Thursday 28th of March 2024

sucking our mushy brains...

fishfishThe influence of religion in politics just got a shot in the arm with the election of Joseph Robinette Biden Junior, the Catholic, as the 46th President of the United States of America. Unlike his Catholic predecessor, JFK, he won’t be assassinated by the secret service. Joe is ticking all the Pentagon and CIA wish lists of aggression, discourse and military, towards non-capitalist aligned countries.  Joe also fulfils the scientific dreams of tackling climate change, pollution and other environmental controls.  Joe also fulfils the Democrats’ dreams of wokeness with an apparent progressive political agenda, though he is still in the pocket of big business.  So, is Joe a dream come true, a political game illusion or a reality in which the world gets closer to midnight annihilation? As we have note many times, sciences and religion don’t mix. But it seems the Joe Machine will use both to promote the US agenda of domination.   "Some people are criticizing President Biden for the recent US air strikes in Syria as well as his refusal to sanction Saudi dictator Mohammed bin Salman, the man who US officials have concluded orchestrated the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Yes, it’s possible that Biden made those decisions. But there is another possibility, one much more likely, one that unfortunately all too many Americans are loath to consider: that it was the US national-security establishment, particularly the Pentagon and the CIA, who made those decisions and that Biden simply deferred to their judgment.

That’s what many people simply cannot bring themselves to consider: that it is the national-security establishment, namely the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and, to a certain extent, the FBI, that is actually running the federal government, especially in foreign affairs. The other three branches, while permitted to have the veneer of power, are expected to defer to critical judgments made by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

And defer they do. When was the last time that Congress significantly reduced the budget for the national-security establishment? You’ll never see it. That’s because the national-security establishment controls Congress. No member of Congress, especially the military and CIA veterans, would dare to take them on. If he did, he would be toast because the Pentagon would immediately retaliate by threatening to close down military projects or bases in his district. The Pentagon’s and CIA’s assets in the mainstream press would immediately take the offensive and accuse the congressman of being “ineffective.” He would be out in the next election."
  http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/march/05/the-national-security-state-racket/  ————— So the Joe, the ailing old man, is at the front of the illusion, like a puppet of the Punch and Judy masters. "He would be out in the next election”?.  Sometimes, a scandal would soon break out and the congressman would resign… In the middle of all this, like in Nazi Germany, most of Jo public has food on the table, has work and is entertained. No need to go to Nuremberg rallies. The media in all their formats, including social media, are spruiking the glory and also spread the fear:  The FBI and Homeland Security are issuing warnings that a second "siege" of the US Capitol may be staged today, citing "chatter" among extremist groups. Does all of this sound like the scare propaganda from the dark days of the "War on Terror"? Endless warnings of "chatter" to justify further restrictions on our liberty like the so-called PATRIOT Act? Are they blowing propaganda smoke or should we be afraid?   http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/march/04/second-capitol-siege-warningshould-we-be-terrified/  Why should we care about what they “want to do to us”? They being the governments and “what they want to do to us” being lockdowns, vaccinations, controls of what good or bad we do, and how much we are going to be paid, and how "they” are achieving these objectives, through manipulation of information… Nothing new here but the complexity of sources and styles of information leads to a complexity of controls and psychological manipulations. We’re dummies in their hands.  Religion had lost power in political decisions of the rulers, and as democracy tends to oscillate between the left and the right, the main driver of political control has been the “economy”. This means bugger all, but the boffins in charge of the “economy”, present two variants of the same thing: markets… Free Markets or regulated markets are the tweaking devices, as long as he state does what it wants and collects taxes for it.  

And science is used against science, like religion is also used against knowledge. We need to look at this in terms of politics and decision making in the new Joe era, from times past.

  Religion was used in politics to influence rulers — or to say, influence the populace to BELIEVE in their ruler.   For example, when the plague ended in Vienna, the Emperor, Charles VI who had made a vow to St Charles Borromeo in 1713, started to built a church in his honour, the Karlskirche, in 1716. This made the Emperor more popular. Imagine — the plague had been ended by his and the populace’s many prayers to the Saint who had already helped to end the plagues in Milan of 1570 and 1576… We believe the shit we choose.   So all was well that finished well, though it took many years to complete the remarkable building and the solidity of its illusionary purpose.   More to come.

sciences versus sciences...

In his later years, controversy marred his [Alvan Feinstein's] career with claims that he may have helped the tobacco industry by publishing articles minimizing the deleterious effects of smoking.[9] He was funded by the Council for Tobacco Research, established by the tobacco industry with the aim to attack scientific studies that put tobacco in a bad light, as early as 1964.

A review of Feinstein's publications in 2002 concluded that "perhaps in hindsight Feinstein could be criticized for not having clearly indicated the sponsorship of the tobacco industry behind these publications, of which he was fully aware. However, this does not suffice to infer that he was the tobacco industry's man. Feinstein's attitude in matters of publication appears balanced".[10] However, this review, an invited article written soon after Feinstein's death and published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, may not be unbiased. For the fourteen years preceding his death, Feinstein was Editor in Chief of this journal, which was the publication outlet for numerous articles and opinion pieces by Feinstein and his colleagues that aimed to debunk the research on tobacco, for which role the journal was subsequently criticized.[9]



Read more:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvan_Feinstein

Here we have a serious scientist compromising his research to suit a result… and an entry in Wikipedia that is smoothing the corners a bit too much. This is where epidemiologist Marcel Goldberg comes in. For him Feinstein was a god. Epidemiology was a solid science until Goldberg was invited to a seminar in 1999, Brussels, where Feinstein was speaking and Feinstein deflated Goldberg’s beliefs in epidemiology — saying that it was crap — until Goldberg found out that the seminar had been paid for by the tobacco industry and that Feinstein was on the payroll...

One of the major problems with epidemiology like the present Covid-19 pandemic, is that NOT EVERYONE REACTS IN THE SAME MANNER. Not everyone gets sick or dies. The statistics are there to prove an inbuilt resilience in many people (98 per cent?), though some others will be hit for six, mostly the already sick, the weak, the frail and the OLDIES…

Some of the statistics also point out to a more rapid transmission of the disease than the “ordinary flu” by a factor of more than 3 times or about 1.5 times for a virulent strain of bad flu.

In our modern times, very few scientific laboratories in any research are independent. Even the Australian CSIRO got decimated by Malcolm and by Abbott, while the Scomo is an ignoramus about sciences and he should be a mental hospital bastard-case for evangelically believing in god. But he has the good grace to trust what Dr Norman Swan tells him because it’s providing more voters, while he does not believe in global warming because his mates, the farmers and the miners, are keeping him in power… 

In more honest political times, Scomo would have resigned on the first whiff of sports rorts. To some extend Scomo is more dangerous than Abbott, because he can make shit sounds plausible and artful like play-dough.

But in our Covid times, the youth has been captured by the new religion: the smart phone, where any shit looks good, often naked and sanitised. Should these machines be like the old smellophones, you would have a few generations — from genX to the latest nappy fillers with a smart phone in their trolley — spewing their guts on the pavement and by traffic lights.

The idea of science fighting science is not new, but it has taken a more sophisticated aspect of statistical analysis as Professor Goldberg says: "You can make statistics fit the result you wish." 

On global warming, this is practically impossible. Interestingly, the science of global warming, though relying on statistics, also rely on evidence that are not derivatively statistically dependent. Yet we need to be careful that we’re not inflating nor underestimating the dangers.

For example, something new is happening the Australian Alps. The trees, the snow gums, are dying. When I was up there last, forty years ago for an article, they were healthy and surviving the harsh conditions better than I did. Today, something has open the door to a beetle infestation killing these trees: global warming. Or is it something else, like pesticides and herbicides — poisons used way away, below in the valleys?

While the speed and scale of the snow gum decline is alarming, it is not the first instance of eucalypt dieback.

Ribbon gums on the Monaro plains around Cooma have suffered a similar fate, as have other eucalypt species across eastern Australia.

It has caught the attention of the NSW Environment Minister, Matt Kean, who has described eucalypt dieback as “one of the state’s most damaging ecological issues”.

He is awarding nearly $1.2 million in grants for researchers working on eucalypt dieback around the state, including $200,000 for Dr Brookhouse’s work on snow gums.

“By engaging some of the country’s best scientific minds, we are hoping to find ways to remedy the current dieback areas and prevent future outbreaks,” Mr Kean said.

Read more:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-10/sudden-death-of-snow-gums-longicorn-beetle/13226128?nw=0

Meanwhile the government is hell-bent on opening bigger coal-mine there is in places where they shouldn’t…

Meanwhile:

You probably haven't heard of them, but endocrine disruptors -- a class of chemicals which are found in everything from shampoos to shopping receipts -- are, to put it in the frightening words of Professor Shanna H. Swan from the Mount Sinai school of Medicine, "imperiling the future of the human race.

Here we must go to when BPA was discovered to mimic oestrogen:
1891: BPA is invented. Chemists synthesize the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in the laboratory.

1930’s: First evidence of BPA toxicity. Scientists discover that BPA is an artificial estrogen. Its use as a pharmaceutical hormone is precluded by the invention of another synthetic chemical, DES, with even more potent estrogenic properties. (DES was later taken off the market when it was linked to reproductive cancers in girls born to mothers taking DES during pregnancy, in retrospect an early warning signal for the similar toxic properties confirmed for BPA many years later). [Dodds and Lawson 1930 publicaton - http://www.jstor.org/pss/82191]

1940’s and 1950's: New use of BPA in plastic. The chemical industry begins to use BPA to manufacture a hard plastic called polycarbonate, and to make epoxy resins used as linings for metal food cans and a variety of other products. Although BPA leaches out of plastic long after its manufacture, the material is used in consumer products with no requirement that companies prove it is safe. The 70 years that follow BPA's introduction in these industries see the explosion of BPA-based plastics to encompass products as wide-ranging as bicycle helmets, water coolers, and baby bottles.

1976: First law to regulate industrial chemicals, fails to establish safety of BPA. Congress passes the Toxic Substances Control Act, the first law in the U.S. to regulate industrial chemicals. BPA is one of 62,000 chemicals "grandfathered" in, presumed safe by the Environmental Protection Agency with no evaluation of the evidence.

1982: Government assessment of BPA toxicity holds no regulatory weight. The National Toxicology Program determines that the lowest adverse effect level (LOAEL) for BPA in laboratory animals is 1,000 parts per million (ppm), equivalent to 50 milligrams of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day (50 mg/kg/d) (NTP 1982). This study becomes the basis for EPA's 1988 safety standard which has remained in place for decades, sorely out of step with scores of low-dose BPA toxicity studies published in the interim. [1982 NTP study of BPA toxicity (pdf) - http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/htdocs/LT_rpts/tr215.pdf].

Late 1980s through 1990's - First BPA safety standard at odds with first low-dose BPA studies

1988: EPA's safety standard for BPA is up to 25 times higher than harmful levels. US EPA sets a safety standard (reference dose) for BPA, based on crude, high-dose BPA studies showing reduced body weight of exposed animals, establishing the standard in 1988 and reaffirming it in 1993. The "safe" exposure level established by EPA, at 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day (50 ug/kg/d), is 1,000 times lower than amounts found to affect the growth of animals in high-dose industry studies. But when a series of studies over the next 20 years show BPA to be toxic at doses far below EPA's safety standard (as low as 2 ug/kd/d), the Agency fails to update the standard to reflect the new information. [EPA's summary of its 1993 (current) BPA safety standard]



THERE IS NO SAFE MINIMAL DOSE OF BPA. This discovery was fought by plastic manufacturers  like tobacco industry fought the safety of cigarettes, etc. — especially in regard to passive smoking… BPA is bad.

Where are sciences now, especially in the Covid-19 era? The stats say this or that vaccine is 60 per cent efficient or 90 per cent effective, blah blah blah — and this can be so. The truth is that the pharmaceuticals are making a mint without any responsibility for side-effects or deaths… Is this science — or is this a sophisticated form of slow butchery? 
There are many other scientific manipulations geared to make profits. And this is annoying, as the honest scientists are caught in a "web of intrigue” — sometimes dismissed by their employer for finding contrary results to what is demanded.

deep fakery...

 

It Was All Already Deeply Fake

 

by Micah Meadowcroft


The digital information environment has long been one where you cannot believe your eyes.

 

You’ve probably heard about the danger of “deepfakes”—the use of artificial intelligence to help make deceptive video content. They were a favorite topic of speculation and fear in 2018, a simpler time. 

You’ve also probably seen deepfake tech in action, maybe in the public service announcement video produced by comedian and filmmaker Jordan Peele that year, which appears to show former President Barack Obama saying things he wouldn’t say on camera. Obviously some other things have happened since 2018, but the fear of fake digital content has stuck around in the discourse, for understandable reasons. It is easy to produce and getting easier, and we are all sorting through more information than any of us can handle. 

 

The fear of deepfakes is that we will no longer be able to believe our eyes. What if a video appears showing the president’s son engaged in obviously illegal and immoral behavior? What if the American voters believe it’s real? … Anyway, the problem with deepfake discourse is that it suggests, in its speculations about a future world in which what we are told by media and experts to be true is in fact false, that our present digital environment is one of evident factuality. This is, if one pauses for only a few seconds to reflect a bit, obviously false. 

Fake news is real, and there’s not a softer way to put it. That isn’t actually a new reality, of course, but let’s consider just the last couple years, working backwards. 

 

We were told that masks are an important part of stopping the spread of COVID-19 and that there was no way the virus could come from a laboratory. Now FOIA’d emails from Anthony Fauci confirm what many knew already, that masks—statements for and against—were always part of a strategy of “noble lies” or supposedly beneficial deception on the part of the public health bureaucracy; plus, epidemiologists, virologists, and science popularizers have come out to say that the lab-leak theory for COVID-19’s origins has more than legs, and there’s clear evidence that we the citizens of the U.S.A. probably funded its developmentwith our tax dollars. 

We were told that President Donald Trump cleared Lafayette Square park during protests last year so that he could take an awkward picture holding a Bible. Now an Inspector General’s report from the Department of the Interior shows that the park police cleared the square on schedule in order to set up fencing in response to the violence and destruction of (our, American citizens’) property. 

 

We were told that Russia had offered bounties for the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan; this was widely reported as evidence of a failure or Putin-favoring weakness on the part of Trump. Now we have been told that the U.S. intelligence community has “walked back” that story.

We were told that Nick Sandmann and his fellow Covington Catholic high school students harassed a noble Native American man at the national March for Life. Now we know, and have had confirmed in court, that quite the opposite occurred—that it was Nathan Phillips who created conditions for an incriminating but misleading video to be produced depicting his interaction with Sandmann. 

 

You cannot believe your eyes. There are an almost limitless number of examples in which the outrage cycle of the week or month or year has proven to be totally false, even the direct opposite of reality. Deepfakes distill what is already true: The digital is an abyss of “misinformation,” of a simulacrum and not the thing itself. You must accept, for your own sanity, that everything is lying to you, when you go online or watch television or even tune in to something as simple and seemingly wholesome as the over-air radio. You might be able to trust people—they have an ethos, an individual virtue status—but you cannot trust “information,” data and words processed without, as your math teacher would say, showing the work. 

What is to be done? Touch grass. Go outside. Log off more often. As we face an increasingly artificial world, in which the spaces we live in are more and more constructed by algorithms and people who do not care about us but have an agenda, we must reacquaint ourselves with the baseline data of our physical environments and the people who we should categorize as “neighbor” and “family.” The only way to avoid playing the fool is to find the wisdom there is in dirt and human flesh, which our civilization has long described as “common sense.” Its place is in relationship and physical space, in walks hand-in-hand and the labored breath of cresting a tall hill. It is not to be found in “the news.” 

There is some distress of late amongst the professional talkers of life online or on the airwaves about conspiracy theories and extremism. The experts and the media have no one to blame but themselves. They have tried to be too clever by half, believed themselves able to manipulate public opinion in not only the common appetitive ways of Madison Avenue and political fervor, but on questions of fundamental health and reality, on complex questions of prudence. The consent they have sought to manufacture, however, can only be, in a nation of free people engaged in self-government, arrived at after long and public deliberation, the careful weighing of prior realities and future consequences, and the essential question of who we are, as citizens, as Americans, and as human beings. 

 

Read more:

 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/it-was-all-already-deeply-fake/

 

Thank you Micah. The deep fakery started a long time ago, back in the intestines of people writing stories on parchment in Yaddish (sorry I mean Aramaic or whatever old symbols, as Yuddish yada-yada was invented in New York). These stories, misread by everyone since then, (4,000 years ago) were the deep fake of the time, to make the errand people tighten their butts and work together. Since then this whole ancient deep fakery has been engrossed into a few religious beliefs, including Christianity that has exploded into a myriad of evangelicals with their own interpretations of the caper, by the side of the main branches — the Catholics and the Orthodox. 

 

Of note is that we're not allowed to mention that religious beliefs ARE a deep fakery — presently spread like butter on bread by your own Rod Dreher, with examples of glorious orthodoxies in former Soviet states... But that's what deep fake are about: making you believe nothing and everything, especially not the truth, whatever that is. Please, I wish The American Conservative would become more existentialist... Yours. GL.

 

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