The evidence does NOT support that idea, because there is no evidence for a missile. Show me the missile parts. Show me the results of a warhead explosion as opposed to a crash with flammables.
You are responding with great verve to things I did not write.
I didn't say anything about thinking a missile hit the pentagon. In fact, I said I thought it was almost certainly an aircraft. --I actually wrote this twice. Clearly. Both times. I am beginning to understand why you continue to hammer away at me when no reasonable person would; I've said nothing untoward or irrational. I can only guess what else you imagine I have said or believe.
Your knee-jerking and erroneous preconceptions are just like those of the worst-case conspiracy 'nut'. Fortunately there are de-bunkers and conspiracy theorists out there who have their act together, otherwise nobody would get anywhere with any of this.
So I was off a bit. The point is, there are lots of witnesses. Doing a search I see numbers anywhere from 89 to 149. That's a LOT of witnesses. You can't dismiss them derisively away just because they don't support your predetermined conclusion.
You were off by a lot, and I also did a read through of the 149 interviews, and as I pointed out in my last post, less than two thirds of them were witnesses to the actual event. I also do not dismiss them derisively or out of hand. That's completely unfair. --I think if you read my last post again, you might see that. --And neither do I have any predetermined conclusions. I find the suggestion that there was foul play on the government's side to have some persuasive arguments and evidence to support it, and as such, it would be foolish to not explore such claims. It may indeed be that the alternative theories are completely wrong and that the U.S. government is honest and noble, but so far the evidence I have looked at, (and I've read everything I can find), doesn't support that. And if you'll pardon me, it sounds as though you are the one being derisive and predetermined. This does a good deal to undermine your position. If you want to champion reason and rationality, you have to be reasonable and rational. Failing this will quickly deposit you on the same level as the conspiracy 'nutbags' you are annoyed with. The fact of the matter is that you don't know what happened on that day any more than I do. All we can do is look at the evidence available and put it through the crucible.
Hundreds of witnesses? Come on now. If you are going to complain about conspiracy theorists spouting wild claims, you had better keep your own boots clean.
Nowhere have I seen data from hundreds of witnesses. Not by a long stretch. --The most comprehensive list I've looked at details interviews from 149 people, and of that number, there were numerous interviewed who were not actually witnesses, but rather felt the explosion from inside the Pentagon, or who were watching radar blips or who came to the site looking for family or what have you. My estimate is that perhaps 80 or 90 people actually reported seeing something fly into the Pentagon.
The curious thing is that their reports are filled with peculiar contradictions and wide variances of conflicting details. As we know, witness testimony is not very trustworthy; human memory is just too malleable, especially when the witness is in a heightened state of fear or shock, as was the case on that day. Further, many of the interviews happened long enough after the event that by the time of the interview, the subject had been watching television news casts about the attacks, being effectively told what they had witnessed by a voice of authority. This is a great way to taint testimony to the point of making it almost useless except in terms of collecting only the broadest, most general of details. So no, the witness testimony has not convinced me of anything except that it is very likely a plane with a some red and blue stripes painted on it hit the pentagon. --Interestingly, one of my more fascinating sources said shortly after the event that, "even the windows had been painted on" [the jet], which is odd, because I noted that several witnesses observed that all the windows were blacked out on the plane.
The twists of logic needed to discount the existanct of a 757 is extremely tortuous. Occam's razor isn't infallible, but the grotesque deformations of rationality needed by the Truthers boggles the mind. Why would the perpetrators fly two airplanes into the World Trade Center, but then expend massive amounts of planning and resources to divert and hide the third plane that was supposed to hit the Pentagon? Why load a drone with 757 parts, when you could just fly the 757 into the Pentagon instead? It's thought processes are insane.
Actually, the logic is not all that twisted. It makes a lot of sense. If the 'terrorists' had failed to hit their targets in New York, it would have been a far less effective event in traumatizing the population. A remote controlled plane, however, could be assured to striking the Pentagon with the kind of accuracy needed to safely do no real damage while still providing a good show. And diverting the original plane would have fit right into the time frame of the event; there is a military air base in the region capable of performing the task, and there were drop outs on the radar path sufficient to account for the time such a maneuver would take. With the Pentagon strike, I can the rationale for such a plan far more easily than the New York claims, and the evidence, such as it is, appears to support this idea whereas the official story has numerous problems.
But that's just my take. If anything else comes up, I'd be willing to alter my thinking accordingly.
I've been impressed for some time now with the work done by the guys at http://www.debunking911.com/index.html and http://www.911myths.com/. There's a lot of rational thinking going on there. Since the day of 911, I couldn't understand the assertion that the towers had been destroyed through controlled demolition. It didn't make sense; a series of jet liners being hijacked in an orchestrated manner, and the crashing of them into the twin towers would have been entirely adequate to start a war. If the buildings had not come down, the deaths of the people and the hampered rescue efforts and the fires would have been a huge tragedy which people would still be talking about today. The buildings collapsing was icing on the cake, if you'll pardon the glibness of the term.
I remember early on, within the first couple of months, a proliferation of conspiracy ideas all landing at the same time. There was one link forwarded to me, which showed a missile striking one of the towers. It was very convincing, upon checking it thoroughly and looking at other samples of the same footage, it turned out to be a very poorly compressed video. The background, which moved very little in the frame looked fine, but the moving object, (the plane), devolved through the encryption process and really did look like a torpedo or cruise missile. I pointed this out loudly, and then never saw that clip ever again. It struck me as odd at the time that such an article would make its way on to the web. Surely the guy who compressed the video and posted it as, "Look! A Missile!" knew that he was creating something very misleading. Perhaps it was a series of mistakes; a poor compression found by somebody else who posted it. But it did seem weird that it and a dozen or so other theories and bits of misleading evidence showed up all at once, several of which continue to hold sway to this day. The process through which disinformation is known to be deliberately distributed to confuse and divide the public seems to me to be a large part of what may be going on here. Covert perception management has been a large part of conducting war in the U.S., and there is plenty of documentation to support this.
I really didn't think much more about the controlled demolition claims until much later when some very well produced items, like "Loose Change" came along and raised doubts again, but for the most part, after looking through all of this stuff, I really don't think that the buildings were deliberately demolished. --I think there is some strong argument of foreknowledge of those attacks, and I noticed that de-bunk sites linked fail to address the more damning of those claims.
And the Pentagon is another matter. I have yet to see anything which convinces me that a passenger jet struck that building. There are a multitude of questions which the de-bunking sites, again, either ignore or answer with very stretched and unconvincing arguments. --The best piece of evidence in my mind in favor of a large jet is the combustion chamber debris, but the first thought which struck me was, "Why not just load some 757 engine parts into the attack vehicle?" I'm surprised that nobody has ever considered this. It seems to me that it would have been a rather obvious ploy. The nature of the wreckage and the missing parts and the withholding of camera images, among numerous other points, are also very awkwardly addressed, if addressed at all by the debunkers. I tend to think that it was not a missile, but perhaps a different type of aircraft which could have been remotely controlled to ensure a 'safe' show-piece disaster at the Pentagon.
In any case, the larger issue is not really in much question. --As one of the sites you linked to put it, "The evidence for a conspiracy to use 9/11 to invade Iraq is significant. While there is not one
If you believe that you paid less under your socialist rule, you probably worked for the bureaucracy. Check your taxes, if I make 100k per year I want to come home with 100k per year not 10k because the government needs my 90k to pay for my neighbor's heat and healthcare because he only makes 20k and can't afford it otherwise. Socialism breeds laziness, stifles innovations, and locks people into financial classes, try to prove otherwise, you can't. And your friend Chavez, great country if you want to work, and live, but if you want control over your life, or if you have goals for yourself, or if you want to become wealthy or raise your standard of living from that of your parents, good luck, it's not happening. All that aside, if your socialist health care is go great, why do Canadians come into the US for surgery? Maybe it's because waiting 6 months for a by-pass surgery after a heart attack isn't exactly fantastic. You have been spit right out of the socialist propaganda mill.
Speaking of propaganda. ..
Your numbers are way off and they speak of paranoia and hate. --And in Canada our level of taxation is for the most part on par with the U.S., but for the most part, Canadians do not fear helping others. There are system abusers, but they make up only a small quotient, and the benefits of sharing far outweigh the dead weight. But it is very easy to make emotional arguments with stir up feelings of hate, and thereby cause people to get a skewed view of the reality and to adopt conservative policies which in both the long and short term, harm society in countless ways. --I'm speaking as one who has lived in a mostly-socialist system all his life, and I would argue that Canadian freedoms and quality of life is superior to that of the average American. And the ability to accumulate enormous wealth in hardly diminished here due to our system. We've got plenty of incredibly rich people in Canada.
Though, yeah, when it comes to surgery, the wait times can be very long; there are several cases in court right now where the public is suing the government over this matter. --Though it wasn't always like this. Much like the situation with Bell, our government is deteriorating under conservative pressure. --When you don't pay your doctors enough, or help put them through medical school, they are tempted to move to the U.S. where they can engage in fleecing the public. --Is having a corrupt medical industry south of the border a fault of Canada's socialist attitudes? Hardly. But as it stands, when only the very rich can afford top notch medicine, it is greed which is doing the killing. --Watch Michael Moore's "Sicko" to see an in depth analysis of how this works. It's easily his best film to date.
For regular medicine and dentistry, Canada's system is good. --Not as good as France or England, (or Cuba), but not bad. The fact is, if I do have a heart attack, I WILL get the surgery I need, and I won't go bankrupt in the process. I have had the need for emergency room care to stitch me back together on a couple of occasions, and the service was prompt and professional. I have seen many dozens of people need hospital care over the years, and in every case, the care has been prompt and effective. There are many, many more benefits than there are talking point detractors which the conservative government in the U.S. use to insulate the American public from the truth.
The big motivation for maintaining a society which punishes most of the population for not being super-wealthy is greed. --The idea that nobody should care about the people around them and that helping people is somehow a hateful thing leads to exactly the sort of messed up situation in the U.S. Basing a society on Service to Self leads is sold on many false promises.
Ha ha! --While I was typing this, my ex-girlfriend actually called up to tell me that she'd cut the tip of her finger off at bakery she works at. She just had it 'glued' back on, (I don't know the procedure), but it all took place under two
Umm, socialism doesn't work at the huge corporate level either. All socialism does is merge low and middle class into a single peasant class for easier management by the ruling class. The "big players" are eliminated and replaced by the government. There are no consumers left because individualism and choice is gone...not to mention that they no longer have money. Say hello to Big Brother.
Did you catch the part where I said, "if our governing bodies actually served the people who pay for it"? --Cuz, I like to qualify my statements even while ranting. In any case, with respect to Bell, the socialist system DID work and it worked exceptionally well. Whoever told you that socialism doesn't work was lying to you. --With regard to essential services, it works just fine, thank-you very much. How much do YOU have to pay for hospital visits? How many dumb wars has your military industrial complex hurled you into in order to swipe your tax dollars? How many kids are starving and illiterate in YOUR country?
And I'm certainly not against non-essential services competing. If two companies want to develop two different kinds of communication hardware to compete for the big Bell contract, then that's great. When Bell was under the government's thumb, (My thumb), because we have a nice paper vote here, we got to choose. And the whole, "Individualism and Choice" being threatened argument is just so obviously flawed, and can't believe Americans have been so effectively hog-tied by it. It's an emotional argument used by the dark side to trick people into making dumb choices. (I love how the right call the left 'bleeding hearts' when the right is constantly using emotionalism rather than logic to get its way.) But anyway, how does individualism and choice vanish when the Telco actually does what the people tell it to do? Cuz the reality is this: I don't WANT to have to choose between phone companies. I want the POWER to make one phone company do what I want it to do. --That is, an excellent job for a reasonable price. Having this power to make a difference creates choice. But people seem to fear work; they want companies to come to them to offer Red or Green. Lazy. It takes more effort, but the rewards are higher when you think, "I want Blue and I'm willing to make it happen."
Honestly, do you feel more individual power because you can choose which identical telco screws you? --I felt power when I could call up the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Television Commission) and say, "Hi, I just moved into a new place and Bell is telling me that they aren't going to hook me up unless I pay them $500 in advance because the last tenant didn't pay her bill and they think I'm going to do the same thing. This is ridiculous. I've got a business to run." and have them say, "They said that? They're not allowed to do that. You call them back and tell them that you talked to us. If they keep giving you problems, you call me back right away and I'll fix it." "Thanks!"
Problem solved. This is a true story. --And it happened after de-regulation, too. (Some vestiges of the socialist system haven't entirely eroded. But back in the day, such an ass-backwards problem would never have even come up.)
Man, I remember when Bell's customer service actually HELPED people. They didn't try to screw them. They solved problems. Man, what a great period of time. I miss it.
Which is not to say that the conservative creep isn't doing everything it can to destroy Canada. People, through ignorance, keep getting pulled down the conservative path. I've watched a lot of good things become undone over the last twenty years under conservative rule. Things which cost more now and no longer work properly.
You obviously don't live in Canada. And if you turn off US news (read: "propaganda pushed by threatened American oil interests who have a puppet in the White House") about Chavez, and tune into world news on the subject, you might begin to see Venezuela in a new light. I hear they've go
When it all comes down to it, I'm not saving as much as I should be.
Heck, getting a naked DSL connection from the local telco provider in my region (Canada) means I also get hit with a $10 charge, (penalty) because I'm not also subscribing to their phone service. What kind of company bills you for NOT using their service? It's damned criminal, but there's precious little which can be done about it. I liked it waaaay back when Bell was a government controlled monopoly. When they pulled greedy tactics, the public was quick to slam them down. It was rare for me to ever see a phone bill over $25 a month back then.
Then the whole show was deregulated and competition opened up and everybody cheered because they were ignorant. (People! Oh lordy, but they can be sooooo dumb!) I was one of the only people yelling, "Don't you see? It's a trap!" --Before I finally switched to VOIP, $100 phone bills were not uncommon. And that didn't include ISP charges.
I love socialism. Competition is a great idea, but it doesn't work at the huge corporate level, because the big players are too few in number, they can cleverly jack up prices and nobody can sick the government on them to control their rampant greed.
If people were less easily fast-talked by corporate America, if our governing bodies actually served the people who pay for it, then this could be a really beautiful world.
I just watched the video via youtube, and was happily impressed. Randy carries his light and encourages others to do so, and thus makes ripples which go on to affect the world in very positive ways. He reminds me of Joseph Campbell ("Follow your Bliss") and Ray Bradbury ("Live on the edge of your hysteria") in this regard.
Those two gents made a huge impact upon me when I was growing through high school, and all I had access to were a few recordings and videos of them speaking, but the philosophies they broadcast were powerful enough to change me forever.
Teachers of this caliber are golden.
The very best thing you can do for the world is to Live Your Light. --Just doing so and encouraging others to do so changes the world in ways which are not immediately obvious, but it is enough to win the war against the dark side.
Right, no one on the left really hates president Bush do they? I've heard so many people, in real life and on TV express hatred and venom for President Bush that it makes my stomach turn. Then of course there was that Nobel Peace Prize winner who said in a speech not too long ago that she wished there was a non-violent way she could kill President Bush. Charming. Sometimes I think the only reason the president is still alive is because liberals don't know how to operate guns.
Well, I can understand high emotion when your kid has been killed by Bush's lunatic war policies. I'm not talking about Bush. I'm talking about all the points the AC actually mentioned; "hatred of the traditional, hatred of religion, whites, capitalism, and America." All of those things, (with the exception of 'whites' which I don't understand at all), are very intellectual problems which many find frustrating, to be sure, but hatred? Nope. When you say 'Hate Mongering' like the AC did, it carries with it, in my mind anyway, the idea of, well, hate. I don't hate religion, for instance, but I think it's stupid and destructive and I have no problem talking about it in those terms. But hatred? My blood doesn't boil and I don't want to kill things. That's a whole different realm which I rarely visit as it is. Hatred, I strongly suspect, is an emotion which is much more prevalent in the life and mind of the conservative, which is a big part of what makes him tick. And as such, also being self-centric, the conservative cannot understand that other people would feel differently. He projects. He sees people lambasting religion around here, and thinks, "When I say such things, I feel hatred so therefore everybody else feels hatred." But I really don't see it that way, (I'm using my own filters, of course, but I also think I'm more observant than the AC.) --The frustration with religion, to follow the example, comes from seeing the obvious flaws which are apparently invisible to everybody else, and having your life in many ways dictated by those same people. That can drive you crazy, but not insane. Hatred is insanity. It comes from down deep in the old cortex, the reptile brain, which is also where religion comes from in a large part. The Neo cortex is where the rational mind exists, (in very broad terms), and which allows one to see why hatred and religion are silly, and which allows one to bash them, but the bashing is based on rational roots, not the snake brain.
The more I study this puzzle, the more I think that the liberal mind-set is the result of having more layers of awareness accessible to the individual. You've got snakes and mammals all walking around wearing human costumes. --Or more accurately, you've got a whole race of Monkey-Snakes walking around, and it's up to each individual to decide which parts of their mammal-reptile brain they wish to invest energy in and develop.
As for the non-violent way to kill Bush. . . I think it would be a great idea to identify the psychopathic gene in people, run a bunch of tests, and put all of the psychos in a big walled city together. That's step one. Step two is to toss big bags of money and guns over the walls for them to play with. The problem would quickly take care of itself after that.
This is just another channel for you to spew your pre-programmed hatred; hatred of the traditional, hatred of religion, whites, capitalism, and America. Your crooked Communist party overlords in the public school/college re-education camps have done their jobs well. They got you while you were young, now you are lost for good. You will think how you are told to think by the "Progressive du jour" for the rest of your lives now. (why do you think they want kids at younger and younger ages? Early Government brainwashing programs are now from *birth* to age 5). Your conditioned white guilt is sickening and weak. Natural selection, please hurry up and get busy here.
Yeah, it sucks that, as Stephen Colbert put it, "As we all know, Reality has a Liberal bias".
But you'll be okay. Keep up your sentiment and I'm sure you'll be receiving your honorary arm band and pistol in the mail, and then you can start punishing all those who offend your notions of reality. And hey, the law will be on your side!
The psychopath always accuses his victims of the very crimes he commits against them. -The one which stands out here being, 'Hate'. I don't think many of those espousing socialist views regard any of the broken systems around them with actual venom.
Oh, and how are you doing with your M's and W's, by the way? -Cuz, you know, natural selection tends to favor those who can differentiate between objects.
C. "Don't run a country in such a way as to create the cause for giant protests."
If there are mass protests, then it means the elected (sic) government is doing something wrong and the appearance of masses of people on the Whitehouse lawn should inspire them not to control and disperse the people with force, but to stop raping them through corrupt law.
Yes, I like that idea a whole lot better than getting to choose which version of molestation I would prefer to be subjected to when I show up to haul my not-so-democratically elected official to prison for started wars and taking bribes and generally being a psychotic clown.
Oh. . , but I should be practical. We don't live in an ideal world. I HAVE to choose, because that's just how it is. The 'facts on the ground' as you say, (along with the genocidal Zionist psychotics who first coined the term), are such that riots exist and must be dealt with, and that we simply must be controlled by weapons of mass dispersal. It's the American way.
Bullllllshit. That's such bullshit, and I reject it outright! The monsters may attack us, but I absolutely refuse to give them my mind as well. --To believe that they are somehow right to fire poison and pain rays into crowds of people. They are not! They are wrong!
Michael Moore's "Sicko" is a good example of the discrepancy between reality and perceived reality. It was easily the best piece of work he's produced, and I would recommend it to anybody. It's hard to realize just how fascist and evil the U.S. Government really is until you get an outside perspective. 9-11 rescue workers injured in their efforts to help out on the day and utterly ignored by the U.S. system were given free medical care in Cuba ferchrisake. It brought them all to tears as their illusions of the outside world were shattered. --And France appears to be an excellent example of a government being effectively bullied by the people, the way it ought to be. French universal health care, long holidays, labor laws which make the U.S. by comparison look like Red Russia, and yet, amazingly, the country remains one of the richest in the EU. America is deeply, deeply messed up, and her inhabitants are for the most part not even aware of the fact for having been so lied to, so beaten, so controlled, so poisoned and so undereducated. When I see Bush on a news piece walking through a crowd, it's plain that he's looking at the people the way one might look at chickens in a factory farm; pathetic and stupid and not even aware of how badly they've been screwed. How can he respect the people for being so blind and so totally bled by him and his kind?
So, No thank-you. I won't choose between CS gas and Pain Guns. Neither should exist.
The day the gene for psychopathy is discovered, all who carry it need to be visibly branded and put away in a big, enclosed city and we should throw huge bags of money and guns over the walls for them to back-stab each other to control. They'll take care of the problem they represent all on their own.
How did this get tagged tortured? It should be tagged gracious. burning feeling or dead you choose. People need to wake up and grow up.
It got tagged 'torture' because it will be used for torture. Your political sympathies cannot alter that.
The brain damage which impairs the use of basic logic and which is commonly labeled, "Conservative Thinking," would be kind of cute if it wasn't so dangerous.
When we figure out how to identify the psychopathic gene, such individuals should have a big symbol tattooed on their foreheads, and they should all be put in a big walled city and given guns and money. The problem would then quickly take care of itself.
It is a bit like touching a red-hot wire, but there is no heat, only the sensation of heat. There is no burn mark or blister. [. ..] These waves are tuned to a frequency exactly designed to stimulate the pain nerves.
What? It's not high enough in power to actually burn, but it causes the nerves in your skin to register burning pain?
See, now that's funny. . .
Cuz, I thought that low power EM couldn't affect the human nervous system. --You know, that the results reported by studies which examined the effects of low power EM radiation on the human body and brain were really just ludicrous phantasms concocted by crack pot scientists who deserve to be snickered at by everybody in the real world who lives in comfortable certainty that the telecommunications industry would never tell a fib.
At least, this is what I have been told a few hundred times or more whenever I have said, "Uh, the human body is made mostly of electrolyte, and there's all these studies which strongly suggest that a host of weird things happen to the nervous system when it is exposed. Maybe Cell Phones aren't such a grand idea. What other effects are they having on our centers of awareness?"
--That tin foil is beginning to look better and better, isn't it? --I sometimes wonder if the Tin Foil hat joke became ubiquitous precisely because it might in fact be one way to avoid neural tampering by the kinds of people who build Pain Rays. (Well, hats would hardly be practical, since you'd have to have a grounding wire attached to your beanie, but the point is metaphorical anyway; the larger issue being one of awareness regarding the dangers presented by EM is the first step toward avoiding subjugation through those means. To laugh and cry, "Tin Foil Hat" means you reject the very idea that there is anything going on, which in turn opens people up to control.)
The best way to control a populace is to make it self-denying, self-loathing, and self-limiting. If everybody is scared to step beyond certain boundaries through social consensus which you have set in place, then you control them, and they don't even recognize the fact, and you don't have to put up any walls. They think they are free when really they are dancing to your tune.
--Though now you sound oddly disjointed. Were you experiencing dizziness while writing this last entry? (I'm not actually joking when I ask that.)
Anyway, let's go through it. ..
orwell write what he wrote when things like east germany were being created, where a very orwellian state existed to keep people unfree and trapped in an inferior system. the revolutionaries were those fighting for a better idea
Yes, government was corrupt and totalitarianism was on the rise. Today, the same is true, we both would seem to agree. So far, so good.
but the challenge today is that you have people who are free, and the spying is being used to fight revolutionaries fighting in the name of militant fundamentalism, fighting for an inferior idea, and simple criminals. such that these tools are being used IN THE SERVICE OF the free, against vile totalitarian forces, not to prevent people's freedoms
So, if I understand your prose here, the 4 million CCTV's and Echelon and similar are being used to fight totalitarian forces. . ?
Hm. First of all, aside from the fact that the term 'totalitarian forces' can only with great awkwardness be used to describe militants and simple criminals, and that 'revolutionary' is also a rather odd term to choose when describing supposed terrorists acting from beyond the borders, I'd have to say that you are placing a great deal of trust in the government and in the official story of 'terrorism'.
But we'll go with your version for now, seeing as it appears to be the reality you have decided to champion today.
thus, when you put up a bunch of cameras in a newark housing project, the residents enthusiastically support it, because it cuts down on crime. when you did the same kind of surveillance in cold war era east germany, the populace hated it, as a tool of an oppressive state. do you understand the difference there? you don't seem to
Assuming again that such efforts are met with universal praise, (which they are certainly not), those who believe in government benevolence have failed to recognize the many problems with the issue of terrorism. The bombings on the London subway system which the world watched with 'shock and awe', were highly suspect in many regards. False flag maneuvers are a very effective ploy, particularly when a government also controls the news agencies. Fear is a powerful tool when you want to dull rational thinking in order to advance your agenda with respect to controlling a population. There is plenty of documentation regarding both the psychological tactics and the key events in question, so I won't bother posting a lot of details. I will assume that you are familiar with them, and that for some reason, you reject them.
Thus, it seems to me that you are suggesting that the government is not in any way deliberately using the climate of fear they have generated, and that they are simply using their spying in a 'nice' manner to keep the population safe from, "vile totalitarian forces".
Pardon me for saying, but this strikes me as a tad naive, particularly for one who is surely familiar with the patterns that governing bodies have emulated time and again over many years of history. To think that governments today are beyond such tactics suggests also that corruption and greed have also been deleted from the rule book. Suggesting that governments today work any differently than they did fifty years ago, or a thousand years ago, is hardly bourn out by the basic fact that human behavior still includes, as you describe, the faculty for fundamentalist militarism and rampant crime.
so let's put it this way: you argue against the sentiment of the average joe on the street. 9/11 and osama bin laden are real. out of control crime is real. emperor palpatine and agent smith are a fantasy, stalin and hitler are dead and defeated [. ..] so welcome to the 21st century bub, adjust your concerns accordingly. you are going to find yourself more and more out of s
Don't flatter yourself. That was a very typical post from yours truly.
And, "Tell-it-like-it-is"?? Do you label your own words like that with a straight face? --And dropped so casually into the middle of your grade-school ad-hom nonsense, (in which you actually quoted Shakespeare and then pointed it out), --all while neatly avoiding having to deal with the fact that your argument just fell apart. . .
Good lord, why not just pout and mumble, "Yeah, well you're a fag!" in order to save everybody some time?
Ugh! Okay. . . Enough distracting nonsense. Let's get to the actual point then, shall we? (Or lack thereof, as the case happens to be.)
Since you didn't respond to any of my points, I'll assume you weren't able to, which doesn't really leave me much to respond to here. --Except perhaps for your 'facts on the ground' comment, (which I notice you didn't attribute.) So instead I'll just mention another point which struck me later and add it to the pile.
You seem to think neighbors reporting on neighbors is the big mechanism the government wishes to use to control the populace. (And I agree, it is indeed one of them). --But from that, we must then assume that you DO believe the government is in fact engaged in totalitarian ambition. Well now! We're on the same page at last, (from 1984, that is).
So if that's the case, then why is wire-tapping and a few million CCTV cameras not something we should be concerned with? Pardon my 'personal mythology', but your 'telling-it-like-it-is' is kind of flying in circles there, captain.
As I have not the heart to withhold love from my shift key, I will instead try to remove as much superfluous punctuation and extra wording as possible in my response in order to (hopefully) align myself with your apparent preferred manner of communication. --You know, so we can see eye to eye for the moment required to utter the following notes. . .
Well, blow me, but I don't think that 4,285,000 video cameras were installed by vindictive girlfriends and envious neighbors, who you seem to suggest are the real threat. --It seems, rather, that somebody in government might have a deeply rooted obsession with keeping the populace under surveillance.
You seem to think that the term "Big Brother" is intended by those using it to refer literally and only to George Orwell's exact vision of totalitarianism. That's just silly. Dangerous governments which do not reflect, and which seek to subvert and undermine the will of the people, come in a variety of flavours, but they all operate in the same spirit. As such, "Big Brother" is a useful term to use when referring to this kind of government because everybody is already familiar with it and understands what it implies. Find another term which so aptly sums up a half million CCTV's and a secret system to evesdrop on all telephone and computer communications. To call "Big Brother" a meme is not just peculiar, but outright discordant with the reality of governments which are furiously spending enormous effort to ensure that everybody really is being watched and listened to all the time.
You suggest that the government doesn't care what Joe Average says or thinks. That's nuts. If they didn't care, why would they spend such enormous effort to shape people's beliefs and behavior? It took a lot of work to sell the Iraqi war. WMD's and Iraq's fictitious connection to 9-11, and now the 'threat' of Iran are not penny ante school election campaign posters.
Yes, Joe Average, since he has already been sold the Bush bill of goods, dosed up on anti-depressants, fattened into gluten goo by an inverted food pyramid, addicted to television and video games, and overworked and debt ridden, hardly needs to be especially worried over. But psychopaths are eternally paranoid. The craving for safety and control is an endless hunger which seek to monitor and control every possible vector of threat. This is why the UK has a camera on every corner, and why AT&T, (and heaven knows who else), is actively working with the secret services to make it possible to monitor every single person in the USA who has ever clapped one ear to a telephone receiver. Or do you still believe that the "War on Terror" is the real reason? There was a time when you wouldn't have written such drivel.
--The sad part is that this circletimessquare clown used to be an intellectual of some significance, but these days his arguments are painfully weak, his once boldly acerbic style has gone soft and he is sounding dangerously close to confusing his W's with his M's. (He certainly can't seem to find his shift key anymore.) The problem with cleaving to the dark side is that it rots your brain.
Hm. . .
Well, now shucks! I went and used lots of words and punctuation and I said I was going to try to avoid that. Terribly sorry. I guess I'll just never be a bridge-building diplomat.
Yes, I grasp the concept of bias with excruciating clarity, I understand what a double-blind test is, and I took this into account when posting.
--You posted, "It is clear you did not understand what I said - I understand why of course and why you couldn't help it." If you are going to make those kinds of bold statements, then you need to back them up. I sincerely hope you've got something good, because my bias regarding conceited slashdot posters is beginning to seep out around the edges.
-FL
Re:I've thought long and hard on this subject. . .
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Nope. I had a scientific education and that means not being told stories; it means learning scientific method, and learning to distinguish fact from fiction. Of COURSE some of what I was told was wrong: and we were taught to improve on what we were taught. All still using that same scientific method. We get to the moon using science, not feelings.
A lie of omission committed through even well-meaning ignorance, remains false. This is what I intended to convey with regard to my comments about teachers being misleading. Striving, as you describe, to face challenges through the use of scientific method is certainly admirable. So you will, of course, then recognize that it is counter productive to ignore some data over other data simply because it happens to allow for a more convenient response. Put simply. . , you didn't answer my question.
-FL
Re:I've thought long and hard on this subject. . .
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No, that's not what I'm talking about. Don't get lost in definitions. The word 'Energy' as I use it does not refer to conventional particle physics. But you knew that already.
It is clear you did not understand what I said - I understand why of course and why you couldn't help it.
If you are referring to your heavy use of hyperbole, then you might well be correct. --If you don't think I followed your thinking, then why not try to make yourself better understood? Half the art of communication rests on the shoulders of the fellow who wants to put his thoughts out to be heard. --And I can assure you, I am quite capable of understanding most things if they are expressed well. You're not dealing with a chimp. Give it another shot, and this time use an example or two to illustrate what you're trying to describe as I have attempted for your benefit.
Sorry - you can't confirm it from within the system. You have to step out of the system. You can't do that - no one can. Therefore you must be blind to the system. The observer too must be blind to it. Double blinding. It works because it takes the out the human bias as much as possible.
The funny thing about this methodology, is that it works wonderfully within the material realm. The double blind test is great when you can remove yourself from the system being studied.
The problem with Energy, is that it appears to be linked in a huge way to consciousness and awareness. What you believe has a significant impact on what you can measure. Stepping outside those boundaries requires a type of experiment which is rather challenging to set up. Further, the subject energies present difficulties in being successfully measured directly using conventional techniques and measurement devices. --There are reports of a type of Aura photography, and ghosts and 'Orbs' have been photographed. --But such evidence is hard to quantify or understand, and despite countless examples, has done little to lead to any sort of watershed acceptance of energies beyond the conventionally recognized forces in nature. (I find that to be a rather curious disconnect; science likes to turn a blind eye to such examples as though they somehow didn't count or do not exist. I consider this to be evidence in itself of the social control system which keeps people locked in place with regard to knowledge.)
But for the most part, evidence of 'energy' is secondary. People recovering from sickness using alternative medicines, like acupuncture and homeopathy is secondary evidence. The fact that dogs can be operated on without complaint with no use of anesthesia and just acupuncture offers evidence that there is something more going on than the placebo effect. This is more evidence which might be considered a manner of 'blindness' in terms of empirical study. But again, such instances are largely ignored. Why?
One of the best ways to learn about energy is to dive in and personally explore it. Is this scientific? Not by the standard definition of scientific procedure. But is it invalid? Absolutely not! Learning how to ride a bike teaches the individual directly through personal interaction with a bicycle. The individual exists within the system and there is no double blind testing going on. The bike rider is very biased, because they believe in what they are doing. Science may reject the bike riding experience because proper scientific method was not followed, but it does not reduce the value of the experience.
The thing with a bike, is that it exists in the physical realm, and so you can easily show somebody a bike and ride it before them to demonstrate. You can 'prove' bikes. But energy is much more slippery. The effects can be diminished or increased by one's will. If you are in a stadium of very angry and skeptical people who don't want to have anything proven to them, then the chances are that an individual being tested will not be able to perform. Indeed, since one aspect of the energetic reality is that we are all connected and aware and in communication on the subconscious level with one another, when the demonstrator hears through the subconscious from the unwilling audience, "Please no! I don't want to see you prove me wrong!", then to force proof upon the audience would be a breach of free will, and thus it is much less likely to happen. This reality is designed to be experienced in a state of extreme ignorance and unawareness. To break down that wall is rather anti-social and people will fight you tooth and nail to keep the veils of forgetting drawn tight around themselves. They nailed Jesus to a cross to stop his efforts! And so curious elements such as these come into effect when we play at 'science'.
--Which is why faith becomes an important element when exploring such matters.
-FL
Re:I've thought long and hard on this subject. . .
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I am sorry, but that is just utter nonsense. I rarely speak so bluntly, but kin your case I am afraid it is called for.
You appear to have not even the foggiest understanding of logic or science. Science is not "conventional understanding", science is the method you use to get closer and closer to an understanding of the true nature of things. 2+2=4, not whatever you want it to be.
Homeopathy either works, or it doesn't; and any good scientific test will show you which one it is. That is not feeling, that is cold logic.
Shall I assume then that you have performed your own testing and exploration into this subject? No? Well then, all you are really offering is a rather rude opinion based on pre-existing biases; on the fact that you BELIEVE you are right. From reading your post, it sounds as though you should know better than that. --I have spent years exploring this stuff, starting from a very biased viewpoint much like your own, sorting fact from fiction, and you clearly have not. So who does that make more qualified to speak? The guy who did all the hard work, or the guy applying a bunch of armchair (in front of a TV?) logic which doesn't hold up in the field?
The field must be walked through. Anything you think you know because you watched it on TV, or because your highschool science teacher said so, is misleading. You were being told stories, often by people with something to gain from your believing them. --And so have I been told false stories. The difference is that I walked in and tested to see what was false and what was not. --Until you start an honest exploration yourself, you simply cannot speak and you certainly should not judge. Those who have been brave and alert enough to explore even a small area of the 'field' know exactly what I'm talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
You are responding with great verve to things I did not write.
I didn't say anything about thinking a missile hit the pentagon. In fact, I said I thought it was almost certainly an aircraft. --I actually wrote this twice. Clearly. Both times. I am beginning to understand why you continue to hammer away at me when no reasonable person would; I've said nothing untoward or irrational. I can only guess what else you imagine I have said or believe.
Your knee-jerking and erroneous preconceptions are just like those of the worst-case conspiracy 'nut'. Fortunately there are de-bunkers and conspiracy theorists out there who have their act together, otherwise nobody would get anywhere with any of this.
-FL
You were off by a lot, and I also did a read through of the 149 interviews, and as I pointed out in my last post, less than two thirds of them were witnesses to the actual event. I also do not dismiss them derisively or out of hand. That's completely unfair. --I think if you read my last post again, you might see that. --And neither do I have any predetermined conclusions. I find the suggestion that there was foul play on the government's side to have some persuasive arguments and evidence to support it, and as such, it would be foolish to not explore such claims. It may indeed be that the alternative theories are completely wrong and that the U.S. government is honest and noble, but so far the evidence I have looked at, (and I've read everything I can find), doesn't support that. And if you'll pardon me, it sounds as though you are the one being derisive and predetermined. This does a good deal to undermine your position. If you want to champion reason and rationality, you have to be reasonable and rational. Failing this will quickly deposit you on the same level as the conspiracy 'nutbags' you are annoyed with. The fact of the matter is that you don't know what happened on that day any more than I do. All we can do is look at the evidence available and put it through the crucible.
Peace.
-FL
Hundreds of witnesses? Come on now. If you are going to complain about conspiracy theorists spouting wild claims, you had better keep your own boots clean.
Nowhere have I seen data from hundreds of witnesses. Not by a long stretch. --The most comprehensive list I've looked at details interviews from 149 people, and of that number, there were numerous interviewed who were not actually witnesses, but rather felt the explosion from inside the Pentagon, or who were watching radar blips or who came to the site looking for family or what have you. My estimate is that perhaps 80 or 90 people actually reported seeing something fly into the Pentagon.
The curious thing is that their reports are filled with peculiar contradictions and wide variances of conflicting details. As we know, witness testimony is not very trustworthy; human memory is just too malleable, especially when the witness is in a heightened state of fear or shock, as was the case on that day. Further, many of the interviews happened long enough after the event that by the time of the interview, the subject had been watching television news casts about the attacks, being effectively told what they had witnessed by a voice of authority. This is a great way to taint testimony to the point of making it almost useless except in terms of collecting only the broadest, most general of details. So no, the witness testimony has not convinced me of anything except that it is very likely a plane with a some red and blue stripes painted on it hit the pentagon. --Interestingly, one of my more fascinating sources said shortly after the event that, "even the windows had been painted on" [the jet], which is odd, because I noted that several witnesses observed that all the windows were blacked out on the plane.
The twists of logic needed to discount the existanct of a 757 is extremely tortuous. Occam's razor isn't infallible, but the grotesque deformations of rationality needed by the Truthers boggles the mind. Why would the perpetrators fly two airplanes into the World Trade Center, but then expend massive amounts of planning and resources to divert and hide the third plane that was supposed to hit the Pentagon? Why load a drone with 757 parts, when you could just fly the 757 into the Pentagon instead? It's thought processes are insane.
Actually, the logic is not all that twisted. It makes a lot of sense. If the 'terrorists' had failed to hit their targets in New York, it would have been a far less effective event in traumatizing the population. A remote controlled plane, however, could be assured to striking the Pentagon with the kind of accuracy needed to safely do no real damage while still providing a good show. And diverting the original plane would have fit right into the time frame of the event; there is a military air base in the region capable of performing the task, and there were drop outs on the radar path sufficient to account for the time such a maneuver would take. With the Pentagon strike, I can the rationale for such a plan far more easily than the New York claims, and the evidence, such as it is, appears to support this idea whereas the official story has numerous problems.
But that's just my take. If anything else comes up, I'd be willing to alter my thinking accordingly.
-FL
There are several points to be made here. . .
I've been impressed for some time now with the work done by the guys at http://www.debunking911.com/index.html and http://www.911myths.com/. There's a lot of rational thinking going on there. Since the day of 911, I couldn't understand the assertion that the towers had been destroyed through controlled demolition. It didn't make sense; a series of jet liners being hijacked in an orchestrated manner, and the crashing of them into the twin towers would have been entirely adequate to start a war. If the buildings had not come down, the deaths of the people and the hampered rescue efforts and the fires would have been a huge tragedy which people would still be talking about today. The buildings collapsing was icing on the cake, if you'll pardon the glibness of the term.
I remember early on, within the first couple of months, a proliferation of conspiracy ideas all landing at the same time. There was one link forwarded to me, which showed a missile striking one of the towers. It was very convincing, upon checking it thoroughly and looking at other samples of the same footage, it turned out to be a very poorly compressed video. The background, which moved very little in the frame looked fine, but the moving object, (the plane), devolved through the encryption process and really did look like a torpedo or cruise missile. I pointed this out loudly, and then never saw that clip ever again. It struck me as odd at the time that such an article would make its way on to the web. Surely the guy who compressed the video and posted it as, "Look! A Missile!" knew that he was creating something very misleading. Perhaps it was a series of mistakes; a poor compression found by somebody else who posted it. But it did seem weird that it and a dozen or so other theories and bits of misleading evidence showed up all at once, several of which continue to hold sway to this day. The process through which disinformation is known to be deliberately distributed to confuse and divide the public seems to me to be a large part of what may be going on here. Covert perception management has been a large part of conducting war in the U.S., and there is plenty of documentation to support this.
I really didn't think much more about the controlled demolition claims until much later when some very well produced items, like "Loose Change" came along and raised doubts again, but for the most part, after looking through all of this stuff, I really don't think that the buildings were deliberately demolished. --I think there is some strong argument of foreknowledge of those attacks, and I noticed that de-bunk sites linked fail to address the more damning of those claims.
And the Pentagon is another matter. I have yet to see anything which convinces me that a passenger jet struck that building. There are a multitude of questions which the de-bunking sites, again, either ignore or answer with very stretched and unconvincing arguments. --The best piece of evidence in my mind in favor of a large jet is the combustion chamber debris, but the first thought which struck me was, "Why not just load some 757 engine parts into the attack vehicle?" I'm surprised that nobody has ever considered this. It seems to me that it would have been a rather obvious ploy. The nature of the wreckage and the missing parts and the withholding of camera images, among numerous other points, are also very awkwardly addressed, if addressed at all by the debunkers. I tend to think that it was not a missile, but perhaps a different type of aircraft which could have been remotely controlled to ensure a 'safe' show-piece disaster at the Pentagon.
In any case, the larger issue is not really in much question. --As one of the sites you linked to put it, "The evidence for a conspiracy to use 9/11 to invade Iraq is significant. While there is not one
If you believe that you paid less under your socialist rule, you probably worked for the bureaucracy. Check your taxes, if I make 100k per year I want to come home with 100k per year not 10k because the government needs my 90k to pay for my neighbor's heat and healthcare because he only makes 20k and can't afford it otherwise. Socialism breeds laziness, stifles innovations, and locks people into financial classes, try to prove otherwise, you can't. And your friend Chavez, great country if you want to work, and live, but if you want control over your life, or if you have goals for yourself, or if you want to become wealthy or raise your standard of living from that of your parents, good luck, it's not happening. All that aside, if your socialist health care is go great, why do Canadians come into the US for surgery? Maybe it's because waiting 6 months for a by-pass surgery after a heart attack isn't exactly fantastic. You have been spit right out of the socialist propaganda mill.
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Speaking of propaganda. .
Your numbers are way off and they speak of paranoia and hate. --And in Canada our level of taxation is for the most part on par with the U.S., but for the most part, Canadians do not fear helping others. There are system abusers, but they make up only a small quotient, and the benefits of sharing far outweigh the dead weight. But it is very easy to make emotional arguments with stir up feelings of hate, and thereby cause people to get a skewed view of the reality and to adopt conservative policies which in both the long and short term, harm society in countless ways. --I'm speaking as one who has lived in a mostly-socialist system all his life, and I would argue that Canadian freedoms and quality of life is superior to that of the average American. And the ability to accumulate enormous wealth in hardly diminished here due to our system. We've got plenty of incredibly rich people in Canada.
Though, yeah, when it comes to surgery, the wait times can be very long; there are several cases in court right now where the public is suing the government over this matter. --Though it wasn't always like this. Much like the situation with Bell, our government is deteriorating under conservative pressure. --When you don't pay your doctors enough, or help put them through medical school, they are tempted to move to the U.S. where they can engage in fleecing the public. --Is having a corrupt medical industry south of the border a fault of Canada's socialist attitudes? Hardly. But as it stands, when only the very rich can afford top notch medicine, it is greed which is doing the killing. --Watch Michael Moore's "Sicko" to see an in depth analysis of how this works. It's easily his best film to date.
For regular medicine and dentistry, Canada's system is good. --Not as good as France or England, (or Cuba), but not bad. The fact is, if I do have a heart attack, I WILL get the surgery I need, and I won't go bankrupt in the process. I have had the need for emergency room care to stitch me back together on a couple of occasions, and the service was prompt and professional. I have seen many dozens of people need hospital care over the years, and in every case, the care has been prompt and effective. There are many, many more benefits than there are talking point detractors which the conservative government in the U.S. use to insulate the American public from the truth.
The big motivation for maintaining a society which punishes most of the population for not being super-wealthy is greed. --The idea that nobody should care about the people around them and that helping people is somehow a hateful thing leads to exactly the sort of messed up situation in the U.S. Basing a society on Service to Self leads is sold on many false promises.
Ha ha! --While I was typing this, my ex-girlfriend actually called up to tell me that she'd cut the tip of her finger off at bakery she works at. She just had it 'glued' back on, (I don't know the procedure), but it all took place under two
Umm, socialism doesn't work at the huge corporate level either. All socialism does is merge low and middle class into a single peasant class for easier management by the ruling class. The "big players" are eliminated and replaced by the government. There are no consumers left because individualism and choice is gone...not to mention that they no longer have money. Say hello to Big Brother.
Did you catch the part where I said, "if our governing bodies actually served the people who pay for it"? --Cuz, I like to qualify my statements even while ranting. In any case, with respect to Bell, the socialist system DID work and it worked exceptionally well. Whoever told you that socialism doesn't work was lying to you. --With regard to essential services, it works just fine, thank-you very much. How much do YOU have to pay for hospital visits? How many dumb wars has your military industrial complex hurled you into in order to swipe your tax dollars? How many kids are starving and illiterate in YOUR country?
And I'm certainly not against non-essential services competing. If two companies want to develop two different kinds of communication hardware to compete for the big Bell contract, then that's great. When Bell was under the government's thumb, (My thumb), because we have a nice paper vote here, we got to choose. And the whole, "Individualism and Choice" being threatened argument is just so obviously flawed, and can't believe Americans have been so effectively hog-tied by it. It's an emotional argument used by the dark side to trick people into making dumb choices. (I love how the right call the left 'bleeding hearts' when the right is constantly using emotionalism rather than logic to get its way.) But anyway, how does individualism and choice vanish when the Telco actually does what the people tell it to do? Cuz the reality is this: I don't WANT to have to choose between phone companies. I want the POWER to make one phone company do what I want it to do. --That is, an excellent job for a reasonable price. Having this power to make a difference creates choice. But people seem to fear work; they want companies to come to them to offer Red or Green. Lazy. It takes more effort, but the rewards are higher when you think, "I want Blue and I'm willing to make it happen."
Honestly, do you feel more individual power because you can choose which identical telco screws you? --I felt power when I could call up the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Television Commission) and say, "Hi, I just moved into a new place and Bell is telling me that they aren't going to hook me up unless I pay them $500 in advance because the last tenant didn't pay her bill and they think I'm going to do the same thing. This is ridiculous. I've got a business to run." and have them say, "They said that? They're not allowed to do that. You call them back and tell them that you talked to us. If they keep giving you problems, you call me back right away and I'll fix it." "Thanks!"
Problem solved. This is a true story. --And it happened after de-regulation, too. (Some vestiges of the socialist system haven't entirely eroded. But back in the day, such an ass-backwards problem would never have even come up.)
Man, I remember when Bell's customer service actually HELPED people. They didn't try to screw them. They solved problems. Man, what a great period of time. I miss it.
Which is not to say that the conservative creep isn't doing everything it can to destroy Canada. People, through ignorance, keep getting pulled down the conservative path. I've watched a lot of good things become undone over the last twenty years under conservative rule. Things which cost more now and no longer work properly.
You obviously don't live in Canada. And if you turn off US news (read: "propaganda pushed by threatened American oil interests who have a puppet in the White House") about Chavez, and tune into world news on the subject, you might begin to see Venezuela in a new light. I hear they've go
Heck, getting a naked DSL connection from the local telco provider in my region (Canada) means I also get hit with a $10 charge, (penalty) because I'm not also subscribing to their phone service. What kind of company bills you for NOT using their service? It's damned criminal, but there's precious little which can be done about it. I liked it waaaay back when Bell was a government controlled monopoly. When they pulled greedy tactics, the public was quick to slam them down. It was rare for me to ever see a phone bill over $25 a month back then.
Then the whole show was deregulated and competition opened up and everybody cheered because they were ignorant. (People! Oh lordy, but they can be sooooo dumb!) I was one of the only people yelling, "Don't you see? It's a trap!" --Before I finally switched to VOIP, $100 phone bills were not uncommon. And that didn't include ISP charges.
I love socialism. Competition is a great idea, but it doesn't work at the huge corporate level, because the big players are too few in number, they can cleverly jack up prices and nobody can sick the government on them to control their rampant greed.
If people were less easily fast-talked by corporate America, if our governing bodies actually served the people who pay for it, then this could be a really beautiful world.
The problem isn't just greed, it's ignorance.
Knowledge protects.
-FL
How the heck do you spend six billion dollars on anything that doesn't involve heavy use of the word 'trajectory'?
Man, I remember when you could make a decent piece of software in your basement and score lavished media praise from it.
What were they doing over there? Were they starting with fresh new computers every week? Did Bond trash their island-based facility?
Jeez.
-FL
Those two gents made a huge impact upon me when I was growing through high school, and all I had access to were a few recordings and videos of them speaking, but the philosophies they broadcast were powerful enough to change me forever.
Teachers of this caliber are golden.
The very best thing you can do for the world is to Live Your Light. --Just doing so and encouraging others to do so changes the world in ways which are not immediately obvious, but it is enough to win the war against the dark side.
-FL
Well, I can understand high emotion when your kid has been killed by Bush's lunatic war policies. I'm not talking about Bush. I'm talking about all the points the AC actually mentioned; "hatred of the traditional, hatred of religion, whites, capitalism, and America." All of those things, (with the exception of 'whites' which I don't understand at all), are very intellectual problems which many find frustrating, to be sure, but hatred? Nope. When you say 'Hate Mongering' like the AC did, it carries with it, in my mind anyway, the idea of, well, hate. I don't hate religion, for instance, but I think it's stupid and destructive and I have no problem talking about it in those terms. But hatred? My blood doesn't boil and I don't want to kill things. That's a whole different realm which I rarely visit as it is. Hatred, I strongly suspect, is an emotion which is much more prevalent in the life and mind of the conservative, which is a big part of what makes him tick. And as such, also being self-centric, the conservative cannot understand that other people would feel differently. He projects. He sees people lambasting religion around here, and thinks, "When I say such things, I feel hatred so therefore everybody else feels hatred." But I really don't see it that way, (I'm using my own filters, of course, but I also think I'm more observant than the AC.) --The frustration with religion, to follow the example, comes from seeing the obvious flaws which are apparently invisible to everybody else, and having your life in many ways dictated by those same people. That can drive you crazy, but not insane. Hatred is insanity. It comes from down deep in the old cortex, the reptile brain, which is also where religion comes from in a large part. The Neo cortex is where the rational mind exists, (in very broad terms), and which allows one to see why hatred and religion are silly, and which allows one to bash them, but the bashing is based on rational roots, not the snake brain.
The more I study this puzzle, the more I think that the liberal mind-set is the result of having more layers of awareness accessible to the individual. You've got snakes and mammals all walking around wearing human costumes. --Or more accurately, you've got a whole race of Monkey-Snakes walking around, and it's up to each individual to decide which parts of their mammal-reptile brain they wish to invest energy in and develop.
As for the non-violent way to kill Bush. . . I think it would be a great idea to identify the psychopathic gene in people, run a bunch of tests, and put all of the psychos in a big walled city together. That's step one. Step two is to toss big bags of money and guns over the walls for them to play with. The problem would quickly take care of itself after that.
-FL
Yeah, it sucks that, as Stephen Colbert put it, "As we all know, Reality has a Liberal bias".
But you'll be okay. Keep up your sentiment and I'm sure you'll be receiving your honorary arm band and pistol in the mail, and then you can start punishing all those who offend your notions of reality. And hey, the law will be on your side!
The psychopath always accuses his victims of the very crimes he commits against them. -The one which stands out here being, 'Hate'. I don't think many of those espousing socialist views regard any of the broken systems around them with actual venom.
Oh, and how are you doing with your M's and W's, by the way? -Cuz, you know, natural selection tends to favor those who can differentiate between objects.
-FL
C. "Don't run a country in such a way as to create the cause for giant protests."
If there are mass protests, then it means the elected (sic) government is doing something wrong and the appearance of masses of people on the Whitehouse lawn should inspire them not to control and disperse the people with force, but to stop raping them through corrupt law.
Yes, I like that idea a whole lot better than getting to choose which version of molestation I would prefer to be subjected to when I show up to haul my not-so-democratically elected official to prison for started wars and taking bribes and generally being a psychotic clown.
Oh. . , but I should be practical. We don't live in an ideal world. I HAVE to choose, because that's just how it is. The 'facts on the ground' as you say, (along with the genocidal Zionist psychotics who first coined the term), are such that riots exist and must be dealt with, and that we simply must be controlled by weapons of mass dispersal. It's the American way.
Bullllllshit. That's such bullshit, and I reject it outright! The monsters may attack us, but I absolutely refuse to give them my mind as well. --To believe that they are somehow right to fire poison and pain rays into crowds of people. They are not! They are wrong!
Michael Moore's "Sicko" is a good example of the discrepancy between reality and perceived reality. It was easily the best piece of work he's produced, and I would recommend it to anybody. It's hard to realize just how fascist and evil the U.S. Government really is until you get an outside perspective. 9-11 rescue workers injured in their efforts to help out on the day and utterly ignored by the U.S. system were given free medical care in Cuba ferchrisake. It brought them all to tears as their illusions of the outside world were shattered. --And France appears to be an excellent example of a government being effectively bullied by the people, the way it ought to be. French universal health care, long holidays, labor laws which make the U.S. by comparison look like Red Russia, and yet, amazingly, the country remains one of the richest in the EU. America is deeply, deeply messed up, and her inhabitants are for the most part not even aware of the fact for having been so lied to, so beaten, so controlled, so poisoned and so undereducated. When I see Bush on a news piece walking through a crowd, it's plain that he's looking at the people the way one might look at chickens in a factory farm; pathetic and stupid and not even aware of how badly they've been screwed. How can he respect the people for being so blind and so totally bled by him and his kind?
So, No thank-you. I won't choose between CS gas and Pain Guns. Neither should exist.
The day the gene for psychopathy is discovered, all who carry it need to be visibly branded and put away in a big, enclosed city and we should throw huge bags of money and guns over the walls for them to back-stab each other to control. They'll take care of the problem they represent all on their own.
-FL
I'm actually a little surprised; searching both Google and Amazon, I was able to turn up nothing on the press, or the book title or the author.
Where did you get a copy?
-FL
It got tagged 'torture' because it will be used for torture. Your political sympathies cannot alter that.
The brain damage which impairs the use of basic logic and which is commonly labeled, "Conservative Thinking," would be kind of cute if it wasn't so dangerous.
When we figure out how to identify the psychopathic gene, such individuals should have a big symbol tattooed on their foreheads, and they should all be put in a big walled city and given guns and money. The problem would then quickly take care of itself.
-FL
What? It's not high enough in power to actually burn, but it causes the nerves in your skin to register burning pain?
See, now that's funny. . .
Cuz, I thought that low power EM couldn't affect the human nervous system. --You know, that the results reported by studies which examined the effects of low power EM radiation on the human body and brain were really just ludicrous phantasms concocted by crack pot scientists who deserve to be snickered at by everybody in the real world who lives in comfortable certainty that the telecommunications industry would never tell a fib.
At least, this is what I have been told a few hundred times or more whenever I have said, "Uh, the human body is made mostly of electrolyte, and there's all these studies which strongly suggest that a host of weird things happen to the nervous system when it is exposed. Maybe Cell Phones aren't such a grand idea. What other effects are they having on our centers of awareness?"
--That tin foil is beginning to look better and better, isn't it? --I sometimes wonder if the Tin Foil hat joke became ubiquitous precisely because it might in fact be one way to avoid neural tampering by the kinds of people who build Pain Rays. (Well, hats would hardly be practical, since you'd have to have a grounding wire attached to your beanie, but the point is metaphorical anyway; the larger issue being one of awareness regarding the dangers presented by EM is the first step toward avoiding subjugation through those means. To laugh and cry, "Tin Foil Hat" means you reject the very idea that there is anything going on, which in turn opens people up to control.)
The best way to control a populace is to make it self-denying, self-loathing, and self-limiting. If everybody is scared to step beyond certain boundaries through social consensus which you have set in place, then you control them, and they don't even recognize the fact, and you don't have to put up any walls. They think they are free when really they are dancing to your tune.
What ring tone does your cell phone play?
-FL
The artwork in this is stunning. Those European illustrators sure know their stuff.
-FL
--Though now you sound oddly disjointed. Were you experiencing dizziness while writing this last entry? (I'm not actually joking when I ask that.)
.
.] so welcome to the 21st century bub, adjust your concerns accordingly. you are going to find yourself more and more out of s
Anyway, let's go through it. .
orwell write what he wrote when things like east germany were being created, where a very orwellian state existed to keep people unfree and trapped in an inferior system. the revolutionaries were those fighting for a better idea
Yes, government was corrupt and totalitarianism was on the rise. Today, the same is true, we both would seem to agree. So far, so good.
but the challenge today is that you have people who are free, and the spying is being used to fight revolutionaries fighting in the name of militant fundamentalism, fighting for an inferior idea, and simple criminals. such that these tools are being used IN THE SERVICE OF the free, against vile totalitarian forces, not to prevent people's freedoms
So, if I understand your prose here, the 4 million CCTV's and Echelon and similar are being used to fight totalitarian forces. . ?
Hm. First of all, aside from the fact that the term 'totalitarian forces' can only with great awkwardness be used to describe militants and simple criminals, and that 'revolutionary' is also a rather odd term to choose when describing supposed terrorists acting from beyond the borders, I'd have to say that you are placing a great deal of trust in the government and in the official story of 'terrorism'.
But we'll go with your version for now, seeing as it appears to be the reality you have decided to champion today.
thus, when you put up a bunch of cameras in a newark housing project, the residents enthusiastically support it, because it cuts down on crime. when you did the same kind of surveillance in cold war era east germany, the populace hated it, as a tool of an oppressive state. do you understand the difference there? you don't seem to
Assuming again that such efforts are met with universal praise, (which they are certainly not), those who believe in government benevolence have failed to recognize the many problems with the issue of terrorism. The bombings on the London subway system which the world watched with 'shock and awe', were highly suspect in many regards. False flag maneuvers are a very effective ploy, particularly when a government also controls the news agencies. Fear is a powerful tool when you want to dull rational thinking in order to advance your agenda with respect to controlling a population. There is plenty of documentation regarding both the psychological tactics and the key events in question, so I won't bother posting a lot of details. I will assume that you are familiar with them, and that for some reason, you reject them.
Thus, it seems to me that you are suggesting that the government is not in any way deliberately using the climate of fear they have generated, and that they are simply using their spying in a 'nice' manner to keep the population safe from, "vile totalitarian forces".
Pardon me for saying, but this strikes me as a tad naive, particularly for one who is surely familiar with the patterns that governing bodies have emulated time and again over many years of history. To think that governments today are beyond such tactics suggests also that corruption and greed have also been deleted from the rule book. Suggesting that governments today work any differently than they did fifty years ago, or a thousand years ago, is hardly bourn out by the basic fact that human behavior still includes, as you describe, the faculty for fundamentalist militarism and rampant crime.
so let's put it this way: you argue against the sentiment of the average joe on the street. 9/11 and osama bin laden are real. out of control crime is real. emperor palpatine and agent smith are a fantasy, stalin and hitler are dead and defeated [. .
Don't flatter yourself. That was a very typical post from yours truly.
And, "Tell-it-like-it-is"?? Do you label your own words like that with a straight face? --And dropped so casually into the middle of your grade-school ad-hom nonsense, (in which you actually quoted Shakespeare and then pointed it out), --all while neatly avoiding having to deal with the fact that your argument just fell apart. . .
Good lord, why not just pout and mumble, "Yeah, well you're a fag!" in order to save everybody some time?
Ugh! Okay. . . Enough distracting nonsense. Let's get to the actual point then, shall we? (Or lack thereof, as the case happens to be.)
Since you didn't respond to any of my points, I'll assume you weren't able to, which doesn't really leave me much to respond to here. --Except perhaps for your 'facts on the ground' comment, (which I notice you didn't attribute.) So instead I'll just mention another point which struck me later and add it to the pile.
You seem to think neighbors reporting on neighbors is the big mechanism the government wishes to use to control the populace. (And I agree, it is indeed one of them). --But from that, we must then assume that you DO believe the government is in fact engaged in totalitarian ambition. Well now! We're on the same page at last, (from 1984, that is).
So if that's the case, then why is wire-tapping and a few million CCTV cameras not something we should be concerned with? Pardon my 'personal mythology', but your 'telling-it-like-it-is' is kind of flying in circles there, captain.
Echelon.
AT&T
4,285,000 CCTV cameras in the UK"
Well, blow me, but I don't think that 4,285,000 video cameras were installed by vindictive girlfriends and envious neighbors, who you seem to suggest are the real threat. --It seems, rather, that somebody in government might have a deeply rooted obsession with keeping the populace under surveillance.
You seem to think that the term "Big Brother" is intended by those using it to refer literally and only to George Orwell's exact vision of totalitarianism. That's just silly. Dangerous governments which do not reflect, and which seek to subvert and undermine the will of the people, come in a variety of flavours, but they all operate in the same spirit. As such, "Big Brother" is a useful term to use when referring to this kind of government because everybody is already familiar with it and understands what it implies. Find another term which so aptly sums up a half million CCTV's and a secret system to evesdrop on all telephone and computer communications. To call "Big Brother" a meme is not just peculiar, but outright discordant with the reality of governments which are furiously spending enormous effort to ensure that everybody really is being watched and listened to all the time.
You suggest that the government doesn't care what Joe Average says or thinks. That's nuts. If they didn't care, why would they spend such enormous effort to shape people's beliefs and behavior? It took a lot of work to sell the Iraqi war. WMD's and Iraq's fictitious connection to 9-11, and now the 'threat' of Iran are not penny ante school election campaign posters.
Yes, Joe Average, since he has already been sold the Bush bill of goods, dosed up on anti-depressants, fattened into gluten goo by an inverted food pyramid, addicted to television and video games, and overworked and debt ridden, hardly needs to be especially worried over. But psychopaths are eternally paranoid. The craving for safety and control is an endless hunger which seek to monitor and control every possible vector of threat. This is why the UK has a camera on every corner, and why AT&T, (and heaven knows who else), is actively working with the secret services to make it possible to monitor every single person in the USA who has ever clapped one ear to a telephone receiver. Or do you still believe that the "War on Terror" is the real reason? There was a time when you wouldn't have written such drivel.
--The sad part is that this circletimessquare clown used to be an intellectual of some significance, but these days his arguments are painfully weak, his once boldly acerbic style has gone soft and he is sounding dangerously close to confusing his W's with his M's. (He certainly can't seem to find his shift key anymore.) The problem with cleaving to the dark side is that it rots your brain.
Hm. . .
Well, now shucks! I went and used lots of words and punctuation and I said I was going to try to avoid that. Terribly sorry. I guess I'll just never be a bridge-building diplomat.
-FL
Yes, I grasp the concept of bias with excruciating clarity, I understand what a double-blind test is, and I took this into account when posting.
--You posted, "It is clear you did not understand what I said - I understand why of course and why you couldn't help it." If you are going to make those kinds of bold statements, then you need to back them up. I sincerely hope you've got something good, because my bias regarding conceited slashdot posters is beginning to seep out around the edges.
-FL
A lie of omission committed through even well-meaning ignorance, remains false. This is what I intended to convey with regard to my comments about teachers being misleading. Striving, as you describe, to face challenges through the use of scientific method is certainly admirable. So you will, of course, then recognize that it is counter productive to ignore some data over other data simply because it happens to allow for a more convenient response. Put simply. . , you didn't answer my question.
-FL
-FL
If you are referring to your heavy use of hyperbole, then you might well be correct. --If you don't think I followed your thinking, then why not try to make yourself better understood? Half the art of communication rests on the shoulders of the fellow who wants to put his thoughts out to be heard. --And I can assure you, I am quite capable of understanding most things if they are expressed well. You're not dealing with a chimp. Give it another shot, and this time use an example or two to illustrate what you're trying to describe as I have attempted for your benefit.
-FL
The funny thing about this methodology, is that it works wonderfully within the material realm. The double blind test is great when you can remove yourself from the system being studied.
The problem with Energy, is that it appears to be linked in a huge way to consciousness and awareness. What you believe has a significant impact on what you can measure. Stepping outside those boundaries requires a type of experiment which is rather challenging to set up. Further, the subject energies present difficulties in being successfully measured directly using conventional techniques and measurement devices. --There are reports of a type of Aura photography, and ghosts and 'Orbs' have been photographed. --But such evidence is hard to quantify or understand, and despite countless examples, has done little to lead to any sort of watershed acceptance of energies beyond the conventionally recognized forces in nature. (I find that to be a rather curious disconnect; science likes to turn a blind eye to such examples as though they somehow didn't count or do not exist. I consider this to be evidence in itself of the social control system which keeps people locked in place with regard to knowledge.)
But for the most part, evidence of 'energy' is secondary. People recovering from sickness using alternative medicines, like acupuncture and homeopathy is secondary evidence. The fact that dogs can be operated on without complaint with no use of anesthesia and just acupuncture offers evidence that there is something more going on than the placebo effect. This is more evidence which might be considered a manner of 'blindness' in terms of empirical study. But again, such instances are largely ignored. Why?
One of the best ways to learn about energy is to dive in and personally explore it. Is this scientific? Not by the standard definition of scientific procedure. But is it invalid? Absolutely not! Learning how to ride a bike teaches the individual directly through personal interaction with a bicycle. The individual exists within the system and there is no double blind testing going on. The bike rider is very biased, because they believe in what they are doing. Science may reject the bike riding experience because proper scientific method was not followed, but it does not reduce the value of the experience.
The thing with a bike, is that it exists in the physical realm, and so you can easily show somebody a bike and ride it before them to demonstrate. You can 'prove' bikes. But energy is much more slippery. The effects can be diminished or increased by one's will. If you are in a stadium of very angry and skeptical people who don't want to have anything proven to them, then the chances are that an individual being tested will not be able to perform. Indeed, since one aspect of the energetic reality is that we are all connected and aware and in communication on the subconscious level with one another, when the demonstrator hears through the subconscious from the unwilling audience, "Please no! I don't want to see you prove me wrong!", then to force proof upon the audience would be a breach of free will, and thus it is much less likely to happen. This reality is designed to be experienced in a state of extreme ignorance and unawareness. To break down that wall is rather anti-social and people will fight you tooth and nail to keep the veils of forgetting drawn tight around themselves. They nailed Jesus to a cross to stop his efforts! And so curious elements such as these come into effect when we play at 'science'.
--Which is why faith becomes an important element when exploring such matters.
-FL
You appear to have not even the foggiest understanding of logic or science. Science is not "conventional understanding", science is the method you use to get closer and closer to an understanding of the true nature of things. 2+2=4, not whatever you want it to be.
Homeopathy either works, or it doesn't; and any good scientific test will show you which one it is. That is not feeling, that is cold logic.
Shall I assume then that you have performed your own testing and exploration into this subject? No? Well then, all you are really offering is a rather rude opinion based on pre-existing biases; on the fact that you BELIEVE you are right. From reading your post, it sounds as though you should know better than that. --I have spent years exploring this stuff, starting from a very biased viewpoint much like your own, sorting fact from fiction, and you clearly have not. So who does that make more qualified to speak? The guy who did all the hard work, or the guy applying a bunch of armchair (in front of a TV?) logic which doesn't hold up in the field?
The field must be walked through. Anything you think you know because you watched it on TV, or because your highschool science teacher said so, is misleading. You were being told stories, often by people with something to gain from your believing them. --And so have I been told false stories. The difference is that I walked in and tested to see what was false and what was not. --Until you start an honest exploration yourself, you simply cannot speak and you certainly should not judge. Those who have been brave and alert enough to explore even a small area of the 'field' know exactly what I'm talking about.
-FL