I'm having mixed feelings about RT, the Russian State news network formerly and more accurately know as Russia Today. Another concern is the Russian Sputnik News Service,.An article from Politico explains what it is like dealing with a state sponsored agency like this:
From my first day at Sputnik, I truly believed that even at a Russian state-owned news service, I could do good work so long as I maintained my own ethical standards. I even believed that Sputnik’s stated mission—to “tell the untold”—is one worth undertaking. Other state-owned news services aim to report stories ignored by other outlets, and to provide a different perspective on the news. Many of them do an excellent job.
But when the “untold” is untold because it’s not true, and the “alternative perspective” is a way to push a hostile government’s agenda by tearing down the reputation of other nations, all the ethics in the world can’t help you. I thought Sputnik wanted me for my skills as a journalist, but what they wanted was to use the veneer of journalism to push their own agenda. I won’t make the mistake of taking someone like Martinichev at his word again.
That is where the problem and concern with agencies like Sputnik as well as RT, lay.
Seemingly too many American journalists and show hosts are jumping on the RT bandwagon. I'm very wary of RT for various reasons in having a very clear and historical understanding of Russian and before them, Soviet disinformation tactics. I don't doubt they may inject specific and targeted tactical information.
For reference, here's a Columbia Journal Review article and one from The Guardian about RT bank account closures in Britain, both from January 2017. Here's another from the New York Times ("Russia's RT Network: Is It More BBC or K.G.B.?):
The agencies issued a report saying the attack was carried out through the targeted use of real information, some open and some hacked, and the creation of false reports, or “fake news,” broadcast on state-funded news media like RT and its sibling, the internet news agency Sputnik. These reports were then amplified on social media, sometimes by computer “bots” that send out thousands of Facebook and Twitter messages.
Another is from Bloomberg , both from May 2017.
From Bloomberg article above, "At RT, News Breaks You"... Did you know? About 17 million U.S. households subscribe to Spectrum, the television provider formerly known as Time Warner Cable. Those in New York City, whether they know it or not, also subscribe to the Russian-funded news outlet RT. Customers can locate it by scrolling past the Chinese Channel and the Africa Channel and into the triple digits, until RT’s radioactive-green logo appears on screen.
From The Economist, June 2017, "America's Answer to Russian Propaganda TV (Current Time Broadcasts in Russian from Capital Hill) [and I don't think they only mean in the Russian language which it is, but the Russian way of thinking]":
Russia’s slickly produced English-language version of RT, featuring American and west European presenters and guests, could pass at times for a non-Russian channel, save for the messages the channel delivers (many of them, in 2016, attacking Hillary Clinton and supporting Mr Trump). The network is just one stream of what RAND Corporation, a think-tank, calls Russia’s "firehose of falsehood”. People do not even have to trust Russia’s propaganda outlets for this saturation strategy to work. Detektor Media, a Ukrainian NGO, found in a survey that only 1.3% of Ukrainians trusted Russian TV channels for news about the conflict in the country’s Donbas region. Yet in the same poll, more than a third of respondents believed the official Russian line on it.
On the other hand it occurs to me that America of late is really quite dysfunctional. Russia does not really benefit from our dysfunction and it leaves us especially, with our whack job of a president in Donald J Trump.
IF RT were to do what they claim, to give us (mostly) free and honest information without corporate and capitalistic maneuverings as our own media does, it could actually be a benefit to all involved. As in an environment where there is no monopoly, it could affect our own media and news in a positive way. One can only hope, anyway.
Let's face it, our media sucks too much of the time. Not all of it, there are some very good reporters and journalists out there. But the nature of our media is such that it requires some degree of pandering to the audience. Give them what they want, less than give them what they need.
I watch about an equal amount of non American news just to balance reality. Watching your enemies is a very good way to get a balanced view of things, even if they are lying.
It's not that our media is state news, or bad news, or corporate news, it's just that if nothing else, in a capitalistic society, news takes a certain slant regardless. In no longer being a loss leader for a network, it has become complicit in catering to news we simply do not need and should not have.
I remember decades ago people crying out for some lighter news in the news. How about a nice short story about a fuzzy doggy? Well, they heard them and we now have that. Much to our detriment. It probably has something to do with our educational system crashing and burning because we won't fully fund schools, we've abused and ignored them, and we've treated our teachers like garbage.
I fully believe we need to better understand Russia and they us. We need more dialog not less. Same goes for Iran, and North Korea. But I find it hard to believe we will see much progress on this plane until Putin is gone. He has been in control for far too long and has to go. He is corrupt. He is a murderer, in at very least ordering executions and assassinations. The FSB, once the KGB, which Putin "grew up" in, has as an arm of it's reach, the Russian Mafia, as it has always been. Crime and State tied closely together. Putin is doing nothing to correct that. In deed, he relies on it.
We have a similar situation in America with Donald J Trump who also needs to go even in being in control for only the short amount of time he has been, as well as the mindset that follows him around like a terminally bad case of genital herpes.
As we have seen with our less informed and more poorly news vetting fellow Americans who only watch news sources such as Fox News, or Breitbert, you cannot only watch news from a single source. You need at least three as in the old journalism methodology of vetting any news from at least three triangulated news sources that are not similar nor connected in anyway. In that way you can trust news you discover and only then, after reflection and analysis, submit it to others.
What we see in too many people is they trust not only questionable news sources, but memes that anyone can and do make up. We have seen this far too much in conservatives, Republicans and Trump supporters where they do not research even a single level into the news. Especially if they agree with it.
They do not research down into several layers, much of which immediately can show some news to be utterly false and may even explain why it exists, which may give one an entirely new side of things. But we are too untrained in this, we are too busy, or simply too lazy. I blame our schools system over past decades for making this even worse, and which has been targeted by the Republican party and American's ignorance in general about our educational system and exactly all it affects in how we have been treating it and our teachers.
What worries me about entities like RT is that even if they show what we should and need to see, they may show it in a way we don't even notice is making us uncomfortable so we discount what we need to count, and count what we need to discount.
So maybe an RT network could work to our benefit, and Russia's as well. However, we have GOT to always be 100% aware they are, first and foremost, a Russian State news agency.
#RT #RussiaToday #RussianStateTV #Putin #POTUS
Monday, August 28, 2017
Monday, August 21, 2017
Shouldn't We Be Appalled?
Shouldn't we? Well, um, yes, I do think we should. Just look around us lately. Watch the news. Look at just about any social media. I know I'm appalled, and in no particular order by:
I'm feeling like it's utterly useless. There's just too many ignorant people about, too many twisting reality and knowing it merely to serve their own superficial and selfish purposes. There's too many lies and liars, too many bullies, and far too much abuse.
Here's what I think is happening.
We (Americans) set up a country with good intent. But once we really started to think about it, things went immediately awry, plummeting downhill. It brought on the Civil War for one.
A rational description of what's going on from Christy Coleman, the black CEO of The American Civil War Museum in Richmond, VA went like this:
"I realized that an important flashpoint had been reached. We go through these cycles whenever there's forward progression on social movement and social expansion of civil rights. There's always a very violent, quick and very hot pushback. This, is how the cycle works. This is what happens when we turn history into nostalgia."
That's refreshing to hear. Rather than feeling as we have that we've suddenly gone two steps back in our social progress, it's just a temporary pause for those backward types to catch up and just let us know, it hurts them to become more mature more than it hurts most of us. Still, they do have to catch up.
Whenever we try to implement a functional version of our American ideal we get push back, we get anger, hatred and at the bottom of it all, fear, if not outright terror from those whose lives would change, who might have to give up some of their privilege which they should never have had, or shouldn't have gained on the blood and backs of others they had control over.
This seems to come from the right, from conservatives, from extremists in religion, in Christianity mostly. Odd that. Not all, just for the most part the easily frightened, greedy or ultimately ignorant ones.
In modern times here, this nearly always seems to come from Republicans.
All we have to do to stop this is to stop trying to implement America as a real and living concept and go back to simply giving lip service to what we have professed is our ideals, what has drawn so many millions to our shores. Back when we wanted them. If ever we did. Kind of like how we treat religion. And yes, even the religious.
Sometimes, I wonder though.
I guess what we have to ask ourselves is, who do we want to be and do we want to do what it takes to implement it? Because if we do, well, it's gonna hurt. It's hurting already. Just in the right claiming we're hurting them and that being so very abusive and selfish, it hurts.
In the end we could have what we have always been labeled as being:
The greatest country in the history of the world.
The question is...is that really who we want to be?
Because according to Donald J Trump and supporters, they simply don't. But then, simple minds and all....
- Support for authoritarianism. Especially stupid authoritarians.
- Greed in general and especially in politics.
- Big money.
- Conservatism, especially extremists forms.
- Did I say, Extremism?
- Religion, especially dumb ones, especially in politics.
- News as entertainment with little concern about the consequences.
- Racism and harm as some kind of populist activity.
- Did I say, sexism? Racism? And classism, that is abuse by the rich of the poor.
- Over concern about one's sexuality. TMI already.
- A lack of more than superficial understanding of reality by far too many if not most.
- A need to feel important by randomly killing people who have nothing to do with you or your especially ridiculous faux ridiculous issues.
- Mistakenly believing some issues are more important than actual imminent issues and ideals over real human beings.
- Presidential support for white supremacists where even speaking out against it falls hollow.
- Entertainment as news replacing news as a necessity.
- "Privileged" believing they are being persecuted.
- "Privileged" believing they are being persecuted while persecuting others.
- Drone strikes where and when innocents are harmed or killed with rationalizations for their allowance as collateral damage.
- Ridiculous support for ridiculous issues such as racism, religion and conservatism or authoritarianism. I would rather be an extreme progressive than an extreme conservative because one leads to progress and one leads to stagnation.
- Lies becoming truths when spoken loudly enough or from a great enough position of power so that they are believed.
- Such a disregard for the truth that it becomes not only utterly inconsequential but an irritant.
- Constant wars.
- War too closely associated with monetary issues and mere imperialism.
- Corporations and money controlling so much of our reality, our government, and religions.
- Religions controlling so much of our governments and our money.
- Art and the Humanities in education so frequently being considered unnecessary when they are extremely necessary to our remaining human and humane.
- Not understanding there are and should be limits to wealth.
- Thinking that freedom of speech means freedom to speak anything, no matter how destructive or meanly intended.
- Seeing the poor, the uneducated and the homeless (for whatever reasons) as a burden and an irritant.
- Seeing immigrants especially refugees as an irritant and as criminals merely for existing.
- Finally a president who is crude, ignorant, arrogant, an utter bore and just pretty much pathetic as presidential offerings do tend to be from the Republican party.
I'm feeling like it's utterly useless. There's just too many ignorant people about, too many twisting reality and knowing it merely to serve their own superficial and selfish purposes. There's too many lies and liars, too many bullies, and far too much abuse.
Here's what I think is happening.
We (Americans) set up a country with good intent. But once we really started to think about it, things went immediately awry, plummeting downhill. It brought on the Civil War for one.
A rational description of what's going on from Christy Coleman, the black CEO of The American Civil War Museum in Richmond, VA went like this:
"I realized that an important flashpoint had been reached. We go through these cycles whenever there's forward progression on social movement and social expansion of civil rights. There's always a very violent, quick and very hot pushback. This, is how the cycle works. This is what happens when we turn history into nostalgia."
That's refreshing to hear. Rather than feeling as we have that we've suddenly gone two steps back in our social progress, it's just a temporary pause for those backward types to catch up and just let us know, it hurts them to become more mature more than it hurts most of us. Still, they do have to catch up.
Whenever we try to implement a functional version of our American ideal we get push back, we get anger, hatred and at the bottom of it all, fear, if not outright terror from those whose lives would change, who might have to give up some of their privilege which they should never have had, or shouldn't have gained on the blood and backs of others they had control over.
This seems to come from the right, from conservatives, from extremists in religion, in Christianity mostly. Odd that. Not all, just for the most part the easily frightened, greedy or ultimately ignorant ones.
In modern times here, this nearly always seems to come from Republicans.
All we have to do to stop this is to stop trying to implement America as a real and living concept and go back to simply giving lip service to what we have professed is our ideals, what has drawn so many millions to our shores. Back when we wanted them. If ever we did. Kind of like how we treat religion. And yes, even the religious.
Sometimes, I wonder though.
I guess what we have to ask ourselves is, who do we want to be and do we want to do what it takes to implement it? Because if we do, well, it's gonna hurt. It's hurting already. Just in the right claiming we're hurting them and that being so very abusive and selfish, it hurts.
In the end we could have what we have always been labeled as being:
The greatest country in the history of the world.
The question is...is that really who we want to be?
Because according to Donald J Trump and supporters, they simply don't. But then, simple minds and all....
Monday, August 14, 2017
Crippled America, Trump Presidency
Never forget who voted for Trump as president. Those who elected him. They are dangerous.
We should never give the ignorant, the greedy or the immature the vote. No matter their age. Yes, we do that. We did that in giving everyone the vote. But that's not even the problem. And not everyone has the vote.
Regarding the travesty in Charlottesville. No Mr. "President", you have NOT calmed our fears. But, nothing new there. Not when your calming message to us also is calming to those we all see as, or we should all see as, the enemy. As in this:
David Duke (American white nationalist, politician, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, convicted felon, and former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.):
"We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That's what we believed in, that's what we voted for in Donald Trump. Yes he said we're going to take our country back. And that's what we're going to do."
Uh, no, dumbass. It's like John Oliver said on his show Last Week Tonight (you can watch it yourself here) recently about Neo Nazis and Trump and how Nazi types are like cats, "If cat's like you, it's probably because you're feeding them."
In deciding to be a Nazi type, a white supremacist, your rights end in your beliefs being contrary to America. We are a melting pot, not a separatist society. The rich and powerful have indeed divided us. We're working, fighting back, against all that. We don't need you making it even more confused and difficult to do what is right.
Germany, their hero's fatherland (in Hitler, and Germany...Germany who despise Nazism of any time), doesn't want you either. They at least matured into humanity. Try Iran, some country run by religion. You (and they) won't like it either though. Just consider yourselves outcasts find an island where you can vote yourselves off. Tear yourselves apart. Because we, don't want you. And it would seem in your ignorance, neither do you.
A Canadian friend and writer this weekend said America is misguided in thinking that hate speech is free speech. And she may have a point. We have gotten carried away with exactly what free speech is or should be. But we have to be very careful. Still, our extremism on freedom and free speech has indeed led us to allowing things that should be disallowed and has led to a segment of America who voted for someone like Donald J. Trump. And the Republican party, who have deluded themselves into their current dysfunctional and dissociative form.
Giving everyone the vote wasn't the Founding Fathers original intention. They gauged their intentions upon industry and land ownership, indications of an investment in America. That was the climate of their times leading into the industrial age. They also had an entirely different consideration of corporations. They had built in checks and balances for our government but did they fall down on protecting us from the future weight of modern economics? Or did we simply cripple their original intentions?
They understood the need for education and intelligence. When capitalism, greed, when big money of the size it is now, a size which they could have never imagined, supplants intellect and morality; when something they could imagine in religion subverting our morals and ethics, then you are in serious trouble.
We, are in serious trouble.
From:
Elements of Economic Theory in the Founding
For the Founders, government has an extensive set of responsibilities that it must fulfill in order to enable people to exercise their right to acquire and possess property. There are three main Founding-era economic policy principles that make possible sufficient production, for rich and poor alike, of the goods that are needed for life and the pursuit of happiness.
Early Americans had a far more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of corporations than the Court gives them credit for. They were much more comfortable with retaining pre-Revolutionary city or school charters than with creating new corporations that would concentrate economic and political power in potentially unaccountable institutions. When you read Madison in particular, you see that he wasn’t blindly hostile to banks during his fight with Alexander Hamilton over the Bank of the United States. Instead, he’s worried about the unchecked power of accumulations of capital that come with creating a class of bankers.
We got ourselves here and we continually shoot ourselves in the feet, making it hard to walk far enough to correct the disabling actions by those who benefit from them and do not want corrected. It is like we handed prisoners the keys to the prison and then allow them to lock us up, expecting them to do good by us. Many of which, do not have the right to vote, by the way.
It ain't gonna happen, it never does. Just like free markets without regulation do not function well and are harmful to far too many people. If we don't fix these things ourselves, if we don't take corrective actions, we will continue to see America heading as it is into a world built only for the wealthy and oligarchs.
That was not why America was founded, nor was it how it was set up to run. We can make it work. If we can just wrest it away from those who control our money, who hoard it from us, and who manage our government to run for them and not those who it was originally set up to support.
This isn't the end. Unless we want it to be.
A brief word on a very current topic. I know this is offensive to some but...
We should teach evolution in schools. If you want the disingenuous belief so inappropriately balled "intelligent design" taught then it should be in an appropriate class, which would have a social or eschatological and not a scientific orientation and has nothing to do with science, other than as a counter to scientific thinking. We should teach science as the best form of thinking that we have because we should teach the best forms of human thought, not the worst and not just second rate forms as primary.
We should not remove memorials showing who we were and who we have been, we should simply place additions to them to explain and place them in context. If it is humiliating to some, reality should always trump ignorance, stupidity and mere belief whenever and wherever they go against it.
We are a heterogeneous country, not a homogeneous one.
It is sad and ironic that white supremest types love homogeneity in only some areas but celebrate heterogeneity in others. Especially since it seems quite obvious where the homogeneous ones are for them even in their being hidden and yet so reviled by them.
We should never give the ignorant, the greedy or the immature the vote. No matter their age. Yes, we do that. We did that in giving everyone the vote. But that's not even the problem. And not everyone has the vote.
Regarding the travesty in Charlottesville. No Mr. "President", you have NOT calmed our fears. But, nothing new there. Not when your calming message to us also is calming to those we all see as, or we should all see as, the enemy. As in this:
David Duke (American white nationalist, politician, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, convicted felon, and former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.):
"We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That's what we believed in, that's what we voted for in Donald Trump. Yes he said we're going to take our country back. And that's what we're going to do."
Uh, no, dumbass. It's like John Oliver said on his show Last Week Tonight (you can watch it yourself here) recently about Neo Nazis and Trump and how Nazi types are like cats, "If cat's like you, it's probably because you're feeding them."
In deciding to be a Nazi type, a white supremacist, your rights end in your beliefs being contrary to America. We are a melting pot, not a separatist society. The rich and powerful have indeed divided us. We're working, fighting back, against all that. We don't need you making it even more confused and difficult to do what is right.
Germany, their hero's fatherland (in Hitler, and Germany...Germany who despise Nazism of any time), doesn't want you either. They at least matured into humanity. Try Iran, some country run by religion. You (and they) won't like it either though. Just consider yourselves outcasts find an island where you can vote yourselves off. Tear yourselves apart. Because we, don't want you. And it would seem in your ignorance, neither do you.
A Canadian friend and writer this weekend said America is misguided in thinking that hate speech is free speech. And she may have a point. We have gotten carried away with exactly what free speech is or should be. But we have to be very careful. Still, our extremism on freedom and free speech has indeed led us to allowing things that should be disallowed and has led to a segment of America who voted for someone like Donald J. Trump. And the Republican party, who have deluded themselves into their current dysfunctional and dissociative form.
Giving everyone the vote wasn't the Founding Fathers original intention. They gauged their intentions upon industry and land ownership, indications of an investment in America. That was the climate of their times leading into the industrial age. They also had an entirely different consideration of corporations. They had built in checks and balances for our government but did they fall down on protecting us from the future weight of modern economics? Or did we simply cripple their original intentions?
They understood the need for education and intelligence. When capitalism, greed, when big money of the size it is now, a size which they could have never imagined, supplants intellect and morality; when something they could imagine in religion subverting our morals and ethics, then you are in serious trouble.
We, are in serious trouble.
From:
Elements of Economic Theory in the Founding
For the Founders, government has an extensive set of responsibilities that it must fulfill in order to enable people to exercise their right to acquire and possess property. There are three main Founding-era economic policy principles that make possible sufficient production, for rich and poor alike, of the goods that are needed for life and the pursuit of happiness.
- The first principle is private ownership. Government must define who owns what, allow property to be used as each owner deems best, encourage widespread ownership among citizens, and protect property against infringements by others, including unjust infringement by government itself.
- The second principle of sound policy is market freedom. With some exceptions, everyone must be free to sell anything to anyone at any time or place at any mutually agreeable price. Government must define and enforce contracts. Means of transportation must be available to all on the same terms.
- The third principle is reliable money. To facilitate market transactions, there must be a medium of exchange whose value is reasonably constant and certain.
Early Americans had a far more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of corporations than the Court gives them credit for. They were much more comfortable with retaining pre-Revolutionary city or school charters than with creating new corporations that would concentrate economic and political power in potentially unaccountable institutions. When you read Madison in particular, you see that he wasn’t blindly hostile to banks during his fight with Alexander Hamilton over the Bank of the United States. Instead, he’s worried about the unchecked power of accumulations of capital that come with creating a class of bankers.
We got ourselves here and we continually shoot ourselves in the feet, making it hard to walk far enough to correct the disabling actions by those who benefit from them and do not want corrected. It is like we handed prisoners the keys to the prison and then allow them to lock us up, expecting them to do good by us. Many of which, do not have the right to vote, by the way.
It ain't gonna happen, it never does. Just like free markets without regulation do not function well and are harmful to far too many people. If we don't fix these things ourselves, if we don't take corrective actions, we will continue to see America heading as it is into a world built only for the wealthy and oligarchs.
That was not why America was founded, nor was it how it was set up to run. We can make it work. If we can just wrest it away from those who control our money, who hoard it from us, and who manage our government to run for them and not those who it was originally set up to support.
This isn't the end. Unless we want it to be.
A brief word on a very current topic. I know this is offensive to some but...
We should teach evolution in schools. If you want the disingenuous belief so inappropriately balled "intelligent design" taught then it should be in an appropriate class, which would have a social or eschatological and not a scientific orientation and has nothing to do with science, other than as a counter to scientific thinking. We should teach science as the best form of thinking that we have because we should teach the best forms of human thought, not the worst and not just second rate forms as primary.
We should not remove memorials showing who we were and who we have been, we should simply place additions to them to explain and place them in context. If it is humiliating to some, reality should always trump ignorance, stupidity and mere belief whenever and wherever they go against it.
We are a heterogeneous country, not a homogeneous one.
It is sad and ironic that white supremest types love homogeneity in only some areas but celebrate heterogeneity in others. Especially since it seems quite obvious where the homogeneous ones are for them even in their being hidden and yet so reviled by them.
Monday, August 7, 2017
Is Our Human Condition Simply Out of Control?
I was watching Incendies (2010) the other day. I had really liked Sicario, both by director, Denis Villeneuve so I thought I'd check out his previous award winning Canadian film.
If ever you want example of the intellectual disease religion can bring to people, there's a good example of that in the film's initial murder which resulted from religious separatism. A separatism which includes the mores and tribalism that comes along with and from it.
Whether religion spawned tribalism, or the other way around matters little at this point, because it also now perpetuates it. Blended with the economics of reality for some, it is simply another cog in the wheel of humanity regressing.
Religion can be all fine and good, but it needs moderation... that is intellectual and informed practical application. That is to say, applying religion's teachings requires outright ignoring some of the more brutal and stupid tenets and statements involved within their convention (a custom or a way of acting or doing things that is widely accepted and followed) that its religious tomes supply, and demand.
If religion does not modify itself with humanity, it is a defective religion and therefore false in the face of Humanity. And reality.
The practical application of religion has gotten out of control many times, in many places, as it has now in the Middle East in obvious examples. As well as here at home in more minor cases. One has to understand that you are not so much then dealing with an enemy, but a people who are experiencing a kind of mental illness through a socially accepted system and a series of defective concepts and ideals.
They need saving from themselves.
It's not unlike a computer virus that begins to eat itself and brings its own system down. It needs to be cleaned up. It's not the enemy but a defective system that has become corrupted and needs its code and inherent governors brought back up to correct speed and action.
Yes, sometimes you have to kill people like this. As you would a rabid dog you stumble across in the wilderness. It's also just good to recognize that they have a problem, one that needs to be corrected and that they are not just inherently evil but misinformed, following their own best understanding of life through defective filters.
Normally I believe, humans want to be good. Want to be seen as good. Want to believe themselves to be doing good, to believe they are good and therefore what they do is doing good.
A little perceived good is good, but more seems better. Even more yet can be therefore be seen as even better, when typically it is simply outright destructive. And when it is destructive to others, it's easy to not see the damage, to rationalize it as "good". More therefore can be less. Just as a nightmare applied in typically human OCD fashion leads to a bipolar and excessive application.
Sadly the nightmare that this causes for some, can be felt as satiation and catharsis for its perpetrators.
And so it is left up to the rest of us to clean up this filthy disgusting belief system against non believers, or those who see reality over magical thinking. Magical thinking that has gone, as it is wont to do, horrendously awry.
The way out of this happening again and again throughout history is simply to lead ourselves into reality and proven belief systems and not simply belief systems conjured up by those in the far past, only to be interpreted by those in the present as the ridiculous and the murderous.
Still, we have new religious beliefs cropping up because we support these old beliefs and so new "prophets" believe they have an open door to come up with whatever crap they can imagine. As in Mormonism. As in Scientology. As is Conservative Republicans on the Christian right. As it stupidity.
We are not a stupid race. So why do we keep supporting belief systems that counter that? We need to get ourselves under control. And as things are going...we need to do it fast. Very fast. Before it's too late.
For far too many on a daily basis, it is already far too late.
Has this untethering of American from reality been brought to us courtesy of religions and the fantastical thinking required to believe them, for one to have faith?
We have seen this belief for many years in making excuses for people's religion and in America for having a diversity of religions and belief systems, that we should allow people their own delusions (if they be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon or Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventist, etc.) because this is America and America means freedom. That's all great and good. However....
American politician and sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said:
"You're entitled to your own opinions, you're not entitled to your own facts."
And that, outweighs either our freedom, or our religions.
It is time we pulled back, that religions went back to their proper and private places, out of our schools, out of our government in order to allow true freedom in America once again and stop infecting both ourselves and the world in such a negative way in our delusionally believing we are doing good when we most assuredly are not.
IF we do not, the corrective action that is inevitably coming, will be far more severe than anything we can now imagine.
If ever you want example of the intellectual disease religion can bring to people, there's a good example of that in the film's initial murder which resulted from religious separatism. A separatism which includes the mores and tribalism that comes along with and from it.
Whether religion spawned tribalism, or the other way around matters little at this point, because it also now perpetuates it. Blended with the economics of reality for some, it is simply another cog in the wheel of humanity regressing.
Religion can be all fine and good, but it needs moderation... that is intellectual and informed practical application. That is to say, applying religion's teachings requires outright ignoring some of the more brutal and stupid tenets and statements involved within their convention (a custom or a way of acting or doing things that is widely accepted and followed) that its religious tomes supply, and demand.
If religion does not modify itself with humanity, it is a defective religion and therefore false in the face of Humanity. And reality.
The practical application of religion has gotten out of control many times, in many places, as it has now in the Middle East in obvious examples. As well as here at home in more minor cases. One has to understand that you are not so much then dealing with an enemy, but a people who are experiencing a kind of mental illness through a socially accepted system and a series of defective concepts and ideals.
They need saving from themselves.
It's not unlike a computer virus that begins to eat itself and brings its own system down. It needs to be cleaned up. It's not the enemy but a defective system that has become corrupted and needs its code and inherent governors brought back up to correct speed and action.
Yes, sometimes you have to kill people like this. As you would a rabid dog you stumble across in the wilderness. It's also just good to recognize that they have a problem, one that needs to be corrected and that they are not just inherently evil but misinformed, following their own best understanding of life through defective filters.
A little perceived good is good, but more seems better. Even more yet can be therefore be seen as even better, when typically it is simply outright destructive. And when it is destructive to others, it's easy to not see the damage, to rationalize it as "good". More therefore can be less. Just as a nightmare applied in typically human OCD fashion leads to a bipolar and excessive application.
Sadly the nightmare that this causes for some, can be felt as satiation and catharsis for its perpetrators.
And so it is left up to the rest of us to clean up this filthy disgusting belief system against non believers, or those who see reality over magical thinking. Magical thinking that has gone, as it is wont to do, horrendously awry.
The way out of this happening again and again throughout history is simply to lead ourselves into reality and proven belief systems and not simply belief systems conjured up by those in the far past, only to be interpreted by those in the present as the ridiculous and the murderous.
Still, we have new religious beliefs cropping up because we support these old beliefs and so new "prophets" believe they have an open door to come up with whatever crap they can imagine. As in Mormonism. As in Scientology. As is Conservative Republicans on the Christian right. As it stupidity.
We are not a stupid race. So why do we keep supporting belief systems that counter that? We need to get ourselves under control. And as things are going...we need to do it fast. Very fast. Before it's too late.
For far too many on a daily basis, it is already far too late.
Has this untethering of American from reality been brought to us courtesy of religions and the fantastical thinking required to believe them, for one to have faith?
We have seen this belief for many years in making excuses for people's religion and in America for having a diversity of religions and belief systems, that we should allow people their own delusions (if they be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon or Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventist, etc.) because this is America and America means freedom. That's all great and good. However....
American politician and sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said:
"You're entitled to your own opinions, you're not entitled to your own facts."
And that, outweighs either our freedom, or our religions.
It is time we pulled back, that religions went back to their proper and private places, out of our schools, out of our government in order to allow true freedom in America once again and stop infecting both ourselves and the world in such a negative way in our delusionally believing we are doing good when we most assuredly are not.
IF we do not, the corrective action that is inevitably coming, will be far more severe than anything we can now imagine.
Friday, August 4, 2017
Ireland Trip 2015 and Vacations
My birthday was August 30th and it's a banner year for me so I thought I should do something special. When I was four, we moved to Spain from Tacoma, Washington. Things didn't go well for us and my grandfather, my mom's dad, threw my dad out of the country. Long story end of marriage.
We ended up moving to Philadelphia to live with and around family. Grandpa had moved his family to Tacoma back in the 40s from Brooklyn. Mom picked up a new husband in Philly whom I never liked.
One day when she broke the news to us that she was going to marry him, we would have a new dad. I was still wondering what happened to the old dad and I don't know what my slightly older sister was thinking. Our mom was putting a happy spin on this marriage but at five years of age I begged her not to marry him. Something that proved to be prescient in time and she would grow to agree with. I had seen a side to him she hadn't yet seen although of her four husbands, he ended up lasting the longest. They remained married even after they mostly and permanently separated about thirteen years ago.
Suddenly we had a new baby and along with my older sister and new dad we moved back to the dreaded Tacoma with these new parts of the family. I wasn't happy. I had lost my dad, got a new one I didn't like, and a baby who was sucking up all the attention that used to be mine.
It wasn't long before my apprehensions about the new guy started to make themself clear. Still after having married my older brother's dad (who lived with his dad after a contentious divorce) and divorced him, then my older sister's dad and divorcing him, then my dad, then the new guy (in 1960), whom she divorced briefly for a year then remarried not once more but several times throughout their stormy relationship until he died about a year ago.
Mom always loved Liz and Richard Burton. Dick and Liz, my parents were not though there were some similarities.
In my lifetime I've been to Hawaii twice. First in 1978 with my first wife, then again in 1988 with my second wife. In 1998 I mentioned going there to my third wife yet for some reason she would have nothing to do with it.
I grew up with my family visiting Canada a lot as Tacoma is so close to Vancouver, British Columbia, though mostly we took the ferry to Victoria, B.C. on Vancouver Island located in the Strait of Juan De Fuca.
Our Grandfather whom I mentioned before was my mother's father. He had traveled the world and after he retired would take the family on short day trips sometimes. We would take the ferry Princess Marguerite from Seattle to Victoria, and would get a cabin for the older folks to rest in. I have fond memories of those trips and visiting around Victoria and the world famous Empress Hotel which had hosted royalty and presidents.
In high school, I used to drive with friends up to Vancouver, BC to party. The pubs in Gas Town were the desired locations to try and get into even though I was around seventeen. I once got into the Gas Town Pub. My friend and I walked up to the counter and got very odd looks from the bartender. The guy on the door had stepped away and so we stepped in. I asked the bartender where the restroom was. He said that it's next door in the Gas Town Hotel.
I was incredulous but he convinced us it was true and I really had to go. So we went. When we got next door an old guy sitting at the desk was reading a paper. I said I needed to use their restroom and that the bartender had said they used theirs but he gave me a look similar to the bartender's and kicked us out. We went back to the pub but couldn't get back in. End of that party. However, we then discovered Third Beach at Stanley Park by just stopping people on the street and asking where the party was. But that's a story for another time and I suspect I've already told that story.
After I got married the last time we would travel sometimes because of her work training horses. Many interesting times back in the 1990s until we divorced in 2002.
Earlier this year my twenty-three year old daughter convinced me I should do something special for this birthday. My birthday is August 30th. My mother was born on that birthday of mine. I'd joked with her many times that God had planned for me, she was an accident. When in reality I think I was actually the accident.
My daughter had travelled Europe with a back pack several times. I along with her friend's parents had sent them for a high school graduation gift to Paris. I think she had got bitten by the travel bug. But then she had grown up with her mother and I travelling with her to horse shows for her mom's work. It was in her blood.
She backpacked with her accordion and hoola hoop, busking around Europe, making money to pay her way. She ended up in Iceland and loving it. Greece during the riots several years ago. Living in caves in Spain. But always returning to Iceland
When she first mentioned the Ireland trip, I was hesitant, but I wanted to go. See, I've been to Mexico a few times, Canada more times that I remember and Hawaii twice, all over the United States. But only one trip out of country and off the continent, to Spain as a child.
And that didn't go well for me at all. In fact when we were living in country the local cantina owner in Roda, Spain was always yelling, "Malo Nino!" (bad boy) at me for some reason. Reasons I'm sure I deserved. I'd deserved them in America, there was really no reason I would not deserve them in another country.
We have 8mm film of our life in Spain and later in Philadelphia. There is one of a banner of shamrocks hanging from our ceiling. My new dad was in that footage. The banner said "Erin Go Bragh!" Roughly, Ireland forever! He didn't much care for it. He always said he was English by ancestry and my dad was Irish. So you could see how it could be annoying to a new guy.
Now I'm getting to the Irish stuff.
So I grew up with that banner and the situation, always in the back of my mind. I would ask my mother about it growing up and she would just say that my dad's family was Irish. I was Irish. Though my mother's family was Czechoslovakian, I got tired of that part of my ancestry and the Irish side was just more flamboyant to me I'm sure.
In the late 1960s I heard a lot about the Irish "Troubles". By high school I started paying close attention to the news about Ireland. I was quite against what was going on there. People were dying. It seemed to me that England should mind its own business. If Ireland wanted them out, it should leave.
Of course there were other issues but the Protestant and Catholic ones were at the forefront. Reasonably many Loyalists wanted to remain a part of England, of the UK.
We ended up moving to Philadelphia to live with and around family. Grandpa had moved his family to Tacoma back in the 40s from Brooklyn. Mom picked up a new husband in Philly whom I never liked.
One day when she broke the news to us that she was going to marry him, we would have a new dad. I was still wondering what happened to the old dad and I don't know what my slightly older sister was thinking. Our mom was putting a happy spin on this marriage but at five years of age I begged her not to marry him. Something that proved to be prescient in time and she would grow to agree with. I had seen a side to him she hadn't yet seen although of her four husbands, he ended up lasting the longest. They remained married even after they mostly and permanently separated about thirteen years ago.
Suddenly we had a new baby and along with my older sister and new dad we moved back to the dreaded Tacoma with these new parts of the family. I wasn't happy. I had lost my dad, got a new one I didn't like, and a baby who was sucking up all the attention that used to be mine.
It wasn't long before my apprehensions about the new guy started to make themself clear. Still after having married my older brother's dad (who lived with his dad after a contentious divorce) and divorced him, then my older sister's dad and divorcing him, then my dad, then the new guy (in 1960), whom she divorced briefly for a year then remarried not once more but several times throughout their stormy relationship until he died about a year ago.
Mom always loved Liz and Richard Burton. Dick and Liz, my parents were not though there were some similarities.
In my lifetime I've been to Hawaii twice. First in 1978 with my first wife, then again in 1988 with my second wife. In 1998 I mentioned going there to my third wife yet for some reason she would have nothing to do with it.
I grew up with my family visiting Canada a lot as Tacoma is so close to Vancouver, British Columbia, though mostly we took the ferry to Victoria, B.C. on Vancouver Island located in the Strait of Juan De Fuca.
Our Grandfather whom I mentioned before was my mother's father. He had traveled the world and after he retired would take the family on short day trips sometimes. We would take the ferry Princess Marguerite from Seattle to Victoria, and would get a cabin for the older folks to rest in. I have fond memories of those trips and visiting around Victoria and the world famous Empress Hotel which had hosted royalty and presidents.
In high school, I used to drive with friends up to Vancouver, BC to party. The pubs in Gas Town were the desired locations to try and get into even though I was around seventeen. I once got into the Gas Town Pub. My friend and I walked up to the counter and got very odd looks from the bartender. The guy on the door had stepped away and so we stepped in. I asked the bartender where the restroom was. He said that it's next door in the Gas Town Hotel.
I was incredulous but he convinced us it was true and I really had to go. So we went. When we got next door an old guy sitting at the desk was reading a paper. I said I needed to use their restroom and that the bartender had said they used theirs but he gave me a look similar to the bartender's and kicked us out. We went back to the pub but couldn't get back in. End of that party. However, we then discovered Third Beach at Stanley Park by just stopping people on the street and asking where the party was. But that's a story for another time and I suspect I've already told that story.
After I got married the last time we would travel sometimes because of her work training horses. Many interesting times back in the 1990s until we divorced in 2002.
Earlier this year my twenty-three year old daughter convinced me I should do something special for this birthday. My birthday is August 30th. My mother was born on that birthday of mine. I'd joked with her many times that God had planned for me, she was an accident. When in reality I think I was actually the accident.
My daughter had travelled Europe with a back pack several times. I along with her friend's parents had sent them for a high school graduation gift to Paris. I think she had got bitten by the travel bug. But then she had grown up with her mother and I travelling with her to horse shows for her mom's work. It was in her blood.
She backpacked with her accordion and hoola hoop, busking around Europe, making money to pay her way. She ended up in Iceland and loving it. Greece during the riots several years ago. Living in caves in Spain. But always returning to Iceland
When she first mentioned the Ireland trip, I was hesitant, but I wanted to go. See, I've been to Mexico a few times, Canada more times that I remember and Hawaii twice, all over the United States. But only one trip out of country and off the continent, to Spain as a child.
And that didn't go well for me at all. In fact when we were living in country the local cantina owner in Roda, Spain was always yelling, "Malo Nino!" (bad boy) at me for some reason. Reasons I'm sure I deserved. I'd deserved them in America, there was really no reason I would not deserve them in another country.
We have 8mm film of our life in Spain and later in Philadelphia. There is one of a banner of shamrocks hanging from our ceiling. My new dad was in that footage. The banner said "Erin Go Bragh!" Roughly, Ireland forever! He didn't much care for it. He always said he was English by ancestry and my dad was Irish. So you could see how it could be annoying to a new guy.
Now I'm getting to the Irish stuff.
So I grew up with that banner and the situation, always in the back of my mind. I would ask my mother about it growing up and she would just say that my dad's family was Irish. I was Irish. Though my mother's family was Czechoslovakian, I got tired of that part of my ancestry and the Irish side was just more flamboyant to me I'm sure.
In the late 1960s I heard a lot about the Irish "Troubles". By high school I started paying close attention to the news about Ireland. I was quite against what was going on there. People were dying. It seemed to me that England should mind its own business. If Ireland wanted them out, it should leave.
Of course there were other issues but the Protestant and Catholic ones were at the forefront. Reasonably many Loyalists wanted to remain a part of England, of the UK.
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Conservatism vs Progressivism or Liberalism
He can't be serious. See: Donald Trump vows to slash funding for Education, EPA.
Why do conservatives as a group think ignorance is something to be proud of? Then again, they ARE already too ignorant to understand that conservatism is not a political stance or patty... as I've said so many, many times before. Iit is an action, a device, a governor on a position.
Why do conservatives as a group think ignorance is something to be proud of? Then again, they ARE already too ignorant to understand that conservatism is not a political stance or patty... as I've said so many, many times before. Iit is an action, a device, a governor on a position.
Basically what Trump and conservatives are saying in that is to just be stupid (which begins with ignorance and a lack of good education) and hand control over to your old, white dad. Gives us access to your wallets and let us take care of you in anyway we see fit, and don't have the knowledge to question us. Yes, that would be good for us, just do that.
As for the EPA, that's just stupidity. About Education, well, where does that stupidity come from? Conservatism, misapplied. How does i get to be misapplied, or even understood to be something to misapply in the fist place. I'd submit, because of fundamental misunderstanding in what conservatism is and it's purpose in maintaining a status quo.
Status quo isn't so great anyway. It means hold onto the best of what you have and do not allow things to get better. Only it also means, do not allow things to get better and if it happens, great, but implementing change to make it happen has to be done at a very slow, plodding pace. America was founding on change, not remaining the same. To keep things from changing too fast (yes, too fast change can be bad, and it makes it had for people to keep up), the Founding Fathers put into place in our government, control, checks and balances, and Governors, and therefore...governors.
The definition I refer to regarding a governor is the base for the term that also regards an individual in control, or more correctly (as we are Americans and are somewhat adverse to "control" or being or feeling, controlled) overseeing a group. A Governor of a State, for instance.
governor:
a: an attachment to a machine (as a gasoline engine) for automatic control or limitation of speed.
b : a device giving automatic control (as of pressure or temperature)
Maintaining a status quo by slowing or doing nothing, is a losing proposition that leads to dysfunction and in you believe in that as a political and actuary stance, will lead o confusion as to why it does not work. In such a case, being you "know" it works or is "the way" (almost in a religious sense, and when you consider how many Christians are conservatives, it explains a lot), and so you blame the only people you can see to blame: liberals\progressives (who are perhaps even trying to do what conservatives want in he only functional way available).
To remain the same requires change, a dance with reality. To truly maintain a status quo one, or a group, has to change to mesh up with ever changing reality to maintain that sameness. Consider, there are other "conservatives" in other countries (especially with religious zeal, think, Middle East, Iran, or even North Korea to go the other direction in several ways). So you are then using your dysfunctional ways against another country's dysfunctional ways and well, here we are.
There should not be a party of liberals\progressives and one of conservatives. There should be a progressive party and a conservative progressive party. Some conservatives may choke on their morning coffee in considering this, but that is the fact.
Why are we in such a state? Because there is a portion of our population who thinks that conservatism is a party to base an entire political belief system upon.
So. How do we get there?
Poor education.
Why do conservatives as a group think ignorance is something to be proud of? Then again, they ARE already too ignorant to understand that conservatism is not a political stance or patty... as I've said so many, many times before. Iit is an action, a device, a governor on a position.
Why do conservatives as a group think ignorance is something to be proud of? Then again, they ARE already too ignorant to understand that conservatism is not a political stance or patty... as I've said so many, many times before. Iit is an action, a device, a governor on a position.
Basically what Trump and conservatives are saying in that is to just be stupid (which begins with ignorance and a lack of good education) and hand control over to your old, white dad. Gives us access to your wallets and let us take care of you in anyway we see fit, and don't have the knowledge to question us. Yes, that would be good for us, just do that.
As for the EPA, that's just stupidity. About Education, well, where does that stupidity come from? Conservatism, misapplied. How does i get to be misapplied, or even understood to be something to misapply in the fist place. I'd submit, because of fundamental misunderstanding in what conservatism is and it's purpose in maintaining a status quo.
Status quo isn't so great anyway. It means hold onto the best of what you have and do not allow things to get better. Only it also means, do not allow things to get better and if it happens, great, but implementing change to make it happen has to be done at a very slow, plodding pace. America was founding on change, not remaining the same. To keep things from changing too fast (yes, too fast change can be bad, and it makes it had for people to keep up), the Founding Fathers put into place in our government, control, checks and balances, and Governors, and therefore...governors.
The definition I refer to regarding a governor is the base for the term that also regards an individual in control, or more correctly (as we are Americans and are somewhat adverse to "control" or being or feeling, controlled) overseeing a group. A Governor of a State, for instance.
governor:
a: an attachment to a machine (as a gasoline engine) for automatic control or limitation of speed.
b : a device giving automatic control (as of pressure or temperature)
Maintaining a status quo by slowing or doing nothing, is a losing proposition that leads to dysfunction and in you believe in that as a political and actuary stance, will lead o confusion as to why it does not work. In such a case, being you "know" it works or is "the way" (almost in a religious sense, and when you consider how many Christians are conservatives, it explains a lot), and so you blame the only people you can see to blame: liberals\progressives (who are perhaps even trying to do what conservatives want in he only functional way available).
To remain the same requires change, a dance with reality. To truly maintain a status quo one, or a group, has to change to mesh up with ever changing reality to maintain that sameness. Consider, there are other "conservatives" in other countries (especially with religious zeal, think, Middle East, Iran, or even North Korea to go the other direction in several ways). So you are then using your dysfunctional ways against another country's dysfunctional ways and well, here we are.
There should not be a party of liberals\progressives and one of conservatives. There should be a progressive party and a conservative progressive party. Some conservatives may choke on their morning coffee in considering this, but that is the fact.
Why are we in such a state? Because there is a portion of our population who thinks that conservatism is a party to base an entire political belief system upon.
So. How do we get there?
Poor education.
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