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I understand that by publishing this post I may be giving ammunition to the anti-science crowd. But we can’t just hide in the ivory tower and tell people that science is perfect as it is. We need deep reforms in the way science is done.

In Italy, we have a term for those who engage in a task much too big and too difficult for them. We call them a “Brancaleone Army” (Armata Brancaleone), a term coming from the title of a wonderful 1966 Italian movie where an Italian self-styled knight tries to lead a ragtag army of incompetent fighters. The sad conditions of science nowadays sometimes look to me like the story of the Brancaleone army.

What is truth? These famous words come not from a scientist but from a politician, Pontius Pilate, governor of Palestine in Roman times. As a politician, Pilate knew very well how truth could be twisted, stretched, sliced, cooked, flavored, and rearranged in many ways in order to be sold to people. Things are not different, today. In politics, truth is what you perceive to be true. After all, isn’t it true that we can create our own reality? (a US government official is reported to have said that at the time of the invasion of Iraq, in 2003).

Eventually, the Roman Empire drowned in its own lies, it was an epistemological collapse. Something similar may happen to us: we cannot continue for long to ignore reality, believing that we can manufacture our own, and deceive everyone in the process.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

TRUTH is so precious that she should Always be attended by a Bodyguard of Lies

August 21, 2018

TRUTH is so precious that she should Always be attended by a Bodyguard of Lies

QUESTION: Do you support the unilateral withdrawal of the US from the Iran deal?

ANSWER: Iran has no intention of actually conforming with that agreement. But that is really a side issue. There is a significant displeasure with the religious government in Iran among its own people. No nation is ever 100% left or right. There will always be dissent against whatever government is in power. This rising discontent has appeared since the Arab Spring. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 will be followed by another counter-revolution probably in 2022. Iran has suppressed its people for far too long and it will rise up in yet another revolution. The government is at war in the Middle East against Saudi Arabia because of a political-religious philosophy. They seek to export their beliefs to others and that is the problem. If they would just adopt live-and-let-live policy things would be much calmer.

I do not support the USA sticking its nose into everything. This is the inherent problem when you have military establishments. As I have said before, the days of Empire Building are gone. China, Russia, and the USA have no desire to occupy each other. Both Erdogan and Iran are still clinging to this idea of reestablishing Empires. The major powers are engaged in proxy wars. It really makes no sense to intervene for it only inspires hatred.

Franklin Roosevelt lied to the people to get into World War II because the American people were isolationists. You have to understand that you MUST always separate the PEOPLE from the Government and its POLITICIANS.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

OMG This This This This!

August 19, 2018

OMG This This This This!

That’s right, I’m writing an entire goddamn article about a single tweet made by another political commentator. It probably won’t even be a long article, because the excellent Tim Black said it all. Call me lazy, I don’t care, this is the most interesting thing I’ve seen all day:

“Last night, one of my callers said we needed journalists and commentators willing to die for the truth,” Black tweeted. “I disagreed. We need journalists and commentators willing to give up their status, quit their jobs and make less money telling truth and sadly to most that’s the same as dying.”

There’s so much truth in that I just want to unpack it a bit and riff on its implications from my own perspective. What would happen if a significant percentage of journalists got fed up with spoon feeding lies to a trusting populace and decided to place truth and authenticity before income and prestige? Or, perhaps more realistically, what if people who are interested in reporting and political analysis ceased pursuing positions in the plutocrat-owned mass media and pursued alternate paths to getting the word out instead?

I contend that if enough people did either of the above, it would save the world. The omnicidal, ecocidal Orwellian power establishment that is oppressing us into heartlessness and driving our species towards extinction depends on deception and manipulation to manufacture support for depraved plutocratic agendas, so truth is poison to those agendas. The plutocrat-controlled media outlets advance that deception and manipulation, and honest alternative media outlets disrupt it. If enough talent began flooding into the latter instead of the former, it would become impossible to manufacture the consent of the governed for the deranged agendas which imperil our whole world.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Artificial intelligence, fake images and crumbling trust in our narratives

August 19, 2018

Artificial intelligence, fake images and crumbling trust in our narratives

In a piece I wrote in 2014 I opined, “If you want to corrupt a people, corrupt the language.” I added, “Once it becomes impossible to say the truth with the language we have, it will ultimately be impossible for us to adapt and survive.”

In that piece I was complaining about what I dubbed “oil Newspeak,” an Orwellian lexicon created by the oil industry to deceive policymakers, investors and the public.

Of course, back then I concerned myself only with words. But with the increasing power of artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced software which is now available to average computer users, practically anyone can alter and/or create images and audio recordings that seem real, but which are entirely concocted. It means that comedian Richard Pryor’s famous line—”Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”—may very well morph from a joke into a serious question.

Humans understand the world by narrating it. Our narratives are always approximations of reality; we cannot know objectively our reality because we are inside of it and limited in the scope and modes of our perceptions—modes that are shaped by evolution to help us survive, but not necessarily plumb the depths of the universe.

Still, those narratives must be reasonable approximations of the dangers and opportunities we face or they will lead us in the wrong direction. Words can be powerful and images even more so. The power of the iconic is so great that it can easily bypass our logic and slip directly into our minds.

Draftsmen, painters and sculptors have long created images for us to dwell on, many of them filled with mythic animals, immortal beings and historical and non-historical personages.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Elite Closing Down Truth Tellers

August 8, 2018

Elite Closing Down Truth Tellers

Economic expert and journalist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts says the ideas of the elite are awful, and they want to suppress free speech to get their policies instituted. Dr. Roberts explains, “The agendas of the elite are hidden. They are not something the American people would support. The elite are fearful that their cover stories are so thin that if truth can be shown on their agendas, they will be discredited. They will lose their abilities to impose their agendas. So, they are closing down truth tellers in order to maintain control over explanations. Alex Jones is a threat to the elites’ control over the explanations. . . . They are sending the message that says get onboard with the official explanations or we terminate you.”

Dr. Roberts goes on to ask, “Why is this possible? It is possible because the antitrust laws of the United States have not been enforced. These are all monopolies. Monopoly is against the law. It’s against the Sherman Antitrust Act, but they don’t enforce it because they’re so powerful. They just prevent the law being enforced. Plus, they have the neo-liberal economists saying that today you have to be a monopoly to compete globally. . . . It’s a lie, but it’s a cover for having just a few people controlling information.”

Dr. Roberts says big tech companies are too big to function fairly. Dr. Roberts explains, “They should be broken up, or they should be nationalized or actually they should be arrested. . . . They are part of a plot. They are engaged in high treason against the government of the United States. If I was the Attorney General, I would have all of them arrested and put in solitary confinement awaiting trial. That’s where they belong. That’s where Google belongs along with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Spotify, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and NPR.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

They Work To Manufacture Consent Because They Need It. So Don’t Give It To Them.

August 4, 2018

They Work To Manufacture Consent Because They Need It. So Don’t Give It To Them.

Social Media and Israel: Censorship of the Truth

July 6, 2018

Social Media and Israel: Censorship of the Truth

Photo by Susan Ruggles | CC BY 2.0

The growing desperation of Israel to avoid public knowledge of its many war crimes and crimes against humanity knows no bounds. The country that, with United States support, proclaims itself the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, has, like its U.S. sponsor, a highly skewed opinion of what constitutes a democracy.

Freedom of the press is a hallmark of any nation that wants to define itself as a democracy. How does Israel ‘respect’ freedom of the press? The organization, Reporters without Borders in April of this year accused the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces; read: Israeli Government Terrorists) of the intentional shooting of reporters. Nothing has changed since then, as more unarmed members of the press have been shot by Israeli terrorists. And during Israel’s carpet-bombing of Gaza in 2014, clearly marked press vehicles and offices were targeted by Israel.

In April of this year, a program entitled “A Jewish-American on Israel’s Fascism: No Hope for Change from Within’, from the ‘Empire Files’, the teleSur program that is hosted by Abby Martin, was blocked in 28 countries. The program was a study of the militaristic posture that Israelis increasingly take towards Palestinians. The purported reason was that the program content violated ‘local laws’.

An interview with journalist Max Blumenthal was part of the program. Questioned later about his participation in the context of the program being so widely blocked, he stated that nothing in his comments “was even remotely illegal, even in countries with the strictest hate-crime laws.” When he was asked his opinion as to the reason for the video being blocked, he said that the decision was “likely made under pressure from powerful pro-Israel interests.”

So much for freedom of the press in Israel.

Another vital component of any democracy is freedom of speech.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Techniques Used to Disrupt 9/11 Questioning

June 25, 2018

Techniques Used to Disrupt 9/11 Questioning

In 2008, Harvard professors Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule proposed that the government should engage in “cognitive infiltration” of citizen groups that seek the truth about 9/11. The proposal was that government operatives, whether anonymous or otherwise, should infiltrate and disrupt the groups. They wrote, “Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action. “

The following year, this anti-Constitutional stance was rewarded when Sunstein was made director of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement responded with detailed criticism.

Of course, the idea of infiltrating a grassroots action group, to disrupt and defame its members, was not new. The FBI program called COINTELPRO was a widely reported example after it was revealed in the early 1970s to have infiltrated citizen groups seeking civil rights and peace. After being revealed, COINTELPRO techniques continued at the FBI and elsewhere in government.

Since 9/11, journalists have noted that government infiltration of political groups is no longer a rare exception but is the norm. The goals of such infiltration are to destabilize and prevent citizen dissent by creating a negative public image for the target group and conflict within the group. Infiltration is easy when it comes to a grassroots movement like 9/11 Truth. That is, you cannot just claim to be a 9/11 Commission member or an employee of a government agency but anyone can say they are a truth seeker. The beauty of this for government operatives is that they can control both sides of the conversation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Assange and Truth: the Deeper (Harder) Issue

June 21, 2018

Assange and Truth: the Deeper (Harder) Issue

Photo by thierry ehrmann | CC BY 2.0

When Harold Pinter got the Nobel Prize (2005), he described “a vast tapestry of lies upon which we feed”. He asked why “systematic brutality, widespread atrocities, ruthless suppression of independent thought” were well-known when they occurred in the Soviet Union. But the same events in the US, despite copious evidence, “never happened”.

It shouldn’t be a rhetorical question. The answer to Pinter’s question is known in countless cultures. It is not obscure. But it is not discussed much in the North.

John Pilger notes an “eerie silence” about Julian Assange. More than any investigative journalist of our time, Assange has exposed “the imperialism of liberal democracies: the commitment to endless warfare and the division and degradation of ‘unworthy’ lives: from Grenfell Tower to Gaza.”

And yet he’s been imprisoned for six years with no charges against him. There is no outcry.

The silence is eerie, but not surprising. Assange allows us to see with our own eyes the actions of US military in Iraq. We hear them laugh about the “dead bastards” on the ground, who were carrying cameras, not guns.

There are truths, which Wikileaks reveals, but there is also truth abouttruths. One truth is that empirical evidence, seen and believed, does not shake deep-seated expectations. When beliefs are well-established, presupposed in daily life, indeed, part of identity, evidence is explained away.

It’s how we reason. If I release an object that doesn’t fall, you don’t give up belief in gravity. If I show you a thousand times, you don’t waiver. You expectgravity. It is a presupposition of life and thought. If you questioned that belief, you’d have to rethink your relationship to the world. It’s a reason not to question it.

You see with your own eyes. You dismiss what you see. Or, you explain it away, rationally.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In The Western World Truth Is An Endangered Species: Come To Its Support

June 12, 2018

In The Western World Truth Is An Endangered Species: Come To Its Support

Nowhere in the Western world is truth respected. Even universities are imposing censorship and speech control. Governments are shutting down, and will eventually criminalize, all explanations that differ from official ones. The Western world no longer has a print and TV media. In its place there is a propaganda ministry for the ruling elite.

Whistleblowers are prosecuted and imprisoned despite their protection by federal statue. The US Department of Justice is a Department of Injustice. It has been a long time since any justice flowed from the DOJ.

The total corruption of the print and TV media led to the rise of Internet media such as Wikileaks, led by Julian Assange, a prisoner since 2012.
Assange is an Australian and Ecuadorian citizen. He is not an American citizen. Yet US politicians and media claim that he is guilty of treason because he published official documents leaked to Wikileaks that prove the duplicity and criminality of the US government.

It is strictly impossible for a non-citizen to be guilty of treason. It is strictly impossible under the US Constitution for the reporting of facts to be spying. The function of the media is to expose and to hold accountable the government. This function is no longer performed by the Western print and TV media.

Washington wants revenge and is determined to get it. If Assange were as corrupt at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, National Public Radio, MSNBC, etc., he would have reported the leaker to Washington, not published the information, and retired as a multi-millionaire with Washington’s thanks. However, unfortunately for Assange, he had integrity.

Integrity today in the Western world has no value. You cannot find integrity in the government, in the global corporations, in the universities and schools, and most certainly not in the media.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Will The Real Global Economy Please Stand Up”

June 11, 2018

“Will The Real Global Economy Please Stand Up”

To say I’ve become skeptical of “markets” and their movements is probably an understatement. However, rather than waste more time trying to make sense of these skewed markets, I believe real economic activity is more accurately represented by changing populations and their energy consumption. So today, we’ll play a little “To Tell The Truth”, an old television show where two imposters could lie but one contestant had to tell the truth. The celebs would ask questions and then attempt to pick which contestant was the real deal. I’ll lay out the data and let you determine how well this lines up with non-stop narrative of record market valuations and stories of strong economic activity.

I’ll start with Japan and work my up progressively larger. The population data is from the UN and I use the 15 to 60 year old population to avoid speculation about changing birth rates over the next fifteen years. Energy data is from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and their projections using their IEO’17 (International Energy Outlook, 2017) models.

Japan

Core population peaked 1993, declined 14% since (as of 2015), will decline 22% by 2030 and 33% by 2040.
Energy consumption peak 2006, declined 17% since
- My est. -25% by 2030, -30% by 2040
- IEO’17 est. +3% by 2030, unchanged by 2040.

Germany

Core population peaked 1995, declined 5% since, will decline 17% by 2030 and 19% by 2040.
Energy consumption peaked 2006, declined 14% since, will decline 22% by 2030 and 28% by 2040. IEO’17 data will be wrapped together for EU below.

Italy

Core population peaked 2005, declined 4% since. Will decline 17% by 2030 and 25% by 2040.
Energy consumption peaked 2005, declined 17% since. I estimate declines of 26% by 2030 and 32% by 2040.

Greece

Core population peaked 2006, declined 5% since. Will decline 15% by 2030, 29% by 2040.
Energy Consumption peaked 2007, declined 27% since. I estimate declines of 40% by 2030, 47% by 2040

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wikipedia Is An Establishment Psyop

May 21, 2018

Wikipedia Is An Establishment Psyop

If you haven’t been living in a hole in a cave with both fingers plugged into your ears, you may have noticed that an awful lot of fuss gets made about Russian propaganda and disinformation these days. Mainstream media outlets are now speaking openly about the need for governments to fight an “information war” against Russia, with headlines containing that peculiar phrase now turning up on an almost daily basis.

Here’s one published today titled “Border guards detain Russian over ‘information war’ on Poland“, about a woman who is to be expelled from that country on the grounds that she “worked to consolidate pro-Russian groups in Poland in order to challenge Polish government policy on historical issues and replace it with a Russian narrative” in order to “destabilize Polish society and politics.”

Here’s one published yesterday titled “Marines get new information warfare leader“, about a US Major General’s appointment to a new leadership position created “to better compete in a 21st century world.”

Here’s one from the day before titled “Here’s how Sweden is preparing for an information war ahead of its general election“, about how the Swedish Security Service and Civil Contingencies Agency are “gearing up their efforts to prevent disinformation during the election campaigns.”

This notion that the US and its allies are fighting against Russian “hybrid warfare” (by which they typically mean hackers and disinformation campaigns) has taken such deep root among think tanks, DC elites and intelligence/defense circles that it often gets unquestioningly passed on as fact by mass media establishment stenographers who are immersed in and chummy with those groups. The notion that these things present a real threat to the public is taken for granted to such an extent that they seldom bother to even attempt to explain to their audiences why we’re meant to be so worried about this new threat and what makes it a threat in the first place.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Before You Tell Me What You “Know,” Tell Me Your Sources

May 9, 2018

Before You Tell Me What You “Know,” Tell Me Your Sources

We can no longer trust data and conclusions being published as impartial by institutions that were once trustworthy.

When someone says they “know” what’s happening on the ground in Syria, how can we assess the validity of their claim to knowledge, i.e. their claim to “know” “facts” or (gasp) “truth”?

When someone says they “know” the U.S. economy is growing and unemployment is at record lows, what is the basis of their claim to knowledge?

Before you tell me what you “know,” tell me your sources. We all know how this works nowadays: the sources are rigged or gamed to support the pre-selected narrative.

In “fake news,” the sources are designed to appear legitimate via official-sounding institutional titles for the source organizations and human “experts” / researchers, and the data that’s presented to support the “fake news” is also designed to be indistinguishable from legitimate data.

The cursory consumer of such content will be inclined to grant the institution, source and data as equal in legitimacy to other accepted sources. For example, if we read that the United Nations Labor Information Council has collected data showing the U.S. unemployment rate is actually 7.2% rather than the official 3.9%, the invocation of the UN and the precision of the data point suggests a legitimate source and data base.

But it’s “fake news;” there is no United Nations Labor Information Council (at least not to my knowledge).

Official sources have learned that the most effective way to propagate the sanctioned narratives is to rig or game the data and/or its interpretation. Thus the bailouts of the U.S. “too big to fail” financial institutions in 2008-09 were purposefully obscured; it took independent researchers to assemble all the bailout guarantees and publish the staggering total of over $16 trillion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

From the Skripals to Douma, the Globalist Pravda Network Reveals its True Face

May 4, 2018

People living in the Soviet Union had a wonderful phrase to describe the two biggest circulation state-controlled newspapers, Pravda (meaning “truth”) and Izvestia (meaning “news”). There’s no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia, was the oft-repeated expression. It is unfortunate that the mainstream media in the Western nations these days don’t have similar sorts of names, since it deprives us of an endless source of amusement in coming up with similarly apposite phrases about them.

It is, however, increasingly clear that on the great issues of the day, you are about as likely to find the truth in them as you would have done in Pravda, although I expect their sports and gardening sections are still relatively reliable. As for the important political and geopolitical issues of the day, I tend to imagine that on the walls next to the desks in the offices of many of these papers and broadcasters are the following instructions:

Rules for Reporting on Global Affairs

Repeat Government line unquestioningly.

If Government line is questioned, accuse those doing the questioning of being Bots, Kremlin-trolls and useful idiots.

If the persistent questioning won’t go away and the Government line is seen to be contradictory and full of holes, bury the issue completely and start posing deep questions, such as “What will Meghan wear?” or “Is there a gender pay gap in midwifery?” or “How much sugar is really bad for you?”

The Skripal and Douma episodes have demonstrated this perhaps more than any others. First the Government line has been dutifully parroted by the media in a relentless propaganda campaign — no questions asked. Then there have been attempts to silence or ridicule those who didn’t bow to the parrots and who were asking legitimate questions — including the appalling treatment meted out to distinguished military men.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Facebook, Etc., Suppress Key Truths

April 30, 2018

How Facebook, Etc., Suppress Key Truths

On April 23rd, the great independent investigative journalist, Craig Murray — a former British diplomat — headlined at his blog, “Condemned By Their Own Words”, and he posted there the translated-to-English transcript (excerpted below) to this Israeli radio Hebrew broadcast on April 21st, in which an Israeli Brigadier-General, named Fogel, explained why Israel’s troops are doing the right thing to shoot and even to kill Gazans who come (an unspecified) too close to the wall which separates Israel from Gaza:

Any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation. If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order [the soldier thinks possibly] to hide an explosive device or [to] check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us …

Nesiel [the interviewer]: Then, then his punishment [for being suspected] is death?

Fogel: His punishment is death. As far as I’m concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm – great. But if it’s more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs. It is clear to you that if one such person will manage to cross the fence or hide an explosive device there …

Nesiel: But we were taught that live fire is only used when the soldiers face immediate danger. … It does not do all that well for us, those pictures that are distributed around the world.

Fogel: Look, Ron, we’re even terrible at it [at suppressing those pictures]. There’s nothing to be done, David always looks better against Goliath. And in this case, we are the Goliath. Not the David. That is entirely clear to me. …

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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