Anyway, this isn't really the same thing as normal retail. For a multi-billion dollar Goliath like Sony, this is advertising.
If you attach a cash register to a promotional stunt, then it becomes a piece of advertising which pays for itself. A store front in a mall gets plenty of walk-by 'viewers' who have disposable income, your product is front and center, and best of all, you don't have to give away a cut of your product revenue to some third party retail outfit. It's a win win win situation.
So why don't more manufacturers didn't take advantage of this incredibly obvious model?
Because they're scared of having their products boycotted by their normal retail base and being driven out of business before they can squeel, "Greed Killed the Rat".
I guess Sony wants more pie. I hope they fall flat on their faces while taking a bold step for Corporate-Kind. I wonder how long it'll be until one of these companies starts buying all the other retail outfits in the malls and then putting on a show of 'competition' when really it's just a bunch of price fixing and design manipulation to make sure every demograph is bled equally while buying shoddy merchandise?
There is nothing special about the number Bruce Willis calls. It just happens to be an answering machine that the people in the post-apocalyptic future find intact. A time traveler could leave a message on that machine and years later the authorities can recieve it. No two way time communication.
Yeah, I know. And that was largely my point; there wasn't anything special about the phone and that's what made it a great story construct, and why a variation on it could have lent itself perfectly to a fantasy/sci-fi live action game like the Bees thing.
And when I say a variation, I meant something like leaving messages written on pottery by a time traveler who missed the mark by a thousand years or so. Or the game creators could hide artificially aged documents or photographs in a library for players to find. There's a ton of fun ways that idea could lend itself to a game.
Two-way communication becomes more challenging of course, because of the need for actors, but there are plenty of ways they could be incorporated in an interesting manner. The phone is a good one, though I'd spend more time coming up with a more believable conceit than the Bees thing. --Like have the actor playing a spy who is calling from a distant country or a time traveller locked away in a secret government facility who managed to access the phone grid, or a VoIP terminal or something. Or the game creators could come up with something more complicated, like renting air-time on a radio station and there stage some sort of event where the whole scene is broadcast War of the Worlds style including telephone participation with players and the whole bit.
There's plenty of ideas one can tap.
That's the great thing about fiction; any problem can be solved in a plausible manner if you spend enough time tinkering.
But I also recognize that I am still a victim of marketing manipulation.
Much of my behavior is the direct result of marketing.
Such as preferring women with shaved legs. This is an almost universal trait in men and it drives women to buy razors, --and a thousand other beauty products, for that matter. --Which in turn makes having self-esteem a conditional thing which can only be satisfied by the purchasing of certain products. They advertise anti-depressants like Prozac in women's magazines, because "No guy would want to love a women who has 'mood swings'".
The greatest achievement of advertising is that people have been conned into believing that they are not affected by advertising.
I don't even own a television. Most of the damaging behavior modification which happens as a result of television is not even related to overt ads. --And being aware that modification techniques are being used, contrary to popular belief, offers almost zero protection.
The fact of the matter is that CRTs which strobes at television frequencies cause people to slip into a trance state which enables messages and modifications to much more easily bypass the conscious level and plug directly into the core of the mind. This is not theory. The effects of television are measurable in the physiological state of the viewer as well as psychological. Reduced metabolic rates, defined changes in frontal lobe activity. It's all there, and it's well understood.
Do you like women with shaved legs? Do you believe in terrorists? Would you get nervous and uncomfortable if somebody accused you of being a 'conspiracy theorist'? How deeply are those reactions seated?
How much of you is really You?
Saying "I'm not affected by advertising because I understand how it works," is rather like saying the same thing about alcohol. The only protection is awareness and avoidance.
I just realized why the marketing/writers of the "I Love Bees!" game wanted players to get all those people to "Salute the Camera".
Every person who has to stand in a public mall and feel stupid saluting a camera is going to want to know "Why?".
This means that the player on the phone is going to have to make some effort to explain it to them, which means that person is going to want to go home and log onto the Bees game and become the next potential customer when Halo-2 ships.
A crafty marketing tactic which makes me want to NEVER buy their video game, EVER. I don't like deliberately manipulative crap like that. If you want to sell something, make it good, and tell people it's available and allow them to choose whether or not they want to buy it. --You can certainly make an interactive game like the Bees thing, but don't be a crafty bastard about it.
While I recognize that people can be VERY effectively manipulated into doing what you want them to do without their realizing it, (like invading foreign countries for no good reason), I strongly feel that the practice is disrespectful and degrading. --If I wouldn't do it to my friends, then I wouldn't do it to somebody I don't know.
Again, I have to tip the hat to the Slashdot editors for grouping this story along with several other stories about marketing. That kind of editing can increase awareness in readers by providing different perspectives on the same subject matter. Good job!
Okay, this is pretty dumb. This site reminds me of every stupid faked computer interaction ever to make it into a mainstream movie.
The page loads. Then some JavaScript starts inserting crap and shifting things. Oooooo! WTF? What kind of retarded tech-type could even suspend the tiniest bit of disbelief over this?
Sorry, but it's ludicrous from the very first page hit. At least the whole A.I. release seemed to be a technologically-grounded puzzle, rather than a silly, contrived, visual presentation.
Yeah! I have the same problem with books!
It's like, you're supposed to believe that the words written on a sheaf of dead tree sheets is actually happening when obviously they're just words put there by some printing press! How insulting to a person's intelligence is that?! And you even have to turn the sheets of paper over yourself! The whole thing is a total crock! Totally unbelievable!
And then there's D&D. . , where people say they're somebody else, when really they're just spinning falsehoods. Don't even get me started on D&D!
Though, joking aside, I can see totally your point. The fact that you're having the "failure to suspend disbelief reaction", (which to be fair, I entirely shared when looking at the Bees page), means that it could have been done a lot better.
The way I would have done it, off the top of my head, is to have made a web page or series of web pages which look like they'd actually been altered in a conventional way, but by a source with a fantastic origin. In a fictional story where it is possible to send matter and energy back through time, how hard is it to accept that electrons and magnetic charges stored on a web server can be manipulated from the future? Remember the phone message system to the future used in, "12 Monkeys"? --That kind of logic was clean and plausible, some variation of which could easily be used to introduce fictional elements into the real world in this case. Anything is possible with fiction. That's the point. There is no good excuse for clumsy "style over substance" mistakes. --A desperate commando from the future seeking help in the past I doubt is going to waste his time making clever looking javascript graphics. (Unless of course, you're trying to show that he's a fucking idiot. He was on the losing side, was he? Hmm.)
But then, the nature of this game was dreamed up by a team which included, most likely, a lot of marketing people and not enough solid creative types who had command veto. Marketing people have the curious problem of being very smart and very stupid at the same time. It's really hard, apparently, to wash the 'slick' off a marketing drone. Most things dreamed up by marketing drones tend to have that subtle odor of, "Coke vs Pepsi". It makes me very badly not want to buy stuff. Ever.
I get the two confused when the term "flat screen" gets used; the term is not specific enough and ends up being applied to two different technologies.
I'm interested because the story doesn't say where or how the signal was being generated, whether by the signal amplifier in the television or by the imaging system itself. And if the thing can be picked up by a civilian satellite in orbit then I'd like to know more about how it was being generated.
Some people are talking on this site like the thing was a CRT, but was it?
The article was published in "Techworld" which is an affiliate (one of many) of InfoWorld Media Group, which in turn is a limb of IDG. ..
Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., InfoWorld Media Group is a wholly owned independent business unit of IDG, the world's leading IT media, research and exposition company. IDG publishes more than 285 computer magazines and newspapers and 500 book titles and offers online users the largest network of technology-specific sites around the world through IDG.net (http://www.idg.net), which comprises more than 200 targeted Web sites in 52 countries. IDG is also a leading producer of 110 computer-related expositions worldwide, and provides IT market analysis through 49 offices in 41 countries worldwide. Company information is available at www.idg.com.
IDG is one of those earth-flattening corporations which dominates everything. Look at their track record. Interestingly, they're not just interested in owning all the computer publications in the world. They also have their fingers in Brain Research. --Which looks on the surface to be a bit of PR angling, but 350 million worth? Whatever. Creepy.
Huge publishing conglomerates have mandates and agendas, (whether they realize it or not), so IDG publishing articles about Echelon is interesting to say the least.
By contrast. ..
Slashdot is owned by OSDG. (Open Source Data Group) From the OSDG website
In the most recent release of Nielsen//NetRatings' @plan (Summer 2004), OSTG retained its top ranking across all competitive networks for delivering online buyers of computer hardware and software, visitors who purchase home electronics online and visitors who buy anything online. OSTG moved up in the rankings for many consumer technology categories, including visitors who are heavy spenders on computer hardware, visitors who purchase MP3 players, and visitors who purchase video games.
For the eighth consecutive quarter, OSTG has been validated as the number one network for delivering visitors who look for technology news online. OSTG reaches over 16 million visitors every month and delivers nearly 250 million page views.
[. ..]VA Software develops and markets SourceForge Enterprise Edition, an enterprise-grade solution for managing and optimizing distributed development. SourceForge Enterprise Edition provides a secure, centralized platform that connects heterogeneous tools and processes together with an integrated suite of project, change management and collaboration tools. Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies use SourceForge Enterprise Edition as a Global Development Platform(TM) to integrate disparate tools and processes, expand visibility and control, and improve development efficiency and collaboration.
VA Software appears to have its morals lined up nicely. That is, their goal appears to be data sharing and the facilitation of collaborative creative efforts. As the much maligned, (and biblically misrepresented), Christ advised, "Judge the Tree by the Fruit it Bears." This is one of the most outstanding bits of advice I have ever heard. Flowing all the way down this particular chain, Slashdot allows peculiar guys like me to speak my mind in forum on taboo subject matter. I have an enormous amount of respect for that.
Here's an article written by Carl Redfield, a guy way up at the top of th
But people have been making political observations for as long as there have been performers. Since most artists are creative, (and thus are inclined to naturally align their lives with the production and distribution rather than the self-serving consumption of energy), their political observations tend to be critical of whichever mini-black hole happens to be leading their nation.
Keep in mind, the "News" guys at the tops of the corporate broadcasting structures are all millionaires. They may have started out on the right path, but to have been allowed to get the top, they will first have been subverted into believing in the state.
Stewart is nothing new. But he's also pulling his punches, I suspect, in order to stay alive. Some Elephants make their own Uzis.
The beauty of the human-driven pencil is that the end image can easily represent dream reality rather than the purely logical reality in which computers are locked.
--Unless an artist uses very rigid rules of perspective, (which most comics and classic animations I've seen rarely bother with), then information represented visually is unrestrained by 3d physical rules. "Squish & Stretch" in the Bugs Bunny universe only works in a 2d, non-logical environment. EVERY time I've seen eyeballs bugging out attempted by 3d software, it looks scary and unsettling rather than funny. That's only one very small example.
This is why, while I enjoyed animations like "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo", I found them to be limited.
Stories bubble up from the realm of the subconscious; the dream world. Stripping them of that quality seems far more a time-saving compromise than it does an artistic achievement.
But then there are so many people hell-bent on stripping this world of all things non-logical, non-literal, non-material that this latest move to cut out the intuitive aspect of humanity should be expected as a very 'logical' step, I suppose.
Materialism is what you are left with once you have reduced your sensory inputs to only include those sanctioned by the "Learning Channel" and your high school science teacher.
Next stop: Voluntary Autism!
The logical half of our minds, while powerful, is over-used and our intuitive sides are shunned and atrophied. The most powerful people will always be those have the two sides working in concert.
But of course, I suspect the Powers That Be don't want the populations which feed them to be powerful or aware of any possibilities beyond those within very limited, very strict parameters. This is largely why, I think, computers have been allowed to spread as they have. Computers cannot think Outside of the Box.
I find it interesting that early on, there were efforts put into the development of analog computers. The theories were sound, but the funding went elsewhere. ..
TFT is based on the fundamental principal that cooperative behavior is more effective than selfish behavior, (so long as people have the brains and back-bone to face defectors when they show up.)
Southampton's new program is simply another aspect of cooperative behavior. The apparent superiority stems from the fact that the it is utilizing the energy potential of two deliberate cooperators rather than a single 'smart' program trying to shepherd a selfish program into cooperative behavior. Or to put it another way, Southampton uses two programs which are working in a co-linear fashion toward the same goal, while the original TFT program must work by itself toward that goal with the equivalent of a retarded child who, with effort, can sometimes assist, but who will also put up annoying resistance from time to time.
Saying that Southampton's program 'beats' the original TFT program is like saying, Cooperative Behavior 'trumps' Cooperative Behavior, which curiously is itself an example of self-serving terminology. Cooperators don't think in terms of 'winning' against other units within the same system. (Good guys don't play chess.)
In any case. . . imagine now three programs which are able to work together to maximize energy potentials. Or four. The amazing part is that the harvested energy potentials don't grow in a linear fashion. They have the ability to grow in a geometric curve. Hmm! (One might think of Groklaw, which has the ability to do thousands of hours of legal research on levels which even a large corporation cannot afford to match. Service to Others v.s. Service to Self.)
The logic presented by these rudimentary programs, if built upon, can become the most sensible energy management system that can ultimately exist; that is, a cell-type network of other-serving individuals willing to give whenever needed, however needed, and who can be assured of being given to when in need themselves.
Naturally, such a system requires that every member be two things;
1) Willing to co-operate fully and without selfish tendency. And,
2) Mastering the 'Tat'. --That is, overcoming our social programming so that we can in fact be brutal when we are being brutalized.
Cutting off a selfish defector when their defection becomes apparent is clearly one of the most difficult things in this world for people to do. If we could bring ourselves to not "Turn the Other Cheek" and to not, "Forgive and Forget", and generally not "Die on the Cross," then things like Enron and rogue presidents could have been easily recognized early on, (when the first business irregularities showed up in the energy biz, or when Shrub was blowing up frogs with fire-crackers), and have been prevented before they ever got rolling. If people had a higher level of awareness, stronger back-bones and less indoctrination, then society would work, I think, with far fewer wars and psychopathic leaders.
But anyway, my point is that such systems CAN and do work in our contemporary environment, albeit, in a limited fashion. On the large scale, though. . , things founder partly because the selfish have taken too much territory and the spineless (who are also often the mindless), are so massive in number. As such, a sensible system is going to be log-jammed with issues of self-service and self-destruction.
But then, I largely see this world as a school whereby people learn the hard way that selfishness destroys, and that the only road out comes through dropping those aspects of ourselves and growing aware, strong and courageous.
I've yet to meet the diehard liberal who, with all else stripped away, is anything more than a selfish kid struggling to make-believe imposing his/her will on others into something wholesome-sounding.
So. . . Stopping the selfish kid from taking all the other kid's toys is imposing one's will, is it?
Stopping the bullies of the world from raping and pillaging howsoever and however much they choose is, "imposing one's will"?
This is what I am talking about. The conservative mind-set is at its core, selfish and dangerous. --And in America, the bully takes using the weapons of Money and Law. The Enron fiasco was an excellent example of this behavior carried to its logical conclusion.
The Conservative believes that s/he should be allowed to harm, take and exploit as s/he pleases, and they don't seem to understand that this is flawed behavior. Despite how the truth of the matter may disguised and flowered as it often is, the simple fact is that there is a sickness involved. Greed is a disease.
So, yes. Whether you think it is wholesome or not, I DO believe in 'imposing my will' when it is appropriate. When I am being attacked, I will "impose my will" and prevent a bully from harming me.
There are monsters in the world. The trick is in keeping a clear head and knowing which ones are real and which ones are your responsibility.
Don't believe it's possible? Perhaps you need to read up on mind control. It's easy to create, 'suicide bombers'. Like the US, Israel has its own secret detention centers to supply unwilling subjects for such operations. It's obviously an effective ploy because it fools people who think, "But they would never DO that!"
If you compare the times when 'suicide bombings' happen, it nearly always during a point when peace talks are looming, or tensions are easing. And the end results of a bombing NEVER benefits the Palestinians.
One way or another, when four of Israel's own security service chiefs cry out against Sharon's megalomaniacal policies, it means that something is wrong. It means that most people who claim that Israel is in the right, probably don't know the subject matter well enough to make such claims.
Great link! The Road to Serfdom comic is what the internet is all about. (Though the fact that it was published by an American auto giant is rather telling.)
That is, I can see what it had to do with Germany, but I don't think it's at all fair to use that example to condemn socialist thinking. I very much doubt that the con-job which went down in Nazi Germany would have met with Marx's approval!
Basically, what I mean in regards to McQuaig is that she appears to abhor greed-motivated social policy. (See for example, this piece of hers on economics and the homeless.)
I think people who work against greed and injustice, deserve respect, and that those who deliberately ignore the lessons of kindergarten, (ie., how to share and play fairly; things we all instinctively know are right), are not worthy of respect. It seems to me that the primary thing which angers those of the conservative mind-set is simply their being told that they should not be allowed take and self-serve without limit, without regard to others or the world they live in.
I've yet to meet the diehard conservative who, with all else stripped away, is anything more than a selfish kid struggling to make-believe greed into something wholesome-sounding.
Anyway, with regards to Indymedia not being balanced in its view. . . This is true, but my thought is that Service-to-Self thinking is fundamentally structured in such a way that it is incompatible with Service-to-Other work, and after a point, it becomes in fact impossible for the two apporaches to accommodate each other at all.
--This is certainly a reflection of my own take on how reality works, and I don't expect everybody to agree with me. I see reality as a war zone between those who are seeking their higher selves and enlightenment, and those who are seeking their lower selves and the ultimate dissolution of the soul. I see the black hole as being the physical metaphor for self-service.
With these two types of people, as they say, "Never the twain shall meet".
The fact that every objective study of the voting in Florida, including those funded by liberal newspapers, shows Bush won by a small margin means little to these fanatics.
"Fact" did you say? --You must have your own definition for the word, 'objective', then. The only 'studies' I've read which support the election theft used broken logic, left out details, and employed falsehoods.
It'd be interesting to know how you feel about Diebold.
Look at recent news. Shots were fired into a Bush-Cheney headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee. In Orlando, Florida, Democratic fanatics attacked a Republican party headquarters.
I see. I noticed that there were no witnesses to the shooting incident, and that, quote. .,
"Volunteers and staffers at the campaign office say they have no clues as to who might have committed the crime. However, they add that the shooting makes them even more enthusiastic about working for their candidates.
"If anything, they've energized us," Dewar says. "Thank you. Not thank you for shooting at us, but, nothing's gonna slow us down."
Interesting. . ? If a false-flag op worked on 9-11, then why not employ the same tactics on the small scale?
I could be wrong. After all, when I copied your words, "Orlando, Florida, Democratic fanatics attacked a Republican party headquarters" into Google, I got nothing back. Perhaps you were over-stating the event?
The chilling effect of these attacks is why, with the two candidates fairly equal in the polls, you see far fewer Bush stickers on cars than Kerry stickers. Bush supporters legitimately fear a rock through their windshield from all these crazed Democrats. Check NationalReview.com for an article on this "Climate of Fear."
Yeah, or. . . the polls are false and support for Bush is actually lower than it is made to appear. After all, you can't stage another stolen election unless the race is nice and tight.
the very decent, honest and non-violent swift boat veterans.
Whoa there! Correct me if I'm wrong in this. . . (The website you posted to didn't have the link to "The Real Story" functioning and I couldn't get the movie to play. At least I was able to read the transcript.)
It sounded like Kerry was describing the barbaric actions of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. --And that the Swiftboat vets, far from denying what he was saying, seemed instead to be complaining that his describing these bloody actions was somehow traitorous because it lowered their moral. (Did I interpret this correctly, and if so, what is your problem here? I am baffled as to why you would include this item at all. Are you suggesting that it is okay to murder civilians during war but not okay to blow whistles about it? Please help me understand this.)
My greatx4 grandfather and one of his daughters were murdered during the Civil War for opposing Southern succession in NW Alabama. My greatx3 grandfather was murdered for voting Republican in 1874 when Southern Democrats were as rabid about winning by any means as national Democrats are today.
Well, the definitions of 'Democrat' and 'Republican', as I understand the rules of that silly snowball match, have changed sides over the last couple of centuries. I can't somehow see one of today's Democrats defending the secession of the slaver state of Alabama.
In any case, your family's personal history can only be taken you at your word, but if your peculiar version of political blindness and deliberately provocative attitudes run in the blood, then I can somewhat understand how your ancestors might have run afoul of some crazy Americans with guns.
Democrate or Republican. Both will do us in. One will just take four years longer.
If the National Post (rigidly right wing Canadian paper) will publish Linda McQuaig and others, why aren't there any divergent viewpoints on Indymedia?
Apples and oranges.
Indymedia definitely has an agenda. There is no question about this, and that agenda is to tell those stories which the National Post will never, ever touch. Linda McQuaig, as admirable as her socialist/Marxist thinking is, remains little more than a showpiece to give a lousy paper some legitimacy. (They call it, 'controversy' and they use it in a large part to sell ad spots.) Indymedia doesn't need to do this. Their primary concern is not money-making or winning false legitimacy.
Linda McQuaig is also carried in the National Post for another reason; so that people can ask exactly the question you asked; so that they can feel as though there is a legitimate reason to scorn and ignore alternative news sources.
Indymedia and other alternative news sources are needed exactly because they do not fall beneath the control of such influences. Or, at least, that was true until the FBI entered the scene.
This universe is made of pure Energy. All Matter is merely an illusion created by this Energy.
Within this medium, Consciousness can also be defined by the movement and patterns within that Energy, and thus Consciousness becomes an expression of Energy. Just as Matter is also an expression of Energy. Is there a difference between the two?
--Now, of course, I don't know the maths behind how it all works, (though I am certain it can all be described through maths), but there do seem to be direct relationships between Matter and Consciousness, and indeed, the line appears to be very blurred. For instance. ..
Take the name of the street you live on and a nice thick dictionary. Find where your street name appears in that dictionary. If the street name does not appear directly, if it is a person's name, then take the root of that name, or if it is a compound word, look up both of those words and perform the following. ..
Read the definition you find, plus all of the definitions of the twenty or so words which appear before the name of your street and the twenty words which appear after the name of your street.
Then consider that the street is the place you live. It is the physical base upon which you are exploring and growing your own Consciousness and your interaction with the world around you.
'CN' and 'VIA', both being Canadian rail companies, call up many things. What does Canada represent in the world? Does the fact that the Progressive Conservative party, (the 'PC' party???) sold off the national train system to a private corporation figure into the equation?
Exploring names can reveal many base aspects of reality, make us aware on other levels.
"Lie" implies knowingly distorting the truth. It's not entirely clear whether this is the case or not. Yes, Bush and company are unquestionably guilty of decieving the American public, but they may actually buy into all the nonsense that they are selling. Hell, why the hell else would they go into Iraq with 100,000 troops instead of 300,000 unless they really believed that it would work, that we would be showered with flowers? Yes, I'm sure the money to be made rebuilding the country was a major factor, as was the strategic control of the Gulf region, but these guys are probably so deluded they believe they really are working for truth, liberty, and the Ameri can way.
You raise an interesting point.
There is a lot of research into the psychopathic personality and Bush lines up on all counts.
Psychopaths lie as a matter of course, but there is some argument as to whether or not they actually believe what they are saying. One of the things which makes them such effective liars is that the various physiological tells which occur when a normal person is lying are simply not present with a psychopath. The best way to determine if one is lying is to match up words to actions and see if there is any discrepancy. Psychopaths are very hard to spot, but in Bush's case, there is so much recorded media attention that he is rather like a full case study.
One of the things which make psychopaths so effective is that normal people by their own internal wiring, are complicit in their own abuse. People tend to actually not hear or see or remember when a psychopath displays one of the classic tells. Regular people rush to make up excuses for a psychopath's dangerously irrational behavior because they are measuring the psychopath's actions against the template of their own lives; the template of a person who is not self-destructive and manipulative.
The result is that the people around the psychopath do most of the work in excusing ludicrous behavior.
You can see this now with everybody trying as hard as they can to come up with excuses regarding Bush's, "Lying about WMD's". --The fact of the matter, though, is that almost every time Bush opens his mouth, another verifiable untruth falls out. He tells falsehoods all the time. The list is endless.
But, true to pattern, people look the other way, do not listen, reconstruct their own memories, and generally fall over backwards to make up excuses for the psychopath.
Interestingly, ALL psychopaths seem to be hell bent on destroying lives, destroying systems and creating chaos for not other reason that to create chaos. This is exactly what Bush has done.
http://ourworld-top.cs.com/mikegriffith1/refute. ht m
Did you actually read any of that stuff?
I read through the most promising looking links which purported to debunk claims that a Boeing passenger jet did not strike the Pentagon. I was actually rather surprised with just how illogical and poorly thought out the objections and arguments presented were. Usually, when it comes to this sort of thing, debunkers are somewhat more coherent. Not in this case. It seemed largely that the debunkers were simply hair-splitting to avoid honestly looking at the questions themselves, selectively addressing only a small number of issues, and throwing up very inadequate and superficial answers which break down even under light scrutiny.
I also noted in one case the use of ridicule and rudeness to bully across weak assertions rather than actually answer questions.
But most curious was the fact that one of the links didn't even attempt to debunk, (http://www.montalk.net/pentagon.html), but instead forwarded a variation of the very claim which is now commonly understood to be the best theory regarding the attack; that the object which struck the Pentagon was a small, drone aircraft.
I recommend that anybody who really wants to know what happened do some more reading and some more thinking.
[. ..]when some fucking nuke blows up in manhattan and we all go "golly fucking gee", peresident kerry said we were safer. wake the fuck up. you think in five years saddam wouldn't have been cranking out wmd's like candy? grow up, welcome to the real world. they want to kill you. even though y'all hate bush. they still hate you and want to kill you.
The Slashdot poster this came from and others like him are indeed for real!
The successful products of propaganda! As Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, once said, "Give me control of the German media, and I can control the German people." But then, of course, this poster would probably say the same of me, the only difference being that rationality and basic logic is not on his side. --Bummer, that. (Who owns the media, after all?)
But, oh, those bad, bad Middle-Easterners. They're all animals, right? They "Hate us for our Freedoms." Those same fringe groups were also funded by the CIA. (Who put Saddam in power, please? That's right! And who put the most recent despotic lunatic in power in Iraq earlier this year? You guessed it! Same people!)
Though these days, animosity in Iraq felt toward the US has been well earned, I'd say. Cluster bombing kids? Well, that's simple economics. A small price to pay for getting rid of a dictator, (which the US put there in the first place.) Hm. Strange, that. Some would almost think that the Bush/Nixon league wanted the world embroiled in profitable war for some reason!
But anyway. . . the trick, of course, is to get as many drone-copies of the fellow who posted the above to vote Bush next month. --At least enough to create a 'close race' so that Diebold and all that other stuff can swing it nicely in his favor once again. --Either that, or the same people who brought you 9-11 may indeed blow up a chunk of Manhattan and blame it on the pretend terrorists in order to convince you.
Remember those scary, scary Anthrax attacks all those many moons ago with US weapons grade spores?
Or how about the indestructible Arab 'terrorists' passport on top of the WTC crater?
Among a thousand other details forgotten in the shuffle by Joe-Average.
My favorite part is how often the argument comes up, "There are no such thing as conspiracies because so many people are not able to keep it a secret!" --Which of course is a broken argument, and I'll tell you why. ..
Very simply. . , with much of the public not just willing, but down-right determined to look the other way you don't need to keep the mistakes and obvious tell-tale signs covered up, because the public will do it for you! Whenever those fascinating bits of incriminating/discordant info pop up, they are instantly shuffled to the back of the public consciousness by the media and by posters like the one above because, "Conspiracies Don't Exist." It's circular logic, and around and around it goes. ..
It is rooted in a variation of Stockholm Syndrome; where the abused will actually protect their kidnapers. The poster above is a prime example of this psychology, and it's because of him that the world is messed up the way it is. --Too many willingly deaf and blind people.
Too bad he's not also dumb.
And too bad Kerry is a tool, unwitting or otherwise.
Damn liberals, Think the world is only viewed through their eyes..
I don't know about liberal eyes, (or even what a liberal is exactly), and I don't know about aluminum tubes either. But I do know that anybody who claims that the Bush government doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.
It is useful to have verified what the withdrawl symptoms are and how they kick in. Pretty much lines up with my experiences.
But I've said it before and I'll say it again; Coffee is a great drug!
It increases and sharpens awareness without affecting judgement.
Typically, I like to use it for a few weeks at a time, and then drop it from my diet for another couple of weeks until my system is clear. Then I know it's standing by in the wings for when I'm going to need to be sharp-minded and productive again. Two to Nine days to clear the system? Man, I can (and do) that by accident.
A greasy slab of pizza can have longer lasting negative effects. --And no positive ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, this isn't really the same thing as normal retail. For a multi-billion dollar Goliath like Sony, this is advertising.
If you attach a cash register to a promotional stunt, then it becomes a piece of advertising which pays for itself. A store front in a mall gets plenty of walk-by 'viewers' who have disposable income, your product is front and center, and best of all, you don't have to give away a cut of your product revenue to some third party retail outfit. It's a win win win situation.
So why don't more manufacturers didn't take advantage of this incredibly obvious model?
Because they're scared of having their products boycotted by their normal retail base and being driven out of business before they can squeel, "Greed Killed the Rat".
I guess Sony wants more pie. I hope they fall flat on their faces while taking a bold step for Corporate-Kind. I wonder how long it'll be until one of these companies starts buying all the other retail outfits in the malls and then putting on a show of 'competition' when really it's just a bunch of price fixing and design manipulation to make sure every demograph is bled equally while buying shoddy merchandise?
Heck, in the clothing biz, it's already happened.
-FL
Yeah, I know. And that was largely my point; there wasn't anything special about the phone and that's what made it a great story construct, and why a variation on it could have lent itself perfectly to a fantasy/sci-fi live action game like the Bees thing.
And when I say a variation, I meant something like leaving messages written on pottery by a time traveler who missed the mark by a thousand years or so. Or the game creators could hide artificially aged documents or photographs in a library for players to find. There's a ton of fun ways that idea could lend itself to a game.
Two-way communication becomes more challenging of course, because of the need for actors, but there are plenty of ways they could be incorporated in an interesting manner. The phone is a good one, though I'd spend more time coming up with a more believable conceit than the Bees thing. --Like have the actor playing a spy who is calling from a distant country or a time traveller locked away in a secret government facility who managed to access the phone grid, or a VoIP terminal or something. Or the game creators could come up with something more complicated, like renting air-time on a radio station and there stage some sort of event where the whole scene is broadcast War of the Worlds style including telephone participation with players and the whole bit.
There's plenty of ideas one can tap.
That's the great thing about fiction; any problem can be solved in a plausible manner if you spend enough time tinkering.
-FL
But I also recognize that I am still a victim of marketing manipulation.
Much of my behavior is the direct result of marketing.
Such as preferring women with shaved legs. This is an almost universal trait in men and it drives women to buy razors, --and a thousand other beauty products, for that matter. --Which in turn makes having self-esteem a conditional thing which can only be satisfied by the purchasing of certain products. They advertise anti-depressants like Prozac in women's magazines, because "No guy would want to love a women who has 'mood swings'".
The greatest achievement of advertising is that people have been conned into believing that they are not affected by advertising.
I don't even own a television. Most of the damaging behavior modification which happens as a result of television is not even related to overt ads. --And being aware that modification techniques are being used, contrary to popular belief, offers almost zero protection.
The fact of the matter is that CRTs which strobes at television frequencies cause people to slip into a trance state which enables messages and modifications to much more easily bypass the conscious level and plug directly into the core of the mind. This is not theory. The effects of television are measurable in the physiological state of the viewer as well as psychological. Reduced metabolic rates, defined changes in frontal lobe activity. It's all there, and it's well understood.
Do you like women with shaved legs? Do you believe in terrorists? Would you get nervous and uncomfortable if somebody accused you of being a 'conspiracy theorist'? How deeply are those reactions seated?
How much of you is really You?
Saying "I'm not affected by advertising because I understand how it works," is rather like saying the same thing about alcohol. The only protection is awareness and avoidance.
-FL
Every person who has to stand in a public mall and feel stupid saluting a camera is going to want to know "Why?".
This means that the player on the phone is going to have to make some effort to explain it to them, which means that person is going to want to go home and log onto the Bees game and become the next potential customer when Halo-2 ships.
A crafty marketing tactic which makes me want to NEVER buy their video game, EVER. I don't like deliberately manipulative crap like that. If you want to sell something, make it good, and tell people it's available and allow them to choose whether or not they want to buy it. --You can certainly make an interactive game like the Bees thing, but don't be a crafty bastard about it.
While I recognize that people can be VERY effectively manipulated into doing what you want them to do without their realizing it, (like invading foreign countries for no good reason), I strongly feel that the practice is disrespectful and degrading. --If I wouldn't do it to my friends, then I wouldn't do it to somebody I don't know.
Again, I have to tip the hat to the Slashdot editors for grouping this story along with several other stories about marketing. That kind of editing can increase awareness in readers by providing different perspectives on the same subject matter. Good job!
-FL
Yeah! I have the same problem with books!
It's like, you're supposed to believe that the words written on a sheaf of dead tree sheets is actually happening when obviously they're just words put there by some printing press! How insulting to a person's intelligence is that?! And you even have to turn the sheets of paper over yourself! The whole thing is a total crock! Totally unbelievable!
And then there's D&D. . , where people say they're somebody else, when really they're just spinning falsehoods. Don't even get me started on D&D!
Though, joking aside, I can see totally your point. The fact that you're having the "failure to suspend disbelief reaction", (which to be fair, I entirely shared when looking at the Bees page), means that it could have been done a lot better.
The way I would have done it, off the top of my head, is to have made a web page or series of web pages which look like they'd actually been altered in a conventional way, but by a source with a fantastic origin. In a fictional story where it is possible to send matter and energy back through time, how hard is it to accept that electrons and magnetic charges stored on a web server can be manipulated from the future? Remember the phone message system to the future used in, "12 Monkeys"? --That kind of logic was clean and plausible, some variation of which could easily be used to introduce fictional elements into the real world in this case. Anything is possible with fiction. That's the point. There is no good excuse for clumsy "style over substance" mistakes. --A desperate commando from the future seeking help in the past I doubt is going to waste his time making clever looking javascript graphics. (Unless of course, you're trying to show that he's a fucking idiot. He was on the losing side, was he? Hmm.)
But then, the nature of this game was dreamed up by a team which included, most likely, a lot of marketing people and not enough solid creative types who had command veto. Marketing people have the curious problem of being very smart and very stupid at the same time. It's really hard, apparently, to wash the 'slick' off a marketing drone. Most things dreamed up by marketing drones tend to have that subtle odor of, "Coke vs Pepsi". It makes me very badly not want to buy stuff. Ever.
But, clearly, we're in the minority.
-FL
-FL
I'm interested because the story doesn't say where or how the signal was being generated, whether by the signal amplifier in the television or by the imaging system itself. And if the thing can be picked up by a civilian satellite in orbit then I'd like to know more about how it was being generated.
Some people are talking on this site like the thing was a CRT, but was it?
-FL
The article was published in "Techworld" which is an affiliate (one of many) of InfoWorld Media Group, which in turn is a limb of IDG. .
IDG is one of those earth-flattening corporations which dominates everything. Look at their track record. Interestingly, they're not just interested in owning all the computer publications in the world. They also have their fingers in Brain Research. --Which looks on the surface to be a bit of PR angling, but 350 million worth? Whatever. Creepy.
.
Huge publishing conglomerates have mandates and agendas, (whether they realize it or not), so IDG publishing articles about Echelon is interesting to say the least.
By contrast. .
Slashdot is owned by OSDG. (Open Source Data Group)
From the OSDG website
OSDG is in turn owned by VA Software
VA Software appears to have its morals lined up nicely. That is, their goal appears to be data sharing and the facilitation of collaborative creative efforts. As the much maligned, (and biblically misrepresented), Christ advised, "Judge the Tree by the Fruit it Bears." This is one of the most outstanding bits of advice I have ever heard. Flowing all the way down this particular chain, Slashdot allows peculiar guys like me to speak my mind in forum on taboo subject matter. I have an enormous amount of respect for that.
Here's an article written by Carl Redfield, a guy way up at the top of th
But people have been making political observations for as long as there have been performers. Since most artists are creative, (and thus are inclined to naturally align their lives with the production and distribution rather than the self-serving consumption of energy), their political observations tend to be critical of whichever mini-black hole happens to be leading their nation.
Keep in mind, the "News" guys at the tops of the corporate broadcasting structures are all millionaires. They may have started out on the right path, but to have been allowed to get the top, they will first have been subverted into believing in the state.
Stewart is nothing new. But he's also pulling his punches, I suspect, in order to stay alive. Some Elephants make their own Uzis.
-FL
society needs to get its yin and yang in balance.
Very true, but with the current balance being what it is, how many would understand that?
The logical mind tends to require lots of wind.
-FL
--Unless an artist uses very rigid rules of perspective, (which most comics and classic animations I've seen rarely bother with), then information represented visually is unrestrained by 3d physical rules. "Squish & Stretch" in the Bugs Bunny universe only works in a 2d, non-logical environment. EVERY time I've seen eyeballs bugging out attempted by 3d software, it looks scary and unsettling rather than funny. That's only one very small example.
This is why, while I enjoyed animations like "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo", I found them to be limited.
Stories bubble up from the realm of the subconscious; the dream world. Stripping them of that quality seems far more a time-saving compromise than it does an artistic achievement.
But then there are so many people hell-bent on stripping this world of all things non-logical, non-literal, non-material that this latest move to cut out the intuitive aspect of humanity should be expected as a very 'logical' step, I suppose.
Materialism is what you are left with once you have reduced your sensory inputs to only include those sanctioned by the "Learning Channel" and your high school science teacher.
Next stop: Voluntary Autism!
The logical half of our minds, while powerful, is over-used and our intuitive sides are shunned and atrophied. The most powerful people will always be those have the two sides working in concert.
But of course, I suspect the Powers That Be don't want the populations which feed them to be powerful or aware of any possibilities beyond those within very limited, very strict parameters. This is largely why, I think, computers have been allowed to spread as they have. Computers cannot think Outside of the Box.
I find it interesting that early on, there were efforts put into the development of analog computers. The theories were sound, but the funding went elsewhere. .
-FL
TFT is based on the fundamental principal that cooperative behavior is more effective than selfish behavior, (so long as people have the brains and back-bone to face defectors when they show up.)
Southampton's new program is simply another aspect of cooperative behavior. The apparent superiority stems from the fact that the it is utilizing the energy potential of two deliberate cooperators rather than a single 'smart' program trying to shepherd a selfish program into cooperative behavior. Or to put it another way, Southampton uses two programs which are working in a co-linear fashion toward the same goal, while the original TFT program must work by itself toward that goal with the equivalent of a retarded child who, with effort, can sometimes assist, but who will also put up annoying resistance from time to time.
Saying that Southampton's program 'beats' the original TFT program is like saying, Cooperative Behavior 'trumps' Cooperative Behavior, which curiously is itself an example of self-serving terminology. Cooperators don't think in terms of 'winning' against other units within the same system. (Good guys don't play chess.)
In any case. . . imagine now three programs which are able to work together to maximize energy potentials. Or four. The amazing part is that the harvested energy potentials don't grow in a linear fashion. They have the ability to grow in a geometric curve. Hmm! (One might think of Groklaw, which has the ability to do thousands of hours of legal research on levels which even a large corporation cannot afford to match. Service to Others v.s. Service to Self.)
The logic presented by these rudimentary programs, if built upon, can become the most sensible energy management system that can ultimately exist; that is, a cell-type network of other-serving individuals willing to give whenever needed, however needed, and who can be assured of being given to when in need themselves.
Naturally, such a system requires that every member be two things;
1) Willing to co-operate fully and without selfish tendency. And,
2) Mastering the 'Tat'. --That is, overcoming our social programming so that we can in fact be brutal when we are being brutalized.
Cutting off a selfish defector when their defection becomes apparent is clearly one of the most difficult things in this world for people to do. If we could bring ourselves to not "Turn the Other Cheek" and to not, "Forgive and Forget", and generally not "Die on the Cross," then things like Enron and rogue presidents could have been easily recognized early on, (when the first business irregularities showed up in the energy biz, or when Shrub was blowing up frogs with fire-crackers), and have been prevented before they ever got rolling. If people had a higher level of awareness, stronger back-bones and less indoctrination, then society would work, I think, with far fewer wars and psychopathic leaders.
But anyway, my point is that such systems CAN and do work in our contemporary environment, albeit, in a limited fashion. On the large scale, though. . , things founder partly because the selfish have taken too much territory and the spineless (who are also often the mindless), are so massive in number. As such, a sensible system is going to be log-jammed with issues of self-service and self-destruction.
But then, I largely see this world as a school whereby people learn the hard way that selfishness destroys, and that the only road out comes through dropping those aspects of ourselves and growing aware, strong and courageous.
-FL
So. . . Stopping the selfish kid from taking all the other kid's toys is imposing one's will, is it?
Stopping the bullies of the world from raping and pillaging howsoever and however much they choose is, "imposing one's will"?
This is what I am talking about. The conservative mind-set is at its core, selfish and dangerous. --And in America, the bully takes using the weapons of Money and Law. The Enron fiasco was an excellent example of this behavior carried to its logical conclusion.
The Conservative believes that s/he should be allowed to harm, take and exploit as s/he pleases, and they don't seem to understand that this is flawed behavior. Despite how the truth of the matter may disguised and flowered as it often is, the simple fact is that there is a sickness involved. Greed is a disease.
So, yes. Whether you think it is wholesome or not, I DO believe in 'imposing my will' when it is appropriate. When I am being attacked, I will "impose my will" and prevent a bully from harming me.
There are monsters in the world. The trick is in keeping a clear head and knowing which ones are real and which ones are your responsibility.
-FL
Thank-you and Cheers!
-FL
Unless I am mistaken, ladies and gentlemen, our friendly poster is calling you all simpletons.
I wonder how his belief that you are all stupid generally affects his moral behavior towards others?
A Conservative, is he? Hmm.
-FL
fascist tendencies of the american left.
Am I reading you correctly?
One of the indicators of Psychopathic tendency is to blame others for what the psychopath is guilty of her/himself.
How many Israeli houses and olive groves have the Palestinians bulldozed? (None.) Have Palestinan snipers been shooting teenaged girls in the head recently? (No.) How about destroying civilian water wells? (No.) How many suicide bombings have the Palestinian secret service performed and blamed on Israeli rebels in order to generate chaos and excuses to continue the war on civilians? (None.)
Don't believe it's possible? Perhaps you need to read up on mind control. It's easy to create, 'suicide bombers'. Like the US, Israel has its own secret detention centers to supply unwilling subjects for such operations. It's obviously an effective ploy because it fools people who think, "But they would never DO that!"
If you compare the times when 'suicide bombings' happen, it nearly always during a point when peace talks are looming, or tensions are easing. And the end results of a bombing NEVER benefits the Palestinians.
One way or another, when four of Israel's own security service chiefs cry out against Sharon's megalomaniacal policies, it means that something is wrong. It means that most people who claim that Israel is in the right, probably don't know the subject matter well enough to make such claims.
-FL
That is, I can see what it had to do with Germany, but I don't think it's at all fair to use that example to condemn socialist thinking. I very much doubt that the con-job which went down in Nazi Germany would have met with Marx's approval!
Basically, what I mean in regards to McQuaig is that she appears to abhor greed-motivated social policy. (See for example, this piece of hers on economics and the homeless.)
I think people who work against greed and injustice, deserve respect, and that those who deliberately ignore the lessons of kindergarten, (ie., how to share and play fairly; things we all instinctively know are right), are not worthy of respect. It seems to me that the primary thing which angers those of the conservative mind-set is simply their being told that they should not be allowed take and self-serve without limit, without regard to others or the world they live in.
I've yet to meet the diehard conservative who, with all else stripped away, is anything more than a selfish kid struggling to make-believe greed into something wholesome-sounding.
Anyway, with regards to Indymedia not being balanced in its view. . . This is true, but my thought is that Service-to-Self thinking is fundamentally structured in such a way that it is incompatible with Service-to-Other work, and after a point, it becomes in fact impossible for the two apporaches to accommodate each other at all.
--This is certainly a reflection of my own take on how reality works, and I don't expect everybody to agree with me. I see reality as a war zone between those who are seeking their higher selves and enlightenment, and those who are seeking their lower selves and the ultimate dissolution of the soul. I see the black hole as being the physical metaphor for self-service.
With these two types of people, as they say, "Never the twain shall meet".
-FL
"Fact" did you say? --You must have your own definition for the word, 'objective', then. The only 'studies' I've read which support the election theft used broken logic, left out details, and employed falsehoods.
It'd be interesting to know how you feel about Diebold.
Look at recent news. Shots were fired into a Bush-Cheney headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee. In Orlando, Florida, Democratic fanatics attacked a Republican party headquarters.
I see. I noticed that there were no witnesses to the shooting incident, and that, quote. .
Interesting. . ? If a false-flag op worked on 9-11, then why not employ the same tactics on the small scale?
I could be wrong. After all, when I copied your words, "Orlando, Florida, Democratic fanatics attacked a Republican party headquarters" into Google, I got nothing back. Perhaps you were over-stating the event?
The chilling effect of these attacks is why, with the two candidates fairly equal in the polls, you see far fewer Bush stickers on cars than Kerry stickers. Bush supporters legitimately fear a rock through their windshield from all these crazed Democrats. Check NationalReview.com for an article on this "Climate of Fear."
Yeah, or. . . the polls are false and support for Bush is actually lower than it is made to appear. After all, you can't stage another stolen election unless the race is nice and tight.
the very decent, honest and non-violent swift boat veterans.
Whoa there! Correct me if I'm wrong in this. . . (The website you posted to didn't have the link to "The Real Story" functioning and I couldn't get the movie to play. At least I was able to read the transcript.)
It sounded like Kerry was describing the barbaric actions of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. --And that the Swiftboat vets, far from denying what he was saying, seemed instead to be complaining that his describing these bloody actions was somehow traitorous because it lowered their moral. (Did I interpret this correctly, and if so, what is your problem here? I am baffled as to why you would include this item at all. Are you suggesting that it is okay to murder civilians during war but not okay to blow whistles about it? Please help me understand this.)
My greatx4 grandfather and one of his daughters were murdered during the Civil War for opposing Southern succession in NW Alabama. My greatx3 grandfather was murdered for voting Republican in 1874 when Southern Democrats were as rabid about winning by any means as national Democrats are today.
Well, the definitions of 'Democrat' and 'Republican', as I understand the rules of that silly snowball match, have changed sides over the last couple of centuries. I can't somehow see one of today's Democrats defending the secession of the slaver state of Alabama.
In any case, your family's personal history can only be taken you at your word, but if your peculiar version of political blindness and deliberately provocative attitudes run in the blood, then I can somewhat understand how your ancestors might have run afoul of some crazy Americans with guns.
Democrate or Republican. Both will do us in. One will just take four years longer.
-FL
Apples and oranges.
Indymedia definitely has an agenda. There is no question about this, and that agenda is to tell those stories which the National Post will never, ever touch. Linda McQuaig, as admirable as her socialist/Marxist thinking is, remains little more than a showpiece to give a lousy paper some legitimacy. (They call it, 'controversy' and they use it in a large part to sell ad spots.) Indymedia doesn't need to do this. Their primary concern is not money-making or winning false legitimacy.
Linda McQuaig is also carried in the National Post for another reason; so that people can ask exactly the question you asked; so that they can feel as though there is a legitimate reason to scorn and ignore alternative news sources.
But I think that this is unwise. Linda McQuaig will not, for instance, be allowed to report on the true events happening in Israel. Canwest Global, (which owns the National Post), has been caught re-wording stories about the war on Palestine so that unaware readers will want to favor the Israelis.
Indymedia and other alternative news sources are needed exactly because they do not fall beneath the control of such influences. Or, at least, that was true until the FBI entered the scene.
-FL
This universe is made of pure Energy. All Matter is merely an illusion created by this Energy.
Within this medium, Consciousness can also be defined by the movement and patterns within that Energy, and thus Consciousness becomes an expression of Energy. Just as Matter is also an expression of Energy. Is there a difference between the two?
--Now, of course, I don't know the maths behind how it all works, (though I am certain it can all be described through maths), but there do seem to be direct relationships between Matter and Consciousness, and indeed, the line appears to be very blurred. For instance. .
Take the name of the street you live on and a nice thick dictionary. Find where your street name appears in that dictionary. If the street name does not appear directly, if it is a person's name, then take the root of that name, or if it is a compound word, look up both of those words and perform the following. .
Read the definition you find, plus all of the definitions of the twenty or so words which appear before the name of your street and the twenty words which appear after the name of your street.
Then consider that the street is the place you live. It is the physical base upon which you are exploring and growing your own Consciousness and your interaction with the world around you.
'CN' and 'VIA', both being Canadian rail companies, call up many things. What does Canada represent in the world? Does the fact that the Progressive Conservative party, (the 'PC' party???) sold off the national train system to a private corporation figure into the equation?
Exploring names can reveal many base aspects of reality, make us aware on other levels.
-FL
You raise an interesting point.
There is a lot of research into the psychopathic personality and Bush lines up on all counts.
Psychopaths lie as a matter of course, but there is some argument as to whether or not they actually believe what they are saying. One of the things which makes them such effective liars is that the various physiological tells which occur when a normal person is lying are simply not present with a psychopath. The best way to determine if one is lying is to match up words to actions and see if there is any discrepancy. Psychopaths are very hard to spot, but in Bush's case, there is so much recorded media attention that he is rather like a full case study.
One of the things which make psychopaths so effective is that normal people by their own internal wiring, are complicit in their own abuse. People tend to actually not hear or see or remember when a psychopath displays one of the classic tells. Regular people rush to make up excuses for a psychopath's dangerously irrational behavior because they are measuring the psychopath's actions against the template of their own lives; the template of a person who is not self-destructive and manipulative.
The result is that the people around the psychopath do most of the work in excusing ludicrous behavior.
You can see this now with everybody trying as hard as they can to come up with excuses regarding Bush's, "Lying about WMD's". --The fact of the matter, though, is that almost every time Bush opens his mouth, another verifiable untruth falls out. He tells falsehoods all the time. The list is endless.
But, true to pattern, people look the other way, do not listen, reconstruct their own memories, and generally fall over backwards to make up excuses for the psychopath.
Interestingly, ALL psychopaths seem to be hell bent on destroying lives, destroying systems and creating chaos for not other reason that to create chaos. This is exactly what Bush has done.
-FL
http://ourworld-top.cs.com/mikegriffith1/refute
Did you actually read any of that stuff?
I read through the most promising looking links which purported to debunk claims that a Boeing passenger jet did not strike the Pentagon. I was actually rather surprised with just how illogical and poorly thought out the objections and arguments presented were. Usually, when it comes to this sort of thing, debunkers are somewhat more coherent. Not in this case. It seemed largely that the debunkers were simply hair-splitting to avoid honestly looking at the questions themselves, selectively addressing only a small number of issues, and throwing up very inadequate and superficial answers which break down even under light scrutiny.
I also noted in one case the use of ridicule and rudeness to bully across weak assertions rather than actually answer questions.
But most curious was the fact that one of the links didn't even attempt to debunk, (http://www.montalk.net/pentagon.html), but instead forwarded a variation of the very claim which is now commonly understood to be the best theory regarding the attack; that the object which struck the Pentagon was a small, drone aircraft.
I recommend that anybody who really wants to know what happened do some more reading and some more thinking.
-FL
The Slashdot poster this came from and others like him are indeed for real!
The successful products of propaganda! As Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, once said, "Give me control of the German media, and I can control the German people." But then, of course, this poster would probably say the same of me, the only difference being that rationality and basic logic is not on his side. --Bummer, that. (Who owns the media, after all?)
I mean, many people still believe a jumbo jet hit the pentagon! Why is this?
But, oh, those bad, bad Middle-Easterners. They're all animals, right? They "Hate us for our Freedoms." Those same fringe groups were also funded by the CIA. (Who put Saddam in power, please? That's right! And who put the most recent despotic lunatic in power in Iraq earlier this year? You guessed it! Same people!)
Though these days, animosity in Iraq felt toward the US has been well earned, I'd say. Cluster bombing kids? Well, that's simple economics. A small price to pay for getting rid of a dictator, (which the US put there in the first place.) Hm. Strange, that. Some would almost think that the Bush/Nixon league wanted the world embroiled in profitable war for some reason!
But anyway. . . the trick, of course, is to get as many drone-copies of the fellow who posted the above to vote Bush next month. --At least enough to create a 'close race' so that Diebold and all that other stuff can swing it nicely in his favor once again. --Either that, or the same people who brought you 9-11 may indeed blow up a chunk of Manhattan and blame it on the pretend terrorists in order to convince you.
Remember those scary, scary Anthrax attacks all those many moons ago with US weapons grade spores?
Or how about the indestructible Arab 'terrorists' passport on top of the WTC crater?
Among a thousand other details forgotten in the shuffle by Joe-Average.
My favorite part is how often the argument comes up, "There are no such thing as conspiracies because so many people are not able to keep it a secret!" --Which of course is a broken argument, and I'll tell you why. .
Very simply. . , with much of the public not just willing, but down-right determined to look the other way you don't need to keep the mistakes and obvious tell-tale signs covered up, because the public will do it for you! Whenever those fascinating bits of incriminating/discordant info pop up, they are instantly shuffled to the back of the public consciousness by the media and by posters like the one above because, "Conspiracies Don't Exist." It's circular logic, and around and around it goes. .
It is rooted in a variation of Stockholm Syndrome; where the abused will actually protect their kidnapers. The poster above is a prime example of this psychology, and it's because of him that the world is messed up the way it is. --Too many willingly deaf and blind people.
Too bad he's not also dumb.
And too bad Kerry is a tool, unwitting or otherwise.
-FL
I don't know about liberal eyes, (or even what a liberal is exactly), and I don't know about aluminum tubes either. But I do know that anybody who claims that the Bush government doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.
-FL
But seriously. .
Yeah. Coffee is addictive. Everybody knows this!
It is useful to have verified what the withdrawl symptoms are and how they kick in. Pretty much lines up with my experiences.
But I've said it before and I'll say it again; Coffee is a great drug!
It increases and sharpens awareness without affecting judgement.
Typically, I like to use it for a few weeks at a time, and then drop it from my diet for another couple of weeks until my system is clear. Then I know it's standing by in the wings for when I'm going to need to be sharp-minded and productive again. Two to Nine days to clear the system? Man, I can (and do) that by accident.
A greasy slab of pizza can have longer lasting negative effects. --And no positive ones.
-FL