People Are Mad as Hell and They Aren't Going to Take It Any Longer

Excellent DU post:

... I think this goes beyond police brutality. I am in no way diminishing the horror of police brutality and the contempt that it demonstrates for black people. To me, the phrase "black lives matter" encompasses more than the right to not be treated as rabid animals to be put down, or swept out of the way into a nightmarish prison system.  

In city after city, and town after town, black people are marginalized, stereotyped and then conveniently forgotten. There's a mountain of blame to go around. Republican economic policies which dominate, are not insignificant. When we talk about the ever increasing gulf between the rich and the rest of the population, the people that suffer most under those policies are people of color. 

I'm not saying this well, but I do believe this: When you marginalize people, when you treat them as disposable and strip them of dignity through a steady stream of cultural contempt and brutality, that some of them, particularly young men, react by acting out on the rage that's been inculcated and building; that shouldn't be a surprise. 

We need to start with police departments, and minor tweaks won't do it. It's so bad and there's such egregious civil rights abuses extant in so many police department that I believe it has to start with the Justice Department. But we need to think beyond that: The Judicial System, the education system, prison reform, the social safety net, and on and on. It's daunting.

The police and the insane drug war are fucking out of control. Maybe not all police are bad, but the sheer psychopathy and sadism of so many policemen is just evil. Evil disguised as authority.

This column on the Baltimore protests in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray killing is good too.

Key Points on the Vaccine Discussion Between Robert F Kennedy Jr and Bill Maher

on Real Time last friday, April 24th.

RFK Jr
1) mercury is a potent neurotoxin
2) mercury, in the form of thimerserol, is still in vaccines, although taken out of the MMR
3) there has been a spike in autism disorders since 1989 when more vaccines were added to the schedule
4) the CDC is totally corrupt and is in thrall to the vaccine manufacturers
5) Dr. Paul Offit, the face of vaccine advocacy, is corrupt

BM
1) people should be suspicious of big pharma, like they would for any other profit-oriented corporation.
2) people need to back off the anti-vaxxer rhetoric

---

I certainly agree with Maher.

About what RFKJr said, sounds pretty accurate.

Transgender Watch

As you likely heard, Bruce Jenner came out as transgender last Friday....

Given the cultural significance of the Kardashians, and that Bruce Jenner was a total Olympic athlete stud back in the day, this does mark a cultural shift of some sort. Clearly transgenderism is being actively promoted by the elites, ostensibly to be more sensitive and tolerant to their peculiar plight. But why is this such a big deal now? Normally, these people are very rare, so why do they occupy so much of the media's attention?

My hypothesis, as I briefly blogged about a few months ago, is that environmental pollution is causing more sexual misidentification and abnormal sexual development. Rather than deal with the pollution, the PTB clearly want to ignore it, and have us deal with some of the strange consequences.

Anthraxed

The 2001 anthrax attacks are still one of the weakest links in the whole 9/11 official story, given that it was admittedly a false-flag inside job. Right?

Still, the real perp of those attacks is unknown and unpunished....

Some news on the anthrax investigation though. A lead FBI investigator is filing a lawsuit against the government charging multiple errors in the investigation.

This relatively recent DU post, interestingly suggests that W. Bush himself may have had a hand in targeting one of the victims.


I haven't read this completely, but Professor Graeme MacQueen has been investigating the anthrax attacks and there is a bunch of good info in this interview.

There are some people who still believe "al Qaeda" was behind the attacks, apparently. This is an odd blog, that promotes this theory.

I would say, there certainly was an active limited hangout, disinfo/misinfo campaign to make people think al Qaeda was behind the attacks, with even some help from Iraq, but it seems clear that even if they were making anthrax, it couldn't be the kind that was used in the attacks. Unless, the government/FBI really wants us to think it was a US defense scientist rogue agent who carried out the attacks, as a cover up for the role of al Qaeda. But that really doesn't make a huge amount of sense given the lies they've already perpetrated about al Qaeda, and I'm not aware of other times where the govt has clearly had reason to frame itself.

OKC Bombing Conspiracy

This is the sort of thing that James Corbett does really well--

I love conspiracy snark!

War Propaganda Alert

This is pretty freaking outrageous, but so typical of our bogus war on terror.

NBC News is at the center of a new controversy, this time focused on its chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel. Back in 2012 he and five other members of an NBC News team were kidnapped by armed gunmen in Syria. They were held for five days. Just after his release Engel spoke on NBC News and said this about his captors: "This is a government militia. These are people who are loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. They are Shiite." Well, earlier this week, a New York Times investigation prompted Engel to revise his story and reveal he was actually captured by Sunni militants affiliated with the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army. In an article published on Wednesday, Engel said the kidnappers had "put on an elaborate ruse to convince us they were Shiite Shabiha militiamen." According to the Times investigation, NBC knew more than it let on about the kidnappers. We speak to As’ad AbuKhalil, professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He runs the Angry Arab News Service blog. He expressed serious doubts about the circumstances surrounding Engel’s captivity and release when the story first broke in December 2012.

I'm sure Engel is intel of some sort.

Media and Banking Consolidation in the US

What could possibly go wrong?

"Sale of U.S. Arms Fuels the Wars of Arab States"

Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

Fuck the military-industrial complex. Seriously.

8 Years Ago Today, We Had A Flash of News That Threatened the Official 9/11 Story

This was on the news in the morning:

French secret services produced nine reports between September 2000 and August 2001 looking at the Al-Qaida threat to the United States, and knew it planned to hijack an aircraft, the French daily Le Monde said on Monday.

The newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents that showed foreign agents had infiltrated Osama bin Laden's network and were carefully tracking its moves. One document prepared in January 2001 was entitled "Plan to hijack an aircraft by Islamic radicals", and said the operation had been discussed in Kabul at the start of 2000 by Al-Qaida, Taliban and Chechen militants. The hijack was meant to happen between March and September 2000 but the planners put it back "because of differences of opinion, particularly over the date, objective and participants," Le Monde said, citing the report.

And then shortly after that, the Va Tech shootings occurred, wiping this 9/11 story off the news, and into the memory hole.

Funny how that works.

Climate Skepticism Vs 9/11 Skepticism

Hmmm... interesting blog post about the psychology of climate science skeptics:

Whether it’s climate hawks talking about why there are so many skeptics, or skeptics talking about why there are so many climate hawks, the story is mostly the same: A nefarious minority seizes control of cultural institutions, using them to peddle falsehoods to a public that doesn’t have the time or scientific literacy to separate truth from lies; this process of deception is assisted by lazy, biased media and an army of online zealots.

Unfortunately, social-science evidence suggests that pretty much every part of this story is wrong. Kahan:

• If public confusion over climate change was a consequence of over-reliance on heuristic reasoning, we’d expect the beliefs of those members of the population who are highest in science comprehension to be most in line with the best available evidence. In fact, those members of the public highest in science literacy, numeracy, and critical reasoning skills are the most culturally polarized ones.

• No doubt, misinformation on climate change abounds. But scientifically sound evidence that misinformation causes polarization does not. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that ordinary people, as a result of the ubiquity and intensity of cultural cognition, aggressively mislead themselves. They aggressively seek out information that confirms and avoid information that challenges their predispositions. And when exposed to the same sources of valid information selectively credit and discredit it in patterns that amplify polarization. Polarization, in sum, creates the demand for professional misinformers, who can profit handsomely by enabling people to persist in culturally congenial beliefs.

• Blaming the media is also pretty weak. The claim that “unbalanced” media coverage causes public controversy on climate change science is incompatible with cross-cultural evidence, which shows that US coverage is no different from coverage in other nations in which the public isn’t polarized (e.g., Sweden). Indeed, the “media misinformation” claim has causation upside down, as Kevin Arceneaux’s recent post helps to show. The media covers competing claims about the evidence because climate change is entangled in culturally antagonistic meanings, which in turn create persistent public demand for information on the nature of the conflict and for evidence that the readers who hold the relevant cultural identities can use to satisfy their interest in persisting in beliefs consistent with their identities.

• The “internet echo chamber” hypothesis is similarly devoid of evidence. There are plenty of evidence-based sources that address and dispel the general claim that the internet reinforces partisan exposure to and processing of evidence (sources that apparently can’t penetrate the internet echo chamber, which continues to propagate the echo-chamber claim despite the absence of evidence).

The theme in all these bullet points is the same: Cultural identity precedes, and creates demand for, distorted media, internet echo chambers, misinformation, and all the rest. The people engaged on climate change, pro or con, seek out confirmation of their beliefs (a process known as motivated reasoning) and a market has arisen to provide it. Much of what people see as a cause of climate polarization is better viewed as an effect.

So, what if we substitute climate change for 9/11?

Whether it’s 9/11 official story supporters talking about why there are so many skeptics, or skeptics talking about why there are so many official story supporters, the story is mostly the same: A nefarious minority seizes control of key information, using it to peddle falsehoods to a public that doesn’t have the time or scientific literacy to separate truth from lies; this process of deception is assisted by lazy, biased media and an army of online zealots. 

Unfortunately, social-science evidence suggests that pretty much every part of this story is wrong. Kahan:

• If public confusion over 9/11 was a consequence of over-reliance on heuristic reasoning, we’d expect the beliefs of those members of the population who are highest in science comprehension to be most in line with the best available evidence. In fact, those members of the public highest in science literacy, numeracy, and critical reasoning skills are the most culturally polarized ones.

• No doubt, misinformation on 9/11 abounds. But scientifically sound evidence that misinformation causes polarization does not. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that ordinary people, as a result of the ubiquity and intensity of cultural cognition, aggressively mislead themselves. They aggressively seek out information that confirms and avoid information that challenges their predispositions. And when exposed to the same sources of valid information selectively credit and discredit it in patterns that amplify polarization. Polarization, in sum, creates the demand for professional misinformers, who can profit handsomely by enabling people to persist in culturally congenial beliefs.

• Blaming the media is also pretty weak. The claim that “unbalanced” media coverage causes lack of skepticism of the 9/11 official story is incompatible with cross-cultural evidence, which shows that US coverage is no different from coverage in other nations in which the public isn’t polarized. Indeed, the “media misinformation” claim has causation upside down. The media fails to cover competing claims about the evidence because 9/11 is entangled in culturally antagonistic meanings, which in turn fails to create persistent public demand for information on the nature of the conflict and for evidence that the readers who hold the relevant cultural identities can use to satisfy their interest in persisting in beliefs consistent with their identities. (THIS PART DIFFERS FOR 9/11)

• The “internet echo chamber” hypothesis is similarly devoid of evidence. There are plenty of evidence-based sources that address and dispel the general claim that the internet reinforces partisan exposure to and processing of evidence (sources that apparently can’t penetrate the internet echo chamber, which continues to propagate the echo-chamber claim despite the absence of evidence).

The theme in all these bullet points is the same: Cultural identity precedes, and creates demand for, distorted media, internet echo chambers, misinformation, and all the rest. The people engaged on 9/11 research, pro or con, seek out confirmation of their beliefs (a process known as motivated reasoning) and but no major market has arisen to provide it. Much of what people see as a cause of holding onto the official 9/11 story is better viewed as an effect.

So, while there may be some interesting similarities in the climate change skeptic mentality, 9/11 skepticism engenders a very different response in the media, for sure. Likely because climate change skepticism FAVORS the evil PTB, whereas 9/11 skepticism does not.

It's actually pretty clear to know how the corporate media will cover stories-- anything that helps the power and monied interests of the US, they will promote. Anything that is damaging to the power structures in the US, they will downplay or ignore.

Climate change skepticism helps the evil big oil polluters and the power and money in the US.

9/11 skepticism does not help any of the moneyed interests in the US.

While there are some points here worth considering about predisposition towards a certain view, it ultimately doesn't hold up for 9/11.

Another difference with climate change skepticism and 9/11 skepticism is that people fall on the climate change denial side, basically on partisan (GOP-based) grounds, whereas this really isn't the case for 9/11 (though 9/11 skepticism is probably stronger on the left-side of the political spectrum).

33 of the Day: the Never-Ending Civil War in America

Appomattox, like the Civil War more broadly, retains its hold on the American imagination. More than 330,000 people visited the site in 2013.

Not the obvious use of 33 here. This piece is from today's NYtimes, yet they use a figure from 2013, not 2015. Also note the "more than" trick, that allows the nice clear 330,000 number, rather than the specific number.

The piece itself has some good history:

To enforce its might over a largely rural population, the Army marched across the South after Appomattox, occupying more than 750 towns and proclaiming emancipation by military order. This little-known occupation by tens of thousands of federal troops remade the South in ways that Washington proclamations alone could not. And yet as late as 1869, President Grant’s attorney general argued that some rebel states remained in the “grasp of war.” 

When white Georgia politicians expelled every black member of the State Legislature and began a murderous campaign of intimidation, Congress and Grant extended military rule there until 1871. Meanwhile, Southern soldiers continued to fight as insurgents, terrorizing blacks across the region. One congressman estimated that 50,000 African-Americans were murdered by white Southerners in the first quarter-century after emancipation. “It is a fatal mistake, nay a wicked misery to talk of peace or the institutions of peace,” a federal attorney wrote almost two years after Appomattox. “We are in the very vortex of war.” 

Against this insurgency, even President Andrew Johnson, an opponent of Reconstruction, continued the state of war for a year after Appomattox. When Johnson tried to end the war in the summer of 1866, Congress seized control of his war powers; from 1867 to 1870, generals in the South regulated state officials and oversaw voter registration, ensuring that freedmen could claim the franchise they had lobbied for. With the guidance of military overseers, new biracial governments transformed the Constitution itself, passing the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. 

The military occupation created pockets of stability and moments of order. Excluded from politics before the war, black men won more than 1,500 offices during Reconstruction. By 1880, 20 percent of black families owned farms. But the occupation that helped support these gains could not be sustained. Anxious politicians reduced the Army’s size even as they assigned it more tasks. After Grant used the military to put down the Ku Klux Klan in the Carolinas in 1871, Congress and the public lost the will to pay the human and financial costs of Reconstruction.

Boston Bombing Fakery-- Let Us Count the Ways!

So, the evidence is of course, pretty fucking conclusive that the Boston marathon bombing was an inside job and largely a hoax.

The question I want to explore here is something I posted about a few days back--

The government finished its presentation by showing jurors the grisly autopsy photos of bombing victims Lingzi Lu, Krystle Campbell, and Martin Richard. The images, which moved some jurors to tears, were accompanied by chilling testimony by the medical examiners who performed the autopsies on the deceased.

Pieces of bloody shrapnel were held up in court as the examiners told the jury that the twisted metal had been recovered from the bodies during the autopsies.

Jurors winced at learning that Krystle Campbell and Lingzi Lu may have lived in agonizing pain for more than a minute after their bodies were torn apart by the blasts. 

Some jurors were moved to sobs as Boston’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Henry Nields, described the 6-by-6-inch hole blown into the side of Martin Richard’s torso.

A very ironic picture of Martin Richard taken from the mainstream media:

So, I alluded to this in the post, but didn't really go into it. What the hell is with these pictures?

I think there are three basic possibilities and several sub-possibilities:

Basic possibilities:
1)  the photos represent real injuries of real people killed in the bombing
2) the photos are some kind of fakery
3) the photos don't even exist and the article is lying

We can't completely rule out #1 but it seems somewhat unlikely based on the overall fakery of the bombing scenario and particularly the lack of fresh blood immediately afterward.

#3 is possible but takes the lying to a whole new and unnecessary level. Let's rule it out as least likely. Plus, we know there were some dead victims already reported, with identities and faces in the media. So something needed to be said about them at the trial.

So let's lean towards #2. What kind of fakery then?

2a) real injuries of those named people but the injuries occurred somewhere else-- possibly easiest to pull off, only relies on minimal lies from from real people (friends and family)-- or some real evil shit involving human experimentation or sacrifice

2b) real injuries of some other people that occurred somewhere else and the faces obscured-- involves either completely fake victim personas or a lot of lies from real people (friends and family)

2c) real injuries of some other people with photo fakery to add the "right" faces-- again involves either completely fake victim personas or a lot of lies from real people (friends and family)

2d) photoshopped injuries onto bodies of the real victims-- similar to 2a, probably doesn't involve too many lies from from real people (friends and family)

2e) complete photo fakery with fake dead victims -- involves a LOT of actors and acting and lies


---------

I have always disliked the pure fake personas for dead victims scenario, even though we can be pretty confident there were actors in this incident. I just really have trouble with the whole idea that a whole network of friends and family needs to be created to lie about this fake person dying.

That being said, assuming there were amputee actors who faked being injured in the bombing, there apparently were a ton of friends and family who were in on the lie and who had to lie. Unless the people got specifically amputated for the event, which is too horrifying to think about really. I suppose there are people who would give up a limb or two for a lot of money, but I just don't want to think about it.

Really, anyway you cut this, it's too weird (like so many other events) and mind-bending.

The official story is too strange and unlikely. The pure fakery scenario is too disturbing-- to think that the PTB can pull off something with so many actors (though maybe it's not as many as say 9/11). The part fake and part real scenario maybe somewhat more easy to accept, but still involves so many official lies and maybe is just impractical.

33 of the Day: Moonbase for the PTB Edition

This is part of the intro to John Oliver's show "Last Week Tonight". I know it's small, but the moon is given a number of F33. I somehow doubt this is a coincidence...

33 of the Day: Ecocide Edition

Alien Overlord Watch

Welcome and read all about the provisions and background on the creation of the bill known as the National Economic Security And Reformation Act / N.E.S.A.R.A. Inside you will read the details of who and what Factions 1, 2, and 3 are. Discover all about the White Knights, the Sovereign World Militia Forces of Planet Earth, and the Ashtar Command. Learn about Commander Lord Ashtar, the King of Swords (KOS), Barack Obama, Saint Germain, and Mother Sekhmet. The missing 13th amendment. How income tax is unconstitutional. The Columbia Organic Act of 1871. The mysterious Rosicrucian who was the father of the American Republic and much more. Please download, read, and share it with others.

Sounds legit.... (wink)

But speaking of winking and aliens and Barack Obama... this is interesting:

"Are Militant Atheists Using Chemtrails to Poison the Angels in Heaven?"

Makes perfect sense to me!

*eyeroll*