As you may know, I've hijacked a couple of threads lately with my "alternative views" of the world. Although I'm not sorry I did this, I am a little uncomfortable. I've been asking myself why I would do such a thing; why would I think that anyone is interested in such outlandish views? Do I want to convert people, to thrust my face into yours and scream "Look! Look what They are doing to us!" Am I mad? Has my mind snapped? They say that a madman never knows that he's mad – is that what's happened to me? Am I howling at the moon? Am I broken?
Or is there something in it? There is little likelihood that such a big question could ever be answered on a forum about 2000AD, but I thought I'd float this thread in case anyone wants to discuss "alternative" views. If nothing else, it'll give me a place to rant and rave without upsetting the forum in general. My own virtual rubber room. Feel free to point and giggle – I won't be offended.
I remember watching the events of 9/11 unfolding moment by sickening moment on TV. Aircraft smashing into buildings. People jumping to their doom rather than waiting to be burned alive. New York suffocating under great, white clouds of pulverized concrete. First Responders heroically but with aching futility searching for survivors in that terrible aftermath. Tears. Pain. Death. Anger.
And then watching, with a chasm of dread in the pit of my stomach, as the United States of America went mad, dragging the rest of the world after it. The most powerful nation on Earth, the one with the biggest guns and the most bullets, shaking its fist and declaring that "you're either with us or against us." I was with America that day. I felt its pain. I felt its fear. I felt its anger. I still do.
I was dimly aware that a few lone voices were crying "foul!" and blaming not Muslim terrorists but their own government and I thought these people mad. The U.S. Government, I believed, would not perpetrate such a despicable act against its own people. The very idea was unthinkable and an insult to all who died on that dark day.
It wasn't until around 2005 or 2006 that I began to have doubts of my own about exactly what did happen on 9/11. There were, I found, some unsettling questions. Thinking still that these questions were probably just landmines planted by anti-government malcontents I decided to look into these questions for myself, to convince myself that what I was being told was the truth and that these questions were trivial and easily answered and dismissed. I soon discovered, however, that many of these questions were difficult to answer and led to some very frightening places.
I had never heard of the collapse of the third tower, WTC7, until an internet friend of mine (whose intellect and knowledge of all things scientific dwarf my own as a redwood dwarfs a thistle) told me about it. Even then I didn't believe it because I didn't want to believe it. But those pesky questions remained and led me deep into a place I didn't want to go – to a place I still don't want to be in.
I continued my research (although the word "research" in this case is a much grander word than my meagre web-trawling sessions merits) and suddenly found myself confronted with a world I had hitherto not even dreamed existed. A world of ruling elites, corrupt central banks, rotten governments, biased media, fake wars, conspiracies and a whole raft of outlandish theories and frightening facts. The world, I realized, was not as I thought it was. It was like seeing a boom-mike dip into the top of the picture in a film or TV show. As if the illusion had been broken, the fourth wall cracked just enough for me to glimpse the other side.
I haven't started this thread to go through all the questions raised by 9/11 – there are a million and one sites on the internet dedicated to such things – but to ask if it's possible that things are not quite as they appear to be in this world of ours. Is it possible that there is a hidden struggle going on for "control" of the world's population? Are we nothing but cattle, or "sheeple" as some observers and commentators call us? If so, what can we do about it?
So, here's a thread where we can discuss truth and lies – if you so desire. The thread may, of course, sink without a trace into the background hiss of the internet but, given everything that has happened and continues to happen as a result of 9/11 should we not at least cursorily examine what's going on, or not, behind the scenes, or not, in our societies?
Over to you, my friends. Let the madness commence...
Have you ever spent a while on the Fortean Times forum? You'll find all sorts of discussions on the conspiracy section (pro and anti) that will interest you. The forum members aren't mad either so I find their debates more enjoyable because they attempt to weigh up the evidence fairly dispassionately (although rows do break out occasionally.)
Although I am not convinced by many of the big modern conspiracy theories especially concerning 9/11, the truth is that conspiracies do happen and have happened throughout history. You just have to separate the wheat from the chaff. I often think if it sounds utterly banal it's more believable.
America is evil, let's just leave it at that.
For my two American cents we didn't drag anyone into madness, they came with us. There were plenty of countries that didn't do anything other than offer condolences; Britain was not forced into this war. If your government still feels they owe us something for WWII then, hey, be mad at it.
Quote from: locustsofdeath! on 18 March, 2011, 07:58:07 PM
America is evil, let's just leave it at that.
Word!
QuoteIf your government still feels they owe us something for WWII then, hey, be mad at it.
I know: that's crazy, isn't it? We spent 60 years paying back America for that and we were nearly done when Blair got us involved in America's bonkers plan to wreak havoc in the middle east. I think there were numerous factors at play, but owing America anything for past favours (like selling us weapons to fight the Nazis with) wasn't one of them. It was a combination of the British Prime Minister always wanting to keep America on our side, like the school bully's less tough sidekick; Blair fancying having a war of his own to run because it worked so well for Thatcher at the ballot box; and also something about 'God told him to do it,' if I remember correctly. Scary, eh?
I think you should still owe us, and anywhere I walk on this island I should have rose petals sprinkled out before me and men should offer me their daughters and all my drinks should be free. What's wrong with you lot? We saved your asses!
I've got a mate who I hadn't seen in years, when we reconnected he told me he had his own secret society of conspiracy theorists who meet and share theories and evidence. I thought he was joking but apparently not (he's been banned from Facebook recently for posting theories, which must have had the society in a right fizz about the conspiracies at play).
He did tell me that he was going to send me conclusive proof that there weren't any planes involved in 9/11 but he hasn't yet.
Quote from: Keef Monkey on 18 March, 2011, 08:23:42 PM
he told me he had his own secret society of conspiracy theorists who meet and share theories and evidence
The Lone Gunmen!
(http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/LoneGunmen.jpg)
Welcome into the light Sharky. You might find Nexus magazine interesting (usually available in the local WH Smiths).
Quote from: House of Usher on 18 March, 2011, 08:39:52 PM
Quote from: Keef Monkey on 18 March, 2011, 08:23:42 PM
he told me he had his own secret society of conspiracy theorists who meet and share theories and evidence
The Lone Gunmen!
(http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/LoneGunmen.jpg)
Ok where's the fourth gun man ? Good ol Jimmy Bond ? What are you trying to hide apart from Jimmy?
If you have doubts about 9/11 you should interview a few of the survivors about what happened. No offense to anyone here, but if you have a certain agenda - "having doubts about exactly what did happen on 9/11" - and you start searching for conspiracy theories you'll find exactly what you're looking for. As far as this stuff goes, one should always be a skeptic with an open mind. Don't read and believe or listen and believe - get out on the street, do your own research.
And I need to add that whilst I can buy into the US government setting 9/11 up to a point...I find anyone saying that there were no plane crashes to be absolutely off their rocker. I was in Pennsylvania, my house was on a hill- as I watched the horrors on TV I could look out my window and see the smoke pouring up from NYC. IMO, claiming that there were no planes is insulting the memories of the people who died in them.
There are lots of ugly rumours surrounding 9/11 but I can't fathom the American goverment blowing up one of the symbols of capitilism just to start a war with the Arab World.
Their mostly at War with the Arab World anyway over Americas [mostly] unconditional support for Israel. Why make the War official when 'covert deniel' is so much more fun?
Anyway as WikiLeaks pointed out it's not Israel the Arab world is afraid of but that old enemy Persia! The Iranians and their alleged not very secret Nuclear Power Plant with it's potential for making weapons grade Plutonium concerns Sunni Arabs and the West far more than the thorn of Israel ever could.
Quote from: locustsofdeath! on 18 March, 2011, 08:55:47 PM
If you have doubts about 9/11 you should interview a few of the survivors about what happened. No offense to anyone here, but if you have a certain agenda - "having doubts about exactly what did happen on 9/11" - and you start searching for conspiracy theories you'll find exactly what you're looking for. As far as this stuff goes, one should always be a skeptic with an open mind. Don't read and believe or listen and believe - get out on the street, do your own research.
And I need to add that whilst I can buy into the US government setting 9/11 up to a point...I find anyone saying that there were no plane crashes to be absolutely off their rocker. I was in Pennsylvania, my house was on a hill- as I watched the horrors on TV I could look out my window and see the smoke pouring up from NYC. IMO, claiming that there were no planes is insulting the memories of the people who died in them.
Maybe his friend meant there were no pasenger planes involved as some have argued. No plane at the Pentagon though. IMHO that was either a light aircraft or more likely a missile of some kind. Never convince me that was a plane. What next ? Jesus was real ?
Yep. And have you, sir, done any first-hand research? What is your knowledge, may I ask, of light aircraft vs. passenger planes and the effects each would have on a building such as the WTC? What types of missile could be used to fire on the WTC yet have millions of first-hand witnesses (people on the streets) see airplanes? Did our government get to every New Yorker and threaten and/or brainwash them into claiming that they saw airplanes rather than missile fire? And what kinds of special effects did our government doctor up during LIVE broadcasts?
I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to "argue" with you. I can tell your type a mile away. You're the guy who's always right.
Quote from: Brigantian on 18 March, 2011, 09:03:16 PM
What next ? Jesus was real ?
Why shouldn't Jesus have been real? Just because he might have been real doesn't confirm his divinity or that he had magic powers, does it? Whilst my disbelief in the supernatural is total, I haven't considered any evidence relating to whether Jesus was real or not, so I'm prepared to keep an open mind on the matter. What evidence do you have for his non-existence?
It's interesting to hear people talk about governments hiding terrible secrets. We live in a world where the government of Israel can forge passports from other countries to facilitate the murder of their enemies, and do so without any real consequences.
Why should a country hide its crimes if they know they can get away with them?
Israel's love affair with assassination. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinations)
Quote from: Brigantian on 18 March, 2011, 09:03:16 PM
IMHO that was either a light aircraft or more likely a missile of some kind. Never convince me that was a plane. What next ? Jesus was real ?
He was real. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus)
Jared Katooie is sponsored by the Wikipedia Foundation and Google.
I'm not arguing how nefarious governments can be - that's their job, innit?
I just want concrete facts and firsthand research to base my judgements on, not regurgitated conspiracy theories from the fat guy with chip-stains on his t-shirt and poo-stains in his pants who sits on his couch all day listening to George Noory reruns and scavenging the internet for articles with the same "voice" as his.
I'll listen to anything, I'll believe anything - as long as I have real proof and real facts. Until I get that, I'll smile and nod and think "what a kook".
Quote from: Jared Katooie on 18 March, 2011, 09:19:04 PM
He was real. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus)
Good grud, what despicable cabal of fucking lunatics and premeditated shite-mongers are Wikipedia allowing to write stuff under their name these days?
He wasn't real.
SBT
SBT, you silly man. He was real and here's proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hBzO47bJMI.
Quote from: locustsofdeath! on 18 March, 2011, 09:07:19 PM
Yep. And have you, sir, done any first-hand research? What is your knowledge, may I ask, of light aircraft vs. passenger planes and the effects each would have on a building such as the WTC? What types of missile could be used to fire on the WTC yet have millions of first-hand witnesses (people on the streets) see airplanes? Did our government get to every New Yorker and threaten and/or brainwash them into claiming that they saw airplanes rather than missile fire? And what kinds of special effects did our government doctor up during LIVE broadcasts?
I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to "argue" with you. I can tell your type a mile away. You're the guy who's always right.
Calm down Locust, I'm not always right. That's far too absolute for me. I just like the evidence to at least have a degree of credibility about it. I'm always open to a different opinion and you're right I am not a military weapons expert. I never claimed I was but I've seen the footage like everyone else from the Pentagon and I can't find it in me to see a plane either in the impact footage (such as it is) or in the shocking aftermath footage. A debate or discussion doesn't have to be an argument.
Whilst I in no way vouch for its accuracy or authenticity, the documentary "September Clues" presents some interesting ideas:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8045542387672451515#
Quote from: House of Usher on 18 March, 2011, 09:18:00 PMWhat evidence do you have for his non-existence?
That noise you hear? Bertrand Russell tutting softly.
Conspiracy theories oncerning huge, historically significant events are all well and good, but the really scary ones are the ones about our everyday lives. That little piece of plastic at the end of your shoelace? It's called an Aiglet, its purpose is sinister......I've said to much.......... :-X
Quote from: staticgirl on 18 March, 2011, 07:42:31 PM
Although I am not convinced by many of the big modern conspiracy theories especially concerning 9/11, the truth is that conspiracies do happen and have happened throughout history.
That.
Quote from: House of Usher on 18 March, 2011, 08:39:52 PM
(http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/LoneGunmen.jpg)
See that actor bloke in the middle? He once wrote a letter to the aforementioned Fortean Times regarding the plot of the first episode of the spin-off series. To quote from wikipedia...
QuoteThe debut of the show in March 2001, began with Byers' father faking his death to uncover a conspiracy to hijack an airliner. The Lone Gunmen try to get to the truth of his supposed death and uncover the conspiracy.
One retrospectively interesting aspect of this pilot episode is that the airliner has been hijacked (via remote control of the plane's autopilot) and, by the end, both Byers and his father have boarded the plane to try to stop the hijacking. Through the aid of the other Gunmen, they are able to regain control of the plane and just miss crashing into the World Trade Center with the airliner. This, of course, was before the actual 9/11 attack against the World Trade Center later that year. Similar to actual conspiracy theories posited about the events of 9/11, the episode's plot indicates that the hijacking was committed as an act of voracity by a greedy American arms manufacturer to ultimately increase its weapons sales by invoking U.S. retaliation against a scapegoated anti-American extremist dictator.
Quote from: TordelBack on 18 March, 2011, 09:45:15 PM
Quote from: House of Usher on 18 March, 2011, 09:18:00 PMWhat evidence do you have for his non-existence?
That noise you hear? Bertrand Russell tutting softly.
It's a fair cop! :lol:
Okay, I'm not looking for hard evidence of the non-existence of Jesus; I'm just saying that an absence of evidence of his existence is insufficient grounds for certainity that he did not exist. This is not at all the same thing as saying that we have no evidence for the non-existence of unicorns, so we cannot be certain of their non-existence either. The grounds for disbelief would be different in each case.
Depends what you call a unicorn.
It's obvious the US government took down the towers. Just look at how good they are at blue on blue contacts.
These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."
Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."
"Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."
"The pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge (gnosis) and hidden them. They themselves have not entered, nor have they allowed to enter those who wish to. You, however, be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves."
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/thomas_poxy.htm
I shall contribute a reasoned and well argued post when I'm not shit faced. Right now I just want to shout and point at the gullible lack wits who think that Prince Philip had Di assassinated by flashbulb. There is a serious argument to be made about govt lies but I can't do it justice right now. *hic*
but please - Gnostic gospels? The main four are dodgy enough!
Means nothing to me, Guv. 'Somebody said Jesus said something or other' still has no bearing on the question of whether Jesus was real or not. The question, as far as I'm concerned, is whether or not it was worth the while of those who wrote the scripture to have made him up. I say not, because you've got a much better story on which to base your cult or protest movement if you start with a real person than if you start with one who is totally made up like the feats he's supposed to have performed.
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 18 March, 2011, 10:59:34 PM
It's obvious the US government took down the towers. Just look at how good they are at blue on blue contacts.
I know it's a cliche, but... LOL!
Anyhoo... Funnily enough I was speaking to a chap today who knows the guy who was Hess's doctor in Spandau Prison. Whoever it was in prison, it was most definitely NOT Hess. The medical evidence does not back up the identification of the prisoner as Hess. Hess was wounded by some sort of high velocity bullet in WW1. The prisoner had no wounds which match his official medical records. Why the heck would the Allies perpetuate such a lie, but perhaps more interestingly why would someone pretend to be Hess? To remain in prison for the rest of your "natural"? Whatever the "truth", I'm sure this one goes a lot deeper than 9/11? 9/11 has been running for 10 years. The mystery of Hess has been running for 70 years. The longer you tell a lie, the harder it is to remember the truth.
Just thought I'd share that one as it happened to be a great coincidence, or was it? ;)
Cheers
Colin
Quote from: Colin MacNeil on 19 March, 2011, 12:02:44 AM
Anyhoo... Funnily enough I was speaking to a chap today who knows the guy who was Hess's doctor in Spandau Prison. Whoever it was in prison, it was most definitely NOT Hess. The medical evidence does not back up the identification of the prisoner as Hess. Hess was wounded by some sort of high velocity bullet in WW1. The prisoner had no wounds which match his official medical records. Why the heck would the Allies perpetuate such a lie, but perhaps more interestingly why would someone pretend to be Hess? To remain in prison for the rest of your "natural"?
Two words...
Jimmy Carr.
yep Jimmy Carr should be locked up for the rest of his natural.
I didn't say he ws the son of God, just that he existed. Please note that there is a difference.
He probably was the son of God though. ;)
Jimmy Carr is not the son of God! He just has the same initials.
VD also just exists but its not polite to talk about it
Quote from: M.I.K. on 19 March, 2011, 01:37:08 AM
Jimmy Carr is not the son of God! He just has the same initials.
Tccch. Now you're confusing him with Jarvis.
Not forgetting Julian Clary.
John Connor. Messiah. Savior. And all of that.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 March, 2011, 09:39:21 PM
Whilst I in no way vouch for its accuracy or authenticity, the documentary "September Clues" presents some interesting ideas:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8045542387672451515#
In the interests of balance (with the same caveat): September Clues - Busted!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8045542387672451515#docid=823734902101057550
I quite enjoy this sort of thing and have gone as far as to read some books by David Icke. My main problem with a lot of these theories though is that they assume an astonishingly high amount of competence and organisation within governments and businesses which in my working life (from Whitehall to blue chip companies) I have seen very little evidence of.
They do bring up some very interesting questions though and it is always a shame when you find a depressingly uninteresting explanation for these things when the conspiracy sounded so fascinating.
Quote from: locustsofdeath! on 19 March, 2011, 10:46:21 AM
John Connor. Messiah. Savior. And all of that.
You joke, but I recently heard the same thing from someone who believes that the Terminator films are actually documentary/prophecy, and that those initials are meaningful in precisely the sense you're hinting at.
I'm not sure that David Icke is the most credible of commentators. He seems to pounce on anything at all that's out of the ordinary and stick it all together into one massive, confusing ball of complexity and assumption.
The "governmental incompetence" argument only works if one assumes that the whole, or at least a large proportion of the government was involved. As I have said elsewhere, it only takes a few key people (not just in government but across several power bases) and the compartmentalization of duties/knowledge. To say that governments can't keep secrets ignores things like the Manhattan Project, which employed thousands of people in dozens of facilities across the US and Canada, set off trial detonations and lasted for around six years with nobody in the general public being any the wiser.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 March, 2011, 12:05:33 PM
I'm not sure that David Icke is the most credible of commentators. He seems to pounce on anything at all that's out of the ordinary and stick it all together into one massive, confusing ball of complexity and assumption.
I thought that was how it was done, to be perfectly honest.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 March, 2011, 12:05:33 PM
I'm not sure that David Icke is the most credible of commentators. He seems to pounce on anything at all that's out of the ordinary and stick it all together into one massive, confusing ball of complexity and assumption.
With lizard people thrown in the mix as well. :lol:
I do hope most of the conspiracy theories I read about are true as it turns the world into a wonderful poorly-written spy novel with badly thought through sci-fi overtones.
I also hope that the Jesus from the Bible is completely true, and thererfore the rest of the OT, as that makes the world a silly place.
But I fear I'll just have to continue working 9-5 for many more years, pay my taxes, avoid crime and die at the end of it all.
Reveal yourselves soon alien overlords/secret cabal/second coming of Jesus.
Make the world "special"
Doesn't determinist theory suggest that we live in the best of all possible worlds?
Everything came from that which went before it so although we seem to be trapped by background or history and we're all just playing out individual parts in a never ending story we can still make the right choices in the end?
We cut out lead in petrol and that made a big difference to air quality so we can do it if we agree to try, we can make a difference.
That of course is the rub. Agreement amongst differing tribes or groups all with competing or rival claims usually proves impossible so we're stuck where we are with little change.
Nature still triumphs in the end as the poor people of both Haiti and Japan have discovered but I still say we can do better. Success is 10% talent 90% effort.
It's the 90% effort alas, I'm always having trouble with.
Quote from: Dunk! on 19 March, 2011, 01:18:09 PM
I do hope most of the conspiracy theories I read about are true as it turns the world into a wonderful poorly-written spy novel with badly thought through sci-fi overtones.
I also hope that the Jesus from the Bible is completely true, and thererfore the rest of the OT, as that makes the world a silly place.
But I fear I'll just have to continue working 9-5 for many more years, pay my taxes, avoid crime and die at the end of it all.
Reveal yourselves soon alien overlords/secret cabal/second coming of Jesus.
Make the world "special"
You sound like Max Weber's cynical twin from a parallel universe!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber#Rationalisation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber#Rationalisation)
(N.B. - Jesus is NT, not OT)
Quote from: IAMTHESYSTEM on 19 March, 2011, 01:48:25 PM
Doesn't determinist theory suggest that we live in the best of all possible worlds?
What is determinist theory? I'm familiar with 'the best of all possible worlds' as a belief extolled by Leibniz and ridiculed by Voltaire in his picaresque comic travelogue,
Candide.
Determinism is a Christian belief peculiar to certain branches of Protestantism (e.g. Calvinism), is it not? Therefore it's something of a 'subscribers only' offer/your mileage may vary.
Yeah, I should have said "And therefore make the Old Tasty Mint true as well".
Knew my view would be covered somewhere.
http://www.determinism.com/
Science seems to point in the right direction if you can get over the free will bit. Not very comforting perhaps but there are lots of people who believe in the counter argument that free will does exist and we're not Genetic robots with delusions of grandeur.
Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 18 March, 2011, 09:26:03 PM
Quote from: Jared Katooie on 18 March, 2011, 09:19:04 PM
He was real. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus)
Good grud, what despicable cabal of fucking lunatics and premeditated shite-mongers are Wikipedia allowing to write stuff under their name these days?
He wasn't real.
SBT
Given that 'Jesus' (or rather 'Yeshua') was a common name centuries before and several decades after His supposed birth, I don't see why it's so hard to believe someone claiming to be the Jewish Messiah
could have existed. I should think it likely there was a tabernacle-load of would-be Messiahs who happened to have the same name.
It's the claims made during the PR assault of a certain young Turk that are impossible to prove.
The problem with personages such as Jesus seems to be that so much time has passed and so many things have been written since his lifetime that it's virtually impossible to be sure of anything. The core message of "be good to one another" seems just about the only useful thing to be gleaned from the whole bloody mess, imho.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 March, 2011, 05:57:54 PM
The problem with personages such as Jesus seems to be that so much time has passed and so many things have been written since his lifetime that it's virtually impossible to be sure of anything.
Sounds like 9/11 conspiracy theories to me.
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 19 March, 2011, 05:43:25 PM
Given that 'Jesus' (or rather 'Yeshua') was a common name centuries before and several decades after His supposed birth, I don't see why it's so hard to believe someone claiming to be the Jewish Messiah could have existed. I should think it likely there was a tabernacle-load of would-be Messiahs who happened to have the same name.
It's the claims made during the PR assault of a certain young Turk that are impossible to prove.
It doesn't matter whether a random person called 'Jesus' was living at the time in Bethlehem (but show me evidence one was!)- it's whether he did the magic tricks. If there is no proof he did the magic, then I'd say that the evidence is very strongly stacked that the magic never happened, and the stuff we KNOW about how the world and universe was created is correct. Ie) that's there's no magic, just as there's been no similar magic in the intervening 2000 years, and just as there was no magic in the 2000 years before that. Or before that. The entire point of Wiki pages like that is to fool the gullible into questioning the rational, and to sew the seeds of doubt. A doubt that inevitably leads to schools not being able to teach evolution, being forced to give "creationism" the time of day (instead of being closed down for even considering it) and fundies some puerile "evidence" with which to argue.
The Jesus myth is a story, designed to keep a small group of people in line thousands of years ago. Just like the Robin Hood myth is a story, designed to give another small group of people (the English) hope, several hundred years ago. Of the two, I'd rather follow the example of Robin!
SBT
Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 19 March, 2011, 06:24:05 PM
It doesn't matter whether a random person called 'Jesus' was living at the time in Bethlehem (but show me evidence one was!)- it's whether he did the magic tricks.
I disagree. You can separate agnosticism about the existence or non-existence of Jesus from belief or disbelief in his divinity, and from atheism.
Whether or not 'he did the magic tricks' is a separate issue from the other questions about whether or not he was the son of a carpenter, he created a scene in the temple, he told parables, he hung out with fishermen, prostitutes and louche types, he delivered the sermon on the mount, or was crucified. There is nothing among that lot I find implausible, which is not to say that any or all of it must be true.
I'm sufficiently secure in my atheism that I don't feel the need to deny all the bits of the Old and New testaments that
aren't supernatural as well as the bits that
are. I don't feel the need to deny that the Romans ever occupied Judaea, for example, or that crufixion was one of their favoured methods of execution.
I once saw a BBC documentary called, if remember correctly, "Did Jesus Die?" which suggested that Jesus was actually a Buddhist and is buried in India (I think, or Kashmir or somewhere like that).
But Ush, the entire fictional life of Jesus is entirely based around the fact he was "the Son of God", born of a supernaturally-impregnated human woman in a stable, to which were guided wizards by a magic star, then grew up to do supernatural tricks including raising the dead, walking on water and pulling magic food out of nowhere. Eventually he was murdered and raised himself from the dead before flying up to space on a magic cloud. Take that away, and it's not Jesus. To use a literary term, you've lost the dramatic center of the story.
Since all of that is patently untrue, whether anyone was holding sermons on mounts or not is irrelevent.
Considering so much of the Bible is provably bollocks, I see no reason to give anything other than the bits we can prove (the scene setting, if you like, including Roman occupations and murder-methods) the benefit of the doubt. Like I say- where is the evidence that there was a man called Jesus sermonising anything?
I know what you're arguing, but I don't agree.
SBT
In Islam, Jesus (Arabic: عيسى; `Īsā) (pbuh) is considered to be a Messenger of God and the Messiah who was sent to guide the Children of Israel (banī isrā'īl) with a new scripture, the Injīl or Gospel.
Like all prophets in Islam, Jesus is considered to have been a Muslim (i.e., one who submits to the will of God), as he preached that his followers should adopt the "straight path" as commanded by God. Islam rejects the Christian view that Jesus was God incarnate or the son of God, that he was ever crucified or resurrected, or that he ever atoned for the sins of mankind. The Qur'an says that Jesus himself never claimed any of these things, and it furthermore indicates that Jesus will deny having ever claimed divinity at the Last Judgment, and God will vindicate him.[5] The Qur'an emphasizes that Jesus was a mortal human being who, like all other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God's message. Islamic texts forbid the association of partners with God (shirk), emphasizing a strict notion of monotheism; i.e., God's divine oneness (tawhīd).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_Islam
On the east coast of China there's a city called Peng Lai. The area has legends of a magical mountain, on top of which lived some immortals. Story's probably rubbish. No such mountain.
However, this doesn't stop a non-existent mountain appearing out of nowhere off the coast of Peng Lai on rare occasions. It's even been captured on video a number of times. It may just be a mirage, but it's still kind of there and is the most likely candidate for the basis of the myth.
Even the most fanciful stories can have a basis in fact.
101 ways to know when a discussion is dead.
#87: When anyone starts regurgitating chunks of stuff from Wikipedia, as if any of it actually means anything.
Gawd, I just can't get this quotations thing right, can I? :lol:
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 March, 2011, 07:26:32 PM
Gawd, I just can't get this quotations thing right, can I? :lol:
Well as someone once said, "Gawd, I just can't get this quotations thing right, can I?".
Oh, don't quote him, he's a dick...
I have read up on more than my fair share of conspiracy theories (although not as much as sharky I suspect) and gone on jaunts into their wild outer reaches (going back to the days when you had to get this information from dodgy pamphlets and self-printed books from strange little book shops and small ads in strange magazines touting lists of books that'd reveal secret histories of the world.
While governments and groups of powerful individuals do get up to some dark and nasty things (which may even count as a "conspiracy" in the broad sense), I have yet to find anything to suggest conspiracism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracism) is real and valid. An awful lot of the time things seem to get slashed by Hanlon's razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor): "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." This is obviously, related to Occam's razor which also applies, some of the big conspiracy theories are so vast and complex, it'd be impossible to keep them secret, someone out of all the thousands that would need to have to break cover. I'm not ruling anything out, of course, and try and keep up with developments, but I've yet to be convinced there is any grounds to rule anything in. It can be great fodder for stories though ;)
My main concern is that conspiracism distracts from the actual stories of lesser dirty deals and incompetence that we really need to know about. However, I'd not go as far to suggest a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories, in that the global elite helps nudge these theories along and give them enough oxygen to thrive, so it is great cover for their actual age-old, and much less flashy, dirty dealing - if anyone questions them they can be easily dismissed as conspiracy theorists. You are just better of with something by John Pilger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pilger) (or by Paul Foot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Foot), especially over the Lockerbie bombings than watching Loose Change (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Change_%28film%29).
Although now I think about it, Charlie Sheen was a big supporter of 911 conspiracy theories, surely all his recent behaviour is some CIA mind control operation? Back to the conspiracy mines for me.
They told you to say that, didn't they?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 March, 2011, 08:23:48 PM
They told you to say that, didn't they?
No, the little spider in my eye did.
Quote from: GordonR on 19 March, 2011, 07:20:23 PM
101 ways to know when a discussion is dead.
#87: When anyone starts regurgitating chunks of stuff from Wikipedia, as if any of it actually means anything.
And there I was thinking there was a great discussion going on. Wrong again, I guess.
QuoteWhile governments and groups of powerful individuals do get up to some dark and nasty things (which may even count as a "conspiracy" in the broad sense), I have yet to find anything to suggest conspiracism is real and valid. An awful lot of the time things seem to get slashed by Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." This is obviously, related to Occam's razor which also applies, some of the big conspiracy theories are so vast and complex, it'd be impossible to keep them secret, someone out of all the thousands that would need to have to break cover. I'm not ruling anything out, of course, and try and keep up with developments, but I've yet to be convinced there is any grounds to rule anything in. It can be great fodder for stories though Wink
My main concern is that conspiracism distracts from the actual stories of lesser dirty deals and incompetence that we really need to know about.
I started typing out a reply earlier, but couldn't express myself succinctly enough - Emperor has put what I was trying to say far more eloquently than I could myself.
I'm sure that governments do dodgy stuff all the time, but it's usually of the sort that is just depressing and mundane rather than the fantastical, outlandish, audacious or exciting type of stuff that conspiracy theorists would have us believe.
Take the invasion of Iraq - imo more the inevitable result of a vague, misguided, greed-based, messily bureaucratic consensus than the work of some sort of robe-wearing shadowy cabal who secretly run the entire world.
Medicinal Cannabis and its impact on Human Health
http://www.tpuc.org/content/medicinal-cannabis-and-its-impact-human-he (http://www.tpuc.org/content/medicinal-cannabis-and-its-impact-human-he)
The idiot cycle: What you aren't being told about cancer. Part 2
http://rt.com/programs/documentary/idiot-cycle-cancer-film2/ (http://rt.com/programs/documentary/idiot-cycle-cancer-film2/)
They are some scary old doctors.
Dr Robert Stoner. LOL.
Quote from: radiator on 19 March, 2011, 10:30:16 PM
QuoteWhile governments and groups of powerful individuals do get up to some dark and nasty things (which may even count as a "conspiracy" in the broad sense), I have yet to find anything to suggest conspiracism is real and valid. An awful lot of the time things seem to get slashed by Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." This is obviously, related to Occam's razor which also applies, some of the big conspiracy theories are so vast and complex, it'd be impossible to keep them secret, someone out of all the thousands that would need to have to break cover. I'm not ruling anything out, of course, and try and keep up with developments, but I've yet to be convinced there is any grounds to rule anything in. It can be great fodder for stories though Wink
My main concern is that conspiracism distracts from the actual stories of lesser dirty deals and incompetence that we really need to know about.
I started typing out a reply earlier, but couldn't express myself succinctly enough - Emperor has put what I was trying to say far more eloquently than I could myself.
I'm sure that governments do dodgy stuff all the time, but it's usually of the sort that is just depressing and mundane rather than the fantastical, outlandish, audacious or exciting type of stuff that conspiracy theorists would have us believe.
Take the invasion of Iraq - imo more the inevitable result of a vague, misguided, greed-based, messily bureaucratic consensus than the work of some sort of robe-wearing shadowy cabal who secretly run the entire world.
seconded my robed brother!
by the way there's hope for us all, well most of us:
A practical observation on the risks of stupidity was made by the German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord in Truppenführung, 1933: "I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!"[
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 25 March, 2011, 04:17:06 AMThe idiot cycle: What you aren't being told about cancer. Part 2
http://rt.com/programs/documentary/idiot-cycle-cancer-film2/ (http://rt.com/programs/documentary/idiot-cycle-cancer-film2/)
This didn't tell me anything about cancer, either. Is it meant to be ironic?
Regards
Robin
I remember seeing a web site that listed everthing The Daily Mail has claimed to cause and/or prevent Cancer. There was a shocking amount of self contradiction, the bawbags
Part 1 had more info about carcinogens in food, bath products, everyday items etc - but the time limit for watching on-line had passed. (I didn't know, for example, that talcum powder can cause cancer.)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 25 March, 2011, 07:49:39 PM
Part 1 had more info about carcinogens in food, bath products, everyday items etc - but the time limit for watching on-line had passed. (I didn't know, for example, that talcum powder can cause cancer.)
I recommend watching the film
The Incredible Shrinking Woman with Lily Tomlin in it. It's the combination of chemicals in her everyday consumer products that causes her to shrink. I went to the pictures to see that many, many years ago.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 25 March, 2011, 07:49:39 PM
Part 1 had more info about carcinogens in food, bath products, everyday items etc - but the time limit for watching on-line had passed. (I didn't know, for example, that talcum powder can cause cancer.)
Yeah, but so can beer, smoking, traffic fumes, the carbon and fat in an over-cooked sausage and the acid in our own stomachs. Loads of things have the potential, but more often than not it's a matter of degree of exposure. Too much sun is potentially dangerous, but too little sun is bad as well. And the information is out there for anyone who cares to take an interest - for example, every packet of tablets comes with an insert listing numerous potential side effects, and there are forests worth of data sheets dealing with every chemical under the sun listing all sorts of delightful hazards and potential risks.
I'm no more inclined to trust the pharmaceutical and chemical industries than I am any other profit-making outfit, but I get a little tired hearing about secrecy and cover-ups when people aren't actually interested in information that's freely available, and cheerfully ignore it anyway.
Regards
Robin
Everything you say is true.
However, lack of action is viewed as consent so if people don't bother to read up on the carcinogens in everyday foodstuffs, then they consent to be poisoned.
But surely, if there are carcinogens in foodstuffs - isn't that what the media and government are there to educate us about and protect us from? Well, if it wasn't for advertisers and lobbyists, that is...
We should get a T-shirt with the slogan "The Twoth? You can't handle the Twoth!!" with Tharg wrestling the prog from some brainshocked youngster.
Back to your regular programming.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 25 March, 2011, 08:56:48 PM
Everything you say is true.
However, lack of action is viewed as consent so if people don't bother to read up on the carcinogens in everyday foodstuffs, then they consent to be poisoned.
People know full well that smoking, drinking and eating badly damages their health and puts additional strain on public services. Every attempt to provide information and encouragement to change attitudes and behaviour gets labelled as 'nanny state'.
If the government does nothing, it's accused of keeping secrets and being in the pockets of big business. If the government provides information, it's accused of nagging and wasting taxpayers' money on leaflets. If the goverment takes direct action, then it's accused of virtual dictatorship.
It's a no win situation for any goverment, and I say that as someone who holds the fuckers in utter contempt.
QuoteBut surely, if there are carcinogens in foodstuffs - isn't that what the media and government are there to educate us about and protect us from? Well, if it wasn't for advertisers and lobbyists, that is...
Where do you think I get my information from?
Regards
Robin
If I choose to smoke knowing the health risks, then that's my responsibility. If, on the other hand, I buy a sandwich that I assume to be made from safe ingredients but it turns out that the tomatoes used contain largely untested chemicals or genetic modifications, whose fault is that? Does slapping a GM TOMATO label on the sandwich constitute fair warning when the full effects of GM tomatoes on the human body have never been fully tested?
"Where do you think I get my information from?"
From more than one source, I assume.
I just believe that before any chemicals are added to foodstuffs they must be thoroughly tested. It's not good enough to perform a few cursory tests on rats and then mix the chemicals in anyway thinking that, if it makes anyone's liver melt then we'll think about taking those chemicals out at a later date if a court tells us to. No, I don't think that's good enough at all - and I assume that many people would agree with me on that.
Just look at the aspartame debacle. From laboratory testing of the chemical on rats, researchers discovered that the drug induces brain tumours. On Sept 30, 1980 the Board of Inquiry of the FDA concurred and denied the petition for approval.
In 1981, the newly appointed FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, ignored the negative ruling and approved aspartame for dry goods. As recorded in the Congressional Record of 1985, then CEO of Searle Laboratories Donald Rumsfeld said that he would "call in his markers" to get aspartame approved. Rumsfeld was on President Reagan's transition team and a day after taking office appointed Hayes. No FDA Commissioner in the previous sixteen years had allowed aspartame on the market.
There is still debate as to whether GM food is harmful.
Over the past years I have took a back bench interest in this as I think GM food will be the norm in the future if we carry on fucking up the environment.
There is no conclusive proof that this is harmful to us. Similar statements to this crop up all the time on many reports that I have browsed over the years.
I am quite happy to eat GM food. I am sure it will be big news if it ever deemed unsafe which is why I keep my ear to the ground.
It has been on the shelves for roughly fifteen years worldwide now so I am sure it there are damaging qualities it would have surfaced by now.
To think we have the tobacco companies to thank for this breakthrough back in the early eighties although GM food stretches a lot further back.
I personally think much of the stigma relates to people thinking that we are playing god but as I am not religious that particular aspect doesn't bother me.
V
I don't know what the problem is. Genetically modified tomatoes are obviously wrong, and I wouldn't knowingly buy or eat them, but I don't see why they should give you cancer. I've heard of fish genes being put into tomatoes, but I don't think fish per se give you cancer.
Chemical food additives are tested, aren't they? It's not any kind of secret that aspartame isn't good for you. It's a straight choice for people whether they like sugar or cancer more, unless you have diabetes. Personally I like sugar, so I don't buy anything that contains aspartame, acesulfame potassium or saccharine. I know that refined sugar isn't particularly good for me, so I limit my intake of sugar.
I don't think everything comes down to a question of truth, lies and sinister conspiracies: I think in a lot of cases it comes down to freely available information, whether or not you access that information, and how you choose to act upon it.
Quote from: vzzbux on 25 March, 2011, 10:22:25 PM
To think we have the tobacco companies to thank for this breakthrough back in the early eighties although GM food stretches a lot further back.
You've confused me now. I don't know where tobacco companies come into it. Genetic modification goes back to recombinant bacteria in 1973 and subsequently genetically modified bacteria with human genetic material being used to manufacture insulin from 1978 onwards.
QuoteThe first transgenic plant - a tobacco plant resistant to an antibiotic - was created in 1983. It was another ten years before the first commercialisation of a GM plant in the United States - a delayed-ripening tomato - and another two years (1996) before a GM product - tomato paste - hit UK supermarket shelves.
This is a generic quote which appears on many reports I have come across (obviously worded different and some go into far more detail). And as I said
QuoteGM food stretches a lot further back.
V
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 25 March, 2011, 04:17:06 AM
Medicinal Cannabis and its impact on Human Health
http://www.tpuc.org/content/medicinal-cannabis-and-its-impact-human-he (http://www.tpuc.org/content/medicinal-cannabis-and-its-impact-human-he)
Could you give me a brief summary of the what his point is? It's a 47 minute video and I can't be arsed - I'm a bit stoned.
Quote from: vzzbux on 25 March, 2011, 10:48:21 PM
QuoteThe first transgenic plant - a tobacco plant resistant to an antibiotic - was created in 1983. It was another ten years before the first commercialisation of a GM plant in the United States - a delayed-ripening tomato - and another two years (1996) before a GM product - tomato paste - hit UK supermarket shelves.
I like your quote. However, I think it's possible to overstate the role of tobacco companies in the development of genetically modified plants. They may well have put up some of the money - tobacco companies love to fund research because they are both wealthy and
evil - but genetically modified food organisms aren't in any literal sense the accidental offshoot of tinkering by the research arm of a tobacco company. It's more a question of scientist goes to tobacco company and says "will you fund this research?"
(P.S. - you win!)
Apparently GM tinkering goes back to the 19th century. I remember reading somewhere that monks spliced Peas with something or other. I probably dreamt it but it is quite a distinct memory.
EDIT. cross pollination of peas I think
V
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 25 March, 2011, 09:52:11 PM
Just look at the aspartame debacle. From laboratory testing of the chemical on rats, researchers discovered that the drug induces brain tumours.
Except they didn't, because it doesn't.
Quoted from the abstract of a reasonably recent review of studies conducted on the effects of aspartame. Full thing here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17828671
QuoteCritical review of all carcinogenicity studies conducted on aspartame found no credible evidence that aspartame is carcinogenic...The studies provide no evidence to support an association between aspartame and cancer in any tissue. The weight of existing evidence is that aspartame is safe at current levels of consumption as a nonnutritive sweetener.
Rather than copy and paste a whole load of stuff, here's a link to a post on another site with a range of references (http://www.badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12126&hilit=aspartame#p247504) you can sift through and follow up at your leisure
In other news, the MMR vaccine is safe too.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 25 March, 2011, 09:52:11 PM
If I choose to smoke knowing the health risks, then that's my responsibility. If, on the other hand, I buy a sandwich that I assume to be made from safe ingredients but it turns out that the tomatoes used contain largely untested chemicals or genetic modifications, whose fault is that? Does slapping a GM TOMATO label on the sandwich constitute fair warning when the full effects of GM tomatoes on the human body have never been fully tested?
*shrug* If people ignore the research or dismiss the scientists doing it as being in the pockets of the GM companies, then it's a no-win situation.
And besides, most of these GM foods are single-gene modifications. Conventional breeding involves hundred of random genes being shared, but nobody makes a fuss about that.
Regards
Robin
GM food conspiracies vex me. If enough research is done, this science could solve world hunger. I think the bigger conspiracy is the one that holds back scientific progress like this.
Sod GM food! I'm more concerned with the idea of VALIS and SPECTRA two alien supercomputers. VALIS beamed thoughts to Philip K Dicks, while SPECTRA had to make do with Uri Geller.
Why an alien supercomputer would target Geller? Well your guess is as good as mine. :D
GM food as a solution to world hunger is a red herring. Food shortages in the developing world are due to food crops being exported to raise revenue to pay off debt. Starving people in the Ethiopian highlands, living on 1,000 calories a day, grow coffee for export. You can't eat coffee. It's not a question of unproductive land or low yield crops, it's a question of peasant farmers not being able to afford to eat the food they themselves grow. While this goes on, land becomes exhausted growing commercial crops, and irrigation schemes result in soil salination.
World hunger is a problem of wealth inequality. Technology isn't the answer.
Quote from: House of Usher on 26 March, 2011, 09:48:42 AM
GM food as a solution to world hunger is a red herring. Food shortages in the developing world are due to food crops being exported to raise revenue to pay off debt. Starving people in the Ethiopian highlands, living on 1,000 calories a day, grow coffee for export. You can't eat coffee. It's not a question of unproductive land or low yield crops, it's a question of peasant farmers not being able to afford to eat the food they themselves grow. While this goes on, land becomes exhausted growing commercial crops, and irrigation schemes result in soil salination.
World hunger is a problem of wealth inequality. Technology isn't the answer.
I'm pretty much in agreement with this, particularly on the inequality issue which I consider the real problem when it comes to hunger. However, technology can be
an answer to
some problems - for example, creating crops that can cope with high salinity would benefit people living on ocean margins.
I'm generally pro-GM, but I'm also intensely wary of commercialisation and profiteering, and my concern is that the technology is driven by commericial interests rather than need or social benefit. However, unless non-commericial organisations have the money to undertake research and testing nothing is going to change. Unfortunately, non-commercial organisations can only fund research through charitable donation or taxation, and the only people who can provide that is us.
Regards
Robin
Preoccupation with hunger and GM food leads to the non-food industrial uses of GM plants often being overlooked, especially by the anti-GM camp. One application of the technology is to grow plants that are able to absorb industrial pollutants from the soil.
Planet Earth has been engineering crops for billions of years. We have everything we need on this planet, and more. The Earth is abundant.
It is mankind who squanders these resources, as Ush points out.
Another major reason behind world hunger is the misuse of the world's water. Europe, for example, is stealing water from Africa at a terrible rate. (This may not sound right, but what makes up 90% of any living organism? This includes all the cheap crops, livestock, flowers we make the poor bastards grow for us for pennies. Any water left is than contaminated by our industries, which would rather pollute Africa than Sussex or Wyoming.)
There is no food shortage in the world. It's an uncomfortable fact that we in the "civilized" world take way more than our fair share - in all things except responsibility.
Apologies for my late night (not entirely sober) outburst. :-[
A big part of the problem is Western greed. I'm pretty sure I heard something about there being twice as many obese 'people' as there are starving people. So the solution is simple, as Billy Connely has pointed out, cannabalism. "If everybody ate just one person, the problem would be halved overnight".
But anti-GM protestors still vex me. When they burn a field of GM crops, they are effectively burning useful information, it's tantamount to burning books in my eyes. Goddamn know-it-all hippies.
Quote from: House of Usher on 26 March, 2011, 09:48:42 AM
World hunger is a problem of wealth inequality.
Absolutely true, and has been for many decades now. There's more than enough food to go around.
Technology certainly isn't the answer to world hunger as things stand, but that doesn't mean that GM crops can't play a role in the future, or in those countries that can afford them as an option. Increasing yields so that less land is under cultivation reduces soil erosion and increases available land for wildlife, recreation etc.; their non-food roles are only beginning to be explored; increasing cost-effective food production in the first world could potentially free up the economies of the developing world from relying on monocultural production for export at miniscule margins. And so on. Their potential role in the convergence of food species to single varieties has to be considered very carefully, and as always the power of big business in over-riding such valid concerns has to be controlled somehow.
Grow your own spuds!
I was under the impression that the issue with GM foods was the underhanded manner in which companies (not just Monsanto and their love of monopolies) go about pushing their product and giving the impression they have something to hide. Personally I see no problem with the idea that we need to do long-term testing on GM food before it can be allowed to permanently contaminate the food chain.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 March, 2011, 01:34:31 PM
Grow your own spuds!
Indeed, I do. It's a very serious skin condition
Lot's of people are marching through London today to protest against the formidable cuts preposed by Sir Guy of Osbourne and his band on no goods. Good luck if your going.
Quote from: pops1983 on 26 March, 2011, 01:14:40 PM
But anti-GM protestors still vex me. When they burn a field of GM crops, they are effectively burning useful information, it's tantamount to burning books in my eyes. Goddamn know-it-all hippies.
The preferred method is trampling. It's hard to keep a fire going in a field of unripe crops.
;)
I do agree with you dear Jared Katooie that Israel becomes the harmful for their enemies by forge of passports from other countries that might helpful to kill the enemies with the help of other countries . This is not a fair thing that Israel is doing here .
Quote from: locustsofdeath! on 18 March, 2011, 09:07:19 PM
Yep. And have you, sir, done any first-hand research? What is your knowledge, may I ask, of light aircraft vs. passenger planes and the effects each would have on a building such as the WTC? What types of missile could be used to fire on the WTC yet have millions of first-hand witnesses (people on the streets) see airplanes? Did our government get to every New Yorker and threaten and/or brainwash them into claiming that they saw airplanes rather than missile fire? And what kinds of special effects did our government doctor up during LIVE broadcasts?
I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to "argue" with you. I can tell your type a mile away. You're the guy who's always right.
Always helpful to get that one in early- before the other guy does :lol:
Not that I actually buy into it- but there was talk of the planes being holograms (no, really!), so people
would see planes, as opposed to whatever did
supposedly bring the buildings down.
I love these threads- but people that can't play in them without being pinheads (and I don't necessarily mean you) should probably just give them a wide berth. They're a bit like religion threads, in that if you know full well that you're not interested in actual
discussion (the idea that you might be persuaded to have a bit of a rethink of your worldview, as opposed to sitting in your compound of ideas, surrounded by gun towers to shoot down any other ideas before they get into earshot), you might as well bugger off and devote your energies to something else instead.
Again, that's not particularly aimed at you.
Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 18 March, 2011, 09:26:03 PM
Quote from: Jared Katooie on 18 March, 2011, 09:19:04 PM
He was real. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus)
Good grud, what despicable cabal of fucking lunatics and premeditated shite-mongers are Wikipedia allowing to write stuff under their name these days?
He wasn't real.
SBT
You forgot to add "FACT!"
:lol:
Quote from: House of Usher on 18 March, 2011, 11:50:28 PM
Means nothing to me, Guv. 'Somebody said Jesus said something or other' still has no bearing on the question of whether Jesus was real or not. The question, as far as I'm concerned, is whether or not it was worth the while of those who wrote the scripture to have made him up. I say not, because you've got a much better story on which to base your cult or protest movement if you start with a real person than if you start with one who is totally made up like the feats he's supposed to have performed.
I think that's my take too. Far easier to embellish existing characters than write completely new ones. I'm open to most possibilities, so I don't think I'll ever fully renounce the possibility of there being a creator of some kind- but I have little faith (crap pun unintended) that any religious text, as written by man, is the
actual word of God.
Any God. Practically nil, in fact.
Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 19 March, 2011, 06:46:09 PM
But Ush, the entire fictional life of Jesus is entirely based around the fact he was "the Son of God", born of a supernaturally-impregnated human woman in a stable, to which were guided wizards by a magic star, then grew up to do supernatural tricks including raising the dead, walking on water and pulling magic food out of nowhere. Eventually he was murdered and raised himself from the dead before flying up to space on a magic cloud. Take that away, and it's not Jesus. To use a literary term, you've lost the dramatic center of the story.
Since all of that is patently untrue, whether anyone was holding sermons on mounts or not is irrelevent.
Considering so much of the Bible is provably bollocks, I see no reason to give anything other than the bits we can prove (the scene setting, if you like, including Roman occupations and murder-methods) the benefit of the doubt. Like I say- where is the evidence that there was a man called Jesus sermonising anything?
I know what you're arguing, but I don't agree.
SBT
You need this:
http://thoughtcatalog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/A-Flowchart-to-Help-You-Determine-if-Yoursquore-Having-a-Rational-Discussion.jpg
Via Andy Diggle on Twitter.
Quote from: House of Usher on 26 March, 2011, 09:48:42 AM
GM food as a solution to world hunger is a red herring. Food shortages in the developing world are due to food crops being exported to raise revenue to pay off debt. Starving people in the Ethiopian highlands, living on 1,000 calories a day, grow coffee for export. You can't eat coffee. It's not a question of unproductive land or low yield crops, it's a question of peasant farmers not being able to afford to eat the food they themselves grow. While this goes on, land becomes exhausted growing commercial crops, and irrigation schemes result in soil salination.
World hunger is a problem of wealth inequality. Technology isn't the answer.
Not so! Give me a working Death-Ray and a secret orbiting weapons platform and we'll soon see an end to world hunger. And war. And everything else that I decide is a bad thing.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 29 March, 2011, 09:48:56 AM
Far easier to embellish existing characters than write completely new ones.
It'd also be far odder if there
was surviving contemporary documentary evidence of a specific rabble-rousing preacher from Galilee, especially since the Gospels don't even suggest that Jesus had any significant contact with the highly-segregated Roman world until he is brought before Pilate. This is 1st C Judea we're talking about - there are almost no surviving eye-witness accounts of
anything (even a Prefect like Pilate himself is absent from contemporary documents, although he does show up in a few contemporary inscriptions), never mind the doings of yet another agitator in a sea of failed revolutionaries, messianic candidates and sundry schismatic zealots. What Roman sources do exist hardly address this aspect of society at all, beyond bemoaning the occasional expense of keeping it in check.
Given the fact that his cult
does exist, and there are
some points of correspondence with reality in the writings of its adherents in the century following, the balance of probability would be that a preacher called Jesus (or contemporary variation thereof) did exist. No evidence against
versus circumstantial evidence for - you wouldn't convict in a court of law, but you should probably allow in a historical argument. His magical powers and divinity are a matter for faith, not history.
Seems reasonable.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 29 March, 2011, 09:48:56 AMFar easier to embellish existing characters than write completely new ones.
I think Alan Moore may have hacked into your account here, it was only a matter of time before this happened and we have been watching out for it.
The London Bombings, 7/7/2005
On the same day that the bombings took place, a "security exercise" was being run by "crisis management expert" Peter Power. This exercise in London was based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where the actual terrorist attacks occurred.
What are the chances of this happening entirely by chance?
I believe there are 270 tube stations in London - so what are the chances that the terrorists and an exercise would involve the same three stations? I'm a complete duffer at maths, but I've seen this equation used to work it out:
3/270 x 2/269 x 1/268 = 3,244,140:1 (this is before even factoring in the same date and times).
Any math-bots care to confirm/refute this? I ask because I have no idea on working out such mathematical problems.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 March, 2011, 08:06:26 PM
I believe there are 270 tube stations in London - so what are the chances that the terrorists and an exercise would involve the same three stations? I'm a complete duffer at maths, but I've seen this equation used to work it out:
3/270 x 2/269 x 1/268 = 3,244,140:1 (this is before even factoring in the same date and times).
Any math-bots care to confirm/refute this? I ask because I have no idea on working out such mathematical problems.
Certainly not a mathematician here, but assuming I'm interpreting things correctly the person who came up with that is working from the point that the choice of stations is entirely random. Now, I don't think anyone planning either a security exercise or a bombing are likely to be choosing randomly - certainly from the perspective of a security exercise, planners really ought to be trying to think from a terrorist's perspective, and so may come to similar conclusions about best/convenient/practical targets. So, you might well see some convergence.
On the same day? Well, coincidences do happen. I think the chances of anyone winning the lottery is in the order of 14,000,000:1 and yet you sometimes get multiple winners.
This, and pages leading from it, may be relevant, although they may also hurt the head:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence
Regards
Robin
Hmmmm......British Security Forces and their methods in dealing with Terrorist Threats/Groups?
:-\
I'm from Northern Ireland, so, I think, for the sake of this here thread, I'll sit this one out. ;)
Heh - the word "Gladio" springs to mind.
QuoteOn the same day that the bombings took place, a security exercise was being run by crisis management expert Peter Power.
There you go- without your "inverted commas" it looks a lot less "sinister", doesn't it?
"Yes." And "no." :)
I'm pretty sure I read that the truth about this was a lot less sensational that it originally sounded in the early press reports.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 March, 2011, 08:06:26 PM
The London Bombings, 7/7/2005
On the same day that the bombings took place, a "security exercise" was being run by "crisis management expert" Peter Power. This exercise in London was based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where the actual terrorist attacks occurred.
Source? Evidence? Was it ONLY the same stations, or lots of stations including those three? What about the 4th aborted station (the one that ended up on the bus)?
Unless there is any evidence suggesting a link, or suspicious motives or communications, then "what are the chances" is meaningless question. One-in-a-billion events happen every day.
I'm tempted to say "what does this prove" but that would be meaningless to most conspiracty theorists, who seem to think that raising hypothetical questions and pointing out coincidences is the same thing as answering them or proving malfeasance. A whole lot of bollox couild be saved if every time they asked "Why did x and y do z" or "Can it be a coincidence that x and y happened" were forced to actually provide an answer these questions that we can judge as more or less plausible than the 'official' facts. When challenged however, they tend to back off claiming they don't actually KNOW anything, they're just raising the question, as if they're doing it in some kind of scientifically neutral way and not dealing in supposition and inference.
(PS - longer post about 9/11 and "truth" vs "cosnpiracy theory" to follow as promised, when I can summon the energy!)
Quote from: pops1983 on 30 March, 2011, 08:52:12 PM
I'm from Northern Ireland, so, I think, for the sake of this here thread, I'll sit this one out. ;)
Yeah, pops! There's few people who want to hear about things that
actually happened on UK soil for years - where's the fun in
that?It only affected a few people. Sure, what would I know about real issues, like micro-chips in me bin?
On balance, I decided it was worth posting that. I'm tired and feeling reactionary, ok?!
M.
Peter Power Radio 5 Interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEbUQiYOGjU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEbUQiYOGjU)
Channel 4 doesn't agree: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/coincidence%2Bof%2Bbomb%2Bexercises/109010.html (http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/coincidence%2Bof%2Bbomb%2Bexercises/109010.html)
Quote from: Dandontdare on 31 March, 2011, 01:53:23 PM
I'm tempted to say "what does this prove" but that would be meaningless to most conspiracty theorists, who seem to think that raising hypothetical questions and pointing out coincidences is the same thing as answering them or proving malfeasance. A whole lot of bollox could be saved if every time they asked "Why did x and y do z" or "Can it be a coincidence that x and y happened" were forced to actually provide an answer these questions that we can judge as more or less plausible than the 'official' facts. When challenged however, they tend to back off claiming they don't actually KNOW anything, they're just raising the question, as if they're doing it in some kind of scientifically neutral way and not dealing in supposition and inference.
(PS - longer post about 9/11 and "truth" vs "cosnpiracy theory" to follow as promised, when I can summon the energy!)
Have you noticed how the word "theory" is always placed after the word "conspiracy" these days? It's as if conspiracies never happen and is as suspicious as coining phrases like disease theory, happiness myth or marriage trap. Very curious. Would public reaction to questions such as "what happened on 9/11 or 7/7" be treated more levelly if they were labelled as, say,
independent amateur investigation instead of
conspiracy theory? The very phrase is almost Orwellian doublespeak, carrying with it the overt implication that difficult or unanswered questions should never under any circumstances be asked, especially of the government. If the BBC doesn't ask the questions, then the questions are not only not worth asking but downright bad manners. (This is not an accusation, merely something that I find curious in modern attitudes.)
George Orwell said "Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." Maybe freedom is also the right to ask questions that nobody wants to think about. I, for one, am glad that there are people out there willing to put their reputations, livelihoods and even lives on the line to ask these questions. When their voices die out it will mean one of only two things: Complete tyranny or complete Utopia - and I don't believe either scenario is possible.
I have one question - why does asking questions or pointing out "inconsistencies" regarding 9/11 or 7/7 (for example) engender such a knee-jerk, angry response in so many people?
Probably because of the signal to noise ratio in many cases isn't favourable. Plus, a lot of 'net sites covering such things also can give credence to what is patently and provably bollocks, meaning they might just be on the credulous side, which doesn't necessarily inspire confidence.
I mentioned this before I think, and this is my personal take of course, but I see a similar thing with religous fundamentalists; there's no answer you can give that will satisfy them because they, and they only, are capable of knowing and understanding the real truth. So you really should be like them to be right.
Or, people don't like being told how to interpret things by strangers.
On the flip of that, I like this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxV3_bG1EHA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxV3_bG1EHA)
Right, I'm off out of this thread!
M.
I'll stop using the word THEORY when they stop using the word TRUTH :D
How about "truth theory?" :D
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 March, 2011, 02:28:33 PMHave you noticed how the word "theory" is always placed after the word "conspiracy" these days?
Because it is a theory about a conspiracy?
When did "theory" become a dirty word? Theories and hypotheses are what science if built on, you test them with evidence, then retest them when new evidence emerges. Of course, if it fails to withstand such tests (against all the evidence, so no cherry picking and no "look at that! Makes you think doesn't it?"), you also have to discard it.
Quote from: Mikey on 31 March, 2011, 03:09:37 PM
On the flip of that, I like this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxV3_bG1EHA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxV3_bG1EHA)
Right, I'm off out of this thread!
M.
Before you go, you should watch Curtis' series "The Power of Nightmares." Excellent stuff!
Quote from: Emperor on 31 March, 2011, 03:33:08 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 March, 2011, 02:28:33 PMHave you noticed how the word "theory" is always placed after the word "conspiracy" these days?
Because it is a theory about a conspiracy?
When did "theory" become a dirty word? Theories and hypotheses are what science if built on, you test them with evidence, then retest them when new evidence emerges. Of course, if it fails to withstand such tests (against all the evidence, so no cherry picking and no "look at that! Makes you think doesn't it?"), you also have to discard it.
All true.
However, let us (for arguments' sake) say that a terrorist's paper passport
cannot actually survive a fireball caused by an exploding aeroplane and a catastrophic building collapse, yet the passport
is found relatively undamaged anyway when no other passports, papers, luggage, seats etc. appear to survive. If the only plausible way that passport can be found is for it to have been be placed in the rubble after the event, we have a conspiracy theory with the word "theory" removed. See how powerful that little "theory" word becomes then? Justifiable questions become merely theories, all lumped together with the wilder claims.
A bridge collapsed today, investigators blame cheap materials but a government spokesman dismissed these claims as baseless.
A bridge collapsed today, conspiracy theorists blame cheap materials but a government spokesman dismissed these claims as baseless.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 March, 2011, 03:34:33 PM
Before you go, you should watch Curtis' series "The Power of Nightmares." Excellent stuff!
Yeah - it was excellent I thought...
M.
Without wanting to be a knob (Too late! Too often!), a conspiracy theory is a theory at best: even if the facts of a given conspiracy are irrefutably established, the interpretation, explanation and understanding of those facts remains a theory. Take gravity - its effects are real, measurable, predictable and largely undisputed (at the medium scale anyway), but the interpretation of those facts, the explanation of how they come to be and how they operate, remains a theory (and these days a number of theories). Theories about how the things we observe function are the basis for how we interact with the world in any sort of deliberate way. They're not to be sneezed at.
In TLS' example, the observed fact is the passport's existence, the theory is the explanation of its presence.
In the case of many alleged conspiracies the facts of the situation are far from established, and in any scientific sense the structure and content of the explanation is seldom anything close to defined, testable or parsimonious, so in reality the use of the term 'theory' is frequently an undeserved compliment.
Quote from: Mikey on 31 March, 2011, 03:09:37 PM
On the flip of that, I like this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxV3_bG1EHA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxV3_bG1EHA)
That was great.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 March, 2011, 03:49:28 PM
A bridge collapsed today, (experienced professional bridge-engineer) investigators (who have actually examined the scene) blame cheap materials but a government spokesman dismissed these claims as baseless.
This happens all the time in the outside world but it's simple corruption, not conspiracy.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 March, 2011, 03:49:28 PMA bridge collapsed today, (untrained amateur) investigators (with no access to the evidence) blame cheap materials (and out of the whoooooole internet have managed to find a few "sources" who concur with their theory) but a government spokesman dismissed these claims as baseless.
This happens all the time on the internet and it's nigh on impossible to sort the wheat from the mentally unbalanced chaff. Best treat it all with heaps of scepticism.
Neither scenario applies 100% of the time, but it's all a matter of perception, and none of us will ever truly know why the feckin' bridge fell down. Usually it turns out to be a mixture of both explanations.
Passports at Ground Zero? Sounds like dodgy evidence planting of the 'perp's gun' variety, just so there's no argument. Does it mean the govt blew 'em up with demolition explosives? Of course not, nor does it even suggest it.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 31 March, 2011, 05:29:23 PM
Passports at Ground Zero? Sounds like dodgy evidence planting of the 'perp's gun' variety, just so there's no argument. Does it mean the govt blew 'em up with demolition explosives? Of course not, nor does it even suggest it.
If indeed it was planted, that in itself suggests some degree of foul play though, doesn't it?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 March, 2011, 03:49:28 PM
Quote from: Emperor on 31 March, 2011, 03:33:08 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 March, 2011, 02:28:33 PMHave you noticed how the word "theory" is always placed after the word "conspiracy" these days?
Because it is a theory about a conspiracy?
When did "theory" become a dirty word? Theories and hypotheses are what science if built on, you test them with evidence, then retest them when new evidence emerges. Of course, if it fails to withstand such tests (against all the evidence, so no cherry picking and no "look at that! Makes you think doesn't it?"), you also have to discard it.
All true.
However, let us (for arguments' sake) say that a terrorist's paper passport cannot actually survive a fireball caused by an exploding aeroplane and a catastrophic building collapse, yet the passport is found relatively undamaged anyway when no other passports, papers, luggage, seats etc. appear to survive. If the only plausible way that passport can be found is for it to have been be placed in the rubble after the event, we have a conspiracy theory with the word "theory" removed. See how powerful that little "theory" word becomes then? Justifiable questions become merely theories, all lumped together with the wilder claims.
No, you just have an item of evidence. You still need to test your theory against the evidence and this could support any range of theories.
Unfortunately, before we even get to that point, we have to deal with the assumptions, which you subconsciously acknowledged by starting it with "if": "If the only plausible way that passport can be found is for it to have been be placed in the rubble after the event." So, there is your initial problem, you'd have to demonstrate that it couldn't have survived the explosion which would have thrown items all over the place (see the debris field at Lockerbie for example - explosions tend not to annihilate everything, this side of using anti-matter). I don't have a problem with some luggage being blown out from the explosion and the only way you can make it work is to deploy an argument from impossibility - "this can't have happened naturally, so this is the only explanation that works" but that is the underpinning of a whole range of pseudoscience from Intelligent Design onwards, so best not to go there.
The actual story about the finding of the passport seems to have been a bit muddled, early reports are along the lines of:
QuoteThe passport of a suspected hijacker was discovered near the ruins of the World Trade Center, authorities said Saturday as exhausted rescue workers clawed through the wreckage, searching unsuccessfully for signs of life.
The report (http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-16-Sun-2001/news/17011253.html) also goes on to say:
QuoteBack at the trade center, details of rescuers' grisly finds since Tuesday began to emerge. Among them were a pair of hands, bound together, found on a rooftop, authorities said.
The New York Times reported Saturday that one rescuer found the body of a flight attendant, whose hands were also bound. Another worker told the paper he had found the remains of people strapped to what seemed to be airplane seats.
Which would tend to invalidate "when no other passports, papers, luggage,
seats etc. appear to survive."
The official report clarifies the the story of the finding of the passport:
QuoteThe passport was recovered by NYPD Detective Yuk H. Chin from a male passerby in a business suit, about 30 years old. The passerby left before being identified, while debris was falling from WTC 2. The tower collapsed shortly thereafter. The detective then gave the passport to the FBI on 9/11. See FBI report, interview of Detective Chin, Sept. 12, 2001.
www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Ch2.pdf
So it was found before WTC 2 collapsed, so the streets would have been relatively clear in some directions, other than the debris from the crash itself.
A quick further Google finds a whole range of these points addressed (with links to the various sources):
www.911myths.com/html/passport_recovered.html
From what was reported it seems a whole range of debris was found from large chunks of planes, to passengers, to equally fragile bits of paper and documentation.
So while I was leaning towards it being of the "ooo look at this, makes you think" variety of argument, I don't think it even qualifies for that. It only becomes remarkable (and evidence) if nothing else survived from the planes that hit the Twin Towers (as you claim), but plenty of things did, as you might expect from an explosion (by its very name). There doesn't even seem like anything to explain here.
Quote from: uncle fester on 31 March, 2011, 05:41:32 PM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 31 March, 2011, 05:29:23 PM
Passports at Ground Zero? Sounds like dodgy evidence planting of the 'perp's gun' variety, just so there's no argument. Does it mean the govt blew 'em up with demolition explosives? Of course not, nor does it even suggest it.
If indeed it was planted, that in itself suggests some degree of foul play though, doesn't it?
From the forensic investigator not washing his hands properly to George Bush and Osama Bin Laden being clone brothers who staged the whole thing ... that's all "
some degree". My point is that if the world is shown not to be squeaky clean, if there's any incompetence or corruption at all, people leap to all kinds of baseless and implausible conclusions.
I watched an interesting BBC doc once about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy which found lots of suspicious examples of witnesses not interviewed and evidence quickly destroyed or lost. After sifting through all that was known, it came to the conclusion that nothing sinister had actually happened, Sirhan Sirhan WAS just a random nutter, but that several agencies had instinctively started covering each other's asses on the assumption that somebody else may have been up to something!
I'd be careful DDD, never believe any documentary that the BBC show!
I don't know how or why or even if any passport survived the impacts - I only know that such items have been claimed to exist. Is it possible that a paper passport could survive such a catastrophe? Well yes, I reckon that is possible, but I don't claim to understand the exact circumstances that would make it possible. It's true that my life experience has shown me undamaged portions of letters etc. that I've thrown onto my own coal fire at home and were still perfectly legible after an hour or more of things being burned around it. In most cases, though, paper objects burned on my coal fire become ash after just a few short minutes. When I find an undamaged piece of paper in the ashes of my fire in the morning, that is an anomaly, but an explainable anomaly. The passport, then, is an explainable anomaly but an anomaly none the less. I could accept some anomalies to arise from an event like 9/11.
But, how many anomalies does it take before the official story (which is in itself a conspiracy theory) starts to look shaky?
A passport survives. Okay, I can accept that.
Trained witnesses (fire-fighters, police officers) report the sounds of explosions and possible squibs as the three towers collapsed. Well, okay - there was a massive structural failure occurring (in all three towers, but let's just ignore that coincidence for now) and so unusual sights and sounds are to be expected. Okay, I can accept that, too.
William Rodriguez, an experienced WTC janitor reports explosions coming from the basement of the north tower prior to its collapse. He was familiar with the layout and operations of the WTC, but there was a lot going on on that day and maybe he was mistaken or misinterpreted certain events. Well, sure - fear and confusion and chaos can addle any human brain - fair enough. (His testimony was omitted from the 9/11 Commission final report - but, again, there may be perfectly plausible reasons for this.)
Thermite has been found in the dust from the collapsing towers. Again, there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this - it may or may not be an anomaly.
Pools of molten steel remained in the rubble beneath the three towers for weeks after the collapses. Well, there was a lot of energy released as the towers collapsed, maybe it is possible for a gravity-driven collapse to release enough energy to heat steel to such incredible temperatures - but by now I feel that maybe there are one or two too many anomalies cropping up to be explained away by a chance conversion of circumstances.
A Boeing 757 strikes the Pentagon and completely vapourises on impact - disappearing into a 16ft wide hole. Well, maybe the wings folded back on impact to fit through the hole (without shearing off and being thrown back onto the Pentagon lawn). Seriously?
The heart of America's defence network, quite possibly the most surveilled building on Earth both inside and out, is hit by a Boeing 757 and not one clear or even blurred image of the plane either approaching or striking the building is ever released. Hmmm, these anomalies are really piling up now.
United Airlines Flight 93 crashes in Shankesville, Pennsylvania and leaves no identifiable debris (but a passport belonging to Ziad Jarrah does survive) or typical indications of an air crash. Well, this is stretching it a bit now, isn't it? I mean, really?
These are just a few of the anomalies noted surrounding 9/11 (there are many more).
Anomalies happen, of course they do. But in such great numbers? I guess that the very nature of probabilities suggest that, at some point in human history, a Big Thing is going to happen where scores of anomalies all occur at the same time (by which I mean, surrounding the same event). Maybe 9/11 was that "perfect storm" of anomalies. Maybe that's all it is.
Of course, these anomalies and the dozens like it surrounding 9/11 do not automatically point to foul play on the part of the government, the Illuminati or Little Green Men from Mars. The point is, I have questions and I think they deserve to be addressed in a dispassionate and forensic manner by experts given full and unfettered access to all data and evidence and I would like their findings to be published in a full, clear and open manner - no matter where the conclusions lead. Maybe 19 hijackers armed with box-cutters (which I believe would be called Stanley knives in the UK) did cause 9/11 - and maybe they didn't. I'm not certain - and neither are many other people. That's my entire point.
My opinion is that all the anomalies surrounding 9/11 should be thoroughly, independently and openly investigated. This investigation is not being undertaken by the authorities and so it falls to the rest of us to look into it. Of course, this is a dangerous process as most members of the public (including myself) are ill-equipped to undertake such investigations and it is inevitable that many conclusions will be jumped to and incorrect theses developed. But, if the US Government is unwilling to investigate properly - what other choice is there? We either investigate, or we ignore.
Which is the best option? Which is the safest option?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 March, 2011, 11:02:59 PM
I don't know how or why or even if any passport survived the impacts - I only know that such items have been claimed to exist. Is it possible that a paper passport could survive such a catastrophe? Well yes, I reckon that is possible, but I don't claim to understand the exact circumstances that would make it possible. It's true that my life experience has shown me undamaged portions of letters etc. that I've thrown onto my own coal fire at home and were still perfectly legible after an hour or more of things being burned around it. In most cases, though, paper objects burned on my coal fire become ash after just a few short minutes. When I find an undamaged piece of paper in the ashes of my fire in the morning, that is an anomaly, but an explainable anomaly. The passport, then, is an explainable anomaly but an anomaly none the less. I could accept some anomalies to arise from an event like 9/11.
Except it was an explosion followed by a fireball and then a fire. The explosion seems to have jettisoned a whole range of material across quite a wide area (including more paper).
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 March, 2011, 11:02:59 PMBut, how many anomalies does it take before the official story (which is in itself a conspiracy theory) starts to look shaky?
Except this isn't testing a theory - it is presenting a long list of "look at this, makes you thinks" and that is far from adequate. Even if they are actual anomalies - the passport business certainly didn't stand up to scrutiny. I don't have the time to go through each one point-by-point (you are going to have to do your own homework, you might just want to read further that 911 conspiracy sites) and you are always welcome to believe what you like, but this stood out:
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 March, 2011, 11:02:59 PMUnited Airlines Flight 93 crashes in Shankesville, Pennsylvania and leaves no identifiable debris (but a passport belonging to Ziad Jarrah does survive) or typical indications of an air crash. Well, this is stretching it a bit now, isn't it? I mean, really?
Because it comes up on the same page I linked to above, which links onto various reports:
QuoteUnited Airlines Flight 93 slammed into the earth Sept. 11 near Shanksville, Somerset County, at more than 500 mph, with a ferocity that disintegrated metal, bone and flesh. It took more than three months to identify the remains of the 40 passengers and crew, and, by process of elimination, the four hijackers.
...
Those items, such as a wedding ring and other jewelry, photos, credit cards, purses and their contents, shoes, a wallet and currency, are among seven boxes of identified personal effects salvaged from the site. They sit in an El Segundo, Calif., mortuary and will be returned to victims' families in February.
www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011230flight931230p3.asp
As well as the heart-breaking personal finds there was a range of debris recovered from the crash site:
www.911myths.com/html/flight_93_photos.html
Witnesses to the crash certainly report debris right after the crash:
QuoteAnother witness is named Eric Peterson. He was standing in his store when he heard the noise of the plane's engines. He stepped outside and watched the United Airlines jet until it disappeared behind a nearby hill. Then a fireball erupted. Peterson immediately jumped into his SUV and drove to the site of the crash.
When he arrived, he saw aircraft debris spread across a large area surrounding the impact crater, which he said was "still burning." According to Peterson, "bits of clothing were hanging" in the branches of the surrounding trees.
There was so much evidence of a plane crash lying around that FBI employees and crash investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) spent thirteen days recovering the wreckage. The heaviest piece of wreckage that was found, part of an engine, weighed almost a ton.
www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,265160-5,00.html
I see no grounds to suggest Flight 93 wasn't an actual plane that did indeed crash. From what I can see, you'd have to cherrypick your evidence or be looking to support a specific worldview (or be relying on the work of someone who was doing one or both of those things).
George W. Bush was president. Remember that? Crazy days. Crazy tragic days.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark link=topic=32312.msg595101#msg595101Thermite has been found in the dust from the collapsing towers....
Pools of molten steel remained in the rubble beneath the three towers for weeks after the collapse....
A Boeing 757 strikes the Pentagon and completely vapourises on impact....
United Airlines Flight 93 crashes in Shankesville, Pennsylvania and leaves no identifiable debris....
And we're expected to accept these "facts" as true? If we apply the logic of the conspiracy theorist to these assertions, we could pick bigger holes in any of them than we could in the mainstream version.
The indestructible passport was found in hours within 1.6 million tons of rubble......bit sus you have to say.
I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous answer...
Okay...
why did NORAD scramble jets from Langley 130 miles away wjen they could have sent them from Andrews base a mere 10 miles away?
Quote from: Emp on 02 April, 2011, 02:12:07 AM
Okay...
why did NORAD scramble jets from Langley 130 miles away wjen they could have sent them from Andrews base a mere 10 miles away?
And you KNOW this is true? The American air force have confirmed it to you? Or someone on the internet has asserted it and you've decided they're trustworthy and that it's a FACT?
I'm only reading from a book....one that i recommend to ant conspiracy buff called "Conspiracy File".
Its set out in a very good way...giving you all the details with headings such as "The Strange Part","The Usual Suspects","The unusual suspects, "most convincing evidence" and "the strange part"
It disects every conspiracy into those groups and when the look at the strange bits & convining evidence you can see why people think as they do.
Also there is the worry that after the 2 hits a no fly zone was declared yet a private jet lisenced to the united Arab Emirates was allow to take off and fuck off.
And no i have not been told that by the US air force or anyonr else but do you really believe everything that government tells you. Personally if a politician told me the sky was blue i'd go look.
Quote from: Emp on 02 April, 2011, 02:27:29 AM
Also there is the worry that after the 2 hits a no fly zone was declared yet a private jet lisenced to the united Arab Emirates was allow to take off
Again, what are you basing this outrageous assertion on? First hand knowledge? Verifiable sources? Physical or eyewitness evidence? ..... or internet bullshitering?
maybe they should let the united nations know then they can use all this hard fact based evidence and bring the us to trial. ;)
A new Mexican restaurant opened at the top of my street. Elvis is working there. He's lost weight.
Are you sure it's the real Elvis and not one of the CIA clones?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 02 April, 2011, 10:10:53 PM
Are you sure it's the real Elvis and not one of the CIA clones?
Uh-huh-huh, mmmmmmm, yeah, yeah
I'm all shook up
Nonsense, everyone knows Elvis died on a river-bank not far from his nursing-home.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 02 April, 2011, 10:14:36 PM
Nonsense, everyone knows Elvis died on a river-bank not far from his nursing-home.
This is an undisputed fact. There's even photographic evidence:
(http://www.konsolifin.net/ylli/upload/uutiset/filmi/1145458338_bub.jpg)
Indeed. The moment was even marked with strange star formations. I know. I saw 'em on a documentary.
Quote from: Emp on 02 April, 2011, 02:27:29 AMPersonally if a politician told me the sky was blue i'd go look.
And that there is a BIG part of the problem. Knee-jerk cynicism is far less taxing on the old noggin than actual critical thought.
A few fascinating examples here to quote whenever people point to coincidences as indications of conspiracy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/04/the-history-of-coincidence?INTCMP=SRCH (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/04/the-history-of-coincidence?INTCMP=SRCH)
Quote from: Dandontdare on 05 April, 2011, 02:35:09 PM
A few fascinating examples here to quote whenever people point to coincidences as indications of conspiracy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/04/the-history-of-coincidence?INTCMP=SRCH (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/04/the-history-of-coincidence?INTCMP=SRCH)
Don't you think that this article being published just as were were talking about the subject to be a bit of a, well...
This does not mean that all conspiracies are just coincidences any more than it means all coincidences are actually conspiracies.
Adept conspirators take full advantage of coincidences - as do adept conspiracy theorists. How much of a coincidence would it be for all coincidences to be just coincidences? The universe is, indeed, a phenominally complex engine and it's easy to hide lies inside complexities. This link, whilst reinforcing the need for care when presented with coincidence, seems to suggest that all conspiracies can be explained away as mere coincidence. Maybe the author is an MI5 agent, tasked with reinforcing the Powers That Be's preferred mantra that all conspiracy theories are just commonplace happenstance? ;)
True, but the fact that a terror contingency planning event was taking place in London on the same day of the bombings featuring the same tube stations does not indicate anything other than coincidence.
It bugs me when these things are put forward as some kind of proof (or even suggestion) of conspitracy. Unless there's some evidence of a direct causal link then it means nothing! The suggestion seems to be that the odds are so remote that ther MUST be something more sinsister going on, but coincidences do happen far more than people think.
I disagree. The presence of coincidental events merely suggests to me that much greater care and thoroughness must be taken to ensure a comprehensive and open investigation. To say "it's all just a coincidence" is as sloppy and intellectually bankrupt as saying "it's got to be a conspiracy." Both views are simply beliefs - and if the world at the moment can teach us anything, it's that acting purely from a standpoint of belief is not the best way to go.
Question everything.
That way madness lies! as Eric said above:
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 03 April, 2011, 06:32:04 PM
Quote from: Emp on 02 April, 2011, 02:27:29 AMPersonally if a politician told me the sky was blue i'd go look.
And that there is a BIG part of the problem. Knee-jerk cynicism is far less taxing on the old noggin than actual critical thought.
Save your energy for the real conspiracies, if you start questioning everything, you believe nothing. No proof will ever satisfy you, any 'evidence' can be fixed. What ultimately happens amongst the deluge of conflicting information and possible expalnations is that you choose to believe what fits your preconceptions, and dismiss contradictory evidence as being suspect or unreliable. (see just about evry climate change or nuclear power argument ever)
I'll accept the consensus unless there's clear evidence to the contrary.
I'd broadly agree with that - except to add the rider that if you believe everything, you'll suspect nothing.
For many, many years (for example) the consensus of opinion was that the Gulf of Tonkin incident actually happened - because the US Government said it did.
And when I said "question everything," I didn't mean "disbelieve everything." (Just thought I'd make that clear. I don't believe that questioning authority is a bad thing - I believe it's our duty. Even if there was no conspiracy, it shows "them" that we're watching.)
Double post - sorry.
DDD, I didn't mean to imply that you believe everything.
Nor did I that you disbelieve everything!
A healthy scepticism is absolutely necessary unless we want to be slack-jawed cattle, but when you begin to question absolutely everything and find more and more reasons to mistrust any evidence, you're only a hop and a skip from full-blown paranoia Then you start believing that Lorraine Kelly's choice of top is a coded signal to the Al Quaida terrorists in the flat downstairs.
That's cool - I never thought you did think that. Speaking of scepticism, though, what to make of this?
5:00 AM Saturday Jul 9, 2005
"A New Zealander working for Reuters in London says two colleagues witnessed the unconfirmed shooting by police of two apparent suicide bombers outside the HSBC tower at Canary Wharf in London.
"The New Zealander, who did not want to be named, said the killing of the two men wearing bombs happened at 10.30am on Thursday (London time)..."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10334992
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 05 April, 2011, 05:44:58 PM
Speaking of scepticism, though, what to make of this?
5:00 AM Saturday Jul 9, 2005
"A New Zealander working for Reuters in London says two colleagues witnessed the unconfirmed shooting by police of two apparent suicide bombers outside the HSBC tower at Canary Wharf in London.
"The New Zealander, who did not want to be named, said the killing of the two men wearing bombs happened at 10.30am on Thursday (London time)..."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10334992
I find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be a lot more witnesses round canary Wharf at 10.30 in the morning. 8000 office workers are messed about and none of them are on the news, suing their employers, blogging or tweeting about it? And if the 2 witnesses did work for Reuters, I'd expect them to seek evidence, interview witnesses, take photos and, you know, actually
report this huge news story, rather than it just being the unconfirmed second-hand hearsay of one anonymous bloke.
In fact this is a very good example. There is absolutely NOTHING in that story that sounds plausible to me. My mistrust of a lot of so-called cover-ups (Princess Di, 9/11) stems from the question "would it be POSSIBLE to cover this up?" and the answer is very often no.
The only suspicious thing about this story is a lazy journalist chatting to a bloke in a pub who said "ere, my mate reckons he was down Canary Wharf..."
EDIT - just noticed the date - Six years and the Omerta-like Web of Silence is still holding! Astonishing!
I can remember that story going round the internet like wildfire on the day. It was rubbished just as quickly if I remember correctly.
You know the film 'Three Men and a Baby'? If you look carefully, at one point there's the ghost of a dead boy in the background in one scene.
Stop being naughty, Ush!
Quote from: House of Usher on 06 April, 2011, 03:00:51 PM
You know the film 'Three Men and a Baby'? If you look carefully, at one point there's the ghost of a dead boy in the background in one scene.
I seem to recall that the "ghost" in question was actually the reflection of a cardboard cut-out movie ad for "Home Alone" or something like that.
LOOK! no plane...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13023559 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13023559)
Pfffft! I could've done the same by pouring thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel straight down the elevator shafts.
:-\
but could you have done while managing not to get your passport burned?
Or without anybody in the densely packed city noticing you doing it?
And could you get the scrap steel exported to foreign climes quick enough to be unavailable to investigators?
A ninja could
I don't believe that there IS a Judge Dredd movie in the works.
I put it down to cos-players, CGI artists and fan fiction writers.
Why has the stubble on the first Dredd picture disappeared? Where are these so called Anderson photos we have heard so much about? Where was the panel at Kapow?
Makes you think.
Quote from: Misanthrope on 10 April, 2011, 07:00:45 AM
I put it down to cos-players, CGI artists and fan fiction writers.
You're thinking of Judge Minty there Mis. :P
I have to say, it does make me smile when people say that you couldn't rig the place the with explosives without people knowing. Of course you could- so long as you weren't planning to do it in an afternoon or anything. Maintenance crews must be at work in these places all the time- probably at night.
That's not to say that I totally buy into the theory- but still. Worth noting.
Did they use secret stealthed black helicopters to kill Bin Laden?
http://xplanes.tumblr.com/post/5220168573/stealth-helicopters-and-serial-numbers-some
Lo! It is written that whenever two or three US military wokka-wokkas are gathered together in sacred operation, at least one of them will crasheth into ye grounde.
Muppets.
Yes but they never ever get shot down. The Pentagon always categorically denies that, they merely suffer mechanical failure.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 05 May, 2011, 09:36:01 PM
Yes but they never ever get shot down. The Pentagon always categorically denies that, they merely suffer mechanical failure.
Of course they do they are built by the lowest bidder.
V
Quote from: Emperor on 05 May, 2011, 08:29:49 PM
Did they use secret stealthed black helicopters to kill Bin Laden?
http://xplanes.tumblr.com/post/5220168573/stealth-helicopters-and-serial-numbers-some
If so as it doesnt look like anything i have ever seen then leaving a large chunk of it lying around in the open and allowing it to be photographed is very very sloppy.
I'm staring to think that governments actively encourage these conspiracy theories. Throw enough shit in the air and nobody can spot the real lies. That's why they won't release the photo and disposed of the body, and even changed lots of details of the story. Must prove something! And while everybody's worrying about whether Bin Laden died in 2001, or where Obama's birth certificate is, they get away with all the less spectacular but genuinely corrupt stuff.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 06 May, 2011, 12:22:45 AM
I'm staring to think that governments actively encourage these conspiracy theories. Throw enough shit in the air and nobody can spot the real lies.
They have done - their interest in the UFO phenomena and muddying the waters there (making sure the Majestic 12 documents were "leaked", the destruction of Paul Bennewitz, etc.) was all to help cover up secret technology and possibly to root out spies (as the Ruskies would also be monitoring reports of strange lights over air force bases in case they were secret vehicle tests).
Quote from: Dandontdare on 06 May, 2011, 12:22:45 AMThat's why they won't release the photo and disposed of the body, and even changed lots of details of the story. Must prove something!
Possibly not - it makes sense, the picture could have been photoshopped and burying the body would create a shrine.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 06 May, 2011, 12:22:45 AMAnd while everybody's worrying about whether Bin Laden died in 2001, or where Obama's birth certificate is, they get away with all the less spectacular but genuinely corrupt stuff.
Definitely. All the big shiny conspiracy theories help distract from all the usual mucky games - power and money (and probably drugs too).
Quote from: Emperor on 06 May, 2011, 01:24:09 AM
Possibly not - it makes sense, the picture could have been photoshopped and burying the body would create a shrine.
This^
Even if wikileaks gets hold of something and claim it to be official and verifiable, it'll be picked apart by conspiracists citing photoshop
However, I fully expect the pictures to be "leaked" at some point - all plausibly deniable but it'll get the job done.
Governments - having your cake and eating it in front of you, since the dawn of civilisation.
Do you really think they buried him at sea?
There is no way the US are going to let his body go. He will end up is some underground vault pickled in a jar.
V
Quote from: pops1983 on 06 May, 2011, 01:53:56 AM
Quote from: Emperor on 06 May, 2011, 01:24:09 AM
Possibly not - it makes sense, the picture could have been photoshopped and burying the body would create a shrine.
This^
Even if wikileaks gets hold of something and claim it to be official and verifiable, it'll be picked apart by conspiracists citing photoshop
Thats the problem with distrust and lack of credibility but a picture that has been photoshopped will never stand up to any scrutiny and if a picture is genuine and its clear it wasnt photoshopped then no one with any credibility would claim its photoshopped.I say this because there has to be a certain amount of objectivity involved if you are interested in this sort of thing otherwise whats the point ?
A photo in itself isnt enough in itself to corraborate this story.
I am very curious about the DNA sampling thing.Now it could be possible to run an existing sample of DNA through the files of DNA samples held in intelligence agency databases to find a match in a few minutes from an aircraft carrier which would presume communicates via satellite but just how long does it take to process/extract the DNA material taken from the dead subject[in laboratory conditions] which means seperating the DNA from the other cellular material and then purifying it and do whatever else you have to do so that you are left with a readable DNA code and then present it in the format that is readable by the DNA database ?
Apparently the Seal team [25 in all] went into Pakistan in 2 Blackhawk helicopters which can carry 11/12 passengers plus equipment so how is it possible that 25 navy Seals left the scene in 1 Blackhawk helicopter plus the dead OBL when it wouldnt be physically possible to do that as you cant fit 25 in a Blackhawk and it would be severely overloaded to the point it wouldnt get off the ground ?
Maybe that has been explained and they were extracted by some other means ?
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 May, 2011, 09:43:58 PM
Apparently the Seal team [25 in all] went into Pakistan in 2 Blackhawk helicopters which can carry 11/12 passengers plus equipment so how is it possible that 25 navy Seals left the scene in 1 Blackhawk helicopter plus the dead OBL when it wouldnt be physically possible to do that as you cant fit 25 in a Blackhawk and it would be severely overloaded to the point it wouldnt get off the ground ?
Every account I read in the mainstream press talked about 3 or 4 helicopters - where are you getting your facts?
Theres always the FACT that governments NEVER.EVER lie.....at all,ever, at all,honest
Quote from: Dandontdare on 07 May, 2011, 12:23:06 AM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 May, 2011, 09:43:58 PM
Apparently the Seal team [25 in all] went into Pakistan in 2 Blackhawk helicopters which can carry 11/12 passengers plus equipment so how is it possible that 25 navy Seals left the scene in 1 Blackhawk helicopter plus the dead OBL when it wouldnt be physically possible to do that as you cant fit 25 in a Blackhawk and it would be severely overloaded to the point it wouldnt get off the ground ?
Every account I read in the mainstream press talked about 3 or 4 helicopters - where are you getting your facts?
The MSM.Heres a randomly chosen article that states that only 2 helicopters were involved :
http://abcnews.go.com/US/osama-bin-laden-dead-navy-seal-team-responsible/story?id=13509739
There was i am sure of it a mention of only 2 helicopters in official statements but i am not backtracking to find it right now.I have read so much material on this over the last 4 days and 2 was the number that was logged in my mind.No idea what you are reading that states 3-4 but the story changes every 5 minutes anyway.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 May, 2011, 12:57:35 AM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 07 May, 2011, 12:23:06 AM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 May, 2011, 09:43:58 PM
Apparently the Seal team [25 in all] went into Pakistan in 2 Blackhawk helicopters which can carry 11/12 passengers plus equipment so how is it possible that 25 navy Seals left the scene in 1 Blackhawk helicopter plus the dead OBL when it wouldnt be physically possible to do that as you cant fit 25 in a Blackhawk and it would be severely overloaded to the point it wouldnt get off the ground ?
Every account I read in the mainstream press talked about 3 or 4 helicopters - where are you getting your facts?
The MSM.Heres a randomly chosen article that states that only 2 helicopters were involved :
http://abcnews.go.com/US/osama-bin-laden-dead-navy-seal-team-responsible/story?id=13509739
There was i am sure of it a mention of only 2 helicopters in official statements but i am not backtracking to find it right now.I have read so much material on this over the last 4 days and 2 was the number that was logged in my mind.No idea what you are reading that states 3-4 but the story changes every 5 minutes anyway.
There were two modified Blackhawks (see the "truth you can't handle the truth" thread for how modified they were) but there were also two back-up helicopters (often named as Chinooks) and it was one of these that retrieved the rest of the team:
QuoteThe tensest moment for those watching, he said, came when one of two helicopters that flew the American troops into the compound broke down, stalling as it flew over the 18-foot wall of the compound and prepared to land. After the raid, the team blew up the helicopter and called in one of two backups. In all, 79 commandos and a dog were involved.
www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/asia/osama-bin-laden-dead.html?_r=1
QuoteSecret until now, stealth helicopters may have been key to the success of the Osama bin Laden raid. But the so-far-unexplained crash of one of the modified Black Hawks at the scene apparently compromised at least some of the aircraft's secrets.
The two choppers evidently used radar-evading technologies, plus noise and heat suppression devices, to slip across the Afghan-Pakistan border, avoid detection by Pakistani air defenses and deliver two dozen Navy SEALs into the al-Qaida leader's lair.
...
Also taking part in the bin Laden mission were two MH-47 Chinooks, specially modified versions of the heavy-lift Chinook helicoptersthat are widely used by the Army's conventional forces.
The MH-47s are flown by the 160th, the Night Stalkers. Those aircraft are not known to have stealth capabilities, although one was summoned to the scene of the raid after one of the stealthy Black Hawks crash-landed, in order to help ferry the SEAL contingent out of Pakistan.
www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ien0q0gTNkNLVk1wa5AJ8Y_Gq4YA?docId=af04a23978a944ef9af17dda8bb28598
Heard an interview on the radio with a Pakistani intelligence analyst who claimed it's more likely Bin Laden was killed by one of his own before the SEALs got near him. Bin Laden's apparent desire not to 'go the way of Saddam Hussein' had him order his 'lieutenent' to execute him if he was ever in danger of being captured. When the lieutenant shot him, the SEALs shot everyone else. Maybe that's why there was no 'capture', no sign of a video -except for picture of every other corpse in the room- and the immediate disposing of the body.
He denied the US it's prime time golden shot for the ultimate anti-climax.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 May, 2011, 12:57:35 AM
Every account I read in the mainstream press talked about 3 or 4 helicopters - where are you getting your facts?
The MSM.Heres a randomly chosen article that states that only 2 helicopters were involved :
http://abcnews.go.com/US/osama-bin-laden-dead-navy-seal-team-responsible/story?id=13509739[/quote]
An overly dramatic account by ABC News - Seriously? That's your reliable source?
Quote from: Dandontdare on 07 May, 2011, 02:13:27 AM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 May, 2011, 12:57:35 AM
Every account I read in the mainstream press talked about 3 or 4 helicopters - where are you getting your facts?
The MSM.Heres a randomly chosen article that states that only 2 helicopters were involved :
http://abcnews.go.com/US/osama-bin-laden-dead-navy-seal-team-responsible/story?id=13509739
An overly dramatic account by ABC News - Seriously? That's your reliable source?
[/quote]
I didnt say it was a reliable source as my point was that i had read that 2 helicopters were involved in multiple MSM websites.
Also obviously i missed the bit about calling for backup which was pointed out above .
I should have noticed this that is quoted from the article : The Navy SEAL team on this mission was supported by helicopter pilots from the 160th Special Ops Air Regiment, part of the Joint Special Operations Command."
::)
Do you think they left that crashed stealth 'copter there on purpose to give them an excuse not to reveal "operational details" to safeguard military secrets and also to hint to the world that "this is what we've got"?
Or are they just muppets who can't fly straight for toffee?
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 May, 2011, 09:43:58 PMI am very curious about the DNA sampling thing.Now it could be possible to run an existing sample of DNA through the files of DNA samples held in intelligence agency databases to find a match in a few minutes from an aircraft carrier which would presume communicates via satellite but just how long does it take to process/extract the DNA material taken from the dead subject[in laboratory conditions] which means seperating the DNA from the other cellular material and then purifying it and do whatever else you have to do so that you are left with a readable DNA code and then present it in the format that is readable by the DNA database ?
Can't put an exact time on it, but we're probably talking a matter of hours, especially when you're set up in advance for one specific task and you're using top of the range kit.
Regards
Robin
jeezy, don't you guys watch CSI? ::)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7SPm-HFYLo
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 May, 2011, 12:35:23 PM
Do you think they left that crashed stealth 'copter there on purpose to give them an excuse not to reveal "operational details" to safeguard military secrets and also to hint to the world that "this is what we've got"?
Or are they just muppets who can't fly straight for toffee?
Those in the know suggest the stealth modifications would make the helicopter difficult to fly especially in those situations when hovering or landing near buildings.
I'd think it'd be a very risky enterprise to deliberately crash a helicopter on such a critical mission with all the Blackhawk Down overtones. If they wanted the world to know about the helicopter they'd have found a better way to do it. Now Pakistan have a lot of the wreckage and I'd bet reasonable cash that the Chinese will get an opportunity to sniff around the wreckage before the Americans get it back - another reason why they probably didn't want to do this.
The alleged 1 million USD Bin Laden compound looks more like an LA crackhouse.
And even if the furniture was included in that price, he still got ripped off, d'you see the state of it?!! Blood and guts everywhere!! Perhaps the previous owners were students. I thought the finish on the plastering was disgusting!!
:lol:
It looks like a crackhouse inside as well as out.
I beleive they had some rather messy American visitors on a weekend break deal.
Apparently they didn't stay long, just shot through then went on a boat trip........!
Im surprised it's taken this long for you to start on the building-work, peter! It was one of the first things i thought of when pictures started to come out- peterwolf is NOT going to like that craftsmanship ;)
SBT
Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 08 May, 2011, 03:51:02 PM
Im surprised it's taken this long for you to start on the building-work, peter! It was one of the first things i thought of when pictures started to come out- peterwolf is NOT going to like that craftsmanship ;)
SBT
They were spot on with the Crack/Smack addict look.The inside of the house should have been cleaned up and had a makeover then it could have featured in a celeb magazine as in an exclusive At Home With The Bin ladens/Exclusive:Inside The Bin Ladens Exclusive 1 Million Dollar Luxury Home ! feature complete with Osama the channel-surfing recluse.
Shot Through the Keyhole, with Floyd Grossgit.
I wonder if the house prices will go up in the neighbourhood ?
Will the Bin Ladens/Bed Linens house be up for sale now and advertised as suitable for investors/speculators/property developers ?
Will the contents of the house be auctioned off ?
Imagine the Lots that would be listed as :
Lot 1 : 1 King sized mattress complete with soiled bed linen and stains of various sizes
Lot 2 : 1 30 year old 14" color TV
Lot 3 : 3 computer monitors
Lot 4 : 1 varnished Pine coffee table
Lot 5 : 1 heavily soiled arabic effect rug
Lot 6 : 1 wood effect double bed
Pete, you've forgotten the property's most recent extension, which has put thousands onto its value, a helipad!!!
And all those snazzy new ventilation holes will really be a boon in the hot weather.
Here we are laughing at the end result of trillions of dollars that have been squandered on the War On Terror not to mention military/civilian casualties/collateral damage and the creation of a Police State.
We are the losers here.
Another thing that is idiotic is the public announcement that the US has seized a load of intel on alleged terrorist activity.Thats not very intelligent as all of the alleged terrorists and terrorist cells will all disperse and go to ground and change their passports etc.
Double bluff Pete. They probably don't have shit and are just waiting for the cells to panic, inadvertently reveal themselves, then the relevant authorities will pounce.
V
I enjoyed the fakesayers responses to the architectural plans for Chez Laden. "They're in English, and in Imperial units - but they're supposed to be from Pakistan! FAAAAKE!". It's nice to know they're on top of this whole 'living in the real world' thing.
I'm hearing rumblings that the 2012 London Olympics will be used to stage a "global event" in order to usher in new global governance. The preferred event seems to be a false-flag, staged alien invasion. How to fool millions of people around the globe? Easy:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html)
See also http://www.septemberclues.info/ (http://www.septemberclues.info/) for suggestions as to how such a thing might be pulled off.
A bit of CGI inserted into live coverage, a few missiles or pre-installed charges set off and a screaming media would just about sew it up. Be one Hell of an Opening Ceremony, though.
QuoteI'm hearing rumblings that the 2012 London Olympics will be used to stage a "global event"
Yes, the event will be called: The 2012 London Olympics
"a false-flag, staged alien invasion"
That'd be Project Blue Beam a vast unwieldy, unworkable conspiracy theory developed by Serge Monast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Monast) (who thought the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was true) basically ripping off Star Trek:
QuoteJoel Engel's book Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek was released in 1994, shortly before Monast's widely-sourced lecture on Project Blue Beam.
In May 1975, Gene Roddenberry accepted an offer from Paramount to develop Star Trek into a feature film, and moved back into his old office on the Paramount lot. His proposed story told of a flying saucer, hovering above Earth, that was programmed to send down people who looked like prophets, including Jesus Christ.
QuoteAll the steps of the conspiracy theory were in the unmade mid-'70s Star Trek film script by Roddenberry, which were recycled for the ST:TNG episode Devil's Due, broadcast in 1991.[17]
There is no evidence of deliberate fraud on Monast's part; given his head was quite thoroughly full of squirrels and confetti by this time, it's entirely plausible that he thought this was the revelation of secret information in a guise safe for propagation. Or something.
However, the actual source was so obvious that even other conspiracy theorists noticed.[18] They confidently state it was obvious that Monast had been fed deceptive information by the CIA. Of course!
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Beam
It's the conspiracy theory I find most conspiracy theorist laugh at.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 May, 2011, 01:20:55 PM
I'm hearing rumblings that the 2012 London Olympics will be used to stage a "global event"
Wait, isn't that rumour moot due to the world having already ended by then, as predicted by The Space Mayans?
I've heard about the fake-alien-invasion thing at the olympics. According to the nutjob who's promoting this theory, the UFO SFX at the LA olympics was a practice run, and the one-eyed London mascots are designed to get us accustomed to the idea of aliens.
That September clues website is hilarious.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 11 May, 2011, 02:36:23 PM
That September clues website is hilarious.
To a point... I find this disgustingly offensive and an insult to the dead:
(http://www.septemberclues.info/images/BlackRibLink_large.jpg)
ANd then there's this:
QuoteA large number of casualties was also reported to generate public outrage and support for illegal wars of aggression. However, the September Clues research has determined that the alleged victims were fictitious identities mostly/or entirely created within the digital realm.
And that's only on the title page!
Anyone who honestly believes this is mentally ill.
Irrespective of whether 9/11 was staged, predicted and allowed to happen or simply exploited by the military/industrial/political complex, I find the results to be far more offensive than people who examine the events of that day and come up with their own conclusions based on the evidence as they see it.
Killed on 9/11: 2,996, including the 19 hijackers and 2,977 victims.
Iraq: the Iraqi Holocaust has been associated with (around) 2.9 million post-invasion non-violent avoidable deaths; 4.5 million violent and non-violent excess deaths, 2.0 million under-5 infant deaths, 1.8 million avoidable under-5 year old infant deaths and 5-6 million refugees – an Iraqi Genocide according to the UN Genocide Convention definition. In comparison, post-2003 US Alliance deaths in the Iraq War now total around 4,758.
Afghanistan: Between 10,708 and 28,478 Afghan deaths and around 2,340 Coalition deaths since 2001.
Now we're after Libya, too.
This is before we even get into the multi-trillion dollar war industry and corporate "reconstruction" contracts.
Offensive? Damned right it's offensive - but a great deal more offensive than people asking awkward or even loopy questions under the auspices of Free Speech, methinks.
Just for the sake of balance, Sharkey, what were the pre-invasion death statistics of the "Iraqi Holocaust" under the rule of Saddam? How many violent and how many non-violent excess deaths? How many Marsh Arabs were slaughtered? You're bound to know. Comparing death statistics is totally inane, but I know you love doing it.
I don't know, Tankie. To mis-quote Babylon 5, we could sit here going through who killed how many of whom and why and we'll be back a thousand years before we're done.
You're right - comparing death statistics is a pretty foul thing to do, but my point is that nobody seems to find the idea that 9/11 should be used as an excuse to inflict so much death and destruction particularly offensive. Try and pick holes in the Official Account, however, and you get accused of anything from spitting on the memories of the dead to treason to mental illness.
No offence meant towards Richmond (or anyone else) in my last comment - I've noticed many people have a similar view and I just find it curious, that's all.
THE MIDDLE AGES NEVER HAPPENED!
http://cargocollective.com/michaelpaukner/598823/Phantom-Time-Hypothesis (http://cargocollective.com/michaelpaukner/598823/Phantom-Time-Hypothesis)
QuoteWhen Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz introduces his paper on the "phantom time hypothesis", he kindly asks his readers to be patient, benevolent, and open to radically new ideas, because his claims are highly unconventional. This is because his paper is suggesting three difficult-to-believe propositions: 1) Hundreds of years ago, our calendar was polluted with 297 years which never occurred; 2) this is not the year 2010, but rather 1713; and 3) The purveyors of this hypothesis are not crackpots.
The whole hypothesis is availible as a PDF (see link), it's quite interesting
Niemitz attempts to refute the damning evidence of dendrochronology by referring to the methodological difficulties experienced by essentially one pioneering researcher, Hollstein, and specifically his papers from 1970 and 1980, when the approach was in its abject infancy and his datasets were fragmentary, local and miniscule. He ignores the subsequent 30 years of cross-referencing, correlation between species and continents, and independent radiometric confirmation of an unbroken global sequence stretching back more than 10,000 years. He somehow ignores the fact that criticism and refinement of Hollstein's work, and the addressing of the very issues he cites, was the foundation upon which the modern science was built. I've even seen Niemitz's criticisms cited as FACT! by creationists which alone is enough for me to want to beat him to death with a log.
But yeah, it's a pretty cool premise for an RPG.
I just managed to delete my comment regarding the September Clues websites claims and i dont have the inclination to type another but i cannot be expected to take their claims seriously and i could rip it bits but i dont have the inclination but its ludicrous and baseless as they offer nothing of any substance to verify their claims that are completely refutable.
Heres one example :
"NO private photography of the real-life events was allowed"
Can anyone verify this as being fact ??
Ludicrous and impossible to implement and enforce and besides that i have seen amateur footage of it yet that is what they base their entire hypothesis on.
"More recent technology deactivated temporarily all cameras within sight of the area. In reality, the towers were most likely enveloped in thick smoke (military obscurants) as they collapsed - and no real footage exists of that brief event."
If you say so there isnt :lol:
Look at the pic at that shows "computer generated imagery" which is presented as a single image that tips from left to right.WTF does that prove ?
The September Clues website and hypothesis is amateurish and just plain silly and i cannot be expected to take them or their claims seriously.
Enough of this nonsense but i am filing September Clues under Disinfo and i trust my own judgement and i know BS when i see or read it.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 11 May, 2011, 02:46:04 PM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 11 May, 2011, 02:36:23 PM
That September clues website is hilarious.
QuoteA large number of casualties was also reported to generate public outrage and support for illegal wars of aggression. However, the September Clues research has determined that the alleged victims were fictitious identities mostly/or entirely created within the digital realm.
yeah tell that to my friend ( and his partner) who would have been there if not for a pre-natal check, then had to attend their colleagues funerals.
FEMA exercise at the New Madrid Fault, May 16-20, 2011.
FEMA has an uncanny knack of carrying out exercises just when disasters happen, so keep an eye out for something (flood, earthquake, terrorist attack etc.) affecting one or all seven of the following American states: Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi over the next week or so.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 May, 2011, 01:20:55 PM
I'm hearing rumblings that the 2012 London Olympics will be used to stage a "global event"
'global event'? I think the clue's in the title 'Olympics'
Of course apparently it's the
Jews who run it all as Mel Gibson's beaver tells me.
(http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/zionolymp_dees.jpg)
I still think the official 2012 logo looks like Lisa Simpson sucking Bart off.
Quote from: strontium71 on 14 May, 2011, 11:38:39 PM
I still think the official 2012 logo looks like Lisa Simpson sucking Bart off.
I just think it looks like a complete waste of money.
Ooh... You know what should totally be the official snackfood of the 2012 Olympic Games?
Lion bars!
Hangonaminute... Isn't the emblem of the British Olympic team a lion?
(http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/8e869f969eb473d93b6cb54a692d2de1ed3791e4_m.jpg)
But what does this tell us, eh?
Quote from: exilewood on 18 May, 2011, 04:17:54 PM
But what does this tell us, eh?
OMG - The legendary Shark is a CIA plant! He's collecting all our names for his military-industrail paymasters and the Yap shop is a cunning virus designed to infiltrate our hard drives. I'm burning my computer and moving to a desert island.
America includes the letters A,C,I which if you change them around you get CIA.
America ain't cool enough to be Sharkland...
BTW, it's Yap Shop night tonight.
Has the rebellion already begun?
English freeman standing in court-council tax the take down begins 3 mirror: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl5qVTWHf8c&fmt=18 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl5qVTWHf8c&fmt=18)
Here's one: Your age on this year's birthday + the last two digits of your birth-date = 111.
Of course, this is just maths - next year, it'll add up to 112 and so on.
However, as 111 is an important number in numerology/astrology/and such, watch out for wild-eyed prophets of doom making hay out of this.
More to the point, it's an excellent way to win a few pints out of your mates down the pub.
::)
I have a friend who tried to convince me this was 'freaky'.
Your age is just the current year minus the year you were born.
Since this mumbo jumbo is only concerned with the last two digits of the year you were born (which we shall define as x), take 1900 away from the current year and the year you were born.
So you age (A) is:
A=111-x
So you're adding the last 2 digits of the year you were born (already defined as x) to your age (111-x)?
x+111-x=111
Q.E.D
I had to explain this to my friend three or four times before she started sulking because I was right and she was a credulous eejit that believes in astrology and suchlike
You know what I think of the big banks like JP Morgan; I think they're utterly corrupt, beyond greedy and downright evil. The current "financial crisis" we find ourselves in has largely been engineered by these big banks. (In the first instance, Banks create enough money out of thin air to lend to everyone from impoverished farmers to affluent governments, flooding the markets with cheap cash. Next, these vampire banks drastically reduce the amount of money they create and start calling in their debts. People can't pay these debts because the money supply has dried up and so lose their homes, businesses, savings, whatever to the banks. They call it "shearing" - let the economy grow and then take it apart, repossessing (or purchasing for pennies on the pound) and keeping the good parts.) It's the greatest scam in history and we've all been taken in by it.
In my view, a very few families of completely rich bankers and businessmen believe themselves to be the rightful rulers of a global fiefdom and have been working for generations (since the mid to late 1800s at least) to control the whole kit and caboodle. But, why stop at just confiscating people's possessions, homes, savings and businesses? Wouldn't it be easier to just take over whole countries? "Pay your debt (which we created out of nothing) or we'll seize your country."
I can hear you laughing at that idea from here. I laughed too, because nobody would ever be stupid enough to even suggest such a thing, would they? Except that it's already starting to happen. Greece has been told that if it doesn't pay back its loans quickly enough, the bankers will move in to collect taxes from the people - stripping the Greek government and people of the power to control their own destiny. Who will lose their sovereignty next? Portugal? Spain? Ireland?
It's way past time to begin to see that banks like JP Morgan and the IMF (amongst others) are enemy forces and debt is their weapon of conquest. Would you like your country to be owned by a banking consortium? Because it's coming - if we don't stop it.
http://www.businessinsider.com/greek-bailout-will-require-loss-of-sovereignty-2011-5 (http://www.businessinsider.com/greek-bailout-will-require-loss-of-sovereignty-2011-5)
IMF got a little publicity today too, on the news. If its true it's not like it hasn't happened beyond the imagination of human perversity.
Quote
The Great Famine in Ireland began as a natural catastrophe of extraordinary magnitude, but its effects were severely worsened by the actions and inactions of the Whig government, headed by Lord John Russell in the crucial years from 1846 to 1852. There was a very widespread belief among members of the British upper and middle classes that the famine was a divine judgment-an act of Providence. A leading exponent of providentialist perspective was Sir Charles Trevelyan, the British civil servant chiefly responsible for administering Irish relief policy throughout the famine years. In his book The Irish Crisis, published in 1848, Trevelyan described the famine as 'a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence', one which laid bare 'the deep and inveterate root of social evil'. The famine, he declared, was 'the sharp but effectual remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected... God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered may rightly perform its part...' This mentality of Trevelyan's was influential in persuading the government to do nothing to restrain mass evictions - and this had the obvious effect of radically restructuring Irish rural society along the lines of the capitalistic model ardently preferred by British policy-makers.
Today's Trevelyans?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Trevelyan,_1st_Baronet
"I can hear you laughing at that idea from here. I laughed too, because nobody would ever be stupid enough to even suggest such a thing, would they? Except that it's already starting to happen. Greece has been told that if it doesn't pay back its loans quickly enough, the bankers will move in to collect taxes from the people - stripping the Greek government and people of the power to control their own destiny. Who will lose their sovereignty next? Portugal? Spain? Ireland?
It's way past time to begin to see that banks like JP Morgan and the IMF (amongst others) are enemy forces and debt is their weapon of conquest. Would you like your country to be owned by a banking consortium? Because it's coming - if we don't stop it"
Its already here.
Greece and every other EU member state has already lost its sovereignty and is owned by the private banking consortuim and there is nothing stupid or funny about it.They are all slave states as is every other country that is host to the private central banking parasites.
The only solution is to remove the parasite from the host nation and tell them exactly where they can shove their bailout funny money.Only an idiot would want more of it anyway and in any case the scale of the debt is unrepayable mathematically so what is going on here is the IMF are scared of defaults so they will work through the EU[a holding company owned by the private central bankers] to recover the unrepayable debt.They dont want the defecit to be cut as they being the Creditor want to eventually seize each country one by one once they have been pushed to the edge when they dont repay quickly enough.The Greeks are notoriously bad at paying taxes anyway and if the vast majority dont have jobs then there is going to be next to no tax revenue generated then eventually all EU member states will be foreclosed on by the IMF as its inevitable since they are not allowing the economy to recover so its all a trap which was the plan all along.
If tax revenue is collected by the IMF then that means that they have already stolen your country so get out of the EU and get out of the Eurozone and let the whole thing collapse.
Also that useless cowardly waste of space Papandreou has had plenty of time to do what Iceland have done but its clearly not going to happen and it wont happen until these shills are voted out or removed by force and replaced by politicians who reflect the will of the people and who are willing to stand their ground against this criminality.
Iceland called their bluff and the bankers havent retaliated so far......
Ireland collectively allowed itself to be walked over by the IMF and they vote for yet another shill and so it goes on......
Useless.
The French were apparently so stupid that they were willing to vote in the head of the IMF-Strauss Khan the alleged rapist of hotel maids so if we take that as an example of the stupidity of European voters then they are their own worst enemies as they are in the UK and as they are in the US.Strauss Khan was disgraced and is now likely to be replaced by Bilderberg Shill Christine Lagarde.
No change and no recovery[despite what you are told by the muppet Media] until everyone faces reality and gets a backbone and educates themselves about the nature of the problem so that this fucked up mess can be resolved once and for all.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13682082
Thanks, Rich. Quite interesting.
""It's much smarter than conspiracy," says Prof Kakabadse. "This is moulding the way people think so that it seems like there's no alternative to what is happening."" This is exactly right. For example, have you noticed that the only alternative presented by officialdom to the present economic situation is austerity? Austerity or... what? Chaos, presumably. The only way to shore up the banking system is quantitative easing (and, surprise surprise in the insane world of politics, QE3 is just around the corner). Yep, listen to your betters - only they know what to do.
It's a very clever debunking article, mixing fact with fiction. By lumping all critics of the Bilderberg Group together under the heading "Conspiracy Theorists" and throwing David Icke into that group, it basically influences readers in the direction of thinking "meh, nothing to see here - just rich gits having a party." Suggesting that every Bilderberg critic a conspiracy theorist is just as simplistic and misleading as calling every English football fan a hooligan. Also, calling every Bilderberg attendee an evil despot is just as simplistic and short-minded. There are plenty of people who attend once and then refuse to go again. (I seem to remember that even Margaret Thatcher eventually got fed up of them - or they of her.)
One last observation from me on this subject: Doesn't it seem weird that actual press coverage of these meetings is practically non-existent? If a couple of hundred film stars, music moguls, sports people or even artists got together like this periodically, the press would be all over it. But a couple of hundred of the most powerful and influential people in the business/economic/political world meet like this and no mainstream reporter wants to know. What's up with that?
Quote from: Krombasher on 06 June, 2011, 07:30:31 PM
Today's Trevelyans?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Trevelyan,_1st_Baronet
Tiernan is one hell of an artist though
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 08 June, 2011, 01:01:38 PM
One last observation from me on this subject: Doesn't it seem weird that actual press coverage of these meetings is practically non-existent? If a couple of hundred film stars, music moguls, sports people or even artists got together like this periodically, the press would be all over it. But a couple of hundred of the most powerful and influential people in the business/economic/political world meet like this and no mainstream reporter wants to know. What's up with that?
I think that's just down to the way different groups behave - film stars, pop moguls etc are usually, by nature, attention seekers and self publicists. They can't fart without tweeting about it, as would all the dozens of associates and acquaintances in their orbit. Finance ministers, chief executives, and their employees, are much better at maintaining confidentiality. The group offer no press access and issues no press relases; security is tight, so I just think it's a case of them being better and more inclined to keep secerets than others. The press won't write about it if they've got nothing to report!
...and the general public tend to be less interested in knowing about a load of suit-wearing middle-aged folk sitting around tables discussing business and politics, (for some bizarre reason).
Quote from: johnnystress on 08 June, 2011, 01:14:10 PM
Quote from: Krombasher on 06 June, 2011, 07:30:31 PM
Haha!
Today's Trevelyans?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Trevelyan,_1st_Baronet
Tiernan is one hell of an artist though
Hah! Yes he is. :P
Quote from: M.I.K. on 08 June, 2011, 02:47:40 PM
...and the general public tend to be less interested in knowing about a load of suit-wearing middle-aged folk sitting around tables discussing business and politics, (for some bizarre reason).
Now, they do that on purpose!
The MSM are covering Bilderberg simply because they are getting so much coverage in the alternative media and each time the MSM publish an article on Bilderberg it gets picked apart by the alternative media as its futile pretending that there is nothing untoward going on and downplaying and trivialising them.
Bilderberg are top level policy makers and elected politicians work to an agenda outlined by Bilderberg.
Thatcher was kicked out of office as she wasnt cooperating with Bilderberg as she refused to sign the Maastrict Treaty which was a precursor to what is now known as the EU.She was outraged that she was expected to give away the sovereignty of the UK and i have a certain amount of respect for Thatcher as she had a certain amount of integrity.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 June, 2011, 03:50:46 PM
Thatcher was kicked out of office as she wasnt cooperating with Bilderberg as she refused to sign the Maastrict Treaty
That's an ... interesting... interpretation. Do you have any ecvidence to back up this remarkable claim? (and I don't just mean repeats of the claim elsewhere)
Quote from: Dandontdare on 08 June, 2011, 02:16:39 PMI think that's just down to the way different groups behave - film stars, pop moguls etc are usually, by nature, attention seekers and self publicists. They can't fart without tweeting about it, as would all the dozens of associates and acquaintances in their orbit. Finance ministers, chief executives, and their employees, are much better at maintaining confidentiality. The group offer no press access and issues no press relases; security is tight, so I just think it's a case of them being better and more inclined to keep secerets than others. The press won't write about it if they've got nothing to report!
I'm not sure that nobody would be interested in what a group of the most influential people on Earth would be talking about or planning. I'd certainly be more interested in learning what's said at a Bilderberg meeting than at an Oscars ceremony - and I suspect many people would agree with me on that. Of course, many more people would be completely disinterested, preferring celebrity gossip and Nuts Journalism. I'm sure that the kind of people who watch The Daily Politics or Newsnight would be interested whereas those who orgasm for Britain's Got the X-Factor on Ice would be less intrigued. (Oops, I think I went a bit stereotypical there - sorry!)
Furthermore, what happened to investigative journalism? Why isn't some intrepid reporter pretending to be a waiter to get the inside scoop? I can't believe that nothing of note ever happens at these meetings - even Nuts Journalism would be interested in a drunken Bilderberger (let's say Angela Merkel (picking a name from the Wiki list at random)) if she even
looked like she'd had one over the eight. (Remember, for example, the fun the media had when Cherie Blair answered the door looking like she'd just got out of bed?) If these meetings are just a high class piss-up and nothing more, any Sunday newspaper worth its ink would kill to get a journalist in there. But... nothing. Not a peep. Sorry, but to me it just doesn't add up.
Also, I don't think it's fair to say that Bilderbergers are any less attenion-seeking narcissists than those in the arts - how many politicians shun the media, for example? Unless, of course, they're up to no good...
The fact is that strategies and policies that affect all of us come out of these meetings, so I think that we are entitled to know what goes on in there. This is also my biggest beef against the EU (which I think is a fantastic idea, in principle) - we don't get to find out what happens behind closed doors but are expected to accept without question any legislation that emerges from behind those closed doors.
To paraphrase the last real PotUS, secrecy is anathema to freedom.
(Add - and I'm with Peter, I too have a certain amount of respect for Thatcher for going against Bilderberg. Not enough to forgive her for everything, mind, but a modicum.)
Quote from: Dandontdare on 08 June, 2011, 03:59:06 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 June, 2011, 03:50:46 PM
Thatcher was kicked out of office as she wasnt cooperating with Bilderberg as she refused to sign the Maastrict Treaty
That's an ... interesting... interpretation. Do you have any ecvidence to back up this remarkable claim? (and I don't just mean repeats of the claim elsewhere)
Of course, as Bilderberg keeps no records, there's no evidence. A quick Google, however, does reveal the claim repeated in several mainstream places. Here are just two:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6283373.ece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6283373.ece)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/10/features.weekend (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/10/features.weekend)
That Jon Ronson article is a great read! Umberto Eco would be proud.
Is it wrong of me to not be surprised that powerful people from around the capitalist world would want to meet in private and have a chinwag about global developments and areas of mutual interest? It seems like a Parents Association coffee morning or a Chamber of Commerce lunch writ large (vile though both those events are). Meeting your peers, coming up with ideas and consensuses (horrid word!), possible collaborations and opportunities - that's how school runs are arranged. It is, as Denis Healey puts it, how the world works. The capability of these folks for evil deeds is only marginally enhanced beyond its base levels - and there may even be some potential for a reduction in (to quote Darth Vader) 'destructive conflict'.
I'd be more surprised and concerned if the great and the not-so-good didn't have the same kind of meetings as local businessmen and marrow-growers, and even more surprised if they didn't want to keep the media firmly away. Who hasn't been at a meeting or conference when a journalist showed up, and watched all the speakers clam up and the banter from the floor just drift away?
Sometimes being free to speak without fear of (mis)quotation is the only way to get ideas out there. And it's by the deeds of these folks that their constituents should judge them, not their chummy bar talk.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 08 June, 2011, 03:59:06 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 June, 2011, 03:50:46 PM
Thatcher was kicked out of office as she wasnt cooperating with Bilderberg as she refused to sign the Maastrict Treaty
That's an ... interesting... interpretation. Do you have any ecvidence to back up this remarkable claim? (and I don't just mean repeats of the claim elsewhere)
Its a shame that i cant recall her exact words about signing over sovereignty which she said was unforgivable and unnacceptable and to find them will take some backtracking.
Its a well known fact that Thatcher had become anti EU once she realised what was going on and was replaced by gray John Major who was either pro EU or simply someone who just did what he was told.Its common knowledge that Thatcher was anti EU and that Bilderberg call the shots and if they want someone out of public office then out they go and Thatcher was distraught even though she kinew it was coming and she felt she was betrayed by her own party which she was to an extent.
I dont have any absolute proof of this other than her own words as she has talked about in interviews after being kicked out of office and she is still talking about opting out of the EU .
Very recent article :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-105481/Time-ditch-EU-says-Thatcher.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-105481/Time-ditch-EU-says-Thatcher.html)
Quote from: TordelBack on 08 June, 2011, 04:57:19 PM
Sometimes being free to speak without fear of (mis)quotation is the only way to get ideas out there. And it's by the deeds of these folks that their constituents should judge them, not their chummy bar talk.
That is exactly what is going to happen and what does happen and i dont think anyone can name one policy that is outlined and implemented by Bilderberg that is in your best interests.
In the meantime everyone can chuckle amongst themselves and trivialise it all and think its all lighthearted chummy bar talk and laugh at the wacky "conspiracy theorists" and in any case its not all chummy bar talk as when they are in meetings they are outlining policy that affects your life and everyone elses life so its all a very very serious business.
People can discuss what they like in private but when it involves govt policy its everyones business.
Nothing to hide - nothing to fear.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 June, 2011, 05:20:49 PM
That is exactly what is going to happen and what does happen and i dont think anyone can name one policy that is outlined and implemented by Bilderberg that is in your best interests.
Well there I'd agree, these folks are talking about what's in
their best interests, and I imagine only very occasionally what they think is in our best interests, in so far as they understand or care about such things.
QuotePeople can discuss what they like in private but when it involves govt policy its everyones business.
Government policy is proposed and implemented by
governments - that's the stuff we need to watch, and influence. Does it matter if the inspiration of that policy came from a Bilderberg meeting, Das Kapital or the back pages of Woman's Own? Does it matter where an agreement or an idea came from if it's a bad one, or even a good one?
I'm not sure that I agree that the proceedings of what is essentially a talking shop
should be public - as long as the governments that take these discussions and agreements on board are themselves transparent and accountable. It's at that level, and that failure, that I'd address my concerns. Private discussions
will occur between peers, that is inevitable, and not necessarily inherently evil. By the contrary definition, everything from residents' associations to sports clubs are sinister conspiracies of silence and consent (hmmmm....).
As to banks and corporations, well they are pretty much universally an evil (apart from Lucasfilm, obviously) - attending Bilderberg meetings doesn't change things one way or another.
Quotei dont think anyone can name one policy that is outlined and implemented by Bilderberg
And I think you're right.
I should say that the argument isnt just that they are having meetings in private as its inevitable that they do or that they are discussing future policy in private as again this happens all the time but its the nature of those that are having the meeting and the nature of their policy and their agenda that is THE problem.
You could then argue that this core of individuals have too much influence and power and then argue the pros and cons of too much power and influence in the hands of too few over so many.
Bilderberg is just one high profile meeting like a conflab but there are lots and lots and lots of other private meetings between these individuals and its easy to fixate on Bilderberg.
Its important to understand that Bilderberg are to an extent subordinates within the power structure.The tier 1 personel[the Bosses] attend as well like David Rockefeller[one of the Godfathers] and queen Beatrix etc and also Tier 2 personel like Henry Kissinger [top advisor] and the head of the FEDRES - Bernanke and then Tier 3 like David Cameron/Gordon Brown who are usually elected PMs and top level minsters along with top CEOs of large corporations and members of infuential think tanks and that type of thing.
Think of the power structure as being exactly the same as the power structure within a large corporation where you have the CEOs and then the board and then you have the different levels of management as its all a heirachy.
The average Bilderberg attendee/delegate is mid level management like David Cameron who then forwards the agenda to the lower level ministers in govt as its all a top down system of control.
If a mid level manager within a large corporation refuses to go along with company policy and the directions of their boss they are fired so the same thing applies in politics and in Bilderberg.Some attend only once while others become regulars but i dont know exactly what the reasons or criteria of this is.
Thatcher attended Bilderberg in 1975 apparently and its very common for junior ministers to be chosen by Bilderberg[Tier 4] to go onto greater things and every recent elected PM had previously attended Bilderberg so once again this is very similar to how large corporations or any large company fills its positions with promotions within its employees.
Its a part of a power structure that is top level but to say Bilderberg themselves are the secret rulers of the world is erroneous to a large extent as Bilderberg themselves are controlled by the likes of Rockefeller and the private central banking families.
Its another world that most are unaware of.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 June, 2011, 05:20:49 PM
Its common knowledge that Thatcher was anti EU and that Bilderberg call the shots and if they want someone out of public office then out they go and Thatcher was distraught even though she kinew it was coming and she felt she was betrayed by her own party which she was to an extent.
So how exactly did the Bildeburgers get all the individuals in the Conservative party to vote her out of office?
As I've said many times, don't confuse consensus with conspiracy. Claiming that these shadowy groups are secretly ruling the world, rather than powerful rich cunts generally behaving the same way, is all very dramatic but it's just a sideshow.
So who controls the Rockefellers Peter?
I don't believe that any single group rules the world, that's just mad. Nobody can control everything. I tend to look at more like the Mafia. There are several Mafia families exerting influence to get their own way. Some of these families work together, some don't - but they're all just out for themselves.
You don't need to control the whole Conservative Party to get rid of one conservative (even if she is Prime Minister). You only need to bribe/threaten/blackmail/kill key people - like the Mafia do. If the Mafia were to move into your town, they wouldn't have to control everyone to be in charge, would they?
I am not confusing anything and from what i recall [which admittedly isnt very much right now] there were other factors involved in the ejection of Thatcher from office resulting in a vote of no confidence in Thatcher but i dont know exactly what went on behind the scenes.
It is very often consensus and conspiracy.
There was a consensus within the Conservatives particularly other Bilderbergers within the Conservatives that they were not happy with Thatchers position on Europe and as i have already pointed out its all a top down organisation and there are many different ways that MPs can be brought into line to vote a certain way on certain issues either behind the scenes and also with Whips.Memos get sent out to influential and powerful memebers of the party and the consensus is generated from there.
We could presume that there was a majority of Conservatives at that point who were pro EU and pro Bilderberg and other prominent Conservatives like Geoffrey Howe previously resigned over her anti EU/Eurozone position for example so there clearly was a pro EU consensus within the Conservatives and it was Bilderberg who promoted the idea of EU membership so the influence of Bilderberg is exercised through consensus as well as coercion.Its a mindset as much as anything else which makes it easy to have a consensus.
Thatcher apparently stated in an interview that "It was an honor to be denounced by Bilderberg" and then stated that she didnt fit in with their mindset and couldnt get on with them.This was mentioned in passing but there has never been a full interview with Thatcher about this but it would be interesting to talk to her about this before her health deteriorites even more.
It would be interesting to read the Thatcher memoirs to get more insight into this .
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 08 June, 2011, 11:41:55 PM
So who controls the Rockefellers Peter?
The Rockefellers control the Rockefellers and they work in cooperation with the private banking cartel.
Rockefellers are involved in the scientific/social engineering side of things and matters that are not financial while the private banking cartel take care of the cash side of things.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 09 June, 2011, 12:33:32 AM
Thatcher apparently stated in an interview that "It was an honor to be denounced by Bilderberg"
This quote appears in the Ronson article linked to above - and it's from a whispered aside to Jim Tucker, who isn't painted as the most reliable witness by the piece in question.
At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if the substance were true.
Quote from: TordelBack on 09 June, 2011, 07:58:45 AM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 09 June, 2011, 12:33:32 AM
Thatcher apparently stated in an interview that "It was an honor to be denounced by Bilderberg"
This quote appears in the Ronson article linked to above - and it's from a whispered aside to Jim Tucker, who isn't painted as the most reliable witness by the piece in question.
At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if the substance were true.
That quote does seem to be all there is available online but i have red more quotes from Thatcher regarding this but i cant find them anywhere online for want of trying.
Anyway i respect and appreciate the fact that you show an interest in this topic and the other stuff i waffle on about and understand it rather than ridiculing it but that comes with intelligence which you are not lacking in to say the least.
David Rockefeller arrived at Bilderberg today as expected.......
Peter, I really don't mean to shite on your ideas or attempt to come off as a superior know-it-all (although reading back I plainly do) - this is very interesting stuff, and a lot of the more solid material that you and and TLS have brought up I hadn't really been aware of. I'm grateful for the chance to think about these things.
When I'm being cynical about some of the claims, it's because I genuinely want to know what's behind them - I have no problem believing that strings are being pulled in the interests of a self-appointed elite (having watched my own country literally destroyed by exactly this process), I'd just like to see the verifiable facts and most importantly the hows, that is to say the point at which citizens might be able to have their say. A list of the putative illuminati that includes Dennis Healey and Queen Beatrix alongside the perennial Rockefellers might prick my interest mightily, but I need to see how this translates into actions to believe that this isn't just one more golf club membership committee.
Quote from: TordelBack on 10 June, 2011, 08:11:45 AM
Peter, I really don't mean to shite on your ideas or attempt to come off as a superior know-it-all (although reading back I plainly do) - this is very interesting stuff, and a lot of the more solid material that you and and TLS have brought up I hadn't really been aware of. I'm grateful for the chance to think about these things.
When I'm being cynical about some of the claims, it's because I genuinely want to know what's behind them - I have no problem believing that strings are being pulled in the interests of a self-appointed elite (having watched my own country literally destroyed by exactly this process), I'd just like to see the verifiable facts and most importantly the hows, that is to say the point at which citizens might be able to have their say. A list of the putative illuminati that includes Dennis Healey and Queen Beatrix alongside the perennial Rockefellers might prick my interest mightily, but I need to see how this translates into actions to believe that this isn't just one more golf club membership committee.
There is no point at present or in the future when citizens will have any say whatsoever in the policies that are outlined and implemented by Bilderberg and above.
Forget about that as its autocratic.
Welcome to the post democratic era where we just pay for it through taxes.
For example the military intervention in Libya.No discussion and no debate in parliament in the UK nor in the US as the decision was made without any on behalf of the UN/Bilderberg which assumes authority over the political system in any country.Military intervention in Libya was authorised under the remit of the UN but the policy arose out of Bilderberg etc so saying that the UN authorised it rather than bilderberg is a moot point.
No discussion and no debate and no referendum [direct democracy] about joining the EU which is part of the Bilderberg agenda as it was simply rubber stamped.No discussion and no debate about bank bailouts and even if there was it was superficial.
an elected govt does have a certain amount of say regarding small time domestic issues but any policy concerning broader international issues is subject to the agenda of Bilderberg.
Thinking back 10 years to the invasion of Iraq which was also part of the Bilderberg agenda there was a certain amount of debate in parliament regarding wether to go ahead with it but anyone in the know knew it was a forgone conclusion.The govt presented its faked dossiers etc to create the pretext for it but that was 10 years ago or more and things have moved on from that as you witnessed with the dictat that the UK/NATO would intervene in Libya and the decision was made very quickly as it was in the US.
The US military is now active in Yemen and again there was no discussion as they just go ahead with it without discussion and Syria and the Lebanon will be next and that is partly what will be discussed this weekend at their private meeting.
Will things improve in the next year regarding the economy and military intervention etc ?
I dont think so
I dont think so as they will get worse for you and i and everyone else as its their world and we just live in it.
This is what you call global governance so get used to it as there will be a lot more of it to come and we the people will need to understand this situation and confront it head on.
[There are leaked Bilderberg documents available if i can find them]
The Codex Alimentarius (Latin for Food Book) is beginning to make an impact.
The ostensible role of the CA is to regulate food standards to protect consumers - but many researchers (including Ian R. Crane and the US National Health Federation) have detected some less desirable consequences. CA, which sovereign nations can volunteer to opt into, seeks to ban health supplements such as vitamins and vitamin fortified foods*.
This may sound perfectly reasonable until one discovers that drugs companies and GM companies have had a heavy hand in the background. Take, for example, Tibetan Crystal Salt - a salt which contains around 75 minerals essential or beneficial to the human body. Under Codex Alimentarius, this salt would be banned because those 75 minerals are seen as additives - even though they've been part of that particular salt deposit for millions of years! Let's say that some people use Tibetan Crystal Salt regularly and that it naturally helps their bodies stay healthy. Once the salt is banned, those people will begin to deteriorate and may even fall ill. And when you fall ill, where do you go? Drugs companies.
Codex Alimentarius - you didn't vote for it and I'll wager that many of you have never even heard of it. If you need an illustration as to how insignificant our opinions are to the ruling classes, then this is a good one. They say that CA is here to protect us - and in some ways I'm sure that's true - but its hidden purpose is to increase the profits of Big Pharma, GM and and maybe (at the darkest ends of the spectrum) to keep the general population weak, sickly and easy to control.
*Hence Denmark's banning of Marmite.
I don't get this. Why is big pharma more powerful than multinational food conglomerates, and why do its profits matter more? Don't Kraft, Nestle, Heinz and Kellogg carry any clout with governments? I think they do.
Quote from: House of Usher on 10 June, 2011, 03:19:42 PM
I don't get this. Why is big pharma more powerful than multinational food conglomerates, and why do its profits matter more? Don't Kraft, Nestle, Heinz and Kellogg carry any clout with governments? I think they do.
Because 'Coco Pops' doesn't sound as sinister as 'Big Pharma'..?
To be fair, Marmite is filth so banning it got the thumbs up from me.
Denmark, kicked out Kelloggs, years ago.
I'm with Big Marma block, who you fightin' with?
Big Pharma also make food additives.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 10 June, 2011, 02:17:36 PM
CA, which sovereign nations can volunteer to opt into, seeks to ban health supplements such as vitamins and vitamin fortified foods
...when you fall ill, where do you go? Drugs companies.
its hidden purpose is to increase the profits of Big Pharma
But...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 10 June, 2011, 04:32:20 PM
Big Pharma also make food additives.
So Big Pharma, who manufacture health supplements and benefit from the sale of foods containing additives such as vitamins and minerals and probiotics, want health supplements and food additives banned, so that... er...
Big Pharma can benefit from the subsequent increase in demand for medicines? Sounds to me like they would be better off sticking to the supplements and fortified foods market that is already serving them very well.
Quoteits hidden purpose is to increase the profits of Big Pharma [...] and maybe to keep the general population weak, sickly and easy to control.
And maybe not. Maybe Big Pharma's interests are better served by a fit and healthy general population with high demand for its products, buying more dietary supplements and wanting more nutritional additives in foods.
Sounds counter-intuitive, doesn't it? However, Big Pharma can only make real money out of artificially created additives.
To illustrate: It has been shown that a fair few natural substances such as hemp oil, bicarbonate of soda, peach pits and mistletoe (amongst a fair few others) are very effective in curing cancer*. However, these substances are no good to Big Pharma as they are naturally occurring and therefore cannot be patented**. All the cancer treatments and chemotherapy drugs Big Pharma sell (for huge prices) are artificial substances created in a lab and then patented. Why would Big Pharma want you to know that hemp, for example, will cure cancer? Hemp is little more than a weed you could grow yourself in the back garden for pennies. Artificial drugs sell for a fortune and cancer is a multi-billion dollar cash cow for them. (NB, there are possible links with substances such as aspartame, an artificial sweetener, which can cause horrible health problems if ingested in large enough quantities whereas naturally occurring sugars cause fewer and more easily treated health problems if ingested to excess. However, if aspartame ingestion causes you cancer, diabetes or galloping knob-rot, then fear not! Big Pharma has drugs you can buy that will make you better - apart from the side-effects, which can be combated with even more artificial drugs!)
It is, therefore, no surprise that Big Pharma has been and continues to lobby for hemp and suchlike to be criminalized. The same is true of vitamins and such - they create artificial vitamins, artificial preservatives and such because that's where the money is. GM crops have fewer vitamins, minerals and nutrients than natural foods which is why Big Pharma loves GM. If your food isn't giving you what you need then fear not! We've got pills and additives to bridge that gap!
*If you or anyone you know has cancer, do not take my claims here as rock solid. Whilst I am fairly convinced of the truth of what I am saying and would probably try one of these natural remedies before having my body blasted by radiation and poisons should I be diagnosed with cancer, you must do your own research. I take no responsibility except to point you in this direction - whether you take that path or not is up to you.
**A reason why the corporate world wants patents and copyrights to last as long as possible. I'm amongst those who think that if a company develops a perfectly safe cure for cancer or an engine that runs off water then it should have a limited copyright/patent on those things. By all means let a company have exclusivity on such breakthroughs for, say, ten years. Once that ten years is up, any other company capable of doing so should be able to produce those things for five years so long as they pay the original company a royalty on sales. Once this five year period is up, the copyright/patent should be given over completely to the public domain. The current period of the lifetime of the inventor + 70 years is at least 70 years too long. If a corporation is credited as the inventor, then the copyright/patent period could last indefinitely, raking in huge profits for the corporation instead of benefiting as many people as possible. Long copyright/patent periods actually stifle innovation.
And yet, despite all these evil politicians and corporations trying to do us down (apparently), human life expectancy continues to rise. God, we must be a hardy bunch!
Quote from: Old Tankie on 10 June, 2011, 06:47:00 PM
And yet, despite all these evil politicians and corporations trying to do us down (apparently), human life expectancy continues to rise. God, we must be a hardy bunch!
In Nigeria alone about 145 women die each day during pregnancy or childbirth, as do 2,300 children aged five years and under, according to United Nations figures.
Globally, more than 5000 children under five die every day from diarrhoea.
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide: it accounted for 7.9 million deaths (around 13% of all deaths) in 2007.
About 72% of all cancer deaths in 2007 occurred in low- and middle-income countries where expensive artificial drugs cannot be afforded but global rules still ban natural cures (usually as components of loan/trade/aid agreements).
Deaths from cancer worldwide are projected to continue rising, with an estimated 12 million deaths in 2030.
(Statistics taken from the WHO website.)
In developed countries people are increasingly living longer. If you live long enough and manage not to die from anything else, you will eventually get cancer as a consequence of ageing.
Infant mortality and death in childbirth figures are inadmissable in an argument about the banning of natural remedies to further the agenda of global pharmaceuticals corporations.
The statistic about 72% of cancer deaths occurring in low and middle income countries has to be put in the context of what proportion of the world's population lives in low and middle income countries. There are reckoned to be about 195 countries in the world, of which only 30 are considered to be developed.
The availability of effective medicines isn't the only factor to be considered in cancer survival rates. The distribution of cancer risks is one important factor, and the quality of medical care is another. UK cancer survival increased dramatically since the 1980s, not because outlawed folk remedies were legalized, but because health spending was increased and improvements were made to cancer treatment.
Yes, Sharkey, terrible statistics, but are they solely down to the politicians and corporations and have nothing to do with the decadent Western population? Perhaps, in future, before we buy our wonderful children/grand children/nieces/nephews their next pointless toy or present, we should think about donating that same money to an African charity that could supply safe drinking water to children of the same age who are dying of diarrhoea, as I'm typing this.
Of course, that won't happen, because we must get our loved ones the latest computer game or their zillionth cuddly toy. Yeah, go on, blame it all on the politicians and corporations, it'll make you feel better.
Quote from: Old Tankie on 10 June, 2011, 07:38:48 PM
Perhaps, in future, before we buy our wonderful children/grand children/nieces/nephews their next pointless toy or present, we should think about donating that same money to an African charity that could supply safe drinking water to children of the same age who are dying of diarrhoea, as I'm typing this.
Thats a good idea.
Its curious why i never hear Bill Gates the [fake] philanthropist talk about spending his billions on a drinking water programme to provide clean drinking water and irrigation in Africa where there is hardly any.Unfortunately Bill Gates has a fixation on vaccines[produced by bigpharma companies he has shares in] being the panacea of all of the health and mortality problems in Africa.
How very curious ;)
I am going make a miniture lifelike Bill Gates effigy and stick pins in it. >:D
QuoteBill Gates the [fake] philanthropist
I'm not a fan of Gates- more of the opposite in fact, but this is bullshit. Not only that, I fear it may be libel.
Unless you have evidence that he doesn't actually do things like buy medicine and build schools, then I think you should retract that statement.
Quote from: Colin Zeal on 10 June, 2011, 03:32:35 PM
To be fair, Marmite is filth so banning it got the thumbs up from me.
I love it :D
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 10 June, 2011, 07:52:36 PM
I am going make a miniture lifelike Bill Gates effigy and stick pins in it. >:D
(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070817191235/uncyclopedia/images/1/19/Ms_paperclip.jpg)
'I see you are making a miniature, lifelike Bill Gates effigy. Would you like some help with that?'
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 10 June, 2011, 07:55:20 PM
QuoteBill Gates the [fake] philanthropist
I'm not a fan of Gates- more of the opposite in fact, but this is bullshit. Not only that, I fear it may be libel.
Unless you have evidence that he doesn't actually do things like buy medicine and build schools, then I think you should retract that statement.
What we can't even LIBEL people anymore?!
This is the most depressing thing that's ever happened to me - even worse than that time Michael Keaton shot my cousin...
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 10 June, 2011, 07:55:20 PM
QuoteBill Gates the [fake] philanthropist
I'm not a fan of Gates- more of the opposite in fact, but this is bullshit. Not only that, I fear it may be libel.
Unless you have evidence that he doesn't actually do things like buy medicine and build schools, then I think you should retract that statement.
I wasnt saying that Bill Gates doesnt spend money on medicines and schools but i was talking about his interest in vaccines.
Perhaps i worded it wrong and fixation was misread as to the exclusion of everything else.
The Gates foundation do spend on sanitation programmes but going by their own website they say this :
Water and Hygiene:
Over the past several years we have invested significantly in technologies and methods for increasing sustainable access to clean water and hygiene in addition to our funding for sanitation. While our focus is on sanitation, we will continue to provide limited funding to promising clean water and hygiene solutions.
Okay, this thread started as a friendly irreverent discussion of "conspiracy theory" type subjects, and I enjoyed it, but I won't be back after this post as the last few days have seen such a deluge of lies and bullshit that I now realise it's just a safe quarantined part of the board where the usual internet bollox can go on harmlessly without bothering normal folk.
Examples of "last straw" bullshit:
Quote
No discussion and no debate and no referendum [direct democracy] about joining the EU which is part of the Bilderberg agenda
Britain held a referendum about joining the EU on 5th June 1975
QuoteFor example the military intervention in Libya.No discussion and no debate in parliament in the UK
Parliament debated UK military action against Libya on 21st March 2011. Our elected representatives voted 557:13 to take action.
QuoteIt has been shown that a fair few natural substances such as hemp oil, bicarbonate of soda, peach pits and mistletoe (amongst a fair few others) are very effective in curing cancer*
Despite the weaselly disclaimer attached, this makes me fucking angry. Mankind does not and never has found a way to stop the internal destruction that occurs when natural cellular reproduction goes batshit. If fucking peach pits did this, then "big Pharma" would have been establishing vast peach plantations the second it was proved. Some substances may
help to avoid cancer; some substances may
slow the effects of cancer, and even so these effects are difficult to prove, but NOTHING we know of will cure it. Anyone who advocates trawling the internet for hemp oil and mistletoe remedies thinking their cancer is going to be cured are simply victims of exploitation (including people I have known), just as much as idiots hooked on big-pharma antibiotics for the solution to all ills. Those who actually promote such bullshit are no better than mediums, faith healers and snake-oil salesman.
As Tim Minchin put it: "What do they call alternative medicine that is proven to actually work?. They call it medicine."
I've got no time for evil big pharma bastards; and I believe the Bildeburg group are a bunch of evil cunts committed to forging policy that ensure that they and their rich pals stay rich and powerful by shitting on the rest of us from a great height.
This is no secret, this is no conspiracy, but when you try to raise awareness through lies and bullshit, you just do more damage than good. Bottom line, "people" are stupid and very easily bought. Why does Saudi Arabia not have the same demos as the rest of the middle East? Cos they can afford to create loads of non-jobs, handouts and low taxation to buy people's complacency. In the Western world, we're living the high life at the expense of the less-developed world - who's going to vote for lower (but fairer) living standards? we're more bothered about who's judging X-factor than who's facing trial in the Hague.
And part of the reason that the majority of people don't engage with these issues is that since the advent of the internet, the debate seems to be dominated by bullshitters and lunatics.
Peace and farewell, this is my last post on this thread.
Quote from: Old Tankie on 10 June, 2011, 07:38:48 PM
Yes, Sharkey, terrible statistics, but are they solely down to the politicians and corporations and have nothing to do with the decadent Western population? Perhaps, in future, before we buy our wonderful children/grand children/nieces/nephews their next pointless toy or present, we should think about donating that same money to an African charity that could supply safe drinking water to children of the same age who are dying of diarrhoea, as I'm typing this.
Of course, that won't happen, because we must get our loved ones the latest computer game or their zillionth cuddly toy. Yeah, go on, blame it all on the politicians and corporations, it'll make you feel better.
It's not about assigning blame - that's the least productive thing to do. It's about understanding the horrendous flaws in the system and working out how to do things better. This is something we are all responsible for - as you rightly allude. I take my part of that responsibility quite seriously as I hope my trying to put my views across demonstrates. I don't for on second believe that I have all the pieces of the puzzle or understand exactly what's going on with any more clarity, authority or understanding than anyone else. Never believe anything I write here, never take my word for it. If what I say piques your interest, then by all means hit Ixquick or Google and satisfy yourself that I'm talking sense/nonsense.
I don't for one minute think that there are rooms full of Big Pharma executives who sit around all day thinking "how many people can we kill today?" (That said, I know that many "elites" do favour population reduction by fair means or foul and people who do subscribe to this view may make business decisions at least coloured by this type of eugenics.) What I do think is that artificial substances like aspartame are engineered to fulfil a purpose (in this case, a sweetener that doesn't make you fat or rot your teeth) without causing harm. The fact that the engineered substance does transpire to cause harm is then either covered up or played down because the development of said substance has a substantial dollar value attached to it which must be recovered. So, if Substance Y causes diabetes in a smallish number of people then it isn't the end of the world for the company who makes Substance Y because they also make Substance X which happens to be a diabetes drug. These things evolve.
Let me just present you with this hypothetical:
Let's imagine that I discover that I've got cancer. In this country, the only legal way to treat cancer is through licensed medicine which is very harsh and destructive.
In reality, I have three choices: Firstly, I could ignore the diagnosis altogether and just live with it. Secondly, I could deliver myself into the hands of modern western medicine which will bombard me with radiation, inject me with toxic chemicals or even slice me open and cut chunks of me away. Thirdly, I could rub a drop of hemp oil into my gums once a day for a month. Given the option, which one should I choose? Which one would you choose?
There are many corporate agendas in the world - sometimes the overlap or coincide and then that can look like a large conspiracy instead of lots of little pockets of corporate self-interest.
BTW, if anyone has Sky TV: Sky Channel 201, Showcase TV (free) is showing the documentary "Cancer: Forbidden Cures" at 10pm this evening.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 10 June, 2011, 09:27:38 PM
In reality, I have three choices: Firstly, I could ignore the diagnosis altogether and just live with it. Secondly, I could deliver myself into the hands of modern western medicine which will bombard me with radiation, inject me with toxic chemicals or even slice me open and cut chunks of me away. Thirdly, I could rub a drop of hemp oil into my gums once a day for a month. Given the option, which one should I choose? Which one would you choose?
The one that works. Listen to your Doctor. Most of them are decent honest people. At least the ones I know are.
Dentists are bastards though. Now
they are definitely up to something. You can indentify
anyone from their dental records. Clearly dentists have a huge record of
everyone. But it goes deeper, the dentists are in bed with the confectionary and sweeties giants. Coca-Cola owns your dentist. Coca-Cola gives you cavities, dentists give you fillings. When these fillings react with the flouride
the dentists insist we should have in our water supply, it sends out an electro-chemical signal with which their spy satellites track you.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 10 June, 2011, 09:13:11 PM
Mankind does not and never has found a way to stop the internal destruction that occurs when natural cellular reproduction goes batshit. If fucking peach pits did this, then "big Pharma" would have been establishing vast peach plantations the second it was proved.
Peace and farewell, this is my last post on this thread.
As I said, peach plantations would be no good to Big Pharma as they cannot patent naturally occurring substances. They may be able to create, say, "Peach Pit Powders" to treat certain cancers, but their profits from such a thing would be tiny compared to what they can charge for a single chemotherapy pill.
Rene Caisse, a nurse in the first half of the last century, cured hundreds of cancer patients with a mixture of herbs she learned from a Native American healer. The medical establishment refused to even look at her results, let alone test the mixture (which she called Essiac) to prove or disprove its efficacy.
"As Tim Minchin put it: "What do they call alternative medicine that is proven to actually work?. They call it medicine.""
Tim Minchin the comedian? Oh well, that's me sold. If Mr Minchin is satisfied that there is not one single naturally occurring substance on Earth that is effective against cancer then who am I to argue?
Farewell, DDD - go in peace. I certainly wasn't trying to convince you or recruit you and my "mealy mouthed disclaimer" that I
may be wrong about what I've learned was meant respectfully to all. That admission is more than you'll get from a modern oncologist, though.
Quote from: pops1983 on 10 June, 2011, 09:49:11 PM
Listen to your Doctor. Most of them are decent honest people. At least the ones I know are.
You are absolutely right; the overwhelming majority of doctors are decent, honest and caring people. Your GP, though, probably does not undertake medical research. Drugs companies do most of the research and tell the doctors what they've discovered - which is generally that they've invented a new drug which is good for this or that. No matter how decent and honest a doctor is, if he or she is being given skewed data to begin with then he or she can only pass on skewed data to their patients in good faith.
Not every artificial remedy is bad, poisonous or evil - but most of them are expensive. Wherever possible, I firmly believe that natural remedies are preferable but in recent times we seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why invent something that costs $300 a pill when you could, say, grind a couple of wild seeds to powder instead?
Edit: Rene Caisse obituary: http://www.essiacinfo.org/caisse_pop_4.htm (http://www.essiacinfo.org/caisse_pop_4.htm)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 10 June, 2011, 10:02:09 PM
Drugs companies do most of the research and tell the doctors what they've discovered - which is generally that they've invented a new drug which is good for this or that. No matter how decent and honest a doctor is, if he or she is being given skewed data to begin with then he or she can only pass on skewed data to their patients in good faith.
You can't conduct a clinical trial without the help of doctors. After a drug has been given to healthy people (Phase I) to demonstrate that it is at least non-fatal and reasonably safe and the known side-effects are acceptable, Phase III of a clinical trial - the last before commercialization - is to administer the drug to patients. You can't administer drugs to people without the help of doctors. Doctors are responsible for collecting the data during psae II and Phase III of a clinical trial. If doctors are at all misled about the benefits of a drug, then other doctors further up the chain are at least partly responsible.
You shouldnt get annoyed about it all as its just comments on the internet.
Chill .Peace to you brother :D
In any event people should check things out for themselves and be their own judge.
The EEC/EU referendum in 1975 was for continued membership of the EEC which is something else entirely to the EU as it is now as it was a trading bloc so the voters in the UK voted yes on the basis of staying in a trading bloc but they didnt vote on being a member of the EU as it is now as it didnt exist then in practice.
We were promised a referendum and the new labour govt renaged on its promise and Cameron also promised a referendum [pre-election] and for a short while afterwards and then nothing as the topic is off the menu and they later presented the AV referendum as something of a distraction.
As for the UK govt voting on Libya they were voting on something that had already begun and the matter was put to the vote in a very short space of time and there was no emergency session held regarding this as far as i know.The case for it [partly after the event] was made to be compelling as it was sold on humanitarian grounds and the enforcement of a no fly zone if a no fly zone means one that involves NATO fighter planes.They just sat round for a day while debating other topics such as the lowering of the drink drive limit and all the while the UK was launching Tomahawk missiles from submarines at Libya and then this all the while knowing that the UK military was massing outside Libya in preperation for this which had been going on for weeks yet there was no discussion about this and then all of a sudden a UN resolution was passed and the UK being a member of the UN Security Council was obliged to uphold the resolution.
The UK in its UN capacity pushed for the resolution which it got and then the govt voted on the resolution that the UK was already committed to or else it wouldnt have pushed for it so its not as if there was ever going to be a majority against it and even if there was it wouldnt have made any difference at all as the UN has assumed authority over the UK govt with the UK being a memeber of the Security Council so it was a foregone conclusion with any debate and vote being a complete farce.
Not much dissent there and if there was it wouldnt have made any difference and if the vote did make any difference then they obviously think voting for an open ended offensive that will cost billions and billions is somehow beneficial to the people of the UK.
They were all probably compelled to vote in favor as there is a lot of compelling that goes on in govt.
Quote"As Tim Minchin put it: "What do they call alternative medicine that is proven to actually work?. They call it medicine.""
Tim Minchin the comedian? Oh well, that's me sold. If Mr Minchin is satisfied that there is not one single naturally occurring substance on Earth that is effective against cancer then who am I to argue?
Now that's just fucking silly. You're not a stupid man- you know he neither said nor meant that, so why the cheap jibe?
And I do find it curious that you question his opinion (or rather the spin you chose to put on it) because it was stated by a comedian, but are will to accept the word of someone on the internet over that of a fire fighter or metallurgist when the reasons for the collapse of the twin towers are explained.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 10 June, 2011, 09:51:42 PM"As Tim Minchin put it: "What do they call alternative medicine that is proven to actually work?. They call it medicine.""
Tim Minchin the comedian? Oh well, that's me sold. If Mr Minchin is satisfied that there is not one single naturally occurring substance on Earth that is effective against cancer then who am I to argue?
I'm not inclined to defend large drug companies who I'm sure are only interested in drug research as a means to maximise profits, who are definitely guilty of profiteering and immoral behaviour and who I think are increasingly engaged in a project to peddle medical solutions to non-existent social problems. However, I also think proper testing and regulation are essential in something as potentially harmful as medicine. You appear to have (I assume deliberately) misinterpreted DDD's point. If a "naturally occuring substance" is proven to have observable, verifiable effects measured in recognised trials against any condition and is subsequently used as the basis of treatment then it is a medicine. Simple as that.
To answer your question about what treatment I'd choose having been diagnosed with cancer. That's also simple. The regime which has a wealth of documented and empiric evidence for its efficacy in the amelioration of my symptoms.
I may be misreading, but you appear to be afflicted with the old "natural good, synthetic bad" malaise. Here's the thing. Nature is made of chemicals. Radiation is a natural process. Chemicals combine and react with each other in unpredictable ways all the time. Humans have been taking naturally ocurring substances (let's take flint as an example) for thousands of years and through various refining processes (let's say hammering, shaving and sharpening the initially shapeless, useless block of stone) synthesising something more concentrated and useful (let's say an arrowhead.) Refinement and standardisation of chemicals to make drugs is surely just an extension of this same, admirable, process.
Going back to your hemp oil. If it is effective against my theoretical cancer then how much should I take and how often? The problem with naturally occuring substances is that they don't naturally occur in uniform quanitities or concentrations. In order to ensure a standarised dosage you need refinement and quality control. As far as I'm concerned, proper legal regulation of this process is an absolute necessity. If you're making health-giving claims for your product then you most definitely have to be able to assure me I'm getting a certain amount in a certain way. When you mentioned it not being legal to provide other treatments, I think (could be wrong) you were talking about this. As far as I know (again, you're probably better informed on this) you can sell whatever you like, you just can't make claims about it's medicinal properties if it hasn't actually been tested and licenced. Why's this a big deal for the suppliers? Because you can charge more and sell more if people believe it's good for them. There's just as much vile profiteering from other people's misery in the snake oil industry as there is in the pharmaceutical industry. Possibly more, given that they actually know they're lying.
Its apricot kernels that are thought to cure cancer or the soft substance inside them and the active ingredient is Vitamin B17.
Now supposing this is proven to be a fact then the drug companies could produce a cancer cure that is 100 percent effective but they cant patent the active ingredient but they could still sell the cure and they would have to be able to produce enough of the active ingredient but this would make the rest of cancer treatment industry redundant apart from that which would be researching vit B17 so there would be a massive loss to the majority of the cancer research industry as it is a billion $$$$$$$$$$$$$ plus industry so think of the implications of that.
Also one company would not have the monopoly of the market either as anyone can produce the active ingredient so competition would be based on costs and its a cheap ingredient so in terms of profitability if you are a drug company then its easy to see that there isnt much cash to be made out of it.
Add that to the losses and collapse of the cancer research industry.
If you were motivated by cash and you had a billion dollar fortune 500 company with shareholders all wanting their share of the goose that lays the golden egg what would you be thinking :-*
Think about it.
Yeah, that's why alchemical research into the Philosopher's stone has halted.
Laughter is the best medicine. Bigfoot told me so.
This is water I'm not keen on swimming in, but I direct everyone who hasn't already been to Ben Goldacre's blog http://www.badscience.net/, (http://ttp://www.badscience.net/,) and indeed his excellent book Bad Science. There you will see someone who actively fights both the claims of Big Pharma, Alternative Medicine and their allies The Meja and the Gubbermint with the tools of science and reason.
From following Dr. Goldacre for several years now one thing is clear to me: people become doctors and medical scientists to help people. Any conspiracy to subvert that aim will be resisted by the best and the brightest. If there were scientifically demonstrable cures of the kind claimed by the alternative community, the medical profession would be all over them. And with that endorsement Boots would be selling them by the truckload. And everyone would win. Sick people don't earn money, dead people don't spend it: a long prosperous life is in everyone's interests, profit-based and otherwise.
QuoteIts apricot kernels that are thought to cure cancer
Really? All cancers? Everything from melanomas to leukemia? REALLY?
This thread is becming unhealthy. I prescribe a change of subject.
FIFA have hired Henry Kissenger. Any thoughts?
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 10 June, 2011, 11:20:11 PM
QuoteIts apricot kernels that are thought to cure cancer
Really? All cancers? Everything from melanomas to leukemia? REALLY?
[I have been drinking.... :o]
Heres a link to a website with lots of articles about it.If you are interested in Natural* health then this website is the most reliable and its all in one place which makes it all easy rather than trawling thorough endless websites wanting to sell you their products as well as the quacks:
http://www.naturalnews.com/GoogleSearchResults.html?q=vitamin+b17&cx=010579349100583850635%3Aw_kzwe9_yca&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=UTF-8&sa.x=38&sa.y=11&sa=Search&siteurl=www.naturalnews.com%2Fcancer.html#1348 (http://www.naturalnews.com/GoogleSearchResults.html?q=vitamin+b17&cx=010579349100583850635%3Aw_kzwe9_yca&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=UTF-8&sa.x=38&sa.y=11&sa=Search&siteurl=www.naturalnews.com%2Fcancer.html#1348)
In some cases their is still a case for orthodox cancer treatment in certain cases but having watched a very close relative deteriorate and then die from a rare form of cancer i have mixed feelings on the subject.In some cases like my brother if its in its advanced stages then there is really no alternative to cutting bits out to contain it but its the chemotherapy treatment that i am sceptical of and so was my brother who was convinced he was subjected to the wrong kind of treatment.The consultant/Doctor treating my brother was not a bad guy as himself and others offer what they believe is the best possible treatment possible but that doesnt make them infallible or give them the ability to save a patient 100 percent of the time but it doesnt mean they are Dr Death either.
I dont know if Vit B17 works as a cure apart from what i have read as i have had no direct experience of it but if there is evidence that it does cure cancer then it should be subjected to proper research if it offers an alternative to being pumped full of toxic chemicals while you are in already critcal state of health.
Those are my thoughts on it and everyone is free to think what they like about it as i dont particularly care what others think anyway.
You get good doctors and bad doctors but doctors cant be blamed as they are trained in one school of medicine and if you dont like it then dont go to a doctor as everyone has the choice as its their health and they make their own choices.Your GP only really perscribe in a lot of cases and they act on the info they have been given regarding drugs with the best intentions a lot of the time.
Everything has to black and white to a lot of people but in reality its not like that.
Doctors are not infallible as they get things wrong and if you are seriously ill then get more than one opinion.A close friend of mine was diagnosed with ME and suffered with it for years and never got a second opinion and then it finally transpired he had a type of Leukemia but by that point it was too late and he was admitted to hospital and went into a coma and then died.
Dont trust orthodox medicine implicitely and dont trust alternative medicine implicitly.Do your own research as the NHS isnt going to do it for you.
Codex Alimentaris is Fascism and denies you choice so Fuck them and as usual with these things it is a trojan horse that is used against you while it is sold as something that is meant to protect you through regulation which it partly does but banning rock salt ????
Denied the right to eat rock salt or to sell it ?
Big govt and the UN care about my health so much that they restrict the sale of all that nasty rock salt that has all those nasty minerals and rare earth elements in it that are so bad for your health as they care about me so much ?
I feel so much more safe and secure without all that nasty rock salt and all those nasty vitamins.
Do me a fucking favor.please..... :lol: :crazy:
In the old days alternative medicine was known as complimentary medicine which meant it was complimentary rather than something that is subjected to criminalisation.
I have been drinking but i have really enjoyed this thread and reading the comments and typing the replies and it brightened up an otherwise boring night.
Quote from: pops1983 on 11 June, 2011, 12:09:17 AM
This thread is becming unhealthy. I prescribe a change of subject.
FIFA have hired Henry Kissenger. Any thoughts?
Henry Kissinger is not in Fifa and never has been.This question has been discounted so please choose another............
*Yes i know its all natural anyway...............
Quote from: House of Usher on 10 June, 2011, 10:09:51 PM
You can't conduct a clinical trial without the help of doctors. After a drug has been given to healthy people (Phase I) to demonstrate that it is at least non-fatal and reasonably safe and the known side-effects are acceptable, Phase III of a clinical trial - the last before commercialization - is to administer the drug to patients. You can't administer drugs to people without the help of doctors. Doctors are responsible for collecting the data during psae II and Phase III of a clinical trial. If doctors are at all misled about the benefits of a drug, then other doctors further up the chain are at least partly responsible.
Granted. However: Do the doctors administering the drugs know what's in those drugs, or is their impartiality enhanced by not knowing? Whilst doctors do indeed administer and take note, they're basically just acting as glorified Pez dispensers. Furthermore, think about this: It's the drug companies who fund these trials with a view to ending up with a commercially viable product. Which drug company is going to spend £50million testing hemp oil in this way when they won't be able to patent the result? Not only will the drug companies not be able to patent the plant but a positive result will cost them millions, maybe even billions, in cancer drug revenue when it's discovered that a practically free weed does the job of a £5,000 per month artificial, patented drug. This is why you always hear opponents of natural cancer cures (et al) saying things like "there is absolutely no scientific evidence for these claims." There is no scientific evidence because the drug companies refuse to spend the money gathering it. It's a classic Catch 22 situation.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 10 June, 2011, 10:37:30 PM
Quote"As Tim Minchin put it: "What do they call alternative medicine that is proven to actually work?. They call it medicine.""
Tim Minchin the comedian? Oh well, that's me sold. If Mr Minchin is satisfied that there is not one single naturally occurring substance on Earth that is effective against cancer then who am I to argue?
Now that's just fucking silly. You're not a stupid man- you know he neither said nor meant that, so why the cheap jibe?
And I do find it curious that you question his opinion (or rather the spin you chose to put on it) because it was stated by a comedian, but are will to accept the word of someone on the internet over that of a fire fighter or metallurgist when the reasons for the collapse of the twin towers are explained.
The cheap jibe was my frustration, and you're right - maybe it was wrong of me to say that. However, DDD also said "Mankind does not and never has found a way to stop the internal destruction that occurs when natural cellular reproduction goes batshit. If fucking peach pits did this, then "big Pharma" would have been establishing vast peach plantations the second it was proved." If he'd bothered to Google any of the cancer therapies I've mentioned so far (or the Gerson Therapy, Vitamin B17, Shark Cartilage, Iscador or the role of the fungus Candida Albicans in possibly causing cancers, or watched the documentary "Cancer: The Forbidden Cures", or any number of other things like that) then he'd see that mankind has known how to cure many (not all) cancers for a great many years. There are Indian medical books from 1,000 years ago that describe the efficacy of certain alkalis on hard to cure cancers.
All this he pooh-poohed because, I assume, he just didn't want to think about it or believe that alternatives to conventional, destructive therapies are the Only Way. Then he throws in a quip by a comedian whose job is to make people laugh as if that's somehow a valid argument. So yes, I got frustrated and made that silly comment. You're right, it was a cheap shot. You're also wrong - it would appear that by making that cheap jibe we have proved that I am indeed a stupid man :lol:
Quote from: The Cosh on 10 June, 2011, 10:56:43 PM
If a "naturally occuring substance" is proven to have observable, verifiable effects measured in recognised trials against any condition and is subsequently used as the basis of treatment then it is a medicine. Simple as that.
To answer your question about what treatment I'd choose having been diagnosed with cancer. That's also simple. The regime which has a wealth of documented and empiric evidence for its efficacy in the amelioration of my symptoms.
I may be misreading, but you appear to be afflicted with the old "natural good, synthetic bad" malaise....
Going back to your hemp oil. If it is effective against my theoretical cancer then how much should I take and how often?
I hope my earlier waffling answered some of this, Cosh.
As to dosage of hemp oil - without looking it up I can only give a brief, rough description of the process. First, you need a large bucket full of bone dry hemp buds, to which you add about two gallons of solvent like pure naphtha or isopropyl alcohol. It's best to soak the buds more than once to extract all the THC from the hemp. The solvent is then gently boiled off (be VERY careful at this stage as the fumes can easily ignite). Eventually, you will be left with a dark brown or amber oil (not much - say enough to fill a modest syringe). A drop of this oil about the same size as a grain of rice rubbed into the gums two to four times a day for a month is enough to cure most internal cancers. For skin cancers, simply rub the same amount into the exposed melanoma. (Another mealy-mouthed disclaimer here - I wrote that from memory so if you want to do it yourself you'd best look it up to be sure.)
Quote from: TordelBack on 10 June, 2011, 11:17:40 PM
...people become doctors and medical scientists to help people. Any conspiracy to subvert that aim will be resisted by the best and the brightest. If there were scientifically demonstrable cures of the kind claimed by the alternative community, the medical profession would be all over them. And with that endorsement Boots would be selling them by the truckload. And everyone would win. Sick people don't earn money, dead people don't spend it: a long prosperous life is in everyone's interests, profit-based and otherwise.
Drug companies do want you to live long lives - long,
unhealthy lives. If the drugs they made cured people, their own business Model would destroy them. Drug companies fund medical schools, research, advertising. They send doctors freebies and gifts right from Day 1 of medical school. Doctors have to be clever to learn all they need to learn but just stop and think for a minute; when you go to the doctor's, 90% of the time, what do you come out with? A prescription. The other 10% of the time you come out with a referral to another doctor who is a specialist in a certain area of issuing prescriptions. It is how the doctors have been taught. As for Boots selling "complimentary medicines" - that's what kicked this discussion off: Codex Alimentarius - an attempt to make natural "scientifically unproven" (see above) medicines and additives illegal.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 10 June, 2011, 11:20:11 PM
QuoteIts apricot kernels that are thought to cure cancer
Really? All cancers? Everything from melanomas to leukemia? REALLY?
Peter's right - although I think peach pits also contain VB17.
Some cancers hare harder to cure than others, but all seem to be curable.The hardest cancer to cure is bone cancer because bones receive very little blood and it is therefore hard to use the bloodstream to administer any treatments.
Jeez - that turned into a bit of a novel, didn't it! Sorry about that!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 June, 2011, 12:48:50 AM
Do the doctors administering the drugs know what's in those drugs, or is their impartiality enhanced by not knowing?
No, not if they're doing a double blind test. They do have protocols for these things. Imperical method and all that. Control groups and suchlike. It may not be perfect, but it's fairly rigorous.
Let me just state for the record that I'm sure many artificial drugs are perfectly efficacious. If they don't work, they won't make money. If they kill people, they won't make money. If they cause massive side-effects, they won't make money. However, if they cause slight side-effects then they actually make more money because then they can be sold along with other drugs to alleviate the side-effects. What Big Pharma is essentially doing is trying to re-invent the wheel for profit. If any industry should be nationalized, it's the drugs companies. A government would be much better placed to thoroughly test the efficacy of the above mentioned cures and treatments as governments don't need to make a profit. Indeed, government run pharmacological production would probably welcome these much cheaper options leading to, perversely, probably the exact opposite of the situation we have now where they'd rather test dandelions than highly complex chemicals to save money.
All we need is a bit of common sense. A bit of balance.
Lawful Disobedience: ARREST THAT JUDGE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6FUawBzSgQ&feature=share (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6FUawBzSgQ&feature=share)
Perhaps i worded it wrong and fixation was misread as to the exclusion of everything else.
Are you trying to pull the piss out of me Pete?
Because on this forum, I've 'ad th' best.
I've 'ad Rennie, Spurrior, Timson, Teague, the best, Molcher, Wyatt, you hear me... Not to mention the best o' th' rest ?
QuoteHeres a link to a website with lots of articles about it.If you are interested in Natural* health then this website is the most reliable and its all in one place which makes it all easy rather than trawling thorough endless websites wanting to sell you their products as well as the quacks:
http://www.naturalnews.com/GoogleSearchResults.html?q=vitamin+b17&cx=010579349100583850635%3Aw_kzwe9_yca&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=UTF-8&sa.x=38&sa.y=11&sa=Search&siteurl=www.naturalnews.com%2Fcancer.html#1348
So I then looked up this Wonder drug on other sites and found this:
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/laetrile.html
QuoteLaetrile is the trade name for laevo-mandelonitrile-beta-glucuronoside, a substance allegedly synthesized by Ernst T. Krebs, Jr., and registered with the U.S. Patent Office for the treatment of "disorders of intestinal fermentation." This compound is chemically related to amygdalin, a substance found naturally in the pits of apricots and various other fruits... It was tried as an anticancer agent in Germany in 1892, but was discarded as ineffective and too toxic for that purpose. During the early 1950s, Ernst T. Krebs, Sr., M.D., and his son Ernst, Jr., began using a "purified" form of amygdalin to treat cancer patients. Since that time scientists have tested substances called "Laetrile" in more than 20 animal tumor models as well as in humans and found no benefit either alone or together with other substances.
Who needs 'Big Pharma' when you have these fucking con men ripping off the poor, scared and desperate, eh?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 June, 2011, 12:48:50 AMWhich drug company is going to spend £50million testing hemp oil in this way when they won't be able to patent the result? Not only will the drug companies not be able to patent the plant but a positive result will cost them millions, maybe even billions, in cancer drug revenue when it's discovered that a practically free weed does the job of a £5,000 per month artificial, patented drug. This is why you always hear opponents of natural cancer cures (et al) saying things like "there is absolutely no scientific evidence for these claims." There is no scientific evidence because the drug companies refuse to spend the money gathering it. It's a classic Catch 22 situation.
In pharmaceuticals development, £50 million is chickenfeed, and if you thought that Big Pharma wasn't dipping its toes in the cannabinoid pharmaceuticals market you'd be wrong.
http://www.gwpharm.com/release-sativex-launch.aspx (http://www.gwpharm.com/release-sativex-launch.aspx)
Sativex Oromucosal Spray
QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE COMPOSITION
Each ml contains: 38-44 mg and 35-42 mg of two extracts (as soft extracts) from Cannabis sativa
L., folium cum flore (Cannabis leaf and flower) corresponding to 27 mg delta-
9-tetrahydrocannabinol and 25 mg cannabidiol.
Extraction solvent: Liquid carbon dioxide.
Each 100 microlitre spray contains:
2.7 mg delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and 2.5 mg cannabidiol (CBD).
Each 100 microlitre spray also contains up to 0.04 g alcohol.
List of excipients: Ethanol anhydrous, Propylene glycol, Peppermint oil.
And the cost? 3x10ml Vial = £480.00
Seems a tad expensive for what's in it.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 11 June, 2011, 09:57:45 AM
QuoteHeres a link to a website with lots of articles about it.If you are interested in Natural* health then this website is the most reliable and its all in one place which makes it all easy rather than trawling thorough endless websites wanting to sell you their products as well as the quacks:
http://www.naturalnews.com/GoogleSearchResults.html?q=vitamin+b17&cx=010579349100583850635%3Aw_kzwe9_yca&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=UTF-8&sa.x=38&sa.y=11&sa=Search&siteurl=www.naturalnews.com%2Fcancer.html#1348
So I then looked up this Wonder drug on other sites and found this:
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/laetrile.html
QuoteLaetrile is the trade name for laevo-mandelonitrile-beta-glucuronoside, a substance allegedly synthesized by Ernst T. Krebs, Jr., and registered with the U.S. Patent Office for the treatment of "disorders of intestinal fermentation." This compound is chemically related to amygdalin, a substance found naturally in the pits of apricots and various other fruits... It was tried as an anticancer agent in Germany in 1892, but was discarded as ineffective and too toxic for that purpose. During the early 1950s, Ernst T. Krebs, Sr., M.D., and his son Ernst, Jr., began using a "purified" form of amygdalin to treat cancer patients. Since that time scientists have tested substances called "Laetrile" in more than 20 animal tumor models as well as in humans and found no benefit either alone or together with other substances.
Who needs 'Big Pharma' when you have these fucking con men ripping off the poor, scared and desperate, eh?
Fair enough as there is very little evidence that proves it cures cancer and the strongest case for it is that there are tribes of people who live in remote areas whose diets are high in B17 where there are no instances of cancer.
Anyway forget apricot kernels as Turmeric seems to be far more effective in treating cancer and even Cancer Research are talking about it:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NP_RfoLKzl0J:www.cancerhelp.org.uk/about-cancer/cancer-questions/can-turmeric-prevent-bowel-cancer+turmeric+cancer+cure&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NP_RfoLKzl0J:www.cancerhelp.org.uk/about-cancer/cancer-questions/can-turmeric-prevent-bowel-cancer+turmeric+cancer+cure&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8328377.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8328377.stm)
I have experience of this myself and while it doesnt prove turmeric cures cancer its interesting given the fact it is being studied.I had a mole that appeared out of nowhere that grew in size and seemed to have similarities to a Melanoma.I had this when i was at the HI-EX.I went to a GP about it who said it wasnt "sinister" but no tests were done and it was left at that.I didnt bother going to see a specialist.It was itchy and had a scabby surface to it.I didnt know it was cancer for sure but it felt like there was something wrong.
Back in december i started taking a very small amount of ground turmeric daily as a detox and i noticed that what i thought was Melanoma as in the mole started to fade and shrink in size to the point now where there is a very faint trace of the mole and its returning to normal skin as it was before the mole appeared.
When one thinks of all the plastics, metals, insecticides, hormones and Christ knows what else that surround us these days it's no wonder so many people are falling ill. When I was at primary school, I only remember one kid having asthma - now it seems like every other child has it.
QuoteAnyway forget apricot kernels
No, let's not. It is not acceptable to throw shit like 'Apricot kernels cure all cancer' and then say 'Anyway forget it' when someone presents you with evidence to the contrary, and then follow it up with something equally left field.
If you don't want to be taken to task for making extraordinary claims, then don't make them
QuoteI have experience of this myself
You have? Okay...
Quoteand while it doesnt prove turmeric cures cancer
Ah- so actually you haven't. Why mention it then?
'Fair enough as there is very little evidence that proves it cures cancer and the strongest case for it is that there are tribes of people who live in remote areas whose diets are high in B17 where there are no instances of cancer'.
They could also have no instances traffic polution, plastic products surrounding them from birth, processed foods, meat injected with protiens and growth hormones... doesn't prove anything.
I'd put money on guessing that the tribes that eat long-pig have no instances of cancer, should we all start eating that?
Go to the badscience page, read learn!! ::)
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 11 June, 2011, 12:42:02 AM
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 10 June, 2011, 11:20:11 PM
QuoteIts apricot kernels that are thought to cure cancer
Really? All cancers? Everything from melanomas to leukemia? REALLY?
[I have been drinking.... :o]
Heres a link to a website with lots of articles about it.If you are interested in Natural* health then this website is the most reliable and its all in one place which makes it all easy rather than trawling thorough endless websites wanting to sell you their products as well as the quacks:
http://www.naturalnews.com/GoogleSearchResults.html?q=vitamin+b17&cx=010579349100583850635%3Aw_kzwe9_yca&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=UTF-8&sa.x=38&sa.y=11&sa=Search&siteurl=www.naturalnews.com%2Fcancer.html#1348 (http://www.naturalnews.com/GoogleSearchResults.html?q=vitamin+b17&cx=010579349100583850635%3Aw_kzwe9_yca&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=UTF-8&sa.x=38&sa.y=11&sa=Search&siteurl=www.naturalnews.com%2Fcancer.html#1348)
An internal search on someone's website isn't that useful. This would have been better:
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=vitamin+b17+cancer
Just a quick selection from the first page:
The vitamin fraud in cancer quackery - freely available to read online:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129741/
QuoteAlternative Cancer Cures: "Unproven" or "Disproven"?
Oncology has always coexisted with therapies offered outside of conventional cancer treatment centers and based on theories not found in biomedicine. These alternative cancer cures have often been described as "unproven," suggesting that appropriate clinical trials have not been conducted and that the therapeutic value of the treatment is unknown. Contrary to much popular and scientific writing, many alternative cancer treatments have been investigated in good quality clinical trials, and they have been shown to be ineffective. In this article, clinical trial data on a number of alternative cancer cures including Livingston-Wheeler, Di Bella Multitherapy, antineoplastons, vitamin C, hydrazine sulfate, Laetrile, and psychotherapy are reviewed. The label "unproven" is inappropriate for such therapies; it is time to assert that many alternative cancer therapies have been "disproven."
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/canjclin.54.2.110/full
Obviously, if I or a close family member, had cancer I'd want to research things more thoroughly (and someone is always perfectly welcome not to go with the doctor's advice and rub hemp oil on their gums if they want) but on a quick skim there I'd have to say I'd be leaning towards the more unpleasant but effective medical treatments.
Let's just hope that none of us ever has to test it.
Quote from: Proudhuff on 11 June, 2011, 03:31:53 PM
'Fair enough as there is very little evidence that proves it cures cancer and the strongest case for it is that there are tribes of people who live in remote areas whose diets are high in B17 where there are no instances of cancer'.
They could also have no instances traffic polution, plastic products surrounding them from birth, processed foods, meat injected with protiens and growth hormones... doesn't prove anything.
Go to the badscience page, read learn!! ::)
I was going to say the same thing as its obvious as its a clean enviroment.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 11 June, 2011, 03:12:00 PM
QuoteAnyway forget apricot kernels
No, let's not. It is not acceptable to throw shit like 'Apricot kernels cure all cancer' and then say 'Anyway forget it' when someone presents you with evidence to the contrary, and then follow it up with something equally left field.
If you don't want to be taken to task for making extraordinary claims, then don't make them
QuoteI have experience of this myself
You have? Okay...
Quoteand while it doesnt prove turmeric cures cancer
Ah- so actually you haven't. Why mention it then?
So when i make statements that are incorrect [despite making no absolute claims as i used terms like "If" and "are thought to"] and i am corrected and state that i am wrong its still not good enough for you ?
I have already said that "there is very little evidence that b17 cures cancer" going by the article you linked to.
This is what happens in debate as its quite normal and if claims i have made are wrong then that doesnt mean that i dont want to be taken to task over it as i dont object to being taken to task over anything and if i am proved wrong then its part of the learning process and wheni am debating things i am always reasonable but here you are coming across as somewhat unreasonable.
Where have i said i dont want to be taken to task over anything ?
"Ah so you actually havent..."
My comment was self explanatory and what i thought was Melanoma was not diagnosed as Melanoma as i have already explained.So at present its unknown wether or not i had cancer
"Why mention it then ?"
I mentioned it because i wanted to mention it and i thought it might be of interest and if i want to type an anecdote based on personal experience then i will.
Do i have to ask you first ?
As for Turmeric then the orthodox Cancer Research are researching it and so are others so i dont get why you still call it "Left field" in a dismissive way when the whole point of science and research is to investigate and research and test it so that it can produce empirical evidence for it which is what they are doing.
If science didnt investigate and research new things then technology would never improve.
Anecdotal evidence is nowhere near the same as research.
Admit it - Richmond won that round.
M
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 11 June, 2011, 02:37:56 PMI have experience of this myself and while it doesnt prove turmeric cures cancer its interesting given the fact it is being studied.I had a mole that appeared out of nowhere that grew in size and seemed to have similarities to a Melanoma.I had this when i was at the HI-EX.I went to a GP about it who said it wasnt "sinister" but no tests were done and it was left at that.I didnt bother going to see a specialist.It was itchy and had a scabby surface to it.I didnt know it was cancer for sure but it felt like there was something wrong.
Sounds like a seborrheic keratosis. I had one myself a few years ago - first appeared as a smooth pale brown mole, then suddenly grew rather quickly to a darker, scabbier lump. At this point I went to my GP who gave me, and I quote accurately, "permission to pick". I was advised to rub some greasy moisturiser in to it first. However, all I did was just pick at the edges until it start to bleed, then stopped, then picked again the next day. I'd got rid of it by the end of the week, and now there's no sign it was ever there. (It goes without saying that I'd advise checking these things with GPs before picking, of course.)
We see heaps of bits of skin in the lab every week - sometimes it's hard to comprehend the sheer number of people who've had bits of skin sliced, excised or punched. Same for the number of people who've had tubes stuck up one end or the other to sample their guts.
Regards
Robin
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 June, 2011, 02:48:19 PM
When one thinks of all the plastics, metals, insecticides, hormones and Christ knows what else that surround us these days it's no wonder so many people are falling ill. When I was at primary school, I only remember one kid having asthma - now it seems like every other child has it.
I'm struggling with this point. I wouldn't deny that those things can have adverse effects on Human physiology, but, but, almost everything can. The things you've listed are just products of our modern age, and they cause modern problems. So everyone has asthma now? When my Great Granda was alive everyone had consumption.
Quote from: Mikey on 11 June, 2011, 07:36:51 PM
Anecdotal evidence is nowhere near the same as research.
Admit it - Richmond won that round.
M
I thought that i already had admitted it above.
*
Moving on from that this video was brought to my attention this morning of all times.I knew nothing of it previously and i have watched three quarters of it earlier today.
I am not commenting on its content or its claims so here it is and if you could try not to shoot the messenger[myself] and presume that by providing the link to it i am advocating anything then that would be appreciated.
The Great Cancer Hoax:
http://www.burzynskimovie.com/ (http://www.burzynskimovie.com/)
Ah-I broke my own rule about posting on this thread I see! (Plus the general not when drinking one) Glad I didn't fuel any flames - it was the cheeky red's fault.
M
Quote from: Mikey on 12 June, 2011, 10:21:02 AM
Ah-I broke my own rule about posting on this thread I see! (Plus the general not when drinking one) Glad I didn't fuel any flames - it was the cheeky red's fault.
M
You secure that shit next time Mikey !!
:D
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 12 June, 2011, 12:25:19 AM
... this video was brought to my attention this morning of all times.I knew nothing of it previously and I have watched three quarters of it earlier today.
I am not commenting on its content or its claims so here it is and if you could try not to shoot the messenger[myself] and presume that by providing the link to it i am advocating anything then that would be appreciated.
The Great Cancer Hoax:
http://www.burzynskimovie.com/ (http://www.burzynskimovie.com/)
Of course, one must always be careful with documentaries addressing such subjects (indeed, one must be careful of
any documentary) but this one does seem to be honest and cites references throughout.
It does demonstrate how a cure for cancer would practically destroy the modern cancer treatment industry and bankrupt many drugs companies. There are conspiracies in the world otherwise the word conspiracy would not exist and films like this expose the naked greed which is behind most of them.
In years to come, I hope Dr Burzynski will be remembered in the same way that Christiaan Barnard or Ignaz Semmelweis are remembered today. The only horror is the millions of people who will suffer and die globally while the zealotry of conventional medicine prevails.
Thanks for posting that link, Peter. A thought-provoking and well made film that should be shown to every doctor and health minister.
(http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/moloch4.jpg)
He knows the score.
This thread upsets me. On the one hand I don't want to sound like a consipracy nutjob, but on the other anyone who thinks Big Pharma has our best interests at heart, the majority of GPs genuinely want to help people and that herbal medicine is some kind of hustle is genuinely naive.
But that's just, like, my opinion man.
Quote from: mygrimmbrother on 13 June, 2011, 11:34:44 AM
...but on the other anyone who thinks Big Pharma has our best interests at heart, the majority of GPs genuinely want to help people and that herbal medicine is some kind of hustle is genuinely naive.
I'll give you Big Pharma no problem, but the other two? Yes, that's what I think. Medical professionals
aren't perfect, are
of course influenced by the commercial environment and structures they operate within, but ultimately yes, they want to help people be healthier.
Are you suggesting that homeopaths and the sellers of essential oils
are pure altruists and guardians of hidden truths while Doctors aren't? Because I think the entirety of human history and the bulk of rational thought strongly disagrees with you.
I used to dig up long-dead people for a living - those folk would have killed for a GP or ER visit, but I bet they had access to all the home-grown herbs going, and they still lost over 50% of their live-birth children before they were five.
Quote from: mygrimmbrother on 13 June, 2011, 11:34:44 AM
This thread upsets me. On the one hand I don't want to sound like a consipracy nutjob, but on the other anyone who thinks Big Pharma has our best interests at heart, the majority of GPs genuinely want to help people and that herbal medicine is some kind of hustle is genuinely naive.
But that's just, like, my opinion man.
Depends what you mean by 'herbal medicine'.
If you mean bottles of water that, they claim, contain the memory of something else, then I would say yes- they are absolutely on a hustle. They are fakes and con-men.
If you mean herbal remidies that have been proven to work, then of course they are not. As has been pointed out- we call these herbal cures 'medicine'.
NM
jeez, take a chill pill... what do you mean they ain't been tested yet? ;)
I don't mean homeopathy.
Quote from: mygrimmbrother on 13 June, 2011, 12:13:55 PM
I don't mean homeopathy.
Then I suspect we're all on the same page!
Sweet! Carry on...
Codex Alimentaris is the World Trade Organisation/World Health Organisation working in conjunction with the Bigpharma cartel and international banks so clearly there is nothing untoward going on here at all and its nothing to do with monopolies and the profit motive.
"Harmonisation"
Codex Alimentaris will banish the scourge of vitamin supplements and dietary supplements except for those that they[BigPharma]produce and sell themselves of course at vastly inflated prices which they have licensed themselves to do.Nothing untoward about that.
Theres nothing untoward about drug companies being given a licence to take over the food and health supplements industry wholesale.
Curiously Codex Alimentaris does not require that GM food should be labelled.Nothing untoward about that either.
QuoteCuriously Codex Alimentaris does not require that GM food should be labelled.Nothing untoward about that either.
You also fail to mention that it is voluntary and countries have no obligation to follow it.
http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/food/codex-alimentarius/
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 11:48:31 AM
If you mean bottles of water that, they claim, contain the memory of something else, then I would say yes- they are absolutely on a hustle. They are fakes and con-men.
I'm not so sure:
"Recently, chemists have made the surprising discovery that molecules form clusters that increase in size with dilution. These clusters measure several micro-metres in diameter. The increase in size occurs nonlinearly with dilution and it depends on history, flying in the face of classical chemistry. Indeed, there is as yet no explanation for the phenomenon. It may well be another reflection of the strangeness of water that depends on its quantum properties.
"In the mid-1990s, quantum physicists Del Giudice and Preparata and other colleagues in University of Milan, in Italy, argued that quantum coherent domains measuring 100nm in diameter could arise in pure water. They show how the collective vibrations of the water molecules in the coherent domain eventually become phase-locked to the fluctuations of the global electromagnetic field. In this way, long-lasting, stable oscillations could be maintained in the water.
"One way in which 'memory' might be stored in water is through the excitation of long-lasting coherent oscillations specific to the substances in the homeopathic remedy dissolved in water. Interaction of water molecules with other molecules changes the collective structure of water, which would in turn determine the specific coherent oscillations that will develop. If these become stabilised and maintained by phase coupling between the global field and the excited molecules, then, even when the dissolved substances are diluted away, the water may still carry the coherent oscillations that can 'seed' other volumes of water on dilution." (1)
Of course, this is all Greek to me so I can't say whether water is capable of holding "memories" or not. I can't rule it out, though. If there wasn't
something in homeopathy then people wouldn't use it. That something, of course, may be nothing more than a placebo effect or it may be something that modern science doesn't yet understand. I don't know - and to be frank, neither do you.
I'm a great fan of science, but it is not my religion. I say that because some of the responses I've had from science fans in the past (not here on this thread, I hasten to add) on trying to discuss things like homeopathy prompt knee-jerk dismissal and even anger. I find this very curious from a discipline that is supposed to look at things rationally. It's often like listening to some Evangelist screaming about Heaven and Hell.
As with the cancer treatments we've been discussing I think we need to keep open minds. Science should be investigating these claims thoroughly and if it turns out that hemp oil or B17 or sodium bicarbonate can cure cancers then we shouldn't let the accountants overrule the scientists as is happening now.
At the moment, humanity is such a stupid species. We have all this potential around us but instead of using our resources to investigate these things we'd rather squander them on profits or buying bombs to atomise Iraqis with. (Speaking of which, did you know that depleted uranium microparticles, which can cause cancers and birth defects if inhaled, have been found in the UK? (2) It's unclear whether these microparticles which are created when the DU rounds are fired have arrived on the wind from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya (etc) or from weapons testing at home. This is what we'd rather be spending our money on?)
Earlier on in this thread it was suggested that I think natural stuff is all good and artificial stuff is all bad. This is most certainly not the case. Science is, in my opinion, one of mankind's greatest achievements and most precious assets. My beef is that once the accountants get involved even the most useful of tools can become blunted or misapplied. Going back to pure nature is not the answer and neither is relying entirely on science. We need to use all our assets if we are to survive as a species, and if that means throwing our resources into thoroughly investigating the
possibility that water has a memory then I'd rather do that than just assume that homeopathy must be bollocks simply because
I can't understand how such a thing might work.
(1) http://www.i-sis.org.uk/water3.php
(2) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article732523.ece
QuoteI'm not so sure:
Evidence disagrees with you, I'm afraid.
http://www.dcscience.net/?p=129
'can't say whether water is capable of holding "memories" '
if it does we're all drinkling pish! not to mention every other thing that water has been in contact with ::)
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 01:54:33 PM
QuoteCuriously Codex Alimentaris does not require that GM food should be labelled.Nothing untoward about that either.
You also fail to mention that it is voluntary and countries have no obligation to follow it.
http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/food/codex-alimentarius/
Everything is voluntary. Technically, every EU directive is voluntary because we as a nation have no say in which directives the EU issues. Our government simply volunteers to comply. Bombing Iraq is voluntary. Sending ground troops into Libya is voluntary.
Technically speaking, statute law in this country is also voluntary. There is no common law saying that you must pay a speeding fine, for example - any speeding ticket you get is merely a cleverly worded
invitation to pay.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 02:21:48 PM
QuoteI'm not so sure:
Evidence disagrees with you, I'm afraid.
http://www.dcscience.net/?p=129
A quick Whois search reveals the owner of that web page to be David Colquhoun, who is behind the website Improbable Science and was the Hon. Director of the Wellcome Laboratory for Molecular Pharmacology which is owned by the Wellcome supermarket chain, one of the two largest supermarket chains in Hong Kong. There is no evidence on that page - only opinion. The phrase "pure pseudo-scientific gobblydegook" may sound impressive, but it is not backed up by evidence. Unfortunately, the evidence that disagrees with me is not evidence at all.
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 June, 2011, 02:28:34 PM
'can't say whether water is capable of holding "memories" '
if it does we're all drinkling pish! not to mention every other thing that water has been in contact with ::)
I know I'm risking the ire of Mr Shark again... but you should listen to the Tim Michin song/poem Storm, where he makes this very point.
QuoteThere is no evidence on that page - only opinion
Much the same as yours then?
There is no evidence that water has amemory. It dioesn not matter how it is dressed up or how many times the word quantum is thrown about- there is simply no evidence. If there is, then those with this evidence should present it in a scientific journal, allow it to be peer reviewed and then collect the Nobel proze that would no doubt follow.
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 June, 2011, 02:28:34 PM
'can't say whether water is capable of holding "memories" '
if it does we're all drinkling pish! not to mention every other thing that water has been in contact with ::)
Er, whereabouts does it say that water memory (if such a thing exists) lasts forever and can be neither erased nor re-set? ::)
Edit: Yes, absolutely - I can only speak from my opinion. And in my opinion, it's
possible that water has a "memory" - it does, after all, "remember" how to be a solid, a liquid or a gas. (A spurious point, I know, but used here just to illustrate that the very word "memory" may not be exactly the correct one in the first place.)
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 01:54:33 PM
QuoteCuriously Codex Alimentaris does not require that GM food should be labelled.Nothing untoward about that either.
You also fail to mention that it is voluntary and countries have no obligation to follow it.
http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/food/codex-alimentarius/
Well i do apologise as it is voluntary on a governmental level but the EU has already fully signed up to it[so has the US] and its now been implemented by the EU through its directives.Every EU country is a member of the CODEX commission but the EU has been making something of a stand against GM which is ongoing so it may be that it is subject to a certain amount of discretion or autonomy which depends on how long any particular country can withstand pressure from corporate lobbyists and pressure from other CODEX members as a whole and from the organisation itself which is the WTO/WHO.
It has been adopted by 120 countries worldwide but i dont know if countries can adopt parts of its directives or wether or not by signing up to it they have to adopt it wholesale.
As for being obliged to follow it there is no wording in it that stipulates that any country has to follow its directives to the letter as the wording in it uses the word "shall" which doesnt in itself state that something is either voluntary or mandatory so in time this may be subject to legal battles.Its what is known as an agreement which is a contract of sorts and is therefore binding in that respect.All trade agreements are contracts.
Its only now being implemented so what happens in the long term remains to be seen as in how aggressively govt agencies like the FDA and the UK equivelant decide to implement it and wether it will be abused.
"Every mystery ever solved has turned out to be not magic." Tim Minchin. Now, this I can agree with - so long as we accept that, so far, not every mystery has been solved.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 June, 2011, 03:08:24 PM
"Every mystery ever solved has turned out to be not magic." Tim Minchin. Now, this I can agree with - so long as we accept that, so far, not every mystery has been solved.
It'll be a sad day when we run out of mysteries...
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 02:21:48 PM
QuoteI'm not so sure:
Evidence disagrees with you, I'm afraid.
http://www.dcscience.net/?p=129
From that article:
QuoteIt is sad that an organisation with a respectable sounding title like the Institute of Science in Society is being used to propagate some pure pseudo-scientific gobblydegook. Is it any wonder that journalists and the general public get confused?
Respectable as its title might sound, the Society's acronym is suspiciously esoteric: ISIS (http://www.i-sis.org.uk/about.php), the Egyptian goddess of nature and magic.
There seems to be an implication that no-one has even tried to investigate homeopathy - nothing could be further from the truth. The demonstrable facts are that in all scientifically conducted tests, homeopathy has scored no better than placebo time and time again - for the simple reason that it is a placebo: at the dilutions proposed it is water.
Coupled with no coherent scientific explanation being presented for its claimed effects (timey wimey memory stuff notwithstanding), a clear historical path from outright 18th C quackery of Hahnemann to the pseudo-science of the present day for its practice, and its dismissal as anything other than a complex administration of placebo is not a matter of 'opinion' - it's a matter of rigorous scientific conclusion. Take it by all means, if it makes you feel better (I do, and it does), but it does not have any value as medicine beyond a sugar pill or flavoured water labelled 'Cure'.
And again, I'll say: if this stuff worked, if there was a 'molecular memory' to investigate, scientists would be all over it - new discoveries, practical applications, this is what their dreams are made of. Scientists do not conspire to hide the secrets of the universe, they shout them as loudly as they can to anyone who will listen - makes for very dull parties, but there you go.
Quote from: TordelBack on 13 June, 2011, 03:21:54 PM
Scientists do not conspire to hide the secrets of the universe, they shout them as loudly as they can to anyone who will listen - makes for very dull parties, but there you go.
Absolutely - but accountants are not scientists and corporations are not scientists. As with most things in this day and age, he who pays the piper calls the tune and if the multinational you're doing science for isn't going to pay you to thoroughly investigate something like water memory then you're either going to have to investigate what you're told to investigate or do it on your own dime as an independent researcher with limited resources.
And we all know how society tends to view independent researchers who "shout ... as loudly as they can to anyone who will listen". Scientists are not paragons of virtue who will put their lives and careers on the line for something they don't have the resources to properly investigate - they're just people like you and me and if they get told not to do something enough times, most of them will comply. Science is a job as well as a vocation, so scientists go where the money is - which is generally in big corporations with an interest in maximising the profits of science, not the benefits of science.
Now, I'm not saying that science should accept every theory or hypothesis that's thrown at it, but it seems to me that good old fashioned skepticsm is in danger of being replaced entirely by pointless, automatic denial.
QuoteNow, I'm not saying that science should accept every theory or hypothesis that's thrown at it, but it seems to me that good old fashioned skepticsm is in danger of being replaced entirely by pointless, automatic denial.
I'd agree with this if homeopathy (as that is what we're talking about) had not already been tested under scientific conditions-
repeatedly- and found wanting every single time.
How many times must something be tested by science before the results of that testing are accepted?
I would suggest that the billions of pounds being made every year by people selling this stuff is the reason for the denial of evidence..
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 June, 2011, 02:52:45 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 June, 2011, 02:28:34 PM
'can't say whether water is capable of holding "memories" '
if it does we're all drinkling pish! not to mention every other thing that water has been in contact with ::)
Er, whereabouts does it say that water memory (if such a thing exists) lasts forever and can be neither erased nor re-set? ::)
that would be a very handy (wavey) solution :lol:
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 04:18:55 PM
I'd agree with this if homeopathy (as that is what we're talking about) had not already been tested under scientific conditions- repeatedly- and found wanting every single time.
How many times must something be tested by science before the results of that testing are accepted?
I would suggest that the billions of pounds being made every year by people selling this stuff is the reason for the denial of evidence..
Every single time? Really?
In 1991, three professors of medicine from the Netherlands, none of them homeopaths, performed a meta-analysis of 25 years of clinical studies using homeopathic medicines and published their results in the British Medical Journal (1) This meta-analysis covered 107 controlled trials, of which 81 showed that homeopathic medicines were effective, 24 showed they were ineffective, and 2 were inconclusive.
The professors concluded, "The amount of positive results came as a surprise to us." Specifically, they found that:
--13 of 19 trials showed successful treatment of respiratory infections,
--6 of 7 trials showed positive results in treating other infections,
--5 of 7 trials showed improvement in diseases of the digestive system,
--5 of 5 showed successful treatment of hay fever,
--5 of 7 showed faster recovery after abdominal surgery,
--4 of 6 promoted healing in treating rheumatological disease,
--18 of 20 showed benefit in addressing pain or trauma,
--8 of 10 showed positive results in relieving mental or psychological
problems, and
--13 of 15 showed benefit from miscellaneous diagnoses.
A recent clinical trial evaluating homeopathic medicine was a unique study of the treatment of asthma(2). Researchers at the University of Glasgow used conventional allergy testing to discover which substances these asthma patients were most allergic to. Once this was determined, the subjects were randomized into treatment and placebo groups. Those patients chosen for treatment were given the 30c potency of the substance to which they were most allergic (the most common substance was house dust mite). The researchers called this unique method of individualizing remedies "homeopathic immunotherapy" (homeopathic medicines are usually prescribed based on the patient's idiosyncratic symptoms, not on laboratory analysis or diagnostic categories). Subjects in this experiment were evaluated by both homeopathic and conventional physicians.
This study showed that 82% of the patients given a homeopathic medicine improved, while only 38% of patients given a placebo experienced a similar degree of relief. When asked if they felt the patient received the homeopathic medicine or the placebo, both the patients and the doctors tended to guess correctly.
A study of the homeopathic treatment of migraine headache was conducted in Italy(3). Sixty patients were randomized and entered into a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Patients regularly filled out a questionnaire on the frequency, intensity, and characteristics of their head pain. They were prescribed a single dose of a 30c remedy at four separate times over two-week intervals. Eight remedies were considered, and prescribers were allowed to use any two with a patient. While only 17% of patients given a placebo experienced relief of their migraine pain, an impressive 93% of patients given an individualized homeopathic medicine experienced good results.
I could go on and on and on, and I too would like to ask the same question you did: "How many times must something be tested by science before the results of that testing are accepted?"
(1) J. Kleijnen, P. Knipschild, G. ter Riet, "Clinical Trials of Homoeopathy," British Medical Journal, February 9, 1991, 302:316-323.
(2) David Reilly, Morag Taylor, Neil Beattie, et al., "Is Evidence for Homoeopathy Reproducible?" Lancet, December 10, 1994, 344:1601-6.
(3) Bruno Brigo, and G. Serpelloni, "Homeopathic Treatment of Migraines: A Randomized Double-blind Controlled Study of 60 Cases," Berlin Journal on Research in Homeopathy, March 1991, 1,2:98-106.
(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p147/the_legendary_shark/2000ADonline%20Images/scotty_likes_this.jpg)
QuoteIn 1991,
And... the twenty years of research since then?
I know a GP that uses St. John's Wort. He also admits (as do two other GPs that I know) that his main function as a GP is to get people out of the door as quickly as possible. They're not bad people and wouldn't, as far as I'm aware, ever do you wrong on purpose- but all agree that if they'd really wanted to help people, then they'd have been nurses instead.
I have my own thoughts on placeboes- and homeopathy in general- but nothing that hasn't already been covered.
Here is the science behind homeopathy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpC8BvHyorg&feature=related
Please- do not try and tell me this in in any way a real science.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 06:49:43 PM
QuoteIn 1991,
And... the twenty years of research since then?
No idea. I'm sure more recent studies could be found but, what's the point? Was science before 1991 all wrong and science after 1991 all right? (A very quick search yielded "Effects of homeopathic medications Eupatorium perfoliatum and Arsenicum album on parasitemia of Plasmodium berghei-infected mice" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1475491606001019 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1475491606001019)) - although this was published in 2006 and may also be too old to be relevant.)
It's not my job or intent to defend homeopathy or convince anyone that it works or doesn't work. The examples I cited in my last post were merely an attempt to demonstrate that your assertion of homeopathy being repeatedly found wanting may need some revision.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 07:15:28 PM
Here is the science behind homeopathy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpC8BvHyorg&feature=related
Please- do not try and tell me this in in any way a real science.
Okay, I won't. Anyone can make a YouTube video and without closely examining his content, qualifications or methods I'm not in a position to pass any kind of judgement on Mr Benneth or his claims.
QuoteWas science before 1991 all wrong and science after 1991 all right?
I'm assuming here that you are again deliberately misunderstanding and misrepresenting what I said for some reason, but doing so does make debating the subject with you very difficult.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 June, 2011, 02:17:20 PM
"Recently, chemists have made the surprising discovery that molecules form clusters that increase in size with dilution. These clusters measure several micro-metres in diameter. The increase in size occurs nonlinearly with dilution and it depends on history, flying in the face of classical chemistry. Indeed, there is as yet no explanation for the phenomenon. It may well be another reflection of the strangeness of water that depends on its quantum properties.
"In the mid-1990s, quantum physicists Del Giudice and Preparata and other colleagues in University of Milan, in Italy, argued that quantum coherent domains measuring 100nm in diameter could arise in pure water. They show how the collective vibrations of the water molecules in the coherent domain eventually become phase-locked to the fluctuations of the global electromagnetic field. In this way, long-lasting, stable oscillations could be maintained in the water.
"One way in which 'memory' might be stored in water is through the excitation of long-lasting coherent oscillations specific to the substances in the homeopathic remedy dissolved in water. Interaction of water molecules with other molecules changes the collective structure of water, which would in turn determine the specific coherent oscillations that will develop. If these become stabilised and maintained by phase coupling between the global field and the excited molecules, then, even when the dissolved substances are diluted away, the water may still carry the coherent oscillations that can 'seed' other volumes of water on dilution."
What this all amounts to is an untested hypothesis. Some quantum physicists have suggested a possible pathway/process/mechanism by which water could retain memory in the manner claimed by homeopaths. That doesn't mean to say it actually happens. I believe it was Einstein who explained theoretically the physics involved in time travel. It doesn't mean time travel is necessarily achievable though.
On a different note, even if it were possible for water to retain memory of previously diluted content that is no longer present in any detectable quantity (i.e. it is just water), that doesn't mean to say that such an infinite dilution is effective as medicine.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 09:01:08 PM
QuoteWas science before 1991 all wrong and science after 1991 all right?
I'm assuming here that you are again deliberately misunderstanding and misrepresenting what I said for some reason, but doing so does make debating the subject with you very difficult.
No, no. I'm not having that.
You said "I'd agree with this if homeopathy (as that is what we're talking about) had not
already been tested under scientific conditions- repeatedly- and found wanting every single time.How many times must something be tested by science before the results of that testing are accepted?"
I cited three references where homeopathy has
not been found wanting and you complained that I didn't cite anything after 1991 (even though a December 10, 1994 issue of the Lancet was also cited). You implied that homeopathy has never, ever been shown to have any positive effects whatsoever and I presented data that would seem to indicate the contrary. How is this deliberately misunderstanding and misrepresenting what you said?
Quote from: House of Usher on 13 June, 2011, 09:07:06 PM
What this all amounts to is an untested hypothesis...
There are many untested hypotheses in science. The Big Bang theory, black holes, the brain as the seat of memory. Science does not know as much as it pretends.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 June, 2011, 09:17:06 PM
The brain as the seat of memory. Science does not know as much as it pretends.
On that one I'm fairly convinced by the well-documented case studies of brain injuried people suffering loss of memory. There's a good correlation between Alzheimer's and loss of memory too. I don't know much about astrophysics and cosmology. They're not in my field and I'm not very interested in them, so I tend not to worry about it too much.
Quote from: House of Usher on 13 June, 2011, 09:07:06 PM
I believe it was Einstein who explained theoretically the physics involved in time travel. It doesn't mean time travel is necessarily achievable though.
In the interest of balance, Stephen Hawking also described the Chronology Protection Conjecture, which describes the impossibility of Time Travel. That doesn't mean it's impossible though.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 June, 2011, 09:17:06 PM
Science does not know as much as it pretends.
I take offense at this. Science does not pretend to know anything. The default scientific position on many subjects, homeopathy included, is 'We really just don't know'. The only people claiming to 'know' anything, while citing a scientific basis, are people with an agenda.
I've used homeopathic remedies a few times over the years for minor ailments, (and major insomnia), in spite of being more than a bit sceptical of the whole "memory of water" thing. I reckoned there was no harm in giving them a go.
None of them worked.
So they're rubbish.
So there.
QuoteI cited three references where homeopathy has not been found wanting and you complained that I didn't cite anything after 1991
You cite a Dutch study from 1991. I can find no reports of this in anywhere but homeopathy sites, so really I can make no comment on it if there is no balanced reporting of it- and I can not find one that cites an actual source for this report (although of course there may be one out there).
QuoteAnyone can make a YouTube video and without closely examining his content, qualifications or methods I'm not in a position to pass any kind of judgement on Mr Benneth or his claims.
Mr Benneth is a homeopath. A quick google search would have told you that. So if he is what he claims to be, then it would be reasonable to think he is speaking from a position of knowledge on the subject, don't you think?
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 09:42:19 PM
Mr Benneth is a homeopath. A quick google search would have told you that. So if he is what he claims to be, then it would be reasonable to think he is speaking from a position of knowledge on the subject, don't you think?
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 13 June, 2011, 07:15:28 PM
Here is the science behind homeopathy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpC8BvHyorg&feature=related
Please- do not try and tell me this in in any way a real science.
If you get anywhere near a coherent position, please let me know ;)
Quote from: pops1983 on 13 June, 2011, 09:29:05 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 June, 2011, 09:17:06 PM
Science does not know as much as it pretends.
I take offense at this. Science does not pretend to know anything. The default scientific position on many subjects, homeopathy included, is 'We really just don't know'. The only people claiming to 'know' anything, while citing a scientific basis, are people with an agenda.
Fair enough, I retract that and replace it with "Science does not know as much as laypeople tend to believe."
Quote from: House of Usher on 13 June, 2011, 09:23:58 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 June, 2011, 09:17:06 PM
The brain as the seat of memory.
On that one I'm fairly convinced by the well-documented case studies of brain injuried people suffering loss of memory. There's a good correlation between Alzheimer's and loss of memory too. I don't know much about astrophysics and cosmology. They're not in my field and I'm not very interested in them, so I tend not to worry about it too much.
In Lashley's experiments (1929, 1950), rats were trained to run a maze. Tissue was removed from their cerebral cortices before re-introducing them to the maze, to see how their memory was affected. Increasingly, the amount of tissue removed degraded memory, but more remarkably, where the tissue was removed from made no difference.
(My statement "The brain as the seat of memory" was incorrect - I should have said "the unknown seat of memory in the brain." Apologies. There is also some suggestion that the heart may also store memories.)
Anyway, UFOs...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 June, 2011, 11:15:50 PM
Anyway, UFOs...
You are using an unlogical non-sequiterial fallacy i:e non-argumental that informally appeals to emotion instead of authority that obscures the logical argument while affirming the consequent as proof by verbosity along with connotation fallacies that alude to all UFOs being unidentified leading to equivocation.
;)
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 13 June, 2011, 11:34:25 PM
You are using an unlogical non-sequiterial fallacy i:e non-argumental that informally appeals to emotion instead of authority that obscures the logical argument while affirming the consequent as proof by verbosity along with connotation fallacies that alude to all UFOs being unidentified leading to equivocation.
;)
I knew you'd say that*... :-\
UAP, then?
*
no I didn't.
QuoteIf you get anywhere near a coherent position, please let me know
Fair enough- if you're determined to misunderstand (I assume on purpose) what I'm saying to this extent, then there's no point carrying on this conversation.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 14 June, 2011, 07:25:06 AM
QuoteIf you get anywhere near a coherent position, please let me know
Fair enough- if you're determined to misunderstand (I assume on purpose) what I'm saying to this extent, then there's no point carrying on this conversation.
Come on, Rich - don't be like that. I was having fun debating here with you.
I have to say that I don't understand what you're saying. Do you think that homeopathy has any merit whatsoever or not? You post a YouTube clip of Mr Benneth with the implication that he's talking rubbish and then suggest that he must know what he's talking about. Please forgive me, but how can both be true? He's either talking rubbish or he isn't. (Although, I suppose he could be compared to a Star Trek nerd; someone who knows a very great deal about something that is essentially a fiction - is that what you're saying?)
Just to be clear, my position is that I honestly don't know whether homeopathy has any merits or not as I have never used it and I don't know anyone who has. I'm reluctant to either dismiss it out of hand or to believe it without question. My position is that there seems to be evidence suggesting homeopathy may be efficacious in certain cases - how and why this might be so, I don't know.
What is your position? Explain it to me like I'm stupid (which I am, to be honest).
It's the Star Trek thing.
Look at this rubbish:
Israel nukes Fukushima:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fAmK7HlepA4J:crisisjones.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/israel-nuked-fukushima-sure-as-hell-for-them-looks-that-way-cj/+israel+nukes+fukushima&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fAmK7HlepA4J:crisisjones.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/israel-nuked-fukushima-sure-as-hell-for-them-looks-that-way-cj/+israel+nukes+fukushima&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk)
It makes a claim then provides nothing at all to explain it other than "It sure looks that way"
Garbage. :lol:
[I sort of know whos website it is and they asked if i wanted to contribute to it.I didnt reply as i wasnt interested and i only visited it to read what info there was about Israel nuking Fukushima which turned out to be nothing.The author is in my opinion a twat who had a habit of launching verbal attacks and abuse on all and sundry for no apparent reason on another websites comments section]
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 06 June, 2011, 06:43:38 PM
"Pay your debt (which we created out of nothing) or we'll seize your country."
I can hear you laughing at that idea from here. I laughed too, because nobody would ever be stupid enough to even suggest such a thing, would they? Except that it's already starting to happen. Greece has been told that if it doesn't pay back its loans quickly enough, the bankers will move in to collect taxes from the people - stripping the Greek government and people of the power to control their own destiny. Who will lose their sovereignty next? Portugal? Spain? Ireland?
It's way past time to begin to see that banks like JP Morgan and the IMF (amongst others) are enemy forces and debt is their weapon of conquest. Would you like your country to be owned by a banking consortium? Because it's coming - if we don't stop it.
http://www.businessinsider.com/greek-bailout-will-require-loss-of-sovereignty-2011-5 (http://www.businessinsider.com/greek-bailout-will-require-loss-of-sovereignty-2011-5)
This means countries effectively going into receivership with the banking cartel being the receivers.
I was just reading elsewhere that Bilderberg were concerned about the state of the Eurozone and countries like Greece defaulting and the collapse of it and what you are talking about here is definately possible as its alright to say they should default but the bankers may very well let it all collapse and capitalise on the fallout of the collapse of the Euro by taking direct control of their spending and tax revenue etc etc for the foreseeable future as in being administrators/receivers with each country being in receivership.Or they will use the imminent collapse of the Euro as the pretext to take complete control.
The Budget will be decided by them while the acting Chancellor of the Exchequer and the treasury in our case simply rubber stamp everything on behalf of the banking cartel.The bankers wont do it themselves as they will get the civil servants of a bankrupt nation to do it for them.
The eurozone could have been designed to fail as part of a problem-reaction-solution as the idea of a single currency linked to seperate countries is otherwise deeply flawed because the constant bailing out of individual nations by others within the Eurozone and the US is simply unsustainable in the long term because countries cant keep borrowing to plug a hole which isnt getting any smaller.A currency that is linked to individual economies is flawed because if one or two or more countries are close to bankruptcy then it has an effect on all the other eurozone members which would not be there if they all had their seperate economies so having them all sharing the same currencies creates a much bigger problem and creates more instability and more debt which might have been the plan all along.......
Since no jobs are being created it means no recovery all the while this situation is allowed to continue but i dont see it happening here yet as the UK has a fairly strong service sector which is about the only thing keeping it going for the time being.....
Its seems like the Eurozone was planned to coincide with the planned/manufactured depression.
The single currency was supposed to bring stability not instability which was probably reverse speak as those who planned it all out must have realised this as its obvious so i see it as a problem-reaction-solution but wether the Euro is replaced by something else remains to be seen but if its left up to the bankers they will do the above and keep the Euro for the time being as the alternative isnt up and running yet.
There is only one permanent solution to this problem or the problem of the banking cartel.
I think they want to destroy the dollar and replace it with the amero first. Then, down the line, when Africa gets the Afro and Asia the Asio it'll be easier to roll the whole lot up into the Mega City One like Cred.
I also half suspect that this current financial crisis is actually spinning out of control of even the economic engineers who set it all up. This debt is spreading like wildfire and it needs to - the whole system needs to burn down to ash so we can return money creation and control to sovereign governments again. Let the banks who lit the fuse burn, that's what I say.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 June, 2011, 09:17:06 PM
Quote from: House of Usher on 13 June, 2011, 09:07:06 PM
What this all amounts to is an untested hypothesis...
There are many untested hypotheses in science. The Big Bang theory, black holes, the brain as the seat of memory.
Except they
have been tested.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 14 June, 2011, 08:19:33 PM
Look at this rubbish:
Israel nukes Fukushima:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fAmK7HlepA4J:crisisjones.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/israel-nuked-fukushima-sure-as-hell-for-them-looks-that-way-cj/+israel+nukes+fukushima&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fAmK7HlepA4J:crisisjones.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/israel-nuked-fukushima-sure-as-hell-for-them-looks-that-way-cj/+israel+nukes+fukushima&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk)
It makes a claim then provides nothing at all to explain it other than "It sure looks that way"
Garbage. :lol:
[I sort of know whos website it is and they asked if i wanted to contribute to it.I didnt reply as i wasnt interested and i only visited it to read what info there was about Israel nuking Fukushima which turned out to be nothing.The author is in my opinion a twat who had a habit of launching verbal attacks and abuse on all and sundry for no apparent reason on another websites comments section]
You know Peter, for someone who spends all of his time attacking people, you really are not very good at it.
I placed all of the facts on the table, and you did not look at a single one, you simply engaged in your normal personal attacks without addressing a SINGLE fact.
You are one disappointing individual!
Now, maybe you should move on to another forum, as you normally do when you have been discredited. ;)
-Crisis Jones
Oh, to set the record straight, I NEVER asked you to contribute to the report Peter.
I invited you to comment on the original reports and articles put out by the highly qualified researchers and writers at the Crisis Jones Report.
Jealously is so unattractive.......
To be honest, Israel nuking Japan doesn't seem very feasible, practical or profitable. I haven't read the whole report yet, but one thing I can tell you is that lots of explosions look like mushroom clouds. You can get a spectacular mushroom cloud just from throwing a snowball into a tub of burning oil.
Quote from: Crisis Jones on 16 June, 2011, 01:28:21 AM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 14 June, 2011, 08:19:33 PM
Look at this rubbish:
Israel nukes Fukushima:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fAmK7HlepA4J:crisisjones.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/israel-nuked-fukushima-sure-as-hell-for-them-looks-that-way-cj/+israel+nukes+fukushima&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fAmK7HlepA4J:crisisjones.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/israel-nuked-fukushima-sure-as-hell-for-them-looks-that-way-cj/+israel+nukes+fukushima&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk)
It makes a claim then provides nothing at all to explain it other than "It sure looks that way"
Garbage. :lol:
[I sort of know whos website it is and they asked if i wanted to contribute to it.I didnt reply as i wasnt interested and i only visited it to read what info there was about Israel nuking Fukushima which turned out to be nothing.The author is in my opinion a twat who had a habit of launching verbal attacks and abuse on all and sundry for no apparent reason on another websites comments section]
You know Peter, for someone who spends all of his time attacking people, you really are not very good at it.
I placed all of the facts on the table, and you did not look at a single one, you simply engaged in your normal personal attacks without addressing a SINGLE fact.
You are one disappointing individual!
Now, maybe you should move on to another forum, as you normally do when you have been discredited. ;)
-Crisis Jones
Firstly out of decency i apologise for linking to your website here and the comment but you did say distributer it so i did.I dont feel good about it in retrospect.I should have commented there instead of here.
You claim that every one of those points is a fact when its not but why let facts get in the way of something that claims to be a fact ?
Your points:
1: I do not spend all my time attacking people where you know me from and the only commenters i have ever attacked are trolls which you have been witness to and i rarely resort to personal attacks attacks when arguing even with trolls because i win by arguing as you know.But i dont keep scores and constantly brag about it like you do constantly each time you appear.before it gets too personal i will leave it at that.
All my comments are archived and so are the responses to them.All the proof i need is there.
The last time you appeared it was yet more insults to all and sundry and personal attacks when you linked to your website the other day to plug it and really my patience snapped as i was just tired of it.
I did rubbish your article without explaining why so thats right that you called me out on that but the majority of the time i comment and explain my reasoning and this is all logged.
I will add a comment about this here that partly explains my thinking.I am not buying the idea that this all originates from Japan offering to provide enriched uranium to Iran as it was official and had US approval and it involved the IAEA and the UN etc etc and the CFR etc.So its not like it was a covert operation so it does not make sense that Israel would attack Japan for that reason as if Israel didnt have any say in it in the first place and if Israel didnt want them to then they could have stopped that program anytime they liked without resorting to bombing nuclear facilities.If it was a threat to going to war with Iran as the Japanese wanted to see peace with Iran then Japan would have been warned not to and i dont see that Japan would have put its own people and country at risk by going a head with it.
Iran rejected the offer anyway.
France and Russia previously offered to enrich uranium and they werent bombed.
I wont be going anywhere as i havent been discredited or moved on from any forums so i dont know where you get "Normally do" from.Never been discredited.
Lastly about contributing all i recall is an invite to your website a while back along with 2 others which was to contribute as you specifically wanted my comments and thats what i meant and you know that i am not a highly qualified researcher. I am not the jelous type either.
Thats it but i had to reply to your comments as i had no choice but again i apologise for rubbishing your research in the way that i did.
I am really curious how you traced my comment here as unless i am missing something i tried various searches that would provide a link to my comment here that didnt produce any results.It took you a day to find it so you must have been either searching for it or monitoring how many links you get to your website and web traffic etc. :-\
Oh get a room you two.
http://youtu.be/3QTVtAsVrEg (http://youtu.be/3QTVtAsVrEg)
"...a fight between two bald men over a comb." - Jorge Luis Borges
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 14 June, 2011, 10:45:13 PM
I think they want to destroy the dollar and replace it with the amero first. Then, down the line, when Africa gets the Afro and Asia the Asio it'll be easier to roll the whole lot up into the Mega City One like Cred.
Isn't the Mega City One
cred just for Mega City One though, not a federal or unified currency?
Doesn't matter anyway, all currencies are contracting as are all economies, exponential growth eventually leads to exponential contraction. We live in a finite world and there's only so much the greedy few can extract for themselves without putting any back in.
No matter who's pulling what strings or if the strings are now all tangled as to not even matter anymore, the strings will eventually be cut so the limp puppet falls in a heap- we will be returning to very base level societies unless the magic
vacuum-energy-making machine is discovered.
I wonder who does create and control the money supply in MC1? It's hard to envisage the banks having as much power over the Justice Department as our contemporary banks have over our governments.
Obviously the Judges have say in the money supply, the banks are just a vessel to store it and give it out just as in Communist Russia.
Possibly. The very word "Credit", though, seems to indicate that it it isn't actual money that's used but credit - just like our money today. Money is created by privately owned banks and then lent into society at interest as credit. Does the Justice Department print bonds which it exchanges for money/credits or does it create its own money/credit with no interest to pay?
What a boring Dredd story this would make!
I doubt it's fractional reserve banking but rather a more 'accounted', 'balanced' method of exchange, there may even be different subsets of 'credit' depending on you status considering a whole group of people -judges- don't use it personally.
I've seen Dredd pay street vendors for food (I think) with a voucher and Justice Dept as a whole must use money to purchase goods and services from outside contractors. If Justice Dept creates and controls all the city's money then the welfare that just about all the citizens receive would be interest free and therefore a lot cheaper than the system we use today. If Justice Dept borrows money from private banks like our governments do, the interest rates would be crippling.
The only way to discover where MC1s money comes from is to discover whether the City has the equivalent of a national debt. National debt = private money; no national debt = social money.
That said, interest on loans etc is a great way to control a population (as we can see every day just by looking around us) so maybe Justice Dept does create and control the money supply but charges interest too purely in order to exert that control. It might be a legal way to control people, but is it just?
Looking at the riots going on in places like Greece at the moment, maybe it wouldn't be such a boring Dredd story after all!
An interesting debate, and I reckon there's quite a body of factoids tangentially about MC-1's economy to draw from.
Some examples:
I seem to recall they bring a selection of various currencies on the Judge Child mission, as well as bullion and trade goods, which may suggest that the Mc-1 Cred is of dubious value beyond the walls.
Accountant Judge Winslow is certainly concerned about the budget for that mission, and later on for Bonny Crickle's op, so Justice Department presumably audits its own expenditure.
In Bob's Law it's Justice Department that gives out the 100 cred Sector Relocation Bonus, and Justice Department that subsequently taketh away (Bob's Third Law).
Hooray! At last we're into the realms of 'space maths' and all that boring stuff about the end of the world and who controls what can take a temporary hike.
The Mega-City economy is neither a closed nor a sustainable system. As for the citizens being welfare-dependent and economically non-productive, that's only possible due to most of Mega-City One's wealth being generated off-planet.
Mega-City One imports huge quantities of minerals, energy and food from off-world, which is why its colonies and interplanetary trade relations are so important. Granted, it tries to resuse and recycle everything it can and we've seen the use the city makes of renewable energy sources, but the whole thing is kept going by a constant input of value by dipping into free interstellar resources the way one might dip into the ocean with a trawler net and just scoop out fish you've put no effort into growing. It's the logical solution when you've all but exhausted your own world's natural resources: start on the natural resources of other worlds.
Quote from: House of Usher on 16 June, 2011, 04:33:01 PMIt's the logical solution when you've all but exhausted your own world's natural resources: start on the natural resources of other worlds.
Aye, but there's still a price to pay, and it's Mandroids who bear the cost.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 16 June, 2011, 02:19:09 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 14 June, 2011, 10:45:13 PM
I think they want to destroy the dollar and replace it with the amero first. Then, down the line, when Africa gets the Afro and Asia the Asio it'll be easier to roll the whole lot up into the Mega City One like Cred.
Isn't the Mega City One cred just for Mega City One though, not a federal or unified currency?
Doesn't matter anyway, all currencies are contracting as are all economies, exponential growth eventually leads to exponential contraction. We live in a finite world and there's only so much the greedy few can extract for themselves without putting any back in.
No matter who's pulling what strings or if the strings are now all tangled as to not even matter anymore, the strings will eventually be cut so the limp puppet falls in a heap- we will be returning to very base level societies unless the magic vacuum-energy-making machine is discovered.
I had to laugh at Africa gets the Afro.
What is going on in the US with the dollar and its economy is the economy is contracting as it is in a depression but the dollar supply is expanding with quantative easing-the reckless and deliberate mass printing of Fedres funny money but a lot of the cash that is being printed is virtual cash.The dollar supply that is expanding isnt going into the economy as its all going offshore and god knows where but at the same time it is driving down the value of the dollar.Its being done to sabotage the dollar and the US economy.
Yet at the same time the US[figuatively speaking] being in a depression is launching wars across the Middle East/North Africa which will cost
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ assisted by NATO of course.Its apparently official now that the US is going to send an occupational force into Libya in October.
It should be very clear by now that this is a serious problem
That shit's so-last-page Peter, we're into more important shit now like fiscal responsibility in the Meg, back on 'current topic'...I assume saving's not particularly encouraged in the Meg?
I reckon The Justice Department gets all the money it needs from confiscating all the profits from the crazy fad-merchants. The banking cabals probably don't have enough financial leverage to influence Judicial legislation
There is definite potential for some stories in the economic history of the mega cities (especially after watching Andrew Marr's series, which makes 2000AD seem awfully prophetic). So, for example, you'd imagine in the early years that all the Mega Cities were heavily mining the asteroid belt, that right there is a chance for some friction and drama, bringing some nice parallels with the Chinese rush to space.
Asteroid mining also solves the question of How can the SJS afford all those ships in Insurrection?
What Justice Department has to cough up the readies for is initial seed ships with robotic crews & possibly a small number of human overseers.
These target asteroid belts in other star systems (Epsilon Eridani, for example, has at least two that we know of), set up shop & manufacture more robots. When they've a sufficient number then switch to the next phase of production: hollowing out asteroids & churning out ships.
The SJS fighting forces can be speed cloned in situ using freely available CHON* harvested from comets, ice moons & Kuiper-type objects.
Volia! Instant(ish) space fleet.
Money in the bank!
*Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen & Nitrogen.
Indeed. As the Justice Department seem to have got to the Moon first you'd have a good base for exploiting the asteroid belt - probably with people first (attracting the tough breed who run oil rigs or go out crab fishing off Alaska) followed later by robots. I can't see how you'd get the materials for MC1 without it and you'd generate some serious income selling metal to the others mega cities (while having a hand on the throttle of their development), plus you could then start building orbital factories to build ships to push out further into the Solar System (to Titan) and then make the jump to the stars.
You'd have to assume the first wave of colonisation of extra solar systems was via Von Neumman probes/seeder ships, punted up to a reasonable fraction of the speed of light. The Justice Department can then catch-up with them later when FTL is developed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_probe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeder_ship
So you could probably work out a rough timeline that'd parallel that of MC1 - you'd be looking at say the early to mid-2020s (possibly earlier) for some kind of permanent settlement off planet, probably driven by environmental problems on Earth and dwindling resources (the Helium 3 on the Moon becomes vital as do things like space-based solar arrays). You'd presumably build mass drivers on the Moon and in orbit to shunt people and cargo around, so you could use them to fire out probes and then miners into the asteroid belt, where they'd build them to send material back. This would then be in full-swing by the time MC2 and Texas City start to get built in the later 2030s/early 2040s. The money raised would help fund more ambitious missions to other stars. Then you have the Atomic war in 2070, which would have set everything back and probably resulted in loss of contact with the colonies, the establishment of a proper colony on the Moon in 2088 would be a sign they are getting back to the stars again and probably starting the job of taming what would probably be quite an unruly mess in the rest of the Solar System. I'm not sure when FTL was developed but they had time travel in 2107, so possibly before that but the colonies will have been on their own for decades before then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega-City_One#History
Something like that.
Lots of potential for stories there - perhaps an Outland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outland_%28film%29)-style tale with early Judges in the Asteroid Belt.
What infuriates me is these two jerks thinking 2000ad forum is just another vessel for their useless opinions. Especially Peter. He really grinds my pulses. Dick.
Don't sit on the fence now Krombasher!
M
Yeah, sorry Mikey, I'm pushing it with the rules of the board. Apologies folks. Except vociferous masturbaters of the delusive ill-informed, half- formed, half understood kind. Can there be a comic forum with room for such inept badly thought out transcripts anywhere on the planet? Besides the John Byrnes one? Without it looking a bit stupid?
So you remain unconvinced by Von Neumann machines Krom?
Quote from: Krombasher on 17 June, 2011, 07:37:55 AM
He really grinds my pulsating Dick.
I didn't know the new-look forum was
that kind of place, but if this is what it takes to get Roger back, I guess it's time to start shipping KromWolf.
Roger is here, like the breath of the great dragon, Tordleneck.
And the only thing I want to know about Von Neumenn, Stevie is whether or not its twinned with a town I've encountered or sings in a new wave electro band.
Quote from: Krombasher on 17 June, 2011, 08:28:40 AM
Yeah, sorry Mikey, I'm pushing it with the rules of the board. Apologies folks.
I don't think you need to apologise, not to me anyway - over the 8 or so years I've been here, there's been much worse said by a lot of people. You're just expressing your opinion after all, which, if I read it correctly and to paraphrase Bill Rawles of Baltimore PD, what you see is two people "fucking a dog."
M.
I'm sorry Peter, for calling you a dick.
What I should do is thank you. I almost became someone like you. One of the worst manifestations of self righteous blinkered thuggery wrapped up in pseudo-intellectualism, not even interested in the comic, only when it suited my purposes to keep me on a message board to continue with my slow advance of changing peoples minds to accepting my opinion. Something to do with turning my gaze on my own self loathing in there too, but the key thing is Petey, you define what it is for me to avoid becoming. So pray dear boy, carry on. I'll be watching. And you know I don't react to your absurdities every time. I'm just up to here with your blatant autistic approach to world problems, that its gotten to a point where your "opinions" have leaked in from another board! It made me feel cheap! You 're compulsive in your "opinions"!
Right. I think that is all I'll say on the matter. Peter can reply all he likes, the situation will still be as above. I'm sure he'll enjoy the "any publicity is good publicity" he now has gained from his manifesto. But be sure. this is my last word on the matter. I'll probably put him back on ignore sooner rather than later.
"Here's Tom with the weather."
"Thanks Mandy. It's going to be a rough day in Missouri as the CIA controlled HAARP rays cause toxic rain and hot wind to push up from the Gulf..."
Much as I am in hushed awe of Krom's unparalleled Level 36 smackdown skillz (a savaging so elegant that the recipient can only be flattered, as if thrust into the role of the blushing subject of a petrarchan sonnet), I would note that this is a thread created by TLS for the showcasing of various looneytoons ideas without derailing other threads (no offence, Shark), and thus should be considered as segregated from General Population - a sort of nonce-wing for conspiracy theorists those who question received orthodoxies. If Peter is going to engage in inter-forum conflict with fellow nutters, this is the place to do it.
Quote from: Krombasher on 17 June, 2011, 11:12:07 AM
I'm sorry Peter, for calling you a dick.
What I should do is thank you. I almost became someone like you. One of the worst manifestations of self righteous blinkered thuggery wrapped up in pseudo-intellectualism, not even interested in the comic, only when it suited my purposes to keep me on a message board to continue with my slow advance of changing peoples minds to accepting my opinion. Something to do with turning my gaze on my own self loathing in there too, but the key thing is Petey, you define what it is for me to avoid becoming. So pray dear boy, carry on. I'll be watching. And you know I don't react to your absurdities every time. I'm just up to here with your blatant autistic approach to world problems, that its gotten to a point where your "opinions" have leaked in from another board! It made me feel cheap! You 're compulsive in your "opinions"!
Right. I think that is all I'll say on the matter. Peter can reply all he likes, the situation will still be as above. I'm sure he'll enjoy the "any publicity is good publicity" he now has gained from his manifesto. But be sure. this is my last word on the matter. I'll probably put him back on ignore sooner rather than later.
Sure enough i could attack you for typing that comment but i am not that interested as i have been through this before with you as you have had an axe to grind for a long time.I dont understand you and i never will and you come across to me as slightly odd which is why i dont normally reply to you and you admit that its the same for yourself.
Do what you want to do as i dont know why you think i am interested in your personal baggage.
One point you do make is a valid criticism in that i dont talk about the comic enough here while i talk about another subject too much for your liking and it is compulsive as there is no denying it but to suggest that i use this place purely to push my opinions on others is just pain wro9ng and that stems from your long term dislike of myself that is ongoing.I dont talk about the comic very much and my passion for comics or this comic is refelected in the fact that i spend a lot of my time at present quietly improving my artwork and inking which i dont talk about much or publicise here.
First you say "I'll be watching" and then you say you will be ignoring so you need to make your mind up but if you choose not to ignore then i dont want to hear your complaints as you have the choice and unless you can deal with it in an adult fashion instead of your juvenile namecalling ignoring is the best option for you and that being the ignore function since you dont seem to able to ignore without the ignore function.
Look at the name of thread for a clue.I dont like the Unicorn thread as i find it annoying so what is the point in me visiting that thread and then complaining that it is full of Unicorns ?
I dont like hitting my finger with a hammer so i dont keep doing it.
This is an emotive thread that is bound to cause friction due to its very nature. For example, I think I upset Rich earlier on - this was not my intent but I'm not going to apologise for it. We all have our opinions and beliefs which we are protective of and to have someone question those opinions and beliefs causes knee-jerk anger. This can't be helped.
Let's just say that what happens on the "Truth?" thread stays on the "Truth?" thread. If we can't play nice like sensible adults with differences of opinion then we might as well ask the mods to lock this thread right now. I personally don't want that to happen as I enjoy talking about this stuff.
I now return you to your regular bitching... :)
QuoteFor example, I think I upset Rich earlier on - this was not my intent but I'm not going to apologise for it.
Nah- I'm not upset! I will admit to being frustrated, but it's only an interweb conversation, after all!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 June, 2011, 01:36:19 PM
We all have our opinions and beliefs which we are protective of and to have someone question those opinions and beliefs causes knee-jerk anger.
I've noticed folk only tend to get
really angry if the conflicting belief is something which they think may be detrimental to
other people, especially if their own opinion is completely ignored.
This is the case whether they believe homeopathy is a load of guff, (which it is), or they believe the planet's being controlled by evil space lizards like out of V, (which it probably isn't).
Let's see...I can confirm I haven't been drinking and I'm not posting from my phone,so...
Homeopathy is probably bollocks. Avogadro's constant tells me so.
Notice I don't say 'might be' as that would imply that there's a 50% chance it might not be bollocks. Holding that the only way to quantify the effective use of any substance as medicine is to identify it's active chemical components and their effect on living organisms or their pathogens, it's probably bollocks. I think the real issue raised is about multinationals again, not medical science in any real sense.
And the comments made about scientists just go where the money is and are dictated to by accountants - that's a rather convenient view to hold if you don't want to trust what you see as part of the establishment, which is how I feel a lot of people view yer actual scientists. I could pretty much guarantee that the vast majority of scientists of the world are not earning big money and do not work for multinational corporations. Industry may fund research, but there's a difference between the grey literature produced by such companies themselves and peer reviewed research articles in quality journals, even if produced by industry scientists. Research must stand on it's own merit. This may be seen as a quixotic view, but that's what's always there in the background. Peer review has it's own pitfalls, but that's another topic altogether...
(Plus I'm stealing that 'science fan' comment TLS!)
Does that help steer it back on topic? It's even a bit necro posty! Just doing my bit... :D
M.
I love this thread!
Quote from: Krombasher on 17 June, 2011, 07:37:55 AM
What infuriates me is these two jerks thinking 2000ad forum is just another vessel for their useless opinions.
O Lucky Stevie! and I are awfully sorry :(
This thread isnt named what it is for nothing.
One musnt make simplistic generalisations about Science and the pharmaceutical industry that are based on your own prejudices against certain sections of the scientific/pharmaceutical community and industry.
There should be a Twat thread where anyone can act like a Twat or an idiot as much as they like and reply to others comments with cliched pejorative comments and statements.
Tch. Intellectuals, eh?
ooo. I popped in here for a quick look and it's all a bit dark.
Would it help if I were to suggest big hugs all round?
I'll back out anyway, your fishy friend was never one for confrontation.
Well, this thread was started by a shark...
Hmmph. A comment has disappeared and now my previous comment makes less sense.
It's a flippin' conspiracy, that's what it is!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 June, 2011, 06:31:33 PM
Well, this thread was started by a shark...
gulp. i never do too well around them.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 17 June, 2011, 01:10:28 PM
I dont like the Unicorn thread as i find it annoying so what is the point in me visiting that thread and then complaining that it is full of Unicorns ?
Dude...I used to think you were cool...but..but..you don't like unicorns?
What kind of a monster are you? ;)
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 17 June, 2011, 11:47:37 AM
"Here's Tom with the weather."
thanks, now the genetic sport...
Quote from: pops1983 on 18 June, 2011, 04:32:09 AM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 17 June, 2011, 01:10:28 PM
I dont like the Unicorn thread as i find it annoying so what is the point in me visiting that thread and then complaining that it is full of Unicorns ?
Dude...I used to think you were cool...but..but..you don't like unicorns?
What kind of a monster are you? ;)
The kind that doesnt like Unicorns.Stupid things with those stupid horns sticking out their heads.They dont seem to do anything other than hang around next to rainbows and waterfalls.
Unicornist.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 17 June, 2011, 05:47:43 PM
This thread isnt named what it is for nothing.
One musnt make simplistic generalisations about Science and the pharmaceutical industry that are based on your own prejudices against certain sections of the scientific/pharmaceutical community and industry.
There should be a Twat thread where anyone can act like a Twat or an idiot as much as they like and reply to others comments with cliched pejorative comments and statements.
Who you calling a twat?!
M.
Fucking hell, peter, you don't like unicorns?! right, that's it- not only am i now going to mass-market reprint meltdown man in colour, and with rewritten 'street' dialogue, but im going to have to insist on unicorns being added to the backgrounds throughout. The associated rainbows and waterfalls they frollic around with be nice and colourful and complement the hues of their big dewy eyes and long lashes. I'll have it ready for london in july.
SBT
Quote from: Mikey on 19 June, 2011, 11:40:02 AM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 17 June, 2011, 05:47:43 PM
This thread isnt named what it is for nothing.
One musnt make simplistic generalisations about Science and the pharmaceutical industry that are based on your own prejudices against certain sections of the scientific/pharmaceutical community and industry.
There should be a Twat thread where anyone can act like a Twat or an idiot as much as they like and reply to others comments with cliched pejorative comments and statements.
Who you calling a twat?!
M.
Where did i call you a twat ??
Can you quote exactly where i stated that you are a twat anywhere in this thread ?
I didnt think so and really i will just have to put you back on ignore for that. ;)
Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 19 June, 2011, 03:52:24 PM
Fucking hell, peter, you don't like unicorns?! right, that's it- not only am i now going to mass-market reprint meltdown man in colour, and with rewritten 'street' dialogue, but im going to have to insist on unicorns being added to the backgrounds throughout. The associated rainbows and waterfalls they frollic around with be nice and colourful and complement the hues of their big dewy eyes and long lashes. I'll have it ready for london in july.
SBT
I really really like unicorns and i wasnt being serious before.
Quote from: Emperor on 17 June, 2011, 03:04:24 PM
O Lucky Stevie! and I are awfully sorry :(
You may be Emperor but Stevie certainly isn't. If peeps want to hide under the sink clutching their adzes when the Starchild comes a-knocking then that's their loss.
Quote from: Emperor on 17 June, 2011, 05:03:55 AM
So you could probably work out a rough timeline that'd parallel that of MC1 - you'd be looking at say the early to mid-2020s (possibly earlier) for some kind of permanent settlement off planet, probably driven by environmental problems on Earth and dwindling resources (the Helium 3 on the Moon becomes vital as do things like space-based solar arrays). You'd presumably build mass drivers on the Moon and in orbit to shunt people and cargo around, so you could use them to fire out probes and then miners into the asteroid belt, where they'd build them to send material back. This would then be in full-swing by the time MC2 and Texas City start to get built in the later 2030s/early 2040s. The money raised would help fund more ambitious missions to other stars. Then you have the Atomic war in 2070...
Blimey, so
that was Bad Bob's game then eh? Not content with nuking the opposition to merely rule a despoiled planet of diminishing resources he hoped to to gain a monoploy of the very heavens in the upshot?
Are you proud of yourself now Mr Pournelle?
Quote from: O Lucky Stevie! on 20 June, 2011, 07:40:58 AM
Quote from: Emperor on 17 June, 2011, 03:04:24 PM
O Lucky Stevie! and I are awfully sorry :(
You may be Emperor but Stevie certainly isn't. If peeps want to hide under the sink clutching their adzes when the Starchild comes a-knocking then that's their loss.
Quote from: Emperor on 17 June, 2011, 05:03:55 AM
So you could probably work out a rough timeline that'd parallel that of MC1 - you'd be looking at say the early to mid-2020s (possibly earlier) for some kind of permanent settlement off planet, probably driven by environmental problems on Earth and dwindling resources (the Helium 3 on the Moon becomes vital as do things like space-based solar arrays). You'd presumably build mass drivers on the Moon and in orbit to shunt people and cargo around, so you could use them to fire out probes and then miners into the asteroid belt, where they'd build them to send material back. This would then be in full-swing by the time MC2 and Texas City start to get built in the later 2030s/early 2040s. The money raised would help fund more ambitious missions to other stars. Then you have the Atomic war in 2070...
Blimey, so that was Bad Bob's game then eh? Not content with nuking the opposition to merely rule a despoiled planet of diminishing resources he had hoped to to gain a monoploy of the very heavens in the upshot?
Are you proud of yourself now Mr Pournelle?
Quote from: Peter Wolf link=topic=32312.msg612253#msg612253/quote]
Where did i call you a twat ??
Can you quote exactly where i stated that you are a twat anywhere in this thread ?
I didnt think so and really i will just have to put you back on ignore for that. ;)
"It was a joke, you fuck!"
M.
A heavy dose of these are in order for this thread.
(http://www.glogster.com/media/4/36/64/43/36644313.jpg)
V
A discussion of this nature getting heated!
What the fuck?
I'm not wound up! Not in the slightest... I'm quoting Tommy in 'Goodfellas' when he tells Frankie Carbone to make the coffee to go, and Frankie takes him at his word..for what I hoped would be comedy effect!
M.
You're a funny guy, Mikey...
What? Like I'm a fuckin clown? Like I amuse you? Just what the fuck is so funny about me?
M.
Your theme Mikey.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0CyOAO8y0
V
It's just, you know. You're just funny, it's... funny, the way you tell the story and everything
I worry about you Richmond. I think you may fold under questioning.
M.
Looks like we got a coupla wiseguys, eh?
I hate that film. It disgusts me.
As you were. :-X
Film..?
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 20 June, 2011, 12:01:10 PM
Film..?
Yeah HoU, they're obviously talking about frozen pizza.
Bada BING! In stores with ice compartments!
M.
I'll stop it now...
Quote from: O Lucky Stevie! on 20 June, 2011, 07:40:58 AM
Quote from: Emperor on 17 June, 2011, 03:04:24 PM
O Lucky Stevie! and I are awfully sorry :(
You may be Emperor but Stevie certainly isn't. If peeps want to hide under the sink clutching their adzes when the Starchild comes a-knocking then that's their loss.
Yeah, I was lying ;)
Quote from: O Lucky Stevie! on 20 June, 2011, 07:40:58 AMQuote from: Emperor on 17 June, 2011, 05:03:55 AM
So you could probably work out a rough timeline that'd parallel that of MC1 - you'd be looking at say the early to mid-2020s (possibly earlier) for some kind of permanent settlement off planet, probably driven by environmental problems on Earth and dwindling resources (the Helium 3 on the Moon becomes vital as do things like space-based solar arrays). You'd presumably build mass drivers on the Moon and in orbit to shunt people and cargo around, so you could use them to fire out probes and then miners into the asteroid belt, where they'd build them to send material back. This would then be in full-swing by the time MC2 and Texas City start to get built in the later 2030s/early 2040s. The money raised would help fund more ambitious missions to other stars. Then you have the Atomic war in 2070...
Blimey, so that was Bad Bob's game then eh? Not content with nuking the opposition to merely rule a despoiled planet of diminishing resources he hoped to to gain a monoploy of the very heavens in the upshot?
Wellll perhaps not that cynically but you've got to ask yourself what the underlying causes of tensions were - even today we are seeing the West and India and China making landgrabs in Africa because their resource footprint is larger than their available land. As climate change kicks in and megacities start to sprawl there is going to be increasing friction thanks to the need for water and other resources. so it can't be long before people start looking to the stars for salvation. Some of the architecture put in place could be used offensively (like orbital mass drivers but just imagine what havoc you could spread with space mirrors) and so even establishing a permanent presence to access resources could turn nasty, before you have different countries pushing to get the best positions.
Quote from: O Lucky Stevie! on 20 June, 2011, 07:40:58 AMAre you proud of yourself now Mr Pournelle?
He helped save the world with the power of fiction, so he should be ;)
Quote from: vzzbux on 20 June, 2011, 09:46:17 AM
A heavy dose of these are in order for this thread.
(http://www.glogster.com/media/4/36/64/43/36644313.jpg)
V
I wonder what that has got in it ?
Ecstacy and Ketamine ?
I will have a few of those off you if you can spare any but if its from BigPharma then i am not going to take any of those thanks as they are trying to kill you.
Hi, I just wanted to tell you people I noticed this thread dropping off the radar. I want Shark to know or venerable in understanding to know, I did not set out with the intentions to kill this thread. Just to argue justly;"What is the truth? And do we give a fuck who gives it us?" Truly. Seems I overstepped the mark or challenged a point of view. Again this was not my intention but more, I wanted to break down the double standard.
I don't think anyone blames you for anything, Krombasher - I certainly don't. This thread rises and falls periodically as the conspiracies come and go.
Anyone who lets a thread like this upset them is probably too fragile to be here anyway. Chill, bro - it's all good and truth is subjective anyway.
I read the news today, oh boy...
No-one is in control. They're making this shit up as they go along
Quote from: pops1983 on 30 June, 2011, 12:11:30 AM
I read the news today, oh boy...
No-one is in control. They're making this shit up as they go along
I read the headlines on alternative media political websites every day and its getting more insane by the day and you dont get slow news days anymore and its been that way for the last couple of years.
As far as the shit they are making up as they go along some time ago i read an article written by a couple of fiction writers saying that they couldnt make this shit up as its insanity on a daily basis.I am well into politics and current events but lately i find i have to switch off from it more and more often as there is simply too much of it.Like this evening i think fuck this i am going to do some drawing and listen to music or something as there is only so much insanity i can take.
"They" are in control to an extent unfortunately and before anyone accuses me of paranoia dont even think about it as i wish i was paranoid and it was all a figment of my imagination but unfortunately that is not the case.
Planet Earth = Planet Absurd
You give "They' too much credit.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 30 June, 2011, 10:21:12 PM
You give "They' too much credit.
Well we have the manufactured banking collapse and bailouts etc etc,Globalisation,overseas UN/US/NATO military intervention/invasions etc,The IMF taking over deliberately bankrupted and sabotaged nations,the Arab Spring,the spurious War On Terror,private central banks like the FEDRES and the list goes on and on and on.............
Yet you can still sit and listen to the radio and draw...
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 30 June, 2011, 10:21:12 PM
You give "They' too much credit.
Very true!
In the words of Steve Earle:
"Now there ain't no one out to get you, They've got to walk in their own shoes"
Depends what you mean by "they" and who you assume them to be.
Me an some friends a mine stayed up all night
Drinking that truth
Truth Serum.
We soon realised the mistake we made and went our seperate ways.
I went up on the roof, to see if I could find some truth
There beneath the stars.
Questions followed me.
"Do you miss me when I go?"
Aw, honey I love you. An that's all you need to know.
"Well then. What is love?"
Love is an object kept in an empty box.
"How can something be in an empty box?"
Well, well, well, well. Gimme another shot of that truth serum.
I went back downstairs to check on my friends
Because truth has a way. A beginning and end.
Big bruiser Ken walks in, says " I like men".
I excuse myself and go back up on the roof again.
Questions follow me.
"Is death really the end?"
Honey I love you, that's all you need to know.
"Well then, what is life?"
Well, that's a good song without you by my side.
People, people there's a lesson here that's plain to see.
There's no truth in you.
There's no truth in me.
The truth is between.
"They" is Bill Callahan?!? Grudamnit, I trusted that guy, never figured him for the engineering-economic-collapse sort. Still, read it on the internet so etc.
Truth is like a diamond, it has many facets and - no matter in which facet you look - you will always see your own reflection.
Quote from: TordelBack on 01 July, 2011, 01:40:07 PM
"They" is Bill Callahan?!? Grudamnit, I trusted that guy, never figured him for the engineering-economic-collapse sort. Still, read it on the internet so etc.
Nope.
Smog was they, now it's Bill. And why do ye think he's always so hang dog? GUILTY CONSCIENCE!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 01 July, 2011, 01:57:50 PM
Truth is like a diamond, it has many facets and - no matter in which facet you look - you will always see your own reflection.
Native diamond or cut? ;)
M.
Either, really.
Can anyone handle the truth about Gadaffi and Libya and the people of Libya and who and what they overwhelmingly support ?
Can anyone handle the fact that the vast majority of Libyans support Gadaffi to the point that Gadaffi arms them en masse with no comebacks ?
Can anyone handle the fact that Gadaffi has been purposefully demonised by the MSM who print lies about pro-Gadaffi Libyans raping women en masse and the lies about attack helicopters strafing anti-Gadaffi protestors etc etc ?
Can anyone handle the fact that the MSM virtually ignored deliberately the million + pro-Gadaffi demonstration in Libya yesterday while dutifully reiterating the words and warnings of Hitlary Clinton etc ?
Can anyone handle the fact that if US/NATO ground forces are sent into Libya which is getting closer by the day is going to be a disaster for US/NATO ground forces as they will be seen as an enemy that will be surrounded by very angry Libyans ?
Can anyone handle the fact that its an act of insanity sending ground forces into Libya ?
Libya was removed from the list of known state sponsors of terrorism in 2007 but of course if Libyans attack US/NATO forces that will be labelled as terrists and insurgents if they resist an occupation and that Gadaffi is being told to renounce power as the only way to guarantee the Libyan peoples well being as in its the only way to stop the bombing campaigns which is blackmail that is holding the Libyan people to ransom in effect.
Already the pretext for bombing campaigns against Libya has changed from [fake] humanitarianism over to Libya being a threat to national security as the humanitarian angle is now played out unless anyone still thinks humanitarianism equares to bombing campaigns against soft targets in residential areas who under the terms of the UN resolution were legitimate targets since they were and still are pro-Gadaffi supporters.
Also in todays news it transpires that Ireland is going to be bailed it again as its economy is not able to recover sufficiently even if it wanted to and therefore avioding being bailed out again so for Ireland its Hobsons Choice as its fucked either way.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 02 July, 2011, 03:07:34 PM
Can anyone handle the truth about Gadaffi and Libya and the people of Libya and who and what they overwhelmingly support ?
Can anyone handle the fact that the vast majority of Libyans support Gadaffi to the point that Gadaffi arms them en masse with no comebacks ?
Can anyone handle the fact that Gadaffi has been purposefully demonised by the MSM who print lies about pro-Gadaffi Libyans raping women en masse and the lies about attack helicopters strafing anti-Gadaffi protestors etc etc ?
Can anyone handle the fact that the MSM virtually ignored deliberately the million + pro-Gadaffi demonstration in Libya yesterday while dutifully reiterating the words and warnings of Hitlary Clinton etc ?
Can anyone handle the fact that if US/NATO ground forces are sent into Libya which is getting closer by the day is going to be a disaster for US/NATO ground forces as they will be seen as an enemy that will be surrounded by very angry Libyans ?
Can anyone handle the fact that its an act of insanity sending ground forces into Libya ?
Libya was removed from the list of known state sponsors of terrorism in 2007 but of course if Libyans attack US/NATO forces that will be labelled as terrists and insurgents if they resist an occupation and that Gadaffi is being told to renounce power as the only way to guarantee the Libyan peoples well being as in its the only way to stop the bombing campaigns which is blackmail that is holding the Libyan people to ransom in effect.
Already the pretext for bombing campaigns against Libya has changed from [fake] humanitarianism over to Libya being a threat to national security as the humanitarian angle is now played out unless anyone still thinks humanitarianism equares to bombing campaigns against soft targets in residential areas who under the terms of the UN resolution were legitimate targets since they were and still are pro-Gadaffi supporters.
Also in todays news it transpires that Ireland is going to be bailed it again as its economy is not able to recover sufficiently even if it wanted to and therefore avioding being bailed out again so for Ireland its Hobsons Choice as its fucked either way.
(http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2008/talks/currall/slides/images/panam_103.jpg)
Not that easy RC.
Lockerbie is very much contested a 'truth' and not in a silly tin-foil-hat kind of way.
QuoteThe Libya 'link'
So was Libya even involved in the Lockerbie bombing? The answer is that nobody knows. Libya certainly had a grim record in state-sponsored terrorism, but there was scant evidence to link it directly to Lockerbie at the Zeist trial. The links to Libya came from the suggestion that a fragment of a timing device which survived the blast was an MST-13 timer produced by a Swiss company, Mebo, which had supplied some to Libya. But it had also supplied them to East Germany; and in any event Libya could have sold them on. Libya could well have had links with the PFLP and PPF cells; but again there was no evidence of such a link.
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&article=122
QuoteOn January 31, after an eight-month trial, three Scottish judges, sitting in a special court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, found a Libyan intelligence officer, Ali Al-Megrahi, guilty of the Lockerbie bombing - Britain's biggest mass murder - acquitting his colleague, Khalifa Fhimah.
Two days earlier, senior Foreign Office officials briefed a group of journalists in London. They painted a picture of a bright new chapter in Britain's relations with Colonel Gadafy's regime. They made it quite clear they assumed both the Libyans in the dock would be acquitted.
The FO officials were not alone. Most independent observers believed it was impossible for the court to find the prosecution had proved its case against Megrahi beyond reasonable doubt.
It was not only the lack of hard evidence - something the judges admitted in their lengthy judgment. The case was entwined, if the judges were right, in a sequence of remarkable coincidences.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/jun/19/lockerbie.comment
Quote"The endgame came down to damage limitation," said the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, "because the evidence amassed by [Megrahi's] appeal is explosive and extremely damning to the system of justice." New witnesses would show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft - he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopowner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and even failed to recognise him in the courtroom.
The new evidence would have shown that a fragment of a circuit board and bomb timer, "discovered" in the Scottish countryside and said to have been in Megrahi's suitcase, was probably a plant. A forensic scientist found no trace of an explosion on it. The new evidence would demonstrate the impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was "transferred" through two airports undetected to Flight 103.
A "key secret witness" at the original trial, who claimed to have seen Megrahi and his co-accused, al-Alim Khalifa Fahimah (who was acquitted), loading the bomb on to the plane at Frankfurt, was bribed by the US authorities holding him as a "protected witness". The defence exposed him as a CIA informer who stood to collect, on the Libyans' conviction, up to $4m as a reward.
http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2009/09/pilger-megrahi-justice
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 02 July, 2011, 03:25:16 PM
Not that easy RC.
Lockerbie is very much contested a 'truth' and not in a silly tin-foil-hat kind of way.
Interesting. I had thought Libyan state involvement at some level was pretty cut and dried and the arguments were over the role (or lack thereof) of Al Megrahi and his mate.
Despite all that Lockerbie was not the pretext for the US/NATO attacking Libya anyway as Libya was officially forgiven for that by the international community years ago.Of course now Libya is a now a problem to national security as you cant expect there not to be a comeback from Gadaffi and Libyans.Thats a presumption and it doesnt help the cause of Gadaffi and Libyans that Gadaffi apparently threatened Europe with attacks at all and it was a very stupid thing to do as he is playing right into the hands of those who are attacking Libya and who want Gadaffi out particularly as attacks could be staged and instigated that would be blamed on Libya to legitimise the US/NATO.
Of course you might think that Libya has a legitimate reason to do so as in an eye for an eye but in this case it wasnt as bombing soft targets in Europe makes you no better than the US/NATO.What a way to weaken their own cause :crazy: as in shooting themselves in the foot and now that it has been said by Gadaffi they are now a threat to national security etc which will be capitalised on by the US/NATO etc etc.
A stupid stupid stupid threat to make and there isnt any proof as of yet that its lies and propaganda.
I might be able to shed some more light on the subject of Libya/Lockerbie but that wont be until Monday onwards and i cant divulge who or what my source of information is as its a sensitive matter but if i find out anything of interest i will post it but i cant promise that i can add anything to what info is already freely available.
[apologies for the double post but i ran out of editing time]
Quote from: The Cosh on 02 July, 2011, 03:59:15 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 02 July, 2011, 03:25:16 PM
Not that easy RC.
Lockerbie is very much contested a 'truth' and not in a silly tin-foil-hat kind of way.
Interesting. I had thought Libyan state involvement at some level was pretty cut and dried and the arguments were over the role (or lack thereof) of Al Megrahi and his mate.
Nothing is cut-and-dried with Megrahi, even the reasons for his release.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 02 July, 2011, 04:48:33 PM
Quote from: The Cosh on 02 July, 2011, 03:59:15 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 02 July, 2011, 03:25:16 PM
Not that easy RC.
Lockerbie is very much contested a 'truth' and not in a silly tin-foil-hat kind of way.
Interesting. I had thought Libyan state involvement at some level was pretty cut and dried and the arguments were over the role (or lack thereof) of Al Megrahi and his mate.
Nothing is cut-and-dried with Megrahi, even the reasons for his release.
Cheers, Joe- some interesting reading there.
The fact that the French are illegally (Although there is a clause that they are arming civvies to protect themselves) supplying the rebels with arms doesn't really surprise me in the least. If it was another nation the French would be up in arms (pardon the pun).
http://aljazeera.co.uk/news/africa/2011/06/2011629234644934286.html
Devils advocate: Surely there are pro Gaderffii civvies who need to protect themselves
The French did back the UN into starting operations against Lybia.
http://warsclerotic.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/french-air-force-in-action-over-libya-at-start-of-broad-anti-qaddafi-operation/
The whole affair is turning into one big cluster fuck and can only get worse.
V
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 02 July, 2011, 04:51:05 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 02 July, 2011, 04:48:33 PM
Quote from: The Cosh on 02 July, 2011, 03:59:15 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 02 July, 2011, 03:25:16 PM
Not that easy RC.
Lockerbie is very much contested a 'truth' and not in a silly tin-foil-hat kind of way.
Interesting. I had thought Libyan state involvement at some level was pretty cut and dried and the arguments were over the role (or lack thereof) of Al Megrahi and his mate.
Nothing is cut-and-dried with Megrahi, even the reasons for his release.
Cheers, Joe- some interesting reading there.
Hand in your internet 'blustering buffoon' card, immediately!
Quote from: Matt Timson on 03 July, 2011, 12:04:57 PM
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 02 July, 2011, 04:51:05 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 02 July, 2011, 04:48:33 PM
Quote from: The Cosh on 02 July, 2011, 03:59:15 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 02 July, 2011, 03:25:16 PM
Not that easy RC.
Lockerbie is very much contested a 'truth' and not in a silly tin-foil-hat kind of way.
Interesting. I had thought Libyan state involvement at some level was pretty cut and dried and the arguments were over the role (or lack thereof) of Al Megrahi and his mate.
Nothing is cut-and-dried with Megrahi, even the reasons for his release.
Cheers, Joe- some interesting reading there.
Hand in your internet 'blustering buffoon' card, immediately!
Errr- by 'interesting reading' I of course mean, Fuck you asshole! I don't need you to tell me what to think!
(Phew, I think I got away with that one...)
What is going on is the US/NATO/UN are just doing what they like regardless of anything or anyone else and it demonstrates the problem with world govt and a self appointed supreme authority who are answerable to noone except themselves but they are being held accountable and are being scrutinised.
Another stupid thing that the UK and France issued death threats to Gadaffi stating that they were sending in a team of assassins to get rid of Gadaffi which was very stupid because if you announce it then you lose the element of surprise but having said that its not the first time the UK[amongst others] has attempted to assassinate Gadaffi and they have failed every time.Also the security around Gadaffi will be very very very tight and anyone attempting to assassinate Gadaffi wont even get close enough and there is no chance of infiltrating Gadaffis security forces and if any of them are unlucky enough to be caught they will either be imprisoned if they are lucky or sent back to where they came from in bits.
Gadiffi is proving very difficult to get rid of which is frustrating the UN/US/NATO forces so they will get more and more desperate as the days and weeks go by and their last resort is to send in ground forces as the US/UN/NATO will not back down or retreat.
I am hoping that the military will refuse as its a suicide mission.The military in Afghanistan and Iraq were initially welcomed by a large amount of the population of those countries so its not hard to imagine the consequences of being unwelcome except for a minority of western backed rebel forces of which a percentage have switched to supporting Gadaffi as they realised that they were losing and because Gadaffi gave them an amnesty.
Wait... Are we talking about Gadaffi, here?
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 03 July, 2011, 03:57:59 PM
What is going on is the US/NATO/UN are just doing what they like
Fixed that for you.
The UN doesn't do anything. If Aliens invaded tomorrow*, the UN would probably take three months to decide that they should freeze all their assets. A pointless, impotent organization is what they are
*who's to say they're not already among us?
The UN - a great concept rendered ineffective at best and dangerous at worst by bureaucracy and selfishness.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 03 July, 2011, 05:05:22 PM
Wait... Are we talking about Gadaffi, here?
I wasn't. I was talking about Gaderffi
(http://www.star.etmortius.net/equipement/weapons/images/Star%20Wars%20-%20D6%20-%20Weapons%20Stats%20Netbook_img_9.jpg)
V
Quote from: pops1983 on 03 July, 2011, 07:09:19 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 03 July, 2011, 03:57:59 PM
What is going on is the US/NATO/UN are just doing what they like
Fixed that for you.
The UN doesn't do anything. If Aliens invaded tomorrow*, the UN would probably take three months to decide that they should freeze all their assets. A pointless, impotent organization is what they are
*who's to say they're not already among us?
I was talking about Gadaffi.The UN are impotent as and when it suits them to be impotent which is the majority of the time as its a corrupt and criminal organisation which is obvious now that it doesnt abide by its own resolutions or international law and it launches a war or "kinetic military action" as they like to call it and uses civil unrest within Libya as a window of opportunity to do so.A sad side effect of it all was not allowing Libyan students abroad to continue their studies simply because their studying was subsidised by Gadaffi.
Bombing campaigns = Humanitarianism
Humanitarianism = Stealing billions that belongs to Libyans and then giving it way after imposing sanctions and freezing its assets.
Humanitarianism = Bombing civilian targets and using DU munitions and drone attacks.
Humanitarianism = The collapse of the Lbyan economy and manufacturing base and everything else.
War = Peace
The Fukushima earthquake and resulting nuclear catastrophe was the perfect opportunity for the UN to demonstrate that it has a purpose yet it has done n o t h i n g in response to that while at the same time that was unfolding it was launching military action against Libya.The UN have also been a complete and utter failure in Haiti.
Ye forgot one there Mr. Wolf
Humanitarianism= Appointing people like Geri Haliwell as 'Goodwill Ambassadors', send them to impoverished countries to speak to the natives, and then broadcasting what the most insightful, politically aware and culturally sensitive member of the Spice Girls thinks about the whole frightful business of poverty
Evidence of technology on Mars? That thing to the top right of centre doesn't half look artificial:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/p/1402/2P250825588EFFAW9DP2432R1M1.HTML
More like evidience of geology.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 04 July, 2011, 09:41:11 AM
More like evidience of geology.
You man it's a naturally formed rock but it came all the way from Earth? Amazing!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giants-causeway-in-ireland.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giants-causeway-in-ireland.jpg)
Evidence of technology in Ireland? Those things don't half look artificial.
Possibly constructed by a race of giants?
Quote from: TordelBack on 04 July, 2011, 09:55:04 AM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 04 July, 2011, 09:41:11 AM
More like evidience of geology.
You man it's a naturally formed rock but it came all the way from Earth? Amazing!
I was going to type
areology -neologism- but it looks too much like
arseology.
QuotePossibly constructed by a race of giants?
And PJ.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 04 July, 2011, 10:30:41 AM
QuotePossibly constructed by a race of giants?
And PJ.
The
Nipper of ancient days.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 04 July, 2011, 10:28:00 AM
I was going to type areology -neologism- but it looks too much like arseology.
It's okay, I miss Roger too.
Quote from: GordonR on 04 July, 2011, 10:22:44 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giants-causeway-in-ireland.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giants-causeway-in-ireland.jpg)
Evidence of technology in Ireland? Those things don't half look artificial.
Possibly constructed by a race of giants?
It was constructed to stop coastal erosion @ about 20,000 BC using a material that was cast in hexagonal lengths and constructed in interlocking sections of varying height.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 04 July, 2011, 06:09:52 PM
Quote from: GordonR on 04 July, 2011, 10:22:44 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giants-causeway-in-ireland.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giants-causeway-in-ireland.jpg)
Evidence of technology in Ireland? Those things don't half look artificial.
Possibly constructed by a race of giants?
It was constructed to stop coastal erosion @ about 20,000 BC using a material that was cast in hexagonal lengths and constructed in interlocking sections of varying height.
constructed back then?
By Neanderthals?
Says here it was caused by natural phenomena http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giants_causeway
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 04 July, 2011, 08:30:55 PM
Quote from: Something Fishy on 04 July, 2011, 08:05:27 PM
constructed back then?
By Neanderthals?
Trans-Time inc.
ah ha.. good point. Same people that turned up on their mobile phone in that old cine-reel recently.
It's a Well Known Fact that the Giant's Causeway was a giant Bee-Hive built by a race of Giant Bees.
When they were hunted to extinction, the Huns and Fenians didn't have a common enemy anymore. That's how The Troubles started. The whole Fairy-Tale about Fionn MacCumhaill has to be one of the worst attempts at a cover-up ever.
Quote from: Something Fishy on 04 July, 2011, 08:05:27 PM
constructed back then?
By Neanderthals?
No need for our big nosed brothers, plenty of H. s. sapiens around in northern Europe by 20,000BC (and no evidence of the former in Ireland, ever - present company excepted). Whether they would have been able to assemble precast under 3km of ice during the last glacial maximum is another matter. The giant bee explanation has more merit, not least the prospect of cracking open some of those columns to feed on sweet, sweet subglacial honey.
8 reasons why the US/NATO* are attacking Libya with a view to taking it over as there is more to this than oil as uneducated people keep saying "Its the oil - Its about oil - "They want the oil" etc etc as if they think they are letting you in on a secret and as they think they are so much more enlightened than you are while missing out the rest.
1: The control of water as there are huge freshwater aquifers under Libya.
2: Cash.Libya was going to produce its own gold backed Dinars which would have become the national currency of Africa.Libya also printed its own debt free currency which was printed in the UK.
3: Banking.Libya is one of the few countries left that doesnt have a privately owned central bank although now it does also have a privately owned central bank that was set up by the so called "Rebel forces".
4: Control of Africa.Libya is the most successful nation in Africa and it had long term plans to assist/lead the rest of Africa to become free and independent and was/is going to assist the rest of Africa to access its underground water supplies amongst other things.
5: Oil.No need to elaborate on that.
6: Independence.Libya is a totally independent self determining country as is Gadaffi who didnt kow tow to the UN/Globalist/Global governance agenda.
7: Theft: The theft/control of Libyan cash and assets and land and resources.
8: Setting a bad example.Libya was setting a very bad example to the world in how a govt and a country could be self reliant to a large extent and how to have a monetary system that doent implode by design and how to invest its cash in itself and how to provide for its people financially and through a welfare system and how to never borrow cash and end up in massive debt and how to become prosperous and the list goes on.....
There are probably more reasons i have not listed.
*On behalf of private interests
I'm also pretty sure- and you can correct me if I'm wrong here- that Gadaffi is an evil bastard.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 05 July, 2011, 10:37:31 PM
I'm also pretty sure- and you can correct me if I'm wrong here- that Gadaffi is an evil bastard.
Never a criteria for invasion though.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 05 July, 2011, 10:37:31 PM
I'm also pretty sure- and you can correct me if I'm wrong here- that Gadaffi is an evil bastard.
Plenty of evil bastards out there in the world, some running countries. The criteria for whether we are allies with them (or at the very least flogging them weapons) or kicking their teeth down their throat seems to be a rather cynical cost/benefit analysis.
Just take a look Uzbekistan - we are quite happy to look the other way as the regime their boils people alive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_boiling#Modern_times), because they let us use their airbases.
Another reason is the 100 minute speech given by Gadaffi to the UN assembly where he threw the UN charter back at Banki Moon and called them criminals amongst many other things as it was highly critical of war in Iraq and the US fighting the Taliban and just about everything else.He has called for a new inquiry into the JFK assassination and has called the West or those that control the West criminals who steal wealth and resources and who control and instigate coups and revolutions.
In its entirity :
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/289093-2 (http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/289093-2)
JFK - the one that won't go away...
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 July, 2011, 12:23:41 AM
Another reason is the 100 minute speech given by Gadaffi to the UN assembly where he threw the UN charter back at Banki Moon and called them criminals amongst many other things as it was highly critical of war in Iraq and the US fighting the Taliban and just about everything else.He has called for a new inquiry into the JFK assassination and has called the West or those that control the West criminals who steal wealth and resources and who control and instigate coups and revolutions.
In its entirity :
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/289093-2 (http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/289093-2)
Lybia was invaded because he asked for an enquiry into the JFK killing?
Hey, Gaddafi's just telling it like he sees it. And what he sees, gentlemen, is The Man fuckin a dog.
I love Gaddafi - he's fuckin nuts and drives a golf buggy.
(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Q27G2fzNlw4/TW7J8qfp9ZI/AAAAAAAADqY/kvzvBMzuFvE/golf+car.jpg)
Wasn't aware that Libya's been invaded by anybody, Richmond!
Not so long ago....
(http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Blair-Gaddafi-Masonic-Handshake-01.jpg)
Quote from: Old Tankie on 06 July, 2011, 04:38:47 PM
Wasn't aware that Libya's been invaded by anybody, Richmond!
Er, how about the invasion of airspace? The invasion of bombs into Libyan property? The (admittedly very small) invasion of "military advisors"?
Quote from: Proudhuff on 06 July, 2011, 05:19:03 PM
Not so long ago....
(http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Blair-Gaddafi-Masonic-Handshake-01.jpg)
Despot the Difference?
If military advisors are a sign of invasion, Sharky, we're currently being "invaded" by Australia, Canada, Russia, France, USA, Poland, Spain, Germany, India, etc., etc. and, as for air space, all you've got to do is look in the sky where I live and the good ole U S of A is "invading" us all the time, by your criteria!!!
Quote from: Old Tankie on 06 July, 2011, 05:53:16 PM
If military advisors are a sign of invasion, Sharky, we're currently being "invaded" by Australia, Canada, Russia, France, USA, Poland, Spain, Germany, India, etc., etc. and, as for air space, all you've got to do is look in the sky where I live and the good ole U S of A is "invading" us all the time, by your criteria!!!
You just keep telling yourself that, eh?
Oh! Thanks for your okay on that, Richmond!
Quote from: Old Tankie on 06 July, 2011, 06:03:23 PM
Oh! Thanks for your okay on that, Richmond!
No problem- anything else you want to know how to think about, just ask.
Cheers, Richmond, I'll be in touch!!
Letting people stay at your house is not the same as having squatters.
Quote from: Emperor on 06 July, 2011, 12:07:48 AM
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 05 July, 2011, 10:37:31 PM
I'm also pretty sure- and you can correct me if I'm wrong here- that Gadaffi is an evil bastard.
Plenty of evil bastards out there in the world, some running countries. The criteria for whether we are allies with them (or at the very least flogging them weapons) or kicking their teeth down their throat seems to be a rather cynical cost/benefit analysis.
Just take a look Uzbekistan - we are quite happy to look the other way as the regime their boils people alive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_boiling#Modern_times), because they let us use their airbases.
That is just horrific.
because they let us use their airbases.
and pipe oil out
Indeed. From 2003 - "Tony Blair's new friend (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/oct/28/foreignpolicy.usa)":
QuoteThere are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.
His crime, like that of many of the country's prisoners, was practising his religion. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, learned his politics in the Soviet Union. He was appointed under the old system, and its collapse in 1991 did not interrupt his rule. An Islamist terrorist network has been operating there, but Karimov makes no distinction between peaceful Muslims and terrorists: anyone who worships privately, who does not praise the president during his prayers or who joins an organisation which has not been approved by the state can be imprisoned. Political dissidents, human rights activists and homosexuals receive the same treatment. Some of them, like in the old Soviet Union, are sent to psychiatric hospitals.
But Uzbekistan is seen by the US government as a key western asset, as Saddam Hussein's Iraq once was. Since 1999, US special forces have been training Karimov's soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia's massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia and China have been vying. Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a secular state fending off the forces of Islam.
So, far from seeking to isolate his regime, the US government has tripled its aid to Karimov. Last year, he received $500m (£300m), of which $79m went to the police and intelligence services, who are responsible for most of the torture. While the US claims that its engagement with Karimov will encourage him to respect human rights, like Saddam Hussein he recognises that the protection of the world's most powerful government permits him to do whatever he wants. Indeed, the US state department now plays a major role in excusing his crimes. In May, for example, it announced that Uzbekistan had made "substantial and continuing progress" in improving its human rights record. The progress? "Average sentencing" for members of peaceful religious organisations is now just "7-12 years", while two years ago they were "usually sentenced to 12-19 years".
...
So what of Tony Blair, the man who claims that human rights are so important that they justify going to war? Well, at the beginning of this year, he granted Uzbekistan an open licence to import whatever weapons from the United Kingdom Mr Karimov fancies. But his support goes far beyond that. The British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has repeatedly criticised Karimov's crushing of democracy movements and his use of torture to silence his opponents. Like Roger Casement, the foreign office envoy who exposed the atrocities in the Congo a century ago, Murray has been sending home dossiers which could scarcely fail to move anyone who cares about human rights.
Blair has been moved all right: moved to do everything he could to silence our ambassador. Mr Murray has been threatened with the sack, investigated for a series of plainly trumped-up charges and persecuted so relentlessly by his superiors that he had to spend some time, like many of Karimov's critics, in a psychiatric ward, though in this case for sound clinical reasons. This pressure, according to a senior government source, was partly "exercised on the orders of No 10".
I may have missed the news that we have cut our links with Uzbekistan after Tony Blair stepped down...
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 06 July, 2011, 09:39:33 AM
Lybia was invaded because he asked for an enquiry into the JFK killing?
No but it goes to show that Gadaffi is seen as a problem and a liability by the "international community".Its well worth watching the entire speech and without making light of the very serious subject matter it does have a certain amount of entertainment value.
I admit that i am biased towards Gadaffi and i never thought i would support a dictator but there is a first time for everything.Gadaffi isnt perfect either as there is no such thing as a dictator/despot who has a perfect record of no abuses of power and sure enough there are problems with Gadaffi in this respect but on the plus side look at what he has done for the Libyan people.Someone will be along in a minute to say "look what Chairman Mao did for the people of China !" or Hitler or Stalin or PolPot etc etc but Gadaffi is not in that kind of league or anywhere near it.
I am tired and i have lost track of what i was going to type so it will have to wait till later.
Libyan airspace has been invaded and taken over by a hostile foreign military force so i am not sure what aspect of that is difficult to understand.It is what it is and there will be US/NATO troops on the ground before this year is out and again this is an invasion as Gadaffi didnt invite them.
Nice country - We will take it !
If gaderffii had the power and strength of both Stalin and Hitler he would be up there in their price range.
V
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 July, 2011, 08:23:47 PM
I admit that i am biased towards Gadaffi and i never thought i would support a dictator but there is a first time for everything.
Peter, you know that as a man of strongly voiced opinions, you'd be dead, in jail or disappeared long ago if you lived in Gaddafi's Libya? Despite the many flaws of western plutocracies they do tend to let us rabbit on in public, protest, and (while I know you think it makes no difference) even vote on occasion. It's hard to hear someone voicing their support for someone who'd have them executed on the spot.
Quote from: TordelBack on 06 July, 2011, 09:39:50 PMPeter, you know that as a man of strongly voiced opinions, you'd be dead, in jail or disappeared long ago if you lived in Gaddafi's Libya?
Orwell often called-out the left-wing/socialists in the UK when they showed naive/comfortable bias for Stalin, it can be easy when throwing boquets and bullets from the other side but you must condemn/stand-up for all equally, the
power-of-facing as he called it.
We simply suffer from a different flavour of tyranny. What we have in Britain, at least for the moment, is Tyranny Lite.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 06 July, 2011, 09:56:23 PM
We simply suffer from a different flavour of tyranny. What we have in Britain, at least for the moment, is Tyranny Lite.
In the same way a sniffle is Tuberculosis Lite. One is irritating, the other will kill or cripple you.
QuoteI admit that i am biased towards Gadaffi
Then you are a fucking idiot.
If I'm living in tyranny, Sharky, I'm all for it. I don't think my grandfather would agree with your description of tyranny, mate. He had the numbers tattooed on his arm by real tyranny.
Quote from: Old Tankie on 06 July, 2011, 10:20:32 PM
If I'm living in tyranny, Sharky, I'm all for it. I don't think my grandfather would agree with your description of tyranny, mate. He had the numbers tattooed on his arm by real tyranny.
You know, I rarely - if, in fact, ever - agree with a single political opinion you've come out with. Except this one.
Buffoons who talk on public forums in this country about how we live in a dictatorship/tyrannical system don't even fucking know they're born.
Most of the time it's a misaligned frustration borne of the collusion of 'good' governments with the 'naughty' ones and the resulting feeling of impotency to ever change it.
Quote from: TordelBack on 06 July, 2011, 09:39:50 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 July, 2011, 08:23:47 PM
I admit that i am biased towards Gadaffi and i never thought i would support a dictator but there is a first time for everything.
Peter, you know that as a man of strongly voiced opinions, you'd be dead, in jail or disappeared long ago if you lived in Gaddafi's Libya? Despite the many flaws of western plutocracies they do tend to let us rabbit on in public, protest, and (while I know you think it makes no difference) even vote on occasion. It's hard to hear someone voicing their support for someone who'd have them executed on the spot.
I would blame the US/UN/NATO for my support of Gadaffi and i am expected to support the US/NATO/UN but i chose to talk up Gadaffi instead of falling in line with the evil brutal dictator rhetoric as obviously i dont support for what falls under the description of the US/NATO /UN and their plan for Libya.I dont support Gadaffi wholesale as i was just pointing out the positive aspects rather then the negatives and i wont condemn outright purely on the basis that you pointed out although i am aware of all that.As i am an outsider of Libya then i have the luxury of being objective about Gadaffi and i am not an apologist.
Thank you Globalist western Plutocrats for letting me speak my mind.Thank you so much as i am so grateful as you are so powerful and benevolent but at the same time they would try to remove freedom of speech anytime if they didnt fear the backlash that would ensue but at the same time they doing other things like financially raping us and all the rest that i wont go into.Free speech is an inalienable right.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 06 July, 2011, 10:19:34 PM
QuoteI admit that i am biased towards Gadaffi
Then you are a fucking idiot.
.
Thats not very condusive for intelligent chat and debate.
There are degrees of tyranny so quoting extreme examples of tyranny doesnt cancel out less extreme examples of tyranny or creeping and encroaching tyranny unless you dont understand the subject.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 July, 2011, 10:48:57 PMI would blame the US/UN/NATO for my support of Gadaffi and i am expected to support the US/NATO/UN but i chose to talk up Gadaffi instead of falling in line with the evil brutal dictator rhetoric as obviously i dont support for what falls under the description of the US/NATO /UN and their plan for Libya.I dont support Gadaffi wholesale as i was just pointing out the positive aspects rather then the negatives and i wont condemn outright purely on the basis that you pointed out although i am aware of all that.As i am an outsider of Libya then i have the luxury of being objective about Gadaffi and i am not an apologist.
I don't understand why you feel the need to choose a side, there is no logic in your thinking other than what you choose to ignore and leave out, it's a very reactionary/typical response from a
propangadised individual -thought to take a side, doesn't matter which one, as long as it's not understood- who reponds in terms of reflex and feelings but without depth or degree of pragmatic thought.
Cut-to-the-chase, they are
both bad for Libya.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 06 July, 2011, 10:55:11 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 July, 2011, 10:48:57 PMI would blame the US/UN/NATO for my support of Gadaffi and i am expected to support the US/NATO/UN but i chose to talk up Gadaffi instead of falling in line with the evil brutal dictator rhetoric as obviously i dont support for what falls under the description of the US/NATO /UN and their plan for Libya.I dont support Gadaffi wholesale as i was just pointing out the positive aspects rather then the negatives and i wont condemn outright purely on the basis that you pointed out although i am aware of all that.As i am an outsider of Libya then i have the luxury of being objective about Gadaffi and i am not an apologist.
I don't understand why you feel the need to choose a side, there is no logic in your thinking other than what you choose to ignore and leave out, it's a very reactionary/typical response from a propangadised individual -thought to take a side, doesn't matter which one, as long as it's not understood- who reponds in terms of reflex and feelings but without depth or degree of real pragmatic thought.
Cut-to-the-chase, they are both bad for Libya.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 06 July, 2011, 10:55:11 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 July, 2011, 10:48:57 PMI would blame the US/UN/NATO for my support of Gadaffi and i am expected to support the US/NATO/UN but i chose to talk up Gadaffi instead of falling in line with the evil brutal dictator rhetoric as obviously i dont support for what falls under the description of the US/NATO /UN and their plan for Libya.I dont support Gadaffi wholesale as i was just pointing out the positive aspects rather then the negatives and i wont condemn outright purely on the basis that you pointed out although i am aware of all that.As i am an outsider of Libya then i have the luxury of being objective about Gadaffi and i am not an apologist.
I don't understand why you feel the need to choose a side, there is no logic in your thinking other than what you choose to ignore and leave out, it's a very reactionary/typical response from a propangadised individual -thought to take a side, doesn't matter which one, as long as it's not understood- who reponds in terms of reflex and feelings but without depth or degree of pragmatic thought.
Cut-to-the-chase, they are both bad for Libya.
You must be talking to someone else.Keep your condescending BS about being propagandised thanks and the rest of it.I have already explained that i am aware of the negatives of Gadaffi as i chose to talk up Gadaffi/the Gadaffi regime so thats hardly responding in terms of reflex.
The flipside to this is if i had chosen to demonise and talk about the negative aspects of the Gadaffi regime and Gadaffi then i would not have been criticised and if i said that i supported NATO etc bombing the murdering dictator i would not have been criticised or it would have been a lot less likely.
"I dont understand why you feel the need to choose a side"
Its because i sympathise with their predicament and because of the nature of those that are bombing their country and i am not looking for yours or anyones approval.
Problem with that anyone ?
Do you sympathise with Libya or with Gadaffi?
Quote from: GordonR on 06 July, 2011, 10:30:05 PM
Buffoons who talk on public forums in this country about how we live in a dictatorship/tyrannical system don't even fucking know they're born.
You're quite right, very few of us know we are born. Everything we need as an individual is made available to us, more or less. We have to
pay for everything of course but it's all there, more or less. But that's not freedom, is it? That's just infrastructure.
Did your government ever set out to deliberately deprive you of shelter, food, water or medicine? Of course not. Does your government sit up at nights dreaming up ever more elaborate plots for complete domination? Of course not. Is your government tyrannical? Well, I'm not exactly certain what our government is. It's not a complete tyranny because we have freedom of speech and Magna Carta and suchlike - but then again it's not a real democracy either because they never ask us whether we want to go to war or not. They just do it. Did your grandfather fight for that? I know mine didn't.
I could point out tyrannical elements in our government, of course I could. I could point out good things, too - I love the idea of the House of Lords, for example, and the constitutional monarchy. But these things are no longer holding the sway they should in our country. They have been subverted, subtly and slowly, by small groups of powerful people.
Every penny in tax you pay goes into paying off the national debt - that is, money a sovereign country (ours) has borrowed at interest from private banks that create the money out of nothing. So, who has more say in that relationship? The government that should serve the people is beholden to the private banks. If you suddenly can't pay for your mortgage, it doesn't matter in the slightest if all your children and your spouse vote to keep the house, the bank will take it off you.
This is the tyranny we have. It holds us back because money is the most effective social control ever devised, but only if created and controlled by privately owned banks and financial institutions. It is also the most effective social energizer ever devised, but only if created and controlled by a society, by a government.
The tyranny we live under may not sport a natty moustache or march people into death camps, but it does bomb innocents in your name. It contaminates pregnant women with uranium in your name. It helps the richest people in the country get richer at your expense.
If you will not see it, how can you ever be free? If you will not see it, how can we ever fix it? It wouldn't be hard to fix, not at all. But every day that passes makes it harder.
QuoteThats not very condusive for intelligent chat and debate.
I wasn't chatting or debating, just telling you what I think.
QuoteThere are degrees of tyranny
Are there? I suppose there are degrees of murder too? Degrees of rape? Degrees of racism?
You know everyone's looking up the degrees of murder now Rich ;)
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 06 July, 2011, 11:40:47 PM
QuoteThats not very condusive for intelligent chat and debate.
I wasn't chatting or debating, just telling you what I think.
QuoteThere are degrees of tyranny
Are there? I suppose there are degrees of murder too? Degrees of rape? Degrees of racism?
I didnt say you were chatting or debating as i said that your comment was not condusive to chat and debate.Hopefully i wont have to explain that again.
Also there are degrees of murder recognised by law as you can look them up.There are degrees of racism as well which is obvious.I dont know about rape but thats probably more cut and dried but its not something i have ever read up on.
Degrees are like a sliding scale and there are degrees of tyranny as there are various regimes past and present that have very different ways of enforcing tyranny and in how people are treated and some dictatorships are very harsh while others are milder or more benevolent but they all have one thing in common which is zero tolerance for dissent.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 06 July, 2011, 11:29:18 PM
Do you sympathise with Libya or with Gadaffi?
Both under the circumstances.If was any other country i would be supportive of them if they were being bombed and invaded by the US/NATO.As for dictators i wouldnt support any dictator by default like i didnt support Saddam Hussein and if it was North Korea i wouldnt support KimJungIl but because Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime have positive aspects i support them on that basis but not on the basis of abuses of power.
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 06 July, 2011, 11:55:48 PM
You know everyone's looking up the degrees of murder now Rich ;)
Indeed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder#Degrees_of_murder_by_country
QuoteThe flipside to this is if i had chosen to demonise and talk about the negative aspects of the Gadaffi regime and Gadaffi then i would not have been criticised and if i said that i supported NATO etc bombing the murdering dictator i would not have been criticised or it would have been a lot less likely.
That's a different matter though, if true, and doesn't really equate with the notion of supporting Gadaffi himself.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 July, 2011, 11:24:57 PMIts because i sympathise with their predicament and because of the nature of those that are bombing their country and i am not looking for yours or anyones approval.
Problem with that anyone ?
Considering Libya is not Gadaffi, that's a different issue akin to who would you support in Greece, the people or the Government/Troika?
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 July, 2011, 11:58:58 PM
As for dictators i wouldnt support any dictator by default like i didnt support Saddam Hussein and if it was North Korea i wouldnt support KimJungIl but because Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime have positive aspects i support them on that basis but not on the basis of abuses of power.
Okay... What are the positive aspects?
President Museveni cites positives for Gaddafi: http://rosebellkagumire.com/2011/03/21/part-two-president-museveni-cites-positives-for-gaddafi/
Quote from: M.I.K. on 07 July, 2011, 12:16:21 AM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 July, 2011, 11:58:58 PM
As for dictators i wouldnt support any dictator by default like i didnt support Saddam Hussein and if it was North Korea i wouldnt support KimJungIl but because Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime have positive aspects i support them on that basis but not on the basis of abuses of power.
Okay... What are the positive aspects?
Why dont you go and look them up for yourself apart from those that i have already listed in this thread like the issuance of debt free currency or the funding of overseas students or the investment back into Libya and its people or the irrigation project or the possible introduction of a gold backed currency or the goodwill extended towards the rest of Africa etc etc etc
I am not an advocate of dictatorships or dictators as all i am doing is pointing out some facts.As for the negatives of Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime i have read up on it and i waiting to talk to my friend as it were who has first hand insight into the goings on inside the Gadaffi regime and the prisons etc etc but my friend is presently unavailable so that will have to wait.
I also said that i support Gadaffi because he is standing up to the western Plutocrats that want to take over Libya and i like the fact that he spoke his mind to the UN and told them some home truths.
Someone else could always post some of the negative aspects that are factual in the meantime befiore i do.
So the positives are that he's friends with his neighbours, good with money and doesn't like people that you don't like?
What about decades of backing international terrorist groups, including the IRA? I presume you don't advocate that either?
Since when were people either good or bad? Things all seem so simple, these days. So cut and dried. This is a good guy, this is a bad guy.
He's a mass of contradictions, dichotomies, mysteries, experiences, emotions, beliefs and knowledge just like the rest of us. In short, he's just as human as anyone else and just dismissing him as one thing or another makes him two dimensional. It de-humanizes him. Makes him easy to dismiss, easy to hate. God forbid our perfect leaders would attack human beings like you or me. No, they only attack bad people - not real people.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 07 July, 2011, 01:42:21 AM
So the positives are that he's friends with his neighbours, good with money and doesn't like people that you don't like?
What about decades of backing international terrorist groups, including the IRA? I presume you don't advocate that either?
You presumed correctly.
The upshot of this fucking pointless conversation that is a waste of my time is that you can only condemn or focus on the negative or else you are met with a chorus of disapproval.
No, Peter. The upshot is that you said that you support a man who is directly responsible for the deaths of innocent people. If you can't see why some would have a problem with that, then there's something very,
very wrong with the way you think.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 July, 2011, 01:52:46 AM
Since when were people either good or bad? Things all seem so simple, these days. So cut and dried. This is a good guy, this is a bad guy.
He's a mass of contradictions, dichotomies, mysteries, experiences, emotions, beliefs and knowledge just like the rest of us. In short, he's just as human as anyone else and just dismissing him as one thing or another makes him two dimensional. It de-humanizes him. Makes him easy to dismiss, easy to hate. God forbid our perfect leaders would attack human beings like you or me. No, they only attack bad people - not real people.
I am well aware of this. I judge people by their actions, not by what list some other three-dimensional political human being git happens to have them on at the time.
Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron - all directly responsible for the deaths of innocent people. I'm not defending Gadaffi on this point - but I wouldn't defend any of the first three either.
To be honest, I don't think any of our leaders deserve our complete respect.
Gadaffi's been around longer.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 07 July, 2011, 03:03:28 AM
No, Peter. The upshot is that you said that you support a man who is directly responsible for the deaths of innocent people. If you can't see why some would have a problem with that, then there's something very, very wrong with the way you think.
The upshot of this argument is just what i said it was.
I said very very clearly that i supported the positive aspects of Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime but NOT the negative aspects which means that i dont support the deaths of innocent people.
Its not my problem that you are thick or that you cant read plain English or that you can only see things in simplified black and white polarised terms.You are not even interested in the subject other than to criticise my comments with your simplistic sanctomonious view of things and you havent bothered to look any of it up as you reiterated my points without adding anything to the argument.
Boring timewaster.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 July, 2011, 03:14:40 AM
Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron - all directly responsible for the deaths of innocent people. I'm not defending Gadaffi on this point - but I wouldn't defend any of the first three either.
To be honest, I don't think any of our leaders deserve our complete respect.
They all vote for them as well but thats alright because they are different but they do it in your name.The only way any of you dont sanction the murder of innocents abroad is if you dont vote for any of the 3 mainstream political parties so you can all go away and think about that.Anyone who pays taxes which is all of you in one way or another pays for the murder of innocent people.
Thats reality.
Not so whiter than white now are you ?
Richmond was right.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 07 July, 2011, 05:15:51 AM
Richmond was right.
Cool!
QuoteI said very very clearly that i supported the positive aspects of Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime
And you have yet to tell us what they are. Instead of doing so you demanded we find out for ourselves. I dunno- do you think his best feature is selling guns and explosives to the IRA or perhaps the killing of policewoman in London? Which one do you think is his most positive aspect?
Or perhaps- and this is me just thinking out loud- your entire argument is full of shit.
(This is the bit you storm off in a faux huff claiming your being picked on and don't have to answer to anyone, by the way)
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 07 July, 2011, 07:32:35 AMWhich one do you think is his most positive aspect?
Maybe it's supporting Milosevic, another stalwart dictator who the west done wrong?
(A man who was quick enough to use the UN Charter to oppose his trial for war crimes, BTW).
I think I can see what Peter is saying, that reducing everything to black and white ignores both the good that even the most villainous government can do, and the crimes that their opponents perpetrate, and that this tendency is particularly unfortunate when it falls in with the global party line. But really, 'accentuating the positive' of a persistently nasty fucker like Gaddafi just undermines all that attempted subtlety by virtue of being ridiculous.
I tried, I really did. I give you the information, even a picture which is easier than having to read. Is NO ONE interested in him driving a golf buggy about? I think that's important. Are alla yous fuckin thick?
Pfft!
I'm away to talk to someone who already agrees with me.
M.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 07 July, 2011, 07:32:35 AM
Quote from: M.I.K. on 07 July, 2011, 05:15:51 AM
Richmond was right.
Cool!
QuoteI said very very clearly that i supported the positive aspects of Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime
And you have yet to tell us what they are. Instead of doing so you demanded we find out for ourselves. I dunno- do you think his best feature is selling guns and explosives to the IRA or perhaps the killing of policewoman in London? Which one do you think is his most positive aspect?
Or perhaps- and this is me just thinking out loud- your entire argument is full of shit.
(This is the bit you storm off in a faux huff claiming your being picked on and don't have to answer to anyone, by the way)
Its clear to me that you are entirely full of shit because you refuse to see my point.
Its you thinking out loud and your inability to understand my argument and your inability to argue against it properly.
You obviously cant read either since i have listed them in previous comments so go back and read them.You obviously cannot read because just above your comment i stated that i dont advocate funding and arming the IRA.Dont advocate means i dont support.Its very simple so go back and read it.As for demanding i didnt demand anything as i suggested that others could look them up for themselves.
As for storming off in a faux huff that is utter nonsense as i didnt storm off in a faux huff as i signed off and went to bed as it was late.
You are a complete arse sometimes like now when you argue in these threads.
Now i hyave to sign off and go and do some work so you can think that i am storming off in a faux huff as well if you like.
QuoteIts clear to me that you are entirely full of shit because you refuse to see my point.
Your point being what? Gadaffi isn't really that bad?
Well sorry Peter- he is. And you even thinking otherwise is the most monumentally fucking stupid and disgusting thing you have ever come out with- and that's a long fucking list.
QuoteAs for demanding i didnt demand anything as i suggested that others could look them up for themselves.
Now who is the one misunderstanding how it works?
You claim this is a debate. Well, in a debate one person will make a satement ('Gadaffi isn't that bad') and then follow up that staement with examples to prove that point. DO you see? Do you see how it works?
You however, did not do that, and when asked to do so refused and told people to find out for themselves... do I really need to explain to you any further?
Quote from: Peter WolfI said very very clearly that i supported the positive aspects of Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime
Peter, your praise is wee bit premature, no? Libya doesn't even have a rail service, never mind one that runs on time.
Why hasn't Gaddafi just been assassinated? If the Arab Spring's Libya wing was orchestrated or endorsed by outside bodies or whatever, why wait to go through all that when you could off him some other way? Is it because it was a genuine popular movement? Are 'them' actually concerned that pinkos would be very upset if a national leader was just offed by international consensus? Surely if them's all up to it and have the measure of control some suspect, they wouldn't give a shit and we'd never find out.
M.
It's illegal to assassinate any Head of State surely? Otherwise as soon as someone got into power they'd be 'offed' by their Politicial rivals/jealous siblings/CIA,SVR,MOSSAD,MI6 etc and the struggle for power would begin again.
It doesn't really matter how twisted or evil a head of state is. So long as he takes our credit, buys our goods and services and gives us first dibs on his resources, why then he can do just about whatever he wants to his own people. As soon as our profits dip, though, a no-nonsense ally can become a tyrannical enemy in a heartbeat.
Distasteful though it is, most of the monsters in this world are made, elevated and kept in power by us mainly to fund our materialistic addictions.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 07 July, 2011, 10:28:56 AM
QuoteIts clear to me that you are entirely full of shit because you refuse to see my point.
Your point being what? Gadaffi isn't really that bad?
Well sorry Peter- he is. And you even thinking otherwise is the most monumentally fucking stupid and disgusting thing you have ever come out with- and that's a long fucking list.
QuoteAs for demanding i didnt demand anything as i suggested that others could look them up for themselves.
Now who is the one misunderstanding how it works?
You claim this is a debate. Well, in a debate one person will make a satement ('Gadaffi isn't that bad') and then follow up that staement with examples to prove that point. DO you see? Do you see how it works?
You however, did not do that, and when asked to do so refused and told people to find out for themselves... do I really need to explain to you any further?
You really are impossible and we seem to have reached an impasse here.
My point was to list the positive acheivements of Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime without being an apologist which is what i did.So far i havent pointed out any or very few of the negatives concerning Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime but in time i will do so to balance things out.Gadaffi may be a complete psychopath but those positives exist nonetheless.That was my point.Even if i strenously deny that i support funding the IRA,torture and imprisonment and the abuses of power that i havent listed but i am aware of its still not enough for you.I dont have a problem understanding others points of view even if i dont agree with them but you seem to have a problem with this because if an opinion doesnt fit into your own worldview you reject it outright and deny that i have outlined my reasoning.
The positives exist alongside the negatives of Gadaffi and its called objectivity as i have already pointed out.The positives dont negate the negatives and vice versa.
As i have already pointed out half a dozen times i have already listed the positives in this thread in previous comments which are there for you and anyone else to read but i have to draw the line at repeating myself on demand as its stupid and unreasonable.
Again i will point out that i did not tell or demand anyone to do anything as i suggested that they either read my comments or look it up for themselves.Its all there in the comments and there is no denying it.
Do i need to explain this again ?
Quote.Gadaffi may be a complete psychopath but those positives exist nonetheless.
No more questions, your honour.
I think there are some people who should be judged according to the best things they've done. There are also some people who should be judged according to the worst things they've done.
It's quite important to know (or at least think about seriously) who falls into which category.
Regards
Robin
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 July, 2011, 03:14:40 AM
Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron - all directly responsible for the deaths of innocent people. I'm not defending Gadaffi on this point - but I wouldn't defend any of the first three either.
That is what i find utterly distasteful about the whole thing is their hypocritical self righteousness apart from many other aspects that i find utterly distasteful and sickening :sick: about our elected PMs.And its their abhorrent hypocritical self righteousness etc that was the reason that i talked up Gadaffi in the first place as previously i didnt have much of an opinion on Gadaffi.They are only[failed] humanitarians when there is something in it for them.
Who is going to pay to repair the country once the bombing campaign and invasion is over presuming that there will be an end to the invasion/occupation ?
Will the Libyans be any better off if Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime is deposed ?
An educated guess says they wont so we will all see how this works out.......
Imagine that i was writing a thesis or a book on Gadaffi as if i was i would have to list the positives as well as the negatives but you will all get the negatives soon enough about what went on inside the prisons and the political dissidents and the torture etc.I dont want to quote from websites regarding that business yet and i did try to find some info from the internet but i gave up looking as it was a plethora of articles written very recently that i dont trust as they all seemed to be loaded articles that were supportive of the US/NATO/UN.
What i did hear about which was appalling was that there was a boatload of Libyan refugees that were stranded out at sea and that NATO ignored their distress calls amd only 9 out of 72 survived the 16 days at sea with no food or water.
Africa rejects the skewed International Criminal Courts arrest warrant for Gadaffi :
Articles:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&biw=999&bih=629&q=africa+rejects+the+ICC&btnG=Google+Search (http://www.google.co.uk/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&biw=999&bih=629&q=africa+rejects+the+ICC&btnG=Google+Search)
I'm not really wanting to fuel this, but Peter,to be honest you're not usually too objective about what you write about so it comes across as you rooting for Col. G because he said some things you agree with. If you're now going to investigate the other things, I think that means you weren't in a position to claim objectivity.
Anyway-is no one interested in his choice of transport? Really?
M
Quote from: Mikey on 07 July, 2011, 08:13:07 PMAnyway-is no one interested in his choice of transport? Really?
The 'rebels' can't be much good if they're unable to catch him in that.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 07:44:28 PM
Africa rejects the skewed International Criminal Courts arrest warrant for Gadaffi :
The African Union? An organisation explicitly working towards creating the United States of Africa, and of which Gaddafi was Chairman. So you're happy to heed
this body's opinion, but meanwhile
everything the EU says or does is part of a conspiracy of power-hungry self-interest?
Quote from: TordelBack on 07 July, 2011, 08:22:33 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 07:44:28 PM
Africa rejects the skewed International Criminal Courts arrest warrant for Gadaffi :
The African Union? An organisation explicitly working towards creating the United States of Africa, and of which Gaddafi was Chairman. So you're happy to heed this body's opinion, but meanwhile everything the EU says or does is part of a conspiracy of power-hungry self-interest?
Please dont shoot the messenger as the article was submitted with out comment other than pointing out that the ICC is skewed.The EU or my opinion of it is off topic.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 08:30:37 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 07 July, 2011, 08:22:33 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 07:44:28 PM
Africa rejects the skewed International Criminal Courts arrest warrant for Gadaffi :
The African Union? An organisation explicitly working towards creating the United States of Africa, and of which Gaddafi was Chairman. So you're happy to heed this body's opinion, but meanwhile everything the EU says or does is part of a conspiracy of power-hungry self-interest?
Please dont shoot the messenger as the article was submitted with out comment other than pointing out that the ICC is skewed.The EU or my opinion of it is off topic.
My god though Africans working for their own self interest !
Whatever next !
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 08:30:37 PMPlease dont shoot the messenger as the article was submitted with out comment other than pointing out that the ICC is skewed.The EU or my opinion of it is off topic.
Blaming someone else?
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 07 July, 2011, 08:34:40 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 08:30:37 PMPlease dont shoot the messenger as the article was submitted with out comment other than pointing out that the ICC is skewed.The EU or my opinion of it is off topic.
Blaming someone else?
No idea what you are talking about.
Can't understand plain English, Peter?
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 08:41:36 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 07 July, 2011, 08:34:40 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 08:30:37 PMPlease dont shoot the messenger as the article was submitted with out comment other than pointing out that the ICC is skewed.The EU or my opinion of it is off topic.
Blaming someone else?
No idea what you are talking about.
t'was the article's/author's fault for your selection of it?
No real problem with the African Union, Peter, just surprised to see you citing them as a source. You wouldn't generally be known for your trust of federalising super states or their aspirants.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 07 July, 2011, 08:47:23 PM
Can't understand plain English, Peter?
Not if its not clear i dont but i m sure that if it is clarified i will.Of course now simply linking to an article is a loaded statement but i am still not clear whos fault it is.
Quote from: TordelBack on 07 July, 2011, 09:02:30 PM
No real problem with the African Union, Peter, just surprised to see you citing them as a source. You wouldn't generally be known for your trust of federalising super states or their aspirants.
Since it was the African Union who have rejected the ICC and noone else what else can i do but refer to the African Union ?
Like i have said i submitted the articles without comment.
It is interesting and curious how very very few of those present here and my critics say what they think about Libya,Gadaffi and the US/NATO/UN.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 09:13:17 PMIt is interesting and curious how very very few of those present here and my critics say what they think about Libya,Gadaffi and the US/NATO/UN.
Don't have much good to say for any of 'em.
Ditto.
Peter, just out of interest... weighing up the positives and negatives, if you could elect Gadaffi as prime minister of the UK, would you? Would you choose him over the likes of Cameron or Miliband?
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 09:13:17 PM
It is interesting and curious how very very few of those present here and my critics say what they think about Libya,Gadaffi and the US/NATO/UN.
Once upon a time a foreign government supplied weapons to a bunch of unsupported rebels. Does that story sound familiar?
It's what the UN are doing in Libya now.
It's what Gadaffi did to my wee country.
That's all I have to say about that.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 07 July, 2011, 09:18:11 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 09:13:17 PMIt is interesting and curious how very very few of those present here and my critics say what they think about Libya,Gadaffi and the US/NATO/UN.
Don't have much good to say for any of 'em.
I know that you have said what you think already and it certainly helps that you have a clue about this sort of thing.I dont know that much about the African Union as i havent really read up on them as there are only so many things i can read up on at any given time or even know the ins and outs of.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 07 July, 2011, 09:27:13 PM
Ditto.
Peter, just out of interest... weighing up the positives and negatives, if you could elect Gadaffi as prime minister of the UK, would you? Would you choose him over the likes of Cameron or Miliband?
Now this is just getting stupid.Of course i wouldnt elect a tyrant control freak but i am no more likely to vote for Milliband or Cameron.Some of you people manage to make debating or even arguing as tedious and unpleasent and timewasting as possible rather than enjoyable as i ususally enjoy debate and arguing.
Quote from: TordelBack on 07 July, 2011, 09:02:30 PM. . . or their aspirants.
Gah!! Don't bring Big Pharma into it!
QuoteSome of you people manage to make debating or even arguing as tedious and unpleasent and timewasting as possible
Well why don't you stop then?
Just trying to get a handle on how you think, PW. The fact you see arguing as something to enjoy is interesting if nothing else.
Bit of a cop-out answer, though. Let's say your life depended on it, (or the lives of lots of cute little orphan kittens or something). - if you had to pick one to vote for... could you? Or are they all just as bad as one another?
To me Gadaffi is just another elite with a personal interest in domineering the weaker elements of Africa, if he really believed he was in 'trouble', he'd as soon as get around the table with Western elites and make a deal that benefitted themselves..
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 07 July, 2011, 09:56:44 PM
QuoteSome of you people manage to make debating or even arguing as tedious and unpleasent and timewasting as possible
Well why don't you stop then?
I wouldn't presume to answer on anyone's behalf, but my guess would be because everyone wants to have the last word on this.
Start a separate Gadaffi thread if it's that important. I need advice on the proper configuration of my tin-foil hat, and none of this Gadaffi Rhubarb is of any use to me
Quote from: M.I.K. on 07 July, 2011, 09:58:08 PM
Just trying to get a handle on how you think, PW. The fact you see arguing as something to enjoy is interesting if nothing else.
Bit of a cop-out answer, though. Let's say your life depended on it, (or the lives of lots of cute little orphan kittens or something). - if you had to pick one to vote for... could you? Or are they all just as bad as one another?
If i didnt enjoy arguing and debate i wouldnt be involved in these threads.I say i enjoy arguing but only on the basis that it is something worth arguing about and it is enjoyable to me because it is challenging but at the same time i wouldnt ever choose to argue if there was an alternative to it as i would much rather debate than argue.
The trick to arguing though especially online is to never take anything personally or bear grudges as lifes too short but i think a lot of others enjoy it as well.If i have insulted you or offended you then keep it in the context of what was being said at the time.
Now to your question about who i would vote for if a loaded gun was pointed at my head i would vote for ...........wait for it................................................................................Cameron ! or do i die by my principles and say none of them ?
I expect more abuse now for that answer !!
The kittens would win out though as i wouldnt be able to bear the thought of anything terrible happening to them so you have found one of my weak points.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 07 July, 2011, 09:56:44 PM
QuoteSome of you people manage to make debating or even arguing as tedious and unpleasent and timewasting as possible
Well why don't you stop then?
Thats making it too easy for you and giving you what you want but keep in mind i very rarely start arguments and attack others points of view as i usually just post a comment that is not posted with the intent of starting an argument but you choose to argue with me as it takes two or more to argue.I could choose not to reply to you but then you wouldnt get any personal enjoyment or satisfaction out of it.I know that this is as much to do with what i say as the fact that is myself saying it so enough said about that as i wasnt born yesterday and i understand psychology ;)
There wouldnt be a shitstorm in this thread if it wasnt for me.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 07 July, 2011, 10:00:54 PM
To me Gadaffi is just another elite with a personal interest in domineering the weaker elements of Africa, if he really believed he was in 'trouble', he'd as soon as get around the table with Western elites and make a deal that benefitted themselves..
Human nature never changes and its the same wherever you go.
Quote from: pops1983 on 07 July, 2011, 10:06:42 PM
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 07 July, 2011, 09:56:44 PM
QuoteSome of you people manage to make debating or even arguing as tedious and unpleasent and timewasting as possible
Well why don't you stop then?
I wouldn't presume to answer on anyone's behalf, but my guess would be because everyone wants to have the last word on this.
Start a separate Gadaffi thread if it's that important. I need advice on the proper configuration of my tin-foil hat, and none of this Gadaffi Rhubarb is of any use to me
I'd like to retract this.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 10:18:00 PM
There wouldnt be a shitstorm in this thread if it wasnt for me.
To be fair, ye chose the right thread in which to start a shitstorm. As i understand it, this thread meant to be a shitstorm-container. A digital tea-cup, if I may employ an idiom. The title is a bit mis-leading. It should be:
"Outrageous, controversial opinions? You can't handle the outrageous, controversial opinions!"Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 10:18:00 PM
Human nature never changes and its the same wherever you go.
That's why shitstorms happen ;)
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 10:18:00 PM
Now to your question about who i would vote for if a loaded gun was pointed at my head i would vote for ...........wait for it................................................................................Cameron ! or do i die by my principles and say none of them ?
I expect more abuse now for that answer !!
Okay, I'll bite: it is the politics thread after all.
What. The Hell. Would David Cameron do for you that Labour wouldn't? How are your interests and David Cameron's aligned in any conceivable way whatsoever?
Edit: Oh bollocks. Wrong thread. Feel free to disregard the question. I don't want to know.
Quote from: House of Usher on 07 July, 2011, 11:00:28 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 10:18:00 PM
Now to your question about who i would vote for if a loaded gun was pointed at my head i would vote for ...........wait for it................................................................................Cameron ! or do i die by my principles and say none of them ?
I expect more abuse now for that answer !!
Okay, I'll bite: it is the politics thread after all.
What. The Hell. Would David Cameron do for you that Labour wouldn't? How are your interests and David Cameron's aligned in any conceivable way whatsoever?
Edit: Oh bollocks. Wrong thread. Feel free to disregard the question. I don't want to know.
Not so fast...........
Labour and Conservatives are all the same to me these days so it was down to the fact that David Cameron comes from a good background and went to a good school.
;) :lol:
Conservatives are not aligned to my interests in any way.Milliband is a complete drip but preferable to his brother by a long way.
Milliband is a puppet. One of Nick Park's puppet to be precise
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 09:13:17 PM
It is interesting and curious how very very few of those present here and my critics say what they think about Libya,Gadaffi and the US/NATO/UN.
If that's an attempt to retreat to the moral high ground, it's piss. What's so curious about it? Do you really care what other people think, seeing as you've said before if people don't understand it like you they're stupid? Hardly a reasonable position to debate from is it?
Bottom line is, you made a statement of personal opinion you claimed was an objective assessment only when you were challenged on it. The shit storm was caused by
that rather than anything to do with you I reckon.
M.
Gaddafi is a paranoid idiot without the sense to fuck off when he should.
M.
QuoteGaddafi Peterwolf is a paranoid idiot without the sense to fuck off when he should.
Fixed that for you, mate.
You're a bad man Mr Rennie. You'll get into trouble!
M.
Who cares whether Gadaffi has a good side or not? He's only a human being and, as we all know, human beings just aren't of any value any more. The only things that matter are property, profit and position. If Gadaffi stood up to the bankers, no matter how despicable he is, he'd have my support in that particular battle. God knows, our own Prime Minister's too feeble to stand up to them and we've got virtually an entire government comprised of similar MPs, all too weak, feeble, afraid, greedy or stupid to discern the civil war that is going on around the world between the People and the Banks, who are using our own governments like human shields.
"Sell, sell, sell: everything must go in great fire sale. Europe's most indebted countries – and Britain – have put prized assets up for grabs to bolster their creditworthiness." http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/01/indebted-european-countries-privatisation-assets?INTCMP=SRCH (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/01/indebted-european-countries-privatisation-assets?INTCMP=SRCH)
"Greek sell-off 'threat to sovereignty'" http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/03/greece-bailout-privatisation-juncker-treuhand?INTCMP=SRCH (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/03/greece-bailout-privatisation-juncker-treuhand?INTCMP=SRCH)
I forget who it was that called me a buffoon for daring to suggest that our country labours under tyranny, I've been called much worse so I really don't care, but here's a little more proof that we are indeed slipping ever deeper into that very real tyranny. Sovereign countries are now expected to sell off national assets to help pay for debts incurred through borrowing money from private banks. Don't forget, a country is perfectly entitled to create its own money instead of borrowing. (I know, I know - I sound like a broken record, but this is just because I can't believe that anyone who understands this could dismiss it as irrelevant or fail to be angered by it. Private money bad, social money good.) So, these bankers caused the debts and now who are the only people left with enough money to buy up national assets? Whatever. Never mind. It's probably not important and I'm probably a buffoon for even considering that our governments have steered the Ship of State up Shit Creek either by accident or design.
Where will it end? Will all roads eventually belong to the banks? All hospitals, fire engines, trees, rivers, lakes, clouds, livestock, crops, houses... people? It certainly feels like we're being conquered. Not by armies or bombers or terrorists - but by pounds, shillings and pence. Everyone's focussed on the War on Whatever, political theatre and X-Factor while all our assets are slowly drained away almost without us noticing - or at least without us noticing where all that wealth, all our wealth, is going. It's being concentrated into the hands of the power elite. They want to own it all and charge us money for using our own planet to live on. The corporatization of the world, started many decades ago, is nearing fruition. If your government doesn't even have ownership of your country's assets on your behalf, what good is it? Is it still sovereign? Is it still relevant? Is it still yours?
Mussolini said, that"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power" - which is exactly the way the world seems to be going.
I'll sign off this particular rant with a quotation allegedly from Sir Josiah Stamp (21 June 1880 - 16 April 1941), fellow buffoon and director of the Bank of England, amongst other things. He understood the real shape of the banking industry (and banking is an industry driven to make a profit like any other - what banking should be is a utility like water or electricity.) Anyway, here's the famous and still painfully relevant quote: "Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take away from them the power to create money and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money."
Some rob you with a sixgun, some with a fountain pen...
Quote from: Mikey on 08 July, 2011, 09:27:45 AM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 07 July, 2011, 09:13:17 PM
It is interesting and curious how very very few of those present here and my critics say what they think about Libya,Gadaffi and the US/NATO/UN.
If that's an attempt to retreat to the moral high ground, it's piss. What's so curious about it? Do you really care what other people think, seeing as you've said before if people don't understand it like you they're stupid? Hardly a reasonable position to debate from is it?
Bottom line is, you made a statement of personal opinion you claimed was an objective assessment only when you were challenged on it. The shit storm was caused by that rather than anything to do with you I reckon.
M.
Gaddafi is a paranoid idiot without the sense to fuck off when he should.
M.
It certainly wasnt that.No problem with being challenged either but i am interested in what others think about it all particularly from the US/UN/NATO side of things and i thought that more of that would have been forthcoming.The comments about stupidity were because i was being misunderstood and having to repeat myself.
As for the comment only being objective it was always objective right from the start but you are suggesting that i was backpedalling when i wasnt.I had to explain that it was objective as some chose to read it as something different probably because they wanted to.
As for Gadaffi having to fuck off when he should there are better ways to go about this than what NATO etc are up to on behalf of a minority of "Rebel forces" and ALCIADA who are funded and armed by NATO etc.Besides that 2 or 3 times Gadaffi offered to engage in talks with NATO etc but it was rejected.
What happens if the majority of Libyans support Gadaffi ?
Do the US/UN/NATO have the right to dictate to them who they can and cant support ?
Who are they to dictate what goes on within a sovereign nation ?
Perhaps if they really were a force for good in the world then they would have some kind of legitimacy but that isnt the case.Their fake humanitarianism is selective anyway.
So, when someone doesn't understand what you're saying, they get called thick, but if you don't understand what someone else is saying, it 's because it isn't clear enough?
I can't see how that works. I must be too stupid.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 July, 2011, 08:30:50 PM
...there are better ways to go about this than what NATO etc are up to on behalf of a minority of "Rebel forces" and ALCIADA who are funded and armed by NATO etc.
There probably are better ways of going about it. When foreign governments* start backing a minority of rebels**, to further their own goals, things can get ugly. The fall from that sort of wreckless behaviour could last years.
*Gadaffi's Regime
**The IRA
Quote from: M.I.K. on 08 July, 2011, 09:15:37 PM
So, when someone doesn't understand what you're saying, they get called thick, but if you don't understand what someone else is saying, it 's because it isn't clear enough?
I can't see how that works. I must be too stupid.
Calling you thick/stupid was a result of having to repeat myself as in having my patience tried as in others as well as yourself claiming that i didnt or havent listed any positives when i had already listed them along with the frustration of being misunderstood that was partly wilful.You even read them and then said i hadnt listed them.I didnt get the impression that you didnt understand anything.
I was called a "fucking idiot" by someone along with another personal attack yet i went out of my way to be polite in return to that comment and others but the fact is it was a heated debate/argument and even though i was going out of my to keep things as civil as possible i dont fuck about with words or saying what i think to others.
As it was you who i called thick then i sincerely apologise.
The comment from @Garageman was a bit ambiguous as in i wasnt sure what it was referring to.
I suppose you could say Hitler had positives.
When Germany was on it's knees from the crippling reparations from the aftermath of WWI, he rose to power and literally turned them round to one of the most powerful nations of the time.
Does that make what he did right? Did it fuck.
People like that should never have power and there are far too many today with those kind of tendencies leading countries.
You need to look at the over all person rather than spouting out small positives.
This isn't directed at anyone it is just input from reading four pages of mayhem.
V
Quote from: GordonR on 08 July, 2011, 10:06:07 AM
QuoteGaddafi Peterwolf is a paranoid idiot without the sense to fuck off when he should.
Fixed that for you, mate.
Now go and fix your face.
Quote from: vzzbux on 08 July, 2011, 10:03:10 PM
I suppose you could say Hitler had positives.
When Germany was on it's knees from the crippling reparations from the aftermath of WWI, he rose to power and literally turned them round to one of the most powerful nations of the time.
Does that make what he did right? Did it fuck.
People like that should never have power and there are far too many today with those kind of tendencies leading countries.
You need to look at the over all person rather than spouting out small positives.
This isn't directed at anyone it is just input from reading four pages of mayhem.
V
reductio ad hitlerum:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum)
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 July, 2011, 09:58:34 PM
As it was you who i called thick then i sincerely apologise.
Apology not accepted.
You also said that I couldn't read plain English, could only see things in simplified, black and white polarised terms, wasn't interested in the subject*, had a simplistic, "sanctomonious" (sic) view of things and hadn't bothered to look anything up. None of which is even remotely true.
Neither is any of this....
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 July, 2011, 09:58:34 PM
Calling you thick/stupid was a result of having to repeat myself as in having my patience tried as in others as well as yourself claiming that i didnt or havent listed any positives when i had already listed them along with the frustration of being misunderstood that was partly wilful.You even read them and then said i hadnt listed them.I didnt get the impression that you didnt understand anything.
When did I say you hadn't listed them? Are you backing up your paranoia with hallucinations now?
And how in hell would understanding things but ignoring or misinterpreting them on purpose make me thick? A bit of a git, maybe, but not stupid. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever!
I'm done here. You've wandered too far into the town of Doolally. No point talking to someone who changes reality to justify their outlook.
*
Bit rich that you'd have a problem with someone commenting on something they have no interest in anyway, given your past history. "I don't really care as it's not something I'm interested in" was pretty much all you seemed to say at one point.
This is excellent - humanity in microcosm. The people of the world are facing great challenges as war, debt and tyranny threaten to engulf us and all we can do is snipe at one another over details.
Maybe, and this is just a wild thought, we* should start putting our heads together instead of banging them together?
*We as in humanity in general, not just on this thread.
Go smoke some pot, ya gruddam hippie shark ;P
I think this whole thread is a ruse so peterwolf can get to 10000 posts in the fastest time possible.
At the next con just have a big fight, It'll be great, just like wrestling in the eighties.
Quote from: pops1983 on 08 July, 2011, 11:57:40 PM
Go smoke some pot, ya gruddam hippie shark ;P
You do realise that what you're suggesting is illegal under statute law? However, as statute laws are laws enacted by a government elected by consent and therefore laws of consent I can refuse to be bound by them if I so choose (so long as I cause no harm, loss or injury to others under Common Law).
Convoluted legal argument in place. Now, where's me bong?
Quote from: M.I.K. on 08 July, 2011, 11:02:55 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 July, 2011, 09:58:34 PM
As it was you who i called thick then i sincerely apologise.
Apology not accepted.
You also said that I couldn't read plain English, could only see things in simplified, black and white polarised terms, wasn't interested in the subject*, had a simplistic, "sanctomonious" (sic) view of things and hadn't bothered to look anything up. None of which is even remotely true.
Neither is any of this....
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 July, 2011, 09:58:34 PM
Calling you thick/stupid was a result of having to repeat myself as in having my patience tried as in others as well as yourself claiming that i didnt or havent listed any positives when i had already listed them along with the frustration of being misunderstood that was partly wilful.You even read them and then said i hadnt listed them.I didnt get the impression that you didnt understand anything.
When did I say you hadn't listed them? Are you backing up your paranoia with hallucinations now?
And how in hell would understanding things but ignoring or misinterpreting them on purpose make me thick? A bit of a git, maybe, but not stupid. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever!
I'm done here. You've wandered too far into the town of Doolally. No point talking to someone who changes reality to justify their outlook.
* Bit rich that you'd have a problem with someone commenting on something they have no interest in anyway, given your past history. "I don't really care as it's not something I'm interested in" was pretty much all you seemed to say at one point.
Here are your comments:
Cut and pasted as i cant backtrack that far when quoting:
Re: "Truth? You can't handle the truth!"
« Reply #540 on: 07 July, 2011, 12:16:21 AM »
* Quote
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 06 July, 2011, 11:58:58 PM
As for dictators i wouldnt support any dictator by default like i didnt support Saddam Hussein and if it was North Korea i wouldnt support KimJungIl but because Gadaffi and the Gadaffi regime have positive aspects i support them on that basis but not on the basis of abuses of power.
Okay... What are the positive aspects?
Report to moderator Logged
http://malcolmkirk.blogspot.com/
That implies that you hadnt read my previous comments or couldnt understand plain english.No paranoia or hallucinations
There it is and that was well after i had already listed them and theres more than that.If you want to nitpick then you have come to the right place for it.Someone else also claimed that i hadnt listed any positives yet they are there further up the thread.
Alternatively you and the other had not read the previous comments.
You can reject the apology if you like but the fact is i still apologised.and the fact that you are overly concerned and slighted over being called thick says a lot about in the fact you wouldnt let it lie.I have been called far worse far more times yets its water off a ducks back to me.Get a thick skin instead of being delicate and easily slighted or dont get in the ring.
It's not being called thick I don't like, Peter, you delusional twat. It's being told that I said, did or thought something which I did not.
Now piss off. I've got to go save the world or something.
I seem to remember posting a link to some Gadaffi positives. Ah yes, here it is...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 July, 2011, 12:23:55 AM
President Museveni cites positives for Gaddafi: http://rosebellkagumire.com/2011/03/21/part-two-president-museveni-cites-positives-for-gaddafi/
This article talks about:
1: Gaddafi has had an independent foreign policy. "Muammar Gaddafi, whatever his faults, is a true nationalist."
2: Pursued Fair oil prices
3: Growth, infrastructure and employment creation. "Is the conflict in Libya economic or purely political?"
4: Gaddafi's secularism and women's rights
Certainly not a Nobel Peace Prize candidate like the weasely mass-murdering corporate puppet Barry Soetoro but certainly no Stalin, either. An interesting article entitled "Why Gaddafi's Crimes Look Worse Than Gbagbo's" at http://allafrica.com/stories/201103220249.html (http://allafrica.com/stories/201103220249.html) postulates that Gadaffi is over-demonized by the west because of his alleged involvement in the deaths of white people. If he'd killed a million blacks, we wouldn't give a damn about him.
To quote a line from the TV show "The West Wing" that has always stuck with me; "Why is the life of an American worth more than the life of a foreigner?" "I don't know, but it is."
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 09 July, 2011, 12:42:13 AMAn interesting article entitled "Why Gaddafi's Crimes Look Worse Than Gbagbo's" at http://allafrica.com/stories/201103220249.html (http://allafrica.com/stories/201103220249.html) postulates that Gadaffi is over-demonized by the west because of his alleged involvement in the deaths of white people. If he'd killed a million blacks, we wouldn't give a damn about him.
I don't think race has very much to do with it, (the west does not consist entirely of white folk), but it stands to reason that people are going to be a bit more concerned with things happening right on their doorstep, (almost literally, in some cases).
I agree. However, I also think that evil, like beauty, is largely in the eye of the beholder.
...and sometimes it's the same thing.
(I seem to have turned into Philip Marlowe. I do apologise).
I remember now why i don't venture in here!
Quote from: Emp on 09 July, 2011, 01:20:42 AM
I remember now why i don't venture in here!
Is it because you can't handle the truth? :lol: :o :(
More due to the negative waves,,,,,always with the negative waves.......woof woof :D
Heres the good bit where i admit that i have fucked up and that i may be delusional as i have backtracked and i cant find where i listed the positives where in actual fact i had only named a few positives over two or 3 comments some way back and then 5 positives in a reply to @MIK.I could have sworn that i had listed them earlier than that......I dont mind admitting i am wrong as its self evident but it was a shock backtracking to find something that i imagined was there - the awful truth.
What a complete utter moron.
Apologies.
(http://www.livelifeready.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/spelling-mistake.jpg)
a slightly lighter note.......mind you it could be a cunning plan my the lizard people!
"Shcool" is the noise the lizard-people make as they consume our children.
AFRICOM :
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:h0chhgV9L5MJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Africa_Command+africom&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:h0chhgV9L5MJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Africa_Command+africom&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk)
VS
The African Union :
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8XEfNfc4EhIJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union+african+union&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8XEfNfc4EhIJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union+african+union&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.uk)
The US is trying to ease its way into Africa through Obama to set up a US military jurisdiction and militarisation over Africa - AFRICOM that was set up by Donald Rumsfeld under GW Bush who was backed by Halliburton,Bechtel,The Carlyle Group,Dynecorp under the pretext of fighting terrorism and Humanitarianism.The vast majority of African nations have rejected Africom but others have signed into AFRICOM like Ethiopia as they received/were bribed with funding from AFRICOM which is easy with corrupt despots and warlords etc.AFRICOM has surrounded Africa with military bases and sections of the military dedicated to AFRICOM who want to assist Africa in a military capacity.Also AFRICOM wants to drive out China from Africa.
The US wanted to take Libya but it has potentially cost them the rest of Africa and the almost certain failure of AFRICOM.The situation in the Ivory coast hasnt helped either.THe US military has merged with NATO military forces as it is overstretched.
The Libyan conflict has worked against AFRICOMs presence in Africa and plans for it and .AFRICOMs mission statement under "Theater Security Objectives" clearly states :
"Defeat the Al-Qaeda terrorist organizations and
its associated networks."
Yet in Libya the US is funding and logistically supporting ALQuaeda members amongst Libyan rebel forces.Gadaffi had previously informed the US that ALQuaeda were active in Libya but these warnings were ignored/not acted upon.
AFRICOM also state the following under their heading of "US Africa Command Mission" as a mission statement:
U.S. Africa Command Mission
United States Africa Command, in concert with
other U.S. government agencies and international
partners, conducts sustained security engagement
through military-to-military programs, militarysponsored
activities, and other military operations
as directed to promote *a stable and secure African
environment in support of U.S. foreign policy*."
So what this means is that if Africa signs up to AFRICOM then they support or will in time support US foreign policy so if US foreign policy decides that there is a problem within Africa [after signing up to AFRICOM]that requires a US military presence for reasons of terrorism or whatever else then they wont have a say in it themselves as US foreign policy isnt set out by Africans so Africa could very easily become a victim of US foreign policy.If African nations sign up to AFRICOM then the US will set up a permanent military base in its country.Obviously Africa is a huge potential marketplace for the arms trade etc or "We will supply you military equipment in return for your resources".Africas political/military leadership have rejected having an AFRICOM headquarters on African soil.
[no idea why there is a line through the text as i didnt do it deliberately and i have no idea how to get rid of it]
Resist AFRICOM:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1552/t/5734/content.jsp?content_KEY=3855 (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1552/t/5734/content.jsp?content_KEY=3855)
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 09 July, 2011, 05:16:23 AM
[no idea why there is a line through the text as i didnt do it deliberately and i have no idea how to get rid of it]
Dude, don't freak out, but I think 'they' are on to you and are trying to censor you.
Also, as my Daddy used to day, 'GET UP 'EM STAIRS AND GO TO BED!'
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 July, 2011, 10:16:38 PM
Quote from: GordonR on 08 July, 2011, 10:06:07 AM
QuoteGaddafi Peterwolf is a paranoid idiot without the sense to fuck off when he should.
Fixed that for you, mate.
Now go and fix your face.
:lol: Peter wins the thread!
Quote from: pops1983 on 09 July, 2011, 09:36:23 AM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 09 July, 2011, 05:16:23 AM
[no idea why there is a line through the text as i didnt do it deliberately and i have no idea how to get rid of it]
Dude, don't freak out, but I think 'they' are on to you and are trying to censor you.
Or it is the strikethrough markup - this button: (http://2000adonline.com/forum/Themes/default/images/bbc/strike.gif). You can
turn it on or off, or just remove the [ s ] markup. However, to err on the side of caution, I'd go with pops1983 option ;)
All you fucks are redacted.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 09 July, 2011, 03:30:32 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 08 July, 2011, 10:16:38 PM
Quote from: GordonR on 08 July, 2011, 10:06:07 AM
QuoteGaddafi Peterwolf is a paranoid idiot without the sense to fuck off when he should.
Fixed that for you, mate.
Now go and fix your face.
:lol: Peter wins the thread!
As well as losing the thread by denying that i hadnt done something when i thought that i had.Or something like that but i am a bit confused about it all. :-\
I will post one more comment about something else then i am opting out of this thread for a bit as its getting to be a bit much.
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 09 July, 2011, 06:21:47 PMi am opting out of this thread for a bit as its getting to be a bit much.
Understatement of the year.
9/11 Road Trip:
The BBC are airing a documentary on 9/11 in September to debunk 9/11 conspiracies featuring Charlie Veitch[the love police] as the presenter to discover the truth about 9/11.Some of you may have heard of Charlie Veitch while others may not have.I have heard of him and i have to say that i never liked him as i think he is a bit of a Tit with his stupid shouting through a megaphone and claiming that what he was saying was biting and scathing satire when it was student level juvenile rubbish of no use to anyone like an idiot.
Charlie Veitch is well known in the truth movement and he was recently arrested and detained for publicising that he was going to disrupt the recent royal wedding so he was arrested before the event and then complained about it as well as his girlfriend whining about it on alternative media websites which was a bit daft because its obvious that if he had kept his mouth shut then he wouldnt have been arrested and would have been able to protest.Charlie actively seeks publicity and always has done so it makes me wonder if Truth and protesting was just a vehicle for publicity in the first place.
Anyway Charlie being an enthusiastic "Truther" was hired by the BBC to present this forthcoming documentary airing in September to commemorate 9/11 and the BBC commissioned the documentary with a view to debunking 9/11 conspiracies as its very very very very very unlikely that the BBC would air a 9/11 documentary that was supportive of 9/11 conspiracies so it seems unlikely that Charlie was going to go with the 9/11 conspiracies on camera as the documentary wouldnt have been shown on TV and Charlie wouldnt have been paid so it seems that despite Charlie being shown evidence that was utterly compelling while in New York as per the official version of events he must have signed up knowing what the remit of the documentary was or he wouldnt have signed up or been hired if he was against it so it was all a foregone conclusion while Charlie was/is claiming to be objective about it all.
Further to that he cant have been open minded about it all as if compelling evidence was presented during filming that supported the official version of events then it would be undeniable if you are objective about it all but Charlie talks of being a member of the 9/11 truth movement and then Charlie describes it as being like a member of a cult.If you had your mind changed by being shown compelling evidence that supported the official version of events which is fair enough then there wouldnt be any reason to describe the 9/11 truth movement as being a cult afterwards because surely up to the point of being shown the compelling evidence he would have had no problem with being a "truther" as it was up until that point something that was completely legitimate ??
I dont like him but he can think and say what he likes and no one is saying that he cant but its tempting to think that the authorities had words with him while he was detained as he had been under surveillance for some time.
Its going to cause a shitstorm in the truth movement [its already started] and Charlie wont be taken seriously by the truth movement anymore so he will probably become a TV presenter instead but he wont be able to complain about being called a sellout and a shill.
What evidence was he shown that was so utterly compelling that isnt already freely available that he wont discuss ?
QuoteIts going to cause a shitstorm in the truth movement [its already started] and Charlie wont be taken seriously by the truth movement anymore so he will probably become a TV presenter instead but he wont be able to complain about being called a sellout and a shill.
If there's one thing that's 'true' it's that the 'truth movement' can't agree on anything, the squabbling will continue and no one will pay any attention, so nothing new.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 09 July, 2011, 08:13:28 PM
If there's one thing that's 'true' it's that the 'truth movement' can't agree on anything...
This of course being the true nature of truth. The things people agree on are compromises, and that's not truth at all.
Quote from: TordelBack on 09 July, 2011, 08:33:38 PMThis of course being the true nature of truth. The things people agree on are compromises, and that's not truth at all.
Consensus I believe, a lot better than
democracy.
For some reason I'm compelled to post this...fucking...madness...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hzh1jZPOkU&feature=player_embedded#at=185
Fuckin' 'peak' credibility has been reached.
Hello, all.
I've had a proper look at this thread for the first time and, boy, what a pile of insane, paranoid shite it is.
It does indeed seem the proper place to object to the excesses of people who don't read comics but are happy to use 2000AD's website as a place to post their ill-informed bile.
However, I do take the point that this site doesn't exist for people to have arguments on, so I'm happy enough to leave it for now. If Peter wants to continue our discussion, that's fine. He can post here. If not, we'll leave it at that.
All the best
- Trout
Tsk! "I think you're stupid- but let's not fight about it! I'm off now!"
:lol:
I feel admonished! Don't judge me-i broke me duck while pissed. In fact i'm 3 sheets to the wind now. Mmmm...sweet tempranillo dulls the pain...
M
Hmmm... Having had a proper, proper look now (my favourite point was when another conspiracy theorist, a total stranger, turned up out of the blue to call Peter a liar and a coward), I get the point of this thread.
It's Argue With Scojo Except It's For Peter!
So why is it on this site? Why not delete this sort of content and set up a group where he can sit by himself, spouting his poison in a way that doesn't affect 2000AD, and the rest of us can simply not go there?
I mean: support for the murderer Gaddafi? Why is this site used for that?
- Trout
An audience can be hard to find.
Quote from: King Trout on 10 July, 2011, 09:15:00 PM
Hmmm... Having had a proper, proper look now (my favourite point was when another conspiracy theorist, a total stranger, turned up out of the blue to call Peter a liar and a coward), I get the point of this thread.
It's Argue With Scojo Except It's For Peter!
So why is it on this site? Why not delete this sort of content and set up a group where he can sit by himself, spouting his poison in a way that doesn't affect 2000AD, and the rest of us can simply not go there?
I mean: support for the murderer Gaddafi? Why is this site used for that?
- Trout
Come on- don't be a cock. He has opinions that you don't agree with- that you probably find a bit mental. That's fine. It's not the same as him spamming up the board, replying to his own witless rants and/or repeating the same message, over and over, in multiple threads- all at the same time.
What's especially annoying is that we've just talked about this on Twitter and you've still wandered back here to effectively join in the pile on. If I was to do that to some of the people I don't like on this board, you'd be accusing me of bullying.
For the most part, there are two threads that effectively contain this stuff and they're easy enough to avoid. I'm pretty sure you've championed off-topic threads in the past- so why are these any different? Apart from the fact that you think they're pish, of course?
"After about one hundred years of domination, the system of capitalism and the existing world order has proved to be unable to provide appropriate solutions to the problems of societies and thus is coming to an end.
"...One can analyze the current governance of the world by examining three events:
"First, the event of the 11th September 2001 which has affected the whole world for almost a decade. All of a sudden, the news of the attack on the twin towers was broadcast using numerous footages of the incident. Almost all governments and known figures strongly condemned this incident. But then a propaganda machine came into full force; it was implied that the whole world was exposed to a huge danger, namely terrorism, and that the only way to save the world would be to deploy forces into Afghanistan. Eventually Afghanistan, and, shortly thereafter, Iraq were occupied.
"Please take note: it was said that some three thousands people were killed on September 11th, for which we are all very saddened. Yet, up until now, in Afghanistan and Iraq hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, millions wounded and displaced and the conflict is still going on and expanding.
"In identifying those responsible for the attack, there were three viewpoints.
"1- That a very powerful and complex terrorist group, able to successfully cross all layers of the American intelligence and security, carried out the attack. This is the main viewpoint advocated by American statesmen.
"2- That some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.
"3- It was carried out by a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation. Apparently, this viewpoint has fewer proponents. The main evidence linking the incident was a few passports found in the huge volume of rubble and a video of an individual whose place of domicile was unknown but it was announced that he had been involved in oil deals with some American officials. It was also covered up and said that due to the explosion and fire no trace of the suicide attackers was found.
"There remain, however, a few questions to be answered:
"1- Would it not have been sensible that first a thorough investigation should have been conducted by independent groups to conclusively identify the elements involved in the attack and then map out a rational plan to take measures against them?
"2- Assuming the viewpoint of the American government, is it rational to launch a classic war through widespread deployment of troops that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people to counter a terrorist group?
"3- Was it not possible to act the way Iran countered the Riggi terrorist group who killed and wounded 400 innocent people in Iran. In the Iranian operation no innocent person was hurt.
"It is proposed that the United Nations set up an independent fact-finding group for the event of September 11th so that in the future, expressing views about it is not forbidden..."
Excerpts from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Speech at the United Nations, Sept. 23, 2010
Sounds reasonable enough to me...
(ducks for cover...)
Quote from: Matt Timson on 10 July, 2011, 10:00:29 PM
Quote from: King Trout on 10 July, 2011, 09:15:00 PM
Hmmm... Having had a proper, proper look now (my favourite point was when another conspiracy theorist, a total stranger, turned up out of the blue to call Peter a liar and a coward), I get the point of this thread.
It's Argue With Scojo Except It's For Peter!
So why is it on this site? Why not delete this sort of content and set up a group where he can sit by himself, spouting his poison in a way that doesn't affect 2000AD, and the rest of us can simply not go there?
I mean: support for the murderer Gaddafi? Why is this site used for that?
- Trout
Come on- don't be a cock. He has opinions that you don't agree with- that you probably find a bit mental. That's fine. It's not the same as him spamming up the board, replying to his own witless rants and/or repeating the same message, over and over, in multiple threads- all at the same time.
What's especially annoying is that we've just talked about this on Twitter and you've still wandered back here to effectively join in the pile on. If I was to do that to some of the people I don't like on this board, you'd be accusing me of bullying.
For the most part, there are two threads that effectively contain this stuff and they're easy enough to avoid. I'm pretty sure you've championed off-topic threads in the past- so why are these any different? Apart from the fact that you think they're pish, of course?
I think avoiding it would be the best policy for me, yes. I managed it until now.
I'd rather it didn't exist but what the hell. Life's too short.
- Trout
My liege, your contribution to this forum is immense and has frequently set the tone that makes this such an affable corner of the web, so I'd always approach your opinions with respect. However, here I think you have the wrong end of the stick.
This is a thread set up by Shark specifically to allow crazy ideas and conspiracy theories to be discussed without anyone having to read them and get pissed off by them. It's nothing like Argue With Scojo, except in the specific issue of Libya (and I suppose a couple of earlier instances), where the argument was so wrong-headed that even cooler heads felt they had to pile in. Yes, supporting Gadaffi is offensively stupid (sorry Peter, it is), but that's why it's being beaten into pulp here. Peter is a man of strange thoughts and approaches, but Scojo-or-equivalent he ain't.
I think there's a place for it here, when you view here as a community of fans rather than a single-issue discussion forum. It's no more irrelevant than are the various (and highly popular) "Life..." and "Last noun verbed..." threads.
EDIT: Oops, our posts crossed. Yes, ignoring it is best.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
Aristotle
As Jim Campbell said, I increasingly feel I'm out of step with this board. I don't come round too often anyway. This isn't a flounce off, or a big announcement - I'll still pop back and say hello - but I think it's moved beyond me.
By the way, I do intend to go to the comics event Peter mentioned before, and I am happy to encounter him at it. If he carries out his threat of violence, I'll be sure to post the results here.
- Trout
Quote from: King Trout on 10 July, 2011, 10:29:10 PM
By the way, I do intend to go to the comics event Peter mentioned before, and I am happy to encounter him at it. If he carries out his threat of violence, I'll be sure to post the results here.
See, some good may come of all this yet!
Quote from: King Trout on 10 July, 2011, 10:29:10 PM
As Jim Campbell said, I increasingly feel I'm out of step with this board. ... I think it's moved beyond me.
- Trout
How so?
so are we in the post-campbellcene era?
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 10 July, 2011, 10:47:03 PM
so are we in the post-campbellcene era?
Ah, alas for the Campbrian, when bony fishes ruled the depths...
Ye know, the Trout speaks truth. Off Topic has had it's share of rows, but it was always the fun sort I reckon. Perhaps overt politicizing doesn't really have a place in a leisure zone.
Unfortunately, i've contributed to it. Like a moth to a flame perhaps.
M
You lahve it you slaaag!
Maybe Pete's posts are just too long-winded, too long for a comics forum? Wood & trees comes to mind...
My posts are often long winded as well, to be fair, as are others.
IMHO the problem most people have with the topics discussed here seems to be the idea that posters such as Peter and myself offer views and ideas which are anathema to most other people's world view and experience. We're basically implying that the world you know so well is actually very different than is generally accepted. It's like saying that if you believe what the politicians, corporations and media tell you then you're an idiot. This is bound to make people angry. It made me angry when first I was exposed to these ideas.
I obviously can't speak to Peter's motives for posting here but mine are simply to ask "are you sure you're seeing the world correctly? Am I seeing the world correctly?" I don't want to convert anyone or belittle anyone for not seeing things as I do. I'm also not looking for anyone to convert or belittle me for not seeing the world as they do.
The topics discussed on this thread are often upsetting and bound to cause friction, bemusement and anger. These are, after all, big topics with many, many dimensions to them. Accept nothing out of hand and deny nothing out of hand, for what is true today may not have been true yesterday and may not be true tomorrow.
We may as well just chill out, because in a hundred years who's going to care?
130 year olds.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 July, 2011, 12:00:03 AM
My posts are often long winded as well, to be fair, as are others.
IMHO the problem most people have with the topics discussed here seems to be the idea that posters such as Peter and myself offer views and ideas which are anathema to most other people's world view and experience. We're basically implying that the world you know so well is actually very different than is generally accepted. It's like saying that if you believe what the politicians, corporations and media tell you then you're an idiot. This is bound to make people angry. It made me angry when first I was exposed to these ideas.
I think that's a rather
inflated view of the thread, we aren't messengers of the light or Neo in the Matrix or even proper
contrarians.
Speaking for myself I've been aware of this stuff you and Pete have posted about for years -read with genuine interest and amusement- as I'm sure others have on this forum, and no sensible person can claim that what they have gleaned from such readings could be sure it's such real 'truth' or particularly enlightening to live one's everyday life though we all have moments of clarity. A lot of it is divorced from any real-world sensibilty -veracious or not- and the bits that may be truthful get lost in the
conspiracy gestalt. It's all a bit of fun and if some genuine personal views get aired it can be a little bit cathartic.
What
grates is when certain members throw around words like
sheep and adopt a condescending tone in relation to either the so called
masses or
members of this forum. It's arrogant and rather naive, none of us are privy to such info, our opinions are always
broad brush strokes feverishly typed in private domesticity.
Now I'm starting to worry that too much sense is being talked here - we should get this thread back on topic.
Or talk some more about the moody fish of the Cambpeniferous.
Quote from: King Trout on 10 July, 2011, 10:29:10 PM
As Jim Campbell said, I increasingly feel I'm out of step with this board. I don't come round too often anyway. This isn't a flounce off, or a big announcement - I'll still pop back and say hello - but I think it's moved beyond me.
By the way, I do intend to go to the comics event Peter mentioned before, and I am happy to encounter him at it. If he carries out his threat of violence, I'll be sure to post the results here.
- Trout
There was never a threat of violence apart from one that you chose to read into it but it was ambiguous so thats fair enough but the fact is i am not interested in violence as telling you what i think of you will be enough.having said that its a long time away and i may drop out before then but if i dont i would prefer it if the whole thing was dropped which it seems like it has been anyway by the looks of things.I am saying that there may be an opportunity for you to say what you think in person.I am not desperate to talk to you and i would rather move on from the whole thing.
Thats my position on that but i have to draw the line at being called certain things as its unnacceptable.Being told that i am wrong or paranoid or ill informed and being wrong headed or whatever is one thing but slander/libel is another.I dont want to hear it or read it again.
If you had your way this thread would not exist which seems like a very intolerant and authoritarian attitude plus the fact that you dont respect others views.
As for this thread the problem is really my views on this thread rather than the thread itself and while i can still say what i want like everyone else i have a kind of pragmatic attitude to it all now where i dont really think its worth continuing anymore as it gets to the point that its no longer enjoyable or productive.Too much "overt politicising" rahter than just conversation on my part.
I had already dropped out of this thread because i could feel something was building up.
I do think that certain individuals here who throw around terms like "paranoid" are in some kind of denial of reality or reality prison.Like i said earlier this thread isnt called what its called for nothing.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 11 July, 2011, 12:24:50 AM
I think that's a rather inflated view of the thread, we aren't messengers of the light or Neo in the Matrix or even proper contrarians.
Speaking for myself I've been aware of this stuff you and Pete have posted about for years -read with genuine interest and amusement- as I'm sure others have on this forum, and no sensible person can claim that what they have gleaned from such readings could be sure it's such real 'truth' or particularly enlightening to live one's everyday life though we all have moments of clarity. A lot of it is divorced from any real-world sensibilty -veracious or not- and the bits that may be truthful get lost in the conspiracy gestalt. It's all a bit of fun and if some genuine personal views get aired it can be a little bit cathartic.
What grates is when certain members throw around words like sheep and adopt a condescending tone in relation to either the so called masses or members of this forum. It's arrogant and rather naive, none of us are privy to such info, our opinions are always broad brush strokes feverishly typed in private domesticity.
In my own personal view, I don't think most of the subjects discussed here
can be inflated. To take my own personal bugbear as an example, the banks are hoovering up the wealth of the world, wealth that belongs to you and me, and society in general seems content to let this happen. Content to allow Africa to starve because of it. Content to allow wars because of it. Content to ignore it. I firmly contend that everyone needs to understand that the way the banks operate is killing humanity in vast swathes and that putting this right would be relatively easy. In
my universe, there is, politically and socially, nothing more important than this. That said, I know that every single one of us lives in our own unique universe and so this subject is nowhere near as important to others as it is to me. I get that, but sometimes I have a hard time accepting or even understanding it - but that's
my problem and nobody else's.
For instance, how can the fact that your parents' wealth, your wealth and your children's wealth is being stolen by an elite few possibly be seen as not "
particularly enlightening to ... one's everyday life"? How much will people have to loose before they start thinking that maybe something's not right with the way things are being run? Again, this is just my own personal viewpoint and I believe in what I say so firmly that it actually scares me.
Without wishing to sound derogatory, I reckon that around 80% of people
are sheep. This is not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to, say, traffic regulations and such. The fact is that most people like to follow leaders/fads/fashions - and it's a trait that has served humanity well through the ages otherwise there'd be none of us here to debate the matter.
Where the sheep mentality comes a cropper is when unscrupulous people take advantage of it. Tony Blair took us into horrid wars; a few people objected but most just kept their mouths shut and went along with it. If someone in an official costume or uniform tells a person to do something then most people do it. (Remember that experiment where ordinary people were ordered by men in white coats to apply ultimately "fatal electric shocks" to an unseen victim and 80% happily went along with it?) Sometimes this trait is beneficial, like following instructions to evacuate a burning building - but sometimes it's positively disgraceful like convincing a population that a minority must be expunged for the common good.
The trick is knowing when to bleat and when to roar - which is never easy.
Where was there threats of violence? Was it on this board?
M.
For what it's worth...
I don't understand why anybody feels the needs to raise these topics and questions here.
It's primarily a light hearted leisure forum.
Why not take these opinions and questions someplace else where they might make a difference? Surely a proper political or newspaper site would be a better fit for your thoughts?
Though I dip my toes into the thread occassionally, (I live without it and) I don't feel they add value to the forum as a whole (though obviously a couple of you get some form of validation from posting here).
I'm not against OFF TOPIC, and even, on occassion, SILLY stuff but the nature of these things just doesn't belong here.
e.g. I think a thread where "fans" of teh Old Firm spout rubbish at each other would be equally out of place.
Maybe I'm out of step as well, or maybe, not enough people have actually bothered to voice an opinion for fear of offending.
So plainly - I'd rather this thread, and the political thread didn't exist. Where the real world* does cross into the forum (e.g. RIPs), I'd rather people didn't politicise their posts.
* I, in no way, mean to imply that this thread represents the "real world".
Quote from: Mikey on 11 July, 2011, 10:23:43 AM
Where was there threats of violence? Was it on this board?
I see it was. That's not a good thing.
M.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 July, 2011, 12:00:03 AMMy posts are often long winded as well, to be fair, as are others.
IMHO the problem most people have with the topics discussed here seems to be the idea that posters such as Peter and myself offer views and ideas which are anathema to most other people's world view and experience.
No, it really isn't. I'm sure you realise this, but what Joe was politely trying to say is that a lot of what you like to portray as revelatory, transgressive ideas really aren't that new and I imagine most people's hackles are raised at least a little by the condescension that attitude implies. NB I know you have said in the past that isn't your intent, but I'm afraid that doesn't change the way it reads.
Personally, I don't follow the two threads that closely, but I have absolutely no problem with them being there or people discussing those ideas on the forum and I assume part of the point in doing so is to stimulate argument. In my experience, you generally go to a reasonable length to respond to people who argue against you. While I'm sure some people do get exasperated at not being able to win you over, that's just part of the debate.
On the other hand people take issue with Peter's posts not because they represent some radical new way of looking at the world which must be resisted lest they break down all our preconceptions, free us from the tyranny of the quotidian and turn all that's solid into air. No. People take issue because they're the incoherent, self-contradictory and often offensive (in tone, rather than content) ramblings of someone who confuses having an opinion on everything with actually thinking about it. I don't think the problem is ever about discussing any topic, but when that spills out and clogs up every thread. The reason you started your own threads to contain it in the first place.
Quote from: The Cosh on 12 July, 2011, 12:06:48 AM
No, it really isn't. I'm sure you realise this, but what Joe was politely trying to say is that a lot of what you like to portray as revelatory, transgressive ideas really aren't that new and I imagine most people's hackles are raised at least a little by the condescension that attitude implies. NB I know you have said in the past that isn't your intent, but I'm afraid that doesn't change the way it reads.
I accept that without reservation. (The issue of social v private money has been rumbling on since at least Roman times so you're right, that isn't new at all.) I think my problem is that I talk to a lot of people in "real life" about this and most either just don't understand (which is my fault for not adequately explaining what I mean) or aren't interested (again, my fault for not being clear enough). I hate the fact that I'm coming across as condescending, especially on this board (which is my most favouritest place on the whole interweb (with the possible exception of [spoiler]youporn.com[/spoiler])).
In my defence, I will say only that the attitudes and beliefs I encounter in real life colour the way I write here, which is probably why I am rather too robust in what I say, tipping me over into condescension. I thank you, sincerely, for pointing this out and promise to try and do better in the future.
Don't sweat it too much, you're a gent, 2000AD was always a magnet for that less reverential comic reader and many an ageing squaxx has put their feet in many a stream since having first read a prog and before finding their way to here, so the conversation won't ever just be about Twoth, but that is still why we're all here.
Joe Soap...the voice of sanity....who'd have thought it :D
You're comin' round to my way of thinking.
I really do love this place and the people in it :)
I tend not to argue with Joe....as Clint says "mans gotta know his limitations"
Naw, I'm jus' grumpy 'n know what to keep my trap shut about.
besides...what are we al doin' up this fuckin' late?...a workin' man needs his slumber.
no concern of mine til august :D
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 11 July, 2011, 02:49:36 AM
There was never a threat of violence apart from one that you chose to read into it
''if you or anyone else wants to continue this in person instead of being on the end of an internet connection then you will have to wait until next March then we will see what you are made of and how far you want to push your luck''So what else can one do 'in person' that one can't do at the end of an internet connection?
Anyway it appears they have both flounced off, thereby spoiling the betting in the 'Hi-Ex Handbag at dawn sweep stakes' ::)
Quote from: Proudhuff on 12 July, 2011, 07:08:10 PMSo what else can one do 'in person' that one can't do at the end of an internet connection?
I'm guessin' t'would've been
Top-Trumps.
Will you lot stop trying to shag each other and get on with some bogus conspiracies.
This thread has gone from entertainment to congratulatory slaps on the back and arse tonguing..
If that doesn't start anything nothing will.
V
Quote from: Proudhuff on 12 July, 2011, 07:08:10 PM
Quote from: Peter Wolf on 11 July, 2011, 02:49:36 AM
There was never a threat of violence apart from one that you chose to read into it
''if you or anyone else wants to continue this in person instead of being on the end of an internet connection then you will have to wait until next March then we will see what you are made of and how far you want to push your luck''
So what else can one do 'in person' that one can't do at the end of an internet connection?
Anyway it appears they have both flounced off, thereby spoiling the betting in the 'Hi-Ex Handbag at dawn sweep stakes' ::)
That's possibly the least threatening and entirely vague 'threat' I think I've ever read. Pretty sure I once promised to beat the shit out of that Cairns fool if he was stupid enough to show his face at Bristol a few years ago.
People really shouldn't make threats on the internet (or indeed anywhere else). Equally, people really shouldn't write cheques with their mouths that their fists can't cash. Or something.
The problem with the internet is that people have forgotten what it's like to have to think about the way that they speak to other people- in case those people punch all their teeth in for it. Again, I'm not saying that it's right to resort to violence over reasoned debate, but I know full well that most of the 'cleverer' people that frequent this and other boards are a lot
less clever- or at the very least,
brave, in person.
On a number of occasions on Facefuck I have had to remind people that there may be a chance we will meet in person. It soon shuts them up when they think about it or correspond with mutual friends.
V
Well, I'm not frightened of any of you pussies...
I see I have missed an 'epic' thread. For shame, T-Mobile and your requirement of cash for services rendered.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 12 July, 2011, 11:19:40 PM
Well, I'm not frightened of any of you pussies...
And I am scared shitless of the shark, he only lives a short local train ride away (once he escapes the village of the damned). I randomly open my curtains to see if I ca catch him lurking in the garden.
And well you should be. I'm close to you even now - so close, in fact, that I just stole an "n" from your last post...
Bwa ha ha haaa
Quote from: Proudhuff on 12 July, 2011, 07:08:10 PM
Anyway it appears they have both flounced off, thereby spoiling the betting in the 'Hi-Ex Handbag at dawn sweep stakes' ::)
Oi! I haven't flounced off at all! :)
It wasn't so much the threat that bothered me. It was the potential it had to spoil Hi Ex, which is a great, family-friendly event. I would have just backed down from any conflict, anyway. Why end up in a cell in Inverness when you could be drawing obscene comics in a hotel bar?
- Trout
Peter won't be coming to Hi-Ex, as he politely asked me to remove him from the list for the Hell-Trek!
Ah now this is getting (GETTING?) silly.
Yes, this is getting silly and I feel partially responsible because it all seemed to kick off because of this thread that I made.
So, I've had an idea. Why don't you both come to the Yap Shop tonight and hash it out properly in real time chat? It seems a shame to be cancelling Hi-Ex tickets and settling into patterns of enmity for what is really a storm in a teacup. You don't have to do it in the main room if you don't want, a private room can be opened and I am more than willing to act as a mediator if that will help.
The "Truth" is that sometimes people fall out. It's not the end of the world and it's not irrevocable. The longer you leave it, though, the harder it becomes to get past it. I hope you will give the idea some consideration.
www.paltalk.com (download and install the software for free, follow the sign-up instructions and find the room under: Miscellaneous/Other/Rowdy Yates Block Citizens' Yap Shop.)
To be fair, I think that Rich has told Peter that he's not welcome.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 13 July, 2011, 08:46:58 PM
To be fair, I think that Rich has told Peter that he's not welcome.
Hardly something that gentlemen couldn't sort out between themselves.
I obviously wouldn't want to speak for Rich, but I think it's more the attitude that's not welcome, not the person.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 July, 2011, 08:54:44 PM
I obviously wouldn't want to speak for Rich, but I think it's more the attitude that's not welcome, not the person.
Bit of both, to be honest.
Hardly anyone's been in the Yap Shop tonight. I hope my suggestion hasn't put people off dropping in.
(http://i616.photobucket.com/albums/tt248/jaredkatooie/BarelyDrawn.jpg)
Brilliant!
Truely brilliant.
Cheered me up no end.
That's one of the funniest things I've ever seen*. Top marks Jared!
*Sheltered life taken as a given.
QuoteThat's one of the funniest things I've ever seen
Yup.
spbloody bloonerisms
Fer Christs sakes, I take a wee holiday and everyone loses sight of what this thread is about.
The government have secret surveillance devices implanted in yer belt loops and all you people care about are yer opinions. Y'all need to get real
Are these secret surveilllance devices machine washable?
I don't normally wash my belts. But I bet the washing machine industry is in on this.
Social Media Targeted by Pentagon for "Strategic Communication"
"Earlier this week Old-Thinker News reported on statements made by Pentagon contractor and "perception manager" John Rendon regarding the manipulation of internet content algorithms with the intent to "shape belief sets." In further revelations, the Pentagon has unveiled on Thursday a project developed by DARPA that will utilize social media as an information warfare tool."
Continued at: http://www.blacklistednews.com/Social_Media_Targeted_by_Pentagon_for_%E2%80%9CStrategic_Communication%E2%80%9D/14749/0/0/0/Y/M.html (http://www.blacklistednews.com/Social_Media_Targeted_by_Pentagon_for_%E2%80%9CStrategic_Communication%E2%80%9D/14749/0/0/0/Y/M.html)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 July, 2011, 12:59:50 PM
"Earlier this week Old-Thinker News reported on statements made by Pentagon contractor and "perception manager" John Rendon regarding the manipulation of internet content algorithms with the intent to "shape belt loops."
Fixed that for ya!
And so the belt loop theory starts.
(http://www.supplierlist.com/photo_images/226270/Belt_Buckle_Spy_Camera_DVR.jpg)
Far too many loops to be a coincidence. You may be onto something Proudhuff.
(http://www.denimhunt.com/.a/6a00d83420b8e253ef011570929c75970b-800wi)
V
(http://pad3.whstatic.com/images/thumb/e/e6/Aglet.jpg/250px-Aglet.jpg)
Apparently these wee things on the ends of our laces are called Aglets.
A more accurate name would be tiny microphones
Aglet mikes are old hat, it's all about those insidious little RFID chips now. They want to put them into everything; food packaging, clothing, money... you. They want all your details and finances to be contained on this little chip, which will be implanted in your body. They'll be able to track you with it 24/7 and shut off your access to public transport, services and even your own funds. Chilling ideas, all packaged and presented to us as being for our own safety.
I don't often quote the Bible for obvious reasons, but here the most appropriate words can be found: "16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 17 and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." (Revelation 13:16-17)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 July, 2011, 01:16:21 PM
I don't often quote the Bible for obvious reasons...
The most obvious being that a 2nd C nutjob holed up on a rock in the Dodecanese is unlikely to have much useful to say about 21st C data collection, other than to unintentionally infect it with the same obfusticating mystical twaddle as the rest of his hateful scratchings.
Then again, some modern nutjob holed up in a corporately-funded secret laboratory somewhere might have read this obfuscating mystical twaddle and thought it was a good idea for furthering the evil goals of his hateful masters.
Quote from: TordelBack on 19 July, 2011, 01:44:50 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 July, 2011, 01:16:21 PM
I don't often quote the Bible for obvious reasons...
The most obvious being that a 2nd C nutjob holed up on a rock in the Dodecanese is unlikely to have much useful to say about 21st C data collection, other than to unintentionally infect it with the same obfusticating mystical twaddle as the rest of his hateful scratchings.
(http://sharetv.org/images/it_aint_half_hot_mum_uk/cast/large/rangi_ram.jpg)
But did he wear a belt?
Shaaaa-daaaaapppp!
(http://retrosmiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/21072-by-pewter-184x184.jpg)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 July, 2011, 02:09:07 PM
(http://retrosmiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/21072-by-pewter-184x184.jpg)
(http://2000adonline.com/forum/avatars_static/avatar_43739.png)
separated at birth? ;)
I don't like posting just to say "lol" because it seems like a complete waste of everyone's time. That said, however:
lol :lol:
... I wouldn't take that from Mr la-di-dah Gunnar Graham!
I remember when bar codes were the number of the latter day beast.
On the other hand, when I go out to my mum's I ride past big open spaces which were all factories when I were a lad.
Good one!
Funnily enough I was noting vacant commercial properties on my way into work this morning - I counted six in a row in a formerly bustling suburban area, with the run only halted by a letting agents office. All bar one (a one-too-many Starbucks) had been occupied at the end of last year. S'all getting a bit depressing.
Quote from: The Cosh on 19 July, 2011, 03:43:13 PM
...big open spaces which were all factories when I were a lad.
That's the visible sign of what using private money is doing to society. When the banks create money for a loan, they
do not also create the interest. The money to pay the interest must therefore come from converting real assets into money. This leads to inflation, fewer holidays, poorer food, cheaper materials and a smaller, richer elite. With social money you'd have more industry, more retail, better services and a much bigger and wider elite.
Return the power to create and control the money supply to government (and entrust government to the will of the people) and you could reverse this decline for ever.
This has been a political post on behalf of the Blind Optimism Party.
Speaking of optimism, articles like this really give me heart for the future:
Muslim Victim Of Post-9/11 Hate Crime Calls On Texas To Spare Life Of His Assailant
"I strongly believe what Mark Stroman did was a hate crime because of his ignorance. He was not capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. Otherwise, he would not have done what he did," Bhuiyan said. "The way my parents raised me and the way my faith teaches me, no one has a right to take another human life. Islam does not allow for hate and killing."
Full article here: http://tinyurl.com/3nx4pjf (http://tinyurl.com/3nx4pjf)
Quote from: Proudhuff on 19 July, 2011, 02:05:01 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 19 July, 2011, 01:44:50 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 July, 2011, 01:16:21 PM
I don't often quote the Bible for obvious reasons...
The most obvious being that a 2nd C nutjob holed up on a rock in the Dodecanese is unlikely to have much useful to say about 21st C data collection, other than to unintentionally infect it with the same obfusticating mystical twaddle as the rest of his hateful scratchings.
(http://sharetv.org/images/it_aint_half_hot_mum_uk/cast/large/rangi_ram.jpg)
But did he wear a belt?
Snake belts - could you ask for a more visible sign that this is all part of a scheme devised by a Set sect dating back before history itself (enshrined, for example, in the Old Testament one of the key ophiophobic tracts). The belt itself represents the snake, the belt loops therefore symbolise the forces working to oppress the serpent worshippers. When one undoes the trousers (ritually reversing the Ouroboros of the closed belt) in order to engage in fornication* one is almost literally setting the trouser snake free.
Only a high level adept of Set would be able to wear the snake belt on their hat and the whole of
It Ain't Half Hot Mum, therefore becomes a form of mystery play in which the foolish Imperialist British army run around making fools of themselves, while Bearer Rangi Ram manipulates proceedings from the sidelines whilst maintaining an aura of innocence. The wink is tipped because he is in fact played by a white British actor (albeit one born in India who could speak Hindi).
I hope this has helped make the scales** fall from your eyes.
* Unless you are going for a quick knee-trembler round the back of the offie.
** See
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Ouroboros-simple.svg/600px-Ouroboros-simple.svg.png)
I've said enough already... :o
Or too much. :-X
(http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/cnishared/tools/shared/mediahub/02/16/00/slideshow_1001623030_schwarzenegger.jpg)
Not only is he holding a snake, he is also wearing a belt :o :-X
A cold-blooded ruthless reptile largely untouched by evolutionary progress since the beginning of time - and a snake.
Quote from: pops1983 on 19 July, 2011, 07:01:51 PM
(http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/cnishared/tools/shared/mediahub/02/16/00/slideshow_1001623030_schwarzenegger.jpg)
Not only is he holding a snake, he is also wearing a belt :o :-X
What should have happened...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRoyuJuWXHM&NR=1
Quote from: Emperor on 19 July, 2011, 05:08:38 PM
Snake belts - could you ask for a more visible sign that this is all part of a scheme devised by a Set sect dating back before history itself (enshrined, for example, in the Old Testament one of the key ophiophobic tracts). The belt itself represents the snake, the belt loops therefore symbolise the forces working to oppress the serpent worshippers. When one undoes the trousers (ritually reversing the Ouroboros of the closed belt) in order to engage in fornication* one is almost literally setting the trouser snake free.
Only a high level adept of Set would be able to wear the snake belt on their hat and the whole of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, therefore becomes a form of mystery play in which the foolish Imperialist British army run around making fools of themselves, while Bearer Rangi Ram manipulates proceedings from the sidelines whilst maintaining an aura of innocence. The wink is tipped because he is in fact played by a white British actor (albeit one born in India who could speak Hindi).
I hope this has helped make the scales** fall from your eyes.
* Unless you are going for a quick knee-trembler round the back of the offie.
** See
If it wasn't a European belt design I'd have been onboard with this :D
Italian shoes have their own belts! Proof or WHAT!
I think that anthropogenic global warming is a scam by the global elite to hoover up more of the Earth's wealth using global carbon taxes as the weapon of choice. I have thought for a long time that the sun is far more likely to affect our climate than a gas that only makes up about one half of one percent of our atmosphere. Some scientists are willing to entertain and investigate this theory and some are not...
CERN Scientists Gagged On 'Politically Incorrect' Global Warming Data
"In a shocking illustration of how the man-made climate change establishment has seized control of the scientific process, physicists at the CERN lab in Geneva were gagged from drawing conclusions about data that seeks to replicate studies which prove the sun is the main driver of climate change, after their boss told them that such heresy was politically incorrect.
"Despite the fact that global warming alarmists have claimed there is no link between the huge raging fireball in space that is over 100 times bigger than the earth, drives the seasons and causes ice ages, and climate change, the data produced by Henrik Svensmark's studies shows a clear historical correlation between cosmic ray penetration and temperature, as can be seen from the graph below."
(http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/11/16/sven_northernhemi.jpg)
Full article here: http://theintelhub.com/2011/07/20/cern-scientists-gagged-on-%E2%80%98politically-incorrect%E2%80%99-global-warming-data/ (http://theintelhub.com/2011/07/20/cern-scientists-gagged-on-%E2%80%98politically-incorrect%E2%80%99-global-warming-data/)
Speaking of CO2, hands up how many people think that putting this gas into the atmosphere is bad? (I'm looking at you, Al Gore...)
In actual fact, more CO2 equals bigger and better plants (and crops) and is contributing to a re-greening of the Earth. For example:
The Increasing Prowess of a Stand of Danish Beech Trees: http://www.co2science.org/articles/V14/N29/B1.php (http://www.co2science.org/articles/V14/N29/B1.php)
I don't get it. The CERN chief advocates that the results of some very important climate research be presented clearly and in full, but with a minimum of interpretation.
His reasons? Because the phenomenon being examined represents only one of many parameters in the (literally) chaotic system of climate change, and he fears that any conjecture presented is going to be picked up and used as a blunt instrument in the climate debate to the exclusion of all other factors by people who are apparently either incapable of understanding the complexity of the system in question or so eager for supportive soundbites that support their conspiracy theory that they will willfully ignore it.
But I will return to the first point: the results of the research will be presented clearly and in full, so that anyone who is actually interested in understanding climate change can take the facts on board without an ideological spin. Nothing is being buried here. Thus is how science should proceed, rather than be seen as fuel for a media circus.
EDIT: Incidentally, I'm not knocking Nigel Calder here, he's been a great voice for science, but he's missing the point here, possibly because he's in his 80's.
So, science is actually aided by the restriction of debate? In what way?
Quote from: TordelBack on 21 July, 2011, 02:38:44 PM
EDIT: Incidentally, I'm not knocking Nigel Calder here, he's been a great voice for science, but he's missing the point here, possibly because he's in his 80's.
...so's Christopher Lee.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 02:35:47 PM
Speaking of CO2, hands up how many people think that putting this gas into the atmosphere is bad?
Try breathing a higher %
in.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 21 July, 2011, 02:49:11 PM
Try breathing a higher % in.
That's the
point. Plants will breathe more in, grow bigger, forests will breathe in, expanding the natural carbon sinks of the Earth to keep step with the CO2 available for it to use. That's more plants for us to use, exhaling more oxygen for us to enjoy. Gaia adapts.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 02:56:02 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 21 July, 2011, 02:49:11 PM
Try breathing a higher % in.
That's the point. Plants will breathe more in, grow bigger, forests will breathe in, expanding the natural carbon sinks of the Earth to keep step with the CO2 available for it to use. That's more plants for us to use, exhaling more oxygen for us to enjoy. Gaia adapts.
Only if we maintain enough
forestry and flora which we don't.
Gaia me arse, nature is anarchic otherwise there'd neve be anything new, 'balance' is stasis and that is not nature.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 21 July, 2011, 03:08:33 PM
Gaia me arse, nature is anarchic otherwise there'd never be anything new, 'balance' is stasis and that is not nature.
I don't agree that "'balance' is stasis". Take the sun, for example; it orbits the galaxy in what we perceive with our limited senses to be a balanced way. But we know that the sun doesn't orbit the galactic core in a simple straight line - it rises and falls over millions of years like a roller-coaster, but this happens on such vast time scales that it really makes no difference to us at all. Likewise, the Earth wobbles as it spins, but that wobble lasts for so long that it takes thousands and thousands of years to make a difference to the constellations we can see in the night sky. That is balance, but not stasis.
It's the same with climate/life. Over long periods of time Gaia (used here in the climate/life homoeostatic sense) changes, the one influencing the other, the other adapting to the one in a complex dance spanning thousands of years. I think this is where most climate-change extremists are going wrong. They're looking at too short a timespan and interpreting their observations without sufficient context.
And here's something else to get your hackles up (if you have any hackles left by now...)
9/11 Explosive Eyewitness Testimony: http://911blogger.com/news/2011-04-27/911-explosive-eyewitness-testimony
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 02:43:56 PM
So, science is actually aided by the restriction of debate? In what way?
'Debate' is a word which can be applied to a number of different types of discourse, not all of them resembling its intended meaning. Research produces results, and those results (and the methodologies that produced them) can be debated, new models/theories constructed on the basis of those debates to account for data if it no longer fits old models, and those models tested with subsequent data, until all data is accounted for in the most logically simple fashion.
In this instance solar or cosmic ray forcing in climate change is one factor in a non-linear mess of factors, whose interactions are poorly understood, and at the reporting stage those papers should only be interpreting what the results mean
for the understanding of that factor - conjecturing at the research paper level about how the results feed into an overall model of climate change is pre-judging something that should be the focus of a much larger meta-project.
The obvious fear at CERN is that a single factor will be popularly mistaken for the whole picture, because it's simple and easy to grasp - and a wider, more inclusive debate will suffer. Every offhand remark that can possibly be interpreted as challenging the now-dominant hypothesis is extracted from its context and used as a rallying call to dismiss the entirety of climatological consensus, and to paint every other hard-working climate scientist as a shill or a stooge - something that is deeply damaging to an intelligent discussion.
Like it or not, climate change is a political issue, and thus knocked about by the tides of popular pressure rather than proceeding through the detailed analysis of data by experts, and the intent here seems not to be to
restrict debate but to
separate it from factual research papers, from the basic level of data collection and analysis.
It's part of the essential house-style of science, because
somebody needs to be establishing basic uncontested elements with which an actual debate, a sensible discussion, can be conducted.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 03:36:33 PM
And here's something else to get your hackles up (if you have any hackles left by now...)
9/11 Explosive Eyewitness Testimony: http://911blogger.com/news/2011-04-27/911-explosive-eyewitness-testimony
Flip-flopper.
Quote from: TordelBack on 21 July, 2011, 04:15:59 PMLike it or not, climate change is a political issue, and thus knocked about by the tides of popular pressure
A bit like the 'Greens', an
issue, not a party.
Quote from: TordelBack on 21 July, 2011, 04:15:59 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 02:43:56 PM
So, science is actually aided by the restriction of debate? In what way?
'Debate' is a word which can be applied to a number of different types of discourse, not all of them resembling its intended meaning. Research produces results, and those results (and the methodologies that produced them) can be debated, new models/theories constructed on the basis of those debates to account for data if it no longer fits old models, and those models tested with subsequent data, until all data is accounted for in the most logically simple fashion.
In this instance solar or cosmic ray forcing in climate change is one factor in a non-linear mess of factors, whose interactions are poorly understood, and at the reporting stage those papers should only be interpreting what the results mean for the understanding of that factor - conjecturing at the research paper level about how the results feed into an overall model of climate change is pre-judging something that should be the focus of a much larger meta-project.
The obvious fear at CERN is that a single factor will be popularly mistaken for the whole picture, because it's simple and easy to grasp - and a wider, more inclusive debate will suffer. Every offhand remark that can possibly be interpreted as challenging the now-dominant hypothesis is extracted from its context and used as a rallying call to dismiss the entirety of climatological consensus, and to paint every other hard-working climate scientist as a shill or a stooge - something that is deeply damaging to an intelligent discussion.
Like it or not, climate change is a political issue, and thus knocked about by the tides of popular pressure rather than proceeding through the detailed analysis of data by experts, and the intent here seems not to be to restrict debate but to separate it from factual research papers, from the basic level of data collection and analysis.
It's part of the essential house-style of science, because somebody needs to be establishing basic uncontested elements with which an actual debate, a sensible discussion, can be conducted.
So, science is
not aided by restriction of debate, so long as only sober experts get to do the debating? I see... Should these sober and well-informed debates happen only behind closed doors and the rest of us just be informed of the results afterwards or do ordinary people get to ask impertinent questions?
Climate change is a political issue, yes - and that's a big problem. Politics has no place in science because then you just bring the whole thing into the same arena as religion where dogma becomes more important than discovery. At the moment, corporations have a lot invested in the man-made global warming scam (or perhaps we should be kinder and call it the man-made global warming error) and so they would lose billions if it was discovered that this climate change we appear to be going through is an entirely natural cycle or combination of cycles after all. In such a circumstance, it is difficult to get the funding to investigate alternative hypotheses or to even give voice to conflicting ideas. Now, I'm not a scientist but it seems to me that refusing to investigate, comment upon results or allow debate over unpopular theories is not what science should be about.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 03:36:33 PM
And here's something else to get your hackles up (if you have any hackles left by now...)
9/11 Explosive Eyewitness Testimony: http://911blogger.com/news/2011-04-27/911-explosive-eyewitness-testimony
Goodness! people on the scene minutes after a building collapsed? It's lucky none of these eye witnesses where, I dunno, suffering from shock or anything are where able to describe exactly what happened.
Never mind the massive amount of forensic evidence since that contradicts any conspiracy, eh?
Dammit, I'm doing it again...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 05:11:10 PM
So, science is not aided by restriction of debate, so long as only sober experts get to do the debating?
When it comes to the business of actual difficult science, I'm sorry, but
yes, that's
exactly it. I'm not qualified, and I haven't got the years it would require to cover the literature, and I'm not smart enough to make sense of the maths anyway, to engage in properly
informed analysis of this type of material. I'm just not that person. All I can do is trust that those people that have made it their life's work, and more importantly the system that
regulates their work, is up to the task - because I'm certainly not. If you are, well fair play, get stuck in. In my case, however, all I can do is form an
opinion based on what I'm told at second or third hand, further based on a judgement of the reliability of those sources. That opinion has feck all bearing on what researchers should or shouldn't present in a low-level research paper
Obviously it's proper for
everyone to question how science is done, to question the biases, the personalities, the sources of funding, and how findings influence real-world policies and budgets - not to do so would be gross complacency. But to question the specifics of the actual core science? I think you have to be a specialist to do that, and that's the level of paper that your post referred to. Dragging specific research papers into the realm of uniformed non-expert discussions is risky, because as 'climategate' showed most people are pig-fucking ignorant as to how science operates and prone to completely misinterpret on the basis of what the media spins in their direction.
Papers need to present evidence that can inform debate at
all levels, but including conjectures that one-note media sources can misinterpret into a rejection of anthropogenic climate change is counterproductive. These aren't opinion columns in New Scientist, these are papers documenting primary research. A policy that restricts them to that role allows them to be used to support or contradict any position as the evidence dictates. It actually opens up their use, rather than restricts it to one partisan or another.
A quote from a character by a non-expert novelist: "Let the philosophers of science delude themselves to the contrary, physics was free of human taint, it described a world that would still exist if men and women and all their sorrows did not." (
Solar, Ian McEwan). That's where we're at.
QuoteIf I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.
Richard Feynman
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 03:36:33 PM
And here's something else to get your hackles up (if you have any hackles left by now...)
9/11 Explosive Eyewitness Testimony: http://911blogger.com/news/2011-04-27/911-explosive-eyewitness-testimony
In disasters like that there will be gas build up just taking a little spark to set it off, or even whole floors slamming against one another as the buildings collapse the impact will sound like an explosion.
How many times have you jumped out of your skin when a car back fires. Even in my job I have to have a gas tester clipped to my belt at all times to test for build up in the street networks.
As a kid I can even remember the amplification of my dads farts around the house when he was in the bath.
V
When 9/11 happened, my telly blew-up.
I heard that Porsche was behind it all, thus making everyone think of buying one of their 911 models, subliminal messaging, it works!
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 21 July, 2011, 08:22:32 PM
I heard that Porsche was behind it all, thus making everyone think of buying one of their 911 models, subliminal messaging, it works!
Pish, it was their competitors at Fiat, trying to link 911s with death, thus adversely affecting the sales of the executive penal compensators.
Mind you those 911s were associated with death long before 2001.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 21 July, 2011, 06:51:04 PM
Goodness! people on the scene minutes after a building collapsed? It's lucky none of these eye witnesses where, I dunno, suffering from shock or anything are where able to describe exactly what happened.
Never mind the massive amount of forensic evidence since that contradicts any conspiracy, eh?
Dammit, I'm doing it again...
Indeed. It's just pure coincidence that many imagined similar secondary explosions and controlled-demolition-type "bang, bang, bang, bangs".
And, which massive amounts of forensic evidence do you mean? The selective evidence considered by the 9/11 Commission or NIST which failed to explain exactly why any of the three towers collapsed?
Oh Lordie, I'm off on one again as well ::) It's all moot anyway. At the moment I've seen no evidence that makes me confident that the official narrative of 9/11 is convincing and I guess you haven't seen anything that makes you think the official narrative isn't convincing. I do want to be wrong, though. I really want to think it was all the fault of human pettiness and human ineptitude and just plain coincidence rather than an elitist black-flag operation designed to make a profit and further a global Fascist agenda.
Quote from: TordelBack on 21 July, 2011, 07:12:25 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 05:11:10 PM
So, science is not aided by restriction of debate, so long as only sober experts get to do the debating?
When it comes to the business of actual difficult science, I'm sorry, but yes, that's exactly it...
I
think I know where you're coming from here, and it's a position I have a great deal of respect for. We want our best scientists working on the most pressing problems, of course we do. We want them arguing with each other and reviewing each other and generally coming up with accurate data and answers. However, to exclude the rest of society from that process seems to me a very elitist and even dangerous thing to do. I reckon we should all have access to important climate change data and interpretations of that data. Why should we not be able to look at the arguments, perspectives and data of our scientists and debate it between ourselves as we are doing here? You don't need to understand every detail to have an opinion - whether that opinion be right or wrong.
Take the case of Ignaz Semmelweis, who discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. The argument between Semmelweis and his peers raged on largely in private (that is, between doctors). Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Some doctors were actually
offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings.
Now, if the rest of society had been privy to this argument then simple statistics (hands washed v dead patients on a chart) may have brought doctors to the truth far earlier and saved many lives.
The more information that's available to as many people as possible, the better the chance that connections will be made or novel proposals generated. Yes, you'll get a lot of rubbish as well, but that's just par for the course and no reason to restrict access to scientific data or its interpretation.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 10:39:03 PM
The more information that's available to as many people as possible, the better the chance that connections will be made or novel proposals generated. Yes, you'll get a lot of rubbish as well, but that's just par for the course and no reason to restrict access to scientific data or its interpretation.
I'd
never advocate restricting access to scientific data or its interpretation. What I
would do is assert that, as a layman, my view of data or interpretation is just not as valid as a professional specialist in that or a related field. It's not elitism to ask that the man flying my plane is a qualified pilot and not just a passenger selected because he's expressed an interest, and some of the other passengers think he's got a better handle on this whole aileron business. What's the problem, why are they keeping all the cockpit action to themselves,
what are they hiding? Where public opinion affects the progress of essential science, that's exactly what happens.
Your 19th C anecdote is a good one, and highlights inertia of praxis in any aspect of life. However this is not the same situation as the one we were discussing - no-one is suppressing or ignoring or sidelining anyone's research. The CERN papers are part of an effort to understand climate, and an influential part.
Quote from: TordelBack on 21 July, 2011, 11:07:26 PM
I'd never advocate restricting access to scientific data or its interpretation.
I apologise, I had no right to insinuate that. Sloppy of me.
I do think that a layman can be of help in data interpretation. In
some cases, the conventional wisdom of scientists can be a straightjacket that the layman just doesn't have. Of course, conventional wisdom has its place - but then, so does unfettered imagination.
When I was at school I was told that it would be impossible to draw a scale picture of the solar system on an A4 sheet of paper. This "fact", no doubt established and tested by people far more intelligent and better educated than I will ever be, has vexed me for most of my life. A couple of years ago, however, the solution to this problem hit me. I
think that I've found a way to put a scale model of the solar system on an A4 sheet of paper - although I can explain the idea and even illustrate it, I don't know exactly how to do it because my maths aren't nearly good enough. Also, there's really no point to having scale maps of solar systems on an A4 sheet of paper that I can think of. And it might not actually work as well as I imagine. All I'm saying is that if a poorly educated buffoon like me can have a brainwave, then anyone can.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 10:39:03 PM
The more information that's available to as many people as possible, the better the chance that connections will be made or novel proposals generated. Yes, you'll get a lot of rubbish as well
E.G. Every science story the Daily Mail has ever run.
A common problem with the way most lay people interpret scientific data is this; Correlation=Causation. The MMR jabs links to Autism is a good example of this.
Just out of curiosity, Sharky, when you say a scale image of the solar system, do you mean out as far as Neptune, or right out to the edge of the Oort cloud?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 11:28:30 PM
When I was at school I was told that it would be impossible to draw a scale picture of the solar system on an A4 sheet of paper. This "fact", no doubt established and tested by people far more intelligent and better educated than I will ever be, has vexed me for most of my life. A couple of years ago, however, the solution to this problem hit me. I think that I've found a way to put a scale model of the solar system on an A4 sheet of paper - although I can explain the idea and even illustrate it, I don't know exactly how to do it because my maths aren't nearly good enough. Also, there's really no point to having scale maps of solar systems on an A4 sheet of paper that I can think of. And it might not actually work as well as I imagine. All I'm saying is that if a poorly educated buffoon like me can have a brainwave, then anyone can.
How 'bout just using a
bigger sheet of paper?*
*Ed de Bono would be proud.
Without the maths skills I don't really know - but I'm fairly confident you could get it to Neptune and optimistic that you could reach the farthest edge of the heliopause. Any maths geniuses want to look at the idea and share the glory/disappointment?? :lol:
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 21 July, 2011, 11:39:44 PM
How 'bout just using a bigger sheet of paper?*
He did say it had to be A4. A smaller scale would seem to be an obvious solution.
Well if it helps, if you intend to trace the orbits you could just draw them as perfect circles. The elliptical nature of planetary orbits is usually exaggerated for diagrams to make it clearer. For your drawing, the the difference between Aphelion and Perihelion would be no greater than the thickness of the line (assuming the line is thick enough to be visible).
I demand examples.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bov9M2gEgcE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bov9M2gEgcE)
BY YOUR HAND!
Quote from: pops1983 on 21 July, 2011, 11:54:15 PM
Well if it helps, if you intend to trace the orbits you could just draw them as perfect circles. The elliptical nature of planetary orbits is usually exaggerated for diagrams to make it clearer. For your drawing, the the difference between Aphelion and Perihelion would be no greater than the thickness of the line (assuming the line is thick enough to be visible).
No, that wouldn't work. Here's a pdf I made to try and explain it (230KB): http://www.mediafire.com/?wc5ta4akzagudnj
Impressive.
That's a clever wee scematic
(http://www.deepfly.org/TheNeighborhood/SolarTable.gif)
Neptune's orbital radius is 30.1 AU/4,515,000,000km, this will be the largest dimension in your picture.
The diameter of Mercury is 3005km, this is your smallest dimension.
S0 a ratio of roughly 1/1,500,000. If you made Mercury 1mm in diameter, Neptune's orbit would be about 1.5 km from the center of the page and would have to be drawn with a really, really, really, really tight spiral.Or not drawn to the same scale as the orbits.
Bear in mind, I've a few beer in me.
Quote from: pops1983 on 22 July, 2011, 12:39:15 AM
If you wanted to do a scale image on an A4 page, the planets would have to be drawn with a really, really, really, really sharp pencil. Or not drawn to the same scale as the orbits.
You're right about the sharpness - I reckon it would be possible with a very thin line and a very dense spiral. No?
(I actually got the idea after watching a documentary about the London Underground Map.)
Yeah I edited that after the fact there. Unfortunately, I don't know much about the mathematics of spirals. Unless they're the Fibonacci kind.
I just emailed ESA with it. Should I have used a green font? lol
This is a nice piece of software that let's you explore the solar system. At my age this is the closest I will get to exploring the the planets. On the bright side you can do it without leaving the comfort of your own home.
http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ (http://www.solarsystemscope.com/)
Bw
Nap
Very cleverly done, TLS. I spent a good while looking through that, nice one.
Wasn't Albert Einstein a lowly clerk in a patent office?
Thank you, Red Dwarf.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 22 July, 2011, 10:52:36 AM
Wasn't Albert Einstein a lowly clerk in a patent office?
yes, but with a great imagination
Quote from: Matt Timson on 22 July, 2011, 10:52:36 AM
Wasn't Albert Einstein a lowly clerk in a patent office?
After graduating in physics and maths, and to support his family while working towards his doctorate in physics at the University of Zurich, having fled military service in Germany, yes indeed he was,
but did his contribution to science at the time consist of posting on internet forums* and writing to the Daily Mail? Or did it consist of (initially) the completion of his doctoral thesis, and the publication, in respected peer-reviewed scientific journals, of his theory of Special Relativity, the photoelectric effect, brownian motion etc. (all in the one year, BTW)?
Rather than complaining that the scientific establishment was conspiring to maintain the fiction of the luminiferous ether through
debate, Einstein mathematically
proved the damn thing was a needless nonsense, and he did it through traditional establishment channels and norms. And did 'they' hush him up and suppress his work? No. Within three years he was a senior lecturer at the University of Zurich, and 3 years after that a full professor in Prague.
This is not the same thing as pulling bits of papers out of context and asserting the sky is (isn't?) falling, and no-one is listening to you because they're all in cahoots with big business and/or the goddamn hippies.
*I am absolutely
NOT referring to TLS here, to be clear. TLS is an intelligent and articulate gentleman, and a unbowed challenger of received orthodoxies, for all that I seldom agree with him.
NM
Quote from: TordelBack on 22 July, 2011, 11:28:07 AM
Quote from: Matt Timson on 22 July, 2011, 10:52:36 AM
Wasn't Albert Einstein a lowly clerk in a patent office?
After graduating in physics and maths, and to support his family while working towards his doctorate in physics at the University of Zurich, having fled military service in Germany, yes indeed he was, but did his contribution to science at the time consist of posting on internet forums* and writing to the Daily Mail? Or did it consist of (initially) the completion of his doctoral thesis, and the publication, in respected peer-reviewed scientific journals, of his theory of Special Relativity, the photoelectric effect, brownian motion etc. (all in the one year, BTW)?
Rather than complaining that the scientific establishment was conspiring to maintain the fiction of the luminiferous ether through debate, Einstein mathematically proved the damn thing was a needless nonsense, and he did it through traditional establishment channels and norms. And did 'they' hush him up and suppress his work? No. Within three years he was a senior lecturer at the University of Zurich, and 3 years after that a full professor in Prague.
This is not the same thing as pulling bits of papers out of context and asserting the sky is (isn't?) falling, and no-one is listening to you because they're all in cahoots with big business and/or the goddamn hippies.
*I am absolutely NOT referring to TLS here, to be clear. TLS is an intelligent and articulate gentleman, and a unbowed challenger of received orthodoxies, for all that I seldom agree with him.
Nobody understands the value of a comedy rhetorical question these days...
Quote from: Matt Timson on 22 July, 2011, 12:02:57 PM
Nobody understands the value of a comedy rhetorical question these days...
It's the way you tell 'em!
Nah, sorry, I misread it as an 'regular outsider folk should get equal recognition in science' comment - sense of humour reboot needed on my part.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 22 July, 2011, 12:02:57 PM
Does nobody understands the value of a comedy rhetorical question these days?
Fixed that for you?
Quote from: TordelBack on 22 July, 2011, 07:34:48 AM
Very cleverly done, TLS. I spent a good while looking through that, nice one.
That's very kind of you to say, thanks :)
As to the covering up of science thing, I think that it does indeed go on. As soon as David Bellamy (remember him, gwubbing awound in the undergwowth?) started questioning the prevailing view of climate change he couldn't get back on telly for love nor money. Which may be a coincidence or he may have run into politics.
Science is being done into climate change that is outside the accepted focus, as with the cosmic ray theory - it's just that the results have a hard time getting through the political and media barriers and into the public eye. Those results and interpretations that do get out tend to be belittled and derided, the scientists undertaking the work characterised as fringe or kooks. For many years, the climate argument was presented as essentially settled and I'm sure even TB would concede that this was never likely to be the case given the sheer complexity of the systems involved.
I have sensed a slight back-pedalling in the global warming assault of late. For one, the very phrase "global warming" has fallen from Apocalyptic grace. It was once on everyone's lips, the same way that "nuclear war" was on everyone's lips when I was a kid, but now I think more and more people accept that the more accurate term for what's happening is the much more friendly "climate change". Changing climate is certainly a challenge the human race has to deal with - but it's a challenge the human race has
always been dealing with and probably always will be. Cave men would either kill a particularly furry beast when it's cold or learn how to spin cotton when it gets warmer. Modern man has to figure out how to get around the inconveniences of having built cities in difficult places or managing the water cycle better. In the future, we may be figuring out how to deal with all those unexpected hurricanes and tornadoes plaguing a terraformed Mars.
So you see, I really don't think that all scientists investigating the accepted fields within the climate change issue are in cahoots with big business or politicians. At least, no more than the rest of us. A handful certainly will be political animals. A few will be mavericks. Most will just turn up and do their work to the best of their ability. Politicians and the media have been picking the bits they like from the data, the dramatic bits that make people scared, and also fostered a climate where those bits receive the most focus to the exclusion (in political and media terms) of all other theories. It's not the scientists who are at fault and it's not necessarily the science - it's the politicians, money men and media.
I posted a link to a scientific study of Dutch Birch trees earlier in this thread that seemed to show that rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere may not be as big a problem as we thought. In itself, of course, it was just one study and didn't prove anything. That site, though, is replete with examples of studies showing that the CO2 problem really may not be a problem at all. Of course, that's only one website with a limited number of studies on it - but stuff like this is largely ignored by politicians and the media because it does not support the argument for us needing them to fix things. It is, in my humble opinion, up to us to flag these anomalies wherever we perceive them.
This does not mean that by pointing out such things as CO2 being beneficial to crop yields I am entitled to the same recognition or standing as a proper scientist or researcher. All I am is a single voice in a supposedly free country shouting about the hard work done by other people.
One only has to watch the egregious "An Inconvenient Truth", which is basically an advert for carbon tax, to see how the most extreme and alarmist climate research results can be presented as pure propaganda. I read that this horrid little movie is being shown in schools all over the place - talk about getting to 'em young!
Quotebut did his contribution to science at the time consist of posting on internet forums* and writing to the Daily Mail? Or did it consist of (initially) the completion of his doctoral thesis, and the publication, in respected peer-reviewed scientific journals, of his theory of Special Relativity, the photoelectric effect, brownian motion etc. (all in the one year, BTW)?
Dunno... I'm going to take a guess at the first one.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 July, 2011, 02:12:06 PM
I think that anthropogenic global warming is a scam by the global elite to hoover up more of the Earth's wealth using global carbon taxes as the weapon of choice. I have thought for a long time that the sun is far more likely to affect our climate than a gas that only makes up about one half of one percent of our atmosphere. Some scientists are willing to entertain and investigate this theory and some are not...
I was taking a break from the board there and now I'm back...
Well ISTR last time it was mentioned you weren't sure it was a scam, plus you didn't think the causes of the Pleistocene glacial episodes were understood. What's convinced you it's a scam then?
I've said this before, but I'll repeat it more strenuously this time. Who in the name of
good fuck doesn't think that our Sun is a significant climate forcing factor? Perhaps people who don't understand
a fuckin thing about Earth sciences, but no Earth scientist, chemist, oceanographer, geologist, planetary, atmospheric or environmental scientist etc, etc thinks that. Read a fuckin textbook!
And carbon dioxide helps plants grow? Fuck me! A revelation!
I'm off again. See ye anon.
M.
Quaternary Science researcher
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 July, 2011, 01:39:05 PM
As soon as David Bellamy (remember him, gwubbing awound in the undergwowth?) started questioning the prevailing view of climate change he couldn't get back on telly for love nor money. Which may be a coincidence or he may have run into politics.
Actually, as Mr Bellamy later admitted, he'd read some dodgy "facts" about glaciers expanding rather than shrinking, took it at face value, drew erroneous conclusions which he then dissemintaed widely. To be fair to him, when the data was proved to be false, he publicly admitted he was wrong, but I don't think his credibility as a scientist has ever really recovered.
There's a lesson there for all armchair experts!
Didn't he also advertise aerosol sprays?
Quote from: Dandontdare on 22 July, 2011, 02:22:16 PM
There's a lesson there for all armchair experts!
...as in don't become a scientist, it's too serious and they're not allowed to post frivolously then backtrack andchange their minds as soon as a new thread comes up they like better.
Quote from: TordelBack on 22 July, 2011, 12:08:46 PM
Quote from: Matt Timson on 22 July, 2011, 12:02:57 PM
Nobody understands the value of a comedy rhetorical question these days...
It's the way you tell 'em!
Nah, sorry, I misread it as an 'regular outsider folk should get equal recognition in science' comment - sense of humour reboot needed on my part.
To be fair, I am only half joking. There are plenty of people able to do things that might not have a piece of paper that
says they can do them- but I don't want to get drawn into a pongos vs scientists argument, because I largely agree with what you're saying.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 22 July, 2011, 02:35:20 PMThere are plenty of people able to do things that might not have a piece of paper that says they can do them-...
No arguments there. There are also plenty that have a piece of paper that says they can do things that they blatantly can't, as I've discovered to my cost over the years in hiring MAs and PhDs who could neither spell nor count nor turn on a computer.
I suppose ultimately I'm not remotely concerned about people without formal qualifications doing the work as well or better than those that have (some of the very best guys in my line of work have had no formal training or relevant education whatsoever) - it's more the widespread self-deception of people who think that they
are doing the work, when all 99.9% are doing is flapping on the surface of things, misinterpreting and misunderstanding and re-inventing the wheel, and claiming that they're being 'excluded' by a jealous elite. All it does is muddy the waters and make for dangerous headlines, as per the old chestnut of MMR.
There's a lot of unpleasant and unscientific shenanigans involved in the allocation of funds for research and its dissemination, of that I have no doubt since actual humans are involved, but it still seems a far better model for pursuing expensive time-consuming science than a blog and sense of purpose.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 22 July, 2011, 02:22:16 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 July, 2011, 01:39:05 PM
As soon as David Bellamy (remember him, gwubbing awound in the undergwowth?) started questioning the prevailing view of climate change he couldn't get back on telly for love nor money. Which may be a coincidence or he may have run into politics.
Actually, as Mr Bellamy later admitted, he'd read some dodgy "facts" about glaciers expanding rather than shrinking, took it at face value, drew erroneous conclusions which he then dissemintaed widely. To be fair to him, when the data was proved to be false, he publicly admitted he was wrong, but I don't think his credibility as a scientist has ever really recovered.
There's a lesson there for all armchair experts!
Not sure when Mr Bellamy recanted - do you have a date for that? Here's a link to an interview with Bellamy from Wednesday November 5, 2008: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/69623 in which he says things like "...there is absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide is anything to do with any impending catastrophe" and "...since I said I didn't believe human beings caused global warming I've not been allowed to make a TV programme." I also found an interview with him from 19 Nov 2009 at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/6598056/Eco-hero-David-Bellamy-botanist-and-campaigner.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/6598056/Eco-hero-David-Bellamy-botanist-and-campaigner.html) in which he adds "I'm sceptical about man-made climate change. There's absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide will kill us all. It's not a poison, it's the most important gas in the world. Carbon dioxide is an airborne fertiliser. How can farmers grow increasing amounts of food without a rise in CO2?" Those are the two most up to date interviews with the man I can find and it seems to me that even if he has come to accept that certain facts were incorrect (something I think we've all done) he still isn't convinced about carbon driving climate change - and neither am I.
Quote from: Mikey on 22 July, 2011, 02:17:04 PM
I was taking a break from the board there and now I'm back...
Well ISTR last time it was mentioned you weren't sure it was a scam, plus you didn't think the causes of the Pleistocene glacial episodes were understood. What's convinced you it's a scam then?
I've said this before, but I'll repeat it more strenuously this time. Who in the name of good fuck doesn't think that our Sun is a significant climate forcing factor? Perhaps people who don't understand a fuckin thing about Earth sciences, but no Earth scientist, chemist, oceanographer, geologist, planetary, atmospheric or environmental scientist etc, etc thinks that. Read a fuckin textbook!
And carbon dioxide helps plants grow? Fuck me! A revelation!
I'm off again. See ye anon.
M.
Quaternary Science researcher
You seem to think that I believe science is a scam, which I do not. Certain climate evidence is being held up as Gospel by politicians, media and the corporate world. They are using science to cement their power and make a profit. What's the point of a carbon tax if carbon dioxide isn't the problem? And if carbon dioxide isn't the problem, don't you think we should be investigating that theory as vigorously as the opposite so that we can get some proper data on what
is going on?
Much is assumed. I remember being told that we could tell what CO2 does to an atmosphere by looking at Venus. Earth's atmosphere has only about 0.05% CO2 and has a mean temperature 14.6 °C whilst Venus' atmosphere is 96.5% CO2 and has a mean temperature of 467°C - therefore more CO2 = higher temperatures, which seems to me to be unsound reasoning. Venus is also closer to the sun and an atmosphere composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide probably behaves much differently to an atmosphere composed chiefly of nitrogen and oxygen. Yes, at a certain point the levels of CO2 in an atmosphere will start keeping in solar radiation, but by the time that's happened we'd all have suffocated anyway. So far as we know, Venus also has no natural carbon sinks (life) to expand and contract with CO2 levels.
I'm not saying that climate change isn't a problem, but I don't believe that carbon dioxide is.
Who doesn't think that our sun is a contributing factor to climate? The people who stand to make money out of the CO2 based argument, that's who. How do you make money out of it being the sun's fault? Solar tax? You gonna' buy that? No, but you might be just taken in enough to pay a man-made-carbon tax.
TLS
A nobody with a questioning mind.
While I disagree with Shark I defend his right to say it , even on a comic furum ;)
All I ask is he does some reseach into who sponsors the 'secptics' and who pays the timewasters who ask for endless FOI requests.
a recent tabacco industry example of this: http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/university-says-tobacco-giant-is-harassing-staff-1.1112518 (http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/university-says-tobacco-giant-is-harassing-staff-1.1112518)
Quote from: Proudhuff on 22 July, 2011, 03:39:49 PM
All I ask is he does some reseach into who sponsors the 'secptics' and who pays the timewasters who ask for endless FOI requests.
a recent tabacco industry example of this: http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/university-says-tobacco-giant-is-harassing-staff-1.1112518 (http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/university-says-tobacco-giant-is-harassing-staff-1.1112518)
I'm sorry, I don't get what you mean. Lots of different institutions sponsor science, skeptics and supporters. Some sponsors are public and some private. It depends on their goals.
And why are people who submit FoI requests "timewasters"? (
FOI request reveals lack of care home record checks: http://www.ftadviser.com/FinancialAdviser/Insurance/HealthcareAndProtection/News/article/20110714/cfc83d96-ac8c-11e0-8fe1-00144f2af8e8/FOI-request-reveals-lack-of-care-home-record-checks.jsp (http://www.ftadviser.com/FinancialAdviser/Insurance/HealthcareAndProtection/News/article/20110714/cfc83d96-ac8c-11e0-8fe1-00144f2af8e8/FOI-request-reveals-lack-of-care-home-record-checks.jsp)
Mayor under fire after FOI request reveals £37K cost of reception: http://insidethem60.journallocal.co.uk/2011/06/09/mayor-under-fire-after-foi-request-reveals-37k-cost-of-reception/ (http://insidethem60.journallocal.co.uk/2011/06/09/mayor-under-fire-after-foi-request-reveals-37k-cost-of-reception/)
FOI Request Reveals Hidden Research Findings : http://www.thegwpf.org/science-news/2751-foi-request-reveals-hidden-research-findings.html (http://www.thegwpf.org/science-news/2751-foi-request-reveals-hidden-research-findings.html) These are all timewasters?)
I also don't get what you're trying to say with the university/tobacco company. Sorry.
okay I'll bite shark ;)
Their goal is to muddy the waters so they can carry on profiteering for as long as possible.
large companies with a lot to lose put large amounts of money into 'reseach' that isn't peer reviewed but can then be promoted by 'friendly' organisations and web users who through front organisations which are paid for by the companies, the aim is to muddy the waters.
This worked well for the tabacco industry for years and the example I gave you shows they continue to do this practice by asking small research teams (whose research could affect sales and profits) for FOI requests on every aspect of their organisation. With limited numbers of staff, monies and time small research organisations have to then put their scant and scarce time and money into answering erronous FoI as these are time critical. (I have personal evperience of this and the effects it has)
Don't get me wrong I think FoIs are a great step forward in shining a powerful light in some very dark corners, FOI can be wonderful powerful things, but we all know what peter parkers uncle says about power. Unfortunately in the hands of some they can become an other legal sledgehammer to beat a small nut.
Many industries have learnt for the Tobacco industries' fight over the last fifty years how to deal with overwhelming emperical(sp) and peer reviewed research that goes against their interests.
I can recommend this very highly:
(http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTI2MDk5MjE4NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMjkwNTU3._V1._SY317_CR1,0,214,317_.jpg)
Pop stars and their conspiracy theories:
www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jul/21/popandrock-hip-hop
Thanks for that, Proudhuff, I hadn't considered that FoI requests could be used as a weapon by corporations although it does make complete sense.
I would suggest that as many small research teams as possible come together and turn the tables. Whenever one is dealt a FoI request by a big boy, the alliance of small teams also make FoI requests of the big boy. What FoI requests have they issued in the past six months? To whom? For what purpose? Etc. A website could have form FoI requests to just print out and send or email. What they do to you, do back to them one hundred fold.
You'd only need a website or even just a Facebook or Google+ group. I reckon such a thing would even get many members of the public to help.
Wiki-FoIs? Maybe not, and I'm sure this isn't a unique idea.
There was no link visible on my screen after you wrote: "I can recommend this very highly:"
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 July, 2011, 03:32:41 PM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 22 July, 2011, 02:22:16 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 July, 2011, 01:39:05 PM
As soon as David Bellamy (remember him, gwubbing awound in the undergwowth?) started questioning the prevailing view of climate change he couldn't get back on telly for love nor money. Which may be a coincidence or he may have run into politics.
Actually, as Mr Bellamy later admitted, he'd read some dodgy "facts" about glaciers expanding rather than shrinking, took it at face value, drew erroneous conclusions which he then dissemintaed widely. To be fair to him, when the data was proved to be false, he publicly admitted he was wrong, but I don't think his credibility as a scientist has ever really recovered.
There's a lesson there for all armchair experts!
Not sure when Mr Bellamy recanted - do you have a date for that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eOFYAg_DPw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eOFYAg_DPw)
http://www.desmogblog.com/david-bellamy-wrong-climate-change-science (http://www.desmogblog.com/david-bellamy-wrong-climate-change-science)
This doesn't mean I always agree with George Monbiot, or that David Bellamy fully recanted his denial views, it just shows that he does talk bullshit at times.
Before this thread, it had never occured to me that David Bellamy might be important in a debate about climate change. Does he have any connections with Belt manufacturers?
I now find Monbiot an insufferable blowhard, ignorant of many things why mass scale nuclear installations is a no-goer and undesirable in a contracting world with less ability to build and maintain such complex structures. Especially since it was hard enough when we had plentiful resouces to build them right in the first place yet the nuclear industry chose to cut-corners and fudge the requirements for safety standards anyway.
Just watched that vid, DDD. Poor David! I note that Monbiot was careful not to address any of Bellamy's points directly but instead chose to undermine his sources instead. The alleged website was never named and neither was the alleged fraudster behind it (unless he was and I missed it). When Bellamy took up the issue of the actual role of CO2 in climate change, Monbiot produced a piece of paper from his jacket containing a statement by several societies who support the conventional view and offered no counter evidence. Indeed, this statement merely said something about denyal climate change being unjustified. But Bellamy isn't denying climate change, is he? It's an age-old trick - if you can't dispute the argument, dispute the arguer. Yes, Maybe Bellamy did get some of his facts wrong but Monbiot's counter-facts were few and vague and his main tactic was to call Bellamy names.
I can't find a complete version of David Bellamy's New Scientist article (I'm not paying for a New Scientist subscription just to get access to it) so I can't really comment on it.
David Bellamy, of course, isn't the only sceptic (that's a good word to apply to a scientist, isn't it?) of man-made global warming. 31,487 American scientists have signed a petition questioning man-made global warming and calling on the US government to reject the Kyoto agreement. (I'm still reading through it, but it seems genuine enough to my untutored eye - perhaps some of the more scientifically minded amongst you would have a different opinion.) http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php (http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php)
(http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/Slide03.png)
(http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/Slide05.png)
Taken from http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/Review_Article_HTML.php (http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/Review_Article_HTML.php), where there are many more interesting nuggets.
Surprised you haven't mentioned this bombing/shooting Sharky -now with added Freemason- have fun there must be some conspiratorial value in it:
The Oil & Gas Ministry was apparently the target of the bombs.
The blond Norwegian 'Anti-Islamist Freemason' arrested over 'holiday island massacre' and linked to Oslo car bomb blasts:
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/07/23/article-2017709-0D1F33FB00000578-704_306x512.jpg)
QuoteHe describes himself as having Christian, conservative views. He says he enjoys hunting, the games World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2, and lives in Oslo.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/22/anders-behring-breivik-id_n_907513.html
Jesus. I'd predicted this being a Neo-Nazi yesterday afternoon.
I'm astonished that no-one has mention the Labour paper that has been caught phone hacking. Amazingly I found it on the BBC website. I bet loads of national papers are not feeling so smug now :lol:
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 23 July, 2011, 08:57:46 AM
I'm astonished that no-one has mention the Labour paper that has been caught phone hacking. Amazingly I found it on the BBC website. I bet loads of national papers are not feeling so smug now :lol:
A Labour paper like the Sun or News of the World, you mean? Both of which backed the Tony Blair government.
It's ridiculous to try to paint this as Tory or Labour- it is not.
And I think that, at the moment, the murder of 80+ children has taken precedence on the news.
I'm impressed Richmond, you are the first left of centre person to admit that the Sun and NoW were actually in the grasp of Labour (New) at the time of the Hacking. As for the Tory Labour slant, I'm just sick of seeing on the web Tory Rag, etc.. about the NoW and Sun, so I thought I'd just point out that, as I have always known, every NATIONAL paper will be dragged into this!
As for Norway and what has happened, I've just spent a night listening to the news channels, Twitter, etc... hearing this rapidly unfold into an horrific story. Already there are many eye witness accounts of what happened all over the airwaves and it sent a shiver down my spine when the island count hit 80 at 03:00.
I've spent a quite a bit of time in Norway on numerous Winter deployments and found the people very polite, the houses (in the countryside) very quaint and the prices very steep.
Sadly I feel politics will be used by certain people when the bloke explains himself today, as he has said that is what he will do!
I also think it's worth pointing out that Blair was to the right of Thatcher when it came to policy!
And yeah- I went to sleep with 10 people dead and woke up to 80+. Grim stuff. Like you, Vicky has spent some time there, and I think anyone who has visited this lovely peaceful country cannot help but feel it more.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 July, 2011, 02:15:52 AMDavid Bellamy, of course, isn't the only sceptic (that's a good word to apply to a scientist, isn't it?) of man-made global warming.
Unlike, say, the aggregation of
conspiracy theories, science actively seek to disprove itself. So, yes. Scientists can be considered professional sceptics.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 23 July, 2011, 04:14:38 AM
QuoteHe describes himself as having Christian, conservative views. He says he enjoys hunting, the games World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2, and lives in Oslo.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/22/anders-behring-breivik-id_n_907513.html
He enjoyed hunting alright. :(
Freemasonry? A bombing exercise 48 hours before a terrorist blast? A pro-Palestinian rally held in the exact same camp the day before? Empty buildings attacked? The emergence of the phrase "White Al Qaeda"? Road/sewer work in the exact area for several days prior to the explosion? Raised ground so that the armouring which had been below the ground now lay above the ground, indicating an underground explosion and not a car bomb? The anniversary of the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes? "Ratcatchers' Day" in Germany? Reports of a strong smell of sulphur? And so on.
Lots of rubbish, distraction and speculation flying about. No idea what's going on here but whatever it is, it sucks.
All that and you still leave out the UFO at the bomb site, you're slacking...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUZC7M26a_s&feature=related
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 23 July, 2011, 02:33:33 PM
All that and you still leave out the UFO at the bomb site, you're slacking...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUZC7M26a_s&feature=related
Don't you think I look insane enough as it is without calling a thing on a wire a UFO?
(http://www.wheelerfolk.org/norweb/reports/Keith_in_Oslo_Sun_morn2s.JPG)
Karl Johan gate, Oslo
(http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Oslo.png)
You don't get me that easy!
Fake Photoshop.
Audit Of The Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion In Secret Bailouts.
Including:
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
So, bailouts out of our pockets and secret bailouts too.
(http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3 (http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3))
(http://www.countercurrents.org/bailout240711.htm (http://www.countercurrents.org/bailout240711.htm))
Pigs in the trough, above governments, above the law, above you. Is it time to sort these greedy pillocks out yet, or should we just continue bending over and taking it?
Some interesting stuff there even on the usual anti-gubbmint websites and blogs, but what's most interesting is that several of the MarketWatch-type sites are taking a similar line on the results, even where they're critical of the idea and process of the audit itself. Mainly on the conflict of interests angle, rather than the "emergency borrowing" itself, but still, odd bedfellows..
It's all coming apart, I tells ya. And so it should.
Wait till the audit of Fort Knox and they realise there's no gold in it, Robert Booth will be toast when he's 'frozen'.
I'm glad Shark likes science now.
;)
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 24 July, 2011, 09:50:14 PM
Wait till the audit of Fort Knox and they realise there's no gold in it, Robert Booth will be toast when he's 'frozen'.
Then there's this from about three years ago, first reported by The Times (but the link to that original article, strangely, now gives a 404 error...)
"Doubts have been cast on the quality of Britain's gold stock after reports that it is beginning to crumble.
"The Bank of England has admitted to cracks and fissures in some of its 320-ton reserves.
"The problem, it (the Bank of England) said, was the age of the bars, many from the United States dating back to the 1930s and 1940s."
Crumbling and cracking gold? Now, I'm no metallurgist but I wonder what on Earth could cause gold to act in such a manner when locked in a nice, cosy, gold-friendly vault for 80 years? Unless, of course, it isn't (or wasn't) really gold...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1564611/Fears-over-cracks-in-Britains-gold-stock.html
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 July, 2011, 10:13:15 PM
Crumbling and cracking gold? Now, I'm no metallurgist but I wonder what on Earth could cause gold to act in such a manner when locked in a nice, cosy, gold-friendly vault for 80 years? Unless, of course, it isn't (or wasn't) really gold...
Isn't really gold? ISN'T REALLY GOLD? Are you suggesting that Bankers are inherently dishonest? Surely not!
Quote from: House of Usher on 24 July, 2011, 10:04:59 PM
I'm glad Shark likes science now.
;)
You won't do when I start posting data that seems to indicate some form of intelligent design may not be so foolish as first thought... It's all about energy fields and spontaneous evolution, you see... ::) :-X
Quote from: pops1983 on 24 July, 2011, 10:16:58 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 July, 2011, 10:13:15 PM
Crumbling and cracking gold? Now, I'm no metallurgist but I wonder what on Earth could cause gold to act in such a manner when locked in a nice, cosy, gold-friendly vault for 80 years? Unless, of course, it isn't (or wasn't) really gold...
Isn't really gold? ISN'T REALLY GOLD? Are you suggesting that Bankers are inherently dishonest? Surely not!
Finally - someone has started reading between the lines of my posts! :lol:
::)
You were s'posed to say:
'That's exactly what I'm suggesting, and don't call me Shirley!'
Apropos of nothing in particular:
Quisling is a term used in reference to fascist and collaborationist political parties and military and paramilitary forces in occupied Allied countries which collaborated with Axis occupiers in World War II, as well as for their members and other collaborators.
The term was coined by the British newspaper The Times in an editorial published on 19 April 1940, entitled "Quislings everywhere" after the Norwegian Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany as it conquered his own country so that he could rule the collaborationist Norwegian government himself.
"If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20 per cent, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who directly contribute... in some useful way.
"... if the Government issues currency, it provides itself with enough money to increase the national wealth... without disturbing the business of the rest of the country. And in doing this it increases its income without adding a penny to its debt."
Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
From:
If government created money instead of debt: Thomas Edison speaks http://dailycensored.com/2011/07/24/if-government-created-money-instead-of-debt-thomas-edison-speaks/ (http://dailycensored.com/2011/07/24/if-government-created-money-instead-of-debt-thomas-edison-speaks/)
What would 15 trillion dollars look like?
(http://www.thereformedbroker.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/15-trillion.png)
We're lucky, we only owe about one trillion. Well, in theory anyway.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 July, 2011, 06:31:04 PMWhat would 15 trillion dollars look like?
Smaller than Dredd's helmet.
'Cause somewhere in the Quisling Clinic / There's a shorthand typist taking seconds over minutes
She's listening in to the Venus line / She's picking out names
I hope none of them are mine.
Elvis has left the building...
(http://onmilwaukee.com/images/articles/ma/madmusic/madmusic_fullsize_story1.jpg)
Elvis? Now yer talkin'. On of his clones runs the Mexican Restaurant at the top of my street. The original is holed up in Camp David with Bigfoot as his butler.
Wait, you mean the Quisling Clinic is (was) a real place? And a real clinic to boot? Now there is a truth I can't handle.
Aye,
art deco apartments now.
From 2001:
QuoteSverre Quisling, a member of a prominent Madison medical family and founder of the Quisling Clinic, died Saturday in Woodbury, Minn. He was 102.
Quisling was born in Lake Mills, Iowa, on May 30, 1898, and moved to Madison with his family at a young age.
Following in the footsteps of his father, Dr. Andreas Quisling, he received his undergraduate degree from UW-Madison and attended Rush Medical School in Chicago and the University of PennsylvaniaMedical School for graduate work.
Do you know if there any connection with Mr. McManus (i.e. did he know about/ have dealings with the place) or is it just a coincidence of names? As a nerdy teenage fan I was guilty on more than one occasion of reading far more into Elvis Costello lyrics than was ever there, but I had thought had the measure of most of Armed Forces, and 'Green Shirt' just doesn't fit with a hospital in Wisconsin...
"So, Doctor Quisling, we meet at last," said Bond, lighting his seventy first cigarette of the day. "This clinic of yours - patches or gum?"
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 July, 2011, 06:31:04 PM
What would 15 trillion dollars look like?
About 15 of these.
(http://www.northernwinorml.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/nixon-trillon-dollar-drug-policy-alliance.jpg)
Quote from: HatefulCactus on 27 July, 2011, 01:23:19 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 July, 2011, 06:31:04 PM
What would 15 trillion dollars look like?
About 15 of these.
(http://www.northernwinorml.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/nixon-trillon-dollar-drug-policy-alliance.jpg)
Genius.
Quote from: TordelBack on 27 July, 2011, 12:36:02 AM
Do you know if there any connection with Mr. McManus (i.e. did he know about/ have dealings with the place) or is it just a coincidence of names? As a nerdy teenage fan I was guilty on more than one occasion of reading far more into Elvis Costello lyrics than was ever there, but I had thought had the measure of most of Armed Forces, and 'Green Shirt' just doesn't fit with a hospital in Wisconsin...
I believe he passed through it at one point.
More on science, politics and global warming climate change.
"A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article."
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-arctic-scientist.html#comments (http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-arctic-scientist.html#comments)
In a Sydney hotel on Monday night, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, an economist who fought against communism, was warning of the new threats to our freedom he recognises in the doctrine of global warming. ""I feel threatened now, not by global warming -- I don't see any -- (but) by the global warming doctrine, which I consider a new dangerous attempt to control and mastermind my life and our lives, in the name of controlling the climate or temperature," he said. "They (environmentalists) don't care about resources or poverty or pollution. They hate us, the humans. They consider us dangerous and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them. I used to live in a similar world called communism. And I know it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced."
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/green-agenda-has-parallels-with-excesses-of-communism/story-e6frfhqf-1226103023674 (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/green-agenda-has-parallels-with-excesses-of-communism/story-e6frfhqf-1226103023674)
Last year, during the Cancun Global Climate Change Summit, the Norway government, headed by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, leader of the Labour Party, agreed to participate in a carbon tax pilot program, endorsed by the UN and George Soros. The Norwegian Progress Party party was against this project from the beginning. Overall, the carbon tax pilot program was a failure and a major embarrassment for the Norwegian government, the international banks, and the government contractors involved in it. Now Anders Behring Breivik has been described as a Progress activist and the Norwegian Progress Party all but labelled as a party of terrorists, Nazis and nutcases.
http://deadlinelive.info/2011/07/26/deadline-live-exclusive-who-are-the-bankers-that-benefit-from-the-norway-terror-attacks/ (http://deadlinelive.info/2011/07/26/deadline-live-exclusive-who-are-the-bankers-that-benefit-from-the-norway-terror-attacks/)
It really doesn't pay to question carbon tax, does it?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 July, 2011, 12:04:54 AM
What they do to you, do back to them one hundred fold.
There was no link visible on my screen after you wrote: "I can recommend this very highly:"
Damn my webfu is weak, try this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427944/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427944/)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 28 July, 2011, 03:20:53 PM
Czech President Vaclav Klaus, an economist who fought against communism, was warning of the new threats to our freedom he recognises in the doctrine of global warming. ""I feel threatened now, not by global warming -- I don't see any --
Well I flippin' do - in the form of
giant spiders. They never used to venture this far north 'til a few years ago, and now the place is crawling with the facehuggin' little sods and they're
bitey. My cousin woke up to find one biting his face a couple of years ago and it left a scar! Stuff threats to freedom - what about the arachnid threat? Eh?
Eh?
The arachnid threat will be countered with specially trained attack-sparrows.
I see hawks. I see big hawks.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 28 July, 2011, 04:48:14 PM
The arachnid threat will be countered with specially trained attack-sparrows.
Sparrow numbers are down, no doubt due to em all being shipped of for training
Quote from: TordelBack on 28 July, 2011, 04:49:31 PM
I see hawks. I see big hawks.
(http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTGv0HhVVBs54otTI8j3_TPczRKayFVbIx91Ir-WSDpMjns6NalAw)
Democracy dying to rapturous applause: Obama Says Becoming A Dictator Is Very Tempting As La Raza Crowd Cheers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgWCAhytQuA)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 28 July, 2011, 04:48:14 PM
The arachnid threat will be countered with specially trained attack-sparrows.
Sparrow-hawks, Ma,am.
anyone know anything about this?
http://www.primalbody-primalmind.com/?p=12
are statins really bad for you? wondering whether to take mine now.
Quote from: Something Fishy on 30 July, 2011, 01:49:21 PM
anyone know anything about this?
http://www.primalbody-primalmind.com/?p=12
are statins really bad for you? wondering whether to take mine now.
I've been looking into this a bit and it does seem that statins may not be all they're cracked up to be and that high cholesterol may not be as dangerous as we're all led to believe. If it were me I'd say no to these things and just eat better instead. But that's just me, I don't trust the drugs companies to put efficacy and safety before profits.
That said, I need to do more reading on the subject. I also know a couple of nurses, so I'll ask them an' all.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 01 August, 2011, 06:50:03 PM
Quote from: Something Fishy on 30 July, 2011, 01:49:21 PM
anyone know anything about this?
http://www.primalbody-primalmind.com/?p=12
are statins really bad for you? wondering whether to take mine now.
I've been looking into this a bit and it does seem that statins may not be all they're cracked up to be and that high cholesterol may not be as dangerous as we're all led to believe. If it were me I'd say no to these things and just eat better instead. But that's just me, I don't trust the drugs companies to put efficacy and safety before profits.
That said, I need to do more reading on the subject. I also know a couple of nurses, so I'll ask them an' all.
Thank you. In my case a big part of it seems to just be that i have a natural tendency to it. I'm not far off double the "safe level" yet i don't smoke, I drink moderately (12 units or so per week), exercise 5 or 6 times per week and am within my ideal BMI. We also have a decent diet with just a few biscuits being my main weakness. I switched to a low chol diet after the last high reading and yet 4 years later it's gone up 2 higher regardless.
I think it's basically avoid them and risk a very high chance of stroke or heart disease or tale them and risk side effects.
The opinion of those nurses would be very interest to hear.
could this be a case of big pharma creating something we really shouldn't be using?
You might find this an interesting read: A Doctor's Treasury of Hushed Up Natural Heart Cures and Deadly Deceptions of Popular Heart Treatments (pdf) (http://landing.easyhealthoptions.com/landing/fulfillment/cardio/heartcures.pdf) where I've read statements like: "The science department at the University of California at San Diego describes it: "Cholesterol is a fatty substance produced by every cell in the body that is vital for health. It is a necessary component of all cell membranes. It is the precursor to all steroid hormone (including estrogen, testosterone, cortisol, and vitamin D). It is the leading organic molecule in the brain and is needed for brain function. Blood cholesterol carries antioxidant vitamins to the tissue. The majority of cholesterol in the blood is produced by the liver." and "Dozens of clinical studies have shown that optimizing nutrition and reducing stress slows and even reverses atherosclerosis. In other words, reversing or slowing endothelial dysfunction must be the cornerstone of therapy."
Interesting. Cheers.
My only question would be how i do that without them when there's little i can change?
must admit the risk of depression from them worries me as i get it anyway, though that doesn't mean it has the same cause and will be provoked by them.
I just read another thing that argued both sides and reasoned that if high cholesterol alone is your only risk factor and your life expectancy is more than 10-20 years then you maybe shouldn't take them.
My problem there is it isn't my only factor, My Dad died of heart disease at 65 and Mum has it too, so i also have familial risk. My risk of a cardiac event right now is 1 in 20 already dropping to 1 in 5 in 10 years (and worse if the chol keeps rising) which seems high to me.
I don't really wan to take them but i suspect i'm one of those who might gain more than he risks.
Of course, in the end the decision is yours - but here's an idea: You don't seem to be in imminent danger of keeling over just yet, so why not give the dietary options suggested in that pdf a six month trial before going straight into potentially debilitating drugs?
"From Each According to His Ability, To Each According to His Need"
The Tramp's Speech from "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand
(http://www.informationliberation.com/files/Atlas0.jpg) (http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=36055) (Linked)
Ayn Rand. Fave author of the Tea Party, Ronnie Reagan and right wingers of all kinds. Including economist Alan Greenspan the guy asleep at the wheel during the Lehman Bros banking crisis.
From the people who brought you Enron, tax cuts only for the wealthy and "dead peasants" clauses in American medical insurance.
I mean I don't want to put you off or anything...
Also deeply into selfishness and a very scary looking example of the female type human:
(http://web-images.chacha.com/ayn-rand/ayn-rand-apr-15-2011-1-600.jpg)
I am quite tempted by this, though:
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41kzVx4l-YL._SL500_AA300_.jpg) (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ayn-Rand-Set-Fountainhead-Shrugged/dp/0451947673/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1312234139&sr=8-6) (Linked)
Shark...you're a pervert.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 01 August, 2011, 10:41:33 PM
Shark...you're a pervert.
You're just realising this
now?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 01 August, 2011, 09:16:37 PM
Of course, in the end the decision is yours - but here's an idea: You don't seem to be in imminent danger of keeling over just yet, so why not give the dietary options suggested in that pdf a six month trial before going straight into potentially debilitating drugs?
That's true. I had a good read. Must say most of those changes were changes i made years ago and iw as very strict leading up to the test and did a fasting test.
I could wait a few more weeks but i suspect i'm going to need them. of course the cholesterol might just be masking something worse but i'm not going to know what and it's then potentially causing harm itself.
Good luck there anyway, Fishy. At least it's something you know about and can take steps to stay on top of.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 02 August, 2011, 06:57:41 PM
Good luck there anyway, Fishy. At least it's something you know about and can take steps to stay on top of.
Yes indeed. Thanks Sharkie.
On this one i think i just have to take a risk. The amount i can mitigate it myself is very small and the risk from it is higher than the risk of side effects.
(http://geek-news.mtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/big_lie_cover_72_dpi1.jpg)
"With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 fast approaching, there will be a lot of looks back, some fond, some heartbreaking... And then there will be "The Big Lie," a comic book by Rick Veitch and Gary Erskine that finds a scientist traveling back in time to the day itself in order to stop the disaster. And while there, she finds out that maybe the truth isn't as clear cut as she thought."
Interview: Rick Veitch On His 911 Truther Comic Book 'The Big Lie' (http://geek-news.mtv.com/2011/08/02/interview-rick-veitch-on-his-911-truther-graphic-novel-the-big-lie/)
I hate everything.
AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8)
Is fluoride safe and effective? Professional Perspectives. (http://vimeo.com/26777907)
It seems that SEAL Team Six, who were involved in the alleged killing of Osama bin Laden (no body, remember), have themselves been killed in a helicopter crash(1). The official story claims that none of the SEAL Team 6 members who got bin Laden was amongst the dead here. It was some different SEAL Team 6 members and a few other guys.
Hmm. Wasn't there a destroyed stealth helicopter(2) at the site of the bin Laden affair? Weren't there reports on Pakistani TV(3) that the destroyed helicopter at the bin Laden site exploded with a dozen troops aboard? "Oh no, no members of SEAL Team Six died in Pakistan and none of those who didn't die in Pakistan died in Afghanistan either, it was some other members of SEAL Team 6." Oh well, that's all right then. Absolutely no suggestion of a cover-up at all. It's all just coincidence.
Um, and why would Navy SEALS be ferried to and from combat missions in the Afghan mountains on a slow and noisy CH-47 Chinook when they have stealth helicopters at their disposal?
(1)SEAL Team 6 members among 38 killed in Afghanistan (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan-chopper-20110807,0,1729289.story)
(2)About two thirds of the way down this page. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1383074/Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-US-trained-Pakistani-troops-hunt-Al-Qaeda-near-compound.html)
(3)Osama bin Laden killing Eye witness account - 1m21s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Wws--nQwo&feature=related&fmt=18)
This also struck me as deeply suspicious - in fact i may be way off here but it made me think of Murdoch firing everyone at TNOTW - sacrificing the lower ranks to protect the higher-ups, but at least now they can say (or imply) that Al Qaida have had an eye for an eye.
rupert murdoch is osama bin laden!!! ;) (go on squint a bit)
So, now it wasn't 22 SEALs who were killed, it was 17 and some dog handlers. This is probably just a case of the US Military not knowing where all its elite troops are due to, er, the fog of war, maybe? But don't worry, the bad guys who did this (also known as Taliban or "witnesses") have all been killed. Hurrah for the Good Guys!
Pentagon Changes It's Story on death of SEAL Team 6, Number of SEALs Killed Changes From 22 To 17 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzgxLZGB2k8&feature=player_embedded) (YouTube, 2:32)
Hate to spoil it for you Shark but most of my counter terrorism insertions happened from inside a Chinook. Slow and cumbersome, especially when a long range fuel tank is taking up over a third of the hold.
It's a good job other sneaky things happen before we used to get anywhere near the target but that's the type of story I leave for the convention evenings ;)
Lets just say, there would be no-one alive on deck when we got near the target (I was marine counter terrorism).
I know you know what you're talking about, CF - but if your CO could choose between a cutting-edge stealth chopper and and an old Chinook, which one would be chosen for an attack mission?
Also, tagging the names of clandestinely KIA troops to subsequent air accidents or training accidents is an old trick. It was used extensively by the Russians in Afghanistan and the Americans in Vietnam before war had been officially declared. I don't know if that's what happened here but given all the mystery and confusion surrounding SEAL Team 6's supposed location and murder of Osama bin Laden, let's just say that I wouldn't be surprised.
I don't know how large these stealth choppers are and what the payload is but the more choppers inserting into the type of extremely small combat zone, like a ship/oilrig the more accidents that can happen.
Are you sure that these are not just attack choppers?
Best we ask LoD to steal one and get back to us!
Probably a modified UH-60 Blackhawk like the one that crashed in Abbottabad:
(http://www.armyrecognition.com/images/stories/news/2011/may/H-60_Blackhawk_highly_modified_version_secretly_developed_stealth_helicopter_used_during_raid_against_Osama_bin_Laden_002.jpg)
\Okay the cops backed off good and proper while the kids got a false sense of courage. The shadowy adults work with the cops to push the kids in the right direction. Boost their moral so to speak. The MPs and PM conveniently go on holiday. Let the problem take shape go in nice and late and clamp down hard . Another section of society under the iron fist and directing public anger away from the real pernicious manipulators.
The cops even vie for their cuts to be lessened while they get a little marshal law going on. Pushing and pulling.
How's that for truth?
Believable. That's pretty much Stuart Hall's 1978 Marxist thesis 'Policing the Crisis.'
Bloody yes. And something from oor Mr Watts;
"Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality. I have also asked the police if they need any other new powers."
You know when you get that feeling?
Quote from: House of Usher on 11 August, 2011, 08:32:16 PM
Believable. That's pretty much Stuart Hall's 1978 Marxist thesis 'Policing the Crisis.'
I
knew there was more to It's A Knockout than first met the eye...
A trial run for bigger things and more social unrest to come.
Star Trek does 9/11... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lIs9eEB6IG8)
Absolutely brilliant! 'Course much later on Enterprise's third season had an official stab at 9/11 too... That one was engineered by [spoiler] blokes from the future[/spoiler].
Speaking of engineered events, Project Bluebeam (a faked alien threat to the Earth designed to legitimize a security-focussed global government/economy/security force) seems to be causing ripples again: Michio Kaku and Paul Krugman agree, we need the aliens to save the world. (http://www.blacklistednews.com/Michio_Kaku_and_Paul_Krugman_agree%2C_we_need_the_aliens_to_save_the_world/15222/0/38/38/Y/M.html) (The first little vid on that page is quite amusing.)
First I find that Star Trek video and now this... Strange how themed my surfing gets, sometimes.
Quote from: Something Fishy on 02 August, 2011, 06:13:44 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 01 August, 2011, 09:16:37 PM
Of course, in the end the decision is yours - but here's an idea: You don't seem to be in imminent danger of keeling over just yet, so why not give the dietary options suggested in that pdf a six month trial before going straight into potentially debilitating drugs?
That's true. I had a good read. Must say most of those changes were changes i made years ago and iw as very strict leading up to the test and did a fasting test.
I could wait a few more weeks but i suspect i'm going to need them. of course the cholesterol might just be masking something worse but i'm not going to know what and it's then potentially causing harm itself.
Coming to this a little late but I'd recommend not to alter your taking of important medication without speaking to your doctor, especially not on the basis of a site that is trying to flog a book to you. Of course, you should also report any side effects to them asap.
I just cross referenced that against a chinook and I think I'll stick with the chinook.
UH-60 - Speed 183 mph max (never exceed 222 mph) - troop load 14
Chinook - Speed 196 mph max - troop load 33-55
In fact looking at all the stats, the chinook comes out on top including range and rate of climb. I'm presuming the max speed for the UH-60 is when it's descending in to an attack, don't want to fall apart now do we!
With reference to the armaments of both, you have to remember that other items are deployed during the mission to negate any hostile fire, hopefully.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 August, 2011, 03:22:40 PM
Speaking of engineered events, Project Bluebeam (a faked alien threat to the Earth designed to legitimize a security-focussed global government/economy/security force) seems to be causing ripples again: Michio Kaku and Paul Krugman agree, we need the aliens to save the world. (http://www.blacklistednews.com/Michio_Kaku_and_Paul_Krugman_agree%2C_we_need_the_aliens_to_save_the_world/15222/0/38/38/Y/M.html) (The first little vid on that page is quite amusing.)
First I find that Star Trek video and now this... Strange how themed my surfing gets, sometimes.
Well Project Blue Beam is lifted from Star Trek, so it isn't such a huge leap:
http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2010/11/project-blue-beam-exposed.html
What always gets me about PBB is that it is so incredibly over-complicated - you just don't need that level of complexity. The intelligence agencies have been manipulating the UFO phenomena for their own ends (and faking them? See the Pentacle Memorandum) since 1947 with no need to rely on vast schemes that would involve thousands of people and all aspects working perfectly.
Good link there - I was very amused by the description of Michio Kaku as "renowned physicist, author and the apparent mouth piece for the scientific dictatorship that is the NWO," but I'm a big fan of his.
I guess that without knowing what the mission actually was, all this is moot. If it was just a supply mission or something then yeah, a Chinook - why not? But what's so vital a delivery that it needs an escort of elite troops? If an attack, again - why not a Chinook. But, do attacks come with only one chopper or would there generally be more than one for stuff like pincer movements, diversions, reserve forces etc? And would you have all your high-value elite troops all on one of those choppers? I dunno', to be honest.
It smells a bit off to me, is all I can say.
Yes you would have them all on one chopper, remember the one that went down in Scotland years ago, wiped out loads of high ranking anti terrorist bods in one go!
Anyway, I've done training missions when we used to go out to the rigs in the North Sea and we all crammed into one Chinook and it had the long range fuel tank fitted inside, let me say it was 'very' cramped. Once I spotted oil dropping on one of the lads legs on the rear door and managed to point this out to the rear loader.
The next thing that happened was that we had to stow all our weapons, ditch the body armour and prepare for a sea ditch in case we crashed out in the middle of nowhere. Having done helicopter dunking drills, there would have probably been no survivors if we had gone down but we didn't. The engines still had sand in from the Gulf War and that Chinook was then VOR, the next one was the same but the third one was okay so we went and attacked Maureen Alpha and it was GREAT FUN!
It all depends on the mission. Other resources would be deployed to get you on target as safely as possible. You have to rely on the teamwork of the joint forces involved. Missions fail for numerous reasons including weather, mechanical (see above), tactical, human error, etc...
Also not everyone has the aptitude for certain parts of the miltary, look at snipers! You can't let people pass an elite course just because your numbers are down, this means that these resources are finite!
As you say, it all depends on the mission and what other vital missions troops are deployed on around the world at the same time.
Good stuff, CF - it's good to read the opinions of someone who actually knows a thing or two!
Going back to the "alien threat" idea, I just found that the NSA (http://www.nsa.gov/) (a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S. government communications and information systems, which involves cryptanalysis and cryptography) has released a document claiming to have received 29 extraterrestrial messages. The pdf can be read on the NSA's website here. (http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/ufo/key_to_et_messages.pdf) Haven't properly read through it myself, yet, but it seems intriguing that a) this information has been released in the first place and that b) the media isn't all over this.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 August, 2011, 05:30:04 PM
Going back to the "alien threat" idea, I just found that the NSA (http://www.nsa.gov/) (a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S. government communications and information systems, which involves cryptanalysis and cryptography) has released a document claiming to have received 29 extraterrestrial messages. The pdf can be read on the NSA's website here. (http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/ufo/key_to_et_messages.pdf) Haven't properly read through it myself, yet, but it seems intriguing that a) this information has been released in the first place and that b) the media isn't all over this.
Panic over. I've just found that the last NSA article key_to_et_messages.pdf (http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/ufo/key_to_et_messages.pdf) follows on from the NSA article Extraterrestrial_Intelligence.pdf (http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/tech_journals/extraterrestrial_intelligence.pdf) which in itself is a response to the NSA article Communication_With_Extraterrestrial_Intelligence.pdf (http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/tech_journals/communications_extraterrestrial_intelligence.pdf) which is just a hypothetical investigation of what a detected alien message might look like.
Dammit, I thought I was on to something there... :lol:
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 15 August, 2011, 05:18:27 PM
Yes you would have them all on one chopper, remember the one that went down in Scotland years ago, wiped out loads of high ranking anti terrorist bods in one go!
Which itself was the target of conspiracy theories for a long time (if I remember correctly the idea was they all had to be shuffled out of the way to make the Northern Ireland peace accord go more smoothly or some such), not helped by everyone trying to blame the pilots.
QuoteAnother candidate for the conspiracy industry is the Chinook helicopter crash into the Mull of Kintyre in June 1994. The Ministry of Defence inquiry into the crash, which killed 25 top security personnel and four RAF crew, blamed the pilots for "breaching safe flying rules".
...
But dark rumours abound. The loss of ten senior RUC intelligence officers, nine army intelligence officers and six MI5 officers on the eve of the 1994 IRA cessation was, for some, propitious.
"The loss of such senior intelligence personalities probably ensured the political case for a peace process to go ahead despite the recent successes against PIRA [Provisional IRA] and loyalist paramilitaries," wrote academic Sydney Elliott in the most recent edition of the Northern Ireland Political Directory.
The diaries on one of the RUC officers killed in the crash, Ian Phoenix, were published in 1996, and showed the mindset of a dedicated anti-terrorist operator who believed that the IRA could be militarily defeated, if the authorities let them "do their job".
Some of those killed were certainly involved in contentious episodes, such as the "Shoot to Kill" operations on the early 80s, in which six alleged republicans were shot dead in circumstances which themselves have been the subject of call for a new inquiry.
Some loyalists believe that the intelligence officers were deliberately "taken out" for "knowing too much" about the people the government would have to deal with in a post-conflict Ulster.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/jun/14/northernireland.comment
Or:
Quotea third explanation for the crash has now come to light: that a top secret hypersonic US plane, codenamed Aurora and which is reportedly capable of flying at up to 20 times the speed of sound, created a massive jet wake into which the helicopter flew, causing the crew to lose control.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/07/10/top_secret_us_plane_caused/
As the US dollar seems on the verge of being abandoned as the global oil trading currency, (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html) Americans will have to start paying the same for petrol as the rest of us. If the US also loses out on having their dollar as the global reserve currency any countries, banks, institutions, people etc. still holding dollars after this will get burned as their "value" plummets. (It's all paper anyway - not worth a fart.)
Gold and silver haven't finished appreciating yet. If you have any spare paper money (I haven't :( ), then I suggest you look into swapping it for some real money:
(http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/ag00-pres.gif) (http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/ag2010.gif) (http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/ag2011.gif) (http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/agaug11.gif)
(http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au00-pres.gif) (http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au2010.gif)
(http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au2011.gif) (http://www.kitco.com/LFgif//auaug11.gif)
Well there's that old nugget about how money made from paper is worth more than money made from metal. Sometimes the copper in a penny is worth more than a penny. But it's illegal to take money out of circulation. Banking and Economics are dark arts to me.
Dark arts is precisely what they are.
Money is simply a way to turn cabbages into shoes or an hour's labour into petrol. It's just one step up from barter and that's all it needs to be. Money, like water, is a public resource - something we all need fair access to in order to function in society. It's the grease of trade, that's all.
Once it was discovered that one could make money out of money (by lending at interest, for example), all bets were off. Now you can make money through buying futures and stocks and bonds and gilts and a thousand and one other bits of paper that aren't really worth anything but can make you more worthless paper out of thin air. It all sounds great but this financial alchemy affects prices of real things in the real world. Things like wheat and rubber and oil and water. The stock, bond and money markets have become one huge great ball of meaningless figures kept in the air by nothing more than perception. Everyone believes that it's working and so it works. They pump billions upon billions more worthless numbers into it not only to keep it working but to demonstrate that it is still working. It's like one huge magic trick or illusion - The Amazing Working Economy by Paul Daniels. We like it - but not a lot.
The ancients saw that allowing people to make money out of money was supremely dangerous. Christians called it usury and made it a sin, as did the Muslims. The Muslim faith still imposes a ban on usury. The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury have let things slide in that regard. Making money out of money is like making water out of water (if such a thing were possible) - eventually, the whole world will drown in cheap, worthless water. Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple for this reason.
Fast forward to the present day and we are indeed beginning to drown as the tide of worthless paper rises like a once in a lifetime rip-tide. I think it's time to take a leaf out of Jesus' book (as it were) and throw the moneychangers out of our governments. Until we do this, the paralysis of society can only get worse.
So... American politicians are calling for a new 'super congress' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/aug/11/super-congress-special-interests) of 12 lawmakers tasked with saving America from financial ruin. These 12 will be essentially in charge of the US government's purse strings and, by extension, in charge of the government itself.
So... France and Germany are calling for a new 'economic government' (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/French-German-leaders-urge-apf-1857027171.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=) tasked with saving Europe from financial ruin. This economic government will be essentially in charge of all the European governments' purse strings and, by extension, in charge of the governments themselves.
So... Vladimir Putin is calling for a new Eurasion economic union (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a7db2310-b769-11e0-b95d-00144feabdc0.html) tasked with saving the former Soviet states from financial ruin. This economic union will be essentially in charge of all the former Soviet states' purse strings and, by extension, in charge of the former Soviet states themselves.
So... Jean Ping is happy that new unions and banks (http://www.afriquejet.com/common-market-eastern-and-southern-africa-2011081820806.html) are to come into being to exploit more Africans lend money to Africans, enslaving benefiting them with debt just like the rest of us.
Is it just me, or does this look like some kind of strategy? The power of the world is being distilled and concentrated into smaller and smaller groups of people. It's like somebody's turning our whole planet into a prison - or a workhouse.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 August, 2011, 03:09:10 PM
Is it just me, or does this look like some kind of strategy? The power of the world is being distilled and concentrated into smaller and smaller groups of people. It's like somebody's turning our whole planet into a prison - or a workhouse.
You know I don't like agreeing with you in this thread, TLS, but yes, I agree, this really does look like a strategy. It's one that requires little beyond a common reading of what's good for elites, no giant sinister conspiracy that would require secrecy and a high level of competence, just gross opportunism on the behalf of the haves. So I'm in agreement on this one.
I must admit I had a quiet chuckle to myself when I saw the European financial developments mentioned as I knew: a) sharky's head would revolve and his eyes flash b) he might be right to be concerned.
That said the European plan will be partly funded by a Tobin tax, which isn't the kind of thing the NWO would tend to encourage. Or is this misdirection? The shiny gewgaw to distract us from the sinister developments in order to get everyone to agree to go along with this, only for it to quietly disappear from the plans later on? Hmmm the lights have just dimmed, somewhere up the Southport Line a shark's head has slowly started revolving...
Some leaders seem to understand what's going down: Chavez to nationalize Venezuelan gold industry. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/17/us-venezuela-gold-idUSTRE77G53L20110817) (There may be war over this, see if the UN starts twitching, egged on by the USA and the IMF...)
And where's the smart money going? The same place it always does: Gold hits new record near $1,830 an ounce. (http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/18/markets/gold_prices/) I wish I could've afforded to take my own advice months ago :'(
As for the Tobin tax, all taxes are theft and this tax on spot currency conversions is most likely a unifying mechanism. It will be touted as a Good Thing but will transpire to have Unforeseen Consequences which would be easily solved by the adoption of a global currency. A global currency issued and controlled by private banks.
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money." – Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England (appointed 1928). Reputed to be the 2nd wealthiest man in England at that time.
Quote from: Emperor on 18 August, 2011, 06:59:14 PM
Then how does the government pay for stuff?
(http://iamkinowei.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/frustration.jpg)
if only the headless chickenshits were that organised ::)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 August, 2011, 07:16:04 PM
Quote from: Emperor on 18 August, 2011, 06:59:14 PM
Then how does the government pay for stuff?
(http://iamkinowei.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/frustration.jpg)
Child slavery? It is a radical solution, but you get my vote.
The Shark Party, putting your kids to work whether they like it or not.
Quote from: Proudhuff on 18 August, 2011, 07:40:00 PM
if only the headless chickenshits were that organised ::)
But they
are that organized. Banking is a very organized business, is it not? Bankers know how to organize problems such as the present global financial crisis in order to deploy solutions that favour them disproportionately. NWO, Illuminati, Bilderberg - that's all smoke and mirrors to make us believe in some core cabal of hooded wizards pulling the strings from a shadowy bunker somewhere. Those things are artificial targets, set up to deflect attention from the truth. Just like Osama bin Laden or the Red Under the Bed.
By their very natures, banks are institutions of control. How many people are tied to banks by overdrafts, mortgages and loans? How many honest and decent people work hard to make sure the bank gets their money before the food is bought, terrified of missing a payment? If you owe the bank money, they can take your house, claim on the insurance for lost revenue and then sell your ex-home through a preferred or partner estate agent. They're laughing and you're not only out on the street but feeling like the whole thing was your fault for not working hard enough. I don't think that the power of the banks over people's lives can be overestimated.
And businesses also need to borrow money, so they too are beholden to the banks. Once the business ceases to be profitable - it's broken up and sold on through a preferred partner or subsidiary.
And governments borrow money, too. Why should the banksters the government has to deal with be any less ruthless than the ones we have to deal with?
It's just a matter of degrees of magnitude and to say that this kind of thing could never happen because nobody's that organized is, I think, a little optimistic. It's more of a secret global cooperation than a secret global conspiracy. It's not a dragon, it's a hydra. The power though, the heart of the hydra, is the private banking system. Pierce that and the hole thing shrivels and dies.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 August, 2011, 08:19:42 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 18 August, 2011, 07:40:00 PM
if only the headless chickenshits were that organised ::)
But they are that organized. Banking is a very organized business, is it not?
The financial crisis would suggest that they are a bunch of feckless chancers who knew no more about how things worked than your average man in the street (or they didn't care because they were reaping bonuses for dishing out increasingly risky mortgages).
Nevertheless, it is to these feckless chancers that the whole world is now in debt.
It is a situation that only exists because we accept it.
"Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/aug/18/aliens-destroy-humanity-protect-civilisations)" the Guardian chatters. I'm finding this recent linking of aliens to carbon emissions quite fascinating. In the "Truther" community, they say that little stories like this are inserted here and there to get us used to the idea. I don't think that aliens are coming to invade us because of carbon dioxide - I think the following (whimsical, before anybody starts) scenario is marginally more likely, though.
It's August 12, 2012 (12/8/12 or 8/12/12?) and you're sat in front of the telly full of beer and pizza watching the closing ceremony of the London Olympics. Wales won 12 golds, Scotland 28 and England got a bronze in curling after three arguments, two recounts and a scuffle.
In his secret subterranean castle beneath the Vatican, Lord Byron Rockerchild III gives the order for the final phase of his bid to control the world. Small groups of very well paid agents inside NASA, the NSA, FEMA, the Pentagon, Whitehall, Westminster and all points bureaucracide swing into action. Satellites around the world are overwhelmed by a strange alien signal, the best grainy alien signal money can buy.
"Evil earthlings," the alien says - translation comes through pretty quickly, almost as if somebody knows this language or what is being said - "you are destroying your planet with CO2! Prepare for a good thrashing! (We'll be there soon, when you least expect it, in our invisible war-stars.)"
"But, oh how we've tried to reduce our carbon emissions!" The politicians will cry, told what to say by the agents of Lord Rockerchild who, strangely, always seem able to predict events and know exactly what's needed to save the day. "We made laws and raised taxes to fight it! But it's the people, oh alien conquerors! The people refuse to cut down! Refuse to live in austerity and squalour for the good of the planet!"
So, there'll probably then be a planetary defence tax which can be collected by the recently created World Economic Task Force, which will essentially rule the whole world and be chaired by a dozen experts - all hand-picked by Lord Rockerchild himself. Then all the money in the world we be controlled from one central office. The Global Defence Tax and Global Carbon Tax will be ruthlessly applied to arming the Global Defence Force with all the best and most expensive weapons, stopping people from emitting carbon dioxide (by killing lots of them who have fallen under a mysterious and difficult to detect "alien mind ray") and keeping Lord Rockerchild's lackeys in their lives of luxury.
And the alien threat? Well, once the planet is in chains it'll probably go away. "You have done well, earthloids. I, Gargo of Phlange, grant you a reprieve from destruction. Have a care, though, for we are watching you closely and may (interference) at any moment!"
Wouldn't it be cool if that actually happened and everyone just laughed and went "oh, come on - now you're just taking the piss" and ignored it. The politicians, looking increasingly foolish, pointing to the sky and saying "look, aliens, death - taxes, austerity..." and everyone else all, like, "come on, man, we've known for years that carbon dioxide doesn't cause global warming. Aliens my arse. Why don't you just go and fiddle some expenses or something and leave us alone?"
I now return you to your regular insanity.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 August, 2011, 09:17:19 PM
As the US dollar seems on the verge of being abandoned as the global oil trading currency, (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html) Americans will have to start paying the same for petrol as the rest of us. If the US also loses out on having their dollar as the global reserve currency any countries, banks, institutions, people etc. still holding dollars after this will get burned as their "value" plummets. (It's all paper anyway - not worth a fart.)
While it doesn't undermine the validity of the central premise, it's worth noting that this story is now two years old and we're no closer to a world where the prices of oil are not routinely quoted in USD. I vaguely remember reading about this at the time and it seemed to be driven by localised sabre rattling on the part of a few Middle Eastern states (which has presumably died down slightly now that they all want the Yanks to back them up on their new, even harsher repression of internal dissent and the Euro maybe doesn't look such a good replacement at the moment) and Chavez (which presumably hasn't.)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 August, 2011, 01:24:18 PM
"Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/aug/18/aliens-destroy-humanity-protect-civilisations)" the Guardian chatters. I'm finding this recent linking of aliens to carbon emissions quite fascinating. In the "Truther" community, they say that little stories like this are inserted here and there to get us used to the idea.
I was surprised to read that because a) they must know it gets conspiracy theorists excited and b) their thought experiment is a load of old cobblers - hardly worth doing in the first place.
'Scotland 28 golds' you've went too far this time Sharkie no-ones gonna believe that!! :D
I was just watching 'Architects & Engineers: Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 (http://rememberbuilding7.org/10/)', a 15 minute documentary on the mysterious destruction of World Trade Center Building #7 on 9/11/01 by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (http://ae911truth.org/) when a rather disturbing thought struck me.
If we allow, for one moment, the possibility that WTC7 was brought down by controlled demolition, then the question becomes "how and when was the building prepared?" Given that the WTC7 tenants (http://wtc7.net/background.html) included the IRS Regional Council, the U.S. Secret Service, the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management and the C.I.A., I wonder if it's possible that the building had been constructed with or overhauled to include a "self-destruct" mechanism?
If that's true, how many more governmental buildings in the U.S. might be similarly rigged? Pursuing that thought takes us to some very dark places indeed.
On the up-side, Libya has 144 tons of gold (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/battle-libya-almost-over-battle-its-144-tons-gold) it won't be needing any more. That's lucky, because Hugo Chavez wants his gold back from the Bank of England. Except that the Bank of England hasn't got it - that job has been delegated to the mega-bank, J.P. Morgan. And J.P. Morgan hasn't got the invested gold either because it's been short-selling gold for years. (Hence the recent surge in gold prices - what you're actually seeing is not gold being worth more, but the currencies "backed" by it devaluing.) We could reimburse Chavez out of the Bank of England's own gold reserves, like honourable people, except that Gordon Brown sold most of it when gold was worth about 50p a ton. However, once NATO gets to Tripoli and finds the gold, all will be well. Piracy! It's a great life!
Its like the movie 'Three Kings' all over again...
Anyone got a link to a official/non consp' version of why theis building can down?
Quote from: Proudhuff on 22 August, 2011, 02:20:52 PMAnyone got a link to a official/non consp' version of why theis building can down?
Start here and follow the sources - seems to be the collapse of the twin towers caused structural damage on one side of the building and it escalated from there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center#9.2F11_and_collapse
See also:
http://www.911myths.com/html/wtc7___silverstein.html
http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/architecture/4278874
cheers interesting stuff
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 August, 2011, 02:13:57 PM
I was just watching 'Architects & Engineers: Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 (http://rememberbuilding7.org/10/)', a 15 minute documentary on the mysterious destruction of World Trade Center Building #7 on 9/11/01 by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (http://ae911truth.org/) when a rather disturbed thought struck me.
Fixed that for you.
Thank you.
Live Streaming Video Tripoli Libya. (http://newsblogged.com/live-streaming-video-tripoli-libya)
The great satan....
(http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Blair-Gaddafi-Masonic-Handshake-01.jpg)
and a bloke wearing the curtains :D
Now that its nearly over does this mean that us, the Yanks and the Frogs will control the new rulers. After all we did help them out ;)
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 23 August, 2011, 03:47:47 PM
Now that its nearly over does this mean that us, the Yanks and the Frogs will control the new rulers. After all we did help them out ;)
You mean NATO.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 23 August, 2011, 03:53:49 PM
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 23 August, 2011, 03:47:47 PM
Now that its nearly over does this mean that us, the Yanks and the Frogs will control the new rulers. After all we did help them out ;)
You mean The Giant lizards
Fixed that for you ;)
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 23 August, 2011, 03:47:47 PM
Now that its nearly over does this mean that us, the Yanks and the Frogs will control the new rulers. After all we did help them out ;)
Er, I very much doubt it. Our masters are probably very pleased with us, though, for providing them with another country to
rape civilize. Indeed, the good old World Bank is poised to spring into action and kindly
enslave Libya in debt help Libya rebuild: World Bank ready to help Libya. (http://www.activistpost.com/2011/08/world-bank-ready-to-help-libya.html) Makes you proud to be a capitalist, doesn't it?
Richard Haass (http://www.cfr.org/experts/afghanistan-iraq-us-strategy-and-politics/richard-n-haass/b3350) of the not-sinister-at-all Concil on Foreign Relations (http://www.cfr.org/) reckons that what Libya really needs now is a mob of foreign troops to
secure Libya's wealth help the Libyans out. He explains his idea in the Financial Times article "Libya now needs boots on the ground (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/559804f8-cc7f-11e0-b923-00144feabdc0.html)" - in this article he also casually mentions that:
"The 7,000 sorties flown by Nato aircraft played a central role in the rebel victory. The "humanitarian" intervention introduced to save lives believed to be threatened was, in fact, a political intervention introduced to bring about regime change." Like we didn't know.
Also, the International Business Times is continuing the "alien invasion"
warning scaremongering: Hoping to Contact Extraterrestrials? Think Again. (http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/201455/20110822/space-extraterrestrial-life-nasa-greenhouse-gas-planet-alien-destroy-humanity-nasa-global-warming.htm) What a load of old cobblers - still, better to be safe than sorry. Get ready for the Global Security Tax and Global Security Council.
I feel safer now. Lets hope the lizard rulers are kinder than those from V
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 23 August, 2011, 05:51:44 PM
I feel safer now. Lets hope the lizard rulers are kinder than those from V
I just hope they're as hawt as the ones from V (apart from Willie, or John, or well any of them really apart from Diana).
Diana can swallow my rodent anytime.
14 Conspiracy Theories That The Media Now Admits Are Conspiracy Facts: (http://www.infowars.com/14-conspiracy-theories-that-the-media-now-admits-are-conspiracy-facts/)
#1 Fukushima Uninhabitable
#2 U.S. Military Attack On Libya
#3 Widespread Use Of RFID Chips In Humans
#4 $2000 Gold
#5 Obama Wants To Impose Backdoor Amnesty
#6 U.S. Government Provides Weapons For Mexican Drug Cartels
#7 Fluoride Is Harmful
#8 The Federal Reserve Favors The Big Banks
#9 Cell Phones Linked To Cancer
#10 The Credit Rating Agencies Are Corrupt
#11 Prescription Drugs Kill A Lot Of Americans
#12 Bisphenol-A Is Linked To Infertility
#13 The "Super Congress" Is In The Pocket Of Wall Street Interests
#14 The Targeting Of Christian Groups
(http://i.imgur.com/9UBfS.jpg)
If I follow one more link to that bloody Alex Jones site... He hasn't done anything good since The Snowman.
A more misleading mealy-mouthed dancing around a set of non-conspiracy-theories I have never seen. For example, how is 'Gold will reach $2000' a conspiracy theory? Everybody knows what happens to gold prices when the stomm hits the fan.
But I'm having a great time Mr Shark! What should I do to make my life miserable, I'm confused ;)
Alex Jones, there's more wrong than right about him. I reckon my initial gut-feeling still stands, he's an egotistical oppurtunist with possible big money behind him. He's been caught lying multiple times and has shafted quite a few while he proclaims himself leader of the 'truth' movement. When you court people such as David Icke onto your show just so you can have access to their audience and shift some more DVDs, it's a bit of a sham.
My favourite bit is when he called Alan Moore an 'admitted Mason' and that Watchmen is Illuminati/NWO propaganda. What a fuckin' twit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctTOzEFbXLU
Never trust anyone who calls it 'the' Watchmen...
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 24 August, 2011, 04:22:17 PM
My favourite bit is when he called Alan Moore an 'admitted Mason' and that Watchmen is Illuminati/NWO propaganda. What a fuckin' twit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctTOzEFbXLU
Best laugh I've had in ages. Wait 'til he reads Lost Girls! :o
Quote from: TordelBack on 24 August, 2011, 04:31:19 PM
Wait 'til he reads Lost Girls! :o
He won't talk about that, it's his
secret shame.
A quick glance at the first one:
'Well, it turns out that those of us that feared the worst were right after all. Just consider the following quote from the New York Times....
Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.'
Hardly a major conspiracy fact unmasked: a nuke plants gets hit by a giant wave and the area could be dodgy for perhaps ten years, what is the wiki term for them? weasle words? and that conspiracy is number one! don't know if I can be ersed debagging the rest :D but am looking forward to the Moore youtube
Quote from: TordelBack on 24 August, 2011, 04:05:28 PM
If I follow one more link to that bloody Alex Jones site... He hasn't done anything good since The Snowman.
A more misleading mealy-mouthed dancing around a set of non-conspiracy-theories I have never seen. For example, how is 'Gold will reach $2000' a conspiracy theory? Everybody knows what happens to gold prices when the stomm hits the fan.
I believe the point about gold hitting $2,000 an ounce is that it demonstrates not an appreciation of gold prices but a depreciation of currency. Depreciating currency drives people to buy gold and as mega-banks like JP Morgan have been shorting gold for decades (ie, selling more gold shares than the actual physical gold they own will cover) mass gold/silver/platinum buying by the general public is a very real threat to the stability and reputation of these essentially corrupt banks. So they say that the gold price is a freak or a bubble. It's not the gold price itself that is the conspiracy, but what it means.
Also, the dangers of fluoride, cell 'phones, prescription drugs and Bisphenol-A aren't worrisome to you? Governments lie, we all know that. Corporations lie, we all know that, too. Haven't we grown up with the joke "How can you tell if a politician's lying?" gag and the nudge-nudge, wink-wink idea that institutions can't be trusted? Why, then, is it so difficult to believe when governments and corporations do lie? It seems to me a strange form of mass-denial, as if people think "well, sure, of
course we were lied to in the past, but they don't do that any more because they know we'd see through it."
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 24 August, 2011, 04:11:29 PM
But I'm having a great time Mr Shark! What should I do to make my life miserable, I'm confused ;)
Just continue on as-is. Use credit cards instead of cash. Save cash instead of gold or silver. Continue accepting the throwaway nature of consumerism and encourage the linear production model. Support the just-in-time method of supply, which leaves no reserves in the system to cover unforeseen circumstances. Vote for red, blue, yellow or green when you're told to. Continue to believe that freedom is freedom of choice. That kind of thing. ;)
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 24 August, 2011, 04:22:17 PM
Alex Jones, there's more wrong than right about him. I reckon my initial gut-feeling still stands, he's an egotistical oppurtunist with possible big money behind him. He's been caught lying multiple times and has shafted quite a few while he proclaims himself leader of the 'truth' movement. When you court people such as David Icke onto your show just so you can have access to their audience and shift some more DVDs, it's a bit of a sham.
My favourite bit is when he called Alan Moore an 'admitted Mason' and that Watchmen is Illuminati/NWO propaganda. What a fuckin' twit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctTOzEFbXLU
Never trust anyone who calls it 'the' Watchmen...
And yes, Alex Jones is a bit... full-on. He does get on my nerves sometimes and, I think, often goes too far in his analyses - but, by God, I'm glad there are people like him out there. When the likes of Alex Jones fall silent, that's the time to really worry. Love him or hate him, though, he is often correct and is the embodiment of that old Gorge Orwell quote, "freedom is the right to tell other people what they don't want to hear."
The plot of Watchmen
is NWO propaganda - but that doesn't make Alan Moore a propagandist any more than it makes J.K. Rowling a wizard. In fact, the "alien threat" idea has been bubbling under recently - as in Watchmen - a staged alien attack forming the excuse to consolidate world power. Even Ronald Reagan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag44dRO8LEA) used to go on about it.
Furthermore, I think that
14 Conspiracy Theories That The Media Now Admits Are Conspiracy Facts article is more about the use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" than anything else. That phrase is too often used as a thought-stopper. When you think about it, what does the phrase actually mean? It's a theory about a conspiracy, like the official theories of what happened on 9/11 or 7/7 or the theories that police investigate to get at the truth. The phrase "conspiracy theory" has come to mean "crackpot idea" in modern Newspeak and has the effect of immediately warning-off any independent investigation you might want to do on your own. It switches off your curiosity - at least, it does in most people who never look beyond the mainstream for their news.
You got me Shark, I'm now off to live in Zimbabwe to speak my mind. Bollocks to that, I think North Korea is the place for me, hang on a second what about Cuba, that's a lovely place if you are on holiday, so it must be brilliant for the locals ;)
I have no doubt that Governments and Corporations lie, all the time, for their own benefit, eternally. But some of the things cited here... over-flouridation of water, for example? Appreciating the trade-off between the benefits of
some flouride to reducing tooth decay and the essentially cosmetic hazards of
too much flouride... isn't this how the accumulation of all knowledge proceeds?
And mobile phone cancer... quoting from the cited article:
QuoteI'm not telling people to stop using the phone. I'm saying that I can't tell you if cell phones are dangerous, but I can tell you that I'm not sure that they are safe," said Dr. Devra Davis, professor of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.
We're into Daily Mail territory here.
Leaping on every divergent factoid as evidence of hidden conspiracy in government/big pharma/the saucer people is just as wrongheaded a strategy as believing everything you're told. Question, evaluate, reappraise, of course, but surely this is how an adult navigates the world
anyway? Personally I
expect to have to look at as many angles as possible before I make up my own mind.
As to Alex Jones: it's
very hard for me to take a grown man seriously who straight-facedly asserts that the global masonic illuminati pre-adapt the world to their schemes through the medium of Tom Clancy, Alan Moore and The Lone Gunmen. I think this gleeful fantasy-building undermines the very questioning approach that Sharky advocates, and I wouldn't be remotely surprised to find that
he's the false-flag element here.
Here, this'll cheer you up:
http://www.viruscomix.com/page552.html
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 August, 2011, 04:57:10 PM
The plot of Watchmen is NWO propaganda - but that doesn't make Alan Moore a propagandist any more than it makes J.K. Rowling a wizard. In fact, the "alien threat" idea has been bubbling under recently - as in Watchmen - a staged alien attack forming the excuse to consolidate world power.
I know where it originates from, an epsiode of the Outer Limits 'the Architects of Fear' which was then adopted by the Rand corp. for one of their think-tank papers, but how do you go from that to Alan Moore being a Mason and really what purpose does it serve except as
deliberate disinfo?
Nothing that Jones really does can in all seriousness be called
analyses -cherry picked internet foraging- and what disturbs is how quickly he changes tack when he's faced with an 'uncomfortable truth' or anyone with a legitimate opposing view, rather than defend -which usually involves him shouting louder than everyone else- he uses the same tactics he accuses his enemy of using, verbal abuse and denigration.
Anyone who refers to an Alex Jones site for news/facts/debate is immeditaely discredited and that's Jones' fault. He conflates legitimate concerns with nonsense.
Quote from: Proudhuff on 24 August, 2011, 04:55:09 PM
A quick glance at the first one:
'Well, it turns out that those of us that feared the worst were right after all. Just consider the following quote from the New York Times....
Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.'
Hardly a major conspiracy fact unmasked: a nuke plants gets hit by a giant wave and the area could be dodgy for perhaps ten years, what is the wiki term for them? weasle words? and that conspiracy is number one! don't know if I can be ersed debagging the rest :D but am looking forward to the Moore youtube
Searching for fukushima + radiation on the BBC website produces few results (http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=fukushima%20%2B%20radiation), but the same search on Al Jazeera led me here (http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/08/201181665921711896.html) and here. (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/08/20118255436253789.html) Now, admittedly these two Al Jazeera pieces aren't as "Aieee!" as Alex Jones paints, but they do point to a massive problem that the BBC doesn't seem too concerned with.
I think that alan has sat next to me on the bus :(
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 August, 2011, 05:23:26 PM
Searching for fukushima + radiation on the BBC website produces few results (http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=fukushima%20%2B%20radiation), but the same search on Al Jazeera led me here (http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/08/201181665921711896.html) and here. (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/08/20118255436253789.html) Now, admittedly these two Al Jazeera pieces aren't as "Aieee!" as Alex Jones paints, but they do point to a massive problem that the BBC doesn't seem too concerned with.
If you want good analyses on Fukushima this is the best
non-alarmist source:
http://fairewinds.com/
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 24 August, 2011, 05:20:43 PM
Anyone who refers to an Alex Jones site for news/facts/debate is immeditaely discredited and that's Jones' fault. He conflates legitimate concerns with nonsense.
Tsk. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Personally, I think it's short sighted to rubbish the message just because the messenger tends to be a bit of a twat.
If I did that, I'd have to foe half the forum. And I'd miss a lot.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 24 August, 2011, 05:20:43 PM
I know where it originates from, an epsiode of the Outer Limits 'the Architects of Fear' which was then adopted by the Rand corp. for one of their think-tank papers, but how do you go from that to Alan Moore being a Mason and really what purpose does it serve except as deliberate disinfo?
Nothing that Jones really does can in all seriousness be called analyses -cherry picked internet foraging- and what disturbs is how quickly he changes tack when he's faced with an 'uncomfortable truth' or anyone with a legitimate opposing view, rather than defend -which usually involves him shouting louder than everyone else- he uses the same tactics he accuses his enemy of using, verbal abuse and denigration.
Anyone who refers to an Alex Jones site for news/facts/debate is immediately discredited and that's Jones' fault. He conflates legitimate concerns with nonsense.
While I'm not going to defend Alex Jones, I view his interpretations of events with as much scepticism as I do the interpretations of the BBC, CNN, RT or anyone else, I do find them helpful in piecing together my own interpretations of events. I don't doubt that Jones is very close to his subject matter and that condition causes a somewhat blinkered view - but he is in no way alone in this. There is so much information out there, both real and imagined, that it is often hard to connect the dots and therefore I can allow him a certain level of ignorance with something like
Watchmen. Nobody can know everything, after all.
I don't know if my following assumptions about Jones' behaviour are true or not, and I'm in no way making excuses for him but rather trying to understand, but I'll put it out there anyway. Jones' radio show has a lot of competition from the chattering uber-media and maybe sensationalism is an advertising tool. If he believes in the creeping tyranny as fervently as he claims then he'll feel compelled to get the message out there (God knows, I understand
that feeling) and one sure-fire way of grabbing attention is sensationalism. Whether this tactic is right or wrong I couldn't say, but it is used by mainstream media as well - some of the trailers for mainstream media "News Specials" or documentaries, with their arresting graphics, sensationalist voice-overs and dramatic music could easily be trailers for dramas. Sensationalism (and getting things wrong from time to time) is not the exclusive purview of Alex Jones - and I know that you never said it was and that you've probably already considered this point and come to different conclusions.
"Anyone who refers to an Alex Jones site for news/facts/debate is immediately discredited and that's Jones' fault." I think that's a rather sweeping and unfair statement akin to rubbishing the sayings of Gandhi because he was married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji when he himself was only 13 (he obviously had a thing for older women). Ok, maybe it's not
exactly like that, but you get my drift. I don't like rejecting any message out of hand just because I don't like the messenger - I do find Alex Jones
intensely annoying.
In the final analysis, though, he's just one voice amongst thousands upon countless thousands - to be treated with the same scepticism and respect as anyone else.
Gah - Matt beat me to it! I really must consider availing myself of that old favourite species of forum-posting style that is colloquially known as brevity.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 24 August, 2011, 07:04:30 PMTsk. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Personally, I think it's short sighted to rubbish the message just because the messenger tends to be a bit of a twat.
Depends on what that
message is? If it's to make you fear that 'the man/illuminati' are controlling your life through ritual sacrifice and mass murder whilst the messenger, needing to fill four hours of air-time everyday like an apocalyptic evangelist, makes money from practicing that same fear-mongering, I'm not too sure that's exactly a message worth hearing. That seems to be the sum total of Jones message, whatever the specifics of his
half-truths. I've yet to see Jones message having much positive effect other than lining pockets.
Propaganda works best when it's only telling you half the story, twice-a-day.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 24 August, 2011, 05:26:29 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 August, 2011, 05:23:26 PM
Searching for fukushima + radiation on the BBC website produces few results (http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=fukushima%20%2B%20radiation), but the same search on Al Jazeera led me here (http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/08/201181665921711896.html) and here. (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/08/20118255436253789.html) Now, admittedly these two Al Jazeera pieces aren't as "Aieee!" as Alex Jones paints, but they do point to a massive problem that the BBC doesn't seem too concerned with.
If you want good analyses on Fukushima this is the best non-alarmist source:
http://fairewinds.com/
I can't get that to load (but I am in the arse end of nowhere at the moment).
My own thinking on the situation, as terrible as it is, is that it can't be any worse than the hundreds of open air atomic bomb tests of the '50s, surely? Or am I missing something?
Genuine question, btw. If anybody has any info, I'm all ears.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 24 August, 2011, 07:22:55 PM
Quote from: Matt Timson on 24 August, 2011, 07:04:30 PMTsk. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Personally, I think it's short sighted to rubbish the message just because the messenger tends to be a bit of a twat.
Depends on what that message is? If it's to make you fear that 'the man/illuminati' are controlling your life through ritual sacrifice and mass murder whilst the messenger, needing to fill four hours of air-time everyday like an apocalyptic evangelist, makes money from practicing that same fear-mongering, I'm not too sure that's exactly a message worth hearing. That seems to be the sum total of Jones message, whatever the specifics of his half-truths. I've yet to see Jones message having much positive effect other than lining pockets.
Propaganda works best when it's only telling you half the story, twice-a-day.
I refer you to my previous post on the subject.
And that's not me being snippy, by the way. Apologies if it reads that way.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 24 August, 2011, 07:31:36 PMGenuine question, btw. If anybody has any info, I'm all ears.
Well the first point would be Fukushima/Northern Japan is/was a more densely inhabited place with a lot of localised agriculture and fishing. Fukushima is constantly leaking radiation of various kinds -cesium et al- that at the moment is equivalent to 29 Hiroshimas entering the sea, land and water table. It's also in danger of 'China Syndrome', burning through the ground-casing into the earth. There's also the problem of not being able to stay near the reactor for more than a few minutes or your toast so it's extremely hard to contain it once it's out.
As far as I know when a nuke is detonated it's an instantaneous explosion of radiation rather than a constant output.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 24 August, 2011, 07:39:58 PM
And that's not me being snippy, by the way. Apologies if it reads that way.
My only question to that would be how do you know
when he -the clock- is right?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 August, 2011, 07:07:37 PM"Anyone who refers to an Alex Jones site for news/facts/debate is immediately discredited and that's Jones' fault." I think that's a rather sweeping and unfair statement
When the messenger deliberately lies to make their point -and the
Watchmen thing is the most trivial of some of his lies/looseness with facts- I think that's no one's fault but their own and I don't see how anyone can defend that. Then the question is how can anyone trust the editorial he produces? If someone get's their facts honestly but with good intentions, wrong, it's an error in communication and fair enough but premeditated distortion of facts in a journalistic context is completely different and no matter who the person is or what experience they have, if they don't aspire to some standard of at the very least
honesty in the 'public service' they perform, what is the point other than their own self-aggrandisement? Do you think Jones would ever fall on his journalistic sword?
If you advocate the journalistic
standards of Jones you may as well be an advocate for Rupert Murdoch or Piers Morgan.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 24 August, 2011, 05:20:43 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 August, 2011, 04:57:10 PM
The plot of Watchmen is NWO propaganda - but that doesn't make Alan Moore a propagandist any more than it makes J.K. Rowling a wizard. In fact, the "alien threat" idea has been bubbling under recently - as in Watchmen - a staged alien attack forming the excuse to consolidate world power.
I know where it originates from, an epsiode of the Outer Limits 'the Architects of Fear' which was then adopted by the Rand corp. for one of their think-tank papers, but how do you go from that to Alan Moore being a Mason and really what purpose does it serve except as deliberate disinfo?
Yeah I was a bit mystified by that as Moore's work is, on the face of it, anti-Masonic and I can find no evidence that he has said he is a Freemason, I can't really think it is his cup of tea (and vice versa).
The real problem is this kind of thing gets very circular in modern times, the reason it contains conspiratorial and occult themes and imagery is because he has been inspired by the literature (V for Vendetta seems to draw on a section in RAW's Illimunatus Trilogy, for example). It is like claiming Grant Morrison was paid by the CIA to write The Invisibles, so all the information was out there as fiction and it could then discredit conspiracy theories, when the truth is he was drawing on a lot of the same conspiracy literature as they were (or so the CIA would like you to think ;) ). Trying to highlight conspiracies in the X-Files is so recursive I'm surprised anyone trying doesn't collapse into a black hole.
To be honest I had trouble concentrating as he kept stopping midway through a sentence, making my check to see if the video had stopped, or if he'd had a stroke line on air.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 24 August, 2011, 07:46:14 PM
Quote from: Matt Timson on 24 August, 2011, 07:31:36 PMGenuine question, btw. If anybody has any info, I'm all ears.
Well the first point would be Fukushima/Northern Japan is/was a more densely inhabited place with a lot of localised agriculture and fishing. Fukushima is constantly leaking radiation of various kinds -cesium et al- that at the moment is equivalent to 29 Hiroshimas entering the sea, land and water table. It's also in danger of 'China Syndrome', burning through the ground-casing into the earth. There's also the problem of not being able to stay near the reactor for more than a few minutes or your toast so it's extremely hard to contain it once it's out.
Okay- thanks. That does seem pretty bleak.
Sorry my reply is on the middle of yours- can't do anything about it.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 24 August, 2011, 07:47:29 PM
Quote from: Matt Timson on 24 August, 2011, 07:39:58 PM
And that's not me being snippy, by the way. Apologies if it reads that way.
My only question to that would be how do you know when he -the clock- is right?
Well two can play at that. How do you know that he lies
all the time?
I think he's seriously full of shit most of the time- but to discredit anything and everything coming from his site just because it IS from his site is no less blinkered than ignoring 'facts' from political parties or newspapers that you don't agree with. Even The Sun gets it right sometimes.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 25 August, 2011, 09:33:50 AMWell two can play at that. How do you know that he lies all the time?
Thanks, that's my point, you can't trust what he says/publishes at any time when it's a deliberate mix of both, so telling the 'truth' is not particularly what he's interested in nor is it a good thing to refer to his site for news.
so in FACT he's 'The Man' and he's telling us the NWO's plan so it's discredited as a double bluff hidden in plain sight! genius! No wonder they rule us...
No, it's how he manages to fill 4 hours of air-time everyday and makes his money.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 25 August, 2011, 09:28:26 AM
Sorry my reply is on the middle of yours- can't do anything about it.
Fixed it.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 25 August, 2011, 12:59:57 PM
No, it's how he manages to fill 4 hours of air-time everyday and makes his money.
yeah? you're just saying that cause it's true and you work for the man ( I think I'm getting the hang of this)
This is what Google is for - to check the sources people like Alex Jones quotes for yourself. Just like we all check what the BBC says to make sure that's true as well.
You know whether the broken clock is right or not by Googling "What time is it?" It's not rocket surgery, is it?
Quote from: Proudhuff on 25 August, 2011, 12:56:39 PM
so in FACT he's 'The Man' and he's telling us the NWO's plan so it's discredited as a double bluff hidden in plain sight! genius! No wonder they rule us...
Damn sneaky those lizards. All that stuff with the tails.
Quote from: TordelBack on 25 August, 2011, 01:45:26 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 25 August, 2011, 12:56:39 PM
so in FACT he's 'The Man' and he's telling us the NWO's plan so it's discredited as a double bluff hidden in plain sight! genius! No wonder they rule us...
Damn sneaky those lizards. All that stuff with the tails.
Listen, the man has shown us...
(http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/77/628878-tyranny2_large.jpg)
That's the queen mum that is
I welcome our new tyrant lizard overtypes and if they're looking for a back-stabbing, sell out -informer nark, well they need look no further than this forum. and it's most degenerate er popular member (oo-er missus) who's name begins with Z.
Modesty forbids me from naming him in full but all I can say is HAIL LIZARDS!
Quote from: Zarjazzer on 25 August, 2011, 08:58:58 PM
Modesty forbids me from naming him in full but all I can say is HAIL LIZARDS!
I have an entire silo full of
red-dust...gekko-fucker.
Better go get it then traitor.
You seriously expect to win?
(http://i20.ebayimg.com/04/i/001/1d/c4/6cd3_35.JPG)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/V-Visitor-Deterrent-RED-DUST-1-oz-package-/360342632833#ht_500wt_910
(http://popapostle.com/V/images/episodes/V80/The-Final-Battle/disperse.jpg)
(http://tvmedia.ign.com/tv/image/article/104/1040193/v-what-we-want-20091029115958181-000.jpg)
Meanwhile, conspiracy theory model kits - superb:
http://laughingsquid.com/conspiracy-theories-illustrated-using-plastic-model-kits/
Quote from: Emperor on 26 August, 2011, 12:06:34 AM
Meanwhile, conspiracy theory model kits - superb:
http://laughingsquid.com/conspiracy-theories-illustrated-using-plastic-model-kits/
Oh they are brilliant.
My mate is convinced that Walkers use inferior potatoes to make the crisps in the multi packs compared to the individual packs you buy off the shelf.
Not exactly an earth shattering conspiracy theory but its important to him. He eats a lot of crisps.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 25 August, 2011, 10:12:43 PM
(http://popapostle.com/V/images/episodes/V80/The-Final-Battle/disperse.jpg)
What the Dickens? That's Sandi Toksvig, shurely?
...and Charlie Williams!
Pishkh. I am defeated by the unstoppable combination of Michael Ironside (still the coolest nearly bald guy going) ,red dust and Sandi Toksvig.
Anyway the hell with lizards i'll be dancing on their graves in my new crocodile shoes man, cos I 'm backing a new foe to humble humankind.
Glaciers.
Go ice demon behemoths!
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 26 August, 2011, 12:47:18 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 25 August, 2011, 10:12:43 PM
(http://popapostle.com/V/images/episodes/V80/The-Final-Battle/disperse.jpg)
What the Dickens? That's Sandi Toksvig, shurely?
A little* known fact** that Toksvig is Denmark's David Icke.
* No slight intended
** There is a reason for that
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 25 August, 2011, 11:38:34 AM
Quote from: Matt Timson on 25 August, 2011, 09:33:50 AMWell two can play at that. How do you know that he lies all the time?
Thanks, that's my point, you can't trust what he says/publishes at any time when it's a deliberate mix of both, so telling the 'truth' is not particularly what he's interested in nor is it a good thing to refer to his site for news.
Just not worth it the bother...
I can't believe some parents still believe the claims of this guy. Why would you risk your child over his unbacked up claims.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3513365.stm
V
Quote from: vzzbux on 29 August, 2011, 07:24:11 AM
I can't believe some parents still believe the claims of this guy. Why would you risk your child over his unbacked up claims.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3513365.stm
Now that the British Medical Journal has demonstrated that his data were systematically falsified to produce his desired outcome, Wakefield should be rotting in a cell like the malicious self-aggrandising and ultimately lethal fraud that he is. Leaving aside the dangerous consequences of the collapse in vaccination uptake that he
directly caused with his lies, I do have sympathy for people who honestly feel that their loved ones have been affected by vaccination, and surely no-one has done more damage to their cause than this towering fuckwit. Grrrrrrrr.
Conspiracy Files is on tonight at 21:00, looking at why people believe in the 9/11 conspiracy theories:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0148yz5
22:01, sharky coming on here to explain why they are talking out of their arses ;)
Quote from: Emperor on 29 August, 2011, 04:31:30 PM
Conspiracy Files is on tonight at 21:00, looking at why people believe in the 9/11 conspiracy theories:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0148yz5
22:01, sharky coming on here to explain why they are talking out of their arses ;)
Indeed. I may even watch the thing before dismissing it as Elitist propaganda...
The Obama administration has stolen a weeks worth of posts. I posted the warning yesterday but you wouldn't listen and now the proof has gone.
V
now the FACTS about the Lizards have gone too!!!
how do you put a tinfoil hat over your threads?
Is this the end of the moon landing conspiracy theories, or the start of a whole shed load of new ones........?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8746008/New-photographs-show-traces-man-left-on-the-Moon.html
Quote from: The return of Judge Jack on 08 September, 2011, 06:23:13 PM
Is this the end of the moon landing conspiracy theories, or the start of a whole shed load of new ones........?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8746008/New-photographs-show-traces-man-left-on-the-Moon.html
Pfft, anyone can do that. Here's a photo of the secret NSA base in Schiller Crater on the moon:
(http://i.imgur.com/VOuNv.jpg)
Took me about ten minutes.
=========
Did anyone just watch that ludicrous "9/11 Road Trip" on BBC3?
Bloody Hell, talk about skewed.
An important topic like this and they get a
comedian to present it. That sets the tone from the off, and when it becomes apparent that said comedian's raison d'etre seems to be convincing the road trippers to "see sense" then you know there's not much chance of balance here.
A pile of loose thermite won't cut through steel? Well, duh. A pile of loose gunpowder won't do much damage, either - but compact and shape a tiny fraction of that pile into a small, brass casing and you get enough energy to propel a small amount of lead over a mile at twice the speed of sound. And how does a few hundred gallons of jet fuel melt what is essentially a huge heat-sink enough to cause a catastrophic and symmetrical failure? Have these film makers never heard of Richard Gage, ffs? And did you notice that the "computer simulation" of the plane hitting the pentagon had the engines of the plane (which, being composed of titanium alloy, would have caused far more damage than the aluminium fuselage) conveniently disappeared upon impact?
I can feel my gall rising, lol. I'd best shut up now before I really go off on one!
Speaking of the Moon Landings, I so desperately want to believe that they happened.
I've just watched an intriguing documentary piece on Sky Channel 201 called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon which showed footage apparently showing Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins faking images of the Earth from orbit when they should have been nearly at the moon. It seems to show them shutting out all the lights in the spacecraft and then filming the Earth from the opposite side of the module from where the porthole is, making it look small and far away. (It's on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0cIhm_OFcE) if anyone's interested.)
Intriguing questions are raised, such as why didn't the astronauts take a telescope with them? It may not have been much use during the lunar day, but at night the view should be spectacular even with the most basic of instruments.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 09 September, 2011, 03:04:49 AM
Speaking of the Moon Landings, I so desperately want to believe that they happened.
Your luck's in, they did happen.
Next.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 09 September, 2011, 03:04:49 AM
Intriguing questions are raised, such as why didn't the astronauts take a telescope with them? It may not have been much use during the lunar day, but at night the view should be spectacular even with the most basic of instruments.
That'd be down to baggage
weight mass restrictions & the lack of leg room between seats.
Dead set.
EDIT: corrected Jeanette Wintersonism.
QuoteDid anyone just watch that ludicrous "9/11 Road Trip" on BBC3?
Bloody Hell, talk about skewed.
An important topic like this...
Sorry, but it
isn't an important topic, I thought the programme treated it with the seriousness it deserved. Care to explain
why the US goverment staged 9/11? I'm in no doubt that the US government and several shady organisations took advantage of the post-9/11 situation (as is sadly the way with these things) and profited from it, but what could be
so important to them that they would risk - if rumbled - mass civic disorder and probable revolution or even civil war? If they wanted to make a case for war with Iraq, then why 'frame' a Saudi terrorist? If they're making all this up, then why not implicate Iraq directly rather than awkwardly try to link it to Saddam after the event? And
how did they pull it off? An operation like that would have involved hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals. What happened to them? All killed by assassins who then killed each other a la Adrian Veidt's Doomsday plan? And could the government really find hundreds of willing volunteers to cheerily slaughter thousands of their fellow citizens? If only our governments were efficient and organised enough to pull off something on that scale! Who did they convince to pilot the planes? Did they give an airforce pilot a nice little bonus for
blowing themselves and hundreds of other people up? Or were the planes a hologram or something?
QuoteA pile of loose thermite won't cut through steel? Well, duh. A pile of loose gunpowder won't do much damage, either - but compact and shape a tiny fraction of that pile into a small, brass casing and you get enough energy to propel a small amount of lead over a mile at twice the speed of sound. And how does a few hundred gallons of jet fuel melt what is essentially a huge heat-sink enough to cause a catastrophic and symmetrical failure?
Funny how reading a bit of hearsay online seems to make all truthers munitions and demolition experts! My guess is the twin towers collapsed
because someone flew some planes into them.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 09 September, 2011, 03:04:49 AM
Intriguing questions are raised, such as why didn't the astronauts take a telescope with them? It may not have been much use during the lunar day, but at night the view should be spectacular even with the most basic of instruments.
Well apart from the weight/available space issue, a lunar day is approx 28 earth days, the astronauts didn't go there during the lunar night (what would be the point?), how would they get their eyes to the eyepiece on the telescope and just what exactly would the be looking at that you couldn't see with a telescope on earth?
If this programme is implying that the moon has the same day/night time scale as earth it's clear they haven't looked into the moon landings (or basic astronomy) to any great degree and therefore any other 'Intriguing questions' investigated should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Just wanted to share this because it cracks me up. Basically, start watching from 28 minutes in and try to guess where I burst out laughing...
:D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTvoNUxMz7Y&feature=feedwll&list=WL
So Martians are Castrati, then how does that explain their deeply resonant bellowing of ULLA! back in the day?
What's more amazing is how you got 28 minutes into this?
Also- and not really wanting to get dragged into this- I do find it an amazing coincidence that not one, not two, but THREE buildings all managed to collapse into their own footprints. I'm not suggesting for one minute that such a thing can't happen without careful planning- but I'm amazed that people find it so difficult to believe that other people find this a little bit fishy.
I also find it pretty comical that people seem to think that an enormous number of conspirators would have to be involved to make it happen. Really? It's easy to believe that 19(?) people hijacked planes and flew them into buildings- but 19 other people couldn't have conspired to do exactly the same thing for entirely different reasons? Sure- there'd be dupes along the way- but they could be easily gotten rid of. If you weren't in any particular hurry, you'd have years to set it all up. I think I mentioned this before, but maintenance crews would've been in and out of the place all the time. Not too difficult to rig all three buildings over time, if you wanted to. Who's to say the hijackers even intended to fly the planes into buildings at all? Maybe they were just dupes and the planes were under outside control?
Again, I'm not saying that any of this is what happened- but it is possible. I'm sure people have done worse things for money, power and resources in the past- and I'm reasonably sure that they'll do worse things again in the future.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 09 September, 2011, 12:51:17 PM
So Martians are Castrati, then how does that explain their deeply resonant bellowing of ULLA! back in the day?
What's more amazing is how you got 28 minutes into this?
Just on in the background while I'm working. I'll listen to pretty much
anything- even the obvious rubbish, so long as it doesn't affect my concentration (such as it is). If nothing else, it keeps my imagination ticking over nicely.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 09 September, 2011, 12:51:17 PM
So Martians are Castrati, then how does that explain their deeply resonant bellowing of ULLA! back in the day?
What's more amazing is how you got 28 minutes into this?
Also, from that description, I am clearly a Martian.
Which would explain a lot.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 09 September, 2011, 12:46:14 PM
Just wanted to share this because it cracks me up. Basically, start watching from 28 minutes in and try to guess where I burst out laughing...
:D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTvoNUxMz7Y&feature=feedwll&list=WL
Brilliant. If you had it on in the background you must have stopped and thought "did I just hear that or have I gone mad?" Also this is proof, if it were needed, that Rebekah Wade is a Martian.
What I like is that he spends an hour banging on about Martians, how they live here and we can teleport to Mars, but doesn't go "ah fuck it, let me show you, we're all off to Mars." he has already blown the gaffe there, he might as well go the whole hog and prove it without any shadownof a doubt.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 09 September, 2011, 01:06:55 PM
Also- and not really wanting to get dragged into this- I do find it an amazing coincidence that not one, not two, but THREE buildings all managed to collapse into their own footprints. I'm not suggesting for one minute that such a thing can't happen without careful planning- but I'm amazed that people find it so difficult to believe that other people find this a little bit fishy.
I also find it pretty comical that people seem to think that an enormous number of conspirators would have to be involved to make it happen. Really?
I tend to agree Matt and being very wary of getting into the elaborate scenario building by amateur fantasists of the 'whys and hows', there's a lot of documented evidence that leads to some individuals within the US at least having having prior knowledge of the event and not just 'ordinary Joes'. Irregular and massive unclaimed bets on the price of the airline stock falling just days before the attack, the leaks between the CIA and Wall St are legendary. Counter terrorism tzar Richard Clarke's recent revelation that the only terrorist info that was 'purposely kept from him' by the CIA was the fact that some of the hi-jackers were training on US soil....and that if he'd known these individuals were in the country at all, not even that they were training in flight-schools, he'd have them rounded up within 24 hours that being his job an' all.
I've heard some analysts say to plan an attack of this kind would need around 2 dozen people in key areas utilising compartmentalisation of duties to direct individuals in false drills etc.
But who the fuck knows? Certainly anyone outside being involved in those circles doesn't, certainly plausible. Sometimes the people of the 'civillised' West believe their 'captains' are beyond savagery and duplicity or madness. To which you only need to point to the centrist self-serving fucks that have been elected everywhere.
I may be proven wrong but all the demolitions of tower blocks and such high rise buildings have been imploded from the bottom and so the tower falls into it's footprint!
I just checked on youtube to make sure and had to pull myself away from the 11th September clips, otherwise I might have gone insane :o
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 09 September, 2011, 07:10:27 PM
I may be proven wrong but all the demolitions of tower blocks and such high rise buildings have been imploded from the bottom and so the tower falls into it's footprint!
Yeah thought so, but there's a group of WTC workers who were trapped in the basement that day and claim they heard and felt explosions beneath them before the planes hit and saw people with burn-wounds running by. The explosions were to weaken the structure or somesuch so hey, whaddaya know, it's the
Troggies in the
Under-City I blame.
A lot of quite patronising people will tell you that those eye (ear?) witnesses were in shock and hearing things. Which, of course, they might well have been.
When it comes to this subject, I think it's just the cast iron rejection- and the accompanying derision- that irritates me. I'm reasonably sure that the official version is the truth- or as close to the truth as we'll ever get- but I think it'd be a sad day if people ever stopped questioning "known truths".
Quotebut I think it'd be a sad day if people ever stopped questioning "known truths".
This is quite true, but in some cases people still question things even though the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the 'official' (for want of a better word) story.
The moon landings are, I think, a good example.
QuoteThis is quite true, but in some cases people still question things even though the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the 'official' (for want of a better word) story.
The moon landings are, I think, a good example.
...or when someone like Kurt Cobain or Princess Diana die. Some people just have trouble accepting the obvious. Shit happens. People die. Move on.
What irritates me about conspiracy theories is that they're usually very fanciful - like movie plots, and you can see why people
want to believe in them - it makes the world seem a bit more exciting. No doubt there
have been cover-ups and conspiracies, but imo nothing as audacious or interesting as a staged terrorist bombing/moon landing. In a way I think the more out-there theories distract from the mundane, depressing reality of what the various governments and agencies of this world are really up to.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 10 September, 2011, 11:35:34 AM
Quotebut I think it'd be a sad day if people ever stopped questioning "known truths".
This is quite true, but in some cases people still question things even though the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the 'official' (for want of a better word) story.
The moon landings are, I think, a good example.
Haven't you being paying attention? They didn't take a telescope with them. That's a dead giveaway that the whole thing was faked.
I like reading about conspiracy theories and alternative "science" and all the rest- but there's not much that I will actually buy into (although I was prepared to accept that the Moon landings might have been faked, for a while). For the most part, it's a bunch of "what if...?" that seems to get a bit out of hand.
Except for the Triangularians. They are very real.
Quote from: radiator on 10 September, 2011, 11:46:38 AM
QuoteThis is quite true, but in some cases people still question things even though the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the 'official' (for want of a better word) story.
The moon landings are, I think, a good example.
...or when someone like Kurt Cobain or Princess Diana die. Some people just have trouble accepting the obvious. Shit happens. People die. Move on.
What irritates me about conspiracy theories is that they're usually very fanciful - like movie plots, and you can see why people want to believe in them - it makes the world seem a bit more exciting. No doubt there have been cover-ups and conspiracies, but imo nothing as audacious or interesting as a staged terrorist bombing/moon landing. In a way I think the more out-there theories distract from the mundane, depressing reality of what the various governments and agencies of this world are really up to.
I followed a link from that YouTube interview I posted, that was allegedly from some whistleblower who knew everything about everything (where aliens are concerned, anyway) - but he'd obviously just lifted great big chunks of it from Stargate, Star Trek and a bunch of other Sci-Fi shows* - he even had bad guys called Zoltar and Baltar! :lol: The lazy bastard!
*of course, 'The Man' probably puts these shows out to discredit the truth... :paranoidsmileygoeshere:
What Alan Moore thinks...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgSbaKpCjq4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgSbaKpCjq4)
Quote from: GordonR on 10 September, 2011, 12:27:43 PM
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 10 September, 2011, 11:35:34 AM
Quotebut I think it'd be a sad day if people ever stopped questioning "known truths".
This is quite true, but in some cases people still question things even though the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the 'official' (for want of a better word) story.
The moon landings are, I think, a good example.
Haven't you being paying attention? They didn't take a telescope with them. That's a dead giveaway that the whole thing was faked.
Of course, they did take a mirror that people regularly bounce a laser off.
A telescope would be rather pointless as we've never been back, so there is no way to do maintenance, like they have done with the Hubble telescope. Also the Moon gives off some gas (like radon) and there will be fine dust caught in its gravity. Both make the Moon a poor site for a telescope.
So they did the sensible science and avoided the pointless stuff - your dollar at work there (if you are American).
I think that another reason to be wary of 9/11 conspiracies is who airs them. I was in Travelling Man today to pick up this month's Atomic Robo and the new Dark Heresy sourcebooks, and on the shelf was a comic called The Big Lie - the cover featured a giant grinning Uncle Sam cackling over the exploding Twin Towers, which at least gave you an early warning of the polemic's slant. I had a flick through it, and outside of a few jokes with the plot (a scientist travels back in time to rescue her husband from the Towers before the attack - he doesn't believe that it's her so she launches into The Truth About 9/11 to convince him. She also brings along an iPad to prove that she's from the future) the general gist was that 9/11 was a false-flag operation engineered by "The Republican Right" as a casus belli for war on Iraq And All That Oil.
Which makes me wonder why we spent a year and a half and billions of dollars mucking about in Afghanistan beforehand instead of going straight for the prize, but that didn't seem to trouble the writer of the tract too much.
In any case, what struck me in the dialogue was that everything was "liberal" this and "neo-con" that - as the labels abounded I could frankly imagine a scruffy college kid in a university bedsit scribbling devil-horns and goatees onto pictures of Dubya, doing his part to fight the Man, maaaaaaan. I don't think that it's unreasonable to say that the conspiracy theories aren't only the preserve of the UFO crowd, but also have a whiff of a partisan smear campaign about them.
(http://www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/TheBigLie_Cover-662x1024.jpg)
Uncle Sam "cackling over the exploding Twin Towers", earlier today. I guess it's not just the conspiracy theorists that see what they want to see...
Well it is Rick Veitch and looks far more interesting than those poxy 'Presidential' comics the 'houses' pump out.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 11 September, 2011, 12:53:48 AM
Well it is Rick Veitch and looks far more interesting than those poxy 'Presidential' comics the 'houses' pump out.
Yes, as far as I'm aware, Veitch doesn't have any far out views on this, so perhaps he is toying with expectations before thoroughly subverting them later on (anything else could get a little laboured and... pointy). However, either approach is bound to annoy someone, but you don't write a comic like that without being prepared for all manner of brickbats to come your way.
From the previews I've seen, a time-travelling scientist is trying to save her husband, which is a promising enough set-up, it is where it goes after that though that'll be the key.
I haven't actually read this myself yet, but I've been assured that it puts the conspiracy theories to rest:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/1227842
i've been watching some documentary today and as the tower falls it collapses from the top (the damaged bit and doesnt necassarily go straight down , you get some evil shit fliying a jumbo into a building the resulting explosion and lots of aviation fuel that suckers going down ...all this conspiracy crap is just that.crap.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 11 September, 2011, 07:15:32 PM
I haven't actually read this myself yet, but I've been assured that it puts the conspiracy theories to rest:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/1227842
They also have a very interesting podcast version- and you're right. It does.
thats what they want you to believe... ;)
the trouble with threads like this are the people who believe them ,REALLY believe them so putting evidence to prove otherwise is an ice/eskimo excersise..
Quote from: Emperor on 11 September, 2011, 11:03:09 AMYes, as far as I'm aware, Veitch doesn't have any far out views on this, so perhaps he is toying with expectations before thoroughly subverting them later on
Swamp Thing does indeed turn up and offer comfort for all those sacrificed so Uncle Sam can live.
Quote from: mogzilla on 11 September, 2011, 07:42:44 PM
i've been watching some documentary today and as the tower falls it collapses from the top (the damaged bit and doesnt necassarily go straight down , you get some evil shit fliying a jumbo into a building the resulting explosion and lots of aviation fuel that suckers going down ...all this conspiracy crap is just that.crap.
But building WTC 7 does without
any plane flying into it, which is where the 'falling into it's own footprint' argument mostly applies, not with the Twin Towers themselves to be fair to the conspiracy faction. I don't have expertise in either camp so it's theirs to prove.
yeah but it does have the remmenants of the big uns crashing into it...thats gottta hurt
Quote from: mogzilla on 11 September, 2011, 09:05:59 PM
yeah but it does have the remmenants of the big uns crashing into it...thats gottta hurt
so did many of the other surrounding buildings, which were closer, that didn't structurally collapse into their footprint. Hard to see how falling masonry would collapse and weaken the internal structure of an entire building for it collapse so evenly and so precisely from the inside so it's beyond many of us to judge
A 25 minute recap on media in America's response to 9/11.
Some disturbing scenes. But, a good, if somewhat scathing report.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X3lEJKV0hg&feature=share (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X3lEJKV0hg&feature=share)
During yesterday's gales, the roof of a bakery in Co Durham collapsed, smashing several parked cars. The operations manager was quoted as saying "when we watched the CCTV afterwards, it looked like a building brought down by a controlled explosion"
Which means:
a) The bakery faked the collapse to justify a preemptive war on Greggs
b) The manager was being ironic
c) It's easy to jump to conclusions and what something looks like is often not what it actually is.
Just saying....
or flawed pastry.
QuoteDuring yesterday's gales, the roof of a bakery in Co Durham collapsed, smashing several parked cars. The operations manager was quoted as saying "when we watched the CCTV afterwards, it looked like a building brought down by a controlled explosion"
Did it
pancake??
BAM!! Still got it!
one quick look at the Risk List http://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/statistics/riskList.html (http://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/statistics/riskList.html) lets you know why Kazakhstan especially can do what the hell they like when it comes to human rights... :( add to this oil pipelines and bases for attacking its near neigbour to the south and they are untouchable, oh and China seems well placed too :o
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 September, 2011, 07:29:00 PM
one quick look at the Risk List http://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/statistics/riskList.html (http://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/statistics/riskList.html) lets you know why Kazakhstan especially can do what the hell they like when it comes to human rights... :( add to this oil pipelines and bases for attacking its near neigbour to the south and they are untouchable, oh and China seems well placed too :o
'Resource' Wars are probably the coming conflicts of the 21st Century. Plus lovely old Nationalism as a reaction to Globilization. Competing groups all armed to the teeth are unlikely to sort out their differences amicably.
When you really get down to it, resources are what most wars are about. We just like to dress them up a a bit.
Quote from: Matt Timson on 14 September, 2011, 09:58:16 AM
When you really get down to it, resources are what all wars are about. We just like to dress them up a a bit.
Fixed that for you Matt.
Just read a depressing article on how the rich use nationalism to promote the notion of the selfless individual and as a tool to prevent those on the lowest rung of the ladder from forming dangerous revolutionary opinions.
Yeah, I agree with your fixage and would've just said so in the first place- but I didn't want to get with the "generalising stick" for my trouble... ;)
QuoteJust read a depressing article on how the rich use nationalism to promote the notion of the selfless individual and as a tool to prevent those on the lowest rung of the ladder from forming dangerous revolutionary opinions.
It's not as if leftist governments aren't fond of wrapping themselves in the flag either, whether it be Stalin's "Great Patriotic War" or, at the other end of the scale, the Scottish Nationalist Party - which boasts of its socialist credentials even as it seeks to tear out another divisive border with its sectarian agenda. At the end of the day, Reds are just another tribe with their own totems.
Which reminds me of a funny thing - there was once a bit of a lefty girl in my drinking circle. One evening the topic turned over to empires, and she launched into one of her rote speeches. I interrupted her mid-flow by asking her why she, a right-on progressive radical internationalist-feminist-socialist-and-every-other-ism-in-the-undergraduate-textbook, was actively endorsing reactionary nationalism through decolonisation. She got quite angry at my subaltern, alternative, unorthodox interpretation. ;)
Quote from: Robert Frazer on 15 September, 2011, 10:09:11 PM
QuoteJust read a depressing article on how the rich use nationalism to promote the notion of the selfless individual and as a tool to prevent those on the lowest rung of the ladder from forming dangerous revolutionary opinions.
It's not as if leftist governments aren't fond of wrapping themselves in the flag either, whether it be Stalin's "Great Patriotic War" or, at the other end of the scale, the Scottish Nationalist Party - which boasts of its socialist credentials even as it seeks to tear out another divisive border with its sectarian agenda. At the end of the day, Reds are just another tribe with their own totems.
Seriously, your head must zip up at the back if you think the SNP - which once upon a time used to be nicknamed 'Tartan Tories' - is a socialist party. Can you provide chapter & verse on where they boast of their socialist credentials?
(Salmond is a populist politician, through and through. He might nick policies from the left, to - very successfully - take on Labour in their central Scotland heartlands - but I assumed it was fairly well known that his personal leanings are much more on the centre-right of the spectrum. Apparently not. He used to be an investment analyst for the banking and oil industries - that sound like an item on the CV for your average socialist firebrand?)
Pffft... left, right- they're all twats- with about as much interest in ordinary people as I've got in ants.
So Shark's not going to be around? I bet he's had to migrate because of over-fishing. Captain Birdseye has no regard for local sea-life.
Let's talk about What 'They' Put in Your Food. (http://www.cracked.com/article_19433_the-6-most-horrifying-lies-food-industry-feeding-you.html)
Nice...
A little change of tacks. (More for myself, seeing all the solutions to world problems in practical ways, in my head, to be kept there without the power to apply these practicalities)
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1091/566/NASA_Whistleblower:_Alien_Moon_Cities_Exist.html (http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1091/566/NASA_Whistleblower:_Alien_Moon_Cities_Exist.html)
Those dero rays must be going full steam for Stevie can only see rocks.
First recorded Irish case of Spontaneous Human Combustion:
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/man-who-burnt-to-death-at-home-died-from-spontaneous-human-combustion-2886192.html
Quote from: Futurefuzz on 23 September, 2011, 12:21:56 AM
A little change of tacks. (More for myself, seeing all the solutions to world problems in practical ways, in my head, to be kept there without the power to apply these practicalities)
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1091/566/NASA_Whistleblower:_Alien_Moon_Cities_Exist.html (http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1091/566/NASA_Whistleblower:_Alien_Moon_Cities_Exist.html)
The article briefly mentions the claim about life being discovered on Mars in the 1970s - I've read this before in the book 13 Things That Don't Make Sense:
http://www.13thingsthatdontmakesense.com/chap.aspx?ch=6
The book is by a New Scientist writer, so that's a trustworthy source, right?
The not-so-sinister truth behind the mysterious way Bin Laden's body was disposed of?
SAVE YOUR LIFE BUCKLE UP OR SURE DEATH (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb7NxLLwLco)
For the conspiratorially minded...current edition of the 'German' Financial Times is now -for the first time- priced in Deutsche Marks along with the €uro exchange rate: 1.95.
(http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2011/10/FT%20Deutschland.jpg)
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 21 October, 2011, 10:40:31 PM
For the conspiratorially minded...current edition of the 'German' Financial Times is now -for the first time- priced in Deutsche Marks along with the €uro exchange rate: 1.95.
Curious, given that that headline reads "There is no return".
I believe the Polish Prime Minister [or someone in the Polish Government] mentioned the prospect of War in Europe in the next decade or so. As Son and Grandson of Cannon Fodder, two World Wars and all that do you think this is possible? Will we really give it all up for an almighty slug fest?
If Greece turned Communist or Socialist since as one Greek mentioned he feels Greece is 'bankrupt already' could that trigger some violence particularly from neighbouring rival and fellow NATO member Turkey? Turkey's Military is hardly going to stand by if it thinks Greece is too weak Financially and Militarily to defend itself from Border incursions.
The Greek Generals once ruled Greece with an Iron Hand apparently with NATO backing. Not much fun for the General population and this led to a lot of resentment. Would our lovely Governments back the Generals or simply allow Greece to go it's own way even if that meant a period of Leftist rule?
Here's one for all you coincidence theorists out there:
9/11 Theories: Expert vs. Expert (http://911blogger.com/news/2011-11-02/911-theories-expert-vs-expert) (Video, 18:15).
Quote from: IAMTHESYSTEM on 23 October, 2011, 11:33:56 AM
Would our lovely Governments back the Generals or simply allow Greece to go it's own way even if that meant a period of Leftist rule?
Our lovely governments will back whichever route is the most profitable for their banking and corporate masters. Then they'll tell us that it's all about "doing what's right", which generally involves becoming part of the revenue stream of the 1%. So long as a country borrows enough credit to buy Western arms and goods with and isn't too precious about hanging on to its natural resources and keeps its head down, who cares who's running it? I bet there's even some formula somewhere that says that mass murders only become genocides when the lack of workers or, more likely, consumers starts to impact on the economy.
This is the kind of thing the Occupy Movement is trying to get us all to look at and to start asking questions like "do we need to take our governments back?"
FCC Prepares Stations for National EAS Test on November 9th (http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2011/11/04/fcc-prepares-stations-for-national-eas-test-on-november-9th/) has absolutely nothing to with Asteroid 2005 YU55 to Approach Earth on November 8-9, 2011 (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news171.html), Excercise Pacific Wave 11 (http://itic.ioc-unesco.org/images/docs/pacwave11_flyer.pdf) or the anniversary of Kristallnacht. (http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/knacht.htm)
Some people reckon that asteroid 2005 YU55 (~400 meters) will actually hit the Moon or even Earth near the Aleutian Islands.
Hopefully, though, this is all a load of asteroids and I'll see you all on the 10th...
ive got skyrim preordered for the 11th and paid a deposit so it better miss!
actually last night i was pondering all the shit the worlds in and cannnot get my head around who we owe all the money to? and can we not just kill them? if we owe $5sqillion to the us for example and they owe 4 villiox to someone else could we just not all just wipe out the debts and start again? (and my mortgage etc as well)
but i fear if it does carry on like this someones gonna crack and press a button.mybe them bloody mayans where right! :o
and we're still waiting for the cheap petrol !
We "owe" the money to the people who created debt out of nothing. Say you need £5, I write "This is worth £5" on a piece of paper and then lend it to you at interest. Simple. It's so simple, in fact, that most people don't believe it because it means we've been scammed for generations - and nobody likes to admit they've been conned.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 06 November, 2011, 06:46:25 PM
nobody likes to admit they've been conned.
They would if told their debt is cancelled.
I wish it was that simple.
I'm hoping that the EU lets me off with the last few years of my mortgage now, what do you think?
CF- Tell them I've said it was cool. Should be fine now...
I think that you should be let off from paying back the money that was created out of thin air that was lent to you as part of your mortgage, but the "real" money you were lent (which could be as little as 5% of the overall loan) should be paid back - with a modicum of interest or a flat handling fee.
Likewise, ordinary people who used their own money (wages, savings etc.) to buy government bonds (Premium Bonds, for example) must be allowed to keep those bonds and the government must honour those bonds. Any bonds purchased with created money (by the central banks and similar institutions) should be written off as worthless. (Also, a fraction of the money lent to governments by the central banks was real, so this fraction too should be honoured.)
How does that sound?
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 06 November, 2011, 09:24:33 PM
CF- Tell them I've said it was cool. Should be fine now...
I shall email my MEP at once, who ever that is!
Sorry Shark, I like Bolt-01's version better ;)
I like Bolt's version better as well. Bolt for Chancellor!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 06 November, 2011, 09:17:24 PM
I wish it was that simple.
It is. Elites know the only solution to the current debt game is
abolishment -inevitable- they also know that to admit it means losing their jobs, hence the stringing out for as long as possible.
There's way more to it than just debt, and although debt cancellation might be a good start, once we lift that particular paving slab there are going to be a lot (and I mean a LOT) of buried bodies and creepy crawlies scurrying for cover. At least as important as targeted and intelligent debt forgiveness is, in my humble, a Truth & Reconciliation process.
"Minions" (and major players) need to be offered immunity in exchange for testimony. We need to see exactly how deep this corruption goes and who are/were the main players.
WITCH HUNT, BITCHES. YYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEE-HHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
I've noticed you banging this drum a bit lately and maybe I'm being dense but I really don't understand what the problem with interest is.
If you want a builder to build a wall you have to pay them. If you want someone to tend your sheep while you're off to the market you have to offer them some sort of reciprocal arrangement next Friday. Or at least a reacharound.
A lender is providing a service just the same as anyone else, surely they are entitled to charge for that with the expectation that the customer will hold up their part of the bargain? If you don't want to pay interest, you don't have to take out a loan.
Banks create the principal but not the interest to service their loans. To find the interest, new loans must continually be taken out, expanding the money supply, inflating prices — and robbing you of the value of your money.
To be honest, trying to explain the flaws of interest without talking about money as a whole is quite difficult. I'd recommend the documentary "The Money Masters", a 1995 documentary produced by Patrick S. J. Carmack and directed and narrated by William T. Still. It discusses the concepts of money, debt and taxes, and describes their development from biblical times onward. It covers the history of fractional-reserve banking, central banking, monetary policy, the bond system and the Federal Reserve System. It's quite a hefty documentary at around 3 1/2 hours, but well worth watching if you want to understand the reality of the modern banking system. It can be found on many torrent sites and in digestible chunks on YouTube. I would urge everyone to make time for it.
Is it in 3D?
Yes, actually - height, width and time...
(http://i.imgur.com/Tpr7b.jpg)
Understandable... look what one of 'em did to that Charles Foster Kane fellow....
Apparently viruses are nanotechnology (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MBIZI4s5NiE)
(http://i.imgur.com/SiiTv.jpg)
11 shocking things you now realize to be true (but you never would have believed just three years ago). (http://www.naturalnews.com/034126_awakening_beliefs.html) All from the United States, but we know how our Government does so like to copy Uncle Sam so maybe some of these things are already going on here, too. I know that people like Brian Gerrish and Robert Green have been investigating institutionalized paedophile rings (see Hollie Grieg (http://holliegreig.info/) for many years.
#1 - Most of the honey you buy in the grocery store contains no actual honey whatsoever
#2 - The fluoride that's dripped into municipal water supplies is actually a highly toxic industrial chemical byproduct
#3 - Flu vaccines often contain live flu viruses and actually cause the flu as a way to worsen the flu season and scare more people into buying vaccines
#4 - Ron Paul is deliberately stripped out of mainstream news reports, online polls and debate coverage in order to "game the system" against him
#5 - The United States government openly trafficks illegal guns into Mexico as a way to cause gun violence in the USA
#6 - Prestigious U.S. hospitals are widely engaged in black market organ trafficking and organ transplants
#7 - The child sex slave industry is huge, highly profitable, and found everywhere across America (and the world)
#8 - Commercial chickens are routinely fed arsenic, and commercial cows are routinely fed chicken poop
#9 - "Natural" foods and cereals are routinely made with genetically modified ingredients
#10 - The global banking industry is a criminal racket that steals wealth from working class People and redistributes it to the global wealthy elite
#11 - The U.S. government routinely conspires with pharmaceutical giants to conduct criminal, inhumane medical experiments on innocent people
#3 is complete bullshit as far as Ireland/the UK is concerned.
According to the NHS website (http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Flu-jab/Pages/How-does-it-work.aspx):
"The flu vaccine contains three different types of flu virus (usually two A types and one B type). For most vaccines, the three strains of the viruses are grown in hens' eggs. The viruses are then killed (deactivated) and purified before being made into the vaccine."
So, I guess that so long as the deactivation process works properly, there's nothing to worry about. (Oh, and that they stop putting toxins like Aluminium Hydroxide in vaccines...)
They may be all true, then again they may all be lies but I'm having a brilliant time :thumbsup:
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 12 November, 2011, 02:19:39 PM
According to the NHS website (http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Flu-jab/Pages/How-does-it-work.aspx):
"The flu vaccine contains three different types of flu virus (usually two A types and one B type). For most vaccines, the three strains of the viruses are grown in hens' eggs. The viruses are then killed (deactivated) and purified before being made into the vaccine."
So, I guess that so long as the deactivation process works properly, there's nothing to worry about. (Oh, and that they stop putting toxins like Aluminium Hydroxide in vaccines...)
If the viruses are first killed then purified, whats the point of even putting them in... :-*
::)
V
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 12 November, 2011, 01:40:09 PM
#2 - The fluoride that's dripped into municipal water supplies is actually a highly toxic industrial chemical byproduct
Let me join in. Flouride, beneficial to dental health in low quantities, potentially harmful in high. Much like Copper, Selenium, Zinc, Iron and almost every other damn thing that form parts of a human's diet: too little, bad for you, too much, toxic.
So what if it's produced by industry - if it's actually the correct flouride compound, and not one of the dodgier ones. Did you know that almost everything you eat was once
dead rotting bodies filled with bacteria, and sometime before this came from
the deadly radioactive heart of an exploding star? No wonder food gives you cancer! Who will stop this madness!
Quote from: SpetsnaZ99 on 13 November, 2011, 08:08:16 AM
If the viruses are first killed then purified, whats the point of even putting them in... :-*
It's like having a cardboard cut out of the beastie to show your immune system I think. IIRC, it's the shape of the virus is key for antibodies. I also think I remember that some vaccinations need live components, but I'm not sure.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 12 November, 2011, 02:19:39 PM
So, I guess that so long as the deactivation process works properly, there's nothing to worry about. (Oh, and that they stop putting toxins like Aluminium Hydroxide in vaccines...)
So why is Aluminium hydroxide used in vaccines?
M.
Probably something to do with proteins and such.
Damn my feeble webbery...
I think the dead and purified virus in vaccines is to do with protein keys and whatnot, ostensibly showing your immune system (remember that? Doctors seem to have forgotten about how damned efficient it is) the shape of certain parts of the virus so it knows what to attack.
And according to this here, (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC97997/) "Aluminum adjuvants are widely used in human vaccines based on their ability to enhance antibody production. However, the mechanisms underlying these effects remain unknown."
Ah, I do love it when that word "unknown" slips into descriptions of stuff drug companies want our doctors to inject into us and our babies. Of course, drug companies operate on an entirely altruistic level and aren't more concerned with making money at all, so fear not - your family is safe...
Quote from: TordelBack on 13 November, 2011, 08:28:03 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 12 November, 2011, 01:40:09 PM
#2 - The fluoride that's dripped into municipal water supplies is actually a highly toxic industrial chemical byproduct
Let me join in. Flouride, beneficial to dental health in low quantities, potentially harmful in high. Much like Copper, Selenium, Zinc, Iron and almost every other damn thing that form parts of a human's diet: too little, bad for you, too much, toxic.
So what if it's produced by industry - if it's actually the correct flouride compound, and not one of the dodgier ones. Did you know that almost everything you eat was once dead rotting bodies filled with bacteria, and sometime before this came from the deadly radioactive heart of an exploding star? No wonder food gives you cancer! Who will stop this madness!
yep, you're absolutely correct. Fluoride is good for
childrens' teeth - if you apply it to
childrens' teeth. What good is swallowing it? Do we swallow toothpaste and expect that to keep our teeth healthy? It actually says on Colgate toothpaste:
In case of intake of fluoride from other sources consult a dentist or doctor. Adding fluoride to drinking water, quite apart from the moral questions surrounding the forced mass-medication of a population already awash with toxins and unnaturally high levels of growth hormones, will cause that potentially high risk of toxicity you mention. As arsenic is also a naturally occurring element, maybe we should put that in drinking water, too - whether we want it or not?
Sodium fluoride is a common ingredient in rat and cockroach poisons, anesthetics, hypnotics, psychiatric drugs, and military nerve gas. It`s historically been quite expensive to properly dispose of, until some aluminum industries with an overabundance of the stuff sold the public on the terrifically insane but highly profitable idea of buying it at a 20,000% markup, injecting it into our water supplies, and then DRINKING it.
The first occurrence of fluoridated drinking water on Earth was found in Germany's Nazi prison camps. The Gestapo had little concern about fluoride's supposed effect on children`s teeth; their alleged reason for mass-medicating water with sodium fluoride was to sterilize humans and force the people in their concentration camps into calm submission.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 November, 2011, 01:00:56 PM
And according to this here, (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC97997/) "Aluminum adjuvants are widely used in human vaccines based on their ability to enhance antibody production. However, the mechanisms underlying these effects remain unknown."
Ah, I do love it when that word "unknown" slips into descriptions of stuff drug companies want our doctors to inject into us and our babies. Of course, drug companies operate on an entirely altruistic level and aren't more concerned with making money at all, so fear not - your family is safe...
I had a look at that link - if you're suggesting that the "...effects remain unknown" comment is a conclusion I think you're wrong. From my reading of the abstract, it's a qualifying statement for the paper i.e. why did they want to do the research in the first place? What problem did they want to address? That sort of thing. The last line of the abstract is "These properties of aluminum hydroxide observed in vitro may explain its potent in vivo adjuvant effect" after all!
M.
Dear grud, TLS goes all Godwin on me! The Nazis did, said and thought a lot of things, it was the rightness or wrongness of those things that mattered, not the cool uniforms ideology of the people who doing them.
The argument for flouridation is an argument of common good versus individual choice, much like folic acid in bread. Muddying the waters with reference to "highly toxic industrial byproduct", "Sodium fluoride is a common ingredient in rat and cockroach poisons" and "the first occurrence of fluoridated drinking water on Earth was found in Germany's Nazi prison camps" have precisely NOTHING to do with whether flouridation is a good or bad thing, and from a less sincere correspondent I might suspect simply flashy unscientific scaremongering.
The only questions of relevance are: does the science indicate that it has a net positive effect that justifies its cost? And if so, is it likely that individual parents will buy and apply flouridated toothpaste to their children, and receive equal levels of dental care, on a equitable basis across society? And if the answer to the latter question is "no", is it worth the infringement of your individual rights to abstain from a demonstrably harmless additive?
States force people to do a lot of things for kids, in the Irish situation with which I am familiar this includes a long sequence of vaccinations, a shorter one of developmental check-ups, speed restrictions outside schools, considerable pressure to use breast milk, compulsory education from at least age 6 funded by the taxpayer, etc. etc. Not everyone likes every element, and not everyone benefits, but it at least strives for an equal start for children. Water flouridation is one of these things. Yes, it does trample on your individual right not to drink flouride, but I'd argue that large scale health initiatives are one of the real advantages of living in societies that impose blanket rules. Much of the opposition I see to flouridation is of the "keep yore gubmint hands off muh stuff" variety, and most of the science is in favour of it as the lesser of two evils.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 November, 2011, 01:20:29 PM
The first occurrence of fluoridated drinking water on Earth was found in Germany's Nazi prison camps.
Well if the NAZIS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum) did it etc, etc......
Besides, I think I've already pointed out that flouridated water makes it easier for the government satellites to track you.
Eek! Please forgive me if I gave the impression that just because the Nazis did something that automatically makes it wrong (Nazis were also perfectly loving parents, kept pets and built hospitals - and in no way would I suggest that any of these things should be banned because Nazis did them). One cannot, however, deny the existence of concentration camps (which were invented in the Boer war by the British, incidentally) in which horrendous processes and human experimentation took place. Whilst the methods of said processes and experimentation may be fundamentally inhumane I don't think that renders the results invalid. Distasteful though it might be, if someone like Joseph Mengele had discovered through his insane vivisections the cure for some hitherto untreatable disease - would that mean this cure could never be used? (I know Mengele didn't really discover much through his "work" and was most likely an insane butcher who just liked torturing people using surgery as an excuse - so my example is presented only as a hypothetical.)
Similarly, the assertion that Nazi concentration camps (and the Soviet gulags) used sodium fluoride in water for the reasons stated or that the substance is used in pest control does not render the information irrelevant or the argument futile. Sodium fluoride has been proven to be dangerous. Even UNICEF (http://www.unicef.org/wash/index_wes_related.html) states: "Fluorosis is a serious bone disease caused by high concentrations of fluoride occurring naturally in groundwater. Fluorosis is endemic in at least 25 countries across the globe. The total number of people affected is not known, but a conservative estimate would number in the tens of millions." And yes, I realise that the inclusion of words like "high concentrations" and "occurring naturally" may seem to undermine my argument - but do we really need to be taking that chance? If you want fluoride, buy fluoride toothpaste - just don't force the rest of us to drink it or build up the natural fluoride levels in the environment through leaky pipes and so forth. I smoke tobacco, which is apparently bad for me, but that's my choice. I can give up if I put my mind to it - but how would I avoid fluoride if it was mixed with my tapwater? Buy bottled water? If that's the answer, then why not switch it and allow people who want to ingest fluoride to buy fluoridated bottled water? Yes, it's about freedom and "keeping yore gubmint hands off muh body".
As to the link I posted, it contains stuff like "In the present study we made an attempt to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the potent immunoadjuvant effect of aluminum hydroxide. The function of this major vaccine adjuvant for human use is still poorly understood. The original explanation of a "depot effect" proposed in the 1930s was later challenged, when it was demonstrated that excision of the complex of antigen and aluminum gel from a subcutaneous injection site shortly after injection did not diminish the immune response. Other studies implicated that T-cell-dependent mechanisms were involved, at least in attracting eosinophils to the injection site. It was hypothesized that particles of aluminum, which easily bind to proteins, can be covered by immunoglobulins in situ and then may activate mast cells through Fc receptors. The cross-linking of Fc receptors on mast cells would then induce production of Th2-type cytokines like IL-4 and IL-5. However, this idea has never been experimentally proved." I don't really understand a word of this and I'm not a scientist, but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed an opinion (which, I know, nobody has asserted). I have, however, read the opinions of scientists who do seem to understand this - and not just the opinions of those who are against aluminium hydroxide/fluoridation. As with most of the things I'm uncomfortable with, I try to make the most informed decision I can at the level of my own understanding. In the final analysis, and in the absence of a government that actually cares about me enough to answer such questions honestly and without overriding corporate influence, this is all I can do and all any of us can do.
Oh, and since you brought up breast milk: Toxic Breast Milk? (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/magazine/09TOXIC.html)
Mengele was responsible for one of my favourite Slayer Songs.
And Toxic Breast Milk would be a great name for a Metal Band
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 November, 2011, 04:20:20 PM
Oh, and since you brought up breast milk: Toxic Breast Milk? (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/magazine/09TOXIC.html)
You're the real deal, Sharky! :D
I won't get into the Nazi thing, except perhaps to clarify for teh record that I wasn't defending them, not even because of their pet-loving ways. Much like my idol Dr. Jones, I hate those guys.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 November, 2011, 04:10:24 PMIf you want fluoride, buy fluoride toothpaste - just don't force the rest of us to drink it
Problem is kids don't buy their own toothpaste. In a nutshell, that's the issue.
Government coercion is necessary because some people are just bad parents, or very poor, or very ignorant, and none of that is their kids' fault. It's justifiable because, according to the overwhelming body of medical opinion (as I understand it in my limited damn-that-Joe-Soap-for-bogarting-a-handy-idiom way), it does plenty of good and very little harm, for very little cost - Wikipedia (I know) asserts less than a dollar per person per year for the US.
Heh, then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree :)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 November, 2011, 05:19:34 PM
Heh, then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree :)
Don't we always?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 November, 2011, 05:19:34 PM
Heh, then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree :)
Do what now?
THIS IS THE INTERNET GRUDAMMIT >:(
Quote from: pops1983 on 13 November, 2011, 06:55:54 PM
THIS IS THE INTERNET GRUDAMMIT >:(
I know, I know, I try to be implacably opposed to his TOTAL WRONGNESS, but he's just so darned polite and reasonable, it's almost like discussing something with a real person, which is hardly what this medium is for.
Even while I seldom (although not never) agree with Sharky's
Everything You Know Is Wrong! bulletins, I do frequently learn lots of new things by thinking about them and following his links deep into Tea Party Illuminati Space Lizard land ;).
Hey, I don't think that everything you know is wrong. You at least have a firm grasp of which is the galaxy's greatest comic... ;)
Live Streaming Video: Occupy Oakland Protests Eviction (http://newsblogged.com/live-streaming-video-occupy-oakland-protests-eviction)
And, despite all the things that our evil government, evil bankers, and evil industrialists & pharmacists continue to do to us, (according to Sharkie, anyway), we continue to live longer and longer! I am actually being kept alive by these same evil pharmaceutical companies, so more power to their elbow, I say!!
The thing with the Nazi regime is that they used the Jews as guinea pigs.
Camps full of Human Beings that the Nazis regarded as sub human, of course they were going to experiment on them for good or bad.
And no I am not condoning what these scum did, just remember most Germans between 1930 and 1946 weren't Nazis.
V
Bit of a shot in the dark here, but over at The Intel Hub (http://theintelhub.com/2011/11/13/writers-take-action-now-this-is-war/) they're asking for writers to help with "this ongoing information war (intel battle) of propoganda pushed onto the masses by the corporate controlled media". Well, obviously, this being a comics forum and me being a complete wannabe comic writer and all, I was thinking comic strip.
Long story short, any conspiratorially minded artists out there fancy butting heads to see what we can come up with? Ain't comics supposed to be subversive?
Conspiracy comics, eh?
First thing that comes to mind: something about an Elvis-Bigfoot-hybrid-clone :-\
They would if it wasn't true :'(
Have you tried bath salts?
Yes, but it ruined my chips.
Bath salts ruin chips, if ye have no bidet vinegar to go with it
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 November, 2011, 12:06:04 AM
Long story short, any conspiratorially minded artists out there fancy butting heads to see what we can come up with? Ain't comics supposed to be subversive?
Are you looking for writers or just ideas?
I'm a bit of a writist myself, I'm looking for an artist to hook up with.
Here's one for you, Sharky:
http://www.eudebtwriteoff.com/
QuoteThis website presents the results of a simulation conducted by students at ESCP Europe Business School. The aim was to uncover the amount of interlinked debt between Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, Britain, France, and Germany; and then see what would happen if they attempted to cross cancel obligations.
The results were astounding:
The countries can reduce their total debt by 64% through cross cancellation of interlinked debt, taking total debt from 40.47% of GDP to 14.58%
Six countries – Ireland, Italy, Spain, Britain, France and Germany – can write off more than 50% of their outstanding debt
Three countries - Ireland, Italy, and Germany – can reduce their obligations such that they owe more than €1bn to only 2 other countries
Ireland can reduce its debt from almost 130% of GDP to under 20% of GDP
France can virtually eliminate its debt – reducing it to just 0.06% of GDP
I'm struggling with my 20-year old schoolkid economics to find the flaw here, but I suspect the answer is 'middlemen'.
Quote from: TordelBack on 21 November, 2011, 04:23:20 PM
Here's one for you, Sharky:
http://www.eudebtwriteoff.com/
Thanks for that, Tordels, it's a cute idea.
However, in my understanding there is a fundamental flaw in this method. Ireland doesn't really owe Portugal anything. This is because Ireland had to
borrow the money it lent to Portugal and Portugal had to
borrow the money it lent to Ireland. And from whom did Ireland and Portugal borrow the credit to lend to one another? Yep, the same private banks.
This debt cross-cancellation method would only work if the Central Banks of both Ireland and Portugal created their own money supply - but they don't. The private banks create and control the money supply and then lend it to the central banks who then lend it to each other. If it wasn't such a toxic process it'd be quite beautiful.
This idea is, however, a great tool for cutting through the (deliberate) confusion and fog hiding the true nature of the debt crisis. Nice find!
In five months' time, new cuts of £1bn to children's benefits kick in. Cutting disability benefits will save the government a further £4bn over the next five years.
Not to worry, though, because Richard Branson's being allowed to buy the "good part" of Northern Rock (the part with assets that are actually worth something) for £750m. Us good old taxpayers paid £1.4bn for it, and we're still left saddled with the "bad part" (the financially toxic part worth less than nothing).
So, disabled people and children are being robbed so that the Godlike Mr Branson can snap up a public asset for an absolute snip.
Good old UK Government! How lucky we are to have such a caring bunch of people in charge.
Meet your new ruler: Goldman Sachs (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/what-price-the-new-democracy-goldman-sachs-conquers-europe-6264091.html).
(http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article6264098.ece/ALTERNATES/w620/Pg-12-eurozone-graphic.jpg)
Randall Munroe has made me an hour late for an appointment. Again:
http://xkcd.com/980/
All-too-credible stuff. The comparison between Worker/CEO wage ratios from 1965 to 2007 is still stunning.
So what are we all gonna do about it? Seriously, anyone think there'll be blood on the streets in the next few years? I'm genuinely interested.
So, the European Union is undemocratic!! Wow!! That's a surprise!! I never knew that!! :lol:
Quote from: mygrimmbrother on 22 November, 2011, 09:24:48 AM
So what are we all gonna do about it? Seriously, anyone think there'll be blood on the streets in the next few years? I'm genuinely interested.
I sincerely hope not. As I posted earlier, there are better ways than bloodshed (it'll only be us poor saps who do the bleeding anyway - the architects of this crisis will stay hidden away in their ivory towers), but I fear the worst.
There is a glimmer of hope, however, if we follow Iceland's crowd-sourced constitution idea (http://stjornlagarad.is/english/) and their refusal to play ball with the banksters. Of course, the presstitutes in our country aren't doing much to present us with such alternatives. All you hear from the BBC, ITV, C4, CNN, Sky etc. is austerity, austerity, austerity. (Austerity for the 99.9%, of course, not the 0.1%. We can't have trillionaires losing their benefits - that would never do.)
Excellent link Tordels - £1,600,000,000 for a single B-2 bomber (and yes, I know the RAF doesn't have any B2s, but we certainly have military vehicles of a similar cost) and yet we can't afford to pay disabled and unemployed people less than £100 a week so they can afford food, shelter and heating. Can't afford a proper health service. Can't afford a proper education service. Can't afford youth clubs for kids. Can't afford to keep our small businesses going. Can't afford... oops - I'm beginning to go off on one again!
:-X
So when did we stop benefits to disabled people then, Sharky? I checked my bank account only this morning and my Employment & Support Allowance and Disability Living Allowance have both gone into my account, as normal.
And dont worry it wont be lost. The government will just rename it without telling anyone. Thats what our governments like to do, they like to rename benefits whenever too many people are claiming them
Quote from: Old Tankie on 22 November, 2011, 02:46:21 PM
So when did we stop benefits to disabled people then, Sharky? I checked my bank account only this morning and my Employment & Support Allowance and Disability Living Allowance have both gone into my account, as normal.
A company called Atos Healthcare is currently being employed by the DWP to carry out medical examinations on people who receive Incapacity Benefits. I'm having direct experience of their "loving touch" and it's awful - like being massaged by a fork lift in a scrapyard. And judging by the internet forums, I'm far from alone. It is plain that it's Atos' job to get as many people as possible off benefits, whether deserving or not.
Renewed concern about Atos medical assessments: The Guardian. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/31/renewed-concern-atos-medical-assessments)
Yep, I've recently been moved from Incapacity Benefit to ESA. I have to say, in my own case, it was pretty straight forward. Filled the forms in, enclosed supporting medical reports from my consultant; four weeks later, placed into Support Group, no medical required. I know lots of people are having problems but I can only say how I found it. I hope it works out well for you.
Good to hear it turned out okay for you, Tankie :)
It's a bit different for me. Mental health seems to be a target for cuts. I've also filled in all the forms but they don't seem to have read them and the situation's going all dark and spikey - just in time for Christmas.
Anyhoo. At least I'm still breathing, right? So there's that.
OMG THE TRUTH IS REVEALED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRLLiofkoMY&feature=related
Quote from: Roger Godpleton on 23 November, 2011, 08:01:54 PM
OMG THE TRUTH IS REVEALED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRLLiofkoMY&feature=related
He poured it down the sink.... hes gonna knack the seals on his plughole
Psychiatrist calls for lithium to be added to water (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1202/1224308474582.html)
I'll never be a fan of the forced mass-medication of populations. First they want us to drink fluoride to protect our teeth, now they want us all on lithium as well. Maybe they should put Ambre Solaire in the water supply to protect us from sunburn, too. How about Gaviscon to stop us getting indegestion or flavourings to encourage more kids to drink the stuff? Or, and this is just my crazy idea, we could make sure our water supplies are the purest they can be for
everyone's benefit, hire more good doctors and leave the drugs in the pharmacies for those who need them. Call me old fashioned, I know.
Although, I must thank this article for making me aware of the fantastically named "Irish Association of Suicidology".
"I feel like Obama's an Illuminati puppet... it's basically dragged this country down into the worst it's ever been. The White House used to be, everybody looked up at the White House and America and everything, and now I think it's like a house of shame."
-The guy from Korn.
Pfft... Stupid evil twin...
Seriously? Wow, that must suck...
Yes. Yes, it does.
Tankie, Shark- everyone in my care, be they living in residential or supported independent or at home has had their benefits frozen or cut. Everyone now has to pay a 'fair contribution' to their own care (meaning frozen benefits are given, then clawed back with the other hand) with threats of legal action if this isnt paid. One to one hours have been cut drastically as well, and more people are being forced out of residential care and into supported living becauee the staffing support costs are so much lower, whether they are ready and able or not.
Social Care has seen its funding cut and frozen across the board, denying service users the level of support they have, up to this year, come to expect. I havent had a pay rise in three years because of this.
SBT
I wonder how this will effect Cybie2000's plastic-fantastic collection.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 03 December, 2011, 04:35:00 PM
Psychiatrist calls for lithium to be added to water (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1202/1224308474582.html)
I'll never be a fan of the forced mass-medication of populations. First they want us to drink fluoride to protect our teeth, now they want us all on lithium as well. Maybe they should put Ambre Solaire in the water supply to protect us from sunburn, too. How about Gaviscon to stop us getting indegestion or flavourings to encourage more kids to drink the stuff? Or, and this is just my crazy idea, we could make sure our water supplies are the purest they can be for everyone's benefit, hire more good doctors and leave the drugs in the pharmacies for those who need them. Call me old fashioned, I know.
Although, I must thank this article for making me aware of the fantastically named "Irish Association of Suicidology".
Thing is lithium occurs naturally in drinking water, it is what inspired this study in the first place:
QuoteIn 1990, a study in 27 counties in Texas found lower rates of not only suicide but also homicide and rape in those where the drinking water contained lithium. In 2009, research in Japan found lower suicide rates in areas with lithium in the water.
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/shortcuts/2011/dec/05/should-we-put-lithium-in-water
So it isn't like people are suggesting adding anything toxic and unnatural to the water - if the idea is to bring the levels of Lithium in drinking water up to the natural occurring amounts in places this appears to be beneficial, then I wouldn't have a problem with that. My grandfather was given lithium (and some ECT) and it completely changed him for the better, the only pity was it didn't happen sooner.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 November, 2011, 01:20:29 PMThe first occurrence of fluoridated drinking water on Earth was found in Germany's Nazi prison camps. The Gestapo had little concern about fluoride's supposed effect on children`s teeth; their alleged reason for mass-medicating water with sodium fluoride was to sterilize humans and force the people in their concentration camps into calm submission.
OK I'll have to ask for an reliable source on this. People have checked the material used to support this claim and found they just don't contain the material they are said to. Someone has flagged this up for Alex Jones but no further clarifications have emerged:
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=78380.0
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 November, 2011, 12:06:04 AM
Bit of a shot in the dark here, but over at The Intel Hub (http://theintelhub.com/2011/11/13/writers-take-action-now-this-is-war/) they're asking for writers to help with "this ongoing information war (intel battle) of propoganda pushed onto the masses by the corporate controlled media". Well, obviously, this being a comics forum and me being a complete wannabe comic writer and all, I was thinking comic strip.
Long story short, any conspiratorially minded artists out there fancy butting heads to see what we can come up with? Ain't comics supposed to be subversive?
Go for it, just make sure the information is properly sourced as it'd be easy to dismiss otherwise. ;) Although looking at their front page they are into Chemtrails, eco-facist One World Governments, FEMA death camps and the Illuminati.
So, if it was something like this:
www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/02/comic-book-corruption
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brought_to_Light
Then that'd be a good idea (I definitely think there is a place for an ongoing political comic) - comics are a good way to get complex information across, the UN publish comics and Will Eisner worked with the US Army on using them for training purposes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS,_The_Preventive_Maintenance_Monthly
The Arctic farts:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 14 December, 2011, 02:44:30 AM
The Arctic farts:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html
The only reason I don't want to handle the truth with this story is because the implications are pretty depressing. :(
But to lighten the mood:
http://mygrimmbrother.blogspot.com/2009/11/cthulhu-blowing-off.html
Yeah, I literally refuse to engage with this one. I don't think I could get up in the morning if I did - my first thought was 'well that's that then'. And that's without even thinking about the comments at that link.
I expect a screaming Bob Peck to appear any minute. Maybe this needs another thread: 'Truth you can't slag Sharky about because it makes you cry'.
Quote from: TordelBack on 14 December, 2011, 09:07:28 PM
Yeah, I literally refuse to engage with this one. I don't think I could get up in the morning if I did - my first thought was 'well that's that then'. And that's without even thinking about the comments at that link.
All I had going through my head was this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTifdoKXoxM
Quote from: Emperor on 14 December, 2011, 10:01:34 PMAll I had going through my head was this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTifdoKXoxM
at least you have
Alien3 to look forward to...
Conspiracy Kids! It's Christmas -or whatever pagan holiday you celebrate:
(http://truthertoys.com/Toys/BohemianGrover_ToySet.jpg)
(http://truthertoys.com/Toys/Eugenics_IQ_Evaluator_Guillotine.jpg)
(http://truthertoys.com/Toys/Letgo_GeorgiaGuidestones.jpg)
http://truthertoys.com/toys.html
Good move, you've just ruined hsarky's Xmas - how is he supposed to look surprised now when opening his presents? How??
Why are they all so obsessed with sodomy?
Ah don't knock it etc.
2 times is a charm??
Once bitten twice shy??
Someone's not listening to old proverbs.
http://kotaku.com/5874706/report-mass-suicide-threats-at-xbox-360-plant
Quote from: George Dread on 14 January, 2012, 02:30:50 PM
2 times is a charm??
Once bitten twice shy??
Someone's not listening to old proverbs.
http://kotaku.com/5874706/report-mass-suicide-threats-at-xbox-360-plant
I wouldnt be at all surprised if microsoft made that into a game for the 360
Quote from: SpetsnaZ99 on 14 January, 2012, 03:59:19 PM
Quote from: George Dread on 14 January, 2012, 02:30:50 PM
2 times is a charm??
Once bitten twice shy??
Someone's not listening to old proverbs.
http://kotaku.com/5874706/report-mass-suicide-threats-at-xbox-360-plant
I wouldnt be at all surprised if microsoft made that into a game for the 360
Top (Yourself) Trumps?
So, this SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill, any thoughts?
It seems to me that this is merely an attempt to introduce censorship through the back door.
Let's take this very forum and hypothesise a bit...
This thread (and others) contain some pretty inflammatory posts which, if true or even partially true, may cast serious doubts upon the honesty and integrity of official governmental and corporate bodies which the Powers that Be don't like. How to erase such posts so that only official and officially approved news and information are accessible? In the case of this board, it's now dead easy to censor it. All they have to do is look for any copyright infringement - maybe a Dredd v Batman pic in the Art Comp thread or a Dante Does She-Hulk tale in the Short Story comp or a copyrighted unicorn paining in That Thread. Any of these items are now "legitimate targets" for lawyers to attack and close down or block 2000ADonline and impose hefty fines on the website's owners. Sly, isn't it? Your own personal website could be shut down for the same reason if you, say, posted a video of your wedding and there happens to be a copyrighted song playing in the background or you post a photo of yourself on holiday at Disneyland where there happens to be someone in a Mickey Mouse suit in the bakground.
One of the spurious claims made in support of SOPA is that pirating movies is costing Hollywood a fortune in revenues, but this is almost certainly not the case. Very few Hollywood movies make a profit in themselves through theatrical releases, most of their profits come from back-end sales (DVDs, CD soundtracks, TV revenues, merchandising etc.). Hollywood Accounting Demystified. (http://thehollywoodeconomist.blogspot.com/2010/07/hollywood-accounting-demystified.html)
Also, who are the so-called criminals making money out of illegal downloads? In my experience, the people who rip and post CDs and DVDs and software on torrent sites do so without charge. Indeed, most posters actually purchase the DVD/Software/CD out of their own pocket and then rip and post movies/songs/software for free as per the altruistic spirit of the internet. When was the last time anybody paid for an illegal download? If a Harry Potter movie rip is downloaded 10,000 times the movie companies make the outrageous claim that they've just lost 10,000 DVD sales which is blatantly untrue.
I've also read reports that people who download movies and songs, on the whole, wouldn't buy the things they download if they weren't available as torrent files and that many of those who do download illegally are also the most likely to purchase music legally as well, as these reports on music piracy claim:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4718249.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4718249.stm)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009...buy-more-music (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009...buy-more-music)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...l-1812776.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...l-1812776.html)
There is also the argument that copyright infringement hampers creativity - but this is another blatant lie. SOPA discourages things like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXWEM4gZhg4) and this (//http://) and even this silly thing. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnEW8uui8Ak)
This whole idea approaches the piracy "problem" from completely the wrong angle - from an accountancy angle. What the entertainment companies should do is turn the "problem" over to creative people and not bean counters. Ideas off the top of my head include posting free to download DVD rips to sites like Pirate Bay but include a couple of ad-breaks in the movie just like you get on TV, or post edited versions with discount codes so that genuine DVDs can be ordered at discount, or include a number of free DVD rip downloads with every cake of blank DVDs purchased - DIY DVDs would save the companies millions in manufacturing costs! I'm sure there are far cleverer people who could come up with far better ideas. Even charging $1 for a DVD rip would generate some income for the companies involved and cost very little to set up. I'm sure the folks on this very forum could come up with even better ideas than mine.
So, with all these possibilities available, why does the entertainment industry want to go down the route of fining a Minnesota woman $222,000 for illegally downloading 24 songs? (Or did I just answer my own question there?) Michael Mozart (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7DkrsCCQ_A) may have the answer...
Anyhoo, what do you think? SOPA good or SOPA bad?
SOPA bad. Those of a piratical bent will quickly and easily cirucumvent any provisions (e.g. http://lifehacker.com/5869665/desopa-for-firefox-bypasses-sopa-dns-blocking), while legitimate sites will be subject to spurious and largely undefendable attack from corporate opportunists, with the added concern (as Sharky points out) of this potentially being used to censor unwanted opinions.
As long as two computers can still connect to each other over distance, this type of broad-measure bill will only have negative effects on the resource that is the Web.
All I know is that I can't edit my Numb3rs episode summaries until tomorrow. WHEN I'M AT WORK.
Write them out in Notepad and upload them later.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 January, 2012, 12:24:53 PMOne of the spurious claims made in support of SOPA is that pirating movies is costing Hollywood a fortune in revenues, but this is almost certainly not the case. Very few Hollywood movies make a profit in themselves through theatrical releases, most of their profits come from back-end sales (DVDs, CD soundtracks, TV revenues, merchandising etc.). Hollywood Accounting Demystified. (http://thehollywoodeconomist.blogspot.com/2010/07/hollywood-accounting-demystified.html)
I think you missed the point of that piece, films often make tonnes of money, for the distributor who is often owned by the parent of the production company. It is the production company that usually operates at a loss because they sold them film to the distributors (i.e. themselves) for more than they'd ever recoup:
QuoteHere's a basic example of Hollywood Accounting: A studio makes a movie. The studio distributes the movie itself, and although the distributor is technically a separate company, they both belong to the same parent company. Also, the distribution arm sets whatever fees it wants. If they want to charge themselves eleventy quintillion dollars for distribution, they totally can. Then, even if the film earns billions of dollars in box office receipts, they're still technically in debt (to themselves) and thus haven't turned a profit.
Sound ridiculous? It happens all the freaking time. David Prowse, the guy who was in the Darth Vader costume in the original trilogy of Star Wars (before being ousted by that douche Hayden Christensen in the special edition) has never been paid for Return of the Jedi because it hasn't turned a profit after nearly 30 years. That's after dozens of home video and theatrical re-releases. (All the merchandising money goes to Lucas directly, of course.)
Similarly, someone leaked Warner Bros.' accounting sheet for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix onto the internet, showing that the film that had grossed about $1 billion worldwide had lost $167 million on paper.
Winston Groom, the writer of Forrest Gump was told that the film based on his work wasn't profitable. Of course, he got the last laugh when they came to him asking if they could turn the sequel, Gump and Co. into a film as well, and he reportedly told them, "I cannot, in good conscience, allow money to be wasted on a failure." In other words, "Go fuck yourself."
www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/6-things-the-film-industry-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about.php/all/1
Its why you need a sharp lawyer to get you a cut off the gross profits not the net.
Dodgy accounting practices don't, however, have much bearing on downloading, although it is difficult to muster up much sympathy if they are using these practices to screw the writers and actors out of money.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 January, 2012, 12:24:53 PMIf a Harry Potter movie rip is downloaded 10,000 times the movie companies make the outrageous claim that they've just lost 10,000 DVD sales which is blatantly untrue.
However, I have heard of small publishers of rare, foreign DVDs not releasing some films because the core audience all pretty much have copies they've downloaded long ago. Now it might be that the core audience are also the ones happy to shell out for a good quality DVD with plenty of extras but they just aren't prepared to take the risk in some cases.
Of course, it could be argued that, like fansubbed manga, being able to get hold of a dirty (sometimes unsubbed) copy of a rare foreign film actually helps expand the market and creates a larger audience, but it is difficult to quantify.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 January, 2012, 12:24:53 PMAnyhoo, what do you think? SOPA good or SOPA bad?
Bad, of course.
Quote from: Emperor on 18 January, 2012, 03:48:49 PM
I think you missed the point of that piece, films often make tonnes of money, for the distributor who is often owned by the parent of the production company. It is the production company that usually operates at a loss because they sold the film to the distributors (i.e. themselves) for more than they'd ever recoup:
Thanks, Emps - I had indeed missed that point. Now that I've read the extract you've posted you can probably hear my teeth grinding even from over there in your rubber room*.
Banks do similar things with loans and who foots the bill? Look in the mirror. Ooh, they make me so mad...
*where you keep your collection of condoms.
So if 2000 AD goes completely online and people start to download it from an illegal free place on the web, forcing it out of business, then that's okay ;)
People may say they would buy it from Rebellion but I bet the figures would decline, especially after the end of the first years subscription runs out.
Before the loons attack, I'm just pointing this out even though it won't affect me as I'm paper all the way :thumbsup:
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 18 January, 2012, 04:33:10 PM
So if 2000 AD goes completely online and people start to download it from an illegal free place on the web, forcing it out of business, then that's okay ;)
People are already illegally downloading 2000AD - the question would be if they be buying the prog in the first place, if it tempts them into picking up their favourite stories in trade form and if it actually got them buying the prog on a regular basis. Unfortunately, it'd be impossible to quantify and I doubt anyone would turn up here and say "I was downloading it but it got me hooked and I had to subscribe" ;)
It might suggest that adding a number of extras to trades could help shift extra copies (like DVD extras), but then that could add to the price which might inhibit sales...
The only upside is that 2000AD is suitably obscure and with a hardcore fanbase that it probably doesn't make a huge dent in the bottom line (I suspect the Big Two are really hurt by it), unfortunately it is the smaller companies that get hurt the most by online piracy, so any loss of readers is potentially a big problem.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 January, 2012, 12:24:53 PMThis whole idea approaches the piracy "problem" from completely the wrong angle - from an accountancy angle. What the entertainment companies should do is turn the "problem" over to creative people and not bean counters. Ideas off the top of my head include posting free to download DVD rips to sites like Pirate Bay but include a couple of ad-breaks in the movie just like you get on TV, or post edited versions with discount codes so that genuine DVDs can be ordered at discount, or include a number of free DVD rip downloads with every cake of blank DVDs purchased - DIY DVDs would save the companies millions in manufacturing costs! I'm sure there are far cleverer people who could come up with far better ideas. Even charging $1 for a DVD rip would generate some income for the companies involved and cost very little to set up. I'm sure the folks on this very forum could come up with even better ideas than mine.
I do think the eventual result will be to monetise this whole area, with something like a YouTube model which would largely cut the pirates off at the knee. Unfortunately, it does rely heavily on ads and that can be dependant on the economic climate - I doubt ad-supported models look quite so attractive at the moment, although people are still doing quite nicely on YouTube at the moment (http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/jan/13/earn-money-youtube-viral-video?newsfeed=true). Perhaps the answer might be a fixed fee for unlimited access (like Marvel's service or Netflix UK that launched this week) or restricted access (like LoveFilm offering you a range of subscriptions), but once you start charging people start turning towards the illegal downloads.
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 18 January, 2012, 04:33:10 PM
So if 2000 AD goes completely online and people start to download it from an illegal free place on the web, forcing it out of business, then that's okay ;)
That's the thing though, CF - I had a horrid financially-enforced break from 1749 to Prog 2012, and every week I was aware that I could get my fix digitally, for free, before I'd normally even have been able to get it from the shops. I didn't succumb, because it would have been Wrong, but SOPA wouldn't be able to do a thing about that availability. As it is half the WiFi places I log on from already block the major torrent sites, but it just takes a tiny bit of vpn fiddling or proxy software to circumvent (e.g http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_use_tor_access_blocked_sites_work_and_school) .
What SOPA
would do (if extended to these jurisdictions) would be to make places like this forum legal minefields that no sane company (or Rebellion) could risk being associated with - it would punish the good folk of the internet, and mean nothing to the bad, except to give them further so-called moral justification.
Well SOPA does sound pretty bad when you put it like that.
I sometimes feel I am genuinely alone in that If somebody makes something that I quite want, I buy it. Or I wait until it comes on the telly. Just because I can get it for free, I don't. I'm a digital prog man now and I buy it through the proper channels. even though that means I''m six weeks behind the paper prog.
And sure, film companies might not need the money. And Tom Cruise won't starve because I rip MI4. But all those people laid off at the Odeon, the DVD store and the comic publisher that folds because of a 5-10% drop in income caused by piracy do.
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 18 January, 2012, 06:18:33 PM
But all those people laid off at the Odeon, the DVD store and the comic publisher that folds because of a 5-10% drop in income caused by piracy do.
I don't think you're remotely alone there, and there's no denying (some of) those consequences, but it does come down to how you tackle the problem, faced with relatively cheaply available technology that effectively replicates the DVD rental experience for free, but throws in no return date, no ads or FACT warnings, infinite availability and no parking issues - and I'd be fairly sure that
this isn't it, for the simple reason that it
won't.
When one thinks about the polycarbonate plastic (yet another oil-based plastic) used in CD and DVD production, the time they take to break down and release toxins in landfill or drift out to sea to choke the fish, the energy involved in manufacturing, the fuel needed for transportation and the inefficiency of recycling (which, like most recycling processes should more honestly be called downcycling) etc. - it could be argued that music and movie piracy is actually good for the environment...
Quoteit could be argued that music and movie piracy is actually good for the environment
No, I think you'll find that digital distribution is good for the environment.
And yes, that will have an effect on the Odeon and DVD shop staff as well, but my point was about the loss of income due to piracy, not other factors.
Piracy of movies and such has been around for years, it was even possible to buy copied VHS, CD's or DVD's from car boot sales many years ago. I personally think a big reason for online piracy is that many people have become hacked off or disenchanted with the volume of crap movies that appear at the cinema that do not live up to the trailers or the promotion of junk music over the top of real talent. Next time your in town look around at the number of shops closing down citing main reasons such as online shopping as the problem. The internet is the real problem not piracy. Im hoping that this year someone will organize and file a class action lawsuit against the actual movie industry.
The BPI claims albums sales are dropping year on year because of illegal downloading. The BPI. That's the British PHONOGRAPH Industry. Clearly they fear all this new-fangled technology.
I remember taping music off the radio. That Involved a bit of skill and effort, because ye had to stop the recording before the DJ started their gormless blabbering. These kids who just click on something and download it, they don't know they're born so they don't.
just a interesting thing I wanted to add to the SOPA talkes have any of you seen theas vids they shead some realy interesting fackits onto the whole thing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzS5rSvZXe8
Quote from: Cyberleader2000 on 19 January, 2012, 11:32:16 PM
just a interesting thing I wanted to add to the SOPA talkes have any of you seen theas vids they shead some realy interesting fackits onto the whole thing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzS5rSvZXe8
What an annoying
prick; whatever he's saying, it's hard to listen to when constantly shouted at. As you say,
Fackit.
Quote from: Cyberleader2000 on 19 January, 2012, 11:32:16 PM
just a interesting thing I wanted to add to the SOPA talkes have any of you seen theas vids they shead some realy interesting fackits onto the whole thing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzS5rSvZXe8
Thanks for that, some food for thought there.
I think that one of the biggest problems the corporate world (not just the entertainment and software corporations) have with the internet is that they don't quite know how to own it or add it to the ever-growing list of Things That Must Be Monetized. In the past, a corporation could move in and open a coal mine somewhere and use their profits to defend it because it was an actual physical thing. The internet exists, surely, but at the same time it doesn't really exist at all. It's a conundrum for them.
Most corporations operate unsustainable linear systems (for an explanation of the fundamental flaws of the current system, see the excellent 21 minute documentary The Story of Stuff (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8)) which are based on actual physical resources. In theory, then, the internet is perfect for them because a single item can be distributed virtually infinitely. An .avi file can be downloaded millions of times but a lump of coal can only be used once. I think this is the realisation that's driving them mad and they're desperate to either profit from or stop it.
Governments don't like the internet because it means anyone can do research and come to their own conclusions about whether their policies or claims are beneficial or truthful or not. Widespread communication and access to information undermines governments' usefulness and gives actual people the opportunity to sort their own problems out without having to go cap-in-hand to Lord Devlin Rockerchild or Prime Minister Connalot. Information is power and they don't have the monopoly on that any more so they have to use other means to maintain their control - which recently has been the artificially engineered financial crisis (heh, you just knew I was going to get that in
somewhere, didn't you?).
The internet can't be annexed with guns or tanks and there isn't a big red Kill Switch somewhere, so they have to resort to other means like these SOPA and PIPA monstrosities. Make no mistake, this row is not about piracy any more than the war in Iraq is about liberating the Iraqi people. It's about control, pure and simple.
A Brief History of Humanity
"You can't use oxen to plough fields! How will I earn a living?"
"Screw you! I want my profits! Learn to yoke oxen or bugger off and do something else!"
"You can't use tractors for farm work! How will me and my horse earn a living?"
"Screw you! I want my profits! Learn to drive a tractor or bugger off and do something else! If you get hungry, you can eat your damned horse!"
"You can't use robots to build tractors! How will I earn a living?"
"Screw you! I want my profits! Learn to operate a robot or bugger off and do something else!"
"You can't use a printing press to make books! How will I earn a living?"
"Screw you! I want my profits! Learn to work the press or bugger off and do something else!"
"You can't use radio to entertain the masses! How will I earn a living?"
"Screw you! I want my profits! Learn to talk into a microphone or bugger off and do something else!"
"You can't export my job overseas! How will I earn a living?"
"Screw you! I want my profits! Emigrate or bugger off and do something else!"
Now, however, the boot is on the other foot...
"You can't use the internet to distribute stuff for free! How will I make my profits?"
"Screw you! I want my freebies! Learn to use the net or bugger off and do something else!"
And it's about bloody time, if you ask me.
Have you heard of the Missionary Church of Kopimism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionary_Church_of_Kopimism)?
Quote from: pops1983 on 20 January, 2012, 01:50:12 AM
Have you heard of the Missionary Church of Kopimism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionary_Church_of_Kopimism)?
Heh, that's cute.
In a minor instance of synchronicity I was reading the Bible the other day, specifically Proverbs, and noticed that there's a lot in there along the lines of knowledge being more important than gold or silver. The link you just posted and this Intellectual Property thing made me realise something.
If it wasn't for Intellectual Property Infringement, humanity wouldn't have got anywhere.
As an example, let's imagine that it's silly-ago BC and Dogface Niptwanger the caveman has just invented the flint knife. He's very happy with it because it's the most useful tool he's ever discovered. What would Dogface do if his neighbour, Catarse Bumslapper, copied his idea? Demand payment? Kill Catfarse? Lock him up? I doubt it, because two people with flint knives can do a lot more for his tribe than just one. The copying spreads, to the betterment of not just his tribe but all the surrounding tribes. Furthermore, Catfarse may even improve the technology by adding a bone handle, finding a better way to sharpen flint or even pointing out that there are large quantities of flint over by Angrygod Mountain just lying around on the floor.
How about if Dogface visits Wormdick Hamstergreaser in another village and hears a particularly lovely song or a story that properly explains how to avoid tigers in an insightful and easy to understand way - would Dogface be penalized for copying this story and telling it to his own tribe? Upon hearing this copied story, Rabbitfondler the Bard might easily adapt it to teach the children of the tribe about avoiding bears, bees and belligerent badgers.
In modern times, an artist or writer might get an idea for his best work ever after being inspired by the content of an illegally copied movie, book, painting or song. A software student might invent the Best Graphics Program Ever after fiddling with an illegal copy of Photoshop. A poor engineer might come up with an engine that runs on water after illegally tampering with a patented carburettor.
Without copying, then, we'd still all be living in caves and carving up uncooked antelopes with our teeth. Maybe Kopimism is the way to go, after all!
Let's say Dogface visits the Village of Lambrape Shiteguzzler and they bludgeon him to death with clubs. Then they follow his tracks back to his village. Luckily Catarse Bumslapper has refined Dogface's flint knapping method, and now the tribe has spears and bows.
There's a bloodbath, but the Bumslappers come out on top. It's good thing Dogface didn't share his knowledge.
Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind, I see
Is in the hands of fools (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhuG2hCJtsk)
I chuffing love King Crimson
You've hit the nail on the head in your rant Shark. The only way for "them" to maintain control now is through economic censorship. The choice we have nowadays is not between authenticity and inauthenticity -- but rather, can we afford to buy the authentic product -- and not be stuck with something cheap and adulterated as the alternative to something that is real.
Quote from: pops1983 on 20 January, 2012, 03:17:14 AM
Let's say Dogface visits the Village of Lambrape Shiteguzzler and they bludgeon him to death with clubs. Then they follow his tracks back to his village. Luckily Catarse Bumslapper has refined Dogface's flint knapping method, and now the tribe has spears and bows.
There's a bloodbath, but the Bumslappers come out on top. It's good thing Dogface didn't share his knowledge.
Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind, I see
Is in the hands of fools (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhuG2hCJtsk)
I chuffing love King Crimson
This assumes that neighbouring communities were always at war and that mankind is basically violent and uncooperative. Whilst this is true in some cases, especially when you get religions or rulers (the 'fools' of the song) involved, in my experience people the world over are intelligent enough to cooperate for mutual benefit. If this were not so, there'd be no roads, bridges, trading, laws, hospitals, fire services, etc.
Of course I'm not so naive as to think that mankind doesn't have an aggressive bone in his body but I do believe that the overwhelming majority of people in this world, if given the choice, would favour peaceful cooperation over bloody war. Our biggest failing is that we look to 'leaders' for answers, even if those answers are insane, because it means that we don't have to take responsibility for the decisions they make. The internet gives us the tools to come up with our own answers, make our own (foolish or wise) decisions and take responsibility for them.
It's too late for Dogface, though, as he'd be forgotten by history. Catarse, on the other hand, would probably be elevated to Leader and had cave paintings made of him - giving Batcheese Frogsquasher the deranged shaman the opportunity to whisper in his ear about what the invisible pixies who live in the clouds want. Bloody Catarse - I knew he was a wrong 'un...
I Blame The Pixies :lol:
Quote from: wonkychop on 20 January, 2012, 11:13:15 AM
You've hit the nail on the head in your rant Shark. The only way for "them" to maintain control now is through economic censorship. The choice we have nowadays is not between authenticity and inauthenticity -- but rather, can we afford to buy the authentic product -- and not be stuck with something cheap and adulterated as the alternative to something that is real.
You're right there, I think. In the past slaves wore their chains around their necks but today we keep them in our bank accounts and wear symbolic chains (collars and ties) instead. As Bill Hicks used to say, "you think you're free? Try going anywhere without money and see how f***ing free you are."
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 January, 2012, 01:02:44 PMIn the past slaves wore their chains around their necks but today we keep them in our bank accounts and wear symbolic chains (collars and ties) instead.
Sorry Sharky, but this grossly misrepresents the reality of slavery. The level of freedom to operate within an admittedly restrictive economic system is completely different from having absolutely no choice in what you do 24-7, who you spend time with, who you breed with or whether you do so at all, and being physically and mentally brutalised. Pseudo-capitalism stinks, but ties are a damn sight more comfortable than slave collars - and you can take them off at 5.
Shark does call them symbolic chains though Tordell -- mind forged manacles if we're going to become allegorical.
I know what those pixies would be whispering in Frogsquashers ear.... "Tell Cartarse to invent taxes now."
Quote from: wonkychop on 20 January, 2012, 01:19:03 PM
Shark does call them symbolic chains though Tordell -- mind forged manacles if we're going to become allegorical.
^ This. ^
Also, just for fits and giggles:
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money." – Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England (appointed 1928).
Some time ago I noticed soething odd on a BBC report about the Occupy Movement in London. The piece began with the camera showing a lovely full moon in the sky above St Paul's Cathederal - the problem was that there wasn't a full moon that night. I can't prove this as I never took proper note of it.
Today I came across this: Channel 4 continuity announcers mispronounce The Simpsons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hS7be8PqktI).
Are the good people in the media (there are some - they're not all corporate vampires) trying to tell us that all is not as it seems? Or is it just a prank?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 January, 2012, 01:37:24 PM
Quote from: wonkychop on 20 January, 2012, 01:19:03 PM
Shark does call them symbolic chains though Tordell -- mind forged manacles if we're going to become allegorical.
^ This. ^
Not buying it. I accept many of your observations in the global banking system and the other self-interested systems of control, but you're invoking a comparison with
slavery, symbolic or otherwise - there's never been a slave who (knowing what the choice entailed) wouldn't swap being
owned for a job and bank account. Slavery is an indescribably obscene condition of being, and the ahistorical analogy diminishes the suffering of many millions of people, and in the process undermines your otherwise sensible points.
Sorry to be a po-faced jerk, but this is one of my (howling troop of) pet bugbears, and invokes an involuntary 'you don't know you're born' reflex.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 January, 2012, 02:22:16 PM
Some time ago I noticed something odd on a BBC report about the Occupy Movement in London. The piece began with the camera showing a lovely full moon in the sky above St Paul's Cathederal - the problem was that there wasn't a full moon that night. I can't prove this as I never took proper note of it.
Found it: BBC News report, 17 October 2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15331459)
Moon phase for 17 October 2011 (http://lunaf.com/english/moon-phases/lunar-calendar-2011/10/17/)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 January, 2012, 02:22:16 PM
Some time ago I noticed soething odd on a BBC report about the Occupy Movement in London. The piece began with the camera showing a lovely full moon in the sky above St Paul's Cathederal - the problem was that there wasn't a full moon that night. I can't prove this as I never took proper note of it.
Today I came across this: Channel 4 continuity announcers mispronounce The Simpsons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hS7be8PqktI).
Are the good people in the media (there are some - they're not all corporate vampires) trying to tell us that all is not as it seems? Or is it just a prank?
Channel 4 the people who brought you
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad President of Iran
alternative Christmas message >:(
Quote from: TordelBack on 20 January, 2012, 02:28:23 PM
Not buying it. I accept many of your observations in the global banking system and the other self-interested systems of control, but you're invoking a comparison with slavery, symbolic or otherwise - there's never been a slave who (knowing what the choice entailed) wouldn't swap being owned for a job and bank account. Slavery is an indescribably obscene condition of being, and the ahistorical analogy diminishes the suffering of many millions of people, and in the process undermines your otherwise sensible points.
Sorry to be a po-faced jerk, but this is one of my (howling troop of) pet bugbears, and invokes an involuntary 'you don't know you're born' reflex.
I get what you're saying, Tordels, I really do - but I'm not talking about the whips and chains method of slavery, I'm talking about the lack of freedoms, rights and opportunities angle.
At least in historical times slaves were looked after (to a point - nobody wants crippled, starving slaves because no work would get done and no profits made). These days, you have to pay the banks for your own (adulterated) food and water, your own shelter, transport (people are now paying up to 1/5 of their income to pay for transport to and from work!), clothing, justice and, well, everything while you work to increase not your profits and freedoms, but the elite's. If you don't submit you don't get flogged but you do get evicted or imprisoned or excluded from society.
A chained slave had no option but to be a chained slave.
An economic slave (as we are) has no option but to be an economic slave.
Yes, our condition of slavery could be catagorized as "velvet slavery" but it is slavery nonetheless. We may not be trapped in the wild, transported to foreign lands and bought and sold as commodities, but we are exploited as a resource and bullied, brainwashed and sometimes even bribed into complying with the will of our self-appointed masters. If we don't play along, what happens to us? We have access to the aspects of our society that make life bearable removed by having our money cut off (our chains shortened). In this sense, every pound coin we own is a link in our own personal chains - the more links you have, the further you can go and the more you can do.
As I'm sure you're aware, the number of bonded ('classical') slaves in the world today remains as high as 12 million to 27 million - but are we not 'bonded' to the banks in a subtler but still thoroughly oppressive way?
And you're not "po-faced jerk", at all. It's good to air your views and argue with me. Hell, if I was right all the time I'd be even more of a tosser! As the esteemed Mr Godpleton once told me, "Shark, if you ever get religion you'll become truly insufferable." Even I can't argue with that!
It's not about the the relative degree of comfort experienced - it's about being owned by another person. I may have colossal debts owned by banks that mean my financial incarnation is effectively their chattel until I die, but those debts aren't me.
For me there is a fundamental difference between Hobson's Choice and no choice - we may not like the alternatives offered to us by non-conformity with the economic environment we find ourselves in, but there are alternatives, other than death. A slave needs permission to marry, to have children, to go for a walk, to eat; a slave can be compelled to fuck, to kill, to do anything their owner desires: to have no ability to exercise free will and remain alive. That's not the condition you and I live in. Life on Earth is always going to be tricky, we're always going to be bound by our need to acquire calories in all their forms, we're always going to have to interact with societies and systems we disapprove of. For all that the oppressive picture you paint is a true one, the world we inhabit is exponentially, fundamentally better than the condition of slavery - although as you point out, this improved condition is by no means universal.
And of course I always enjoy discussing these things with you - otherwise, I wouldn't do it!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 January, 2012, 02:32:29 AMHow about if Dogface visits Wormdick Hamstergreaser in another village and hears a particularly lovely song or a story that properly explains how to avoid tigers in an insightful and easy to understand way - would Dogface be penalized for copying this story and telling it to his own tribe?
So the song has value. Wouldn't it then be an idea to reward Hamstergreaser for having the skill to produce such a song? If he got enough back because of it, he could devote more of his time and energy to making more songs that may further benefit everyone? Otherwise he'd have to spend most of his time hunting and gathering. Specialisation requires compensation.
If no one paid Alan Moore for writing his stories, he would have had to spend his days working in a gentlemen's beard care shop (and entering Britian's Got Beards in the hope he'd get some prize money for winning the "you could lose a badger in that" category) and writing in his few spare hours he could carve out in the evening.
I see the above as an argument
for online piracy, not one
against SOPA.
Quote from: Emperor on 20 January, 2012, 04:04:42 PM
So the song has value. Wouldn't it then be an idea to reward Hamstergreaser for having the skill to produce such a song? If he got enough back because of it, he could devote more of his time and energy to making more songs that may further benefit everyone? Otherwise he'd have to spend most of his time hunting and gathering. Specialisation requires compensation.
The point here for me is that it doesn't really
matter if someone copies Hamstergreaser's song. If his songs are good, and the tribe wants more, they will give Hamstergreaser the time he needs to write/sing them, and not some other guy - unless that other guy is better at singing it, in which case tough. As Dave Sim* once said, he doesn't care if someone else starts producing their own
Cerebus stories, because he's confident that the audience will think his and Gerhard's version is the best, and any extra attention generated will only benefit them by comparison.
*A shining example of rational thought, I'm sure you'll agree.
Of course most people in the Western world are not "economic slaves", Sharky, we have total freedom to choose the amount of mortgage we take out, or the amount of rent we pay, whether to drive a car or not, how much we spend on clothes, whether to eat cheese on toast or caviar, how much we want to spend on holidays, what schools/universities to go to, what career paths to follow, where we live, where we visit, etc. etc. All that we have to do, to avoid becoming "economic slaves", is be responsible. If people of sound mind take on debts that they can't afford to re-pay and never think of the possibility of a rainy day, that's their fault. Of course, there are groups of people who through illness or disability lose the ability to be their own masters, but we are in a minority. It's no comparison to real slavery at all.
Quote from: Old Tankie on 20 January, 2012, 04:34:30 PM
we have total freedom to choose the amount of mortgage we take out, or the amount of rent we pay,
Not true - If I object to my rent or mortgage what are my options? I could build a shelter in the woods and live off the land, but I would get moved on because the woods belong to someone, or I didn't have planning permission, or I'd be prosecuted for poaching. It's incredibly difficult to opt out of financial slavery.
Well there is a lot of people in the U.K. who say they've winded up as wage slaves. Maybe they're not talking literally when they say this, but it's a common enough expression. To compare your economic function in our society to that of a slave may not be an objective correllative, but it is a symbolic use of language and it's valid to use language symbolically, because that's all it's comprised of : symbols.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 20 January, 2012, 05:29:12 PM
Quote from: Old Tankie on 20 January, 2012, 04:34:30 PM
we have total freedom to choose the amount of mortgage we take out, or the amount of rent we pay,
Not true - If I object to my rent or mortgage what are my options? I could build a shelter in the woods and live off the land, but I would get moved on because the woods belong to someone, or I didn't have planning permission, or I'd be prosecuted for poaching. It's incredibly difficult to opt out of financial slavery.
No they wouldn't regard you as a slave if you did that ,but as a criminal , it's true.
I think I'll have to accept that 'slavery' has suffered the same fate as 'rape' in becoming severely devalued as a term. For me, slavery will always mean being utterly deprived of agency in your own life, which is pretty much the worst thing I can think of. The context I'm seeing it used here is having to do unpleasant work just to have food and a roof, or to play The Man's game. Those are absolutely not the same thing AFAIC, but I'm happy to acknowldge that I'm out of touch with what the word now means.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 20 January, 2012, 05:29:12 PM
Quote from: Old Tankie on 20 January, 2012, 04:34:30 PM
we have total freedom to choose the amount of mortgage we take out, or the amount of rent we pay,
Not true - If I object to my rent or mortgage what are my options? I could build a shelter in the woods and live off the land, but I would get moved on because the woods belong to someone, or I didn't have planning permission, or I'd be prosecuted for poaching. It's incredibly difficult to opt out of financial slavery.
Of course you can't object to your rent or mortgage once you're in the property but, hopefully, you figure out before you move in whether you can afford the rent or mortgage. If you can't afford it, you go somewhere that you can afford.
Quote from: Emperor on 20 January, 2012, 04:04:42 PM
Specialisation requires compensation.
Why?
A hunter/gatherer is a specialist. The compensation he gets is that the other members of his tribe also specialize: The medicine man if he hurts himself when he's out hunting; the storyteller to entertain him around the fire at night after a long day wrestling with mammoths; the grandparents looking after his kids; the builder making him a hut; the brewer making him a cup of wine etc., etc. The other specialists are compensated by being allowed access to the food the hunter provides. This is the compensation afforded by being part of a society. Uh-oh, Communism!
If the hunter has a bad run, will the others exclude him from their specialized services? Well, so long as he isn't a crap hunter (in which case he'd admittedly be forced to find another way to make himself useful) he'd still have access to all the benefits of his society without penalty. If you miss a day's work today, however, you get penalized whether it's a one-off incident or not by having your salary docked (your chain shortened) and your access to the compensations of society curtailed.
The compensation you speak of here alludes to
monetary payment dished out by those who have the money to dish out. Therefore those with the money decide whether you can afford to be a writer or not, whether you can afford to go on holiday or not, whether you can afford to eat good food or cheap crap, whether you get first, second or third rate public services or even the type of home you can live in and whether you can afford to improve it or not.
Your example of Alan Moore having to prostitute his beard because nobody pays him for his stories is true, yes, but only under the modern economic paradigm. In a freer world, such legitimate artists might not get paid for their works at all but instead be allowed access to all the things he reasonably needs through the bounty of society in return for gifting his works to the wider world. There are more than enough resources in this world for everyone to have a decent life and for society to look after everyone in it, even the Hairy Wizard. Yes, of course, some people will always abuse that if given the opportunity but that is what laws are for. Today, most of the resources of the country - YOUR country - have been tied up by the monied classes and it is they, not society's members, who decide who has access to what and at what level. This is slavery.
Quote from: Old Tankie on 20 January, 2012, 04:34:30 PM
Of course most people in the Western world are not "economic slaves", Sharky, we have total freedom to choose the amount of mortgage we take out (based on the amount of money we can convince other people to pay us), or the amount of rent we pay (based on the demands of the property owner, employer and banks regardless of the type of home we require), whether to drive a car or not (based on whether we are gifted enough money to buy one and pay the associated taxes or not and whether we're allowed a license), how much we spend on clothes (which we are compelled to buy from 'reputable' manufacturers, some of whom rely on slavery to make them cheap and sell them expensive and also because nudity is illegal) , whether to eat cheese on toast or caviar (here you are correct - we all have the freedom to starve should we so desire), how much we want to spend on holidays (provided we can afford the transport and are allowed access to a passport by our masters), what schools/universities to go to (depending on where you live and what you can afford or graciously be lent), what career paths to follow (provided you don't get ideas above your station), where we live (provided we can pay enough to move), where we visit (provided you can pay the entrance fee and the place isn't restricted), etc. etc. All that we have to do, to avoid becoming "economic slaves", is be responsible. If people of sound mind take on debts that they can't afford to re-pay and never think of the possibility of a rainy day, that's their fault (except for governments and bankers, who can borrow willy-nilly and then come to us with a cap in one hand and a truncheon in the other when it all goes breasts aloft for them). Of course, there are groups of people who through illness or disability lose the ability to be their own masters, but we are in a minority (so, as long as it's only a handful of damaged, economically inactive human beings who are robbed of their freedom through no fault of their own, that's okay? What would you say is the upper limit for people who it's all right to deprive of their freedom in this manner? 25? 100? Half a million?). It's no comparison to real slavery at all. (You're right - it is no comparison, it's exactly the same thing.)
Quote from: wonkychop on 20 January, 2012, 05:39:06 PM
No they wouldn't regard you as a slave if you did that ,but as a criminal , it's true.
Here we get into the difference between Natural Law and Statute Law and how that has been subverted into another form of oppression and removal of freedom. We've all been brainwashed to think that these two are the same things when they are absolutely not. Did you know, for example, that nobody is required to pay a fixed penalty parking or speeding fine? That fixed penalty notice is not an order to pay (only a judge, after a trial, can order you to pay anything) but an
invitation to pay? You actually have 72 hours to politely decline that offer. Similarly, a police officer cannot arrest you for anything other than a Common Law crime (causing
actual harm or loss) unless you agree to being arrested. When a police officer reads you your rights and asks, at the end, if you understand - he's using the legal meaning of understand, which does not mean comprehend but 'stand-under' - i.e., "do you agree to be bound by the rights I have just read you and waive your Natural Common Law Rights?" As soon as you say yes, you've agreed to be arrested and accept any punishment the statutory system invites you to bear.
Quote from: TordelBack on 20 January, 2012, 05:54:17 PM
I think I'll have to accept that 'slavery' has suffered the same fate as 'rape' in becoming severely devalued as a term. For me, slavery will always mean being utterly deprived of agency in your own life, which is pretty much the worst thing I can think of. The context I'm seeing it used here is having to do unpleasant work just to have food and a roof, or to play The Man's game. Those are absolutely not the same thing AFAIC, but I'm happy to acknowldge that I'm out of touch with what the word now means.
I can agree that "slavery" is a strong word to apply in this case, but I won't stop using it. To me, it's like the difference between carefully murdering someone with a sniper's rifle and killing a pedestrian with a car whilst drunk. In the former example the murder is deliberate but in the latter it is a consequence. Either way, it's still murder.
Phew! My fingers are aching!
Quote from: Old Tankie on 20 January, 2012, 06:33:31 PM
Of course you can't object to your rent or mortgage once you're in the property but, hopefully, you figure out before you move in whether you can afford the rent or mortgage. If you can't afford it, you go somewhere that you can afford.
But, once you're in the property, what's to stop the landlord or bank from upping the money demanded of you irrespective of your ability to pay?
Quote from: Old Tankie on 20 January, 2012, 06:33:31 PM...hopefully, you figure out before you move in whether you can afford the rent or mortgage. If you can't afford it, you go somewhere that you can afford.
This rather assumes that everything remains roughly the same, and you can always afford what you could afford.
To give you an anecdote (and this is in no way intended to fish for sympathy, it just happens to be the case I know best!) but when my wife and I bought our very modest home in a fairly shitty area, we took a mortgage for about 2.75 times our combined salaries, in professional roles that we'd been in for about 10 years at that point, and well under the 6 times we were offered. We kept things low because neither of us believed the good times would last forever, and we wanted a repayment we could work with if one of us lost our job or decided to stay home with kids. Our combined income is now, 7 years later, 1/3 of what it was. Or to put it another way, we have a mortgage of about 9 times our family income, and our house is worth about 1/2 what we owe. How were we were supposed to know that we would end up this far in the shitter? And we would be far from unique, even in our circle of friends.
Sorry, TB, I was generalizing there, which is probably not the right thing to do. I just get frustrated when people, like Sharky, compare the present situation in our islands with boat loads of people in chains being forcibly taken from their homelands and transported across the Atlantic to a life of living hell.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 January, 2012, 06:41:38 PM
I think I'll have to accept that 'slavery' has suffered the same fate as 'rape' in becoming severely devalued as a term. For me, slavery will always mean being utterly deprived of agency in your own life, which is pretty much the worst thing I can think of. The context I'm seeing it used here is having to do unpleasant work just to have food and a roof, or to play The Man's game. Those are absolutely not the same thing AFAIC, but I'm happy to acknowldge that I'm out of touch with what the word now means.
I can agree that "slavery" is a strong word to apply in this case, but I won't stop using it. To me, it's like the difference between carefully murdering someone with a sniper's rifle and killing a pedestrian with a car whilst drunk. In the former example the murder is deliberate but in the latter it is a consequence. Either way, it's still murder.
[/quote]
I don't think the use of the word slave inappropiate at all. If members of our society go around regarding themselves as masters, then there will be other portions of this group who will regard themselves as slaves. It's basic Hegelian/Marxism logic. It's on the whole symbolic language -- the reality outside of the image of master/slave dichotomy is different. Chaotic perhaps, certainly more dynamic.
I know what your position is Tordel. Maybe if we called ourselves prisoners of the system rather than as slaves, this would sound more reasonable to your ears?
Quote from: Old Tankie on 20 January, 2012, 07:00:55 PM
I just get frustrated when people, like Sharky, compare the present situation in our islands with boat loads of people in chains being forcibly taken from their homelands and transported across the Atlantic to a life of living hell.
As I wrote:
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 January, 2012, 03:09:18 PM
We may not be trapped in the wild, transported to foreign lands and bought and sold as commodities, but we are exploited as a resource and bullied, brainwashed and sometimes even bribed into complying with the will of our self-appointed masters.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 January, 2012, 02:22:16 PM
Some time ago I noticed something odd on a BBC report about the Occupy Movement in London. The piece began with the camera showing a lovely full moon in the sky above St Paul's Cathederal - the problem was that there wasn't a full moon that night. I can't prove this as I never took proper note of it.
It seems I may have been wrong about this, sorry:
(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p147/the_legendary_shark/bbc_moon_17-10-2011.jpg)
If a country/community -or possibly planet- is completely and reasonably incapable of paying back its monetary debt/bribe ever due to the collapse of the speculative bubble which inflated the price of its necessities/luxuries beyond all reason; could those bearing the brunt the most -most of whom who did not indulge- via ever increasing taxes and ever decreasing essential services be considered debt slaves to the functionless bankrupt creditor/institution but whom by law must be paid?
Since it's not a means to an end whom does it ultimately serve, who the master, who the slave?
Good question.
I'd argue that nobody is served in the long run. The richer they get, the more they fear us. The poorer we get, the more we hate them.
The cycle must be broken and a more equitable solution found for everybody.
I'd suggest starting with 3 fairly easy steps:
1) Outlaw the private issuance and control of debt/currency and return that power to the people where it properly belongs.
2) Outlaw fractional reserve lending and use publically created money to back the high street lending banks with non debt-based currency.
3) Instigate a Truth and Reconcilliation process.
It's not just the 99% who are trapped in this Godawful situation, it's all of us.
tl;dr
tbh; dc
That was meant for everyone. Not everything is about you, jerkpoop.
Yes it is.
Get a room lads
Yeah, stop fuckin' in the street.
Who are the masters who are the servants? By today's standard the master is the one who orders the sewers cleaned --- the servants are the ones who go down to the sewers and get their hands dirty. The master is dependent on the servant to carry out this task for him --- anyone with a dependency, is figuratively speaking, a slave.
Slave to alcohol, slave to drugs , slave to women...etc... Who are the masters who the slaves?
any one with a dependency is a slave....or a victim.
If your unemployed you cant choose your job you have to get a job, or you dont get benefits. if you need somewhere to live you have to accept the rent that the landlord states (and they do increase the rent whenever they like, scheming gits) most rents are pretty standard even if its a shithole. Choice! you dont have a choice. As Bill Hicks once said "Go back to bed, America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control. Here, here's American Gladiators."
Choice! my arse...
We are told what to do and how much we have to pay for the joy of doing it. What they dont like is when someone does something free but they should be paying for it then it becomes worse than rape, murder or assault
Quote from: SpetsnaZ99 on 21 January, 2012, 11:49:02 AM
We are told what to do and how much we have to pay for the joy of doing it. What they dont like is when someone does something free but they should be paying for it then it becomes worse than rape, murder or assault
I'm sorry the promises made to you regarding a land of milk and honey didn't pan out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W67H4k-Asf8
I'm officially out of this discussion.
Oh that's a shame Tordel.
We do get some choice spetzna and that's to "stop rutting 'til we figured out this food air deal" to paraphrase Hicks.
When it comes to governments we don't seem to have much choice "'cos it don't matter who you vote for the government always gets in"-- to paraphase Willy again.
Quote from: pops1983 on 20 January, 2012, 09:33:13 PM
Get a room lads
We've got one - it's called the Rowdy Yates Block Citizens' Yap Shop and it's free for all to visit on a Wednesday night! (See the "Wednesday Night Chat" (http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php/topic,21832.1275.html) thread for details!)
Courtesy of The Shameless Plug Department.Quote from: wonkychop on 20 January, 2012, 10:06:06 PM
Who are the masters who are the servants? By today's standard the master is the one who orders the sewers cleaned --- the servants are the ones who go down to the sewers and get their hands dirty. The master is dependent on the servant to carry out this task for him --- anyone with a dependency, is figuratively speaking, a slave.
I think it's the coordinators who order the sewers cleaned and the workers who go down to the sewers and get their hands dirty. Both are perfectly valid and vital roles in our society. The masters are the ones who purchase the sewer system and then tell the coordinator and the worker that their jobs are being axed to increase 'efficiency' - or, more accurately, profits.
Quote from: SpetsnaZ99 on 21 January, 2012, 11:49:02 AM
We are told what to do and how much we have to pay for the joy of doing it. What they dont like is when someone does something free but they should be paying for it then it becomes worse than rape, murder or assault
The first part of your statement I can broadly agree with however there has to be some limit on earnings which is reasonable, affordable and adequate. Under the present profit-driven system these criteria have been skewed by the murderous rush for ever increasing profits, which is driven largely by inflation.
If we were to adopt the first two of the suggestions I made earlier and allowed governments instead of private corporate banks to create the money, the problem of profits would be severely curtailed. In the case of the sewers it would work like this:
The government collates all the information it needs to properly devise a country-wide sewer upgrade and upkeep project. From this information it could work out how many coordinators and workers are needed, the costs of materials and equipment and so on and so forth. It then goes to the recently nationalized (in this example) Bank of England and gets it to create (from nothing) the amount of money needed to pay for this project. That money is then spent on the project, which could be to a single nationalized sewer department, several private companies or a mixture of the two. The money is therefore
spent into society on something that we all need. That money then starts circulating around society through normal channels - companies to workers to shops to banks to taxes etc and none of it needs paying back. The end result is a shiny new sewer system and an economy in which everyone is better off. (Under this system, taxes are used simply as a gauge of the economy and as a "pressure valve" to control the money circulating in the economy - if there's too much, taxes are raised and if there's too little, taxes are lowered. Under this system, inflation (and deflation) becomes a thing of the past as prices settle to an accurate gauge of a product or sevice's actual worth.)
Under the current system, everything happens in roughly the same manner except for one crucial and crippling difference: At present, the privatized Bank of England borrows the money from J.P. Morgan or Goldman Sachs (who create that money out of nothing, as the Bank of England would do in the previous example) and then that money is
lent into society meaning that every penny of it, plus interest, has to be paid back to these private banks. The end result is a second-rate, cheap as possible sewer system that leaves us all with bigger tax bills and inflation. (Inflation is the hidden tax - as the wages the coordinators, workers and contractors earned was originally borrowed and has to be paid back, every penny of it plus interest, and this has the knock-on effect of raising prices across the board because we're
all spending borrowed money, whether we've earned it claimed it or stolen it. Every penny of these wages has to be paid back to the banks who created the money out of nothing in the first place, plus interest. It is the interest that is the sole driver of inflation and the reason behind the desperate mantra of Growth at All Costs.)
Which one would you prefer?
The second part of your statement, comparing freedom with murder and rape is a little harder to swallow. You see, the corporations have the mirror of the problem we do - if their profits don't continually rise, they'll go out of business and get swallowed up by an even bigger corporation or lose shareholders to more profitable companies. This is because of rising taxes and inflation - the very problems that afflict us lowly mortals. Yes, they're rabid profit-hunters and often go too far in their pursuit of the Almighty Dollar, but it's the system that forces them to go that way, just as the same system forces us to do what we have to do.
Corporations are not inherantly bad or evil but are forced to act in the ways they do due to the forces I've just described. Return the money creation and control to the governments, resulting in debt-free currency, and inflation will be cut to practically zero and corporate taxes dropped to as little as one or two percent. Taxes on earnings, VAT on basic essentials, property taxes, car taxes etc can be axed altogether. Corporations could then work in a far more equitable manner because everything would cost less, or cost more or less its true worth. (Imports would still be expensive, of course, but only until the rest of the world adopts the same system and throws off the tyranny of the private global banks. There is a counter to this, of course, as we wouldn't need to charge import/export duties - or levy only a nominal fee to cover administration - so it would become much more profitable for the UK to act as an "international distribution point" for goods.)
Quote from: TordelBack on 21 January, 2012, 12:06:16 PM
I'm officially out of this discussion.
That's a shame, Tordels. I hope it wasn't something I said :(
I prefer the 1st suggestion shark. The question is : if the current system is so unpopular with it's participants (the masses), how has it survived so well, what sustains it?
I don't believe it's due the machinations of an elite few, but something more fundamental in the structure of the system.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 January, 2012, 02:31:48 PM
That's a shame, Tordels. I hope it wasn't something I said :(
Not at all Shark, I can just feel myself getting grumpy, and that's when it's time to do something else, rather than after the fact!
Quote from: wonkychop on 21 January, 2012, 03:07:33 PM
I prefer the 1st suggestion shark. The question is : if the current system is so unpopular with it's participants (the masses), how has it survived so well, what sustains it?
I don't believe it's due the machinations of an elite few, but something more fundamental in the structure of the system.
It started off small and was easy to manage and use. For politicians it was sold as a great system by the bankers because they could borrow what they needed (initially just for big projects like wars and National Health Services) and pass on the repayments to the next government elected to office, forever passing the costs forward. But as the debt and interest on the debt gradually increased, the government was forced to find ever more ways to make up the shortfall. At first with minimal tax increases and gradually by selling off state run industries and cutting back on services. We just find ourselves to be part of the generation living as the system reaches maximum bloat. We are living at the End of the Line, as it were and, as with all dying things, the system is fighting as hard as it can to survive. Best to just euthenize it quietly because it's in pain, now, and causing us all distress. Think of it as a tumour that's been growing at the heart of government since the 1600s and has now reached the stage where it needs to be cut out.
Quote from: TordelBack on 21 January, 2012, 03:45:56 PM
Not at all Shark, I can just feel myself getting grumpy, and that's when it's time to do something else, rather than after the fact!
Heh, no stranger to grumpiness I. Don't stay away too long, Tordels - your posts here always make me think.
I feel exactly the same shark. Only two days ago I told a woman who was knocking on front doors with a bible, that for me "the end of days" was that the capitalist system was finished, had failed, here in the west, and was not God's judgement on mankind. Hearing Cameron explicitly defending the capitalist system the other day in a speech of his just confirmed for me that capitalism was in the shit.
So I sometimes feel optimistic. But what about China? Surely it's just a matter of business as usual? The face may be different but the name's the same. :(
tl;dr
G + CD = H - A.
A?
OMG the internets geting worse basickily if like me you have used MegaUpload your scrued
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tD1yaE0GfQ&feature=youtu.be
Then you deserve to feel the full weight of the LAW Cyberleader2000.
I'll be quite happy to wave to all you criminals at the airport, as your flight to America's maximum security prisons await you on your arrival :wave:
thats not going to happen.
What? Him happily waving, or a flight to an American max security prison?
I'll wave when those extradition orders come through and our government caves in and sends the lot of you criminals to the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Then again, if you don't want to go to prison you can join Jammie Thomas-Rasset and receive a little fine :lol:
They're gonna need a bigger plane.
They're gonna need all the planes!
Its all a load of rot and hype. If i end up in court on a charge ill simply explain how frikin simple it is to stop piracy and if they dont understand ill ask them exactly what proof they have, then walk free.
As you are probably aware, there have been protests against the European ACTA bill in Poland (http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=WToxyRwd-I0). Now, Kader Arif, the "rapporteur" for ACTA, has quit that role in disgust over the process behind getting the EU to sign onto ACTA. "I will not take part in this masquerade," (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120126/11014317553/european-parliament-official-charge-acta-quits-denounces-masquerade-behind-acta.shtml) he said.
Sheriff handed own arse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpUjl4LvQM8&feature=youtu.be
How do you fancy having a privatized police force? Revealed: government plans for police privatisation (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/02/police-privatisation-security-firms-crime) (Guardian).
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Benito Mussolini. I bet the old dictator's giggling in his grave.
Quote from: mygrimmbrother on 23 January, 2012, 03:44:37 PM
They're gonna need all the planes!
Yes, they'll have a lot of fun trying to arrest and imprison a quarter of Internet users - CF's arm is going to get very tired from all that waving ;)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 January, 2012, 06:41:38 PM
Quote from: Emperor on 20 January, 2012, 04:04:42 PM
Specialisation requires compensation.
Why?
A hunter/gatherer is a specialist. The compensation he gets is that the other members of his tribe also specialize: The medicine man if he hurts himself when he's out hunting; the storyteller to entertain him around the fire at night after a long day wrestling with mammoths; the grandparents looking after his kids; the builder making him a hut; the brewer making him a cup of wine etc., etc. The other specialists are compensated by being allowed access to the food the hunter provides. This is the compensation afforded by being part of a society. Uh-oh, Communism!
Sorry a bit late but hunter/gatherer refers to the society and other than a gender-based division of labour (men hunt, women gather) they have little specialisation - brewing and building tend to be group activities in their spare time. However, if you look at one aspect of the examples you give - grandparenting that was a vital component in early human evolution, the less productive members of the tribe would look after the children when the men and women were out and they would be rewarded for this specialisation with food brought back by the hunters and the gatherers (although you would tend to find that they'd also be doing some of the gathering and processing of food so even then the specialisation isn't clear cut).
What you find is that with the introduction of farming and civilisation you also get increasing specialisation and more complex hierarchies, leading to a less egalitarian culture.
As it stands, if I chose to spend all my time making something and giving it away free with no attempt to find some way to get recompense for that effort, I'd starve.
Even if if we lived in a Communist utopia, people would be compensated by the state for doing less practical activities like enriching the cultural heritage of the state. It is just another way of compensating specialisation.
Who are you? Are you a human being or a person made of paper?
Meet Your Strawman: http://www.yourstrawman.com/ (http://www.yourstrawman.com/)
Iran - such a barren, featureless desert that it really won't matter if it gets bombed to buggery?
(http://i.imgur.com/HgWAe.jpg)
More. (http://imgur.com/a/AZLY9)
Photoshop!
tl;dr
Singapore has semi privatized its police force, very quietly,
now traffic police, half the guards at the immigration and all the banks are by one firm.
slow and gradual, seems to be the method.
CERITIS they call it, the firm.
ran and owned by a government funded and back private investment company.
one step closer to the world of robocop every day this country. living here but viewing at arms length is often quite :o ::) :-\ :-X an unusual experience.
There's generally a banker at the bottom of something sinister like this...
Certis CISCO's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certis_CISCO) parent company is Temasek Holdings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings) whose Chairman of the Board is S Dhanabalan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_Dhanabalan) who is also the Chairman of DBS Bank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBS_Bank) which is partially owned by HSBC and Citibank.
It's happening here as well, according to this document (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/interactive/2012/mar/02/contract-note-bidders-police-services)seen by The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/02/police-privatisation-security-firms-crime).
Private companies are being invited to:
(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p147/the_legendary_shark/private_police.jpg)
Has no one put 2 and 2 together.
This petrol crisis. End of the financial year.
Just an excuse to increase the coffers from the tax accumulated from the panic buying to make the yearly figures better.
Well its a good conspiricy theory to start anyway.
V
When theorising about conspiracies, it's best to think globally. This isn't about the taxes of a single country (taxes are just chains, they've already got us chained enough for now and the artificially induced 'financial crisis' is seeing to turning that particular screw).
A better conspiracy theory is to convince us that having a terrible place like Iran in charge of so much of our precious fuel is just going to keep causing problems like this. If 'they' hold true to their Diocletian 'Problem-Reaction-Solution' method, we'll be told that an unstable oil supply is the problem. Our reaction will be to beg them to do something to ensure this doesn't happen again. Their solution, of course, will be to bomb Iran into submission, thereby ostensibly solving the initial problem. This is, of course, merely a cover for them to move in and shackle Iran's people with the same debt-slavery under which we suffer.
There. That's a much better conspiracy theory altogether, don't you think?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 01 April, 2012, 12:52:06 AM
There. That's a much better conspiracy theory altogether, don't you think?
No.
The hurricane seasons in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mid-West States are caused by the weather machine that Stalin gave to Castro.
That's a better conspiracy.
It's simple, we passed peak oil in 2005 as predicted by geoscientist M King Hubbard* and now confirmed by declining world production since then. Iran has the biggest oil reserve left, everyone else wants it.
*In 1974, Hubbert projected that global oil production would peak in 1995 "if current trends continue". He also said that if there's an oil crisis in the meantime -in the 70's there was with OPEC- plus smaller discoveries made etc., it could be delayed by 10-15 years. He was fairly accurate.
Not sure I believe in the concept of Peak Oil. There's a hell of a lot of area underground. We're simply reaching the technological limits of getting to the easily accessible oil beneath the crust. How to pay for the next level of technology? Pretend oil's scarce thereby driving up the price and increasing profits.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 01 April, 2012, 01:18:18 AM
Not sure I believe in the concept of Peak Oil. There's a hell of a lot of area underground. We're simply reaching the technological limits of getting to the easily accessible oil beneath the crust. How to pay for the next level of technology? Pretend oil's scarce thereby driving up the price and increasing profits.
Well there's a problem. Do we invest loads of money in getting to this oil that may or may not be beneath the crust (for all we know, there could be deep swathes of oil beneath the Himalayas, there's just too much mountain in the way)? Or do we invest in alternate sources of energy production (e.g nuclear and hydrogen cells)?
I say
we, but
we don't really get a say in the whole thing do we? It's the people with the money (like, say, just as a random example, big petrochem prospectors) that decide
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 01 April, 2012, 01:18:18 AM
Not sure I believe in the concept of Peak Oil. There's a hell of a lot of area underground. We're simply reaching the technological limits of getting to the easily accessible oil beneath the crust. How to pay for the next level of technology? Pretend oil's scarce thereby driving up the price and increasing profits.
BP's situation in the gulf kinda proved that it's too hazardous and expensive trying to suck up the oil from that deep -technology is at its limit and there's less money/energy to develop it any further- and the lack of any oil discoveries that can last more than 15 years is a good indication too. It eventually means you need to put more energy in, than what you get out, which is pointless. The evidence of peak oil is all around us. I don't believe the earth has a
nougat centre and that there's such a thing as
abiotic self-producing oil as Alex Jones -infamous geo-physicist- likes to toot.
I see no evidence that peak oil
isn't happening and it was always the oil companies and governments who said it isn't and that always ties the so called establishment
oppposing conspiracy theorists in knots, trying to explain it away with magical thinking.
Quote from: pops1983 on 01 April, 2012, 01:32:58 AM
Well there's a problem. Do we invest loads of money in getting to this oil that may or may not be beneath the crust (for all we know, there could be deep swathes of oil beneath the Himalayas, there's just too much mountain in the way)? Or do we invest in alternate sources of energy production (e.g nuclear and hydrogen cells)?
There's no equivalent with oil in terms of energy production -it's almost 1:1- you used to punch a whole in the ground and it flowed out hence the earth's population exponential increase to 7 billion from 1 billion since the discovery of oil. No combination of alternatives can keep the standard of living we're used to as we still need oil to create the machines and materials that will enable
said alt-energy production. More links in the chain to get the energy we need is inefficient unlike the old days of just drilling a hole in the ground and bucketing
old fossil juice. Living standards will decrease, world population too, and infrastructure will be re-arranged to rely less on imports of food and energy, we have no choice in the matter.
Nuclear power took a hammering since
Fukushima with the result that Japan shut down all its reactors -over 50- therefore heightenening it dependence on imported oil. It also takes over a decade to build nuke-plants.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 01 April, 2012, 01:44:12 AM
There's no equivalent with oil in terms of energy production -it's almost 1:1
What? Nuclear reactions yield far more energy than any exothermic chemical reactions. By several orders of magnitude.
But I do take your point. These things need HUGE initial investment. It pays out in the long term, which would be good if we didn't live in a world where making a
fast buck takes precedent.
I would like to think it's not too late to do anything about it though.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 01 April, 2012, 01:35:32 AM
I see no evidence that peak oil isn't happening and it was always the oil companies and governments who said it isn't and that always ties the so called establishment oppposing conspiracy theorists in knots, trying to explain it away with magical thinking.
Look around you right now. How much oil can you see? Oil in the plastics and chemicals all around you. Oil that went into the mining of raw materials, refining those materials, shaping and combining those materials into products and the transport behind everything. As just one example, there's an average of seven gallons of oil in every tyre.
When I walk the dog, I see plastics everywhere discarded. Pop bottles and food wrappers accumulating in the irrigation ditches and fields, slowly breaking up (but not breaking down) into smaller and smaller fragments that do mischief to our world and its inhabitants. How much plastic do we just throw away? Plastic wrappers and bottles and electronics that don't last five minutes before getting thrown away. Many plastics can't even be recycled. It's waste, waste, waste - it's not peak oil that's the threat, it's peak waste. If we were to go back to re-usable milk bottles instead of throwaway plastics (which, incidentally, also contain minute traces of toxins) the oil companies would lose billions in plastic sales.
There is more than enough oil in this world (there is more than enough of everything we all need) but what there is not enough of is the will to use it wisely. One neat idea I heard of was ice cream wrappers made of gelatin which contain the seeds of rare wild flowers. Once you've eaten the ice cream you are encouraged to throw the wrapper away so that the gelatin will dissolve and the wild flowers will proliferate. There are many, many solutions like this out there but, unfortunately, they aren't going to make BP much money so they're not going to get behind them.
The time of the huge corporations, however, I believe is coming to an end. Once their greed and linear-production mindset is swept away we'll be quids in.
Quote from: pops1983 on 01 April, 2012, 02:11:11 AM
What? Nuclear reactions yield far more energy than any exothermic chemical reactions. By several orders of magnitude.
Indeed, but how much oil would it take to build thousands of nuclear plants before you get the energy and in the long term how safe would they be and how would we dispose of all the waste? It was far easier to sling together a few planks of wood and pump some liquorice. Building massive pie-in-the-sky energy projects to sustain our living standards comes from the same magical thinking as
exponential growth, markets recovering and other bullshit which as a philosophy is flawed, and nature is telling us in the straightest way possible that it's ending.
QuoteBut I do take your point. These things need HUGE initial investment. It pays out in the long term, which would be good if we didn't live in a world where making a fast buck takes precedent.
I would like to think it's not too late to do anything about it though.
It's too late if we all want a new generation iphone and car every year, we're not going to
tech our way out of this problem, we're fucking up the planet anyway so I think it's time for a
time-out indulging the
myth of progress.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 01 April, 2012, 02:20:41 AM
Look around you right now. How much oil can you see? Oil in the plastics and chemicals all around you. Oil that went into the mining of raw materials, refining those materials, shaping and combining those materials into products and the transport behind everything. As just one example, there's an average of seven gallons of oil in every tyre.
When I walk the dog, I see plastics everywhere discarded. Pop bottles and food wrappers accumulating in the irrigation ditches and fields, slowly breaking up (but not breaking down) into smaller and smaller fragments that do mischief to our world and its inhabitants. How much plastic do we just throw away? Plastic wrappers and bottles and electronics that don't last five minutes before getting thrown away. Many plastics can't even be recycled. It's waste, waste, waste - it's not peak oil that's the threat, it's peak waste. If we were to go back to re-usable milk bottles instead of throwaway plastics (which, incidentally, also contain minute traces of toxins) the oil companies would lose billions in plastic sales.
There is more than enough oil in this world (there is more than enough of everything we all need) but what there is not enough of is the will to use it wisely. One neat idea I heard of was ice cream wrappers made of gelatin which contain the seeds of rare wild flowers. Once you've eaten the ice cream you are encouraged to throw the wrapper away so that the gelatin will dissolve and the wild flowers will proliferate. There are many, many solutions like this out there but, unfortunately, they aren't going to make BP much money so they're not going to get behind them.
This is the point and still in no way does it disprove that world oil-production has decreased since 2005 and that the oil is becoming too hard to recover. If anything it supports the shite state we're finding ourselves in, we depend far too much on oil and it's getting too expensive to buy and we haven't made any preparations for the consequences. We've
used up 500 million years of stored photo-synthesised
recoverable energy in 200 years, we won't be getting that back too soon, what's done is done. Don't blame the coporations too much, we're all responsible.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 01 April, 2012, 02:20:41 AM
The time of the huge corporations, however, I believe is coming to an end. Once their greed and linear-production mindset is swept away we'll be quids in.
depends what is left.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 01 April, 2012, 02:28:38 AM
It's too late if we all want a new generation iphone and car every year, we're not going to tech our way out of this problem...
Well that's another problem. A lot of very bright people are employed as glorified toymakers
Quote from: pops1983 on 01 April, 2012, 02:40:14 AM
Well that's another problem. A lot of very bright people are employed as glorified toymakers
But it's part of the same prognosis.
Pixel pushers take note.
(http://www.collapsenet.com/images/gobackcartoon.jpg)
Heh, genius!
Quote from: vzzbux on 31 March, 2012, 10:16:26 PM
Has no one put 2 and 2 together.
This petrol crisis. End of the financial year.
Just an excuse to increase the coffers from the tax accumulated from the panic buying to make the yearly figures better.
Well its a good conspiricy theory to start anyway.
V
Thirty-two million pounds earned in fuel excise duty by 30/03/2012, according to the Irish Independent:
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/petrol-panic-shambles-earns-uk-treasury-32m-3066393.html (http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/petrol-panic-shambles-earns-uk-treasury-32m-3066393.html)
"(NaturalNews) (http://www.naturalnews.com/036010_Poland_Monsanto_GM_corn.html) A significant health freedom victory has taken place in the European nation of Poland, where all plantings of Monsanto's MON810, a genetically-modified (GM) variety of maize (corn) that produces its own built-in Bt insecticide in every kernel, have been officially banned.
"The decision comes after thousands of protesters recently took to the streets in demonstration of the undeniable fact that both MON810 and the chemicals applied to it are at least partially responsible for causing Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the worldwide phenomenon in which entire swarms of honey bees disappear or turn up dead..."
good news, but unfortunately pollen doesn't recognise national boundaries.
Exactly, DDD - this is why I'm so against GM foods.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 May, 2012, 02:39:30 PM
Exactly, DDD - this is why I'm so against GM foods.
That makes you a Nazi. Apparently.
http://www.nfuonline.com/Media_centre/2012/GM_wheat_trashers_equivalent_to_Nazi_book_burners,_says_NFU_President/ (http://www.nfuonline.com/Media_centre/2012/GM_wheat_trashers_equivalent_to_Nazi_book_burners,_says_NFU_President/)
I don't think I've ever posted in this thread before, so I'm quite proud that my first post is utterly rabid. ;)
But, GM companies lie and cheat. Remember Golden Rice (http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/failures-of-golden-rice/)? This GM rice was supposed to solve the problem of childhood blindness due to vitamin A deficiency in the developing world and was sold in massive quantities as such. Of course, Nature knows way more than man and it turns out that people would need to consume 12 times more Golden Rice than normal rice to satisfy the minimum daily adult requirements of vitamin A - actually making the problem of childhood blindness worse.
Of course, GM companies spend gazillions on lobbying governments around the world to play all this down and concentrate on the positives, which are mainly that it makes oodles of cash.
Frankencrops! (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428666.100-squaring-the-genetically-modified-crop-circle.html)
M.
Quote from: Mikey on 30 May, 2012, 03:56:47 PM
Frankencrops! (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428666.100-squaring-the-genetically-modified-crop-circle.html)
Indeed - it is too complex an issue to adopt a black and white position on, as there is a world of difference between Monsanto researching weedkiller-resistant crops with terminator genes, so they can boost weedkiller sales, and publicly-funded research into making aphid-resitant crops that will reduce the amount of weedkiller people need to use. From that article:
QuoteBy offering clear societal benefits, the wheat being tested was expected to be a game-changer. It produces a pheromone that should protect the crop from aphids, reducing reliance on insecticide in the UK and helping farmers in developing countries who may not have insecticide.
Rothamsted Research, the publicly funded institute conducting the trial, says it won't patent the technology and plans to make it available to farmers at minimum cost. To guard against contaminating conventional wheat in the area, buffers surround the trial zone.
In their letter and video, the scientists emphasise potential environmental benefits, invite protesters to meet them to talk about the science, and emphasise the need for freedom of enquiry. "We do not see how preventing the acquisition of knowledge is a defensible position in an age of reason," argues lead researcher John Pickett.
And also:
QuoteMark Lynas, an anti-GM protester in the late 1990s who now admits to a Damascene conversion to the merits of the technology in recent years, believes the protesters have misjudged the public attitude to GM this time round. "I think there are several reasons why GM is making a comeback. First, the blanket opposition to GM per se as a technology is obviously untenable in any scientific sense – there is no reason why it should present any new dangers in food, and, indeed, may well be safer than conventional breeding in crops."
...
But the world's priorities and needs are also fast changing, says Lynas. Issues such as climate change and population rise mean we just don't have the luxury any more as a species to ignore or decry this technology: "It is increasingly obvious – even to environmentalists like myself who had initial strong doubts about the technology – that unnecessarily ruling out crop improvement technologies harms the interests of humanity when our challenge is to feed over nine billion much richer people by mid-century on a similar cultivated area to today and without enormous increases in fertiliser and pesticide use."
Lynas believes that the opposition to GM is now more driven by ideological rather than scientific objections: "I think most of the remaining opposition to GM is really a displaced fear about big corporations dominating the food chain, which is why every argument about GM seems to be reduced down to one word: Monsanto. In which case we should be encouraging publicly-funded, open-source GM such as that conducted at Rothamsted and the John Innes Centre, not threatening to rip out their crops."
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/22/gm-crops-protesters-battlefields
Of course, facts and figures will never win the day when a lot of opposition is based on value judgements, but at least the scientists are trying this time:
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/27/gm-food-pr-strategy
$15,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO FRAUD EXPOSED in UK House of Lords (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbI0VoiqY04)
I haven't got 10:57 spare to watch that!
NECROPOST
Did you know that the confectionary industry lobbied congress do have US daylight savings extended? It moved from the end of October to the start of November, so there would be an extra hour of sunlight on the last day of October. THAT'S HALLOWE'EN. So kids would have an extra hour of trick or treating, with emphasis on treats, like Candy. It increased the profits (on a day which was already the most profitable for the industry) by $2BILLION.
Was it capitalist running dogs r us?
Quote from: pops1983 on 16 October, 2012, 09:32:59 PM
It increased the profits (on a day which was already the most profitable for the industry) by $2BILLION.
Hardly worth it.
Quote from: pops1983 on 16 October, 2012, 09:32:59 PMSo kids would have an extra hour of trick or treating, with emphasis on treats, like Candy. It increased the profits (on a day which was already the most profitable for the industry) by $2BILLION.
That's the first decent argument I've heard for the anachronistic nonsense of DST.
Quote from: pops1983 on 16 October, 2012, 09:32:59 PM
Did you know that the confectionary industry lobbied congress do have US daylight savings extended? It moved from the end of October to the start of November, so there would be an extra hour of sunlight on the last day of October. THAT'S HALLOWE'EN. So kids would have an extra hour of trick or treating, with emphasis on treats, like Candy. It increased the profits (on a day which was already the most profitable for the industry) by $2BILLION.
The US lobbying industry is proof that the best way to conceal your evil conspiracy of malign influence and manipulation is to conduct it in full view of the public.
Al last, the truth behind the money system is beginning to filter through to the mainstream media (well, Radio 4): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ngmjr
I was on a roll in the wrong thread talking about money and I've had a glass so here I am.
See, the thing with all this debt problem kerfuffle is that nobody's asking the really simple questions. You'll sigh and shake your head when I ask the questions because you know - of course you know, you use the damned stuff every day.
What is money? What's it for and where does it come from? Who owns it? Questions so simple that they're boring. Even a child would know the answer, wouldn't they?
The first answer's easy, money is a medium of exchange; vouchers for turning shoes into food or your labour into bottles of wine, which pretty much covers answer two as well.
Answer three turns out to be a little bit trickier. Where does money come from? The Bank of England, right? Well, some of it, yes, the BoE allows the Treasury to print bank notes in exchange for the sale of government bonds to banks and... But hang on, didn't that just get all very complicated all of a sudden? This is the magic trick, the Grand Illusion that has duped princes, emperors and governments and me and my father and his father before him. It's brilliant.
So, let's wind back a bit and examine an idealized view of money with all the warts sawn off. There is a society where paper money isn't used; instead they use gold, silver and copper coins. This society has charged its government with making sure that there are enough coins in circulation to make sure that nobody goes hungry. The government issues coins to its departments and servants and dependants and those coins spread throughout societies via shops and workers and tradesmen and banks and what have you. To continue the flow of coins through the system, the government extracts taxes - re-cycling the coins, helping drive them around society like blood through a body. Pure capitalism works well under this system as myriad small, medium and large businesses also pump coins around the system. Cool, sounds great. So, that's where money comes from, then? Well, no.
Paper money (and digital money) aren't really money. They're representations of money. This is that complicated magic trick again. Money used to be based on gold - used to be gold. Now, say some prince wanted to invade the lands of another prince but lacked the gold to pay for enough oomph. He would go to the goldsmiths' I was on about in the wrong thread and borrow some gold, or notes, on the understanding that the loan would be paid back in full, with interest. What the goldsmith has done is lent the prince a proportion of their own gold and also a proportion of other people's gold - passing it off as their own (because they have enough 'covering notes' to prove it). Win, loose or draw the debt must be repaid and the goldsmiths make a profit through lending wealth that wasn't theirs to lend. When trading in notes became more fashionable than trading in actual gold, this sleight of hand became ever easier to conceal. When money got digital, the concealment became a piece of piss. Nowadays, the banks can make a billion dollars as easily as opening up Excel and typing 1,000,000,000,000 into B6:E4.
One more little thought experiment, on the nature of interest. There are only three people in our village and only £3, which I own. Now, say you want to buy something from the other guy but he wants £1 for it. You could print your own £1 and give him that, but you opt instead to borrow one of mine. I say, sure, but I want 25p interest. Now, you have your thing, the other guy has his £1 and I still have £2. Where are you going to get the £1.25 from? You're going to have to borrow it from me because only I can afford to lend it to you. From this point on, so long as I keep the monopoly for printing money, I've got it made. I'll print some more and lend it to people in other villages so you can trade with them and pay me my £1.50 back. (Yes, it went up - late fees, I'm afraid.) If you don't pay me back, I'll just take £2.50's worth of your stuff (that compound interest is a bitch) which I'll use to back more loans to more people. Does the phrase 'Ponsey Scheme' ring a bell?
So, in answer to the question (finally!) where does money come from? The answer is that private banks create it out of thin air. All you have to do is promise to pay it back and it's yours. And with a flourish, the magician waves a pen and contract under your nose, converting your signature into a promise, your promise into numbers, numbers into debt. And you come out feeling happy because now you can have a car.
The fourth and final question was, who owns money? Not you, that's for sure. You might have a fiver in your wallet and enough numbers in your bank account to buy a new sofa, but that money isn't yours. It belongs to the banks who issued it because they only issued it on the understanding that someone else would pay it back and, as there is more debt than currency in the system this means that every £1 you 'own' represents around £97 or more owed by other people. If everybody suddenly decides to A) Pay off their debts or B) Default on their debts, all at the same time, that £5 in your pocket isn't going to be worth a mote of dust.
If money was gold coins then its worth would be far more stable and in that case, the money would actually be owned by you and it wouldn't matter nearly half as much how many other people were in debt.
See, money should belong to society for societies to use as they see fit - on stuff like roads or sewers or the National Health. You've got to start being mad about it. You've got to start asking why the fuck we're converting so many of our resources and so much of our time into these magic numbers just to balance the fictional accounts of people who already have more wealth than you could hope to expend in a thousand lifetimes.
Damn.
Empty glass.
Lots of dying bankers (one of whom seems to have shot himself eight times with a nail-gun) seems to be an appropriate form of necroposting...
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303277704579348591876659108?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303277704579348591876659108.html (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303277704579348591876659108?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303277704579348591876659108.html)
http://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/1430296/man-leaps-death-jp-morgans-headquarters-central (http://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/1430296/man-leaps-death-jp-morgans-headquarters-central)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2547343/Former-executive-Deutsche-Bank-hanged-Kensington-home.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2547343/Former-executive-Deutsche-Bank-hanged-Kensington-home.html)
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-30/russell-investments-chief-economist-dueker-found-dead.html (http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-30/russell-investments-chief-economist-dueker-found-dead.html)
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_25081462/under-investigation-american-title-ceo-dead-grisly-suicide?source=most_viewed (http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_25081462/under-investigation-american-title-ceo-dead-grisly-suicide?source=most_viewed)
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-13/ryan-crane-jpmorgan-equities-trading-executive-dies-at-37.html (http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-13/ryan-crane-jpmorgan-equities-trading-executive-dies-at-37.html)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 18 February, 2014, 04:42:44 PM
Lots of dying bankers (one of whom seems to have shot himself eight times with a nail-gun) seems to be an appropriate form of necroposting...
(http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/issue/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/from-batman-year-one-2-david-mazzucchelli.jpg)
(http://s25.postimg.org/u6xemeq0f/IMG_20140218_171340.jpg)
Lordy - even I think that's a creepy photo now...
Another Sudden Death of JPMorgan Worker: 34-Year Old Jason Alan Salais
(http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/02/another-sudden-death-of-jpmorgan-worker-34-year-old-jason-alan-salais/)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2014, 04:17:21 PM
Another Sudden Death of JPMorgan Worker: 34-Year Old Jason Alan Salais
(http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/02/another-sudden-death-of-jpmorgan-worker-34-year-old-jason-alan-salais/)
Mildly worrying since my brother works for JPM...
This is the lions weeding the weak out of the pride, so as long as your brother keeps out of the crossfire and doesn't ask any awkward questions he'll be fine, and probably be lucky enough to work for JPM for as long as it lasts - which is about a fortnight...
Seriously, though, I wouldn't worry. In an organization of that size, very few people know too much.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2014, 05:13:45 PM
This is the lions weeding the weak out of the pride, so as long as your brother keeps out of the crossfire and doesn't ask any awkward questions he'll be fine, and probably be lucky enough to work for JPM for as long as it lasts - which is about a fortnight...
Seriously, though, I wouldn't worry. In an organization of that size, very few people know too much.
So can you account for your whereabouts on the dates in question?
I was feeding.
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 24 February, 2014, 05:46:49 PM
So can you account for your whereabouts on the dates in question?
Hmmm. Is there any proof that it was actually
Sharky lurking behind his door the other week? I'm now imagining a nefarious long-game scheme involving tape-recorded retorts, supporting internet postings, and baiting officers of the Court into becoming witnesses for his alibis...
I'd tell you the truth but you can't handle it...
Bwa ha ha ha haaaaa....
On a more serious note, I find these deaths to be very sad. These were probably people who, for whatever reason, were ready to testify, go public or otherwise rock the boat. Any one of them might have been a potential Banking Snowden or at least an idiot with a big mouth.
Although I have many criticisms of the so-called 0.001%, I do believe that they have become as trapped by the system as the rest of us. If these people will kill millions of us for fun and profit, they would certainly kill one or two of their own to keep it secret. Imagine 12 Mafia families, with two thirds of the world's wealth between them, running every racket in the world worth running, using banks and corporations and governments and charities as fronts.
The system is set up to encourage sociopaths to the top positions; lured by money and power, their weaknesses exploited, often entirely unknowingly. They truly think they get to the top on merit, which of course they do, and not because the game is rigged to favour the morally flexible. They need rescuing from all this bullshit too - before the Ubermafia manipulates us into savaging them, and them us.
I wish I could suggest a way out for everybody.
The article states :
QuoteThe incidence of heart attack or myocardial infarction among men aged 20 to 39 is one half of one percent of the population, according to the National Center for Health Statistics and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, based on 2007 to 2010 data, marking this as another unusual death at JPMorgan.
- which means if they've got 200+ employees, it would be statistically unlikely if this DIDN'T happen.
It goes on to state:
QuoteThe New York Post pointed out in its reporting that there is "no other known link between any of the deaths" outside of the individuals working for the same company. In fact, there are numerous links: all of the men are in their 30s, while according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the expected longevity in 2011 for a U.S. male is 76.3 years.
This seems to me to be either a wilful distortion a boneheaded ignorance about statistics and probability.
I cannot see a single shred of evidence in that piece about anything untoward in any of these deaths. Conspiracy theorists really need to get some education about statistics and probabilities - coincidences are not that rare and don't prove anything.
the article accuses the press of
Quotean unseemly indifference to a worker's life and an alarming insensitivity to the grief stricken families still searching for answers.
- I think they need to look hard at themselves in that respect until they actually have something solid to report.
sloppy journalism of the highest order.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2014, 04:17:21 PM
Another Sudden Death of JPMorgan Worker: 34-Year Old Jason Alan Salais (http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/02/another-sudden-death-of-jpmorgan-worker-34-year-old-jason-alan-salais/)
In a consecutive series of 233 emergency visits by cocaine-using patients, 56% presented with cardiovascular complaints, including 40% with chest pain. A minority of these patients have acute myocardial infarction (MI) (≈6%),4,–,7 and overall mortality is low (<1%).3,–,5,8,–,10 However, cocaine is associated with a number of cardiovascular diseases, including MI, heart failure, cardiomyopathies, arrhythmias, aortic dissection, and endocarditis. Identifying patients with acute disease is challenging. This review describes the relationship between cocaine and various cardiovascular diseases, as well as appropriate diagnostic evaluation and therapies.
https://circ.ahajournals.org/content/122/24/2558.full
DDD, I know nothing about statistics - maybe you could work out what the most statistically likely cause of death might have been? Just in case, here's another one (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-24/another-successful-banker-found-dead) to add to the data set. As for waiting for something hard to report, the report is full of facts and devoid of speculation! There are names, dates, sources - unnamed sources are clearly flagged with titles like 'friend' or 'colleague'. (May I ask, did you consider any of the other points in this article or were you just content to investigate the yardstick against which this death was measured?)
Neither does the article make any direct accusations or present any so-called 'conspiracy theories.' It does make certain inferences and suggestions but the only words I could find in the entire article concerning the deaths were 'unusual' and 'bizarre' - which is hardly foaming rhetoric.
I think that posting that last sentence out of context was ill-advised. The article presents few assumptions, if any, so I think that maybe you might possibly want to read it again and then read some of the mainstream news articles on the same story. I bet you find lots of words like 'plunge' and 'horrified' and all sloppy reportage like that. Sorry, DDD, but I can't see how this article can be called "sloppy" at all, to me it seems fairly solid and sober. But then, I like the version of Bladerunner with the voiceover, so I'm not the sharpest critic on the web.
Here's that last sentence in context:
When a rash of sudden deaths occur among a most unlikely cohort of 30-year olds at a bank that has just settled felony charges and been put on notice that it will be indicted if it commits any further felonies; when it is currently under investigation on multiple continents for potentially committing criminal acts in the realm of interest rate and/or foreign exchange rigging — for the press to cavalierly call these deaths "non suspicious" before inquests have been conducted and findings released by medical examiners shows an unseemly indifference to a worker's life and an alarming insensitivity to the grief stricken families still searching for answers. (My emphasis.)
Sauchie, so your theory is that all bankers are drug addicts, therefore all unusual banker deaths are drug related? Or are you just presenting this as a possible cause? Or am I missing something?
No it doesn't make any direct accusations - because that would require them to back them up. But by presenting a series of incidents and quoting statistics about how many people of a certain age die of certain causes, it certainly IMPLIES that there is something dodgy going on. This is the number one tactic of poor journalism particularly among the 'conspiracy theory' sections of the press/web- present two unrelated facts, or some coincidental facts, in such a way as to imply a connection without ever explicitly saying so. Another is to pose everything as a rhetorical question ("Is it a coincidence that....?). The intent is clear, but they are like politician's weasel words in that they can hold up their hands and say "we never actually SAID there's anything going on."
They may have a point about the way that other publications have reported each individual death, but their primary motivation is not a critique of modern journalism. They are clearly implying that bankers are being bumped off so that they don';t spill the beans about something, but they present not one shred of evidence to support this.
as for the mainstream articles I've read a few:
QuoteLondon police said no arrests had been made and the incident was being treated as non-suspicious at this early stage. - reuters
Quote"No arrests have been made and the incident is being treated as non-suspicious at this early stage," London police said in a statement. - cnbc.com
(and many others quoting the same non-committal factual reuters press release.
A responsible journalist only reports what they know - in this what the police have said. If the police shouldn't have said that, it's a different issue.
This one about a different death: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10255199/Bank-intern-who-died-after-working-for-72-hours-felt-pressure-to-excel.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10255199/Bank-intern-who-died-after-working-for-72-hours-felt-pressure-to-excel.html) mentions a suspected epileptic fit and reports of high levels of stress and pressure put on interns, but does not make any insinuations about whistleblowers being silenced.
I quoted that last line because that is EXACTLY what I was feeling about the article in question and he phrased it as well as I ever could.
(the above typed hurriedly as I was leaving work, I'll expound more if you like)
Of course I must and do concede that the article in question comes from a website with a certain point of view, even the most cursory perusal reveals that - indeed, it is the website's stated aim to expose corruption in the financial world. I do not think it unreasonable, then, to find such 'biased' reportage. Such a site would hardly write articles which weren't intended to expose whatever corruption its reporters see or suspect they see. This is no different from any other media source in that regard; you don't get many articles about the vagaries of Leeds' dustbin service in the Guernsey Echo, for example. So yes, I'll take that bias as a given.
Hand in hand with that bias, however, must come a certain level of provisional respect. If the owners of the website are being honest about their credentials (which I have not checked, admittedly, a failure on my part), then they are experienced in the ways of the arena they have chosen to enter. And when one considers their target, the most powerful institutions on Earth bar None, can you wonder that they take care of their words?
As to the question of evidence, the evidence they present is circumstantial. But so what? The aim of this site is to expose corruption, not hang bankers. It is not a court, it is a forum. A forum where, ostensibly drawing upon experiences, perspectives and sources I have no knowledge of, they can point a finger and say, "that... see that over there? That needs looking at." Circumstantial evidence is often a very good starting point for any investigation; a missing pet, blood in the kitchen, an overturned flowerpot in the garden. Something's happened, but what? Pet ran off? Pet was stolen? Another animal got it? Some kids took it to play with? Your clumsy neighbour took it for a walk? Only further investigation will reveal the truth*.
Now, what I should really do with this article is chase down every source, double check every number, find diometrically opposed articles, remove the bias and blather from both to see what facts they agree on, personally contact as many of the direct participants for first-hand facts and perspectives as I can, put it all together in one big chart and then still not be sure exactly what's going on. But I was up early and I can't be arsed.
It is interesting that you post two practically identical links, arising presumably from the same Reuters source, and then suggest that journalists should only write what they know.
So far as I understand it, Reuters is basically a 'clearing house' for news - whichever journalist gets to the phone first can call the breaking news in. Maybe journalists get paid freelance to do this, maybe Reuters has dedicated journalists, maybe it's a mixture, maybe it's a voluntary thing - I don't know. I shouldn't think Reuters would accept reports from just anybody, though. But - what makes Reuters so infallible? Since when was Reuters the Word of God, not to be questioned? Reporting from Reuters press releases, however accurate, amended or wrong, is not, I don't think, reporting what you know - it's reporting what you've been told. Which, unless we were actually there, is all any of us can do, I guess. (And as this is the conspiracies thread, I was told by a reasonably reliable lunatic that Reuters is wholly owned by one certain European banking dynasty...)
Where was I?
*It was the clumsy neighbour, in case you were worried. Everything's fine.
Just read that article you linked to properly. Three things struck me:
1: Paramedics tried to resuscitate him but he was declared dead at the scene.
2: The Coroner has yet to perform an autopsy or pronounce cause of death.
3: Mention of the epileptic fit is unattributed and is not mentioned again, even later in the article where the events are explained in more detail.
The mention of the epileptic fit has a line to itself.
So it'll sink in. All that article actually says is that an intern died, nobody knows why although some people seem to have some ideas, the police aren't saying anything, the Coroner isn't saying anything and the bank's made it clear that it will Never be saying anything.
I think that reporter needs to take your advice, DDD!
Epilepsy?
Seriously?
Says who?
Friends, family and colleagues who knew he was an epileptic and thought it was the most likely cause?
That's an awful big assumption. I could easily assume that the first pc on scene had asked tbe paramedics what happened and one shrugged and said, "not sure. Epilepsy, maybe?" Or somebody showing the pc to the correct dorm room might have said it sounded like that, anyway. The pc tells his sarge, the sarge tells the repoorter, "but don't quote me, okay?", just to get rid of her. She has her explanation. People like simple explanations because they're usually the best kind. Or maybe it was from Anna Hill? Does she often share a by-line with Victoria Ward? Or is Anna the flatmate, given the byline for whatever reason? (For fans of neurolinguistic programming, note how seamlessly the end of the "epilepsy" sentence runs into the next sentence about the deceased's own online profile, creating a subtle reinforcing link to the unattributed epilepsy claim...) And the epilepsy has only "been claimed", not proven or even indicated - just claimed. Maybe his parents claimed it before boarding the 'plane they were 'understood' to be on. Maybe somebody bribed somebody to suggest it. Maybe it was aliens. Maybe God's Word. Maybe the paramedics were really assassins and... but no, nobody could afford to pull a stunt like that these days - you'd have to rob a bank! Er... Point is, it's a pretty big claim to just leave unattributed and unexplored, I think.
my last post was rattled off rather hastily. I'll try and put together some more coherent thoughts tomorrow about responsible journalism vs unhelpful speculation.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 25 February, 2014, 08:12:27 PM
Just read that article you linked to properly. Three things struck me:
1: Paramedics tried to resuscitate him but he was declared dead at the scene.
I don't understand why this struck you. As far as I understand*, paramedics will only attempt to resuscitate a patient who shows no vital signs, and will only declare the patient dead after those attempts have failed. Maybe you just mis-phrased it, mebbie you meant to say:
Quote1: Paramedics tried to resuscitate him but when that failed he was declared dead at the scene.
Yet there's nothing striking about that, is there?
See, this is why conspiracies annoy me. They employ just as much obfuscation and misdirection as the official lines they attempt to discredit.
QuoteThat's an awful big assumption. I could easily assume...
See?
*I'm no paramedic, but I've an Aussie mate who drives ambulances. Dude always has amazing stories.
He had a history of epilepsy.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/22/moritz-erhardt-merrill-lynch-intern-dead-inquest (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/22/moritz-erhardt-merrill-lynch-intern-dead-inquest)
QuoteThat's an awful big assumption.
Bigger or smaller than the assumption there's a secret worldwide conspiracy to secretly (or actually not because The Man has been found out) kill of bankers before they Tell The Truth..?
It struck me because the paramedics working on him might have recognised what an epileptic fit looked like if Erhart was still alive whilst treating him or what epilepsy induced death might look like. If so, why was not the quote something like "Paramedics attending the scene said that Mr Erhart seemed to have suffered an epileptic fit." Was Erhart dead before the paramedics got there or not? Was he dead or alive when he was discovered in the shower by his flatmate? Who called the paramedics and why?
I have only known a handful of people with epilepsy and don't know much about it but those people did claim to be able to feel an event coming on, sometimes hours in advance. They use this time to prepare, by taking medication or moving to a safe place, there to ride out the fit away from hard surfaces like sinks, baths, cookers and showers. Of course, there is always the possibility that the fit came on without warning, leaving Mr Erhart no time to get out of the bathroom or even the shower. I don't know how likely, or otherwise, that scenario is.
That's what struck me about the paramedics; that they'd have to wait for the police to turn up and give them at least a cursory report. When the police ask about the body, the paramedics aren't going to give a detailed forensic thesis nor are they going to just shrug and walk away. They're going to give an informed, professional opinion so the police know what to do next. What struck me was that the claim of an epileptic fit as causation would most likely stem from the paramedics attending - but the claim was made just once in the original article, was unattributed and not explored. So again I ask, who made that claim and under what circumstance?
So, according to M.I.K.'s link, three months later we get the coroner's report and Victoria Ward's uattributed claim seems to have been correct - findings pointed strongly to a seizure and a history of epilepsy was found. It is claimed that Erhart had a history of epilepsy and was taking medication for it. But he didn't tell anybody at the bank about it. Not his fellow interns (presumably so as not to appear weak?), not his supervisors, not even the H.R. department (whom surely you'd tell, so you know that, in the event of a seizure, somebody knows what to do?). Do interns need to go through any medicals before being taken on? Fill in medical history forms on which he, for whatever reason, decided to omit his history of epilepsy? How often did he take his medication? Did anybody ever see him taking it at work and ask what it was for?
So it is strongly indicated that Mr Erhart died of an epileptic seizure from a long-standing condition for which he was taking medication but that nobody knew about. And that's all. Nobody knows what brought the seizure on. No drugs were mentioned. No head injuries, so he didn't slip in the shower and have the trauma bring it on. No alcohol mentioned. No clear cause reported here. I note how both articles go out of their way to highlight working hours - because that's something we can all relate to. But of course there's no solid link. The bank is unrepentant, they need hard workers so of course they make it tough. Most survive it, though, and learn the value of hard work in the end. But we know that working too hard can make us ill and exacerbate existing conditions. Somebody mentions epilepsy and we naturally put two and two together - fatal seizure brought on by overwork. Both article suggest that without saying it - because it's the simplest and most understandable explanation. But is it the correct one?
Again, all this article really says is that a man died, nobody's sure how or why although a few people seem to have some ideas, and nobody's particularly concerned about it.
Ah, Rich - of course my views are an assumption. I see certain things in a certain way and assume they mean certain things. I do like to have my assumptiones challenged, though, which is why I'm enjoying this current discussion so much!
And yes, I am aware that we are discussing the actual death of a human being. If the exuberance of my language has served to belittle this truth then I apologise. It is not because I don't care that I blithely bang on about this but precisely the opposite - a human being is dead, one of us, and nobody's sure why. I think this man's death is worth more than a coroner's opinion that shit happens.
Just an observation - the pathologist at the inquest, Peter Vanezis, seems to be a heavy hitter. (http://www.petervanezis.com/high_profile_cases.html)
Am I the only one who really dislikes to misuse of V's mask by Anonymous?
I am ambivalent about the whole thing.
In the spirit of things, they should all make their own. Or make a mold from one and run off thousands of pirate copies and give them away free at events. Or dress like the Three Amigos, which is where the film-makers got the idea for their finale, which doesn't appear in the book.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 February, 2014, 09:12:24 AM
So it is strongly indicated that Mr Erhart died of an epileptic seizure from a long-standing condition for which he was taking medication but that nobody knew about.
Nobody
at the bank.
I knew someone who apparently died because of a seizure which happened without warning when he was somewhere unsafe. He didn't like telling people he suffered from it either.
Exactly my point, M.I.K., the article presents us with a lot of blanks but, by providing extraneous information about overwork and epilepsy, invites us to fill in the blanks from personal experience. As a result we come away from the article feeling that everything has been explained when, in fact, nothing or almost nothing has been explained.
Maybe it's nothing more than lazy reporting or sloppy journalism - but maybe it's not. The only thing I do seem to know for sure, and that we all seem to agree on, is that a man died and none of us knows for sure how it happened. That's really all I can take om either of those articles - the rest is all hearsay, speculation, opinion and propaganda (one of two articles, the one about the inquest if memory serves, actually rounds off with quotes about how great it is to work for the bank in question).
I expect more from my journalists.
RBS has lost all the £46bn pumped in by the taxpayer. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10664372/RBS-has-lost-all-the-46bn-pumped-in-by-the-taxpayer.html)
My guess is that this apparent poor performance is deliberate, a demonstration that governments and the public know nothing about banking and whenever they get involved it's always a disaster. Therefore the banks need more freedom to do what only they can do, free of pesky political interference. Imagine, your government in debt to institutions who make their own laws...
Another dead banker: http://nypost.com/2014/03/17/investment-banker-leaps-to-his-death/
The apparent phenomena of animal mutilations is quite well known but it would seem that this kind of thing also happens to humans as well. Richard D. Hall has made a documentary on the subject which is available here: http://www.richplanet.net/starship_main.php?ref=175&part=1
Be advised - this documentary contains photographs of dead and mutilated animals and humans.
I was going to post this link to a really cool NASA image of a "Light on Mars (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/00589/opgs/edr/ncam/NRB_449790582EDR_F0310000NCAM00262M_.JPG)" in the Science is Drokking Fantastic thread, but there's something not right with this image. Ignoring the "light", or reflection, or outgassing, or camera malfunction, or alien distress beacon, or Photoshoppery, or whatever it is - this image is way too blurry.
As a long-time Photoshop dabbler, I know what a skilfully weilded smear-brush looks like. And this image is FULL of them. Take a look at the mid left centre of the image and locate a strip of rock running from left to right, ending in a point. Look at it in a certain way and I see the suggestion of engineered geometry, almost like a railway track. Take note of how certain blurred areas seem to follow or partially obscure interesting shapes and suggested geometries. I can see the hand of man in several of the "brush strokes."
From the pointed end, the right, of the "railway," track down until you see the end of an "iron bar" and similarly look at the patterns of smearing around it. The sharp delineation between chaotic, gravel-strewn untouched Martian desert and the extremely smooth smeared areas. The unusual, cone-like shape just above and to the right of the "iron bar" that sticks clumsily out of a smeared area. The partially blurred double cylinders just south of the "iron bar".
Under the dark hill to the right of the image, as the ground turns darker before running into the foreground, south of those weird circular discs that look like mushrooms, look at the weird texture of the ground. Isolated sections of it seem to have a honeycombed texture, maybe like a root or fungus or "chicken wire" half buried in the sand - and half buried in Photoshop smears.
This image is FULL of these odd blurs. Maybe that is an alien distress beacon after all - or a 65 million year old Martian railway signal light - and NASA's Photosmearing out the debris field?
So instead of just not publishing anything, they published a shoddily 'shopped picture and hoped nobody would notice?
I have no idea. I simply think that this image is very intriguing.
The position of the light itself also seems "staged" to appear at a kind of crossroads. If that were on Earth, I'd be asking if that ramp might be the remains of an ancient ruin. Here, it must be a natural feature.
Curious also that such a poorly altered image should be about light - maybe somebody in NASA, one of the majority of good guys, IS trying to tell us something...
But, I don't know. I just know the smear brush when I see it - and there it is, all over the place.
It could be a composite of time-lapsed images from a moving camera, hence the odd blurred section. My money's on the blurs being done to cover up evidence of oil.
What I love about this kind of discussion is that one day it will be true. However, whatever the cause of these space oddities the last thing NASA is going to do at the moment is try to reduce public interest in its missions. Lost alien civilisations have to be worth a few extra quid in anyone's budget.
Not so sure, Tordels. NASA's been going for a long time so, say they discovered that the face on Cydonia was real decades ago and were made to cover it up, for example. Imagine a situation like the discovery of the Monolith on the Moon in Clark/Kubrick's 2001, covered up to "protect humanity from panic" - the usual excuses of power, who dread panic they can't control.
At what point do you 'fess up? If you don't come clean, does the lie become self-perpetuating simply because of the reputations of the powerful people who must have been involved? We know that NASA has a low tolerance for independent theories, which seems odd given its line of work, and I wonder if this attitude is the result of a lie that is maintained only by a few key people and has become crystallized and institutional over time.
I am about three quarters convinced that there are ancient ruins on Mars and virtually certain that primitive life, at least, exists there to this day. Because of that, I maybe sometimes am guilty of seeing what I want to see.
Shame they won't let dogs on Mars - otherwise you'd be up there having a look! Where's Helen when you need her...
The chances of anything coming from Mars...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 09 April, 2014, 09:06:59 PM
I am about three quarters convinced that there are ancient ruins on Mars and virtually certain that primitive life, at least, exists there to this day. Because of that, I maybe sometimes am guilty of seeing what I want to see.
Primitive life seems very likely at this stage, and just maybe not even extinct. But ruins? I can't see it myself, but how I would love it to be so.
I know we differ on this very fundamental point, but NASA's current robot missions are run and populated by regular scientists (it's not the military spinoff it once was), and that lot couldn't keep their mouths shut if there was an actual gun to their heads. One tweet from one of them, that's all it would take.
The always-interesting Howard Bloom* has some thoughts on the American space programme over on his Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfoWN51_Nqk and a follow-up post this evening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4BBNTP81CI
* A publicist for the likes of ACDC and Michael Jackson in the 1970s and 80s who became a shut-in because of medical problems in the 1990s and used the time to read and research a rudimentary and interesting take on a unified theory (short version: it's gravity). Tends to accidentally upset religious types, usually by telling them their religion is a load of bollocks and then explaining in seemingly rambling but over-educated detail why.
Interesting stuff, Prof, cheers.
I really don't see it happening. Simply from a basic physiological and micro-biological stand point. Mars's core surface temperature is roughly -55C. Even in he hight of it's summer the equator only reaches 20C. At these temperatures it would be impossible for any micro-scopic life to develop in the first place never mind adapt to live in such temperatures.
No, life on Mars is a long forgone dream.
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 10 April, 2014, 09:16:05 AM
Even in he hight of it's summer the equator only reaches 20C. At these temperatures it would be impossible for any micro-scopic life to develop in the first place never mind adapt to live in such temperatures.
But surely the increasing evidence of historical flowing water on the surface lends credence to the theory that Mars once had a thicker, warmer atmosphere? In such a scenario, it's possible to hypothesise a fairly rich ecosystem whittled down to only the most hardy extremophiles as the planet loses most of its atmosphere and cools.
Cheers
Jim
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 10 April, 2014, 09:16:05 AM
I really don't see it happening.
Put a fiver on it: Evidence of life on Mars at some point in the past, within our lifetime.
Given that the conditions for the start of life on Earth are not understood in any concrete sense, being prescriptive about those conditions is risky. I agree, Mars is a cold desert as far as our current understanding of life and required energy levels is concerned, but it's been there a very long time and there have been enough active processes there to still permit some hope.
I'm still holding out this little wild bouquet.
The evidence to suggest Mars once sustained bodies of water has always seemed very incoherent to me. Their are no indications of a hydrogen cycle was once present mars and no recorded instances of sediment locked precipitation. I am willing to wait until further examination of sedimentary deposits proves the continued existence of extremophiles on Mars, but as it stands I feel all the atmospheric factors lend arguments against such an argument.
I'm not an expert on environmental science, i'm a damn Zoologist (minus the doctorate) anyway, so i'll put a fiver on it.
Quote from: TordelBack on 10 April, 2014, 09:25:57 AM
Put a fiver on it: Evidence of life on Mars at some point in the past, within our lifetime.
If not Mars, then somewhere in the solar system, although perhaps not in my lifetime given the timescales involved in getting a project funded, built and then sending the damn thing to the outer planets to have a look at their moons.
As soon as we can disprove the (frankly ludicrous) assertion that Earth is uniquely suited for the development of life, everything changes. There are planetary systems around practically every star we point a device at and look hard enough.
(As I've mentioned before, I believe it's the unimaginably vast ocean of cosmic time in which human existence is an incomprehensibly tiny island that separates us from non-terrestrial life as much as the challenges of traversing interstellar distances and provides a much more convincing answer to the Fermi Paradox.)
Cheers
Jim
we're martians,we fucked up the planet came here for a fresh start then fucked it up again.
Dammit - I wish I could have done a screen grab on that "badly photoshopped image" because now it's been replaced. My suspicion is that the posted web image was displayed in error, before the smudged layer had been texturized and flattened. Of course, now I'm just a nut because I can't prove anything - I tried photographing segments of the blurred image off my Kindle with my 'phone but the results were disappointing.
As to the question of current life on Mars, check out the intriguing movements spotted by Ron Bennett. (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GUzYpaan0xk)
Given Mars' apparently cold, dry and inhospitable environment, any surface dwelling life would, to my mind, be likely to have a tough external shell or carapace to conserve heat and moisture and - given the way nature works on Earth - many would appear camoflaged. They would look like small rocks, stones and bits of gravel.
[quote Of course, now I'm just a nut because I can't prove anything [/quote]
A Justice Department Psyche Unit has been dispatched to your residence, Citizen Shark. Remain in your home and fear not. Help is on it's way.
conflicting advice about whether/when we should change all our passwords because of the Heartbleed bug - and lots of suspicions that it was created by the NSA as a 'backdoor' into encrypted websites. Certainly plausible, but I doubt we'll eve be able to prove it (or at least not for a while - these things always come out eventually)
I'm not really amused at John Wagner closing an issue with, " Well you're on welfare, therefore you have no right to tell anyone what to do with money." Har de har?
Quote from: Hoagy on 10 April, 2014, 09:41:15 PM
I'm not really amused at John Wagner closing an issue with, " Well you're on welfare, therefore you have no right to tell anyone what to do with money." Har de har?
John Wagner's putting himself in the strip now?
Isn't that just "satire"? No need to be offended. In the words of St Howard Beale, "first, you gotta' get mad!"
I've been enjoying Richard C. Hoagland's work recently. I'm currently reading his book "Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA" by himself and Mike Barra and it's a fascinating read. Even if you discount everything the book says about the mathematics and geometry displayed in the construction of the Cydonian monuments on Mars, the understanding of which led to the idea that the entire ancient ruin was an alien mathematical message pointing to hyperdimensional physics, a hitherto fringe area of theoretical research concerning torsion fields as the fifth dimension, leading to the possibility of limitless free energy and instantaneous hyperdimensional effects, with "proof" in the form of hexagonal impact craters (the "shadow" of hyperdimensional combined tetrahedron shaped fifth dimension energy fields frozen in 4d spacetime) and the hexagonal storm at Saturn's pole, and the importance of latitude 19.47° (wherin lies Jupiter's Great Red Spot, Saturn's Great White Spot, mystery upwellings on Neptune, the active volcanoes of Hawaii and the majority of major sunspots), the assassination of JFK and Christ knows what else (I haven't finished it yet), I have to say that it's a cracking story. It's like an Arthur C Clark novel written from the inside out.
If you Google for it you'll find a free pdf of it soon enough. Very entertaining!
It might worth bearing in mind that this is the very same man who maintains that it was he --not Carl Sagan-- who originally came up with the idea of Pioneer 10 plaque.
Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. His presentations on Youtube are entertaining, though - especially the presentation he gave to the UN in the late 90s.
Worth watching.
The Pentagon has a space plane. www.rt.com/usa/195476-mysterious-space-plane-landing/
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Wasn't NASA shut down recently due to lack of money? Nice to know that when science runs out of funding they'll still be able to beg for cargo space off the military.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 October, 2014, 05:39:44 PM
The Pentagon has a space plane. www.rt.com/usa/195476-mysterious-space-plane-landing/
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Wasn't NASA shut down recently due to lack of money? Nice to know that when science runs out of funding they'll still be able to beg for cargo space off the military.
They didn't beg, but they were given a major donation recently by an American secret service - 2012 National Reconnaissance Office space telescope donation to NASA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 10 April, 2014, 10:34:13 AM
Dammit - I wish I could have done a screen grab on that "badly photoshopped image" because now it's been replaced. My suspicion is that the posted web image was displayed in error, before the smudged layer had been texturized and flattened. Of course, now I'm just a nut because I can't prove anything - I tried photographing segments of the blurred image off my Kindle with my 'phone but the results were disappointing.
And a dammit from me as well - Ive just spent a fair bit of time looking at that link on your previous post, and no amount of enlarging, or rotating, or squinting revealed any ramps, ruins, railway lines, or waving little green men. Least i'm no longer cursing your name under my breath, Sharky!
Now, why on Earth would the NRO have orbital telescopes better than Hubble? They'd be useless for looking at Earth because of the focal lengths and angles and whatnot. That's why they never point Hubble at the moon, it's too close to get a sharp image.
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I seem to remember that the NRO located the Mars Polar Lander after NASA "lost" it but the space.com article seems to have vanished.
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Just what kind of "recon" are those boys doing?
I swear it Spikes, that image was changed and the original was littered with anomalies - like really ancient bits of machinery and such. I think you can still make out an "iron bar" in there somewhere, if I recall. I really wish I could have screen-grabbed that. Hm... I wonder if anyone else did? To Google!
Search it out Sharky!
As another thread is in danger of de railing, I thought I'd decamp here (out of the way) to talk about what NASA means to me.
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One of my earliest memories is of stars.
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My dad was going to lay some flags in our big yard and had a huge (or huge to mini-me) pile of sand delivered. Me and my dad lay back on this pile of sand and looked up at the fat autumn stars in a purple black sky. He showed me the Plough, how to find the Pole Star and pointed out Venus. That was more or less the limit of his knowledge but from that moment on I was hooked.
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I spent my pocket money on books about astronomy and space and planets and all sorts, I wanted to know it all. I always hated school, right from Day One, but the one thing I was looking forward to about High School was that I'd heard they had an astronomy club. They hadn't.
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The very first High School Geography lesson was about "The Solar System" and my heart soared. I put my hand up to every question, expounded on the difference between the gas giants and the ice giants to a largely disinterested teacher and generally made a smart arse of myself. Everything after that was ox-bow lakes and how much wheat came out of Oregon. I was deadly disappointed and the teachers just shrugged and said that's the way it is and pointed me at the library.
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But then someone, a fellow geek from a higher year, gave me the address of JPL in California and I wrote to them, expressing my admiration and, no doubt, my adolescent dream of becoming an astronaut. Some weeks later I received a fat brown A4 envelope with NASA printed on it packed with dozens of consecutive "Voyager Bulletins" from issue one onwards along with a bunch of photos from the spacecraft - all big and glossy and in full colour, some with descriptions printed on the back and others with little Post-It sized typed descriptions taped to the back. A treasure trove!
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Over the years I wrote several times and got some really cool stuff back about Voyager, Viking and the Shuttle. NASA provided me with the stimulation I craved in an educationally barren environment.
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Then life took over, as it does, but I never lost my passion for NASA's next mission, never lost my love of lying back and just looking up at the stars.
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In around late 2006 or 7, something happened that I've taken to calling "the Curse of 9/11." I watched, in one of the official American news channel archives (I forget which one, CNN, NBC or Fox or somesuch), a video of WTC7 collapsing into its own footprint and turning to dust as it did so. I was challenged to explain it. I couldn't. I still can't.
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WTC7 was a revelation to me. Not all at once, to be sure, not for months. There had to be an explanation but all I found were more questions. Things I thought I'd known and understood my whole life turned out to be suspect or even false. I argued vehemently against it, cast about for answers towards everyone from David Ike to my beloved NASA and found none. It dawned on me slowly, kicking and screaming all the way, that the world is not as I thought it was. There are things going on.
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As revelations go, it was a pretty frightening, painful and shitty one. I wish I could've seen an angel or something instead, or have God whisper in my ear, but no. As usual, I have to do it the feckin' hard way, as the holocaust which is my life amply attests.
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Boiled down, I believe that the human race - the magnificent, terrible, creative, dynamic, rational, irrational, wonderful, surprising, precious human race - is being held back from pursuing its boundless potential by a very few selfish individuals and repressive systems.
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I often go on about the need to rescue our governments from these individuals and systems but the truth is we need to rescue ourselves first. Freedom, much like charity, begins at home.
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Even though I fear the shadow of repression is falling fast across the world and its institutions and people, I think there is great hope for us. We have all the technology and resources we need to start building something better. And build it we will. But first we must be free to build it.
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I still have that stack of Voyager Bulletins, rescued from the Council's ire, by the way. They remind me of the NASA I love, the stars and my dad. They remind me of potential.
Well said Shark. Z :thumbsup:
I've been meaning to bite the bullet and apologise for a while now, so here it is. I want to apologise to all concerned, now that time has passed and tempers have cooled, for my recent behaviour on the "Science is..." thread. I was oversensitive and reacted poorly, for which I am sorry.
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Although it is no excuse, my view of the world often brings me into conflict with others and this is tiresome and disagreeable. I defend myself and my views as a matter of course, a reflex, but I know it doesn't make any difference. The worst part is the animosity. I don't mind being regarded as mad, delusional or simply "quirky" but I hate the anger that oft comes with such judgements. I don't like making people angry. I like making people smile or laugh - maybe even, sometimes, think.
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Anyway. To those whom I upset, and you know who you are, I am sorry. Not for what I believe in or how I see the world but for my reflex to strike out in defence when no strike was called for.
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I acted poorly and I am sorry.
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Beautiful posts, Shark.
Thank you, Z & SM. :-)
Sharky, my boy, you are indeed an eccentric chap with unusual viewpoints - sometimes exasperatingly unusual; I won't lie - but you've never offended me personally, and I've always seen you as a really nice chap.
Some of my closest friends have opinions that differ radically from mine and sometimes it frustrates me (one, whom I mentioned to you before, believes aliens assisted humankind in pretty much all its greatest endeavours, whilst another is a devotee of those men in weird clothes who don't have sex or families but tell everyone else how to to both), but they're still my closest friends.
And anyone who doubts the basic decency, generosity and indeed organisational skills of the Legendary Shark should refer to the following links:
http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php/topic,34167.0.html (http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php/topic,34167.0.html)
http://flintlockjaw.blogspot.ie/2010/09/carlos-ezquerra-project.html
(http://flintlockjaw.blogspot.ie/2010/09/carlos-ezquerra-project.html)
You are the architect of my two best fanboy moments, Sharky!
Awww, thank you, JBC :)
What do you think about net censorship? Well it doesn't matter because Facebook are planning on crowd-sourcing censorship.
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You'll be able to click a new button in order to flag a news story as fake, annoying or against your religion. Stories that get enough of these flags will not be removed from Facebook (because that would be against freedom of speech) but suppressed instead.
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Sounds good, doesn't it? Facebook isn't censoring anything - you are. But hold on a minute and consider this: Many of you know that I am unhappy with the treatment I got at the hands of West Lancs Council and Lancashire police, so if I were to post anything about that the council or the police could theoretically get their staff to flag my story, effectively killing it without removing it - I might not even know my story has been suppressed and think that nobody's interested.
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Conservative MP caught taking bribes by a whistle-blower - mobilise the party faithful to flag the story. An oil company caught poisoning farmland - mobilise staff to kill the story.
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What a cunning way to introduce censorship. Freedom of speech becomes freedom of suppression. If you read something you don't like, for whatever reason, you can help make sure nobody else gets to read it. And there are plenty of people out there who think that being offended justifies this kind of thing. If I read something I don't like I wouldn't dream of suppressing it, I'd just either ignore it and move on or post my objections in the comments section and then move on.
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mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0KT2C820150120?irpc=932
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I hope the button looks like a burning book. They could call it a burn button.
The slide into fascism is always a gentle one at first.
As I understand it, Sharky, that option only suppresses that and similar stories from your timeline in the same way that an email filter sends certain kinds of correspondence to your spam folder. If so, this means that your council staff will simply be stopping themselves seeing the story while everyone else can still read it, a bit like solving the problem in the same way an ostrich does by hiding its head.
Twitter has an in-built algorithm that suppresses any hashtag that trends for a certain amount of time, which was why #CameronMustGo wasn't appearing on trending lists after two weeks despite getting thousands more Tweets per hour than the highest trending topics. Scary to think that the whole purpose of Twitter is to prevent any kind of sustained conversation between large groups of people, but I suppose the side-effect will be that people will simply use it to meet those of a like mind and then take their conversation elsewhere.
I hope you're right, Bear.
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I do sometimes jump to dark conclusions and I hope this is one of those times. Not being much of a Facetwit user myself it is entirely possible I've got the wrong end of the stick.
Is Russia about to hit the U.S. with a truth bomb? A couple of interesting links to chew on:
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www.veteranstoday.com/2014/05/20/too-classified-to-publish-bush-nuclear-piracy-exposed/
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www.veteranstoday.com/2015/02/10/pravda-putin-threatens-to-release-satellite-evidence-of-911/
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Pure shit or oh shit? I'm sceptical, to be honest.
I'm not going to waste much time on those as they seem to take as their starting point that the WTC was demolished by nukes. Why didn't we see the flash? Because "Most of the light was in the non-visible light spectrum".
Sorry, but that's plain bollox.
I believe that very point is addressed in the first link. Not being a nuclear expert, I don't know if the explanation is plausible or not.
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There are lots of things about 9/11 which are implausible. I mean, how do three steel and concrete skyscrapers turn to dust? Shaped subterranean mini-nukes is at least as plausible as the US government's explanation.
I had spent a wonderful long weekend with my girlfriend in Dublin (Wynns Hotel) from the of 8 - 10 Sept 2001 and had booked the 11th off to recover. I was watching a 24 hour news channel whilst preparing a late lunch when I saw in virtually real time the second plane hit the south (I think) tower.
Now it was quite a smash and having looked at subsequent documentaries on the whole horiffic affair, it would seem the aviation fuel on board the plane could have caused sufficient heat to warp and weaken the metal superstructure in part of the tower. Mass and gravity then caused the catastrophic collapse.
It did not need nukes for this to happen: mearely a well trained; well led; well organised; well funded (probably one of the oil states) group of murderous, deluded terrorists. Z
No, aviation fuel, most of which burned off in the initial explosions, does not burn hot enough to warp steel, let alone cause not one but two symmetrical collapses. Hot fires burn with less smoke, and the twin towers, filled with modern flame-resistant fixtures and fittings, belched dense black smoke for hours. The denser the smoke, the cooler the fire.
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There was simply not enough energy present, either kinetic or from burning fuel, to cause such a catastrophic structural and material failure. Also, Tower 7 wasn't even hit by a 'plane but also collapsed into its own footprint.
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In the entire history of the world only three steel and concrete buildings have ever been "accidentally" destroyed in this fashion - all three of them in New York, all three of them on 11/09/2001.
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That extra energy must have come from somewhere - the question is, where?
Pure shit. Think they were just sitting on that for the right moment?
And it would be very easy to determine if nuclear bombs had been used anywhere in the vicinity of a major, major metropolitan area like NYC. And putting that aside that would be a ridiculously focused device to only hit ground zero without destroying half of Manhattan.
I don't profess to be a structural engineer but I would suggest that the initial kinetic energy dump of a plane travelling at a high sub-sonic speed followed by an intense heat spike from high octane avitation fuel and what ever other ancillary material in the building caught in the conflagration may have been sufficient to cause a localised failure in the building superstructure.
I dont think all of the stancions need have been effected in order for the building integument to have been compromised. What followed was in an an analogous sense a domino or cascade effect.
As for the third tower the ground effect persumably upwards of the high hundreds of thousands of tons of buildings collapsing around it may have exceeded its structural tolerance parameters.
It is also my understanding that nuclear devices leave a radiation footprint?
Again Shark I hasten to add I am not an expert. Z
maybe the planes were cgi .lucasfilm is implicated!
At the risk of being insensitive to the tragedy on that day; had it been lucasfilm cgi we would have seen 30 planes and a f**king cutsie Ewok/gungan hybrid hit the towers. Z
And America would have shot first.
Planes don't usually fly into buildings, so models for what happens in such an event would at some point be guesswork. The one time it actually happened on a large scale, there were loads of variables in motion and people are still arguing about it 14 years later.
The real conspiracy here is how come no-one's talking about the theory where "jews did 911". I mean, if we're examining the theories objectively, why not that one?
What is that theory....he asks nervously?
On 910 someone came into a shop and didn't have the full price for something but the shopkeeper said "no that's okay just take it anyway" so the guy said "Thanks let me give you some free advice don't go to the WTC on 911" and then he left and one day later 911 happened.
As a layman, I don't want to appear foolish by disputing the science, but the theory seems pretty airtight.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 14 February, 2015, 08:07:26 PM
No, aviation fuel, most of which burned off in the initial explosions, does not burn hot enough to warp steel,
Is that right? Really?
See glass? Melts at about 2-3000
oC. Gooogle it if you want an exact figure.
Water? Boils at a maximum of 100
oC.
Here's an experiment. A bit of actual science you can engage in instead of just quoting numbers.
1)Take a glass container, put it in a freezer for about an hour.
2)Boil a kettle
3)Remove glass from freezer.
4)Pour boiling water over cold glass5)Using the numbers above and the logic in the quoted statement, nothing should happen.
Quote from: Grugz on 14 February, 2015, 08:54:00 PM
maybe the planes were cgi .lucasfilm is implicated!
That theory has actually been put forward someplace....no, really, it was!
(http://loyalkng.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Star-Wars-911-Death-Star.JPG)
Oh Bear....you're the divil. How's the puppy dog by the way.
KP: I'm not gonna try that one. :lol: Z
Ghost you are having me on! Z
I believe Shark raised a valid point about Building 7. If that building collapsed due to proximity to the two plane crashes then why didn't any other Building in the vicinity collapse as well?*
Cheers
*Unless there was some flaw already in the structure that could cause a complete collapse into it's own "footprint", which in and of itself sounds ridiculous.
I shit you not. It was on a mate's facebook feed under the title 'You're never gonna believe the pish they are spouting now!'. Apparently there were no planes at all, and they have been CG'd in on the fly, or it was prepared footage or some such mince. I can't recall what the clip was called, but type ''CGI planes 9/11'' into youtube, and trawl the sewage you find! The one I saw kept pointing to flicker shadows on bad footage from cell phones to 'prove' that it was actually CG. Think of a dumb theory as to what happened...type it into google, you will find multiple pages supporting the case. Any case!!!!
Luck of the draw. Proximity to debris from the two towers, fire damage to a weight bearing structure followed by failure of the component and gravity did the rest. Z
Quote from: NapalmKev on 14 February, 2015, 09:26:48 PM
I believe Shark raised a valid point about Building 7.
Building 7....the one reputed to have all the evidence relating to the Bush administration sacking the federal bank to assist the oil companies after congress refused to do so? Total co-incidence I say. ;)
The mind boggles. I tend to skirt the whole conspiracy theory thingy as the truth is bitter enough to handle. I think people gift the powers that be with more intelligence than they merit. The reality is much more seedy, pointless and mundane. Z
The WTC attack was an extreme and unprecedented event involving huge structures and vast amounts of energy. Extreme and unprecedented things happened.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't try to understand those things, or dispute the official version, but I'm not sure the best way to do that is to add additional complexity by positing further extreme and unprecedented elements for which there is no direct evidence.
On the other hand, the US establishment have subsequently been repeatedly shown to be a shower of lying inhumane f*cks, so I'm not sure I'd quibble on that score.
Yes lying and inhumane, but shortsighted and random. Z
The temperature at which steel melts and the temperature at which steel bends are quite far apart.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 14 February, 2015, 09:46:10 PM
The temperature at which steel melts and the temperature at which steel bends are quite far apart.
I'm no scientist but if the steel only got hot enough to
Bend then surely the Buildings would have swayed towards whichever side got hit, meaning the collapsing section would
lean towards the impact; thereby making a "footprint" collapse pretty much impossible.*
Cheers
*As I said, I'm not a Scientist.
I think the temperature differential caused the columns to list intowards the centre of the building. Z
And, in tonight's episode of Legendary Shark vs Science...
Quote from: Professor Cardigan on 14 February, 2015, 09:38:57 PM
the US establishment have subsequently been repeatedly shown to be a shower of lying inhumane f*cks, so I'm not sure I'd quibble on that score.
Yep. The 'theories' that have drawn my attention most aren't so much about how it was done, more why, and by who. To deny the false flag element is as short sighted as it is to deny it could have occurred as described officially. Long and short is, there's so much bollocks surrounding this now, they could broadcast the exact truth right now, and folk would still continue to argue about it without pausing for breath.
Heh. He's just away for a quick swim and some frest monk seal....our contrary elasmobranch friend. Z
1) Make a glass model of one of the towers, complete with all major structural components.
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2) Put it in the freezer for an hour.
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3) Boil a kettle.
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4) Remove the model from the freezer.
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5) Fill a water pistol with boiling water and squirt it at one side of the frozen glass model, near the top.
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6) Watch the entire glass model turn to dust as it collapses in a symmetrical fashion.
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The implausible (but interesting in other ways) "on-the-fly-cgi" idea was put forward, if I remember correctly, in the film "September Clues." Though this scenario is highly unlikely, there has since been a president to suggest that this kind of live tampering is at least possible: www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html
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Aircraft crashing into tall buildings is not unprecedented - even in New York: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-25_Empire_State_Building_crash
.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862
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In neither of the above was anything like a 9/11 collapse seen.
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Windsor Tower in Madrid burned for over 24 hours, was completely gutted and still did not collapse: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Tower_(Madrid)
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What science am I disputing, Mr R? If jet fuel has a maximum Open Air Burn temperature of 1030¤C ( en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel ) and structural steel doesn't begin to melt until it reaches 1130¤C - 1492¤C ( en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_steel ) and each tower contained 100,000 tons of steel, and that steel is a good conductor of heat (you'd have to really go some to get hefty beams like that to deform with just an open flame), and that most of the jet fuel was flash-burned away on impact, mainly outside the buildings, what science am I disputing? Rennieiatry?
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Temperature of average house fire = 1200 Fahrenheit.
Temperature at which structural steel is deemed unsafe for load bearing = 1000-1300 Fahrenheit (says so on that wikipedia page).
Fair enough - but with a 100,000 ton interconnected heat sink? Steel mills use electric furnaces, arc welders, oxy-acetylene torches and gas burners to melt and shape steel. So they've been getting it wrong - they should have been using kerosine and flame-retardant office furniture instead.
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A cool fire (evidenced by the smoke) over a widespread area would not have much effect on the whole structure. Take, for example the six floor fire which burned 'like a blowtorch' for longer than the 9/11 fires in February 1975. www.nytimes.com/1975/02/14/nyregion/14WTC.html
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Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 February, 2015, 03:12:42 AM
Aircraft crashing into tall buildings is not unprecedented - even in New York: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-25_Empire_State_Building_crash
I'm no engineer, but a 767 is at least three times the length and ten times the weight of a B25, while a plane on landing approach is both decelerating and carrying proportionately less fuel than one just starting a transcontinental flight. To expect the outcome of both events to be the same is a bit like being confused at why an out of control lorry crashing into your house would do more damage than a Renault Clio.
Mmmm. If you visit the Empire State the impressive thing about the wartime Mitchell crash is how small the scale of the impact was relative to the building - they were even able to fight the resulting fire, on the 80-somethingth floor, in 1945. The fuel-laden WTC 767 impacts, even on the larger towers, seemed far larger. I'd maintain the scale of the later impact on structures of that size and design was unprecedented. My point is that there is so much to understand about the astonishing physical event that we can actually see happening on the footage that adding 'hidden' factors is akin to saying 'a wizard did it'.
The solution to a tricky jigsaw puzzle isn't gabbing a scissors and some blank cardboard and drawing your own pieces.
But to reiterate, after the past decade I would put precisely no criminal act beyond the amoral arrogance of the US military-political-intelligence 'community'.I'd now be prepared to accept that they could have considered false flag attacks on their own people - I just don't think they'd have the ambition or competence to pull off something so complex so successfully.
This is a great demonstration of the thermal dynamics of tall structures, but I think the opening 20 seconds of voiceover are particularly relevant to the 9/11 industry. Fred Dibnah (1938-2004*) (http://youtu.be/0L1WOnR2KBY)
* coincidence?
Nor is the Empire State Building of the same construction or strength as the Twin Towers. I cited the other two incidents as a presidents, not carbon-copy events. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.
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Sorry Shark but I would argue that the Twin Towers were considered to be structurally light buildings in that the New York urban governance loosened their building laws for aa time in the early 1970's to facilitate the construction of super-tall buildings (including WTT 1 & 2). The Empire State Building constructed 40 years before is a more rugged steel cage construction. Z
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 February, 2015, 09:41:13 AMI cited the other two incidents as a presidents...
Looks like even autocorrect is fighting the conspiracy!
My point about precedents is that I don't thing the ESB crash is a precedent, in terms of the scale of the energies and type of building structures involved. We're talking about the only such event on record, two fully-laend African Swallows, errr, 767s crashing into adjacent lightweight-design tallest-buildings-in-the-world. And we're saying that the results don't match expectations - the results are the results, it's up to people to work out how A+B=C, not add in an invisible D so the answer matches our (obviously false) preonceptions.
Apologies for torrent of typos, I have a new cheapo keyboard, and my fingers aren't doing my bidding.
A unique event indeed. There is a huge amount of what is in my opinion, rational analysis on a: what the components involved in the attack were and b: what the outcome was.
As Prof Cardigan says the motivations can seem amorphus but Occams razor as applied by me, sees an attack by a nascent organisation Al Queda funded by very wealthy backers in the Gulf States making a huge PR gambit and suceeding in a gruesome manner. We see more recent low tech versions of this today in the areas of Syria and Iraq currently controlled by the Islamic State, i.e. beheadings of western or allied prisoners and indeed indigenous civilians as well.
The aim is two pronged: firstly to instill a sense of horror and hopelessness into the minds of western populations and regional administrations and secondly to act as a rallying call to like minded individuals throughout the region and more worringly (given recent events in Europe) further afield.
The aim of terror is unfortunately terror. Z
Me, I don't believe the 9/11 attacks were anything other than an Al Qaeda attack.
However, I do remember one little anomaly on the day - that plane that was headed for the White House. I distinctly recall the news reporting a US fighter plane being sent to deal with it, but the next day we were told that the brave passengers overpowered the terrorists ('Let's roll'). A tad suspicious, I thought.
And moving on to the bit where I cite better-informed sources than a fantastist comics fan: My friend Paddy, known to RTE News watchers as Western Correspondent Pat McGrath, agreed completely and put together a reel of soundbites from the two days in question; which really did seem to suggest that the fighter plane blipped out of media existence overnight.
Now, maybe the passengers did bring it down, but as I said, I have a fairly vivid memory of the US Air Force having a go first.
EDIT: And as the good Tord... er, Prof Cardigan points out, this is the US government we're talking about, and they are capable of some really, really nasty stuff. Nixon, forr example, would have had an anti-Nixon journalist murdered if Watergate hadn't blown him out of the water. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/nixon-jack-anderson-mark-feldstein (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/nixon-jack-anderson-mark-feldstein)
According to a report last year (http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/f-16-pilot-was-ready-to-give-her-life-on-sept-11/2011/09/06/gIQAMpcODK_story.html), 'unarmed' F-16s were on the way. The passengers managed to deal with things before the planes could get there.
Were there any internal recordings recovered from the plane in question? Z
Quote from: Butch on 15 February, 2015, 09:40:56 AM
This is a great demonstration of the thermal dynamics of tall structures, but I think the opening 20 seconds of voiceover are particularly relevant to the 9/11 industry. Fred Dibnah (1938-2004*) (http://youtu.be/0L1WOnR2KBY)
* coincidence?
Thanks for that Sauchie. Just watched that with my mid-morning cuppa. How great a man was Fred Dibna, a true giant of his age.
Quote from: ZenArcade on 15 February, 2015, 11:26:25 AM
Were there any internal recordings recovered from the plane in question? Z
I don't know. I thought the 'Let's Roll' thing was recorded somewhere, but I could be wrong. Also, why would they send an unarmed plane? The end result of 'ramming' it would be the same as that of shooting it down.
I seem to remember a huge sense of everyone being caught on the hop, as i suppose you do in an unprecedented attack. There was an amazing paucity of military aircraft available, simply because strategic planners discounted the possibility of a conventional attack on the continental USA . Z
The lack of aircraft/organisation was largely due to operation Vigilant Guardian (I think), a training exercise sending lots of fighters off to Canada and all over the place chasing phantoms. This exercise played the scenario of multiple-plane hi-jackings, which also caused great confusion.
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The alleged terrorists, none of whom had any experience as pilots in these types of aircraft, could not have picked a better day.
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The precedents (yes, my spilling socks sometimes) show that buildings are constructed to withstand aircraft impacts. The Twin Towers were designed to withstand impacts from the biggest civilian aircraft of the day - the Jumbo Jet. The outer structure was constructed to a honeycomb design specifically because such an arrangement is very good at load-bearing even with great holes punched in it.
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Take a look at the Shanksville crash-site, where the 'Wasington-bound' aircraft came down. It looks like no other crash site - no bodies, no large sections of fuselage (cockpit, tail section, etc.), not even any seats or luggage.
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Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 February, 2015, 12:07:02 PM
The precedents (yes, my spilling socks sometimes) show that buildings are constructed to withstand aircraft impacts. The Twin Towers were designed to withstand impacts from the biggest civilian aircraft of the day - the Jumbo Jet.
This isn't quite true. Channel 4 did a detailed examination of the collapse of the towers a few years ago and spoke to one of the primary architects, who explained that it never crossed their mind in their wildest imaginings that someone would fly a
fully laden plane at full speed into the structure — their scenarios envisaged something like a passenger liner becoming lost in poor weather coming into JFK. In such a scenario, the plane would be travelling relatively slowly and, being at the end of its flight, be carrying a relatively small amount of fuel.
Cheers
Jim
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 15 February, 2015, 11:30:36 AMAlso, why would they send an unarmed plane?
Because they didn't have any armed ones ready.
QuoteThe end result of 'ramming' it would be the same as that of shooting it down.
The interviews show it was all ad-hoc. They weren't sure what they were going to do. One suggestion was to take off a wing. The aim was to stop the plane hitting anything vital to the US (Capitol/White House, e.g.), not to safely bring it down.
Jim: I also remember a few pieces of insight into the manner in which the buildings collapsed, which stated it's all very logical. Starting with what you said, loads more fuel ended up in the mix, and then all it took was for one or two floors to fail. Then you've got a structure designed to hold up a certain weight having to hold up two or three times that. Then that falls. The floor underneath now has to cope with four. This becomes incremental all the way down, and happens very fast on reaching the point of no return.
So I don't see conspiracy either. I just see shitty people doing shitty things to create a shitty event. (I also recall around the time, some kind of report stating the intention was to create spectacle rather than bring the towers down. In a sense, they 'got lucky', in the most hideous nature of the word 'lucky'.)
Quote from: Butch on 15 February, 2015, 09:40:56 AM
This is a great demonstration of the thermal dynamics of tall structures, but I think the opening 20 seconds of voiceover are particularly relevant to the 9/11 industry. Fred Dibnah (1938-2004*) (http://youtu.be/0L1WOnR2KBY)
* coincidence?
I wonder if there was any asbestos in that dust/smoke cloud that they were all breathing in!
That was the 70's. People used to eat it for their dinner, back then. Never did them any harm.
Quote from: Skullmo on 15 February, 2015, 12:45:44 PM
Quote from: Butch on 15 February, 2015, 09:40:56 AM
This is a great demonstration of the thermal dynamics of tall structures, but I think the opening 20 seconds of voiceover are particularly relevant to the 9/11 industry. Fred Dibnah (1938-2004*) (http://youtu.be/0L1WOnR2KBY)
I wonder if there was any asbestos in that dust/smoke cloud that they were all breathing in!
You saw the clothes those people were wearing, their haircuts, and the cars they were forced to drive. They were trapped in the eighties, Julius; death would have been a release.
Back then the poor had asbestos; now they have asbos. Z :(
Quote from: NapalmKev on 14 February, 2015, 09:54:16 PM
Quote from: M.I.K. on 14 February, 2015, 09:46:10 PM
The temperature at which steel melts and the temperature at which steel bends are quite far apart.
I'm no scientist but if the steel only got hot enough to Bend then surely the Buildings would have swayed towards whichever side got hit, meaning the collapsing section would lean towards the impact; thereby making a "footprint" collapse pretty much impossible.*
Cheers
*As I said, I'm not a Scientist.
I believe the stair wells actualy distort hiw a building collapses. Being more structerly secure than the rest of the building they collapse last and some how change the direction it falls. Just something I heard on the radio and it's probably complete bollocks but felt I should give my two pence.
I trust everyone has their Structural Engineering MEngSc degree certs ready for inspection, unless of course you opted for Aeronautical Engineering with a follow-up certification in Accident Investigation? 'Cos it'd be really embarassing if all we have between us is school-level physics and an internet connection like wot I do.
Ah Prof my physics is A Level and my internet down on the border at Clogher is low bit rate. It is just a dollop of common sense (I hope) that's guiding my thoughts here. Z
In 1993 John Skilling, one of the WTC designers, told the Seattle Times that the buildings had been designed to withstand the impact of a laden 707: community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930227&slug=1687698
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I guess Channel 4 got it wrong - or decided to do a little revision - or didn't do their research - or something.
Common sense, that most uncommon of senses. I suppose my point is that we're all woefully unqualified to contest each other's interpretations, so all any of us are doing really is regurgitating anecdotes we've read or heard. You either take it that the vast body of qualified experts know what they're talking about, or you don't - but both positions come from an ideological rather than an informed start point. I'm disposed to defer to scientific expertise when I see a consenus - someone tells me 'this is how concrete-clad steel behaves under these stresses' I have no basis for a counter-argument - all I can do is look at their credentials and what their colleagues say, and decide if they are reliable. Me arguing about melting-points and failure-stresses is just preposterous, and with genuine respect, that goes for all of us.
Doesn't mean it can't be fun, or informative, mind.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 February, 2015, 02:15:50 PM
In 1993 John Skilling, one of the WTC designers, told the Seattle Times that the buildings had been designed to withstand the impact of a laden 707: community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930227&slug=1687698
.
I guess Channel 4 got it wrong - or decided to do a little revision - or didn't do their research - or something.
So, a 707, not a 747 as you previously claimed. And there is no statement in that link to suggest that they calculated the impact at full speed and with full fuel tanks.
Cheers
Jim
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 15 February, 2015, 02:23:46 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 February, 2015, 02:15:50 PM
In 1993 John Skilling, one of the WTC designers, told the Seattle Times that the buildings had been designed to withstand the impact of a laden 707: community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930227&slug=1687698
.
I guess Channel 4 got it wrong - or decided to do a little revision - or didn't do their research - or something.
So, a 707, not a 747 as you previously claimed. And there is no statement in that link to suggest that they calculated the impact at full speed and with full fuel tanks.
Cheers
Jim
And perhaps more to the point who the hell has ever designed ANYTHING to withstand the impact of fully-laden 767s - even if they said they did when they submitted their competetively-costed design 40 years previously.
Well put Prof: it is a discussion and to be fair some on here have science backgrounds and we are in varying degrees, educated and informed lay persons with access to varying levels of published data on the incident. Some here including myself have good ideological grounds for involvment in the debate in that ideologically I am opposed to the peddling of basic non truths about ghastly events. This is as ever with the greatest respect to my esteemed friend Shark. Z
I'm loathe to swim in the rivers of shit being spewed here, but the Popular Mechanics podcast did a pretty definitive debunking of all the nonsense being talked here a few years ago.
Can't do a link to it from here (on phone in pub) but you know how to use Google.
The tale is that a designer indicated that the building could withstand the impact of a 707 jet, the precurser to the 767 (the type which impacted ith the building). When questioned on this the designers colleagues evinced a huge amount of disquiet if not uncertainty on the basic premises and validity of the 'report'. Z
I honestly have no idea how you even build a sky scraper but thought the stair well thing might have helped. :lol:
Eek! I got the 'plane type wrong. That'll teach me to do my research properly, I guess.
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If you were going to design for aircraft impact, why would you assume that only 'planes coming in to land with partially filled fuel tanks and hardly any cargo were the only threat? Do fully laden jets stuffed with fuel not leave New York airports? Engineers tend to design for the worst scenario, not the best.
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Googling WTC + asbestos throws up some interesting results but no original Port Authority sources. It apparently was going to cost Mr Silverstein between $1.5bn and $10bn to replace it all. Lucky for him they collapsed, especially as he'd just upped the terrorist insurance.
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I'm not an engineer or scientist either. Neither was I in New York when this tragedy happened. I have no idea what happened or why, which is my point. I know the official story doesn't add up, and neither to most of the so-called "conspiracy theories." I want to know, though, because so many innocent people have died, and continue dying, as a result.
Well you start off with a big pile of moneynand a bigger ego....
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 February, 2015, 02:58:07 PM
If you were going to design for aircraft impact, why would you assume that only 'planes coming in to land with partially filled fuel tanks and hardly any cargo were the only threat? Do fully laden jets stuffed with fuel not leave New York airports? Engineers tend to design for the worst scenario, not the best.
Because, again, it
never crossed their minds that anyone would ever
deliberately crash a fully-laden plane into the building. You can't design a building to withstand every hypothetical threat imaginable — I'm assuming that the inward and outbound flightpaths make the likelihood of such an accident with an incoming plane greater than one with an outbound. It's also likely that in the event of weather conditions being so bad that a plane might conceivably fly right into a building like the WTC, a plane on the ground would never be allowed to take off in the first place.
Cheers
Jim
Mechanical failure. Pilot error. It's not just weather and terrorists which can down 'planes. Is a deliberate hit unquestionably more damaging than an accidental one? Possibly, possibly not.
But we are dabbling in the realms of statistical probability here. Given the primary and secondary safety systems inherent in aviation design crashed of this type by modern aircraft are infitismly unlikely (but of course not impossible) in my opinion. The statistical analysis is horribly skewed into potential likelihood when inimical human factors come into play. Z
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 February, 2015, 04:09:38 PM
Mechanical failure. Pilot error. It's not just weather and terrorists which can down 'planes.
Not if the outbound flight path makes it vanishingly unlikely that it would occur. Again: it's not absolutely 100% impossible that a building might get hit by a meteorite, but no one builds their skyscrapers to withstand meteor strikes. It's all about probabilities.
Cheers
Jim
Indeed. I a complex system you can't design and test for every possibility. So you cater for the most likely and hope that your risk assessment was correct. Sadly , in this case, it wasn't.
Heh, I should really stay away from the interweb when I've been drinking. My last post is a bit spherical chickens in a vacuum, but I stand by it. Don't know much about architecture and civil engineering, but I know enough thermodynamics to know boiling/melting points aren't the only temperatures which affect the state of a material. Pointing to the flash point of Jet Fuel and saying it isn't high enough to affect the kind of steel used in skyscrapers is hardly conclusive evidence and actually verges on misinformation. The whole thing is dodgy and uncertain enough without adding to the bullshit.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 15 February, 2015, 12:37:21 PM
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 15 February, 2015, 11:30:36 AMAlso, why would they send an unarmed plane?
Because they didn't have any armed ones ready.
QuoteThe end result of 'ramming' it would be the same as that of shooting it down.
The interviews show it was all ad-hoc. They weren't sure what they were going to do. One suggestion was to take off a wing. The aim was to stop the plane hitting anything vital to the US (Capitol/White House, e.g.), not to safely bring it down.
Jim: I also remember a few pieces of insight into the manner in which the buildings collapsed, which stated it's all very logical. Starting with what you said, loads more fuel ended up in the mix, and then all it took was for one or two floors to fail. Then you've got a structure designed to hold up a certain weight having to hold up two or three times that. Then that falls. The floor underneath now has to cope with four. This becomes incremental all the way down, and happens very fast on reaching the point of no return.
So I don't see conspiracy either. I just see shitty people doing shitty things to create a shitty event. (I also recall around the time, some kind of report stating the intention was to create spectacle rather than bring the towers down. In a sense, they 'got lucky', in the most hideous nature of the word 'lucky'.)
Fair enough. It's probably a far better theory than mine. I'm not being sarcastic or facetious either, I just never heard an alternative point of view till now
When did anyone claim that the WTC designers factored in every possible scenario? I don't think I made that claim. I did wrongly think the designers used a JJ in their calculations when it seems they "only" factored in a 707 but I don't think the impact of either (or any) type of passenger aircraft would be an insignificant thing. I doubt the architects envisaged multiple strikes from small, single engined Kamikaze 'planes either, or flying saucers, or Godzilla. Or meteorites.
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If your point is that the designers did not factor in every possible circumstance then I agree absolutely. If your point is that the impact of a 707 is different from the impact of a 767 then, again, I don't disagree.
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Indeed, I would go as far as to say it's likely the impact from an unknown (from the architects' point of view) marque of Boeing passenger airliner reduced a steel and concrete skyscraper to dust not once but twice. If it were not for Tower 7.
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The fact that T7 collapsed into dust in exactly the same way as Towers 1 and 2 without being hit by any type of aircraft makes me think that even though the 'plane strikes were a factor in the equation they are by no means the only, or even the most important, factor.
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I would admit that it's possible for the impacts and fires to deform localised sections of the steel framework, enough to cause a partial collapse of the structure, but I do not think there was nearly enough energy present to deform enough of it, across an even section, to cause a total symmetrical collapse.
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I suppose one could argue that the massive inertia of the buildings meant the only way they could collapse is straight down but, again, this would require near perfect symmetrical and simultaneous failure of structure. Otherwise it's more likely the sections above the impact damage would lean and twist, causing an asymmetrical collapse.
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The three towers collapsed in a way reminiscent of controlled demolition. But it was not a controlled demolition (at least not a conventional one) in my opinion because a controlled demolition leaves a pile of rubble behind one sixth (I think) the height of the original structure. This did not happen in New York - all three buildings were turned to dust like vampires in sunlight. The rubble piles were relatively insignificant.
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Now, it's possible that this unprecedented and unique attack uncovered some unknown physics causing well-understood materials and architectural engineering conventions to act in a completely new and counter-intuitive fashion but I'm sceptical of that idea. Given a choice between believing in the discovery of a new branch of cartoon physics or the ruthless duplicity of human beings I'd much rather the former but, unfortunately, the latter seems more likely to me.
I typed a long reply but realised it was pointless.
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 16 February, 2015, 08:48:13 AM
I typed a long reply but realised it was pointless.
Indeed. Shark, and conspiracy believers is not interested in a discussion. All they do is spout their stuff and then move the goalposts when disproved. If you look through this thread you'll see many many times where he has been presented with hard evidence of something and either ignored it or replied with a long winded post that says nothing at all.
"presented with hard evidence of something and either ignored it or replied with a long winded post that says nothing at all."
To be fair, that's me on a typical day at work.
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 16 February, 2015, 08:48:13 AM
I typed a long reply but realised it was pointless.
Yup.
Jim
I now envision Shark singing the Guvnor's 'Sidestep' song from Best Little Whore House in Texas.
Funny what a Monday can throw up.
Dunk!
For someone who isn't claiming to be a structural designer you seem to be making a lot of far out assumptions, Shark.
"Hard evidence" of what, for example?
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Maybe posting from the pub about all this being rivers of shit due to a podcast I once listened to is hard evidence. I don't know.
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I'm not here to convince anyone of anything, the fact that many of us have different views is a Good Thing. I have read very little on this thread to satisfy my need for answers and many of you have obviously heard very little from me to convince anyone that my questions are valid. I don't find this upsetting, nor does it make me angry. I sense this subject makes other people angry but it's not my intent to stir that anger. That said, I'm not going to stop being suspicious of this event just to keep the peace, and I hope you wouldn't want me to.
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Some things about 9/11 simply don't add up, the way the towers collapsed being one of them. I don't think this makes me a "conspiracy theorist" as there was definitely a conspiracy (officially, 19 hi-jackers conspired to take over four aircraft with box-cutters) but I don't have a theory to explain the questions I have. Other people have theories attempting to tie it all together - some of them plausible, most of them not. I don't subscribe to any of them but that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore them either.
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Perhaps worth remembering that this is the Shark's thread specifically set aside for pushing the limits of both credulity and cynicism, and not actually the official inquest report.
I keep coming back to the old Treknerd exchange when some hitherto unsuspected god-power of the Transporter was revealed at a surprisinglky useful moment: "That couldn't happen! The Transporter can't do that!". "But it did. You just saw it happen". I'm the second geek. I'm always inclined to adjusting my understanding to accommodate my understanding to the new event, rather than adjust the event to fit my understanding. A position which could be summarised as 'credulous'.
So having followed Ireland's superb win over the West Indies at 530 this morning, something I thought impossible once a target of 305 had been set thanks largely to our head coach's very own nephew, a thought experiment struck me:
How LARGE a conventional plane hitting each of the twin towers would it take for Shark to believe that it accounted for the observable evidence, including Tower 7?
And how SMALL a plane would it take for the rest of us to accept that it couldn't account for the sequence of events?
I think the answers to those questions would tell us a lot about how we arrive at our conclusions.
Got to disagree, TB. There's no way that every clearly crackpot theory on everything should be given the same serious consideration. When something is clearly moronic - holographic airplanes for example - it should be laughed at as nonsense.
Good question, TB. I'll have to ponder that.
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And Rich throws "holographic aeroplanes" into the mix, which nobody else has mentioned. I wonder why?
Really? In the 94 pages of this thread you claim they have never been mentioned (you can now move the goalposts and pretend you didn't actually mean that...)?
"The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory.
The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control.
The world is rudderless."
― Alan Moore
I'm sorry, Rich, I was talking about the current conversation, not the entire thread. Shall I move those goalposts back or will you?
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You do know what 'using an example is'..?
I do like how you ignored my point about giving equal time to all stupid ideas being a waste of time and chose to focus in on something irrelevant instaed.
I notice in that quote that theres no mention of the Lizard people AND Moore worships a snake god. What exactly IS he hiding behind that beard eh?
All the Jews, LGBT folk and the entire population of Poland pre-1940 because apparently the Holocaust never happened.
Hey, the Nazis were no saints, but at least they weren't Northampton Borough Council.
Well I just spent a frustrating morning trying to get to the bottom of this for once and for all. Unfortunately the only resource at my disposal was the internet. Trying different combinations of words, I searched for some actual science on the tower collapses. Did I find any? Did I fuck!
Oh I found lots of reports written in style of an actual Science paper, but lacking most of the content. Facts and figures were presented without any indication of how they were reached. They never showed their work. Ideas presented in other actual scientific publications were refuted without any solid justification or serious attempts at disproof. These actual science papers weren't even properly cited, in fact the only citations were URLs* for truther sites**. It's like they only thought to include citations so it would look Sciencey. Much like websites such as IFLS, they make a big song and dance about how great science is, but ignore the boring business end of collecting, collating and analysing data.
So in conclusion, if you want to know the truth about the attacks you're shit out of luck. The truth has been buried and obscured, not by a sinister governmental conspiracy, but by people claiming there is a sinister governmental conspiracy. If there is a conspiracy, then (tin foil) hats off to whoever's behind it. They didn't need to do much covering up, they got the crackpots to do it for them.
*a bad sign
**obviously biased and as citations go, that's fairly undermining
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 16 February, 2015, 11:51:44 AM
All the Jews, LGBT folk and the entire population of Poland pre-1940 because apparently the Holocaust never happened.
I may be getting the wrong end of the stick here but are you implying Alan Moore is a holocaust denier? I've never heard that before.
Really, fervently hope not. The guy is one of my all time favourite writers. Z
I was refering to conspiracy nut's as a whole but now I think about it I could certainly have thought of a better analogy. In no way was I critisising Mr. Moore, I have the up most respect for the man, this was just yet another example of my own impluse reaction getting the better of me. Sorry chaps.
Well I got a good laugh out of the juxtaposition of Moore's Beard and Schindler's Ark anyway!
As did you, Rich, when you brought up holographic aeroplanes in a discussion about how the towers collapsed. Maybe I'm just learning from the Master, huh?
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I don't give equal time to all theories and ideas, I may read a lot of them but if they don't seem plausible I don't investigate further. I often simply read (especially the more "out there" ideas) simply as a writer.
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And yes, I do know what as an example means. In fact, I'm still waiting for you to give me an example of the hard evidence I've ignored - or was the non-existence of holographic 'planes it? Or were the holographic 'planes a smokescreen to hide the fact that you can't find any hard evidence for me to ignore?
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You're right, K-Pops, there is very little hard information out there. I'd suggest starting with official USG documents - the NIST Report, the 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST (I think) Building Performance Report on the Pentagon, which are (or were) all available to download as pdfs.
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When researching this, if I may offer a humble tip, the best thing to do is concentrate on the questions and do them one at a time. Here's a good question, and a challenge, to start you off: What hit the Pentagon? Prove it. There, that can't be too hard, can it?
Let's say that the US government wishes to create a terrible and spectacular incident that will kill thousands of their own citizens in order to shift public opinion and let them bring in harsh anti-terror laws and go to war with a couple of countries. This I can accept as possible.
However, the idea that they'd do it by planting a nuke under the WTC, or wiring it with demolition explosives, and then fly a couple of planes in to the building to mask the detonation, all under the eyes of millions of live TV viewers and hope that not one of the thousands of people who would have to be involved ever 'fess up is frankly ludicrous. Why would they care whether the buildings fell straight down into their own footprint? The plane would have been enough however the building fell.
I tend to discount 95% of conspiracy theories purely on my belief that government agencies simply aren't competent to pull them off without being found out.
DDD, exactly. We have seen governments in action (although the word action is flattering). They are a cabal of incompetent fuckwits who are currently deconstructing societal foundations in as kack handed and overt a fashion as it is possible to imagine. They are tools of the monied cabals, who are themselves as myopic and venal as it is possible to envisage. Able to do 9 11, $ome chance! Z
Who says it was the Government? I certainly don't know who's to blame. It could have been billionaire Larry Silverstein, who was struggling to make the Towers pay and was faced with a huge bill for de-asbestosing the buildings. It could have been 19 young terrorists with box-cutters and a 'How to Fly a Jet' manual. Maybe four pilots just decided to commit suicide that day. Maybe it was Dick Cheney, for the cash his defense/oil/whatever shares stood to make in the subsequent wars. Maybe it was Elvis, for a bet with Lord Lucan. Maybe it was Russia or Saudi Arabia. I don't know.
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Going in with the mindset of there only being two options - Al Qaeda or GWB - helps nobody.
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What happened, who was involved and why.
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Just be careful what you believe - an open mind is like an open wound; if you don't look after it, it'll get infected (with holographic aeroplanes).
It was most likely that it was the young men with the box cutters. It seems that 6 recieved flight training at a facility in San Diego of which 4 were adjudged competent.
They used extremly brutal tactics to cow the passengers and cabin crew and probably severly injured or murdered the flight crews.
The level of competency required whilst notable (particularly in a navigational sense), was not at a pilot standard as they did not have to take off or land the several planes. Z
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 May, 2011, 01:20:55 PM
I'm hearing rumblings that the 2012 London Olympics will be used to stage a "global event" in order to usher in new global governance. The preferred event seems to be a false-flag, staged alien invasion. How to fool millions of people around the globe? Easy:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html)
See also http://www.septemberclues.info/ (http://www.septemberclues.info/) for suggestions as to how such a thing might be pulled off.
A bit of CGI inserted into live coverage, a few missiles or pre-installed charges set off and a screaming media would just about sew it up. Be one Hell of an Opening Ceremony, though.
Just trawling through the thread and found this one. Yeah we all remember this Global Event, y'know, from before, when we had a governement and not this new governance, right?
Right?
Guys..?
But they had to pinpoint relatively tiny targets, descending from thousands of feet on a precise trajectory at hundreds of miles per hour whilst simultaneously learning to fly a complex aircraft. With one chance to get it right. After taking over the planes with knives. Or maybe they knew how to program and override the autopilot.
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Oh yeah, at least 95% probability there. I wonder if you could even do it on Microsoft Flight Simulator with no practice? (I know I couldn't, I'm crap at computer games.)
I did say the navigational skills were noteworthy. They did have flight orientation and most importantly of all the will to suceed. Z
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2015, 03:15:17 PM
But they had to pinpoint relatively tiny targets, descending from thousands of feet on a precise trajectory
You mean like pilots do all the time when they're landing on a runway?
A bunch of nutters fly two huge planes, filled with aviation fuel, at hundreds of miles an hour into two tall buildings causing a massive fire storm, which, over a period of time, weakens the integrity of the buildings and they collapse, killing thousands of people going about their daily business. What else is there to say?
Quote from: Old Tankie on 16 February, 2015, 03:34:14 PM
A bunch of nutters fly two huge planes, filled with aviation fuel, at hundreds of miles an hour into two tall buildings causing a massive fire storm, which, over a period of time, weakens the integrity of the buildings and they collapse, killing thousands of people going about their daily business. What else is there to say?
Apparently a lot...
Prove it.
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Still no examples, Rich?
You're doing my head in, Trig, you're doing my head in!!
Sharkey! What's Richmond supposed to prove?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2015, 03:43:25 PM
Prove it.
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Still no examples, Rich?
What are you talking about?
And seriously, are asking me to prove something did not happen?
Quote from: Old Tankie on 16 February, 2015, 03:34:14 PM
A bunch of nutters fly two huge planes, filled with aviation fuel, at hundreds of miles an hour into two tall buildings causing a massive fire storm, which, over a period of time, weakens the integrity of the buildings and they collapse, killing thousands of people going about their daily business. What else is there to say?
Precisely.
The way I see it, conspiracy theories like the 9 11 inside job one are themselves an obstacle to actual anti-authority propaganda (whether you are a proponent of it or not). Did the U.S. government blow up the twin towers? I seriously doubt it, but what they undeniably did was seriously exploit the tragedy to intern people without trial, use torture with impunity, spy on innocent people, illegally invade oil-rich countries and generally assist Al Qaeda in their quest to make the world a less free and more fearful place to live.
All that intense scrutiny over government involvement in the Twin Towers catastrophe, I feel, deflects attention from these issues - the McCarthyesque use of fear to keep people in line, and the starting of tragic, cack-handedly organised wars. (I'm not on Al Qaeda's side either, black-and-white thinking fans.)
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 16 February, 2015, 03:14:46 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 May, 2011, 01:20:55 PM
I'm hearing rumblings that the 2012 London Olympics will be used to stage a "global event" in order to usher in new global governance. The preferred event seems to be a false-flag, staged alien invasion. How to fool millions of people around the globe? Easy:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html)
See also http://www.septemberclues.info/ (http://www.septemberclues.info/) for suggestions as to how such a thing might be pulled off.
A bit of CGI inserted into live coverage, a few missiles or pre-installed charges set off and a screaming media would just about sew it up. Be one Hell of an Opening Ceremony, though.
Just trawling through the thread and found this one. Yeah we all remember this Global Event, y'know, from before, when we had a governement and not this new governance, right?
Right?
Guys..?
Oh come on, we had Liz jumping out of a plane with James Bond... what more do you want?
Prove the 'planes brought the towers down - if it's so obvious it should be easy, no?
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I asked Rich to provide an example of me ignoring hard evidence.
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"I'm hearing rumblings" and "seems to be" does not mean "I'm hearing facts" or "it is."
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 02 January, 1970, 04:33:29 PMWhat hit the Pentagon? Prove it. There, that can't be too hard, can it?
Well without too much effort I have dug up hundreds of eye witnesses and photographs of plane debris in the damaged Pentagon building. Would independent but consistent eye witness testimony and photographs be good enough for you? If not, let's both admit this is a pointless discussion.
Cmon Shark, this one has ran it's course. It's just gonna be repetition and frowns. Z
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 16 February, 2015, 03:56:27 PMAll that intense scrutiny over government involvement in the Twin Towers catastrophe, I feel, deflects attention from these issues - the McCarthyesque use of fear to keep people in line, and the starting of tragic, cack-handedly organised wars. (I'm not on Al Qaeda's side either, black-and-white thinking fans.)
Orwell had much to say about the value of Newspeak - back in the 1940s, depressingly - to instill fear in people to make them believe in imaginary enemies of the state and vicious foreigners rather than to get angry at the people who ran the country for the interests of a few (Newscorp), and how those in charge limited the debate by reducing the amount of words available to explore and express ideas (Twitter), eventually reducing the argument to "you're either with us or with them" (conservatives).
That's why conspiracy theories are a bit bum, really - because no-one's doing all this stuff from the shadows behind closed doors, they're doing it out in the open with our willing participation.
911 inside job conspiracies are also stupid because 911 was such a rubbish false flag op: most of the hijackers were Saudi fundamentalists rather than Iraqis, making it harder to invade the country the Bush administration wanted to invade, leading them to get Tony B to make up some leftfield justification about WMDs that had fuck all to do with anything as a pretext to war. On top of that, Bushgov MK2 had to publicly ferry a bunch of Bin Laden's family out of the US, and Bin Laden didn't even admit culpability for 911 at first, making him a rubbish patsy. There's far more holes in the inside job narrative than there are in the official version of events.
I got a t-shirt for Christmas. It had one of those plastic loop tags attached to it. I gave the tag a yank and it detached from the t-shirt, still connected in a loop. "Oops! That'll have made a hole," I thought. Nope. No hole in t-shirt. Tag still looped. Didn't make sense. Either the tag should have snapped or a small hole should've appeared in the t-shirt. Neither had occurred.
I can't rule out the involvement of the Illuminati.
Tips, the Pentagon is and was one of the most surveiled buildings on Earth - so where's the cctv footage, not just from the Pentagon itself but from the surrounding buildings? Photos of wreckage indicate only one thing - there was wreckage. Doesn't prove where it came from or what it was the wreckage of.
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For eye-witness accounts compared with the official story, you might find this interesting: www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/videos/national-security-alert I can't vouch for the absolute authority of this piece, of course. What you think of it is up to you - if you can be bothered, of course. Again, it's up to you. I personally found portions of it to be quite compelling.
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Z - not until I know what happened.
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Bear, I agree with everything you say except that the official version has just as many holes as the inside job version. Both stories have elements of truth to them but, I think, neither is even close to the whole truth.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2015, 03:15:17 PM
But they had to pinpoint relatively tiny targets, descending from thousands of feet on a precise trajectory at hundreds of miles per hour whilst simultaneously learning to fly a complex aircraft.
NO THEY DIDN'T - they just needed to crash a jet in the middle of NYC to achieve their aims. I think anyone could develop enough skill of a simulator to crash a jet into the tallest buildings in the city. The fact that they did so well is more likely down to luck rather than judgement. it is certainly NOT proof that anything else was going on.
I'm getting an headache from banging my head on this particular wall (can't believe I got sucked in AGAIN) so I'll be withdrawing now. It's amazing how an aversion to gullibility can go full circle and become even more extreme gullibility "I'm not going to believe all those qualified accident inspectors and engineers 'cos they're government stooges, but I will give credibility some twonk on the net who says it was nukes." ::)
So you are discounting verifiable eye witness accounts in favour of something that you have no idea about the authenticity of the source?
I don't know why you can't see how full of wrong that is.
I'm audi.
This is serving no purpose. Byyeeee. Z
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 16 February, 2015, 04:52:27 PM
So you are discounting verifiable eye witness accounts in favour of something that you have no idea about the authenticity of the source?
Never forget that you are dealing with a man who argued the toss over the finer points of fossil fuels and global warming for
pages before revealing that his understanding of the entire subject proceeded from the belief that oil was, and I quote, "dead dinosaur juice".
Save your breath.
Jim
Quote from: Old Tankie on 16 February, 2015, 03:34:14 PM
A bunch of nutters fly two huge planes, filled with aviation fuel, at hundreds of miles an hour into two tall buildings causing a massive fire storm, which, over a period of time, weakens the integrity of the buildings and they collapse, killing thousands of people going about their daily business. What else is there to say?
I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Old Tankie, I think the chemtrails have done their work on me! ;)
I would however remind folk to play the ball, not the man.
So, when I used the phrase "I'm sceptical" in the first post of this discussion, you took that as me giving the idea credence (giving it belief or credit)? Wow.
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The fact that the 'planes hit the buildings is indeed proof of nothing - except that 'planes hit the buildings. It doesn't prove it was the government and it doesn't prove it was Al Qaeda either.
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That's quite a run of luck, hitting three out of four targets with such precision. Still, luck or God's will or whatever is as good a theory as any I've heard. I don't buy it, though.
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I can't vouch for any source, can I? Not that film, not a CNN film, not a BBC film. What you think of any source is up to you. As I said.
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Also (and I'm sure I've said this before but certainly not recently) you shouldn't believe a word I say - I might be lying, delusional, trolling or insane. Check it out for yourself, if you want. It'll take longer than an afternoon on Google, though.
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That headache you can feel is your conditioning breaking down* ;-)
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Z - byeeee!
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*this is a joke, just a joke.
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I think the more telling fact is that you took my "dead dinosaur juice" post seriously. (See the science thread for non-fossil created organic hydrocarbons.)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2015, 05:08:10 PM
I think the more telling fact is that you took my "dead dinosaur juice" post seriously.
Oh, it was a
joke.
At this point, you're either lying or trolling. Either way, this conversation is at an end.
Jim
As a freak out Vegan, I am pretty used to having everybody eye me up like I am some kind of nutter he'll bent on taking nice things away from people.
So I do understand where you are coming from to a certain degree, Shark, I really do. It is lonely out here.
But where I think we differ is that my set of passionate beliefs is backed up by the fundamental ethics of the food industry and a lot of science and facts and figures. The issue is simply getting people to release their hold on what is comfortable and easy for them So they do the right thing for reasons of ethics and sustainability and health.
Having a vague notion that something, somewhere isn't right is not enough to be getting into this sort of discussion and expecting change.
But if you put forward fallacious arguments as if they are the truth, people are right to challenge them. You really do have to stop saying "Ah but.." at some point and that point is where you have been presented with fact.
No hard feelings.
Apologies for skipping the last 97 pages, so I presume all these points have been made before, but I'll have my two penn'oth anyway.
I wonder if Shark and other doubters of the official story have read the Popular Mechanics / Skeptical Enquirer magazines about 9/11? It goes through the main stuff, and seems reasonably clear in both instances - unless anyone thinks a magazine normally only read by engineering nerds is a tool of the New World Order, I suppose.
I don't think it was a hoax, or an inside job, or whatever else, not only because there's no decent evidence for it, but because there's no need for them to have done it to achieve their goals. They never needed such a reason to go to war before, and much as I hated George W Bush I don't see how he could have signed off on killing thousands of his own citizens.
I don't see hitting with three out of four planes is a run of luck, given the training the pilots had. Any more than I think a novice pilot landing on a relatively narrow runway is luck.
I just think that "conspiracism" turns news and history from a description of what happened into a puzzle to be solved, and it's just a fundamentally wrong way of looking at it. Having read the Above Top Secret and related forums quite a bit, it's people who hate the way the world is run but feel so utterly powerless to do anything about it that they ignore the real, out in the open shit our governments do to us and focus on turning everything into a "false flag" operation or whatever. If a tenth the energy that had been spent by people to prove that the official story of 9/11 is wrong had gone towards campaigning for a real political alternative to the garbage we have now, for example, then the world might be moving towards being a better place.
I've got a headache now, as well.... :(
Jim - shame. I was enjoying discussing the possible causes of the Towers' collapse.
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Tips, no hard feelings at all. I know I've upset you in the past with an insensitive comment, and I am sorry about that, and I'm grateful you're big enough to not hold it against me - kudos for that. I think you are wrong on this, though. I have done the reading, on all sides, and I wish there was just one version out there making sense. If there is, I haven't found it yet.
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Famous Mort, welcome to the Madhouse! It's not as if the US doesn't have form in basing wars on staged events; Google the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, for starters. As for governments having qualms about killing their own citizens for political and financial gain, Google Operation Gladio, for starters.
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And yes, just because these things happen, and continue to happen (those satellite images I failed to track down have now been presented by a pro-attack-Ukraine US senator, and photos from 2008 have been presented as proof that Russian tanks are in the Ukraine today) it doesn't mean that 9/11 should be automatically included in these egregious incidents but it does at least suggest that such a thing cannot be ruled out without question.
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QuoteDid the U.S. government blow up the twin towers? I seriously doubt it, but what they undeniably did was seriously exploit the tragedy to intern people without trial, use torture with impunity, spy on innocent people, illegally invade oil-rich countries and generally assist Al Qaeda in their quest to make the world a less free and more fearful place to live.
This.
Quote911 inside job conspiracies are also stupid because 911 was such a rubbish false flag op: most of the hijackers were Saudi fundamentalists rather than Iraqis, making it harder to invade the country the Bush administration wanted to invade, leading them to get Tony B to make up some leftfield justification about WMDs that had fuck all to do with anything as a pretext to war. On top of that, Bushgov MK2 had to publicly ferry a bunch of Bin Laden's family out of the US, and Bin Laden didn't even admit culpability for 911 at first, making him a rubbish patsy. There's far more holes in the inside job narrative than there are in the official version of events.
And This.
More to the point, if it
was a bombing, why not just
say it was a bombing and not bother with the whole planes thing, if such a scenario was so unlikely/implausible? I mean, that kind of cgi isn't cheap!
At the end of the day, the world is being run by incompetent morons like you and me. They are prejudiced, ignorant and utterly fallible, and most of them just want to clock off at 5pm and do just enough to cover their own arses. Sometimes people commit acts of senseless violence, and crazy, random events spiral out of control.
And
that to me is the far more terrifying truth. The notion that there's some shadowy cabal of puppet masters controlling everything is laughably naive, and almost seems comforting in comparison to the reality.
This just about sums it up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5muY64Oyp10 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5muY64Oyp10)
it was aliens... many people believe they are among us so the aliens in the government worked with aliens in al quaeda to cause a massive destabilisation in the civilised world so they can move their plans against us and destroy us from the inside before they invade proper like. ;)
QuoteMore to the point, if it was a bombing, why not just say it was a bombing and not bother with the whole planes thing, if such a scenario was so unlikely/implausible? I mean, that kind of cgi isn't cheap!
And let's not forget their most basic of errors in miscounting the number of planes they needed, and while not having one to hit it, they decided to set off the charges in building 7 and bring it down anyway...
DP - sorry
Radiator, I don't buy the "incompetence argument." Too many things in this world work perfectly well, run by perfectly competent people. Could incompetence put men on the Moon, develop an atomic bomb in a project spanning several countries, scores of facilities and thousands of people (very few of whom knew what they were working on) in complete secrecy until two were dropped on Japan, build and maintain infrastructure or construct Channel Tunnels and mag-rails? Did incompetence create the internet or build nuclear submarines? I think not.
.
No. There is a lot more competence about (wish I could get me some...) than we think.
.
I can't watch vids on this old 'phone :-(
See, Rich? Doesn't make sense, does it?
That was scientists. Scientists sometimes know what they're doing.
Scientists were involved, sure - but so were politicians, civil servants, businessfolk, managers, financiers, engineers, cleaners...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2015, 01:20:20 AM
Now, it's possible that this unprecedented and unique attack uncovered some unknown physics causing well-understood materials and architectural engineering conventions to act in a completely new and counter-intuitive fashion ...
This statement has neen niggling at me.
A system with simple well understood properties and initial states behaving in an unpredictable way when a new variable is introduced? That's not fucking "cartoon physics", it's Chaos Theory.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here, I don't think you're being wilfully ignorant but you are displaying a degree of ignorance while using obfuscatimg language.
Also, if you don't buy the incompetence argument, then why are you skeptical of the official reports on the attack? Even if they were written by stooges, there are thousands of qualified, competent people who could disprove that alleged bullshit comprehensively.
Just askin'...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2015, 05:54:45 PM
Famous Mort, welcome to the Madhouse! It's not as if the US doesn't have form in basing wars on staged events; Google the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, for starters. As for governments having qualms about killing their own citizens for political and financial gain, Google Operation Gladio, for starters.
There's a slight difference between Operation Gladio and flying a plane into a building and killing three thousand people, for example. And the first Gulf of Tonkin incident had real ships, and again didn't involve killing three thousand of their own citizens.
Also, I'd rather you didn't assume I know nothing about history, thanks. A less friendly person might assume you were being rather condescending.
Okay, point taken, I'll re-phrase it:
.
Two jets, similar to but different from the ones envisaged by the original architects, impacted the Twin Towers in a way similar to but different from the impacts envisioned by the same architects. Soon after, three buildings collapsed in a way not envisioned by any architect or engineer, ever, and which has not been seen before or since. I apologise for calling it cartoon physics; maybe a better description would be localised physics.
.
Any better?
.
Chaos Theory it may be but buildings don't tend to evaporate no matter how much chaos is involved. If we did not exist on a macrosc... sorry, on a big scale, then quant... sorry, very tiny uncertainty might cause virtu... sorry, just about every molecule in the buildings to decide to turn to dust almost in unis... sorry, all at once. But we don't, so it didn't.
.
Sarcasm, sorry.
.
I would, seriously, love to know what could turn three skyscrapers to dust. I don't think two jets, no matter how lucky they are, could achieve such a thing.
.
And how was it that two jets and three tower blocks could not withstand all this chaos yet Satam al-Squami's visa survived without a singe?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satam_al-Suqami
I guess Chaos Theory allows for random coincidences like that one but still, it makes my eyes narrow.
I don't know what you know, Famous Mort, I gave examples, that's all. I was recently taken to task for not citing things and now I've been taken to task for citing things. I can't win, lol! No offence intended, FM.
.
There have been cases where governments have sacrificed thousands of their own citizens, in secret, for the "greater good."
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2015, 07:39:38 PM
I would, seriously, love to know what could turn three skyscrapers to dust. I don't think two jets, no matter how lucky they are, could achieve such a thing.
Really? Because I think you would reject that explanation if it didn't fit with your World-View, no matter how comprehensive that explanation was.
Why, have you got one?
No, and neither do you.
Correct.
.
That's kinda' what I've been saying.
.
Horses and Zebras innit?
Or humans and humans.
Can you even begin to imagine how a government might carry something like 9/11 off? The only way it'd work is some kind of Adrian Veidt supervillain plot, with all key witnesses murdered by assassins who then murdered each other. Even then it'd be entirely reliant on finding dozens - if not hundreds - of people willing to betray their country and murder thousands of their fellow citizens in cold blood. And to what end? It's pure fantasy.
I don't get why it has to be thousands. If we are happy to accept a dozen or so with box-cutters did it.....why couldn't it be a dozen or so with box-cutters under direction from...elsewhere? Not wanting to fan the flames here, but the idea that armatures can do it with a handful but if it was the gu'vmint it requires thousands just seems a bit daft.
Oh, and in no way am I saying the gu'vmint did or didn't, I'm just quizzing the numbers bit. ;)
Quote from: Ghost MacRoth on 16 February, 2015, 09:00:44 PM
I don't get why it has to be thousands. If we are happy to accept a dozen or so with box-cutters did it.....why couldn't it be a dozen or so with box-cutters under direction from...elsewhere? Not wanting to fan the flames here, but the idea that armatures can do it with a handful but if it was the gu'vmint it requires thousands just seems a bit daft.
Oh, and in no way am I saying the gu'vmint did or didn't, I'm just quizzing the numbers bit. ;)
I think radiator is talking about the methods used according to some of the conspiracy theories, (and the resulting cover up), rather than them doing things in exactly the same way as the terrorists (probably) did.
Ah yes, fair one. I took it as more general, my mistake. :-[
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2015, 07:39:38 PM
Chaos Theory it may be but buildings don't tend to evaporate no matter how much chaos is involved.
Chaos theory does not describe things that
tend to happen. This was a unique event. I don't doubt that the most qualified people and most brilliant minds in the world couldn't come up with an perfect explanation, but that alone does not imply a conspiracy.
I don't claim to understand the subleties of geo-politics, propaganda and spin, but when you start citing science,
YOU'RE IN MY HOUSE, BITCH!
Again, I should really stay away from the internet when I've been drinking.
Quote from: King Pops on 16 February, 2015, 10:42:44 PM
Again, I should really stay away from the internet when I've been drinking.
LIKE.
I've been drinking too. I'm not going near this thread again till tomorrow.
Quote from: King Pops on 16 February, 2015, 10:41:38 PM
I don't claim to understand the subleties of geo-politics, propaganda and spin, but when you start citing science, YOU'RE IN MY HOUSE, BITCH!
This is one of the many frustrations in arguing with people who support a fringe view point — they have a tendency to demand a level of expertise they do not themselves possess, and standards of evidence they cannot themselves produce ("You're not a structural engineer!" or "I don't care about that structural engineer's report! What about
this YouTube video!").
Occasionally, I suffer a lapse in judgement and get into an argument with one of a disparate group I like to call "Shakespeare Deniers". Now, I don't claim to be an
expert on the authorship of Shakespeare's plays but I did study both the Bard as a dedicated paper and the wider field of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature as a separate paper at university, so in a roomful of randomly sampled people ordered from "layman" to "expert", I feel confident asserting that I stand comfortably on the "expert" side of the median line.
The first thing to note about those who argue for Marlowe, Devere, Raleigh, et al, is their insistence on referring to Shakespeare as "Stratford" or "The Stratford Man", which is essential to their argument since it allows them to obfuscate the somewhat significant fact that
Shakespeare's name is on the front of the plays. These people point to the lack of facts in support of Shakespeare's authorship, when the facts we can be reasonably confident of are that: Shakespeare was part-owner of the Globe theatre, which was home to the King's (Lord Chamberlain's) Men, a company of actors of which Shakespeare was also a part and which performed Shakespeare's plays. Also, the broadly contemporary Ben Jonson penned a verse to preface Shakespeare's first (posthumous) folio collection fairly clearly identifying Shakespeare as author of the works therein.
Yet you find yourself confronted with protestations that this is inconclusive, that a higher standard of evidence is required, from an opponent whose position (in the case of the Marlowe camp*) requires their candidate for authorship to have faked his own death and then spent twenty years having plays smuggled into England anonymously from secret exile in Italy so that Shakespeare could pretend that they were his.
And
this is one of the most pernicious effects of the internet: the myth of equivalence of opinion when not all opinions are equal. All of the cases for alternative authorship of Shakespeare's plays require the dismissal of some or all of the known facts of Shakespeare's life, and some bending of the biographical detail of the preferred alternative candidate (de Vere, for example, inconveniently died four years before the believed date of Shakespeare's final play).
Many of the counter arguments to Shakespeare's authorship don't hold water under any kind of scrutiny: it's asserted that a common man of limited education** couldn't have displayed such knowledge of foreign parts, and examples of him getting important details (such as the location of certain Italian cities) hilariously wrong are hand-waved away.
And yet, when you systematically go through all of this, pointing out the illogicalities and inconsistencies of their argument, an argument which supports a version of events far less likely than the mainstream version (which also has the advantage of
being supported by the vast majority of the available facts) then the shutters come down, and you're labelled an establishment stooge, incapable of critical thinking,
blahblahblah.Which all seems very familiar to the argument at hand. It's a basic template, all you have to do is change the subject and the pattern is identical. I'm not suggesting that one should never question the orthodoxy*** merely observing that knee-jerk rejection of the mainstream narrative on a particular subject should be approached with caution, particularly if one's alternative explanation for that subject is
really fucking stupid.
Cheers
Jim
* Who, I will concede are outliers in the debate and whom I've chosen largely for comedic value.
** Remarkable how many arguments against Shakespeare's authorship proceed from the assertion that he was a pleb and couldn't possibly have written the works because he wasn't posh enough.
*** Whilst I wouldn't claim to have maintained anything other than the most cursory of interest in the academic study of Shakespeare since my degree, continued academic rigour has seen the case for Middleton's hand in some of Shakespeare's plays strengthen radically, and the identifying of
Cardenio as a plausible candidate for a 'lost' Shakespeare work, demonstrating that even the 'mainstream' position is not one cast in stone.
I'd say my area of moderate expertise is the JFK assassination. I have a pretty dull job with access to the internet, so I pick a new subject every week to learn about. One week was baseball (handy when I met Mrs Mortimer, an American and fan of fancy-rounders); and another was JFK, which led to years of reading and interaction with some of the oddest corners of the internet.
My last argument about it (and the last one I'll ever have on the subject, probably - life is too damn short) had the greatest hits of conspiracy-minded thinking. A court transcript directly contradicted what one person was saying, so I linked to it, but because the site that the transcript was hosted by was run by a well-known Oswald-did-it guy, they felt able to ignore it. Their argument was a hydra - chop one head off, and a bunch more would spring up. Ask what they thought actually happened, and you'd just get the "well, I'm only asking questions" response.
One of the main issues I have with trying to have a discussion with "people like that" on the internet is they tend not to treat it as an attempt to find the truth, but as a court case that needs winning, so they use all the tricks of the disreputable lawyer (and every logical fallacy known to humanity).
The JFK one is interesting. It just blows the mind that one single nutter with a gun could alter history in such a way. The cannot accept it so construct a comforting narrative that tells them someone somewhere is in control.
Nope. Just a nutter with a gun.
What about Diana and that tunnel though eh? ;)
Quote from: JamesC on 17 February, 2015, 10:28:20 AM
What about Diana and that tunnel though eh? ;)
The great "Man Wearing Seatbelt Survives Crash" conspiracy?
Quote from: The Cosh on 17 February, 2015, 11:07:03 AM
The great "Man Wearing Seatbelt Survives Crash" conspiracy?
Stooge.
Cheers
Jim
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 17 February, 2015, 09:29:37 AM
The JFK one is interesting. It just blows the mind that one single nutter with a gun could alter history in such a way. The cannot accept it so construct a comforting narrative that tells them someone somewhere is in control.
Nope. Just a nutter with a gun.
Arh man I got really into that as a teen. Bill Sienkiewicz trading cards leading me to all kinds of books that made the case quite clear to my alcohol fuelled mind. This was backed up by Oliver Stone and Pete Milligan issues of Shade (my chronology is not to be trusted here by the way) and that was it. I was through the looking glass people...
...then I heard the other side and well...
... oh I see...
...sorry about all the fuss folks.
I now find things about debunking conspiracy theories fascinating having been suckered into one myself.
I've always thought the Red Dwarf episode where a time-traveling JFK assassinated himself so he wouldn't take America down with him when his dirty linen was aired in public makes more sense than most official theories.
Quote from: Famous Mortimer on 17 February, 2015, 09:15:16 AMOne of the main issues I have with trying to have a discussion with "people like that" on the internet is they tend not to treat it as an attempt to find the truth, but as a court case that needs winning, so they use all the tricks of the disreputable lawyer (and every logical fallacy known to humanity).
Pedants are not confined to conspiracy discussions - there's a very common kind of internet troll whose MO is simply to get any kind of concession or admittance of minor inaccuracy from the person they're arguing with - regardless of how they get it or its importance to the discussion either way - at which point they act like they've won something. In their own minds, I think they might actually believe that they
have.
Oh, agreed - pedantry is the bane of anything interesting.
I'd recommend reading Michael Barkun's "Culture Of Conspiracy" for a flavour of that sort of thinking and activity; David Aaronovitch's book, provided you don't have to spend any money on it, is worth a flick through too.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 17 February, 2015, 09:29:37 AM
The JFK one is interesting. It just blows the mind that one single nutter with a gun could alter history in such a way. The cannot accept it so construct a comforting narrative that tells them someone somewhere is in control.
Nope. Just a nutter with a gun.
Poor choice of words or dark humour?
I would like to claim the latter, but that would be a lie!
Quote from: JamesC on 17 February, 2015, 10:28:20 AM
What about Diana and that tunnel though eh? ;)
Thats no way to speak about the peoples princess! No matter who is responsible for 9/11 it is currently the most amazing telly I have ever seen. I think it will only be topped if the rapture occurs in my lifetime and is on BBC news 24.
The JFK conspirac[ies] I took as read as a kid - the only question was which one. I fancied the FBI myself, but I could be persuaded to the Mafia. My belief hinged on the 'holes' that every C4 documentary, magazine and Costner soliloquy harped on about, if you couldn't explain every coincidence and unidentified blur completely then deep and sinister currents must be the logical cause - as opposed to the usual fog of life.
Ultimately however it came down to deciding whether a surprisingly fine piece of shooting from a known marksman and all-round nutter was more unlikely than a convoluted mess involving hundreds of people conspiring and fudging and bumping each other off while keeping totally silent about it. And not to drag this rather good run of posts backwards, but that's exactly what the WTC asks of us: nasty bastards with pilot training and what you could actually see happening on your telly that awful day, versus a secret industry of hundreds of US citizens prepared to murder thousands of their own in the most complex and public way imaginable and (in stark contrast to every other revealed US abomination) not get found out. Oh, plus the planes and their hijackers too.
Your second paragraph brings us to people like the woman who survived one of the bombs on 7/7, and went to a meeting of conspiracists who insisted, to her face, that not only had the attacks not happened, but she was an NWO stooge for daring to pretend they had. That's an impressive amount of denial right there.
When you have people like...what's her name? Madeline Albright? One of Bush's top people...answering the question "was the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children worth it?" with "yes", then you realise they don't really need to invent elaborate and monstrous justifications to go to war. They just don't care.
Reading about JFK (and I've read more books than I care to remember), the fascinating thing about it is not the facts of the case, but the way people have misused those facts. The Oliver Stone movie fellow, Jim Garrison, took a pile of lies based on lies based on a half-remembering of a fragment of evidence and made a case against a chap who had nothing whatsoever to do with any of it. The jury immediately acquitted the guy, of course.
QuoteYour second paragraph brings us to people like the woman who survived one of the bombs on 7/7, and went to a meeting of conspiracists who insisted, to her face, that not only had the attacks not happened, but she was an NWO stooge for daring to pretend they had. That's an impressive amount of denial right there.
Isn't there a brilliant (as if there's any other kind) Jon Ronson piece on this?
That, I would love to read. Z
I could be wrong, but I *think* it's a chapter in The Psychopath Test about David Shayler and the whole 7/7 thing.
I'd be genuinely interested to hear that Popular Mechanics podcast if anyone has a link? Can't seem to find it anywhere online.
Has this been posted yet ?
If so here it is again.
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/jet_fuel.png)
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 17 February, 2015, 02:39:51 PM
QuoteYour second paragraph brings us to people like the woman who survived one of the bombs on 7/7, and went to a meeting of conspiracists who insisted, to her face, that not only had the attacks not happened, but she was an NWO stooge for daring to pretend they had. That's an impressive amount of denial right there.
Isn't there a brilliant (as if there's any other kind) Jon Ronson piece on this?
I can't find the original thing, but there's a summary of it here-
http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2tgnge/the_cyberstalking_of_london_bombing_victim_rachel/
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 17 February, 2015, 02:54:59 PM
I could be wrong, but I *think* it's a chapter in The Psychopath Test about David Shayler and the whole 7/7 thing.
I knew Dave Shaylor at uni (before he went mental obvs) - he was editor of the student paper and a bit of a local hero for publishing extracts of Spycatcher when it was still banned.
Re the Kennedy assassinations, I remember seeing a documentary about the killing of Bobby Kennedy years ago - there were lots of suspicious activity - files being destroyed and evidence 'lost' etc, but they came to the conclusion that the murder was indeed committed by a lone nutter, but every branch of the government, police or security services was frantically covering up by instinct on the assumption that someone else was up to something dodgy
Quote from: radiator on 17 February, 2015, 04:44:20 PM
I'd be genuinely interested to hear that Popular Mechanics podcast if anyone has a link? Can't seem to find it anywhere online.
Seems to have gone! I'll have a look around my hard drives to see if I kept a copy, but I can't promise anything.
However there are loads of articles that address any 'mysteries' on the site.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a6384/debunking-911-myths-world-trade-center/
Ahem...
David Shayler came to do a meeting for our local Stop The War Coalition group, must be 10 years ago now. He seemed okay at the time but when he was having a cigarette outside his conversation changed to be all about him and the dark forces massing against him. Poor chap.
(http://i.imgur.com/UkXpKfL.jpg)
I cant link to youtube from work but the video of an elderly Buzz Aldrin punching a moon landing conspiracy nutter is awesome!
Quote from: Satanist on 17 February, 2015, 06:29:12 PM
I cant link to youtube from work but the video of an elderly Buzz Aldrin punching a moon landing conspiracy nutter is awesome!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wptn5RE2I-k
Never gets old.
Quote from: Satanist on 17 February, 2015, 06:29:12 PM
I cant link to youtube from work but the video of an elderly Buzz Aldrin punching a moon landing conspiracy nutter is awesome!
Easily one of the best things to come out of the tin foil hat community. So utterly delicious to see the smug shit get his justs.
Violence is never the answer, but throwing that punch must have felt pretty fuckin' good, eh?
Hey whatever happened to the ufologists?
Oh that's right, we all got easy access to still and video cameras and rather then a flood of new footage it all dried up.
Russian cameras caught the meteorite yet no multiply views of an unidentified flying object coming forward.
Though it's probably a cover up we're all in on.
Just asking questions btw.
Foil!
Sometimes violence is the answer.
Quote from: Dunk! on 17 February, 2015, 06:46:50 PM
Hey whatever happened to the ufologists?
Oh that's right, we all got easy access to still and video cameras and rather then a flood of new footage it all dried up.
I'm going to use that argument next time my friend starts going on about aliens. Not that it'll make much difference - as he says himself, there's no real proof but he wants to believe. What can you do?
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 17 February, 2015, 07:54:27 PM
Quote from: Dunk! on 17 February, 2015, 06:46:50 PM
Hey whatever happened to the ufologists?
Oh that's right, we all got easy access to still and video cameras and rather then a flood of new footage it all dried up.
I'm going to use that argument next time my friend starts going on about aliens. Not that it'll make much difference - as he says himself, there's no real proof but he wants to believe. What can you do?
Much like when radar coverage got better aircraft disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle (remember that one!?) all but stopped.
Wait, are we finding some truth here? I, I can't handle it!
Dunk!
Quote from: Satanist on 17 February, 2015, 06:29:12 PM
I cant link to youtube from work but the video of an elderly Buzz Aldrin punching a moon landing conspiracy nutter is awesome!
I think I've now watched that clip more times than the actual moon landing footage. I've even shown it to my kids more than once with the "now you must never never do anything like this (at least until you're as great a person as Buzz Aldrin), but look, this is the greatest thing on the internet!".
Buzz threw that punch so that we don't have to.
Quote from: Dunk! on 17 February, 2015, 06:46:50 PM
Hey whatever happened to the ufologists?
Oh that's right, we all got easy access to still and video cameras and rather then a flood of new footage it all dried up.
No it didn't. There's more footage of weird lights in the sky than there ever was, it's just that we
usually have a better chance of finding out what they actually are nowadays 'cos of the internet and suchlike, whether it be a meteor or a Chinese Lantern.
First thing I've done on the occasions I've seen meteors/auroras/weird atmospheric phenomena like parhelions and stuff, is have a look on Twitter to see if anyone else has mentioned it. They usually have and there's usually photos or video footage and explanations of what it actually was.
You still get the odd weird thingymajig or groups of thingymajigs, (sometimes even filmed by more than one person), that nobody can offer a definitive answer for, so there are plenty of
Unidentified Flying Objects still up there.
Probably not aliens, though.
Why many footages of UFO or monsters always blur??
To be fair, any spontaneous pictures I've tried to take of odd but completely natural phenomena and moving wildlife usually blur too, and could just as easily be spaceships or Bigfoot.
(Hot air balloons also look very flying saucery when they're quite far off and you try to zoom in on them with a cheap camera phone).
and Orb, is it just some dust? Most Haunted shows always freak about proof of ghosts which was orbs...
Most Haunted basically disproved the existense of ghosts by running for about a decade without producing a single compelling frame of evidense.
I remember Arthur C Clarke saying once that if you'd seen as many UFOs as he had, you wouldn't believe they were alien spaceships, and if you've never seen one, you aren't looking up enough.
Arthur C Clarkes Mysterious World is still the best series to go and watch for a proper, educational and yet still whole heartedly sceptical view on any phenomena put forward as beyond the normal. Cracking series.
Orbs and Robs are complete bullshit, by the by. Lense over exposure ever single time.
And Bigfoot, though a favourite folk law of mine is also utter horse shit.
Quote from: King Pops on 17 February, 2015, 10:08:57 PM
Most Haunted basically disproved the existense of ghosts by running for about a decade without producing a single compelling frame of evidense.
They might have got slightly better results if they'd pointed the night vision camera at anything other than their own stupid gurning faces whenever anything 'supernatural' was supposedly happening.
I really, seriously,
detest that programme.
There's just as many explanations for ghosts as there are for UFOs, (from the psychological to the atmospheric to the WTF?), and there's plenty there that should warrant further investigation, but that shower of sods have ruined it for everybody because now the image in most folk's heads of yer average paranormal investigator is of an Indian-spirit-guided orb-spotting 'psychic medium' putting on silly voices and saying they're Anne of frigging Cleves or something.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 18 February, 2015, 12:30:44 AM
now the image in most folk's heads of yer average paranormal investigator is of an Indian-spirit-guided orb-spotting 'psychic medium' putting on silly voices and saying they're Anne of frigging Cleves or something.
No, my image is, and always will be, Ghostbusters. Those guys had credibility.
Dunk!
Quote from: King Pops on 17 February, 2015, 10:08:57 PM
Most Haunted basically disproved the existense of ghosts by running for about a decade without producing a single compelling frame of evidense.
Oh,
evidense. That's beautiful.
Except, y'know, existense. A glorious fluke, then.
I stop believing that a paranormal investigation is going to provide any reliable evidence for the existence of ghosts the second that the "investigators" turn out the lights.
If you were attempting a serious investigation then being in the pitch dark is pretty much the stupidest thing you could do. Not only does it heighten paranoia and imagination in the investigator (which is presumably why they do it on TV), but it's also an incredibly absurd idea that ghosts would only appear in the dark.
I'm not saying I believe in the existence of ghosts one way or the other, but any experiences I've ever had which could even begin to be suspected of being the result of paranormal activity, have happened in a well lit environment.
The "interesting theory ruined by crackpot believers" applies doubly to the worst show of them all, "Ancient Aliens".
Now, I don't believe that aliens visited us in the past, but I think a genuine study of ancient cultures can be positive – we learn, we understand more about our own history, and so on. Scratch the surface of one of these "researchers", though, and you'll get people who think they're a direct bloodline descendant of Jesus, or who think the Earth is hollow, or that the Moon is a secret CIA base.
Quote from: Famous Mortimer on 18 February, 2015, 09:22:09 AM
The "interesting theory ruined by crackpot believers" applies doubly to the worst show of them all, "Ancient Aliens".
This. It was recommended to me by a friend. The very first part I saw (suggesting that the wall-shattering Ark of the Covenant and trumpets were a sonar weapon) was clearly a load of bollocks - Even with my meagre knowledge of archaeology, I know that the existence of the Jericho Siege (along with the rest of Exodus) is largely refuted.
Enter the esteemed Prof Cardigan...
These programmes are all just a bit of fun though aren't they? I quite like them (apart from Most Haunted which is shit).
The best pseudo-science shows are Deadliest Warrior and that one where they see what would happen if an elephant had a fight with a rhino.
The finest UFO documentary ever made:
Danny Dyer's 'I Believe in UFOs'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1RaIWZq5Q8
Quote from: Famous Mortimer on 17 February, 2015, 04:59:59 PM
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 17 February, 2015, 02:39:51 PM
QuoteYour second paragraph brings us to people like the woman who survived one of the bombs on 7/7, and went to a meeting of conspiracists who insisted, to her face, that not only had the attacks not happened, but she was an NWO stooge for daring to pretend they had. That's an impressive amount of denial right there.
Isn't there a brilliant (as if there's any other kind) Jon Ronson piece on this?
I can't find the original thing, but there's a summary of it here-
http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2tgnge/the_cyberstalking_of_london_bombing_victim_rachel/
I believe this is actually in 'Them'
Quote from: JamesC on 18 February, 2015, 10:09:19 AM
These programmes are all just a bit of fun though aren't they? I quite like them (apart from Most Haunted which is shit).
The best pseudo-science shows are Deadliest Warrior and that one where they see what would happen if an elephant had a fight with a rhino.
I think they're comedy shows, but the problem is, being on the History Channel and looking the same as actual history shows, they have people believing them. There's a great archaeologist / writer called Jason Colavito who reviews all these shows, and he is bombarded with "why are you trying to stop the truth getting out?" emails from people who take it all at face value.
Quote from: Theblazeuk on 18 February, 2015, 10:21:49 AM
Quote from: Famous Mortimer on 17 February, 2015, 04:59:59 PM
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 17 February, 2015, 02:39:51 PM
QuoteYour second paragraph brings us to people like the woman who survived one of the bombs on 7/7, and went to a meeting of conspiracists who insisted, to her face, that not only had the attacks not happened, but she was an NWO stooge for daring to pretend they had. That's an impressive amount of denial right there.
Isn't there a brilliant (as if there's any other kind) Jon Ronson piece on this?
I can't find the original thing, but there's a summary of it here-
http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2tgnge/the_cyberstalking_of_london_bombing_victim_rachel/
I believe this is actually in 'Them'
Nah, I'm pretty sure Them was out a few years before 7/7.
I never understood the orbs thing. I once did a website for someone who was totally obsessed by those things. He'd keep forwarding me pictures, and I'd look at them and think: exposure issue; lens issue; exposure issue; etc. Bizarre.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 18 February, 2015, 12:00:43 PM
I believe this is actually in 'Them'
Nah, I'm pretty sure Them was out a few years before 7/7.
[/quote]
You are 100% right
Quote from: Theblazeuk on 18 February, 2015, 12:17:55 PM
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 18 February, 2015, 12:00:43 PM
I believe this is actually in 'Them'
Nah, I'm pretty sure Them was out a few years before 7/7.
You are 100% right
[/quote]
Woohoo! Makes a change!
Right that's enough! There's far too much consensus blossoming on this thread. Shark get back here toot sweet!! Z
Quote from: ZenArcade on 18 February, 2015, 12:56:44 PM
Right that's enough! There's far too much consensus blossoming on this thread. Shark get back here toot sweet!!
I don't think he can handle the truth...
Cheers!
Jim
I saw a UFO once. Honestly, I did. It was one of those silver cigar shaped object ones - it was my mate who spotted it out of our college canteen window, and alerted me to its presence with the words 'What the FUCK is that?' We went back to our art class and he denied having seen it to save face, the cunt.
Let's face it, though - it wasn't an alien ship, was it? It was a Flying Object that we simply couldn't Identify.
our planet lies in one solar system of many many more in our galaxy which is big. the universe consists of many many many more galaxies as seen by the telescope of hubble. each one of those galaxies contains a lot of solar systems ,only human arrogance could scoff the possibility of intelligent and advanced life somewhere out there and just cos we can't get to other worlds and stars don't mean they cant,after all, a few years ago we still believed the world was flat and travelling to the moon absolute piffle! ;)
Grugz, google the Fermi paradox. Z
Quote from: Grugz on 18 February, 2015, 08:15:07 PM
our planet lies in one solar system of many many more in our galaxy which is big. the universe consists of many many many more galaxies as seen by the telescope of hubble. each one of those galaxies contains a lot of solar systems ,only human arrogance could scoff the possibility of intelligent and advanced life somewhere out there and just cos we can't get to other worlds and stars don't mean they cant,after all, a few years ago we still believed the world was flat and travelling to the moon absolute piffle! ;)
I suspect everyone here would agree that the probabbility of extraterrestrial life existing somewhere out the in the universe is a given. That's not what anyone's saying.
I don't. Z
I've said this before; the biggest problem with assertaining the existence of extraterrestrial life is that we only have a sample group of one when it comes to inhabited planets. The only kind of life we're certain exists is that which developed on our little blue ball. That's not to say that's the only kind of life that can exist, but it does give us a bit of bias when we come to look at extraterrestrial life. Extremophiles can only teach us so much.
Extraterrestrial life might not resemble anything we're used to defining as alive.
"Life, Jim, but not as we know it."
That's the facinitation. Z
I read an amusing article in an old issue of the Fortean Times I found in the dentist waiting room last week, about a U-Boat that got breached by a torpedo and had to surface only to be attacked by a Mosasor like creature. Obviously bollocks but stuff like that give's me a laugh.
Sounds like a buncha lads coming up with a tall tale about how their u-boat got trashed.
I do like to keep an open mind regarding cryptids, and i'm 100% positive their ARE large vertabrate marine lifeforms we do not yet know off. One thing being a diver is experiencing just how impossibly vast the ocean is and never truely getting your head around how it's one single body of water. I've dived with Basking Shark, Whale Shark, Manta's and Sunfish. Orcas, Bottlenose's and Humpbacks and everytime i'm struck by the realization that humans are so tiny and fragile. But I do draw rhe line at Zeugolodonts or Plesiosaurs. That shits just silly.
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 18 February, 2015, 09:58:24 PM
I do like to keep an open mind regarding cryptids,
Yet you dismissed bigfoot. I'm not saying there is a sasquatch, yeti or abominable snowman, but the Pacific North-West and the Himylayas are HUGE expanses of land yet to be comprehensively explored. It's not impossible* that there's some kind of undiscovered primate out there.
And the stories are always fun.
*Although, admittedly highly unlikely.
Donno Hawk, but I guess they hadn't proved the Giant Squid until recently. Z
Oh, Giant Squid a legit. It's just a question of HOW big they can grow. They are literally amongst the least documented marine invertebrates with carcasses of individuals barely out of infancy being the only real evidence to go off. The only footage of what might be an adult was recorded back in 2005 (I think) and we can only just make out the front of the thing.....from 20 meters above it. It must have bean massive.
And Pops, theirs a world of a difference between filter feeding marine predators and an Ape living in the woods of Ohio. The fact people actually live in Ohio and in pretty high numbers being one of them.
Oregon?
I failed my Geography A-level, you can't expect me to remember where every state in the US is when they don't even know Scotland is a separate country to England. :lol:
I think the existence of a meter scale primate roaming about in the US North West is stretching my belief levels as well. I think the land based discoveries will be on the millimetre scale ie arthopods. The oceans may well be another matter. Z
Quote from: Grugz on 18 February, 2015, 08:15:07 PM... a few years ago we still believed the world was flat ...
Comic-geek pedantry time - that's not entirely true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth)
As for extraterrestrial life, well, my guess is is that it exists in some form or other out there, but doesn't visit earth in silver cylinders like the one I saw. And I'm about 99.999999% sure it hasn't helped humans in any of our historical endeavours, despite the insidious vortex of bullshit the History Channel is sucking people into. Did I mention how much I hate
Ancient Aliens?
No Jayzus.....are you none too fond of Ancient Aliens? Z
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DDCe7b-0reg/UMMaglWVvOI/AAAAAAAADyM/Y7s2g8faH4E/s1600/Maurice-Moss.gif)
Quote from: ZenArcade on 18 February, 2015, 10:32:58 PM
No Jayzus.....are you none too fond of Ancient Aliens? Z
I... I'm secretly in love with it. But it won't have me :'(
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 18 February, 2015, 10:29:38 PM
Did I mention how much I hate Ancient Aliens?
Maybe we could have a hate-off about it. It got to the point where every time the narrator would ask a question, I'd scream "NO" and would then loudly abuse every stupid fact-free minute of it.
How about vaccinations causing autism in certain cases? It seems Italian courts have ruled it more likely than not. Is a court science? No but it is meant to consider evidence and come to an impartial decision. (I can't read Italian so I don't know what the linked Italian pages say - anybody on here read Italian?)
.
www.ageofautism.com/2015/01/recent-italian-court-decisions-on-vaccines-and-autism.html
.
(Sorry I haven't been on this thread for a bit - I must have cocked-up somewhere along the line and ceased receiving update notifications, so I thought the conversation was dead - but it's good to see you can all get on perfectly fine without me and my big spoon...)
.
So Sharky, you're saying courts come to impartial and just decisions eh?
http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com/
I'm saying the purpose of a court is to reach impartial decisions. Nothing can be taken for granted - who's to say some judges don't wear tinfoil hats under their wigs?
.
I'm downloading that study now, Rich. Will read it later.
Absolute fucking bollocks. To even suggest anti-vax might be a thing, or that there's a link between vaccination and autism, really gets my back up, not least given how many middle-class fuckwits are not vaccinating their children, putting them and everyone else at risk.
The ONLY 'link' that was ever really shown was by Wakefield, immersed balls-fucking-deep in all kinds of dodgy activity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield). His plans backfired to the point that he got struck off and we now have pretty major diseases like measles making a comeback in the west, despite being all-but-eradicated. Autism rates won't change, because as numerous scientists have pointed out extremely clearly, there isn't and never was any link. The Lancet should every single bloody week reprint WE ARE SO FUCKING SORRY across a double-page spread, and Private Eye's championing of the original report shouldn't be forgotten either.
Quote from: Theblazeuk on 20 February, 2015, 10:57:53 AM
So Sharky, you're saying courts come to impartial and just decisions eh?
Not when there is a significant technical component they don't. When I worked for $HIGHSTREETBUSINESS*, I helped our legal secretary prepare the documents that formed the basis of our barrister's case when a customer sued for damages.
We did not dispute the the customer had been sold an out of date product, but we repudiated utterly the suggestion that they had suffered any harm as a result, since such harm would have required a sealed, sterile product to magically have become either acidic or caustic enough (the prosecution was never quite clear which) to cause harm to the customer within weeks of the expiry date. Harm whose symptoms, strangely enough, tallied precisely with a well-documented pre-existing medical condition.
We produced expert witnesses to explain these facts in detail, while the prosecution offered only a tale of woe from the customer. At the end of the trial, the judge announced that we was going to 'set aside' (transl: ignore) the expert testimony and made a substantial damages award to the customer.
Also: what IP and Rich said.
Cheers
Jim
*Which I won't name for obvious reasons.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2013/08/09/court-rulings-dont-confirm-autism-vaccine-link/ (http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2013/08/09/court-rulings-dont-confirm-autism-vaccine-link/)
QuoteThe centerpiece of the "courts confirm" article is the 2012 finding of a local Italian court that a child was diagnosed with autism a year after receiving an MMR. The court, in linking the two things, relied very heavily on the retracted and fraudulent 1998 Wakefield MMR Lancet paper and the testimony of a single physician, hired by the plaintiff's attorney (widely known for advising parents on how to avoid compulsory vaccinations). The physician, Massimo Montinari, it seems, has written a book on how vaccines cause autism and peddles an autism "cure" that he's devised.
One comment from that (incredibly biased) site that TLS linked to says: "Compulsory vaccines is the ultimate violation of personhood... not to mention our basic, fundamental human rights. It WILL lead to horrific suicidal violence directed at those that promote such $talinist ideas."
I fully support people's right to choose not to be vaccinated or to vaccinate their kids - as long as they are forced to live in colonies separate from society so they don't spread infections amongst the rest of us.
Successful vaccination is arguably humanity's greatest achievement, an absolute and unequivocal net good, a proven assertion that individuals acting in concert can be good for all. As DDD says, turning your back on vaccination because of self-interested superstition should be a one-way ticket to a modern leper colony. It's precisely where I draw the line on the individual's freedom to be a fecking idiot: when it represents real and pointless harm to the community. Not offense, not discomfort, but death and disability and plenty of it.
I would love to know if anyone who champions anti-vaccination has ever suffered from any of the diseases vaccinations prevent.
Or worse, some anti-vaccination plonker whose child has come down with one of those diseases.
I suspect they they are like any other kind of conspiracy truther in that there's nothing you can say or no evidence you can present that they cannot ignore or dance around.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 20 February, 2015, 11:29:35 AM
. The Lancet should every single bloody week reprint WE ARE SO FUCKING SORRY across a double-page spread, and Private Eye's championing of the original report shouldn't be forgotten either.
Blimey, didn't know about Private Eye. What was their involvement?
The problem is people forget what these diseases did, and they think that just because the majority don't die, no-one will. They avoid an infinitesimal risk to a child (a deadly negative reaction to a vaccine) and play it against a much larger (if small) individual risk, but that combines to form a huge risk for society as a whole. The recent Disney disaster shows that: kids hospitalised for measles! In 2015! In the USA! Fucking hell. (And although I live in an area with a high vaccine rate, there are a lot of middle-class fuckwits around here that for a while made me rather concerned about the unvaccinated state of our newborn, because what if?)
I'd fully support schools and medical establishments essentially blocking entry from people who aren't vaccinated unless they have very good (i.e. very rare and specific health) reasons why they're not.
As for autism, it's undoubtedly a horrible thing, but the symptoms manifest around the time vaccines are done. Correlation is not causation, otherwise Internet Explorer market-share would be being blamed for the US murder rate (http://gizmodo.com/5977989/internet-explorer-vs-murder-rate-will-be-your-favorite-chart-today).
Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 20 February, 2015, 12:26:30 PMBlimey, didn't know about Private Eye. What was their involvement?
It supported Wakefield.
Heavily. It got it very wrong and never really admitted doing so, instead defending its coverage, which was based on junk science that itself was based on terrible numbers. Without Private Eye's coverage, the overall effect of Wakefield may well have been substantially lower.
In general, I like Private Eye and its anti-establishment leanings. Here, it messed up
monumentally.
Here's how deal with one of them. http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anderson-cooper-takes-down-dan-burton/
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 February, 2015, 10:54:26 AM
How about vaccinations causing autism in certain cases? It seems Italian courts have ruled it more likely than not. Is a court science? No but it is meant to consider evidence and come to an impartial decision.
http://www.britannica.com/list/148/editor-picks-the-10-worst-us-supreme-court-decisions-part-one
Quote from: Famous Mortimer on 20 February, 2015, 12:46:43 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 February, 2015, 10:54:26 AM
How about vaccinations causing autism in certain cases? It seems Italian courts have ruled it more likely than not. Is a court science? No but it is meant to consider evidence and come to an impartial decision.
http://www.britannica.com/list/148/editor-picks-the-10-worst-us-supreme-court-decisions-part-one
The thing about those (very interesting, cheers!) cases is that they are all essentially about basic morality (discrimination, exploitation etc) and/or money, things which you would hope courts would have some expertise, but would not be surprised when they get it wrong due to their inevitable failings and biases as humans. The vaccination business is science, pure and simple, and nobody should be under the impression that these are questions about 'choice' in society any more than driving blindfolded is a 'choice'.
If anyone wants to play a game of anecdotes as opposed to general scientific conclusions, I dig up dead people for part of my living. I can expect that the majority of those dead people will be children (in those cultures that routinely bury children in a recognisable way), and that's even allowing for cultural attitudes to disposing of neonates and stillbirths less formally. Most recent cemetery dig, an 18th/19th C one, the usual pattern was 2 or more children inserted into/around each adult grave. I'll let any anti-vaxxer have a good rummage in the boxes around my desk, and then they can explain why their misunderstanding if causation a statistics and 'people I know' is worth going back to that shite.
Apologies for that nonsensical rant. I find vaccination a very emotive subject, which isn't helpful. Nearly bit our GPs head off when he asked us as new parents how we 'felt' about vaccination. Strongly, that's how.
9/11 conspiracy and now vaccination causes autism. Are we going for a collect-the-set deal on online mentalism this week?
Next up: the Moon landings!
Well after my crop circle experience is debated. :| Z
Vaccination is a no-brainer and I'm continually astonished that it seems to be the 'educated' people who have issues with this. As a parent, it's just insane to not take the precaution. And anyone reading Roald Dahl's letter and remaining unswayed... well.
https://roalddahl.com/roald-dahl/timeline/1960s/november-1962
I was looking into this recently. It's absolute 100% bullshit, and dangerous bullshit at that. I thought what Chelsea Manning's sentence was way, way too severe, but frankly I'd be far less sympathetic if Wakefield received something similar. Spreading this kind of rubbish costs innocent lives.
If you espouse hate, it's a hate crime. If you espouse fear, can you have a fear crime?
The anti-vaccination 'debate' is of course dangerously mental. It appears to be a case of myopic interpretation of the private rights of individuals overwhelmingly outweighed by the need for general public safety from epidemic and pandemic spread of totally preventable diseases. That does not even touch on the rights of the infant to live a disease free childhood and indeed whole life. Z
Being uncharacteristically charitable, I do think that the success of the last 100 years or so of public health programmes has created a disconnect for some people when it comes to thinking of measles as something which can be fatal rather than just give you some uncomfortable spots for a couple of weeks.
Yes, me being charitable means calling people ignorant rather than evil.
My mother never had me vaccinated as a child. I lived in fear of catching something or other which luckily never happened. I won't put my future offspring through the same issue.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 20 February, 2015, 12:31:32 PMHere's how deal with one of them. http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anderson-cooper-takes-down-dan-burton/
I love the manner in which Cooper politely keeps asking the question that if mercury has been removed from vaccines, why have autism rates not fallen? And Burton keeps blurting out about the danger of mercury (while clearly being dumbfounded by the fact that breast milk contains mercury).
Quote from: The Cosh on 20 February, 2015, 02:30:15 PMBeing uncharacteristically charitable, I do think that the success of the last 100 years or so of public health programmes has created a disconnect for some people when it comes to thinking of measles as something which can be fatal rather than just give you some uncomfortable spots for a couple of weeks.
Well, this is it. These things fade, and people forget. Or they say "well, I had measles when I was younger and I'm fine". Really? Did you have measles? Or did you have rubella? Regardless, how many children died that year from what's an entirely preventable disease?
And of course, this idiocy is also stopping the UK's vaccination programme moving on at all and adding to children's defences.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 20 February, 2015, 12:30:05 PM
In general, I like Private Eye and its anti-establishment leanings. Here, it messed up monumentally.
Wasn't aware about PRIVATE EYE but Jeni Barnett on LBC Radio and (especially) Fiona Phillips on GMTV did more than their fair share of scaremongering. The Phillips creature had even the usually sublime Dr. Hilary almost lose his cool on at least one occasion.
Quote from: ming on 20 February, 2015, 02:06:04 PM
Vaccination is a no-brainer and I'm continually astonished that it seems to be the 'educated' people who have issues with this.
I'd replace "educated" with "wealthy" or "famous", the same people who think Scientology is completely reasonable.
I have never thought we faked the moon landings, but the one bit of "evidence" for fakery I found convincing for a long time was that when you speeded up the footage of the astronauts bouncing about the moon's surface, it looked exactly like someone running on earth. It wasn't, of course, but it was fun to ponder.
I'm not a parent.
.
If I was, I would not be against vaccination against diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella. I would not, however, be comfortable to exposing an infant (any infant) with an undeveloped immune system be subjected to what amounts to three attacks at once. Measles, wait a few months, mumps, wait a few months, rubella. To me, that seems sensible.
.
But, because I question, I'm obviously against all vaccinations and deserve to be killed.
This made me smile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg)
Where is it you live again Shark, a Judge will be around to your riverine hab immediately. Z ;)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 February, 2015, 03:33:37 PM
I'm not a parent.
.
If I was, I would not be against vaccination against diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella. I would not, however, be comfortable to exposing an infant (any infant) with an undeveloped immune system be subjected to what amounts to three attacks at once. Measles, wait a few months, mumps, wait a few months, rubella. To me, that seems sensible.
Even if there's absolutely zero evidence that all three at once is bad for kids?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 February, 2015, 03:33:37 PMTo me, that seems sensible.
But Sharky, none of us are doctors or medical researchers - what 'seems' sensible to you and I is neither here nor there. Vaccination, its safety and efficacy, can only be understood statistically and in aggregate, not by anecdote and gut feeling. And while no-one will kill you for questioning, children WILL die because parents have been persuaded by nonsense.
"Common sense" is just about the worst judge of anything more complicated than "should I stick my tongue in this fire?"
Science is drokking fantastic because.... it is questioning.
How much you let 'common sense' override the answers it finds is up to you.
Well I aint no fancy pants doctor *gasp* but when both my sons were infants the vaccination dispute was really kicking off in the media. In the end we agreed that it was much better to get it done than not considering we know loads of snotty/pukey/spotty children but only one has been diagnosed as autistic.
In the end neither of them have autism but they are both nerds, I consider this down to my parenting but may use vaccination as an execuse to my Mrs when called on this fact.
QuoteBut, because I question, I'm obviously against all vaccinations and deserve to be killed.
I feel compelled to post this again...
I asked my brother who wasn't getting my neice done if even if it were true would he rather have a vaccinated autistic child or a dead one as there was a run on kids being deaded from measles due to a lot of people buying into the bullshit and not having their kids protected .
he had to concede .
.
the moon landings... why have we never been back? 1999 has been and gone and still no moonbase alpha
Quote from: Grugz on 20 February, 2015, 05:56:16 PMthe moon landings... why have we never been back?
Because the US is still using the same technology - by which I mean they are using decades-old rockets - owned and run by private industry with a vested interest in retarding technological advances in the field so that they can maintain lucrative contracts with the government to make what amounts to postal runs to the ISS.
In what must surely be a first in human history, putting profit over the advancement of the interests of the species has not been working out too well.
A conspiracy to retard space exploration? What a stupid idea... :-D
It is not necessarily a retardation of space travel from their perspective; it is merely the maximisation of profit balanced against the minimum possible cost involved in achieving what they are contracted to do. Pretty similar to the Aliens plot device where the company contracts the space marines to send the minimum amount of marines to Acheron (which worked out ok).
On a more serious note the system extant on the planet now is ploughing us into the ground for pretty much the same reasons. Z
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 February, 2015, 03:33:37 PM
But, because I question, I'm obviously against all vaccinations and deserve to be killed.
Sharky, I have no problem at all with you questioning the status quo - generally speaking, it's a healthy thing to do and it's what leads to progress. But in the case of the vaccination / autism link, there are readily available
answers to your questions; and the likelihood of a link is so low it's pretty much non-existent.
So while I really don't think
you're doing anything wrong by questioning whether there is a link or not (I wasn't quite sure myself until I personally delved into the subject not long ago), I think Andrew Wakefield has done something very morally wrong indeed by actively falsifying medical findings in full knowledge that his actions would lead to the deaths of children. Which they did.
I really should stop being sarcastic in these conversations (the me deserving to be killed crack) because it undermines me and insults you. I apologise for that.
We're still sending a Judge round Citizen Shark, your mealy mouthed backtracking will not avail. Z
Quote from: ZenArcade on 20 February, 2015, 06:27:05 PM
It is not necessarily a retardation of space travel from their perspective
Depends on whether the extent of their business practices is simply to provide the minimum amount of outlay on the service they're contracted to provide, or if they employ lobbyists to ensure the limitation of rocket research and the reduction of funding to NASA (so that they're financially incapable of doing anything themselves and have to contract out to private contractors reliant on rockets NASA created decades ago), and have their media interests run gleeful stories about the failure of tech trials from rival firms researching technology that would make space travel cheaper and safer.
I agree. Z
Then you have missed the point of the thread.
Quite. :| Z
Been busy all day and now find that after updating the software on my 'phone I can no longer open pdfs or connect to my ancient laptop. Grrr.
.
Some links anyway:
.
www.dcclothesline.com/2015/02/05/bombshell-cdc-whistleblower-admitted-covering-mmr-vaccine-links-autism-granted-immunity-will-testify/
.
www.generationrescue.org/resources/vaccination/cal-oregon-unvaccinated-survey/
.
voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/dr_obama_and_dr_mccain.html
.
www.safeminds.org/research/New-Scientific-Evidence-Links-Autism-to-Vaccines-and-Mercury.html
.
healthimpactnews.com/2013/new-published-study-verifies-andrew-wakefields-research-on-autism-again/
.
www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/italian-court-reignites-mmr-vaccine-debate-after-award-over-child-with-autism-7858596.html
.
https://m.facebook.com/notes/lisa-joyce-goes/30-scientific-studies-that-demonstrate-vaxes-can-cause-autism/10150278904786311
.
www.vaccinesuncensored.org/autism.php
.
Reading through all these pages, I notice it's not actually the vaccinations themselves appearing to cause the damage but toxic metals (mercury, aluminium) used as preservatives within the shots. Maybe, then, (and this is pure speculation) the medical companies are technically correct in their claims that vaccinations are all safe - it's just the delivery system which isn't. Wordplay? I don't know.
.
I'd never heard of Leo Kanner either, and that he postulated a link between autism and vaccinations in the 1930s/1940s. Interesting stuff.
Seriously? There is NO scientific evidence in support of what you're saying and I'm forced to conclude that what you actually are is an elaborate troll. The flitting between emotive conspiracy theories, the retreat from the forum when your arse is getting kicked only to resurface with a new loony theory du jour...
If you spent five fucking minutes on the internet, you'd know that there is no controversy here, so I'm forced to conclude that your purpose here is to provoke a response rather than look for informed discussion. Whilst I'm aware that the word "troll" is now used to describe all manner of internet douchebaggery, this is actually text book trolling in the classic sense.
Take it somewhere else.
Jim
Fish also contain mercury in varying degrees, Shark. You can't subsist on a diet of sequels and numberplates.
Everybody should ask questions. It's really important.
Almost as important is listening to the answers.
Jim, have a look at those links or don't, it's up to you.
.
Eric, I'm pretty sure there is such a thing as mercury poisoning in humans: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning
.
Tips, I agree.
.
Now I'm off to bed.
I'm with Jim here. Don't just post a load of links that have no scientific grounding. Hell, watch the video posted earlier, because that alone provides plenty of insight into precisely what harm mercury that USED to be in vaccines caused (i.e. none), and pointed out if mercury in and of itself was so dangerous as to cause brain disorders, the human race would essentially have died out long ago, given that BREAST MILK has mercury in it.
So, yeah, this is basically textbook trolling. People provide science. Someone says AND HERE ARE THE LINKS READ IT YOURSELF. Right.
Oh, and this cartoon (https://medium.com/the-nib/vaccines-work-here-are-the-facts-5de3d0f9ffd0), obv.
(https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/872/1*UIMtQ7_78pOwEM2iuRYwfA.jpeg)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 February, 2015, 11:00:15 PM
Been busy all day and now find that after updating the software on my 'phone I can no longer open pdfs or connect to my ancient laptop. Grrr.
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Some links anyway:
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www.dcclothesline.com/2015/02/05/bombshell-cdc-whistleblower-admitted-covering-mmr-vaccine-links-autism-granted-immunity-will-testify/
Do you really like asking questions Shark?
I will preface this by saying; if this is more of your sarcasm that I have failed to grasp then ignore all of the following. If it's not sarcasm I suspect you'll just ignore it anyways.
Here be questions:
How did you actually read that without ignoring everything else about that website?
"Airing Out America's Dirty laundry" is the subtitle for that website. Does that not imply, if not bias, then at least an agenda?
Barely three sentences in, I loudly ejaculated "WHAT THE FUCK?!" Prompting Her to ask, "What's wrong love?"
"Anti-vaxxers," was the only answer I could give. Do you have a better one?
Why were all the numbers and statistics just couched in URLs (http://media.giphy.com/media/33MZLeoY8idGM/giphy.gif)instead of properly analysed?
Why the fuck should I take an online source seriously?
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/citogenesis.png)
Wakefield's original study involved eighteen children, all of whom were diagnosed as autistic. Their vaccinations were the only common denominator.
Tony Blair refused comment on whether his baby was vaccinated. The slimy fuck.
I'll finish by citing Doctor Ben Goldacre form his excellent book Bad Science.
The most insidious thing about the anti-vax movement is that they keep insisting the link between vaccinations and autism has not been disproved. There is an important distinction to be made here. The link was never proved in the first place.
Of course I'm drunk.
I can't believe this thread has chundered on and on and on and on. Incredibly tedious.
I read Ben Goldacre's Bad Science a couple of years ago. It covers this and other horrors of idiocy. The vaccine deniers need to shut up now and talk about comics. Please.
Does anyone watch the other conspiracy-themed US shows, like "America Unearthed"? That one is lousy with stuff about the Jesus bloodline and the Templars and all that - all based on some idiotic bit of fraud in the 1950s, it would seem.
KP, here are my answers:
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1) Many websites have agendas - even this one. If we were all to ignore everything we read on websites with agendas we'd might as well switch off the internet.
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2) I cannot answer the question that made you go WHAT THE FUCK?! because you neglected to say what the question was.
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3) I don't know why all the statistics were couched in URLs, nor do I know why you linked this question to a photo of a man who appears to be on a train.
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4) You shouldn't take any online source seriously - there is always room for mistakes and/or lies. I wonder if you show such healthy scepticism towards BBC, uk.gov or NASA websites?
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5) That cartoon's too small to be read on my 'phone (I also can't watch videos on it).
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6) Wakefield's original study may have been flawed (I don't know either way but I'm prepared to be convinced) and involve only eighteen cases. The second link I posted showed results from reportedly surveying 11,817 households. Maybe this is a blatant lie, I'm prepared to be convinced that it is.
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7) I remember Tony Blair doing that, of course. I don't know why he did it. It might have been a security issue - if one of his children had not yet completed the vaccination battery and Tony explained which ones had been taken and were yet to be taken, it might provide terrorists/blackmailers/enemies of the state to tamper with vaccines scheduled to be taken - threatening the life of his child. Again, I don't know.
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8) I think Dr Goldacre may be wrong. There are several studies in amongst those links, especially to the Facebook post, which seem to indicate a link. Having not read the book, which obviously has its own agenda (why should I believe anything with an up-front agenda?), I don't know if he has taken any of these studies into account or not.
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9) Of course, I am not drunk.
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I am not anti-vaccination but I do think the vaccination process should be as safe as we can make it.
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IP, you are correct. According to the CDC, the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal was removed from production in 2001 "as a precautionary measure."* (Thimerosal is, however, still used in 'flu jabs in Europe and the United States and in most Third World vaccines.) Why take precautions to remove something so unquestionably safe?
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A study** linked to the CDC page claims several negative, and positive, links to thimerosal in a small number of cases. (This study is dated 2007, seven years after the CDC advised vaccine manufacturers to cease using the preservative.) The study, which did not factor in autism-spectrum disorders, concludes "The weight of the evidence in this study does not support a causal association between early exposure... and neuropsychological functioning at the age of 7-10 years" and that significant associations may have been chance findings stemming from a large number of statistical tests.
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The associations detected were small, almost equally divided between positive and negative effects and mostly sex-specific. The authors seem most concerned about motor and phonic tics, a phenomena also recorded in a study concerning the effects of consuming mercury bearing fish which "...suggests the potential need for further studies."
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The authors admit the study had several weaknesses and several strengths but does indicate thimerasol effects on a small number of subjects.
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A small number of subjects is not an epidemic but a small number of a million people may be a lot of people. Thimerasol, then, does have an effect. So it was replaced with aluminium salts - which I have not had a chance to look into yet.
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* www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/thimerosal/
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** www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa071434#discussion
QuoteI think Dr Goldacre may be wrong.
That's the beauty of facts, they don't care what you believe.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 February, 2015, 09:56:03 AM
8) I think Dr Goldacre may be wrong. There are several studies in amongst those links, especially to the Facebook post, which seem to indicate a link. Having not read the book, which obviously has its own agenda (why should I believe anything with an up-front agenda?), I don't know if he has taken any of these studies into account or not.
Funny how you don't consider things that agree with your particular view of the world to have an agenda, eh? How about you read it, see the way he backs up his ideas and conclusions, and then form an opinion about it? Having an agenda =/= lying, by the way.
The one simple quote that Shark and people of his ilk seem to have forgotten is "keep your minds open — but not so open that your brains fall out."
"We wish to apologise to viewers for mistakenly showing the same episode of Legendary Shark vs Science over and over again. Normal service will hopefully be resumed shortly."
Shark, unless you plan to train as a doctor, then devote your career to exposing the methodological flaws and distorting biases of large scale medical studies and stating how they could be improved, and to clearly and logically explaining this to laymen like us, I think you have to accept that the fully-documented arguments of Ben Goldacre hold more weight than your questions, however you frame them.
Thiomersal mercury was removed because of the fuss made about it, not because any proven link with autism. Had that been the case one would expect autism rates to plummet in the subsequent dozen years, especially in tandem with the drop in vaccination takeup in general. Has this happened? Whatever your thoughts about vaccines, the good ship mercury has sailed.
Shark, questioning everything is all well and good. But when your refuting evidence procured by professionals much more qualified than yourself you should probably give up.
Quote from: Famous Mortimer on 21 February, 2015, 08:13:14 AM
about the Jesus bloodline and the Templars and all that - all based on some idiotic bit of fraud in the 1950s, it would seem.
I was suckered by that one, I'm embarrassed to say, when I was in my early 20s:
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which clearly says that they sometimes deal with 'ripples' from possible facts rather than facts themselves. Would that my understanding of Occam's Razor had been more developed.
Also, the authors later tried to sue Dan Brown for ripping off their idea - if it was in any way historical then they clearly didn't have a case. (Better call Saul.)
Just wondering, Sharky, I know you can't be completely sure, but if you were pushed for a 'yes' or 'no' answer would you say that you believe vaccinations have ever caused autism?
The bracketed comment you highlight is a response to a similar one made by KP. I hoped to show it to be false by examining the CDC's website and one of the studies it linked to instead of a so-called "anti-vax" site.
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Who was it who said that a mark of intelligence is the ability to entertain a notion without necessarily accepting it? I entertain the notion that some part of the vaccination process may be detremental to certain people.
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Are there studies refuting this notion? Yes.
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Are there studies supporting this notion? Yes.
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Are there malformed or otherwise untrustworthy studies concerning this notion? Yes.
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If the answer to the second question was "no" and the third and first questions still "yes" then I'd be with you - with the proviso that we keep an eye on the third question just in case and never stop asking the second question.
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We are talking here about the most precious resource of humanity - children. Even though I am not a parent I believe this to be True and would like to be certain vaccinations are as safe as they can possibly be. Every child is precious and if vaccinations adversely affect just one child in a million that's simply not good enough. Certainly not good enough if that one child happened to be my own, I imagine.
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To answer your question, JBC, if pushed I'd be forced to say no. I would qualify that, however, by saying I think vaccinations have been a contributing factor, possibly a major one, in some cases.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 February, 2015, 11:14:08 AM
To answer your question, JBC, if pushed I'd be forced to say no. I would qualify that, however, by saying I think vaccinations have been a contributing factor, possibly a major one, in some cases.
Fair enough. I strongly disagree with the second part, but appreciate the straight answer.
I can give 'em sometimes! :-D
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I'm not against Vaccination.
I think that this "discussion" could benefit from being approached at a different angle.
The Human Race apparently Evolved over a couple of Million years. In that time, disease and illnesses of many kinds came and went. Many people would die, some would survive. Our immune systems became more advanced (the 'Common Cold' may have been lethal at some point). But now we have the capacity to potentially eradicate certain illnesses through Scientific endeavours, Which is a good thing, obviously.
I'll cut my ramblings short - Is it possible that Vaccination (over generations) could have a detrimental affect to our own 'natural' ways of fighting illness?
Cheers
QuoteAre there studies supporting this notion? Yes.
Where?
And I mean rigorous scientific studies published in a scientific journal. (The Wakefield study is, as has been said, thoroughly discredited)
Quote from: NapalmKev on 21 February, 2015, 11:32:58 AM
I'll cut my ramblings short - Is it possible that Vaccination (over generations) could have a detrimental affect to our own 'natural' ways of fighting illness?
Cheers
I'm no medical expert, but doesn't vaccination actually
strengthen our natural ways of fighting illnesses? We're not dealing with antibiotics here. As far as I know, vaccination simply introduces a harmlessly small dose of the disease into the body and lets the body learn to deal with it.
Quote from: NapalmKev on 21 February, 2015, 11:32:58 AM
I'll cut my ramblings short - Is it possible that Vaccination (over generations) could have a detrimental affect to our own 'natural' ways of fighting illness?
In short, yes. Preventing death from illness reduces the genetic robustness of the population in the same way that poorly sighted people 'should' starve before they reproduce, those with narrow pelvic openings 'should' die in childbirth etc. to ensure that future generations will be composed of only those with genetic characteristics that nature has selected for fitness. We are replacing the cruel winnowing of nature with the fruit that evolution has gifted us with. Two fingers to natural selection, it's for chumps (and chimps).
Like he said, Humanity has moved beyond natural selection. Z
Edit: What the Prof said.
Cheers
Jim
Or to put it another way: natural selection has already given us a better immune system than the biological one we started with, in that our brains have the capacity to do science, store and disseminate complex knowledge and act in counterintuitive ways for the greater good.
A quick ramble here about genetics, if you'll bear with me. I know little about it bar a couple of Richard Dawkins books but it's an incredibly interesting subject.
It was a bit of a mindfuck originally when I read The Selfish Gene, which scientifically answers the old philosophical question as to what the meaning of life is (to pass on DNA, and nothing more), and brings home the stark reality that we're all essentially machines for keeping the genepool going; and slaves to the whims (not the best word but I can't think of another) of DNA. Genes make all of our decisions for us, and we rationalise them with our mind.
However, we as humans are unique in that we know this - and we can sometimes take our masters on at their own game. In giving the middle finger to natural selection with the likes of vaccination, we are essentially Frankenstein's monster, or Sláine in Time Killer. DNA bit off more than it could chew when it evolved into educated human beings, and while it of course controls pretty much everything we do, we have started to control it back.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 21 February, 2015, 11:00:02 AM
I was suckered by that one, I'm embarrassed to say, when I was in my early 20s: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which clearly says that they sometimes deal with 'ripples' from possible facts rather than facts themselves. Would that my understanding of Occam's Razor had been more developed.
Also, the authors later tried to sue Dan Brown for ripping off their idea - if it was in any way historical then they clearly didn't have a case. (Better call Saul.)
That was the key - at the time a lot of people were saying "er, you can't copyright historical research".
I remember the BBC actually being quite decent on the whole Da Vinci thing, giving us shows which dismantled the pack of lies around it all. It's sad to think that even a few years later, they're so petrified of causing offence to anyone (except their own licence-fee payers) that they'd devote an equal amount of time to any charlatan who shouted loud enough.
We'll be 'legislated' into extinceion not wiped by a disease. The bad meme seems to be fairly potent now. Z
Our "natural" way of fighting disease is to die.
I've spent the last few hours in a futile and frustrating attempt to download a pdf reader so I can look at certain studies I've found pointing to a link between immune system irregularities and conditions like autism. Studies have shown people living in more basic conditions where parasites and infections are more prevalent have virtually no instances of autism. Furthermore, a pregnant mother fighting off infection is more likely to give birth to an autistic child. This New York Times article from 2012 touches on the subject:
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mobile.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/immune-disorders-and-autism.html?pagewanted=all&
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Two of the papers I really want to read are "Neurological Activation and Neuroinflammation in the Brain of Patients with Autism" and "Microglial activation in young adults with autism spectrum disorder 1" - both of which are available for download from here (http://vaccinepapers.org/category/immune-activation/).
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From what I've read about these papers (and not having read them myself I can't be sure) it seems that activation of the immune system (which is what vaccination does) at critical stages of development can cause inflammation of the brain leading to, amongst other things, autism. The next time I'm near a cyber cafe I'll download these pdfs onto my data stick for a proper look.
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I've spent the last few hours in a futile and frustrating attempt to download a pdf reader so I can look at certain studies I've found pointing to a link between immune system irregularities and conditions like autism. Studies have shown people living in more basic conditions where parasites and infections are more prevalent have virtually no instances of autism. Furthermore, a pregnant mother fighting off infection is more likely to give birth to an autistic child. This New York Times article from 2012 touches on the subject:
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mobile.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/immune-disorders-and-autism.html?pagewanted=all&
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Two of the papers I really want to read are "Neurological Activation and Neuroinflammation in the Brain of Patients with Autism" and "Microglial activation in young adults with autism spectrum disorder 1" - both of which are available for download from here (http://vaccinepapers.org/category/immune-activation/).
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From what I've read about these papers (and not having read them myself I can't be sure) it seems that activation of the immune system (which is what vaccination does) at critical stages of development can cause inflammation of the brain leading to, amongst other things, autism. The next time I'm near a cyber cafe I'll download these pdfs onto my data stick for a proper look.
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Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 February, 2015, 06:19:40 PM
Studies have shown people living in more basic conditions where parasites and infections are more prevalent have virtually no instances of autism.
First question I'd ask is, "are there really fewer cases or are people from that kind of background just less likely to be diagnosed with the condition and the researchers haven't taken that into account when conducting their studies?"
Shark, assuming these studies (out of all the hundreds of studies out there that you obviously dismiss) do show what you think they do, that a 'naturally' strengthened immune system correlates with reduced instances of autism when all other factors have been eliminated, what's the implication? That we go back to polio, dyptheria, rubella, TB, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, fucking smallpox? That we exchange a potential risk that cannot be statistically demonstrated for the ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that tens of thousands of children, even millions, will die or become disabled?
You're the same generation as me, you remember when we first entered the workforce the older, office-based end of any operation was full of men crippled with polio. My own mother nearly died of TB when she was a girl. Using the tiniest of personal doubts as reason to undermine a public health programme that relies on near-universal compliance to work at all is beyond the bounds of exercising intellectual freedom - if you really can't be convinced, and I don't understand why, then take a leap of faith: it's worth it.
Out of curiosity, what's the supposed endgame of this vaxxing long con we're being subjected to? What do the Venusian lizard people gain from giving us all shots we don't need?
Also, if it is a con, why is there less diseases and stuff now that we have these vaccines? Shouldn't at least a few board members have Polio if it's all a con?
I don't know the answer, Prof C. It may be an age limit on vaccinations or the addition of an anti-inflammatory so that the immune system can develop without the concomitant inflammation and damage. Perhaps pre-screening for genetic predispositions is the answer, with different vaccines for different people. Maybe the answer is even to cut down on vaccinations and just risk it on certain things. Or possibly only GM of embryos would be sufficient. I wouldn't want to lose vaccinations altogether but even that possibility should be considered. (That idea in the NY Times article about benign worms, kind of artificial parasites to keep the immune system working, is a weird one but might be integrated into the vaccination program somehow. Heh, artificial Go'a'ould - or however you spell it.) I'm sure there are many more possibilities and I'm sure scientists are already working on them.
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First we have to explore the problems and understand them. The current climate of hysteria, on all sides, concerning this highly emotive subject does not seem conducive to that effort.
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Vaccinations also do not happen in a vacuum and we also quite urgently need to clean up our act. As has already been pointed out, human breast milk contains modern toxins such as mercury. Aluminium, plastics, pesticides, antibiotics and synthetic hormones in food, air pollution and God knows what could all have a detrimental effect on top of vaccinations. With anything from 1 in 110 to 1 in 50 (depending on which source is used) people developing autism, not to mention all the other maladies (allergies, asthma, etc) on the rise, the scientists need to figure out what's going on. Their job in this regard is going to be made very much harder if certain areas of research are essentially taboo.
Shark: Benign worms, read that out loud and tell me how you think it probably sounds to others.
There is no hysteria on the behalf of the majority, merely a firm resolve not to let bullshitting quacks dominate important areas of public health to the detriment of the most innocent and vulnerable in their society.
Traces of toxins in breast milk, yes there are, the issue is how concentrated these metals are ie are they at a level where they will directly affect the health of the individual. My reply would be probably not. Z
Bear (PhD), I don't believe your theory about "Venusian lizard people" - if you think that's a likely possibility then by all means try to prove it.
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Nor do I believe it is some form of deliberate population reduction program. (Well, not in a sinister sense. In poorer countries where infant mortality is high, people tend to have more children as "genetic insurance." A truly effective vaccination program means more children survive so people eventually have/need fewer children. I expect this change might lead to a reduction in and eventual plateauing of populations.) One thing I do know is that manufacturers are slow to change and even slower to accept the need for change. History is replete with examples, from lead in petrol to thalidomide. The only "conspiracy" I see is basic corporate inertia.
Z - read the NY Times article for the benign parasites idea - I was a bit glib in my explanation.
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A quick search for the possible effects of just one of the substances being discussed, aluminium, yielded this article from the Jounal of Inorganic Biochemistry: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0162013405001613
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For plastics, this: serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/health/case_studies/plastics.html
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Frikkin' DP, sorry.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 February, 2015, 07:58:16 PM
I wouldn't want to lose vaccinations altogether but even that possibility should be considered.
I'm sure it HAS been considered, both when the idea of vaccination came out first and before the autism link was quite properly rubbished by the scientific community, then disregarded as by far the worse option. That's how scientific progress works, no?
Shark I've read the abstract, and where is a hypohesis (stated in the abstract to be unproven) germaine to the discussion in hand? Z
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 February, 2015, 08:23:20 PMA truly effective vaccination program means more children survive so people eventually have/need fewer children. I expect this change might lead to a reduction in and eventual plateauing of populations.
It already has (and your pal Bill Gates is a mover and shaker in this area). Population growth from chidbirth has practically ceased. It's now longer lifespans that drive the increase.
The argument re: Thalidomide and lead in petrol* are spurious, because this is 2015, universal vaccination has been in place for over half a century, over 80% of the entire planet's children receive immunisation from at least three diseases: the available data is vast and unequivocal. You're arguing as if it's some nasty new scheme rushed to market to make a quick buck. It isn't, it simply, definitively is not.
*Patterson's fight against lead was half a century ago, and despite the vast resources arrayed against him he won, because, again, the scientific evidence was unequivocal. He was able to show that experimental methodology used to measure lead levels was flawed - I believe it's Bill Bryson's
History of Almost Everything covers this in a very accessible way. There are no comparable methodological flaws in studies of vaccination and autism, excepting Wakefield's charade. In fact, if you want to use the lead example as analogy, you're on the side of the Ethyl Corporation.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 February, 2015, 07:58:16 PMMaybe the answer is even to cut down on vaccinations and just risk it on certain things.
Like what? Seriously. Which vaccines would you potentially cut? Polio? My father in law got that and as he heads towards retirement is having loads of fun having bones fused. Measles? Look at what's happening now in the US, where there's only been a relatively small drop in certain areas of vaccines. Kids are getting sick. Entirely preventable deaths are only a matter of time.
Or, you know, we could rally round and actually eradicate a whole shit-load of diseases, in much the same way smallpox is now dead. (Rather than, you know, the literally hundreds of thousands of people who died
from smallpox in the 1900s.)
QuoteI wouldn't want to lose vaccinations altogether but even that possibility should be considered.
If you genuinely believe that, you are either trolling or are genuinely beyond the pale. Fuck it—let's get rid of sanitation too, given that those bastard water companies clean the water we drink with chemicals! And let's stop eating any food we haven't caught or collected ourselves! In fact, let's just get rid of civilisation entirely! I'm pretty certain eradicating vaccines would be a fantastic first step for achieving that particular aim.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 February, 2015, 11:40:02 PM
Eric, I'm pretty sure there is such a thing as mercury poisoning in humans
My point was, as with all childhood vaccines here in the UK, the MMR jab doesn't actually contain mercury/thiomersal. Unlike, say, the antiseptic merbromin, readily available here in the UK despite being banned in the US, Germany, and France. Or all those emissions being released by the UK's fourteen coal-burning operators supplying thirty-one percent of all electricity to England and Wales. Or eye drops and that solution people use for their contact lenses.
Or fish. 17 kilograms of which were consumed on average per person worldwide in 2011. Limit yourself to two tins of tuna a week and you should be okay. Or maybe opt for fish-oil supplements instead. Or number plates. Ah, yes. But! They contain aluminium, the stuff found in deodorants that's giving each and every one of us breast cancer the exact same way we're all developing Alzheimer's from having that occasional flu shot.
Citing vaccines as being especially hazardous is, frankly, ridiculous and disingenuous.
I don't think the Shark is trolling, I think he just believes that every consensus should be questioned. The problem here is that this one has been thoroughly questioned, and has answered. There is simply no evidence that links vaccination and autism, none, to the extent that people have had to make some up to peddle their lies. And employing the argument that vaccination should be 100% safe or not be used is ridiculous from any standpoint: no single thing we do can be 100% safe, yet we assess the risks and we do them every day, and by going ahead with vaccination we know that we are saving uncountable lives, and by not doing it we risk those lives. I just don't see what is at issue.
Z - you'll have to be more specific. Which abstract are you talking about and which aspect of the conversation? What did you think of the NY Times article I linked to in Reply #1636?
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Prof C - I do not argue that vaccination is, on the whole, a good thing. The Devil, of course, is in the detail. For example, are we simply swapping mumps for meningitis? There are several strains of mumps and several strains of mumps vaccination. Vaccine strain Urabe AM 9 has a seropositivity (long-lasting immunity) rate of 85 - 97% and an efficacy rate of ~75.8% whilst the Jeryl-Lynn strain has a sr of 81 - 90% and an efficacy rate of ~64.7% (source (http://web.stanford.edu/~siegelr/mathakia.html)*. There are other strains (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumps_vaccine).
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The Urabe strain was withdrawn in 1992, on the advice of lawyers, after evidence that it caused aseptic meningitis, which had been indicated since the early 80s and confirmed in 1989, was finally accepted and acted upon. The JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) spent three years playing down the findings before recommending the removal of the urabe strain on, it is worth repeating, the advice of lawyers.
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The subject of vaccinations is, as I am continuing to discover, very complex. To say that all vaccinations are good is as incorrect as saying all vaccinations are bad. Some vaccines have been proven to cause chronic side-effects and have been (eventually) withdrawn. We cannot close our minds to this fact.
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* Another interesting topic from this site is the phenomena of vaccine failure. A vaccination against one form of mumps or measles does not imply a full immunity to either disease. The site gives several examples, including one study of a Texas high school (by Cheek, et al) where, of 54 students who contracted mumps, 53 had been vaccinated against mumps at least once. The strain of vaccination used is important and should be factored in to local conditions but the fact is that the United States tends to use the Jeryl-Lynn strain because it is manufactured there and Europeans tend to use the Rubini strain because it is manufactured in Switzerland. Neither strain is wholly effective against wild mumps.
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Now, I really must go to work! I'll try and address some more of your points and questions later on. Toodles!
Quote from: Professor Cardigan on 22 February, 2015, 12:11:22 AM
I don't think the Shark is trolling,
this, nor does he resort to name calling . if you don't like what is said on the thread either disagree like grown ups and gentlemen or move along.
He's an obstinate fellow, but an utter gentleman thats for sure. As I've said before if I needed someone to hold at the postern gate, it'd be Shark. Z
We've played this game before with Shark, but in this case it's really very simple:
There's no link between vaccinations and autism and there's a clearly proven link between children not being vaccinated and children dying.
I hope that, whilst respecting Shark's right to say what he likes, no parent (current or future) is actually influenced by his posts on this topic.
Quote from: Jimmy Baker's Assistant on 22 February, 2015, 04:34:46 PM
I hope that, whilst respecting Shark's right to say what he likes, no parent (current or future) is actually influenced by his posts on this topic.
This.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 22 February, 2015, 04:59:13 PM
Quote from: Jimmy Baker's Assistant on 22 February, 2015, 04:34:46 PM
I hope that, whilst respecting Shark's right to say what he likes, no parent (current or future) is actually influenced by his posts on this topic.
This.
Yes, while I have the greatest respect for Shark and enjoy his polite, eloquent, argumentative, stubborn ways, that's my problem with this particular topic in a nutshell. It's not just idle chit-chat, it's talk that can have real effects on people's lives, and not just those of the potentially-influenced parents and their own children, but on humanity as a whole.
What parent wants to risk injecting their child with a solution that may (rumour has it) permanently affect them mentally and physically? Not everyone takes the time to research away their nagging doubts, and how much easier so not to take the risk. So in this instance, baseless rumours can have terrible and wide-ranging real world effects.
I really don't understand the point of Sharkey's posts on this subject. I would hate to think that somebody out there could be put off vaccinating their child based on what Sharkey is saying. If there was a vaccination for the life-changing condition that I have, I would be dragging my grandchildren down the doctors. Vaccination saves lives. End of.
This type of discussion is beyond banter.
Thanks, chaps. I'll admit, it is often difficult to refrain from joining in the name-calling and I'm ashamed to say I don't always succeed. As soon as I start down that road the argument is essentially lost.
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I would like to make the same deal with everyone who comes to this thread as I made with one of you via email: the next time we meet in person, especially if it's in a pub, NO POLITICS! What happens on the board stays on the board.
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Now then, where was I?
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Prof C - there are comparable methodological flaws in "pro-vax" studies. Take, for instance, one of the most respected and widely referenced studies, A Population-Based study of Measles, Mumps and Rubella Vaccination and Autism (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134#methods) by K.M. Madsen M.D. et al. The study examined the links between children vaccinated with the MMR jab and instances of autism between January 1 1991 to December 31 1998.
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The study does not differentiate between vaccinations with MMR and other vaccinations, meaning that children who had not received the MMR vaccine but may have received other vaccinations (including measles, mumps and rubella individual vaccinations) were placed in the "unvaccinated" group. This in itself represents a flaw in the methodology, for if vaccines other than MMR caused autism the results would essentially hide that fact by mis-labelling subjects receiving vaccinations other than MMR as "unvaccinated."
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A second flaw in this study is the cut-off point of December 1998. The average age of autism diagnosis is 4.6 years (though it can be between 2 to 8 years), which means that any child vaccinated before the cut-off date and developing autism afterwards would be counted as vaccinated without developing autism. The only thing this study indicates is the MMR vaccine is no more likely to cause autism than any other vaccine - and even then the flaws in the study make this indication generally unsound.
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Sorry, Prof C, but the evidence is not quite so conclusive as generally believed.
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IP - Which vaccines would I cut? The dangerous ones, and not necessarily cut altogether. For instance, taking part of my previous post as an example, let's say that Vaccine Strain A (VSA) is the most efficacious but the most dangerous and Vaccine Strain B (VSB) is the least efficacious but also the safest. Why not use VSB on infants, risking infection but avoiding other complications, and providing a booster of VSA at age ~12 when the body is more likely to resist or repair damage?
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Vaccination is all about the odds. We're stacking the deck in our favour using this technology but still the risk/benefit analysis must be done. Do we risk infection or risk side-effects? That's where the cold reality of the numbers game comes in; does one risk an X% chance of contracting mumps (eg.) or a Y% chance of suffering meningitis (eg.), and who should make that decision?
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To suggest abandoning all vaccinations because some are dangerous is, as you point out, stupid. If all vaccines are found to be equally risky (which is, I think, highly unlikely), then the same question arises - which risk is most acceptable? If the choice was between 1,000,000 people contracting possibly fatal diseases and a similar number suffering possibly fatal side-effects, which would we choose?
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EP - You are correct; the MMR vaccine does not contain mercury any more, it has been replaced with aluminium salts. Many vaccines do still contain mercury, though. And to state that substances like mercury and aluminium effect everyone equally ("giving each and every one of us breast cancer") really is disingenuous, I think. Mercury and aluminium are dangerous, especially cumutively, so should we really be introducing these substances to the body and brain of developing infants?
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Prof C- I hope the above, and my Reply #1651, demonstrates that there is some evidence linking certain vaccines to autism-spectrum disorders and other things such as meningitis.
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I will end with a concession. Refusing to use something because it is not 100% safe is foolish. That does not mean we should fail to strive for a 100% safe, 100% efficacious vaccination program. At the moment, we haven't got that. In time, though, we will - but only if we can get past the emotion, which is hard where children are concerned.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 February, 2015, 08:38:48 AM
Z - you'll have to be more specific. Which abstract are you talking about and which aspect of the conversation? What did you think of the NY Times article I linked to in Reply #1636?
To anyone who's spent any time on the internet, these sort of replies, while entirely polite, are also trolling. Please give me ever more specific information while I stick to my vague suppositions! Waste more of your time debating me, when my position will never, ever change!
If I'm misrepresenting how you're actually behaving, Shark, I apologise. But I don't think I am.
Mistake 1 - the cut-off point (follow-up) of the study I quoted above was December 1999. December 1998 was the cut-off point for recording new births.
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Mistake 2: I inferred in my comment to Prof C that the same study above demonstrated a link between MMR and autism, which it clearly does not. The study provides no evidence whatsoever as to whether vaccinations, of any type, do or do not cause autism.
.
Sorry about that.
This thread isn't as entertaining when you're sober
Tell me about it.
Rigbt, then you lot are off the sauce for lent. Z
Glad you're here, Z. I hope you don't think I was trolling you when I asked you which abstract you were referring to in your question (as I was accused of). I honestly didn't know which abstract you meant and in what context. I suppose I could have guessed but that would be kind of dishonest, I think. If you want to continue with that conversation, I'm up for it - if not, that's fine too.
It was the hyper-link Breast/deoderant one. I'd say it's time to call last orders on this one Shark. Z :D
As you wish, Z.
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Apropos of nothing ;)
(http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/873/260/a5b.png)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 February, 2015, 05:44:58 PMAnd to state that substances like mercury and aluminium effect everyone equally ("giving each and every one of us breast cancer") really is disingenuous, I think.
. . . The flippancy of which I would've thought qualified by the words 'the
exact same way'. Because,
obviously (or so I thought), the regular use of deodorant is not equivalent to someone having an occasional flu shot, irrespective of how differently people might react to either.
Ah, well.
I see. Apologies, flippancy sometimes does not translate well in this medium - as I well know!
Tell me about it me and Tordel got new ones torn by JD this morning for being smart asses. Z
Quote from: Old Tankie on 22 February, 2015, 05:27:44 PM
I really don't understand the point of Sharkey's posts on this subject. I would hate to think that somebody out there could be put off vaccinating their child based on what Sharkey is saying. If there was a vaccination for the life-changing condition that I have, I would be dragging my grandchildren down the doctors. Vaccination saves lives. End of.
This type of discussion is beyond banter.
I'm sorry to hear it, Tankie. I know you've mentioned it before, but it you don't mind me asking, what condition is it? I hope I'm not being too nosy here
Hi Jayz. No, Mate, you're not being nosy, after all, if I wanted to keep my illness private, I shouldn't have mentioned it on here! I've got a disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, which is a disease of the peripheral nervous system. It is an inherited condition and basically involves muscle wasting in the hands, arms, legs and feet. Balance goes to pot, I'm regularly falling over and damaging myself, walking becomes very difficult, no strength or energy, constant pain, etc. etc. No, don't get the violins out!!!
Going back to the discussion on vaccines, my disease can be passed on from generation to generation, and if there was a chance of stopping it with a vaccine, I would jump at it.
Looks like they're making progress with that, Tankie: www.hnf-cure.org/cmt-update-fall/hot-press-3/
I know a few of you will be interested in this: Ancient Aliens clothing!
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/ae-networks-launches-ancient-aliens-fashion-line
Quote from: Old Tankie on 23 February, 2015, 08:31:28 AM
Hi Jayz. No, Mate, you're not being nosy, after all, if I wanted to keep my illness private, I shouldn't have mentioned it on here! I've got a disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, which is a disease of the peripheral nervous system. It is an inherited condition and basically involves muscle wasting in the hands, arms, legs and feet. Balance goes to pot, I'm regularly falling over and damaging myself, walking becomes very difficult, no strength or energy, constant pain, etc. etc. No, don't get the violins out!!!
Going back to the discussion on vaccines, my disease can be passed on from generation to generation, and if there was a chance of stopping it with a vaccine, I would jump at it.
Aw, crap. Sorry you have to go through all that, fella; you deserve better. I hope Sharky's link is right and that treatment will be improved. It looks like a reliable source.
Thanks for that, Jayz and thanks for that link, Sharkey, I'm afraid a lot of the technical language goes over my head but I do know there's a lot of research going on into CMT. Trouble is, the more advanced DNA testing gets, the more variants of the disease they're finding. It took the medical profession fifteen years to diagnose me accurately, so I think it will be a good few years before there's a vaccine.
Nice summary of what is for me the core issue via Twitter: http://m.thenation.com/article/198609-what-anti-vax-movement-doesnt-tell-you-about-measles
A good article, Prof C. I especially like:
.
.
"Our common desire to protect the health and
well-being of children was always the best
reason to eliminate these diseases, and it
remains our best hope of bringing us all back to
common ground. Public health is about
common sense and common goods. Let's not
allow spin doctors and myths to prevail over
our shared aim of protecting the world's children from the world's oldest and deadliest diseases."
.
Our faith in vaccinations, however, cannot be allowed to blind us to the reality of vaccinations. If we do not recognise the problems we could 'believe' ourselves into extinction just as easily as we could 'disbelieve' ourselves the same way. When studies like the one at the end of this post pop up, shouldn't we pay attention? We can't rely on bodies like the JCVI paying attention for us because they have other priorities.
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Take the Urabe AM-9 mumps vaccination strain I mentioned earlier. The science left the JCVI unmoved until the law raised its head, whereupon they scrambled to act.
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There is a conspiracy here but it's a conspiracy of circumstance and belief, I think. There are about five strains of mumps vaccination; to remove one would cause several problems. The equipment making the strain would have to be emptied, sterilised and re-tasked. Some smaller facilities might cease to be financially viable or unable to obtain license to grow one of the other strains. Facilities producing the other strains would have to take up the slack - an especially daunting task if all existing doses of the Urabe-based MMR vaccine were to be recalled and replaced. There's the problem and expense of destroying the recalled doses. On top of all these expensive practical problems there is the issue of faith.
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The world has great faith in vaccines. The United Nations, sovereign governments, local councils, corporate shareholders, doctors - they've all staked their reputations on it. In some cases, their fortunes as well. To you and me, our very lives are at stake. To suddenly stand up and admit that one of our sacred vaccines is dangerous or ineffective would be appalling. The fear is that the people, or even their governments, might start asking how many more vaccines were unsafe or ineffective - questions with the potential to uncover distressing answers.
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The science led to financial concerns, which in turn led to corporate inertia and misinformation - waiting to see what would happen. Meanwhile, despite the science, some people continued to suffer appalling neurological damage caused by the Urabe strain until the weight of evidence grew too great to ignore or disguise. The lawyers then stepped in, arguably doing the world a great service, and the JCVI was scared into doing the right thing.
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As the poster you linked to so eloquently and correctly put it:
.
"Individuals and institutions that are allowed to prioritize personal preference or financial and political gain ahead of children's health are irresponsible and unethical, and they should not call the shots."
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Which means that we have to keep an eye on stuff like this:
.
Outbreak of Measles Among Persons With Prior Evidence of Immunity, New York City, 2011
(Jennifer B. Rosen et al). (http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/58/9/1205)
Sort it out, America.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/anti-vaxxer-spokane-official-says-tinfoil-hat-wearing-folks-deserve-representation-too/
QuoteEvery time this particular subject comes up, people are talking about the tinfoil hat-wearing folks, etcetera and so forth," he explained. "But these people have a valid concern.
No. No they really don't...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 February, 2015, 02:40:54 PM
.
"Individuals and institutions that are allowed to prioritize personal preference or financial and political gain ahead of children's health are irresponsible and unethical, and they should not call the shots."
.
Which means that we have to keep an eye on stuff like this:
.
Outbreak of Measles Among Persons With Prior Evidence of Immunity, New York City, 2011
(Jennifer B. Rosen et al). (http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/58/9/1205)
There's a huge jump from a vaccination not doing its job properly (which I agree should be taken very seriously, and looked into) to a vaccination causing autism.
You said earlier, Sharky, something about entertaining ideas without necessarily accepting them. While I entertained anti-vaxxer scare stories, when I looked into them I found that I couldn't accept them because they've been rubbished. I'll entertain any idea, from alien abductions to psychic powers, but I won't accept them till the evidence points to their being the most believable option. And it doesn't; it really doesn't.
I remember saying on another thread that I thought you were a very nice chap, and I still think so. I also appreciate the fact that sometimes a lone dissenter can be a great thing - just ask Galileo. But my strong belief is that anti-vaccination sentiment is not only provably wrong but also provably harmful, and on a mass scale at that.
As I said, I appreciated your straight answer earlier; so here are two more, if you don't mind me asking: Firstly, are you vaccinated against any diseases yourself, and secondly, if you had kids would you have them vaccinated against diseases?
(For me, while I don't have kids either, it's an emphatic 'YES' on both scores.)
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 23 February, 2015, 06:09:23 PM
Sort it out, America.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/anti-vaxxer-spokane-official-says-tinfoil-hat-wearing-folks-deserve-representation-too/
QuoteEvery time this particular subject comes up, people are talking about the tinfoil hat-wearing folks, etcetera and so forth," he explained. "But these people have a valid concern.
No. No they really don't...
I remember reading an article about how news of Climate change wrongly gives parity to both sides of the argument. Roughly 97% of scientists agree that it is a real thing and largely our fault. So for reporting accuracy, every time they air one view of a denier, they should should air 32-33 counter arguments.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 23 February, 2015, 08:35:41 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 February, 2015, 02:40:54 PM
.
"Individuals and institutions that are allowed to prioritize personal preference or financial and political gain ahead of children's health are irresponsible and unethical, and they should not call the shots."
.
Which means that we have to keep an eye on stuff like this:
.
Outbreak of Measles Among Persons With Prior Evidence of Immunity, New York City, 2011
(Jennifer B. Rosen et al). (http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/58/9/1205)
There's a huge jump from a vaccination not doing its job properly (which I agree should be taken very seriously, and looked into) to a vaccination causing autism.
Okay, so I only read the abstract of that article, but surely what it mainly does is highlight how essential vaccination is?
Vaccination works to eliminate the disease from a population - as was done with smallpox - through almost total immunisation, to the point where there is no way for anyone to get infected because there's nobody to transmit it. This is herd immunity, the magic behind the whole thing.Vaccination doesn't protect individuals, it protects populations. As long as a disease is present, people WILL be infected - potentially including some who are vaccinated, but also those who are of necessity excluded from the programme, or with compromised immune systems. From the abstract I take it that this had not previously happened in individuals with double vaccinations - but had 'everyone' been immunised, it couldn't have happened AT ALL, because there would been no place for measles to come from - as happened with smallpox. It's probably a symptom of declining take-up of vaccination, not flaws in the programme itself.
Obviously we should always strive for continual improvement, for perfection, and be wary of emerging problems. But that isn't a reason not to participate in ensuring the success of vaccination, in fact it's the very opposite.
I was about to type a big long rant, then I realised what I was doing.
Basically, what is so terrible about autism that you should risk a child's life to avoid it?
Quote from: King Pops on 23 February, 2015, 10:21:31 PM
I was about to type a big long rant, then I realised what I was doing.
Basically, what is so terrible about autism that you should risk a child's life to avoid it?
Ding ding! Someone said it!
I cam only quote Philomena Cunk:
"climate change - an issue that has divided the world of science right down the middle, 90-10"
Quote from: King Pops on 23 February, 2015, 10:21:31 PM
Basically, what is so terrible about autism that you should risk a child's life to avoid it?
My thoughts exactly. The NHS's own estimate is that one in every hundred Britons is somewhere on the autism spectrum (http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Autistic-spectrum-disorder/Pages/Introduction.aspx).
You only have to use your everyday experience and common sense to realise that the vast majority of those people are living ordinary lives which mean most people they meet have no idea they're talking to someone who knows everything there is to know about WWII aircraft and feels uncomfortable in social situations.
I'd imagine most folk on this board (including the Shark) lie somewhere on that spectrum. Obviously there are serious physical and mental health consequences for the small number of people at the extreme end of that spectrum, but that brings us back to the tiny
potential link to autism versus the certain and terrible consequences of measles.
I agree with the sentiment, with the slight caveat that some forms of autism are very difficult for individual and family, but I'd mainly deem it irrelevant because THERE IS NO LINK WITH AUTISM. You might as well ask what is so terrible about the potential risk of developing freckles that you should risk a child's life to avoid it? Show me a connection and I'll weigh the risks. Until then...
Quote from: Professor Cardigan on 23 February, 2015, 10:51:26 PM
I agree with the sentiment, with the slight caveat that some forms of autism are very difficult for individual and family, but I'd mainly deem it irrelevant because THERE IS NO LINK WITH AUTISM... Show me a connection and I'll weigh the risks. Until then...
Yes, of course, I planned to include words to that effect in the rant I didn't start, and finished with:
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 February, 2015, 02:40:54 PM
The world has great faith in vaccines.
Faith is irrelevant when you have evidence
Snigger.
http://www.lamebook.com/perfect/ (http://www.lamebook.com/perfect/)
Quote from: Professor Cardigan on 23 February, 2015, 10:51:26 PM
Show me a connection and I'll weigh the risks. Until then...
Quite. Pretty much the whole anti-vaccination nonsense can be refuted by the observations that correlation does not equal causation, and that the plural of anecdote is not data.
You might as well assert that because 100% of people breathe oxygen, and 100% of people die, oxygen is clearly a deadly poison. And, of course, in certain concentrations, oxygen has
proven toxic effects. Can you prove that everyone everywhere throughout the whole of history
wasn't actually killed by their exposure to this dangerous chemical? My god, mix it with hydrogen and people can actually
drown in the stuff! What more proof do you need?!
Cheers
Jim
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 24 February, 2015, 08:19:33 AM
Quote from: Professor Cardigan on 23 February, 2015, 10:51:26 PM
Show me a connection and I'll weigh the risks. Until then...
Quite. Pretty much the whole anti-vaccination nonsense can be refuted by the observations that correlation does not equal causation, and that the plural of anecdote is not data.
You might as well assert that because 100% of people breathe oxygen, and 100% of people die, oxygen is clearly a deadly poison. And, of course, in certain concentrations, oxygen has proven toxic effects. Can you prove that everyone everywhere throughout the whole of history wasn't actually killed by their exposure to this dangerous chemical? My god, mix it with hydrogen and people can actually drown in the stuff! What more proof do you need?!
Cheers
Jim
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
JBC - to answer your first question; yes, I have been vaccinated.
.
To answer your second question - yes and no. I would employ the minimum number of vaccinations and not allow any at all in my hypothetical infant.
.
Countries have different vaccination requirements and those giving their infants the most vaccinations tend to have the highest instances of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). The paper, Infant mortality rates regressed against
number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is
there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?
(Neil Z Miller and Gary S Goldman) (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/), points out that access to adequate nutrition, clean water, effective sanitation and access to healthcare are at least as or more important than vaccines at preventing child deaths. (The United States requires more vaccinations than any other country and yet 33 countries have better infant mortality rates.)
.
The inference is that over-vaccination is harmful. Sometimes, less really is more.
.
Prof C - the paper linked to describes how Patient Zero, or "Measles Mary," was the source of a measles outbreak despite having already been immunised twice against the disease. Several of those she infected had also received two measles vaccinations. Link that with the study I posted to earlier reporting that of 54 Texas high school students contracting measles, 53 had been vaccinated and questions begin to arise about the efficacy and/or longevity of some vaccinations.
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Measles is a disease with no known cure except the human immune system and, although unpleasant, in countries like the UK, chances of death from complications brought on by measles is about 1 in 5,000. In poorer countries with limited access to proper nutrition, clean water, sanitation and access to healthcare, the mortality rate is around 10%.
.
Logically speaking, improving living conditions is more important than vaccinations (at least in the case of measles) but of course that would be far more expensive than a vaccination program. There's no point expecting people to live perfectly happily in open sewers just because they've been vaccinated.
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I think vaccinations are important but we put too much faith in them. We are in danger of over-vaccinating ourselves and of letting the existence of a global vaccination program blind us to the fact that standards of living have to be raised as well.
.
KP - let me turn that question back on you: What's so terrible about measles that you'd risk SIDS to avoid it?
.
The World Health Organization disagrees.
http://www.who.int/features/qa/84/en/
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 08:58:02 AM
.
KP - let me turn that question back on you: What's so terrible about measles that you'd risk SIDS to avoid it?
.
What.The.Actual.FUCK?!
Jim, you make an excellent point - oxygen is great but too much of it can be toxic. Can you concede that vaccinations are great but too many of them might be toxic?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 08:58:02 AM
To answer your second question - yes and no. I would employ the minimum number of vaccinations and not allow any at all in my hypothetical infant.
I don't get you. Would you have your kids vaccinated or not?
Interesting link, Rich. The WHO doesn't seem to have read some of the scientific papers I have (and have linked to on this thread).
.
I don't disagree with all its 'facts' but some of them are at least misleading. There is evidence that some parts of the vaccination program are dangerous. Does that mean we should scrap the whole thing and give it up as a bad job? Certainly not.
.
To cast doubt on part of the program does not invalidate the whole of the program but to deify the whole program leads to the ignorance of legitimate concerns.
.
KP - short answer, yes. Long answer, yes but sparingly.
QuoteThe WHO doesn't seem to have read some of the scientific papers I have
How do you know?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 08:58:02 AM
The inference is that over-vaccination is harmful. Sometimes, less really is more.
Refutation: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/05/16/vaccines-and-infant-mortality-rates/
"The first author, Neil Z. Miller, is described as an "independent researcher," and the second author, Gary S. Goldman, is described as an "independent computer scientist." This is not a promising start, as neither of them appear to have any qualifications that would lead a reader to think that they have any special expertise in epidemiology, vaccines, or science."
"I did a bit of Googling, as is my wont whenever I encounter someone whose name I don't recognize, and I found abundant evidence in his Wikipedia entry that Miller has a long history of anti-vaccine activism, having written books with titles like Vaccine Roulette: Gambling With Your Child's Life, Immunization Theory vs Reality: Expose on Vaccinations, and Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective?, among others. But that's not all; he's also the director of the ThinkTwice Global Vaccine Institute and in fact is hosting a copy of this study on his website. Gary S. Goldman is even more interesting. It turns out that he is the President and Founder of Medical Veritas, a rabidly anti-vaccine "journal" that is into HIV/AIDS denialism, having published dubious "reanalyses" of autopsy results of victims of AIDS, such as Eliza Jane Scovill. He also notes at his website that he's written books entitled The Chickenpox Vaccine: A New Epidemic of Disease and Corruption."
"I also note that the authors here seem to have pulled the same trick that J.B. Handley and crew like to pull when trying to convince people that U.S. infants are "overvaccinated" by artificially pumping up the apparent number of vaccine doses by counting multivalent vaccines as more than one. For instance, the MMR and DTaP are counted as three each because each vaccine is trivalent; i.e., containing vaccines against three different diseases. In fact, the authors of this gem do this very thing in spades..."
There follows a long, detailed and well-reasoned examination of the numerous statistical distortions deployed by the authors of the original paper to make the data fit their hypothesis.
Weak sauce, Shark. Odd how eager you are to question evidence that differs from your pre-existing worldview, and accept that which doesn't.
Edit: it took me 90 seconds googling the original paper's title to find the refutation above.Jim
I don't know - that's why I wrote "doesn't seem". If the WHO had read them, surely the honest thing to say would be, "there is very little evidence" or even "there is no conclusive evidence" instead of the flat-out incorrect "there is no evidence"? Would that not be the morally correct, not to mention the scientific, thing to say?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 09:38:55 AM
I don't know - that's why I wrote "doesn't seem". If the WHO had read them, surely the honest thing to say would be, "there is very little evidence" or even "there is no conclusive evidence" instead of the flat-out incorrect "there is no evidence"? Would that not be the morally correct, not to mention the scientific, thing to say?
Because the paper you cited is horseshit, as I have shown above.
It isn't necessary to say "the majority opinion of the shape of planet Earth is that it is an oblate spheroid" simply because there are a number of complete fruitcakes who insist that it's flat.
Jim
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 08:58:02 AMI would employ the minimum number of vaccinations and not allow any at all in my hypothetical infant.
Then your hypothetical infant should not be allowed to to go to school, or out in public. You can take stupid risks with your own hypothetical children's health (god help 'em), but I wouldn't want you risking the health of my hypothetical children.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 09:28:23 AM
Interesting link, Rich. The WHO doesn't seem to have read some of the scientific papers I have (and have linked to on this thread).
I imagine they have, but seeing as they have a working bullshit filter,which you seem to lack, and y'know actual medical knowledge and expertise, they have probably dismissed them as bollocks
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 08:58:02 AMMeasles is a disease with no known cure except the human immune system and, although unpleasant, in countries like the UK, chances of death from complications brought on by measles is about 1 in 5,000.
So let's take a hypothetical extreme here and say not to vaccinate against measles in the UK. Herd protection would vanish within a generation. After that point, the likelihood of a child catching measles would head rapidly towards 100 per cent. At least 1 in 5000 would die, given that the health service would be overrun by an entirely preventable disease. And the net benefit? A few children who would have had an adverse reaction to the vaccine wouldn't get that.
As the parent of a youngling, I'm genuinely angry at the current situation where primarily middle-class idiots with too much time on their hands are selfishly banging on about their individual rights to not vaccinate while ignoring the protection it brings. (But I'll bet if their kid has some kind of allergy, they'd be the first to scream if you were to bring some good within spitting distance of their kid.) As I noted before, I find it bizarre we don't immunise in this country against chicken pox, and it's clear that has quite a bit to do with people still freaking out about the MMR, along with some decidedly odd reasoning by the NHS itself.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 09:38:55 AM
I don't know - that's why I wrote "doesn't seem". If the WHO had read them, surely the honest thing to say would be, "there is very little evidence" or even "there is no conclusive evidence" instead of the flat-out incorrect "there is no evidence"? Would that not be the morally correct, not to mention the scientific, thing to say?
Right now, that there is no evidence, on the basis that there is no evidence. You don't sow the seeds of doubt by giving credence to bullshit papers, like the one you linked to. You may as well say to Wakefield that all is forgiven. And also when you do go for the supposed 'balanced' viewpoint, you're back to the likes of news ensuring that after someone talks patiently about climate change that airtime is also given to some frothing right-wing loon about the same subject.
Sometimes there is no 'balance' to be had between alternate viewpoints.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 24 February, 2015, 09:46:26 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 08:58:02 AMI would employ the minimum number of vaccinations and not allow any at all in my hypothetical infant.
Then your hypothetical infant should not be allowed to to go to school, or out in public. You can take stupid risks with your own hypothetical children's health (god help 'em), but I wouldn't want you risking the health of my hypothetical children.
Quite. But I fear the school thing just won't happen and things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better—see the absolutely crazy 'measles parties' that are happening in affluent areas of the USA. I wonder how many babies and children will have to die before this ignorance surrounding vaccination finally goes away.
I'm reluctant to continue the discussion, because I've said all I have to say already, and it feels like we're dogpiling Sharky, which whatever the reason is unpleasant. So, one last thought:
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 09:28:23 AM
To cast doubt on part of the program does not invalidate the whole of the program but to deify the whole program leads to the ignorance of legitimate concerns
In this instance casting doubt
does invalidate the whole of the programme, because the whole project requires near universal confidence in it to work at all. In undermining the public's confidence by focusing attention on peripheral or non-issues and discredited dissenters we risk losing our species' best protection against diseases that ravaged it in the past. In the 1900s smallpox had a mortality rate of over 30%. That's the risk you should be talking about, not unproven tosh about SIDS.
I agree, far more money should be spent on the unlovely unprofitable low-tech business of sanitation, schools and bicycles. But vaccination in the developing world, which you know full-welll isn't just against measles, has been enormously successful, and once in place is carried by whole populations through wars, disasters and displacements that can take all the rest away.
Quote from: Professor Cardigan on 24 February, 2015, 11:00:12 AM
I'm reluctant to continue the discussion, because I've said all I have to say already, and it feels like we're dogpiling Sharky, which whatever the reason is unpleasant.
I would suggest that if Shark doesn't want to get 'dogpiled' he perhaps shouldn't select a hot-button topic for discussion and then under the guise of 'just asking questions' regurgitate the first bullshit paper he hits on Google as if it in any way refutes the well-researched, well-documented position he claims to be 'just questioning'.
You may have declared this not-trolling, but it looks a lot like it from where I'm sitting, particularly coming so hard on the heels of the previous discussion where one needs only to substitute 9/11 for vaccination to see the pattern of 'debate' repeated almost exactly. If Shark
was 'just asking questions', then he would do a little more due diligence on the 'papers' he presents in defence of his own position, or be a little more prepared to concede the validity of the counter view.
Jim
Perhaps I (mis-)understand 'trolling' as having a core motivation of malicious disruption, whereas I think the Shark genuinely wants to have an informative discussion, even if it seldom seems like he can be convinced by the points (or facts) raised. Plus he restricts his, err, baiting to these specifically designed threads, rather than derailing every other one.
There comes a point where everyone is making essentially the same points to one person over and over, and that person is persisting in standing their ground despite being a position where so many voices are against him that he couldn't reasonably respond to them all even if he had a sound argument, where I start to feel uncomfortable and unsure what the point of continuing is...unless that person is played by Henry Fonda, of course.
But that's just a personal reaction, don't let me discourage you from carrying on.
I don't really understand how you can reconcile this:
Quote from: Professor Cardigan on 24 February, 2015, 11:31:26 AM
I think the Shark genuinely wants to have an informative discussion,
With this:
Quoteeven if it seldom seems like he can be convinced by the points (or facts) raised.
Unless you substitute "informative discussion" for "crackpot soapbox".
I would respectfully suggest that a blog would be a more appropriate forum if informative discussion is
not one's primary intent, and we have many, many pages of evidence here and in the political thread that it is not.
Note that it is possible to believe that Shark is an intelligent man, and a decent human being who is kind to animals and bears few, if any, of his fellow men genuine malice, yet
still be irritated beyond all reason less by Shark's tinfoil-hattery than his insistence that it is indicative of a spirit of keen-minded enquiry.
Jim
QuoteI think the Shark genuinely wants to have an informative discussion
But he doesn't do this. Time and again he ignores and rejects actual scientific evidence given to him because it contradicts his world view and puts forward links that support it without any need for it to have an evidential basis.
It's almost like he can't handle the truth!
(http://stashpit.com/upload/big/2014/06/11/5398470f8a623.jpg)
A pertinent Mitteleuropean anecdote: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31585047
Quote from: Professor Cardigan on 24 February, 2015, 11:00:12 AM
It feels like we're dogpiling Sharky
This was a concern of mine too, and as such I'm also dropping out till the subject changes. I've been disgusted in the past a certain ex-boarder trying to get a gang together when they didn't like another boarder's fan film.
However, in this case, though I like the Shark and think there is no badness in him, I am glad to see his viewpoint overwhelmed by counterpoints. I am sure it isn't his intention at all, but I believe he's inadvertently doing the work of self-serving, dangerous, amoral liars like Wakefield, who have falsified information for their own gain. As such I'm glad there are so many opposing voices, because if his opinion were a majority one, people would die.
I know you see it as the other way round, Sharky, and you're entitled to that opinion, but I just don't agree with it, or like it. So no hard feelings, but I'm out of this topic for now.
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 24 February, 2015, 09:08:39 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 08:58:02 AM
.
KP - let me turn that question back on you: What's so terrible about measles that you'd risk SIDS to avoid it?
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What.The.Actual.FUCK?!
Indeed. Moving the goalposts much?
To answer your question, measles is fatal but well understood and preventable, whereas sudden instant death syndrome is unexplained therefore unpreventable. Also the unproven link between vaccines and SIDS (again, no known cause) is from the DTP vaccine, not the MMR, so you're just compounding one unsubstantiated scare with another.
You avoided my question completely, but I'll try with another.
Would you place the responsibility for an infants unexplained SID ( if they knew the cause it wouldn't have such a vague name) on the parents who wanted to protect him/her from diptheria and tetanus*?
*well understood and preventable
Quote from: King Pops on 24 February, 2015, 12:37:00 PM
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 24 February, 2015, 09:08:39 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 08:58:02 AM
.
KP - let me turn that question back on you: What's so terrible about measles that you'd risk SIDS to avoid it?
.
What.The.Actual.FUCK?!
Would you place the responsibility for an infants unexplained SID ( if they knew the cause it wouldn't have such a vague name) on the parents who wanted to protect him/her from diptheria and tetanus*?
*well understood and preventable
Ugh. This is getting creepy now.
I understand the point of the question and it makes a point. Having said that wouldn't it be better to draw a line and move on at this stage?
Quote from: JamesC on 24 February, 2015, 12:46:48 PM
Having said that wouldn't it be better to draw a line and move on at this stage?
That line would surely be Shark conceding that there is no evidence worth a damn to support his position, rather than continuing to move the goalposts and throw out links to spurious papers whose support for his point don't bear up under the most cursory inspection?
Jim
I'm just asking questions...
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 24 February, 2015, 11:48:33 AM
QuoteI think the Shark genuinely wants to have an informative discussion
But he doesn't do this. Time and again he ignores and rejects actual scientific evidence given to him because it contradicts his world view and puts forward links that support it without any need for it to have an evidential basis.
I did say that he
wants to have an informative discussion, not that he succeeds, or allows himself to succeed, in that aim. (Although again I would note that I've learnt a hell of a lot over the years from reading people's responses to Shark's, um, gambits, so at least somebody is getting informed...).
But look, I agree, these threads can be very frustrating precisely because of the vastly unequal weight ascribed to one or two often dodgily authored articles versus the entirety of the rest of humanity's scientific endeavour. I'm not saying the debate shouldn't continue, or that others shouldn't bring the Shark to book, I'm just saying that I like the guy, and am no longer taking any pleasure in the process of trying to convince him, en masse, of the merits and conversely the dangers of undermining something that really is as clearcut as it's possible for a complex subject to be.
Aliens, fiat money, the moon landings, Kennedy, where Buttonman's other hand is in all those photos, even 9/11, I'm game for a laugh, but this? Had enough.
Swerving the thread a bit, it is interesting to see counterpoints and people playing devil's advocate, and that is important, but this subject is one where crackpots (especially in the USA, but increasingly in the UK too) are causing very real harm under the guise of individual 'rights'. I wish no malice on Shark either, but if the debate has been one-sided, that's because it is one-sided.
I'm reminded a bit of one of my favourite responses to assumptive 'facts' centred on something mentioned earlier: basic sanitation. Elsewhere on the internet, someone went off on one about local water companies (one of which made a real mess of bits of our town, in one case leaving an open works there for about six months while they presumably ordered some kind of widget from the back of beyond) quite literally poisoning the population. So it was NO WONDER they wrecked the roads too! THE EVIL SWINES!
Naturally, it turns out this was someone freaking out about fluoride being added to the water, which has been somehow proven to give you cancer/madness or enable the government to track you. After this person had banged on a bit, someone linked to the relevant water company's website, where an article clearly noted that this particular provider only treats water with what it's required to as a result of government legislation (which in the UK does not include fluoride). Of course, the next rant was: "PROVE they haven't added it". *headdesk*
I see you've all been busy (and thanks for the kind words - I probably don't deserve them). Anyway, I've been busy too. Enjoy!
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Part 1
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Thanks, Jim, cool link.
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I'll start in the same way this blogger does. Orac is the web-name of David Henry Gorski M.D. PhD (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gorski), an American surgical oncologist, Professor of surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine and a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, specializing in breast cancer surgery. He is a critic of alternative medicine and the anti-vaccination movement.
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Dr. Gorski is the Managing Editor of and contributor to sciencebasednews.org and has been funded over the last decade by institutional funds, the Department of Defense, the National Cancer Institute, the ASCO Foundation, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. He has recently held a small grant (€30,000) from Bayer HealthCare through its Grants4Targets program, which grant has expired. "Dr. Gorski must beg the NIH and other granting agencies for the money to keep his lab going. Please be aware that he does also write elsewhere for a small monthly payment." (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/editorial-staff/david-h-gorski-md-phd-managing-editor/)
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He serves as chairman of the board of directors for the Society for Science-Based Medicine, a group dedicated to promoting good science in medicine and opposing pseudoscience in medicine.
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To be pedantic here, what is "good science"? Good in what context and to whom? And why would anyone want to join a group encouraging pseudoscience in medicine? To broadcast the fact that one is opposed to pseudoscience in medicine is as daft as pointing out that one is opposed to cyanide in custard - all it does is demonstrate a conflict of interests, an agenda. Just as Dr Gorski demonstrated Miller's and Goldman's agendas which he, and I, point out was not an ad hominem attack - and neither is this.
.
I did a bit of Googling, as is my wont whenever I encounter someone whose name I don't recognize, and I found that Dr Gorski might not be the best person to pay overmuch attention to.
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In his blog post A survey administered by a German anti-vaccine homeopath backfires spectacularly (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/08/31/an-anti-vaccine-administered-survey-back/)– Posted on: August 31, 2011 3:00 AM, Orac has a go at a 'phone study. He ends his post with:
.
"NOTE: I notice that the total number of children is increasing. It's now up to 7,799 at this moment, suggesting that 30 people have filled it out since last night. Given that Child Health Safety lists it as 7,724 five days ago that suggests that the surveys still open and is automatically updating totals.
Hmmmmm."
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"Hmmmmm"? I wonder what that was supposed to mean? One of his followers seemed to figure it out on the comments thread:
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#13
Ash
August 31, 2011
The survey does indeed appear to still be
ongoing at http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/
new-survey-shows-unvaccinated-children-vastly -healthier-far-lower-rates-of-chronic-conditions-and-autism/
Kind of tempting to mess with their results...
(My emphasis.)
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37 Well the "open" survey now has 7,799 participants...I think the 7,799th "child" might be "mine". I filled out the survey on behalf of my six year old...who is unvaccinated and has 10 siblings. I entered "yes" to every question about disturbed sleep, fussiness, medical issues and developmental diagnoses.
I haven't had so much fun messing up a "survey" since I responded to a robocall from the Tea Party Voter Choice Telephone Survey. (My emphasis.)
Posted by: lilady | August 31, 2011 4:04 PM
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42 I just entered data on "another child" of mine on the open survey. This child is 10 years old, has four siblings and is vaccinated. My "10 year old child" has none of the problems listed on the survey and I ticked off "NO" on all the questions about behaviors, physical diagnoses and developmental diagnoses on the "survey".
Posted by: lilady | August 31, 2011 5:12 PM
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43 Should we inlcude a couple of children
who died from complications to measles or
whooping cough?
Posted by: KeithB | August 31, 2011 5:33 PM
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76 Yes, I entered data on the open survey from my one computer site and it is probably just a valid as the data from the other "participants"... and might even be "more valid".
Posted by: lilady | September 1, 2011 9:42 AM
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And how does Dr Gorski react to such blatant scientific sabotage by his followers?
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63 ...... this is nothing more than an Internet poll of the sort that PZ Myers over at Pharyngula routinely sends his minions over to crash.I didn't do that because I didn't want to give our friendly neighborhood German homeopath an "out." His survey was badly designed enough, and his results, for autism at least, are completely within the range of error of estimates for autism prevalence. In
brief, I was too amused by the fact that this "study" actually comes far closer to refuting the vaccine/autism hypothesis than providing evidence to support it. Of course, as I said before, the survey is so bad that it really doesn't tell us much of anything, but CHS is too scientifically ignorant to realize that.
Posted by: Orac | September 1, 2011 12:01 AM
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I wonder how Dr Gorski would react if a group of people who disagreed with him sabotaged his own research in a similar manner?
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Anyway, this is getting us nowhere, so now I'll read his actual critique of the paper you linked to.
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Cont/
Part 2,
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First up, in September 2011 the paper in question was amended to include declarations of interests etc. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463891/ Orac's post was made in May 2011, making his assertion that "I'm merely pointing out that what's good for the goose is good for the
gander when it comes to pointing out conflicts
of interest..." has been addressed by the authors.
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Dr Gorski begins by pointing out that this is a simple study, as if this is a bad thing. It takes relatively simple data sets and uses them to look for correlations. Dr Gorski then spends some time criticising the authors' data sources ("Basically, Miller and Goldman went to The World Factbook maintained by, of all organizations, the Central Intelligence Agency." The CIA are, of course, well known for their lack of data...) and asking why they used data from two years ago instead of one year ago as if this made a difference in a simple study of this kind.
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Gorski then moves on to criticise the method of counting vaccination doses, complaining that a vaccinnation such as MMR, which contains three doses of vaccine, should be counted as a single dose. This may be so, but the authors of the paper in question were well aware of this limitation: "This analysis calculated the total number of vaccine doses received by children but did not differentiate between the substances, or quantities of those substances, in each dose." And: "For the purposes of this study, all vaccine doses were equally weighted." That's because it's a simple study, Dr Gorski, with a simple agenda.
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He then goes through some statistical arguments which go over my head and will assume are correct because of my ignorance in this area.
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Finally, Dr Gorski points out the difficulties and problems associated with comparing nations - difficulties and problems acknowledged in the paper. "This analysis did not adjust for vaccine
composition, national vaccine coverage rates,
variations in the infant mortality rates among
minority races, preterm births, differences in
how some nations report live births, or the
potential for ecological bias."
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It's not as if the authors were hiding all this.
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Gorski concludes by declaring the paper "utterly worthless" and opines that it only got published because the peer-review process broke down. One wonders if Dr Gorski ever questions the presumably similar peer-review process passing papers he agrees with.
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He then erroneously claims that the paper "...purport(s) to show that vaccines cause autism, neurological diease, or even death." What the authors actually point out is that. "A closer inspection of correlations between vaccine doses, biochemical or synergistic toxicity, and IMRs, is essential. All nations—rich and poor, advanced and developing—have an obligation to determine whether their immunization schedules are achieving their desired goals."
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Going back to the beginning and agendas, it is clear that Dr Gorski has an agenda as well as Miller & Goldman. The agenda of the latter seems to be looking for a correlation between vaccinations and child mortality rates. The agenda of the former seems to be stopping this line of investigation at all costs.
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All scientific papers have an agenda - it's usually in the title. Scientist A looks for Phenomena B in Location C. The paper in question might have been simple and might have contained flaws and errors but by declaring it utterly worthless Dr Gorski gives himself away. This paper, which has nevertheless displayed what might be worrying results, should act as a springboard and model for constructing more accurate studies in the future. In science, as in life, making a mistake can be just as important as getting it right.
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In Dr Gorski's world, however, it seems this is not the case.
Edited to remove strikethrough text—IP
I have no idea what I did to cross the last paragraphs out, sorry. Brilliant mistake to make!
Quote from: Professor Cardigan on 24 February, 2015, 01:33:40 PM
Although again I would note that I've learnt a hell of a lot over the years from reading people's responses to Shark's, um, gambits, so at least somebody is getting informed...
That you used the word "years" is quite crucial. Presumably, years ago when he started this, people were posting links to well-argued, well-researched pieces that showed he was wrong about the topic du jour. Has his position changed one micron in those years?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 February, 2015, 04:01:17 PM
To be pedantic here, what is "good science"? Good in what context and to whom? .....
..... I wonder how Dr Gorski would react if a group of people who disagreed with him sabotaged his own research in a similar manner?
You have answered your own question ' "good" science is science that cannot be sabotaged by people on the internet.
Okay, I have an idea to stop this. It's obvious that we cannot at present agree - I post a link, you refute it, I refute the refutation and you refute the refutation of the refutation - and on and on until somebody (probably me) gets stabbed. (Joke - I hope.)
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We come here for fun and this is rapidly turning into not-fun. I shoulder my portion of the blame for that - but only my portion.
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I propose a good old-fashioned politicians' fudge to lay this issue to sleep before people get too upset. Something vague enough that we can all agree on it without feeling cheated. Something like:
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"The vaccination program is a wonderful idea and a fantastic achievement but there is room for improvement."
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I commend this statement to the Thread.
well said mr shark, I think calling you a troll was well out of order as I'm sure rebellion in their wisdom and fairness would stamp on any form of trolling and unpleasentness at all on the forum. you started this thread and with all your eccentricities (I remember the hat at southport) and invited debate on various conspiracy theories and for the most part I enjoy the usually interesting discussions. I met you once and didn't leave with any feelings of you being anything other than a nice chap even though I was ill and probably didn't come across as ...well...me.
Now get thee back to your corner put your tin foil hat back on put the bucket of fish heads down for a minute and carry on challenging the system.
Quote from: Grugz on 24 February, 2015, 06:22:23 PM
I think calling you a troll was well out of order as I'm sure rebellion in their wisdom and fairness would stamp on any form of trolling and unpleasentness at all on the forum.
I have been
very clear that I am not using the word in its commonly accepted current useage which covers all flavours of internet douchebaggery, but in its very specific original sense, which is that of "trolling" for a reaction: picking an inflammatory topic and then adopting a contrarian position in the face of all evidence and argument in opposition, no matter how well-presented or reasonable.
The 'trolling', as Prof C notes, is also in the intent, but you'll note I said it
looks a lot like trolling in accordance with that definition. Which it does.
If you think that was out of order, report me.
Jim
Just for the record, I don't think Jim's out of order. We are both robust in our views and I fully accept Jim's impression of me as his point of view.
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As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to report.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 20 February, 2015, 11:19:34 PM
I'm forced to conclude that what you actually are is an elaborate troll. ... this is actually text book trolling in the classic sense.
Jim
Yes. And I stand by that, because that's it's exactly what it looks like from the outside. I defined trolling in that post, the same way that I defined it my more recent post. And that's what it looks like.
Jim
Maybe Sharky is actually this forums vaccine against trolls. A small enough dose of trollery to build up our resistance.
I would just like to point out that this particular conversation has been going on over four days. It spans 8 pages and contains 176 posts.
.
As far as I am aware, the conversation has not 'infected' any other threads. As far as I am aware, none of our virtual relationships have broken down irreparably. As far as I am aware, nobody has been banned. As far as I am aware, this website is not on fire.
.
Performing an entirely made up statistical and methodological analysis in my head, I can confirm that the above data, when adjusted for something-or-other and with certain irrelevant subsets removed, point to the inescapable conclusion that we have all behaved admirably and with conviction. These results strongly indicate that we should all feel jolly proud of ourselves for keeping it together through such an emotive and complex topic.
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Now then, let's change the subject:
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Religion - Is God a tw@t?****
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****This is most assuredly a joke!
Your're ma!
Right, Shark, olive branch accepted; now there's work needs doing on the political thread with Rifkin and Straw. Z
Quote from: ZenArcade on 24 February, 2015, 07:57:14 PM
now there's work needs doing on the political thread with Rifkin and Straw. Z
Proof, in answer to to Sharks 'Is God a tw@t? ' query that there is
no God surely?
Quote from: JamesC on 24 February, 2015, 07:07:08 PM
Maybe Sharky is actually this forums vaccine against trolls. A small enough dose of trollery to build up our resistance.
:lol:
Even Pokemon is in on the conspiracy.
I've recently become quite intruiged by the so called "Black Knight Satellite(s)". One or more unusual satellite like objects that where noted to be orbiting the earth long before any human satellites where launched. Pribably just some space rock but interesting how they are isolated phenomena.
I've never heard of this. To Google!
I wonder at what distance from the Earth they would have to be in order to have an orbit not subject to decay. I know geosynchronous is about 20,000km?. Z
Surely everything experiences orbital decay, irrespective of height? Higher orbits just slow the process by being subject to less atmospheric drag - but anything over 1000km should last many decades, if not centuries. Perhaps you're thinking of Lagrange points?
Ah you're quite right I was. Z
The LAGEOS series (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAGEOS) of satellites orbit at an altitude of 5,900 kilometres (3,700 mi) and won't re-enter the Earth's atmosphere for over eight million years - so it is possible to put satellites into such long-lived and stable orbits.
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As to the Black Knight Satellite itself, I'm still looking into it but my initial feeling is that several unrelated facts have been stitched together to form a kind of mirage.
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For example, one of the claims is that Tesla picked up the BKS's transmissions but it seems more likely, given the technology he was using, that he was detecting electromagnetic "bleed" from the telegraph system or early radio signals bouncing off the atmosphere (probably not pulsars, either, given his tech).
.
I'm still reading up on it but, much as I would love to believe the BKS was put there by Pre-Cataclysm humans or aliens, my current thought is that there is probably nothing there.
Truth-lovers will enjoy Russia Today, the Russian government's definitely-not-propaganda TV station. They've just hired Stone and Ventura, sons of Oliver and Jesse, to present a show; they've previously done a series on the internet which basically says everything ever is a false flag operation. So I'm looking forward to this!
I wouldn't broadly dismiss all of Russia Today as lies, as it makes a point of giving screen time to western voices like Max Keiser and Howard Bloom that are far from being pro-Russian, but are anti-capitalist and critical of Western conservatism. The old adage about broken clocks being right twice a day is probably apropos.
The Ventura family has good form with conspiracy theories, even becoming the subject of a few when the only episode of their tv show to be banned in the US was the one looking into the barmy idea that HOHO! the American government was funneling military supplies and training into domestic police forces in preparation for the institution of a police state and the suspension of democracy.
Max Keiser is not anti-capitalist - he's anti-banking fraud.
So he's a communist, then?
He's as mad as a sack of shaved rats, I know that much...
Quote from: Bear "Bear" McBear (bear) on 13 March, 2015, 12:08:16 PM
I wouldn't broadly dismiss all of Russia Today as lies
I didn't, I hope? I was reading about the lunatic they're replacing, who apparently did some stuff about how Russia was wrong to invade the Ukraine. And I know it's really easy to mock these news places, but Al-Jazeera produces stories the Western media would run to avoid, as it criticises their paymasters.
Quote from: Bear "Bear" McBear (bear) on 13 March, 2015, 12:08:16 PMThe Ventura family has good form with conspiracy theories, even becoming the subject of a few when the only episode of their tv show to be banned in the US was the one looking into the barmy idea that HOHO! the American government was funneling military supplies and training into domestic police forces in preparation for the institution of a police state and the suspension of democracy.
While I'm as guilty as anyone of watching these sort of shows for a laugh every now and again, I just worry that there's so little critical thinking taught to people these days that shows like this aren't laughed off the air after the first episode.
Lots of rumours flying around the internet on the apparent disappearance of Putin and a supposed big announcement coming from the Kremlin. Everyone's got their own theory, from an assassination attempt to the birth of Putin's child; from an announcement that Russia's about to go back on the Gold Standard through declaration of WWIII to contact with aliens.
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He's probably got the 'flu and the announcement will be that he's got better. (I hope it's the Gold Standard thing, though. Or the aliens. Either of those would be cool.)
.
Anyway, I haven't got time to wait and see. I'm off to bed!
After the Kim Jong Un 'disappearance' I'm expecting something very mediocre. Though if he has been ousted, I can't say I'll miss the belligerent old gangster much
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 March, 2015, 05:08:02 PM
Lots of rumours flying around the internet on the apparent disappearance of Putin and a supposed big announcement coming from the Kremlin. Everyone's got their own theory, from an assassination attempt to the birth of Putin's child; from an announcement that Russia's about to go back on the Gold Standard through declaration of WWIII to contact with aliens.
.
He's probably got the 'flu and the announcement will be that he's got better. (I hope it's the Gold Standard thing, though. Or the aliens. Either of those would be cool.)
.
Anyway, I haven't got time to wait and see. I'm off to bed!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31901078 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31901078)
do we have to start propping our doors against the wall yet? I'd like some notice as we have a memory foam matress that's too heavy to keep lugging up and down for the shelter.
It seems a war is what the US (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/02/24/u-s-military-vehicles-paraded-300-yards-from-the-russian-border/) and the EU (http://m.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31813939) wants, despite Ukranians voting to rejoin Russia last year. (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304914904579441563920333966) Of course, our side wants Ukraine too and so called the referendum illegal.
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Of course, this all started in earnest with a spat over money and gas. (http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/11/ukraine-at-crossroadsafterrejectingeupact.html)
.
It's a sad and horrific mess made worse by Russia, the EU and the US playing power politics and fuck the people. As usual.
I wouldn't worry about the UK getting directly nuked (not London anyway); Putin and his mafia scum mates have too much invested in property to do that. It'll most likely be some poor people in the Ukraine that get it. Z
Brit-Cit Sector SW6 has its own impenetrable nuclear shield too - aka 'The Abramovich Warp'.
I wouldn't feel too secure. (http://research.dyn.com/2015/03/uk-traffic-diverted-ukraine/) I wouldn't feel too secure at all. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-putin-says-russia-was-preparing-to-use-nuclear-weapons-if-necessary-and-blames-us-for-ukraine-crisis-in-crimea-documentary-10109615.html)
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The situation in the Ukraine, which I believe was engineered/influenced by the US and its toadies (EU, UK), could spin out of control at any moment. It reminds me of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We can only hope that Putin this time takes on the role of Kennedy as Obama's too weak, Merkel's too unimaginative, Tusk-Junker and Schultz are too disorganised and Cameron's too irrelevant.
Quote from: ZenArcade on 16 March, 2015, 04:58:24 PM
I wouldn't worry about the UK getting directly nuked (not London anyway); Z
I live in the north west, our own government are quite happy to see us get fracked into oblivion :'(
Well Sharkey, if Putin's the new Kennedy, maybe he'll secretly withdraw his forces from the Crimea, just as Kennedy secretly withdrew his missiles from Turkey.
The difficulty in the Ukraine particularly in the Eastern parts and especially in the Ukraine is that large majorities of the population identify much more closely with Russia than they do with the Kiev administration. This is certainly the view in the Crimea. Putin pulling out of Crimea is like the British pulling out of Gibraltar or the French out of the Alsace Z
Not sure about there being a majority favouring Russia in the Ukraine, Zen, although I accept there's a decent minority. Having said that though, doesn't that apply to the Baltic States? Perhaps that's Putin's next stop!
OH, my post indicated substantial majorities in the parts of Eastern and Southern Ukraine; the West and Centre of the country would appear to have substantial majorities who are vehemently anti-Russian. Z
Ps your point about the Baptist States is certainly worth a discussion.
That would probably be as likely as the US withdrawing its forces from, well, just about everywhere, (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployments) relinquishing its military industrial complex* (http://web.stanford.edu/class/e297a/U.S.%20Defense%20Industry%20and%20Arms%20Sales.htm) and giving up its reliance on mercenaries. (http://www.privatemilitary.org/private_military_companies.html)
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So, not very likely at all, I guess.
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*"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Pity nobody listened.
There's no way we'd go to war with Russia over the Ukraine, but at least it's now clear to mostly everyone both that Putin is a nutter and also that we can't deal with him, in either sense of the phrase.
The US and EU are baiting the Bear (no not Our Bear McBear) at the entrance to his cave....just what did they expect. Putin is one of the old Nomenklatura, he is far from stupid and not mad. He is simply doing what any Russian leader/despot has ever done. That is defending a sphere of influence or buffer zone between Russia and the West.
Look at it from a Russian chauvinist point of view. They have been repeatedly invaded and interfered with by Western states since the Seventeenth century. They are understandably paranoid about the West's intentions, which are not always.benign. Z
An interesting poll on how Ukrainians/Russians think: www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/regional-polls-show-few-ukrainians-russians-want-a-united-single-state/
Putin is many things but he's not a nutter. To believe such a thing prevents logical and unbiased analysis.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 March, 2015, 09:05:05 PM
Putin is many things but he's not a nutter. To believe such a thing prevents logical and unbiased analysis.
He banned transsexuals from driving, as a road safety measure.
He's totally bat-shit crazy, but that doesn't make him bad at being a tyrant. Exactly the opposite, he's certainly the most effective tyrant in the world today.
Doesn't make him mad, just a scapegoating, cynical fuck. Sorry Z
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 March, 2015, 08:47:40 PM
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
"I hope we shall take warning (...) and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Thomas Jefferson, 1816. No-one listened to him, either.
Quote from: Jimmy Baker's Assistant on 16 March, 2015, 09:51:59 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 March, 2015, 09:05:05 PM
Putin is many things but he's not a nutter. To believe such a thing prevents logical and unbiased analysis.
He banned transsexuals from driving, as a road safety measure.
He's totally bat-shit crazy, but that doesn't make him bad at being a tyrant. Exactly the opposite, he's certainly the most effective tyrant in the world today.
This is also the man who thinks Homosexuality is contagious and site's Bisexuals as proof. The kings new clothes, I swear!
Transsexuals have not been banned from driving in Russia, or so says the Moscow Times (http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/514313.html) and Reuters. (http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0KN23220150114?irpc=932) The driving ban applies to psychological disorders listed by the WHO (ICD-10 Section v) which make certain sufferers dangerous drivers - transsexuality happens to be on that list. I don't know which is more worrying; that the media reports this patently absurd "story" or that we so willingly accept it without question.
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The "anti-gay laws" are similarly mis-reported. The actual law, and English translations can be found on the internet (http://m.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/11/1082469/-Full-English-text-of-Russia-s-anti-gay-law), is an attempt to stop homosexual (and paedophilial) propaganda being targeted at minors. Leaving aside the morality of lumping homosexuality and paedophilia together (many people all around the world mistakenly do this, not just in Russia but the UK, EU, US, etc. as well), this Russian law is an attempt to protect children from undue sexual influence. It may be a clumsy and ham-fisted attempt but is not, I think, deliberately anti-gay. Again, it's the western media falling over itself to demonise Russia by magnifying and distorting its flaws.
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At least we know our own noble politicians, authorities and entertainers treat children with far more respect than those horrid Russians and would never expose them to such sordid sexual brainwashing...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 07:55:16 AM
I don't know which is more worrying; that the media reports this patently absurd "story" or that we so willingly accept it without question.
Or, perhaps, the breath-taking ease with which you act as an apologist for a policy that brands being transsexual as a dangerous psychological disorder.
Jim
Yeah, because Homosexuality = Rampent sexual desire targeted in a very public manner. You know, like hoe media campaigns pander to insecure straight fuckboys by objectifying women.
Shark, my man, I love ye and everything but that's some grade A nonsense right their.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 07:55:16 AM
The driving ban applies to psychological disorders listed by the WHO (ICD-10 Section v) which make certain sufferers dangerous drivers - transsexuality happens to be on that list.
What you're saying here, then, is that transexuals
have been banned from driving in Russia.
Good grief, Shark. I thought you came out with some shit during the vaccines stuff, but being an apologist for one of the most dreadful discrimination laws in recent history? Seriously? You know about the mobs in Russia who go around kicking the shit out of gay people, and not getting prosecuted, yes? You know about Russia essentially creating law that's in practice more regressive than anything we had here regarding homosexuality, yes? These laws have more in common with how certain Middle Eastern countries deal with (and I use those words very deliberately) women.
As for 'undue sexual influence', what a load of horseshit. There's no gay 'propaganda', trying to convert kids to the 'dark side'. You're either gay or you're not. You can no more not be gay than you can't be white or black. Trying to pretend gay people don't exist, forcing them to hide their sexuality, and literally branding them as psychologically damaged and therefore not able to even drive, is utterly reprehensible. There is no excuse. (Also, it's quite blatantly largely about Russian government creating an enemy to distract the proles, much in the same way the Tories and UKIP do the same here when it comes to immigrants.)
While not wishing to be an apologist for an apologist, I don't think that's what the Shark said. He's just noting the disparity in how we view things when the Russians do them, while the rest of the world does similar or worse.
If he is suggesting what the posters above infer, then I'll happily agree with them.
I utterly agree with the sentiments expressed by Jim, Hawk and IP; but like Tordel says, Shark wasnt advocating or supporting this in my reading of what he said. Z
Quote from: ZenArcade on 17 March, 2015, 10:03:39 AM
I utterly agree with the sentiments expressed by Jim, Hawk and IP; but like Tordel says, Shark wasnt advocating or supporting this in my reading of what he said. Z
He was unquestionably acting as an apologist for it, however, which is what I said.
Jim
Well we'll wait until Shark clarifies his stance....if he chooses to do so. Z
Quote from: Tordelback on 17 March, 2015, 09:55:34 AM
While not wishing to be an apologist for an apologist, I don't think that's what the Shark said. He's just noting the disparity in how we view things when the Russians do them, while the rest of the world does similar or worse.
I'm afraid I find this an astonishingly generous reading of his comments. As far as I can see, he is bending over backwards to find a way to defend (possibly replace "defend" with "present a defence for" I suppose) Russian policy for the simplistically contrarian reason that Western politicians and media don't necessarily represent it the way Russian ones do, therefore the Russian view must be valid.
At best, this puts him into the same doublethinking apologist camp as Western leftists happy to endorse the Soviet regime.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 07:55:16 AM
The "anti-gay laws" are similarly mis-reported. The actual law, and English translations can be found on the internet (http://m.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/11/1082469/-Full-English-text-of-Russia-s-anti-gay-law), is an attempt to stop homosexual (and paedophilial) propaganda being targeted at minors. Leaving aside the morality of lumping homosexuality and paedophilia together (many people all around the world mistakenly do this, not just in Russia but the UK, EU, US, etc. as well), this Russian law is an attempt to protect children from undue sexual influence. It may be a clumsy and ham-fisted attempt but is not, I think, deliberately anti-gay. Again, it's the western media falling over itself to demonise Russia by magnifying and distorting its flaws.
From the explanatory note of
the fucking source you provided yourself: QuotePropaganda of homosexualism in Russia took a wide sweep. This propaganda is delivered both through the media and through active social actions that promote homosexualism as a behavioral norm.
... it is necessary to establish measures to ensure intellectual, moral and mental security of children, including the prohibition onto perform any act aimed at the promotion of homosexuality.
So they're defining "propaganda" as
anything that defines homosexuality as normal i.e. not abnormal, or in other words they're outlawing exactly what you should be telling kids, many of whom will be gay themselves. Your prevarication over this is sickening- "...not, I think, deliberately anti-gay" indeed.
But you see, Jim, that's not what the policy says, is it? The policy actually says that people suffering from certain mental conditions should not be allowed to drive. The policy points to the WHO's list of mental disorders, which happens to include... Ah, what's the point? You've obviously made up your mind and jumped to your own hysterical conclusions.
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If you want to believe I'm anti-vaccinations and pro-LGBT discrimination then you go right ahead, I can't stop you. I get the impression that if I were to say "people with broken arms or legs shouldn't drive" you'd interpret that as me discriminating against people with skeletons.
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What if someone has gender-reassignment surgery and is banned from driving until their sliced-into sexy parts have stopped hurting, would that be anti-gay too? Probably yes, in Jim's World.
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Did you miss the part where I said; "Leaving aside the morality of lumping homosexuality and paedophilia together (many people all around the world mistakenly do this, not just in Russia but the UK, EU, US, etc. as well), this Russian law is an attempt to protect children from undue sexual influence. It may be a clumsy and ham-fisted attempt but is not, I think, deliberately anti-gay. Again, it's the western media falling over itself to demonise Russia by magnifying and distorting its flaws." Or did you simply ignore what I said in order to do some demonising of your own?
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I believe consenting adults should be able to marry irrespective of their sexuality - our government and churches do not. I believe a person's sexuality is just a small part of their whole being and, so long as nobody gets hurt, they can hang out of whomever they like. I don't care if people are LGBT or S; it makes no difference to me.
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The point of my last post was to demonstrate the skewed and hysterical nature of western "news" reporting, which you seem to find perfectly acceptable. In Saudi Arabia, for example, the penalty for homosexuality is death. Yet the media skirts around this and instead chooses to blather on about a skewed version of Russia's anti-gay laws. A quick (90 second) perusal of Google reveals that Moscow has a thriving, if somewhat subdued/hidden, gay scene. Sure, Russian attitudes on homosexuality are still behind the times but both you and I were born into a country where the homosexual act was illegal. You could go to prison for it. Our country has moved on from that (largely), and a good thing too, but Russia's still struggling with it. Pull them up on real discrimination by all means - but don't just condemn the entire country on some half-baked and distorted rubbish.
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I'm sure there are ill-informed idiots in the rest of the world who look at our own appalling record on paedophilia and believe everyone from the UK is a child abuser and that the exploitation and rape of children is UK Government policy.
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Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 10:19:22 AM
Pull them up on real discrimination by all means - but don't just condemn the entire country on some half-baked and distorted rubbish.
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I know you're not homophobic, Sharky, but I don't think anyone on the board has condemned the entire country. All I've seen so far here are condemnations of the Russian government's anti-homosexual policies. Surely I'm allowed to condemn another country's discriminatory laws - it doesn't mean I think my country's government is perfect either (it really, really isn't).
Slave: I am oppressed and not treated equally. Here, i'm bleeding due to physical assault you allowed on my person by not enforcing anti-discrimination laws.
Slaver: Source?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 10:19:22 AM
But you see, Jim, that's not what the policy says, is it? The policy actually says that people suffering from certain mental conditions should not be allowed to drive. The policy points to the WHO's list of mental disorders, which happens to include... Ah, what's the point? You've obviously made up your mind and jumped to your own hysterical conclusions.
You concede that being transsexual is on the list of "mental conditions" that preclude people from driving. The WHO doesn't say that being transsexual is a bar to driving, the Russian legislation does.
QuoteWhat if someone has gender-reassignment surgery and is banned from driving until their sliced-into sexy parts have stopped hurting, would that be anti-gay too? Probably yes, in Jim's World.
That is the most outrageous non-sequiteur. There is
no equivalence between those two things and your attempt to connect them is either rank stupidity or flagrant trolling.
While I'm at it:
QuoteLeaving aside the morality of lumping homosexuality and paedophilia together (many people all around the world mistakenly do this[...])
1)
Leaving aside?! You don't get to
leave that aside. It's the
point of the legislation. If you're not conflating homosexuality and paedophilia, then there's no reason to 'protect' children from homosexuality.
2) "Many people" in the world hold ugly, wrong-headed beliefs. Many people are racists and anti-semites, that doesn't make it OK to
codify those prejudices into law. Doing so legitimises and emboldens those holding those views when any civilised nation should be doing
precisely the opposite.
You shouldn't need this explaining to you.
Jim
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 17 March, 2015, 10:25:18 AM
I don't think anyone on the board has condemned the entire country.
A shocking oversight when you consider every last inch of Russia is fucking shit.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 10:19:22 AMIt may be a clumsy and ham-fisted attempt but is not, I think, deliberately anti-gay.
Apart from, as JPMaybe noted, specifically stating that anything defining homosexuality as normal within society is outlawed. The Russian law is the most blatant type of discrimination around. This isn't poor reporting. This isn't looking at another society's news reporting and exaggerating. This is the policy the country has in place, which is seriously hurting a great many people.
As for your other points, I don't get them. What does the West's habit of ignoring appalling Saudi law have to do with Russian law also being appalling?
As for:
QuoteI'm sure there are ill-informed idiots in the rest of the world who look at our own appalling record on paedophilia and believe everyone from the UK is a child abuser and that the exploitation and rape of children is UK Government policy.
Seriously? There is no bloody equivalent here. There have been some truly awful acts perpetrated by certain members of society, and there may well have been cover ups, but these things are not placed in law. A bad or even terrible record is one thing, but actually enshrining in law defining an underclass and not allowing people to live their lives in an open fashion is just appalling. This isn't magnifying or distorting anything, any more than saying women are repressed in Saudi Arabia.
Jeez Bear, Russia covers a huge amount of different climate and time zones and is hugely under populated. My guess is most of it is stunningly beautiful. It's just we never get to see the good bits. Z
Jim, allow me to post the following links again for your perusal:
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www.themoscowtimes.com/article/514313.html
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mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0KN23220150114?irpc=932
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These posts were both made on January 14th this year, after which it seems the mainstream media quietly let their hysterical rhetoric drop - with no word of clarification. (I'm prepared to be wrong on this but I can't find the allegations repeated after this date, nor can I find any clarifications after this date either. Thus, the rhetoric remains on record as "fact" despite its wildly skewed nature.) In short, the Russian legislation does not bar transsexuals from driving merely for being transsexual.
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You're right - there is no equivalence between the two, just as there is no equivalence between being transsexual and not being allowed to drive in Russia. Nor is there any equivalence between making a(n admittedly extreme) point to demonstrate the foolishness of the western media's perspective and trolling.
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1) Yes, I do get to leave that aside because I'm talking about facts and not morality. If you want me to comment on the morality of sexual discrimination of any kind then here it is: Leaving aside the obvious sexual discrimination leading to segregated male/female changing rooms/toilets/etc. (ha, ha), the overwhelming majority of all sexual discrimination is both wrong and damaging to societies and individuals.
.
2) I agree. That's not my argument though - and if you read what I've written in a calm and logical manner, you shouldn't need this explaining to you either.
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JBC - you're correct; nobody on this board has condemned the whole country, nor (probably) has any media source. The media, though, infer that a whole country is responsible for its government - which, in my opinion, is more or less correct.
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The horrible claims of institutionalised paedophilia (and racism, homophobia, et al) throughout our own governments and organisations are our responsibility - yours and mine. We vote for these people and allow others to inhabit positions of power and influence and so, in my opinion, these crimes are as much our responsibility as the perpetrators. Most of us, however, are content to sit back and let the very institutions where these evil crimes take place sort themselves out. I am as guilty of this as anyone and I don't know what the solution is beyond being vigilant and making an unholy noise about it.
No. We are not responsible for the immoral sexual urges of a high and mighty prick in parliament. They are responsible for their own inhibitions.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 11:22:22 AM
In short, the Russian legislation does not bar transsexuals from driving merely for being transsexual
You're right, and I was wrong. Indeed, a quick google of "russia transsexual driving ban" does indeed reveal a plethora of reports on the 'ban' on major news sites and very few reporting the clarification, which came only a few days later.
(I will say that I remain sceptical that this shows systemic anti-Russian bias, given that
"News outlet reports story that lends itself to sensationalist headline but fails to give same priority to less exciting clarification" is hardly exclusive to stories about Russia.)
Quote1) Yes, I do get to leave that aside because I'm talking about facts and not morality.
Either you hold an indefensible view of homosexuality — that it's broadly equivalent with paedophilia and is capable of 'infecting' impressionable young minds — or you are acting as an apologist for that view.
And, yes, I am more than aware of Saudi Arabia's appalling record on every aspect of human rights and condemn both that and the West's cynical ability to turn a blind eye to the Saudi regime's many atrocities. I can and do condemn that
and condemn the Putin regime's vehemently anti-gay stance.
Jim
Quote from: ZenArcade on 17 March, 2015, 11:18:12 AM
Jeez Bear, Russia covers a huge amount of different climate and time zones and is hugely under populated. My guess is most of it is stunningly beautiful. It's just we never get to see the good bits. Z
I'm pretty sure he was joking...
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 17 March, 2015, 11:49:49 AM
Quote from: ZenArcade on 17 March, 2015, 11:18:12 AM
Jeez Bear, Russia covers a huge amount of different climate and time zones and is hugely under populated. My guess is most of it is stunningly beautiful. It's just we never get to see the good bits. Z
I'm pretty sure he was joking...
He's from Cookstown is he not?
Russia must look like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to him...
Fair point...
(Whereas I myself am from the Utopian metropolis of Kells, County Meath, truly the jewel in the crown of the Western World.)
EDIT: Though actually I meant it was the Bear who was joking about all of Russia being shit.
Sorry Jayzus, I know the Bear was, as was I. Cookstown's not that bad, I used to head out to clubland in my younger days. Z :D
Jim, that's very decent of you and I applaud you for it, seriously. (No - I'm not being condescending; I hate admitting when I'm wrong as well and know how much it stings.)
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To clarify my position on homosexuals (oo-er, missus!) - I in no way equate homosexuality with paedophilia. At least, no more so than I equate heterosexuality or lesbianism with paedophilia. I would *guess* that there are more heterosexual paedophiles than gay or lesbian paedophiles and that paedophilia is a seperate proclivity, or sub-proclivity if there is such a thing, to sexual orientation.
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As I have admitted before, I am not a parent; but if I was I'd have no qualms about hiring a LGB or T babysitter. If my hypothetical child were to grow up gay, I wouldn't have any problem at all with that.
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Unfortunately, many people in the world do see gayness as unwholesome, perverted or "against God" and act accordingly. I think, and again I'm guessing here, homophobia stems from irrational fears, suppressed feelings and religious or social indoctrination.
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I apologise unconditionally if I gave the contrary impression.
Every last inch of Russian soil is forsaken by God.
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 17 March, 2015, 11:51:29 AMHe's from Cookstown is he not?
Russia must look like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to him...
Only because the Hanging Gardens of Babylon aren't as nice as Cookstown, which is the official dog dirt, wasteground and mystery bonfire capital of the West.
how did speculation of putin's whereabouts turn into wether transsexuals are allowed to drive trabants?
Magick?
Trabantsubstantiation?
TrabantsmMOGrified. Z
maybe putin has been for his pre-op meeting and is laying a false trail of policy before his gender reassignment ,he'll then drive down red square in a t-34 tank singing "I am what I am!" lippy glaring in the sunlight and blonde wig blowing in the Balkan wind!
now theres an image for you all before you have your tea ;)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 11:37:47 AM
.
The horrible claims of institutionalised paedophilia (and racism, homophobia, et al) throughout our own governments and organisations are our responsibility - yours and mine. We vote for these people and allow others to inhabit positions of power and influence and so, in my opinion, these crimes are as much our responsibility as the perpetrators. Most of us, however, are content to sit back and let the very institutions where these evil crimes take place sort themselves out. I am as guilty of this as anyone and I don't know what the solution is beyond being vigilant and making an unholy noise about it.
Sorry, but I refuse to share the burden of guilt for a conspiracy to cover up crimes I knew nothing about at the time. Speaking as an Irish citizen, I have never voted for any of the governments that assisted the Catholic Church in hiding its appalling crimes (and I do vote), and actively take no part in any of the church's goings on. I detest the Catholic Church as an institution and never shy away from saying so.
Until recently, I didn't know that Sinn Fein members were (allegedly) doing the same thing either, and thus let it happpen. Does that also make me responsible?
No it doesn't, unless you accept a totalitarian collective guilt view. The system as we know it is essentially lying bullshit. When they have fucked up either fiscally or in the sense of criminal sexual predation (or worse), we everyone have to shoulder the monetary or guilt burdern. If you or I fuck up in any sense at all, we have to accept the stringent individual penalties. Z
I think we must all take responsibility - it's our society and we are all responsible for it. In my view, when we abnegate our powers and responsibilities to others we must demand certain standards of decent behaviour from them. If they are unable or unwilling to act properly then we must either replace them or take back their powers and responsibilities for ourselves. At this time I do not have a government - I reject its authority and legitimacy. Give me a government that treats the people with honesty and respect and I will die to protect it, whether I agree with its policies or not. I would not die to destroy the government we have but I will die before I bow down or bend my knee to it.
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This is my position only and I neither demand nor expect anyone else to follow suit. I am the sovereign of my own life, as I believe you are the sovereign of yours. I bow only to those whom I respect and never to those who simply believe they deserve it.
.
Of course, authority is doing its best to grind this out of me and maybe one day it will win - but not because I let it. Please God, not because I let it.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 03:55:13 PM
I think we must all take responsibility - it's our society and we are all responsible for it. In my view, when we abnegate our powers and responsibilities to others we must demand certain standards of decent behaviour from them. If they are unable or unwilling to act properly then we must either replace them or take back their powers and responsibilities for ourselves. At this time I do not have a government - I reject its authority and legitimacy. Give me a government that treats the people with honesty and respect and I will die to protect it, whether I agree with its policies or not. I would not die to destroy the government we have but I will die before I bow down or bend my knee to it.
.
This is my position only and I neither demand nor expect anyone else to follow suit. I am the sovereign of my own life, as I believe you are the sovereign of yours. I bow only to those whom I respect and never to those who simply believe they deserve it.
.
Of course, authority is doing its best to grind this out of me and maybe one day it will win - but not because I let it. Please God, not because I let it.
There's nothing here I disagree with. We all have a responsibility to improve society as best we can -because both our governments are doing a pretty poor job of it - and I never once implied anything other than that.
What I
was saying, though, was that we can't be held responsible for crimes committed by other people when we had no idea they were happening. It suits the powers-that-be to distribute their burden of guilt amongst the rest of us (usually through the media), which I've seen happen all too often.
Our responsibility, as I see it, is not to be made feel guilty for crimes committed by authorities (did you have a say in invading Iraq, for example?), but to pressurise them as best we can into mending their ways and boycotting them if they don't.
I agree - I guess I should have made it clear that responsibility doesn't necessarily mean guilt.
.
An interesting question occurs to me, though. Let's imagine that Tony Blair returns to politics and I vote for him - does that make me guilty of supporting a war criminal? Further, if Mr Blair becomes Prime Minister again and lies us into another unjust war again, does that make me guilty of war crimes?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 05:18:19 PM
Let's imagine that Tony Blair returns to politics and I vote for him - does that make me guilty of supporting a war criminal?
YES
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 05:18:19 PMFurther, if Mr Blair becomes Prime Minister again and lies us into another unjust war again, does that make me guilty of war crimes?
NO
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 March, 2015, 12:15:39 PM
Unfortunately, many people in the world do see gayness as unwholesome, perverted or "against God" and act accordingly. I think, and again I'm guessing here, homophobia stems from irrational fears, suppressed feelings and religious or social indoctrination.
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I apologise unconditionally if I gave the contrary impression.
The impression you gave me is that you're a massive fan of Putin and that you don't care about his homophobic laws, or indeed any of the other bad stuff he's done (like abolishing Russian democracy, having his critics murdered, etc. etc.)
However, from previous posts I think you take such positions largely for the sake of it, and it's certainly more memorable than the many contributors on here that talk sense.
I'm not a fan of any leader.
I hesitated to post the following, given the anger generated last time this subject was raised, but this does feel important and we're all grown up enough to do our own thinking on this subject. Given my frustratingly limited internet access at the moment I am unable to read any of the supposed "court transcript" pdfs found in the various links and so view this whole episode with a little scepticism - but only a little.
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When Dr Jayne Donnegan acted as an expert witness in a case where parents did not wish their children to be vaccinated, she was accused of using "junk science," acting unprofessionally, of bringing the profession into disrepute and failing in her duty to present a balanced report.
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This was reported by The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/oct/02/health.law) (02/10/2006) and the London Evening Standard (http://www.standard.co.uk/news/gp-accused-of-misleading-court-over-mmr-danger-6604270.html) (07/08/2007).
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The GMC took Dr Donnegan to court - and apparently Dr Donnegan won. (http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/03/15/the-doctor-who-beat-the-british-general-medical-council-by-proving-that-vaccines-arent-necessary-to-achieve-health/)
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I say "apparently" because neither the Guardian nor the Standard appears to have reported any follow-up, and neither has the rest of the media.
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This is not me trying to rubbish vaccinations altogether, nor do I think this is what the above is all about. Rather, it is enlightening from the point of view of how those with differing views are treated by the establishment and media and how real debate is stifled by knee-jerk emotion and vested interests.
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I neither accept nor deny either the GMC's or Dr Donnegan's positions in this case. As with most issues of this kind, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 March, 2015, 08:43:32 AM
The GMC took Dr Donnegan to court - and apparently Dr Donnegan won. (http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/03/15/the-doctor-who-beat-the-british-general-medical-council-by-proving-that-vaccines-arent-necessary-to-achieve-health/)
No, she didn't. The GMC called her before their own Fitness To Practice committee. I have had some experience of the operations of the equivalent GOC (General Optical Council) FTP committee and fleeting contact with the GMC's and this is most emphatically
not the same thing as an argument being tested in court.
The FTP investigation was not triggered by Dr Donegan's views, but the criticism of her by the judges in the case to which she presented expert testimony. The judges were not medical experts and, frankly, should have kept their mouths shut but the GMC, when presented with such a high profile accusation of mis-conduct, had little option other than to be seen to act.
Dr Donegan's views were not tested in the GMC's hearing, only the accusation that she had misused existing data to support her view, by means of selective quoting, to present a view that was detrimental to the best interest of her patients and thus incompatible with the responsibilities of a doctor. FTP committees need a LOT of convincing to bring any kind of disciplinary action to bear on someone brought before them and Dr Donegan was able to demonstrate to their satisfaction that she did not do this.
As I say, her actual views were not tested here, only her conduct in the court case, and for what it's worth her actual views get fairly thoroughly pulled apart here (https://jdc325.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/dr-jayne-donegan-on-measles/).
Jim
In the articles I've read, coupled with what you say, it seems that a court case and a GMC hearing might have been conflated. Whether this is a flaw in the articles or in my own understanding, I don't know.
.
I totally accept that it was Dr Donnegan who was "on trial" and not the vaccination programme itself. I also agree that the judges should have kept their mouths shut. However, the fact that the judges acted on their own preconceptions instead of accepting Donnegan's testimony as valid is a worry - at least to me.
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The link you gave was interesting and I could provide links to sites giving equally well-presented opposing views (and I will if you like) but to the overall question of vaccinations I'll stick to the last thing I said about it; it's a great idea but there's room for improvement.
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The GMC and governments - all of us, in fact - should treat all claims, made by all sides, with a healthy scepticism. Some claims will be true, some claims will be untrue and some claims will be unverified. When people like Dr Donnegan are put on trial I think the mainstream media has a duty to report it in as unbiased a way as possible - but this rarely happens.
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Donnegan's vindication does not automatically condemn the vaccination program but it does suggest, to me at least, that her research and conclusions should now be taken more seriously. I don't think this is a "victory for anti-vaxxers" or a "defeat for pro-vaxxers" but I do think it's a step in the right direction for level-headed and informed debate and a step backwards for unquestioned acceptance. This, again in my view, can only be a good thing.
On a not entirely unrelated note; my gum abscess this morning has completely disappeared.
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The first time it came up I visited the dentist (at a cost of £18) who prescribed me a course of two antibiotics (at a cost of £16.10p). The antibiotics worked but took over a week to do so - a week of intense discomfort and not incosiderable pain.
.
The abscess started to return last weekend and by yesterday morning was almost as big and painful again. This time, I bought a box containing two bulbs of garlic (at a cost of 89p), which I chewed raw and kept the pulp on the abscess (on my lower left jaw between my gum and my cheek) for as long as I could stand it - which wasn't very long at all, maybe one to two minutes. I did this several times throughout the day, using less than half a bulb of garlic.
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As I write this, the abscess has completely disappeared, the only thing remaining is a slight niggling pain as if I'd scratched my gum.
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£34.10p and a week of pain and discomfort keeping me off work v 89p and just under 24 hours of discomfort and watering eyes which I easily put up with whilst at work (not driving, btw, but wire-brushing a large bike-rack in a workshop). Hmmm...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 March, 2015, 10:34:18 AM
On a not entirely unrelated note; my gum abscess this morning has completely disappeared.
Delighted to hear that, Sharky, I honestly am. I've had a gum abcess and it's horrible; nice to see you sorted it out on your own.
I'm far less delighted to see the return of the vaccinations debate, however. You're clearly not going to let this one lie, so I'm staying out of it from now on, except to say this: I don't believe that the truth lies 'somewhere in the middle' as you say, but far, far closer to the pro-vaccination side than the anti- one, and overwhelming evidence backs me up. And it disturbs me to see that a practising homeopath is allowed to work as a GP; when homeopathy has been debunked again and again as being a mere placebo (which can be effective, of course, but not nearly as much as real medicine).
You're entitled to contradict me, of course, but that's my final word on it; I found the last debate on the matter very frustrating - the only thing I got from it was a far greater certainty that the anti-vaxxing movement is misguided and dangerous - so I'll stay away from this thread for the time being.
I get ulcers fairly regularly. A side effect of mouth pieces on my regulator rubbing against tender flesh. You have my sympathy, Shark, and i'm glad it's cleared up for you. :D
Sharky, when it comes to somethings, you can't handle the truth ::)
Iraqi Commander: Tapped Communications Confirms US Aids to ISIL. (http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13931227000427)
Taking the enemy of my enemy is my friend thing a bit far, if true. Z
It's how the military industrial complex works. If you want to sell expensive metal detectors, security systems and armed guards to a school, simply toss a few cheap flick-knives into the playground.
I loved the 'metal detectors' some scumbags flogged to th Iraqis. Well swap I loved for was horrified. They were simply plastic and metal wands with a piece of cheap card circuit installed. They have probably led to many deaths and looking at the news a couple of weeks ago they are still being used; after being totally discredited in a British Court of Law and the vendor being subject to criminal conviction. Z
The curious case of Jill Dando, Mark
Williams-Thomas, Britain's VIP paedophile
ring and the missing murder theory (https://thecolemanexperience.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/the-curious-case-of-jill-dando-mark-williams-thomas-britains-vip-paedophile-ring-and-the-missing-murder-theory/).
I'm moderately sympathetic to there being more to Dando's death than we're being told, but I'd hope Britain's top paedophiles could figure out a subtler way to kill her than that.
That article does illustrate one of the classics of the "conspiracist" mindset, though. "That theory is old hat dear boy." I've encountered a fair few people on forums and so on who will dismiss out of hand any theory more than 6 months old, as if being a conspiracy believer is like being a shark and you always need to revealing new things, endlessly muddying the waters so no conclusion can ever be reached.
That article needs more backing up with actual evidence, though. It's the weasel-word-iest thing I've read in ages.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 April, 2015, 05:03:32 AM
The curious case of Jill Dando, Mark
Williams-Thomas, Britain's VIP paedophile
ring and the missing murder theory (https://thecolemanexperience.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/the-curious-case-of-jill-dando-mark-williams-thomas-britains-vip-paedophile-ring-and-the-missing-murder-theory/).
What a nasty, horrible thing. Is that the point of forwarding it?
QuoteCliff [Richard] is very much a tool of the British and Israeli Intelligence Services
Wow. Case closed, eh?
Crisis time, missile codes and mines...?
The Taliban don't like vaccinations, Pakistan remains one of the only places where Polio is endemic. Children suffer, forever. Link not great but there is a podcast as well if you have the itunes. Never heard a single sufferer of a vaccinated disease say they didn't think it was worthwhile.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/on-demand
The needless suffering, the persistance - and heroism - of the people trying to stop it in the face of fearful skepticism and outright, violent hostility; this is why people are outright disgusted by the anti-vax movement. Whoever works against this is working against humanity.
Maybe we can move on with our lives now?
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/21/no-link-between-mmr-and-autism-major-study-concludes
Quote from: Famous Mortimer on 22 April, 2015, 08:13:36 AM
Maybe we can move on with our lives now?
Maddeningly, there's been so much noise on this that we're now into territory where people say: "There's no smoke without fire."
Which, of course, is only true in as much as there was
no fucking smoke to begin with, only one lying, discredited, struck-off bastard claiming to have seen smoke.
Gaah.
Jim
The comments thread for that article is a car crash, with people still not believing. "Look who funded some of the data," they scream, ignoring Wakefield's cunning money-making scheme that started this whole mess. It won't matter. It's pretty clear at the very best, loads of kids are going to have to get very sick with entirely preventable diseases (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/04/14/anti-vax-mom-changes-her-tune-when-all-7-of-her-children-come-down-with-whooping-cough/) before we get back to herd immunity again.
If anyone's still interested in that lost thermal blanket "Black Knight Satellite," I stumbled across an article, with no new information (surely amateur astronomers and satellite spotters would be all over this?), here (http://disinfo.com/2015/05/black-knight-satellite-truth/).
Quote from: White Falcon on 13 May, 2015, 07:11:33 PM
If anyone's still interested in that lost thermal blanket "Black Knight Satellite,"
Seems familiar.
(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/watchtower_zpsdhhfriq4.jpg)
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 22 April, 2015, 08:26:26 AMMaddeningly, there's been so much noise on this that we're now into territory where people say: "There's no smoke without fire."
To be fair, this is a tactic that's proven useful down through the decades, and remains good for everything from WMDs in Iraq, Intelligent Design and"Global Warming is a myth."
Of course, I don't know how true or false the following link might me but it does put me in mind of the dead body found near one of the Queen's estates a few years back (Sandringham, I think). Savile was a friend of Prince Charles as well and it seems the ruling classes do have a deep involvement with this kind of thing so, who knows, is it real or just people drawing conclusions from unconnected stories? Still, power corrupts and all that...
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Queen Elizabeth Found Guilty in Missing Children Case -- Whistle Blowers Incarcerated, While She is Free. (http://humansarefree.com/2014/05/queen-elizabeth-found-guilty-in-missing.html?m=0)
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Quote from: White Falcon on 31 May, 2015, 01:29:26 PM
Of course, I don't know how true or false the following link might me but it does put me in mind of the dead body found near one of the Queen's estates a few years back (Sandringham, I think).
And, as I pointed out at the time, Sandringham estate takes up 20,000 acres, which is over 30 square miles of land.
If a dead body found in that kind of proximity to someone is suspicious, everyone on this forum is a murder suspect.
There's an article on that website about how the pharaohs were alien hybrids.
I can't keep up with all these name changes..
So, which one of you used to be Sharky?
nk it's white falcon....as he's got the first post in the thread? Could be wrong.....I don't quite get the name changing this either, so I don't even try to keep up most of the time!
I'm Sharkatus!
Ahhh, so who was Lesbian Seagull - that you again Sharky? I thought it may have been Sauchie, or that chap who likes Bear names, or someone else entirely...
But this all seems to confirm my suspicion that there's only ever been about 5, or 6 members on this forum... ;)
White Falcon is Shark, Butch is Sauchie, Lesbian Seagull is the artist formerly known as Professor Bear.
Cheers
Jim
(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb84qvNaek1rq9c58o1_500.gif)
Forget the Illuminati, 9/11, Rothschildism, faked Moon landings and shape-shifting reptillian overlords - the Ultimate Conspiracy has been discovered! I suppose it had to happen one day - you, personally, are nothing more than a conspiracy (http://howtoexitthematrix.com/2015/07/14/exposing-the-reincarnation-deception-your-soul-is-enslaved/)!
.
Or maybe not. The only way to find out the truth, or otherwise, of this one is to die - and I for one am in no rush to investigate anything requiring my own demise as a research tool...
There was a Bearshark on about 2 months ago. Either the Ursine/Laminiform issue of the said Lesbian Seagull and the White Falcon or King Pops taking the piss? Z
I'm a Doctor now. Got a certificate from the Internet and all. So I'm just as qualified as Gillian McKeith
A proper doctor wouldn't get some crummy internet certificate; he'd have the skill to make his own...
"I came to the growing realization that I had fallen into the trap of groupthink. I had accepted the consensus based on 2nd order evidence: the assertion that a consensus existed. I began making an independent assessment of topics in climate science that had the most relevance to policy." (http://judithcurry.com/2015/12/08/senate-hearing-data-or-dogma-2/)
.
Dr. Judith Curry, Professor and former Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Part of her verbal remarks as delivered to last week's US Senate Commerce Committee Hearing on "Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate Over the Magnitude of the Human Impact on Earth's Climate."
Airplane Contrails May Be Creating Accidental Geoengineering. (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/airplane-contrails-may-be-creating-accidental-geoengineering-180957561/?no-ist)
"Big Climate"
Yeah, **** off back to Big Oil and Big Business.
Huh?
Reading your last link about Judith Curry and going through the comments (terrible idea).
This idea that there's "Big Climate" strongarming the poor little guy. That it's some kind of elitist conspiracy against honest folk to say "Actually it looks like global industrialisation does actually have an impact on the ecosystem, maybe we should do something about it".
Dr Curry has some point but it's like all things that enter the political sphere - only those who oppose the hegemony are required to be consistent and perfect in all things. She's naive to think that science remaining at a complete distance will ever have an impact on business as usual.
comments section on any "chemtrails" article are always hilarious - truly the tinfoilhattiest of the tin foil hat brigade.
Ah, I see. I think I agree with you, there. Those who claim that climate change is "settled science" are wrong (when is science - especially something as complex and stuffed with variables as climatology - ever "settled"?).
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One only has to look at the title of the IPCC to see how deeply political (and money-spinning) current prevalent thinking actually is. I'm sure human action does have an impact on climate - the question is, to what extent?
That link isn't about so-called "chemtrails" - it's about ice crystals. And I'd hardly lump the Smithsonian Institute in with the "tinfoil hat brigade."
That actually is a non-conspiracy chemtrails article. However Dan is probably talking about the comments, which are the usual bag of "the high bypass turbo fan engine is nearly incapable of producing condensation trails. Sit in your bubble of denial" "Propaganda ~ there is nothing "accidental" about this article's intent.
These are NOT "contrails" (condensation trails of water vapor/ice crystals). They are 'intentional' geoengineering aerosols (particulate aerosol trails) - period."
:-\
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 December, 2015, 12:18:08 PM
Ah, I see. I think I agree with you, there. Those who claim that climate change is "settled science" are wrong (when is science - especially something as complex and stuffed with variables as climatology - ever "settled"?).
.
One only has to look at the title of the IPCC to see how deeply political (and money-spinning) current prevalent thinking actually is. I'm sure human action does have an impact on climate - the question is, to what extent?
And the problem is that the groups dedicated to sustaining the idea that human actions can continue unfettered will only acknowledge anything when it is 'settled', and never acknowledge that there will always be doubt.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 December, 2015, 12:20:27 PM
That link isn't about so-called "chemtrails" - it's about ice crystals. And I'd hardly lump the Smithsonian Institute in with the "tinfoil hat brigade."
I wasn't referring to the article but the commentators it attracted:
QuoteAttempting to coverup a biological and chemical terror attack is aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, and can land you in prison for a long time. I suggest that you change your theory about "condensation trails."
QuoteSo tired of the blatantly lying media, such as this article. They truly are despicable, causing most of the problems in the US. Cannot wait for justice to finally happen, for these marxist criminals in the media to be tried on grounds of treason.
QuotePeople who follow chemtrails also can spot a disinformant from a mile way.
QuoteAnd it appears you might be too young to realize how warm, yellow and bright the Sun shone on Earth from 1950 to 1980. .... consider who deserves the horrendous multitude of laser, pulsed laser, resonance, frequency, sonic, tectonic, tsunami and other electromagnetic and weather weapons that are being unleashed on innocent populations around the world and upon the American population.
Yes. That's a big part of the problem, I think - to frame the argument in absolute terms like Mankind Is Driving Climate Change or Mankind Is Not Driving Climate Change when the truth is probably far more complex and nuanced.
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The bigger problem, in my view, is when politicians begin setting the agenda and framing the arguments in ludicrous and simplistic ways. I don't believe that "governments" have the welfare of human beings as their top priority. All they want is to make enough money to continue servicing their illusory and unservicable debts and keep the rich rich. I think, for example, that these wars we keep getting dragged into have more to do with arms sales and reconstruction contracts than fighting "terror."
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Conspiracies do exist, many of them quite innocuous sounding. For example, I seem to recall that in the 90s United Biscuits successfully lobbied for the abolition of the Potato Marketing Board - which sounds laughable until one realises how much money United Biscuits, one of the biggest users of potatoes in the UK saved and how much many hundreds of potato farmers lost.
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Give the politicians something they can tax, like carbon emissions, and they're going to pursue that revenue stream like starving wolves in a sausage factory.
.
I don't think even the most rabid and blinkered anthropogenic climate change deniers argue that mankind should be allowed to pump toxic shit into rivers, the soil and atmosphere but, somehow, governments the world over seem to turn a blind eye to this kind of thing whilst damning carbon dioxide as a toxic, evil gas that needs to be eradicated.
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This leads to the unfortunate situation whereby anyone who points out inconsistencies or even outright lies in the ACC model are automatically labelled as Deniers and their findings rubbished or ignored. What we need is to let the scientists get on with their research without governmental interference or coercion, I think.
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And I apologise if I misunderstood DDD's post - which I did as I didn't read the comments. Always a "bad idea," as TheBlaze says. Maybe I should change my policy on ignoring comments! Sorry, DDD - my bad.
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Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 December, 2015, 01:12:30 PM
Yes. That's a big part of the problem, I think - to frame the argument in absolute terms like Mankind Is Driving Climate Change or Mankind Is Not Driving Climate Change when the truth is probably far more complex and nuanced.
No, it's not. Mankind is driving climate change.
Quote
I don't think even the most rabid and blinkered anthropogenic climate change deniers argue that mankind should be allowed to pump toxic shit into rivers, the soil and atmosphere but, somehow, governments the world over seem to turn a blind eye to this kind of thing whilst damning carbon dioxide as a toxic, evil gas that needs to be eradicated.
Its emission does need to be eradicated. Its laboratory-observed properties are that it increases the mean temperature of an atmosphere subject to a constant heat source.
I don't discount the possibility that human activity is contributing to climate change but I don't for one moment believe it's the sole driver. If that was the case, Earth's climate would have remained fairly constant for the billions of years before mankind evolved. There would have been no ice ages (and, remember, we are still in the tail-end of an ice age) and no warm periods - unless our emissions are somehow falling backwards through time.
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I agree that our emissions should be reduced and cleaned up and that ideally we'd all be using Tesla free-energy devices or molten salt reactors (or whatever) but for wider environmental and economic reasons, not for the shaky idea of ACC. There's no money in "free energy," though, so it's unlikely any big companies would invest in any serious research in that direction.
Good job then that no climatologist would say that it *is* the sole driver and you're refuting a strawman position.
There are no wider economic or environmental ideas than AGW. It poses an existential threat to humanity and the only "shakiness" exists in your head.
PS there's no such thing as free energy nor a free-energy device. That's fundamental thermodynamics, not lack of investment.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 December, 2015, 01:42:48 PM
I don't discount the possibility that human activity is contributing to climate change but I don't for one moment believe it's the sole driver. If that was the case, Earth's climate would have remained fairly constant for the billions of years before mankind evolved. There would have been no ice ages (and, remember, we are still in the tail-end of an ice age) and no warm periods - unless our emissions are somehow falling backwards through time.
You understand the difference between variations in global temperature over spans of geological time and this (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/388674main_portal2Huge.jpg), right...?
Here's a clue: the higher CO
2 levels which contributed to higher global temperatures in pre-history reduced over many millions of years as plant matter which would normally have liberated the CO
2 it had sequestered from the atmosphere as part of normal decomposition instead locked it into fossil deposits underground. The problem is that since the human race started industrialising, we have been putting that prehistoric CO
2 back into the atmosphere at a rate many orders of magnitude greater than the rate at which it was originally removed.
Cheers
Jim
We can all quote graphs (http://blog.heartland.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/monckton-graph-18-years-no-global-warming.png), Jim. And you know that more CO2 leads to increased plant-growth, right? Or it does when corporations aren't chopping it all down. Stop that and the CO2 ceases to be such a big "problem" - but there's no money in not cutting trees down, is there?
Please, then, quote a graph that doesn't look like a massively increased rate of heating overlaid on a much slower natural cycle.
The only scientists who put forward that 'CO2 is a nett good' line are the tiny number of moral minnows firmly in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. There's your conspiracy right there.
It's the utterly terrifying speed of change these past 100 years that is the issue, not the either/or arguments, or the fringe benefits.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 December, 2015, 02:09:06 PM
And you know that more CO2 leads to increased plant-growth, right? Or it does when corporations aren't chopping it all down.
Really? You're actually going to go back to repeating verbatim the stuff you trotted out the last time this subject came up and which made you look entirely clueless back then as well?
Again: we are taking CO
2 stripped out of the atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years and putting it back at a rate measured in tens of years. This is undeniable, unless you're now also disputing basic geology.
Cheers
Jim
JPM, I could link to many (http://www.sportpunter.com/weather/maqnoon.gif) graphs (http://gustofhotair.blogspot.co.id/2006/11/australia-just-aint-warming-upat-all.html) that don't (http://www.co2science.org/articles/V18/nov/Landsea2015b.jpg) fit (http://www.co2science.org/articles/V18/feb/Reidetal2013b.jpg) or agree (http://www.co2science.org/articles/V18/mar/BenitezandDomecq2014b.jpg) with (http://helcom.fi/PublishingImages/baltic-sea-trends/environment-fact-sheets/hydrography/development-of-sea-surface-temperature-in-the-baltic-sea/BSEFS_Sea%20surface%20temp%202014_Figure%204.png) the current (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/vostok.co2.gif) Intergovernmental (https://journals.lib.unb.ca/journalimages/GEOCAN/2005/Vol_32/No_01/geocan32_1art01_fig7.jpg) Panel on Climate Change's position - but what would be the point? You would undoubtedly find some fault with them all and extrapolate that fault, real or imagined, to indicate an overall lack of plausibility for any data you don't like. Hundreds of scientific papers exist which either do not support or flatly contradict the IPCC's stance - I doubt they are all written by ACC deniers, lunatics or just plain liars, although I'm fairly sure that a few are.
Tordels, I'm disappointed that you'd use such an obvious straw-man argument. To suggest that every scientist investigating the effects of increased CO2 on plant life is a fossil fuel industry stooge involved in some huge conspiracy is beneath you. The paper "Rice Growth, Yield and Photosynthetic Responses to Elevated Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration and Drought" (http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/41880/PDF), for example, finds that increased CO2 levels promote higher crop yields and a ~10% reduction in water usage. Chapter 7 (http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2009/pdf/Chapter%207.pdf) of Climate Change Reconsidered outlines many benefits of increased CO2. There are many more papers on the subject. This does not mean that unbridled CO2 emissions are desirable because there does come a point when CO2 levels rise so high that they become toxic - but the world is a long way off that level.
The Earth is basically one huge carbon sink, with the forests being just one method of carbon sequestration. "Forests as a Carbon Sink" (http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/169930/) estimates that Terrestrial vegetation including forests act as a sink for about 1.0 gigatons of carbon per annum, while oceans provide a sink for another 2.0 gigatons per annum. The ongoing atmospheric contribution of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion of approximately 8.7 gigatons per annum, however, is admittedly too high and so deforestation must stop and ideally be reversed. These figures indicate that there is a balance to be struck and that CO2 emissions are not intrinsically bad in themselves but do need to be brought down. The idea that all CO2 is bad is wrong, as the carbon cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle) is essential to life on earth.
Jim, your predictable and tiresome trademark ad hominem attacks aside, even the petroleum industry (http://www.petroleum.co.uk/abiotic-oil-formation) itself admits that "... it is not possible to be... certain about the formation of oil," and that there are other possibilities. Just because current thinking tends towards a certain process it does not automatically follow that this thinking must be correct.
For example, current thinking is that natural gases (http://naturalgas.org/overview/background/) such as ethane and methane are fossil fuels created by ancient dead biomass subjected to intense subterranean pressures and temperatures or through the transformation of organic matter by tiny microorganisms. Even so, there is a third way - such gases may be formed is through abiogenic processes. Saturn's moon, Titan, is awash with lakes, seas and rivers of liquid ethane and methane (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/0315-titans-lakes-the-basics.html), so unless there is life on Titan, which is not beyond the realms of possibility, there must be more than one way of forming natural gases and, by extension, other hydrocarbons as well. To think that the only way oil and gas can be produced in nature is via prehistoric biomass is clearly incorrect.
It is undeniable that human activity is having adverse effects on our planetary environment but to pin everything on CO2 emissions is both short-sighted and dangerous. CO2 we can deal with fairly easily by nurturing natural carbon sinks and constructing artificial ones as well as reducing emissions - but there is no need to do away with carbon emissions altogether. Indeed, a certain level of CO2 emissions should be actually beneficial to us. This fixation with CO2 is distracting us, either by accident or design, from all the other crap we're pumping into the environment in the name of profit and luxury. Yes, we must absolutely clean up our act but we must be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 December, 2015, 02:59:30 AM
Tordels, I'm disappointed that you'd use such an obvious straw-man argument. To suggest that every scientist investigating the effects of increased CO2 on plant life is a fossil fuel industry stooge involved in some huge conspiracy is beneath you.
You should know by now that nothing is beneath me, no level I wouldn't stoop to! :lol: But I stand by my point: every single time I've followed up on the suggestion that the effects of increasing CO2 represent a
nett positive because of a supposed benefit to the agri-industry, that scientist's research has been funded or part-funded by the fossil fuel sector. The 'conspiracy' here is real, not imagined: AGW support comes from the fossil fuel industry and its fellow travellers, just as all opposition to pollution controls has
always come from the industries largely responsible. No doubt the scientists who produced endless papers highlighting the dangers of smoking, lead in petrol, asbestos were also working within a populist group-think orthodoxy benefiting their careers, but they were also right. That's the beauty of science - you can actually establish who was right, it's not a talent show.
Yes, plants like CO2, I recall covering this in Science class when I was 11. But the idea that increased yields are going to in some way offset loss in productivity through the inundation of farmland, desertification and/or increased erosion, displacement of agricultural populations (-points finger at Syria-) is just patent nonsense. It's about as sane as suggesting that modern humanity would be better off living in the Ordovician or Jurassic, because growing veg would be a doddle - has Pat Mills taught us nothing?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 December, 2015, 02:59:30 AM
This does not mean that unbridled CO2 emissions are desirable because there does come a point when CO2 levels rise so high that they become toxic - but the world is a long way off that level.
It's never been about toxicity, or indeed absolutes - it's about the real, genuine impact of a rapidly warming world on humanity. Natural carbon sinks took millions of years to work their magic, we don't even have
centuries. In that context undermining attempts to even
slow this process by asserting truisms about plant biology is irresponsible.
Ah. Right. So we are rejecting basic geology. I'm not doing this again.
Jim
Bloody Hell! It's the mutant offspring of the political thread! :o
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 December, 2015, 02:59:30 AM[/url]...but what would be the point? You would undoubtedly find some fault with them all and extrapolate that fault, real or imagined, to indicate an overall lack of plausibility for any data you don't like.
Yet again I prove to be more of a masochist than Jim. And I had to cut out this particular portion for its shear, bald-faced, up-is-down lack of introspection and myopia. Not one of those graphs refutes the fact of a massively increased
rate of
global heating that just happens to coincide with the industrial era. If you're going to do the Gish Gallop at least make it relevant (not that you could, because contrary data just doesn't exist).
Amongst all the festive beer cheer you might have missed this:
Green energy projects are now the largest generator of electricity in Scotland, according to new figures.
Department of Energy and Climate Change statistics showed almost half (49.7%) of Scotland's electricity demand came from renewable sources in 2014.
Scotland exported 23.7% of what it generated.
With that figure taken in to account, renewables provided 38% of electricity generated - above both nuclear, at 33%, and fossil fuels, at 28%.
Scotland has a target of generating 50% of its energy from green sources by 2015.
In 2014, Scotland generated 49,929 GWh of electricity with renewable electricity generation delivering 18,962 GWh.
Renewable generation for last year was up 11.9% on 2013, which was a previous record.
The sector north of the border employs 21,000 people directly and last year produced almost a third (29%) of the UK's renewable energy.
Sources of renewable electricity include hydro, wind, tidal, solar and biomass developments.
rest of info here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-35160271 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-35160271)
Jesus Sharky, next you'll be telling us Dinosaurs never existed!
So, Tordels, all swans are white? I'm sure there are conspiracies, on both sides, but I wouldn't say that all pro-ACC research is funded by the carbon tax lobby or governments and therefore invalid. If I wanted to make that argument, all I'd have to do is point to people like Al Gore, who make millions out of carbon trading and such. But that's the beauty of science - you can actually establish who was right, it's not a talent show.
I agree that the idea of increased yields and reduced water use is no excuse for continuing to pump too much CO2 into the atmosphere - I never claimed otherwise. I was pointing out that, as gaseous emissions go, CO2 is not as bad as dioxins, for example. The greatest threat from our high CO2 emissions, from what I see, is the acidification of the oceans - which is a serious problem.
The desertification of agricultural land cannot be laid at the door of CO2 - there are myriad causes from deforestation to over-exploitation of water sources to over-farming to urbanization to the damming of rivers.
JPM again moves the goalposts. I never claimed to have irrefutable proof. Neither does anyone else. The climate is so complex and dynamic that irrefutable proof one way or the other is practically impossible to find. The fact that the climate is warming anyway due to natural decadal, centennial and millennial fluctuations, and that the Earth is coming out of an ice age, is fairly well established. To put the two data sets together (in this case, industrialisation and temperature trends) is bound to show a correlation, but this is almost certainly confirmation bias. Studies have indicated that, historically, atmospheric CO2 content lags behind temperature fluctuations by between ~600 and ~1,000 years.
The El Niño phenomena on its own raises the surface temperature of the tropical pacific anywhere between .5c and 3.0c (and rarely even higher) depending on its intensity. This has a noticeable knock-on effect on the global climate for around six months; so comparing atmospheric CO2 content to atmospheric temperature during an intense El Niño phase, or even a weak one, will invariably lead to false correlations.
Further, many of the climate stations used for gathering data are located in urban areas, where it is well known that microclimates diverge from the overall norm. A sensing station in the car park of a university is bound to show skewed results. Building a wall near to a sensing unit, or parking cars next to it, also skews results. Reliable satellite data is also a fairly recent development, with more sensitive instruments only being put into orbit from around 2000 onward, so much of the pre-2000 satellite data is unreliable.
Complicated computer generated climate models are notoriously unreliable and have failed to predict actual warming to any realistic degree. The climate continues to do its own thing, no matter what the predictions say.
Then we add the conspiracies, the money, the human fallibilities and all the other stuff and it adds up to a huge mass of uncertainties and contradictions. There is simply no irrefutable proof one way or the other and to demand it before you'd even begin to look at counter-indications seems a bit silly to me.
To quote Donald Rumsfeld (dear God - shoot me now!), "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." The climate is a massive confusion of these things in a constant state of flux. So yes, JPM, you're absolutely correct - I do not have irrefutable proof - if anybody did, we wouldn't be having this discussion!
And Huffy - well done, Scotland!
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 23 December, 2015, 06:03:20 PM
Jesus Sharky, next you'll be telling us Dinosaurs never existed!
Don't be ridiculous. Of course dinosaurs existed - who do you think built the Moon? ;)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 December, 2015, 06:20:32 PM
To quote Donald Rumsfeld (dear God - shoot me now!), "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." The climate is a massive confusion of these things in a constant state of flux. So yes, JPM, you're absolutely correct - I do not have irrefutable proof - if anybody did, we wouldn't be having this discussion!
You've got absolutely nothing. You don't know what confirmation bias means. You have absolutely no relevant education.You think your generation of quantification-free hypotheticals
ad nauseum means a damn thing compared to known physical properties and the body of evidence that makes AGW as much a fact as evolution. 95% of climatologists.
We would still be having this conversation because no standard of evidence would be sufficient for you. You're part of the reason the next generation will be facing a desertified hellscape to live on.
Congrats, your boundless solipsism and intellectual arrogance means you're a shill for the corporate forces you claim to oppose.
And a merry Christmas to you, too, JPM.
Dinosaurs built the moon: I've never heard such claptrap. Surely it ihas been established beyond all possible doubt that it is made from cheese. Z
Yeah, but it's cheese made from Dinosaur milk
S'right - that's why it's green cheese, innit?
Nothing earth-shattering, but an interesting article about conspiracy theorists:http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/26/the-truth-is-rushing-out-there-why-conspiracies-spread-faster-than-ever (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/26/the-truth-is-rushing-out-there-why-conspiracies-spread-faster-than-ever)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 December, 2015, 02:59:30 AM
Jim, your predictable and tiresome trademark ad hominem attacks aside
Actually, I'm not prepared to let that one slide.
It's not an ad hom to point out that you are re-presenting arguments that held no validity and were comprehensively and authoritatively refuted the last time we had this
exact same discussion.
It is, in fact, a very clear demonstration of the utter futility of 'discussing' anything with you, since it is apparent that this 'just asking questions', 'enquiring mind seeking after truth' schtick of yours is more likely the unquestioning adoption of a contrarian stance to the mainstream opinion on no sounder basis than the fact it
is contrarian.
There is, as JPMaybe points out, no standard of evidence presented against the flimsy arguments you advance on the hot-button-topic-du-jour which you will accept. Today, global warming, will we be back to vaccines tomorrow? Or shall we do another round on the World Trade Centre?
Jim
It's at times like this that you can see why there was an exodus of people away from here.
Quote from: W. R. Logan on 27 December, 2015, 10:47:41 AM
It's at times like this that you can see why there was an exodus of people away from here.
Weren't you leaving forever? Or was that me? ;-)
Cheers!
Jim
Okay, Jim, let's get into it.
First, though, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I don't hold my views simply because they are contrarian. In fact, I change my views as soon as new evidence comes to light. Here are three examples:
1) 9/11. It was my previously held belief that passenger airliners could not travel at top speed in the denser lower atmosphere because they'd rip themselves apart. This turns out to be untrue. Planes
can travel at top speed in the lower atmosphere although such a manoeuvre can cause structural damage, engine flame-outs and turbine failure. The truth is that it's against aviation legislation, and technical recommendations, to fly at top speed in the lower atmosphere, not impossible.
2) Hollie Greig. It has come to light that many of the persons who supposedly abused Hollie do not exist.
3) Winston Churchill knew Coventry was to be bombed and did nothing about it to protect the secret of the cracked Enigma code. The truth is that Churchill was told there was to be a raid that night but the target was unknown. In fact, Churchill believed the raid was to be on London.
(I know you are also capable of altering your view as new information comes to light, as with the false hysteria over Russia supposedly banning gays from driving.)
I therefore cannot accept your assertion that there is "...no standard of evidence presented against the flimsy arguments you advance on the hot-button-topic-du-jour which you will accept."
On a personal note, I want to say that I do not put forth my
opinions in order to upset or annoy people, neither am I trying to convince anyone of anything. I find it upsetting that the modern attitude seems to be that if I disagree with someone I think they're stupid or that I must hate them. This is absolutely not the case. Sometimes, though, I do rise to comments like
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 22 December, 2015, 02:34:43 PM
...you look entirely clueless...
as if they were ad hominem attacks, because that's what they feel like. There is no excuse for me doing this as it just makes both of us look childish and, as W.R. Logan points out, is a turn-off to other board members. Arguments like that just make us look like Newman and Baddiel's "that's you, that is" sketches. I don't know everything, I'm not perfect and I do occasionally drop clangers (like the "dead dinosaur juice" howler) but my imperfections are no basis on which to consider everything I say as false. As you yourself said:
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 22 November, 2013, 03:57:01 PM
...I don't claim expert knowledge on fossil fuels, climate change or geology, but I have taken enough of an interest as a layman to have some broad, imperfect surface knowledge which I try to maintain through broad reading and, where possible, some attempts to grapple with raw data.
Which is exactly where I stand as well.
So please, attack my arguments all you want but, please, do not attack me. And if you find me firing off ad hominem attacks, as I sometimes (to my shame) do, then I expect you to pull me up on that sharpish.
Now, back to the topic in hand. You said:
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 22 December, 2015, 02:34:43 PM
Again: we are taking CO2 stripped out of the atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years and putting it back at a rate measured in tens of years. This is undeniable, unless you're now also disputing basic geology.
The way you put that makes it sound like oil and gas fields have been constantly stripping CO
2 out of the atmosphere for hundreds of millions of years. I don't think you meant it that way. If the current mainstream thinking about the formation of fossil fuels is correct, then it cannot be true. Some biomass, whether ancient forests, peat bogs, dead dinosaur juice or seabed, gets covered somehow by new layers of sediment which eventually turn into rock. Whilst the covering process is going on, the biomass continues as a carbon sink/exchanger but, at some point, will be cut off from the atmosphere or ocean. At this point, the biomass becomes a carbon reservoir and ceases exchanging CO
2 with the wider world. I don't know how long this process of cutting off takes, so I'll guess at between one and ten million years - though I am open to a more accurate estimate. I do then concede that fossil fuel reservoirs contain hundreds of millions of years worth of cumulative CO
2 which is being released over a matter of decades. I'm not disputing that.
If the above scenario is true, then the problem of CO
2 may not be quite so bad as the alarmists would have us believe. The oil, we are told, is close to running out, or at least getting more difficult to access, and so there is only a finite amount of CO
2 yet to be released. As I said earlier, we have the technology, both natural and artificial, to make use of this carbon dioxide in safe and even beneficial ways. This is not to say that we should burn every drop until it's all gone and then wait for the Earth to fix it for us. What I'm saying is that, if current mainstream thinking is correct, the CO
2 problem is not as insurmountable as it might at first seem.
If, on the other hand, "fossil fuels" can be formed by ongoing abiotic or geobiological processes (which I think is a distinct
possibility) then there might be a big problem in that we can keep sucking it out of the ground and burning it up virtually forever. Whilst I don't currently believe that CO
2 in the atmosphere is as big a problem as the alarmists claim, a virtually inexhaustible supply of oil and gas could cause extreme problems in the long run if we do not balance our output - especially with the acidification of the oceans.
Climate change is real.
I thought I'd put that on a line of its own just to show that I'm not a "climate denier" (whatever that means) but I don't think that CO
2 is a significant driver behind it. It is a very small part of a very large and complex system but still needs to be tackled. I think, and I believe you do to, that climate change is a very serious problem which needs to be understood and addressed. My fear is that, by putting all our eggs in the CO
2 basket, we are looking for and implementing solutions (like the execrable carbon tax) which will be ineffective at best and disastrous at worst. We can't spend the next fifty years concentrating on reducing carbon emissions only to find that climate change is an ongoing, natural phenomena that cannot be halted.
So yes, we do need to reduce our carbon emissions but that's only a very small part of what needs to be done.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 27 December, 2015, 05:49:11 PM
We can't spend the next fifty years concentrating on reducing carbon emissions only to find that climate change is an ongoing, natural phenomena that cannot be halted.
So yes, we do need to reduce our carbon emissions but that's only a very small part of what needs to be done.
I have to ask: what's the plan, so?
When we know, by all current metrics and by all historical and palaeoclimatic proxy data, that increased CO2 in the atmosphere leads to a higher global mean temperature, and that we as a species chuff out CO2 at an unprecedented rate, why shouldn't reducing these emissions be the major thrust of our response?
If it does turn out that increasing temperatures are 99% due to solar fluctuations or are caused by Thetans angry at South Park or whatever, won't we still have done our best with the 1% we have control over?
I just don't see why we shouldn't act on current understanding, even as we continue to gather and interrogate new data, and I don't see why it is so important to so many people (who aren't themselves super-rich wankers with vested interests) to impede these efforts by seizing on every half-baked utterance from a very small group of largely discredited scientists as if is was the pillar of fire sent to guide us by day. How can you simultaneously be sceptical of 98% of climate scientists, and blindly trusting of 2%?
QuoteHow can you simultaneously be sceptical of 98% of climate scientists, and blindly trusting of 2%?
This is what baffles me too.
It's not about disregarding climate scientists' results, but about the political interpretation of what "agree with ACC" actually means. For example, a paper describing the rising temperatures within cityscape microclimates is not the same as agreeing with overall ACC. Some links:
Global Warming Alarmists Caught Doctoring '97-Percent Consensus' Claims (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/05/30/global-warming-alarmists-caught-doctoring-97-percent-consensus-claims/)
97 per cent of climate activists in the pay of Big Oil shock! (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100227804/97-per-cent-of-climate-activists-in-the-pay-of-big-oil-shock/)
The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/jun/06/97-consensus-global-warming)
The Myth of the Climate Change '97%' (http://blog.heartland.org/2014/06/the-myth-of-the-climate-change-97/)
Keep Googling shitty blog posts genius, maybe if you do it enough the laws of physics will match those in your febrile imagination
James Delingpole? At the risk of invoking the curse of Ad Hominem yet again, if he's for it, I'm agin it. You two make for very strange bedfellows, Sharky.
I'll push on with the ad homs, in for a penny and all that: your other cited sources are the bloody Heartland Institute (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Heartland_Institute) again, and the economist Richard Tol, quoted as saying "The first rule of climate policy should be: do no harm to economic growth", and not bothered about the man-made climate change that he accepts is happening because it will only negatively impact those south of a line from Paris to Munich, and the poor and dispirited victims are unlikely to be much of a military threat. That's okay, then.
Here (https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm) is a far more detailed rebuttal of all those pieces than I could manage, and also doesn't appear to be authored by the kind of people who would step on your head to prevent their handmade slip-ons getting muddy.
I do love it when people who are barely comment on the forum anymore pop on to tell us how unappealing a place this is to hang out.
If you don't give a shit you're doing a very bad job of it!
In terms of all this: :-X :-X :-X
John Cook, co-author of Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature (http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024;jsessionid=8560D57229186EDFE61B065111AF827B.c1.iopscience.cld.iop.org), the study under criticism here, is "...not a climatologist or a scientist but a self employed cartoonist and web programmer..." (http://web.archive.org/web/20080213042858/http://www.skepticalscience.com/page.php?p=3) He is also the founder of skepticalscience.com, the very website Tordels links to as rebuttal of the site's founder's paper.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 27 December, 2015, 10:51:10 PM
He is also the founder of skepticalscience.com, the very website Tordels links to as rebuttal of the site's founder's paper.
Ha, missed that completely! Nice one.
Took me a while to uncover that :)
.
I'm working at the moment so haven't got the links to hand, will post them later if you like, but skepticalscience.com does have its critics. I haven't followed up fully yet, but it seems the site may have a history of deleting comments arguing against its position off the forums. Again, I haven't followed this through yet so it might not be true. If you fancy a little project, maybe you'd like to look into that. No probs if not, of course.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 27 December, 2015, 11:15:06 AM
Quote from: W. R. Logan on 27 December, 2015, 10:47:41 AM
It's at times like this that you can see why there was an exodus of people away from here.
Weren't you leaving forever? Or was that me? ;-)
Cheers!
Jim
LOL, probably me, but I dip my toe in to see if things have changed.
Then I see that you're bashing your head against the same brick walls and realise that as good as this place can and draws in some great boarders it's also the 2000AD home for Futsies.
TV illusionist Derren Brown 'persuades' two ordinary women to push a stranger off a roof... but could you be talked into MURDER? (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3396758/As-TV-illusionist-Derren-Brown-persuades-two-ordinary-women-push-stranger-roof-talked-MURDER.html)
.
I don't possess a telly, so I don't know how accurate this is. Still, it
makes me wonder if certain individuals could be 'persuaded' to shoot a president, eliminate a dissident or simply carry a 'harmless' rucksack into a public place...
Quote from: Tordelback on 27 December, 2015, 08:25:33 PM
James Delingpole? At the risk of invoking the curse of Ad Hominem yet again, if he's for it, I'm agin it. You two make for very strange bedfellows, Sharky.
I'll push on with the ad homs, in for a penny and all that: your other cited sources are the bloody Heartland Institute (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Heartland_Institute) again, and the economist Richard Tol, quoted as saying "The first rule of climate policy should be: do no harm to economic growth", and not bothered about the man-made climate change that he accepts is happening because it will only negatively impact those south of a line from Paris to Munich, and the poor and dispirited victims are unlikely to be much of a military threat. That's okay, then.
Here (https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm) is a far more detailed rebuttal of all those pieces than I could manage, and also doesn't appear to be authored by the kind of people who would step on your head to prevent their handmade slip-ons getting muddy.
Anyway, isn't it all the fault of the farting cows?
How Big Oil Conquered The World. (https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-310-rise-of-the-oiligarchs/)
.
"From farm to pharmaceutical, diesel truck to dinner plate, pipeline to plastic product, it is impossible to think of an area of our modern-day lives that is not affected by the oil industry. The story of oil is the story of the modern world. And this is the story of those who helped shape that world, and how the oil-igarchy they created is on the verge of monopolizing life itself."
.
Fascinating stuff!
http://theconversation.com/we-just-had-the-hottest-year-on-record-where-does-that-leave-climate-denial-53576?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%2026%202016%20-%204176&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%2026%202016%20-%204176+CID_dc454c1839076f87450c7e2df81d9af3&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=We%20just%20had%20the%20hottest%20year%20on%20record%20%20where%20does%20that%20leave%20climate%20denial (http://theconversation.com/we-just-had-the-hottest-year-on-record-where-does-that-leave-climate-denial-53576?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%2026%202016%20-%204176&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%2026%202016%20-%204176+CID_dc454c1839076f87450c7e2df81d9af3&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=We%20just%20had%20the%20hottest%20year%20on%20record%20%20where%20does%20that%20leave%20climate%20denial)
ooops sorry forgot how to give that a title and CBA looking :D
That's a good piece in itself, but hasn't the crazy train already moved on from climate change denial? The nutjobbery seems to now be in the form of (1) it's getting warmer but it's nothing to do with us, look how warm it was when the dinosaurs were farting about, and they did okay; and my personal pet hate (2) it's getting warmer but why is that a bad thing for us? Look at all the crops we'll be able to grow in Canada! Look at how it's only poor and overpopulated areas that will suffer, and let's face it they have it coming.
Climate change denniers often have to reach for the most far fetched diversions in order to try and make their arguments seem reasonable.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 January, 2016, 01:02:12 PMI don't possess a telly, so I don't know how accurate this is. Still, it makes me wonder if certain individuals could be 'persuaded' to shoot a president, eliminate a dissident or simply carry a 'harmless' rucksack into a public place...
I knew a hypnotist at college. He tried to hypnotise me. I was genuinely interested, as a means to potentially deal with my tinnitus. (I'd tried everything else.) He pronounced I was basically impossible to hypnotise, because people who can be must let go. But additionally, he noted that you never do
anything while hypnotised that you wouldn't otherwise do. It's not about commands so much as suggestion and giving in to that. So the notion you could somehow arm a terrorist through hypnotism is hogwash. (As for those TV shows, quite a lot of smoke and mirrors, I suspect, in the same way David Copperfield never actually make the Statue of Liberty disappear.)
Quote from: Tordelback on 26 January, 2016, 12:43:38 PM(2) it's getting warmer but why is that a bad thing for us? Look at all the crops we'll be able to grow in Canada! Look at how it's only poor and overpopulated areas that will suffer, and let's face it they have it coming.
Good job most major cities aren't on the coast and— Oh.
What gets me right now is all the morons going: Look, it's snowing! Global warming is clearly a hoax! GOP! GOP! This helpfully ignores the Arctic now seeing temperatures as high as freezing, in the middle of winter, polar vortexes flinging horrible weather south, Siberia seeing record highs in winter, and so on. Western Europe won't fare well from this either, if it changes the seas too much. If the Gulf Stream packs in to any extent, the UK will suddenly realise how far north it actually is (while Boris Johnson continues to guffaw about GLOBAL WARMING—HAH!).
You're right, of course, there are still people who see a cold day and figure it's all a hoax, but I do think in the main even the most dedicated hockey-stick crew have moved on to acknowledging it's happening, but denying the human role and/or the fact that it's a bad thing. See up-thread for the supposed self-regulating benefits of carbon dioxide.
This sums things up beautifully for me:
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/30/97/d7/3097d76029fb49a66b083b0ca79f14a8.jpg)
Even if it turns out we can't do anything, green energy is broadly better. The UK is also well-placed to capitalise on this. We're reasonably light rich (it's notable that many anti-solar people ignore the niggling issue that they don't need blazing sunlight—just light), have strong tides and are wind rich. If we fully took advantage, we could dramatically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and wouldn't be begging the Chinese to fund a French nuclear power station.
The fact is that we can't do anything about climate change - it's as natural a phenomenon as continental drift or solar output. Earth's climate has been in a constant state of change forever, as studies of the Eamian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian) and Holocene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum) periods show. Climate change is not a problem - it's a fact of planetary life.
The problem is the alarmism over carbon dioxide and the political conflation of CO2 and pollution. Again, CO2 is not a problem, on the whole, but pollution is. We can, and indeed must, do more to eliminate pollution than to eliminate carbon dioxide.
In the foreword to the Global Warming Policy Foundation's Report 18, Carbon Dioxide, The Good News (http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf), Freeman Dyson writes,
"Indur Goklany has done a careful job, collecting and documenting the evidence that
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does far more good than harm. To any unpreju-
diced person reading this account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic
effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously
beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been
greatly exaggerated, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.
"I consider myself an unprejudiced person and to me these facts are obvious. But
the same facts are not obvious to the majority of scientists and politicians who con-
sider carbon dioxide to be evil and dangerous. The people who are supposed to be
experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are
blind to the evidence. Those of my scientific colleagues who believe the prevailing
dogma about carbon dioxide will not find Goklany's evidence convincing. I hope that
a few of them will make the effort to examine the evidence in detail and see how
it contradicts the prevailing dogma, but I know that the majority will remain blind.
That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a
human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is
blind to obvious facts?"
The false dichotomy pitting "climate believers" against "climate deniers" is a blatant political ploy, designed to reduce a highly complex issue to simplistic straw-man arguments. In the end it is entirely possible that a firm causal link between CO2 levels and rising temperatures might be found, but I doubt that. It would mean discovering a process that goes against current basic scientific principles which is, of course, possible but, I think, unlikely.
It's not so long ago that the Earth-centric model of the universe was imposed by the "elites" in order to help them maintain their grip on power. As a species, we have not evolved beyond that yet, no matter how intelligent and sophisticated we believe ourselves to be.
Once again Sharky, it's not a question of weather climate change is real or not it's a question of rate and carbon emissions have shot up in the last decade alone, the radical increase in climate change cann't be a coincidence.
Plus, ya know. We've kind of ruined the Ozone layer.
Climate change is inevitable. However the pace and severity of climate change appears to be affected by the pollution of human activity, and steps could be taken to prevent or mitigate it.
Everything else is just sophistry.
Oh and whilst heliocentrism is on topic :) This whole B.O.B thing is hilarious. Flat Earth! In a world with GPS. Hilarious.
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 26 January, 2016, 03:21:59 PMPlus, ya know. We've kind of ruined the Ozone layer.
I'm sure he'll be along in a minute to state that either that's a hoax by someone or other, or that the Ozone layer in fact ended up 50 times as powerful when we were flinging CFCs into the atmosphere with merry abandon.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation is a lobbying group which appears to act for mining organizations.
They are the Elites
Freeman Dyson is a truly brilliant man, but he's in his 90s now and is a quantum physicist, nuclear physicist and astronomer, not a biologist or climatologist. He worked in the RAF during WWII, he was a contemporary of Feynman: are his carefully-chosen words really the definitive modern statement on the subject? Or are we cherry-picking here?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 January, 2016, 03:04:10 PM
The fact is that we can't do anything about climate change - it's as natural a phenomenon as continental drift or solar output. Earth's climate has been in a constant state of change forever, as studies of the Eamian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian) and Holocene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum) periods show. Climate change is not a problem - it's a fact of planetary life.
Shit my house is on fire. Now I don't know whether it's because of the petrol I'm storing in the living room, houses without petrol burn down all the time, and nobody has been able to show me any definite proof that it's conected. Therefore I refuse to use this bucket of water or listen to the Fire Brigade (what do they know about fire?) Let me just stash a few more jerry cans in the lounge though before it gets too hot....
And that really is the point.
Yes climate change is an inevitable and ongoing part of life, as is my death, the death of everyone I love, the sun, and the visible universe itself. But I don't want any of those things to happen next Tuesday, and I'd hate to risk wilfully hastening any of those things if I could avoid it. Lots of very smart people (almost all of them) who have spent a lot of time studying and thinking about this say this is what we are doing with our climate at present.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 26 January, 2016, 04:25:12 PM
Shit my house is on fire. Now I don't know whether it's because of the petrol I'm storing in the living room, houses without petrol burn down all the time, and nobody has been able to show me any definite proof that it's conected. Therefore I refuse to use this bucket of water or listen to the Fire Brigade (what do they know about fire?) Let me just stash a few more jerry cans in the lounge though before it gets too hot....
If it be a petrol fire I would strongly recommend
against throwing that bucket of water on it. Unless you are into interesting pyrotechnics.
It's good that Hawkie mentions the ozone layer. The "hole" (which isn't really a hole but a thinning) in 2015 was the fourth largest on record, peaking at 28.2 million square kilometers (10.9 million square miles), an area larger than the continent of North America. Since the Montreal Protocol in 1989, there has been a significant drop in CFC use around the world. However, some of the replacement gases are thousands of times more powerful agents of radiative forcing than carbon dioxide over the short and medium term. (If indeed radiative forcing and not atmospheric mass/pressure/gravity drive climate change.)
I believe we can do something about pollution but I don't believe we can do anything about climate change, except prepare. I don't believe the Earth is flat (where did that come from?)
Indigoprime - nope. See above.
MP - maybe so. But then, the IPCC is a governmental organisation set up, funded, overseen and backed by the "elites."
Tordels, at what age does a person's opinion cease to be valid? I, personally, would be more inclined to believe a 93 year old Freeman Dyson than David Cameron, who is only 49.
DDD, that analogy would only be valid if you didn't know what was in the jerry cans before the fire started. Besides, you don't put out a petrol fire with water. You use either foam or, er, CO2...
Tordels, lots of very smart people also disagree.
I don't claim to know "the truth" about what drives climate change, nor do I claim to have any answers. What I do know is that our climate is an ancient and dynamic system which changes all the time and that to pin all that complexity and change one one specific and entirely natural gas seems to me to be grossly simplistic and dangerous. Continue to study CO2 by all means, but not at the exclusion and derision of all else.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 January, 2016, 07:38:21 PM
Tordels, lots of very smart people also disagree.
Yes, but far, far more smart people agree. Obviously climate changes over time, but the overwhelming consensus is that we're accelerating the process to a dangerous degree.
Put it this way, which would you prefer world leaders to do: To take a chance that the vast majority of scientists are right, and try to do something about climate change; or to take a chance that the minority are right, and sit back doing fuck all?
If they go along with the first option, and are wrong; well, the global economy will suffer somewhat (though localised pollution will decrease). If they go along with the second, and are wrong, the world will descend into an uninhabitable desert far more quickly than it would if left to its own devices.
I'll take my chances on the first scenario, thanks very much.
Once again, the false "either-or" argument. As I said, continue to study the CO2 claims by all means, but not to the detriment and derision of all else. If for no other reason than that isn't how science works, it's only how politics works.
There doesn't seem to be much urgency in the way 'man made' climate change is tackled by the leaders of the world!
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 27 January, 2016, 04:45:07 PM
There doesn't seem to be much urgency in the way 'man made' climate change is tackled by the leaders of the world!
Because a lot of the prominent world leaders will lose money if carbon based fuels start to be used less.
And that's the problem. If we are heading into the abyss at ever growing speed, then they should do something about it. Makes you wonder! Money or climate, which one do people prefer, or believe!
Nail. Head.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 27 January, 2016, 05:18:20 PM
Nail. Head.
I'm sorry, Sharky, I'm not trying to sound smart arsed, but that's the opposite of what you said earlier.
CF is making the point that politicians are ignoring the increasingly apparent concept of man-made climate change for the sake of money, and I agree with him, judging by the US Senate's terrifying head-in-the-sand reaction to the overwhelming scientific consensus.
Yet you refuted my last post by saying that accepting the findings of the vast majority of scientists is a political, rather than a scientific reaction. Now you're agreeing that the political reaction is to ignore the scientific one.
Also, you've accused me of putting forward an 'either / or' argument as to whether carbon emissions affect the climate, which is utterly unfair, because I neither believe that nor suggested it. What I said was that human activity is ACCELERATING climate change. Credit me with some intelligence, please.
Carbon can't be taxed if it's harmless or if we stop using it.
I don't believe carbon is accelerating climate change. (The end-Ordovician (Hirnantian) Ice Age, 440 million years ago, began when CO2 was around 4,000 ppm and lasted a few million years. At the end of that time, with 85% of marine life extinct, when the frigid oceans had gobbled up atmospheric CO2 to around 3,000 ppm, the globe suddenly began to warm up. In 2015, CO2 in the atmosphere was around a measly 400 ppm.)
I don't doubt your intelligence.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 27 January, 2016, 06:39:42 PM
Carbon can't be taxed if it's harmless or if we stop using it.
I don't believe carbon is accelerating climate change.
Fair enough. You're entitled to your opinion. I agree with your first point but not your second.
It does seem that one of us has misunderstood CF's post though. What I gathered was that he believes that political leaders, for financial reasons, refuse to take seriously the global scientific consensus that humanity is playing a large part in climate change. Which, if I understood him correctly, I agree with entirely.
Maybe I missed something though. Was that your point, Mr Burdis?
Climate change is multi-factorial, obviously. But the extremely rapid increase in global temperatures over the last century coincides with extremely rapid increase in carbon dioxide, one of the atmospheric components known to absorb and radiate long wavelength radiation. Thus there is a mechanism that plausibly assigns causation to this correlation.
The causes of the major glacial periods is a matter of much debate, especially the Late Ordovician (orbital/axial variations, landmass/current distribution, vulcanism etc). But I would imagine that if there was somehow paleoclimatological evidence for the kind of extraordinarily rapid change in atmospheric CO2 in conjunction with temperature change that we are experiencing now, we'd be looking very seriously at that.
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 27 January, 2016, 05:06:01 PM
And that's the problem. If we are heading into the abyss at ever growing speed, then they should do something about it. Makes you wonder! Money or climate, which one do people prefer, or believe!
Unfortunately, the people with the money don't believe. Or care.
...and the people without the money that suffer.
And that's what its about human suffering.
Howdy!
Saw this so thought I'd pop me head in to share.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-01-26-too-many-minions-spoil-plot# (http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-01-26-too-many-minions-spoil-plot#)
I see it's climate week again...
A bientôt...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 27 January, 2016, 06:39:42 PM
I don't believe carbon is accelerating climate change. (The end-Ordovician (Hirnantian) Ice Age, 440 million years ago, began when CO2 was around 4,000 ppm and lasted a few million years. At the end of that time, with 85% of marine life extinct, when the frigid oceans had gobbled up atmospheric CO2 to around 3,000 ppm, the globe suddenly began to warm up. In 2015, CO2 in the atmosphere was around a measly 400 ppm.)
The problem is that I don't understand the significance of those figures and NEITHER DO YOU. The people who DO understand whether that's a valid comparison or a boneheaded misinterpretation of the statistics are people who've spent years at university studying this stuff, and when the vast majority of them agree that you're wrong, I'm going to believe them.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 27 January, 2016, 09:12:55 PM
The problem is that I don't understand the significance of those figures and NEITHER DO YOU.
"Truth? You aren't qualified to statistically interpret the truth!"
Cheers
Jim
Quote from: Dandontdare on 27 January, 2016, 09:12:55 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 27 January, 2016, 06:39:42 PM
I don't believe carbon is accelerating climate change. (The end-Ordovician (Hirnantian) Ice Age, 440 million years ago, began when CO2 was around 4,000 ppm and lasted a few million years. At the end of that time, with 85% of marine life extinct, when the frigid oceans had gobbled up atmospheric CO2 to around 3,000 ppm, the globe suddenly began to warm up. In 2015, CO2 in the atmosphere was around a measly 400 ppm.)
The problem is that I don't understand the significance of those figures and NEITHER DO YOU. The people who DO understand whether that's a valid comparison or a boneheaded misinterpretation of the statistics are people who've spent years at university studying this stuff, and when the vast majority of them agree that you're wrong, I'm going to believe them.
This, this, this, this is literally the root of the whole thing.
Of course everyone is entitled, exhorted even, to investigate the evidence and come to their own conclusions, but equally we need to assign different weights to those conclusions based on the experience (and perhaps the associations) of the holder, simply because for most of us there is no realistic way of acquiring the necessary expertise and expending the necessary time: to some extent we have to listen to the consensus of those who have.
Quote from: Tordelback on 27 January, 2016, 10:37:22 PM
This, this, this, this is literally the root of the whole thing.
YES.
See also, my repeated rants about the internet encouraging the idea that all opinions are both equal and sacrosanct.
You (abstract you, not actual you, TB) absolutely have the right to hold a stupid opinion but I (non-abstract me) have the right to point and laugh and advance arguments as to why your (abstract your) opinion is stupid.
Non-Abstract: Shark, do you also dispute the basic chemistry of CO
2's role in ocean acidification? If so, on what grounds? If not, please explain why either: 1) the extinction of hundreds of pH sensitive organisms is not a problem, or 2) how a catastrophic collapse in the oceanic food chain will have no negative effects on the ability of the human race to feed itself.
Jim
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 27 January, 2016, 10:51:41 PM
Quote from: Tordelback on 27 January, 2016, 10:37:22 PM
This, this, this, this is literally the root of the whole thing.
YES.
See also, my repeated rants about the internet encouraging the idea that all opinions are both equal and sacrosanct.
You (abstract you, not actual you, TB) absolutely have the right to hold a stupid opinion but I (non-abstract me) have the right to point and laugh and advance arguments as to why your (abstract your) opinion is stupid.
Non-Abstract: Shark, do you also dispute the basic chemistry of CO2's role in ocean acidification? If so, on what grounds? If not, please explain why either: 1) the extinction of hundreds of pH sensitive organisms is not a problem, or 2) how a catastrophic collapse in the oceanic food chain will have no negative effects on the ability of the human race to feed itself.
Jim
I can vouch for this. In the last 5 years i've visted the Great Barrier Reef twice. In 2011 it was, in my eyes anyway, a heaven for corels. 3 years later many of these spots where habited only by bleached, dead corels over exposed to water Ph approaching moderate alkaline. It's a very, very real problem as without corels the entire global ecosystem will suffer.
Quote from: Tordelback on 27 January, 2016, 10:37:22 PM
Of course everyone is entitled, exhorted even, to investigate the evidence and come to their own conclusions
The problem is, parroting observations and conclusions from articles you have found on google is not scientific research. This kind of thing, rife with confirmation bias, dominates mainstream scientific discourse.
All I can think of is this when I read Sharky's posts:
(http://politicalirony.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/091207usatC.slideshow_main.prod_affiliate.91.jpg)
I love that cartoon, but it's a pity that idiot in the crowd is 90 per cent of politicians. She might be at the other extreme, but we need more people like Caroline Lucas in positions of actual power, to have any hope for our descendants.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 28 January, 2016, 09:50:45 AM
I love that cartoon, but it's a pity that idiot in the crowd is 90 per cent of politicians. She might be at the other extreme, but we need more people like Caroline Lucas in positions of actual power, to have any hope for our descendants.
I'm by no means anti-Green, but by all accounts they made a spectacular hash out of their one term in control of Brighton. If they can't run a town council, I'm not sure I'd let them loose on a global crisis.
Quote from: GordonR on 28 January, 2016, 07:26:52 PMI'm by no means anti-Green, but by all accounts they made a spectacular hash out of their one term in control of Brighton.
Of the people I know who live there, many (including voters of other parties) seemed broadly fine with the city council, and it'll be interesting to see if the new lot do any better.
But my point was specifically about people like Lucas, not the Green Party. She's forward-thinking, actually gives a shit, and is a bloody good MP.
Quote from: Tordelback on 27 January, 2016, 07:28:29 PM
Climate change is multi-factorial, obviously. But the extremely rapid increase in global temperatures over the last century coincides with extremely rapid increase in carbon dioxide, one of the atmospheric components known to absorb and radiate long wavelength radiation. Thus there is a mechanism that plausibly assigns causation to this correlation.
The causes of the major glacial periods is a matter of much debate, especially the Late Ordovician (orbital/axial variations, landmass/current distribution, vulcanism etc). But I would imagine that if there was somehow paleoclimatological evidence for the kind of extraordinarily rapid change in atmospheric CO2 in conjunction with temperature change that we are experiencing now, we'd be looking very seriously at that.
Yes, I agree - climate change is multi-factoral, that's partially my point. Yet the populist argument is that it's
just CO2. I would take issue with the claim that temperature rises have been
extremely rapid over the last century - since 1880, the average temperature has risen by ~0.8C (an average of ~0.0059C/year). Between ~800 and ~850 (the Medieval Warm Period), temperatures rose by ~0.3C (an average of ~0.006C/year). Between 1400 and 1600 (The Little Ice Age), temperatures dropped by ~0.7C (an average of ~-0.0035C/year). There is nothing particularly rapid, unusual or catastrophic about current temperature trends. The fact that the current warming period coincides with an atmospheric CO2 level of around ~400ppm is interesting, but the two comparative fluctuations mentioned above both occurred with a quite stable CO2 level of around 280ppm, with no significant fluctuations coincidental with those temperature changes. If CO2 is the sole driver if climate change today, it
must have driven climate change back then as well - somehow without changing its concentration.
Then there's evidence from the Dome-Concordia ice core temperature reconstructions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:0Master_Past_740000yrs_temperatures_CO2_icecore_Dome_C_150dpi.png), stretching back 740,000 years, showing "clearly that temperature variation precedes CO2 change by >700 years on a sustained basis." This suggests that atmospheric CO2 is more of a temperature regulator than a temperature driver. Then there's the correlation between global temperatures and cosmic rays (http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0168e75dbc73970c-pi), which looks pretty good to my untrained eye.
Overview, around 500 million years of temperature and CO2:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png) [1]
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png) [2]
Whilst there are correlations between these two graphs (note the reversed axis on graph 2), they are not exact and contain at least one clear anomaly. Climate scientists are so far unable to account for this, although it has been suggested that the sun's output was 4% less at the time of the O/S Ice Age anomaly might be a factor. This is another indication that it's not just CO2 driving climate change.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 27 January, 2016, 09:12:55 PM
The problem is that I don't understand the significance of those figures and NEITHER DO YOU. The people who DO understand whether that's a valid comparison or a boneheaded misinterpretation of the statistics are people who've spent years at university studying this stuff, and when the vast majority of them agree that you're wrong, I'm going to believe them.
You're right, in a sense. I'm not a scientist and I don't understand the scientific significance of those figures. The point is, neither do the people who've spent years at university studying this stuff. They can't explain it using current CO2 climate driver science. So yes, believe them by all means - although I would suggest that just because the
vast majority hold an opinion, that doesn't make it true. The significance of those figures to me is that the science, contrary to popular belief, is not settled.
Quote from: Tordelback on 27 January, 2016, 10:37:22 PM
This, this, this, this is literally the root of the whole thing.
Of course everyone is entitled, exhorted even, to investigate the evidence and come to their own conclusions, but equally we need to assign different weights to those conclusions based on the experience (and perhaps the associations) of the holder, simply because for most of us there is no realistic way of acquiring the necessary expertise and expending the necessary time: to some extent we have to listen to the consensus of those who have.
I agree. Wholeheartedly. There are literally hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers (http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html) supporting skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW alarmism. I can only speculate as to why "governments" and the mainstream media ignore them. Surely not all those people who've spent years at university studying this stuff, writing these papers and getting them peer-reviewed can be crackpots?
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 27 January, 2016, 10:51:41 PM
Non-Abstract: Shark, do you also dispute the basic chemistry of CO2's role in ocean acidification? If so, on what grounds? If not, please explain why either: 1) the extinction of hundreds of pH sensitive organisms is not a problem, or 2) how a catastrophic collapse in the oceanic food chain will have no negative effects on the ability of the human race to feed itself.
Jim
No, Jim, I don't didpute the basic chemistry of CO2 and ocean acidification. I actually mentioned this very thing earlier. However, like most alarmist arguments, the acidification of the oceans might not be such a big problem in the medium to long term. I would suggest you read this document (http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf), written by an actual science and technology policy analyst for the United States Department of the Interior, and then maybe we can debate its contents later.
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 27 January, 2016, 11:06:48 PM
I can vouch for this. In the last 5 years i've visted the Great Barrier Reef twice. In 2011 it was, in my eyes anyway, a heaven for corels. 3 years later many of these spots where habited only by bleached, dead corels over exposed to water Ph approaching moderate alkaline. It's a very, very real problem as without corels the entire global ecosystem will suffer.
Whilst I am neither blind nor unsympathetic to natural tragedies such as this, the decline of the Great Barrier Reef cannot be laid exclusively at the feet of climate change - though I'm sure it is a factor. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_threats_to_the_Great_Barrier_Reef), the major culprits are agricultural chemicals, sediments, mining pollution, waste dumping, overfishing, shipping and oil.
Quote from: Mister Pops on 27 January, 2016, 11:26:48 PM
The problem is, parroting observations and conclusions from articles you have found on google is not scientific research. This kind of thing, rife with confirmation bias, dominates mainstream scientific discourse.
As opposed to parroting observations and conclusions from articles and reports on the entirely unbiased BBC and from scrupulously honest politicians? And of course it's not scientific research - I'm not a scientist - but wherever possible I do try to look at the research and opinions of scientists and researchers instead of reporters and MPs. And no, I don't understand it all - but then again, who does?
Sorry for the long post but you all gave me a big test!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 28 January, 2016, 10:58:44 PMYes, I agree - climate change is multi-factoral, that's partially my point. Yet the populist argument is that it's just CO2.
Isn't this because the CO2 element of global warming is the one that we can affect?
Sorry Sharky, but your wrong on this case. Dredging on the great barrier reef is not only illegal but heavily policed, a severe instance hasn't occured in a decade. Agricultural waste, chemical or sediment dropping, or overfishing or even oil would NOT cause corals to bleach. That only occures with increased alkaline purity on the water or exposure to bands of light emitted from the sun (or in artificial conditions not repliated in such a large scale) that would other wise have been filtered by the Ozone layer. The fact that in 20 years, over which CO2 emissions have increased, a drastic increase in coral fatalities has also occured only goes to prove that increased CO2 in the atmosphere has a detremetal effect on the Ozone layer and is the cause of increased sea Ph.
Just because we can affect it, that doesn't mean it's going to do anything. We'd be much better off cutting out the really toxic pollutants we spew out into the environment.
CO2 does not affect ozone. Ozone depletion is caused by chemicals such as chlorine and bromine. Also, NOx and HOx groups of chemicals, contained in jet exhausts, cause ozone depletion. In this case, CO2 is not the culprit. As for the rest, I'm content to take your word for it.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 28 January, 2016, 10:58:44 PM
And no, I don't understand it all - but then again, who does?
Oh right. Got it.
What was it again, that actually generated more co2 and methane emissions than all transport combined?
I just don't recall.
The World Health Organisation called it out as well.
Damn. What was it again?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 28 January, 2016, 10:58:44 PM
I would suggest you read this document (http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf), written by an actual science and technology policy analyst for the United States Department of the Interior, and then maybe we can debate its contents later.
Still peddling that document, eh, Shark?
You know what? No, I'm not going to read it, because it comes from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation) — an organisation dedicated to questioning the mainstream scientific opinion on climate change which refuses to disclose its funding but is co-founded by Lord (Nigel) Lawson, a man who takes a
lot of money from the coal industry, an organisation whose 'Academic Committee' has no requirement for actual academic qualifications, relevant or otherwise.
Your willingness, as already noted, to embrace the opinions of vested big business interests sits oddly with your seeker-of-the-truth, sticking-it-to-the-man schtick and leads me back to my suspicion of a strong contrarian streak in your motives for posting here.
The problem here is that you can always find outliers on any scientific consensus. As proven this week, you can even find idiots who think the Earth is flat — we get to mock them because literally every available piece of evidence shows us that the Earth is an oblate spheroid and the argument is settled beyond any definition of reasonable doubt.
With the climate debate, the problem is that the only way it's proved beyond doubt is if we follow the pro-climate change argument or we don't. If we do, and the climate science is wrong, then all we've done is transition to a more sustainable, lower carbon economy which would be better able to survive the travails of a changing climate. If we don't, and the climate sceptics are wrong, then we render vast tracts of the planet uninhabitable to humans, still more unfarmable, and bring about the extinction of uncounted thousands of species of plants and animals when this outcome could have been mitigated, even if it couldn't be completely avoided.
There is plainly no point in discussing this further, because we're just going round the exact same houses as the last time.
Jim
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 29 January, 2016, 12:00:44 AM
What was it again, that actually generated more co2 and methane emissions than all transport combined?
I just don't recall.
The World Health Organisation called it out as well.
Damn. What was it again?
I'm on record as saying that we should all eat a LOT less meat. I'm not going round the houses on the relative merits of veganism again, but this issue is a rather clear illustration of a couple of problems with the climate change debate.
First, is the inability of some parts of the climate change lobby to recognise that not all carbon emissions are equal. The climate change impact of livestock is about 18% of the global quantity of CO
2 released into the atmosphere annually, of which 9% is down to fertiliser manufacture, land clearance and deforestation, and transportation of animal products, and 9% is, essentially, respiration. For comparison, the combined effect of all the humans on Earth breathing is about 8% annually.
Considering respiration as part of climate change is idiotic. Plants extract CO
2 from the atmosphere and eventually, that CO
2 gets put back, whether it's by the plants dying and decomposing, or being eaten by creatures with an O
2 -> CO
2 respiratory cycle. As I've noted before, if I grow a tree, then cut it down and burn it, that CO
2 is broadly carbon neutral — I'm only putting back the CO
2 which the tree took out of the atmosphere over its lifetime.
Everything happen in the
current carbon cycle is broadly carbon neutral. It's the hundreds of millions of tons of prehistoric carbon we're returning to the atmosphere that are the problem.
Second, is the belief that climate change is going to be solved with a few wind turbines and solar panels. We all need to eat a LOT less meat and yet, when I suggested a while back that a tidy mechanism for that would be to end intensive farming and introduce far higher animal welfare standards, the thought that such a policy might make a pack of mince more expensive had people branding me as some kind of let-them-eat-cake elitist.
We're all going to need to make a LOT of changes to our lifestyles in a LOT of areas if we're going to mitigate climate change to any degree.
Cheers
Jim
Quote
You know what? No, I'm not going to read it, because it comes from the Global Warming Policy Foundation — an organisation dedicated to questioning the mainstream scientific opinion on climate change which refuses to disclose its funding but is co-founded by Lord (Nigel) Lawson, a man who takes a lot of money from the coal industry, an organisation whose 'Academic Committee' has no requirement for actual academic qualifications, relevant or otherwise.
Your willingness, as already noted, to embrace the opinions of vested big business interests sits oddly with your seeker-of-the-truth, sticking-it-to-the-man schtick and leads me back to my suspicion of a strong contrarian streak in your motives for posting here.
The problem here is that you can always find outliers on any scientific consensus. As proven this week, you can even find idiots who think the Earth is flat — we get to mock them because literally every available piece of evidence shows us that the Earth is an oblate spheroid and the argument is settled beyond any definition of reasonable doubt.
With the climate debate, the problem is that the only way it's proved beyond doubt is if we follow the pro-climate change argument or we don't. If we do, and the climate science is wrong, then all we've done is transition to a more sustainable, lower carbon economy which would be better able to survive the travails of a changing climate. If we don't, and the climate sceptics are wrong, then we render vast tracts of the planet uninhabitable to humans, still more unfarmable, and bring about the extinction of uncounted thousands of species of plants and animals when this outcome could have been mitigated, even if it couldn't be completely avoided.
There is plainly no point in discussing this further, because we're just going round the exact same houses as the last time.
Jim
The above sums up everything I could possibly say on the matter eloquently and exhaustively. There's no reason to debate this any issue for me either; because it's not a debate - it's facts versus fiction.
It is vexxing.
As far as I can see, all of the information is out there to help me take my part in the "transition to a more sustainable, lower carbon economy which would be better able to survive the travails of a changing climate".
Number 1 contribution - giving up meat and dairy (there are other reasons to do this too). But there's the "not using the car for un-necessary journeys", recycling, the re-use, etc. too.
There are so many people who are just so comfortable/lazy/making huge profits with the status quo that the education and change of habits is spectacularly hard. They'd rather argue the toss and be deniers than take a few simple steps to benefit everybody*.
It's convenient for them to not see a tangible answer to "What's in it for me?". Instead of a "A better world" they just see "Less profit" or "No bacon" or "Public Transport" and think "Fuck that!".
But in good news, it took a long time and a lot of legislation and education to wear down smokers; hopefully their numbers are still on the decrease.
*Similarly - Teenage children would spend an hour arguing with you and throwing a tantrum about why they shouldn't take their turn to load the dishwasher than actually take the five minutes to load the fecking thing. The logic of their arguments is of the level of climate change denial.
A lot of the time, strong direction from government is needed, and we just don't have that now. Having cynically transformed its logo into a tree, the Conservative Party is ripping the heart out of the British solar industry (to the point many companies are going to the wall), while continuing to heavily subsidise nuclear (including effectively paying the Chinese to build a French plant, and guaranteeing insanely high rates) and go nuts of fracking.
I'm not yet convinced by the Green Party line that we could ditch fossil fuels and nuclear any time soon, but arguments we should head to a more sustainable mixed future seem entirely sensible. More solar, tidal and wind power. Less meat. Better housing construction. Retrofitting where possible. Why is it not yet law that all new builds have solar, for example? Baffling.
Problem is, Tips and though I agree with you whole heartedly, pretty much everyone see's "a better world" differently. And that's the beef of the matter and why educating the next generation is so important.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 29 January, 2016, 08:17:36 AM
Still peddling that document, eh, Shark?
I've mentioned it twice, and then in only the last three days. Your question, framed in such a way as to imply I've been trying to foist it on people forever, is a prime example of your snide and misrepresenting style of "argument."
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 29 January, 2016, 08:17:36 AM
You know what? No, I'm not going to read it, because it comes from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation) ...
Right. Well. Would you refuse to read
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica because its author was an alchemist,
On the Origin of Species because its author was a heretic or
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies because its author was a level-III patent clerk?* I have no way of dealing with such bloody minded and willful ignorance.
It seems there is simply no way to engage with you in any meaningful or even reasonable way because, Jim, you're not even wrong.
The only thing I can agree with is that there is plainly no point in discussing this further with you.
*And no, before you bring one of your silly responses to bear, I don't consider the document I linked to as being on a par with these three - they were just the first examples that came to mind.
Surely the argument is that the authors of the document have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and denying climate change. The same can't be said of your heretic and patent clerk etc.
I don't think your response fits the point made.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 29 January, 2016, 05:00:30 PM
I have no way of dealing with such bloody minded and willful ignorance.
And I note that you snip out the part of my paragraph where I explain in some detail why your 'source' is extremely dubious and tied to vested interests whose anti-climate-change arguments are straight out of the Vested Interest Playbook*.
Were you not so terribly prone to posting the first set of half-arsed links Google spits out in response to a search on your crackpot theory du jour, I might be more inclined to read them, but half the time they don't actually support the position you're defending, and a lot of the rest of the time they appear to be commissioned, as this one is, by precisely the sort of military-industrial cluster of capitalist vested interests you would normally be found railing against.
Your 'source' has no credibility for reasons I have both outlined and linked to.
Try again. Try harder.
Bah.
Jim
*No, seriously... how many times to do we have to put up with vested interests deploying the 'muddying the waters' tactic before we tell them to fuck right off? We've seen this
exact same set of tactics deployed by the tobacco industry and again right now by the food industry over the health implications of stuffing sugar into everything... I'm sure back in the first half of the 19th century there were big cotton, sugar and tobacco companies commissioning reports whose executive summaries said
"And so we can conclude that your average negro lives 18% longer and is at least 41% happier working on a tobacco plantation in Virginia than he would have been in a mud hut on the edge of the Serengeti..."
Okay, so follow the money/vested interests. Here's another paper for you not to read: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/climate_money.pdf
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 29 January, 2016, 09:10:56 PM
Okay, so follow the money/vested interests. Here's another paper for you not to read: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/climate_money.pdf
Christopher Monckton vanity project? Really?
More pathetically sloppy first-hit-googling, Shark. You really ought to read more of these links before you post them.
Jim
Another well reasoned counter-argument of the quality I've come to expect. "I don't like him/her, so he/she must be wrong." "I don't believe this, so it can't possibly be true."
I don't tink anyone like's Nigel Lawson, because he's a monumental hypocrite and a nob.
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 29 January, 2016, 09:59:08 PM
I don't tink anyone like's Nigel Lawson, because he's a monumental hypocrite and a nob.
He makes a nice cake and has a top rack, all the same.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 29 January, 2016, 10:04:43 PM
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 29 January, 2016, 09:59:08 PM
I don't tink anyone like's Nigel Lawson, because he's a monumental hypocrite and a nob.
He makes a nice cake and has a top rack, all the same.
I once made the mistake of google imaging Nigel Lawson* instead of Nigela. Boy was I conffused!!!
*For scientific reasons!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 29 January, 2016, 09:57:39 PM
Another well reasoned counter-argument of the quality I've come to expect. "I don't like him/her, so he/she must be wrong." "I don't believe this, so it can't possibly be true."
Conversely: "He agrees with my contrarian adoption of a fringe viewpoint, so I will accept his assertions over better-qualified REAL SCIENTISTS without actually considering his actual credibility, which is zero (https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/lord-moncktons-rap-sheet/)."
Jim
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 29 January, 2016, 10:08:44 PM
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 29 January, 2016, 10:04:43 PM
Quote from: Hawkmonger on 29 January, 2016, 09:59:08 PM
I don't tink anyone like's Nigel Lawson, because he's a monumental hypocrite and a nob.
He makes a nice cake and has a top rack, all the same.
I once made the mistake of google imaging Nigel Lawson* instead of Nigela. Boy was I conffused!!!
*For scientific reasons!
Well, science
is drokking fantastic... http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=33858.msg904752#msg904752 (http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=33858.msg904752#msg904752)
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 29 January, 2016, 10:10:55 PM
Conversely: "He agrees with my contrarian adoption of a fringe viewpoint, so I will accept his assertions over better-qualified REAL SCIENTISTS without actually considering his actual credibility, which is zero."
Jim
The blog you link to was written by Barry Bickmore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_R._Bickmore), who not only believes but acts as a missionary to the idea that the Word of God was copied down off golden plates found by Joseph Smith after a conversation with God under a tree in 1820. Bickmore is also a supporter of AGW and so - surprise, surprise - writes in support of that view. Hey, you're right, you know - this ad hominem approach you love so much is really easy and takes little effort or intellectual ability. I can see why it appeals to you. The blog you link to seems to have missed the fact that Monckton has been ordered (http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2011/july/letter-to-viscount-monckton/) to stop claiming to be a member of the House of Lords. Maybe you could email Bickmore with this fact in order to gain yourself some Ad Hominem Club Brownie Points...
Except that, oh wait, "Climate Money" wasn't written by Monckton, was it? It was written by Joanne Nova (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanne_Nova), a Bachelor of Science first class whom, presumably, you couldn't dig up any personal dirt on in order to automatically poo-poo anything she writes that you don't like. So you lazily attempt to dismiss her by association. How cunning of you.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 January, 2016, 08:22:43 AM
this ad hominem approach you love so much is really easy and takes little effort or intellectual ability.
It's not an ad hom to point out that the Gobal Warming Policy Foundation refuses to disclose its sources of funding, nor to point out that one of its founders is deeply in the pocket of the coal industry, and that these two facts make any pronouncements it may make on the subject of climate change deeply suspect.
I note that you decided to trot out another paper rather than address any of the problems with the first one, and you also fail to engage with my other point about there really only being two courses of practical action over this issue, the consequences of one being wrong is cleaner, more sustainable planet and the other being utter catastrophe.
Jim
How do you know what the problems with either paper are if you refuse to even read them? Far more money, far, far more, goes into the pro-AGW side of the debate - much of it out of our taxes - so why is this not a problem? Why does that not make the pronouncements of the alarmists equally "deeply suspect"? How can it be fine one way yet not fine the other? Shouldn't the money go into balanced research?
.
As to the "either-or" argument, where's the sense in that? It's the kind of thing leading to the "you're either with us or against us" mode of thinking so beloved of people like G. W. Bush and company.
.
Science, as we both know, issues only provisional conclusions based on current understanding. There's no "either-or" about it. Yes, continue to study the effects of CO2 and yes, continue to try and cut down (all) emissions because that seems prudent. But don't just ignore everything else because this One Thing will solve all our problems.
.
I'm no expert, neither of us is, and I'm sure I've said before that I like your ideas about phasing out intensive farming and finding ways to improve animal husbandry. These ideas have several commendable aspects, not all of them climate related.
.
But once we start refusing to consider ideas and research purely on unscientific, "he said this, she did that and they paid for whatever," the science can only suffer. If we want to dismiss or refute ideas then that's fine, necessary even - but at least we should do so on the merits of the ideas themselves, not on the merits of their originators or supporters.
.
If some redneck hick comes forward and claims bigfoot exists, that's great, I'm interested: show me the body or the bones or the DNA tested hairs or droppings and I'll believe it. If he's got nothing, or next to nothing, then I'm not going to believe it whether it comes from a redneck hick or a professor with more letters after his name than contained in a tin of alphabet soup.
.
Similarly, ostensibly respectable politicians, businessmen and bankers have a lot invested, both in terms of capital and reputation, on the pro-AGW side. Ditto, but to a lesser extent, on the anti-AGW side. It makes no difference which side the science comes from, so long as it's reasonably solid. And it's that we should be looking at, not the distraction of finger-pointing and who can out-humiliate whom. There isn't an adult on the planet - including you and me - who hasn't said and/or done stupid things in their life. Some of us, like the amusing Monckton, have exceeded the norm. This does not make him wrong about everything - it just means we should approach his ideas with caution, in the same way we should approach all ideas.
The only point in debating with somebody like you is to illustrate to other people how egregiously, preposterously wrong you are. So given that absolutely nobody on this forum swallows your obscurantist twaddle wrapped in your incredibly tiresome, "what me guv?" faux-naif act, it's probably utterly pointless.
You've pinged around like a dozy wasp in a conservatory between so many mutually exclusive and strawmanned positions in this thread I've lost count; from "CO2 doesn't cause warming, look I've got this graph with a scale in the millions of years to prove it!" to "well okay it does cause warming but it'll be good, see!" to "look I can make a naive average to show it ain't no thang if I use the figures derived by the methods I've previously said are untrustworthy" to "AGW proponents say it's just the anthropogenic CO2 that causes warming!" to "we don't know for sure so the rational position is apportioning exactly a 50% probability to each!".
You don't get to refute the laboratory-observed properties of greenhouse gases from the confines of your head. The inference that adding to atmospheric CO2 will cause warming regardless of other factors (i.e. the natural cycles that you constantly irrelevantly bring up, that nobody outside your constructed-version of an agw proponent actually disputes the existence of) is such a solid one that the burden of proof is entirely on denialists to explain why CO2 would act differently in the atmosphere. And no amount of Gish-galloping on your part will change that.
That's odd - what happened to this:
Quote from: JPMaybe on 31 January, 2016, 12:18:31 PM
Could a mod delete that previous post please? Ta.
?
I deleted it.
Ah. Okay.
CONSPIRACY.
Quote from: Scolaighe Ó'Bear on 01 February, 2016, 01:01:35 PM
CONSPIRACY.
You'll note that if you carefully rearrange the letters in my handle here, 'IndigoPrime', it spells out 'Illuminati forevaarrr'.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 01 February, 2016, 01:04:38 PM
Quote from: Scolaighe Ó'Bear on 01 February, 2016, 01:01:35 PM
CONSPIRACY.
You'll note that if you carefully rearrange the letters in my handle here, 'IndigoPrime', it spells out 'Illuminati forevaarrr'.
"Drop Gemini I" - Obviously an Illuminati clue about the fake NASA space program...
And - "Big Shale Era - Coo!" Obviously another Illuminati clue about fraccing!
Put these clues together and it must mean that aliens are coming for our shale gas!
*gasp!*
Somewhere among those anagrams is the HARSH TANGLED KEY.
(http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/obama_shh-150x150.jpg)
"This is a pervasive pattern of covering up the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11 by all of the agencies of the federal government which have access to information that might illuminate Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11."
Yet another made-up quote from a tinfoil-lined nut-job conspiracy site?
Nope. The quote comes from former Democratic Senator Bob Graham (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Graham) and was printed in April 2015 in the msm's New York Post article "How the F.B.I. is Whitewashing the Saudi Connection to 9/11." (http://nypost.com/2015/04/12/saudi-role-in-911-being-whitewashed-by-fbi/) A year later and 60 minutes Moment of the Week "Who Helped the 9/11 Hijackers When They Were in the US?" (http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/who-helped-the-911-hijackers-when-they-were-in-the-u-s/) is on CBS. Of course, there simply can't be anything in it because that would mean there's been some kind of fifteen year old "conspiracy" or something, which is clearly impossible. So impossible, in fact, that the Saudis have no need whatsoever to threaten reprisals. (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-warns-ofeconomic-fallout-if-congress-passes-9-11-bill.html?_r=0)
The question occurring to me is, why is this information coming to the fore now? Is it going to be used as another pretext for more military expansionism into the Middle East? To close off the United States' borders by one more degree? To remove the House of Saud in favour of another puppet government? To introduce a few more "security laws" to hold over the American people? Expanding control over oil supplies? Sabre rattling for economic and/or political purposes? A lust for sand? All, some or none of the above? Only time will tell.
Oh there was a conspiracy. By fundamentalist terrorists who hate western decadence yet, oxymoronically, also desire it. As far as US connections go i'm highly, highly sceptical to the point of total dismisal.
I think it's pretty self-evident that the Saudis and other rich arabs, who rely entirely on US support, back fundamental terrorism that is murderously opposed to the US. And consequently, US officials, agencies and so all obscure those connections as much as possible, as the Saudis and other rich arabs are both profit-making for their interests and as useful a tool as they are a source of pain.
It's not so much a calculated conspiracy as a confederacy of (greedy hypocritical) dunces.
Quote from: Theblazeuk on 20 April, 2016, 11:07:58 AM
It's not so much a calculated conspiracy as a confederacy of (greedy hypocritical) dunces.
I think that hits the nail (many nails, actually) squarely on the head (except for the "dunces" part - many of these confederates are exceptionally clever and calculating).
The Saudis fund Islamic extremists because this keeps those extremists away from Saudi Arabia and engaged in wars in the rest of the Middle East. It's kind of like the US bombing the fuck out of somewhere to stop its residents exporting their violence to US soil - only the Saudi method (not that I'm condoning it) actually seems to work.
Quote from: Theblazeuk on 20 April, 2016, 11:07:58 AM
It's not so much a calculated conspiracy as a confederacy of (greedy hypocritical) dunces.
Add to the mix: Saudi Arabia is a major supporter of Pakistan. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. What do you think the Saudis have got in return for their support?
Cheers
Jim
The Saudi refusal to decrease oil production, which has decreased oil profits, and its funding of extremists in Syria, also has a negative effect on Iran, which can now sell oil to the west via Syrian pipelines. The slows the "normalizing" of Iranian relationships with western nations, preventing the Shai nation from challenging Sunni Saudi Arabia as the region's biggest player.
We're learning more about this Great Game not because of some shadowy pysops involving the world's media, but because we live in an increasingly connected and informed world, filled with flawed individuals.
Further, Saudi Arabia also supports IS - albeit quietly.
There does seem to be a facade here. Why did the US authorities censor those 28 pages if they do indeed implicate Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 attacks? If that alleged information had been made public, would the lucrative wars on Afghanistan and Iraq have seemed so attractive to the hawks and the military industrial complex, and the governments of the world, at the time? Afghanistan and Iraq, after all, possessed second and third rate military hardware but Saudi's armaments were top notch - the best we could sell them, in fact.
September 11th 2001 is the day our entire planet went mad. Leaving aside all the other inconsistencies and questions surrounding those terrible attacks on that dark day, have we been led to today's bloody mess by nothing but lies (remember WMDs?), profiteering and our governments' insatiable hunger for power?
I think we have. And, whether you agree with my world-view and solutions or not, and I know that many of you do not (which is cool and socially healthy, by the way), I think at least some of you will agree that it's time we stopped letting these monsters of ours get away with it.
For fascinating background into how and why Saudi Arabia originally became a western ally, and the rise of Wahabi fundamentalism, check out Adam Curtis' excellent documentary Bitter Lake - downloadable on BBC iplayer
No wonder Saudi Arabia's bricking it. Capital costs for installed solar power has fallen 60% in the last four years, according to a new report from Deutsche Bank. The report claims costs could fall another 40% in coming years. Oil is on its way out and now this 9/11 thing...
(http://allnewspipeline.com/images/last_72hrs.gif)
Prince's soul departing the planet? HAARP weather modification wave? Alien interference? Equipment malfunction? Data artefacts? Hoax? Unknown natural phenomena? Don't ask me, I've no idea.
Sky criminals: Chuck Norris examines geoengineering 'in skies above us.' (http://www.wnd.com/2016/04/sky-criminals/) Careful, Chuck - you'll end up mysteriously dead...
Quite frankly I wouldn't mourn his loss if he did meet his maker. Vile example of a human.
I've never met the man, so I couldn't say. Prince and Merle Haggard also spoke out against the same phenomenon but I've never met them, either, so who knows?
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 26 April, 2016, 10:10:37 AM
Quite frankly I wouldn't mourn his loss if he did meet his maker. Vile example of a human.
Any particular reason? I know next to nothing about him (apart from things like 'when he's swimming in the sea he doesn't get wet; the sea gets Chucked' and so on, ad nauseum).
Very active conservative texan politicical supporter, with strong family ties to the KKK and has been put on record as refusing to work with LGBT+ people. He's a typical white extremist who I have ni small measure of distaste for.
Don't be too hard on old Chuck, as he's one of those people who just got left behind by the modern world: an old-fashioned conservative rather than a hateful far-right loon, I believe his LGBT record stems not from maliciousness but from the same Christian beliefs that make him set up HIV/AIDS charities, and anti-drug/martial arts programs for at-risk kids, as well as being a campaigner for veterans.
His is a life of contradictions as much as anyone's. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rDs23KxGBk)
Besides, you may be deluding yourself if you think that once he dies* he won't be appropriated by sections of the LGBT community as an icon - that mustache! The films! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voeID5w8hxw) The cartoons! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzBZGF3MLCQ) The comic books!
(http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3841/751/400/ChuckNorris-OneBullet.jpg)
* Or more accurately, "when he finally decides it's time to go and kill Satan."
To be fair he did invent racism, apparently, after Mr T something something something, I don't remember
And yet ironically he also invented black.
Just been looking into his supposed "anti-gay" stance. It seems to stem from a summer 2012 article he wrote about the Boy Scouts of America movement being forced to change its policies due to political pressure. The article labours under the unfortunate title Is Obama Creating a Pro-Gay Boy Scouts of America? (http://www.ammoland.com/2012/06/is-obama-creating-a-pro-gay-boy-scouts-of-america/) but doesn't seem anti-gay. What he seems to be saying is that private organisations have the right to implement any rules they want to without government or big business interference.
Maybe it is an old-fashioned view that some people feel uncomfortable having gay men in charge of groups of male children but I don't think that's rabidly anti-gay any more than not wanting a heterosexual man in charge of a group of female children is rabidly anti-straight. The commenters on the article take it as such, though, and the msm seems to have picked up on the whole "this-guy-said-something-a-bit-off-colour-so-let's-get-him" attitude and ran with it.
On his blog (http://chucknorrisnews.blogspot.co.id/search?updated-max=2012-08-22T16:30:00-05:00&max-results=15&start=150&by-date=false) a couple of days later he wrote, ""Let me clarify what I meant by my article. I was not criticizing the gay community. What I tried to convey in my article is that no private organization operating within the bounds of the law should be forced to change its principles and traditions based on outside pressure.
"The Boy Scouts of America is over 100 years old. It has a set of traditions its members live by. They should be able to continue to live by traditions that have worked and served the organization well for a century."
Oh, and the original article appeared on a website called "Ammoland," which really doesn't bode well for anyone looking for well-reasoned and compassionate discourse.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 April, 2016, 03:02:07 PMWhat he seems to be saying is that private organisations have the right to implement any rules they want to without government or big business interference.
"You can't come into this restaurant, because we don't allow black people in here."
QuoteMaybe it is an old-fashioned view that some people feel uncomfortable having gay men in charge of groups of male children but I don't think that's rabidly anti-gay any more than not wanting a heterosexual man in charge of a group of female children is rabidly anti-straight.
I don't even know where to begin unpicking that, but I'd suggest a default stance that doesn't assume every adult caring for children intends to assault them, that gay men don't tend to assault young boys in their care, and nor to adult men tend to assault girls they're looking after.
I just... fucking hell. SETS FIRE TO FORUM
"The Boy Scouts of America is over 100 years old. It has a set of traditions its members live by. They should be able to continue to live by traditions that have worked and served the organization well for a century."What if one of their traditions was no Jews? No gays is no better. It's that kind of thinking that results in the shitstorm happening in the US regarding laws specifically designed to demonise people who aren't white and straight.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 April, 2016, 03:02:07 PM
Maybe it is an old-fashioned view that some people feel uncomfortable having gay men in charge of groups of male children but I don't think that's rabidly anti-gay any more than not wanting a heterosexual man in charge of a group of female children is rabidly anti-straight.
I think you're misusing the terms 'gay' and 'heterosexual' there, Sharky. The one you're looking for is 'paedophile'.
I do agree however that Norris is just the visible tip of a religious iceberg, and within that setting is probably no worse than his peers. He's also done a lot of good in many fields, by all accounts, so he's probably not a monster. This doesn't mean his views shouldn't be challenged at every opportunity.
Reminds me of that old episode of South Park in which Big Gay Al is made to leave his position as scoutmaster, only to be replaced by a more traditionally masculine individual, who then turns out to be a paedophile.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 26 April, 2016, 03:20:13 PM
"You can't come into this restaurant, because we don't allow black people in here."
"You can't come into this toilet, it's for women only."
"You can't come into this club, it's for members only."
In a truly free world, private clubs can make any rules they want - so long as they don't harm other people. As something of a libertarian I do agree with this. If somebody wants to set up a "whites-only" restaurant, they can do so. They can set up a blacks-only, men-only, Jews-only, Christian-only, gay-only, Irish-only or whatever-only establishment they desire. Would I go to such a place? No. Would you? Probably not. It's distasteful, yes, of course it is - but that's the thing about freedom. Sometimes it's ugly.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 26 April, 2016, 03:20:13 PM
I don't even know where to begin unpicking that, but I'd suggest a default stance that doesn't assume every adult caring for children intends to assault them, that gay men don't tend to assault young boys in their care, and nor to adult men tend to assault girls they're looking after.
I just... fucking hell. SETS FIRE TO FORUM
"The Boy Scouts of America is over 100 years old. It has a set of traditions its members live by. They should be able to continue to live by traditions that have worked and served the organization well for a century."
What if one of their traditions was no Jews? No gays is no better. It's that kind of thinking that results in the shitstorm happening in the US regarding laws specifically designed to demonise people who aren't white and straight.
As I said, it's an old-fashioned view. It's not a view I agree with and I'm certain there are a great many childrens' group leaders who are gay and act responsibly in every way. Just because someone's gay, that doesn't make them a predator. We have to remember, though, that this is a fairly modern attitude and that a great many people have still to assume it, especially in the U.S.
Jumping up and down, frothing at the mouth and setting fire to things is not the way forward. If I am expected to try and understand the position and attitude of gay people then isn't it incumbent upon me to try and understand the position and attitude of those less-enlightened people as well? How can attitudes be changed if they are not understood?
Quote from: Tordelback on 26 April, 2016, 03:33:20 PM
I think you're misusing the terms 'gay' and 'heterosexual' there, Sharky. The one you're looking for is 'paedophile'.
I did not want to conflate the two terms as if they are interchangeable. I was describing the old-fashioned
attitude which does just that.
There's definitely a problem in American conservatism with telling the difference between "gay" and "pedophile", but I don't think that's where Chuck's coming from. If you look at his wider political activism, it paints a picture of someone who just doesn't want the concept of any sexual identity or activity presented within an educational setting, and a lot of parents feel the same way without being motivated by homphobia - they just think that sex ed is for them to teach their kids.
I agree with that, Bear.
So anyway, chemtrails and weather modification. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5is16A8pfw) Any takers?
If anyone's intentionally trying to alter the weather up here, they're not doing a very good job of it, (unless they're going for the confusingly random mess we've always had anyway).
In terms of aeroplane contrails, I seem to remember that when basically all flights in and out of the the North American Continent after 11/09/2001 the atmospheric temperatures dropped by 2-3 degrees centigrade as compared with the norm. Z
Quote from: M.I.K. on 26 April, 2016, 04:27:00 PM
If anyone's intentionally trying to alter the weather up here, they're not doing a very good job of it, (unless they're going for the confusingly random mess we've always had anyway).
One of the things Rosalind Peterson claims in her address to the UN link I posted is that one company is spraying iron dust into the air in order to increase algal blooms, thereby ramping up oxygen production. The business model for this madness is claimed to be that the company can then charge companies to offset their CO2 production - never mind the costly business of redesigning and refitting all your factories to be clean, just pay us and we'll make sure to produce enough oxygen to offset your pollution.
(https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/jet_fuel.png)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 April, 2016, 04:11:48 PM
So anyway, chemtrails and weather modification. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5is16A8pfw) Any takers?
http://contrailscience.com/ (http://contrailscience.com/)
I always find when presented with any so-called conspiracy theory and all it's associated "evidence" just type the key word plus "debunked" into Google to find plenty of useful stuff.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 26 April, 2016, 05:10:16 PM
http://contrailscience.com/ (http://contrailscience.com/)
I always find when presented with any so-called conspiracy theory and all it's associated "evidence" just type the key word plus "debunked" into Google to find plenty of useful stuff.
Wow.
I take it that's a sarcastic wow rather than you being impressed by all that useful information.
When reading about these things on the internet, the "evidence" often sounds very compelling - however it only takes moments and the magic D word to find out, as in that link, lots of reasons why the evidence has been misinterpreted or is simply not reliable or non existent.
Sorry if it doesn't fit with your theories, but unless they can come up with something that isn't easily debunked with basic science, I'll continue to shout BOLLOX!
Alternatively, if you do a google search for 'Rosalind Peterson', the second thing listed is a youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOXt0BTOTN0) of a segment from a radio phone-in, in which she herself says that she has no direct proof of jets releasing anything into the atmosphere other than jet fuel emissions, (and some military chaff), despite a decade of research.
People were convinced for years that the government, the police, and the right-wing media were in cahoots to blame the victims of a disaster for their misfortunes, and the barmy conspiracy theory took a turn today when they were proven right. (http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/how-the-suns-truth-about-hillsborough-unravelled)
Good point, Bear.
EDIT - completely misread Bear's post ... nothing to see here!
Quote from: Dandontdare on 26 April, 2016, 05:32:09 PM
I take it that's a sarcastic wow rather than you being impressed by all that useful information.
The "wow" was sarcastic, sorry. I'm actually reading through that website now, have been for a while and just came up for air (no pun intended). I'm finding the comments discussions particularly fascinating and through them, and cross-referencing, I'm learning more about the topic. As with most of these things, it's a lot more complex than simply "they are/they are not poisoning us."
Thanks for the link - I'm having fun!
I was just made aware that there's several conspiracy theories regards the government faking the Sandy Hook massacre. That murdered children isn't dreadful enough the internet has to create a business out of harassing the parents for being actors is just plain depressing.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 April, 2016, 03:41:51 PM"You can't come into this toilet, it's for women only."
There is a Gents next door, though. The disabled toilet that also doubles as the baby change is over there.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 April, 2016, 03:41:51 PM"You can't come into this club, it's for members only."
. . . But here's a membership form.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 April, 2016, 03:41:51 PMIn a truly free world, private clubs can make any rules they want - so long as they don't harm other people. As something of a libertarian I do agree with this. If somebody wants to set up a "whites-only" restaurant, they can do so. They can set up a blacks-only, men-only, Jews-only, Christian-only, gay-only, Irish-only or whatever-only establishment they desire. Would I go to such a place? No. Would you? Probably not. It's distasteful, yes, of course it is - but that's the thing about freedom. Sometimes it's ugly.
YAY SEGREGATION!
I watched part one of a two parter, where Simon Reeve was traveling around the whole of Ireland and the last few minutes showed that Segregation was unbelievably alive and well in the North's schools.
Me and the missus were stunned at the percentages quoted, even after all these years.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 29 April, 2016, 03:03:58 AM
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 28 April, 2016, 08:02:49 PM
YAY SEGREGATION PERSONAL CHOICE!
FTFY
Thats basically the single argument behind anti-black/ angi-semetic/ anti-LGBT+ establishments and it's fucking bullshit.
How many organizations run at a massive profit despite treating people badly? If they acted a bit worse, what's to say they wouldnt still run at a massive profit?
If Apple don't loose customers despite the condition s in their Chinese factories, do we really think they would loose that many just because they sack all their gay employees, or decide to pay their female employees less. And once they do it, why shouldn't everyone else.
We didn't become a more tolerant people because market forces made us so.
No it isn't. You're failing to take into account the fact of ownership.
Who owns the toilet or the private club?
If a shop, private property, owns the toilets, it's up to the owner how they are used. Segregated by sex, unisex or staff only. Customers only have the right to use those toilets as the owner stipulates. You don't like it, use another shop.
You are free to enforce toilet use in your own home during, for example, a party. Upstairs for women, downstairs for men, both for anyone, one for partygoers and one off-limits. If your guests don't like it, tough. Your toilets, your rules.
Same with private clubs. It's up to the club owner who's allowed to join and who isn't. If you don't like the club, don't join, find a better one or start your own. If you owned a LGBT club, would you allow hetreosexuals or even LGBT haters to join it or refuse their applications? It's your club, it's up to you.
We all practice voluntary segregation all the time. I wouldn't join a Conservative Club, a Labour Club or a Liberal Democrat Club. I willingly and lawfully segregate myself from them.
When "government" decides the associations you make for you, we end up with Nazi rallies, Communist Parties and Fascist states - where everyone is forced to attend and participate and the first person to stop applauding the leader's speech is taken out back and shot.
Disliking people, for any reason, is not a crime. Harming people, any people, based on that dislike is a crime.
I have never been to a single LGBT+ club that does not welcome heterosexual patrons. That would be an act of hypocrysy, considering such establishments where set up in defiance of clubs that propogate homophobic attitudes. In contrast i've spent many a night uncomfertable that certain 'friends' have dragged me to a bar, only to see anti-queer material covering the door ways. It's sickening, and it's not through choice these people think this way as it's an indoctrination of a phobic mind set.
You don't need to put quotes around "government" every time. We get it.
Yet another ridiculously simplistic example to support your cause. Let's look at it another way...
Company X is the main supplier of widgets. Company X decides it will pay black employees less.
People still buy widgets from Company X, because they're cheap and that's how the world works.
Black employees, in a liberatarian world, would just go work somewhere else. However, in the real work, most workers are stuck with what they can get.
Other companies see that they can save money through basic rascism, and the market follows suit.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 29 April, 2016, 03:03:58 AM
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 28 April, 2016, 08:02:49 PM
YAY SEGREGATION PERSONAL CHOICE!
FTFY
Personal choice, yes. To discriminate beyond gym membership and unisex toilets. To discriminate based on someone's age, race, ethnicity, sex, gender, religious belief or lack of, ableness, mental health, class, etc..
In a "truly free world" such clubs would serve no purpose. There would be no need for people to exclude themselves from
genuine discourse (something you were advocating previously with regard people's attitudes being changed) which is why, ultimately, clubs founded on fear and bigotry
are harmful, hence me quoting you in full.
The 'less-enlightened' (your words) should (and would) be willing to have their belief systems challenged in public debate not confirmed and reinforced by like-minded individuals in private retreats. Such clubs aren't conducive to education. They exist as refuges for the intolerant, a place members can go to escape a world being overrun by darkies, fags, kikes, Mohammedans, mongs, and proles.
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 28 April, 2016, 08:02:49 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 April, 2016, 03:41:51 PM"You can't come into this toilet, it's for women only."
tell that to the woman in the gents loo in Blackburn yesterday who didn't even lock the door!!
thankfully she wasn't in a compromised position...
I've said before on this thead, but I sincerely believe that properly constructed legislation codifies values that our societies aspire to, and helps us make them real and ubiquitous. It's patronising, sure, and it'd be better if we all behaved decently without any constraints upon us, but for now the results of such pragmatic compromise speak for themselves.
Libertarianism is a nice idea but it doesn't work in practice. Just like communism, dickheads always screw it up for everyone.
QuoteDisliking people, for any reason, is not a crime.
Actually, I think you'll find it clearly is - certainly to the extent we're talking about here, where people are denied access to goods, services, locations etc purely on the basis of personal prejudice regarding their race, gender, sexuality, physical or mental health, or religion.
http://report-it.org.uk/what_is_hate_crime (http://report-it.org.uk/what_is_hate_crime)
Pretty disheartening that this thread has been resurrected this week and there's absolutely no mention of the official acceptance of an actual conspiracy at the heart of the British establishment.
Hillsborough wasn't a matter of elaborate plots or false flags, just people in a position of power lying and closing ranks to try and protect themselves after the fact.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 29 April, 2016, 09:46:59 AM
I have never been to a single LGBT+ club that does not welcome heterosexual patrons.
That's not been my experience of the Village in Manchester. In the early 90s (when the gay clubs were the only place you could get off your tits and dance to techno till 4am) we would always have to arrange ourselves into same-sex couple in the queue and memorise a list of other gay bars in order to pass the "gay test". It's been a while since I've been there, but judging by some of the more negative comments on Tripadvisor, this is still the case*.
Then again, nightclub bouncers are a unique form of twat who will discriminate against anyone they don't like the look of on any grounds they wish - I've seen lots of stories in the press recently about clubs with hidden racist policies who are always "full" or "members only" when black people try to get in.
Quote from: The Cosh on 29 April, 2016, 01:29:06 PM
Pretty disheartening that this thread has been resurrected this week and there's absolutely no mention of the official acceptance of an actual conspiracy at the heart of the British establishment.
Don't be disheartened - Satanist posted abourt it on the last page!
*(and next time I see you, remind me to tell you how I once made a complete drunken arse of myself as the only bloke in Follies lesbian club ... :-[)
I didnt but I think that we all know that the police lie and ruin lives to keep themselves in a job so its not really a conspiracy.
It's like the Olympics: police conspiracies don't count because they're professionals.
Quote from: Satanist on 29 April, 2016, 02:07:41 PM
I didnt but I think that we all know that the police lie and ruin lives to keep themselves in a job so its not really a conspiracy.
sorry, it was Prof Bear
Quote from: Modern Panther on 29 April, 2016, 09:56:20 AM
Company X is the main supplier of widgets. Company X decides it will pay black employees less.
People still buy widgets from Company X, because they're cheap and that's how the world works.
Black employees, in a liberatarian world, would just go work somewhere else. However, in the real work, most workers are stuck with what they can get.
Other companies see that they can save money through basic rascism, and the market follows suit.
I will assume your example comes from a proposed libertarian society as an example of why it wouldn't work and so I will answer from the same standpoint of a society that is, or on its way to becoming, a libertarian one. This presupposes an overall understanding by the population of libertarian mechanisms and economics and a social will, widespread but not necessarily universal, to have a libertarian society.
Is Company X based in the libertarian country or outside?
If Company X is based outside "Libertaria," say in "Exploitistan," it might seem like Company X can do what it likes, and so it can. However, Libertaria's largest corporations and companies will have private trade deals, some individually but most en-bloc, with countries like Exploitistan. Such deals would include clauses about the non-exploitation of workers (a libertarian ideal). Exploitistan, still labouring under the yoke of "government," will value these trade deals and not want Company X jeapordising its trade. The exploitation, in that case, would be tackled at source or Company X would be forced to hawk its wares in other countries with which Exploitistan does not have lucrative deals. However, Libertaria might not be happy about this and the private trade deals might still be at risk if Exploitistan does nothing about Company X.
But let's assume Company X has bribed enough officials and can go ahead and produce its widgets. Firstly, low-paid, exploited workers are not bound to produce quality merchandise and so market forces would be ripe for the creation of a better widget manufacturer. Company X would be in danger of losing its market share. But let's say Companny X does somehow produce a quality product and bribes or bluffs its way into trading with companies in Libertaria. The Libertaria trade organisations would employ inspectors, just as many large companies do now, and it's only a matter of time before Company X's exploitation is discovered and trade with it is suspended.
Company X might, though, find a non-libertarian company to trade with in Libertaria but would still need to export its widgets. The larger importers/exporters would have similar non-exploitative contracts with the large Libertaria companies and would be loath to risk those lucrative deals by trading with Company X. Of course, Company X might find a smaller import/export company who will deal with it, most likely for a higher cost. But then that import/export company has to get Company X's product into Libertaria through one of its privately owned air or sea ports. Again, in a libertarian country, each of these ports would subscribe to certain libertarian ideals and be signators to several lucrative contracts with companies and corporations, so Company X's widgets might still not be allowed into the country. Of course, the Flybynight Import/Export Co. might know of a few non-libertarian ports, or at least a remote beach somewhere, where the widgets can come into Libertaria. Company X's problem then is finding a non-libertarian transport company and then, finally, a non-libertarian distributor.
Even if Company X gets this far, its troubles aren't over. Libertarian factories who need widgets for their products would want to know where these cheap (although, by this stage, not so cheap any more) widgets came from. Most factories would not buy them. But, say one factory does and begins incorporating Company X's widgets into its products. That factory then has to find a retailer and all the bigger retailers are already out - as they have been from the beginning. This leaves small, unscrupulous retailers. The final barrier to Company X's product is the libertarian consumer who, in the society we are discussing, would be aware of the undesirability of exploited labour. Certainly, Company X might sell a few widgets this way but not nearly as many, and at not nearly as profitable a price, as by playing by Libertaria's rules. Rules enforced privately, efficiently and uniformly each step of the way with not one unnecessary "government official" in sight.
The free market - the truly free market, not the kind we have today which is crippled by corporate protectionism, high tariffs and taxes and "government" monopolies - is the backbone of a true libertarian society and relies on the good will of the consumer, and the worker, to survive and thrive.
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 29 April, 2016, 10:13:37 AM
Personal choice, yes. To discriminate beyond gym membership and unisex toilets. To discriminate based on someone's age, race, ethnicity, sex, gender, religious belief or lack of, ableness, mental health, class, etc..
In a "truly free world" such clubs would serve no purpose. There would be no need for people to exclude themselves from genuine discourse (something you were advocating previously with regard people's attitudes being changed) which is why, ultimately, clubs founded on fear and bigotry are harmful, hence me quoting you in full.
The 'less-enlightened' (your words) should (and would) be willing to have their belief systems challenged in public debate not confirmed and reinforced by like-minded individuals in private retreats. Such clubs aren't conducive to education. They exist as refuges for the intolerant, a place members can go to escape a world being overrun by darkies, fags, kikes, Mohammedans, mongs, and proles.
I agree with the majority of what you say here. I, personally, do not find racism, willful ignorance or bigotry to be endearing qualities in anyone. However, just because I think this, I have no right to force others to think the same thing. If I did have the right to force people not to be bigoted then the equal and opposite right for others to force me to be bigoted must also exist. Much as I would detest seeing such clubs, I would not assume the right to ban them. It's better to educate than subjugate.
Quote from: GordonR on 29 April, 2016, 11:06:05 AM
QuoteDisliking people, for any reason, is not a crime.
Actually, I think you'll find it clearly is - certainly to the extent we're talking about here, where people are denied access to goods, services, locations etc purely on the basis of personal prejudice regarding their race, gender, sexuality, physical or mental health, or religion.
http://report-it.org.uk/what_is_hate_crime (http://report-it.org.uk/what_is_hate_crime)
From dislike to hate crime? Seriously? Did you read what I said about harming people based on dislike?
Plenty of people dislike me - that's neither hate nor a crime.
People are discriminated against, yes, and that's often bad - but sometimes necessary. Should a landlord, for example, be forced to rent a top floor flat with limited access to someone with a physical disability whose life might be jeopardized in the event of a fire because of discrimination laws? Then there's monetary discrimination - if somebody can't afford to buy a million pound flat in Kensington, should the vendor be forced to sell at whatever price the poor person offers? Should a shopkeeper be forced to sell lighter fluid to someone he knows to be, or even suspects to be, an arsonist?
Of course it's disgusting if a shopkeeper or other service provider refuses to deal with would be customers on the grounds of race, creed, colour, gender, sexuality or any other superficial difference - but that shopkeeper or provider risks alienating a large proportion of the customer base, and diminished profits, through such actions. If somebody wants to do that, just let them - then stand back and watch their business fail.
The gist of your argument seems to be that there's no need for anti discrimination laws because there's no way that people would buy from a company that treats others badly.
That is obviously not true.
You've also confused the ability to pay for something with being discriminated against, to justify another of your ridiculous examples. There's a clear difference between "I won't sell you a product at a reduced price" and " I refuse to sell you a service you require because you're a Jew".
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 29 April, 2016, 05:13:31 PM
that shopkeeper risks alienating a large proportion of the customer base, and diminished profits, through (discriminating against others). If somebody wants to do that, just let them - then stand back and watch their business fail
That's the Whig interpretation of history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history), Sharky.
This is David Maxwell Fyfe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Maxwell_Fyfe,_1st_Earl_of_Kilmuir) (1900-1967). He was an MP from 1935-1962, serving as Attorney General and Home Secretary. An opinion poll of the general public named him third favourite to succeed Churchill.
As Home Secretary, he described homosexuality in men as a plague he intended to rid England of (http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/from-torment-to-tolerance-and-acceptance-to-the-everyday-the-course-of-lgbt-equality-in-the-uk/), and he opposed the bill which eventually led to the
decriminalising (not legalisation) of gay sex for those over the age of 21,
in 1967.
His views were not those of an unpopular minority (http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-30/personal-relationships/homosexuality.aspx). Sometimes it takes a law to stop people being cunts:
(http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/38527/personal_relationships_figure_1_5.png?width=500&height=364.3949930458971)
I'm at the tram stop this evening, scrawny lad in filthy tracky turns to two girls standing beside me and addresses the white girl of the pair in the drawn-out slurred pitch of the Dublin drunk/junkie: "do you know you have the most beautiful blue eyes". "Yep, that's why I married her" says the black girl of the pair (and convincingly said, rather than a cunning defence). Scobie says, still in the mangled tones of the fellow you don't by choice sit beside on a park bench: "I'm really sorry, I didn't know she was your wife, didn't mean anything by it". "No problem" say the two girls together.
This exchange brought to you by near-universal acceptance of equal rights which comes with legislation to back it up. Absolutely inconceivable in my youth that a mixed-race gay couple would be treated with respect by the average edgy drunk - I would have expected a fouk-mouthed retort on at least two grounds. No-one is policing this lad's speech directly, but he knows, we all know, that this is the society we live in , the society we want to live in. These laws, these policies, we want them. They encourage us to be better.
A typically interesting and eloquent response TB.
Anecdotally, friends point to the complete absence of gay (or similar) as an insult used by teenage boys.
Question for Sharky: can you think of one negative outcome (within the existing legal framework as conceived by the sheeple you pity) of equality legislation?
TB I have no idea who you are, what you look like or what your real name is but I will one day find you and hug you! A beautiful example of how it should work and is becoming progressively common.
DDD, i'm sorry your visit to Canal Street was so misfortunate, i've always found it to be my kind of a night out and my straight friends have always been made welcome.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 29 April, 2016, 05:34:52 PM
The gist of your argument seems to be that there's no need for anti discrimination laws because there's no way that people would buy from a company that treats others badly.
That is obviously not true.
You've also confused the ability to pay for something with being discriminated against, to justify another of your ridiculous examples. There's a clear difference between "I won't sell you a product at a reduced price" and " I refuse to sell you a service you require because you're a Jew".
You have misunderstood. The anti-discrimination "laws" would be written into libertarian trade agreements (in my example) and upheld by the signatories. You also seem to be imagining how a libertarian company would operate if it suddenly came into being
now, in the current non-libertarian environment. As I said at the start of my post, my answer comes from a hypothetical time when a country is, or is on its way to being, a libertarian society. A libertarian society cannot come into being overnight or through some kind of armed uprising or general coup. It's nowhere near as simple as just slotting a libertarian leader into Number 10 and then getting on with your life. It's the opposite of that. It begins and ends at grass roots level, firstly with learning about libertarianism from such writers as Spooner, von Mises and Rothbard (among others), and then figuring out one thing at a time. It's a case of chipping away at what is, bit by bit, and not simply chopping its head off and sewing on a new one. And I'm sorry you found my response "ridiculous" - I couldn't think of anything as in-depth and complicated as "...because that's how the world works."
Butch - thanks for the links. I'll read them later as I'm about to go to work.
Tordels, legislation may have played a part in cementing modern attitudes but it is not the
source of them. It's not like legislators said, "hey, i know, let's make people equal," because they didn't - they simply took modern attitudes and desires at second or third hand and then codified them. It doesn't take legislation to do this. Furthermore, legislation is a small part - there's also the massive influence of television, film, radio, newspapers, books, general social attitudes, cases at law, etc.
Cosh, I neither like nor use the term "sheeple" - I think it's derogatory and insulting and does nothing to get my point of view across. All terms like that do is put people's backs up. That term is just one step up from calling people idiots, and people are not idiots. I have great faith in people. If I didn't, how could I be libertarian? In answer to your question - no, not off the top of my head. I'll have a think about it and get back to you as I have to get off to work now.
Quote from: Tordelback on 29 April, 2016, 07:04:46 PM
I'm at the tram stop this evening, scrawny lad in filthy tracky turns to two girls standing beside me and addresses the white girl of the pair in the drawn-out slurred pitch of the Dublin drunk/junkie: "do you know you have the most beautiful blue eyes". "Yep, that's why I married her" says the black girl of the pair (and convincingly said, rather than a cunning defence). Scobie says, still in the mangled tones of the fellow you don't by choice sit beside on a park bench: "I'm really sorry, I didn't know she was your wife, didn't mean anything by it". "No problem" say the two girls together.
This exchange brought to you by near-universal acceptance of equal rights which comes with legislation to back it up. Absolutely inconceivable in my youth that a mixed-race gay couple would be treated with respect by the average edgy drunk - I would have expected a fouk-mouthed retort on at least two grounds. No-one is policing this lad's speech directly, but he knows, we all know, that this is the society we live in , the society we want to live in. These laws, these policies, we want them. They encourage us to be better.
Ha! Brilliant. This is not the Ireland I grew up in, thank fuck.
QuoteThe anti-discrimination "laws" would be written into libertarian trade agreements (in my example) and upheld by the signatories.
Written agreements which everyone agrees to abide by, but which are definitely not laws. When the companies which provide you with fuel break these agreements, you'll just go to another company? Except, there's nothing to prevent every company from breaking the agreement, allowing them to make more of a profit and leaving you with no choice.
Quotemy answer comes from a hypothetical time when a country is, or is on its way to being, a libertarian society.
"Utopian society will be utopian" isn't an answer to anything. "I imagine a time when crime doesn't exist, so there's no need for a police force" is not a reason to do away with a police force. "I imagine a time when everyone will treat everyone with respect regardless of race, gender, or religion, so there's no need for laws to enforce that" is not a reason to do away with anti discrimination laws.
QuoteAnd I'm sorry you found my response "ridiculous" - I couldn't think of anything as in-depth and complicated as "...because that's how the world works."
Do you honestly think that companies which act badly don't run at a profit?
Quotelegislation may have played a part in cementing modern attitudes but it is not the source of them.
No legislation is not the source, but that doesn't mean it is not necessary. As a society, we can only move at the pace the slowest members are willing to move at. When slavery was abolished, plenty of people would have been quite happy to keep slaves. (Yes I know, in a libertarian world everyone is just nice to each other) anti pollution laws are made despite plenty of organization s and individuals being willing to pollute. Equal pay laws are required because many companies were perfectly willing to treat women worse. There is no reason to think that these things would have just developed had they not been enforced by legislation.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 April, 2016, 03:33:10 AM
legislation may have played a part in cementing modern attitudes but it is not the source of them ... they simply took modern attitudes and desires at second or third hand and then codified them.
70% of baby boomers still thought homosexuality was wrong in 1993 (http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-30/personal-relationships/homosexuality.aspx). Their elders, who made up the majority of the voting public when homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967, disapproved even more strongly. There were no votes to be won by decriminalising homosexuality:
QuoteThere was no political impetus to legislate on this matter, but it was considered that criminal law should not penalise homosexual men, already the object of ridicule and derision. The comments of Roy Jenkins, Home Secretary at the time, captured the government's attitude: "those who suffer from this disability carry a great weight of shame all their lives" (quoted during parliamentary debate by The Times on 4 July 1967).
Lord Arran attempted to minimise criticism with the following qualification to this historic milestone: "I ask (homosexuals) to show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity ... any form of ostentatious behaviour or public flaunting, now or in the future, would be utterly distasteful ... (and) make the sponsors of this bill regret what they had done" (quoted during Royal Assent of the bill by The Times newspaper on 28 July 1967 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Offences_Act_1967))
As the links above demonstrate, public hostility to homosexual men remained strong amongst boomers and their elders in the years following decriminalisation, but not among those who grew up after the passing of the 1967 legislation
[1], in a world where being gay didn't make you the same kind of criminal as a
rapist or
child molester.
[1] The eighties led me to understand that trainers bought (by your mum) from the market were gay and that Julian Clary and Jimmy Somerville were gay. As such, gayness was to be avoided in oneself, but might be tolerated and even prove entertaining in others. Progress of sorts
Quote from: Modern Panther on 30 April, 2016, 09:56:30 AM
Written agreements which everyone agrees to abide by, but which are definitely not laws. When the companies which provide you with fuel break these agreements, you'll just go to another company? Except, there's nothing to prevent every company from breaking the agreement, allowing them to make more of a profit and leaving you with no choice.
According to the Oxford Dictionary (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/law), law is the, "... system of rules which a particular country or
community recognizes as
regulating the actions of its members and which it
may enforce by the imposition of penalties." So, basically, a law is something which people agree to abide by. Things like the rules contained in the agreements I was talking about. And once more you bring up a foolish example, set in
this current system, totally failing to recognise that,
in this current system, fuel companies lobby and bribe and bully "governments" for concessions and protection - centralising their wrong-doing through one easily manageable group of greedbags. "Oh, did we spill some black shit all over your beach? Sorry - here's a couple of million, now f*ck off and leave us alone. And if you don't leave us alone, we might have to reduce or even stop trading - and if we do that, oh my! What a mess you'll be in!" So they're left alone.
In a libertarian society, what the fuel companies do would be up to you and your community. The Esso on the roundabout ripping people off? Boot it out and get a better firm in, or create a new one - one that isn't banned from trading by protectionist "government" tariffs, license fees and regulations. make sure the new company's a good one yourself, by hiring your own private fuel experts to check its business practices and premises out. Esso's soon going to realise that it's in the free market, now, not some protected cloud-cuckoo land where it can do as it pleases. It's going to learn, and fast, that in a true free market economy the consumer is In Charge, not some easily bought-off gang of freebooters in expensive suits. If it doesn't learn, it'll go the way of the dodo and there'll be plenty of good business types waiting in the wings to take over.
The way to make businesses follow the rules is to hit them in their pockets. You find a good business, you'll fill its pockets with gold and it'll cherish your custom forever. That's basic economics.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 30 April, 2016, 09:56:30 AM
"Utopian society will be utopian" isn't an answer to anything. "I imagine a time when crime doesn't exist, so there's no need for a police force" is not a reason to do away with a police force. "I imagine a time when everyone will treat everyone with respect regardless of race, gender, or religion, so there's no need for laws to enforce that" is not a reason to do away with anti discrimination laws.
Fantastic example of a straw-man argument, there. I never mentioned Utopia. There's no such thing as Utopia. A Utopia, being perfect, would be a place where there is nothing left to improve, nothing left to solve, nothing left to strive for; nothing left to do. Deadworld. Any society, be it libertarian, fascist, democratic, republican or the peculiar land you seem to inhabit, are all
works in progress. Society is a process, not a goal.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 30 April, 2016, 09:56:30 AM
No legislation is not the source, but that doesn't mean it is not necessary. As a society, we can only move at the pace the slowest members are willing to move at. When slavery was abolished, plenty of people would have been quite happy to keep slaves. (Yes I know, in a libertarian world everyone is just nice to each other) anti pollution laws are made despite plenty of organization s and individuals being willing to pollute. Equal pay laws are required because many companies were perfectly willing to treat women worse. There is no reason to think that these things would have just developed had they not been enforced by legislation.
Yet another straw-man - "...in a libertarian world everyone is just nice to each other." What a crock. Human beings are human beings. There will always be disagreements and arguments, no matter the society. It doesn't matter where the rules are written if nobody follows them. How many times have I seen people chucking rubbish out of car windows up the motorway, dumping old mattresses down country lanes, double-parked, pissed-up and fighting in pub car parks, showing their tits and arses through mini-bus windows, pissing in the gutter, not wearing seat belts, stealing saplings from public parks or the borders of farmers' fields, short-changing their customers, smacking their kids, swearing at check-out staff, running red lights, not picking up after their dogs, playing their radios too loud, picking wild flowers, stealing supermarket trolleys and dumping them in canals, spraying graffiti on walls, pinching stationary from work, fiddling the gas meter? The list of things legislated against is virtually endless, and this is just the low-level stuff! There's no reason to think legislation had no effect at all but I don't think its effect is as great as you would like to believe. As I said before, television, films, newspapers, books, radio, social attitudes, schooling and plain old leading by example have a far greater influence. Here's an example; a friend and I went for a walk along the local sea-wall not long ago. She said to me, "Gee, look at all that plastic crap washed up." So we got a couple of washed-up buckets and started collecting a bit on our way back. And as we went, what did we see? Lo and behold, a couple of other people (but by no means all, admittedly) were following suit. Legislation didn't tell us to do that, we just did it. A handful of people voluntarily doing a small amount to make a tiny bit of the world slightly better. Pass legislation ordering people to clear up the coastline if they want to walk there and very few people will bother. Show some celebrity doing it voluntarily on TV and you'll get thousands joining in - but still not everybody. Most of us would much rather be inspired to do something than ordered to do the same thing.
Come on, Panther, you can't think that this modern fuck-witted society is the best we can do, surely? Like I said earlier, society is a process and we have to keep moving it along. We can't just keep on doing the same things over and over, hoping that the next time there's a
popularity contest election the person who gets in will steal less of our money, stop threatening us so much, destroy fewer of our services, pander to half the special interest lobbyists, listen to more sensible advisors, not get us into any more wars, etc. But, oh shit, look - it's all happening again. Damn it. Well, maybe next time. Or the time after that. Or the time after that? Because if we keep on down this road, with those self-appointed godheads in Westminster making things one degree worse every day, sooner or later we're going to vote in a Hitler or a Stalin, and then what? Our system's already thrown up a BNP and a UKIP so don't say it could never happen. Concentrate the power of society all in one place like that and the danger is great - and more imminent the worse things get and the more disaffected people feel.
Is libertarianism the answer? I think it might be but, of course, I can't be sure. I think it's got a lot going for it. You disagree, that's fine. That's great! But we have to think of something to work towards beyond more of the same - because that more of the same is causing a lot of misery and getting a lot of people killed. We need to think about how to move the process on.
You've managed to completely ignore the issue.
Yes, I think we can do better. No, I don't think we'll get there through unregulated capitalism.
"Throwing out" the local petrol station sounds like a great idea, but history shows us that people don't behave this way. People make the financial decisions which are best in the short term for them. People, on the whole, care little about the environment they can't see or the rights of minority groups that they are not confronted with. There are plenty of facts and sources in the last few posts which show this.
You've said yourself that people will continue to behave poorly, yet you think that having a powerless minority who are willing to pick up litter and point out bad behaviour is a solution.
And I appreciate that your not talking about an actual utopia. My point was that saying "a functioning libertarian society will be a functioning libertarian society" is not a blueprint for a libertarian society, nor is it any reason to believe that people would be better of without the legislation that protects them from abuse. You want to change things, but you've said in the past that you are unwilling and unable to put forward any solution as to how society should actually reach this point, because we should all just get there.
If you're unhappy with government, if you're unhappy with legislation then there is a whole system in place to change things. It might be hard, but as noted above even the most unpleasant but popular rules can be changed. In a libertarian society, the only thing that changes things is having enough money to compete with a monopoly.
But your not going to accept this, because you begin and end with the premise that government is either bad or simply non existent.
History shows us these very things have happened, hence the still used expressions "tarred and feathered" and "run out of town on a rail." People who scammed, harmed or insulted the community were humiliated and banished. Whilst I am not advocating such treatment, one has to admit that tarring and feathering highly-polished pseudo-humanoid Cameron and dumping him in a remote field somewhere does have some appeal. In any case, it's better than lynching.
Yes, people will make financial decisions that benefit them. They do that now. They have done it throughout history. They will continue to do it. The trick is to make the benefits less toxic to wider society. Unfettered capitalism does not mean a free-for-all or survival of the fittest. Libertarianism is the champion of enlightened self-interest. The system we have now is the champion of unenlightened greed.
As an example, take the logging industry. A "government" sells logging rights to vast swathes of the Amazon, for example. The logging companies then have the incentive to cut down as many trees as they can before somebody else gets to them. If sections of the forest were sold to the companies instead, however, their priorities change. It then becomes more economically viable to cut and re-plant in order to maintain a sustainable income from the land they now own. Ownership is the key to enlightened self-interest.
People will continue to act poorly so long as conditions permit, and even encourage, such behaviour. "Government" is the biggest enabler of bad behaviour and one of the primary, if not the primary, culprit. It does things you and I would never dream of doing. Picking up litter is one tiny example (as I said) and not, as you claim, an entire manifesto upon which to lay the foundation of a better society.
I have offered no blueprint because no blueprints exist. I have offered only suggestions and indicated possible directions and possible solutions. Without writing a novel, I could not possibly hope to present every conceivable answer to every conceivable question, nor every conceivable solution to every conceivable problem. Nobody could. There are, however, a great many solutions out there which have been written about over the centuries by far more intelligent and learned people than I could ever hope to be. It's not like there's absolutely nothing to use as foundations. There's tons of stuff.
And you're absolutely right. I've said, many times, that I can't tell you how to get from here to there. There are various reasons for this, chief among them being that I don't know which "there" you want to get to. I don't know what's best for you, your family or your community. I don't know what you can and can't do, what you're willing or unwilling to do, what you have got or not got to offer. Those are questions for you and you alone to answer - it's not up to me, or anybody, to map out your future for you.
I've said this before as well, but the only revolution that's worth a damn is a revolution of the mind, a revolution of attitude. And that I might be able to help with. After that, it's up to you.
The system you speak of has one function and one function only - to preserve itself. It is a system of coercion and monopoly. It manufactures nothing, it produces nothing. Its only source of income is through theft at gunpoint. Its only power is that which you give it - which power you give, again, at gunpoint. It is little more than a cult with its own version of the Spanish Inquisition to deal with dissenters.
At least in a libertarian society you have the chance to compete with a monopoly. Currently, there's no chance because, if you try, you will be stifled by the legislation you love so dearly, by tariffs and licensing, through taxes and red tape. If you try to cut through all that, the state's enforcers will shut you down, lock you down and take you down with batons and handcuffs. Under these protections, monopolies have no need to be sensitive to customers' needs, mindful of the environment, efficient or even profitable for any shortfalls will be offset by corporate welfare, paid for with the money stolen from you. This system is not fair, not honourable and, perhaps worst of all, not sustainable.
Your last statement is correct. Unless you can convince me that coercion, theft, kidnapping, slavery and murder are good, then yes, I believe government is bad. And unless you can show me an actual thing, an entity which exists in and of itself, and is not just a bunch of people in a building assuming rights you and I don't have in order to keep themselves and their systems in place, I will continue to claim that "government" is as real as magic pixie dust.
Are government regulations the only thing that stop you from running your own oil company, or is the power to do such things held only by the richest? If we remove the government regulations which cut pollution and fix workers rights, would you be able to challenge the position of the wealthiest?
No...well, maybe you would in the libertarian world where everyone is "enlightened", but that is a utopia.
There's a reason why libertarianism is popular with the most powerful and wealthy. It cements their position, because it removes the democratic system which can challenge their authority. It raises self interest and self importance from vice to virtue. Under the pretence of individual freedom it gives us a system where everything is permissible if you can afford it.
We have laws to protect minority groups and the disenfranchised not because of some government scam of self interest, but because people fought for them, died for them. People struggled with unfair, and unregulated, systems for centuries. The idea that they are no longer required, or unfair...who does that benefit?
Enacting legislation is leading by example, just at the regional level. It's society saying to itself 'this is how we behave now'. Your list of horrid modern goings-on is accurate, but in most cases represents a distinct improvement on what was going on only a century ago.
I completely agree with the idea that individuals leading by example is a massively powerful force, your beach cleanup is an excellent case (I regularly participate in two beach cleanup groups, as well as doing it with just the kids - we always bring more bags than we think we can use, and we always end up with too few because passers-by join in). But note that it takes place against a background of pollution legislation, and general attitudes (including your own), that almost certainly make the task easier. And if you could vote for legislation that would further improve the situation, why not do both?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 29 April, 2016, 04:58:24 PMI agree with the majority of what you say here. I, personally, do not find racism, willful ignorance or bigotry to be endearing qualities in anyone. However, just because I think this, I have no right to force others to think the same thing. If I did have the right to force people not to be bigoted then the equal and opposite right for others to force me to be bigoted must also exist. Much as I would detest seeing such clubs, I would not assume the right to ban them. It's better to educate than subjugate.
To clarify, I was responding to your assertion that such clubs aren't harmful to others. Perhaps not directly, though being hives (wretched, natch) of scum and villainy they aren't conducive either to someone's 'education' for living in a world of
all stripes.
Panther, once again you think it's simply a case of pulling some lever somewhere with "Libertarianism" written on it, going straight from one system to another. I don't know if you've genuinely missed the historical and practical inadvisibility of such a move or if you're just stuck in a groove.
The libertarianism for the wealthy and powerful which you describe is no such thing, if anything it's a kind of Frankenstein socialism; privatisation of profit and socialisation of debt. Freedom for me and f*ck you. The democratic system is the thing that cements their wealth and power simply because they can buy influence all in one place. Take away that support system and they'll have to maintain their power and wealth on a level playing field. And to say that libertarianism leads to a state where everything is permissible if you can afford it is just laughable - that's the system we have now!
People fought and died for these things. A lot of conscripts. And, of course, another word for conscript is slave. What else would you call someone who is forced to do something they don't want to do?
Tordels, yes, some things are better than they were a century ago - but not as good (I hope) as they will be a century from now. The current system might get us there, but I seriously doubt it. As I said, society is a process and we need to be moving it along. Take the good things, keep them and nurture them and strengthen them - but toss out the bad stuff, the theft, the slavery, the coercion, the murder.
Also, note the way that pollution legislation works. Carbon credits being a case in point - carry on polluting as much as you want, just pay someone else to clean up their act so you don't have to make expensive changes to your factories and processes. I've worked in a factory that regularly polluted the environment. It was a big factory, owned by a household name. We knew in advance when the government inspectors were coming because a couple of days before we'd be cleaning and replacing filters that didn't usually get cleaned or changed because it meant halting the process for 48 hours. The locals would complain of pollution, the inspector would make an appointment and find everything in order. Bloody locals, complaining about nothing just for the Hell of it... The only firms getting unannounced spot-checks were the small ones, the ones the Big Boys wanted out of the way. No amount of legislation is going to change practices like that.
Too often, legislation is used as an industrial weapon. For example, recently my boss was telling me that it was ruled that all vehicles of a certain size must have special or additional mirrors added. A good idea for safety, to be sure. But this idea was put forward by the big companies, companies to which this expenditure is negligible. To smaller companies operating on tight budgets to start with, it's expensive - not only the cost of the mirrors and having them fitted but in having vehicles off the road for half a day or more to get the job done. And if it's not done, or not done in time, there's the larger expense of fines and having vehicles put off the road until the job is done. It's just one rule like this after another, adding up bit by bit until the smaller operators are forced out of business leaving more work for the big companies. The death of a thousand cuts - all through legislation.
Eric, once again I agree with you. We might perhaps quibble over the precise definition of harm; I wouldn't class name-calling or harsh language as directly harmful but it is dangerous, as it can lead to physical harm - which is never okay.
Living without law isn't some kind of dry thought experiment. There are, and have always been, areas where no state exists:
Christiania (http://www.visitdenmark.co.uk/en-gb/copenhagen/attractions/christiania)
Zomia (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/the-undiscovered-country/?&_r=0)
Somalia (http://www.economist.com/node/12637009)
Oh, now, Butch, surely you realise that Sharky does mean that sort of lawless. He mean the nice sort of lawless, where everything works out well because "government" isn't there to force companies to do silly things like comply with anti discrimination laws and pay taxes, and companies can just be replace by enthusiastic locals when they do naughty things, which they'll hardly ever do when they don't have to pay bribes to useless bureaucrats. We can't trust elected officials that we can replace.
Sharky, I'll repeat my questions. Is government regulation the only thing that prevents you from running your own oil company, or is a huge amount of money required? Who will benefit from removing anti discrimination laws?
I'll give you a clue...claiming that I just don't understand and that everything will work out okay if we can all just open our minds is not a valid answer.
Nobody said anything about living without law, it's how that law is propagated and upheld that's the question. In this country, we have the police - who are unquestioned paragons of virtue who never lie or cheat and treat everyone with utmost respect and honesty all the time. If you're driving along the motorway and a police car slots in behind you, how do you feel? Protected? Safe? At ease? Is your first thought, "ah, good," or "oh shit"?
If I wanted my own oil company, I could start my own, of course I could. I could buy shares in an existing company or raise capital by borrowing or issuing shares in my own. But say I've discovered an oilfield on an uninhabited island, under unused wilderness land or out at sea - is the "government" just going to allow me to drill? Nope. It's going to stop me and pass on those rights to established oil monopolies. I would remind you that John D. Rockerfeller was on the bones of his arse when he originally struck oil. He used the profits he made to bribe, buy and threaten "government" officials and representatives to help him build one of the biggest and most ruthless monopolies in history.
Nobody would benefit from removing anti-discrimination laws but that's not what I'm advocating. It's a case of shifting from having any laws which society wants from being enforced by government monopolised industries like the police and courts, who have no need to care much about customer satisfaction, to free market industries, like private protection agencies and private courts, whose very survival depends on customer satisfaction.
I'm guessing that when you hear phrases like "private protection agencies" and "private courts" you imagine paid bands of Mafiaesque thugs and dingy back-room kangaroo courts and forget that these things exist already, and have for a long time. Shops and factories employ private police (store detectives, security guards, nightwatchmen) and industry in general employs private courts (tribunals, arbitrators, lawyers). These private entities are employed by their reputations of fairness and conduct. If you need the police or courts these days you have only one choice as who to call - one of the government monopolies; and they're not tied to give a damn. If there were private alternatives, you'd subscribe to and/or call the one you'd heard good things about.
Sharky, I think that your utterly shitty treatment at the hands of the police and subsequently the courts is influencing your view here. And why wouldn't it - it makes the blood boio? Of course there are many things wrong with the police (this week's papers alone...) and they will always be in dire need of monitoring, accountability and reform, but the idea that a better alternative is privately-owned armies ungoverned by law or regulation, but somehow controlled by the sanction of market forces, is, well, terrifying. We've been there before. It wasn't very nice.
I'm going to be rude and preempt a response: the police are already a private army, owned by corrupt establishment, and there's no way of removing or reforming them. Except there is, through concerted democratic engagement. That's what's lacking here, genuine thoughtful, informed democracy. That's where energies should be expended.
I agree my attitude is coloured by my experience. I don't actually blame the officers involved so much as I blame the system they're working within. I genuinely believe the officers made a mistake and that their system swung into action not so much to protect them from the consequences but to protect itself as a whole.
Control and monitoring of the police now is too reliant on abstracts such as targets. The individual accountability of the officers themselves, who are human beings just like the rest of us, has been absorbed into an amorphous mass. Had the "government" been truly interested in providing a police service dedicated to serving the public and not a force to protect itself, outrages like Hilsborough and minor (in the wider sense) infractions such as my own case, would not take so long to come to light.
A police constable is just a human being in a costume with no more or fewer rights and responsibilities than the rest of us. Placing them behind a shield of "government" protection elevates them above this common status and encourages bad behaviour.
A private police force is not a private army. Let me try and explain how a private police force might, basically, work in a proposed libertarian society.
Imagine there is a large town center area full of shops, I'll use Lord Street in Southport as an example because its close to where I live. Under the current situation, the various shopkeepers and business owners down Lord Street pay taxes (ostensibly) into a central pot and gets whatever policing the local authorities decides it needs and/or can afford. These police are liable to be called away at any moment to other parts of town for any number of reasons, leaving Lord Street without any on-site cover at all. The police themselves decide which laws they're going to enforce or not and some of the officers (but by no means all) are downright rude and overbearing. The shop owners have no choice in the matter. If the police decide they can't afford to patrol Lord Street any more, or need to cut back patrols, the shop owners have little recourse but to complain and hope somebody listens. In the meantime, Lord Street may become so rife with crime that shoppers begin to stay away, harming profits.
The libertarian alternative would be for the Lord Street Merchants' Guild (for example) to pay a private policing company, staffed by properly trained officers, to patrol Lord Street and uphold the law. These officers would have the same powers as any other officers (indeed, the same powers you and I have) but would be directly accountable to the LSMG, their employers. Heavy handed, rude or overbearing officers would not be tolerated because the Guild wants them to be polite to the consumers enjoying their establishments and to treat everyone fairly and with respect. The private policing company, driven by free market forces, would provide a far superior service to the one we get today and strive to be the best in the area to win more contracts and increase profits.
There is no need to dismantle the inefficient and protected state police service overnight but allowing competition in this important field would be a good start. It's not as if the private police companies would just hire anyone off the street and squeeze them into a costume - applicants would be properly trained, as in any business, and the better officers would naturally gravitate to the better firms, as in any business. Poor officers, just like poor employees in any for-profit company, would not be protected by a "government" backed institution but retrained, reassigned to more fitting duties or fired.
Not rude at all, Tordels.
Democratic reform is one way to try and reform the police but I don't think it's a very good way, especially as things stand. Another way, as I described above, would be to allow competition - to break the monopoly. Even labouring under the current system, the existence of private police agencies would force the state's force to up its game in response.
Perhaps private forces and democratic pressure working in tandem would be far more effective than just one or the other and be a good example of how we can move the process of society along without the need to suddenly sweep away the state's policing mechanism.
Quote. If you're driving along the motorway and a police car slots in behind you, how do you feel? Protected? Safe? At ease? Is your first thought, "ah, good," or "oh shit"?
If security guards drew up behind me I'd think "fuck 'em, they have no authority here.".
Law and order for those who can buy it. Kickstarters for everyone else. Let's hope we don't have to buy any penicillin.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 01 May, 2016, 05:15:39 AM
If you need the police or courts these days you have only one choice as who to call - one of the government monopolies; and they're not tied to give a damn. If there were private alternatives, you'd subscribe to and/or call the one you'd heard good things about.
During a heated dispute with my neighbour, he calls the Aldi Value Police. I consider their conflict resolution and breach of the peace services to be of low quality, so I phone the more expensive Apple i-Constabulary to represent my interests.
Obviously my police win, because they're more expensive, better resourced, and have better branding, but my neighbour files to have the case tried in an Uber Court ™. The Uber Judge ® arrives in a Toyota people carrier with one hubcap missing, but I'm unhappy with this rough and ready justice.
I want the case to be tried at my local Waitrose Crown Court, as they offer a greater range of laws, which better fit my modern lifestyle aspirations. They employ artisanal legislators, who'll draft a fresh law, tailored to meet your needs, while you wait. It's more costly, but you get what you pay for.
Who wins; my neighbour and his Poundland justice, or my reading the Sunday supplement in front of the Aga law?
(http://i.imgur.com/9vhi2iA.jpg?1)
Quote from: Modern Panther on 01 May, 2016, 09:54:17 AM
If security guards drew up behind me I'd think "fuck 'em, they have no authority here."
Exactly! Breakthrough! Doesn't matter who draws up behind you - unless you're causing loss, harm or damage then the only authority
anyone has over you is the authority you give them. Just putting somebody into a costume doesn't make them special.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 01 May, 2016, 09:54:17 AM
Law and order for those who can buy it. Kickstarters for everyone else. Let's hope we don't have to buy any penicillin.
And you don't buy penicillin now? Through
theft taxes?
But is there really a problem if all the lawyers are getting big fat fees?
That's an excellent question, Butch. Unfortunately, I've just been called into work so I'll have to answer briefly ("Yaay!" I hear you cry!).
In a world with myriad private police agencies, what happens when conflicts inevitably arise? The client of Company A against the Client of Company B?
Firstly, these companies will be professionals and in most cases be able to work out who's right and who's wrong between them.
In case they can't, each company will have a list of private courts/arbitrators whose impartiality and professionalism they trust - say the EDX Arbitration Co - who will, based on previous decisions, common law and evidence presented, rule on the case. Both companies, having agreed beforehand, will abide by this ruling. And the EDX Arbitration Co. makes a few bob in the process!
If you still don't agree, you're free to try another court or arbitration service, possibly a more specialised one or one employing more experienced judges or arbitrators, but that's your choice.
QuoteExactly! Breakthrough! Doesn't matter who draws up behind you - unless you're causing loss, harm or damage then the only authority anyone has over you is the authority you give them.
Not so much a breakthroughs a massive hole in your line of reasoning. I could have just mowed down a line of pensioners on their way to the soup kitchen. Private security guards have no authority over me unless I accept their authority. Same with private courts...they find against me, I can just pick another one and pay them enough money so they find in my favour. Law and security for the wealthy and to hell with everyone else.
And, yes, I do pay for healthcare through my taxes...unless, of course, I can't. In which case society pays for me. In Libertania, if I can't pay I'm fucked unless I happen to have wealthy friends.
Oh. what a brave new world.
Dear Aldi Legal Assistant,
Thank you for recent correspondence regarding our clients' dispute.
After discussion I must agree that my client, on whose good fortune and continued custom my companies relies, is not in the wrong. I'm glad that we've been able to come to this arrangement like the professionals we are.
In the event that you are not satisfied with this response, we are willing to take the matter further. In the past we have used EDX Arbitration Services and are happy to refer the issue to them. Our company has a long history of co operation with EDX. In fact, we are their biggest client. I am sure, however, that they will be completely impartial, despite all the money we give them.
Our invoice is enclosed. Please pay within 28 days, or a private security company will be employed to follow you around. Feel free to employ your own protection should you feel threatened.
Yours,
Apple Legal.
Stepping back for a moment from what is increasingly reminding me of Guard-o-ped from 'Are you tired of being mugged?' (Prog 354, CF 7), one of my fundamental problems with Sharkworld is the sheer amount of time and energy I'm going to have to put into providing myself with basic services. I have to actively choose, oversee and assess my police force, my legal system, my roads maintenance division, my local hospital, my food safety inspections, my local pollution levels, my education system etc etc... Right now I delegate and pay local and national governments to do that stuff, and I don't even have the time to keep proper tabs on them.
And this really is my point: if I (and my fellow citizenry) are not currently sufficiently engaged with the folks who are delegated to manage the complex logistical and specialist webs of modern society to make them do a good job, are we really going to take on the burdens of micro-management of every aspect of our world? I can't even decide on a private rubbish collection company, I'd much rather pay the Council to do it like I used to. I, and I suspect the majority, actually prefer delegating thinking about all this crap.
And if we did have the energy and enthusiasm for this kind of of non-stop decision making, would we not be better directing it at keeping our current representatives in line?
It all reminds me of my days of running a company, when I decided that since I knew a bit the best way to manage the 25 or 30 office computers was to do all the maintenance myself, rather than hire someone for something that wasn't a full time job, or pay some external crowd. Great idea, but some days it seemed like it was all I did, and there were more important things I really should have been attending to.
Sharky, have you been reading the 'ungoverned' by Vernor Vinge again?? Z
Quote from: Modern Panther on 01 May, 2016, 11:16:41 AM
Not so much a breakthroughs a massive hole in your line of reasoning. I could have just mowed down a line of pensioners on their way to the soup kitchen. Private security guards have no authority over me unless I accept their authority. Same with private courts...they find against me, I can just pick another one and pay them enough money so they find in my favour. Law and security for the wealthy and to hell with everyone else.
Damn, and I thought you were getting it. Okay, let's take a look at three scenarios from the mundane to the monstrous.
1: You're driving your car along the M6 Toll and a private police patrol vehicle slots in behind you. It's dark and pissing down with rain. You're not worried because you haven't done anything wrong and, even if you had, you know your rights. The patrol car gives you a quick flash of its beacons and the matrix on the front says "PLEASE STOP." You don't stop because you don't have to. You know you don't have to, they know you don't have to. So you keep going. They keep following. They keep requesting you to stop. Maybe you give them the finger but you keep going. F*ck those do-gooder assholes! They follow you until you exit the toll road, their jurisdiction, and then let you go off on your own. But there's another private patrol car waiting on the slip road, with a different jurisdiction. The private police in this car try to flag you down but, you know, f*ck 'em, right? This car follows you too until it too leaves its jurisdiction. Another one follows you instead. Then another. Then another. All the way home.
When you arrive home, you discover your tail lights aren't working. The police merely wanted to tell you this but, because you were exercising your right not to stop, they never got the chance. As you had not committed any loss, harm or damage to others, there was nothing they could do except follow you - not to intimidate you or issue you with a ticket (they can't do either of these things because they're police constables, tasked with upholding the law and protecting the general public on their beat and not, as we have today, police officers whose task is to enforce regulation and raise revenue for the state) but to protect other road users; using their own tail-lights to stop other motorists ploughing into the back of you due to the poor visibility conditions. Some weeks later, you may get a bill if any private police cars had been forced to deviate from the routes or tasks demanded of them by their respective employers in order to protect other road users from your idiocy.
But say it was a little more serious than that, your rear bumper was hanging off and you didn't know. Again, they ask you to stop but you refuse. In that case, the patrol car stays behind you in order to "take the hit" if your bumper does come off - protecting other road-users, as is their job. They may even dispatch another car to ride beside the first, protecting the middle lane. As you leave the M6 Toll, they'd have radioed ahead to the next private police agency so that they could do the same and follow you. If your bumper comes off and hits any of the police cars, you will get billed for repairing the damage. If there's any damage to the road, you'll be billed for that as well. If only you'd stopped! In the first instance, the police might have had some spare bulbs and fuses aboard to help you fix your tail lights - they might have sold them to you or given them to you depending on the calibre of the agency involved. They'd have escorted you to a garage or service station, called out the AA for you. Helped you - because that's why they're there. In the second instance, they might have had some zip-ties or string aboard to help you tie your bumper up as a temporary fix until you could get it properly looked at. But no, you had to exercise your rights and, as a consequence, incurred costs.
2: You've stolen my car and you're driving it along the M6 Toll and a private police patrol vehicle slots in behind you. The patrol car gives you a quick flash of its beacons and the matrix on the front says "PLEASE STOP." This time, knowing they can't drag you out of the stolen car and haul you away because that's assault (which is a worse crime than theft) you stop and wind the window down. The private constable gets out and politely informs you that you're driving a stolen vehicle. You tell him that you know and ask him what he's going to do about it. He tells you that he's currently doing all he can and advises you to return the vehicle to its owner (while you're not looking, maybe he or his colleague places a GPS tracker on the car) as soon as possible. You tell him to f*ck off and drive away. He doesn't follow you but instead calls my insurance company, to whom I reported the theft. It was my insurance company who reported the theft to the private police network. The private patrolman reports what he knows, gives the frequency of the GPS tracker and uploads the video of your conversation taken with his uniform-cam. Then the patrolman gets on with the business of his assigned duties.
My insurance company sends out a specialist recovery team in unmarked vehicles, including an investigator and a couple of private police constables. They wait for you to stop and exit the vehicle - which you have to do at some point. Then they seize the vehicle and put it on the back of a recovery truck. If you try to attack the recovery team, or if the recovery team try to attack you, the constables step in to prevent it. You are not arrested because that's kidnapping, worse than theft. The recovery team ask you for the car keys. You refuse to give the keys to them. They shrug and leave, taking the car with them and leaving you behind. The investigator, and maybe the constables, remain. The investigator asks you your name and address. You refuse to say anything because that's your right, right? Right. So the investigators follow you, do some investigating and find out who you are.
Several days later you are presented with a bill from my insurance firm for all the time and resources expended in recovering my car, the petrol you've used, the tracker and any damage you've done. You refused to return the keys so all the locks and ignition had to be replaced - you're charged for that, too. If you refuse to pay, you're sued. If only you'd followed that jumped-up do-gooder's advice and returned my car straight away, you wouldn't have such a lot of money to pay out right now!
You refuse to pay because you know they can't just come along and take your money or your stuff because that's theft, right? You are invited, through your own insurance company if you have one or directly if you don't, to attend a voluntary hearing at a reputable private court. You don't turn up because you don't have to. So you are tried in absentia and all the evidence gathered proves your guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. All the costs so far are added up and you are sent a bill. You ignore it. You are sent another bill and advice on what to do if you can't pay. You ignore that, too, because that is your right. You are sent a final bill - each one slightly more expensive than the last due to the extra work involved - along with a notice that if you do not make some arrangement to pay off your debt immediately, your name will be added to the Dishonourable Register. All you do is laugh, because that's so lame. The Dishonourable Register! What a joke!
Then you start receiving letters. The first one comes from your bank. They've used whatever money was left in your account to pay off your credit card, cancelled the card and closed your account. As signators to the Voluntary Banking Code, your bank takes the Dishonourable Register seriously and has a policy of not allowing anyone on that list access to their services as they have proven they cannot be trusted. Then comes one from Sky TV - they'll still provide you with a service but insist that you pay six months in advance otherwise your subscription will be cancelled. Then come letters from your ISP and 'phone provider with similar content. Your insurance company. Your mortgage provider. The private school where you send your kids. Your local newsagent is more understanding, he doesn't mind you still getting your Prog and Meg from him but, from now on, you can't have them unless you pay for them first; no more credit. Then a letter from your boss - the firm you work for is applying for Voluntary Business Code status to increase business and thus have agreed to take the Dishonourable Register seriously. As your name is on that register, unfortunately they're going to have to let you go. They're sad to lose you, though, and will offer you any help you need to get your name taken off the Register - just make an appointment with Zoe in HR and she'll help you set up a monthly payment scheme with the people you owe the money to. No biggie. You find all this intolerable and unfair and write to private courts and arbitration services to take the original agency who sued you to court. Unfortunately, you've been blacklisted from most courts and the few who are willing to look at your case find the already submitted evidence against you compelling and cannot help you. You are in dishonour and individuals and businesses have every right to refuse to deal with you, just as you initially refused to deal with the private police. Of course, this is a libertarian society and there are many charities who will help you find food, clothing and shelter and you'll be able to live of the backs of private charities for as long as you want. Or you could give up and realise that living in a self-regulating society means that you have to take responsibility for your own actions in order to play a full part in it.
3: You're so angered by my last post that you get in your car, find me and deliberately run me over - killing me outright. You flee down the M6 Toll and a private police patrol vehicle slots in behind you. The patrol car gives you a quick flash of its beacons and the matrix on the front says "PLEASE STOP." You refuse, because they've got no right to force you to do anything, right? But, what's this? Another three patrol cars appear and box you in, bringing you to a halt. They ask you to step out of the vehicle but you refuse. So they smash the window and drag you out. This is assault, yes, but assault is a lesser crime than murder. They handcuff you and arrest you. This is kidnapping but, again, kidnapping is a lesser crime than murder. You are put in a holding cell.
If you subscribe to a private insurance or protection company they dispatch help in the form of lawyers, advisors and maybe even a couple of private constables to ensure your safety. My private insurance company presents you with a choice of private courts which have proven to be professional and impartial in cases like this. You can pick one or suggest your own at the advice of your own company. If you refuse to choose, one will be chosen for you - your own company will insist on the one chosen being known to it and of reputable standing - and you will be put on trial.
You are found guilty of premeditated murder.
Now comes the one part of a libertarian society that I am truly uncomfortable with. As I have paid the ultimate price for your rage, the ultimate sanction must also be an option. Execution. However, the sentence is not decided by legislation, the jury or even the judge. A range of sentences is put on offer and my next of kin decides what it wants. They may decide to forgive you. They may decide to request a flogging or an amputation. They may decide to have you imprisoned for life. They may decide to have you executed. Or they may allow you to buy your way out of such "eye-for-an-eye" justice. Indeed, I may have written into my will the sentence I would prefer in the event I was murdered, sparing my loved ones this difficult choice. In any event, your fate is now in the hands of your victim's kin so you'd better pray they're better libertarians than you are. In the event, it happens that I have stipulated "payment restitution only" in my will and all the court, jury, kin and yourself have to decide is the amount to be paid. They settle on £1,000,000. Even if everything you own is sold, you still don't have close to that amount (and you've got all the court costs and agency fees to pay as well) - so, what's the solution? It's not £250,000 and an amputation or £500,000 and a flogging (although it might be in other cases, I have stipulated "payment restitution only" because I don't believe in that kind of barbarity, so it's kinda' lucky you murdered me and not Ian Duncan Smith) - the only thing left is the libertarian prison, where you will be enslaved.
Yes, enslaved.
A libertarian prison would be some kind of business; maybe a farm, a factory, a workshop or any other kind of enterprise. You would be taken to this prison-factory/workhouse and given a job. Your wage would be on a par with what non-prisoners earn in the free world. However, out of this wage would be taken a portion for your upkeep (room, board, clothing, laundry, water, electricity, healthcare etc.), a portion for the running of the prison (guards, administration, building maintenance, etc.), a portion for you to use how you wish (to purchase little luxuries like tobacco, alcohol, comfy slippers, your weekly Prog, to send home to your family, to put aside against the day of your release so you don't leave with nothing, a combination, etc.) - but the lion's share goes to paying off your debt to your victim or, more likely, to paying off the loan taken out in your name to compensate your victim. If you work really hard, doing overtime and earning bonuses, you might have paid off what you owe in under twenty years. Or if you're lazy it might take you thirty years, forty or never. The length of your sentence is, at least partially, up to you.
But that's a crap idea - it means a rich man can buy his way out of any crime!
It means a rich man can buy his way out of any crime if the victim agrees to it. I've strayed from the three scenarios somewhat so I might as well carry on and add one last example - the vicious multi-millionaire scenario.
Let's imagine there's this very, very rich man who likes going around breaking people's arms. He's taken to court for assault and generally pays his victims £20,000 and then walks free to do it again. Then he breaks my arm and I sue him in court. I know that I can request to have his arm broken if I want (any physical harm dished out could only be on a par with the harm done to me and maybe slightly more - no breaking both his arms, or all his limbs, or execution - conversely, I could let him off with a good slapping or a punch in the face, to be administered by Court Bailiffs, whose fees would be paid by the criminal) but I don't hold with that kind of thing. He offers me the same £20,000 and I agree, on the provision that he does so via the prison-factory/workhouse system. He doesn't like the sound of this so offers me £40,000, then £80,000, then £100,000. But no, I'm happy with the twenty thousand, I'm not greedy and this jerk needs to be taught a lesson. So off to the prison-factory/workhouse he goes to pay off his debt through hard work like anyone else. How long it takes is largely up to him. If he's lazy and awkward it might take him a very long time. Indeed, a poor prisoner owing the same amount, admitted on the same day might, through sheer hard work and diligence, serve his sentence in half the time.
Slavery is one of the most despicable states in which a human being can be held. Libertaria recognises this and so reserves its use as punishment - but in a humanitarian and productive way. Modern prisons in today's statist society enslave people for arbitrary periods of time and then do nothing with them beyond locking them up like animals in cells for up to 23 hours a day. That's just cruel.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 01 May, 2016, 11:16:41 AM
And, yes, I do pay for healthcare through my taxes...unless, of course, I can't. In which case society pays for me. In Libertania, if I can't pay I'm fucked unless I happen to have wealthy friends.
Oh. what a brave new world.
In Libertaria, healthcare will be run by the free-market, free from wasteful and costly "government" interference, and will therefore be cheaper and more efficient. If you do turn up at a hospital with a life-threatening injury or condition, you won't be turned away if you don't have your own insurance. Hospitals will add a small percentage to pay for treatment of people like you to the premiums of those subscribers willing to pay it and use those extra contributions to maintain an emergency fund. When you are discharged, you might be asked to make a donation to the amount of whatever you feel you can afford or you might wait until you are in a better position and then make your donation in the future. You will be asked for money if you are poor, but you will not be forced to pay. You might even volunteer to go into a prison-factory/workhouse in order to pay off some or all of the costs of your treatment but, unlike the prisoners you'll be working with, you'll be free to leave at any time. And there will still be private charities.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 01 May, 2016, 11:51:54 AM
Dear Aldi Legal Assistant,
Thank you for recent correspondence regarding our clients' dispute.
After discussion I must agree that my client, on whose good fortune and continued custom my companies relies, is not in the wrong. I'm glad that we've been able to come to this arrangement like the professionals we are.
In the event that you are not satisfied with this response, we are willing to take the matter further. In the past we have used EDX Arbitration Services and are happy to refer the issue to them. Our company has a long history of co operation with EDX. In fact, we are their biggest client. I am sure, however, that they will be completely impartial, despite all the money we give them.
Our invoice is enclosed. Please pay within 28 days, or a private security company will be employed to follow you around. Feel free to employ your own protection should you feel threatened.
Yours,
Apple Legal.
Dear Apple Legal,
Having examined the record of EDX, and having dealt with them ourselves on numerous occasions, we find them to be an excellent choice. Their reputation for fairness and impartiality is second to none, which is why they attract such illustrious clients as yourselves and Aldi Legal Assistance. The fact that they recently ruled against IBM, one of their oldest and largest clients (almost as big a client as you), confirms this reputation is justified.
Will you make the arrangements with EDX Arbitration Services yourself or would you like me to do it? I can have the contract of arbitration agreement signed and in the post by 9am tomorrow, if this is convenient.
Yours,
Aldi Legal Assistance Co.
Tordels - you are absolutely right, it is a lot of work. However, consider this - you already spend a lot of time each year dealing with "government" forms to organise this kind of thing so it's simply a matter of switching one set of forms for another, the chief difference being that you have a choice whether or not you want to pay or how much you're willing/able to pay and you won't end up fined or in jail if you decide not to play along with certain things.
Consider also that where there's work, there's opportunity. Companies will spring up dedicated to relieving you of this burden, much like an insurance broker. They may send you a form once a year where you take advantage of their research and expertise in evaluating and engaging the available companies. They might offer you something really simple and quick, like maybe their Premium, Standard or Budget packages. They may offer you a multiple choice form where you choose each service individually on the basis of their ratings and cost/value analysis or even the choice to pick whichever companies you choose based on your own research or a combination of all, and more than, the above.
These companies might make all the yearly paperwork the "government" forces you to do look like the central planning admin for a small African republic. When presented with Premium, Standard or Budget, this whole process could take you less than five minutes a year.
Zen - never heard of it! Is it any good?
Quotefree from wasteful and costly "government" interference, and will therefore be cheaper and more efficient.
Like they are in all countries with private healthcare. It's as valid an argument as saying in Libertanian no one will get sick because fairies will chase away all the germs.
QuoteHospitals will add a small percentage to pay for treatment of people like you to the premiums of those subscribers willing to pay it and use those extra contributions to maintain an emergency fund.
Now I'm relying on the charity of the wealthy.
QuoteYou might even volunteer to go into a prison-factory/workhouse in order to pay off some or all of the costs of your treatment
"Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses?". Let the poor go there, its not like they've got jobs to do.
Dear Aldi Legal,
Thank you for your letter. Aren't we lucky that having money, and the promise of making more money, automatically makes people reasonable? I'm off to watch one of my work house slaves count my cash.
Yours,
Apple.
Question Sharks...If you where one of
those libertarians, you know, the self interested rich ones, how would you have answered that question differently?
Just noticed your earlier posts and ,Sharky, this is nothing if not elaborate. Overwhelming numbers of private police, with top of the range technology, all paid for through road tolls. Police who can investigate me, even though they have no power to investigate me. Courts which aren't actually courts who can take money, even though they don't have authority, and its not stealing. Shooting people who break the laws which aren't there, even though we can prove that they've broken the law because we don't have the power to detain anyone, never mind question them. And slaves! In Libertanian, to ensure our freedom, we make people into slaves! But that's okay, because they're naughty people. Well, we think they might be. They might just be poor.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 02 May, 2016, 03:20:35 PM
Quotefree from wasteful and costly "government" interference, and will therefore be cheaper and more efficient.
Like they are in all countries with private healthcare. It's as valid an argument as saying in Libertanian no one will get sick because fairies will chase away all the germs.
In countries with private healthcare, including this one, "government" taxation, tariffs, licenses etc. add to the cost both directly and indirectly. I think the fairies are all in your mind.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 02 May, 2016, 03:20:35 PM
Now I'm relying on the charity of the wealthy.
Actually, you're relying on the charity of ordinary people. The same people who throw a few coppers in the collection box to keep air ambulances in the sky, the same people who donate to cancer research and hospices. People, in short, with a social conscience.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 02 May, 2016, 03:20:35 PM
QuoteYou might even volunteer to go into a prison-factory/workhouse in order to pay off some or all of the costs of your treatment
"Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses?". Let the poor go there, its not like they've got jobs to do.
Did you miss the word "volunteer"? If some hospital saved my life, I'd at least consider finding a way to give something back. Perhaps you're different - perhaps you believe that you have a right to getting anything you want and not needing to put anything back. Volunteering to go into a prison-factory/workhouse in order to pay off a debt you have no legal obligation to pay off, if you're poor and unemployed, demonstrates a level of honesty and honour that many employers will find appealing. Just as the prisoner who works hard to pay off his debt to his victim in a shorter time than expected would also demonstrate to prospective employers his worth as an employee.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 02 May, 2016, 03:20:35 PM
Dear Aldi Legal,
Thank you for your letter. Aren't we lucky that having money, and the promise of making more money, automatically makes people reasonable? I'm off to watch one of my work house slaves count my cash.
Yours,
Apple.
Dear Apple Legal,
It is becoming increasingly obvious that you are not taking your responsibilities as a private legal protection firm seriously.
In accordance with my last letter, I have placed the signed documents in the post this morning. If you do not sign and return them within 28 days of this letter, we will have no option but to begin proceedings to add you to the Dishonourable Register. How many rich clients will you have then?
Quote from: Modern Panther on 02 May, 2016, 03:20:35 PM
Question Sharks...If you where one of those libertarians, you know, the self interested rich ones, how would you have answered that question differently?
I wouldn't, because I understand that being rich is a privilege that can evaporate very quickly in the business world. I like being rich and I want to be richer. If achieving this goal means I have to pander to the airy-fairy libertarian whims of the unwashed pillocks from whom my fortune is derived, then I'll do it. I'll do in spades and I'll do it with a huge, cheesy smile on my face.
I posit an alternative to Sharktopia: we do things exactly as we do now, but we introduce legislation that allows citizens to smash politicians' legs with hammers as/when/if they feel like it. If nothing else, this will lead to much better wheelchair accessibility.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 02 May, 2016, 03:33:14 PM
Just noticed your earlier posts and ,Sharky, this is nothing if not elaborate. Overwhelming numbers of private police, with top of the range technology, all paid for through road tolls. Police who can investigate me, even though they have no power to investigate me. Courts which aren't actually courts who can take money, even though they don't have authority, and its not stealing. Shooting people who break the laws which aren't there, even though we can prove that they've broken the law because we don't have the power to detain anyone, never mind question them. And slaves! In Libertanian, to ensure our freedom, we make people into slaves! But that's okay, because they're naughty people. Well, we think they might be. They might just be poor.
Now you're just making stuff up. "Overwhelming numbers"? Where did you get that from? Police who investigate you, where did you get that from? Courts that aren't courts? Where did you get that from? Courts who can take money? Where did you get that from? Shooting people? Where
the fuck did you get that from? Laws which aren't there? Where did you get that from? Don't have the power to detain anybody? Where did you get that from? Slavery as a punishment, yes - that's something you did see right but chose to be emotive over rather than think about. They might just be poor (and made to be slaves)? Where did you get that from?
Quote from: Professor Bear on 02 May, 2016, 03:58:23 PM
I posit an alternative to Sharktopia: we do things exactly as we do now, but we introduce legislation that allows citizens to smash politicians' legs with hammers as/when/if they feel like it. If nothing else, this will lead to much better wheelchair accessibility.
Heh. Tempting, but no.
You don't get to unilaterally decide these things - Hammertopia goes to a vote.
QuoteOverwhelming numbers"? Where did you get that from?
QuoteThis car follows you too until it too leaves its jurisdiction. Another one follows you instead. Then another. Then another. All the way home.
Quoteyou refuse, because they've got no right to force you to do anything, right? But, what's this? Another three patrol cars appear
Next...
QuotePolice who investigate you, where did you get that from?
Your absolutely right. I apologize for misreading. Rather than powerless security guards it's powerless insurance company employees...
QuoteSo the investigators follow you, do some investigating and find out who you are.
Courts...
QuoteCourts that aren't courts? Where did you get that from?
Quotea voluntary hearing at a reputable private court.
QuoteMy private insurance company presents you with a choice of private courts
Courts taking money...
Quotecourts who can take money? Where did you get that from?
QuoteThey've used whatever money was left in your account to pay off your credit card, cancelled the card and closed your account.
Executing undesirables...
QuoteShooting people? Where the fuck did you get that from?
QuoteAs I have paid the ultimate price for your rage, the ultimate sanction must also be an option. Execution. However, the sentence is not decided by legislation, the jury or even the judge. A range of sentences is put on offer and my next of kin decides what it wants. They may decide to forgive you. They may decide to request a flogging or an amputation. They may decide to have you imprisoned for life. They may decide to have you executed.
Power as a finite resource...
QuoteDon't have the power to detain anybody?
The right of the "state" stem only from the rights of the individual. The many can hold no more authority that the one. Unless I have the right to detain, the many have no right to detain.
Slavery, which is so much better than one of those Statist "prisons"...
QuoteSlavery as a punishment, yes - that's something you did see right.
QuoteSlavery is one of the most despicable states in which a human being can be held. Libertaria recognises this and so reserves its use as punishment - but in a humanitarian and productive way.
Many slave owners thought the same way.
QuoteIt means a rich man can buy his way out of any crime if the victim agrees to it.
By the same reasoning, it means a poor man could never buy his way out, unless the victim agrees to it.
QuoteSo off to the prison-factory/workhouse he goes to pay off his debt through hard work like anyone else. How long it takes is largely up to him.
Maybe we could engrave something inspiring above the door...
Five or six cars in the first instance and three in the second overwhelming numbers? Where do you live? Antarctica?
They are powerless to hurt you, yes. Powerless to investigate you, no. (Actually, technically they do have the power to hurt you, they just don't have the right. I have the right to try and jump over the Atlantic, but I don't have the power to.)
Again, the word "voluntary" is key. If both parties agree to abide by their decision, then its a court by consent. If one party doesn't agree, sure, it can't issue a binding judgement - but it can give its expert and considered opinion which, in the absence of a valid challenge, can be acted upon by the party who does agree. That party is then free to pursue other avenues, lawful avenues, of recompense. This is in the case of non-violent crimes. In the case of violent crimes such as murder, rape and assault, the criminal, by breaking the most fundamental laws of society, has forfeited any right to refuse to accept the judgement of a widely respected appropriate court.
That's the bank taking money to pay off the money you owe them (I'll grant that might be a grey area, but no more than that - if a person is in dishonour then the bank has the right to protect itself from fraud or theft). The court takes no money other than the fees agreed to by both parties prior to doing its work.
Execution automatically means shooting people? No it doesn't. You present "shooting people" entirely out of context in a lawless Wild West kind of way as if it's going to be a regular and unavoidable thing.
Anybody has the right to detain a murderer, rapist or violent attacker (within reasonable limits) as part of the basic right of self defence. That "anybody" includes paid police.
Many slave owners may have thought the same way but very few, if any, paid their slaves the going market wage for their services or released them when they'd made enough money.
Of course a poor man could buy his way out - that's what the working prisons are for!
Like what? "If you hadn't hurt somebody, you wouldn't be here."?
You've taken just about every single thing I've said out of context and at face value and offered little more than derisive comments or vacuous homilies in counter.
Panth, before we get into the inevitable shitstorm of nit-pickery I sense coming, allow me to ask you a question.
What is your most basic, fundamental reason for not wanting a libertarian society?
New internet rule, in the spirit of Godwin's Law:
When someone advocates reinstating slavery as a means of criminal punishment, then the argument is over, and every piece of subsequent nonsense they have to say on the subject can be safely disregarded.
Six police cars being required to prevent me from speeding is a lot of police cars. And in your example, if six weren't enough to follow me all the way home and encourage me to stop without the use of force, in think it likely that more would appear.
So they do have the authority to investigate? Because before you seemed surprised by my suggesting they could investigate.
The issue with a voluntary court system is this...If I am taking someone to court, and have a choice of court, I have no incentive to suggest a court that I think might find against me. If I have enough money, I'm likely to have contacts in a private court. It's likely that that court is going to find in my favour. All a court company has to do is have a few wealthy friends, and those people become immune to the law.
The bank taking money from my account is taking my money. That's them forcing their will upon me. This is a private company, possibly under incentive from a private wealthy customer, causing me harm and the only way I can defend myself is putting enough of my own money on the line to buy a defence.
Execution doesn't mean shooting people. Would it be better if I said "hanging"? By the way, why are we executing criminals? Is it to keep costs down, because that's a horrible reason to take anyone's life.
Could a poor man buy his way out? In your example, the victim ensured that the rich man is properly punished by setting the level of his fine at a higher level. What's to stop the victim setting a poor man's punishment at a high level? What about the elderly or the disabled?
My most fundamental reason for not wanting a libertarian society? People fought for hundreds of years to enshrine a democratic system where we choose our leaders. A system of one man, one vote. It's flawed. Sometimes it fails, but everything we have as a people, we built through this system which shares burdens and tries to provide for our needs. Everyone puts in a share, everyone gets healthcare, education, clean water.
In the libertarian system, money buys you power. You want a crime investigated? You better have the cash. You're sick? Either pay up or hope that the rich are feeling charitable. Time for kids to go to school? you better have saved the money. This places a burden on the poorest, whilst allowing the wealthiest to thrive. it takes power from the individuals who we elect into and out of office, and gives it to those with money. You think things are bad just now because they have the best lawyers and bribe politicians? Wait until they own the courts themselves. Wait until those G4 police are referring you to a G4 court because you pissed off a G4 board member.
Yes, I know that the current system allows the wealthy to get away with too much. A libertarian system removes any barrier to their power.
Quote from: GordonR on 02 May, 2016, 06:07:51 PM
New internet rule, in the spirit of Godwin's Law:
When someone advocates reinstating slavery as a means of criminal punishment, then the argument is over, and every piece of subsequent nonsense they have to say on the subject can be safely disregarded.
Re-instating? What do you call imprisonment at present? What do you call compulsory education? What do you call sweatshops? What do you call conscription? What do you call taxation? Each one is a case of forcing human beings to perform tasks they might not want to do voluntarily - i.e., slavery.
At least using slavery as punishment for the worst crimes, and not imposing it arbitrarily at the whim of some profit-mad oligarch, and calling it by its true name instead of by some comforting euphemism is honest. Unlike classical slavery, punishment slavery will not generally be unending and its fruits will be used to compensate the victims of only the worst crimes - that compensation being earned by the transgressors themselves. Maybe you'd prefer it to be called constructive imprisonment, compensatory incarceration or bad-person-fluffy-time?
New internet rule, in the spirit of Godwin's Law:
When a person advocates ending an argument simply because they encounter a word or concept they don't like and can't be bothered forwarding a rational rebuttal but instead rely on crass populist sentimentalism to arbitrarily dismiss it, then that person is invalidated, and every piece of subsequent nonsense they have to say on the subject can be safely disregarded.
Sharky, calling people "slaves" because they pay taxes is really under valuing the millions upon millions of people who suffered and died in abject misery as actual slaves.
Also, it fails to address the essential quality of slavery: ownership of human beings, and their transformation into property. I think what the Shark describes is indenture.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 02 May, 2016, 03:02:01 PM
Companies will spring up dedicated to relieving you of this burden, much like an insurance broker. They may send you a form once a year where you take advantage of their research and expertise in evaluating and engaging the available companies
Aren't you describing a political party? A 'company' who will use their expertise to recommend who to choose in order that I get my services delivered the way I want?
The police cars weren't there to prevent you from speeding, neither were they all following you at once. They were there to protect other road users. One took over as the last reached the limit of its jurisdiction.
The police don't investigate. The private insurance company's investigators investigate.
A private court will rely upon its reputation for impartiality and professionalism to survive. A court that consistently makes biased decisions or has ties to either party (beyond purely commercial ties) will soon go out of business and will not be immune to being asked to defend itself in another court. (Even our current courts frown upon having your relatives in the jury box or sitting on the magistrates' judges' bench - so they're not all bad.)If you believe you are right, and you believe the court is impartial, what's the problem? The only reason to fear a negative outcome is if you are sure or suspect that you might be in the wrong. If you know you're in the wrong you still might want to attend because you believe your opponent is requesting too much compensation and an impartial court might find a lower level of compensation more appropriate. And even if you do refuse to attend because you're certain you're in the right and the suit is frivolous or mischievous, what's to say that court won't find you not guilty in absentia?
In the case of the bank taking your money, I did concede that is a gray area. However, the money spent on your credit card belongs to the bank and it has the right to recoup that money. Don't forget that in the example given you had been placed on the Dishonourable Register, which indicates that you are untrustworthy (in the example given, I hasten to add, not in your real life). If you had no credit card debt, the bank would simply have returned all the money in your accounts to you.
"We" are not executing criminals. It is an option open to the next of kin of a murder victim. There is no reason to assume that every murderer will be executed. If someone murdered a member of my family, I would not call for execution - except, possibly, in the case of an exceptionally vicious and sadistic crime, but even then I'd be extremely unlikely to call for that punishment. I don't know what you'd do, I hope you'd do the same as me, I'd even beg you to do the same - but I have no right to force you. The point is that its the victim's decision and not handed down by some hanging-happy judge or vindictive state.
There is nothing to stop the victim's next of kin setting the price of a murderer's compensation to an unrealistic level beyond the advice of the court and jury and the pleas of the murderer. The next of kin might do this to ensure the murderer spends the rest of his life in prison. There is, however, the possibility of parole - at the next of kin's discretion. Professional parole boards might interview the imprisoned murderer at the request of the next of kin or the murderer and forward their observations and recommendations to the next of kin, who would make the ultimate decision on release or continued incarceration. People's attitudes change, so life in prison might not mean life in prison if the next of kin feel the murderer has suffered enough.
The elderly or disabled murderer is no different in the eyes of the law than the teenage or athletic murderer. Age or disability are not excuses for murder - though they might mitigate lesser crimes. Each case must be judged on its own merits.
So, anything which people fought for, and presumably died for, must be preserved? How about the people in Spain who fought and died for a libertarian society? How about the Native Americans who fought and died to preserve their ancient cultures and lands? How about the white supremacists and Nazis who are still fighting and willing to die for their right to dominate what they believe to be inferior races? How about the Mafia clans who fight each other and die at each others hands for supremacy?
The current system is broken. It has become overdeveloped and overbearing. It takes what it wants from you and punishes you if you refuse. It gives you back as little as it can. It doesn't give you education - education is a lifelong and ongoing process - it gives you schooling. Schooling in obedience with a bit of general knowledge thrown in, just enough to make us smart enough to operate the machines but not smart enough to ask why. The schooling it gives stifles education. It gives you water of the lowest quality it can get away with. It borrows billions in imaginary money in order to preserve itself and comes after you for the repayments. It brings nothing to the table but unlawful and arbitrary and uncaring force. It is broken.
In the libertarian society, the power and right returns to its rightful owner. It returns to the place where it's been all along. To You. In the libertarian society, money buys you exactly the same as it does today - better stuff. It doesn't buy you power because there's no centralised power-mongers to buy it from. It might buy you a bit of localised power, for a short time, but that's all. You'll still pay for all the mechanisms, processes and trappings of a modern society but without having to support unproductive, parasitic bureaucrats along the way. There will be no protectionism of big business to bar entry to the marketplace by smaller firms. No inflated taxes to make earning a decent wage difficult for the underprivileged and unskilled. No fear of being bullied or railroaded by an uncaring and jealous state police monopoly (look at what's happening to JBC (and I hope he doesn't mind me using him as an example here) - if he paid a small subscription to a private protection agency, they'd be falling over themselves to listen to him - the state police care a lot less; they still get paid whether they listen to him or not,). You'd have a choice of courts based on their reputations instead of just one option - the state courts which, like the state police, get paid whether they listen to you or not, make sensible judgements or not.
It takes power from the flawed human beings we set up as our masters and returns it to our hands. It returns to us true choice, not the faux "freedom of choice" we are forced to endure now, where the things we can choose from are a narrow and controlled subset of the whole. G4 police might try to refer you to a G4 court but you won't have to accept that. You will have the right, and the power, to choose a court mutually acceptable to you both. The lack of a "government" monopolised court system does not mean a lack of justice, it means precisely the opposite - a flowering and expansion of justice. Courts will cease looking for the legislation to impose on any case and go back to their true purpose, examining each case as a unique thing and picking it apart to discover what's right.
Libertarian society does not remove all barriers to oligarchical power, it is made of barriers to oligarchical power. It gives each and every person their own barrier, to raise or lower as they choose. It allows for cooperation and mutual benefit. It gives you back, so long as you follow a handful of simple rules we all instinctively know already, the most powerful barrier to oligarchy there's aver been - the word "no."
A libertarian society won't be perfect, no society can be. It will be a complex, dynamic, sometimes frightening process of mass human interactions, entrepreneurship and invention. A society with which you can engage on any level, and to any extent, that you choose.
There is more than one type of slavery. I trust you don't think I am in any way dismissive of all the victims, past and present, of the worst kind of slavery. Tax-paying may, in comparison, be velvet slavery but it's still slavery. Try not paying any and see how soon the velvet overseer takes to bring his velvet whip to bear. As to the enslavement of the worst criminals, indentured servitude may well be a better description but I didn't want to dance around the core concept of the work-prison. It's punishment for heinous crimes but punishment designed to focus as much on the victims as on the criminals. (I seem to recall the Irish Kings of old did something similar, recompensing the victims immediately and then setting their men to seek restitution from the criminals. That's only a hazy memory and may well be wrong but I'm sure you, Tordels, can set me straight on that!)
Tordels, no - no more than an insurance broker is a political party.
Shark, I think its obvious that this isn't something that we're ever going to agree on. Your entitled to your opinion. Good luck with it.
One last thing...
QuoteA private court will rely upon its reputation for impartiality and professionalism to survive.
No company relies upon a reputation for impartiality. The current judiciary does, but companies don't. They rely upon providing paying customers with what they want.
You'll dispute this. I'll disagree. That's fine.
A company survives or fails on the quality of its products or services. The private court's products and services are impartiality and professionalism.
Thank you for the conversation, Panth, I've really enjoyed it. Your questions, observations and probings (oo-er, Missus!) have helped me to understand my own position - its strengths and weaknesses - a lot better than I did at the outset. In the end, I think that's one of the true joys of a good debate.
I know we don't agree but I hope I've at least given you something to think about, as you have given me.
Thanks again.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 02 May, 2016, 08:36:51 PMHow about the people in Spain who fought and died for a libertarian society?
.
I assume you're referring to Anarchist Catalonia, which was a very different libertarian society from the one you're proposing, founded as it was on Marxist principles.
Yes, that's the one!
Quote from: GordonR on 02 May, 2016, 06:07:51 PMNew internet rule, in the spirit of Godwin's Law:
When someone advocates reinstating slavery as a means of criminal punishment, then the argument is over, and every piece of subsequent nonsense they have to say on the subject can be safely disregarded.
Indeed, although I'm seeing an awful lot of similar postings online to this of late (presumably due to Tory NHS bullshit seeping into people's brains):
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 02 May, 2016, 03:52:53 PMIn countries with private healthcare, including this one, "government" taxation, tariffs, licenses etc. add to the cost both directly and indirectly. I think the fairies are all in your mind.
It's amazing how few people understand the basics of economy of scale and also the basic goodwill that allows the NHS to perform as it does (in terms of many staff working for far less than they could get in the private sector).
Still, I'm sure when everyone has a mortgage-sized chunk removed from their wages every month, they'll understand — although it'll be a bit late by then (and somehow still blamed on Labour's 1997–2005 govt).
So, a prison system is the same as a health system? Wow.
A health system must rely on goodwill rather than sound market economics? Double wow.
What's the reasoning behind your last paragraph? Tory NHS bullshit seeping in?
I never said that a health system
must rely on goodwill. The reality, however, is that the NHS does. In a sense, the entire system is quite close to aspects of the utopia you dream about. Staff from top to bottom do their jobs because of a love of what they do. It's a calling for them. That doesn't work once you inject rampant free-market capitalism into the mix. Similarly, once you eradicate the NHS's other key benefit — its sheer size —
everything becomes significantly more expensive. At best, you end up with a system akin to what we have now, with the illusion of 'choice' (see also: almost every other privatised industry in the UK and elsewhere), but where you are paying out mortgage-sized chunks every month to be covered in case of the worst. (Quite how this tallies with the Tories and their attempts to get more people self-employed, I've no idea.)
QuoteWhat's the reasoning behind your last paragraph? Tory NHS bullshit seeping in?
My last paragraph is simply a reference to the fact the current government continues to blame all ins on the 'mess we were left'. Fair enough to use that common argument (even if sometimes inaccurate) in 2010 and 2011. But we're now some way into the second post-Labour government. I'll bet we'll head into the 2020 general election with the Tories still blaming Labour for everything that's gone wrong in the UK.
Can't fault you on the blame game. Reminds me of the old joke about the new leader finding two sealed envelopes on his desk...
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 03 May, 2016, 01:33:51 PMFair enough to use that common argument (even if sometimes inaccurate) in 2010 and 2011. But we're now some way into the second post-Labour government.
The argument is pretty much beyond use once you start butchering public finances under the austerity banner and then miss every single economic target you've set in six years.
Quote from: Professor Bear on 03 May, 2016, 04:40:49 PMThe argument is pretty much beyond use once you start butchering public finances under the austerity banner and then miss every single economic target you've set in six years.
Yes, but you forget that this is all the fault of the Labour government. It's all down to the hand the Tories were dealt. Etc.
A question about Water, if any will indulge me!
I work in a Warehouse which stocks many types of drinks. Just in our Depot alone there must thousands of litres of water sat on the shelf awaiting sale. Multiply that across the UK and the rest of the World and we're looking at millions of litres.
Could this contribute towards the many droughts seen across the World?*
Cheers
*in addition to climate change/man-made interference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTUK0WSfpD4
Quote from: NapalmKev on 30 May, 2016, 08:45:45 AM
A question about Water, if any will indulge me!
I work in a Warehouse which stocks many types of drinks. Just in our Depot alone there must thousands of litres of water sat on the shelf awaiting sale. Multiply that across the UK and the rest of the World and we're looking at millions of litres.
Could this contribute towards the many droughts seen across the World?*
Cheers
*in addition to climate change/man-made interference
It's almost certainly a minuscule contributor; as profligate and wasteful as I find bottled water, looking at some very rough calcs from googling: volume sold in 2005 (about 200 billion litres) vs total world volume of water in reservoirs (around 700 thousand trillion litres) and you're looking at probably less than a millionth of the world's freshwater being bottled. This is very rough, and ignores any local effects, but I'd be very surprised if it were ever a significant factor in droughts compared to, say, heavy industry.
It's been a while since I watched the documentary I linked to in my last post but I think it made some important points. It does mention the effects of bottled water plants on local communities (in one South American country, iIrc, one effect was to make Coca Cola cheaper than water) and other, more annoying claims. For example, one of the usual suspects in the ongoing global rape, the World Bank, imposes conditions like insisting on selling water infrastructure to western companies before granting aid to poor countries. One of the things I remember is that many water-poor African countries are actually forced to export water in the form of meat, tea and flowers - using the limited clean water for these industries whilst the human population is forced to subsist on the run-off.
I think this documentary is also where I learned that Florida is sinking due to its aquifers being pumped dry - but rising sea-levels due to global warming are blamed instead.
Huge chunks of Florida are barely above sea level. It really is going under due to rising sea levels, although not quite to the degree some small islands are. (I was there once during a bad storm that temporarily raised the sea levels about two metres. If nothing else, that should have been a wake-up call for people in that part of the US. Streets became rivers. Terrifying to drive through.)
I'm no expert but I think "temporarily raised sea levels" are called high tides. However, in this case I suspect you may have experienced a storm surge. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_surge)
Yep. Point is, it showcases what kind of shitstorm will happen when the seas rise that far and stay that way.
My point is that pumping water from aquifers causes land to sink. This is illustrated by the photograph, below, of USGS scientist Joe Poland taken in 1977 in the San Joaquin Valley southwest of Mendota, California illustrating land subsidence due to groundwater extraction for agriculture since 1925.
(http://water.usgs.gov/edu/pictures/landsubsidence.jpg)
In some areas of the world, like Alaska, land is actually rising due to the earth's crust still rebounding after glacial melt or through general tectonic activity, causing the relative sea level to fall.
Places like Florida, through poor water management, are actively exacerbating the effects of sea level fluctuations (which in Florida is rising at about 2.4mm per year). This also demonstrates the potential problems in measuring sea level from the land.
Florida has all kinds of issues at the moment. Water use is massive, but fresh water is an issue. And the climate has becoming noticeably more hostile over the past 25 years. People we know there say that years back, the weather was broadly reliable throughout the year. (And this was the cast in the 1990s whenever I visited.) Now, it's all over the place. Winters are far wetter and with far more cold snaps, killing crops. Springs and autumns are much warmer, causing issues relating to farming and health.
I was amused to read today that Citibank are being represented in court in a multi-million pound hedge-fund fraud case by one Mark Howard QC.
As I've always suspected, this "Legendary Shark" persona is just a front to lure out the commies and malcontents to be reported to MI5
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 May, 2016, 06:59:55 AM
pumping water from aquifers causes land to sink. This is illustrated by the photograph, below, of USGS scientist Joe Poland taken in 1977 in the San Joaquin Valley southwest of Mendota, California illustrating land subsidence due to groundwater extraction for agriculture since 1925.
(http://water.usgs.gov/edu/pictures/landsubsidence.jpg)
I'm going to pull this one out next time someone asks why Megacity One is flush with the land around it, when it was built on top of old New York. The aquifers around Albany must have been pumped dry.
Perhaps the Cursed Earth beyond the walls is all sorts of crap on top of the old world, too. (A bit of a stretch...)
Quote from: Dandontdare on 07 June, 2016, 08:29:47 PM
I was amused to read today that Citibank are being represented in court in a multi-million pound hedge-fund fraud case by one Mark Howard QC.
As I've always suspected, this "Legendary Shark" persona is just a front to lure out the commies and malcontents to be reported to MI5
How very dare you! MI5 indeed. I wouldn't be caught dead working for such an amateurish bunch of clowns.
I represent the
Chimera Group, of course. We're much scarier and have better shoes.
Club Shooter was Gay (?) (http://nypost.com/2016/06/13/shooter-used-to-visit-orlando-gay-club-use-gay-dating-apps/?AID=7236)
Truth, lie or obfuscation? It's so hard to tell these days. Does it really matter in the end, though? All those dead human beings. Tragic.
This is one of the side-effects of only allowing the state police to own guns. Were nightclubs (and other public venues) expected to take charge of their own security through trained and armed private police, there would most likely be a better chance of stopping people with rifles at the door instead of having to call 911 and wait for "official" assistance.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 09:05:55 AM
This is one of the side-effects of only allowing the state police to own guns.
Umm... this statement is so breath-takingly untrue, I can only conclude that you're trolling. The
entire cause of what happened in Orlando is
exactly not that
Quoteonly the state police own guns.
The
entire cause of what happened in Orlando is that private citizens
can own assault weaponry.
Jim
If every citizen in America can own weaponry, why did nobody shoot back?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 09:59:14 AM
If every citizen in America can own weaponry, why did nobody shoot back?
Are you claiming that private gun ownership in the US isn't widespread and guaranteed by Constitution?
Are you also suggesting that
even more live fire in a crowded nightclub full of panicking people would have resulted in
fewer deaths? Are you
actually parrotting the NRA's 'good guy with a gun' fantasy?
If none of the above, please explain the intention of your question quoted above.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 09:59:14 AM
If every citizen in America can own weaponry, why did nobody shoot back?
Dear fucking god not this shit again.
If you'll read my first comment on this tragedy, you'll see I was actually placing the onus on the club itself. Had it, unilaterally or as part of a local group of businesses, been responsible for hiring professional and armed private police then the response time would very probably have been much quicker. A guy with an assault rifle kind of stands out in a crowd, he didn't just materialise inside the club. He had to get through the door. Had to walk down the street to get to the door.
Of course, arming everybody isn't the answer - that's simply a lower version of the nuclear MAD option. "I would shoot you but I don't know if you're carrying a concealed weapon or not" is not the best of situations to be in but is (marginally) better than "I'm going to shoot you because I'm pretty sure you obey the law against carrying concealed firearms." A better solution is to allow for, maybe even require, venue owners and operators to be responsible for the security on their premises. It's simply an extension of home defence - few people would argue (in the U.S.) that a homesteader has no right to shoot back against invaders intent on shooting their dinner guests. In the same spirit, club-owners should have the right to defend their patrons against similar assaults.
I would love to see a world where nobody had to carry a weapon to defend themselves, I guess we all would, but that's an increasingly fantastic scenario. However, when the majority of guns are carried only by either the police or criminals (and we are talking carrying, not owning a gun and keeping it in a regulation lock-box inside one's home) then, inevitably, it is the law-abiding unarmed citizen who gets caught in the crossfire - no matter from which direction that crossfire comes.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 10:28:31 AM
I would love to see a world where nobody had to carry a weapon to defend themselves, I guess we all would, but that's an increasingly fantastic scenario.
And
our solution, in the UK, to drastically restrict access to firearms amongst the private citizenry, puts as far closer to that ideal than the US solution, or the variations thereon proposed by the NRA and other pro-gun lobbies. This is undeniable. I have no idea what point you think you're arguing here.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 10:28:31 AM
A guy with an assault rifle kind of stands out in a crowd, he didn't just materialise inside the club. He had to get through the door. Had to walk down the street to get to the door.
http://www.opencarry.org/ (http://www.opencarry.org/)
"Where Is 'Open Carry' Legal?"
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/map-where-is-open-carry-legal-1715/ (http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/map-where-is-open-carry-legal-1715/)
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 15 June, 2016, 10:31:51 AM
I have no idea what point you think you're arguing here.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 10:28:31 AM
...venue owners and operators to be responsible for the security on their premises. It's simply an extension of home defence - few people would argue (in the U.S.) that a homesteader has no right to shoot back against invaders intent on shooting their dinner guests. In the same spirit, club-owners should have the right to defend their patrons against similar assaults.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 10:28:31 AM
...venue owners and operators to be responsible for the security on their premises. It's simply an extension of home defence - few people would argue (in the U.S.) that a homesteader has no right to shoot back against invaders intent on shooting their dinner guests. In the same spirit, club-owners should have the right to defend their patrons against similar assaults.
QuoteAre you also suggesting that even more live fire in a crowded nightclub full of panicking people would have resulted in fewer deaths? Are you actually parrotting the NRA's 'good guy with a gun' fantasy?
The mere thought that armed security (and are we talking machine guns here?) should be needed at a night club (or a cinema, or schools suppose) is as ridiculous as it is terrifying.
Quote from: morpheas on 15 June, 2016, 10:46:56 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 10:28:31 AM
A guy with an assault rifle kind of stands out in a crowd, he didn't just materialise inside the club. He had to get through the door. Had to walk down the street to get to the door.
http://www.opencarry.org/ (http://www.opencarry.org/)
"Where Is 'Open Carry' Legal?"
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/map-where-is-open-carry-legal-1715/ (http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/map-where-is-open-carry-legal-1715/)
He had to get through the door.Open carry, whilst legal in many states, does not imply
unrestricted carry. Any home or venue owner has the right to deny access to their premises to armed people. In the overwhelming majority of cases, especially where alcohol is served, that makes a great deal of sense. But if the venue owner isn't equipped to deny access to an armed person, or has to wait for the "authorities" to turn up and sort it out, there will inevitably be danger.
Let us remember that the incidents we are talking about are very rare indeed. It might not seem like it because the MSN loves these dramatic incidents but millions of people attend millions of events (nights out, concerts, movies, theater performances, sports fixtures, etc., etc., etc.) every week without incident. The overwhelming majority of people know how to go out and have fun without either murdering or getting murdered.
What I'm talking about, giving over responsibility for patrons' safety and security from these rare but devastating incidents, is not new or radical. It's the same as any venue owner/operator being responsible for fire safety, food safety and what have you.
Grim documentary about how black Americans frightened by both racial and Police violence are arming themselves. Graphic violence, strong racism with videos of people being shot and killed on camera. You have been warned.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p03t9g3j/black-power-americas-armed-resistance
The gunman didn't just walk into the bar, he opend fire from outside and forced his way in. Read the reports.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 10:58:19 AM
He had to get through the door.
He approaches the club, he opens fire on the door guards before they've registered that he's a threat. He steps over the bodies and opens fire inside the club.
Again: the NRA's 'good guy with a gun' scenario is a fantasy. In order to be the good guy in any of these scenarios, you have to be
reactive, by which time there's every chance you'll be dead.
Quote from: IAMTHESYSTEM on 15 June, 2016, 10:58:19 AM
Grim documentary about how black Americans frightened by both racial and Police violence are arming themselves. Graphic violence with videos of people being shot and killed on camera. You have been warned.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p03t9g3j/black-power-americas-armed-resistance
Aye, harrowing stuff. I have no real intention of venturing to the states simply due to these events.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 15 June, 2016, 10:48:45 AM
Are you also suggesting that even more live fire in a crowded nightclub full of panicking people would have resulted in fewer deaths? Are you actually parrotting the NRA's 'good guy with a gun' fantasy?
I love your straw-man arguments, Jim. If everyone in the nightclub had been armed, then it could have been far worse with all the panic and crossfire (the Hollywoodisation of this argument you seem to be going for). Untrained security apes-with-guns, probably the same. Trained security - who knows? Stopping the guy at the door would be the best option. Carrying out security procedures such as evacuation if he gets inside, a less good option. Carrying out security procedures such as "ambushing" the invader at certain predetermined locations, less good still. A single well-aimed shot from a trained marksman as a last resort should the invader actually open fire, not ideal.
Waiting for somebody to actually start shooting in a crowded room
before calling 911 is, surely, the very worst of all the possible options.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 15 June, 2016, 11:01:40 AM
He approaches the club, he opens fire on the door guards before they've registered that he's a threat. He steps over the bodies and opens fire inside the club.
Oh God - you're right! Professional security firms will have absolutely no way of coming up with any kind of defence against such an eventuality! They'll just sit around waiting to be shot at like everyone else! Nothing at all can be done!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 11:11:13 AM
Waiting for somebody to actually start shooting in a crowded room before calling 911 is, surely, the very worst of all the possible options.
It wasn't a straw man. Your position was unclear, so I asked you a question. You can tell I was asking you a question because it's a sentence directed at you with a question mark at the end of it.
You've clarified it to that extent, but still seem unwilling to engage with the fact that 'good guys with guns' in
any scenario, will always be reacting to the initiation of violence by bad guys with guns. When those guns are assault weapons, the reacting party is very like to be dead long before they've had the opportunity to take any sort of useful action.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 10:28:31 AM
If you'll read my first comment on this tragedy, you'll see I was actually placing the onus on the club itself. Had it, unilaterally or as part of a local group of businesses, been responsible for hiring professional and armed private police then the response time would very probably have been much quicker.
Mateen was immediately met with an armed response from a trained professional employed by the venue. That's why he hid in the restroom, rather than continuing to mow down patrons indiscriminately:
(http://i.imgur.com/mFTedMS.png?1%5Dhttp://i.imgur.com/mFTedMS.png?1)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 10:28:31 AM
I would love to see a world where nobody had to carry a weapon to defend themselves, I guess we all would, but that's an increasingly fantastic scenario.
Where do you live? I've seen someone with a gun three or four times in my life, and they were hunting rabbits, rather than the most dangerous game.
There have been three spree shooting incidents in my lifetime, and the few lethal terrorist attacks by radical Islamist terrorists in the UK have been a bomb attack on public transport and an off-duty soldier being run over by a car from behind. Supposing EVERYONE in each incident was armed, nobody would have been able to stop them.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 11:15:33 AM
Oh God - you're right! Professional security firms will have absolutely no way of coming up with any kind of defence against such an eventuality! They'll just sit around waiting to be shot at like everyone else! Nothing at all can be done!
Now,
this is a straw man, because that's not what I said. And, for the record, there isn't much defence against a direct hostile attack other than to hope you aren't killed immediately (mitigated by body armour), seek cover, return fire, and hope back-up arrives.
So, now we have armed and
armoured guards on the doors of nightclubs. Please note, that it's your rejection of my suggestion that reducing the number of guns in the original scenario rather than increasing them which is leading us down this hypothetical route.
Incidentally, I think I preferred the Hippy Conspiracy Theorist Shark to Shark 2.0, who now seems to side with the sort of libertarian interests and right-wing establishments that Shark 1.0 would have railed against.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 15 June, 2016, 11:21:55 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 11:15:33 AM
Oh God - you're right! Professional security firms will have absolutely no way of coming up with any kind of defence against such an eventuality! They'll just sit around waiting to be shot at like everyone else! Nothing at all can be done!
Now, this is a straw man, because that's not what I said. And, for the record, there isn't much defence against a direct hostile attack other than to hope you aren't killed immediately (mitigated by body armour), seek cover, return fire, and hope back-up arrives.
So, now we have armed and armoured guards on the doors of nightclubs. Please note, that it's your rejection of my suggestion that reducing the number of guns in the original scenario rather than increasing them which is leading us down this hypothetical route.
Incidentally, I think I preferred the Hippy Conspiracy Theorist Shark to Shark 2.0, who now seems to side with the sort of libertarian interests and right-wing establishments that Shark 1.0 would have railed against.
Apologies. After our previous arguments I do tend to overreact to you, which is my bad.
The reaction to the initiation of violence is not too clear. What constitutes the initiation of violence? Is it when the armed invader first attempts to gain access (I would say yes) or when the shooting starts?
There is also a place for security cameras. Say the nightclub (for example) owner (through his private security company) spots a person with an assault rifle walking towards the venue: the guards on the door would be informed in advance, the simple expedient of locking the doors until the supposed invader had gone might be enough (this act, locking the doors, is reaction). Reaction is not necessarily a bad or tardy thing - the whole point is
when that reaction occurs. Better react sooner than later, I say.
State monopolisation of policing cannot help but encourage any reaction to be too late.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 09:05:55 AM
Club Shooter was Gay (?) (http://nypost.com/2016/06/13/shooter-used-to-visit-orlando-gay-club-use-gay-dating-apps/?AID=7236)
Truth, lie or obfuscation? It's so hard to tell these days. Does it really matter in the end, though? All those dead human beings. Tragic.
Then why even suggest there's something else going on? Three days, Sharky. That's how long it's been and barely time at all to conduct an official investigation.
And even if Pulse's security
hadn't been armed, so the fuck what?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 11:29:58 AM
Better react sooner than later, I say.
Pre-emptively?
QuoteState monopolisation of policing cannot help but encourage any reaction to be too late.
The relative lack of gun violence in places like the UK and Australia suggests very strongly that my position in this respect is far more likely to have the desired outcome than yours.
Butch, I'm talking about an organised private policing company, not some random officer working as a glorified bouncer on his day off.
And yes, you're right, it isn't an "increasingly fantastic scenario" - that was a bit too much hyperbole, even for me. (Although, if one pays attention to the MSM they do tend to ramp up the threat.) I live in rural Lancashire and see people with guns all the time - for hunting and sport. In all my 50 years I've only known of one shotgun murder in my village - when I was a teenager a guy shot his wife to death for being unfaithful to him - and a couple of suicides. Given the number of guns around here, that's not bad.
People mostly know not to shoot one another. If you grow up around guns, as I did, this gets drilled into you all the time. In my opinion, people should be taught about guns and gun safety in school. Learning about guns from Call of Duty is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster - like learning about road safety from Grand Theft Auto.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 15 June, 2016, 11:38:54 AM
The relative lack of gun violence in places like the UK and Australia suggests very strongly that my position in this respect is far more likely to have the desired outcome than yours.
Who says it's an either/or situation? There is no chance that the state is going to give up its police any time soon and, despite how I might come across, I don't think
everything the state police do is evil, corrosive or bad for society (just most of it :D).
There is a place for private police working alongside state police. Indeed, allowing professional private police services in some areas would help the state police.
What the actual fuck am I reading here! >:(
I can't help but feel this is Sharky whenever something doesn't work out in his imaginary world where everyone pays voluntary tax and people with sociopathic tendencies still know not to use guns.
(http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/019/304/old.jpg)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 11:29:58 AM
Say the nightclub (for example) owner (through his private security company) spots a person with an assault rifle walking towards the venue: the guards on the door would be informed in advance ...
Kevin West (http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/omar-mateen-gay-orlando-shooting) said he recognised Mateen outside the club and said hi. West mentioned Mateen had a strange look in his eyes, which he thought suspicious, but not that he was wielding an AR-15.
Presumably, Mateen concealed the weapon underneath a jacket - the bushmaster's about the length of the average torso:
(http://gridiss.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Fotolia_33219951_S.jpg)
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 15 June, 2016, 11:30:32 AM
Then why even suggest there's something else going on? Three days, Sharky. That's how long it's been and barely time at all to conduct an official investigation.
That's a very good point, Eric. The MSM does it all the time. The first page on this story, which I searched for at random, was this one. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3637414/Everyone-running-Gunman-bursts-gay-nightclub-Florida-shoots-20-people-taking-hostages.html) It
begins with the following words: "ISIS has claimed responsibility..." It doesn't begin with facts, eyewitness or police accounts. It begins with a
claim.
Quote from: Satanist on 15 June, 2016, 11:46:18 AM
What the actual fuck am I reading here! >:(
A discussion about how such tragedies might be avoided in the future.
Hawkie, how dare you. I don't shout at clouds - even I know they're too high up to hear me and, besides, very few of them speak English.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 11:40:59 AM
I'm talking about an organised private policing company, not some random officer working as a glorified bouncer on his day off.
The killer was a security guard, employed by G4S, the world's largest private security contractor:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/14/g4s-security-firm-orlando-attack-omar-mateen
Quote from: Butch on 15 June, 2016, 12:01:47 PM
The killer was a security guard, employed by G4S, the world's largest private security contractor:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/14/g4s-security-firm-orlando-attack-omar-mateen
What's your point?
You can't be saying that all private security personnel are the same - that would be like saying that all comic fans are like Scojo. You can't be saying that all private security firms only employ killers, either. Or that the G4S model is the only way to run a private security firm. Maybe you're saying that his training helped him commit the crime or pointing out that his employers failed to investigate his behaviour?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 11:58:50 AM
Quote from: Satanist on 15 June, 2016, 11:46:18 AM
What the actual fuck am I reading here! >:(
A discussion about how such tragedies might be avoided in the future.
Ah ok as for a moment I thought someone was suggesting that the answer to US gun crime is MOAR GUNZ!!!
Some people think that's the answer, I don't. I think the answer, at least part of the answer (it's a very wide-ranging social question covering and interconnected with many areas), lies in the direction of smarter distribution of guns and better education.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 15 June, 2016, 12:11:58 PM
Quote from: Butch on 15 June, 2016, 12:01:47 PM
The killer was a security guard, employed by G4S, the world's largest private security contractor:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/14/g4s-security-firm-orlando-attack-omar-mateen
What's your point?
You can't be saying that all private security personnel are the same - that would be like saying that all comic fans are like Scojo. You can't be saying that all private security firms only employ killers, either. Or that the G4S model is the only way to run a private security firm. Maybe you're saying that his training helped him commit the crime or pointing out that his employers failed to investigate his behaviour?
You
can't be the same guy who was complaining about others using straw man arguments just one hour earlier (http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=32312.msg919290#msg919290).
You seemed to be arguing that a private security provider was inherently better than a publicly funded police force just because it was privately funded and operated.
The link I provided illustrated that the recruitment practices and operational efficiency of private security contractors are no better than the public model. Here's another (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/supportservices/10070425/Timeline-how-G4Ss-bungled-Olympics-security-contract-unfolded.html).
So the option, "...pointing out that his employers failed to investigate his behaviour," was, in essence, the correct one.
There seems to be some basic misunderstanding about what I mean by "private security companies" and, by extension, all private companies. I am not talking about the government protected fascistic (in the way Mussolini defined fascism as the marriage of state and corporate power) entities we suffer under today - entities which lobby governments for special rights, legislations and protections. I'm talking about private companies from the Misesan, Austrian Economics school of thought in which private companies rely entirely on the free market. That is, the market of pure economics as opposed to the market of government controlled economics.
In the government controlled market, profits are determined by subsidies, protectionism and cronyism. In the free market, profits are determined by supply and demand. In the government controlled market, waste and bad practices can be positive boons - in the free market, waste and bad practices lead to failure.
Take as an example the current private rail companies. If they fail to make profits they are subsidised through money stolen from you (in taxes). It does not pay these companies to be efficient because if they claim less in subsidies this year they will be given less next year. The more inefficient they are, the more subsidies they can claim. (This happens in most, if not all, pseudo-privatised industries.) (In the late 19th Century, Leland Stanford, a former governor and US senator from California, used his political connections to have the state pass laws prohibiting competition for his Central Pacific railroad, and he and his business partners profited from this monopoly scheme and also from government subsidies paying so much per mile of track laid, which led to long and inefficient routes. Conversely, James J. Hill (http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/hill.htm) built the Great Northern Railroad without any government aid, paying for the right of way through hundreds of miles of private and public lands (even Indian lands)in cash and laying shorter, more efficient routes.)
In a proper free market, a rail company failing to make a decent profit from providing a decent service would go out of business to be replaced by a company or companies who could do it.
The same is true of all companies, in a proper free market.
You might say that only "government" can provide such a national service (rail, hospitals, police, etc.) but this is patently untrue. Imagine, for example, that since the invention of cinema the "government" had been in charge of making and showing all films through the Ministry of Cinematography and Public Cinemas. Then somebody comes along and says, "why don't we let private companies make all the films instead?"
The nay-sayers would immediately scoff and put forward a torrent of questions. Who's going to make the film stock? Who's going to make the cameras and the lighting rigs? Who's going to write the scripts? Who's going to operate the cameras? Who's going to write the music? Who's going to distribute the films? Who's going to advertise the films? Who's going to act in the films? Who's going to direct the films? Where will the films be shown? How will the poor get to see the films? Will only the rich be able to make films? Will only the rich be able to see them? All of these questions are obviously easily answered and the same is true of all government monopolies. There is nothing the government does which cannot be done, and be done better, through true free market economics.
On your train example, Sharky, it might be worth taking into account that the inefficient train company would only be replaced in the free market if:
1) people stopped purchasing the essential service which they provide, which most customers would not have the option to do.
2) another company was willing to invest a huge sum in competing with an established company, and was willing to invest in providing a better service despite the easy profit to be made in providing a poor one.
What you need, mate, is a regulator.
3) Government subsidies cease, forcing the established companies to innovate.
what we need, mate, is fair economic competition.
They don't have to innovate. A train company, by its very nature, pretty much has a monopoly over how a whole bunch of people get from A to B. If they stop making such a huge profit, they can just charge more or drop the quality of their service, slash their staff numbers, cut the amount of seats. Most people have no choice but to buy their service.
QuoteThere is nothing the government does which cannot be done, and be done better, through true free market economics.
Provide essential services to individuals who cannot afford them.
In Quito every bar has an armed uniformed security guard - they will react to trouble on the premises but will happily watch you get mugged and stabbed in the street outside because they're privately hired and policing the streets is not their job.
Give me police over hired goons any day
Opposition to state-run trains (or a centralised trust-based system) makes me furious. Any privatisation should be about effective competition. There can be no effective competition with trains. It's either a national monopoly or a local one. The same goes for water. You only really start getting into murky territory with electricity and gas, for which there are arguments in both directions.
Panth, if you want to look at it like that, every business is a monopoly. MacDonald's has a monopoly on Big Macs, Switzerland has a monopoly on Swiss watches and my local newsagent has a monopoly on the stuff it sells from its little corner of the village.
This view that businesses are all evil with no other goal than the rape of the public has grown up because that's what a government controlled economy encourages. Which sane business person would run a railway service in the way you describe if it didn't have a coercive state safety net? How many investors would put money into a service designed to shaft people? Such a business, in a truly free economy, would not make any money and better, more savvy businesspeople would be itching to pounce. Local coach services would be champing at the bit to offer a competitive service, for example. The main thing stopping them now is government regulation - the demand for license fees to make fair competition impossible, local laws preventing coaches parking to pick up passengers and so on.
A good businessperson knows that it's better to charge 1,000 passengers £1 each than one passenger £1,000 because, if one out of the thousand passengers doesn't turn up you've lost a pound, if the one rich passenger doesn't turn up, you've lost it all. Profits don't have to be huge, they have to be steady. It is, again, the existence of state subsidies which encourages greed, encourages cutting staff, encourages charging high fees - encourages all the things you fear - because the subsidies and protectionist legislation all but guarantees profit no matter what is done. Take away those subsidies and protections and the companies will innovate or go under. Investors will still invest but will switch to whoever is going to give the most reliable return. Investors invest to make money, not to screw people over. It's just that, at present, the system encourages screwing people over to make money - change the system to one where pampering people makes money and investors will invest in the best pamperers.
IP, why would opposition to state-run trains make you "furious"? The state is nothing but a bunch of lying, cheating, hypocritical bullies acting together like a mafia mob to keep their position, privilege and power. Why on earth would keeping such a useful system out of their hands make anyone anything other than relieved? Privatisation should be real privatisation in a real free market, not the dog's breakfast we have now which is neither one thing or the other but still manages to propagate the worst aspects of both. Of course there can be competition with trains - companies could invest in and run anything from nationwide lines to individual engines and carriages. Stations can be privately owned by countless different companies. Tracks can be owned by specialised companies, as can level crossings, signal systems and even embankments. It wouldn't be impossible to organise by any stretch of the imagination even though it would be comprised of countless sub-units. The food industry manages to feed just about everyone in the country on a regular basis and that's a much larger and much more fragmented operation.
The state doesn't have some magical power to take all the disparate pieces of the railway system and make them work in unison - the system basically organises itself, like just about every human system, and all the state does is take credit (and taxes) for it. The state, as I've said before, is an illusion - nothing more than an irrational superstition. It's the people on the ground, the human beings doing their jobs, who make it all run properly. The same goes for water, electricity, gas, air travel, the roads, policing, hospitals, schools, universities, newsagents and everything else. "Government" is not needed in order to make any system work - except government itself.
DDD - that's a narrow view. As I've mentioned before, it would make more sense for local businesses to club together to hire security for a specific area. What would be the point of operating the safest nightclub in a war zone? Who's going to risk walking through a street lined with muggers, rapists and murderers to get to a club that's safe inside? It makes no business sense whatsoever. Wouldn't you rather go to a nightclub in an area with specialised and localised visible security services, dedicated to patrolling, upholding the law and protecting the customers than one in which you might see a state police car passing through now and then if they happen to have nothing else to deal with elsewhere in the town/city/county?
Private ANYTHING has only one loyalty - money. I know accountability isn't always perfect but state provided services are theoretically designed to work for us and even if it takes years justice can eventually be won. British soldiers have faced courts for murdering Iraqis for example, but Blackwater et al operate under the radar.
Quoteif you want to look at it like that, every business is a monopoly.
No, they're clearly not. But some are. And without regulation, the is no limit to the control they hold.
QuoteThis view that businesses are all evil with no other goal than the rape of the public has grown up because that's what a government controlled economy encourages.
Wait...what? Companies do evil things because...government regulation?
QuoteHow many investors would put money into a service designed to shaft people?
If it made them money? Literally millions.
QuoteInvestors invest to make money, not to screw people over.
No, of course they don't invest to deliberately shaft people, but its often a side effect. Look at the largest and most profitable companies in the world and you'll soon find a list of the dead they leave in their wake. Are people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation? Do many companies regularly abuse their staff because of democracy?
The thing I find worrying about your view of the world, Sharks, is that everyone seems so unusually....
nice to each other. Cast free of the terribly burden of having to contribute towards the healthcare and education of the nation, free from the horror of equality laws and health and safety, free from any sort of democratic control and in a world were property rights are supreme...everyone seems to genuinely care for their fellow man and wants only to act in a way which will benefit society. It's like conversing with someone who holds a devout religion. You have your vision of the perfect world, and despite how utterly unlikely it appears, despite the vast flaws in logic which everyone else can see, you are unshakable.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 June, 2016, 05:48:21 PMOf course there can be competition with trains
There just can't. However a system is set up, you end up with some kind of regional monopoly. There is no effective competition in such a system.
QuoteThe food industry manages to feed just about everyone in the country on a regular basis and that's a much larger and much more fragmented operation.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. In terms of supermarkets alone, there are five in my town. I can pick and choose between them. I can also visit a restaurant or buy groceries from smaller stores. In other words, there is competition.
In my town, there is one train station, where I can take trains west to Basingstoke or East towards London.
There. Is. No. Competition.
DDD - who do organisations like Blackwater work for? Also, I think that private businesses, especially smaller ones unentangled with the state, have loyalties to more than just money. Yes, money is important in this world but there are many businesses that won't do
anything for money, they do have corporate morals, as it were. Not all, sure, but many. The private company I work for, for instance, is very loyal to its customers and employees and doesn't screw either of them over because it's not good business. You don't need governments to win justice - indeed, governments are often the biggest bar to getting justice. Tony Blair, for example.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 16 June, 2016, 07:15:48 PM
Quoteif you want to look at it like that, every business is a monopoly.
No, they're clearly not. But some are. And without regulation, the is no limit to the control they hold.
Depends on your view. I can't go into my local newsagent's and just start selling stuff without their permission. They have the monopoly over what they sell on their premises. (as an aside, this is as it should be but if the "government" decides to give me the right to go into my local newsagents' and sell stuff whether they like it or not, what recourse do they have? In the free economy, the premises owner decides what to sell and who to ally with.) In the free economy, the consumer is the regulator. In the free economy, the consumer limits control. In the government controlled economy, the government regulates and limits control whether the consumer likes it or not.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 16 June, 2016, 07:15:48 PM
QuoteThis view that businesses are all evil with no other goal than the rape of the public has grown up because that's what a government controlled economy encourages.
Wait...what? Companies do evil things because...government regulation?
"This view that businesses are all evil with no other goal than the rape of the public has grown up because that's what a government controlled economy encourages." Take the idiocy of the minimum wage as an example. We all know that if the "government" wants to make people eat more fruit, it tries to make fruit cheaper through subsidies and tax breaks. If it wants to make something popular, it makes it cheaper so more people can afford it. If it wants to discourage smoking or drinking, it makes cigarettes and cider more expensive so fewer people can afford them. By the same logic, making wages higher makes sure fewer companies can afford to pay them. The minimum wage, therefore, causes companies to destroys jobs - whether they want to or not. If it worked, why just up the minimum wage by a few pennies at a time? Why not up it by a tenner? Twenty quid? A ton? Instead of giving aid to poor countries, why not just tell them to raise their minimum wage so we won't have to send them our money? Because it doesn't work.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 16 June, 2016, 07:15:48 PM
QuoteHow many investors would put money into a service designed to shaft people?
If it made them money? Literally millions.
And which entity protects services that regularly shaft people? If I formed a company that went around demanding money off people under threat of violence, no legitimate investor would touch me with a ten foot pole and my victims would soon put me out of business one way or another. If the "government" formed a department that went around demanding money off people under threat of violence, they'd call it HMRC, attract thousands of corporate and private investors (government bond purchasers) and protect their operatives with legislation and police and court monopolies.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 16 June, 2016, 07:15:48 PM
QuoteInvestors invest to make money, not to screw people over.
No, of course they don't invest to deliberately shaft people, but its often a side effect. (Yes - a side-effect of government protectionism.) Look at the largest and most profitable companies in the world and you'll soon find a list of the dead they leave in their wake. Are people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation? Yes - because companies make deals with governments, especially foreign governments strapped for cash, to turn a blind eye or legislate for exemptions. Do many companies regularly abuse their staff because of democracy? Basically the same as my last answer and also, "So, young Mwata, you don't like being beaten? Hands up anyone else who thinks the beatings are unfair. Anyone? Thought not. Now get back to work."
The thing I find worrying about your view of the world, Sharks, is that everyone seems so unusually....nice to each other. No, that's not it. In the case of a self-owned, sharing society, people will have much more choice over who they work for and what they buy. There will always be bastards but bastardry will be harder to make a profit out of. Cast free of the terribly burden of having to contribute towards the healthcare and education of the nation, free from the horror of equality laws and health and safety,(That's a misunderstanding - it's not about not having to pay anything, it's about having the choice of what to pay for, what not to pay for, how much to pay - it's about the freedom to choose, the freedom to live without coercion or threats from those entities supposedly in place to serve but which actually terrorise) free from any sort of democratic control (otherwise known as Mob Rule) and in a world were property rights are supreme...everyone seems to genuinely care for their fellow man and wants only to act in a way which will benefit society. The idea is to encourage an economy where cooperation, sharing and "care for their fellow man" is not blocked by "authority" or actively discouraged through legislation, subsidies and protectionism. As I said earlier, when it becomes profitable to treat people right, companies will treat people right - even if some of the psychopaths in charge have to do it through clenched teeth. It's like conversing with someone who holds a devout religion. In my view, it is people who believe in the invisible Volcano God called "Government" who are the religious zealots. They support it even as it robs them and uses their money to bomb the shit out of innocents, as it encourages slavery and pollution, as it dictates morality and income, as it treats those it claims to serve as serfs, as it erodes rights and civil liberties, as it protects paedophiles, murderers, swindlers and besuited scumbags of all types, as it steals their money and pushes them around, as it spends the stolen money on things nobody wants, as it tells bald-faced lies, as it hurts anyone who disobeys it, as it destroys services, economies and people. It is worse than Satanism. You have your vision of the perfect world, (how many times do I have to say that the world will never be perfect before people stop claiming this? I merely point out that there are other and better options to this neo-serfdom we're saddled with - take the ideas on board or don't, that's not my call; I do not expect anyone to believe what I believe but most other people, it seems, demand that I believe what they believe and vilify me (accuse me of trolling, even) when I don't) and despite how utterly unlikely it appears, despite the vast flaws in logic which everyone else imagines they can see, you are unshakable. I am.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 16 June, 2016, 08:25:17 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 June, 2016, 05:48:21 PMOf course there can be competition with trains
There just can't. However a system is set up, you end up with some kind of regional monopoly. There is no effective competition in such a system. Whiz-Rail says, "We're going to run our trains on this line between times A and B on days C and D for £E per ticket," Zoom-Rail says, "We're going to run our trains on this line between times F and G on days C and D for £H per ticket," and so on. Whiz-Rail says, "We've got U carriages on this train to Whereverville, with V facilities for £W per ticket," whilst Zoom-Rail says, "We've got X carriages on this train to Whereverville, with Y facilities for £Z per ticket." It's no different from having the choice between National Express and Megabus. Private stations can be built and/or purchased and expanded/improved to offer more services than just rail travel. Private tracks can be laid by companies who think they can profit from them - just as in the beginning. Specialist companies can compete to run signals, maintain tracks, service engines and carriages, provide food and entertainment services, cleaning services, driver training, embankment management, level-crossing control and maintenance, tunnel and bridge maintenance, ticket services, timetabling construction, traffic control, safety inspections, security services and so on and on. There is lots of scope for competition.
QuoteThe food industry manages to feed just about everyone in the country on a regular basis and that's a much larger and much more fragmented operation.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. In terms of supermarkets alone, there are five in my town. I can pick and choose between them. I can also visit a restaurant or buy groceries from smaller stores. In other words, there is competition. Exactly. One train operator, no competition. Five train operators, competition.
In my town, there is one train station, where I can take trains west to Basingstoke or East towards London. There. Is. No. Competition. Under. The. Present. System. FTFY.
Quote- who do organisations like Blackwater work for?
Whoever pays them
QuoteWhiz-Rail says, "We're going to run our trains on this line between times A and B on days C and D for £E per ticket," Zoom-Rail says, "We're going to run our trains on this line between times F and G on days C and D for £H per ticket," and so on. Whiz-Rail says, "We've got U carriages on this train to Whereverville, with V facilities for £W per ticket," whilst Zoom-Rail says, "We've got X carriages on this train to Whereverville, with Y facilities for £Z per ticket." It's no different from having the choice between National Express and Megabus.
You know that trains run on tracks, right? Doesn't this great inter-company negotiation depend entirely on who owns those tracks? (Let me guess..."Ah, but, unregulated by government, new tracks would spring up everywhere! There'd be seventeen lines where once there was one, because companies would invest a huge amount of money in buying vast areas of land and laying new lines, investing in new transport links, spending billions in the hope that they would be able to compete with an established monopoly, which would continue to run at a profit until this complex web of steel was complete. Shareholders love that kind of thing. They love investing billions in the possibility of scratching a small return decades into the future. Boo, government.")
QuoteTake the idiocy of the minimum wage as an example.
As someone whose wages actually increased as a result of minimum wage, your pro-greed viewpoint on this is quite offensive. The company I worked for didn't pay shit wages because it was all they could afford - they paid shit wages because they could get away with it. I worked for them because of a severe lack of opportunity in the jobs market and because I'd rather work and earn anything than be on the dole. Their behaviour, though, was no doubt the problem of "government regulation" and if only they didn't have to meet basic standards expected of citizens they would have behaved much better. Of course, in a "true free market" companies would treat their employees with respect and any unhappy employees would just go work for a different company,because of the cast number of opportunities which would exist for some reason. Magic.
QuoteAre people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation?Yes - because companies make deals with governments, especially foreign governments strapped for cash, to turn a blind eye or legislate for exemptions.
Wow.
Apple are making deals with governments so that health and safety laws are not applied. This is the fault of the governments, which are corrupt, but not the fault of Apple. If the health and safety laws did not exist, conditions would be better (somehow), because bribes would not be necessary.
Your unending support for the Volcano God of the "free market" is terrifying. Companies across the globe treat employees and customers appallingly everyday. They pollute and abuse. They spread chaos in the unstoppable quest for more, yet you bow before them, happy for them to go uncontrolled, in the bizarre belief that, given more power, they will become better. You would happily cast aside the rights which have taken centuries to put in place, to kneel before the altar of capitalism and unregulated greed. All because government, which is accountable to the people, is automatically corrupt whereas companies, which answer only to shareholders, can be trusted to provide everything society needs.
So the pretty obvious answer to your train conundrum is some form of communal ownership where, rather than being run for the private gain of a small number of people, they are operated for the public benefit of all. As part of this we collectively agree that services which would not viable if we were operating solely for the generation of profit but which are actually important to people (e.g. weekend evening services in the Western Highlands) should continue to run because of the social benefit to those unable to travel in any other way.
Obviously, people need to work on this to maintain and make it work but I'm not sure I could be arsed doing it myself. Seems that the most reasonable way of running something which we all need would be some form of centralised agency to which we deputise our collective responsibility for governing it. Can't think of a suitably snappy name for this idea.
You say there's lots of scope for competition and give a bunch of spurious examples of railside services while ignoring the key point that somebody, somewhere, somehow has to own the land and lay some tracks for any of that to exist.
Can you give an example of anything which can be done better by an organisation which needs to siphon off some of the resources as profit compared to one which is run solely for the benefit of those who require the product or service?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 June, 2016, 10:10:24 PMAre people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation? Yes - because companies make deals with governments, especially foreign governments strapped for cash, to turn a blind eye or legislate for exemptions.
Going to have to jump on this one here. You seem to be saying something that makes absolutely no logical sense. You posit that the government of country A does not allow Company B to, as an example, dump toxic waste in its rivers. Company B therefore sets up shop in Country C where it's able to exercise its economic clout to overrule any attempts to prevent it dumping toxic waste in the river.
Your conclusion from this is that the government of Country A is to blame for this rather than the management of Company B and, by extension, its shareholders. Really?
Your solution is to remove all government restrictions from all countries rather than to try and extend the protection to all? Trying to look at it from your point of view I can see how this is problematic. Here is a clear example of the hated "government" (or "authority" or whatever the current idea is) providing a tangible benefit to the governed without any obvious ulterior motive. But that doesn't fit with the paradigm, so the facts must be wrong rather than the concept.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 16 June, 2016, 11:02:10 PM
Quote- who do organisations like Blackwater work for?
Whoever pays them. Fair enough. The original accusation by DDD, however, asserted that Blackwater (which was renamed XE Services in 2009 and renamed Academi in 2011) operates "under the radar." It has clients including the US Department of Defense, the CIA, the US State Department, Monsanto, Chevron, Deutche Bank, Barclays, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and even the Walt Disney Company. A fair few of those clients have the financial and political clout to keep operations under the radar, but that cover is not and can never be absolute as proved in 2008 when four of its guards were convicted in a US court for killing 17 and injuring 20 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad the year before - thereby proving that, even under present conditions, private security companies can still be held accountable for their actions. One wonders if this is simply the tip of the iceberg, with other atrocities hidden by government and corporate bodies with at least as much desire to keep such actions quiet.
You know that trains run on tracks, right? Doesn't this great inter-company negotiation depend entirely on who owns those tracks? (Let me guess..."Ah, but, unregulated by government, new tracks would spring up everywhere! There'd be seventeen lines where once there was one, because companies would invest a huge amount of money in buying vast areas of land and laying new lines, investing in new transport links, spending billions in the hope that they would be able to compete with an established monopoly, which would continue to run at a profit until this complex web of steel was complete. Shareholders love that kind of thing. They love investing billions in the possibility of scratching a small return decades into the future. Boo, government.") Ownership of the tracks is indeed a factor but you need to guess again. You might want specialist corporations to own some of them, or some to be owned by private companies staffed and run by the people who live in towns and cities where specific parts of the rail network reside, you might want to own 10ft of track yourself. There would not, of course, be unlimited track construction. If anything, laying new tracks would be more difficult because there would be no more compulsory purchase powers. Any company wishing to lay a new stretch of railway would have to be able to purchase land legally, abide by the decisions of local communities and be sure the track they want to lay would be necessary and profitable. Unregulated by government does not mean unregulated by anything. The biggest regulator is reality - nobody's going to invest billions in a line that will piss people off and yield a pound a week in profits. Government skews reality (as we all know) and provides profits where there should be none.
As someone whose wages actually increased as a result of minimum wage, your pro-greed viewpoint on this is quite offensive. The company I worked for didn't pay shit wages because it was all they could afford - they paid shit wages because they could get away with it. I worked for them because of a severe lack of opportunity in the jobs market and because I'd rather work and earn anything than be on the dole. Their behaviour, though, was no doubt the problem of "government regulation" and if only they didn't have to meet basic standards expected of citizens they would have behaved much better. Of course, in a "true free market" companies would treat their employees with respect and any unhappy employees would just go work for a different company,because of the cast number of opportunities which would exist for some reason. Magic. It's not pro-greed, it's pro-logic. Just because the company you worked for was despicable, that doesn't mean they all are. In the wider economy, enforcing a minimum wage has the knock-on effect of increasing labour costs. These costs must be met by either reducing profits, thereby decreasing the ability for further investment, increasing the price of products and services, thereby nullifying the benefits to the workers themselves (I get an extra £5 per week but then, so does everyone else, so my overall shopping and services bill has increased by at least £5 per week), or a combination of the two. The minimum wage exacerbates problems in poor areas and has no effect on affluent areas. In the area where you lived and worked, Panth, was there scope for you and others to set up your own businesses, to become self-employed in some way? What stopped you doing this? Was it lack of opportunity or the sheer number of government hoops you'd have to jump through to even get something off the ground, let alone make a profit from it? Licenses, permits, fees, assessments, etc? Or a combination of the two? Getting rid of government creates countless opportunities. It's not magic at all. What is (black) magic is the idea that you can't be a street vendor, a window cleaner, a taxi driver, a shopkeeper or even a shoe-shiner unless the magic pixies up at your local enchanted fairy council castle issue you with a piece of supernatural paper.
QuoteAre people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation?Yes - because companies make deals with governments, especially foreign governments strapped for cash, to turn a blind eye or legislate for exemptions.
Wow.
Apple are making deals with governments so that health and safety laws are not applied. This is the fault of the governments, which are corrupt, but not the fault of Apple. If the health and safety laws did not exist, conditions would be better (somehow), because bribes would not be necessary. You do know that entities like the World Bank, which are supported by governments, which are supported by corporations, attach conditions such as the sale of infrastructure (to the corporations that support the governments that support the banks) to so-called loans, right? You know that foreign companies go into places like the Amazon to plunder logs with little regard for the livelihoods and even lives of indigenous populations, right? You know that foreign companies pay peanuts in local fines for polluting rivers, providing poor working conditions and such, don't you? You know that local governments, or the corrupt politicians making them up, enjoy the foreign income so much that they send their hired thugs (police) to quell any dissent from the workers/indigenous people/victims, don't you? In such circumstances, it makes absolutely no difference whether safety laws exist or not because it's up to governments, not the people to whom the laws are meant to apply and protect, whether these laws are enforced or ignored.
Your unending support for the Volcano God of the "free market" is terrifying. Companies across the globe treat employees and customers appallingly everyday (despite the existence of governments put in place to prevent this very thing). They pollute and abuse (despite the existence of governments put in place to prevent this very thing). They spread chaos in the unstoppable quest for more (despite the existence of governments put in place to prevent this very thing), yet you bow before them (I bow before nobody, and neither should anyone else be made to - that's kind of the whole point) happy for them to go uncontrolled (uncontrolled by government, not uncontrolled by law and society), in the bizarre belief (bizarre? hey, you're the one who believes that a government official is better than you, able to tell you what to think, how to behave, how much you have to pay them and whether or not people in a distant country deserve to die) that, given more power (um, no - remove government coercive power and the power of corporate cronies would be severely weakened), they will become better. You would happily cast aside the rights (governments do not and cannot bestow rights upon anyone - they can only bestow privileges) which have taken centuries to put in place (yet have existed throughout recorded time and beyond), to kneel before the altar of capitalism and unregulated greed. All because government, which is accountable to the people (like Tony Blair - he killed a bunch of people because of a lie and then went on to live a billionaire, globetrotting lifestyle of fabulous wealth, glamour and respect but not before we'd voted him out - yeah, we really showed him who's boss, didn't we?), is automatically corrupt (power corrupts - it's virtually inevitable; I own there may be an honest politician somewhere, maybe even more than one, but nowhere near enough to make a difference) whereas companies, which answer only to shareholders (and customers and employees and communities), can be trusted to provide everything society needs.
Quote from: The Cosh on 17 June, 2016, 12:19:41 AM
So the pretty obvious answer to your train conundrum is some form of communal ownership where, rather than being run for the private gain of a small number of people, they are operated for the public benefit of all. As part of this we collectively agree that services which would not viable if we were operating solely for the generation of profit but which are actually important to people (e.g. weekend evening services in the Western Highlands) should continue to run because of the social benefit to those unable to travel in any other way. Can't disagree with that, sounds reasonable.
Obviously, people need to work on this to maintain and make it work but I'm not sure I could be arsed doing it myself. Seems that the most reasonable way of running something which we all need would be some form of centralised (why centralised? Why not local to the people such things actually have an impact on? People who not only have skills but also care?) agency to which we deputise our collective responsibility for governing it. Can't think of a suitably snappy name for this idea. Local investment?
You say there's lots of scope for competition and give a bunch of spurious examples of railside services while ignoring the key point that somebody, somewhere, somehow has to own the land and lay some tracks for any of that to exist. I addressed this point in my last reply to Panth.
Can you give an example of anything which can be done better by an organisation which needs to siphon off some of the resources as profit compared to one which is run solely for the benefit of those who require the product or service? I'm not sure I get this question. How about, ooh, I don't know, a bakery? A family run, local bakery produces and sells products at such a price that it's possible for the employees and owners to profit. If the product and service is good, people will buy it. If it's not, they won't. It is therefore important for the product to be good. The bakery serves the local community with a good product and the local community serves the bakery by allowing it to profit and maybe even invest in expansion to serve the wider community. Let's compare that with a local "bread charity" where everyone works as a volunteer from a donated premisis. People donate whatever bread they don't want to the charity, and maybe the charity even has a few ovens of its own, which gives it away for the benefit of the community. The charity uses stolen money (taxes) or voluntary donations to pay for the services it requires (electricity, water, etc) and depends on people willing to work for nothing who may or may not know anything about bread. The bread the charity produces will be inferior to the bread the professional bakery produces. It would even be in the professional bakery's interest to give some of its product away (batches from yesterday or the day before) to reduce waste and to gather good publicity and to produce a range of products of varying cost, from simple and cheap to elaborate and expensive. In this case, the profit-driven company will provide a better service than the charity. This might not answer your question as, as I said, I'm not sure I grasp what you're getting at.
Quote from: The Cosh on 17 June, 2016, 12:19:52 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 June, 2016, 10:10:24 PMAre people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation? Yes - because companies make deals with governments, especially foreign governments strapped for cash, to turn a blind eye or legislate for exemptions.
Going to have to jump on this one here. You seem to be saying something that makes absolutely no logical sense. You posit that the government of country A does not allow Company B to, as an example, dump toxic waste in its rivers. Company B therefore sets up shop in Country C where it's able to exercise its economic clout to overrule any attempts to prevent it dumping toxic waste in the river.
Your conclusion from this is that the government of Country A is to blame for this rather than the management of Company B and, by extension, its shareholders. Really? No, the responsibility is shared. Governments act as enablers for bad corporate behaviour.
Your solution is to remove all government restrictions from all countries rather than to try and extend the protection to all? Trying to look at it from your point of view I can see how this is problematic. Here is a clear example of the hated "government" (or "authority" or whatever the current idea is) providing a tangible benefit to the governed without any obvious ulterior motive. But that doesn't fit with the paradigm, so the facts must be wrong rather than the concept. I think I addressed this in my last answer to Panth.
It's like the Mayor never left.
Quote from: Professor Bear on 17 June, 2016, 10:45:22 AM
It's like the Mayor never left.
"Larry, the summer is over. You're the mayor of Shark city."
::)
Has never been more fitting.
Quote from: Tordelback on 17 June, 2016, 10:47:38 AM
Quote from: Professor Bear on 17 June, 2016, 10:45:22 AM
It's like the Mayor never left.
"Larry, the summer is over. You're the mayor of Shark city."
A seeker of thrills indeed.
You know, my kids* were in the water too.
* Well, they would have been if I had any. Does my dog count?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 17 June, 2016, 12:41:18 PM
You know, my kids* were in the water too.
* Well, they would have been if I had any. Does my dog count?
The Brody's had a dog I think...
Not forgetting poor Pippet :-(
Just when you thought a forum member couldn't come up with a more annoying or impenetrable posting style...
Jim
Yes, Jim, I agree. That is a crap posting style. No real excuse except for being in a rush to get to work and having many points to address.
I'll try to do better in future.
QuoteOne wonders if this is simply the tip of the iceberg, with other atrocities hidden by government and corporate bodies with at least as much desire to keep such actions quiet.
You know if you remove any oversight other than the free market, then no one gets held to account at all, ever, right?
QuoteYou might want specialist corporations to own some of them, or some to be owned by private companies staffed and run by the people who live in towns and cities where specific parts of the rail network reside, you might want to own 10ft of track yourself.
Doesn't really matter what I want. only thing that matters is who can afford to pay for it.
QuoteAny company wishing to lay a new stretch of railway would have to be able to purchase land legally, abide by the decisions of local communities
Why? Why would they have to abide by the will of local people? What authority do they have, unless they want to put their savings together and buy me out?
QuoteJust because the company you worked for was despicable, that doesn't mean they all are.
Just because you're able to hand pick example of government acting badly, doesn't mean that we should privatise everything.
QuoteWhat is (black) magic is the idea that you can't be a street vendor, a window cleaner, a taxi driver, a shopkeeper or even a shoe-shiner unless the magic pixies up at your local enchanted fairy council castle issue you with a piece of supernatural paper.
You've struck upon the cure for mass unemployment. What this country needs is 4 million self employed shoe shiners. That's lucky because the alternative will be for them to starve to death unless the rich are feeling charitable.
Quoteit makes absolutely no difference whether safety laws exist or not because it's up to governments, not the people to whom the laws are meant to apply and protect, whether these laws are enforced or ignored.
The question was "who is to blame for poisoning people in Apple factories". The answer which you could not bring yourself to give is "Apple". Because sometimes companies kill people in the search for profit. Sometimes they do it despite regulation. With no regulation, they would do it a hell of a lot more.
And then we've got a whole last paragraph, in which your point seems to be that government has failed to control corporations, therefore should be done away with and the corporations put in control.
Your leaps of logic and getting longer. "Magical dinosaur juice" Sharky may have just been factually questionable, but now your opinions have verved into down right unpleasant.
How about this weather we're having? Sure is some heat.
Panth, it seems people have had enough of this conversation and it's increasingly looking like just a point-scoring pissing contest.
If you want to carry it forward in PM or emails I'm more than happy to continue.
referred here to talk about PROJECT MONARCH. the real one. Deliberately created/trained split personalities... the comic put out has some real TRUTHS, some was changed. Anyone aware of this project?
The comic or the project?
Not aware of the comic but have heard of the alleged project. If memory serves, this is what The Manchurian Candidate was inspired by.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 August, 2016, 05:17:36 PM
The comic or the project?
Not aware of the comic but have heard of the alleged project. If memory serves, this is what The Manchurian Candidate was inspired by.
Apoceclipse is referring to Pat Mills' Greysuit strip.
Ah, thank you. I assumed there was a comic called Project Monarch - which there might very well be if I can ever be bothered to write one and find a suitably loopy artist...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 August, 2016, 06:33:53 PM
Ah, thank you. I assumed there was a comic called Project Monarch - which there might very well be if I can ever be bothered to write one and find a suitably loopy artist...
If you can get it out before September 2017 you could be on to a winner!
(http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i128/mubhceeb/image_12.jpeg) (http://s71.photobucket.com/user/mubhceeb/media/image_12.jpeg.html)
yeah the actual project, yep, manchurian. hah someone who has heard of it. nice. that damn comic has some real info on the actual project itself. a lot changed of course... was very interesting. ran across this comic (don't usually read comics) researching it, once I caught myself on cameras leaving in the middle of the night, and my life spiraled...
What do you mean by "caught myself on cameras leaving in the middle of the night"?
Dweezil - I gotta' get me one of those!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTSGQxOW9VWXB0dzA
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTWHBhdWpCblNtQTQ
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTQlFyNTZpdkVOSjQ
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTN0kwTzRySjJPTzA
https://youtu.be/UWYZaAqrNkM
That trail behind the house was a pickup, I don't know WHY there is that road showing on maps...funny.
I mean like that, and there. hunter field, well, if you were local, you would know that is EDWARD HUNTER field. the thing no one knows - is that it is referencing Edward Hunter.
Edward Hunter (1902–1978) was an American journalist, author, and intelligence agent. He wrote several books on, and 'coined' the term brainwashing
ask wikipedia (ha, but actually reliable with references, including to his own books, and look at the rest of the references... full circle)
Background[edit]
In March 1958, testifying before the United States House of Representatives' House Committee on Un-American Activities [1], Hunter described his career as a journalist, which he began at the Newark Ledger in New Jersey before moving on to the Chicago Tribune's Paris edition. Hunter worked in Japan and in China from the mid-1920s to mid-1930s, the time of the Japanese detachment of Manchukuo from China. He covered the Second Italo-Abyssinian War between Italy and Ethiopia, and took note of the psychological warfare methods used in all these instances, as well as during the preparations by Germany for World War II [2]. According to Hunter's 1958 testimony [3], he served for two years during World War II as a "propaganda specialist" for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the institutional predecessor to the CIA.
References
Seed, David (2004). Brainwashing: The Fictions of Mind Control : a Study of Novels and Films. Ohio: Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-462-8.
Hunter, Edward (1951). Brain-washing in Red China: the calculated destruction of men's minds. New York: Vanguard Press.
Hunter, Edward. "Communist psychological warfare". Retrieved 2008-02-06.
Marks, John (1979). The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate:' The CIA and Mind Control. NY: Times Books.
---------------------------
Went to school in GATE and this was the program: THIS WAS MONARCH GROOMING
http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1997/oct97/gifted.html
Gifted and Talented
Curriculum Program Raises Concerns
HILLSBOROUGH, NJ--Parents who were originally puffed up with pride when told by their local public school that their fourth-grade child should be promoted into a "gifted and talented" class became concerned about the content of the course when they read a document that defines its "Philosophy." It brags that this is "a DIFFERENTIATED [sic] program" in goals and curriculum, and that class size will be limited to 12 students.
The document starts out using all the trendy public school buzz words: self-esteem, self-awareness, problem-solving, decision making, higher-level cognitive processes, self and peer evaluation, and self-direction.
Page after page instructs the teacher how to give guided imagery exercises under the caption "Your Minds Eye." "Room will be darkened. Students must find comfortable position. Eyes may be closed or open. Closed is preferable. . . . Concentrate on slowly breathing, releasing energy from body."
...later in the article
The fourth-grade gifted and talented students are now ready to progress into some heavy learning. Students are taught to "use the experimental research technique in a self-directed learning activity reated to experimental anomalies."
The teacher is instructed to introduce clairvoyance (which the curriculum defines as "seeing" events taking place far away), telepathy (defined as the ability to send messages from one person's mind to another), precognition (defined as predicting events in the future), and psychokinesis (defined as moving objects with concentrated mental energy).
Students are told to conduct their own experiments and report their conclusions to the class. Will this information be scanned into the students' computer profiles? How will the students work be graded? Perhaps that doesn't matter any more since all students get A's and B's to preserve their self-esteem.
The federal Javits Gifted and Talented Education Act laid out the vision that the federal taxpayers should give children of "outstanding talent" some "services or activities not ordinarily provided by the schools." Parents wonder if this is what Senator Jacob Javits had in mind when he sponsored the law.
----------------
Sound like BS? Well look into THE SILVA METHOD, and it doesn't say it on wikipedia, but watch some of the owners original videos, and he will tell you himself - the army paid him to develop it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silva_Method
---------------
thats NOTHING -
THE MONROE INSTITUTE. this is where they really do the work. CONTROLLED OOBE's. Out of body experiences/astral travel/shadowalking....
https://www.monroeinstitute.org/Out%20of%20Body%20Experience
this isn't your BS 'remote viewing' NO - this is where you leave your physical body, and can literally watch people real time. Creepy, but real. Obviously there is viable military and intelligence applications! access can be restricted by electromagnetic field. Leaving your body is science, not hokey pokey BS. Ok?
they train civilians to do this now... haha my life is a sick joke, I swear....
Oh, one more - the training, after they torture you as a child into having a split personality, then give you rewards of course, to earn your trust, and groom you - they start training you very very young with VR headsets such as CUBIC and other platforms, to learn all the equipment when you are too young to use it yet...
https://www.cubic.com/Global-Defense/Leading-Edge-Solutions/Immersive-Simulation-intific
https://www.cubic.com/Global-Defense/Leading-edge-Solutions/Virtual-and-Immersive-Training-Systems
and don't tell me the CIA doesn't look at children:
https://youtu.be/QbaKn6qIOOM
Oh, and if you didn't know the history, the research done to be able to implement MONARCH:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
Last part - my website
organizesafety.wordpress.com
there are better videos on my website. I have personal proof, but it exposes my person, so... I am chatting on a comic book site - yeah
eh, starting to get that feeling like, shit! should I delete all that? eh, it doesn't fucking matter!
I'm going to be honest with you, I think you lost all of us from word one. I'd take it easy pal :)
Quite frankly, my dear Apoceclipse, it sounds like a loud of tosh of the highest order, but we've been around Sharky long enough to be inoculated to tin foil hate scenarios.
"Tin foil hate"? Heh.
Mind control is real. Pavlov controlled the minds of dogs through conditioning. A person who goes to a hypnotist to stop smoking is engaging in mind control. The very phrase "tin foil hat" is a form of mind control based on the appeal to ridicule - you see or hear a person given that label and automatically discount their argument without looking at the argument itself. It's what a good friend of mine used to call a "thought stopper." Similarly, the phrase "conspiracy theorist" is also a thought stopper, despite the fact that all police detectives are conspiracy theorists in that they see a crime and then produce theories as to who conspired to commit that crime. These theories are then tested in court. The MSM, however, presents a conspiracy theorist as some kind of mental deficient, which attitude permeates the minds of the viewers which is, of course, mind control. We are all mind controlled/conditioned to some extent by the sources we expose ourselves to. The trick is to ignore labels and examine the arguments themselves - which is, I admit, often difficult. For example, I can't be doing with Alex Jones; his voice gets on my nerves, his ranting and raving grates and he is an inveterate fearmonger. These things do not indicate, however, that all of his information is wrong.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 08 September, 2016, 10:28:53 AM
Quite frankly, my dear Apoceclipse, it sounds like a loud of tosh of the highest order, but we've been around Sharky long enough to be inoculated to tin foil hate scenarios.
Not quite.
See that last link Apocelipse posted - the one to the wikipedia article about MKUltra? Read that. As mental as it sounds, the US government
actually were doing mind control experiments on folk without their knowledge, dosing them with LSD and messing with their heads. For real. There
might even be links between that programme and the US military's 'psychic warfare' stuff, (like in that Stranger Things thing), which they also definitely dabbled in, (as mental as that also sounds).
'Course the problem with this sort of thing is telling apart the folk who've had their heads messed up from government experimentation, from the folk whose heads were messed up to begin with.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 08 September, 2016, 10:04:17 PM
See that last link Apocelipse posted - the one to the wikipedia article about MKUltra? Read that. As mental as it sounds, the US government actually were doing mind control experiments on folk without their knowledge, dosing them with LSD and messing with their heads. For real. There might even be links between that programme and the US military's 'psychic warfare' stuff, (like in that Stranger Things thing), which they also definitely dabbled in, (as mental as that also sounds).
'Course the problem with this sort of thing is telling apart the folk who've had their heads messed up from government experimentation, from the folk whose heads were messed up to begin with.
This thread is too wordy for me to keep track of whether I've read
every reply, but The Men Who Stare at Goats (http://amzn.to/2bWamuX) is a brilliant film (and presumably the book scrubs up well too).
I do like that film. Haven't read the book yet, though it's on my list as one to get hold of.
I've still only seen the original documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAMIvDmWbQs).
for the naysayers... you obviously didn't read the material. which is fine, but if you are going to actually weigh in on the subject, being informed would help. don't you think? must not have been (thinking) - eh?
What I speak of is pretty simple, overall.
Monarch is REAL - Monarch being a program where a person is purposefully 'given' a split personality, that is trained for military/intelligence purposes.
did that lose you? to understand it entirely, is very complicated. try actually reading the information. most of it is straight declassified material. the rest is heavily documented. where is the mystery?
https://organizesafety.wordpress.com (my website)
has some very informative information, including declassified information, and videos of congressional hearings/testimony regarding this very subject. So... what do you have to say to that? A general 'you lost me'? Well, I think you are just lost, because I am presenting very well documented/official evidence. It isn't hard to interpret. Pretty straightforward...
The Men Who Stare at Goats is a fantastic book, I would highly recommend it along with everything else Ron Jonson has written. The Psycopath Test would be highly relevent to the Shark's narrative, as would Them. Ron Jonson is very much like Louis Theroux in written form. I agree with a lot of what he has to write, particularly his opinions on so-called crack-pot tin-foil hatted conspirasists. They're not crack-pots, they're just people that are too terrified to admit to the real and horrible truth that the world is completely out of control. There is no secret cabal influencing world events. There is only chaos.
Quote from: Mister Pops on 09 September, 2016, 02:30:35 AM
The Men Who Stare at Goats is a fantastic book, I would highly recommend it along with everything else Ron Jonson has written. The Psycopath Test would be highly relevent to the Shark's narrative, as would Them. Ron Jonson is very much like Louis Theroux in written form. I agree with a lot of what he has to write, particularly his opinions on so-called crack-pot tin-foil hatted conspirasists. They're not crack-pots, they're just people that are too terrified to admit to the real and horrible truth that the world is completely out of control. There is no secret cabal influencing world events. There is only chaos.
Well, may not be a secret, but Bilderberg group for example... what do they do?
Then, there are several 'secret societies' that a lot of world leaders are in, so if you don't think they discuss business and things of that nature, that have a direct impact on world events, than you are mistaken...
I could go in depth here, but you could as easily actually research the information...
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 09 September, 2016, 02:35:24 AM
I could go in depth here, but you could as easily actually research the information...
Yes I could....
...or I could could cite the On the Spot Fallacy, or the Proof by Verbosity.
Y'know, Gish Galloping.
I have facts and cite actual resources. So there is logic.
On the other hand, although your post may sway people, it is merely speculation and opinion.
So who is doing what...
Are you trying to cite me for something that you are doing? Nah, you haven't replied enough yet, to qualify for that, but the nature of my 'argument' (not even an argument, I am informing with several very valid resources) and the details I include, exclude me from the aforementioned as well.
Please realize I take this very seriously, I was raised in a very serious military intelligence program, and have been through a lot. If you are not interested, or do not feel like researching, or reading what I have posted, including the links, fine. Just, please be respectful. Is that a fair request?
I'm not sure anyone would challenge that, in the past, governments across the world have instigated mind control research and programs (and your website does comprehensively provide that information).
I think what people may have difficulty with is your belief that there is an on going program in which children are being placed in government sponsored programmes (for which you site the disasterous bureaucratic ballsup that was the transfer of children to Australia in the 40s and 50s which was part of a plan to increase the white working population), an essay written by an unnamed person, and your personal experience.
I do appreciate that this is very serious for you. However, for the outside observer it does require somewhat of a leap of faith.
Quote from: Modern Panther on 09 September, 2016, 08:04:29 AM
I'm not sure anyone would challenge that, in the past, governments across the world have instigated mind control research and programs (and your website does comprehensively provide that information).
I think what people may have difficulty with is your belief that there is an on going program in which children are being placed in government sponsored programmes (for which you site the disasterous bureaucratic ballsup that was the transfer of children to Australia in the 40s and 50s which was part of a plan to increase the white working population), an essay written by an unnamed person, and your personal experience.
I do appreciate that this is very serious for you. However, for the outside observer it does require somewhat of a leap of faith.
Fair enough, however if you looked independently into the 'epidemic' of the mind control experiments in Australia, you would realize several of these said children were in fact entered into it.
The thing is, if you really understand D.I.D/M.P.D. you would realize why children are NEEDED for this type of program. War is war, ethics and morales can go. They take the children, trust me!
I mean... a leap of faith? Do you think they just did all that research for nothing? Or do you think that there may be ongoing programs, but without the use of children? I mean if you really think about it logically... with all the factors... it isn't much of a leap at all, but my position is one of major bias, I will admit. Although my bias is based in fact, as opposed to opinion, which is very important. Anyway, I get it, I get it. People don't know, and don't care to. It is a little much for most people, and at the very least, they feel takes a 'leap of faith'. Tell me, why wouldn't they? Why is it such a big leap? Perhaps you have to have a better understanding of why children would be needed, especially for early grooming. If we aren't starting early, the next ones are!
It's an arms race....
As you may have noticed... being entered in the program as a child myself, I am really not trying to hear it from people who find this hard to believe. Kind of insulting. I get where you are coming from, but I guess it is just a very different world for people exposed to different things...
So, why would I take the time to put this all together, etc. Insanity? Some malicious reason to lie? Just curious what one would think... If you brief the material, as some of you have, it should be pretty obvious that I am halfway competent putting together credible resources... so is the rest really so much of a leap? That this is still going on, and for best results/requirements, they must enroll children into said programs... Maybe it is just too hard to stomach for some, that you don't want it to be true. I hope that is it!
250,000 children are reported missing every year in the EU, 1 child every 2 minutes. (http://missingchildreneurope.eu/figures)
Thousands of children in care disappear each year. (http://www.channel4.com/news/missing-children-care-homes-foi-babies)
Hundreds of refugee youths disappear every year. (http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6092786)
Wake Up Watchmen - Our Children Are Being Stolen By The State. (http://www.ukcolumn.org/article/wake-watchmen-our-children-are-being-stolen-state)
Presented without comment.
Welcome Apoceclipse, you're a worthy replacement for the much missed Shark (I have him on ignore)
Dunk!
Quote from: Dunk! on 09 September, 2016, 01:59:10 PM
Welcome Apoceclipse, you're a worthy replacement for the much missed Shark (I have him on ignore)
Dunk!
Waste of a comment/space
I'll put you on ignore now
Quote from: Modern Panther on 09 September, 2016, 08:04:29 AM
I'm not sure anyone would challenge that, in the past, governments across the world have instigated mind control research and programs (and your website does comprehensively provide that information).
I think what people may have difficulty with is your belief that there is an on going program in which children are being placed in government sponsored programmes (for which you site the disasterous bureaucratic ballsup that was the transfer of children to Australia in the 40s and 50s which was part of a plan to increase the white working population), an essay written by an unnamed person, and your personal experience.
I do appreciate that this is very serious for you. However, for the outside observer it does require somewhat of a leap of faith.
If you look into the receiving organizations, especially 'Sisters of Mercy'... you would find a trail... I get it, you don't know any of this for a fact. I do
If you take time to investigate the literally THOUSANDS of 'survivors'... you will start to see the big picture. So many of them are level headed, and speak sense. So many are un-related, but have very similar stories... at what point does it merit further research?
https://youtu.be/eXDASDDrDkM
Testimony (in open court) of a person who was subject to a program, as a child, in which they induced multiple personalities, and attempted to train them to be spy/assassins...
Are you a viral marketing poster for STRANGER THINGS?
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 10 September, 2016, 05:00:22 AM
I'll put you on ignore now
You are both a Grade-A nutcase and a colossal arse. Welcome to my 'ignore' list. Doubtless, you will be proclaimed the new Mayor of the forum in short order.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 10 September, 2016, 05:00:22 AM
Quote from: Dunk! on 09 September, 2016, 01:59:10 PM
Welcome Apoceclipse, you're a worthy replacement for the much missed Shark (I have him on ignore)
Dunk!
Waste of a comment/space
I'll put you on ignore now
Troll! Troll in the dungeons!
Thought you ought to know.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 10 September, 2016, 08:17:45 PMYou are both a Grade-A nutcase and a colossal arse.
(http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/pot-kettle.jpg)
Harvest's due, Shark.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 10 September, 2016, 08:17:45 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 10 September, 2016, 05:00:22 AM
I'll put you on ignore now
You are both a Grade-A nutcase and a colossal arse. Welcome to my 'ignore' list. Doubtless, you will be proclaimed the new Mayor of the forum in short order.
Thryllseekr Macroth no more. We now live in the "Age of Apoceclipse"!
Cheers
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 10 September, 2016, 05:27:13 PM
Are you a viral marketing poster for STRANGER THINGS?
Nah, I'm one of the many thousands that has been through this sort of thing, who now speaks out against it.
I am also realizing that a comic book forum is not the best place to post about reality!
I have to practice arguing with people who don't even brief hard declassified documentation etc though, helps sharpen my skill of raising awareness, har har (is the half glass full scenario here)
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 10 September, 2016, 08:39:27 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 10 September, 2016, 05:00:22 AM
Quote from: Dunk! on 09 September, 2016, 01:59:10 PM
Welcome Apoceclipse, you're a worthy replacement for the much missed Shark (I have him on ignore)
Dunk!
Waste of a comment/space
I'll put you on ignore now
Troll! Troll in the dungeons!
Thought you ought to know.
Are you serious? Or trying to make light of the situation, because some very touchy subject matter is being breached here. You want to just on some stereotypical bandwagon for something that people say on the internet and forums, but doesn't have any real substance, go ahead. I am looking to raise awareness for human trafficking and the like. Show some respect
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 11 September, 2016, 08:10:22 AM
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 10 September, 2016, 05:27:13 PM
Are you a viral marketing poster for STRANGER THINGS?
Nah, I'm one of the many thousands that has been through this sort of thing, who now speaks out against it.
I am also realizing that a comic book forum is not the best place to post about reality!
I have to practice arguing with people who don't even brief hard declassified documentation etc though, helps sharpen my skill of raising awareness, har har (is the half glass full scenario here)
The glass is always
half-full, to me. 'Empty' means "nothing inside" and "Full" means it has something in it. Pessimism doesn't even enter into the equation.
Cheers
Quote from: NapalmKev on 11 September, 2016, 08:10:00 AM
Thryllseekr Macroth no more. We now live in the "Age of Apoceclipse"!
Belly laugh is best way to start the day, Kev: nice one.
Apoceclipse, you're in "extraordinary claims" territory, so you need to be patient rather than contemptuous in dealing with doubters. No-one is denying your personal experience, but you started this discussion with reference to Greysuit, a strip with some of the daftest elements ever seen in the Prog: eyebrows are raised. Everyone accepts that there have been dodgy psychological and neural programming schemes pursued by the military and intelligence services, it's the scale, purposes and level of crazy, along with your direct involvement, that's at issue.
You must see why people have difficulty with the picture you paint, for a start it wouldn't be much of a secret government reality-bending programme if everyone clocked it straight away. So you do need to allow people to apply high standards of proof without giving out to them for doing so.
Great username, by the way.
I
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 11 September, 2016, 08:02:05 AM
Harvest's due, Shark.
I don't doubt it.
I'm just fed up with Jim steaming in simply to call people names and then flounce off like some spoilt five year old in the playground.
It adds nothing to the conversation except ill-will and, honestly, what's the point?
Apoceclipse has posted in exactly the correct thread for this kind of thing and if Jim doesn't believe it he should either make a case or shut up, to be frank. "Nyaa-nyaa-nya-nyaa-na" is neither helpful nor worthy.
Tordels contributes to the conversation in the perfect way, showing skepticism without hostility and offering advice to boot.
I myself am ambivalent about the topic under discussion. Whilst several high profile assassins have claimed not to have been in control of their actions it does seem hard to believe that governments would condone such practices. It conjours up images of the whole senate/parliament discussing whether or not to send out mind-controlled assassins to do their bidding, which is clearly ludicrous - such a debate would appear in Hansard after all. Rogue elements of the security services, working in compartmentalised secrecy without the direct knowledge or consent of governments seems more plausible and there is precedent in such things as
Operation Gladio.
The facts that operations like MKUltra have been well documented and researched and that children go missing on a worryingly regular basis also add fuel to the fire. Yet all these facts may or may not be linked as causality does not prove causation. Like most people, I suspect, I don't want to believe this kind of thing could be going on but what I do or do not want to believe is irrelevant.
If Apoceclipse wants to research and talk about these things, especially on this thread, then he should be allowed to do so without having to suffer childish Jimisms.
Polite skeptisism is all well and good, hell I know we need more of it, but if your spouting paranoid fantasy that sounds like it's ripped straight out of an Orson Scott Card novel as well as being incredibly rude and aggressive towards fellow firumites themselves, then expect a retaliation if the aging goth northerner variety.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 11 September, 2016, 11:18:41 AM
Polite skeptisism is all well and good, hell I know we need more of it, but if your spouting paranoid fantasy that sounds like it's ripped straight out of an Orson Scott Card novel as well as being incredibly rude and aggressive towards fellow firumites themselves, then expect a retaliation if the aging goth northerner variety.
We all make mistakes when we first fetch up here. Hell, I made loads (and still do, from time to time).
Apoceclipse; Posts - 21
Jim_Campbell; Posts - 11003
Which one should know better?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 September, 2016, 11:48:44 AM
Apoceclipse; Posts - 21
Jim_Campbell; Posts - 11003
Which one should know better?
If you're killfiling people after 19 posts, I'd respectfully submit that you're Doing It Wrong.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 September, 2016, 11:48:44 AM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 11 September, 2016, 11:18:41 AM
Polite skeptisism is all well and good, hell I know we need more of it, but if your spouting paranoid fantasy that sounds like it's ripped straight out of an Orson Scott Card novel as well as being incredibly rude and aggressive towards fellow firumites themselves, then expect a retaliation if the aging goth northerner variety.
We all make mistakes when we first fetch up here. Hell, I made loads (and still do, from time to time).
Apoceclipse; Posts - 21
Jim_Campbell; Posts - 11003
Which one should know better?
Pressuming both are responsible, reasonable adults then thats utterly redundant. Posts count =/= sensability. Thats a straw man argument.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 September, 2016, 09:21:33 AM
I Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 11 September, 2016, 08:02:05 AM
Harvest's due, Shark.
I don't doubt it.
I'm just fed up with Jim steaming in simply to call people names and then flounce off like some spoilt five year old in the playground.
It adds nothing to the conversation except ill-will and, honestly, what's the point?
Apoceclipse has posted in exactly the correct thread for this kind of thing and if Jim doesn't believe it he should either make a case or shut up, to be frank. "Nyaa-nyaa-nya-nyaa-na" is neither helpful nor worthy.
Tordels contributes to the conversation in the perfect way, showing skepticism without hostility and offering advice to boot.
I myself am ambivalent about the topic under discussion. Whilst several high profile assassins have claimed not to have been in control of their actions it does seem hard to believe that governments would condone such practices. It conjours up images of the whole senate/parliament discussing whether or not to send out mind-controlled assassins to do their bidding, which is clearly ludicrous - such a debate would appear in Hansard after all. Rogue elements of the security services, working in compartmentalised secrecy without the direct knowledge or consent of governments seems more plausible and there is precedent in such things as Operation Gladio.
The facts that operations like MKUltra have been well documented and researched and that children go missing on a worryingly regular basis also add fuel to the fire. Yet all these facts may or may not be linked as causality does not prove causation. Like most people, I suspect, I don't want to believe this kind of thing could be going on but what I do or do not want to believe is irrelevant.
If Apoceclipse wants to research and talk about these things, especially on this thread, then he should be allowed to do so without having to suffer childish Jimisms.
well said sir.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 11 September, 2016, 11:49:52 AM
If you're killfiling people after 19 posts, I'd respectfully submit that you're Doing It Wrong.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 10 September, 2016, 08:17:45 PM
Welcome to my 'ignore' list.
Guess doing it wrong works only one way, huh?
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 11 September, 2016, 11:51:05 AM
Pressuming both are responsible, reasonable adults then thats utterly redundant. Posts count =/= sensability. Thats a straw man argument.
Many forums on the net are way more insulting than this one. This forum has its own ways (like all others) and is an overwhelmingly friendly place. Jim's number of posts indicates that he should know this by now, Apoceclipse's small count indicates that he has yet to get into the swing of this particular interweb nook. The straw man argument is yours as it takes what I said and adds presumptions of responsibility and reasonableness, which you then attack. That's the textbook
definition of a straw man argument.
All that said, Sharky, Jim knows what sets his black blood simmering by now, so pre-emptive kill-filing is a sensible reaction. He knows and we know that Apoceclipse's (really like that name) style of post is going to drive him batty, best not to even start. He can always change his mind later. Or not.
If presuming a fully grown adult is both reasonable and responsible for there actions is a straw man then i'm worried for how many reactionaries can get away with being dicks because no one expects them to act in a reasonable fashion.
Personally I feel it's one thing to killfile somebody (not something I've ever done), but another to publicly announce it.
Quote from: sheridan on 11 September, 2016, 02:38:35 PM
Personally I feel it's one thing to killfile somebody (not something I've ever done), but another to publicly announce it.
It is, of course, a different thing. But I don't see a problem with Jim registering his disapproval publicly either, if he choose to do so.
Tordels - you're the voice of reason, as always. If I was Captain Kirk (ha ha, yeah right, as if!), I'd want you as my Spock.
Hawkie, people need to be given time to learn, I feel. Apoceclipse (yeah, great name) deserves that chance - as do we all. Even Jim.
Sheridan, I agree - but this was worse. Jim publicly called Apoceclipse names and then killfiled him, which I think is unacceptable in civilized company. You don't like someone's attitude or message, fair enough; either pull them up and explain yourself or butt out. What Jim did was the virtual equivalent of punching someone in the face then running off.
Who said that?
/obligatorycliche
Quote from: sheridan on 11 September, 2016, 02:38:35 PM
Personally I feel it's one thing to killfile somebody (not something I've ever done), but another to publicly announce it.
You noticed I did that in response to Apoceclipse publicly announcing that he killfiled someone, right? I await your condemnation of his breach of netiquette, although my copy of the 'rules' must be out of date, because I've always thought the reverse was true, since it prevents the other party becoming frustrated with the lack of response, should they address posts to someone who has them on 'ignore'.
So, you called him a "Grade-A nutcase and a colossal arse" before killfiling him to be polite?
Oh, puh-lease.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 September, 2016, 02:53:20 PM
What Jim did was the virtual equivalent of punching someone in the face then running off.
Perhaps it's because I'm Scottish, and thus more desensitised to instances of verbal aggression, but I think that's overstating the metaphorical violence levels by quite a degree.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 September, 2016, 03:17:27 PM
So, you called him a "Grade-A nutcase and a colossal arse" before killfiling him to be polite?
No. The insult was a different thing. Sheridan pulled me up on the right/wrongness of telling someone you've killfiled them, whilst failing to chastise Apoceclipse for the
exact same thing. I'm not sure how many forum members have been practically libelled on here, or how many have been harassed in personal messages and threatened with physical violence, but I've been subjected to both those things in the past. No one on the 'friendliest place on the internet' had
my back on either of those occasions but, apparently, it's much worse to be mildly irritated with someone who announces that they're killfiling people after only 19 posts on the forum.
Well Apoceclipse was being a colossal arse, as so many of us often are, and Jim pointed it out as justification for putting him on Ignore. It's not polite, but it is honest and direct. It wasn't sustained bullying or anything, it was just a lack or patience with a certain style of poster, which Apoceclipse at least initially seems to represent.
We should all deal with each other politely, but it isn't always possible or desirable.
Quote from: Tordelback on 11 September, 2016, 03:33:03 PM
Well Apoceclipse was being a colossal arse, as so many of us often are, and Jim pointed it out as justification for putting him on Ignore. It's not polite, but it is honest and direct. It wasn't sustained bullying or anything, it was just a lack or patience with a certain style of poster, which Apoceclipse at least initially seems to represent.
We should all deal with each other politely, but it isn't always possible or desirable.
This, all of this.
Be excellent to each other.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 11 September, 2016, 03:38:01 PM
Quote from: Tordelback on 11 September, 2016, 03:33:03 PM
Well Apoceclipse was being a colossal arse, as so many of us often are, and Jim pointed it out as justification for putting him on Ignore. It's not polite, but it is honest and direct. It wasn't sustained bullying or anything, it was just a lack or patience with a certain style of poster, which Apoceclipse at least initially seems to represent.
We should all deal with each other politely, but it isn't always possible or desirable.
This, all of this.
Be excellent to each other.
Kill the Hippies! ;)
Seriously though, and coming Back to Apoceclipse original posts on mind-control; I'm sure we're all aware of the LSD experiments on soldiers and other forms of Brainwashing that have been conducted in the past. But I believe you claimed that yourself and others you know have broken your
programming. If this is the case I would (politely) ask two things...
1: How did you break your programming?
2: If you (and others) have easily broken your programming why is it a major concern?
Cheers
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 September, 2016, 09:21:33 AMApoceclipse has posted in exactly the correct thread for this kind of thing
With respect to Apoceclipse I would hazard he won't have your equanimity and magnanimity in fielding any contrariness on our part without thinking we're impugning him
personally. Therefore, I don't think
Quote from: NapalmKev on 11 September, 2016, 03:52:50 PM
I believe you claimed that yourself and others you know have broken your programming. If this is the case I would (politely) ask two things...
is a particularly good idea. There are more than a few skeptics here I suspect have refrained from commenting
for this very reason rather than us being unaware of MKUltra's actual existence.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 11 September, 2016, 03:28:31 PM
No. The insult was a different thing. Sheridan pulled me up on the right/wrongness of telling someone you've killfiled them, whilst failing to chastise Apoceclipse for the exact same thing.
I didn't actually specify anybody in particular in my comment - you've chosen to interpret it as being aimed at you alone and not Apoceclipse.
Quote from: sheridan on 11 September, 2016, 06:08:26 PM
I didn't actually specify anybody in particular in my comment - you've chosen to interpret it as being aimed at you alone and not Apoceclipse.
Fair enough. I apologise for implying a double standard. I was feeling a little got at, and was clearly over-sensitive. Apologies, once again.
now that we have that childish behaviour out of the way can we please re-don our tin foil hats and fill our buckets of fish heads and continue with the conspiracy theories please? fank yu!
The moon is a hologram. Discuss.
well that is mad, everyone knows its cheese...or a giant space egg.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 11 September, 2016, 03:08:39 PM
Quote from: sheridan on 11 September, 2016, 02:38:35 PM
Personally I feel it's one thing to killfile somebody (not something I've ever done), but another to publicly announce it.
You noticed I did that in response to Apoceclipse publicly announcing that he killfiled someone, right? I await your condemnation of his breach of netiquette, although my copy of the 'rules' must be out of date, because I've always thought the reverse was true, since it prevents the other party becoming frustrated with the lack of response, should they address posts to someone who has them on 'ignore'.
EDIT: First of all, killfile makes me extremely uneasy as a term, and it sounded like someone was saying that I said that I killfiled someone which clearly I did not state, unless killfille means: ignore - in which case I did state that - but I was only kidding, to make 'a point'. ahahahah no grammar or punctuation here, folks. no thank you
I'm lost, and confused. I am sure you all realized this. Killfile? Is that ignore or whatever? When I responded to the one person's comment, I didn't actually ignore them or anything, I was just mirroring what I thought was a stupid comment. So I shot the same thing back. I was too curious of his response to actually block him, and by now, I would have to go back to even check who we are talking about.
Quote from: Tordelback on 11 September, 2016, 03:33:03 PM
Well Apoceclipse was being a colossal arse, as so many of us often are, and Jim pointed it out as justification for putting him on Ignore. It's not polite, but it is honest and direct. It wasn't sustained bullying or anything, it was just a lack or patience with a certain style of poster, which Apoceclipse at least initially seems to represent.
We should all deal with each other politely, but it isn't always possible or desirable.
And I guess I don't frequent forums, so I am not used to this - but why are people talking about me like in the past tense, like I am not still here... haha this sounds like a stupid question to you perhaps, but to me, the manner you communicate in is... 'odd' - (euphemism) :lol:
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 11 September, 2016, 06:00:38 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 11 September, 2016, 09:21:33 AMApoceclipse has posted in exactly the correct thread for this kind of thing
With respect to Apoceclipse I would hazard he won't have your equanimity and magnanimity in fielding any contrariness on our part without thinking we're impugning him personally. Therefore, I don't think
Quote from: NapalmKev on 11 September, 2016, 03:52:50 PM
I believe you claimed that yourself and others you know have broken your programming. If this is the case I would (politely) ask two things...
is a particularly good idea. There are more than a few skeptics here I suspect have refrained from commenting for this very reason rather than us being unaware of MKUltra's actual existence.
Good points, but the thing is, I can handle it. I don't take it personally but I am obviously sensitive, bias, and simply won't stand for quick shots that are not backed with any actual research into the subject matter.
If anyone tries to argue about anything, when they obviously don't actually know about the subject, I would take the same position. I would tell them to get real, actually get some experience and knowledge or at least one, and then revisit the situation. You can't weigh in when you bring literally nothing of substance to the table... My opinion, of course... a little extreme, but I stand behind it.
Quote from: sheridan on 11 September, 2016, 02:38:35 PM
Personally I feel it's one thing to killfile somebody (not something I've ever done), but another to publicly announce it.
I see there was mild confusion over this post? Between forum people? You being one? Hahah is that making sense. I was only jokingly replying - rhetoric - with the same line of reasoning I was getting from the comment. To make an example/prove a point. I didn't follow through very well with that one, did I? Hahahaha
I didn't 'ignore' anyone, if that is what kill file means, which is not my preferred term at all here, to dually note that.
Skin, you see - mine is thicker than that. I hope we can still talk, I know I am having fun and learning.
Shark, let me know if I piss you off too bad and 'hi-jack' your thread, and I will move on...
at least you haven't been accused of being scojo...yet.
Did you guys really never even consider the possibility, nor of even asking, if I was actually serious. (about the 'official' ignoring of someone)
I know the rest of the subject matter is very serious, but do know that while I may be 'missing pieces' of some aspects of 'normal living in modern times' I do realize that I am on a comic book forum, and am breaching some... taboo(?) subject matter - so while I stand very firm on my position, I too can joke around, and contextualize a 'come-back' - if I deem necessary? Eh?
Pretentious? :lol:
Your sarcasm is....quite hard to read, if I may be honest. The grammer doesn't help sadly (pot kettle black coming from me).
The moon is clearly the top of an ancient god's skull
Quote from: Grugz on 11 September, 2016, 08:39:03 PM
at least you haven't been accused of being scojo...yet.
explain? I am preparing a post, I usually would research real quick as to not sound ignorant, haha
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 11 September, 2016, 08:45:56 PM
Your sarcasm is....quite hard to read, if I may be honest. The grammer doesn't help sadly (pot kettle black coming from me).
fair enough, and I am new. Hey, so does JIM have me on ignore then? Maybe someone let him know, we can all be adults here? hahaha not me, but you all. But still, I never ignored him, it became very interesting, haha.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 11 September, 2016, 07:54:37 PM
The moon is a hologram. Discuss.
I've tried so hard to find a frame from Loonie's Moon to insert here, but no joy!
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 11 September, 2016, 08:44:04 PM
Did you guys really never even consider the possibility, nor of even asking, if I was actually serious. (about the 'official' ignoring of someone)
Well, you didn't show any sign at all of making a joke in that comment. It is considered pretty offensive to treat somebody as if they've made a joke when they've been serious (as was brought home to me in a conversation a few months back).
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 11 September, 2016, 08:30:50 PM
Quote from: Tordelback on 11 September, 2016, 03:33:03 PM
Well Apoceclipse was being a colossal arse, as so many of us often are, and Jim pointed it out as justification for putting him on Ignore. It's not polite, but it is honest and direct. It wasn't sustained bullying or anything, it was just a lack or patience with a certain style of poster, which Apoceclipse at least initially seems to represent.
We should all deal with each other politely, but it isn't always possible or desirable.
And I guess I don't frequent forums, so I am not used to this - but why are people talking about me like in the past tense, like I am not still here... haha this sounds like a stupid question to you perhaps, but to me, the manner you communicate in is... 'odd' - (euphemism) :lol:
I certainly didn't intend to refer to you in the past tense, and reading my comments back I don't think I did: just one instance of your behaviour, which was in the past. As to talking about you as if you weren't there, well I did refer to you in the third peeson, but that's because I wasn't addressing you specifically. I'm not really sure how to do that any other way, English lacking a second person plural form. As to my/our communication being 'odd', guilty as charged.
Quote from: NapalmKev on 11 September, 2016, 03:52:50 PM
Seriously though, and coming Back to Apoceclipse original posts on mind-control; I'm sure we're all aware of the LSD experiments on soldiers and other forms of Brainwashing that have been conducted in the past. But I believe you claimed that yourself and others you know have broken your programming. If this is the case I would (politely) ask two things...
1: How did you break your programming?
2: If you (and others) have easily broken your programming why is it a major concern?
Cheers
1: How did you break your programming?1.) It's more complicated that that. There is programming, and there are fully developed alters that don't identify with me, due to the extreme duality that was developed over time, on purpose, to keep us separate, in every aspect. That alter - WENT ROGUE. That was the only reason I was FORCED to face some aspects of reality, though I still don't have all the memory, I got caught up in classified legal situations.
There are still several 'programs' intact. This would all take forever to go in depth, and there are books out explaining this in great detail, which I could refer you to if you desire. Basically 'programming' is a 'conditioned stimuli response sequence.'
Ever hear of the test where they rang the bell, then fed the dog? Soon, the bell would make the dog salivate. Well, take that, and add research, technology, and sprinkle some torture in for compliance issues! It's basically the bell X... maybe X100 or so - who knows. Hard to put a number on it.
If you remember (or saw) my initial few posts, you may have noticed the picture, and video, of me on low quality surveillance cameras.
They had me set up with plausible deniability... I maintained various safe-houses. These safe-houses were marijuana grow houses. I was set up as a self-sufficient on-call operative for the 160th. The 160th is the unmarked black helicopters, and while they are all military trained etc, it is officially an entity branched under the NSC (national security council) so they can perform domestic intelligence operations LEGALLY. Unethically, of course, but there is a legal blanket for national security.
Maintaining these safe houses, kept me 'on my toes' as to to the secretive practices, and provided me with financial breathing room so I could go anywhere, and any time, on my own schedule.
It provided them with plausible deniability, and although I am get in trouble, even 'by accident' (not being 'burned' if gone rogue etc.) then the penalties for such would be easy to deal with, as to not completely eliminate me from future use. As there is a bit of funding that goes into these things from Day 1, and no one like to waste money.
The MJ Safehouses are at the very very very low end of the ladder when you look at nefarious activity with the CIA etc... mostly they import/traffic humans and cocaine. To be blunt. And blackmail blackmail and murder, of course - for hire. My job was a 'fluff' job, just to be easy convenient, and in practice. Most of all, available.
Also, I would constantly get high and fall asleep, which I never thought much of until enough was enough. When I 'fell asleep' was MOSTLY when my alter persona was taking over, repeatedly... I know, you have to be an idiot, right? Not if you had a horrible childhood, and just like to get fucked up to forget, so much so, that missing time isn't out of the ordinary, and you have to worry about being busted and going to jail, so any 'odd' hiccups get quickly forgot, because there was always a new problem to face... preoccupied, busy, with my own shit and ambitions. More money more drugs more sex more food. HAHAH - but seriously. Addiction was a large part of how they kept me under control.
2: If you (and others) have easily broken your programming why is it a major concern?2) WOW - I know you probably don't mean anything by it, but let me explain why this is so rude.
I WOKE UP IN THE TRAUMA UNIT, and my girlfriend never came to see me. I was horrible smashed up, with no memory at all. I kept on reciting that I had done something to my friends, but don't remember what I said. Then, when I got out of the hospital, I finally got in touch with my girlfriend of years, and found out - I had called her in the middle of the night - told her I was CIA, and she wouldn't tell me the rest, said she couldn't and to please not involve her because it was dangerous.
Ok, I was to confused to be hurt, what in the world? I quickly forgot this, but had flashbacks, very heavy, something had flooded through, the pics and surveillance camera footage had already happened right before this, and I took some evidence and put it several places (including of crimes uncovered, and various blackmail evidence the agency had accumulated through black ops methods) - I know very cliche, but this is the only play for someone like me>
Who knows if that was it, or the fact that it wasn't worth trying to kill me again. Who knows if my handlers were just corrupt, and then the agency sent replacements, or just took pity on me.
No one listens anyways, ok maybe a couple, but in reality, even if everyone listened, what would they do? Stage a riot? HAHAH for what? Where? There is no one person, not one agenda, and trauma based mind control and exploitation of deliberate dissociation goes on in many places. So maybe what is the point to kill me? Maybe they hope to use me again. Maybe this, maybe that, Everything I have wrote before this, I thought in just a couple seconds, and it takes minutes to type - but I hope you get the idea - I analyze, analyze, analyze, and I have ideas of what probably is going on, but I do not know for sure...
What I do know, is that directly after this incident, I went to prison, and was in solitary for 14 months. They switched my record from Marijuana Manufacturing to METH Manufacturing - which I JUST GOT FIXED. I was supposed to be immediately released, but I obviously highly suspect this error was not an accident, but a ploy to punish me, or buy time, keeping me locked up. Maybe hoping that I would do something to get locked up longer, or forever, or to get myself killed. I don't know, but I was in prison for 3 years, 14 months was mostly 24 hours a day in a 6x12 cell (with a bed, toilet/sink/desk, so not much room, homie).
Yeah so it was NOT EASY - get it?
Quote from: sheridan on 11 September, 2016, 09:10:47 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 11 September, 2016, 08:44:04 PM
Did you guys really never even consider the possibility, nor of even asking, if I was actually serious. (about the 'official' ignoring of someone)
Well, you didn't show any sign at all of making a joke in that comment. It is considered pretty offensive to treat somebody as if they've made a joke when they've been serious (as was brought home to me in a conversation a few months back).
Understandable, no problems here - just noticed a lot of talk, not even pointing at you, so I wrote a few things to clarify. I just cant stop sometimes - big character flaw hahaha
First of all, this notarized letter was in support of a legal issue I ran into, due to my involvement with the agency:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTZ0JKNGJDT2c5ckE
page 1
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTaGxsSHRHUkhyLW8
page 2
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTcGN6TWpwcEx5cmc
page 3
and then was utilized in support of a failed lawsuit, which I got my hopes up for when:
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/psychologists-who-designed-cia-program-can-be-sued-victims-federal-judge-rules
"
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Psychologists Who Designed the CIA Torture Program Can Be Sued by Victims, Federal Judge Rules
The first time such a case has been allowed to proceed.
By Sarah Lazare / AlterNet April 25, 2016
4.3K176
Print
126 COMMENTS
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
For the first time, a federal judge is allowing torture victims to sue the psychologists who devised the CIA's brutal interrogation methods that included sleep deprivation, starvation and forcing captives into coffin-like boxes.
"
Now although this was not for my situation, the ruling still applies - to seeing the psychologists, as well as any contracted persons or entities - in my case - MORTICIANS/FUNERAL DIRECTORS.
But why did they involve me with morticians and funeral directors from such an early age? Not just to traumatize me into having a split personality - no - for DESENSITIZING and TRAINING for the 160th!
http://www.web-ak.com/waco/war/page/w_ga.html
Body Mutilation and Drug Use
Sometimes Special Ops personnel who are on covert missions become injured and cannot be retrieved and given medical assistance. These people are left behind--but killed first by their own comrades who decapitate the body and remove the hands to prevent identification.
This information comes to the Museum from an unofficial source through the medical personnel of Special Ops. These medical personnel have special duties to administer drugs (uppers) to commandos to enhance their performance and depress the desire for sleep while on mission. When the mission is over, other drugs (downers) are administered to bring the commandos down.
Body Laundering (apoceclipses note - GET IT?!?!)
We now come to another practice of the US military and especially Special Operations: Body laundering, sometimes called "body washing." When Special Ops personnel die on secret and illegal missions, a problem is created for the military bureaucracy. The military cannot tell the families how the serviceman died, so the body is "laundered." That is, a cover story is invented to explain the death, and the body of the dead soldier is mutilated in such a way to corroborate the cover story.
Journalists Frank Greve and Ellen Warren wrote of the practice in their series which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on December 16 & 17, 1984 (cited above). According to the article, during the Vietnam War, soldiers were killed while on CIA secret missions in Laos and Cambodia. "If a guy was killed on a mission, and if it was sensitive politically, we'd ship the body back home and have a jeep roll over on him at Fort Huachuca," one former officer told the two Knight-Ridder writers. Ft. Huachuca is a covert operations base in Arizona.
"Or," the former officer said, "we'd arrange a chopper crash, or wait until one happened and insert a body or two into the wreckage later. It's not that difficult."
And the secret Special Ops helicopter unit, the 160th Task Force, almost certainly laundered the bodies of its servicemen when they were killed in El Salvador. The widow of a 160th pilot who died in a crash reported that her husband told her just days before his death, "If I ever die in an accident and they tell you I was a spy, or if I crash somewhere that I'm not supposed to be, don't ever believe that I was spying or wasn't working for the Army," according to Greve and Warren (Philadelphia Inquirer, December 16, 1984).
A cousin of another deceased member of the 160th Task Force said that two weeks before his death, the man told her that whatever happened to him, "the Army could pull whatever they wanted to make it look other ways." (Philadelphia Inquirer, December 16, 1984).
According to the Greve and Warren article, fines, imprisonment, and loss of rank can result from breaches of security by military personnel. "That's in the top-secret category, so I'm not going to talk about that," said one Army airman familiar with the Central American missions. "I don't want to go to jail."
The Washington Post, May 6, 1996 (Public Honors for Secret Combat) described body laundering during the El Salvador operation. Many who knew the truth about the circumstances surrounding the soldiers deaths were troubled by the outright false official reports relatives received, says the Post.
Judy Lujan, wife of Army Lt. Col. Joseph H. Lujan, was told her husband died in 1987 when the helicopter carrying him crashed into a hillside during stormy weather. But the Army never produced her husband's personal effects or photographs of his corpse, despite her repeated requests, she said. "I can't get on with my life, I can't do anything, until I know for sure he's dead."
Relatives of Gregory A. Fronius, a 28-year-old Green Beret sergeant, know he was slain during a guerrilla attack on a Salvadoran brigade's headquarters at El Paraiso. But initially they were informed Fronius had died in his barracks when a mortar shell struck. In fact, Fronius had bolted from the barracks and was trying to rally Salvadoran soldiers for a counterattack when several guerrilla snipers shot him, then blew up his body with an explosive charge.
"First they told me one thing, then I found out something else," said Celinda Carney, who was married to Fronius. "I was upset."
Insight Magazine, January 29, 1996 reported that one of the magazine's Special Ops contacts was predicting bodies would be laundered as a result of the Bosnian "peacekeeping" mission. With many Special Ops personnel operating in Bosnia, some of their missions will likely be extremely sensitive and high risk, with plausible deniability built into them, said the source. "When their bodies come home, they will be identified not as soldiers, but as businessmen or members of nonmilitary government agencies. The truths about their deaths will be difficult to learn," says author Anthony Kinnery.
"If I'm on one of these missions that's deep, deep black, you can safely bet few, if any, in Congress--maybe not even the secretary of defense--knows about what the hell I'm doing," says a black operative. "And if I get killed and my body's fortunate enough to be recovered, you can also bet I'll turn up dead in a car wreck in some place like Munich or Berlin." (Insight Magazine, January 29, 1996, Secrecy Shrouds Spy Deaths.)
gifted child quarterly - gifted children and LSD
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTblYwMi1iZnByS0k
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTbUZ3TnhySGFCd2s
remember the article on the eagle forum where they were experimenting on psychic stuff with the children - well it isn't just experimenting.
Look, to over simplify this - when you 'vibrate' at a specific frequency, and someone else does, you can 'meet' in a sort of alternate dimension to speak. It's very complicated, and I don't understand it, but I have experienced it as a matter of routine, in what is commonly known as 'astral projection' and they agency trains people young to do this, for covert communication, and gathering intel, which can be iffy, of course. Different success rates, different abilities...
here is an article about eliciting an out of body experience with electromagnetic cranial stimulation. imagine the applications - military/intelligence is way ahead of this - classified technology
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTTUxDVjNBVmNvNkU
the strengthened protection bill for people like me, lol. some people within the agency agree with this, most don't. its complicated.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTX0pvN1laYkc3T1k
So, I just talk and talk and talk. Feel free to chime in, maybe you all know my standpoint and have been initiated into my style of rhetoric. Eh?
I got way more personal stuff, like records with multiple SSN#s, the documentation of having to fix my legal record, and of course, some childhood medical records as well... plus I don't want you to reverse image search too much of this, might land on my Facebook - hahaha. be careful! er - polite
Quote from: Apoceclipse
link=topic=32312.msg929210#msg929210
date=1473622636
Shark, let me know if I piss you off too bad
and 'hi-jack' your thread, and I will move on...
You didn't piss me off at all. What pissed me off was that you came onto this thread to post about your views and personal experiences and were called a "Grade-A nutcase and a colossal
arse."
Obviously, I can't know if what you claim happened to you is true or not but, whichever the case, name-calling is neither helpful nor acceptable.
Jim and I often butt heads but this is because we see the world from very different perspectives and I am as guilty of pissing him off as he is of pissing me off. This time, unfortunately, you got caught in the crossfire, for which I apologise.
Jim - I hope you can understand my point here. There's a lot of crap going down in this world and mountains of bullshit to cover it up, distract us from it or scare us away from looking deeper. Not everything is true but that doesn't mean it's all lies. I understand that you have reservations, so do I, but to simply dismiss someone as a nutcase is not helpful in sorting the crap from the bullshit. A wise man once told me to "listen to everyone, extract what you need and discard the rest." Nobody is 100% wrong about everything, and vice versa. If I overreacted, I apologise and hope that we can both learn to be a little more tolerant of our respective perspectives in future. If not, well, feck you and the goat you rode in on :-)
Oh, and just because I started this thread, I in no way see it as "mine." Have at it!
As for the name, let me explain. Apoc - ECLIPSE, as in the Eclipse of May 10, 1994.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTenYzSU5sdFBONXM
A pretty rare event, especially locally.
What do we know about Eclipses, well according to Einsteins theory of general relativity, blah blah blah blah blah. So they had an experiment in place - CLEMENTINE.
Remember CLEMENTINE, which mapped the moon, and supplied us with the pictures we have of it?
I know you all want to talk about the moon, so listen up, hahaha.
Here is the lowdown:
Clementine (officially called the Deep Space Program Science Experiment (DSPSE)) was a joint space project between the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO, previously the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or SDIO) and NASA. Launched on January 25, 1994, the objective of the mission was to test sensors and spacecraft components under extended exposure to the space environment and to make scientific observations of the Moon and the near-Earth asteroid 1620 Geographos. The Geographos observations were not made due to a malfunction in the spacecraft.
Oh, a malfunction?
On May 7, 1994 (UTC) Clementine experienced a computer failure after it left Lunar orbit.[4] The failure caused it to use up its remaining propellant, spinning the spacecraft up to 80 rotations per minute.[4] It was utilized in a geocentric orbit until the end of its mission, but the asteroid trip was aborted.
Well, funny, because we have a spacecraft actually NAMED - Deep Space Program Science Experiment and now we have a very rare ECLIPSE, and the craft malfunctions before?
Nay, I submit that they were utilizing the properties of a solar eclipse, to A) test long distance telemetry properties, and B) attempt to harness/weaponize said properties.
That is all I can say in good faith.
interesting patch for clementine
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTTHVNcVd2NU5LNEE
How's that for weird conspiracy with no proof, hahaha, I will stick to my own thing, but I am generational, so - I have been briefed on some interesting stuff that I don't talk about. Doesn't matter much anyway, really. I was just explain the name Apoceclipse, and someone wanted to talk about the moon, right?
Understandable Shark, thanks. I'm not too worried about anything - it would all be very mild here for me - relatively speaking.
I have posted some more info, including of a notarized letter from my sister, who was also involved in this program. They preyed on low income households, foster children, generational military/intelligence families, and the like. I come from/a a mix.
Either way, I hope some of the people here take the time to thoroughly brief the new material I have posted, as poorly formatted as it may be. I hope it does not get lost in the mess, nor ignored.
I mean, aside from the personal stuff I am posting, between the monroe institute, the GATE article from eagle forum, and the induced OOBE's with per singer and the 'koren' helmet - it is PROVED that you can induce an OOBE. So logical reasoning states that this is being done, especially where virtually unlimited technology,money,and manpower is available. At least to me, but I do already know this for a fact...
I mean I can go on for days, but I am not the best at keeping my composure, and lack formatting disciplines... My body literally reacts to this sort of thing... It's like when you slam your fingers in the car door - your body will remember for a while, and when you go to close the car door, you'll be like 'whoop' - ' i better be careful ' for a little while. Body memory/muscle memory kinda...
Well, my body remembers, and is nervous hahahah to be honest
Take Care, Everyone
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 11 September, 2016, 09:01:09 PM
Quote from: Grugz on 11 September, 2016, 08:39:03 PM
at least you haven't been accused of being scojo...yet.
explain? I am preparing a post, I usually would research real quick as to not sound ignorant, haha
I had to ask meself when I joined the forum, he was a bit of an unstable individual who used to multiple post and answr his own he got banned many times ...oh don't worry about sounding ignorant I apparently do it a lot just do your thang and don't break the forum rules (handily linked by me!) even though some do on a regular basis. and welcome to the board btw!!! and did anyone else read his name as ape-ocalypse?
Quote from: Grugz on 11 September, 2016, 10:09:59 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 11 September, 2016, 09:01:09 PM
Quote from: Grugz on 11 September, 2016, 08:39:03 PM
at least you haven't been accused of being scojo...yet.
explain? I am preparing a post, I usually would research real quick as to not sound ignorant, haha
I had to ask meself when I joined the forum, he was a bit of an unstable individual who used to multiple post and answr his own he got banned many times ...oh don't worry about sounding ignorant I apparently do it a lot just do your thang and don't break the forum rules (handily linked by me!) even though some do on a regular basis. and welcome to the board btw!!! and in agreement ,great name!
Ah, am familiar with the concept. This actually has happened to me (being accused of coming back, from a previously banned account, to form a new one) on other forums, specifically 'conspiracy forums' which is where 'my type of people' would probably normally go. I just happened to find that Monarch comment, so gave it a whirl here. Believe it or not, if you read that comic, you have gained a little more insight into the practices that are in place, than the lay man - as ridiculous as that may sound. I should not reference a comic, for reality. Still, the author had done actual research into the project, then simply switched some facts. VERY interesting.
This is all actually pretty well received. I really appreciate the welcome, and the chance to work on raising awareness. At the very least, this is good practice for me in real life, which I do visit several D.I.D. trauma therapists and attempt to educate them, incase if any of their clients are sabotaging/endagnering themselves...
Quote from: Tordelback on 11 September, 2016, 09:21:30 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 11 September, 2016, 08:30:50 PM
Quote from: Tordelback on 11 September, 2016, 03:33:03 PM
Well Apoceclipse was being a colossal arse, as so many of us often are, and Jim pointed it out as justification for putting him on Ignore. It's not polite, but it is honest and direct. It wasn't sustained bullying or anything, it was just a lack or patience with a certain style of poster, which Apoceclipse at least initially seems to represent.
We should all deal with each other politely, but it isn't always possible or desirable.
And I guess I don't frequent forums, so I am not used to this - but why are people talking about me like in the past tense, like I am not still here... haha this sounds like a stupid question to you perhaps, but to me, the manner you communicate in is... 'odd' - (euphemism) :lol:
I certainly didn't intend to refer to you in the past tense, and reading my comments back I don't think I did: just one instance of your behaviour, which was in the past. As to talking about you as if you weren't there, well I did refer to you in the third peeson, but that's because I wasn't addressing you specifically. I'm not really sure how to do that any other way, English lacking a second person plural form. As to my/our communication being 'odd', guilty as charged.
Eh, I had to say something, you had stated that I was being a colossal arse. I prefer to acknowledge that I tend to overcompensate when replying to this subject matter, which I am very sensitive to. but hey, I'll watch for ya! :)
and just to loop back to what brought me here:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a6Jnb6g9ITzQKfiZZcUTWhiPwQwXk4pim4l5g8IciAqo9Ikokh7Q1bwBEmn_UM8-N8PacAbuxyXkMRM=w2212-h1211
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a6Jnb6g9ITzQKfiZZcUTWhiPwQwXk4pim4l5g8IciAqo9Ikokh7Q1bwBEmn_UM8-N8PacAbuxyXkMRM=w2212-h1211)
Courtesy of SEMATECH/DARPA when I was 6 months old - before fontanelle closure, so they could see what they were doing, as it was a very high risk process. Not just the slip n seal implants they put in some subjects, this one got hard wired, buddy....
Brain Implants
A CIA memorandum for MKULTRA Subproject 142 describes the control of animals through stimulation of brain electrodes. The overall goal was clear; to control the mind and behavior, and to create dissociation through a combination of drugs, hypnosis, brain electrode implants, electric shock, and beaming different kinds of energy at the brain. The ability to create limited, controlled amnesia through a variety of methods was a primary goal of the mind control programs. P. 87
Brain electrode experiments were also conducted in humans. Dr. Jose Delgado, [51][52][53][54][55][56][57] a neurosurgeon and professor at Yale, received funding for brain electrode research on children and adults. He was able to control the movements of his animal and human subjects by pushing buttons on a remote transmitter box. In one paper, Dr. Delgado describes the cats as "mechanical toys." P. 87-89
An 11-year old boy underwent a partial change of identity upon remote stimulation of his brain electrode: [58] "Electrical stimulation of the superior temporal convolution induced feminine striving and confusion about his own sexual identity. The patient, an 11-year-old boy, said, 'I was thinking whether I was a boy or a girl, which I'd like to be,' and 'I'd like to be a girl.' After one of the stimulations the patient suddenly began to discuss his desire to get married to the male interviewer. P. 89
Temporal-lobe stimulation produced in another patient open manifestations and declarations of pleasure, accompanied by giggles and joking with the therapist. In two adult female patients stimulation of the same region was followed by discussion of marriage and expression of a wish to marry the therapist. P. 89
Brain electrode research was also conducted independently at Harvard by Dr. Delgado's coauthors, Drs. Vernon Mark, Frank Ervin, and William Sweet. Mark and Ervin describe implanting brain electrodes in a large number of patients at Harvard hospitals. A patient named Jennie was 14 years old when they put electrodes in her brain. In Mark and Ervin's Violence and the Brain, [59] photographs show 18-year old Julia smiling, angry, or pounding the wall depending on which button is being pushed on the transmitter box sending signals to her brain electrodes. P. 89-91
Dr. Heath, [60][61][62] Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane University, placed brain electrodes in a young homosexual man and fitted him with a box. A button on the box could be used to electrically stimulate an electrode implanted in the septal region of his brain, a pleasure center. During one three-our period, the patient, referred to as B-19, stimulated himself 1,500 times. [63] "During these sessions, B-19 stimulated himself to a point that he was experiencing an almost overwhelming euphoria and elation, and had to be disconnected, despite his vigorous protests. P. 94
ReCap: (now that I can post pics)
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/qyulL8z3JiD3CjukfNJT8Reo0LOmDQ1Pz7WPlGpQeUW5gU2M9-CCbhColMooKQCYBRyE3E6PF5vqALY=w2212-h1211
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/qyulL8z3JiD3CjukfNJT8Reo0LOmDQ1Pz7WPlGpQeUW5gU2M9-CCbhColMooKQCYBRyE3E6PF5vqALY=w2212-h1211)
video - https://www.youtube.com/embed/UWYZaAqrNkM
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/0xL2yq5vI8q4qmIxN918HT1t1jc1-xEsFnRTbEo68M9HP8lYf72jvkYQkNzFO3AugRSWmBq45or8l94=w2212-h1211)
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/mrffsWrL75PbQ7Ry9J8yCnV-Xurgv2WlLtbnuTEqARA0xOHGeWAvCSHCT52zIeFIRvRf26aviIlMipY=w2212-h1211)
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/5YMQJBdPgGvrM5L9ao2EFJhHyYDurrPCjQ9g8iS4c8H4YXPhRNT6B2ffQiHbOKgbYc4URzr0-lpqJVQ=w2212-h1211)
not the same exact issue, but the ruling still applies - personnel contracted by the agency, can be sued
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/psychologists-who-designed-cia-program-can-be-sued-victims-federal-judge-rules
"
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Psychologists Who Designed the CIA Torture Program Can Be Sued by Victims, Federal Judge Rules
The first time such a case has been allowed to proceed.
By Sarah Lazare / AlterNet April 25, 2016
4.3K176
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126 COMMENTS
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
For the first time, a federal judge is allowing torture victims to sue the psychologists who devised the CIA's brutal interrogation methods that included sleep deprivation, starvation and forcing captives into coffin-like boxes.
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Now although this was not for my situation, the ruling still applies - to seeing the psychologists, as well as any contracted persons or entities - in my case - MORTICIANS/FUNERAL DIRECTORS.
But why did they involve me with morticians and funeral directors from such an early age? Not just to traumatize me into having a split personality - no - for DESENSITIZING and TRAINING for the 160th!
http://www.web-ak.com/waco/war/page/w_ga.html
Body Mutilation and Drug Use
Sometimes Special Ops personnel who are on covert missions become injured and cannot be retrieved and given medical assistance. These people are left behind--but killed first by their own comrades who decapitate the body and remove the hands to prevent identification.
This information comes to the Museum from an unofficial source through the medical personnel of Special Ops. These medical personnel have special duties to administer drugs (uppers) to commandos to enhance their performance and depress the desire for sleep while on mission. When the mission is over, other drugs (downers) are administered to bring the commandos down.
Body Laundering
We now come to another practice of the US military and especially Special Operations: Body laundering, sometimes called "body washing." When Special Ops personnel die on secret and illegal missions, a problem is created for the military bureaucracy. The military cannot tell the families how the serviceman died, so the body is "laundered." That is, a cover story is invented to explain the death, and the body of the dead soldier is mutilated in such a way to corroborate the cover story.
Journalists Frank Greve and Ellen Warren wrote of the practice in their series which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on December 16 & 17, 1984 (cited above). According to the article, during the Vietnam War, soldiers were killed while on CIA secret missions in Laos and Cambodia. "If a guy was killed on a mission, and if it was sensitive politically, we'd ship the body back home and have a jeep roll over on him at Fort Huachuca," one former officer told the two Knight-Ridder writers. Ft. Huachuca is a covert operations base in Arizona.
"Or," the former officer said, "we'd arrange a chopper crash, or wait until one happened and insert a body or two into the wreckage later. It's not that difficult."
And the secret Special Ops helicopter unit, the 160th Task Force, almost certainly laundered the bodies of its servicemen when they were killed in El Salvador. The widow of a 160th pilot who died in a crash reported that her husband told her just days before his death, "If I ever die in an accident and they tell you I was a spy, or if I crash somewhere that I'm not supposed to be, don't ever believe that I was spying or wasn't working for the Army," according to Greve and Warren (Philadelphia Inquirer, December 16, 1984).
A cousin of another deceased member of the 160th Task Force said that two weeks before his death, the man told her that whatever happened to him, "the Army could pull whatever they wanted to make it look other ways." (Philadelphia Inquirer, December 16, 1984).
According to the Greve and Warren article, fines, imprisonment, and loss of rank can result from breaches of security by military personnel. "That's in the top-secret category, so I'm not going to talk about that," said one Army airman familiar with the Central American missions. "I don't want to go to jail."
The Washington Post, May 6, 1996 (Public Honors for Secret Combat) described body laundering during the El Salvador operation. Many who knew the truth about the circumstances surrounding the soldiers deaths were troubled by the outright false official reports relatives received, says the Post.
Judy Lujan, wife of Army Lt. Col. Joseph H. Lujan, was told her husband died in 1987 when the helicopter carrying him crashed into a hillside during stormy weather. But the Army never produced her husband's personal effects or photographs of his corpse, despite her repeated requests, she said. "I can't get on with my life, I can't do anything, until I know for sure he's dead."
Relatives of Gregory A. Fronius, a 28-year-old Green Beret sergeant, know he was slain during a guerrilla attack on a Salvadoran brigade's headquarters at El Paraiso. But initially they were informed Fronius had died in his barracks when a mortar shell struck. In fact, Fronius had bolted from the barracks and was trying to rally Salvadoran soldiers for a counterattack when several guerrilla snipers shot him, then blew up his body with an explosive charge.
"First they told me one thing, then I found out something else," said Celinda Carney, who was married to Fronius. "I was upset."
Insight Magazine, January 29, 1996 reported that one of the magazine's Special Ops contacts was predicting bodies would be laundered as a result of the Bosnian "peacekeeping" mission. With many Special Ops personnel operating in Bosnia, some of their missions will likely be extremely sensitive and high risk, with plausible deniability built into them, said the source. "When their bodies come home, they will be identified not as soldiers, but as businessmen or members of nonmilitary government agencies. The truths about their deaths will be difficult to learn," says author Anthony Kinnery.
"If I'm on one of these missions that's deep, deep black, you can safely bet few, if any, in Congress--maybe not even the secretary of defense--knows about what the hell I'm doing," says a black operative. "And if I get killed and my body's fortunate enough to be recovered, you can also bet I'll turn up dead in a car wreck in some place like Munich or Berlin." (Insight Magazine, January 29, 1996, Secrecy Shrouds Spy Deaths.)
Making any connections, anyone? Now that I can post pictures hahaha or does that not help?
Remember where I was:
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/4LZDSkZZs8oRtA7iC4m_Sev9gc8jFJO3KjiSKLCJMcvsD9VFf6aMF-udGAhCtErDR_rzcl7bu2xbP-A=w2212-h1211)
Thats EDWARD HUNTER FIELD:
(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/rwYCY__EW5mMqC4jyaTNUOttdbXp5SSNBCL0TI8gp-xkngIU30TNM3LN7cgrOqAwTZnhRVLOuOU9A28=w2212-h1211)
EDWARD HUNTER = COINED THE TERM BRAINWASHING
Edward Hunter (1902–1978) was an American journalist, author, and intelligence agent.
Book Reference:
Brainwashing: The Story Of Men Who Defied It - by: EDWARD HUNTER
https://www.amazon.com/Brainwashing-Story-Men-Who-Defied/dp/1258013312
please tell me this is all understandable.. haha
i mean, something to chew on at least, right?
the mortician stuff was of course training, but largely desensitizing. you have to be able to do anything, in any conditions, including sexually please someone, while acting happy about it. these are the requirements of a spy/assassin, and these are the methods (I describe) that goes into grooming/training/desensitizing/conditioning them. its an ugly world out here, especially for a monarch!
WHEW, feels good to unload, but of course I suffer inner guilt/remorse/selfsabatogingretaliation for this sort of thing... it is really hard on me.
So be kind, if you want to call BS, in any way shape or form. Because this was not only my life, but that of many.
this is about as much personal info as I can post - you can already easily find out who I am from this, if you are adept to that sort of thing.
but I'm obviously not hiding, just not publicly putting myself on blast, at least not directly directly with my name and face... but the scare is obvious if you ever see me in person, of course... so I've done enough, haha
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 11 September, 2016, 09:31:19 PM
Quote from: sheridan on 11 September, 2016, 09:10:47 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 11 September, 2016, 08:44:04 PM
Did you guys really never even consider the possibility, nor of even asking, if I was actually serious. (about the 'official' ignoring of someone)
Well, you didn't show any sign at all of making a joke in that comment. It is considered pretty offensive to treat somebody as if they've made a joke when they've been serious (as was brought home to me in a conversation a few months back).
Understandable, no problems here - just noticed a lot of talk, not even pointing at you, so I wrote a few things to clarify. I just cant stop sometimes - big character flaw hahaha
You've taken it in good grace, but my ocmment there was a little more pointed than I intended. Best to bear in mind that sarcasm, humour and irony don't always come across in a text-based medium. They may be corny but emoticons are incredibly useful in that respect :-)
This is my favorite thread ever right now.
Quote from: blackmocco on 12 September, 2016, 04:20:05 PM
This is my favorite thread ever right now.
Wait until he starts telling us more details about his special powers.
Quote from: blackmocco on 12 September, 2016, 04:20:05 PM
This is my favorite thread ever right now.
It's certainly...an experience.
Quote from: GordonR on 12 September, 2016, 04:26:35 PM
Quote from: blackmocco on 12 September, 2016, 04:20:05 PM
This is my favorite thread ever right now.
Wait until he starts telling us more details about his special powers.
Is this humor, or are you serious? I wonder what you would say to someone like me in person. Not looking to escalate this or anything, I am being very serious. I really wonder what you would say to someone like me in person, because that seems very rude. I'll let it go
Hmmm, so the pics I posted to show directly in the thread are now 'dead links' - but the links a few posts back are still working. I am going to take a short break, and wait for something meaningful, because people coming along like GORDON, with the smart mouth tempt me. I don't think I can respond like I actually need to over the internet, and either way, it wouldn't be productive.
I have training and conditioning, no one said anything about 'special powers'... and this is not about any of that regardless. It is about exposing horrific human trafficking and the torture of children. But continue to make jokes and my (and their) expense. Real good contribution, and real mature. Gordon gordon gordon... tsk tsk tsk... Ok, I am going to try to really leave this alone... but man... something simple like that, maybe you should keep to yourself next time.
Maybe I'll take some time to brief your previous posts, and see what you're about... eh? I'm sure it will be interesting... I am sure you are a real interesting guy, with a lot to offer the world, eh? Maybe apply yourself... or maybe not. I stop talking now
So Gordon - 2000AD 'creator' eh? I guess if I speak up too much, I get booted ;) haha, or maybe you play nice...
So, although you don't appear to be involved with the MONARCH comic, got any input to it basically seeming either plagiarized from articles such as Ron Patton's - or as an alternative - very close to the actual truth?
Eh? Just curious, it's what brought me here.
Or maybe you have something else funny to say. Then maybe you can take some of the realism from the information I present, and twist it and write a new comic hahahah
Quote from: GordonR on 12 September, 2016, 04:26:35 PM
Quote from: blackmocco on 12 September, 2016, 04:20:05 PM
This is my favorite thread ever right now.
Wait until he starts telling us more details about his special powers.
Since I play nice - I will give you something to read. This may be funny to you, but to me - it is sad, and the whole ordeal has caused people great harm. Here is what happens when people think they have 'special powers':
http://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/appellate-division-unpublished/2005/a4563-04-opn.html
SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY
APPELLATE DIVISION
DOCKET NO. A-4563-04T44563-04T4
STATE OF NEW JERSEY,
Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
MICHAEL A. PERO, III,
Defendant-Appellant.and lets get to what you want to hear - the funny stuff right? Let's skip him hurting his mom, and his own future severely... all because of him not being able to cope, and being confused, from the program he was in. Let's ask about special powers, eh? Nah, let's read some of it all
QUOTE FROM LEGAL CASE:
In her statement, Eleanor said that she was fifty-eight years old; that she was sitting at her dining room table having breakfast when defendant "walked up to [her] and put his face directly in front of [her] face," then grabbed her robe; that defendant picked her up and threw her onto the floor; that while she was on the floor, defendant grabbed her three to four times, pulling her up and throwing her down again, and kicked her all over her body; that defendant "poked" her with a four- to five-inch kitchen knife, putting the knife on her ribs, in the center of her chest, and in one of her nostrils; that defendant "choked" her with his hands; that she was "dizzy" during the attack; that the assault lasted fifteen to twenty minutes; and that during the attack, defendant was "making delusional remarks," saying that he did not come back to live in the house with video bugs so that "they could watch him." Eleanor also explained that her son believed that the FBI wanted to "clone him for his DNA because he has super powers."Funny? Is that funny to you? It's a real messed up situation to me. Lot's of people who went through the program think they have super powers and the like. Deeply embedded post hypnotic suggestions/programming to make yourself seem NOT CREDIBLE.
I, am very credible, as are my fellows. We don't like this situation. I hope you enjoyed your response, I mentioned 'special powers'
Picking a fight with Campbell AND Rennie in the same thread. The wascal has spiwit. Bwavado. A touch of dewwing do.
Quote from: blackmocco on 12 September, 2016, 04:20:05 PM
This is my favorite thread ever right now.
Oh, we got some ...people... here in the thread. I should pay better attention.
Tell me, is there something you want to know? I think I managed to satiate the thirst of the next guy, maybe I can help you with something personally, since I feel so obligated due to your background... ;)
Is my demeanor hard to read? I am not even sure how I feel, but I am interested myself, in...stuff.
Talk talk talk. blah blah blah... =) Yup, I'm done
Quote from: Tordelback on 13 September, 2016, 01:04:00 AM
Picking a fight with Campbell AND Rennie in the same thread. The wascal has spiwit. Bwavado. A touch of dewwing do.
Fair enough - but on the other side - I am talking about very serious subject matter, that includes the wellbeing of children, and I am experiencing what I would call 'cheap shots'... so - I don't feel I am the only one 'picking a fight'.
Like I said before, I stand my ground firm, but don't really care that much - predictable is the key word right now. I already stated I may overcompensate due to my bias sensitivity regarding the subject matter... SO... is it really that bad?
Cmoooooon :lol:
Live a little - eh?
HAHAHA, just now realizing who Campbell is as well. I never did actually 'block'/'ignore' him. I can't even access my own profile etc... I don't even think I AM ABLE to block anyone... which begs the question, how did the '2000AD creator' not realize this when he got what seemed to be offended?
I stand by my actions regardless - I treat people the same, according to said actions, not because of who they are or the background they come from... For the most part. but hey, don't learn from me - probably won't go great for you! hahaha
Let me ask you guys this, no facts, etc, just strictly speculation and train of thought.
So, in all the worlds military/intelligence, they obviously have trigger men. Call them what you will, we do not just mean your standard soldier, I mean special forces, and among them, the creme of the crop when the job is to terminate the target. Some targets have to be taken out low key, some have to be made an example of, etc...
So, don't you think that somewhere, they have a special program to train and groom the men(/women) to fill this job description? If we want to make them the BEST (better than any other country, for example) - what extra steps would that take. If it was YOUR JOB, to design the training program, and crank out some special forces assassins... what would this entail? Video game training when they are too young for real training? To groom them? Special education? Then when they are older, what physical training? Also, don't forget, you better prepare them from childhood for what they will see. What better than a generational mortician/funeral director's family - eh? Notice most funeral homes, do intact keep it in the family... Family business...
I mean, just think about it - what do you think would be going on? If my whole thing is complete BS - that's fine - but don't you think that something is going on somewhere - of course for 'national security' etc etc... but still. Does this sort of thing not make sense, or just no one ever thinks about it? What's up - educate me, people!
Quote from: Tordelback on 13 September, 2016, 01:04:00 AM
Picking a fight with Campbell AND Rennie in the same thread. The wascal has spiwit. Bwavado. A touch of dewwing do.
I'm just still floored - I post a notarized letter about being drugged, and forced to eat dead bodies and stuff, and then I get smartass comments shot at me, about 'special powers' - and then this is the topic that people comment on - not the eating dead bodies in my neighbors basement. I mean - REALLY?
What am I missing? Or am I not the one missing something?
Let's see let me look through the emojis... whoops NONE
Do y'all know what it is like to have split personalities? This is ridiculous, I am already back here checking, and I just can't wait to see what someone says. Anything. This is crazy, is this like instagram and all that snapchat stuff hahahahahaha. No, I just, am very obsessive. Even though I am obviously lying when I claim to be laid back, as small this is (forum pitter patter) to what I have experienced in life, I still seem to have a lot emotionally invested. I mean even that is contradictory of me all nonchalantly trying to downgrade the importance of my own topic that I introduced, which by no means should be referred to as pitter patter... But I mean - listen to me go> I am talking about nothing!
Guess what, that above probably entertains you and will get more response, than the very serious stuff I have posted competently about. Go figure (looks around and reminds himself of the basics *smack*) Oh yeah...
HAHAHA
QuoteNot looking to escalate this or anything.
QuoteI'll let it go.
...followed by nine lengthy posts and hundreds and hundreds of words of you not escalating anything and very much letting it go.
However, I apologise for suggesting that your experiences with a nationwide conspiracy of evil funeral directors who train children to be government assassins might have given you special powers.
That would, of course, have been completely ludicrious.
multiple personalities man... you must be missing something more than me
ah, I tried to be cool, but I can't make your own stupid decisions for you...
good luck with it
once again. I love the focus. you're a riot
you like to sum things up and put words in peoples mouths?
so you think this is a joke? alright.
this IS me not escalating it, is what you are super lucky to not even realize.
Once again, factor in multiple personalities and maybe you will see the pattern.
I apologize to humanity for your ignorance. you're excused.
If you want to call BS, by all means do so - don't insult people that were involved with me through this, that is taking things to the next level...
I love the 'substance' of your quick shots... wow man, I love your style, you're so cool and funny...
Quote from: GordonR on 13 September, 2016, 06:35:00 AM
QuoteNot looking to escalate this or anything.
QuoteI'll let it go.
However, I apologise for suggesting that your experiences with a nationwide conspiracy of evil funeral directors who train children to be government assassins might have given you special powers.
So this is what you want to take a stab at? You think that was a joke? A lie? Let me know, maybe I could show you some personal information and further documentation including court cases with the names and all. You think this didn't happen? You think there wasn't fallout?
'Evil' morticians? No, just desensitized and cut from reality, over eagerly pursuing the next phase of modern warfare... for military/intelligence. You're humor must be going over my head here buddy. You can snap back and take shots at ME, but the little kids next to me? Who don't even have a voice here?
Real big man, you are. Real big man... =) hahaha we forgive you
I realize I am on a forum - a comic forum at that - but let me remind the adults here - that when you make light of this sort of thing, you are playing with fire. I'm sure you are happy to take your chances, as your arrogance professes... so I will do my best to shut up, but I have a lot to say - just not over these message boards... This little game is growing old, because for me to talk to you like a man, would probably end my time here on the forum, which is rapidly approaching anyway, I 'sense with my special powers' haha... right?
I got plenty to say though, I just don't think you can actually handle it without getting your little feelings hurt over personal ego matters. I am offended for a population of survivors... Want me to introduce a network of hundreds if not thousands of them? For blind eyes/deaf ears? I'll be back maybe soon, maybe a few days, maybe never if they guys here get butt hurt... We'll see
I have a further questions if you'll indulge me, Apoceclipse.
Given that you claim to have been brainwashed by Government agencies do you consider it wise to talk about it publicly on an internet forum? Possible reprisals, and all that Jazz!
Cheers
given the history of what already happened to me - it doesn't matter much at all. of course I could be wrong, but I don't care... also, I don't experience fear in the same way as others, which is definitely to my detriment these days... I'm stubborn like that
If there were NO problems for me at all previously, and I had just found out - it would be idiotic.
I've already been hurt, and lost most of my family... I don't have much to lose, only gain - only the small possibility to help others, although this seems like a sideshow more than anything... people focusing on little comebacks, and oversimplifying things, not actually getting into depth as to the substance...
I'm just wondering Gordon, if you read the notarize letter I posted?, and if you did, if you think it is a complete fake, a hoax, that the author is 'insane' or otherwise... etc... Sharing much more than that publicly would really be a no-no, especially as it is not just me involved, and I have already posted enough to find my person on Facebook... Yes, Facebook, where I lobby for the same thing with my name and face, only people take it more seriously... A lot of people know me personally, and watched some of the fallout, and KNOW this is not a joke. I understand none of you hear have that privilege, so I will continue with my rebuttals as I see fit, or until I am forcefully stopped (by way of... 'banning'? would you call it) - although I hope that is not yet a viable option
I mean, I get it, you're a riot, but do you mind discussing the actual content, and explaining the reasoning behind your little shots you are taking? Would go a long way...
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 13 September, 2016, 08:28:37 AM
given the history of what already happened to me - it doesn't matter much at all. of course I could be wrong, but I don't care...
If there were NO problems for me at all previously, and I had just found out - it would be idiotic.
I've already been hurt, and lost most of my family... I don't have much to lose, only gain - only the small possibility to help others, although this seems like a sideshow more than anything... people focusing on little comebacks, and oversimplifying things, not actually getting into depth as to the substance...
I think you're slightly missing the point of this forum.
Yes, most of us have rambled on about all sorts of everything, but the one thing that unites most of us is our love of 2000AD and/or its associated IP's. You have stated (twice I believe) that you found this forum after googling the word 'Monarch'.
I understand that you believe this to be important but don't be too surprised if you are taken to task on what you are saying. The same applies to me and everyone else. We hold this section of the internet in very High regard!
Cheers
(http://thepinksmoke.com/images/cj203.png)
Hang on, isn't this the plot to Stranger Things?...
....And yeah, guess I need to watch that show now.
I'll be frank, what little sympathy/interest I may have had evapourated entirely when you suggested the space mission/solar eclipse links.
Back in the day, my mate's sister was convinced that she was a spy in the pay of the Soviet Embassy and used to stalk and harass some of the staff there. Now there is plenty of documented evidence that spies exist etc. for which she could provide links. It turned out she just needed some professional help in identifying the real cause of her issues and was prescribed a course of medication to control the excesses of her active imagination.
And similarly, our last forumite who regularly replied to their own posts with essay after essay (of the first links they could come across that vaguely supported their position) also required daily medication.
Now this may not be the case for yourself but I would genuinely suggest seeking some professional medical help before either a) asking a comic forum to validate your ideas or b) trying to spread the ideas further to your friends, family and or the world at large.
I hope the outcome of such a consultation brings you peace.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 13 September, 2016, 12:54:18 AM
So Gordon - 2000AD 'creator' eh? I guess if I speak up too much, I get booted ;) haha, or maybe you play nice...
Writers, artists and letterers who have worked on 2000AD get set up with creator profiles. These are not the same as moderator profiles, and so they wouldn't have any more power to boot you than I do (i.e. they'd have to report you to somebody who
is a moderator).
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 13 September, 2016, 12:27:01 PM
And similarly, our last forumite who regularly replied to their own posts with essay after essay (of the first links they could come across that vaguely supported their position) also required daily medication.
I totally meant our former Mayor by the way.
There are hundreds, if not thousands like me... SMART, RA-INFO, SURVIVORSHIP, IVORY GARDEN, this list goes on... Look into it, or don't.
I don't have the energy to show people who aren't trying to see. Carry on with what interests you then. It would seem anything of substance gets brushed over, and the focus lies elsewhere. People are funny like that. Much more respectful in person though. What does that tell you?
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 13 September, 2016, 12:27:01 PM
I'll be frank, what little sympathy/interest I may have had evapourated entirely when you suggested the space mission/solar eclipse links.
Back in the day, my mate's sister was convinced that she was a spy in the pay of the Soviet Embassy and used to stalk and harass some of the staff there. Now there is plenty of documented evidence that spies exist etc. for which she could provide links. It turned out she just needed some professional help in identifying the real cause of her issues and was prescribed a course of medication to control the excesses of her active imagination.
And similarly, our last forumite who regularly replied to their own posts with essay after essay (of the first links they could come across that vaguely supported their position) also required daily medication.
Now this may not be the case for yourself but I would genuinely suggest seeking some professional medical help before either a) asking a comic forum to validate your ideas or b) trying to spread the ideas further to your friends, family and or the world at large.
I hope the outcome of such a consultation brings you peace.
... wow, I work with several survivor and trauma therapists and professionally consult. Look into survivorship.org, or ivory gardens, or any of the massive DID communities that involves sections for deliberately programmed persons... this is more real than YOUR imagination wants to believe... I'm busy today though, so probably not 10 posts for this one.
I am starting to get it. The thing is - some of YOU, ARENT.
I love you little ideas that would suit someone 10 years ago, real cute
Now I get it! This is some form of internet Cluedo where we have to establish what has happened from vague comments made by an individual none of us have ever met. I think I've cracked it.
It was General Schwarzkopf... in the shitter... with a dildo!
Cheers
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 13 September, 2016, 01:13:01 PM
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 13 September, 2016, 12:27:01 PM
And similarly, our last forumite who regularly replied to their own posts with essay after essay (of the first links they could come across that vaguely supported their position) also required daily medication.
I totally meant our former Mayor by the way.
tips, some of us do require daily medication but don't require tin foil hats thanks.
Quote from: Grugz on 13 September, 2016, 02:41:36 PM
tips, some of us do require daily medication but don't require tin foil hats thanks.
So
now you're sensitive about medication comments? Right. Got it.
not for me but on behalf of my fellow medicites,as we have to take it through no fault of our own, its not like we're all raging alcoholics for example is it? as that is an illness through choice. Any way you haven't got time to troll me i'm sure apo has put something in his many posts you want to pick apart while your safe behind your keyboard...regards! xxx
Quote from: Grugz on 13 September, 2016, 02:54:32 PM
not for me but on behalf of my fellow medicites,as we have to take it through no fault of our own, its not like we're all raging alcoholics for example is it?
I'm not trolling you, I'm pointing out that you appeared to think it was just fine to make cracks about people 'needing to take their tablets' and being 'delusional' when you were addressing me, but are quick to step in on behalf of others for perceived insensitivity on the same issue... which whiffs just a
little bit of a double-standard, don't you think?
of course you are absolutely right ,bit like calling someone out on this thread for getting stroppy and putting someone on ignore ,then saying you were doing it yourself, although apo didn't call anyone names like some immature child ...and I do make cracks about my own health problems thanks and can see the lighter side of most things ,it helps to have a sense of humour about such things ,you should get one...
now, i'm sure you'd like to drag this drama over a few posts as you do wanting the last word as always but I have said what I wanted to and have nothing more to say on that matter you can call me all the names under the sun and be as personal as you like but if I could draw your attention to the forum rules (handily linked) you can see you have broken many on many occasions before you had the audacity to attack apo's lack of "netiquette"
again, regards
Quote from: Grugz on 13 September, 2016, 03:17:18 PM
of course you are absolutely right
Good. Nice of you to say so.
For fuck's sake.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 13 September, 2016, 01:29:27 PM
I don't have the energy to show people who aren't trying to see.
Er, so save your energy and your wonderful knowledge for people who are seekers and leave a forum set up for people who like a comic you've never heard of and written by people you choose to threaten online, (BTW Gordon is ruder that that in real life,)
Bon voyage!
mocco, absolutely right ffs indeed. still,life on the net eh?
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 September, 2016, 03:55:24 PM
(BTW Gordon is ruder that that in real life,)
He really is! But we all still love him for it, we're a bunch of masochistic tools here...
Quote from: Grugz on 13 September, 2016, 02:54:32 PM
not for me but on behalf of my fellow medicites,as we have to take it through no fault of our own, its not like we're all raging alcoholics for example is it? as that is an illness through choice.
Is it hard to take the moral high ground and say something as ignorant and insensitive at that at the same time? Life threatening addiction is not a choice its an illness. Mental illness is not a choice so weather your daily pills are for schizophrenia or high blood pressure or epilepsy it doesn't matter. 'tin foil hat' or not, overtly visible symptoms or not, illness is illness.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 13 September, 2016, 03:57:23 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 September, 2016, 03:55:24 PM
(BTW Gordon is ruder that that in real life,)
He really is! But we all still love him for it, we're a bunch of masochistic tools here...
I always worry about the small rodents he crushes in his coat pockets whenever he appears in public...
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 September, 2016, 04:02:15 PM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 13 September, 2016, 03:57:23 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 September, 2016, 03:55:24 PM
(BTW Gordon is ruder that that in real life,)
He really is! But we all still love him for it, we're a bunch of masochistic tools here...
I always worry about the small rodents he crushes in his coat pockets whenever he appears in public...
It's stress relief for every time somebody asks him what comics he's currently reading.
Quote from: Grugz on 13 September, 2016, 02:41:36 PM
tips, some of us do require daily medication but don't require tin foil hats thanks.
I've re-read the Tipsy fella's post a few times and I'm still not inferring any such assertion.
its no big deal, just forget it.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 13 September, 2016, 01:29:27 PM
I am starting to get it. The thing is - some of YOU, ARENT.
We do, though. Sadly.
Even without those other members chipping in saying so, we're an ageing audience with similar interests. I
know it's a safe bet I'm not the only one here who's already
quite aware of the various government-sponsored programmes. We've watched THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (both versions) or read the novel. We've kept up with THE X-FILES. And now there's STRANGER THINGS. But to say we don't
know the background that inspired the aforementioned works of fiction is, frankly, insulting.
I doubt also I'm the only one here who's aware of the various survivor networks and investigators who
genuinely believe as do you. The difference is we've reached
different conclusions, based on much the same information.
Your contention we
aren't aware
simply because we don't agree with you is as equally rude as anything you've taken personally.
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 13 September, 2016, 07:28:39 PM
Even without those other members chipping in saying so, we're an ageing audience with similar interests. I know it's a safe bet I'm not the only one here who's already quite aware of the various government-sponsored programmes. We've watched THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (both versions) or read the novel. We've kept up with THE X-FILES. And now there's STRANGER THINGS. But to say we don't know the background that inspired the aforementioned works of fiction is, frankly, insulting.
I doubt also I'm the only one here who's aware of the various survivor networks and investigators who genuinely believe as do you. The difference is we've reached different conclusions, based on much the same information.
True; along with real-life claims it's been a part of pop-culture for quite some time now hence the slew of fiction referencing code-names like MKULTRA/MONARCH/ARTICHOKE/FINDERS directly.
I clearly recall watching a Channel 4 broadcast of one - at the very least - documentary in the 1990s concerning a specific US doctor and his test-subjects and one of the first public cases was model
Candy Jones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_Jones) who was
alleging MKULTRA/sex-abuse as far back as the 1960s - Donald Bain published the book
The Control of Candy Jones (https://www.amazon.com/Control-Candy-Jones-Donald-Bain/dp/0872234576) in 1976. Walter Bowart's well known book
Operation Mind Control (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Operation-Mind-Control-Walter-Bowart/dp/0006352413/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1473796216&sr=8-2&keywords=Operation+Mind+Control) was published 2 years later on both sides of the Atlantic by commercial publishers. I read both books in my late teens in the
gombeenocracy (https://www.google.ie/search?q=gombeen&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gws_rd=cr&ei=lF7YV_S1NqmMgAbbh7GIAg) of 1980's Ireland.
As to the veracity of the actual events and claims in these things they're beyond the purview and proving powers of most Joe Soaps
- especially a forum of shut-ins who worry about how Tharg will solve Dredd's aging problem before I'm too old to care? - so I'm not sure why anyone would choose this place as the spear-head of their crusade.
The best result of these blind forum conversations is as follows -
Forumite A: "This shit happened to me..."
Forumite B: "I don't know but if you say so."
And end there.
Quote from: Grugz on 13 September, 2016, 02:41:36 PM
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 13 September, 2016, 01:13:01 PM
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 13 September, 2016, 12:27:01 PM
And similarly, our last forumite who regularly replied to their own posts with essay after essay (of the first links they could come across that vaguely supported their position) also required daily medication.
I totally meant our former Mayor by the way.
tips, some of us do require daily medication but don't require tin foil hats thanks.
Didn't intend to imply the two were inextricably linked. Definitely not what I was getting at.
no worries it got a bit more inflated than I intended.
People getting on? Cats and Dogs living together?! MASS HYSTERIA!!!!
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 September, 2016, 04:02:15 PM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 13 September, 2016, 03:57:23 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 September, 2016, 03:55:24 PM
(BTW Gordon is ruder that that in real life,)
He really is! But we all still love him for it, we're a bunch of masochistic tools here...
I always worry about the small rodents he crushes in his coat pockets whenever he appears in public...
Is
that what he's doing in his pockets?
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 13 September, 2016, 04:06:53 PM
It's stress relief for every time somebody asks him what comics he's currently reading.
I'll have to see what he does when I ask where he gets his ideas from :-)
Quote from: Proudhuff on 13 September, 2016, 03:55:24 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 13 September, 2016, 01:29:27 PM
I don't have the energy to show people who aren't trying to see.
Er, so save your energy and your wonderful knowledge for people who are seekers and leave a forum set up for people who like a comic you've never heard of and written by people you choose to threaten online, (BTW Gordon is ruder that that in real life,)
Bon voyage!
I take multiple avenues... I am still hoping for someone to answer me about the MONARCH comic, which is why I came here.
Gordon being rude in real life would not last long around me
Quote from: Eric Plumrose on 13 September, 2016, 07:28:39 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 13 September, 2016, 01:29:27 PM
I am starting to get it. The thing is - some of YOU, ARENT.
We do, though. Sadly.
Even without those other members chipping in saying so, we're an ageing audience with similar interests. I know it's a safe bet I'm not the only one here who's already quite aware of the various government-sponsored programmes. We've watched THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (both versions) or read the novel. We've kept up with THE X-FILES. And now there's STRANGER THINGS. But to say we don't know the background that inspired the aforementioned works of fiction is, frankly, insulting.
I doubt also I'm the only one here who's aware of the various survivor networks and investigators who genuinely believe as do you. The difference is we've reached different conclusions, based on much the same information.
Your contention we aren't aware simply because we don't agree with you is as equally rude as anything you've taken personally.
If you were going on FACT, you would be correct. But see, 'opinion' is not even accurate, because certain events are infact taking place in real life, so if your standpoint is disagreeing with that, you are simply wrong.
Live it, and then comment. You are just talking, I am TELLING (more ways than one)
Also, you must not have thoroughly briefed these organizations of survivors like you claim... there are many court cases involved, with VERY credible evidence....
I am not talking about general information, I am talking about specific information, nice argument, if it was factually based, and not inserting words/meanings into 'my posts' (not mouth? eh)
Carry on...
As for the rest of the posts: wow, you guys seem to have more problems than me! hahah, good luck sorting all that out. Whatever the problem actually is. Interesting social dynamic here... very interesting.
Still, no comment about the notarized letter? I mean if you think it's BS, state why, and we can continue with substantial dialogue... all this petty talk about more or less 'nothing' just speculation, does not serve much purpose...
I mean, address something specifically, and I will reply specifically, but taking cheap shots and being vague about what you think is BS - is not doing much. This whole thing does not round up into one clean category...
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 14 September, 2016, 12:44:25 AM
As for the rest of the posts: wow, you guys seem to have more problems than me! hahah, good luck sorting all that out. Whatever the problem actually is. Interesting social dynamic here... very interesting.
Still, no comment about the notarized letter? I mean if you think it's BS, state why, and we can continue with substantial dialogue... all this petty talk about more or less 'nothing' just speculation, does not serve much purpose...
I mean, address something specifically, and I will reply specifically, but taking cheap shots and being vague about what you think is BS - is not doing much. This whole thing does not round up into one clean category...
Personally, I took no cheap shots and don't know why you think that or try and use the same tactic - nevermind the historical footnotes of this issue but I've no way of knowing whether your personal claims are "bullshit" and this forum isn't really the place to try and prove something of that nature - it's certainly not reasonable to think it is.
It'll be hard to prove any such claim of historical abuse committed on your person on an internet forum
- it's hard enough doing it in an official court - and anything of such a serious nature can only be addressed in a
broad social context - sometimes with a little humour - but not on an individual basis. This forum wouldn't last long if the latter were the case and wouldn't be fulfilling its primary remit as a comic forum.
*Being notarised just proves you signed the document and had the signing witnessed. A Notary Public's role is to verify the identity of the person signing the document and to make sure they understand the implications of what they're signing - not to prove that the content of what is being signed is true.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 14 September, 2016, 01:19:53 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 14 September, 2016, 12:44:25 AM
As for the rest of the posts: wow, you guys seem to have more problems than me! hahah, good luck sorting all that out. Whatever the problem actually is. Interesting social dynamic here... very interesting.
Still, no comment about the notarized letter? I mean if you think it's BS, state why, and we can continue with substantial dialogue... all this petty talk about more or less 'nothing' just speculation, does not serve much purpose...
I mean, address something specifically, and I will reply specifically, but taking cheap shots and being vague about what you think is BS - is not doing much. This whole thing does not round up into one clean category...
Personally, I took no cheap shots and don't know why you think that or try and use the same tactic - nevermind the historical footnotes of this issue but I've no way of knowing whether your personal claims are "bullshit" and this forum isn't really the place to try and prove something of that nature - it's certainly not reasonable to think it is.
It'll be hard to prove any such claim of historical abuse committed on your person on an internet forum - it's hard enough doing it in an official court - and anything of such a serious nature can only be addressed in a broad social context - sometimes with a little humour - but not on an individual basis. This forum wouldn't last long if the latter were the case and wouldn't be fulfilling its primary remit as a comic forum.
*Being notarised just proves you signed the document and had the signing witnessed. A Notary Public's role is to verify the identity of the person signing the document and to make sure they understand the implications of what they're signing - not to prove that the content of what is being signed is true.
Totally, yeah I didn't even reply to what you said, because you didn't say anything to upset me, I am really falling off here (obviously). Haha. I dive in manic for a bit, then move on. Sometimes, I could lose my cool and get real childish and talk enough to get me kicked off. It's hard living with D.I.D. - and I take full responsibility, not trying to excuse behavior or anything etc. etc.
Anyway, yes I do generally agree, and I did state clearly twice that I overcompensate due to being bias/sensitive. And I say one thing, but another part of me says another, and I feel like I have to equally present. See, the dynamics of communicating with someone who has D.I.D (well, DDNOS to be 'specific') can be complicated, let alone trying to understand it on a forum, when 1) I am not adept to communicating on this platform anyhow; and 2) You all are just 'meeting me' and have no chance to know my usual behavior from another 'part'; and 3) ok I'll stop numbering, point is, there WON'T be a lot of sense to my behavior. Not in an easily interpretable manner across this platform within the recent time frame specified at least....
I didn't write the letter, and the content was what I was getting at. Not the fact that it was notarized, anything can be notarized... doesn't make it true. Yes, we realize that. It's what the letter says, what I say, what happened, and who was involved. I blanked it out, because it exposes my person, and others. We have already moved forward with it, but the lawsuit failed, and the would be defendant is now deceased regardless.
The lawsuit failed due to statute of limitations, in NY it is ridiculous for child abuse. Failed doesn't quite hit it. Fell flat, is more like it.
Like I said, I have nothing to 'prove' to you guys, but that doesn't increase my tolerance for what people like me would consider bigotry. Yep, some people seem like biggots talking the way they do in response to this.
The thing is, if I don't know 100%, but small children are involved, or women, children, you get it - THEN I WOULD TREAD LIGHTLY. Out of respect.
I know this is a comic book forum, and I am not losing any sleep, and I have said it, I stand firm, because I lived it, and I network with TONS of people who have as well (and are 'coming out') so I don't need you all to believe, or even know. But I won't stand for the childish BS either. Not directing towards you, good sir, but in the general direction, that is away from me. Hahaha
When I was talking about the 'rest of the posts' I was referring to the obvious history I had missed that preluded the awkward social dynamic (funny comment coming from me) that unfolded, which was just flabbergasting to me, considering what we were in the middle of discussing.
Of course there are two sides to that, you all's (for the most part generalizing everyone that has not lived this), which would be taking this topic lightly, naturally, and my side (who lives it, and has seen and felt horrible things, dude) - so I mean - I get it. I repeat - I stand firm!
Hahahah do you see the duality?
Good day kind sir!
To be clear, I am not trying to PROVE anything. Just saying this and that, and sharing a few things that I won't take too personally if people don't believe it, enticing me to post what would be much closer to actual 'proof', exposing people.
At the same time as not been hellbent on proving it, I am not going to be exactly tolerant of what I don't like, and consider rude, disrespectful behavior. The being careful badmouthing thing - if you are not 100% positive thing - regarding the kids - ya know?
Other than my little rants, most of my comments are begging answers, I want to learn what goes through peoples heads. I don't have a common past experience with most people, so it is harder to relate. I am very different. Maybe some ways more thoughtful, maybe some ways more impulsive, maybe both.
It really does just drop my draw to see, what in my opinion, is very petty talk and childish behavior due to the gravity of the situation. Although we exist in different perceived situations, so I understand. The thing is, my perception is of experience, and knowledge, while others concerning this issue, is of mostly speculation, and guessing, with varying degrees of base knowledge of the subject.
I still want to know - what do you think they do for whatever top special forces assassin training? What type of candidate would they look for? I mean the best, we have to beat all the other countries. It is your job to devise the whole program. This is the Olympics, ok? (haha) What do you do? If you were willing, of course.
You understand the exercise...? things get messy, real quick...
Now tell me - if you are a Commando in the 160th, and part of your job may be what is commonly known as 'body laundering' - where do you think they teach that? In a classroom? Open your eyes, think about what must be done, for the tasks...
I don't care if you think my damn neighbors made me eat some dead body flakes as a kid - I don't even remember that specific incident, I was too young. I got other stuff that keeps me awake at night. Way worse than what you can read about there. Point is, I am saying - open up your mind, and eyes, and realize that the best damn training to do certain things, would be apprenticing under a mortician from young - such as in a generational funeral directors home/family. Perhaps we could test them for viability, and enlist them.
I mean, tell me that it doesn't make sense? Desensitizing and training, from young, when it counts. HELLO.
Do you see what I am saying, forget my personal claims, lets talk about the meat of the subject - the claims period.
Special Forces selection and grooming, and eventual routing being handled domestically by the CIA (big no no domestically). Maybe I should just talk about that in general...
They are starting to publicly do some very weak research into deliberate dissociation in special forces...
http://publications.amsus.org/doi/abs/10.7205/MILMED-D-14-00081
just interesting
While I don't doubt that certain things go on behind closed doors, I have trouble believing what you are saying.
They allegedly made you eat skin! To what end? How does it link to brain washing?
You've claimed that hundreds of people have gone through the same process as yourself but you're all walking around freely, openly discussig how the C.I.A/Goverment have allegedly mind-Fucked you. Why are there no reprisals? I've known your governing authorities take a hard line stance over much less!
What is your take on Bin Laden and September 11th? Is he likely to have been brainwashed or was he just a Cunt!
Did we ever land in the moon or is it complete Horseshit?
Is the Earth flat?
Do you believe in God?
Answer or ignore at your leisure, convince me that I'm missing the point somehow.
Cheers
Can a mod please un-ban Thryllseeker and set him loose here? You never know, him and Apoceclipse might cancel each other out or something.
Cue another 50 posts about how I'm not taking this seriously enough... ::)
NapalmKev - I'd like to address a couple of your points.
Firstly, why no reprisals by the authorities? From direct, personal experience - I was arrested for a the crime of breach of the peace. I was alone in my own home at the time, with all doors and windows locked. The police had to force entry, smashing down the front door and, when this failed, the bedroom window. I was locked up for 26 hours. I was never taken to court over the crime I was accused of committing and was instead brought before magistrates to answer for a crime I did not commit - assault on a civilian police officer inside the police station during my unlawful incarceration. At the magistrates' court, the police called two officers to testify and their stories did not match and the only piece of evidence which could have proved my innocence/guilt (cctv footage of the alleged incident taken by cameras inside the police station) was unavailable due to a "corrupt hard drive." Despite these facts, and my previously spotless record, I was found guilty of assault.
When I pointed out these things, the Police Complaints team and magistrates' court did the following: They "looked at" the testimonies of one of the witnesses and, because it tallied with what was said in court, concluded that there was nothing wrong (how can you investigate the claim of conflicting stories if only one story is investigated?), and invited me to take them to court to make my case. This is simply the employment of the tactic of stasis.
My case, compared to what is being talked about here, is trifling. It shows, however, how legal reprisals can easily be stalled indefinitely through loss of evidence, partial investigation presented as conclusive investigation and invitations to discuss the matter in another (expensive and time/will consuming) venue. If such methods can be employed to such small cases as mine, then a scaled-up version can be applied to more serious cases. It takes a lot of time, money, support and effort to overcome such "constructive inertia" (as "Yes, Minister" dubbed the process) - one only has to look at the Hillsborough case to see that.
Lack of reprisals, then, is not necessarily an indication that nothing untoward happened or is happening.
Secondly, conflating Bin Laden, 9/11, the moon landings, flat Earth and the existence of God into the argument has no bearing on the topic at hand. All this argument does is throw out a smokescreen and attempt to condemn Apoceclipse's arguments through guilt by association. We all know there are many wild and unreasonable theories concerning Bin Laden, 9/11, the moon landings, flat Earth and the existence of God, and an attempt to drop Apoceclipse's claims into the same bag is an attempt to dismiss them en mass. Each claim must be assessed on its own individual merits.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 14 September, 2016, 10:33:58 AM
NapalmKev - I'd like to address a couple of your points.
Lack of reprisals, then, is not necessarily an indication that nothing untoward happened or is happening.
Secondly, conflating Bin Laden, 9/11, the moon landings, flat Earth and the existence of God into the argument has no bearing on the topic at hand. All this argument does is throw out a smokescreen and attempt to condemn Apoceclipse's arguments through guilt by association. We all know there are many wild and unreasonable theories concerning Bin Laden, 9/11, the moon landings, flat Earth and the existence of God, and an attempt to drop Apoceclipse's claims into the same bag is an attempt to dismiss them en mass. Each claim must be assessed on its own individual merits.
Are you suggesting that I asked those questions just to take the Piss? If so, you assume too much!
I'm under the impression (perhaps wrongly) that Apoceclipse is the sort of guy that latches onto (possible) conspiracy theories to find some sort of peace within himself and find answers to questions that he has. This train of thought led me down the path to inquire further on Apoceclipse beliefs and if he has any evidence to support it!
I only took the piss with my 'Cluedo' comment, and that didn't bother him or you it seems!
Cheers
Certainly not.
I was suggesting that the one thing has no direct connection with the other and that belief in one thing does not necessarily reinforce or nullify belief in another. For example, Arthur Conan Doyle's belief in the Cottingley Fairies had no bearing on his beliefs in contemporary (for his time) medical or legal practices.
The Cottingley Fairies where always debunked as a hoax though (yet the children, even as adults, still insist the Goblin photo is legit...) and Doyle was believed to only be invested in the nonsense for public interest and the sake of his own image.
Precisely. He did not abandon medicine in favour of fairy dust nor suggest bringing all court cases before King Oberon for judgement.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 14 September, 2016, 12:20:34 PM
Precisely. He did not abandon medicine in favour of fairy dust nor suggest bringing all court cases before King Oberon for judgement.
Sounds like a setup for Dandridge...
The Cottingley Fairies weren't
properly debunked until the 1970s, with the sisters admitting they were fake in the early '80s and explaining how they did it. However, there was that aforementioned photo that one of them said was real, (the other disagreed), and
both maintained that they
really had seen fairies, but hadn't been able to photograph them.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 14 September, 2016, 12:12:28 PMDoyle was believed to only be invested in the nonsense for public interest and the sake of his own image.
Don't know where that idea came from, but I don't think it's accurate. Arthur Conan Doyle almost certainly believed that the photographs were real, was deeply involved with spiritualism and massively fell out with Houdini because Doyle was convinced Houdini had actual paranormal abilities in spite of Houdini's insistence that his tricks were just illusions.
I go away for a few days and now I have a lot of TRUTH to catch up on. Capitals certainly required.
Tis all a bit sad. A friend of mine was convinced that a lass at his uni was a CIA sleeper agent. And then that he'd seen black vans outside his house. All because he's a self-purported communist. But really he's just a rebellious pseudo-politico who has a tendency towards massive paranoia, and the weed wasn't helping with that.
So... best just to try and chill out while you can. They're not out to get you. The scary truth is that you probably don't even register.
On the other hand, a few years back my brother became convinced that for weeks he was being followed around and spied on by someone, and it turned out he really was - by the Department of Work & Pensions, who'd been wrongly informed he was working while claiming benefits. God knows how much money they wasted pointlessly following him up and down the countryside.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 14 September, 2016, 03:23:09 PM
On the other hand, a few years back my brother became convinced that for weeks he was being followed around and spied on by someone, and it turned out he really was
Many years ago, our then-lodger invited an acquaintance round to our house who turned out to be a local heroin dealer. He was charming company, and a very pleasant evening was had by all. The following day, and for a week thereafter, we had two plain clothes police officers in an unmarked car parked opposite our house dutifully, and quite visibly, making notes of everyone entering and leaving the house.
Since our recreational drugs of choice at that time were Golden Virginia and cheap ASDA red wine, we weren't overly worried by this and after a couple of days took to waving cheerily at them as we went to, and returned from, our perfectly respectable jobs. After a week, they apparently got bored and transferred their attentions elsewhere.
'Just because I'm paranoid...'
I'll reply in-line:
- While I don't doubt that certain things go on behind closed doors, I have trouble believing what you are saying.
Fair enough - this type of statement is your right, I have no problem with that.
- They allegedly made you eat skin! To what end? How does it link to brain washing?
That was just the beginning. I was too young to remember that part, and it is very very mild. For one, this is known as trauma based mind control. If you studied enough psychology, in this specific area, you may be able to actually understand the some of the process that takes place throughout the course of it. Other than the trauma, there were a few things that we beneficial for the process overall. The aim is always to LAYER in purpose. And to keep the purpose, UNDER layers.
Desensitizing. Training (mortician apprentice, to learn about cause of death, anatomy, etc etc)
Also, once they torture you into having a split personality, there is a dichotomy they look to create. As I child, I was raised ultra strict, ultra religious - think AMISH. Not amish, but just giving you an idea of the discipline involved.
So my 'daytime personality' was all good, etc. and my 'nighttime' personality was raised to eat flesh. In part, for the missions in the future to be self motivating/rewarding for my alter/nighttimepersonality, and also to keep my personalities so completely different, that they not only could not identify with each other, but would literally be so different that would repulse one another...
That might sound crazy to you, but it kept me in a daze and completely oblivious to having a personality. We are talking through waking up with slight injuries and everything, missing food in the fridge - sleep eating, I just knew it, was no problem ever. I might, I just never knew people could have split personalities. I thought I had never even heard of it (early 2000's when this started coming up... I am now around 30).
- You've claimed that hundreds of people have gone through the same process as yourself but you're all walking around freely, openly discussig how the C.I.A/Goverment have allegedly mind-Fucked you.
Actually I TOLD you - you just think I claimed. Then you go inserting assumptions into a question. Falling off already.
There you go right there. If you want dialogue, and answers, this is not the right route to go, talking like this...
Keep in mind, some people talk, but to be able to actually articulate methods like I do - not many are able, not many at all. So some of what I say, is kind of 'rare' to read about. Believe it or not. At least bunched together. If you spent more time reading what I had already posted, you would not have to ask some of these questions, you know...
There are not as many successes as they would like. Most subjects that are not already generational military/intelligence, are not successful. Military/Intelligence families have the best chance from day one, to not be 'ruined' by this - as they are already 'in the system', and will be right there with the 'friendly technology' which is mostly electromagnetic cranial stimulation (koren helmet), ECT (shock treatment), and 'psychic driving' - which is repeat tape recording, also with split video/audio (Dr. Narut style improved upon) matched to emotional stimulation from the koren helmet. Then military video games/simulations (look up CUBIC) from as early as they are able.
The rest is branched out for plausible deniability, to local cults (stupid word, but accurate, just not what people think of when they think cult - more of a disciplined network) etc, after all the legal mess they went through, they had to step back, and keep this thing quiet.
Now they make tons of movies and stuff about it, like it's a joke - American Ultra - stuff like that. I watch em all, just to see, but it messes with me. Ridiculous.
Walking around freely huh? This would take too long to explain the problems I have had, where I am at now, and what all is going on, and would expose my person. I did previously mention steering this away from me personally, but am trying to reply. Don't assume, ok? If you are asking at the same time. Very rude.
We are not all walking around freely openly discussing this, not at all, and there are casualties for talking about certain specifics. Rules, of course - and I am on a comic book forum, where no one knows who I am, or even believes, let alone would care enough to do anything, or actually make a difference in trying - SO. Even if my person was exposed, still, what would it matter, unless I expose key elements - or COULD, but they would prelude that with termination as well.
Maybe I am already sick and dying of cancer or something. Maybe I still work for them too, on top of that. Maybe who cares, what is the difference for what anyone says, if no one listens or acts. So... think about the world for a minute, ok?
Maybe I am not, but maybe I am - it's the point, you understand? Let's steer this away from me eh?
- Why are there no reprisals? I've known your governing authorities take a hard line stance over much less!
WOW, really? Why are there no reprisals? Why do you think that there are no reprisals? That is the most ridiculous statement/question yet... THERE ARE - THAT'S YOUR ANSWER
- What is your take on Bin Laden and September 11th? Is he likely to have been brainwashed or was he just a Cunt!
don't know much, don't care
- Did we ever land in the moon or is it complete Horseshoe?
you don't think we can go to the moon at this day and age? the 'original one'? I don't care, if your answer again.
- Is the Earth flat?
WHAT? If you are serious right now, I can't tell.
- Do you believe in God?
None of your business
-Answer or ignore at your leisure, convince me that I'm missing the point somehow.
Convince you that you are missing the point? Well generally you can't change a person, nor do I expect/want to - I just say and think what I do - and you do the same, ok? Choose your own adventure buddy.
- Cheers
Yeah have a real good day :-X
Quote from: NapalmKev on 14 September, 2016, 11:39:53 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 14 September, 2016, 10:33:58 AM
NapalmKev - I'd like to address a couple of your points.
Lack of reprisals, then, is not necessarily an indication that nothing untoward happened or is happening.
Secondly, conflating Bin Laden, 9/11, the moon landings, flat Earth and the existence of God into the argument has no bearing on the topic at hand. All this argument does is throw out a smokescreen and attempt to condemn Apoceclipse's arguments through guilt by association. We all know there are many wild and unreasonable theories concerning Bin Laden, 9/11, the moon landings, flat Earth and the existence of God, and an attempt to drop Apoceclipse's claims into the same bag is an attempt to dismiss them en mass. Each claim must be assessed on its own individual merits.
Are you suggesting that I asked those questions just to take the Piss? If so, you assume too much!
I'm under the impression (perhaps wrongly) that Apoceclipse is the sort of guy that latches onto (possible) conspiracy theories to find some sort of peace within himself and find answers to questions that he has. This train of thought led me down the path to inquire further on Apoceclipse beliefs and if he has any evidence to support it!
I only took the piss with my 'Cluedo' comment, and that didn't bother him or you it seems!
Cheers
are you serious right now?
bother him or you it seems? I hadn't even replied yet
if you get caught pulling a BS stunt, at least man up and own up to is. Get out of here with this childishness
Your attitude will avail you none, sir.
Quote from: Theblazeuk on 14 September, 2016, 02:51:03 PM
I go away for a few days and now I have a lot of TRUTH to catch up on. Capitals certainly required.
Tis all a bit sad. A friend of mine was convinced that a lass at his uni was a CIA sleeper agent. And then that he'd seen black vans outside his house. All because he's a self-purported communist. But really he's just a rebellious pseudo-politico who has a tendency towards massive paranoia, and the weed wasn't helping with that.
So... best just to try and chill out while you can. They're not out to get you. The scary truth is that you probably don't even register.
Did I talk about someone following me? If anyone was following me, I would approach them with haste, as long as I didn't think that discharge of a firearm would be imminent...
You must've missed the bit where I was talking about waking up in the hospital, what I had told my girlfriend, what I had told my friends, catching myself on camera, getting caught up in classified legal cases, and um - working as a damn commando for the 160th. I don't think anything, I lived it.
Call me a liar if you wish, I could care less - but suggesting that I am just paranoid? Fool, I got caught up in a black ops human trafficking scandal where my superior officer was corrupt, and we were on unsanctioned 'missions' that when I found out about the real nature/basis thereof, I went rogue on the spot, and was almost killed shortly thereafter. Other did lose their life that night. Then I sat in prison with fake charges for a while. Don't come at me with some ' I think this ' or ' paranoid that'. Man up, call me a liar, or don't. Trying to sprinkle in something ridiculous - if you read what was actually written.
Tsk tsk
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 15 September, 2016, 12:42:03 AM
Your attitude will avail you none, sir.
It's working just fine for me so far. :D
See, people bunch everything up so tight, and just assume, from whatever there standpoint is. You guys think I never chose to do this, at any point? There is much more to this than 'brainwashing a mind controlled manchurian candidate'... I have been talking about grooming special forces operatives (not only field operatives, mind you, we need tech specialists and everything else) from young. You are missing the bigger picture than if one person is full of shit. It's a dirty world out there, this, some of you may have had a taste of. Well, you didn't get to bite right into the shit, trust me :lol:
Tell us about one of the ops you went on! I'm quite interested to hear how you went about everything, right down to the minutest of details.
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 15 September, 2016, 01:41:40 AM
Tell us about one of the ops you went on! I'm quite interested to hear how you went about everything, right down to the minutest of details.
i want to answer this like 10 different ways, and I usually do that to people's questions, as you may have noticed.
short answer is, I feel I would take too much time, suffer too much internal grief, and also open me up for personal attack. also the ops themselves were/are classified... I am not really into leaking classified information here... that is generally a no-no. so, in a way, the actual content I present is nothing new... we know this sort of thing took place a while ago, as the declassified MK ULTRA documents showed us, the thing is, for people to think it stopped... doesn't make sense. I am just saying some of the same old - just reminding people it didn't go away by itself. the reports on the subject? where did they go?
I am trying to steer this away from me, however, if you are very interested, and sincere, not looking for an angle of attack - shoot me a PM with an e-mail, and I can tell you some specifics of something that happened, when I went rogue when I found out my superiors were really into trafficking humans in the worst way, based out of the strip club (of course). thats a teaser for everybody else - I don't want to go in depth here. but, I already mentioned it earlier when some guy was talking nonsense about vague paranoia...
"Get out of here with this childishness"
Yes, Apoceclipse; quite obviously I'm the silly one here for questioning the validty of your dubious claims!
Quote from: NapalmKev on 15 September, 2016, 06:40:43 AM
...your dubious claims!
He's not
claiming anything Kev, he's
telling you. And I'm afraid that attitude is what makes it hard for me to read Apoceclipse's posts in anything resembling a sympathetic manner. For all that they are interesting.
Have to agree, it's all way too sterile, too polished to be entirely convincing.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 03:11:00 AM
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 15 September, 2016, 01:41:40 AM
Tell us about one of the ops you went on! I'm quite interested to hear how you went about everything, right down to the minutest of details.
i want to answer this like 10 different ways, and I usually do that to people's questions, as you may have noticed.
short answer is, I feel I would take too much time, suffer too much internal grief, and also open me up for personal attack. also the ops themselves were/are classified... I am not really into leaking classified information here... that is generally a no-no. so, in a way, the actual content I present is nothing new... we know this sort of thing took place a while ago, as the declassified MK ULTRA documents showed us, the thing is, for people to think it stopped... doesn't make sense. I am just saying some of the same old - just reminding people it didn't go away by itself. the reports on the subject? where did they go?
I am trying to steer this away from me, however, if you are very interested, and sincere, not looking for an angle of attack - shoot me a PM with an e-mail, and I can tell you some specifics of something that happened, when I went rogue when I found out my superiors were really into trafficking humans in the worst way, based out of the strip club (of course). thats a teaser for everybody else - I don't want to go in depth here. but, I already mentioned it earlier when some guy was talking nonsense about vague paranoia...
Were your super-secret military adventures before or after your experiences with the nationwide network of evil funeral directors who turn children into government assassins?
I haven't had this much fun since we elected Thyrllseeker Mayor! :D
There is this series in 2000AD called Absalom, I think you might see more themes there, just like Grey Suit. Can't think who writes it at the moment, but there's a character who was raised from an early age by a sinister organisation with ties to the authorities to commit acts of violence.
You'd think these writers would do some research wouldn't you? ::)
Its a sad of fact of this board that creators are driven away by thinly veiled threats, still the good news its not by a comic fan this time... progress!
Quote from: GordonR on 15 September, 2016, 08:15:50 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 03:11:00 AM
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 15 September, 2016, 01:41:40 AM
Tell us about one of the ops you went on! I'm quite interested to hear how you went about everything, right down to the minutest of details.
i want to answer this like 10 different ways, and I usually do that to people's questions, as you may have noticed.
short answer is, I feel I would take too much time, suffer too much internal grief, and also open me up for personal attack. also the ops themselves were/are classified... I am not really into leaking classified information here... that is generally a no-no. so, in a way, the actual content I present is nothing new... we know this sort of thing took place a while ago, as the declassified MK ULTRA documents showed us, the thing is, for people to think it stopped... doesn't make sense. I am just saying some of the same old - just reminding people it didn't go away by itself. the reports on the subject? where did they go?
I am trying to steer this away from me, however, if you are very interested, and sincere, not looking for an angle of attack - shoot me a PM with an e-mail, and I can tell you some specifics of something that happened, when I went rogue when I found out my superiors were really into trafficking humans in the worst way, based out of the strip club (of course). thats a teaser for everybody else - I don't want to go in depth here. but, I already mentioned it earlier when some guy was talking nonsense about vague paranoia...
Were your super-secret military adventures before or after your experiences with the nationwide network of evil funeral directors who turn children into government assassins?
Are you a little kid poking a stick or what?
If you are just looking to talk shit on here, maybe send me a PM and do it in private, where can freely converse...
So, was I on intelligence ops (not military, although you may not understand the 160th being branched under the NSC) before I was a little kid? Is that what you're asking?
Obviously not asking anything, but I mean, really? It's cool, I know how to handle this sort of thing. I could really care less, you, whom obviously - I know who you are, are a joke to me.
You have read a little about me, and dont know much. Keep talking.
Quote from: Proudhuff on 15 September, 2016, 11:45:10 AM
You'd think these writers would do some research wouldn't you? ::)
Its a sad of fact of this board that creators are driven away by thinly veiled threats, still the good news its not by a comic fan this time... progress!
Who was driven away. Its funny that this is what you deem sad, from everything that is going on... very small world for you, in the comic industry huh. If comics aren't real, nothing is? Or what... not much range it seems
Quote from: Theblazeuk on 15 September, 2016, 11:36:39 AM
There is this series in 2000AD called Absalom, I think you might see more themes there, just like Grey Suit. Can't think who writes it at the moment, but there's a character who was raised from an early age by a sinister organisation with ties to the authorities to commit acts of violence.
So you're not going to blatantly call me a liar? I'm disappointed
S'all just a joke mate, relax. Bit of an injoke really so maybe a bit harsh - and realise it's not a joke for you but there's the rub.
Quote from: Theblazeuk on 15 September, 2016, 01:54:55 PM
S'all just a joke mate, relax. Bit of an injoke really so maybe a bit harsh - and realise it's not a joke for you but there's the rub.
fair enough
Quote from: GordonR on 15 September, 2016, 08:15:50 AM
Were your super-secret military adventures before or after your experiences with the nationwide network of evil funeral directors who turn children into government assassins?
I don't have to write about fiction, like some people.
If you want real dialogue, at any time, we can converse, but with these little kiddy statements you are spewing, nothing real will come from it. Nothing good anyway. Maybe stick to what you do best(?)
Quote from: Tordelback on 15 September, 2016, 06:45:47 AM
Quote from: NapalmKev on 15 September, 2016, 06:40:43 AM
...your dubious claims!
He's not claiming anything Kev, he's telling you. And I'm afraid that attitude is what makes it hard for me to read Apoceclipse's posts in anything resembling a sympathetic manner. For all that they are interesting.
Also fair enough. I don't want sympathy at all however, not for me anyway. Mostly I want action, to organize safety for prospects
Quote from: NapalmKev on 15 September, 2016, 06:40:43 AM
"Get out of here with this childishness"
Yes, Apoceclipse; quite obviously I'm the silly one here for questioning the validty of your dubious claims!
This is your reply? To all of that? Look at the focus. EGO.
Get past the personal bit - you are taking shots, what do you want. You wouldn't even admit it. PSH
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 15 September, 2016, 06:56:56 AM
Have to agree, it's all way too sterile, too polished to be entirely convincing.
Sterile and Polished? Please sir - elaborate
I'm a sophisticated sex robot, sent back in time to change the future for one lucky lady.
You've mentioned the 160th Spec Ops Airborne - the so-called Night Stalkers - before, in your hard-to-follow ramblings here and elsewhere. This is the first time you've mentioned that you were actually one of them. Which I find odd, considering the things you accuse them of being involved in, and therefore your presumed complicity in it.
Simple question: are you standing by your statement that there's a conspiracy between the US government and funeral directors to brainwash and de-sensitize children? Because this, frankly, is the stuff of lurid fantasy.
20-30 years earlier, and you'd be peddling satanic abuse stories instead of government conspiracy ones. In fact, your "I was forced to eat dead human flesh!" story comes straight out the handbook of fictitious satanic abuse fantasies of the time.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 02:11:53 PM
Quote from: NapalmKev on 15 September, 2016, 06:40:43 AM
"Get out of here with this childishness"
Yes, Apoceclipse; quite obviously I'm the silly one here for questioning the validty of your dubious claims!
This is your reply? To all of that? Look at the focus. EGO.
Get past the personal bit - you are taking shots, what do you want. You wouldn't even admit it. PSH
Ego be Fucked! You came here making fantastic claims about how you've been brainwashed and made to eat Human skin! When myself (and others) have posited questions you respond with "none of you get it"!
To quote some guy whose name I can't remember - "Fantastic claims require fantastic evidence!".
The bottom line is that I don't believe you and you are not doing a very good job of convincing me otherwise! If you wish to prove that I'm wrong then go for it! If you want to keep making fatuous references about Ego then I would suggest that you don't. It doesn't help you case!
I've been trying to follow this thread, but I think I'll wait for the SyFy film of the week. :crazy:
Fart. Spacesuit. Etc.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 01:42:05 PM
If you are just looking to talk shit on here...
My Irony-Sense is tingling.
I refer the honourable gentlemen to my (apparently contentious) remarks of several pages ago.
At the risk of tripping a few landmines here I would like to offer a few observations about the general direction of the conversation at present. This is more about the general nature of military personnel.
Sociopathic personalities tend to be largely discouraged as they tend to lead to events such as Abu Graig. Those who are selected for special services (and here I have only limited experience of colleagues who chose such service) tend to be largely controlled in their responses as they need to be under high stress situations.
I would be interested, and quite possibly will at some point in the future with the current trajectory of my studies, to learn more about trauma induced control methods. What I do know at present, and this is partially from personal experience, is that it is more likely to generate conditions such as Unstable Personality Disorder or Bipolar disorder. The effects of such conditions tend to be unhelpful for special forces. A dramatic example might be Michael Biehn in Abyss.
This is not to say that at some point in the past the military in this or other countries did not experiment with such notions. The big problem is that so much of what we believe to be fact has been grossly distorted by the popular media. I guess we have Mulder's maxim to fall back on here.
Quote from: NapalmKev on 15 September, 2016, 02:37:27 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 02:11:53 PM
Quote from: NapalmKev on 15 September, 2016, 06:40:43 AM
"Get out of here with this childishness"
Yes, Apoceclipse; quite obviously I'm the silly one here for questioning the validty of your dubious claims!
This is your reply? To all of that? Look at the focus. EGO.
Get past the personal bit - you are taking shots, what do you want. You wouldn't even admit it. PSH
Ego be Fucked! You came here making fantastic claims about how you've been brainwashed and made to eat Human skin! When myself (and others) have posited questions you respond with "none of you get it"!
To quote some guy whose name I can't remember - "Fantastic claims require fantastic evidence!".
The bottom line is that I don't believe you and you are not doing a very good job of convincing me otherwise! If you wish to prove that I'm wrong then go for it! If you want to keep making fatuous references about Ego then I would suggest that you don't. It doesn't help you case!
To be fair, that is not an accurate assessment, I took the time to answer most of your questions quite thoroughly...
Try responding to a particular part of my reply, instead of bunching it all together and shooting a short remark. I took the time for a serious reply.
Notice how I afford some people/comments respect.
Ponder on that.
I really dont care if you beleive my claims. To think that MKultra methods simply stopped, is very naive.
Quote from: Woolly on 15 September, 2016, 07:41:31 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 01:42:05 PM
If you are just looking to talk shit on here...
My Irony-Sense is tingling.
Fair enough, but look at my posts, and the timeline, and how some people and comments received different type of responses. Do you think that is random? I admitted several times that I overcompensate, and am sensitive. I do not lash out for no reason, however...
Quote from: Tjm86 on 15 September, 2016, 08:47:16 PM
At the risk of tripping a few landmines here I would like to offer a few observations about the general direction of the conversation at present. This is more about the general nature of military personnel.
Sociopathic personalities tend to be largely discouraged as they tend to lead to events such as Abu Graig. Those who are selected for special services (and here I have only limited experience of colleagues who chose such service) tend to be largely controlled in their responses as they need to be under high stress situations.
I would be interested, and quite possibly will at some point in the future with the current trajectory of my studies, to learn more about trauma induced control methods. What I do know at present, and this is partially from personal experience, is that it is more likely to generate conditions such as Unstable Personality Disorder or Bipolar disorder. The effects of such conditions tend to be unhelpful for special forces. A dramatic example might be Michael Biehn in Abyss.
This is not to say that at some point in the past the military in this or other countries did not experiment with such notions. The big problem is that so much of what we believe to be fact has been grossly distorted by the popular media. I guess we have Mulder's maxim to fall back on here.
DDNOS is the goal. A very 'blended' type of DID...
I would learn about dissociative disorders, and visit SURVIVORSHIP, SMART, RAINFO, and places like that. You'll learn alot, if you are interested.
If you have trouble I I'll provide links.
I'll probably provide links later, anyway - on the phone, out and about - at the moment...
Oh go on then, I'll chuck you another biscuit... ::)
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 08:57:42 PM
Quote from: Woolly on 15 September, 2016, 07:41:31 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 01:42:05 PM
If you are just looking to talk shit on here...
My Irony-Sense is tingling.
Fair enough, but look at my posts, and the timeline, and how some people and comments received different type of responses. Do you think that is random?
Do I think the responses and opinions of other boarders are random? Um... no.
No idea what you're getting at with 'the timeline'.
Anyway, best of luck with whatever it is you think you're going to achieve by ranting on a UK comics-based forum. For what it's worth, I hope you pick up a copy of 2000AD at some point and find something worth obsessing over.*
*Not that it did Thryllseeker any good... :-\
Quote from: Woolly on 15 September, 2016, 09:12:58 PM
Oh go on then, I'll chuck you another biscuit... ::)
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 08:57:42 PM
Quote from: Woolly on 15 September, 2016, 07:41:31 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 01:42:05 PM
If you are just looking to talk shit on here...
My Irony-Sense is tingling.
Fair enough, but look at my posts, and the timeline, and how some people and comments received different type of responses. Do you think that is random?
Do I think the responses and opinions of other boarders are random? Um... no.
No idea what you're getting at with 'the timeline'.
Anyway, best of luck with whatever it is you think you're going to achieve by ranting on a UK comics-based forum. For what it's worth, I hope you pick up a copy of 2000AD at some point and find something worth obsessing over.*
*Not that it did Thryllseeker any good... :-\
I think hypocritical, or double standard would be more accurate than ironic...
Timeline: order of events/forum posts. I didn't 'come out swinging '. I am responding. A lot of the time, I am mirroring people's attitude. For example, with the ignoring comment that everyone took so seriously. Even though some should know - I am not even able, with a new account.
I have a 2000AD comic. Thanks.
So you are suggesting that I obsess over that, instead of the well-being of children? I understand that you may think I am full of shit, and that is fair, but don't expect me to be happy about it, I simply return the rude attitude.
Ive stated why I am here, clearly you are not briefing the actual content of what I wrote. People see and hear what they want to I suppose.
Also, I spend time actually replying to others questions, even if laced with insults, I still do not get my questions answered...
Remember what I said... even if you think it is BS, if you are not 100%, and it pertains to the well-being of children etc. perhaps it would be wise and respectful to tread lightly.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 11:28:04 PM
Ive stated why I am here
Hmm. Have you? I mean this most sincerely, but why
are you here?
Quote from: blackmocco on 15 September, 2016, 11:44:39 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 11:28:04 PM
Ive stated why I am here
Hmm. Have you? I mean this most sincerely, but why are you here?
An excellent question, but I think he's already answered it.
He's said he wants to protect future prosoects from suffering the same things he's suffered at the hands of the US government.
So, obviously, the best way to do this is spending hours and hours a day fighting a flamewar on a forum dedicated to a UK comic that until very recently he'd never heard of and has absolutely no interest in.
Quote from: GordonR on 16 September, 2016, 12:06:07 AM
Quote from: blackmocco on 15 September, 2016, 11:44:39 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 11:28:04 PM
Ive stated why I am here
Hmm. Have you? I mean this most sincerely, but why are you here?
An excellent question, but I think he's already answered it.
He's said he wants to protect future prosoects from suffering the same things he's suffered at the hands of the US government.
So, obviously, the best way to do this is spending hours and hours a day fighting a flamewar on a forum dedicated to a UK comic that until very recently he'd never heard of and has absolutely no interest in.
So you have read some - but still continue to poke a stick, like a little kid. I have not spent that much time, and mostly, I converse while sitting in horrible traffic, or as a passenger on the road, or otherwise - multitasking, not really spending much additional time.
We get it, you are sarcastic. Very sharp one, you are.
I spend plenty of time and resources actually helping people. Your sarcasm and lack of knowledge regarding my personal/business life does not take away from that.
The initial reason I came here, was to get answers about the blatant plagiarizing/accuracy in the Monarch:Greysuit comic. Then of course, to help sharpen my skills conversing, and raise awareness. I see the focus has fallen on me, and not the subject matter. I am not too worried about it - I am still getting something from this.
I hope people like your sharp witty comments, I mean, man - you are a really cool funny guy, eh? I hope YOU get something, other than fans realizing you have no respect (euphemism), which I have received more than 1 private message, talking about you already. HAHA. So in part, you are probably hurting your sales/image. How is that for ridiculous. I am sure you don't care, and it makes little difference, but is still accurate.
Like I said, take all the personal shots you want, but if you are not 100% about a situation, that affects children etc... maybe shut up, and stick to writing fiction. Just because YOU make up stories, doesn't mean everyone does. Once again, if you all think the MKultra methods just stopped, I don't know why you would come to that conclusion...
Carry on
Say Gordon, can I book you for an event? I'll fly you out and cover expenses, what is the $$? eh? PM me... eh?
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 13 September, 2016, 12:27:01 PM
I'll be frank, what little sympathy/interest I may have had evapourated entirely when you suggested the space mission/solar eclipse links.
Back in the day, my mate's sister was convinced that she was a spy in the pay of the Soviet Embassy and used to stalk and harass some of the staff there. Now there is plenty of documented evidence that spies exist etc. for which she could provide links. It turned out she just needed some professional help in identifying the real cause of her issues and was prescribed a course of medication to control the excesses of her active imagination.
And similarly, our last forumite who regularly replied to their own posts with essay after essay (of the first links they could come across that vaguely supported their position) also required daily medication.
Now this may not be the case for yourself but I would genuinely suggest seeking some professional medical help before either a) asking a comic forum to validate your ideas or b) trying to spread the ideas further to your friends, family and or the world at large.
I hope the outcome of such a consultation brings you peace.
FYI - Clementine (officially called the Deep Space Program Science Experiment (DSPSE)) was a joint space project between the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO, previously the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or SDIO) and NASA.
This was a continuation of the 'Star Wars' program that Reagan set forth (going on memory, but you can look it up). Yes, they attempted to harness the properties of a solar eclipse for a damn laser beam or some shit - hence my name - apoc-eclipse, after the experiment...
They say clementine was malfunctioning, but look into it, its pretty obvious. Tons of classified experiments go on all the time, and media coverup etc ensues...
Why is this what threw you off?
Just something cool I picked my name after - kind of like how some people pick their name from comics...
I'll come back later, and keep it personal, since some of you insist.
I'll show some mostly whited out medical records, with the abnormal brain, the somatropin (rHGH), then link it with university of TN - the experimental farm lake (where cows drink the experimental water, then you extract modified somatropin for special forces/celebs hahah) and the university of TN - body farm (forensic cadaver analysis training grounds) - the former of which was RIGHT NEXT to edward hunter field, the place I showed - where I caught myself on trail cams etc...
It makes a circle - easy to group together and dismiss, but if you look into it - it makes sense...
ANYWHO - have blast you all
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 12:20:25 AM
Quote from: GordonR on 16 September, 2016, 12:06:07 AM
Quote from: blackmocco on 15 September, 2016, 11:44:39 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 11:28:04 PM
Ive stated why I am here
Hmm. Have you? I mean this most sincerely, but why are you here?
An excellent question, but I think he's already answered it.
He's said he wants to protect future prosoects from suffering the same things he's suffered at the hands of the US government.
So, obviously, the best way to do this is spending hours and hours a day fighting a flamewar on a forum dedicated to a UK comic that until very recently he'd never heard of and has absolutely no interest in.
We get it, you are sarcastic. Very sharp one, you are.
I see the focus has fallen on me, and not the subject matter.
Actually, there's no sarcasm in Gordon's response. That
is what you said and that
is what you're currently doing.
You're also responsible for the focus falling on yourself. All you've done is repeatedly (and somewhat obnoxiously) talk about yourself, placing more emphasis on that than on the subject you purport to be interested in discussing.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 12:48:49 AM
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 13 September, 2016, 12:27:01 PM
I'll be frank, what little sympathy/interest I may have had evapourated entirely when you suggested the space mission/solar eclipse links.
Back in the day, my mate's sister was convinced that she was a spy in the pay of the Soviet Embassy and used to stalk and harass some of the staff there. Now there is plenty of documented evidence that spies exist etc. for which she could provide links. It turned out she just needed some professional help in identifying the real cause of her issues and was prescribed a course of medication to control the excesses of her active imagination.
And similarly, our last forumite who regularly replied to their own posts with essay after essay (of the first links they could come across that vaguely supported their position) also required daily medication.
Now this may not be the case for yourself but I would genuinely suggest seeking some professional medical help before either a) asking a comic forum to validate your ideas or b) trying to spread the ideas further to your friends, family and or the world at large.
I hope the outcome of such a consultation brings you peace.
FYI - Clementine (officially called the Deep Space Program Science Experiment (DSPSE)) was a joint space project between the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO, previously the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or SDIO) and NASA.
This was a continuation of the 'Star Wars' program that Reagan set forth (going on memory, but you can look it up). Yes, they attempted to harness the properties of a solar eclipse for a damn laser beam or some shit - hence my name - apoc-eclipse, after the experiment...
They say clementine was malfunctioning, but look into it, its pretty obvious. Tons of classified experiments go on all the time, and media coverup etc ensues...
Why is this what threw you off?
Just something cool I picked my name after - kind of like how some people pick their name from comics...
When I first moved Stateside there was a phone number. Every day, sometimes more than once a day, this guy would leave a long, rambling message, mostly about Project: Over The Rainbow and letting us know how the government were building their spacecraft to populate another planet and let the rest of us rot here on Earth. The detail he went into was pretty astounding (although completely contrary on any given day) and his energy levels never dimmed, despite the fact he sounded pretty old.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 12:21:06 AM
Say Gordon, can I book you for an event? I'll fly you out and cover expenses, what is the $$? eh? PM me... eh?
No, it's a simple question, so why don't you answer it -
why are you here?You blew in the door on the winds of a Google search about a graphic novel that you don't seem to understand is just a work of fiction based around conspiracy theory stuff. Just about all of us here are from the UK or the Republic of Ireland, so can't do anything about injustices in the US, and, anyway,, no-one here actually believes much of anything you've told us. You're not interested in comics - especially a British comic that you'd previously never heard of before - and you actually seem to have quite a disparaging attitude to comics and people who read them.
So I'll ask you again -
why are you here?
He just can't handle the tooth.
Quote from: GordonR on 16 September, 2016, 01:25:16 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 12:21:06 AM
Say Gordon, can I book you for an event? I'll fly you out and cover expenses, what is the $$? eh? PM me... eh?
No, it's a simple question, so why don't you answer it - why are you here?
You blew in the door on the winds of a Google search about a graphic novel that you don't seem to understand is just a work of fiction based around conspiracy theory stuff. Just about all of us here are from the UK or the Republic of Ireland, so can't do anything about injustices in the US, and, anyway,, no-one here actually believes much of anything you've told us. You're not interested in comics - especially a British comic that you'd previously never heard of before - and you actually seem to have quite a disparaging attitude to comics and people who read them.
So I'll ask you again - why are you here?
Look up Ron Patton's article, and tell me monarch:greysuit wasn't plagiarized.
I don't think YOU understand.
So, big man, not.interested in a paid event? Hahaha
And Gordon, like you said, I have already answered that question. So why ask it again?
Also, not only in the US, also, isn't this the off topic forum? Bot everything revolves around your little comics
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 02:13:54 AM
Look up Ron Patton's article, and tell me monarch:greysuit wasn't plagiarized.
I don't think YOU understand.
It's clearly understood that Ron cribbed his mash-up article from other sources.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 16 September, 2016, 02:21:00 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 02:13:54 AM
Look up Ron Patton's article, and tell me monarch:greysuit wasn't plagiarized.
I don't think YOU understand.
It's clearly understood that Ron cribbed his mash-up article from other sources.
plagiarized from a plagiarized article - for ease of presentation. people don't usually take time to look into things anyway, they just talk, so hey
I can totally understand people's point of view, but know mine - I lived through torture, to induce DDNOS. So when people try to speak against it, I become more hostile. I am acting very mildly, for the circumstances. I don't expect people to know, or understand, or even want to learn - but material is out there - plenty, so to me, it makes people look stupid. I do what I do in the real world, while people with thousands of posts (equating to lots of time) in a comic book forum try to bash me and my true story. I am not knocking comic books, or thousands of posts, I am simply assessing the situation. I suggest that some people do the same. Only actually really do it - don't just flap your lips.
Want a gig Gordon? eh? eh? Or do you make enough money writing fiction and talking bullshit on a forum? eh? big man? :lol:
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 02:24:40 AM
plagiarized from a plagiarized article - for ease of presentation. people don't usually take time to look into things anyway, they just talk, so hey
Well maybe that's an issue - you underestimate other people's intelligence?
Quote from: blackmocco on 16 September, 2016, 01:18:29 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 12:48:49 AM
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 13 September, 2016, 12:27:01 PM
I'll be frank, what little sympathy/interest I may have had evapourated entirely when you suggested the space mission/solar eclipse links.
Back in the day, my mate's sister was convinced that she was a spy in the pay of the Soviet Embassy and used to stalk and harass some of the staff there. Now there is plenty of documented evidence that spies exist etc. for which she could provide links. It turned out she just needed some professional help in identifying the real cause of her issues and was prescribed a course of medication to control the excesses of her active imagination.
And similarly, our last forumite who regularly replied to their own posts with essay after essay (of the first links they could come across that vaguely supported their position) also required daily medication.
Now this may not be the case for yourself but I would genuinely suggest seeking some professional medical help before either a) asking a comic forum to validate your ideas or b) trying to spread the ideas further to your friends, family and or the world at large.
I hope the outcome of such a consultation brings you peace.
FYI - Clementine (officially called the Deep Space Program Science Experiment (DSPSE)) was a joint space project between the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO, previously the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or SDIO) and NASA.
This was a continuation of the 'Star Wars' program that Reagan set forth (going on memory, but you can look it up). Yes, they attempted to harness the properties of a solar eclipse for a damn laser beam or some shit - hence my name - apoc-eclipse, after the experiment...
They say clementine was malfunctioning, but look into it, its pretty obvious. Tons of classified experiments go on all the time, and media coverup etc ensues...
Why is this what threw you off?
Just something cool I picked my name after - kind of like how some people pick their name from comics...
When I first moved Stateside there was a phone number. Every day, sometimes more than once a day, this guy would leave a long, rambling message, mostly about Project: Over The Rainbow and letting us know how the government were building their spacecraft to populate another planet and let the rest of us rot here on Earth. The detail he went into was pretty astounding (although completely contrary on any given day) and his energy levels never dimmed, despite the fact he sounded pretty old.
Good for you/him. So the point? Am I the old guy in this story? eh? Speak man - come out and say it... maybe you want a paid gig too. I will handle all expenses, come on, I'll fly you out, show you a good time, get you paid eh? hahaha
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 16 September, 2016, 02:27:47 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 02:24:40 AM
plagiarized from a plagiarized article - for ease of presentation. people don't usually take time to look into things anyway, they just talk, so hey
Well maybe that's an issue - you underestimate other people's intelligence?
I think it is clear that most have not thoroughly briefed the base material. I don't make a habit of underestimation, that is dangerous. Applying that intelligence, may be another story however.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 02:27:41 AMI do what I do in the real world, while people with thousands of posts (equating to lots of time) in a comic book forum try to bash me and my true story. I am not knocking comic books, or thousands of posts, I am simply assessing the situation. I suggest that some people do the same. Only actually really do it - don't just flap your lips.
Something tells me you've clocked-up a lot of 'real world' time on previous, niche, forums. This is definitely not the first wall you've scrawled on.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 16 September, 2016, 02:33:30 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 02:27:41 AMI do what I do in the real world, while people with thousands of posts (equating to lots of time) in a comic book forum try to bash me and my true story. I am not knocking comic books, or thousands of posts, I am simply assessing the situation. I suggest that some people do the same. Only actually really do it - don't just flap your lips.
Something tells me you've clocked-up a lot of 'real world' time on previous, niche, forums. This is definitely not the first wall you've scrawled on.
some, which I have stated, i'll share some articles I posted on ATS. Like I said, I am not knocking people's use of time - choose your own adventure. I know I do mine, for the most part... certainly not knocking your 13k+ posts, as you have been most respectful, in my opinion, not to mention more thoroughly briefed than most here, as far as I can tell...
https://youtu.be/eXDASDDrDkM
is she full of BS too? and you think this 'just stopped'?
this court hearing outcome was - guess what - CLASSIFIED
JOE SOAP, out of curiosity, my whole 'thing' aside - what is your opinion of 'project MONARCH'? is it BS? a reality? etc... let me know...
Thanks
Quote from: blackmocco on 16 September, 2016, 12:58:55 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 12:20:25 AM
Quote from: GordonR on 16 September, 2016, 12:06:07 AM
Quote from: blackmocco on 15 September, 2016, 11:44:39 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 15 September, 2016, 11:28:04 PM
Ive stated why I am here
Hmm. Have you? I mean this most sincerely, but why are you here?
An excellent question, but I think he's already answered it.
He's said he wants to protect future prosoects from suffering the same things he's suffered at the hands of the US government.
So, obviously, the best way to do this is spending hours and hours a day fighting a flamewar on a forum dedicated to a UK comic that until very recently he'd never heard of and has absolutely no interest in.
We get it, you are sarcastic. Very sharp one, you are.
I see the focus has fallen on me, and not the subject matter.
Actually, there's no sarcasm in Gordon's response. That is what you said and that is what you're currently doing.
You're also responsible for the focus falling on yourself. All you've done is repeatedly (and somewhat obnoxiously) talk about yourself, placing more emphasis on that than on the subject you purport to be interested in discussing.
Mostly true, but nothing is one sided, eh? I take it you are authorized to speak for Gordon...
That surely is PART of what I said. Obviously the only part you focus on - ?
Also, I have done much more than speak about myself, please review the posts, and the content, kindly. Thank you
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 02:40:31 AM
JOE SOAP, out of curiosity, my whole 'thing' aside - what is your opinion of 'project MONARCH'? is it BS? a reality? etc... let me know...
Thanks
Remaining evidence of MKUltra - that wasn't shredded by Richard Helms - was revealed to the US Supreme Court by the Church Committee findings in the seventies. I don't think many people here said it didn't exist as a long-term research project but as to the results and application of these things - if any - I doubt there'd be much of a paper trail. Unfortunately decades of truth and fantasist fiction have mingled and muddied the waters of covert history so it's not wise to believe or trust every claim made - even if it looks 'official'.
In this day and age you don't have to spend time trying to brainwash/coerce people into doing things - you just hire them as private contractors and pay them off.
First of all, I apologize if I have insulted you. Look, I understand people's point of view. It's fine. All aspects of social dynamic, let alone addressing the issue I am speaking of, where I am right now, online, on the 2000AD FORUM (i don't think you realize, I am not trying to demean by calling it a comic book forum, but I see being specific sounds perhaps, less derogatory?) - the whole thing is too complicated, even talk about. So, sorry if I did something to actually hurt your feelings, or really affect your life. I get upset about this stuff. I should know better by now.
Ok guys, it for real is about time for me to move on, because truth be told, I am very emotionally attached to all this, and even giving tidbits of my story out, and being attacked like this, really fucken hurts. It have been a long time, and I should know better, but I do understand, and get it, and don't blame anyone, I would act the same damn way. It's fucked. Fuck it. I still don't get why people don't understand that MKultra wasn't just research, and then got operationalized, at least the aspects that worked. I mean, DUH. You think they did all that shit for no reason? What the fuck. I know I am an asshole, but just imagine that this is real for a second. Even is you have to just imagine, I am genuinely insane, halfway intelligent, but insane, and truly know, in my mind, or think that this happened to me.
Most people would be flipping there shit. Completely. I did, I WENT TO PRISON. Then got my charges switched to fake charges. I obviously have evidence (if not proof of my story, because an alternate story could be made to fit the evidence, I realize) that this happened, but it exposes my person. I could give a shit, because it goes 10x (figure of speech) deeper than that. IM FUCKED. So fuck you! hahaha, but seriously. Do you not get it? I just want to help people. Holy shit!
PLEASE, just do me the favor - look into these links, FOR 15 minutes, just incase:
https://ritualabuse.us
http://childabuserecovery.com
https://survivorship.org
Now, comes the honest rant. Holy shit, dude. I'm about to type-like-I-talk. Which is what I mostly do, if you don't realize...
Tell me all these people are wrong/crazy. There are THOUSANDS. Imagine how many don't know or aren't there. Probably 10's of thousands in the world. Which is not that many, if you do the math, but still, this shit is super fucked up. FUCK
Look, I know I am an asshole, but shit - at least I have to act like what I went through made me tough as shit - I have to salvage something from my childhood and life - what the fuck. Please understand, this is not about me - it is genuinely about trying to stop something horrible from happening. The only way I can do this is raise awareness, because I tried to first hand, and woke up in the trauma unit, OK? I barely made it. Then finally found out what happened years later. It's fucked. I had amnesia. Dissociative Fugue - look it up. I did what I could do, it needs to be people en mass caring, and maybe something eventually will happen. Probably not, its fucken classified shit, that all the countries do. Modern warfare for fucking real. FUCK.
Goodbye then? Or until someone really talks shit and I get kicked off with my reply? =) hahaha... how much can we talk normal? I have been holding back like a mother fucker. Obviously....
OK, I am going up and down, trying to check this, and can't even read this shit, I am upset, and should leave, because I expose my person further, which if fucking ridiculous, but I'll post the next post, with the shit I have planned, and then hopefully I can pull the plug, because fuck you if you don't realize that it hurts someones feelings when they are just trying to do something good, when shit is so fucked up. I am done trying to explain this SHIT!
I hope you all enjoy that public breakdown shit hahahahahah
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 16 September, 2016, 03:02:40 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 02:40:31 AM
JOE SOAP, out of curiosity, my whole 'thing' aside - what is your opinion of 'project MONARCH'? is it BS? a reality? etc... let me know...
Thanks
Remaining evidence of MKUltra - that wasn't shredded by Richard Helms - was revealed to the US Supreme Court by the Church Committee findings in the seventies. I don't think many people here said it didn't exist as a long-term research project but as to the results and application of these things - if any - I doubt there'd be much of a paper trail. Unfortunately decades of truth and fantasist fiction have mingled and muddied the waters of covert history so it's not wise to believe or trust every claim made - even if it looks 'official'.
In this day and age you don't have to spend time trying to brainwash/coerce people into doing things - you just hire them as private contractors and pay them off.
no way 10x bigger than that. people processed while young may not know they are a sleeper and be in key positions. no way to replace that. I was self aware due to the generational aspect. but was also lied to of course, as is custom
before everybody cheers (for me leaving), just let me post the last of what I can show publicly, to full circle the shit
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 03:17:39 AM
I still don't get why people don't understand that MKultra wasn't just research, and then got operationalized
Because you can't show demonstrable evidence that would prove it
beyond doubt on this forum. It's not the reason the forum is here.
QuotePLEASE, just do me the favor - look into these links, FOR 15 minutes, just incase:
Thanks but I've read plenty over the past 2-3 decades about institutionalised/cyclical child abuse in my own country so I don't need to be handed links to understand the psychology of it and the consequences and generational effects it has on human lives. I don't need to be instructed to "look it up".
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 16 September, 2016, 03:36:01 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 03:17:39 AM
I still don't get why people don't understand that MKultra wasn't just research, and then got operationalized
Because you can't show demonstrable evidence that would prove it beyond doubt on this forum. It's not the reason the forum is here.
QuotePLEASE, just do me the favor - look into these links, FOR 15 minutes, just incase:
Thanks but I've read plenty over the past 2-3 decades about institutionalised/cyclical child abuse in my own country so I don't need to be handed links to understand the psychology of it and the consequences and generational effects it has on human lives. I don't need to be instructed to "look it up".
talking to everyone, not you, just give me a sec, fucker. hahaha
and despite the name, it is about gov't mind control, and ritual abuse, not just child abuse - what the whole thing I am on about is, and what have you say about the video of the lady? huh? or you couldn't be bothered?
look, I obviously don't give a shit if this is the right place - can ya tell?
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 03:45:52 AMwhat have you say about the video of the lady? huh? or you couldn't be bothered?
It's the attitude that gets you nowhere.
For your info, I've seen these testimonies before - long before you posted the same video all ready on this thread - and if you noticed, these are the same testimonies and claims about MKUltra that were related to the Church Committee I mentioned earlier.
This woman does not claim to have been an operational sleeper agent.
First off - HERE ARE CREDIBLE CONCISE SUMMARIES ~ THIS TOPIC:
http://www.wanttoknow.info/mindcontrolinformation#mindcontrolsummaries
Ok, on to my "BS"
I realize none of this shit is proof or anything, no shit. I won't release anything classified, and I won't release anything directly exposing my person. But if you think that they don't put brain implants, in a select few, and basically groom them to be an assassin/spy from young, through various methods, than you are fucking kidding yourself. Fucken less you know, not me.
Straight off the GOV'T ID. But no, I am a liar, and won't show more. I have nothing to prove. Use common sense for the big picture, not just in regards to my smart mouth. Hahahaha
BRAIN IMPLANT - at 6 months old, before fontanelle closure, so they could have actual access to see. Look up SEMATECH - and the CSNE. This was in UPSTATE NY. BOTH are affiliated with DARPA... which is also affiliated with CUBIC. You need to look into these places, just out of curiosity. This is the platform I can tell you about....
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTcTh0ZHQ2VGdSbDg
Yeah, I read comics, too. So as one person knows, who has replied, MONARCH has been written about. Basically different forms of 'manchurian candidates' to simplify it... The comic goes hand in hand with LOTS of material out there - none proven, of course not. Because nowadays, what is proof over the internet? With modern graphics, NOTHING is proof online. Of course. So why ever expose my person on a 2000AD forum? Of course not. Plus, nothing to prove. SCAR, is as close as you get.
'abnormal brain' - is how they describe implant, and the physiological changes of delicately induced D.I.D/DDNOS - a euphemism, for sure. Or perhaps you will read this as, I have a abnormal brain, and am INSANE. - fair enough!, hahahaha
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTLUc2UmNPT3BOdk0
160th airstrip - Edward Hunter Field. - Edward Hunter was an intelligence agent and writer, who coined the term 'brainwashing' - look it up. I don't give a shit if you don't see 'edward' on the map.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTN0kwTzRySjJPTzA
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTQlFyNTZpdkVOSjQ
you can see the maze in corn across the street, for training. only instructor know map of field
found out I was going out in the middle of the night on my trail cams. that fucked shit up
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTSGQxOW9VWXB0dzA
video of the same shit, different place. ya I had several places, but I won't prove it. I am a liar - eh?
https://youtu.be/UWYZaAqrNkM
right next to university of TN (remember the name) EXPERIMENTAL FARM LAKE!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTTXh6WnJxOWtDaDg
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTX2JmM1hMQmxkd1U
see the cows drinking?
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTVFRVdXB4QTYxZEE
SOMATROPIN
Growth hormone (GH), also known as somatotropin (or as human growth hormone [hGH or HGH] in its human form), is a peptide hormone that stimulates growth, cell reproduction, and cell regeneration in humans and other animals. It is thus important in human development. It is a type of mitogen which is specific only to certain kinds of cells. Growth hormone is a 191-amino acid, single-chain polypeptide that is synthesized, stored, and secreted by somatotropic cells within the lateral wings of the anterior pituitary gland.
GH is a stress hormone that raises the concentration of glucose and free fatty acids.[1][2] It also stimulates production of IGF-1.
A recombinant form of hGH called somatropin (INN) is used as a prescription drug to treat children's growth disorders and adult growth hormone deficiency. In the United States, it is only available legally from pharmacies, by prescription from a doctor. In recent years in the United States, some doctors have started to prescribe growth hormone in GH-deficient older patients (but not on healthy people) to increase vitality. While legal, the efficacy and safety of this use for HGH has not been tested in a clinical trial. At this time, HGH is still considered a very complex hormone, and many of its functions are still unknown.[3]
In its role as an anabolic agent, HGH has been used by competitors in sports since at least 1982, and has been banned by the IOC and NCAA. Traditional urine analysis does not detect doping with HGH, so the ban was unenforceable until the early 2000s, when blood tests that could distinguish between natural and artificial HGH were starting to be developed. Blood tests conducted by WADA at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece targeted primarily HGH.[3] Use of the drug for performance enhancement is not currently approved by the FDA.
GH has been studied for use in raising livestock more efficiently in industrial agriculture and several efforts have been made to obtain governmental approval to use GH in livestock production. These uses have been controversial. In the United States, the only FDA-approved use of GH for livestock is the use of a cow-specific form of GH called bovine somatotropin for increasing milk production in dairy cows. Retailers are permitted to label containers of milk as produced with or without bovine somatotropin.
Ok, so it can boost adults, but also we are looking into using it for cows. Of course, this could write off why the University of TN was using them at the experimental farm lake, perhaps they were also looking into using this 'ultra rHGH'
Recombinant human growth hormone (rHGH)[edit]
In 1981, the new American corporation Genentech, after collaboration with Kabi, developed and started trials of recombinant human growth hormone (rHGH) made by a new technology (recombinant DNA) in which human genes were inserted into bacteria so that they could produce unlimited amounts of the protein. Because this was new technology, approval was deferred as lengthy safety trials continued over the next four years.
In 1985, four young adults in the U.S. having received NPA growth hormone in the 1960s developed CJD (Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease). The connection was recognized within a few months, and use of human pituitary GH rapidly ceased. Between 1985 and 2003, a total of 26 cases of CJD occurred in adults having received NPA GH before 1977 (out of 7700), comparable numbers of cases occurred around the world. By 2003 there had been no cases in people who received only GH purified by the improved 1977 methods.
Discontinuation of human cadaver growth hormone led to rapid Food and Drug Administration approval of Genentech's recombinant human growth hormone, which was introduced in 1985 as Protropin in the United States. Although this previously scarce commodity was suddenly available in "bucketfuls", the price of treatment (US$10,000–30,000 per year) was the highest at the time. Genentech justified it by the prolonged research and development investment, orphan drug status, and a pioneering post-marketing surveillance registry for tracking safety and effectiveness (National Cooperative Growth Study).
So there were several reasons to apprentice as a mortician. SEVERAL REASONS. MAKE YOU STRONG hahahahaha
When I was 17 - I 'woke up' doing something. totally freaked me out. Notice the narrative, and also that I was on SOMATROPIN. Think I had any trouble other this? No - but it provided them with better 'plausible' deniability in the future.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTbUJpLUJpdV9QUFE
then next time, it go real bad for me - I wake up in trauma unit, no memory of previous event
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTekYzV0VlS1IwbUE
not from car wreck - from - yes, you guess it - CIA. to be specific - ECT ElectroConvulsiveTreatment.
My Security Clearance had been downgraded, but they did not wish to terminate me fully. So they perform ECT to wipe recent memory after debriefing, and set up fake crash. This happen. Fuck you if you say no.
OK??
I've posted about the children. The video, - the MK ultra files in wanttoknow.info/mindcontrol - it speaks of children. The 'giftedchildquarterly' with the LSD for the gifted children. The eagle forum, with the Monroe Institute/Silva Method programs... You can look into, and the thousand of people like me at survivorship.org, and smart, and CAR, and the others, or not. I do not care that much.
I figure, due to my language, I have violated rules? Yes?
Perhaps they permit me to continue, perhaps they ban me. Either way, FUCK YOU
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 16 September, 2016, 04:04:58 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 03:45:52 AMwhat have you say about the video of the lady? huh? or you couldn't be bothered?
It's the attitude that gets you nowhere.
For your info, I've seen these testimonies before - long before you posted the same video all ready on this thread - and if you noticed, these are the same testimonies and claims about MKUltra that were related to the Church Committee I mentioned earlier.
So then, you think I am a liar? Or for some reason you argue? Obviously I have attitude and argue, I am in distress and upset! What do you expect
I once in a while reach out, and it always sucks. To colleagues, it cracks them up, I am sure. We do not speak of it, but I am sure they have heard.
You think this is for real? or no? I told you, I am not trying to prove - this is internet
oh shit I forgot, so the UNIVERSITY OF TN - had the cows for the SOMATROPIN.
Guess what else they have:
BODY FARM:
A body farm is a research facility where decomposition can be studied in a variety of settings. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the decomposition process, permitting the development of techniques for extracting information (such as the timing and circumstances of death) from human remains. Body farm research is particularly forensic anthropology and related disciplines, and has applications in the fields of law enforcement and forensic science. Six such facilities exist in the United States, with the research facility operated by Texas State University at Freeman Ranch being the largest, at seven acres.
University of Tennessee
The original "Body Farm" is the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility located a few miles from downtown on Alcoa Highway in Knoxville, Tennessee, behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center. It was first started in late 1981 by anthropologist Dr. William M. Bass as a facility for the study of the decomposition of human remains. Dr. Bass became head of the university's anthropology department in 1971, and as official state forensic anthropologist for Tennessee he was frequently consulted in police cases involving decomposed human remains. Since no facilities existed that specifically studied decomposition, in 1981 he opened the department's first body farm.[1]
It consists of a 2.5-acre (10,000 m2) wooded plot, surrounded by a razor wire fence. At any one time there will be a number of bodies placed in different settings throughout the facility and left to decompose. The bodies are exposed in a number of ways in order to provide insights into decomposition under varying conditions. observations and records of the decomposition process are kept, including the sequence and speed of decomposition and the effects of insect activity. The human decomposition stages that are studied begin with the fresh stage, then the bloat stage, then decay, and finally the dry stage.[2]
Over 100 bodies are donated to the facility every year. Some individuals pre-register before their death, and others are donated by their families or by a medical examiner. 60% of donations are made by family members of individuals who were not pre-registered with the facility. Over 1300 people have chosen to pre-register themselves.[3] Perhaps the most famous person to donate his body for study was the anthropologist Grover Krantz, as described by his colleague David Hunt at the Smithsonian.[4]
The University of Tennessee Body Farm is also used in the training of law enforcement officers in scene-of-crime skills and techniques.[5]
ok ok - full circle - with the mortician shit - university of TN obviously has CIA embedded into it, like a lot of places - all the water supply sources, etc - everywhere - I mean - thats the job of national security, right?
so anyway, 16yrs old - medical record with abnormal brain - 17yrs old, hospital record where i had a pistol for protection (at 17? WHAT?) - and then at 21 - in that car crash, where I wanted to know what happened... WELL I FOUND OUT WHAT HAPPENED EVERY TIME. Basically a fucken manchurian, although I had been self aware wanting/going to work for them, I did not know of the alternate personality which had been groomed all along. That's my dumbass story, and I am sticking to it.
So I am right, or batshit crazy.
Have a fucking ball
once I get kicked off (which I am sure is imminent) I will be checking, so just try not to piss me off TOO BAD,
mmmKay? :-X
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 04:08:06 AM
So then, you think I am a liar?
As I pointed out before, I don't actually know you to make that judgement on your state of mind, so not much point asking.
QuoteYou think this is for real? or no? I told you, I am not trying to prove - this is internet.
It's obvious you have a strong desire to prove it if you're continually asking me to
confirm if I think you're a liar or not. I'm not going to do that, sorry.
Just to re-direct you - it's all ready been stated the research took place. The woman in the video does not claim to have been an 'operational sleeper agent' - she said the experiments failed.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 16 September, 2016, 04:26:14 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 04:08:06 AM
So then, you think I am a liar?
Nah not a strong desire to prove it - I would post the very convincing stuff I have, exposing myself however... I just want to get where we are going. Or do you want to dance? haha
As I pointed out before, I don't actually know you to make that judgement on your state of mind, so not much point asking.
QuoteYou think this is for real? or no? I told you, I am not trying to prove - this is internet.
It's obvious you have a strong desire to prove it if you're continually asking me to confirm if I think you're a liar or not. I'm not going to do that, sorry.
Just to re-direct you - it's all ready been stated the research took place. The woman in the video does not claim to have been an 'operational sleeper agent' - she said the experiments failed.
yes, obviously it didn't work out for her. dually noted. for some, it may have. that was research, from back then.
what are you still replying for. I am saying - this is still going on. If you won't confirm nor deny, then why continue dialogue? what is your end game?
I wrote a poem:
"If you're not NAY or YAY
then shut the fuck up
you've nothing to SAY"
HAHAHA come on, that's humor!
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 04:30:34 AM
As I pointed I am saying - this is still going on. If you won't confirm nor deny, then why continue dialogue? what is your end game?
How can you expect anyone to confirm or deny it without proof?
I don't think I've ever given thought to having an 'endgame' in my life.
Older Article I wrote - mostly garbage, but accurate, just poorly articulated...
Foreword: I am not claiming that people have not had 'holy visions' or that there is no such thing as 'aliens'. I am not claiming anything, other than that the type of thing I describe below, does in fact take place.
Certain intelligence agencies, as well as other groups (or whatever term you want to use) have been known to employ some pretty nasty methods - to get the job done - 'by any means necessary'. Keep in mind, you probably want to distance yourself/layer in plausible deniability...
This method can be used on anyone, very close to the way a hypnotic stage show would play out -
To gain a better understanding of how exactly this is put into effect... let me explain a couple things:
**Post-Hypnotic Amnesia** is the inability in hypnotic subjects to recall events that took place while under hypnosis. This can be achieved by giving individuals a suggestion during hypnosis to forget certain material that they have learned either before or during hypnosis.
**Post-Hypnotic Suggestion** is a suggestion made to a hypnotized person that specifies an action to be performed after awakening, often in response to a cue or 'trigger'. This action may include remembering specific things that you were unable to recall previously, due to post-hypnotic amnesia. For example a stage-hypnotist making someone cluck like a chicken after a bell rings, and the subject has no memory of the hypnotic suggestion being given to them, until a different tone chime sounds...
So that is the recipe for the basic side of it... Now, I want to go more in-depth about how this method is applied specifically to subjects with 'deliberately created and programmed dissociative identity disorder systems'. If you do not know what that is, perhaps visit my thread on Modern Day Human Trafficking and Deliberate Dissociation - (REMOVED - ask if you want it)
This technique (I once dubbed it the 'God Made Me Do It' programme) may be supplemented with others as well, but in essence will call for the common prep, which would be a 'blank/fresh' dissociated part (we all know how these are made - torture or nowadays sensory overload through audio/visual)... and then the actual programming will include a sensory depravation chamber/tank, and electromagnetic cranial stimulation - to induce a certain experience, accompanied by a certain message, along with certain emotions. These are all designed, as is the experience as a whole. The next step is to create a post-hypnotic trigger, which may even just be a time-release trigger etc... there is no solid framework for what a trigger may be, and sometimes there are multiple of layers of triggers to act as a safeguard/double blind so triggers do not accidentally or prematurely go off... When this post-hypnotic trigger 'goes off', you remember *just* the direct programming portion of this process, which would be the intense experience through the 'god helmet' while in the sensory deprivation chamber/tank, as to have no outside stimuli added to the experience. It is intense, and all encompassing when you abreact/flashback. However, you do not remember being 'hooked up' to the 'god helmet' nor anything other than just the direct portion of the intense experience that they planned for you to remember. The moment of intensity where you experience a vision, feeling, and message. That way you have no context to put the whole thing into. It is 'all in the moment'. Later, however later it may be, when you are having a 'normal' day, just walking in the park, or watching TV at home, and then all of a sudden, you have the most intense vision, accompanied by feelings and thoughts/words/instructions, it can be easy to think you have had contact with God, some other Entity, or Alien Being. This depends on the 'script' and exact programming method they are using, as well as how you respond. They utilize your own response/manifestation of the experience in an Ericksonian fashion (hypnosis strategy that utilizes going with your own psyche). To be clear, an experience can be designed, where you think you had contact with Aliens, or even God, and that you were instructed, or told, or shown something, and you do not realize this experience was 'fabricated'/'designed'/'controlled'/manipulating you. This experience will be accompanied with strong emotion, which could be 'fear', in the context of an Alien being frightening you in order to obey, even on a subconscious level that 'there is no escaping', or on the other hand, it could be 'love', where you feel encompassed by the most extreme, unconditional 'god love' and that God is showing you something and instructing you with his unlimited love and understanding. This can be very dangerous.
Again - I am not saying that no one has had legitimate contact with God, Aliens, or Otherwise. I am merely stating that this situation can be fabricated, with such intricate design, as to manipulate someone.
In conclusion, this method can be used to make someone do something, by thinking they were ordered but a 'worthy' third party (haha pick your term), or could be used to discredit someone making disclosures of sensitive material.
Once they start blabbing about the Aliens and UFOs... its a wrap for the rest of it. Not that there is anything wrong with Aliens or UFOs, but if you are trying to be 'down to earth' (yes, puns now) and report on trafficked children through foster homes and pedophilia, including some V.I.P.s... the hocus pocus and aliens do not help get the ball rolling.
https://youtu.be/_O_aGlm9QjU
An OLD research video with Dr. Michael Persinger
----------------------------------------------------------------
from 2:40-- 'if you stimulate the deep portions of the temporal lobe, you get vivd imagery, and the emotional commitment/sensation that something is PROFOUND, real, cosmically real, and personally significant'
from 3:15-- 'what we've been doing recently is generating words as magnetic patterns, and even though the person isn't hearing it through their ears, their brain is interpreting it, so they're actually having fragments of experiences, as if they're hearing it when in actual fact, they cannot be. These experiences are so strong they're utterly real for the person who has them
from 4:00-- 'you can control people's experiences, and they don't know they are being controlled' --( let alone if they don't realize they have ever been hooked up to a machine by way of dissociative amnesia )
We all know about 'psychic driving' and message repetition, accompanied by torture to make your subconscious (as well as conscious) submit, accept, and adapt... (see declassified etc. info on Ewen Cameron etc.) however, with this technique, a lot of the time, the message is more eagerly received due to the profound intensity of the experience, accompanied by such strong emotion, the feeling that what you are receiving is of the upmost importance... and this may be the catalyst for immediate change and/or acceptance of certain beliefs etc...
The God Helmet ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet ) is an experimental apparatus originally called the Koren helmet after its inventor Stanley Koren. It was developed by Koren and neuroscientist Michael Persinger to study creativity, religious experience and the effects of subtle stimulation of the temporal lobes.
A common technique which may be used in conjunction with/or to supplement/ is utilization of what is sometimes called a 'Voice of God' 'weapon' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect ) This is basically -- " the microwave auditory effect, also known as the microwave hearing effect or the Frey effect, consists of audible clicks (or, with speech modulation, spoken words) induced by pulsed/modulated microwave frequencies. The clicks are generated directly inside the human head without the need of any receiving electronic device. The effect was first reported by persons working in the vicinity of radar transponders during World War II. These induced sounds are not audible to other people nearby. The microwave auditory effect was later discovered to be inducible with shorter-wavelength portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
MY NOTE - - - THIS IS OLDER THAN DESCRIBED IN ARTICLE, AND OBVIOUSLY STILL USED BY SEVERAL GROUPS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND AGENCIES ETC...
Murder in God's Name: Son says he killed parents according to Jehovah's command
https://www.armenianow.com/social/human_rights/25784/jehovah_witnesss_killed_parents
TONS OF THESE SAME TYPE OF OCCURRENCES - LIST OF ARTICLES UPON REQUEST
...and an example (very high probability that this was an actual occurrence, however i was not present for this, but regardless, this does accurately portray how the situation plays out in the public, or how it is meant to, at least)
Look around and you will be disgusted. There is obviously something up... There is a whole website devoted to Jehovah Witness murderers, most of whom were 'ordered by god'. If you look around for murders ordered by god, and actually look into the details, not just write the person off as 'that kind of crazy', you might really get upset. I hate to say it, but 'that kind of crazy' just might not be popping out of everywhere like they'd have you believe.
Neither are these mass shooters. Nor was it serial Killers. Don't get me started on the terrorist groups we make. Touch a nerve? I hope so. Inform Yourself. Maybe read Dave McGowan's 'Programmed to Kill' - ( https://www.amazon.com/Programmed-Kill-Politics-Serial-Murder/dp/0595326404 ) too. Too much info on the terrorist groups and all that mess to even tell you to look into that. Do look at Operation Northwoods ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods ) to see how capable we are of that though. Oh, and look what happened to who denied that op!
Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation against the Cuban government, that originated within the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against American civilians and military targets, blaming it on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The proposals were rejected by the Kennedy administration.[2]
At the time of the proposal, communists led by Fidel Castro had recently taken power in Cuba. The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts that would actually be perpetrated by the US Government.[3] To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. It stated:
The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.
Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various US military and civilian targets. The operation recommended developing a "Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington".
The plan was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. Although part of the US government's anti-communist Cuban Project, Operation Northwoods was never officially accepted; it was authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President John F. Kennedy. According to currently released documentation, none of the operations became active under the auspices of the Operation Northwoods proposals.
AND THEN WE KILLED HIM
Harry Arons scale of depth.
Stage 1: HYPNOIDAL – Very light stage of hypnosis in which most clients don't feel hypnotized. The mojarity of people feel completely awake. Two types of HYPNOIDAL states are Hypnopompic and Hypnoagogic. Hypnopompic is the state by before waking up in the morning and Hypnoagogic is the state right before falling asleep at night.
A lot can be accomplished in this 1st stage: Weight reduction, smoking withdrawal and simple muscle control such as eyelid catalepsy.
Stage 2: More relaxed state where larger muscle groups can be controlled and manipulated such as Arm Catalepsy. Your power of critical reasoning starts to become impaired.
Stage 3: You get fairly complete control of your entire muscular system. Most people won't be able to articulate a number, stuck to a chair, can't walk and even partial analgesia.
Stage 4: In this stage you start to produce greater phenomena and is known as the beginning of the amnesic stages. Your client will actually forget items such as their name, number, address and other items. Glove Analgesia and feeling touch, but no discomfort.
Stage 5: This is considered the start of somnambulism. You get cool stuff like complete anesthesia and experience the ability to neither feel discomfort or touch. A lot of different pain control techniques can be used in this stage as well. You can also experience what is called Positive Hallucinations which means you can see and hear things which do not actually exist. You can also experience real Age Regression in this state and not just remembering the past.
Stage 6: This is the next level of Profound Somnambulism. You can experience Negative hallucinations which means you won't see or hear things that actually do exist.
So, with hypnosis alone, you can make someone see a certain person as an ALIEN, for instance.
Then, if the said person, who the subject is seeing as an alien, has TORTURED the subject in the past - then the subject may experience 'body memories' and be in distress. The subject will take this as a natural reaction to seeing an alien.
Is this over your head, or just crazy sounding...
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 04:48:20 AM
Is this over your head, or just crazy sounding...
Sounds like the average weekend gig for Derren Brown and Paul McKenna.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 16 September, 2016, 04:54:26 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 04:48:20 AM
Is this over your head, or just crazy sounding...
Sounds like the average weekend gig for Derren Brown and Paul McKenna.
after searching that. OK. So you think the intelligence agencies are not doing more/better? Old article, just posting shit on the way out...
Anyway, I have overstayed my 'welcome' hahaha
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 04:30:34 AM
...dually noted...
I'm having that one.
Really AE, your hectoring accusatory style does your argument no favours. I imagine very few here would deny the existence of dodgy psychological programmes and general state malfeasance. I live in a country where tens of thousands of children and vulnerable peoppe were spirited into state and religious institutions and subject to appalling abuse with the blithe consent of the general population, their stories ignored and their tormenters lauded. So I don't need convincing of the
possibility of this kind of crap. What I need is some indication of evidence for the James Pattersonesque specifics you sort-of describe.
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 05:15:12 AM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 16 September, 2016, 04:54:26 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 16 September, 2016, 04:48:20 AM
Is this over your head, or just crazy sounding...
Sounds like the average weekend gig for Derren Brown and Paul McKenna.
after searching that. OK. So you think the intelligence agencies are not doing more/better? Old article, just posting shit on the way out...
Anyway, I have overstayed my 'welcome' hahaha
So what is your favourite JD story anyway? Thoughts on Rogue Trooper's Disco phase? I'd love to read your feelings about Absolom as well?
I find it amusing Apo was brought here by a copy of one of the very fucking worst strips in 2000AD history, GREYSUIT. :lol:
Don't forget the Ginger Ninja! ;)
Maybe just best now to walk away from this one and let it quietly drop down the page?
Strange how all that distracted us from the 15th anniversary of 9/11... :eh:
Shall I start posting about how you shouldn't eat or drink meat, fish, eggs and dairy to take your minds off it?
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 16 September, 2016, 08:52:59 PM
Shall I start posting about how you shouldn't eat or drink meat, fish, eggs and dairy to take your minds off it?
Well... Is it just cultivating livestock that's bad, or is agriculture in general a complete shitshow?
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 16 September, 2016, 08:52:59 PM
Shall I start posting about how you shouldn't eat or drink meat, fish, eggs and dairy to take your minds off it?
Battery farming - Still agree on, an awful, dreadful industry.
Micro farming - Still disagree on, never did anyone any farm before the first generation boom of the 1700's.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 September, 2016, 08:42:57 PM
Strange how all that distracted us from the 15th anniversary of 9/11... :eh:
Apoceclipse is clearly an Illuminati plant, sent to distract people from thinking about 9/11. Or the eleventh of September, as nobody calls it any more.
has he gone? its gone quiet...
I know that the members of this forum are always polite and nice to each other and I like that. But at some point somebody has to accept that apoc-eclipse is a complete and utter fruitcake and the best thing that could happen is for him to be blocked from this forum.
Hey, now that he's gone, why not keep talking about him, to see - since he said he'll be monitoring this discussion - if it'll bring him back again?
FFS...
Say CIA in a mirror three times and a conspiracy nut will appear.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 17 September, 2016, 11:20:02 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 September, 2016, 08:42:57 PM
Strange how all that distracted us from the 15th anniversary of 9/11... :eh:
Apoceclipse is clearly an Illuminati plant, sent to distract people from thinking about 9/11. Or the eleventh of September, as nobody calls it any more.
I do! as its my birthday, and every fecker you speak to on the phone wants to know, but none of them ever send pressies ::) ... and those event coincide with the one that end in 5s and 0s
Quote from: Proudhuff on 19 September, 2016, 10:41:25 AM
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 17 September, 2016, 11:20:02 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 September, 2016, 08:42:57 PM
Strange how all that distracted us from the 15th anniversary of 9/11... :eh:
Apoceclipse is clearly an Illuminati plant, sent to distract people from thinking about 9/11. Or the eleventh of September, as nobody calls it any more.
I do! as its my birthday, and every fecker you speak to on the phone wants to know, but none of them ever send pressies ::) ... and those event coincide with the one that end in 5s and 0s
Now that is a shitty date to have your birthday. Hope you had a happy 9/11 anyway!
(Which is something nobody should say, ever.)
One of my two Bros Birthday is on Guy Fawkes night, the third now dreads what's going to happen on his each year...
so far nothing :D
Ah bollocks, I missed all this!! Now you can see how harmless TS was in comparison to some of the punters out there....bring back the Mayor!! Z :D
Quote from: ZenArcade on 19 September, 2016, 03:10:56 PM
Ah bollocks, I missed all this!! Now you can see how harmless TS was in comparison to some of the punters out there....bring back the Mayor!! Z :D
TS, as his very last post here so ably illustrated, as a sexual as salt incident waiting to happen.
He's fine just where he is.
"sexual as salt".
What a great turn of phrase!
Ok, I'll drop the nascent bring back TS campaign. Z
Male skulls and faces are designed to take a blow to the face. Is this the truth- or BS? Are we violent by nature or is violence merely a modern product?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/06/09/male-faces-evolved-to-take-one-on-the-chin/#.V-BEifArKUk
Most species of most animals wallop each other about the place to some degree. I don't see why human beings should've evolved any differently.
So let's just slap everyone.
Metaphorically speaking.
I can't shake the feeling that some folk still haven't get the memo about people being animals. Many animals beat nine kinds of shite out of each other from time to time, and have evolved to cope/be better at it. Seen any deer recently?
Quote from: Mr Roger Godpleton II on 19 September, 2016, 11:32:39 PM
I can't shake the feeling that some folk still haven't get the memo about people being animals. Many animals beat nine kinds of shite out of each other from time to time, and have evolved to cope/be better at it. Seen any deer recently?
Yes this morning from the train... wonderful Autumnal fields of golden stubble in the sunrise, with Roe deer skipping across the field...totally ignored by a trainful of people intent on there handheld devices.. ::)
Quote from: Mr Roger Godpleton II on 19 September, 2016, 11:32:39 PM
I can't shake the feeling that some folk still haven't get the memo about people being animals. Many animals beat nine kinds of shite out of each other from time to time, and have evolved to cope/be better at it. Seen any deer recently?
Kindly put that boardname back the way it was immediately, young man.
What ever happened to the original Godpleton?...
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 20 September, 2016, 10:13:22 AM
What ever happened to the original Godpleton?...
Suicide by goatse, to sum up. It's a long story.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 20 September, 2016, 10:13:22 AM
What ever happened to the original Godpleton?...
Abducted by secret government funeral directors and used in top secret black ops.
Or committed suicide by moderator by posting goatses. One of the two.
Edited to add: PSYCH!
Fair enough; it's a short story. I'm just tired.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 20 September, 2016, 10:20:51 AM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 20 September, 2016, 10:13:22 AM
What ever happened to the original Godpleton?...
Suicide by goatse, to sum up. It's a long story.
Oh wait THAT was Godpleton?! I thought that was Scojo/Blowjo/what ever the hell he called himself in the end...
No two different people.
Roger posted a graphic photo which got him booted.
Oh I remember hearing about that incident many a time!
With all of you wags changing your user names, I'm reminded of parents telling me not to pull faces in case the wind change and it sticks.
I'm sure the subject of Roger's ban felt the same way.
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 19 September, 2016, 05:56:24 PM
"sexual as salt".
What a great turn of phrase!
Sexual salt, aye?
(http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i128/mubhceeb/image_21.jpeg) (http://s71.photobucket.com/user/mubhceeb/media/image_21.jpeg.html)
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 20 September, 2016, 10:20:51 AM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 20 September, 2016, 10:13:22 AM
What ever happened to the original Godpleton?...
Suicide by goatse, to sum up. It's a long story.
what did he do to goaty???!!!
Quote from: Grugz on 20 September, 2016, 03:01:47 PM
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 20 September, 2016, 10:20:51 AM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 20 September, 2016, 10:13:22 AM
What ever happened to the original Godpleton?...
Suicide by goatse, to sum up. It's a long story.
what did he do to goaty???!!!
Well, I'd better not say... but it was certainly an eye-opener.
When did TS get banned?
My lurking skills have slipped drastically, I miss all the good stuff. I must improve.
Quote from: Dog Deever on 21 September, 2016, 01:02:13 AM
When did TS get banned?
I like the way you ask 'when?' and not 'why?'!
Quote from: _Krustabi_ on 21 September, 2016, 06:00:16 AM
Quote from: Dog Deever on 21 September, 2016, 01:02:13 AM
When did TS get banned?
I like the way you ask 'when?' and not 'why?'!
Heh- yeah, well the last time I really noticed his presence was when he was posting misogyny and buying an axe...
The Mayor was on my banned list waaaay before that... is he still the Mayor BTW? :-X
Quote from: Dog Deever on 21 September, 2016, 11:41:27 AM
Heh- yeah, well the last time I really noticed his presence was when he was posting misogyny and buying an axe...
His brother eventually confiscated all his fantasy weapons.
Can't for the life of me imagine why...
Quote from: Proudhuff on 21 September, 2016, 11:55:23 AM
is he still the Mayor BTW?
Takes more than an unhealthy attitude to sex to blow a sweet gig like mayoralty*:
Marion Barry (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/us/politics/marion-s-barry-jr-former-mayor-of-washington-dies-at-78.html?_r=0)
Rob Ford (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/11/rob-ford-crack-video-release)
Kwame Kilpatrick (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/us/former-detroit-mayor-kwame-kilpatrick-sentencing.html)
* Yes, that is a real word. Those who share my affection for and interest in the fortunes of our Mayor will be pleased to learn that he has recently dyed his mohawk 'raven black' and has moved back in with his dad until the electrics of his grandparents' former home can be repaired. The mice infestation I mentioned last update advanced as far as the inside of Thryllseekyr's toaster and blew the local grid
Quote from: GordonR on 21 September, 2016, 04:59:20 PM
Quote from: Dog Deever on 21 September, 2016, 11:41:27 AM
Heh- yeah, well the last time I really noticed his presence was when he was posting misogyny and buying an axe...
His brother eventually confiscated all his fantasy weapons.
Can't for the life of me imagine why...
Because it's probably not a good idea to kick an axe and then moan about it online instead of seekng medical help?!
I'm sure Mayor was a good sort....deep, deep down, but he really need's to see someone about his many issues before it gets out of hand.
Why couldn't it have been his mum that confiscated his fantasy weapons.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 21 September, 2016, 05:25:00 PM
Quote from: GordonR on 21 September, 2016, 04:59:20 PM
Quote from: Dog Deever on 21 September, 2016, 11:41:27 AM
Heh- yeah, well the last time I really noticed his presence was when he was posting misogyny and buying an axe...
His brother eventually confiscated all his fantasy weapons.
Can't for the life of me imagine why...
Because it's probably not a good idea to kick an axe and then moan about it online instead of seekng medical help?!
No. He confiscated them after TS attacked their father with a broom.
Naturally, our beloved ex-mayor spent more time moaning about the confiscating of his weapons than he did showing any remorse for putting his dad in hospital.
(But I remember the axe-kicking incident as well.)
Bye gravy I forgot about THAT incident. Worrying, very worrying indeed.
Quote from: GordonR on 21 September, 2016, 05:57:23 PM
Naturally, our beloved ex-mayor spent more time moaning about the confiscating of his weapons than he did showing any remorse for putting his dad in hospital.
I particularly enjoyed him accusing you of threatening him with your profile icon.
Ha- it appears he was banned on my birthday as well, presumably I was too up-to-my-neck in hedonism and excess to have noticed.
Quote from: Dog Deever on 21 September, 2016, 07:44:19 PM
Ha- it appears he was banned on my birthday as well, presumably I was too up-to-my-neck in hedonism and excess to have noticed.
This is precisely as it should be.
Goodness gracious, we got some gossip girlies over here. Is this what you guys sit around and... type... about? Hahahaha I can't beleive I let anything anyone said even remotely upset me, this is ridiculous. Very amusing.
Don't mind me, just checking in. Don't expect a reply if you address me or this comment
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 21 September, 2016, 08:25:58 PM
Don't mind me, just checking in. Don't expect a reply if you address me or this comment
OK then, git.
Most of it is typed whilst we sleep...
Ahhhhh poor TS, he just needed a lot of help and love....we did try. Z :(
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 21 September, 2016, 08:25:58 PM
Goodness gracious, we got some gossip girlies over here. Is this what you guys sit around and... type... about?
Is there something wrong with girls that girls talking should represent an unfavourable thing to be compared to, in your mind?
Besides... conspiracy theories... isn't that just 'gossiping about the machinery of power'?
Quote from: Dog Deever on 21 September, 2016, 11:58:39 PM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 21 September, 2016, 08:25:58 PM
Goodness gracious, we got some gossip girlies over here. Is this what you guys sit around and... type... about?
Is there something wrong with girls that girls talking should represent an unfavourable thing to be compared to, in your mind?
Besides... conspiracy theories... isn't that just 'gossiping about the machinery of power'?
when I said don't expect a reply, I should have clarified - expect 10! hahaha
first of all, no nothing wrong with girls, in the US - gossip girls is a term... also a show I think. but I used that phrase, maliciously, to purposefully annoy, irritate, etc... but to be honest, I stand behind it. talking all that yak about someone who is already gone, is not very honorable... or much else...
conspiracy theories? what about the subject matter I spoke of was a conspiracy theory? I see how my own personal story had not been verified, obviously, but as to the subject, this most definitely did happen 100%, as all the declassified info, and thousands of survivors attest to. so I am confused, probably about you being confused, or at least confused as to the way you are attempting to twist the situation...
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 19 September, 2016, 09:26:51 AM
Say CIA in a mirror three times and a conspiracy nut will appear.
'
no wonder you replied instantly, you were the most self conscious, and the most petty chatty kathy over there. hahaha. bionic fingers is right. those lips probably just keep flapping in real life too.
conspiracy nut? what about the subject matter was conspiracy? it was all 100% verified. so you believe it was shut down? that is seriously a joke.
so my personal situation isn't verified by the gossip girls. ok? doesn't make the whole issue a conspiracy. if you are going to keep talking, at least use the right end of the body. :lol:
maybe some of you want a sample drill?
we can show you how we do some of the training, with the labyrinth - and the minatour (wulfe)
huh? any comic book/authors want to fly out, get a sample of the real deal, and then write about it?
you see the scar, this is me, no big deal, jus' sayin'
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTQWZPZjZOTlV1Q28
https://youtu.be/BuSmu1UyfIk
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTMGNWYl9YV1FDTXM
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTWWVwT3ZIYjRTMmM
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTbFVaU0FTSHpPZm8
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTN3F2RnE0N0lxeUk
you like to play, yes?
or maybe you like different game? talk talk talk talk bunch of big talk on the internet and type type type type :lol:
really, the big secret is, I am offended no one ask for advice on better coming, but hey, no experience in comics here, but I am an idea man =) I have an idea of what some of you can do here =) hahahah
i poke wolf in face, you think I won't poke fun at wisecrackers over the internet? ;)
Have you been training that wolf dog to be pointlessly snarly? Its body language is all over the place.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 22 September, 2016, 05:38:21 AM
Have you been training that wolf dog to be pointlessly snarly? Its body language is all over the place.
oh gosh you must be an expert video analyzer hahaha but surely not a k9 behavioral wiz - for a dog, you want to be alpha, for a wolf, you want to co-exist. but I AM WOLFPACK so I break rules and wolf listen better when you are in hierarchy of pack - so I join in with pack. Does not work with hunt if you are not in pack. Do you understand this concept and the cross-over? We run drills. Question me more if you wish, only real questions get real answers.
He is submitting to ME, while growling/snarling - I AM ALPHA
Quote from: M.I.K. on 22 September, 2016, 05:38:21 AM
Have you been training that wolf dog to be pointlessly snarly? Its body language is all over the place.
wolf dog? that is dirty coat, and he is fat to keep him happy in picture. let me show you better pictures. this is wolf, not wolf dog.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTNWNfVENGMTh5U1E
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTN2hLa1owOFY0MW8
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B26i5S7plMOTam9qSE9UMDFFVTQ
we have wolf dog too. mix with GSD, better for executive level protection training
i could show more pictures, but I show enough on internet. I can show you in real life? Yes?
or you can talk talk talk talk :lol:
Whatever. That chappy may be submissive, but in normal circumstances, snarling from anything canine = signs of defiance + mind yer fingers.
Quote from: Grugz on 18 September, 2016, 04:05:37 PM
has he gone? its gone quiet...
You just
had to go and say something didn't you! ::)
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 21 September, 2016, 08:25:58 PM
Don't mind me, just checking in. Don't expect a reply if you address me or this comment
Followed by seven posts of you not definitely not replying to anyone.
It's almost like you're a sad attention seeker with not much else to do - how do you fit your work counselling trauma survivors and your mission to warn the world about the conspiracy of evil funeral directors into your busy schedule of Internet trolling? - and absolutely no impulse control.
After recent evaluations I'm if the opinion Apo is a brainwashed, hollowed out husk of former forumite, Roger.
The levels of batshit insanity and ad homenims in the last page of text is startling. "Poke a wolf" indeed! Beastiality is a sin! IT'S A SIN!!!
This thread is clinging on by its fingernails – nay, fingernail. Keep it civil, or it's locked and any subsequent similar threads will be deleted. Apoceclipse now has a 14-day cooling off. Please refrain from discussing any of their posts from this point on, because you're only fanning the flames.
I'm guessing now would be a bad time to post a link to a blog with '10 interesting facts about fingernails' then, yes?
well,you've peaked my curiosity I only know they were evolved as a method of removing stubborn bogies.
I can hear fingernails scraping down thin ice...
Quote from: Proudhuff on 22 September, 2016, 07:43:04 PM
I can hear fingernails scraping down thin ice...
A
tightrope of thin ice.
So - the assassination of JFK: lone nut or deep state coup?
Sinister and Dexter. Time job.
Quite possibly my favourite part of Full Metal Jacket:
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Do any of you people know who Charles Whitman was? None of you dumbasses knows? Private Cowboy?
Private Cowboy: Sir, he was that guy who shot all those people from that tower in Austin, Texas, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: That's affirmative. Charles Whitman killed twelve people from a twenty-eight-story observation tower at the University of Texas from distances up to four hundred yards. Anybody know who Lee Harvey Oswald was? Private Snowball?
Private Snowball: Sir, he shot Kennedy, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: That's right, and do you know how far away he was?
Private Snowball: Sir, it was pretty far! From that book suppository building, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: All right, knock it off! Two hundred and fifty feet! He was two hundred and fifty feet away and shooting at a moving target. Oswald got off three rounds with an old Italian bolt action rifle in only six seconds and scored two hits, including a head shot! Do any of you people know where these individuals learned to shoot? Private Joker?
Private Joker: Sir, in the Marines, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: In the Marines!* Outstanding! Those individuals showed what one motivated marine and his rifle can do! And before you ladies leave my island, you will be able to do the same thing!
*The perverse pride R.Lee Emery expresses in this line floors me every time
*MWAH*
just stopped by to blow GORDON a kiss
hahahahaha
and to publicly ponder if of the 'multiple complaints' any stemmed from parties engaging me in the thread as well (as complaining behind the scenes) hmm...
:lol:
I must say, I am 'honored' (if not surprised) to not have been fully kicked out!
That's fair, that's fair. :lol:
Welcome back.
Quote from: GordonR on 22 September, 2016, 07:43:34 AM
Quote from: Apoceclipse on 21 September, 2016, 08:25:58 PM
Don't mind me, just checking in. Don't expect a reply if you address me or this comment
Followed by seven posts of you not definitely not replying to anyone.
It's almost like you're a sad attention seeker with not much else to do - how do you fit your work counselling trauma survivors and your mission to warn the world about the conspiracy of evil funeral directors into your busy schedule of Internet trolling? - and absolutely no impulse control.
sounds good, so say it! is that how you write, too? interesting. I would tell you to stick with fiction, but your posts portray the sense that you already are...
if you want to talk bad to me, damn it man, do it! but don't try to make light of a serious situation and make jokes at everyones expense, see thats the problem. and the couple minutes in replies (couple hours total) is patty cakes, especially when I have to wait on my ass doing nothing but waiting for a call at times, or commuting as a passenger, and I can post in that time frame... very efficient, and unloading. I am doing this, partially for fun, but obviously I layer in analytical aspects into this as well.
so a little time spent, mentioning my specific case of a funeral director, mentioning unethical methods they use nowadays to desensitize/groom future candidates for SF. gave an example. go on and on trying to twist that, fine. yeah I talk a lot, but talk some specifics back, tell me WHY its BS, not just that you think it is etc etc... you never say much anything of substance. sure, I run my mouth plenty, but there is some very comprehensive material in what I post as well.
sorry for the format, don't want to 'waste too much time trolling'.
when I came here in all seriousness, and then GOT TROLLED, by very senior members here. I replied accordingly, and I don't blame you for not liking it, but you came around poking a stick at me, I am going to bite at you.
is this not common sense? I just hope you weren't the one complaining in the background, if you were playing this game you play here publicly as well. either way, i think i've typed enough
good day!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 October, 2016, 12:48:24 AM
Welcome back.
Thanks! I will try to be civil as requested, but have a hunch this will not be long-lived... but perhaps it will. but I am not modifying my response to people making fun of children being tortured for future selection in SF, that is run by corrupt officials. there is nothing right about it. corrupt from bottom to top. unethical. period. my standpoint, and willing to debate, or even argue, or even get petty and childish, and 'fight' about it!
hahahah
Is it a full moon?
Quote from: COMMANDO FORCES on 16 October, 2016, 01:43:13 AM
Is it a full moon?
Funnily enough it was a full moon last night. Spooky huh? :)
The moon was both full, and very large, this morning - 7:30/8:00AM.
I did take a photo, but it didn't really turn out that great.
Quote from: Spikes on 17 October, 2016, 04:32:28 PM
The moon was both full, and very large, this morning - 7:30/8:00AM.
I did take a photo, but it didn't really turn out that great.
Your hiding something....
That was no moon...
(http://i.imgur.com/dRq4K1M.jpg)
Whatever it was, it just hovered silently in the sky, no doubt utilising highly advanced technology that would be way beyond our understanding.
Eventually it disappeared...
I want to believe...
(http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r153/brnwlsh/2043574467-tumblr_mexcy1Xbp91qcmuf7o1_500.jpg)
Quote from: Spikes on 17 October, 2016, 08:34:02 PM
Whatever it was, it just hovered silently in the sky, no doubt utilising highly advanced technology that would be way beyond our understanding.
Eventually it disappeared...
Control Room: "South Wales Police, what's your emergency?"
Caller: "It's not really. I just need to inform you that across the mountain there's a bright stationary object."
Control room: "Right."
Caller: "If you've got a couple of minutes perhaps you could find out what it is? It's been there at least half an hour and it's still there."
Control: "It's been there for half an hour. Right. Is it actually on the mountain or in the sky?"
Caller: "It's in the air."
Control: "I will send someone up there now to check it out."
Caller: "OK."
Control: "Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?"
Officer: It's the Moon, over (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7489457.stm)
Well of course, they would say that, wouldn't they...?
and of course anyone living in the north of England will tell you theres summat called a sun in the sky ...at least that's what them southerners tell us.
Quote from: Grugz on 18 October, 2016, 03:49:40 PM
and of course anyone living in the north of England will tell you theres summat called a sun in the sky ...at least that's what them southerners tell us.
I'll have to remember to point it out when my friend from York visits That London.
Sheridan's link...
QuoteSuperintendent Kevin O'Neill said: "There is no doubt in my mind that the public have taken on board the message we sent about making inappropriate 999 calls and thought twice about dialling the number in a non-emergency situation for which we are extremely grateful.
Insane art robot infiltrates police department. The moon bit is just to distract you from the real conspiracy.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 18 October, 2016, 11:31:21 PM
Sheridan's link... QuoteSuperintendent Kevin O'Neill said: "There is no doubt in my mind that the public have taken on board the message we sent about making inappropriate 999 calls and thought twice about dialling the number in a non-emergency situation for which we are extremely grateful.
Insane art robot infiltrates police department. The moon bit is just to distract you from the real conspiracy.
How did I miss that bit?
https://medium.com/@darren_cullen/conspiracy-theory-left-right-and-wrong-85739fbb6611#.e5ism7rqy
Good article about the proliferation of conspiracy theories from the right to the left over the course of the 20th century.
The opening sentence of this article states, "...neoliberal myths that support the West's oppression of the developing world and help secure corporate domination at home." The ways in which the World Bank, B.I.S. and other bodies subjugate and exploit the "developing world" are well documented, as are the involvement of such bodies as the C.I.A. in destabilising non-Westernised governments. Such agreements as TTIP, the contents of which are kept secret from the public it purports to help, are attempts to "secure corporate domination at home." To arbitrarily label such things as "myths" gives away the shallowness of this article from the outset.
The phrase "conspiracy theory" has come to mean other than the meaning of its two constituent words. It means nutcase, idiot, fool, fantasist, moron, paranoiac. It is this straw man meaning that Cullen does a good job of demolishing here. He makes the fundamental mistake of lumping all things from false flag operations to alien lizard overlords together into a single belief system. If one believes that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a false flag operation undertaken for industrial/political reasons then one must also believe the world is run by shape-shifting extradimensional lizard people. This is simple guilt by association.
If one examines the phrase "conspiracy theorist" properly, it becomes apparent what its actual meaning is. Police detectives, for example, are conspiracy theorists. They perceive a crime and then construct theories (to be tested in court) as to who conspired to commit that crime. Doctors are a form of conspiracy theorist; they perceive an ailment or illness and construct theories to explain the factors "conspiring" to cause that illness.
To use the former interpretation, it is easy to demolish the very idea of a conspiracy theorist. To use the latter interpretation makes it harder.
When David Icke proposes ancient alien interaction with human beings based on ancient texts and symbols, that's not a conspiracy theory - it's creative interpretation and connection of data and must be treated as such, at least until he shows us a humanoid lizard in a cage.
When the families of victims gathered data and evidence pointing to malfeasance by the police during and after the Hillsborough disaster, that was a conspiracy theory. There was a theory about a police conspiracy to cover up the truth. This theory was tested (eventually) in court and found to be largely sound.
But for many years, as the two definitions of "conspiracy theory" were conflated, anyone who believed in a police cover up over Hillsborough was also inferred as believing in secret lizard overlords as well. It is a convenient phrase with which to win arguments through the implied dual logical fallacies of guilt by association and ad hominem - you can't take any notice of what these people say because they're conspiracy theorists.
Cullen, then, in this article takes the obviously flawed interpretation of the phrase "conspiracy theory" and tells us, rightly, just how flawed and often foolish many creative interpretations and connections of data are. Unfortunately, he ignores the actual meaning of the words "conspiracy" and "theory."
He ends by reinforcing the false left/right paradigm and admitting to the existence of "...the one conspiracy which genuinely threatens us all: neoliberal capitalism." By "neoliberal capitalism," I assume he means neoconservative corporatism. If not, it seems he's fallen into the creative interpretations and connections of data presented by governments and corporations in order to cement their positions and powers. Neoliberal capitalism actually means something quite good - modern (neo) progressive (liberal) free trade (capitalism).
This article, while not particularly insightful, does demonstrate the danger of conflating all "conspiracy theories" into a single mass and then dismissing them all based on the most ludicrous. Each claim must be examined on its own merits or lack thereof.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 October, 2016, 02:44:05 PM
The opening sentence of this article states, "...neoliberal myths that support the West's oppression of the developing world and help secure corporate domination at home." The ways in which the World Bank, B.I.S. and other bodies subjugate and exploit the "developing world" are well documented, as are the involvement of such bodies as the C.I.A. in destabilising non-Westernised governments. Such agreements as TTIP, the contents of which are kept secret from the public it purports to help, are attempts to "secure corporate domination at home." To arbitrarily label such things as "myths" gives away the shallowness of this article from the outset.
'Cept you've just completely misread that first sentence, ye twonk.
QuoteExamining and criticising the media narrative around world events is vital in order to unpick and dismantle neoliberal myths that support the West's oppression of the developing world and help secure corporate domination at home.
You've gone full bore on misreading the opening sentence and throwing your own slant on everything written.
I don't think so. Cullen claims that the "West's oppression of the developing world" and "corporate domination at home" are supported by myths, inferring they are myths in themselves. His suggestion, which is actually sound, is that examination and criticism of the MSM narrative is vital but his conclusion, that this examination and criticism should be carried out with the purpose of unpicking and dismantling those "myths," is flawed. One unpicks and dismantles in order to reveal the truth, not in order to serve a predetermined decision - i.e., this is a myth. Until something is unpicked and dismantled, one cannot know if it's a myth or not.
Regardless of Sharky's reading, his point stands: 'Conspiracy Theory' is a term whose meaning has been completely subverted* through its application to unrelated ideas.
As a total aside, when Trump talks about a conspiracy against him, he's exactly right: it's the mass of the people conspiring to keep him out of political office even when the annointed alternative is pretty ghastly itself: a.k.a. democracy.
*Probably deliberately**.
**By a shadowy cabal. In an exclusive ski-resort***.
***Artificially maintained on a private Polynesian island.
Quote from: TordelBack on 19 October, 2016, 03:36:25 PM
Regardless of Sharky's reading, his point stands: 'Conspiracy Theory' is a term whose meaning has been completely subverted through its application to unrelated ideas.
^ This ^
Whilst I am willing to admit I may have misinterpreted the opening sentence, I have my prejudices just like anyone else, I still think that regarding something as a myth before examining it leads to problems. Perhaps Cullen thinks that "the West's oppression of the developing world" and "corporate domination at home" are real but to blanket-label everything supporting those ideas as "myths" from the outset is unhelpful.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 October, 2016, 03:26:08 PM
I don't think so. Cullen claims that the "West's oppression of the developing world" and "corporate domination at home" are supported by myths, inferring they are myths in themselves.
WHUUUUH? If someone told me you stole something of mine and I punched you in the face for it, that doesn't mean that because the information is false that the punch in the face didn't happen either. The Iraq War was waged based on false information, but nobody thinks the war itself was mythological.
But yes, the current usual intended meaning of 'conspiracy theory' is a bit wrong and has been for decades. Wouldn't disagree with that.
Quote from: TordelBack on 19 October, 2016, 03:36:25 PM
*Probably deliberately**.
**By a shadowy cabal. In an exclusive ski-resort***.
***Artificially maintained on a private Polynesian island.
No such thing.
Quote from: I, Cosh on 19 October, 2016, 04:12:31 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 19 October, 2016, 03:36:25 PM
*Probably deliberately**.
**By a shadowy cabal. In an exclusive ski-resort***.
***Artificially maintained on a private Polynesian island.
No such thing.
That's what they want you to think.
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
;)
I'm not paranoid. Nobody ever said I was paranoid! What have you heard?!
And the opposite of being Paranoid?
"I'm following somebody!" :)
So it's you lurking behind my privets...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 October, 2016, 03:26:08 PM
I don't think so. Cullen claims that the "West's oppression of the developing world" and "corporate domination at home" are supported by myths, inferring they are myths in themselves.
But, no.
If all systems capitalism, communism failed then where do we go from here? It looks like Nationalism is the alternative for the future and that is a sort of isolationism in disguise. People are scared they're worried about the seeming lack of control on the 1%, immigration and borders so they're opting for what is familiar and there is nothing more familiar than the past. Ken Loach complained about having a 'rosy image of the past' citing TV shows like Poldark and Victoria but he's perhaps not quite able to grasp that his own social realism style of Film is itself a past vision. Not the inequalities and injustices he highlights in his scripts, such things are forever IMHO but the kitchen sink style of film is itself a relic of a more collective vision of England. He too seems stuck in the past, the familiar. Can we ever escapes history's grim gravity or are we simply pulled back by it as we struggle to build the future that somehow is influenced or even determined by the past?
I don't think we can ever escape "history's grim gravity," nor should we try. We should always keep an eye on the past, mistakes and successes, as the future is built from the present. As the old saying goes, "he who keeps one eye on the past is blind in one eye but he who looks only to the future is blind in both eyes."
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 22 October, 2016, 10:14:44 AM
I don't think we can ever escape "history's grim gravity," nor should we try. We should always keep an eye on the past, mistakes and successes, as the future is built from the present. As the old saying goes, "he who keeps one eye on the past is blind in one eye but he who looks only to the future is blind in both eyes."
Well said Shark. God, Banners is right! I must proof read more. Dreadful.
if hils gets in how long before Donald does a Robert Maxwell?
Quote from: Grugz on 22 October, 2016, 05:17:55 PM
if hils gets in how long before Donald does a Robert Maxwell?
You know, I wouldn't wish drowning at sea on anyone. That said, if it
was Trump, I wouldn't miss the fucker much either.
it doesn't have to be a sea based "accident" they could say his toupee woke up and ate his face or he brutally accidently cut his head off whilst combing his "hair" that or a really big calibre bullet ,probably a stray one from a hunter ,or a caniballistic funeral director which is a thing apparently.
We have to Nuke him from Orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
I remember watching some documentary as a kid, where it showed some prehistoric structure like a ring-fort or something, possibly in Scotland. The stones were all melted and it seemed to be a mystery how it happened, with the documentary saying that burning all the wood in the country couldn't produce the heat needed for it.
I think, nay, know it was alien heat rays.
Of course it wasn't, but I'm just wondering if anyone can fill in the gaps in my memory; now that I have the internet to research this kind of thing.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 25 October, 2016, 02:13:28 PM
I remember watching some documentary as a kid, where it showed some prehistoric structure like a ring-fort or something, possibly in Scotland. The stones were all melted and it seemed to be a mystery how it happened, with the documentary saying that burning all the wood in the country couldn't produce the heat needed for it.
I think, nay, know it was alien heat rays.
Of course it wasn't, but I'm just wondering if anyone can fill in the gaps in my memory; now that I have the internet to research this kind of thing.
A google search on vitrified forts Scotland will get you where you need to go.
And, yes, there's perfectly ratiional explanations for them, using the heat-producing technology that was available at the time.
Cheers, Gordon. And now I have a new word - vitrified!
Quote from: GordonR on 25 October, 2016, 02:18:49 PM
And, yes, there's perfectly ratiional explanations for them, using the heat-producing technology that was available at the time.
Aye. Atomic kelpie breath.
If you have any news on this fuzzy, out of focus cryptid (http://cryptozoologynews.com/little-bigfoot-photographed-alaska-say-leprechaun/) please, keep it to yourself.
It's 2016 and people still think Bigfoot is real, good grief.
Watched this whilst doing some brainkilling repetition at work, 'tis pretty interesting look at some odd characters with a bit of an...odd ending.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03z05nr/storyville-20132014-24-shooting-bigfoot-americas-monster-hunters
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 25 October, 2016, 03:09:26 PM
If you have any news on this fuzzy, out of focus cryptid (http://cryptozoologynews.com/little-bigfoot-photographed-alaska-say-leprechaun/) please, keep it to yourself.
Given that almost everyone and their elderly mother now carries a camera capable of shooting 1080 HD video, usually with autofocus, auto exposure and image stabilisation, it's amazing how no one who ever sees a UFO or mythical beast ever seems to have one on them...
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 25 October, 2016, 03:36:03 PM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 25 October, 2016, 03:09:26 PM
If you have any news on this fuzzy, out of focus cryptid (http://cryptozoologynews.com/little-bigfoot-photographed-alaska-say-leprechaun/) please, keep it to yourself.
Given that almost everyone and their elderly mother now carries a camera capable of shooting 1080 HD video, usually with autofocus, auto exposure and image stabilisation, it's amazing how no one who ever sees a UFO or mythical beast ever seems to have one on them...
The undertakers are soooo coming for you pal!
Quote from: GordonR on 25 October, 2016, 02:18:49 PM
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 25 October, 2016, 02:13:28 PM
I remember watching some documentary as a kid, where it showed some prehistoric structure like a ring-fort or something, possibly in Scotland. The stones were all melted and it seemed to be a mystery how it happened, with the documentary saying that burning all the wood in the country couldn't produce the heat needed for it.
I think, nay, know it was alien heat rays.
Of course it wasn't, but I'm just wondering if anyone can fill in the gaps in my memory; now that I have the internet to research this kind of thing.
A google search on vitrified forts Scotland will get you where you need to go.
And, yes, there's perfectly ratiional explanations for them, using the heat-producing technology that was available at the time.
Come now, heat doesn't come into it. It's clearly sonic liquification caused by time-displaced Dilluvials. Where's Thryllseekyr when you actually need him...
But yes, Gordon is right - last time I looked (a few years back), analysis of the vitrified material suggested temperatures below 850C could have caused the effect - which is well within the range of Bronze Age pottery kilns, never mind Iron Age/Early Medieval furnaces, so presumably achievable with a well-constructed bonfire, possibly symbolising the utter destruction of an occupying dynasty.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 25 October, 2016, 03:36:03 PM
Given that almost everyone and their elderly mother now carries a camera capable of shooting 1080 HD video, usually with autofocus, auto exposure and image stabilisation, it's amazing how no one who ever sees a UFO or mythical beast ever seems to have one on them...
As I'm sure I've said on here somewhere before,
they do. It's just that nowadays folk on the internet are able to tell you what it more than likely
actually is.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 25 October, 2016, 03:09:26 PM
If you have any news on this fuzzy, out of focus cryptid (http://cryptozoologynews.com/little-bigfoot-photographed-alaska-say-leprechaun/) please, keep it to yourself.
I'm going to give my opinion anyway, because
here's the video (https://youtu.be/rTXrnmAr5I4?t=3m25s) that image is taken from and if you look to the left of the picture you can see that it's clearly just
the vengeful spirit of Greyfriar's Bobby a tree stump.
trouble is with these things that you cannot prove they don't exist just as much as folk cannot prove they do exist, bigfoot will always be poo pooed as its humanoid shaped and can be faked ,I am a believer that a large ape like creature could live in these remote places without being seen readily ,you know gorillas exist and where but I doubt you could trot off into the forest and find one just like that and if bigfoot posseses a semblance of intelligence it could avoid us...the only way to prove them of course is for one to wander into town blind drunk from a hooch still it found.
things are being discovered all the time including things we were sure were extinct (coelacanth) I just wish they could find a dodo.
I like the idea that areas like the Pacific North-West and Himalayas are so vast that there's a chance of an undiscovered Saquatch/Yeti/Qwyjibo. However much I like the notion, it's a bit like saying outer space is vast and you can't prove there's not an undiscovered teapot up there.
It would explain the saucers.
And E Tea.
"There'a no proof Bigfoot DOESN'T exist"
Except, you know, no North American non-hominid primates exist, or have ever existed.
Not strictly true, but there certainly have been any for several million years, (that we know of). The chances of Bigfoot being descended from one of those is about as likely as Nessie being a plesiosaur.
*'haven't'
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 25 October, 2016, 08:09:41 PM
"There'a no proof Bigfoot DOESN'T exist"
Except, you know, no North American non-hominid primates exist, or have ever existed.
Maybe bigfoot ate them all
Quote from: Mister Pops on 25 October, 2016, 08:56:54 PM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 25 October, 2016, 08:09:41 PM
"There'a no proof Bigfoot DOESN'T exist"
Except, you know, no North American non-hominid primates exist, or have ever existed.
Maybe bigfoot ate them all
You've been watching to many X-File re runs.
Everyone knows the Jersey Devil ate them all.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 25 October, 2016, 03:09:26 PM
If you have any news on this fuzzy, out of focus cryptid (http://cryptozoologynews.com/little-bigfoot-photographed-alaska-say-leprechaun/) please, keep it to yourself.
It's 2016 and people still think Bigfoot is real, good grief.
After experiencing the scale of the Pacific NW forests, it isn't hard to see how that particular myth stays alive after all this time. It's so vast, it seems conceivable to me a creature of reasonable intelligence could remain concealed in there.
My gf's from Oregon and she knows someone who claims to have encountered ol' Sasquatch. As with everything, I'm skeptical until Bigfoot actually bites me on the arse (and I actually see it) but the person in question believes without a shadow of any doubt that's what he encountered.
Quote from: blackmocco on 25 October, 2016, 11:13:45 PM
My gf's from Oregon and she knows someone who claims to have encountered ol' Sasquatch. As with everything, I'm skeptical until Bigfoot actually bites me on the arse (and I actually see it) but the person in question believes without a shadow of any doubt that's what he encountered.
No, no, officer -
I didn't bite blackmocco on the arse, it must have been sasquatch...
Quote from: Grugz on 25 October, 2016, 07:15:03 PM
trouble is with these things that you cannot prove they don't exist just as much as folk cannot prove they do exist
Quote from: Mister Pops on 25 October, 2016, 07:52:06 PM
I like the idea that areas like the Pacific North-West and Himalayas are so vast that there's a chance of an undiscovered Saquatch/Yeti/Qwyjibo. However much I like the notion, it's a bit like saying outer space is vast and you can't prove there's not an undiscovered teapot up there.
I was going to mention Russell's Teapot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot)!
Bigfoot relies on a single piece of compelling evidence. The Roger Paterson-Gimnli footage.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 26 October, 2016, 10:08:47 AM
Bigfoot relies on a single piece of compelling evidence. The Roger Paterson-Gimnli footage.
He's rogering people on camera now? Add that to the improbable hair, the incoherent grunting, reality TV career and the Washington-outsider status and that's the next Republican nominee sorted.
Quote from: TordelBack on 26 October, 2016, 10:19:47 AM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 26 October, 2016, 10:08:47 AM
Bigfoot relies on a single piece of compelling evidence. The Roger Paterson-Gimnli footage.
He's rogering people on camera now? Add that to the improbable hair, the incoherent grunting, reality TV career and the Washington-outsider status and that's the next Republican nominee sorted.
You're thinking of Smallhand.
Teehee Republicans teehee...
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 26 October, 2016, 10:50:22 AM
Quote from: TordelBack on 26 October, 2016, 10:19:47 AM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 26 October, 2016, 10:08:47 AM
Bigfoot relies on a single piece of compelling evidence. The Roger Paterson-Gimnli footage.
He's rogering people on camera now? Add that to the improbable hair, the incoherent grunting, reality TV career and the Washington-outsider status and that's the next Republican nominee sorted.
You're thinking of Smallhand.
Magnificent.
Dear Grud! Thanks to this thread I just wandered south of the line on utube below the rising Tide of demons ... They make our own radges seem positively sane :o
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 26 October, 2016, 10:08:47 AM
Bigfoot relies on a single piece of compelling evidence. The Roger Paterson-Gimnli footage.
watched an interesting programme about that a while ago ,they stabiblised the images and cleaned them up and it appears that bigfoot is a lady one !
It's a baffling piece of footage. Sharp enough to make out a startling amount of detail, but too vague to be verified as an actual organism. The maze of conflicting accounts doesn't help settle matters.
It intrigues even firm Bigfoot non-believers like myself because it CAN'T be described as anything other than A) A whole unknown species of primate or B) A man in a costume, and there's just not enough evidence to swing it either way. It's a real oddity.
Quote from: Grugz on 30 October, 2016, 11:02:12 AM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 26 October, 2016, 10:08:47 AM
Bigfoot relies on a single piece of compelling evidence. The Roger Paterson-Gimnli footage.
watched an interesting programme about that a while ago ,they stabiblised the images and cleaned them up and it appears that bigfoot is a lady one !
Get your t**s out for the loggers! I doubt that there is a large unknown anthropoid wandering the forests of America, China, Russia and other places but there has always been stories of such sightings. The legendary Green Man here in Blighty for instance with it's spiritual associations with nature could be seen as a sort of unripe, pre Bigfoot story. Basically the wild still fascinates and frightens us and long may that continue.
Few of the classic cryptids hold any water when put under scrutiny. Nessie? A myth of self deprecating hugeness. Yeti? No real visual evidence exists outside of foot prints, most easily linked to mountain goats and even snow leopards. Jersey Devil? Drunk yanks.
I'm far more interested in the more obscure brand of crytpids that indicate a small window in history that tell stories of easily acceptable giant animals. Look at the Bobhar-chu. By accounts it was a modestly sized cross between a dog and an eel. Coming from County Galaway in the 17th century, I fancy the idea said monk who encountered this creature had a wonderful encounter with a rather large sea otter.
Death Worms are real thought right?
its them Mexican killer rabbits you have to watch out for.
Quote from: Grugz on 31 October, 2016, 02:44:03 PM
its them Mexican killer rabbits you have to watch out for.
Ah here now, that's a bit racist. We should be wary of
all killer rabbits regardless of nationality
it is true but I had to specifically name them so to explain to my then young lass why john marston was killing bunnies in old mexico in red dead redemption, once i'd explained she wasn't upset anymore..
Quote from: Mister Pops on 31 October, 2016, 08:18:20 PM
We should be wary of all killer rabbits regardless of nationality.
Fetch the Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch!
ni.
Aren't ducks the greatest?! (http://cryptozoologynews.com/vermont-navy-veteran-records-champ-monster/) Deliberately startling psuedo-zoologists like this, oh deary me you little necrophiliac bird devils you!
Seriously though, that's a duck. Not Champ. It's a bloody duck.
that's what champ wants you to think...
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 29 November, 2016, 06:37:46 PM
oh deary me you little necrophiliac bird devils you!
What are they doing at night in the park...? (https://youtu.be/UJO2Tjp3hQ0)
Well over the last month i've had to knock back more climate change deniers than in the last few year combined. I'm sure elevating an oil tycoon to the pedastle of president has nothing to do with these roaches creeping out from under their internet rock.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 11 December, 2016, 02:45:38 PM
Well over the last month i've had to knock back more climate change deniers than in the last few year combined. I'm sure elevating an oil tycoon to the pedastle of president has nothing to do with these roaches creeping out from under their internet rock.
Trump may be many things, but oil tycoon isn't one of them. While he holds stocks in the oil industry, the main source of his wealth - and chief personal interest - remains real estate, hotels and leisure facilities.
If you want presidents deeply tied up with the oil industry then look no further than the Bush dynasty or Lyndon B Johnson.
Ah, apologies, it seems my understand of just how large a role Drumpf plays in the fossil fuel industry is somewhat distorted, but I do still find it an interesting correlation how many out Trump supporters are materialising as open climate change deniers all of a sudden.
The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it. (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/19/cashless-society-con-big-finance-banks-closing-atms)
I've noticed something that's probably a coincidence but nevertheless intriguing. The symbol for Christianity, the cross, is an ancient symbol for the sun, Islam's symbol is the moon and Judaism's symbol is a star. These three religions hail from the same part of the world - is it possible, I wonder, that these three religions were once a single "sky cult" that split into three a few centuries ago?
That they all share the same origin story, right up to Genesis Ch 22, and in many details thereafter, rather suggests that is the case. But rather more than a few centuries ago.
Also, the split was not exclusive: you can fire a whole of other religions into the sky cult grab-bag too, as they borrow and lend elements to each other.
Thanks, Tordels - I guess lots of people have investigated this already. Are there any books on the subject that you know of?
Lots of incidental stuff wrapped up in the same stories. Moses secret origin bears more than a paint resemblance to Karna in the Mahabharata.
I couldn't give you any succinct, modern treatment but The Golden Bough is surely the classic starting point. And out of copyright.
Quote from: I, Cosh on 31 July, 2018, 10:05:12 AM
I couldn't give you any succinct, modern treatment but The Golden Bough is surely the classic starting point. And out of copyright.
Was going to suggest that very book, Frazer a heavy presence on my bookshelf since I was a teen. But I'd also be wary of the kind of easy conflation Golden Bough is full of - and in general things like Graves' wonderfully entertaining schema for the Greek Myths, for example - if it looks too neat to be true, it probably is.
The common root of the Abrahamic religions though, that's in indisputable territory.
Thanks, chaps. I'm becoming quite intrigued by the base similarities between the different religions - one of the most striking similarities to me is the different versions of The Golden Rule, which seems all but forgotten in these materialistic times but would surely help the world achieve a better state if brought more to the fore.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 July, 2018, 10:21:06 AM...the different versions of The Golden Rule, which seems all but forgotten in these materialistic times but would surely help the world achieve a better state if brought more to the fore.
Testify. I won't bore you with my personal belief system ("like arseholes..."), but that same process is how I came by it.
Quote from: TordelBack on 31 July, 2018, 10:42:31 AM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 July, 2018, 10:21:06 AM...the different versions of The Golden Rule, which seems all but forgotten in these materialistic times but would surely help the world achieve a better state if brought more to the fore.
Testify. I won't bore you with my personal belief system ("like arseholes..."), but that same process is how I came by it.
ah, the Golden Rule.... he who has the gold makes the rules. That's it right?
Quote from: TordelBack
link=topic=32312.msg988911#msg988911
date=1533030151
Testify. I won't bore you with my personal belief system ("like arseholes..."), but that same process is how I came by it.
The deeper I delve, the more I come to see that beliefs must be based on Truths. Since the widespread adoption of Kant's philosophy (that everything is subjective), the idea of Truth seems to have fallen out of fashion. I once took a friend of mine to task over this. His favourite phrase was, "nothing can be known," to which I answered, "how do you know that?"
Solipsism seems to me to be a very dangerous philosophy which leads to such monstrosities as moral relativism, which can and has been used to justify all manner of atrocities.
Objective Truths do exist, and it is upon these, I think, that personal moral codes must be based.
That's my arsehole at least partially revealed! :D
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 31 July, 2018, 12:32:01 PM
Objective Truths do exist, and it is upon these, I think, that personal moral codes must be based.
Yup. I'm all for relativism, I think it's a very useful way to view and understand the world and its people, but I'm also convinced there are truths-with-a-capital-T that are inherent in the universe, and thus in one of its noisier products, humanity, and its morals. The mistake we make is the level at which we look for objective truths, I think they're a lot deeper, and a lot harder to accept, than we believe: the Golden Rule is the simple exception, but it promises the possibility of other absolutes. In the meantime we make do with the shallow partial truths we can grasp.
I always hoped this thread would redeem itself someday.
But yes, basing morality on Truth seems simple but by no means easy. What, for example, is the truth about Brexit? In my view, all government is based on a lie - the lie that some people have more rights than others. This being so, Brexit must be a lie based on a lie. However, as most people believe in the basic lie this means that it does have effects on me whether I believe in the lie or not. A thorny problem, to say the least.
Damn, the redemption didn't last long, did it? :(
The Church Of Climate Scientology: How Climate Science Became A Religion. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2013/11/07/the-church-of-climate-scientology-rationalizes-some-of-the-worst-policies-in-our-history/)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 23 October, 2018, 08:36:17 PM
The Church Of Climate Scientology: How Climate Science Became A Religion. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2013/11/07/the-church-of-climate-scientology-rationalizes-some-of-the-worst-policies-in-our-history/)
Hmmm. Do I believe 95%+ of the scientists who have studied this issue, or a five-year-old article by this man:
Alex Epstein is the author of the New York Times best-selling book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and an expert on energy and industrial policy. Called "most original thinker of the year" by political commentator John McLaughlin, he champions the use of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas and has changed the way thousands of people think about energy. He has risen to prominence as the nation's leading free-market energy debater, promoting a philosophy that is "anti-pollution but pro-development." He challenges many popularly held ideas about energy, industry, and the environment, including the big picture benefits (and costs) of fossil fuels and nuclear power. He draws on cutting-edge research and original insights to offer an alternate perspective on the energy debate and shares eye-opening thoughts into how fossil fuels and technology will improve the lives of people – safely, cleanly, and effectively – for years to come.Co-founder of a for-profit think tank peddling this drivel, who cites Ayn Rand as his greatest influence, and has a degree in philosophy.
This is weird - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45953252 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45953252)
I'm not quite sure what your argument is in the context of the article I linked to, Jim.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 07:49:06 AM
I'm not quite sure what your argument is in the context of the article I linked to, Jim.
That it's bullshit, peddled by an unqualified peddler of bullshit.
97 per cent of qualified scientists globally agree that man-made climate change is extremely likely.
They're not ALL in the pockets of Big Wind and Solar. It hardly needs pointing out (I hope) that there's far more money to be made in denial, not only by fossil fuel companies but by the powerful governments you (and I) hate so much, Sharky.
Most people don't want man-made climate change to be true. But that doesn't mean it isn't.
Which parts, Jim?
JBC, back in the day, the big companies like Standard Oil bought off politicians who agreed to do away with electric trams in order to replace them with vehicles powered by petrol and diesel. Those same companies are now moving into wind and solar and funding modern politicians and researchers accordingly.
But that's not the question, there will always be people making money out of problems and there always will be, the question is whether the problem is being over hyped. It seems to me that the problem of climate change must be addressed from all sides. Some solutions do include wind, wave and solar power, some include safer and cleaner ways of extracting and utilising natural fuels, some include the development of new technologies and some include building defences and mitigating systems.
The danger, as I see it, is reducing climate change to a simple model in which mankind is the sole or major driver and ignoring all the other natural factors. In doing this, we allow these entrenched companies to present themselves as champions, the only option to save the planet, for which we are expected to pay through the nose.
As the article says, "...first and foremost, that you need to think for yourself," is the key to addressing the problem in a reasonable and effective way.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 10:22:41 AM
As the article says, "...first and foremost, that you need to think for yourself," is the key to addressing the problem in a reasonable and effective way.
Yes, but anyone who goes away and does that, looks at the evidence, and knows a bit of science can see that the temperature increase of the last 100 years or so is obviously a result of industrial pollution.
Also:
(https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/4vc6we6yx1cwMgLEYRUos2ZhJqo=/500x334/filters:fill(auto,1)/What-If-Its-A-Hoax-56a74f4c5f9b58b7d0e8f300.jpg)
Heh, I was just about to google for that very cartoon.
Leaving aside the Pythonesque irony of being commanded to "think for yourself", I'm simply not sure that this is always the best thing to do: sometimes you have to look at the thinking of the people who have spent their whole careers specialising in deeply complex subjects and accept that your amateur noodling can't possibly hold as much weight.
Under these circumstance, your independent thinking input comes down to assessing which experts are the most credible - and when there's less than 1 dissenter out of every 20 climate scientists, that maverick better be the most brilliant, squeaky-clean, accomplished savant of the age. Are they? Otherwise, you need to play the percentages.
Sharky, I've been tangentially involved in Wind Energy in Ireland (I blame the Guinness) over the past half dozen years, and there's a lot of truth in what you say: it's a business, very few involved particularly care about anything other than buying/leasing land and securing planning so that they can build something that will generate revenue - just like every other kind of developer. It's a wind turbine because that's what the client - the EU, the state, the voter, the consumer - are prepared to permit and pay for, it could just as easily be a landfill or a forest park or a prison. Sadly this is how it is for everything, no sense of common good, just individual profit for the land owner, the developer, the consultants (hi!), the builder, the operator.
BUT.
I just recently spent over 3 years working on a new tram system that closely followed the lines of the 1870s system (hydro-electrified from 1901, before that horse drawn) that was dug up in the '50s to facilitate oil-guzzling cars and buses - but the new tram system's elctricity relies on 80% fossil fuels (90% of energy is imported). That ridiculously shortsighted flip-floppery doesn't mean that the current tram is a bad idea. And nor does the shift away from fossil fuels to wind, solar and (hopefully) tide, all of which have their disadvantages: we'll still need fossil fuel (to get into space if nothing else), but getting away from complete dependence on this finite resource by whatever means gives us the options to manage it properly. It also hopefully, frees us from endlessly squabbling over the oil-producing regions of the world, and putting up with this shit because we have no choice.
Big, monstrous costs are coming, due to climate change and the population displacements it is accelerating. The price of the shift to sustainable energy, efficient batteries, low emission food production, is only the very beginning of the pain. We need to explore and/or employ all technologies and all options, including a drastic reduction in First World consumption and increase of immigration that nobody is going to like. But as long as we can sweeten the pill for the supreme selfishness of the monied by making some of these essential changes as profitable for them as the alternatives, we get at least a chance to make progress. Letting them think there's nothing to be gained by trying, and having them put all their eggs into fortifying swathes of New Zealand or digging bunkers in the Andes will do no-one any good. Not even them.
Now's not the point at which to throw up our hands, declare every expert a fraud and demand Year Zero: we just don't have the time.
MARS: 2068
Astronaut #1: no, look, I'm just saying there's not much we can do about the temperature of Mars so why bother trying? There's no consensus on climate change so why try to introduce all this carbon and oxygen? What's the p
MARS: 2078
Cosmonaut #1: Mind you don't trip on those skeletons while you're turning on that atmosphere generator, comrade.
Cosmonaut #2: Da, comrade Musk.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 10:22:41 AM
Which parts, Jim?
JBC, back in the day, the big companies like Standard Oil bought off politicians who agreed to do away with electric trams in order to replace them with vehicles powered by petrol and diesel. Those same companies are now moving into wind and solar and funding modern politicians and researchers accordingly.
You're missing the point. I'm not talking about politicians, and 'researchers' working for companies are not the same as scientists working for science. As we have seen with that fucking clown in the White House, world leaders are all too happy to ignore expert opinion. Put it this way; who do you think has more financial clout; oil companies or wind ones?
.
As for thinking for yourself, well, that's all well and good, but how far does that go? 'Well, I've never seen an atom, so they don't exist', perhaps? Or 'evolution can't exist, because I haven't watched it happening'? Where do you stand on gravity? I can't do the maths to prove it's there, but other people can. Those people are experts, and we're not. There's a difference between saying 'i have proof that you're wrong' and 'in my opinion, you're wrong'.
I'm always amazed that its only when someone disagrees with the speaker that they are told to 'think for themselves' :-X
"Think for yourselves!"
'Shares an article filled with pseudo-scientific jargon, peddled by someone with a very blatant none-renewable fuel source driven agenda'
"Think for yourself" is also one of the advertising slogans used by Scientology.
Anyone who needs to be told to think for themself is already in trouble.
I stopped listening to my doctor once I realised he was getting paid. I mean, if you think about, it's in his interest for me to be unwell.
Quote from: Professor Bear on 24 October, 2018, 03:47:03 PM
I stopped listening to my doctor once I realised he was getting paid. I mean, if you think about, it's in his interest for me to be unwell.
Sadly, I know people who believe that. People who should know better at that.
I possibly should not throw stones as I stopped taking statins I was proscribed - not because I think I know better than the doctor or anything, but because they stopped me getting off to sleep properly.
Statins are probably a good paradigm for this discussion: they provably prevent catastrophic heart problems and thus pre-emptively take strain off the NHS, but they also negatively impact a profitable area of private medicine/palliative care, so the outlets of media barons with holdings in private health for some inexplicable reason keep running horror stories about statins and their nightmarish side-effects. The Daily Mail is pretty much murdering its own readers at this stage, though obviously not fast enough for my liking.
I would have more faith in the IPCC if it were the Independent Panel on Climate Change or the Interdisciplinary Panel on Climate Change and not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I'd also have more faith if policy recommendations were written after the bulk of evidence had been submitted, if its mandate wasn't wasn't to look virtually exclusively for anthroprogenic causes and to ignore other possibilities and if contrary evidence was investigated instead of being shouted down.
Is it possible that humans are the sole or major driver of climate change? Of course it's possible. Is it possible that other factors are the sole or major drivers? Of course. It's the idea that the science is settled that bothers me because that's not how science works. Somebody mentioned gravity and that's a good comparison - gravity definitely exists, just like climate change, and at the moment the understanding seems to be that gravity is caused by the geometry of spacetime but this is just a placeholder - another Einstein may come up with a better theory tomorrow. Scientists don't stop studying gravity just because the current theory seems to work quite well.
It's not a case, for me at least, of refusing to believe in this so-called consensus just because I don't want to. There are factors which give me pause, such as the existence of other evidence and, certainly not least of all, the track record governments and corporations have of skewing evidence for their own ends.
Even if anthroprogenic climate change is as big a problem as is claimed, which is of course a possibility, then the solutions need to be more far ranging than carbon taxes and such. First and foremost, I think, planned obsolescence must itself be made obsolete, or as near as possible. (For example, several years ago I learned of packaging made not from oil-based plastics, the bane of waste disposal, but of gelatin. Packaging designed to rot away naturally. Furthermore, this packaging had wildflower seeds embedded in it so that chucking it away at the side of the road would be, whilst still initially unsightly, actually good for the environment. How much landfill would this one simple idea save? Not all of it, sure, but even a small percentage would help. Yet still we are inundated with plastics.)
Lastly, I don't agree with the idea that a scientist's views be dismissed out of hand because they are paid by one "side" or the other. Climate change would seem to be too big a topic, with too important implications, to be decided by who's paying whom. All the evidence has to be considered and weighed on its own merits and I'd rather have it presented in a scientific rather than political or emotional way.
I am not yet convinced either way but I do, at present, lean towards anthroprogenic factors being less impactful than governments and corporations would have me believe.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 05:10:52 PM
It's not a case, for me at least, of refusing to believe in this so-called consensus just because I don't want to.
"So-called"...? What
would you accept as a consensus? 99% of climate scientists? 100%? Your tinfoil hat is showing.
Also, I didn't dismiss a scientist with an opposing viewpoint, I dismissed an article by a paid oil industry shill with a degree in philosophy.
But who said climate science was complete and finished, Shark? As you say yourself, that's not how science works. All we can do is act on our current understanding, we don't stop and wait until all knowledge has been achieved: we have to live at a human scale. If it turns out some unknown factor of Milankovic cycles is the sole or main driver of climate change, then we will adapt our response to that (although I'm not sure how that would look any different - we'll still need to sequester carbon and reduce emissions) But right now is when need to act based on the science we have available.
But yes, reducing consumption is probably the key to everything. But corporations don't sell 'reduction' and governments can't tax it, so for now we do the things that those in power will go along with.
This does seem to boil down to "I am suspicious of Gvts and all their works"
As for, "they have been told to focus on man made heating", well so what? They could just conclude - "no evidence for man made heating" without discussing other causes if thats teh remit they have been given - no conspiracy there.
What are you basing your reluctance to follow the overwhelmingly agreed science - I mean, I am no scientist, but I know how the carbon cycle works and I know theres a lot more carbon in the air (due to our activity) and I can see temperature figures inching up in line with said increase - I frankly don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure theres maybe some connection.
No offence, but I do wonder how your utopia based on the concept that of "people are generally reasonable" as opposed to "people look for things that confirm their bias and excuse their bad behavour/lack of positive action" stands up against your view on this subject, Sharky
Now I might sit there and look at the facts, but the facts lead me back to man made, so why teh reluctance, unless you are cherry picking to suit your own agenda?
Jim, there is a consensus of scientists who accept that climate change is a real phenomenon but this does not mean there's a consensus on its cause. If the IPCC gathers evidence from scientists from a limited pool then their consensus is skewed.
Tordels, those "in power" present the science as settled - or at the very least as a binary choice between "believers" and "deniers." They have to in order to impose their "solutions." This is why people who question it are derided, hounded and marginalised - because questions lead to doubt and doubt undermines their power.
Leigh, that's an entirely fair criticism and I have to accept that it's possible I can't see clearly because of my attitudes to government.
However, is it also possible that those who believe in government are similarly influenced?
Once upon a time the majority of people believed that the sun orbited the Earth simply because the Church told them so. This belief wasn't about cosmology but faith - and, of course, threats. Of course, anthroprogenic climate change and an Earth-centric cosmology are different animals - it doesn't really matter if the Earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the Earth, practically speaking, because it doesn't affect the calendar or harvests, but climate change does have tangible and serious effects and so it matters very much. This being the case, I don't think I can take acc as read just because the powers that shouldn't be (who I admittedly don't trust) say so.
I suppose I would ask that you look at it this way Sharky
You come home to find your bathroom is flooding - you can see the water on the tiled floor, just a surface flood, but clearly not what you would like.
Your taps have been left running - the water isnt demonstrably pouring over the edge of the sink, so would you leave the taps running until the plumber gets here to tell you exactly whats wrong? Would you ask a few more plumbers to come around over the week rather than just accepting what the first plumber told you?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 05:51:58 PM
Jim, there is a consensus of scientists who accept that climate change is a real phenomenon but this does not mean there's a consensus on its cause.
That's wrong. Plain and simple. The 97% consensus referred to is that climate change is man-made.
EDIT: I'm not sure your analogy works, Leigh. It would be more like if 100 plumbers came round to your house, and 97 agreed with each other what the problem was. And then you went with the 3 and watched your house get flooded.
Yeah, meant to make this point too - the scientists who don't think climate change is happening need to look up the definition of "scientist" in one of those big book things. Those who accept it is happening, but donlt put man as a major contributor (if not the sole/biggest factor) are vanishingly small and probably funded by Big Oil.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 24 October, 2018, 06:42:04 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 05:51:58 PM
Jim, there is a consensus of scientists who accept that climate change is a real phenomenon but this does not mean there's a consensus on its cause.
That's wrong. Plain and simple. The 97% consensus referred to is that climate change is man-made.
JBC, iIrc, that 97% figure was from an alarmist Obama speech and based on a study of published scientific papers of which about three quarters expressed no opinion but of the remaining quarter that did express an opinion, 97% agreed with acc. (Taking that from memory so it may be wrong.)
Leigh, all the plumbers might agree that the water is coming out of the taps - the obvious part - but they may not agree on why the water is coming out of the taps. One might blame me for not shutting them off, one might blame perished washers, one might blame a surge in water pressure, another a defective tap. I would, of course, look at the cause myself and go with the plumber most likely to be correct based on my own investigations, regardless of whether his was a majority, minority or middling view. In the meantime, I'd find the stopcock and fetch a mop...
1. The "greenhouse effect" is simple physics that can be recreated easily in a lab - If you increase the amount of Co2, the temperature goes up.
2. We have been vastly increasing the amount of Co2 in our atmosphere for the last couple of centuries
3. The temperature is going up
I get why the oil barons and governments have an interest in denying this, but I really cannot understand why otherwise intelligent people with no ulterior motives cannot see the simple cause-and-effect there.
Is it just CO2, though? How about methane, steam, carbon monoxide, particulates, aluminium and barium from aircraft exhausts and who knows what else from heavy industry? Even if I concede that acc is certain, which I don't, why is it only CO2 that gets the blame when it's such a tiny atmospheric component and naturally absorbed and sequestered by oceans and plant life?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 07:56:34 PM
Is it just CO2, though?
Yes. Yes, it fucking is. This has been explained to you over, and over, and
over a-fucking-gain, every damn time you cycle round to this as your trolling subject
du jour.
No need to get so angry, Jim.
Debate is a waste of time?
Everyone else is defending their position thoughtfully, respectfully and voluntarily. How is that a waste of time?
Quote from: Dandontdare on 24 October, 2018, 07:47:29 PM
really cannot understand why otherwise intelligent people with no ulterior motives cannot see the simple cause-and-effect there.
... because we live in an age where 'truth' is such a variable quantity. Once upon a time it was editorial bias. Now it is 'fake news'. Scientific theories are touted as fact rather than as hypotheses that are largely substantiated by evidence. The nuances of scientific debate do not lend themselves easily to the subtle discourse that science requires. Largely since that requires more time to digest and reflect than many are willing to employ.
Not everything is a conspiracy but right now we live in an age seriously lacking in discernment. Employing anything approaching the standard tin foil hat tropes is likely to result in rejection immediately. Does not matter if the argument makes sense.
Only thing I would say Sharky is that whilst debate is not a waste of time, how it is achieved is important. If it is the case that my response elicits an extreme and emotional response then I would benefit from considering how to frame my point in a way that is likely to make others engage with my ideas rather than what they perceive as my priorities / ideology. I don't see that as debate, rather as debasement.
Mind you, I'm a very drunk optimist.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 08:32:24 PM
Debate is a waste of time?
Everyone else is defending their position thoughtfully, respectfully and voluntarily. How is that a waste of time?
Because you've done this exact same schtick before, on this exact same argument. It's trolling. You're plainly seeing who you can aggravate and I'm sorry I indulged you. I won't make the same mistake again.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 08:32:24 PM
Debate is a waste of time?
Did the Holocaust really happen? Do black people
really need the same rights as the rest of us?
I'm just asking questions. Just trying to start the debate.
So you would shut off the water supply? and try to fix the damage?
But when it comes to global warming, you would assume we have no agency and do nothing to inconvenience yourself? Even though action would benefit us from cleaner air nd better technology, even if we had over estimated our impact? You would rather side with the same vested interests that have brought Government into disrepute? Sharky your ways are very strange and seemingly contrary for contrary's sake
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 07:37:50 PM
JBC, iIrc, that 97% figure was from an alarmist Obama speech and based on a study of published scientific papers of which about three quarters expressed no opinion but of the remaining quarter that did express an opinion, 97% agreed with acc. (Taking that from memory so it may be wrong.)
Leigh, all the plumbers might agree that the water is coming out of the taps - the obvious part - but they may not agree on why the water is coming out of the taps. One might blame me for not shutting them off, one might blame perished washers, one might blame a surge in water pressure, another a defective tap. I would, of course, look at the cause myself and go with the plumber most likely to be correct based on my own investigations, regardless of whether his was a majority, minority or middling view. In the meantime, I'd find the stopcock and fetch a mop...
Climate change is rather more complex than a busted tap. I don't advocate sitting back and doing nothing. There are lots of things we can and should be doing beyond what governments suggest, including but not limited to considering all the evidence and not just data that supports a single or limited course of action and implementing other changes, some of which I outlined earlier.
For hawks who enjoy sending armies off to secure oil supplies, despite simultaneously condemning fossil fuels, how about sending armies off to defend the rain forests from logging companies, thereby helping save the planet's lungs, for example?
For doves, how about diverting some of the resources away from armed conflict towards research into some of Tesla's ideas, for example?
There are countless things that can be done to improve our environment - but waiting for governments and corporations to save us using plans based on what I think is most likely faulty and incomplete data is far from the best way to go.
I believe that criticising received wisdom on this and other topics is a valid contribution to the problems we all face. If it turns out that I am wrong, which I admit is a possibility, then my contribution has been deepening the understanding and resolve of my fellow debaters and maybe even opening up new avenues of possibility. If it turns out that I am right, and despite what some people think I wouldn't be writing these things if I knew them to be false, then my contribution has been to help divert us away from the wrong path and revealing new avenues of possibility.
And yes - I guess I am rather strange!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 24 October, 2018, 07:37:50 PM
Taking that from memory so it may be wrong
It is, and you know it. Sorry, this non-debate is over for me; see y'all on another thread
Sometimes the received wisdom is your own.
Agreed.
Fascinating three-part documentary on the less known aspects of WWI. (https://www.corbettreport.com/wwi/)
I haven't watched this, but when I saw the 'conspiracy to start WW1' tag I sighed in exasperation. It was an uncoordinated shitshow that got massively out of control very quickly, and there are a century's worth of academics and historians to back that up.
Or are we Michael Gove-ing the experts again?
Just try the first part. You don't have to believe it but it is interesting.
How far into the third episode, entitled New World Order, do you have to go before you learn it was the evil 'bankers' (i.e. the Jews), 'Zionists' (i.e. the Jews) or 'Rothchilds' (yep, still the Jews) what done it all?
Why on Earth would you assume it was "the Jews"?
The comments are filled with ((())), an alt-right code for Jewish doxing. Bankers and Zionists, again, weak sayce coding for Anti-Semitic conspiracy loons.
Even when it was the bears, I knew it was them.
Having skimmed through the script, the first thing I noticed was that three people decided to start World War 1, then went ahead and did it.
That's the kind of "can do" spirit this country is sorely lacking. Feckless Millenials with their social medias and avocados could learn something from those three.
I bet they weren't micro managers, that's what's wrong with this country now. Did they write any books on their can-do attitude?
Amazing what can be achieved when you don't listen to experts. It could have taken decades to introduce systems of industrialised killing if the maverick patriots of August 1914 had been constrained by Health & Safety regulations imposed by unelected eurocrats.
These days you'd need to have a Diversity Officer before you could even invade Belgium.
And the guy who threw the bomb at the Archduke's car had obviously received zero training seeing as how he finished up blasting the wrong vehicle. Bloody Serbs can't even start a war properly.
(https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Visualizing-U.S.-Debt-in-2023.jpg)
Do you think anyone would notice if one of those smaller bundles happened to go missing?
I mean that guy next to the $1million stack has his back to us.
Just saying.
On September 10, 2001 (great timing, btw), then U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disclosed that his department was unable to account for roughly $2.3 trillion - so yeah, have at it!
Your Guide to 5th-Generation Warfare (https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/your-guide-to-5th-generation-warfare#play).
*WARNING* Alternative media.
As in alternative to well written and presented?
Is there an alternative to peer reviewing? Turns out, if you want quality journalism, then no.
While we are all breathlessly watching an old reprobate, one of the world's most famous apex parasites, be fitted with a gold hat we should all loyally say, "I swear that I will pay true allegiance to your majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God."
Yeah, right.
Dream on, Charlie.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 April, 2023, 07:44:44 PMWhile we are all breathlessly watching an old reprobate, one of the world's most famous apex parasites, be fitted with a gold hat we should all loyally say, "I swear that I will pay true allegiance to your majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God."
Yeah, right.
Dream on, Charlie.
I don't always agree wholeheartedly with you, Sharky, but I'm with you all the way on this one. Easy for me to say, of course, being from a different country and not having a monarch, but the idea of someone being born to rule just feels abhorrent to me.
Also, wasn't he killed years ago by that hippy in
Purgatory?
Quote from: The Irish Times back when all that shite about Harry and Meghan was kicking offHaving a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who's really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it's like having a neighbour who's really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown. Beyond this, it's the stuff of children's stories. Having a queen as head of state is like having a pirate or a mermaid or Ewok as head of state. What's the logic? Bees have queens, but the queen bee lays all of the eggs in the hive. The queen of the Britons has laid just four British eggs, and one of those is the sweatless creep Prince Andrew, so it's hardly deserving of applause. (https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/harry-and-meghan-the-union-of-two-great-houses-the-windsors-and-the-celebrities-is-complete-1.4504502)
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 30 April, 2023, 09:49:15 PMthe idea of someone being born to rule just feels abhorrent to me.
That's all well and good, but can the touch of President Michael D. Higgins cure scrofula?
Quote from: JWare on 30 April, 2023, 11:11:35 PMQuote from: JayzusB.Christ on 30 April, 2023, 09:49:15 PMthe idea of someone being born to rule just feels abhorrent to me.
That's all well and good, but can the touch of President Michael D. Higgins cure scrofula?
I don't know about that, but the touch of Prince Andrew can probably cure you of mental wellness.
Quote from: JWare on 30 April, 2023, 11:11:35 PMQuote from: JayzusB.Christ on 30 April, 2023, 09:49:15 PMthe idea of someone being born to rule just feels abhorrent to me.
That's all well and good, but can the touch of President Michael D. Higgins cure scrofula?
You've just reminded me that I met him once in Bray. He definitely made me feel taller than I am.
Happy May Day, comrades.
Ni dieu ni maître.
I've gone the Woodward route for the last couple of decades, and sought out a fire-burning pseudo-pagan piss-up for May Day wherever possible. Haven't managed it this year though, so it's cans in the garden for me.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 01 May, 2023, 12:54:43 AMI've gone the Woodward route
I sometimes re-watch an episode or two from the Equalizer boxset also.
:P
In other Chuck Windsor news, he doesn't like slavery and doesn't hate other nationalities and religions. So he's 'woke' apparently, because not being a bigot is somehow bad.
https://www.thejournal.ie/charles-king-coronation-6051539-May2023/ (https://www.thejournal.ie/charles-king-coronation-6051539-May2023/)
He has asked us to swear allegiance to him and his descendants, so - y'know - a little bit power mad, there.
I think the best I can say about that is that he's only *asking*.
NewsThump says "Nation invited to swear allegiance to the King RSVPs 'F**k No'"
Quote from: Credo! on 01 May, 2023, 05:38:22 PMHe has asked us to swear allegiance to him and his descendants, so - y'know - a little bit power mad, there.
The most contentious clause in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was that government employees in the newly created Irish Free State had to take an oath of allegiance to Chucky Three's great-grandad.
My own grandad was disinclined to take such an oath, which resulted in jail time and a somewhat stalled career.
(Don't we need a dedicated Coronation thread? There's a world of fun just waiting to be had.)
"In 1935, the Congress of American Writers was held in New York City, followed by another two years later. They called on 'the hundreds of poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, short story writers and journalists' to discuss the 'rapid crumbling of capitalism' and the beckoning of another war. They were electric events which, according to one account, were attended by 3,500 members of the public with more than a thousand turned away.
"Arthur Miller, Myra Page, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett warned that fascism was rising, often disguised, and the responsibility lay with writers and journalists to speak out. Telegrams of support from Thomas Mann, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, C Day Lewis, Upton Sinclair and Albert Einstein were read out.
"The journalist and novelist Martha Gellhorn spoke up for the homeless and unemployed, and 'all of us under the shadow of violent great power'.
"Martha, who became a close friend, told me later over her customary glass of Famous Grouse and soda: 'The responsibility I felt as a journalist was immense. I had witnessed the injustices and suffering delivered by the Depression, and I knew, we all knew, what was coming if silences were not broken.'
"Her words echo across the silences today: they are silences filled with a consensus of propaganda that contaminates almost everything we read, see and hear. Let me give you one example:
"On 7 March, the two oldest newspapers in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, published several pages on 'the looming threat' of China. They coloured the Pacific Ocean red. Chinese eyes were martial, on the march and menacing. The Yellow Peril was about to fall down as if by the weight of gravity..."
Full article: John Pilger on the Coming War. Speak Up, Now (https://www.globalresearch.ca/john-pilger-coming-war-speak-up-now/5817726).
Oh boy, must be Tankie Tuesday.
Quote from: JWare on 01 May, 2023, 05:56:04 PMQuote from: Credo! on 01 May, 2023, 05:38:22 PMHe has asked us to swear allegiance to him and his descendants, so - y'know - a little bit power mad, there.
The most contentious clause in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was that government employees in the newly created Irish Free State had to take an oath of allegiance to Chucky Three's great-grandad.
My own grandad was disinclined to take such an oath, which resulted in jail time and a somewhat stalled career.
(Don't we need a dedicated Coronation thread? There's a world of fun just waiting to be had.)
Lady Victoria Hervey says she would have all anti-monarchist protesters put in jail before the coronation. On GBeebies, like you couldn't guess.
Lady Victoria Hervey? Lady Wanktoria Hervey more like.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 02 May, 2023, 04:08:17 PMLady Victoria Hervey? Lady Wanktoria Hervey more like.
Another Irish rogue who needs to be taught his place!
Seize him!
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 02 May, 2023, 04:08:17 PMLady Victoria Hervey says she would have all anti-monarchist protesters put in jail before the coronation. On GBeebies, like you couldn't guess.
Hitler's plans for a successful invasion of Great Britain included reinstalling the Nazi sympathiser Edward VIII as a puppet monarch to rule on his behalf. Hervey's comments give a glimpse into what life under such a regime would have been like.
And so the thread is elegantly returned to where it belongs: among shadowy ruling cabals, alternate history, and dastardly Nazi schemes.
Neatly done, Nxylas.
(oh yeah – and to add an extra layer of villainy, Hitler's preferred candidate for collaborationist PM was Lloyd George, the Welsh Wizard himself)
As for Chucky Three and his Magical Hat, I really do think it deserves a thread of its own. I'd start it myself, but given that I'm a base foreigner whose forebears wilfully shunned the radiance bestowed by monarchy, you might think I was taking the piss.
Members of both Houses of Parliament are required by law to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown. MPs cannot take their seat, speak in debates, vote or receive a salary until taking the oath or affirmation. They could also be fined £500 and have their seat declared vacant "as if they were dead" if they attempted to do so.
The wording of the oath comes from the Promissory Oaths Act 1868. The form and manner of giving the oath are set out in the Oaths Act 1978. MPs take the oath by holding the sacred text in their uplifted hand and saying the words of the oath: "I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God."
You vote for them, but their loyalty is not to you. For a crown that professes not to interfere with parliamentary business, this is pretty heavy-handed interference.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 02 May, 2023, 06:41:40 PMMembers of both Houses of Parliament are required by law to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown. MPs cannot take their seat, speak in debates, vote or receive a salary until taking the oath or affirmation.
This often cited as the reason for Sinn Féin's abstention policy. The other reason being they don't think British people should be influencing Irish affairs so it would be a bit hypocritical if they did vice versa.
Quote from: JWare on 02 May, 2023, 05:54:22 PMAs for Chucky Three and his Magical Hat, I really do think it deserves a thread of its own. I'd start it myself, but given that I'm a base foreigner whose forebears wilfully shunned the radiance bestowed by monarchy, you might think I was taking the piss.
A bit of respect from the colonies at last!
Quote from: JWare on 01 May, 2023, 05:56:04 PMThe most contentious clause in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was that government employees in the newly created Irish Free State had to take an oath of allegiance to Chucky Three's great-grandad.
My own grandad was disinclined to take such an oath, which resulted in jail time and a somewhat stalled career.
Of course having previously removed the oath of allegiance in 1932, and never one to miss an opportunity,
de Valera futher dismantled the Free State Constitution and Anglo-Irish Treaty by using the opportunity of political delay presented by the abdication of King Edward (and the recently passed Statute of Westminster 1931) to pass legislation that removed the monarchy from the internal affairs of the Free State. The next year a new
Constitution of Ireland, with a President, was approved by the people. Further cemented in 1949 with the Republic removing the king from all external affairs and head of state.
A great example of using the constitutional monarchy of empire against itself.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 02 May, 2023, 04:08:17 PMLady Victoria Hervey says she would have all anti-monarchist protesters put in jail before the coronation. On GBeebies, like you couldn't guess.
Never heard of them.
Quote from: LadyVictoriaHerveyIt's so bad being homeless in winter. They should go somewhere warm like the Caribbean where they can eat fresh fish all day."
Oh.
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 03 May, 2023, 02:57:09 PMQuote from: JWare on 01 May, 2023, 05:56:04 PMMy own grandad was disinclined to take such an oath, which resulted in jail time and a somewhat stalled career.
Of course having previously removed the oath of allegiance in 1932, and never one to miss an opportunity, de Valera futher dismantled the Free State Constitution and Anglo-Irish Treaty
...By which time Grandad had a good job with the ESB, so that's alright then. As a lifelong de Valera fanboy, his youthful troubles during the Civil War stood him in good stead, careerwise.
It amazes me how that generation of ultra-respectable churchgoing men and women who tut-tutted about the immoral youth of the 1970s almost all had prison records for offences against the state.
If they were still with us they'd be railing against King Charles – not because of ancient wrongs done in his ancestors' name, but because he's
divorced, the shameless so-and-so.
Quote from: JWare on 03 May, 2023, 03:34:26 PM...By which time Grandad had a good job with the ESB, so that's alright then. As a lifelong de Valera fanboy, his youthful troubles during the Civil War stood him in good stead, careerwise.
And Ireland had a Latin-American President before the US.
At least Charlie and his heirs have helped Disney in their war against Obergruppenfuehrer DeSantis Disney v DeSantis dispute hinges on clause referencing King Charles III (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/30/disney-ron-desantis-florida-dont-say-gay)
Salvaging scrap helped wedding couple save thousands (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-65543308)
Cost of living: 'I worry about money more than my uni assignments' (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-65301400)
Cost of living: Large rent rise causes 66-year-old to live in a van (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-kent-65274902)
Thousands of children sharing beds due to overcrowding (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65312086)
Cost of living: Pet owner would 'rather starve' to feed cats (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-65299310)
What is the UK inflation rate and why is the cost of living rising? (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12196322)
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSonNccJaVfHVCYRdODGOOHo5TcqC5-gOHYlA&usqp=CAU)
Never not at it. (https://arethebritsatitagain.org/)
Official Problem - People don't have enough money.
Official Reaction - People need more money.
Official Solutions - CBDCs and Social Credit.
Unofficial Problem - Rampant money creation reduces the value of money.
Unofficial Reaction - Devalued money makes everything appear more expensive.
Unofficial Solutions - Decentralized money creation, decentralized digital currencies, more Austrian Economics solutions, a ban on planned obsolescence, any politician losing an election to be shot*.
*Not really a serious solution, but we can all dream...
Crypto currencies are, of course, famous for being stable and dependable, and have never once crashed.
Not a single time.
Supplanting a systemic issue with an similarly ineffective, yet more esoteric alternative, doesn't really feel like addressing the issue at all.
Okay, say you're right about crypto - that's only part of the solution. Decentralizing money creation or, rather, ending the global monopoly enjoyed by a vanishingly few private banks and returning the mechanism to public hands would be a massive first step (which would also prevent these private interests from undermining crypto, thereby increasing its stability) and, I say, a vital first step towards economic stability and the long-term goal of doing away with money altogether or at least as much as possible.
Planned obsolescence must also be done away with as it is unbelievably wasteful and polluting.
What would some of your solutions be?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 May, 2023, 10:11:38 AMDecentralizing money creation or, rather, ending the global monopoly enjoyed by a vanishingly few private banks and returning the mechanism to public hands would be a massive first step (which would also prevent these private interests from undermining crypto, thereby increasing its stability) and, I say, a vital first step towards economic stability and the long-term goal of doing away with money altogether or at least as much as possible.
Planned obsolescence must also be done away with as it is unbelievably wasteful and polluting.
This would honestly be the sum of my own solutions, and to which we can agree wholeheartedly.
Just scrap crypto entirely, it's a symptom of the diseased economic system itself not a solution to it and is inherently designed to be pumped-and-dumped.
Okay. The blockchain is, however, good for other things as well such as registering cars, property, etc. I agree that crypto is still money, and in my view money is something we really should be looking to retire, but so long as we insist on needing money crypto is as good as anything. It's also safer than banks, which are again teetering on the edge of collapse as we speak.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 May, 2023, 12:24:15 PMIt's also safer than banks, which are again teetering on the edge of collapse as we speak.
Profoundly untrue, afraid to say. (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/13/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-charged-sec-crypto-exchange)
If we're also coming from an angle of becoming more environmentally sustainable as a species (which is unanimously a good thing, which unfortunately seems to be becoming a controversial take) then the simple running costs and minting of crypto has a terrible environmental impact. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bitcoin-could-rival-beef-or-crude-oil-in-environmental-impact-180980877/)
Thanks - I'll look into those links when I get some spare time.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 May, 2023, 05:39:13 PMThanks - I'll look into those links when I get some spare time.
No... you won't.
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 13 May, 2023, 11:15:09 PMQuote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 May, 2023, 05:39:13 PMThanks - I'll look into those links when I get some spare time.
No... you won't.
(https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExNGYyNDBjYjA2Y2MwODE3NjgyYzk3NDVlZTg4ZGNmNTk0NjBjMGRmNyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZzX2dpZklkJmN0PWc/l2JJKs3I69qfaQleE/giphy.gif)
I haven't had time to go deep into this FTX thing so far because it's quite complicated. However, according to The Grauniad (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/13/ftx-customers-funds-recovered-cryptocurrency-exchange), as of April 13th FTX has recovered $7.3bn (£5.8bn) of customer funds, of which the biggest sum has been in "category A crypto" tokens. I can't be sure, of course, but until I can find out more I assume that the crypto tokens were more easily recovered due to the nature of the blockchain which (as I'm sure you know) records every transaction in millions of widely dispersed and separate ledgers. In order for such a massive fraud to be perpetrated by a bank only a handful of ledgers would have to be altered but in crypto it would involve altering literally millions of ledgers all around the world, and even then the alterations would leave fairly blatant concomitant errors in previous and subsequent blocks.
So, until I know more I'm still of the mind that legitimate cryptocurrencies are indeed safer than banks.
I have still to read the scientific paper quoted by the Smithsonian Magazine in the second link but the first thing that jumps out at me is that crypto mining is being compared to the beef or crude oil industries instead of the traditional banking system - which would be the obvious comparison to make.
not looking good for crypto in the US (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/13/techscape-us-sec-crypto-lawsuits-uk-rishi-sunak)
Quote from: Dandontdare on 13 June, 2023, 09:11:17 PMnot looking good for crypto in the US (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/13/techscape-us-sec-crypto-lawsuits-uk-rishi-sunak)
Interesting.
My take on this is that it's not cryptocurrencies per-se that are at fault here but the corrupt financial institutions trying to profit from them, which sounds all too familiar. Although neither you nor the article directly argues that cryptocurrencies are at fault, this seems to be the impression that is trying to be made. This could be said of virtually anything, blaming corporate or even personal greed on the currency itself - which is correct, to a certain extent - so as to say that everyone from pickpockets to bank robbers to tax-collectors to corrupt bankers only broke the law because of the nature of money.
I am not a fan of any form of money, finding it to be a fundamentally toxic element in our world's civilizations, but crypto at least has anonymity going in its favour. However, all currencies are fundamentally unsound - especially since 1971(?) when the most important method of monetary control was swept away following the abandonment of the gold standard.
Once humanity finally leaves behind our current primitive mindsets and methods, money will be seen for what it actually was - a mechanism for social, economic, and philosophical control.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 June, 2023, 03:07:34 PMOnce humanity finally leaves behind our current primitive mindsets and methods, money will be seen for what it actually was - a mechanism for social, economic, and philosophical control.
I think most people realise this already. Most people come to this conclusion this once they notice they have to do things that don't benefit themselves to survive. Like getting a job or whatever.
I think crypto-currency is flawed due to the energy intensive nature of mining/producing it.
It seems to me that using up finite resources to produce currency makes things more expensive and devalues the currency?
This Crypto Currency issue seems to talk to the heart of the circular arguments we end up having regarding the Honourable Sharks thinking
System A doesnt work because humans are awful, exploit it and misuse it for their own gains
System B on the other hand, would work much better because humans are fundamentally good and dont look to exploit systems.
Obviously, I take some systems might be better at encouraging co-operation and avoiding coercion, which is what I take from Shark's outlook, but as this cryptocurrency example would seem to show is that there's no system that will self regulate for the benefit of all its users
Money is just a sophisticated method of barter. If it was magically done away with, I'd have to swap something else for some cereal and milk. Which would be an enormous pain in the arse. So, someone would quickly invent money. And here we all are.
Quote from: Definitely Not Mister Pops on 16 June, 2023, 11:00:29 PMIt seems to me that using up finite resources to produce currency makes things more expensive and devalues the currency?
I think that's partially true. All currencies use up resources. "Paper" money and coins also use up a lot of resources, not only in initial materials and printing costs but in continuing fuel also. I'd imagine that the fuel and manpower costs incurred through the constant transportation of cash from one institution to another throughout the world is considerable. Then there are peripheral costs such as safes, armoured vehicles, physical bank buildings with all the concomitant energy costs, and so on. I'm confident that these factors play a significant role in the global banking industry's plans to introduce CBDCs of their own.
The biggest factor in devaluing currency is, as with most things, overproduction. Our current currencies are based on debt, which can be pushed to practically infinite levels. (The more money produced, the less it's worth. The less it's worth, the more it's needed. The more is needed, the more is produced. The more is produced, the less it's worth, and so on in an eternal vicious circle - the true engine of inflation.) Current global debt levels are around 305 trillion dollars, which is due to mismanagement rather than production costs, and is causing incalculable harm and misery around the globe.
Quote from: Leigh S on 16 June, 2023, 11:20:48 PMObviously, I take some systems might be better at encouraging co-operation and avoiding coercion, which is what I take from Shark's outlook, but as this cryptocurrency example would seem to show is that there's no system that will self regulate for the benefit of all its users
I agree with this entirely.
In my view, the trick is to come up with a system that can't be manipulated or abused so easily (as a step along the road to doing away with money altogether). In this area alone crypto is a step in the right direction due to the inbuilt blockchain ledger.
Of course, it doesn't really matter what the unit of exchange happens to be. I think it's the institutions that monopolize and manipulate currencies for their own benefit which are at the core of the problem.
The House Oversight's National Security Subcommittee hears from three witnesses, including a former Navy commanding officer, with firsthand knowledge of how the government has handled reports of UFO sightings. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgoul4vyDM)
What's going on here, and why now?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 08 May, 2023, 09:17:24 PMWhen I was a teenager I worked on a beetroot farm in the summer holidays with a bunch of rough blokes. One overcast afternoon, we spotted a bright white light in the sky.
You've got to get to Washington and testify before that committee, Sharky!
They have to listen to your story!
The aliens are coming for our Earth beetroot!
(Sorry – I didn't follow the link you just posted, but I never forget a good UFO/beetroot close encounter story and I jumped at this chance to recall it.)
:lol:
They can feckin' well have it.
Damn right they can. I can't stand beetroot after working there. I used to come home looking like an extra from The Walking Dead.
9/11 and "The Unspeakable": Award Winning Actor William Hurt: "It took me a long time to face what I knew to be true about 9/11" (https://www.globalresearch.ca/it-took-long-time-face-what-knew-true-about-911/5761325)
William Hurt: actor, wife-beater, structural engineer. Hear him!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chossudovsky
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 09 September, 2023, 10:40:16 AM9/11 and "The Unspeakable": Award Winning Actor William Hurt: "It took me a long time to face what I knew to be true about 9/11" (https://www.globalresearch.ca/it-took-long-time-face-what-knew-true-about-911/5761325)
Good start there, getting the year of William Hurt's death wrong.
Seeing Shark post something in the conspiracy thread is honestly more of an adrenaline rush than it ought to be, guaranteed giggles every time.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 09 September, 2023, 06:42:32 PMQuote from: The Legendary Shark on 09 September, 2023, 10:40:16 AM9/11 and "The Unspeakable": Award Winning Actor William Hurt: "It took me a long time to face what I knew to be true about 9/11" (https://www.globalresearch.ca/it-took-long-time-face-what-knew-true-about-911/5761325)
Good start there, getting the year of William Hurt's death wrong.
This is how I found out that William Hurt is dead.
Truly, I cannot handle the truth.
Impressive that a dead person can see the truth ffs get a grip
You can get AI to write limericks:
QuoteIn the realm of conspiracies so grand,
Some say, 9/11 was all planned.
William Hurt, they claim,
Knew the whole twisted game,
But evidence slips through their hand.
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 09 September, 2023, 09:15:11 PMYou can get AI to write limericks:
QuoteIn the realm of conspiracies so grand,
Some say, 9/11 was all planned.
William Hurt, they claim,
Knew the whole twisted game,
But evidence slips through their hand.
Do a haiku
Peace, War, and 9/11. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBnJBocjxVM)
Dr. Graeme MacQueen: Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies, Professor of Religious Studies [retired], structural engineer. Hear him!
"And now I have become cringe, the destroyer of reputations."
-The Bh'ugg'ad Git'a, Verse 32
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 12 September, 2023, 06:56:22 PMDr. Graeme MacQueen: Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies, Professor of Religious Studies [retired], structural engineer. Hear him!
Also co-editor of 'the Journal of 9/11 Studies''
The long winter nights must just have flown by for Captain Whacko here.
A lot of cynicism here, but when I recreated the Twin Towers *event* using Giant Jenga bricks (because, of course, normal Jenga would not be a good comparison), there was just no way! No way that flying a Matchbox Skybusters 767 into the side of the Jenga North Tower and then sprinkling some paraffin on there resulted in the sort of collapse seen.
Something something international banking conspiracy...
Lacking a mail-order rifle, I throw stones at guys called Kennedy from an upper-storey window.
Lacking a passer-by named Kennedy, I'll settle for guys with great hair and/or glamorous wives.
Doesn't matter – I miss almost every time.
And that proves it was the Cuban CIA Mafia.
I know a fella called Ken and a fella named Eddy if that's any use?
Quote from: Definitely Not Mister Pops on 12 September, 2023, 11:40:20 PMI know a fella called Ken and a fella named Eddy
Coincidence?
I don't think so.
(https://i.imgur.com/h6rb23F.png)
Believe!
Russell Brand (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66831593) - right-wing propagandist, verbal idiot savant, sex pest: hear him!
(https://media.tenor.com/oF-A79g46G8AAAAC/mild-shock-shocked.gif)
He's
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 17 September, 2023, 01:22:14 AMRussell Brand (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66831593) - right-wing propagandist, verbal idiot savant, sex pest: hear him!
He's swung to the right, has he? I'd totally lost track of him, but to be fair the last time I saw him on telly he was opposing Farage's racist bolloxology.
Although before that he was telling everyone not to vote. Meanwhile the types who didn't listen to him very much did vote, and in came the new far-right incarnation of the Tories, and out went EU membership.
The mans been a huckster and self anointed self-help-guru for years now. Kind of surprised news outlets are treating this as if it where groundbreaking, I assumed everyone knew he was a massive creep already.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 17 September, 2023, 09:02:50 AMQuote from: Funt Solo [R] on 17 September, 2023, 01:22:14 AMRussell Brand (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66831593) - right-wing propagandist, verbal idiot savant, sex pest: hear him!
He's swung to the right, has he? I'd totally lost track of him, but to be fair the last time I saw him on telly he was opposing Farage's racist bolloxology.
Although before that he was telling everyone not to vote.
For me, he's always come across as a charismatic moron who swallowed a Shakespearean dictionary. Quite convincing in the moment, but once you take away the flowery language you find his patter's shite, but he wears nice shirts.
The "don't vote" stuff was circa 2013 - and Brand keeps reinventing himself. As far as his politics go, I'd say he's just a messianic (his avatar has a halo) opportunist that rides waves. Right now, his YouTube channel (which seems to be one of his key money-spinners) positions itself (and therefore himself, as its mouthpiece) as an anti-media, right-wing, populist platform.
Look at the most recent few videos and you find him questioning 9/11, worrying about Bill Gates, slinging mud at Obama, worshiping Trump, attacking Kamala Harris, gently stroking Tucker Carlson, anti-vaxxing and platforming the Incel Emperor (Jordan Peterson). It's like pr0n for Tin Foil Hatters.
I don't think he believes anything he says - but it plays well to his viewers (average half a million per video), which translates into $$$.
---
As for being surprised or not at yesterday's news story - I was. From my perspective (and I mostly avoided his output over the years), he seemed like a charismatic lothario. I assumed that a) he'd be "beating them off with a shitty stick" and b) he'd be a relatively good lover.
Turns out he's (allegedly) a rapist who's fond of sexual assault, that enjoys spitting on women and flashing his colleagues. So - yep - I am surprised. (Partly, this may be due to my job - if I behaved anything like he has at work, I'd get immediately sacked and would have to find a new career.)
Naturally, he's now screaming that the establishment are out to get him - but it would seem like the reality is that some investigative journalists have worked very hard to expose the dark side of his powerful career.
The ravings in the Twitter-sphere really are something else on this issue. I've never been a major fan of the guy and as far as the allegations are concerned, my preference would be for them to be properly dealt with in a court of law.
At the end of the day though we know why that hasn't happened. Aside from the most cynical side of this with journalists and their employers wanting to sell their wares, the judicial system in this country is pretty much guaranteed of fail the victims.
For me this is the real scandal that the whole sordid affair highlights. The percentage of sexual assaults that get anywhere near prosecution is insanely small. Then there is the way in which victims are effectively re-traumatised in the proceedings. From the outset with the police through to the way assailants can effectively attack their victims again under the pretence of 'cross-examination.' The argument that rape has effectively been decriminalised is absolutely spot on.
When you think about it the implications are terrifying. It effectively means that for every registered sex-offender out there, there are potentially scores more that haven't been identified. When you get into the world of entertainment or politics it seems like it is safe to assume that anyone who wields power / influence is likely to be a predator. We really do seem to be living in disturbing times.
There's something that's always stuck in my mind about Russell Brand. A few months before the whole "Sachsgate" thing in 2008, Brand made a prank call to an emergency rape phoneline, setup by police in response to a series of attacks in underpasses local to the venue Brand was performing in at the time.
Not only was it difficult for me to comprehend why anyone would think that was an appropriate thing to do, but it occurred to me that it likely wasn't even a spur of the moment thing, because he would had to have taken note of the number at some point beforehand.
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 17 September, 2023, 03:59:17 PMAs for being surprised or not at yesterday's news story - I was. From my perspective (and I mostly avoided his output over the years), he seemed like a charismatic lothario. I assumed that a) he'd be "beating them off with a shitty stick" and b) he'd be a relatively good lover.
Turns out he's (allegedly) a rapist who's fond of sexual assault, that enjoys spitting on women and flashing his colleagues. So - yep - I am surprised. (Partly, this may be due to my job - if I behaved anything like he has at work, I'd get immediately sacked and would have to find a new career.)
I was pretty surprised too. I remember when the Rolf Harris thing came out (which disturbed me profoundly, far more than the Savile semi-revelations), Brand was talking about how it was like someone graffitiing over your childhood memories, and I thought that was a very good description. Turns out he is (ALLEGEDLY) a massive hypocrite.
Quote from: M.I.K. on 17 September, 2023, 06:02:26 PMThere's something that's always stuck in my mind about Russell Brand. A few months before the whole "Sachsgate" thing in 2008, Brand made a prank call to an emergency rape phoneline, setup by police in response to a series of attacks in underpasses local to the venue Brand was performing in at the time.
beforehand.
Wow. Not cool at all. I liked his stuff at the time - went to see him once, in fact - but yeah, he's just another gobshitey-wobshitey and always has been, it seems. Of course, we live in times when a proven rapist may soon be the most powerful person in the world, so who the fuck knows where people's minds are at.
Well, if anything positive comes out of things like this it should be that we (as a society) recognize that there's a problem (that Brand, actually, isn't all that much of an aberration) with a system that supports the sort of behavior he has engaged in.
*Reportedly, a BBC car picked the 16-year old up from school and drove her to his house, when he was 30. And his management persuaded him not to go out in public with her. It may have been strictly legal, but it's not a good look for the BBC, and it's obvious the management team wanted to hide the relationship.
Anyway, in context, this is now ... something else entirely:
(https://i.imgur.com/Q2GfHmo.png)
You should watch the C4 documentary. He was surrounded by enablers, such as assistants who (allegedly) procured the contact details of Brand's choice of audience members for him and daren't refuse for fear of losing their jobs. At one point, there's a clip of Brand saying something like, "you can be as mad as you want so long as some people are making money out of you."
Whether the allegations are true or not, and I'd prefer to wait and see on that question, this atmosphere of entitlement surrounding the whole entertainment industry (amongst others) is disgusting. Brand is just the small tip of a very large iceberg. As I've said before, there is something terribly dark hidden in the depths of our society that needs illuminating with urgency.
Meanwhile, as we're all focused on this story, the official death toll in Maui stands at 96 (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12403503/Lahaina-Maui-mobile-morgue-refrigerated-bodies-search-victims.html), while it seems that nearly 1,000 (https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/09/fires-in-maui-school-enrollment-missing-kids/70798107007/) children are missing from schools. Where are all these children? Why isn't this question getting the same attention?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 19 September, 2023, 07:35:48 AMit seems that nearly 1,000 (https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/09/fires-in-maui-school-enrollment-missing-kids/70798107007/) children are missing from schools. Where are all these children? Why isn't this question getting the same attention?
Because it's not true (according to the same site fact-checking the wild, unsubstantiated rumors it published only a few days before):
(https://i.imgur.com/RMRqj95.png)
(School enrollment being down is not the same as "missing children". It's a bit like panicking about a zombie apocalypse because the high street's a bit quiet today.)
Good to hear you're not going to jump to conclusions based on incomplete evidence, though.
(https://www.udrop.com/cache/plugins/filepreviewer/1158144/b7f87e8edc0e733aae9487ad9447d5a4ca2f9ad4f61b588951c4933bfafc694f/1100x800_cropped.jpg) (https://boe.hawaii.gov/Meetings/Notices/Meeting%20Material%20Library/GBM_08242023_Report%20on%20Report%20of%20the%20Superintendent.pdf)
(https://www.udrop.com/cache/plugins/filepreviewer/1158145/5877cca086d45cb80574a25af8a44bd386d270864ccd7f195825019fcaee9f00/1100x800_cropped.jpg) (https://boe.hawaii.gov/Meetings/Notices/Meeting%20Material%20Library/Special_09072023_Report%20on%20Report%20of%20the%20Superintendent.pdf)
(https://www.udrop.com/cache/plugins/filepreviewer/1158147/b03a6b81a379f64d5041e7bf47a066d71ba31395ad3e0376c2ae0659e48b4d8b/1100x800_cropped.jpg)
(September 15th). (https://www.hawaiipublicschools.org/ConnectWithUs/MediaRoom/PressReleases/Pages/maui-school-closures.aspx)
You are correct, it seems, according to official figures the number is - thankfully - coming down.
I am intrigued to know how me asking where these children are indicates "jumping to conclusions." I hope the remaining number of unaccounted for children drops even further, preferably to zero. 191, though, is still 191 too many as I hope you'll agree. And of course enrolment being down doesn't mean anything other than that a number of children are currently missing from the records, but to intimate that you know the figures are nothing at all to worry or be concerned about is, I feel, an odd position for a teacher to take. If first 2,025, and then 1,208, and finally 191 students didn't turn up at your local schools following a horrendous disaster, wouldn't you want to know where they were, even if only to be assured they're at least still alive?
Human-induced climate change (HICC) is the probable cause of the tragic extreme weather event in Maui that has left (according to the FBI) 66 people unaccounted for (one being a minor).
So, there are two points:
- it's not 1000 (your first claim), or 191 (your second), but 1. I'm sure you will double-down on that, though.
- the ultimate threat (HICC) is something you don't believe in.
But it was fun that you blithely accused me of not being worried about the plight of children. I could imagine a baddy character in a children's book doing that. Let's call him Willy Weasel. Can you picture him?
The 191 isn't my claim, it's the latest number from the Maui authorities, posted 7 days after the FBI's list (http://www.mauipolice.com/uploads/1/3/1/2/131209824/9-8-2023_fbi_list_of_unaccounted_to_maui_pd.pdf) was issued. Did the FBI not pass on details (names, locations, phone numbers, emails, etc.) of the people they've traced to the Maui authorities in order to at least put islanders' minds at rest? Possible, I guess, given governmental inefficiencies. It's certainly more likely that people are missing after a massive fire that actually happened than in some fantasy "zombie apocalypse" that exists only in your own mind.
And sure, the "nearly 1,000" number does appear to be inaccurate but was based on more recent official documentation. Are we to believe that no official numbers are to be believed? Or only some numbers? Or just the ones you KNOW are correct? Situations evolve, numbers change. Even the 191 might (hopefully) be wrong. I even hope the FBI's 1 is a mistake.
You care less about trying to understand an evolving situation than you do about spewing out your hatred of me and perspectives you don't like, which was what your original Russel Brand post was about. You clearly wanted to use the Brand story to tar everyone who doesn't agree with you, or who shares a different worldview, with the same "bad apple" brush - your trademark ad-hominem nonsense.
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 19 September, 2023, 07:04:23 PMI could imagine a baddy character in a children's book doing that. Let's call him Willy Weasel. Can you picture him?
Yep - (https://www.udrop.com/cache/plugins/filepreviewer/1158243/86e0241d57fb0bcad9dc99654c811154139ddb9683ba1ce0d8add9dbaba72354/160x134_middle.jpg)
Okay. Enough of this.
I asked you once in p.m. and now I ask you in public - let us stop this petty (on both our parts) bickering, it's beneath us both.
Is it petty to post news about Russell Brand and what seems to be a litany of sexual assaults? Aren't you interested in knowing the truth about someone who purports to be exposing hypocrisies in the world? Isn't the exposing of truths what this thread is for?
Is it petty to point out the difference between disaster relief and conspiracy theories? Just to be clear - Maui is a shit-show because of an extreme climate event. All this bollocks about mysteriously missing kids is just bollocks. Two minutes of research outside of nutso-land will throw up the truth of the matter: people can't register at burnt down schools and are home-schooling more than they did before everything got burnt to fuck.
Is it petty to suggest that human-induced climate change is a bigger problem than some fucked up fever dream about stolen kiddos?
I really am trying to focus on the issues you raise - and not on you the person. You see this as me "having a go at you", but I'm not - I'm having a go at your arguments because they're nonsense. Not you. Your arguments.
Shark:
(https://media.tenor.com/Z_Eb_gATTkQAAAAd/wont-somebody-please-think-of-the-children-think-of-the-children.gif)
Funt:
(https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls_2x.png)
I'd hold my hands up to that if I wasn't too busy typing.
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 09 September, 2023, 04:45:41 PMWilliam Hurt: actor, wife-beater, structural engineer. Hear him!
Ad-hominem attack to avoid dealing with the film he produced.
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 12 September, 2023, 06:56:22 PMDr. Graeme MacQueen: Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies, Professor of Religious Studies [retired], structural engineer. Hear him!
Ad-hominem to avoid dealing with the film
Peace, War, and 9/11.
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 17 September, 2023, 01:22:14 AMRussell Brand (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66831593) - right-wing propagandist, verbal idiot savant, sex pest: hear him!
Ad-hominem to avoid dealing with what he says about things you don't like directly. If you posted it on your
News channel, then fair enough, but you posted it here - because either you think the case against him is a conspiracy or, as I said, to generally disparage everyone who doesn't see the world in the same way you do.
Maui is a shitshow for all kinds of reasons - the emergency warning system was turned off because it's for tsunamis and not fires, so using it would encourage people to run away from the coast and into the fire(!); police blocked exits from the fire causing dangerous gridlock as the fire raged(!); authorities turned off the water to Lahaina so that people wouldn't hurt themselves trying to put out the fires on their own property(!); the US Coastguard turned away civilians trying to bring aid to the victims while FEMA was still nowhere to be seen(!)... All these, and more, come from people who actually live on Maui, not msm reports. Could they be lies? Of course, that's always a possibility. Could they be true? According to The Book of Funt, absolutely and positively not.
Who said the children had been stolen? You did (straw-man). I ask where they are which, for some reason, seems to you to be a question nobody should ask because
trust the telly.
You never get anywhere near the arguments to adequately decipher whether they're nonsense or not because you fallacy your way into avoiding them. Why not watch the films and comment on their actual content so that we can debate it? Because you daren't? Because fallacies are easier? You reject the meal because you don't like the plate, and we end up arguing about the plate instead of the quality of the meal.
Funt Solo: Pedagogue, master fallacist, comic book nerd. Hear him! (See how dumb that is?)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 01:47:44 AMQuote from: Funt Solo [R] on 09 September, 2023, 04:45:41 PMWilliam Hurt: actor, wife-beater, structural engineer. Hear him!
Ad-hominem attack to avoid dealing with the film he produced.
Attack? I listed his qualities and said "hear him". Next you'll be telling me he wasn't a structural engineer.
Temperature has risen in here a bit so I'm reluctant to post this but...
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 17 September, 2023, 01:22:14 AMRussell Brand (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66831593) - right-wing propagandist
Brand was a big draw at both Occupy New York and Occupy Westminster; led the New Era protests; endorsed (and interviewed) Ed Milliband in 2015; was courted by Billy Bragg; described as a hero of the year by George Monbiot; welcomed Corbyn's election as Labour leader; "Marx was a great economist; Communism wasn't done properly" on Joe Rogan; "Socialism's historical connection with spiritual principles is deep" in the New Statesman; front cover blurb for Owen Jones' book The Establishment; and was until a few days ago, set to be a contributor to Corbyn and McClusky's upcoming poetry book.
Not sure I'd call him a right winger
Structural engineers. (https://www.ae911truth.org/news/199-news-media-events-60-structural-engineers) (You might need to use a TOR browser or VPN to access this link.)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 07:44:24 AMStructural engineers. (https://www.ae911truth.org/news/199-news-media-events-60-structural-engineers) (You might need to use a TOR browser or VPN to access this link.)
Just to clarify: Do you genuinely believe that 9/11 was an inside job or not? Or if you're somewhere in between, which do you think is more probable?
Another successful example of what I have come to term 'The Chum & Switch" where Shark either overtly or (more likely) vaguely yet not so subtly implies an argument for one things (apparently in this instance deep state agents are paradropping into Maui to kidnap up to a thousand children to ensnare into indentured sex work) and when he gets push back dials it back to being apparently about an entirely different matter(s) and leans on a wobbly understanding of clauses and shady web links.
Must be a day ending in Y.
QuoteNot sure I'd call him a right winger
Then you've not been paying attention.
Recent guests on his podcast include Republican presidential candidate crazies Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, right-wing crazy agitator Candace Owens and perennial right-wing snake oil salesman Jordan Peterson.
As far as I know, he doesn't host any similar figures from the left.
No matter where he was 10 years ago, he's now firmly entrenched in the GB News/conspiracy theory end of the spectrum, because, frankly, that's where the easy Scam Money is.
And, let's say, you were a devious and manipulative narcissist who knew you had done a bunch of nasty shit that was going to catch up with you one day? Well, that market comes ready with a mass of rubes and apologists who'll come charging out at the first mention of MeToo or 'cancel culture' to defend you.
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 20 September, 2023, 08:15:40 AMAnother successful example of what I have come to term 'The Chum & Switch" where Shark either overtly or (more likely) vaguely yet not so subtly implies an argument for one things (apparently in this instance deep state agents are paradropping into Maui to kidnap up to a thousand children to ensnare into indentured sex work) and when he gets push back dials it back to being apparently about an entirely different matter(s) and leans on a wobbly understanding of clauses and shady web links.
Must be a day ending in Y.
All very true.
However, his current descent into Poundshop QAnon drivel - "1000s of fictional children are missing, and all we want to talk about is a prominent conspiracy theorist sexual predator!" - is quite something.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 20 September, 2023, 07:55:52 AMQuote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 07:44:24 AMStructural engineers. (https://www.ae911truth.org/news/199-news-media-events-60-structural-engineers) (You might need to use a TOR browser or VPN to access this link.)
Just to clarify: Do you genuinely believe that 9/11 was an inside job or not? Or if you're somewhere in between, which do you think is more probable?
I honestly don't know what happened, only that many elements of the official story don't seem to add up. "Inside job" is, I think, too simplistic an explanation because it implies that "the government" (all those thousands and thousands of people) planned and executed the whole thing whilst keeping it quiet, which is patently impossible. Were elements of government involved? I think so. Elements of banking and corporations? Yes, I think so.
Quote from: GordonR on 20 September, 2023, 08:34:51 AMThen you've not been paying attention.
very true, not been on my radar for a long time.
Quote from: GordonR on 20 September, 2023, 08:34:51 AMAnd, let's say, you were a devious and manipulative narcissist who knew you had done a bunch of nasty shit that was going to catch up with you one day? Well, that market comes ready with a mass of rubes and apologists who'll come charging out at the first mention of MeToo or 'cancel culture' to defend you.
Similar allegations made in 2015 and at that time the likes of Marina Hyde, James O Brian and Charlie Brooker came riding to his defense. Partisan bias going both ways.
Quote from: GoGilesGo on 20 September, 2023, 10:24:47 AMSimilar allegations made in 2015 and at that time the likes of Marina Hyde, James O Brian and Charlie Brooker came riding to his defense. Partisan bias going both ways.
I don't remember that. What was being said back then?
Quote from: M.I.K. on 20 September, 2023, 11:22:58 AMI don't remember that. What was being said back then?
excuse the link to the Mail.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3065667/Russell-Brand-misogynist-hurt-abused-says-ex-girlfriend-labels-Ed-Miliband-fool-getting-bed-him.html
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 10:20:31 AMQuote from: JayzusB.Christ on 20 September, 2023, 07:55:52 AMQuote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 07:44:24 AMStructural engineers. (https://www.ae911truth.org/news/199-news-media-events-60-structural-engineers) (You might need to use a TOR browser or VPN to access this link.)
Just to clarify: Do you genuinely believe that 9/11 was an inside job or not? Or if you're somewhere in between, which do you think is more probable?
I honestly don't know what happened, only that many elements of the official story don't seem to add up. "Inside job" is, I think, too simplistic an explanation because it implies that "the government" (all those thousands and thousands of people) planned and executed the whole thing whilst keeping it quiet, which is patently impossible. Were elements of government involved? I think so. Elements of banking and corporations? Yes, I think so.
So, more likely orchestrated by people in the US government and western businesses than by religious extremists?
Quote from: GoGilesGo on 20 September, 2023, 07:37:16 AMTemperature has risen in here a bit so I'm reluctant to post this but...
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 17 September, 2023, 01:22:14 AMRussell Brand (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66831593) - right-wing propagandist
Brand was a big draw at both Occupy New York and Occupy Westminster; led the New Era protests; endorsed (and interviewed) Ed Milliband in 2015; was courted by Billy Bragg; described as a hero of the year by George Monbiot; welcomed Corbyn's election as Labour leader; "Marx was a great economist; Communism wasn't done properly" on Joe Rogan; "Socialism's historical connection with spiritual principles is deep" in the New Statesman; front cover blurb for Owen Jones' book The Establishment; and was until a few days ago, set to be a contributor to Corbyn and McClusky's upcoming poetry book.
Not sure I'd call him a right winger
I absolutely take your point - and nobody likes to be gaslit. If you could stand to read back a page or so in the thread you'll find where JayzusB.Christ was posting a similar experience of him - and I provided some context. To be absolutely clear - I have had moments of being vaguely fond of him (as a media personality), and of agreeing with the words coming out of his mouth. But in small doses, and a long time ago.
Given all the evidence on offer - I have to come to the conclusion that I have no idea at all what Russell Brand really thinks (recall he also had a "don't vote it's a waste of time" moment), and perhaps neither does he.
But, if you look at his YouTube page (and I don't recommend it, for all love) you can clearly see the audience he's currently pandering to.
---
Regarding the sexual assault claims, I'm not following an argument that says "he was accused of this sort of thing before so it can't be true now", but hopefully nobody was making that point and we can all breath a sigh of relief.
(It's also true that people are complicated, so you have folk who will be "that's not the man I know" while at the same time having people saying "that man raped me" or "that man sexually assaulted me". One hopes and assumes the latter camp is the smaller set.)
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 20 September, 2023, 03:00:21 AMQuote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 01:47:44 AMQuote from: Funt Solo [R] on 09 September, 2023, 04:45:41 PMWilliam Hurt: actor, wife-beater, structural engineer. Hear him!
Ad-hominem attack to avoid dealing with the film he produced.
Attack? I listed his qualities and said "hear him". Next you'll be telling me he wasn't a structural engineer.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 07:44:24 AMStructural engineers. (https://www.ae911truth.org/news/199-news-media-events-60-structural-engineers) (You might need to use a TOR browser or VPN to access this link.)
So, he
wasn't really a structural engineer? If he wasn't, then that brings into question my entire understanding of the whole cover up! I'm calling a fucking
++LAMBDA ALERT++! Stamping this one for the higher echelons by invoking the big Q:
?
Quote from: GoGilesGo on 20 September, 2023, 11:48:20 AMhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3065667/Russell-Brand-misogynist-hurt-abused-says-ex-girlfriend-labels-Ed-Miliband-fool-getting-bed-him.html
That's a compelling and illuminating article.
For my part, I never paid much attention to him. I haven't watched broadcast t.v. for years and take no interest in celebrity gossip and all that concomitant crap, and so he really never entered into my sphere of interest. I've watched a few of his Facetube videos and found them to be entertaining and amusing, but he wasn't really saying anything new or unique. I think he did a good job of getting the general ideas out to a certain demographic but, being in the demographic of (apparently) dumb-ass nutjobs, I prefer more sober content from people actually doing the investigating in real time; other dumb-ass nutjobs like Corbett, Christian and the like. I didn't pay much attention to Brand for the same reasons I don't pay much attention to Alex Jones (who, I nevertheless think, also does a good job in his own way) - sensationalism and rabble-rousing. I like my crazy-ass conspiracy bollocks to highlight what needs fixing, not what needs destroying, what brings us together rather than what drives us apart, our similarities rather than our differences.
This article puts Brand into a different light, for me. The "messiah complex" statement strikes the biggest chord in the context of the crazy-ass conspiracy world I inhabit. It strikes me now that maybe Brand was using the things other people uncovered simply as a vehicle to feed his own narcissism, like some crooked televangelist praising God* as a means to an end. Maybe I'm wrong, but this is how I'm thinking at the moment. As far as I know, he never actually uncovered anything himself but simply jazzed-up the work of others. And, no matter what you might think of them, many of those other researchers (the few I follow amongst them) do a
lot of work and approach each topic on its own merits. Of course they have biases, we all do, and mistrust "the authorities" while placing more trust in authorities in their fields. But then, it wouldn't make any sense at all for people who trust in the authorities and think governments and corporations are largely a force for good to be constantly analysing and criticising their flaws, would it? But whatever his motivations, Brand has encouraged more and more people to look at the more serious end of the crazy-ass conspiracy world - which I, for one, welcome.
I didn't fall down the crazy-ass conspiracy rabbit hole until 2007, when I first became aware of WTC7. That led me to other anomalies; the indestructible terrorist passport, highly suspicious and suggestive stock-market activity, Operation Able Danger, and so on and on. The world literally shifted before me, like suddenly getting the technique for viewing those magic eye pictures. And it was scary. Terrifying, in fact.
See, I was once just like Funt and GRennie and Hawkie and Pops. I believed in the system, more or less, knowing it had flaws but also knowing that we needed it and should largely trust it. Even Tony Blair's 45 minute WMD debacle didn't dent my overall trust in the system, because the system's full of good people trying to do the right thing, right? Even when some tw*t we couldn't get rid of for at least four years rose to power, my overall faith in the system was unshaken. I watched Newsnight and Panorama and Horizon and I knew what was what. I could shout ineffectually at Question Time with the best of them. I knew what was going on. I was informed. I was smart. I joined in to shout down the crazy-ass conspiracy nutters in Yahoo Chat.
And then, quite suddenly, I was that nutter. Scary, like I said.
Then came my run-in with the authorities and much of what I had learned about the true nature of things was revealed to me personally as more than just online theory. I lost everything (my beloved Progs! I still mourn for them) but gained a new strength.
So, from personal experience, I can say that a shift in perspective hits people hard. If Russell Brand had been there when I first fell in, I think I might have been enamoured by him, made to feel less alone, even validated. On the campsite we get people from all over the country, and many from surprisingly far-flung locations around the world, and I've noticed a definite upsurge of mistrust for the system in the last three years. Some of them have seen and are either angry or afraid, more often both, and I think Brand, whatever his motivations, helps a fair percentage of those people. I guess he softens the blow.
This is not, of course, a defence of Brand's alleged behaviour. Let the truth out on that one, though this article, and its timing, do add weight I will still defend his right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
TL;DR
Good article, thanks.
*Not that I'm equating crazy-ass conspiracy theories to the Word of God, of course - just using certain content to push a personal agenda.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 20 September, 2023, 01:24:01 PMQuote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 10:20:31 AMQuote from: JayzusB.Christ on 20 September, 2023, 07:55:52 AMQuote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 07:44:24 AMStructural engineers. (https://www.ae911truth.org/news/199-news-media-events-60-structural-engineers) (You might need to use a TOR browser or VPN to access this link.)
Just to clarify: Do you genuinely believe that 9/11 was an inside job or not? Or if you're somewhere in between, which do you think is more probable?
I honestly don't know what happened, only that many elements of the official story don't seem to add up. "Inside job" is, I think, too simplistic an explanation because it implies that "the government" (all those thousands and thousands of people) planned and executed the whole thing whilst keeping it quiet, which is patently impossible. Were elements of government involved? I think so. Elements of banking and corporations? Yes, I think so.
So, more likely orchestrated by people in the US government and western businesses than by religious extremists?
Not necessarily orchestrated. For me, I'm beginning to think it's more about masses of different agendas, philosophies and ideas - the tides in human affairs, if you will - flowing through time. Parts of it appear planned, I think, but I don't think it was any one group of cigar-smoking villains in a Bavarian castle orchestrating every aspect. Nor do I think it was orchestrated by Bush, Bin Laden, or Bad Bob Booth. I think that it's a confluence of agendas, each organising its own little part for mutual benefit or taking advantage of the situation for the same reason. In a fantasy conversation, "All you have to do is authorise the Abel Danger Drill, Mr President - our partners will take care of the rest." Ha. Maybe.
The long and the short of it is, I don't know what happened or who's ultimately or collectively responsible. I do find it hard to believe that a paper and plastic bog-standard passport would survive a five-hundred mile-an-hour plane crash into a concrete and steel skyscraper, the ensuing one-thousand degrees C fireball, and the collapse of a five-hundred-thousand ton building almost completely unscathed, and that no fewer than three buildings, within the same location and the span of a few hours, collapsed into their own footprints in a symmetrical manner (despite asymmetrical damage) never seen before or since - except under very specific conditions.
That's where it starts, looking at the little details that don't add up. Just a few, probably a coincidence, sure - but the more coincidences and connections you see, the less it looks like what the official story says it is. Just because I don't have a counter-theory doesn't make my assertion wrong. All we can do sat on our asses staring at computer screens is look at the presented evidence. What we do after that is up to the individual. Just have a look at
Peace, War, and 9/11 and see what you think. I'd be genuinely interested to read your thoughts.
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 20 September, 2023, 03:39:13 PMSo, he wasn't really a structural engineer?
Well, he did design and build David in
A.I., if that counts...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 05:19:35 PMQuote from: Funt Solo [R] on 20 September, 2023, 03:39:13 PMSo, he wasn't really a structural engineer?
Well, he did design and build David in A.I., if that counts...
And AI, reversed, is IA - Internal Affairs. It's all coming together now!
Sorry to double-post, but I just received some disturbing news (from two years ago*):
Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-we-live-in-a-simulation/)
*Time travel - not as difficult as we thought.
My brain's been programmed to hurt...
It's a cute theory but I could just as well say that the universe is God dreaming, and that the speed of light is Hisherits limit of synaptic activity. Or that the whole universe is a hyperconscious vibration, and that the speed of light is boundary to the Hyperunconscious or the Hypersubconscious. Or that the universe is constantly taken apart and reassembled by industrious extradimensional elves and that the speed of light is the limit of how fast they can work.
One thing about the simulation hypothesis that I do find a bit spooky, though, comes from quantum physics. A particle can't really be measured properly, one can either detect its location or its speed, but not both at the same time. Imagine a fly before a sensitive camera, with an accurate measure in the background. On a slow shutter speed, the fly is a blur so you can calculate its speed but not its location, and on a fast shutter speed the fly is frozen in space in exquisite detail, allowing calculation of its location but not its speed. This, some say, might be another limit. To save processing power, the simulation only generates subatomic particles when somebody actually pays attention to them, but its own algorithms make the simulation very complex and processor intensive. So at a certain point it makes a decision, the particle has a speed or a position, is a particle or a wave. Before someone looks, none of it needs to exist, but as soon as they do, maintaining an accurate simulation takes intensive processor power, making this decision the equivalent of the other speed of light limit.
So there's that.
Jet Set Willy would have had no idea that I was controlling him from a place outside the ZX Spectrum. He wouldn't even have realised there was a third dimension. So it must be true.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 20 September, 2023, 08:28:57 PMJet Set Willy would have had no idea that I was controlling him from a place outside the ZX Spectrum. He wouldn't even have realised there was a third dimension. So it must be true.
Jet Set Russell!
(Carefully resisted the urge to type "Russell's Willy", there. Trying to keep it classy.)
Try harder... :P
Sorry. I was planning to write something longer I saw recently about the universe being a simulation but my borderline ADHD took over and I baled out early.
No, you were programmed to bail out...
:o :o :o :o
Also, my programmer has designed me to confuse the spelling of the two types of bail / bale.
Great. And now I've been programmed to look like a damned spelling-nazi. Way to go, programmers.
Hmph.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 04:39:12 PMSee, I was once just like Funt and GRennie and Hawkie and Pops.
I'm miffed (nay, bordering on incandescent) that you'd bundle me in with those sheeple! (Or am I still in deep cover?)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 04:39:12 PMI will still defend [Russell Brand's] right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty
Do I get 10 points if I find a quote from you arguing against reliance on the UK courts? At any rate, you might pause to ingest Tjm's erudite post (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=32312.msg1104985#msg1104985) on the reality of UK justice when it comes to seeking such for similar crimes. Summary: you've got Buckley's. Or, rather - females have got Buckley's. Men are rather well protected.
---
Genuine (promise) 9/11 question for the Legendary Chum-Dispenser: I understand that you've discovered *evidence* (
*cough*) from *experts* (
*sneeze*) that question the reality we all witnessed. But - here's my question - where there has also been evidence (from
actual structural engineers - including the one who built the towers) explaining how they collapsed - why don't you lend that any credence? Asking for a friend.
---
As ever, Newsthump is winning with this headline: David Walliams launches right-wing conspiracy theory podcast (https://newsthump.com/2023/09/21/david-walliams-launches-right-wing-conspiracy-theory-podcast/)
(Just in case anyone's wondering - the only reason Russell - allegedly - committed his sexual assaults and rape was that I hypnotized him in 2002 - purely so that I could discredit conspiracy theorists in 2023. I play the long game. And, yes, I also hypnotized Walliams and forced him to play Hide the Sausage on stage in front of thousands of people.)
---
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 01:47:44 AMWhy not watch the films and comment on their actual content so that we can debate it?
It's a bit like asking why not watch "Triumph of the Will" and debate the pros and cons of Nazi ideology. And if you think I'm just invoking Nazis so that I can claim my Godwin's Law Bingo for the month, then you're absolutely correct.
Bingo!(Better analogy: "Why not watch Ivor the Engine to debate the state of the rail service in Wales?" There are answers to the questions you ask - just not the answers you want.)
The courts, as imperfect as they are, are still the better alternative to trial by media or trial by mob. Society will always need courts, indeed a fair court system is vital for a free society.
As with all experts, one lends credence to the ones who seem to offer the better explanation - and these experts are not always the ones presented to us by governments, corporations, or the msm. Some experts, the ones whose findings support a convenient agenda, are promoted (Top doctors reccommend Dromedary Fags!) while the experts who disagree (No! Listen! Cigarettes are bad for you!) are sidelined, mocked, or ignored. At the end of the day, it's a judgement call - which experts make the most sense?
I don't agree with your last point. If I wanted to learn about the state of the rail service in Wales, I'd see if any experts had compiled data on that very subject and start there, rather with Ivor the Engine. If you want to learn more about some of the arguments and observations about 9/11 that I find so compelling then this film would present them to you in a way that watching a charming children's cartoon wouldn't.
I had never heard of the social media platform Rumble before this week and now I'm starting to think the Secret Hidden Illuminati Types (SHITs for short) dropped the omertá on Brand to get it in the news cycle
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 September, 2023, 04:39:12 PMSee, I was once just like ...Pops.
HA! You wish!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 05:24:39 PMI'd see if any experts had compiled data on that very subject
The dictionary's are weeping at your abuse of the word "expert". It has a meaning, you know - you don't get to just adopt it for your own purposes.
Remember, we found out that Hurt's credentials were actor and wife-beater - and (I was surprised to learn) not a structural engineer. So, not an expert on the topic he was discussing, then. Just an actor. (I'm not sure how his wife-beating comes into it, to be honest, so probably best we stop mentioning that part.)
And that other guy you found - a Buddhist and a Professor of Religious Studies. I think I had him down as a structural engineer as well, which would lend some credence to your use of the word "expert" in this context. I've been surprised already during this debate, though - but please don't tell me that your second "expert" also just wasn't one.
Can you start to see how my Ivor the Engine analogy was actually quite appropriate? Or - making stuff up about you feel isn't the same as being an "expert". Being suspicious isn't the same as being an "expert". Making up stories about indestructible passports isn't the same as...I could go on.
The problem with experts is they spec'd too hard into Wisdom and Intelligence so they tend to have shite Charisma modifiers.
They're also woeful tanks and feckin abysmal glass cannons
Russell Brand
Class: Bard (Troubadour)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
STR: 12
DEX: 16
CON: 13
INT: 08
WIS: 07
CHA: 18
So the Buddhist, who is not a structural engineer, talks to people who are structural engineers. Interviews them, gathers testimony together, presents it. The actor produces a film following the journey of an English family trying to re-open the inquest into their son's death on 9/11 and presents it. Attaching arbitrary labels to people to discredit their work without even looking at the work itself doesn't feel fair to me.
One wouldn't discredit Einstein's work because he was a mere patent clerk or rubbish Darwin because he was an Anglican parson. Such arguments make no sense, but I'll wager they were used at the time by people who were perfectly satisfied with the way things were and didn't want to even consider an alternative. So if an Anglican parson and a patent clerk get a pass, why not an actor or a Buddhist?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 05:24:39 PMThe courts, as imperfect as they are, are still the better alternative to trial by media or trial by mob.
Ah, but nobody was suggesting "trial by mob" - so to casually plop that next to your mention of media is unfairly conflating them.
What did happen was that some journalists (experts in their field - you should listen to them) spent a long time compiling witness testimony - some of it from Brand's own phone, you will recall. Lots and lots of witnesses. That don't know each other. Telling similar stories. But anyway - it's just a documentary - it's not a trial.
You would rather, what? That the (alleged) victims go to the police? When they know that the chance of getting anywhere down that road is practically nil. That's almost the same as just brushing it all under the carpet, and leaving the way open for fresh victims. It's a weak sauce argument because it's ultimately "I'm quite happy with women being sexually abused and having no way of reporting it that will have any tangible effect".
And what of Brand? Has a baying mob torn him limb from limb? Nope. Has he been de-platformed? Actually, not. Arrested. Nope. Abandoned by his loyal followers? Not as such, no. (He has suffered some business reversals, but then - if you were running a business, would you want to be associated with him?)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 06:36:08 PMSo the Buddhist, who is not a structural engineer, talks to people who are structural engineers. Interviews them, gathers testimony together, presents it. The actor produces a film following the journey of an English family trying to re-open the inquest into their son's death on 9/11 and presents it. Attaching arbitrary labels to people to discredit their work without even looking at the work itself doesn't feel fair to me.
One wouldn't discredit Einstein's work because he was a mere patent clerk or rubbish Darwin because he was an Anglican parson. Such arguments make no sense, but I'll wager they were used at the time by people who were perfectly satisfied with the way things were and didn't want to even consider an alternative. So if an Anglican parson and a patent clerk get a pass, why not an actor or a Buddhist?
So now you're comparing William Hurt with Albert Einstein and Buddhist Dude with Charles Darwin? The short answer is "peer review".
Yes, I did put in "trial by mob" of my own accord, because the point I was making is that courts are the better option, at least in theory and hopefully in practice. I mentioned "trial by mob" because "trial by court" is better. It's also better than trial by media, martial law, drum-heads, and Judge bleedin' Dredd.
I watched the documentary, which was an adequate presentation of the allegations. If the information the journalists have collected is accurate, and if they have interpreted and presented it correctly, it casts Brand in a bad light. We need courts to cast lights of their own and erase every shadow.
I would rather that we look at the truths of the broken system we have inherited and look to fix it. I would rather work towards a world where every human victim of any sort can reach out for help at any time, without fear or favour. That's what I'd rather. In the meantime, it is up to each victim to decide their own course of action and for each of us to respect that course and that person.
You seem to be under the impression that I think Brand has himself boarded up in a windmill somewhere while a mob of angry, pitchfork-wielding yokels swarm up the garden path with mischief in mind. I never made any suggestion of the perils to Brand that you list. As far as I know, it's all legalities-at-dawn for the moment.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 07:05:55 PMit casts Brand in a bad light
Quite an understatement. It accuses him of a variety of sexual assaults, at least one clear instance of rape and actually demonstrates him carrying out a variety of sexual harassments.
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 21 September, 2023, 06:40:48 PMNo, that's entirely the mirror of the argument I was making. (How do you so consistently do that? It's a talent.) I wasn't comparing the people to each other, I was comparing the arguments used against them to each other.
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 21 September, 2023, 07:11:27 PMQuite an understatement.
I was trying to avoid hyperbole.
I know, I know...
Try harder.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 07:12:14 PMQuote from: Funt Solo [R] on 21 September, 2023, 06:40:48 PMNo, that's entirely the mirror of the argument I was making. (How do you so consistently do that? It's a talent.) I wasn't comparing the people to each other, I was comparing the arguments used against them to each other.
I never said that! And you're avoiding the key point I made:
peer review is important!
---
Meanwhile - this fresh BBC article (https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66882644) has audio of Russell (an expert on himself) and his cohost discussing the fact that Russell trapped a woman in a bathroom and exposed himself to her. He's not denying it. I suppose he himself is part of the "trial by media/mob" you're worried about.
Sorry, I screwed the quote up. You said,
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 21 September, 2023, 06:40:48 PMSo now you're comparing William Hurt with Albert Einstein and Buddhist Dude with Charles Darwin?
Which is pretty much comparing people to each other. My point was that the same ad-hominem attack has been used against them all;
you can't listen to him because he's a used car salesman, you can't listen to her because she's a waitress. It makes no difference. The absolute best way to treat any ad-hominem attack is to take it as an indication of bias, by both the accuser and the accused.
If you bought a Vintage Thing and it broke, and the local chip shop owner knew exactly what was wrong with your Vintage Thing and how to fix it, because he once had a Vintage Thing of his own that broke in exactly the same manner, would you decline his help because he's a chip shop owner? I would hope not. You'd at least hear him out, see if what he said made sense while all the time keeping in mind that this guy is a chip shop owner and not a professional Vintage Thing engineer. Information gathered, you'd use it as you saw fit. Being a chip shop owner is no disadvantage to having an understanding of your knackered Vintage Thing, and neither is it an advantage. It's a modifier at worst and completely irrelevant at best.
I would agree that peer review is important. I could point you to some legitimate peer reviewed papers that would blow your socks off, but unfortunately they're on a verboten topic. I can sense hackles going up even now. Nonsense! Fake news! These must be the wrong kind of peer reviewed papers!
If we are to accept peer review for one position, then we must accept peer review for others as well. That's a big part of the scientific process, to look at all the papers, to hypothesise, theorise, and synthesise - one paper supporting or detracting from or adding to the whole body of knowledge.
But politics doesn't work like that. We all know it. Convenient research is funded, even popularised. Inconvenient research is ignored or derided be it peer reviewed or not.
Like the ad-hom, the peer review is just a label - but it is a significant one. It's also not 100% reliable - plenty of scientists make a living reviewing papers, and scientists are only human, and humans make mistakes. So yes, peer review is the gold standard and a strong indicator that what the paper says has been determined as accurately and dispassionately as possible, that procedures were followed and interests declared. The peer review in no way endorses the conclusions of any paper, but it does indicate that those conclusions were reached in the correct manner.
Your understanding of the peer review system and scientific discourse in general is quite different to mine.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 08:00:35 PMBut politics doesn't work like that. We all know it. Convenient research is funded, even popularised. Inconvenient research is ignored or derided be it peer reviewed or not.
Convenient research?
Like that time they dug miles of tunnels under the alps and filled it with expensive fiddly magnets and then fired particles around it at near light speeds, to collide with a particle going the other way producing a big messy scattering of particles to be analyzed even though it's not visible to the naked eye? The most expensive thing humanity has ever built? (ISS is 2nd)
Convenient like that?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 08:00:35 PMBut politics doesn't work like that
No shit, most politicians are too scientifically illiterate to influence the general scientific consensus.
Yes, convenient exactly like that. The potential benefits to science and industry of CERN are incalculable. It's a modern wonder displaying the technological and scientific prowess of Europe. Politically, that's all very convenient.
For years, politicians were convinced by the petrochemical industry's scientific studies suggesting that having lead in petrol was completely fine and utterly dandy. Any studies suggesting otherwise were quashed. Had the scientific process in that case been allowed to play out without political and corporate interference, which inevitably boil everything they can down to a simple binary choice so the ayes and nays can shout at one another for a bit, lead might have been out of petrol much sooner.
What worries me is that peer reviewed papers on certain subjects are verboten if they say the inconvenient thing, or come to the inconvenient conclusion. This has become more and more obvious over the last three years. There is politically inconvenient science out there but I think it's starting to permeate a bit more of late.
"Trust the science" is nonsensical political dogma because it suggests having faith in presented conclusions, "trust the scientific process" is good advice because it suggests drawing conclusions properly.
TL;DR
Yeah, politicians know dick about science.
Is Most Published Research Wrong?
An interesting video, and p-hacking has been a problem (according to some of the experts I've heard discussing various papers), and I have also heard of the non-replication problem. It doesn't mean that everything's wrong, of course, just that some discernment is needed.
However, if I was to indulge in the kind of arguments favoured by others of this parish, I'd simply say that this video can't be trusted because Veritasium: A Story of YouTube Propaganda (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc), and ignore everything it has to say.
Now here is where I'm starting to get interested. Is there a point of intersection between conspiracy theories (9/11, gulf-war syndrome, moon landings, global conspiracy movements, judeo-globalist conspiracies, illuminati movements, ...) and the challenges people face in their everyday lives?
I almost feel like perhaps there needs to be some sort of scale (the bacofoil scale?). This reflects someone's ability to accept ideas that should be classified as 'bat-shit crazy' or 'reasonably-rational'.
At the end of the day we need to accept that scientific theory is based in empirical evidence but subject to revision as the evidence provides disconfirming evidence. So it is constantly subject to revision.
The real problem right now is that people are basing their ideas on subjective rather than empirical evidence. Then they are holding onto those theories on the basis of disconfirming evidence rather than revising them.
Unfortunately social media in particular has become an echo chamber that reinforces the validity of extreme ideas. So the sorts of things that would once have been fringe are now being embraced by ordinary people.
As Terry Pratchett said: "The truth is out there but the lies are in your head!"
My quick tuppence'orth about conspiracy theorists, having dated one, been good mates with another (who has grown out of it, fortunately), and, when it came to a few niche topics, been one myself. For me, it's very often these people who can't handle the truth. Seeing illusory patterns of human action where there are none, or at least ones of a far smaller scale, is part of our genetic make-up and has helped us survive (known as apophenia (https://nesslabs.com/apophenia), as I've recently learned, rather than its subcategory pareidolia). The rustle in the leaves is probably just the wind, but if you're alone in the prehistoric jungle, you're better off believing it's someone with a spear and legging it.
It's also very often less scary than the reality - sometimes we fuck up on a global scale and it spirals out of control, and we don't know how to reign it in. Or sometimes terrible things just happen and humanity just isn't organised enough to either cause them or solve them. It's easier to imagine global warming, for example, as something that occurs of its own accord, rather than embrace the awful notion that we accidentally caused it and now we don't know what to do about it. Or, even worse, we do know, but the world isn't organised enough to take the necessary action. Diana was sacrificed? The older you get the more you realise that sometimes people have car accidents and just fucking die. When the Blair government did try to peddle the flimsy idea of Saddam having WMDs, it didn't take much of anyone's 'own research' to see it was probably a heap of shite.
Not sure where all that came from, sorry. Actually the only reason I came here now was to enquire as to what people think will happen to Russell Brand now. I presume he'll be going to court at some point now the accusations are out in the open, but I haven't seen anything about it yet.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 24 September, 2023, 06:47:11 PMwhen it came to a few niche topics, been one myself.
I've found myself in the very weird position of sounding like a conspiracy theorist myself, of late... which is why I've abandoned a couple of social media platforms.
As a Corbyn supporter*, I've found myself on the side of an argument that's seen the wholesale re-writing of reality by (and I hesitate to use this term) the mainstream media. I try to comfort myself by knowing that there is actual,
proper evidence that shows I'm not delusional (ie: the Forde Report, the leaked, and then blocked, submission to the EHRC) but, even so, I often feel like I'm just a fringe loon howling at the moon.
It's not a feeling I enjoy, and is why I've more or less abandoned politics in this country.
*Not an uncritical one, I should stress — I literally only supported him for the Labour leadership in 2015 because the alternatives were fucking
awful.**
**And who are now in senior positions in Starmer's version of the Labour Party... make of that what you will.
Three conspiracy theorists walk into a bar. You're not telling me that's a coincidence
Quote from: Dandontdare on 26 September, 2023, 05:23:06 PMThree conspiracy theorists walk into a bar. You're not telling me that's a coincidence
Yes, but what's going on in the cellar?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 07:41:33 PM...Being a chip shop owner is no disadvantage to having an understanding of your knackered Vintage Thing...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 08:00:35 PM...the peer review is just a label - but it is a significant one. It's also not 100% reliable...
Both of these points are correct. But, with the danger of sounding like a broken record, that's where good old Occam and his famous/infamous Razor come in handy. At all times, when trying to figure stuff out, I need a useful tool like Occam's Razor because the alternative is too much ground work.
I think of it like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Taking the example of that William Hurt-backed, documentary-style video piece you linked to. My options are:
A. Watch it and consider it on its merits. This takes time, which is a precious commodity. I may also find myself needing to fact check a lot of the propositions contained within it. More time.
B. Consider the scales of information that already exists and that I have already imbibed - with regard to 9/11 and the causes thereof. In other words, I invoke Occam's Razor and come to the conclusion that I already know what caused the towers to collapse, and that (in all probability) the mass of available information is correct and that the other stuff is just conspiracy theory fictionalization. This takes less time.
I do realize that you don't like my opting for B, and that you would never opt for B. But, and I think this is crucial: we are very different people. From my perspective, you enjoy fanfic of real events, and I don't. From your perspective (I imagine), you are trying to get to the truth, and I'm being too narrow-minded.
What is clear: I'm never going to change you and you're never going to change me. We are set in our respective ways. Trying to change each other is sometimes painful and leads to conflict. So, we're both a bit silly to have tried - especially repetitively. Oops! (Unless we're getting some need fulfilled beyond that, of course.)
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 24 September, 2023, 10:40:19 PM...Corbyn...
You've probably already seen it, but
Declassified's long form interview, Jeremy Corbyn on the establishment campaign to stop him becoming Prime Minister (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXfoKJEqRPs) is quite interesting.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 07:41:33 PMBeing a chip shop owner is no disadvantage to having an understanding of your knackered Vintage Thing, and neither is it an advantage.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 21 September, 2023, 11:48:53 PMYeah, politicians know dick about science.
I am noticing a dichotomy between these two statements that suggests a rather bigoted view of politicians - who are, after all, just people with a job title. Like the fabled "chip shop owner" who has an imaginary sideline in "knackered Vintage Things".
Margaret Thatcher [I know - boo, hiss etc.]: BSc, "a food research scientist at J Lyons" (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2013/apr/17/margaret-thatcher-team-mr-whippy).
Science being a rather broad term - it turns out that lots of politicians know rather a lot about science.
(Neal Dunn is currently a serving representative in the US House, and also a Doctor of Urology - so he literally knows science about dicks!)
A good post, Funt, thank you.
Simply for reasons of discussion and debate, and not to try and change you, I must, of course, take issue - if only for the practice.
Let us take Occam's razor to your core claim; that you already know enough to be sure of your interpretation of the events of 9/11. Occam's razor is about paring down all elements to the bone, including assumptions. The assumption that all relevant facts are known is just that, an assumption. Occam would demand you cut that out because you can't be sure. Occam would demand you watch Peace, War, and 9/11 simply to expose yourself to things you don't know and replace assumptions with certainties.
And yes, it is a lot of work. Work you have to do yourself. Original sources are still available, and a lot of investigation has been done. Don't rely on "fact checkers," though. Like Wikipedia, they might be a good start but, also like Wikipedia, should not be used as a primary source but more of a jumping-off point.
I'm pushing this because, in my not so humble opinion, it's important. You may question my strategies and style, my choice of words and even my sanity - but please don't question my motivations (in general, I mean, I'm being poetic here, not flinging accusations). I'm no genius or student of deep geopolitics, but I ain't dumb, neither. I know that the global system is fundamentally broken and failing the vast majority of the inhabitants of this planet, human and otherwise. 9/11 exposes significant aspects of this breaking failure. It's important.
I understand why you opted for B. I favoured the same option for many years. All the way up to 2007. Then I was challenged to consider option A, and here we are, having this conversation (which I'm enjoying much more than our usual slanging-matches, by the way).
I'm not going to challenge you, but I will try one last time to convince you. Watch Peace, War, and 9/11. It'll take you, what, an hour and a half? Less if you up the playback speed a bit. You may find it's just a collection of deluded idiots spouting made-up facts to support wild allegations, thus reinforcing your own worldview. It may show you something you've never seen, play you something you've never heard, ask a question you've never thought of, present an interpretation you've never considered, thus informing your own worldview. I think it's important, and that's the only motivation I have. Please God I'm wrong to even consider this shit and see the world this way - but if I'm right, you need to take a look.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 September, 2023, 08:14:03 PM...your core claim; that you already know enough to be sure of your interpretation of the events of 9/11.
Ah no - I never said I was "sure". I said "in all probability". Very different things.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 September, 2023, 08:14:03 PMOccam's razor is about paring down all elements to the bone, including assumptions.
So, adding a new video would be adding elements. And - worse - adding elements that are full of assumptions.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 September, 2023, 08:14:03 PMOccam would demand...
You cannot speak for Occam. I think, again, we have a fundamental difference of opinion here - you are interpreting it in an unusual way - from my perspective.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 September, 2023, 08:14:03 PMAnd yes, it is a lot of work. Work you have to do yourself.
No - I rely on experts to do that work for me. I do not need to understand soap in order to use soap.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 September, 2023, 08:14:03 PMplease don't question my motivations ... I ain't dumb
I didn't, and didn't suggest that.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 September, 2023, 08:14:03 PMthe global system is fundamentally broken and failing the vast majority of the inhabitants of this planet, human and otherwise
Well, humans (in general) are getting on far better than they used to. Yes, the planet (& other species) are being affected by us - but then you have said in the past that human-induced climate change isn't real - so it's difficult to take you seriously on this point.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 26 September, 2023, 08:14:03 PMWatch Peace, War, and 9/11 ... you need to take a look.
No, I will not, and no, I do not. For reasons given previously, which still make abundant sense to me, and which (obviously, from my perspective) you have failed to undermine, shift or adjust in any sense.
As you wish.
Though I'll never stop trying.
I was working outside a leisure centre yesterday and a storm started up. A man near me started telling me that these floods were clearly caused by nuclear missiles being tested in the Arctic. You know, and I quote, 'with this Russia thing and all'.
The city of 'Bayern Munich' was hit very badly, apparently.
EDIT: And suddenly it hits me that he must have been thinking of Burning Man.
The same day and place, I was fittingly painting a commissioned mural of Greta Thunberg with a sign reading 'You're never too small to make a difference', when another man took exception. I thought it was a bit weird that he took it personally, but later found he had complained to the people who commissioned it that it was a double negative and was grammatically incorrect. I'm also an English grammar teacher. It isn't.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 27 September, 2023, 04:22:04 PMThe same day and place, I was fittingly painting a commissioned mural of Greta Thunberg with a sign reading 'You're never too small to make a difference', when another man took exception. I thought it was a bit weird that he took it personally, but later found he had complained to the people who commissioned it that it was a double negative and was grammatically incorrect. I'm also an English grammar teacher. It isn't.
Yeah, it really isn't not, aye? People have to really stretch to come up with reasons sometimes. Let's assume he just doesn't like Greta Thunberg, and all her pointing out the bloody obvious.
Climate change is a funny one - because the real conspiracy is that the fossil fuel companies have spun yarns for years about it not being something we can control - because they're a vested interest. Somehow, they've convinced loads of folk (TFH Brigaders) that there's a cabal of scientists who are all trying to bum us out for no reason whatsoever. Why do full-on conspiracy theorists not like *actual* conspiracies?*
I've heard worse, though - tons of folk just go straight for the jugular with Greta and point at her disabilities (as if that somehow counters her logic). Goebbels would be proud.**
*I have a theory that they dislike solutions, and far prefer mysteries.
**Just getting in my Godwin's Bingo for the week.
Quote from: Douglas AdamsThis is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
Quote"Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 27 September, 2023, 07:02:30 PMI've heard worse, though - tons of folk just go straight for the jugular with Greta and point at her disabilities (as if that somehow counters her logic). Goebbels would be proud.**
There has been a wave of anti-disability language in the last ten years, in the UK this is since the Tory/Liberal government and media colluded to demonise disabled people tied to 'austerity'. This led to about 57,550 excess deaths of disabled people between 2010 and 2014. Doesn't appear to have gotten any better with the continuing dismantling of the NHS but while the R word isn't used so often in the UK any more, the L word seems to be pretty much normalised, even among people you'd have thought would know better.
QuoteYeah, it really isn't not, aye? People have to really stretch to come up with reasons sometimes. Let's assume he just doesn't like Greta Thunberg, and all her pointing out the bloody obvious.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure it wasn't that. He was non-native English speaker and an admittedly very good one, and suggested some alternative suggestions to my client that conveyed the same meaning but were grammatically correct; leaving aside, of course, the fact that the actual Greta quote is grammatically correct too.
From his general demeanour, and from the perspective of someone who doesn't know all that much about human psychology, I suspect he had a more extreme version of what Greta herself has. Unlike Greta, though, he picked a very silly hill to die on rather than the most important one in the world.
Quote from: sheridan on 28 September, 2023, 09:50:08 AMQuote from: Funt Solo [R] on 27 September, 2023, 07:02:30 PMI've heard worse, though - tons of folk just go straight for the jugular with Greta and point at her disabilities (as if that somehow counters her logic). Goebbels would be proud.**
There has been a wave of anti-disability language in the last ten years, in the UK this is since the Tory/Liberal government and media colluded to demonise disabled people tied to 'austerity'. This led to about 57,550 excess deaths of disabled people between 2010 and 2014. Doesn't appear to have gotten any better with the continuing dismantling of the NHS but while the R word isn't used so often in the UK any more, the L word seems to be pretty much normalised, even among people you'd have thought would know better.
As someone who should know better, and has done a quick audit of the (extensive) list of known offensive terms, what's the L word? Genuinely drawing a blank
I expect it's "lame", and mea culpa - I have a "lame-o potato" phrase in my lexicon that I'll consign to the dustbin of history. You *can* teach an old dog new tricks.
(Also, I am partially - and perhaps permanently - lame, due to a knee injury.)
I don't know what the R word or the L word mean - just fucking say the words
You're being a bit of a c-word, there, with your petulant, sweary demands.
Literally two seconds of googling will net you the r-word, you lazy f-word.
:D
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 30 September, 2023, 12:16:23 AMYou're being a bit of a c-word, there, with your petulant, sweary demands.
Literally two seconds of googling will net you the r-word, you lazy f-word.
:D
okay i googled it and I now know what R stands for.
It does piss me off though that people can't make a distinction between using a word as a slur or mentioning the word when discussing the word.
I also googled the L word - since when can we not say lesbian?
(https://i.imgur.com/nWBicsU.png)
Quote from: Dandontdare on 30 September, 2023, 01:55:24 AMIt does piss me off though that people can't make a distinction between using a word as a slur or mentioning the word when discussing the word.
Well, let's take the example of the n-word, because I want to use the nuclear option on this debate. People are choosing not to say the actual word, in order to make a point. It demonstrates care, consideration & support. C-words have started calling those things "virtue signaling", as if being nicer is somehow instantly boastful and anyway the wrong thing to do.
As for the l-word, only sheridan knows what he meant - but I had a guess in the post one before your demand that it be spelled out. Pretty sure it's not lesbian, though - because the context was about disabilities and the last time I checked sexual proclivity wasn't (one).
I'm still in the dark about the l-word, though I suspect you're probably right with 'lame'. My own knee is a bit fecked from a motorbike accident so I'm a tad the l-word myself.
I remember being very surprised to the the n-word in its entirety in an old Judge Dredd special, and this was before the introduction of proper swearing to the house of Tharg.
The word niggardly (which has a completely different meaning and etymology than the n-word) has also become problematic but it's still okay to snigger at anyone who uses it. Go figure.
I had to google this and I think Funt has it. I live out in the countryside and use the word 'lame' to apply to animals, as there are a lot of sheep around here hobbling about. A google suggests that's an acceptable context but using it for 'boring' or 'uncool' is ableist language. Not a context I've used it for - feels to me like an an Americanism. But good to know.
Had a job actually getting my phone to accept the word being typed in - it prefers 'lane'.
Quote from: sheridan on 28 September, 2023, 09:50:08 AMwhile the R word isn't used so often in the UK any more, the L word seems to be pretty much normalised, even among people you'd have thought would know better.
It's used quite a bit but I guess it depends on where you are. I got into trouble a few years back. There was an autistic girl in the class that managed to aggravate some of the other kids. They called her a retard. I pulled them up on it, reminding them that as language it is as inappropriate as 'nigger'.
A few days later I was pulled up by the head. Apparently they had complained about the use of the latter expression. I was informed that this was inappropriate. When I questioned him about the use of their language he looked at me blankly. Ironically there was not a single child from a non-white background in the class.
The thing is, although disability discrimination and racial discrimination are technically equivalent in the eyes of the law they aren't in society. It is still totally acceptable to use 'disabling' language, to denigrate individuals with any form of disability and to tacitly (hell, openly a lot of the time) discriminate against them.
Redacted interviews Kevin Ryan, editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies and a board member of the International Centre for 9/11 Justice, on the September 11th Hi-jackings. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrnx5yhihj8)
The Jesuits are poisoning our wells!
(Or wait – maybe it's the Freemasons.)
Quote from: Tjm86 on 30 September, 2023, 10:17:41 AMIronically there was not a single child from a non-white background in the class.
Reminds me of teaching an all-male programming class one time:
Student: "Women belong in the kitchen!"
Teacher-Me: "Woah! Let's avoid sexist statements, thanks!"
Student: "But there aren't any women here!"
(You don't need the targeted demographic to be in the room to magically activate inappropriate language.)
This is a bit like people from Quiet English Village saying that racism can't exist in Quiet English Village because there aren't any black folk in Quiet English Village. (This was on the news recently when studies had shown that England is a bit racist, now, father.)
QuoteIt's built largely around the testimony of a guy named Kevin Ryan from Underwriters Laboratories. In fact, it turns out his expertise was testing water. He wasn't involved in steel at all.
Kevin Ryan: water tester, self-editor, structural engineer - hear him!
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 02 October, 2023, 07:03:29 PMKevin Ryan: water tester, self-editor, structural engineer - hear him!
I love how you (Funt Solo: Pedagogue, master fallacist, comic book nerd - hear him!) believe you have the qualifications to criticise the qualifications of others. Do you also refuse to engage with t.v. news or newspapers when the reporters have no qualifications in the stories they're presenting to you? How about the bureaucrats in the education system - do you refuse to listen to the ones who have never been teachers themselves, or who have been teachers but not of the subject/s you teach? If you had a student who didn't believe in evolution and refused to learn about it (because Charles Darwin: Blasphemer, monkey worshipper, geneticist - hear him!), would you support that student's argument?
I honestly don't know why you keep throwing out the same fallacies time after time instead of just saying, "I'm not interested in this subject so I don't want to look at it." And if you're truly not interested, why continue posting in this thread?
Quote from: JohnW on 01 October, 2023, 06:24:17 PMThe Jesuits are poisoning our wells!
(Or wait – maybe it's the Freemasons.)
Nah, it's the farmers (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-66896942)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 02 October, 2023, 08:36:27 PMwhy continue posting in this thread?
I've been paid to, by Bill Gates. Or, it's a forum. Take your pick.
(By the way, you have the format wrong - it's NAME: THING THEY REALLY ARE A, THING THEY REALLY ARE B, THING THEY'RE NOT: hear [them]! You keep getting that wrong.)
-----------------------------
-----------------------------
In other news - planet-sized warships (on fire, off the shoulder of Orion): James Webb telescope makes 'JuMBO' discovery of planet-like objects in Orion (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66974738)
Jeez, get a room guys
Aggro Dome?
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 02 October, 2023, 06:56:30 PMQuote from: Tjm86 on 30 September, 2023, 10:17:41 AMIronically there was not a single child from a non-white background in the class.
Reminds me of teaching an all-male programming class one time:
Student: "Women belong in the kitchen!"
Teacher-Me: "Woah! Let's avoid sexist statements, thanks!"
Student: "But there aren't any women here!"
(You don't need the targeted demographic to be in the room to magically activate inappropriate language.)
This is a bit like people from Quiet English Village saying that racism can't exist in Quiet English Village because there aren't any black folk in Quiet English Village. (This was on the news recently when studies had shown that England is a bit racist, now, father.)
Then again the latest adaption of
The Midwich Cuckoos had three inter-racial couples ... in rural Buckinghamshire!
Someone may have been trying a little bit too hard there?
Quote from: edgeworthy on 03 October, 2023, 01:58:17 AMQuote from: Funt Solo [R] on 02 October, 2023, 06:56:30 PMThis is a bit like people from Quiet English Village saying that racism can't exist in Quiet English Village because there aren't any black folk in Quiet English Village. (This was on the news recently when studies had shown that England is a bit racist, now, father.)
Then again the latest adaption of The Midwich Cuckoos had three inter-racial couples ... in rural Buckinghamshire!
Someone may have been trying a little bit too hard there?
Eh - I don't think you'll manage to get me to follow that sort of argument. I never get twitchy about non-white folk being in things.
Quote from: Definitely Not Mister Pops on 02 October, 2023, 09:00:41 PMQuote from: JohnW on 01 October, 2023, 06:24:17 PMThe Jesuits are poisoning our wells!
(Or wait – maybe it's the Freemasons.)
Nah, it's the farmers (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-66896942)
Actually, it's Chemical pollution: A growing peril and potential catastrophic risk to humanity. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021002415#ab010).
QuoteRockström et al. (2009) (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021002415#b0480) warned that chemical pollution is one of the planetary boundaries that ought not to be crossed to safeguard humanity. Altogether more than nine million humans are dying prematurely each year – one in six deaths – due to contamination of their air, water, food, homes, workplaces, or consumer goods* (Landrigan et al. 2018 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021002415#b0370)). To place this in perspective, the chemical-related annual death toll is significantly greater than that of World War II and today constitutes the greatest preventable form of mortality. Furthermore, it inflicts catastrophic losses on wildlife, notably insects and animals that depend on them, ecosystems and their services, such as pollination or clean water, on which humans depend for our own existence. This underlines the role of chemical pollution in potential planet-wide ecological breakdown (Dave 2013 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021002415#b0165)). There is increasing evidence in recent decades of cognitive, reproductive and developmental disorders and premature deaths caused by chemical contamination (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/chemical-contamination) of the human living environment (Diamanti-Kandarakis et al. 2009 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021002415#b0175)).
(*My emphasis.)
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 03 October, 2023, 03:30:29 AMQuote from: edgeworthy on 03 October, 2023, 01:58:17 AMQuote from: Funt Solo [R] on 02 October, 2023, 06:56:30 PMThis is a bit like people from Quiet English Village saying that racism can't exist in Quiet English Village because there aren't any black folk in Quiet English Village. (This was on the news recently when studies had shown that England is a bit racist, now, father.)
Then again the latest adaption of The Midwich Cuckoos had three inter-racial couples ... in rural Buckinghamshire!
Someone may have been trying a little bit too hard there?
Eh - I don't think you'll manage to get me to follow that sort of argument. I never get twitchy about non-white folk being in things.
Me neither. I come from a small Irish Midlands town and these days there are plenty of non-white locals. I find it fascinating to hear new accents evolve in my lifetime, the most noticeable for me being a blend of Nigerian and various Irish accents.
I thought Lenny Henry was by far the most interesting harfoot in the village (and one of the very few to nail their Irish accent).
QuoteI find it fascinating to hear new accents evolve in my lifetime...
Me too. The Preston/Pakistan accent is a joy to listen to.
"Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7DpMnRHm4A)
...and tangentially related to that video,
here's a pattern for ye...
This is
Moira Stewart, best known as a newsreader...
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1200x675/p05tdmrb.jpg)
...and this is
David Icke, previously a sports presenter, best known nowadays as a conspiracy theorist...
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amzn-author-media-prod/tenj8pnuhf94vlo3k4d1etut7h.jpg)
One of David's most well-known beliefs is that
shape-shifting lizard beasties from space secretly control the planet.
In the early 1980s, Moira Stewart was the main presenter of
The Adventure Game, a BBC game show in which a team, consisting of 2 celebrities and 1 member of the public, is set tasks by
alien lizard beasties who can
shapeshift into human form. Moira appeared under her own name, while clearly being seen to transform from one of said alien beasties.
In the early 1980s, David Icke was one of the presenters on children's TV show,
Saturday Superstore. Several of David's fellow presenters appeared as contestants on The Adventure Game, (John Craven, Maggie Philbin, Keith Chegwin and Sarah Greene).
The name of the shapeshifting alien beasties on the show was "
Argonds", (an anagram of "
dragons").
The name of the shapeshifting alien beasties David Icke thinks are controlling humanity is "
Archons", which he says are descendants of creatures from the constellation of "
Draco", (Latin for
Dragon).
Here is David Icke co-presenting the news alongside confirmed shapeshifting alien lizard beasty, Moira Stewart...
(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUf_BKuAB6oSy2OrmqnhCW2POGMQeIpXgF4PJzXxXcv-IS83J6_nNcx7Cp-EZ2GJk2apGXbdcbyrL9iIFIvirhEbr2MOwaDLxvFKU6epweNK2-pJEi91G1fvrI1uia86LHBE5EZCRApAmAprSXiHdBueoszdWjnkTNhHv9RIpJEbvfInLJT5gmRVBFJus/s16000/moira&david.jpg)
Georg Rockall-Schmidt*: YouTuber, Lava Lamp connoisseur, successful author (https://grsxproductions.com/) - hear him!
David Icke: [has broken me]. :-X
* I'm just being a King Cnut - I liked his video.
I was going to make a joke about the Luton airport carpark fire and how "it couldn't possibly have collapsed like that just because of a measly fire" - but actually folk are already spinning mad conspiracy threads into jumpers of doolally without my help.
Lizards!
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 12 October, 2023, 12:54:08 AMI was going to make a joke about the Luton airport carpark fire and how "it couldn't possibly have collapsed like that just because of a measly fire" - but actually folk are already spinning mad conspiracy threads into jumpers of doolally without my help.
Lizards!
Its Luton Airport.
That it didn't unmask a howling vortex into a Hell Dimension
is the surprise!?
It was JUST the carpark? Fack sake.
From a couple of years ago, BT's Kei Pritsker speaks with Abby Martin about the occupation of the West Bank, the siege of Gaza, and other aspects of Israel's criminal occupation of Palestine in Palestine 101 with Abby Martin. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEUIR_JG_b8) .
The BBC, of course, has another take in the 2008 documentary The Birth of Israel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5MlMGU63CQ&list=PL99339C3A45701CFF&index=1), which seems to substantially misrepresent the Nakba (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba), but I'll leave it to you to decide whether it actually does so or not.
As to the recent atrocities, I'll leave the last word (for now) to The Times of Israel and its article, For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it's blown up in our faces. (https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/)
The conspiracyists are right that Stanley Kubrick filmed the moon landings, but they failed to realise that he was such a stickler for authenticity and attention to detail, he insisted on filming on location.
:lol: :lol:
I don't know which made me laugh more - the 'interview' itself, or the fact that some individuals actually assumed that what they were seeing was genuine. I mean, come on. Vegan hand grenades?! :lol:
https://www.facebook.com/kevin.kavanagh.37/posts/pfbid02RMmNRVuKPMnyD1EoAu8Wn7ZZJe7UTsiXuGUbkd5L5vByHNxci4hK2uku1vTTpeQml
A true story: The Beekeeper (https://youtu.be/SzINZZ6iqxY?si=IHb3fwsvKI6sfp9_)
All governments, to me, are nothing more than sophisticated pantomimes designed to foster divisions amongst populations and hide the excesses of the status quo. All of them - fascist, communist, apartheid, democratic, monarchic, religious - rely on organised violence to enforce their legislation (which they conflate with Common or Natural Law). All governments rest on the lie that some people have more rights than others. All forms of government, again in my opinion, are illegitimate and dangerous. We need better ways to organise ourselves.
Okay, so you all know this already. I've banged on about it enough.
Governments overwhelmingly attract the least desirable personality types into "power" - but a few decent people slip through, and more power to them, I say. If they can fix at least bits of this monstrous system from the inside then I'm all for it.
Anyway, I wanted to point to Clare Daly, MEP, who writes, "World Children's Day 2023. EU leaders sit around congratulating themselves for signing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, while their ally, Israel, "defends itself" by raining white phosphorus on a concentration camp full of children. Well, aren't we great?" She then posts this powerful video. (https://twitter.com/ClareDalyMEP/status/1727351000611135810)
I hope her honourable colleagues can get their heads out of one another's arses long enough to hear her.
[linked removed]
I realize that news about the Israel-Hamas conflict is terribly upsetting. I'd caution against throwing out content, though, that sways into dangerous polemical territory. I wouldn't like to see more threads locked.
(I'm deliberately avoiding pointing out the specific ways in which the video that was linked-to crosses lines - but it does. I just don't want to get bogged down in specifics because I think that's exactly the sort of debate that would probably result in flames and thread locks - given past experience on the board.)
I understand your point but, respectfully, I cannot agree. Ethnic cleansing is crossing a line, being angry about it doesn't even get close.
There is a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the only people capable of stopping it are us. We must shout at our own politicians until they see through the lies and misinformation, see what is really happening, and develop courage enough to speak out. We are the foundation of all government power. If we refuse to go along with them, what are they going to do? Arrest all of us? Bomb us into submission? As soon as they realise that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are not the same thing their spines will stiffen and they'll start to do what we pay them to do - to keep the peace, operate lawfully, look after people. Isn't this what they claim to be for anyway? To stop us savage nobodies kicking the sh*t out of each other? Without them, they like us to believe, there'd be no law or order. Everywhere would be in chaos without their guiding hand - yet see the global chaos and misery they inflict under the banner of "freedom" or "order" or "law."
Yes, the man in the video is angry. Yes, his words are harsh. But have not we all got the right to be angry about this? Have not we all the right to use harsh words? Everything he says is verifiable, and the Zionist Israeli government is guilty of oh-so-much more, from urging Gazans to flee south for their own safety and then bombing the south to accusing the UN's Secretary General of antisemitism and demanding his resignation for the crime of questioning Israel's disproportionate response.
You're an intelligent person, Funt (I like to think everyone here is), so I won't insult your intelligence by listing the Zionist Israeli government's crimes over the last seventy five years. They're easy enough to find on what I believe most people would consider to be reputable sites from Amnesty International to the United Nations. Even the MSM has documented some of it, though often in a biased way, sometimes blatantly so and sometimes far more subtly. Most of the things I've learned about the current horrible situation, its history and context, comes from The Last American Vagabond, which I believe most people would consider to be a disreputable site. Things I've recently learned, of which I was shamefully previously unaware, include things like; as Palestine is officially recognised as an Occupied Territory under International Law, on October 7th Palestine technically invaded itself; Israeli citizens are tried in civilian courts with lawyers and such but Palestinians (being Under Occupation) are tried in military courts which have a near 100% conviction rate with no defence and often no understanding of the charges against them; that Israel constructed the tunnels under the Al Shifa hospital in 1983; that even before the current atrocities, 95% of the water in Gaza was undrinkable and they were allowed electricity for only four hours a day; that Israel is an Apartheid state. And although, as an Occupied Territory, Palestine has the legally recognised right to armed rebellion, that right is restricted to military or other direct-force targets. Civilians are off limits and anyone harming them must be brought to justice. No matter the ideology or the flag. I know you all think I have some funny ideas about the law (and I do want to get into it with Professor X at some point, for us to exchange perspectives and maybe deepen our respective understandings), but rule-based international order is a must if our species is to grow up. We must force our governments to acknowledge this and stop letting £$€ get in the way.
It may sound strange for a staunch anarchist to be calling on governments to do something when I hold them all in such contempt. The fact is that most people do believe in governments as a force for good, and if this were true then I'd have saved myself (and you) a lot of grief over the years. If ever there was a time in human history for statists to be proved correct, then this is it. If you can make your government speak out, and if your government can make other governments speak out, between us we can stop a genocide in real time. That's the potential power we collectively wield, this is our superpower and we must start using it for good. And we have to start now. Because I guarantee you that, absent international disapprobation, this slaughter will continue until Palestine and its people have been erased from history.
TL: DR - In this situation, with so much obvious corroborating evidence, harsh words are justified. That said, I should have labelled the link as NSFW, for which I apologise. Maybe a Mod could add that?
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 November, 2023, 08:22:49 AMEverything he says is verifiable
Well, that's the problem, right there - it isn't. For example - he equates The Holocaust with current events. That is minimizing the extent of The Holocaust, which is an anti-Semitic trope.
(Note - I'm not saying he doesn't also make valid points about current events, but he does also minimize The Holocaust.)
---
Flagging this up to moderation - is it really okay to propagate this stuff on here?
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 30 November, 2023, 04:58:21 PMFlagging this up to moderation - is it really okay to propagate this stuff on here?
I've been largely giving this thread a wide berth, but it does kind of feel like we're replicating the shut-down Political Thread to a significant degree, if I'm honest.
Yeah, I see what you mean. I know there is a lot of common ground - nobody is keen on the spilling of innocent blood, I'm sure. I expect we're all in agreement on that.
It's that being a launch pad to open the door to other, more hateful stuff, that I'm suggesting isn't a palatable (or, perhaps, even legal) thing to be doing.
Perhaps we can all agree just to change the subject?
My opinion is that there must be a thread where these things can be discussed.
That said, I understand that this is a forum predominantly - but not exclusively - about a particular comic, which is why I limit such observations and opinions to threads such as this.
As to Funt's accusation that the speaker minimises the Holocaust, this is not so. He merely points out that Zionists use the Holocaust as an excuse, and are not averse to embellishing that tragedy for political ends - as the BBC reported in 2015 (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34594563). That an ostensibly Jewish prime minister should twist history this way to justify atrocities of his own minimises the Holocaust to a much deeper and more sinister degree than calling it out does.
These things are hard to look at and hard to comprehend. But we must look. Zionism is an inherently genocidal political ideology which is completely at odds with Judaism. It's not me saying that, it's people like Rabbi Elhanan Beck (https://www.reddit.com/r/bestconspiracymemes/comments/181acqa/rabbi_elhanan_beck/?rdt=35309), who I'd regard as more informed on the topic than me (link probably safe for work, so long as you're not working somewhere you really shouldn't). Agreeing with a rabbi doesn't make me antisemitic (not that anyone said it did), or at least it shouldn't.
We've come to fear talking about these things because to be labelled antisemitic is to be regarded as as a dreadful person. So many examples have been made, so many political and economic careers ruined over a misconception, an illusion, a lie. To question the Zionist Israeli government is not the same as being filled with antisemitic hatred. It's a fear that's been hammered into us as surely a hatred of Palestinians has been hammered into Israelis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e_dbsVQrk4) (CAUTION: Link leads to a piece by Abby Martin, who used to be on evil foreign news channel RT). But we've been played.
This fear is largely illusory (but, of course, there are dyed-in-the-wool bigots of all stripes in the world, so we must be on our guard) and we must see this illusory fear for what it is; emotional blackmail. I think most ordinary people would not endorse any kind of Holocaust, I know I wouldn't, nor belittle the stain on our collective humanity such tragedies leave. But neither should we have this grotesque history held over our heads like the Sword of Damocles, especially by a cynical and genocidal political ideology engaged in the theft of another country. I don't really think ignoring it will achieve anything, but talking about it might.
I think it is important for people to talk about these things honestly and without fear, even if it is only in one dark corner of a forum dedicated to a zarjaz comic.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 November, 2023, 09:11:50 PMAs to Funt's accusation that the speaker minimises the Holocaust, this is not so.
Yes, it is so:
Quote0:28
the reason why I've had enough of Israel
0:31
bringing up the Holocaust as it carries
0:33
out a holocaust against Palestinians
From Wikipedia: "Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe"
From Wikipedia: "Since the start of the ongoing war, as of 18:00 on 23 November, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza, more than 14,800 people have been killed in Gaza"
So, he's either saying that the murder of six millions Jews (with no provocation whatsoever) is the same as a complicated conflict in which about 15 thousand people in Gaza have been killed, or that six million Gazans have died, or that only 15 thousand Jews died in The Holocaust. He's not really clear - which is why hyperbole is such a shit way to debate anything - but especially on a topic as heated as this one.
He's minimizing The Holocaust. You're spreading that around. Please - just drop it!
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 November, 2023, 09:11:50 PMMy opinion is that there must be a thread where these things can be discussed.
No, you think that you deserve a forum to air your specific opinions on certain subjects. The question is whether
this is the appropriate forum for that. I've come to the conclusion, after many, many years that the answer to that question is: no.
Find somewhere else for it. Start your own YouTube channel. Get a TikTok account. Whatever. Just stop shitting up this forum with your bollocks. Please.
Cancelled.
Gotcha'.
Just please don't ban me until after the Advent Calendar, okay? ;-)
Flat earthers - they so lame! Witness the truth:
(https://i.imgur.com/NvM2FYU.png)
Mugs!
Yes - these will be available on mugs ... and tea towels!
That was an awful, awful, truly terrible attempt at a joke about the topological homeomorphism between donuts and coffee mugs/tea cups.
I wish I could find the clip of an Flat Earth Society spokesman thanking all the speakers that attended a convention in the good 'ol United States of Yeeeehaaaaw America for flying in to give lectures...from AROUND the GLOBE...
From the Jerusalem Post (https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-778367):
"The entire Gaza Strip should be emptied and leveled flat, just like in A*schw*tz. Let it become a museum, showcasing the capabilities of the State of Israel..." Metula Council head David Azoulai.
Monstrous.
(Caution! This article also contains the "H" word!)
When Flat Earthers Spent $20,000 Trying To Prove Earth Is Flat And Accidentally Proved It's Round
https://www.triplem.com.au/story/flat-earthers-spend-20-000-trying-to-prove-earth-is-flat-accidentally-prove-it-s-round-129953
So this current A.I. conversation got me thinking about how it's going to be hard to spot fake images and even videos from now on, maybe even broadcast in real-time. Then I remembered that brief conspiracy theory flap from the early 2000s about video artefacts being proof that certain people were actually alien lizards hiding behind holographic disguises which glitched occasionally. Good fodder for sci-fi but almost certainly (and most hopefully) bollocks.
So why bring it up?
Well, connect another vague dot and a vague possibility looms into view. Classified research is presumed to be decades ahead of what's publicly known (although this, too, might be bollocks - a kind of "we're smarter than our enemies" propaganda war), so maybe, just maybe, those glitching lizards were early tests of "live" A.I.?
Not saying it's true, it's only a possibility. The A.I. available to the public now is often glaringly imperfect but, very rarely, convincingly real, so if the bods behind the scenes really are so far in front, we're going to have to be vigilant on so many levels.
But that's all just speculation and not the truth at all.
What is the truth, sadly, is that A.I. is, right now (and since 2021), being used to kill people. Don't take my word for it (or theirs, for that matter), but check out +972 Magazine's (https://www.972mag.com/about/) article mentioning the "Habsora" ("The Gospel") (https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/).
There's a lot more at stake than art.
Good lord... It would seem my digital telly gets more attuned to detecting holographic technology utilising alien lizard-folk and/or A.I. generated imagery when it's really windy and the outside aerial is wobbling about.
Climate Change on Trial. (https://climatechangeontrial.com/)
It's a bit of a clickbait title, but this short (15 part) podcast series following the recent (Jan/Feb '24) defamation case brought by prominent climate scientist Michael Mann against writer and broadcaster Mark Steyn (alleging an article by Steyn defamed him and his research) is fascinating. Using actors to bring to life court transcripts and presented by two engaging Irish journalists, this series is well worth a listen no matter which "side" one supports.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 14 February, 2024, 10:44:43 PMNot saying it's true, it's only a possibility.
It's not.
It's dropped or corrupt frames, lost or corrupted between transmission and reception. Typically caused by improper tuning or bad weather.
Video broadcast codecs only encode
changes to data
between keyframes. When one frame gets corrupt or lost, the changes-since-the-last-frame data are missing, in whole or in part, and the decoder can only get some of the data to complete the picture. The picture from that point is a result of whatever the subsequent frames of data look like when incorporated into the decode picture at that point - often like blocky garbage for some of the screen. This worsens up until the next keyframe is received to refresh the whole picture.
Reminds me of one of my favourite nonsense arguments used by flat earthers, who will pull a random image of the globe taken from satellite and turn up the resolution in photoshop.
Low and behold, there's artefacts all around the globe! What are they hiding?! Don't trust NASA globeheads!
It's .jpeg compression, you absolute rubes.
We all know...if the Earth was flat cats would have pushed everything off the edge by now, what more proof do you need :)
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2024, 01:59:36 PMClimate Change on Trial. (https://climatechangeontrial.com/)
It's a bit of a clickbait title, but this short (15 part) podcast series following the recent (Jan/Feb '24) defamation case brought by prominent climate scientist Michael Mann against writer and broadcaster Mark Steyn (alleging an article by Steyn defamed him and his research) is fascinating. Using actors to bring to life court transcripts and presented by two engaging Irish journalists, this series is well worth a listen no matter which "side" one supports.
A classic presentation of the situation as false balance. You say "alleging", but Mann won the case, so Steyn
did defame him. There's no question of which "side one supports". Human-induced climate change is real, and demonstrated clearly by the evidence. The "other side" of that is some people, now guilty of defamation, suggesting that the scientists are liars.
This is us back to step #1 of your cyclical routine of posting links to bullshit.
And you back to assuming bullshit right from the start, straight in to your beloved circular argument mainstay. "I'm not going to investigate this bullshit because it's bullshit, but I am going to tell everyone else it's bullshit because it's bullshit."
In your world, "Mann won" seems to say it all; no need to understand a case that has lasted twelve years, no need to know who funded Mann's legal fees for all that time, no need to understand the arguments of both sides, no need to know why the jury didn't award Mann what he was asking (just $1 in one category), no need to understand anything beyond "Mann ("we") won."
Nothing to learn here, move along, move along...
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2024, 08:45:06 PMjust $1 in one category
And how much in the other? Can you bring yourself to type it?
Jeez, get a room you two!
weird duo
(https://s3.awkwardfamilyphotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/22233508/tumblr_lrkdsz7oAp1r39dcqo1_1280.jpg)
Fatman and Blobbin.
"Bring me my Bat-bellywheel boy blunder!"
Quote from: Funt Solo [R] on 16 February, 2024, 08:53:55 PMQuote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2024, 08:45:06 PMjust $1 in one category
And how much in the other? Can you bring yourself to type it?
I couldn't resist looking it up. Mann was awarded over one million.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 17 February, 2024, 10:11:08 PMQuote from: Funt Solo [R] on 16 February, 2024, 08:53:55 PMQuote from: The Legendary Shark on 16 February, 2024, 08:45:06 PMjust $1 in one category
And how much in the other? Can you bring yourself to type it?
I couldn't resist looking it up. Mann was awarded over one million.
Certainly an interesting case, with the outline presented here (https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-defamation-michael-mann-penn-state-61289ee2d8d2143768d28995c83899ef) on AP news.
The $1 (compensatory) vs $1 million (punitive) against Steyn is something of a sideshow in the debate. (Compensatory being low means that the jury didn't think that Mann lost out very much financially from the defamation, is all.) Steyn doesn't contend that he's just making shit up when he talks about the climate science - on the contrary, he seems rather proud of his free speech ability to talk complete and utter bullshit.
Somehow, climate deniers have latched onto Steyn (a right-wing horror that tried to link Mann to child molestation as an attempt to win an "argument") as a hero figure. Even after this clear loss in court, they still clutch at the straws of their barmy conspiracy theory as if this is somehow a win for, well, anyone. Desperate stuff, really.
Quote from: Definitely Not Mister Pops on 16 February, 2024, 10:10:37 PMJeez, get a room you two!
I have been informed that this turn of phrase is a bit homophobic. This was not my intention whatsoever, didn't even occur to me. I apologize unreservedly and will accept any admonishments.
No worries, Mr. P. Didn't even occur to me, either.
Quote from: Definitely Not Mister Pops on 18 February, 2024, 04:37:06 PMI have been informed that this turn of phrase is a bit homophobic.
I've been trying to twist this expression in my head in order to work out
how it might be considered homophobic, and I've reached the conclusion that it just isn't, and whoever said this is wrong.
I'm all for cutting out inadvertent bigotry, but I just can't see it here.
The expression is meant to imply that a couple is fighting and that there is pent up sexual tension which could break out into passionate shenanigans at any moment. And, as we all know, a couple can be comprised of folks of any sex, sexual orientation, or gender. Doesn't even have to be a couple; the expression works fine with a group of more than two.
Someone explain it to me! :-\
Don't ask me, I was about to comment the very same.
Actually, I was just going to post the word "How?", but it amounts to pretty much the same thing.
Phantasms, holistic conspiracies and why the British gentrified-privatised infrastructure sucks. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2lHNkUjR9nM&t=3018s)
Agenda 2030 and The Great Reset are not the same thing. Neither are they "fictional."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/agenda-2030-delivering-the-global-goals
https://www.weforum.org/press/2020/06/the-great-reset-a-unique-twin-summit-to-begin-2021/
I don't know anything much about 15 Minute Cities as I've not studied the idea so can't comment.
Whilst many good points are made in this video, I think the presenter pours all "conspiracy theories" (whatever they are) into one handy bucket with "nuts" written on it, and implies that every "conspiracy theorist" (whatever that is) must necessarily support them all.
She's bob-on about the phantasms, though, those bloody things are everywhere.
++Incoming message from Colonel Kovert++
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Reset#Conspiracy_theories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Reset#Conspiracy_theories)
Who is afraid of the 2030 Agenda? (https://www.wearewater.org/en/who-is-afraid-of-the-2030-agenda_365203)
The assertions made by the video's presenter was that these projects are the same thing and that they do not exist. Ten seconds on a search engine is all it takes to disprove these assertions. Yet the presenter makes these claims in her introduction; did she not think to check? Or did she just assume that because there are "conspiracy theories" around them, they must, ipso facto, be "conspiracy theories" themselves and chucked into the "Nuts" bucket?
Sure, make the argument that nutty theories attach to these projects, but don't deny their existence altogether. Because, if the presenter doesn't know what the projects are actually about, who's pushing them and why, how can she know whether genuine criticisms and concerns haven't been thrown into the "Nuts" bucket with everything else?
Some real weirdos here
Quote from: judgeurko on 27 February, 2024, 02:06:51 PMSome real weirdos here
I blame the lack of news regarding a Dredd show myself.
You've arrived on a rather special night...
Quote from: judgeurko on 27 February, 2024, 02:06:51 PMSome real weirdos here
Aye, you don't want to know what some of them get up to with their iPods and a block of Wensleydale! :o
Quote from: Tjm86 on 27 February, 2024, 03:46:17 PMQuote from: judgeurko on 27 February, 2024, 02:06:51 PMSome real weirdos here
Aye, you don't want to know what some of them get up to with their iPods and a block of Wensleydale! :o
Oy! I told you what happens in the Lawless Secret Hot Tub Party stays in the Lawless Secret Hot Tub Party!
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 27 February, 2024, 02:14:12 PMQuote from: judgeurko on 27 February, 2024, 02:06:51 PMSome real weirdos here
I blame the lack of news regarding a Dredd show myself.
That took me a minute, but I got a snigger out of it.
Quote from: Tjm86 on 27 February, 2024, 03:46:17 PMQuote from: judgeurko on 27 February, 2024, 02:06:51 PMSome real weirdos here
Aye, you don't want to know what some of them get up to with their iPods and a block of Wensleydale! :o
dubious deeds.