This is a lot more fun than Huis Clos.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Saturday Night Radio Drama - Eileen Horne - The Lost Sister
Eileen Penny Downie
Mona Lia Williams
Ken Kerry Shale
Mother Dearbhla Molloy
Elsa Dearbhla Molloy
Greg Patrick Cremin
Mr Devlin Danny Webb
German Cop Danny Webb
Deiter Danny Webb
German Cop Jasmine Hyde
Dr Streep Jasmine Hyde
Siri Jasmine Hyde
Leenie Shea Hall
Mona Eliza Harrison Dine
Richard Michael Carney
Charlie (Older) Thomas Cassidy
Charlie (Younger) Bertie Cassidy
Susan Jacqueline Hass
Did Someone Really Say That? Atrios?
They Don't Care?
Not in the mood to pick personal fights but I saw one of my old sparring partners of the "all Dems need to do is pretend to love Jesus more" variety appeal to conservative Christians about potential food stamp cuts.
They don't care? I mean, of course plenty of self-identified Christians care and some self-identified conservative Christians care, but appealing to the consciences of "conservative Christians" will get you no further than appealing to the consciences of "conservatives," which is to say maybe somewhere but not very far. Conservative Christianity as a political movement (again not all conservative Christians or all pastors who identify as Christian conservatives) is opposed to the welfare state as it competes with private, and more importantly, good Christian charity. There's nothing magical about being a "Christian" that isn't completely modified by that modifier "conservative." I'm not interested in one true Christian arguments about what Jesus does and does not want as it's not my business. This is not a theological argument. Christian conservatives are part of the conservative movement, and while one can perhaps tease out some differences in emphasis between the subset and the whole, caring about food stamps isn't really one of them. They (notallthey). Don't. Care. Frankly, I find liberal Christians suggesting that "good" Christians should care about X because of their religion to be kind of offensive. Their deeply held religious beliefs are what they are. The point is to stop pretending that religion (and in the US we mean good Christian religion) necessarily steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs, because all that does it give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are. Religion might be wonderful for individuals but it doesn't elevate the morals of one group over another. I think this should be somewhat obvious by now.
They don't care? I mean, of course plenty of self-identified Christians care and some self-identified conservative Christians care, but appealing to the consciences of "conservative Christians" will get you no further than appealing to the consciences of "conservatives," which is to say maybe somewhere but not very far. Conservative Christianity as a political movement (again not all conservative Christians or all pastors who identify as Christian conservatives) is opposed to the welfare state as it competes with private, and more importantly, good Christian charity. There's nothing magical about being a "Christian" that isn't completely modified by that modifier "conservative." I'm not interested in one true Christian arguments about what Jesus does and does not want as it's not my business. This is not a theological argument. Christian conservatives are part of the conservative movement, and while one can perhaps tease out some differences in emphasis between the subset and the whole, caring about food stamps isn't really one of them. They (notallthey). Don't. Care. Frankly, I find liberal Christians suggesting that "good" Christians should care about X because of their religion to be kind of offensive. Their deeply held religious beliefs are what they are. The point is to stop pretending that religion (and in the US we mean good Christian religion) necessarily steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs, because all that does it give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are. Religion might be wonderful for individuals but it doesn't elevate the morals of one group over another. I think this should be somewhat obvious by now.
First, no, he wasn't talking about me because a. I doubt he reads me, b. I've never made that argument or any of those claims, c. I've never said anything remotely like the few alleged statements buried in that mass of qualifications contradicted immediately by their refutation and then qualified again. I don't know who he's referring to in the first sentence but the rest of it is a straw man, one he doesn't seem to be able to push over after he sets it up. If he is referring to something someone published, he should have provided a link, at least, if it's something that isn't published, well, so what?
I will go to what Duncan said his point was, first, though it's about the last thing he said.
The point is to stop pretending that religion (and in the US we mean good Christian religion) necessarily steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs, because all that does it give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are. Religion might be wonderful for individuals but it doesn't elevate the morals of one group over another. I think this should be somewhat obvious by now.
Well, yeah, but what entity in human culture does all those things. Ideology? Political identity, orientation, party? The Humanities, the so-called-social-sciences? Science proper? Drinking Liberally? Which of those "NECESSARILY steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs". I will point out that a number of them have had the straw man status that Duncan assigns to religion, that, science, for example, that ideologies, for other examples "give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are". I would suggest he look at that photo of Sartre and de Beauvoir stylishly pushing Maoism in the name of free speech* posted below, for example. Does his blog community not have that pretension, at times if not most of the time? I don't look at it much these days but I doubt it's changed for the better in the past five years.
While, yes, there are religious hucksters and others who pretend the same thing about their religious identity, who claim that all they have to do is declare themselves, like Trump to be a Christian or to be "born again" and like the extinct Muggletonians that everything, therefore, goes. But that is hardly Christianity that is based very firmly on the Bible in which just about every text advocates continual self-reflection and consideration of how well someones' actions stack up against the Law and, the Prophets and the Gospel of Jesus. I would like him to point to me where in the Bible that kind of hypocritical finality is advocated or endorsed. Years ago a woman I heard put it extremely well, "It's so much easier to praise the Lord than to follow him".
But I've got to repeat my amazement that someone with Duncan Black's academic qualifications as a Brown University PhD in economics who has been associated with such places as the London School of Economics and the University of California system could be so entirely clueless about how politics works. You win in politics by putting together more votes. That's how you win elections and, within a legislative body, that's how you either prevent a law from passing or how you pass one. And when it's at that stage, you need to get constituent to pressure their members of the House and the Senate and state legislatures and even within the executive. CONSIDERING THE HUGE MAJORITY OF VOTERS IN THE UNITED STATES ARE CHRISTIANS MOST OF THAT PRESSURE MUST COME FROM CHRISTIANS. Is there some math-free option for getting that degree?
That the Gospel of Jesus, the Law of Moses, the Prophets all say it is a religious duty to feed the poor, to actually feed them, not to go through the motions, to refuse to use that fact to pressure people who claim to follow those to put their politics where their professions are is something that MIGHT BE EFFECTIVE WHERE OTHER PRESSURE WILL NOT.
I would love to ask those in danger of losing their food stamps if they agree that because someone like Duncan finds Christianity icky that Democrats shouldn't request Christians to pressure their legislators and members of Congress to do what Jesus said they should do. I have a feeling that most people who are in danger of going hungry would think what Duncan Black insists on is just plain stupid. Not even most of those who hadn't finished sixth grade could fail to see that.
* I'd love to know what would have happened to them if, that year, they'd gone to a street in Beijing and distributed The Declaration of Human Rights or whatever document asserting a right of free speech. Especially in defiance of the law in Mao's China. Or, rather, if a Chinese intellectual had done so - without backing from a stylish vedette intellectual milieu such as the one those two phonies operated in.
Update: What JR and Simps know about music is the equivalent of patty-cake. That Brit might be even stupider than Tlaz, and if she's actually achieved that it's the only thing she's ever done that's hard to do. Hoodwinking the Eschatots into believing that she's smart isn't that hard and not all of them have bought it.
An Ignoramus Who Never Read Sartre Is Trying To Use Him To Taunt Me
Get back to me when any of them have the slightest idea of what Sartre meant by one of his stupidest, most incredibly egocentric, egomaniacle inanities.
The full version of that famous quote, about the only thing most college educated Americans think they know about Sartre's turgid, voluminous and entirely pointless writing is
GARCIN: Le bronze .. . (Il le caresse.) Eh bien, voici le moment. Le bronze est là, je le contemple et je comprends que je suis en enfer. Je vous dis quentout était prévu. Ils avaient prévu que je me
tiendrais devant cette cheminée, pressant manmain sur ce bronze, avec tous ces regards sur
moi . Tous ces regards qui me mangent .. . (Il se retourne brusquement.) Ha ! vous n'êtes que
deux ? Je vous croyais beaucoup plus nombreuses. (Il rit.) Alors, c'est ça l'enfer. Je n'aurais
jamais cru ... Vous vous rappelez : le soufre, le bûcher, le gril... Ah ! quelle plaisanterie . Pas
besoin de gril : l'enfer, c'est les Autres.
GARCIN: This bronze. Yes, now's the moment; I'm looking at this thing on the
mantelpiece, and I understand that I'm in hell. I tell you, everything's been thoughtout
beforehand. They knew I'd stand at the fireplace stroking this thing of bronze, with all
those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were
more; many more. So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were
told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives'
tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS-OTHER PEOPLE! [Not my translation, one taken from the web, but it will do.]
What Sartre meant is that the very fact that there are other people in the world with us is hell because we have to think of what they think of us as they observe our behavior. It's the philosophy of a sociopathic, solipsistic jerk.
If I cared I'd go look up the relevant passages in Being and Nothingness, etc. to back up the point. But why bother with people who don't even know that much of the context of the thing.
And, I'll remind people, Sartre was such a great moral force and thinker on such things that he was a famous and active - if pretty much a for-show as a reigning vedette of the intellectual Parisian Left - Maoist at the height of Mao's reign of murder, outdoing Hitler at the height of his reign of murder.
For someone who found it so existentially painful to have to think of other people looking at us while we might merely touch a bronze statue, he seldom lost an opportunity to make a world-wide spectacle of himself as an advocate for the reigning champion of murder as he passed out Maoist hand-bills in Paris, mugging for the cameras that would record it for all the fashionable journals. The biggest Vichyist, collaborating apologist for Hitler at the height his mass murders is as worthy of respect as Sartre was. The only thing either deserves is absolute and total scorn.
Update: No, dopey, I wasn't making that up. Here's a picture of Sartre and his equally assholish girlfriend and fan of de Sade, Simone de Beauvoir, doing exactly that in 1970, the height of the Cultural Revolution that killed an unknown number of people, scholars estimating the figure well into the millions. We don't know because there is no transparency in Sartre's workers paradise, which he and his girlfriend, notably, did not elect to live in.
The full version of that famous quote, about the only thing most college educated Americans think they know about Sartre's turgid, voluminous and entirely pointless writing is
GARCIN: Le bronze .. . (Il le caresse.) Eh bien, voici le moment. Le bronze est là, je le contemple et je comprends que je suis en enfer. Je vous dis quentout était prévu. Ils avaient prévu que je me
tiendrais devant cette cheminée, pressant manmain sur ce bronze, avec tous ces regards sur
moi . Tous ces regards qui me mangent .. . (Il se retourne brusquement.) Ha ! vous n'êtes que
deux ? Je vous croyais beaucoup plus nombreuses. (Il rit.) Alors, c'est ça l'enfer. Je n'aurais
jamais cru ... Vous vous rappelez : le soufre, le bûcher, le gril... Ah ! quelle plaisanterie . Pas
besoin de gril : l'enfer, c'est les Autres.
GARCIN: This bronze. Yes, now's the moment; I'm looking at this thing on the
mantelpiece, and I understand that I'm in hell. I tell you, everything's been thoughtout
beforehand. They knew I'd stand at the fireplace stroking this thing of bronze, with all
those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were
more; many more. So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were
told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives'
tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS-OTHER PEOPLE! [Not my translation, one taken from the web, but it will do.]
What Sartre meant is that the very fact that there are other people in the world with us is hell because we have to think of what they think of us as they observe our behavior. It's the philosophy of a sociopathic, solipsistic jerk.
If I cared I'd go look up the relevant passages in Being and Nothingness, etc. to back up the point. But why bother with people who don't even know that much of the context of the thing.
And, I'll remind people, Sartre was such a great moral force and thinker on such things that he was a famous and active - if pretty much a for-show as a reigning vedette of the intellectual Parisian Left - Maoist at the height of Mao's reign of murder, outdoing Hitler at the height of his reign of murder.
For someone who found it so existentially painful to have to think of other people looking at us while we might merely touch a bronze statue, he seldom lost an opportunity to make a world-wide spectacle of himself as an advocate for the reigning champion of murder as he passed out Maoist hand-bills in Paris, mugging for the cameras that would record it for all the fashionable journals. The biggest Vichyist, collaborating apologist for Hitler at the height his mass murders is as worthy of respect as Sartre was. The only thing either deserves is absolute and total scorn.
Update: No, dopey, I wasn't making that up. Here's a picture of Sartre and his equally assholish girlfriend and fan of de Sade, Simone de Beauvoir, doing exactly that in 1970, the height of the Cultural Revolution that killed an unknown number of people, scholars estimating the figure well into the millions. We don't know because there is no transparency in Sartre's workers paradise, which he and his girlfriend, notably, did not elect to live in.
The Free Press Sold Us To Putin's Puppets Lie By Lie
Perhaps one of the stupidest and most hypocritical and utterly foolish things one of the most idolized of the "founders" said is also one of the most often cited with mandatory piety. It was everyone's favorite deified, slave-holding profligate Thomas Jefferson who said:
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Yeah, really. I can imagine if the people he held in slavery ever decided to take what a later and far more admirable president* would have said was theirs by "natural right" without the leave of Master Thomas and assert their full equality and those natural rights to the fruits of their labor, which he took from them by declaration of the government he had such a hand in setting up, his recourse in stopping them would not be to wave a newspaper at them. Look at his reaction to the successful slave revolt in Haiti if you don't believe me on that point.
The entire course of Jefferson's life as a wealthy slave holder, as a politician and an office holder shows that he was blowing smoke when he said that. And it is an utterly stupid thing to say in the late 20th century when it was a slogan the media industry sold its privileges through and today when we are beginning our terrible ordeal which is the result of their having the freest reign in their history, free to degrade the public discourse and the minds of a sufficient number of Americans so they would be duped into voting for the very Donald Trump who, not a month into his regime, they are finding they were deceived, duped into and are about to be cheated, robbed by and worse.
The American media had every chance to tell the truth when they were given free reign to lie and they chose to tell lies. From the sewer pit of Breitbart, to the stink stack of FOX right up through the cabloid and broadcast crappers and even up to the Great Gray Lady of the New York Times, the free press has lied us into Donald Trump. The sales job that turned one of Jefferson's alcoholic bromides into a slogan to sell people on allowing the press to lie was, actually, an experiment in what would happen when they did that and the results are they lied us into Donald Trump.
The ACLU, the Joel Gora style media paid shills and the many scribbling class copy boys of the media who pushed allowing them to totally escape responsibility for their lies are what gave us Donald Trump.
We've seen the media lie countries into fascism before, Italy got both Mussolini and Berlusconi that way, the German and Austrian people were corrupted and sold Nazism through the media. We've seen every dictator in the modern period use the media to get and consolidate their stranglehold on countries. We've, now, seen the media creation Trump sold to the American people using the media and the very same methods of snake oil salesmanship and fascistic methods of rule through creating and channeling hate talk.
Yet we are not to learn a single thing from that because people like Thomas Jefferson said shit in the 18th century which they certainly wouldn't have lived under themselves. If the newspapers, somehow, during Jefferson's lifetime, called for the immediate abolition of slavery and his slaves to be able to sue him for the property he stole from them - declared by Lincoln to be rightfully theirs - I'm sure he would have used every organ of the government to suppress such talk, even as slaves were forbidden by law to even learn to read a newspaper.
The free-speech absolutists are in fact if not in hypocritical proclamation, the ones who gave us Trump. We need to understand that because even if we were to, somehow, manage to escape the damage that he, his fascist party and the Supreme Court with whatever fascists he and Pence put on it, it will just be a matter of time before the regime of lies that now rules our countries thinking will give us another Trump or worse. Instead of getting the puppet of someone like Putin, we could get a Putin next time. We're no smarter than they are in Russia or in any of the other countries which have been duped into voting in their own dictators.
* I am referring, of course to Abraham Lincolns utterly American refutation to Stephen Douglas's racist remark during one of their debates that Lincoln must want to marry a black woman if he claimed she was equal to a white one. Lincoln's response proves he was in every way Jefferson's moral and intellectual superior.
Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.
Also: It's one of the stupidest aspects of anarchism that their pipe dream is that some wonderful, decent society would result if governments were to disappear when the results of no civil government and authority is fully known and proven in the most tragic of human experience many times over the entirety of human history. When legitimate authority is absent, rule by the most violent, ruthless strong-man style thugs and their organized criminals will replace it. Anyone who advocates anarchism is rightly considered either entirely stupid or entirely in favor of such strong-man fascism. It was one of the great surprises to me, when I was able to freely access many of her full pieces online that I saw the deified Emma Goldman was a huge admirer of Nietzsche. Her anarchism wasn't interested in universal freedom, she had great disdain for the majority of people, it was with a view fo some kind of amoral superman asserting his rule, or, probably in her fantasy, hers. Goldman is another of the biggest frauds ever sold to an ignorant and gullible left.
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Yeah, really. I can imagine if the people he held in slavery ever decided to take what a later and far more admirable president* would have said was theirs by "natural right" without the leave of Master Thomas and assert their full equality and those natural rights to the fruits of their labor, which he took from them by declaration of the government he had such a hand in setting up, his recourse in stopping them would not be to wave a newspaper at them. Look at his reaction to the successful slave revolt in Haiti if you don't believe me on that point.
The entire course of Jefferson's life as a wealthy slave holder, as a politician and an office holder shows that he was blowing smoke when he said that. And it is an utterly stupid thing to say in the late 20th century when it was a slogan the media industry sold its privileges through and today when we are beginning our terrible ordeal which is the result of their having the freest reign in their history, free to degrade the public discourse and the minds of a sufficient number of Americans so they would be duped into voting for the very Donald Trump who, not a month into his regime, they are finding they were deceived, duped into and are about to be cheated, robbed by and worse.
The American media had every chance to tell the truth when they were given free reign to lie and they chose to tell lies. From the sewer pit of Breitbart, to the stink stack of FOX right up through the cabloid and broadcast crappers and even up to the Great Gray Lady of the New York Times, the free press has lied us into Donald Trump. The sales job that turned one of Jefferson's alcoholic bromides into a slogan to sell people on allowing the press to lie was, actually, an experiment in what would happen when they did that and the results are they lied us into Donald Trump.
The ACLU, the Joel Gora style media paid shills and the many scribbling class copy boys of the media who pushed allowing them to totally escape responsibility for their lies are what gave us Donald Trump.
We've seen the media lie countries into fascism before, Italy got both Mussolini and Berlusconi that way, the German and Austrian people were corrupted and sold Nazism through the media. We've seen every dictator in the modern period use the media to get and consolidate their stranglehold on countries. We've, now, seen the media creation Trump sold to the American people using the media and the very same methods of snake oil salesmanship and fascistic methods of rule through creating and channeling hate talk.
Yet we are not to learn a single thing from that because people like Thomas Jefferson said shit in the 18th century which they certainly wouldn't have lived under themselves. If the newspapers, somehow, during Jefferson's lifetime, called for the immediate abolition of slavery and his slaves to be able to sue him for the property he stole from them - declared by Lincoln to be rightfully theirs - I'm sure he would have used every organ of the government to suppress such talk, even as slaves were forbidden by law to even learn to read a newspaper.
The free-speech absolutists are in fact if not in hypocritical proclamation, the ones who gave us Trump. We need to understand that because even if we were to, somehow, manage to escape the damage that he, his fascist party and the Supreme Court with whatever fascists he and Pence put on it, it will just be a matter of time before the regime of lies that now rules our countries thinking will give us another Trump or worse. Instead of getting the puppet of someone like Putin, we could get a Putin next time. We're no smarter than they are in Russia or in any of the other countries which have been duped into voting in their own dictators.
* I am referring, of course to Abraham Lincolns utterly American refutation to Stephen Douglas's racist remark during one of their debates that Lincoln must want to marry a black woman if he claimed she was equal to a white one. Lincoln's response proves he was in every way Jefferson's moral and intellectual superior.
Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.
Also: It's one of the stupidest aspects of anarchism that their pipe dream is that some wonderful, decent society would result if governments were to disappear when the results of no civil government and authority is fully known and proven in the most tragic of human experience many times over the entirety of human history. When legitimate authority is absent, rule by the most violent, ruthless strong-man style thugs and their organized criminals will replace it. Anyone who advocates anarchism is rightly considered either entirely stupid or entirely in favor of such strong-man fascism. It was one of the great surprises to me, when I was able to freely access many of her full pieces online that I saw the deified Emma Goldman was a huge admirer of Nietzsche. Her anarchism wasn't interested in universal freedom, she had great disdain for the majority of people, it was with a view fo some kind of amoral superman asserting his rule, or, probably in her fantasy, hers. Goldman is another of the biggest frauds ever sold to an ignorant and gullible left.
Friday, February 3, 2017
This Speaks For Itself: Someone Sent Me This I Repost It
Details remain thin on the ground, but the head of Paris police confirmed that they "are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat, and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident.”
The attacker was shot five times and was shouting “Allahu akbar,” Mr Cadot added.
Responding to news of the incident, Donald Trump tweeted:
A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.
Mr Trump's speed at condemning the attack comes at no surprise of course. He is famed for his reactionary tweeting style.
However, what is interesting is his selectiveness of which incidents he reacts to in a public forum.
Earlier this week, the residents of Quebec were left in mourning after a shooting at a city mosque left six dead.
The man charged in connection with the terrorist attack is French Canadian student Alexandre Bissonnette , who was a fan for Donald Trump and far-right nationalist politician Marine Le Pen.
Along with the six people killed, five were left in a critical condition and 12 others suffered minor injuries.
Reality TV Meets Reality And The Result's Ain't Pretty
As I'm reading those in side the DC establishment who are scratching their heads over Donald Trump's dangerously pathological practice of picking fights with even our strongest allies, I think I see the habits of a deeply incompetent, deeply stupid, deeply unfit for his job, man. In his entire and complete ignorance and lack of knowledge about even the most vital and basic aspects of what an American president needs to know, the Pretender Trump is resorting to the tactic of bullying and threatening as a way to cover up his total ignorance. His call to the Australian Prime Minister is a good case to see this in, it was reportedly scheduled for an hour, which carried the huge danger that he wouldn't live in real time, without a director and film editing and scripting, be able to cover his fat ass, he resorted to what he did and cut the call short because he sensed he wouldn't be able to do it.
Donald Trump, a creation of, not even the movies, but "reality TV" is like a really incompetent star of TV trying to do a real play on stage for the first time while the whole world is watching him flounder and flub and forget, lines, cues etc. revealing he doesn't have the faintest idea what the play is even about. It's worse than that because there's no script and he's making a total and absolute ass of himself and deep, deep down in his 4-year-old mind, even the parts that he's forgotten are where he acts from, he has a sense that he's blowing it and getting caught and so he throws a tantrum.
"No Scientist Thinks Like You Claim"
There was an objection to my saying that the required ideology of the biological and, especially the alleged sciences dealing with the mind is materialist-Darwinist. Well, we've got fascists in the White House and running congress and about to install one in a stolen Supreme Court seat but, a quick one.
It just so happens that a couple of weeks ago I read the refutation of that in an old article from Scientific American. Jessie Bering felt it necessary, before he wrote about some of his personal experiences, his experience of which couldn't be true if his ideology were valid, to establish that he is a true believer in that very dogma. He began:
"I’m as sworn to radical rationalism as the next neo-Darwinian materialist. That said, over the years I’ve had to “quarantine,” for lack of a better word, a few anomalous personal experiences that have stubbornly defied my own logical understanding of them."
Based on what he described as his witness of the frequently experienced phenomenon of terminal lucidity in people who have had long or serious dementia, right before they died, it wasn't his logical understanding of his experience that was defied, it was his "neo-Darwinian materialist" faith. Atheist materialists are ALWAYS having to suppress the witness of their own experience, reject the reported experience of other people, having to resort to the most unfounded, even illogical and irrational and basest practices of debunkery on the basis of lies and ridicule to make it go away. But it won't because most people are not so stupid as to not believe their own experience, experiences as valid as any that the reporting of genuine science is made of. People who are fortunate enough to see and experience the terminal lucidity of their loved ones before they pass have every right to the evidence of their own eyes without atheist assholes telling them they didn't see what they saw and which the atheists seldom were there to see.
That "neo-Darwininan materialism" is the faith of the entire pseudo-skeptical-atheist materialist priesthood of science and academia that they coerce their colleagues to adopt or at least not violate, which they and their fellow atheists browbeat people with constantly. It is why, when I challenged atheists to explain how the brain could build the physical structures they claimed were ideas and thoughts BEFORE THEY COULD BE PRESENT AS A PHYSICAL STRUCTURE IN THE BRAIN, several of them, unable to come up with a real answer chanted "natural selection" which, in such atheism, is more a magic charm than a component of rational discourse.
And if I looked for the exact quotes and citations in written stuff, quite a list of them could be compiled. Maybe I should ask Jessie Bering for a list of "the next neo-Darwinian materialist" and then I could ask those two to the sides of him for more names.
It's a funny ideology that has to lie about its basic faith holdings and the fact that that is what they claim. It's almost as if they didn't really believe it, themselves, or maybe they just don't like anyone articulating what they're up to. They prey on the general ignorance and laziness in reading and looking up stuff that is ubiquitous among those who hold college degrees and those who like to think they're superior.
I haven't dipped into the foul little phenomenon of James Randi and CSICOP and pseudo-skepticism in a long while, maybe I should before the foul little creep passes.
It just so happens that a couple of weeks ago I read the refutation of that in an old article from Scientific American. Jessie Bering felt it necessary, before he wrote about some of his personal experiences, his experience of which couldn't be true if his ideology were valid, to establish that he is a true believer in that very dogma. He began:
"I’m as sworn to radical rationalism as the next neo-Darwinian materialist. That said, over the years I’ve had to “quarantine,” for lack of a better word, a few anomalous personal experiences that have stubbornly defied my own logical understanding of them."
Based on what he described as his witness of the frequently experienced phenomenon of terminal lucidity in people who have had long or serious dementia, right before they died, it wasn't his logical understanding of his experience that was defied, it was his "neo-Darwinian materialist" faith. Atheist materialists are ALWAYS having to suppress the witness of their own experience, reject the reported experience of other people, having to resort to the most unfounded, even illogical and irrational and basest practices of debunkery on the basis of lies and ridicule to make it go away. But it won't because most people are not so stupid as to not believe their own experience, experiences as valid as any that the reporting of genuine science is made of. People who are fortunate enough to see and experience the terminal lucidity of their loved ones before they pass have every right to the evidence of their own eyes without atheist assholes telling them they didn't see what they saw and which the atheists seldom were there to see.
That "neo-Darwininan materialism" is the faith of the entire pseudo-skeptical-atheist materialist priesthood of science and academia that they coerce their colleagues to adopt or at least not violate, which they and their fellow atheists browbeat people with constantly. It is why, when I challenged atheists to explain how the brain could build the physical structures they claimed were ideas and thoughts BEFORE THEY COULD BE PRESENT AS A PHYSICAL STRUCTURE IN THE BRAIN, several of them, unable to come up with a real answer chanted "natural selection" which, in such atheism, is more a magic charm than a component of rational discourse.
And if I looked for the exact quotes and citations in written stuff, quite a list of them could be compiled. Maybe I should ask Jessie Bering for a list of "the next neo-Darwinian materialist" and then I could ask those two to the sides of him for more names.
It's a funny ideology that has to lie about its basic faith holdings and the fact that that is what they claim. It's almost as if they didn't really believe it, themselves, or maybe they just don't like anyone articulating what they're up to. They prey on the general ignorance and laziness in reading and looking up stuff that is ubiquitous among those who hold college degrees and those who like to think they're superior.
I haven't dipped into the foul little phenomenon of James Randi and CSICOP and pseudo-skepticism in a long while, maybe I should before the foul little creep passes.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Oh, For ......
Apparently it has never been noticed by you of the rump remnant of Eschaton but I haven't posted a comment on there in almost five years. I know, most of you are of an age when the light dims and the memory fades but, really, it's been that long. I certainly don't ask Simps to talk about me over there.
If Duncan Black didn't sponsor the lies that Simels and JR, Tlaz and Skeps, and a few other of you assholes over there tell about what I've said, I'd never mention him, his blog or his daycare for agéd atheists, ever again. NOTHING that he posts is of interest to me unless someone like Kevin Drum picks it up and, really, how often does that happen in a decade, these days?
If Duncan doesn't like it, he can stop posting lies about me and I will never have any reason to do other than pretend that he and you do not exist. Why don't you ask him, then you can pretend I don't exist, either. Whine where it will get you what you think you want. Don't complain to me.
If Duncan Black didn't sponsor the lies that Simels and JR, Tlaz and Skeps, and a few other of you assholes over there tell about what I've said, I'd never mention him, his blog or his daycare for agéd atheists, ever again. NOTHING that he posts is of interest to me unless someone like Kevin Drum picks it up and, really, how often does that happen in a decade, these days?
If Duncan doesn't like it, he can stop posting lies about me and I will never have any reason to do other than pretend that he and you do not exist. Why don't you ask him, then you can pretend I don't exist, either. Whine where it will get you what you think you want. Don't complain to me.
One Difference Between France And The United States Is That We've Actually Got A Fascist Government Here, They've Avoided It So Far
The emerging picture of the mass murderer who attacked the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center, killing eleven and injuring more, shows that he's a fan of Donald Trump and the French neo-fascist Marine Le Pen. Le Pen has yet to control the government of France, which they can take some comfort in. We, in the United States, aren't so fortunate.
But he came across as intelligent to his peers, and joined the chess club at Laval University, where he studied anthropology and political science.
Bissonnette appeared to enjoy discussing politics with select classmates at university. Jean-Michel Allard Prus, who took a politics class with Bissonnette, said they often debated with each other on Facebook.
Muslim leaders find it difficult to ignore tensions that preceded shooting
In these debates, Bissonnette expressed fairly mainstream conservative views. A hunter, he opposed gun control and was pro-Israel, but otherwise didn't bring up more divisive issues such as Muslims or immigration.
But that was a year ago.
"I think … something happened. He radicalized a lot," Prus said. "He seemed just a normal right-wing individual."
As Bissonnette began to espouse more radical views, he stopped interacting with his fellow students. He took part in at least one informal discussion group, but quickly found its members too moderate and stopped attending.
"He was not interested by our politics meeting because we are conservative and moderate right wing," said Éric Debroise, a Laval University student and member of the discussion group.
"He is more far-right or alt-right."
Trump, Le Pen political idols
Debroise described Bissonnette as nice but anti-social. In their meetings, he said, Bissonnette often spoke admiringly of U.S. President Donald Trump and the French far-right politician Marine Le Pen Trump enjoys the support of the alt-right, a loosely defined political movement that includes white nationalists and white supremacists.
The alt-right is known, too, for its army of online trolls who circulate racist memes and virulent attacks on perceived opponents.
Within activist circles in Quebec City, Bissonnette has been considered an extremist troll in his own right.
In a Facebook post, a refugee support group said Bissonnette is "known to several activists in Quebec City for his pro-Le Pen and anti-feminist positions."
The group said Bissonnette is fond of using the term "feminazi" — alt-right slang for those who advocate women's rights.
First, let's call the "alt-right" what it is, FASCISM. To use the fascist Steve Bannon's own invented euphamism for his own fascism is to cooperate with his fascism. Our media has shown it is entirely willing to cooperate with it. That is when it's more accurate to call it neo-Nazism. Second, let's stop helping them by pretending that they are just some other political ideology which deserves to be allowed to air their views and propagate them BECAUSE AN INTRINSIC PART OF THEIR POLITICAL POISON IS TO KILL, OPPRESS AND DISCRIMINATE AGAINST OTHER PEOPLE. That certainly transforms them into something which normal people should not ignore, pretend is innocuous and allow the same rights as those who favor equal rights, economic justice and a peaceful, decent life for all people, a right, the denial of which defines the politics of fascism.
Anyone who insists that fascists, Nazis, white-supremacists, male-supremacists, Marxists, etc. who advocate inequality, oppression and murder of other people deserve an equal hearing so those intended victims can stand a chance of being oppressed and killed is a total asshole no matter what Ivy League law school they came from or what eminent newspaper or magazine hires them to write such crap. Only, these days, it's TV and radio and the internet that pushes that nonsense. I say let the advocates of such false equality put their rights, their lives, the rights and lives of their loved ones on the line for the absurd, nonsensical and entirely irresponsible and unnecessary pose. I'm sure if it were possible to make them the focus of the fascist "alt-right", setting them up to be those in front of their automatic weapons they'd quickly drop the crap. Those who oppose universal liberty, equality and good will have no legitimate claim to it for themselves. You might forgive them their errors but you have no right to risk them putting it into effect to target others.
But he came across as intelligent to his peers, and joined the chess club at Laval University, where he studied anthropology and political science.
Bissonnette appeared to enjoy discussing politics with select classmates at university. Jean-Michel Allard Prus, who took a politics class with Bissonnette, said they often debated with each other on Facebook.
Muslim leaders find it difficult to ignore tensions that preceded shooting
In these debates, Bissonnette expressed fairly mainstream conservative views. A hunter, he opposed gun control and was pro-Israel, but otherwise didn't bring up more divisive issues such as Muslims or immigration.
But that was a year ago.
"I think … something happened. He radicalized a lot," Prus said. "He seemed just a normal right-wing individual."
As Bissonnette began to espouse more radical views, he stopped interacting with his fellow students. He took part in at least one informal discussion group, but quickly found its members too moderate and stopped attending.
"He was not interested by our politics meeting because we are conservative and moderate right wing," said Éric Debroise, a Laval University student and member of the discussion group.
"He is more far-right or alt-right."
Trump, Le Pen political idols
Debroise described Bissonnette as nice but anti-social. In their meetings, he said, Bissonnette often spoke admiringly of U.S. President Donald Trump and the French far-right politician Marine Le Pen Trump enjoys the support of the alt-right, a loosely defined political movement that includes white nationalists and white supremacists.
The alt-right is known, too, for its army of online trolls who circulate racist memes and virulent attacks on perceived opponents.
Within activist circles in Quebec City, Bissonnette has been considered an extremist troll in his own right.
In a Facebook post, a refugee support group said Bissonnette is "known to several activists in Quebec City for his pro-Le Pen and anti-feminist positions."
The group said Bissonnette is fond of using the term "feminazi" — alt-right slang for those who advocate women's rights.
First, let's call the "alt-right" what it is, FASCISM. To use the fascist Steve Bannon's own invented euphamism for his own fascism is to cooperate with his fascism. Our media has shown it is entirely willing to cooperate with it. That is when it's more accurate to call it neo-Nazism. Second, let's stop helping them by pretending that they are just some other political ideology which deserves to be allowed to air their views and propagate them BECAUSE AN INTRINSIC PART OF THEIR POLITICAL POISON IS TO KILL, OPPRESS AND DISCRIMINATE AGAINST OTHER PEOPLE. That certainly transforms them into something which normal people should not ignore, pretend is innocuous and allow the same rights as those who favor equal rights, economic justice and a peaceful, decent life for all people, a right, the denial of which defines the politics of fascism.
Anyone who insists that fascists, Nazis, white-supremacists, male-supremacists, Marxists, etc. who advocate inequality, oppression and murder of other people deserve an equal hearing so those intended victims can stand a chance of being oppressed and killed is a total asshole no matter what Ivy League law school they came from or what eminent newspaper or magazine hires them to write such crap. Only, these days, it's TV and radio and the internet that pushes that nonsense. I say let the advocates of such false equality put their rights, their lives, the rights and lives of their loved ones on the line for the absurd, nonsensical and entirely irresponsible and unnecessary pose. I'm sure if it were possible to make them the focus of the fascist "alt-right", setting them up to be those in front of their automatic weapons they'd quickly drop the crap. Those who oppose universal liberty, equality and good will have no legitimate claim to it for themselves. You might forgive them their errors but you have no right to risk them putting it into effect to target others.
In Political Results Black Hoods = White Hoods
The Black Bloc "anarchists" hijacking peaceful protests are doing for Donald Trump what Donald Trump's anti-Muslim executive orders do for ISIS.
Black hoods are the new white hoods. They should be driven out of any demonstration, they should be suspected as being fascist agent provocateurs, perhaps sent by the Comey FBI as the Hoover FBI used to do.
Update: Oh, for crying out loud. James Comey illegally inserted himself and the FBI into the presidential campaign on behalf of Trump and his Republican-fascist party DO YOU THINK HE'S ABOVE SENDING IN AGENTS DRESSED IN BLACK HOODS TO DISCREDIT THE PROTESTS AGAINST HIS REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS AND TRUMP?
I don't, I think he deserves to be suspected of that until proven innocent beyond any reasonable doubt. A reasonable doubt he never gave Hillary Clinton as he targeted her as he didn't target the massively corrupt Donald Trump. He doesn't get to have one for himself, now.
Black hoods are the new white hoods. They should be driven out of any demonstration, they should be suspected as being fascist agent provocateurs, perhaps sent by the Comey FBI as the Hoover FBI used to do.
Update: Oh, for crying out loud. James Comey illegally inserted himself and the FBI into the presidential campaign on behalf of Trump and his Republican-fascist party DO YOU THINK HE'S ABOVE SENDING IN AGENTS DRESSED IN BLACK HOODS TO DISCREDIT THE PROTESTS AGAINST HIS REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS AND TRUMP?
I don't, I think he deserves to be suspected of that until proven innocent beyond any reasonable doubt. A reasonable doubt he never gave Hillary Clinton as he targeted her as he didn't target the massively corrupt Donald Trump. He doesn't get to have one for himself, now.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
The Power Of Hate Talk Radio And Those Who Profit From It
To follow up on what I mentioned about the Bill Clinton administration not silencing the Rwandan hate-talk radio even as it was telling the equivalent of Einsatzgruppen where to find the equivalent of Jews to murder because "free speech" here's a piece about what many in Quebec believed might have inspired the white-supremacist mass murderer in Quebec the other day or at least created the milieu which his mind inhabits.
Quebec City’s popular mayor, Régis Labeaume, also appeared to criticize the radio stations. Speaking at an outdoor vigil in memory of the victims Monday evening, he denounced those who “get rich from peddling hatred.”
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard acknowledged Tuesday that the province has “its demons” and that “xenophobia, racism and exclusion are present here.” But he told reporters that Quebec society is generally open and tolerant.
“Whenever you happen to listen to this trash radio, you hear clearly xenophobic language,” said Mohammed Ali Saidane, who has lived in Quebec for 30 years.
“What I reproach with these media is that they import problems from elsewhere, especially France. We don’t live in ghettos here. It’s not the same as France,” he told the Journal de Quebec newspaper.
“The real danger of this kind of radio is that they play with the line between news, opinion and demagoguery,” said Louis-Philippe Lampron, who teaches human rights law at Laval University.
Being experienced in the two-step that the free-speech absolutist dances whenever someone gets killed as a result of hate-speech, they'll claim that "there's no proof" that hate-talk radio actually lit the fuse that exploded in many deaths. Or, more likely, "there's no link" between the two phenomena. I have come to the conclusion that for these absolutist asses, no amount of causation could be proved that they would admit as evidence, no number of people killed would matter to them - they rarely constitute the kind of people who are at danger of being attacked and killed or having their loved ones attacked and killed. And there's always money to be made from broadcasting hate and defending it. No matter how depraved it is.
Jeff Fillion, one of the best-known hosts, was fired last spring by Bell Media, owner of Energie 98.9 FM, after he ridiculed a prominent local businessman who had publicly grieved his son’s suicide. But soon after, Fillion was back on the air at another station.
“It’s like reality TV,” said Guillaume Verret, a 21-year-old college student and part-time barista as he sat with friends at a Starbucks in suburban Sainte-Foy. “It’s completely stupid and easy. They don’t give you facts. They just give you opinions that provoke people.”
Like reality TV. And, as we're seeing in the ACLU fund-raising campaign in the face of the developing Trump-fascism, they'd claim that "there is no evidence that reality TV ever hurt anyone".
I really hate the lawyers and writers and other liars who promoted the lie that what is said in the mass media, over and over again has no effect on how people act and, it being mass media, that masses of people can't be led to do everything from the foolish, to the bad, to the evil to the mass murdering influenced by the same techniques TV gets big bucks to use to sell people junk between their hate fixes. There's no evidence that they're not a bunch of money grubbing liars and hypocrites who don't care how many people get killed and if it leads to a fascist government in the United States. Pretty much the whole professional scribbling syndicate is in on it, too. With a few exceptions.
Quebec City’s popular mayor, Régis Labeaume, also appeared to criticize the radio stations. Speaking at an outdoor vigil in memory of the victims Monday evening, he denounced those who “get rich from peddling hatred.”
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard acknowledged Tuesday that the province has “its demons” and that “xenophobia, racism and exclusion are present here.” But he told reporters that Quebec society is generally open and tolerant.
“Whenever you happen to listen to this trash radio, you hear clearly xenophobic language,” said Mohammed Ali Saidane, who has lived in Quebec for 30 years.
“What I reproach with these media is that they import problems from elsewhere, especially France. We don’t live in ghettos here. It’s not the same as France,” he told the Journal de Quebec newspaper.
“The real danger of this kind of radio is that they play with the line between news, opinion and demagoguery,” said Louis-Philippe Lampron, who teaches human rights law at Laval University.
Being experienced in the two-step that the free-speech absolutist dances whenever someone gets killed as a result of hate-speech, they'll claim that "there's no proof" that hate-talk radio actually lit the fuse that exploded in many deaths. Or, more likely, "there's no link" between the two phenomena. I have come to the conclusion that for these absolutist asses, no amount of causation could be proved that they would admit as evidence, no number of people killed would matter to them - they rarely constitute the kind of people who are at danger of being attacked and killed or having their loved ones attacked and killed. And there's always money to be made from broadcasting hate and defending it. No matter how depraved it is.
Jeff Fillion, one of the best-known hosts, was fired last spring by Bell Media, owner of Energie 98.9 FM, after he ridiculed a prominent local businessman who had publicly grieved his son’s suicide. But soon after, Fillion was back on the air at another station.
“It’s like reality TV,” said Guillaume Verret, a 21-year-old college student and part-time barista as he sat with friends at a Starbucks in suburban Sainte-Foy. “It’s completely stupid and easy. They don’t give you facts. They just give you opinions that provoke people.”
Like reality TV. And, as we're seeing in the ACLU fund-raising campaign in the face of the developing Trump-fascism, they'd claim that "there is no evidence that reality TV ever hurt anyone".
I really hate the lawyers and writers and other liars who promoted the lie that what is said in the mass media, over and over again has no effect on how people act and, it being mass media, that masses of people can't be led to do everything from the foolish, to the bad, to the evil to the mass murdering influenced by the same techniques TV gets big bucks to use to sell people junk between their hate fixes. There's no evidence that they're not a bunch of money grubbing liars and hypocrites who don't care how many people get killed and if it leads to a fascist government in the United States. Pretty much the whole professional scribbling syndicate is in on it, too. With a few exceptions.
Aural Ipecac
A university music department, for music majors, is something like a second family. Only you're more likely to feel an obligation to try to like everyone in your family. Back, about half a century and it's none of your business ago there was a guy in our music department who was on work study and who worked for the music department. I worked in the library, wanting to get out of the music wing of the arts building as much as possible.
Anyway, this guy, I'll call him "Bob" because that wasn't his name and the real guy might still be alive, if he managed to avoid someone throttling him, was a ubiquitous presence and constant irritant. He wasn't that bright but, somehow, several times a day, he managed to, somehow, find the right thing to say that would be really embarrassing to someone or really hurtful. He generally did that as he was being helpful. People would roll their eyes and say, That's just Bob being Bob, he's not too bright. Only, after a while I realized there was no possible realm of possibility in which someone could be so accidentally malevolent without planning involved. I came to the conclusion that, far from being an innocuous dolt, Bob was a mean little bastard who you should be careful of. He obviously liked pushing peoples' buttons and causing them pain. No one would do it so consistently by accident.
I think the same is true of a majority of Republicans, especially those who present themselves as moral or idealistic. Paul Ryan, James Comey, the entirety of those who are presented as moderate in the lying media. They love to hurt people, they love to think about hurting people, they love seeing that people are hurting and the love that they are the ones who have the power to make people hurt.
The Republican Party that finally pushed Nixon out the door and onto the helicopter is not the Republican Party of today. Those people all died and their successors are all the Nixon type. There is, literally, no one of any good will in that party now. Anyone with any shred of good will either left the party or died. You can remember that during the confirmation hearings as you hear calls for comity among Senators. Democrats should go for the neck, every time.
Looking for that old post from my first blog, I also came across this haiku.
Senate Hearings Haiku
Take some comity.
Add old football metaphores.
Aural ipecac
Anyway, this guy, I'll call him "Bob" because that wasn't his name and the real guy might still be alive, if he managed to avoid someone throttling him, was a ubiquitous presence and constant irritant. He wasn't that bright but, somehow, several times a day, he managed to, somehow, find the right thing to say that would be really embarrassing to someone or really hurtful. He generally did that as he was being helpful. People would roll their eyes and say, That's just Bob being Bob, he's not too bright. Only, after a while I realized there was no possible realm of possibility in which someone could be so accidentally malevolent without planning involved. I came to the conclusion that, far from being an innocuous dolt, Bob was a mean little bastard who you should be careful of. He obviously liked pushing peoples' buttons and causing them pain. No one would do it so consistently by accident.
I think the same is true of a majority of Republicans, especially those who present themselves as moral or idealistic. Paul Ryan, James Comey, the entirety of those who are presented as moderate in the lying media. They love to hurt people, they love to think about hurting people, they love seeing that people are hurting and the love that they are the ones who have the power to make people hurt.
The Republican Party that finally pushed Nixon out the door and onto the helicopter is not the Republican Party of today. Those people all died and their successors are all the Nixon type. There is, literally, no one of any good will in that party now. Anyone with any shred of good will either left the party or died. You can remember that during the confirmation hearings as you hear calls for comity among Senators. Democrats should go for the neck, every time.
Looking for that old post from my first blog, I also came across this haiku.
Senate Hearings Haiku
Take some comity.
Add old football metaphores.
Aural ipecac
I'm Sure The Ivy Soxers Will Object
Oh, and, yeah, I suspected that Neil Gorsuch is a product of the Ivy League, in his case Columbia, Harvard and the Brit factory of servants of the ruling class, Oxford.
American democracy is being strangled by that ivy that covers the Supreme Court. If I were a Democrat I'd mention something like that in attempting to do everything I could to prevent or at least slow his confirmation and to expose as much as I could that would damage him with the American public. I've gone to war with invasive ivy, all out slash and burn is often the only way to get rid of it.
The sales job that the Ivy League elite has done on the American People is one of the most successful of their con jobs. If I had a dollar for every time an alleged liberal got the vapors when I dissed them I'd probably be able to buy a really good computer.
Oh, and, I don't think I'd necessarily ask Neilsie about her, specifically, but his mother was the criminal Ann Gorsuch McGill Burford who, appointed by Reagan to head the EPA did her best to destroy the agency and to mishandle and perhaps misdirect funds to clean up some of the worst hazardous waste dumps there are. She was a Flint poisoner type decades before Flint. Surely finding out if he shares his mother's philosophy of government regulation is relevant to the job he's asking for. I'm sure the Steve Inskeeps, other NPR hacks and the rest of the media would say that was out of bounds, though it is necessary if protecting the very lives and health of the American People is important, which it clearly isn't to them.
American democracy is being strangled by that ivy that covers the Supreme Court. If I were a Democrat I'd mention something like that in attempting to do everything I could to prevent or at least slow his confirmation and to expose as much as I could that would damage him with the American public. I've gone to war with invasive ivy, all out slash and burn is often the only way to get rid of it.
The sales job that the Ivy League elite has done on the American People is one of the most successful of their con jobs. If I had a dollar for every time an alleged liberal got the vapors when I dissed them I'd probably be able to buy a really good computer.
Oh, and, I don't think I'd necessarily ask Neilsie about her, specifically, but his mother was the criminal Ann Gorsuch McGill Burford who, appointed by Reagan to head the EPA did her best to destroy the agency and to mishandle and perhaps misdirect funds to clean up some of the worst hazardous waste dumps there are. She was a Flint poisoner type decades before Flint. Surely finding out if he shares his mother's philosophy of government regulation is relevant to the job he's asking for. I'm sure the Steve Inskeeps, other NPR hacks and the rest of the media would say that was out of bounds, though it is necessary if protecting the very lives and health of the American People is important, which it clearly isn't to them.
The Pantomime of Lying That Is Held For Republican Nominees Is In Full Swing
The Republican hack, Steve Inskeep's barely concealed, fawningly Republican friendly interview with Ben Sasse of Nebraska is in keeping with them doing their part to get Trump's pick for the stolen Court seat confirmed. It is just one of many things that further prove that liberals should dump NPR and encourage their members of congress to allow Republicans to kill it. Liberals who have given that fraud their support over the years are suckers for the FOX farm team operation. I would predict that if NPR went under Inskeep would join those other NPR personalities that made the tiny little step to FOX.
I noticed, especially, his providing a previously recorded interview with a Democratic senator so Sasse could refute what he said. I don't believe they had yet broadcast that other interview when I heard the one with the Republican-fascist. I wonder what the minor pantomime of journalistic integrity would say about giving his side that opportunity to sandbag the Democrat. I'd say it's obviously sleazy and Democrats who give NPR an interview should note that.
Also notice how, when he asked the inevitable question about Senate Republicans under the neo-Confederate racist, Mitch McConnell not allowing even hearings on Obama's nominee to the seat, Ben Sasse knew he didn't even have to do much but refuse to answer the clear hypocrisy of his partisan double-speak on the issue. And Inskeep, in keeping with everything anyone who has heard him would notice, let it pass without any pressing of the issue.
Every single person in the media will pretend that they don't have a pretty good idea how Neil Gorsuch is going to rule on flagship Republican-fascist cases and every one of them will be lying. I've been saying that for more than ten years.
EVERYONE IN THE ROOM KNEW THEY WERE LYING
Molly Ivins' most enduring statement might turn out to be her observation that everyone in Washington DC ends up saying the same things. One of the same things today is that the Senate Judiciary hearings for Supreme Court Justices have become a Kabuki dance. What do you think the chances are that even three of the parrots of the DC press corps knows anything about the high art of Kabuki? Given that within the past year we have been witness to two of these shows and what those were like I'd like to suggest we pass up the obvious "theater of the absurd" designation and go straight to "charades".
But charades isn't the right word either. In charades while the player says nothing they make gestures that are designed to get the audience to say what the player is thinking. In these hearings there were a flood of words and few gestures, give or take a staged bout of tears, and the exercise was to make the audience NOT say what everyone in the room and beyond knew was the subject of the play.
Roberts and Alito lied every single time they verbally mimed the pose of not having made up their minds before hearing a case. These kobe cattle were bred and hand raised to provide the most predictable results. They were nominated into the entirely predictable and safe Republican hands to be put on the court to join Scalia and Thomas to gut the Bill of Rights and Civil Rights amendments and to continue the Republican handover of the country to the oligarches and their corporate properties.
Everyone in the room knew they were lying. Such press as had any knowledge of the Court and things judicial knew they were lying though I'm prepared to concede that the cabloid clack might not have even known what the Court was. The large majority of us who listened to the entire farce knew they were lying. And now the lies will continue as they do exactly what everyone knew they would do. The very rare times that one of them has a bit of a woozy stomach and does something slightly unpredictable will be held onto like a life raft to prove the myth of judicial independence but that won't happen very often.
The lesson for the left is that Earl Warren is dead. He's been dead a good long while now. We can stop pretending that the Supreme Court is going to be anything but the hand maiden of the corporate oligarchy. If we are going to fight this its going to be through the ballot and if not there God save us.
Let's see how much of what happened then happens how, in the pantomime of let's pretend that attends Republican nominations to the Court. The goddamned Supreme Court under the Republican stacking of it, is a politicized and entirely partisan institution. The media enables that through their pretense that those robed priests of the cult of the Constitution are chosen for anything like impartiality and fairness and trying to figure out "original intent" which is a slogan of the most anti-democratic creeps in the legal profession and establishment.
I noticed, especially, his providing a previously recorded interview with a Democratic senator so Sasse could refute what he said. I don't believe they had yet broadcast that other interview when I heard the one with the Republican-fascist. I wonder what the minor pantomime of journalistic integrity would say about giving his side that opportunity to sandbag the Democrat. I'd say it's obviously sleazy and Democrats who give NPR an interview should note that.
Also notice how, when he asked the inevitable question about Senate Republicans under the neo-Confederate racist, Mitch McConnell not allowing even hearings on Obama's nominee to the seat, Ben Sasse knew he didn't even have to do much but refuse to answer the clear hypocrisy of his partisan double-speak on the issue. And Inskeep, in keeping with everything anyone who has heard him would notice, let it pass without any pressing of the issue.
Every single person in the media will pretend that they don't have a pretty good idea how Neil Gorsuch is going to rule on flagship Republican-fascist cases and every one of them will be lying. I've been saying that for more than ten years.
EVERYONE IN THE ROOM KNEW THEY WERE LYING
Molly Ivins' most enduring statement might turn out to be her observation that everyone in Washington DC ends up saying the same things. One of the same things today is that the Senate Judiciary hearings for Supreme Court Justices have become a Kabuki dance. What do you think the chances are that even three of the parrots of the DC press corps knows anything about the high art of Kabuki? Given that within the past year we have been witness to two of these shows and what those were like I'd like to suggest we pass up the obvious "theater of the absurd" designation and go straight to "charades".
But charades isn't the right word either. In charades while the player says nothing they make gestures that are designed to get the audience to say what the player is thinking. In these hearings there were a flood of words and few gestures, give or take a staged bout of tears, and the exercise was to make the audience NOT say what everyone in the room and beyond knew was the subject of the play.
Roberts and Alito lied every single time they verbally mimed the pose of not having made up their minds before hearing a case. These kobe cattle were bred and hand raised to provide the most predictable results. They were nominated into the entirely predictable and safe Republican hands to be put on the court to join Scalia and Thomas to gut the Bill of Rights and Civil Rights amendments and to continue the Republican handover of the country to the oligarches and their corporate properties.
Everyone in the room knew they were lying. Such press as had any knowledge of the Court and things judicial knew they were lying though I'm prepared to concede that the cabloid clack might not have even known what the Court was. The large majority of us who listened to the entire farce knew they were lying. And now the lies will continue as they do exactly what everyone knew they would do. The very rare times that one of them has a bit of a woozy stomach and does something slightly unpredictable will be held onto like a life raft to prove the myth of judicial independence but that won't happen very often.
The lesson for the left is that Earl Warren is dead. He's been dead a good long while now. We can stop pretending that the Supreme Court is going to be anything but the hand maiden of the corporate oligarchy. If we are going to fight this its going to be through the ballot and if not there God save us.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Why I Will Not Be Sending Money To The ACLU In Their Own Words
The ACLU is mounting one of their high profile campaigns to raise money, taking advantage of the Trump regime's outrageous discrimination against Muslims. But, I'm sorry, the ACLU doing that is less effective than the little boy who stuck his finger in the dyke to hold back the ocean. In fact, the ACLU doing that is like a little boy who sticks his finger in a hole in the dyke as he drills more holes in the very same dyke. The relevant activities of the ACLU have been in filing cases and amicus briefs in some of the worst rulings of the Supreme Court in the past century, cases like Sullivan v New York Times, Buckely v Valeo and Citizens United.
Donald Trump and his fascist, in my opinion fairly described as even crypto-Nazi regime came to power thorough the freely expressed lies he and others told in the freest of all free presses in our history, a free and freely lying press, free to follow its own profits and the will of its owners through the past actions of the ACLU and its buddies in the "free-speech-free-press" industry. They've done so, quite often, with the patronage and financial support of the very owners of the media who benefited mightily from carrying those lies without having to worry about being sued by those they lied about.
The ACLU is among the foremost groups which have facilitated and protected the ability of those lies to become the dominant force in our politics. They are the part of the media's protection racket that has made those lies safely told, their relationship to the Trump regime's attack on the very notion of the truth being real as opposed to "alternative facts" or, rather lies couldn't be more plain.
To make matters worse, the ACLU has had a huge hand in thwarting efforts made by politicians, Democrats and, amazingly enough, Republicans of the past to try to get the blatant influence peddling and extortion of big money out of our politics. The ACLU, on the one hand the champion of minorities and those whose advocacy of equality and justice made them targets of illegal actions by the goverment, is also one of the greatest forces in ensuring the corruption of our politics and the descent into the fascism we are now in and which they, in their weird two-step, are also fighting. That part of it is so obvious and so dangerous that even some of the foremost members and former leaders of the ACLU have publicly disagreed with it. In an article in The Nation, Burt Neuborne ACLU legal staff member for eleven years, and it's former national legal director from 1981 to 1986 said:
I’ve marched proudly behind the ACLU’s First Amendment flag for almost fifty years. On campaign finance reform, however, I believe the ACLU’s adamant opposition to limits on massive campaign spending by the superrich gets the constitutional issues wrong. Limiting the power of a few individuals and corporations that exercise disproportionate political influence solely because of their enormous wealth has nothing to do with censoring a speaker’s message; it is desperately needed to preserve the integrity of the egalitarian democracy the First Amendment was designed to protect.
The campaign finance mess rests on three erroneous arguments the ACLU advanced in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo case before the Supreme Court: (1) that spending unlimited amounts of money in an electoral campaign is “pure” speech entitled to the highest level of First Amendment protection; (2) that any attempt to equalize political power by limiting massive electoral spending by the superrich is flatly unconstitutional; and (3) that “independent” expenditures on behalf of a candidate (as opposed to contributions to the candidate) are incapable of corrupting the democratic process. In 2010, in Citizens United, five Supreme Court justices made the Buckley system even worse by ruling that corporations have the same electoral free-speech rights as individuals, which unleashed a torrent of electoral spending by corporations seeking a financial return on their political investments.
I confess to having supported the ACLU position in Buckley. As the corrosive effects on democracy of uncontrolled campaign spending became increasingly clear, however, I joined several former ACLU leaders—Norman Dorsen, Aryeh Neier, John Shattuck and Mort Halperin—in opposing the organization’s campaign finance position. We have argued, before the Supreme Court and the ACLU board, that spending massive amounts of money during an election campaign is not “pure” speech when the spending level is so high that it drowns out competing voices by repeating the same message over and over at higher decibel levels; that a compelling interest in equality justifies preventing wealthy speakers from buying up an unfair proportion of the speech in settings like courtrooms, classrooms, town meetings, presidential debates and elections; that massive campaign spending by “independent” entities poses a serious risk of postelection corruption; and that corporations lack the attributes of conscience and human dignity that justify free-speech protection.
The ACLU has been an integral and important part in the corruption of our politics, the media that has mis-informed a decisive margin of voters, the very idea that there is a real and effective and vital difference between the truth and lies, between the truth and salacious libel against liberal politicians and others. Its entire theory of the First Amendment has been adopted by the very enemies of egalitarian democracy, the actual fascists who now hold the White House as their means of gaining and, they hope, keeping power. That theory that refuses to accept that it is possible to make the kinds of distinctions between truth and lies, between egalitarian democrats and fascists, Marxists and neo-Nazis, between those who favor equal justice and those who attack it in favor of the privileged who want an ever increasing inequality that favors them is and will always be a clear and present danger to egalitarian democracy.
Do read the article linked to. I don't agree with everything said in it or think it goes nearly far enough, but it does show that there is a huge problem with the organization as it exists now. Supporting them while they participate in actively creating the very legal problems that resulted in Trump is a waste of your money. There are other groups that support the legal rights of beleaguered minorities without doing the bidding of the lying corporate media, the likes of James Buckley and David Bossie and the very fascists who the ACLU and those other groups now have to fight with such unequal resources.
Answer To A Response By Someone Whose Pose of Civility Is Eroding Under Testing
If what I said about the Anglo-American atheists' favorite model of human minds is true - and no atheist I've put those problems to has yet proposed a means to overcome the problems with it - then that material-mind can't possibly be true. The atheist model, practically ubiquitous among so-called neuro- and cognative scientists, holds that minds and the thoughts they have are the mere product of physical causation rearranging chemicals due to the accidental and ambient physics present in our brains.
If my critique of that idea stands - if they can't come up with a way for the information contained in a thought to be present in a material form to instruct the brain of what to do to make "make" that idea, to instruct it what to make to "be" that idea and HOW to make it BEFORE IT IS PRESENT IN A PHYSICAL FORM IN THE BRAIN TO INSTRUCT IT, their entire model falls.
That is not my fault. They are the ones who insist on defining thoughts and the minds that think them in a way that can't possibly be true, not me. And I'm not required to invent a new model to replace it before the impossibility of their model -by its own definitions and holdings -takes itself down. There is no requirement in logic that the invalidation of a proposal requires a replacement proposal. True and false isn't dependent on the convenience of those who call what they do "science". If I'm right in suspecting that minds are immaterial, then science is not applicable.
The human experience of thought, within time, within the experience of human beings of their minds in operation IS AN ESSENTIAL ASPECT OF TESTING ANY MODEL OF THE MIND. You can't come up with an explanation of a phenomenon which contradicts what is actually going on in that phenomenon and when the phenomeon is "THE MIND" then that experience is the most salient aspect possible about it. In fact it is the only aspect of it that is absolutely relevant. Furthermore, the acceptance of any model depends, absolutely, on peoples being convinced that it accounts for their experience of life as they live it and as they experience it. Anyone who doesn't consult their own experience as a crucial part of acceptance of something are merely resorting to professions of a superficial faith based in the authority of those who make the proposals for it. The entire method of science, as invented by human beings, is a method for matching proposed ideas to human experience and observation relevant to them. Atheist-materialists will deny that that's what they do but they do it all the time, they just won't face the fact that it is what they are doing. The rather savory irony in this is that there are no more obvious violators of the pretended standards of Anglo-American, scientistic, materialist atheism than those very atheists who pretend those are their standards.
If my critique of that idea stands - if they can't come up with a way for the information contained in a thought to be present in a material form to instruct the brain of what to do to make "make" that idea, to instruct it what to make to "be" that idea and HOW to make it BEFORE IT IS PRESENT IN A PHYSICAL FORM IN THE BRAIN TO INSTRUCT IT, their entire model falls.
That is not my fault. They are the ones who insist on defining thoughts and the minds that think them in a way that can't possibly be true, not me. And I'm not required to invent a new model to replace it before the impossibility of their model -by its own definitions and holdings -takes itself down. There is no requirement in logic that the invalidation of a proposal requires a replacement proposal. True and false isn't dependent on the convenience of those who call what they do "science". If I'm right in suspecting that minds are immaterial, then science is not applicable.
The human experience of thought, within time, within the experience of human beings of their minds in operation IS AN ESSENTIAL ASPECT OF TESTING ANY MODEL OF THE MIND. You can't come up with an explanation of a phenomenon which contradicts what is actually going on in that phenomenon and when the phenomeon is "THE MIND" then that experience is the most salient aspect possible about it. In fact it is the only aspect of it that is absolutely relevant. Furthermore, the acceptance of any model depends, absolutely, on peoples being convinced that it accounts for their experience of life as they live it and as they experience it. Anyone who doesn't consult their own experience as a crucial part of acceptance of something are merely resorting to professions of a superficial faith based in the authority of those who make the proposals for it. The entire method of science, as invented by human beings, is a method for matching proposed ideas to human experience and observation relevant to them. Atheist-materialists will deny that that's what they do but they do it all the time, they just won't face the fact that it is what they are doing. The rather savory irony in this is that there are no more obvious violators of the pretended standards of Anglo-American, scientistic, materialist atheism than those very atheists who pretend those are their standards.
What RMJ Said. Literally
Canary in the Coal Mine
The United Church of Christ, the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, the Episcopal Church have all raised objections to Trump's ban on Muslims (let's be honest about that). Some of those churches, as well as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church's Council of Bishops, the Union for Reform Judaism, signed a letter against Trump's ban. The Southern Baptist Convention sent a letter this morning protesting the ban.
That list doesn't include Muslim groups, and secular groups, and individuals like Fr. James Martin, also listed at the links, who protested Trump's action.
Interestingly, the objections of all those groups, except for the SBC, were made last week, before Trump signed the order on Friday that created so much controversy and chaos over the weekend. It was announced; the news was available. Religion News Service and Huffington Post reported on it as late as Friday, as early as Wednesday, and yet on the news channels over the weekend:
*crickets*
Which is a mockery of our claims to be a "Christian" nation, or of the complaints that our country is run by right-wing Christians. When he was governor, Mike Pence objected to Trump's idea (during the primaries) of a ban on Muslims. Now, of course, he tacitly supports it. Only Franklin Graham has come out in support of Trump's ban; even Focus on the Family has objected.
Just a reminder that there is an alternative voice out there; even if almost no one wants to listen to it....
NOTE from The Thought Criminal: You can't see the links in the original on my blog unless you put the cursor on them. They're worth reading.
NOTE from The Thought Criminal: You can't see the links in the original on my blog unless you put the cursor on them. They're worth reading.
Monday, January 30, 2017
Absolutely, I'd Crush Every Last Vestige Of Those Groups Out Of Business
William Pierce's Turner Diaries was the blueprint for the record terrorist incident before 9-11, Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City and it was also someone who is known to have written the inspiration of Dylan Roof in his mass slaughter of last year. There is no rational reason or moral reason to not suppress everything to do with him, his ideas, his writings and his bowel movement of a movement. Any "civil libertarian" or alleged civil liberties group which advocates they be allowed to publish their advocacy for murder and to organize to encourage each other in that criminal insanity is an ally of theirs. I'm sure if they were the intended target of them they'd come up with some reason to change their tune, but they tend to be working class and poor people who are targeted by thugs and criminals like those.
What part of THE NEO-NAZI STEVE BANNON BEING IN THE WHITE HOUSE MAKING POLICY AND ON THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL RIGHT NOW DON'T YOU GET?
What part of THE NEO-NAZI STEVE BANNON BEING IN THE WHITE HOUSE MAKING POLICY AND ON THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL RIGHT NOW DON'T YOU GET?
There Is No Rational Reason And Certainly No Moral One For Groups With A Record of Murdering Thousands and Millions To Be Allowed Free Association To Spread Their Poison - Hate Mail
Well, there's one big difference between me and the libertarian-liberals such as Duncan Black and Nat Hentoff, I think it's sheer idiocy, on the basis of a bunch of words put on paper by 18th century, slaveholding, landstealing, Indian murdering aristocrats, to think that we must permit such ideologies as Nazism the opportunities that the First Amendment has given them. The idiocy of our Constitution - next to impossible to amend in any important way - is that the lessons learned at such a horrific cost of how dangerous some ideologies can get, now many tens of millions and more they can murder, how many billions they can oppress and enslave - those lessons are not to be learned and those groups not to be suppressed so they can't get a second chance to do it again. Nazism, Marxism, fascism of various sorts, white supremacy, and, let's not forget one of the the most effective of all ideologies that have effected a reign of terror and oppression, male supremacy.
During the Rwanda genocide, as the rapid murder of the minority by a majority incited to kill by radio, was at its most bloody, Bill Clinton's administration refused so much as jam, the dictator-genocidalist's radio station that was instructing killers how to find their victims because of "freedom of the press". Reading about that shameful, insane, stupid and cowardly inaction might have been the beginning of my skepticism on such absolutism. The elevation of the imaginary rights of untrue words over the lives of people, even words instructing active killers on how to find their victims was the exact opposite of that old canard about lying to the Nazis about the hidden Jewish children.
I had someone, this weekend, when I said that Steve Bannon was a neo-Nazi installed with real power in the very White House say that he'd been a naval officer, having taken whatever oath he had to take to get that position so he wasn't dangerous. I guess we're supposed to pretend that a white supremacist, neo-Nazi is above lying when they swear to uphold the Constitution or something. What I think it shows is that the failure to de-Nazify the American military and media was a betrayal of those people who fought to defeat Nazism and fascism and, yes, communism. The idea that Nazis, the Klu Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, etc. just be permitted to organize, publish and spread their poison, now with the support of one of our two major parties because of Tommy Jefferson and Jimmy Madison and Al Hamilton wanted to strike a pose in minor 18th century poetry is one of the stupidest mass delusions among American liberals. There is no reason to pretend that the distinction between murderous, racist, advocates of grotesque and and, eventually, inevitably deadly inequality and people who favor equality and justice can't be made.
As things go to worse, I don't think we can avoid having an actual, genocidal, fascist if not Nazi period happening here unless we stop pretending that we can't distinguish between the National Alliance, a group begun under the leadership of the overt advocate and promoter of genocide, the Nazi William Pierce and groups such as Pax Christi and Green Peace. One thing the FBI is, apparently and certainly under the likes of James Comey, more likely to target Pax Christi and Green Peace than it is a crypto-nazi "alt-right" group advocating discrimination. The "free speech-free-press-free-association" clauses have always been applied so as to favor the the wealthy, the connected and, certainly the enemies of equality, justice and freedom. It's way past time we gave up the pretense that they aren't used that way, even as it is pretended that distinctions between egalitarian democrats and Nazis can't possibly be made or acted on.
The maintanence of that pretense is one of the stupidest, most cowardly and irresponsible stances commonly taken on the alleged left. I strongly suspect it was a pose promoted by Marxists who figured it would turn into opportunities for them to push their species of anti-democratic crap when it's been obvious all along that it was the fascist-Nazi brand that it would be made to favor. And, look at the mountains murdered by Marxists, there was never any reason to give them any credit anymore than the Nazis or the Klan. For Pete's sake, we had an inauguration concert where someone advocated lynching last week. How many friggin' clues do you guys need?
* This implied that the United States had done a good deal but not quite enough. In reality the United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements. It refused to use its technology to jam radio broadcasts that were a crucial instrument in the coordination and perpetuation of the genocide. And even as, on average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, U.S. officials shunned the term "genocide," for fear of being obliged to act. The United States in fact did virtually nothing "to try to limit what occurred." Indeed, staying out of Rwanda was an explicit U.S. policy objective.
It was, in fact, worse than that. The State Department said that to even jam them would violate the spirit of freedom of the press, even as they were instructing murderers of where their victims were to be found, the free-press in Rwanda murdering an average of 8,000 people a day.
Whatever the limitations of radio jamming, which clearly would have been no panacea, most of the delays Wisner cites could have been avoided if senior Administration officials had followed through. But Rwanda was not their problem. Instead justifications for standing by abounded. In early May the State Department Legal Advisor's Office issued a finding against radio jamming, citing international broadcasting agreements and the American commitment to free speech. When Bushnell raised radio jamming yet again at a meeting, one Pentagon official chided her for naiveté: "Pru, radios don't kill people. People kill people!"
During the Rwanda genocide, as the rapid murder of the minority by a majority incited to kill by radio, was at its most bloody, Bill Clinton's administration refused so much as jam, the dictator-genocidalist's radio station that was instructing killers how to find their victims because of "freedom of the press". Reading about that shameful, insane, stupid and cowardly inaction might have been the beginning of my skepticism on such absolutism. The elevation of the imaginary rights of untrue words over the lives of people, even words instructing active killers on how to find their victims was the exact opposite of that old canard about lying to the Nazis about the hidden Jewish children.
I had someone, this weekend, when I said that Steve Bannon was a neo-Nazi installed with real power in the very White House say that he'd been a naval officer, having taken whatever oath he had to take to get that position so he wasn't dangerous. I guess we're supposed to pretend that a white supremacist, neo-Nazi is above lying when they swear to uphold the Constitution or something. What I think it shows is that the failure to de-Nazify the American military and media was a betrayal of those people who fought to defeat Nazism and fascism and, yes, communism. The idea that Nazis, the Klu Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, etc. just be permitted to organize, publish and spread their poison, now with the support of one of our two major parties because of Tommy Jefferson and Jimmy Madison and Al Hamilton wanted to strike a pose in minor 18th century poetry is one of the stupidest mass delusions among American liberals. There is no reason to pretend that the distinction between murderous, racist, advocates of grotesque and and, eventually, inevitably deadly inequality and people who favor equality and justice can't be made.
As things go to worse, I don't think we can avoid having an actual, genocidal, fascist if not Nazi period happening here unless we stop pretending that we can't distinguish between the National Alliance, a group begun under the leadership of the overt advocate and promoter of genocide, the Nazi William Pierce and groups such as Pax Christi and Green Peace. One thing the FBI is, apparently and certainly under the likes of James Comey, more likely to target Pax Christi and Green Peace than it is a crypto-nazi "alt-right" group advocating discrimination. The "free speech-free-press-free-association" clauses have always been applied so as to favor the the wealthy, the connected and, certainly the enemies of equality, justice and freedom. It's way past time we gave up the pretense that they aren't used that way, even as it is pretended that distinctions between egalitarian democrats and Nazis can't possibly be made or acted on.
The maintanence of that pretense is one of the stupidest, most cowardly and irresponsible stances commonly taken on the alleged left. I strongly suspect it was a pose promoted by Marxists who figured it would turn into opportunities for them to push their species of anti-democratic crap when it's been obvious all along that it was the fascist-Nazi brand that it would be made to favor. And, look at the mountains murdered by Marxists, there was never any reason to give them any credit anymore than the Nazis or the Klan. For Pete's sake, we had an inauguration concert where someone advocated lynching last week. How many friggin' clues do you guys need?
* This implied that the United States had done a good deal but not quite enough. In reality the United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements. It refused to use its technology to jam radio broadcasts that were a crucial instrument in the coordination and perpetuation of the genocide. And even as, on average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, U.S. officials shunned the term "genocide," for fear of being obliged to act. The United States in fact did virtually nothing "to try to limit what occurred." Indeed, staying out of Rwanda was an explicit U.S. policy objective.
It was, in fact, worse than that. The State Department said that to even jam them would violate the spirit of freedom of the press, even as they were instructing murderers of where their victims were to be found, the free-press in Rwanda murdering an average of 8,000 people a day.
Whatever the limitations of radio jamming, which clearly would have been no panacea, most of the delays Wisner cites could have been avoided if senior Administration officials had followed through. But Rwanda was not their problem. Instead justifications for standing by abounded. In early May the State Department Legal Advisor's Office issued a finding against radio jamming, citing international broadcasting agreements and the American commitment to free speech. When Bushnell raised radio jamming yet again at a meeting, one Pentagon official chided her for naiveté: "Pru, radios don't kill people. People kill people!"
Sunday, January 29, 2017
He Is Such A Big Fat Superannuated Cry Baby-Man
I'm thinking of calling him Wittwe Donawd from now on.
Don't Buy Their Lies And NPR Will Die
I really do mean it, don't give a cent to NPR, don't give a cent to the local "public radio" stations and tell them they won't get another cent from you until they dump NPR. NPR is the FOX farm team, it has been since before Murdoch started FOX "news" when they went from slash and burn against the Carter administration to having the gentle stylings of Jim Angel covering the Reagan champion criminal enterprise before he moved to FOX "news".
Oh, yeah, in fact checking this little post, I came across this description of Angel, "One of the most fair, incisive, and informed investigative reporters on the Washington scene." it was the guy who went from the Village Voice to the crypto-fascist Cato Institute, the late Nat Hentoff, who gave him that evaluation.
Oh, yeah, in fact checking this little post, I came across this description of Angel, "One of the most fair, incisive, and informed investigative reporters on the Washington scene." it was the guy who went from the Village Voice to the crypto-fascist Cato Institute, the late Nat Hentoff, who gave him that evaluation.
FOX-NPR Republican-mouthpiece, Mara Liasson is on the radio as I type this, soft-selling the blatant neo-fascism of the blatantly fascist Trump regime. She must be kind of uneasy trying to pass herself off as a legitimate reporter on NPR and keeping the fascist-facilitators at her major gig happy. But she's been getting away with that on NPR for decades, now.
NPR deserves to die for crimes against reality, for passing itself off as an alternative to the corporate media. Liberals who have been supporting them for that entire time are their easy marks, dupes, useful idiots. NPR is in thick with the normalization of the Trump regime as it veers between neo-fascism and neo-Nazism with the support of the Republican-fascists in the Congress and, no doubt, it will develop, in the federal judiciary.
Update: And now NPR's Weekend Edition, in response to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moving the Doomesday Clock to two and a half minutes to nuclear holocaust has on a cheery, upbeat story with a guy who makes "survivalist" bunkers and the business opportunity this is for his brand of con artists. Right now as I'm typing, they're talking about how people are choosing to decorate their self-designed tombs for the stupid and clueless rich.
NPR deserves to die for crimes against reality, for passing itself off as an alternative to the corporate media. Liberals who have been supporting them for that entire time are their easy marks, dupes, useful idiots. NPR is in thick with the normalization of the Trump regime as it veers between neo-fascism and neo-Nazism with the support of the Republican-fascists in the Congress and, no doubt, it will develop, in the federal judiciary.
Update: And now NPR's Weekend Edition, in response to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moving the Doomesday Clock to two and a half minutes to nuclear holocaust has on a cheery, upbeat story with a guy who makes "survivalist" bunkers and the business opportunity this is for his brand of con artists. Right now as I'm typing, they're talking about how people are choosing to decorate their self-designed tombs for the stupid and clueless rich.
I'm Not A Muslim But If The Trump Regime Says They Have To Register I'll Register As One Too
I don't think I have to write a post on this, do I?
I Will Never Again Rank Victims Of Genocide On A Scale Of Valuation
Steve Simels, has been lying that I'm an antisemite for the past five years because five years ago I responded to a disgusting, racist joke he made on Eschaton, joined by other nitwits at the "Brain Trust".
I said that I would rather they'd either put Israel on land donated by the United States or given Jews citizenship in the United States, as Simels and several other of the wits who joined him have enjoyed in relative safety, instead of a perpetual state of war, their entire lives. In my responses that day I mentioned several locations that might be considered for such a Jewish Homeland, as I recall I said I'd like to have a lot more Jews living in my state in the expectation they'd move our politics decidedly in a better direction. For his typically dishonest reasons, Steve Simels has fixed on one I mentioned, Arizona. Now, let me ask you if you think Arizona would be the paleo-Republican-fascist state it mostly is if several million more Jews called it home. I suspect it would be a beacon of liberalism. As I recall, as the attacks and my responses to them developed, it turned out I would rather the Jewish population which were to die in Europe had been allowed to come to my country, something which apparently my biggest troll didn't like. And, in Simels-speak, that's antisemitism.
Here's what Simels said on Duncan Black's blog in respone to "R.McGeddon, futilitarian" joking about moving "Israel to Florida".
The CNN story that Simps is using as the basis of his lie about me links to a piece in Huffington Post the Trump lackey mentioned in their defense*. It mentions the incontestable fact that Jews were high up on a list of those targeted for total genocide by the Nazis, but they were not the only group. I've pointed out, to Simels' rage, that the genocide of the disabled began the industrial campaign of genocide by the Nazis, officially starting in September of 1939. The Nazis obviously used it as a practice run for killing other groups, notably, Jews. In that month, as well, Hitler gave explicit orders to his troops that invaded Poland that the plan was to murder the entire Polish population to be replaced on the Polish homeland with Germans. The Nazis plans were to murder many entire groups on the basis of their biological identity and for ideological reasons. I told Simels after a number of years of him asserting that only the Jews who were murdered mattered that I wouldn't engage in Nazi thinking, ranking the victims of the Nazis in terms of value and importance. HE CERTAINLY DOESN'T THINK THE CAMPAIGN TO DESTROY THE ROMA PEOPLE IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO HAVE KEPT HIM FROM MAKING THAT JOKE EVEN AS THEY ARE STILL UNDER ACTIVE DISCRIMINATION IN MANY PARTS OF EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE. If he didn't realize that, something which had been in the news a number of times, it certainly doesn't disprove my point.
To not mention that Jews were murdered in huge numbers by the Nazis during a day of remembrance of their murder - for the obviously blatant and for the worst of political motives by the Trump regime - is clearly an outrage. It is just as outrageous to leave out any of the other groups targeted to be just as dead. It is also a huge mistake to present the Nazi program of murdering Jews as if it is a unique case, set off from all others because all of them are related. To make "never again" mean never again should Jews be murdered instead of NEVER AGAIN SHOULD ANY GROUP BE TARGETED FOR GENOCIDE is the same type of ranking for value, ranking for worthiness to live that the Nazi's theory of selection for death was based on. I won't do it. I refuse to think like a Nazi thinks. My choice to not rank people in terms of value on the basis of their identity is entirely different thinking than what I'm accused of by someone who has been lying about me on that count for five years. And I will point this out as many times as the lie is told.
* I very strongly doubt that the author of that piece, Louise Ridley, would welcome being used that way by the Trump regime.
Update: If anyone has the curiosity to fact check what I said about this, go to the Disqus thread on Eschaton from 2012 at the link above , click "oldest first" and you can see, near the end of the thread that I didn't say anything about Israel until after Simels made his racist joke about Roma having a "homeland" in abandoned mall in Jersey and after his buddy made the crack about relocating Israel to Florida and another of the Eschatots making another anti-Roma witticism.
Before that he was trying to pick a fight with me over music. He didn't know what he was talking about then, either.
As I said, after putting up with this for the past five years, I'll point it out as many times as necessary.
I said that I would rather they'd either put Israel on land donated by the United States or given Jews citizenship in the United States, as Simels and several other of the wits who joined him have enjoyed in relative safety, instead of a perpetual state of war, their entire lives. In my responses that day I mentioned several locations that might be considered for such a Jewish Homeland, as I recall I said I'd like to have a lot more Jews living in my state in the expectation they'd move our politics decidedly in a better direction. For his typically dishonest reasons, Steve Simels has fixed on one I mentioned, Arizona. Now, let me ask you if you think Arizona would be the paleo-Republican-fascist state it mostly is if several million more Jews called it home. I suspect it would be a beacon of liberalism. As I recall, as the attacks and my responses to them developed, it turned out I would rather the Jewish population which were to die in Europe had been allowed to come to my country, something which apparently my biggest troll didn't like. And, in Simels-speak, that's antisemitism.
Here's what Simels said on Duncan Black's blog in respone to "R.McGeddon, futilitarian" joking about moving "Israel to Florida".
The CNN story that Simps is using as the basis of his lie about me links to a piece in Huffington Post the Trump lackey mentioned in their defense*. It mentions the incontestable fact that Jews were high up on a list of those targeted for total genocide by the Nazis, but they were not the only group. I've pointed out, to Simels' rage, that the genocide of the disabled began the industrial campaign of genocide by the Nazis, officially starting in September of 1939. The Nazis obviously used it as a practice run for killing other groups, notably, Jews. In that month, as well, Hitler gave explicit orders to his troops that invaded Poland that the plan was to murder the entire Polish population to be replaced on the Polish homeland with Germans. The Nazis plans were to murder many entire groups on the basis of their biological identity and for ideological reasons. I told Simels after a number of years of him asserting that only the Jews who were murdered mattered that I wouldn't engage in Nazi thinking, ranking the victims of the Nazis in terms of value and importance. HE CERTAINLY DOESN'T THINK THE CAMPAIGN TO DESTROY THE ROMA PEOPLE IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO HAVE KEPT HIM FROM MAKING THAT JOKE EVEN AS THEY ARE STILL UNDER ACTIVE DISCRIMINATION IN MANY PARTS OF EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE. If he didn't realize that, something which had been in the news a number of times, it certainly doesn't disprove my point.
To not mention that Jews were murdered in huge numbers by the Nazis during a day of remembrance of their murder - for the obviously blatant and for the worst of political motives by the Trump regime - is clearly an outrage. It is just as outrageous to leave out any of the other groups targeted to be just as dead. It is also a huge mistake to present the Nazi program of murdering Jews as if it is a unique case, set off from all others because all of them are related. To make "never again" mean never again should Jews be murdered instead of NEVER AGAIN SHOULD ANY GROUP BE TARGETED FOR GENOCIDE is the same type of ranking for value, ranking for worthiness to live that the Nazi's theory of selection for death was based on. I won't do it. I refuse to think like a Nazi thinks. My choice to not rank people in terms of value on the basis of their identity is entirely different thinking than what I'm accused of by someone who has been lying about me on that count for five years. And I will point this out as many times as the lie is told.
* I very strongly doubt that the author of that piece, Louise Ridley, would welcome being used that way by the Trump regime.
Update: If anyone has the curiosity to fact check what I said about this, go to the Disqus thread on Eschaton from 2012 at the link above , click "oldest first" and you can see, near the end of the thread that I didn't say anything about Israel until after Simels made his racist joke about Roma having a "homeland" in abandoned mall in Jersey and after his buddy made the crack about relocating Israel to Florida and another of the Eschatots making another anti-Roma witticism.
Before that he was trying to pick a fight with me over music. He didn't know what he was talking about then, either.
As I said, after putting up with this for the past five years, I'll point it out as many times as necessary.
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