Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Monday, December 21, 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Monday, December 14, 2015
Placate the Masses
I hate to be a 'downer' on the climate change agreement. With lots of world-wide attention, there was a real chance to actually make history and to at ameliorate possible climate change pace and impacts. But, the agreements from the summit are voluntary; the deadlines are way to long, and the money needed to address the issue is not mandatory. The words are nice in the agreement but they are straw men, hollow reeds.
The agreement makes no commitment to abandon fossil fuels. The time period for changes makes not sense. Do we have 30-50 years to meet targets, all of which are not mandated. If there is one thing that is certain, models underestimate change. Year after year since the first IPCC report, NEW factors have emerged that show an ever hastening climate disaster.
The summit and all of the nice talk appears to be more of a ruse to placate the masses and to lull them into thinking all will be okay---that it's all under control. It's not.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/global-climate-change-sum_b_8801996.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change
"But those are targets, not requirements. And the national action plans brandished by all but a few of the 195 nations voting for the Paris accord add up, in the first round of estimates, to fall very short of the target. Indeed, temperatures would rise between 2.7 and 3.5 degrees Celsius under the actual national plans, between five and more than six degrees Fahrenheit. That result would be absolutely disastrous.
President Barack Obama hailed the Paris summit accord as grandly historic. But former NASA scientist James Hansen, a founding father of climate change awareness, declared the summit "a fraud," an event of "no action, just promises."
So the agreement, at the insistence of the Obama administration, includes a schedule of regular reviews, every five years, of national action plans, essentially pushing the nations to resubmit new and better plans based upon technological advances and increased political will.
And the Paris accord does not call for an actual phase-out of widespread fossil fuel use.
Instead of "greenhouse gas emissions neutrality" in the draft, which some interpreted to mean an end to emissions, the phrase "global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible" was substituted. This change was made, not surprisingly, at the urgent insistence of Saudi Arabia and some other members of OPEC. The Saudi line is to keep burning oil and make up for it with carbon sinks such as new forest growth and techno-fixes down the line. Meanwhile, they are going to keep on pumping and selling."
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Donald "Goebbels" Trump
Donald Trump: Ban all Muslim travel to U.S.
CNN
Some of the Goebbels' principles of propaganda:
"Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority."
"Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false."
"Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans. "
"Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred. "
"Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects. "
"To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium. "
"Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level"
There
was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals
would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the **er, and
this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore
be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not
the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics
and psychology.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1393155
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
“Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.”
There
was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals
would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the **er, and
this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore
be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not
the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics
and psychology.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1393155
There
was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals
would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the **er, and
this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore
be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not
the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics
and psychology.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1393155
There
was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals
would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the **er, and
this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore
be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not
the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics
and psychology.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1393155
Monday, December 7, 2015
Friday, December 4, 2015
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Monday, November 30, 2015
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Where are all of the holiday commercials?
In recent years there has been a chorus of complaints, mine included, about Christmas commercials starting even before Halloween. The buy now, shop early was really annoying. This year, holiday commercials are almost non-existent, relatively speaking. The most I've seen so far are from car dealers, the little else. Why? Have companies seen the light? Have they decided to not annoy people?
Even more interesting is the total lack or new products--new fads to attract the weak minded, weak willed, the keeping up with the Jones', and the gullible. No really new gadgets-just old models made bigger or slightly modified. Star Wars-boring, been there, done that.
Yeah, there are Black Friday and pre-Black Friday and post Black Friday emails advertising sales, but it's all just same old stuff. What is going on? Are companies just trying to save on expenses? Are they concerned that wanton consumerism is a thing of the past? Do they know something about the economy that we don't? For an economy that has rebounded this lack advertising is disconcerting. The lack of anything new is bothersome.
On the one hand I was happy not to be inundated with ads in October. But here we are, the week of Thanksgiving, and I'm still not seeing what has become the normal bombardment of jingle bell ads.
When Wall Street doesn't act in their normal greedy way, it is worth taking notice; it is worth wondering why.
Friday, November 20, 2015
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Refugees and the Growing Danger of Social Monocultures
The Dangers of Monocultures (please keep reading)
1. A monoculture is very vulnerable. It can be wiped out completely by one virus, fungus, destructive insect, or other disease. A farmer could lose his or her entire crop – and income – to one microbe.
2. Monocultures encourage more diseases, weeds, and destructive insects. These pests build resistance to the changeless nature of a monoculture, and their life cycles are never interrupted.
3. Because the natural resistance is so low in a monoculture, farmers must use greater and greater amounts of synthetic pesticides and fungicides to keep their crops alive and yielding. The environmental and health impacts of this kind of copious use of agrichemicals are significant.
4. Nutrients become depleted in soil that is used to grow only one type of crop year after year. Thus, farmers must step up the chemical fertilizers to keep getting crop yields.
5. The recent decline in honeybee populations has caused many to cast a critical eye on monocultures as a possible causal factor. Honeybees are prime pollinators, and only having one type of flower from which to gather pollen is completely unnatural (vast monocultures do not occur in nature).
( http://greenhealthreport.com/2010/07/the-dangers-of-monocultures/ )
What the hell does this have to do with refugees?
Societies around the globe have created social, political, and religious mono-cultures. As in agriculture, we have seen that this has caused the depletion of the human spirit, an increase in social disease, a vulnerability to thought viruses of hatred and mistrust, and the spread of mental poison to attempt to weed out the undesirable.
Biodiversity is essential to a healthy environment. There are too many examples of biodiversity being lost and the collapse of ecosystems that follow. The same is true of human systems. Through the influx of many immigrants and cultures, America became the hotbed of new ideas, innovation, tolerance, and change. But when society no longer accepts diversity and mono-cultures its ideas and and socio-religious institutions, what follows is a nation of dogma, decay, and collapse. Innovation becomes stale as the new becomes rejected only because it is new. Looking back on our history, the nation grew the most when it experienced wave after wave of new people from foreign lands. Were there clashes? Yes. But while a few of the newcomers turned to crime, the majority was a net gain to our society. The diversity made us healthy and strong.
But now there are those who would make us all the same, in their image, with their religion, political ideology, and social biases. They have, in the name of religion and using fear propaganda, fed the mono-culture notion to those who have been to complacent in their ways.
Like the honeybee, America used to be the prime pollinator of the world. However, it would appear that our current mono-culture of ideas is leading to colony collapse.
Alas poor America , we knew you well.
Monday, November 16, 2015
ISIS Prediction
I believe that ISIS/ISIL may well have radicalized itself out of existence. The clock is ticking.
It is my prediction that France, with help from the U.S., Britain, Russia and others will conduct a air/ground assault on all ISIS strongholds. Russia will help with the deal that the coalition will not use this effort as an opportunity to remove Assad, and will, in fact, leave his fate in the hands of Russia. I wouldn't be surprised if the coalition effort also included coordinated attacks on sites in Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Increased airstrikes will occur to "soften" targets, but knowing that any real defeat must include feet on the ground, ISIS has crossed a line that will make that happen. Iran and the Saudis will be heavily involved and the ISIS held thought that that there will be a surge of Muslim support for them will be revealed for the illusion that it is.
The clock is ticking against this band of sadistic murderers. While it will take time to organize, time is running out for ISIS.
It is my prediction that France, with help from the U.S., Britain, Russia and others will conduct a air/ground assault on all ISIS strongholds. Russia will help with the deal that the coalition will not use this effort as an opportunity to remove Assad, and will, in fact, leave his fate in the hands of Russia. I wouldn't be surprised if the coalition effort also included coordinated attacks on sites in Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Increased airstrikes will occur to "soften" targets, but knowing that any real defeat must include feet on the ground, ISIS has crossed a line that will make that happen. Iran and the Saudis will be heavily involved and the ISIS held thought that that there will be a surge of Muslim support for them will be revealed for the illusion that it is.
The clock is ticking against this band of sadistic murderers. While it will take time to organize, time is running out for ISIS.
Friday, November 13, 2015
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Monday, November 9, 2015
Friday, November 6, 2015
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Monday, November 2, 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Monday, October 26, 2015
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