Category: Control of the herd

Facebook “thoughts”

My mother was a very wise person, although I have to say I rarely recall her reading a book. She had a saying that people of my era will recognize. The two dominant means of spreading propaganda in my youth and well into adulthood were Time and Life Magazines. As my mother said, probably repeating her own mother’s words, “Time is for people who can’t think, Life is for people who can’t read.”

I have two major means of interacting with other people: This blog, and Facebook. Our friend and writer Steve Kelly recently quit Facebook, and I admire that. I cannot make myself do it. I am connected to my cousins, a few real friends, and some former classmates. I don’t want to lose ties with them.

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This wackadoo planet

We have just concluded a two-week trip to Baja, California, watching whales and kayaking. It’s different and beautiful down there except for the litter all about, the run down buildings and impoverished population.

Our guides were educated men and women – this is common. One is a marine biologist. What the hell is he doing helping privileged Americans and Canadians push kayaks cross the Sea of Cortez? It is a but choice he made. Why? Because all the other choices were worse. That makes me sad. He wants to apply his learning but cannot break through. So he lives in Lareto and in winter makes his living erecting tents and paddling his kayak at a far slower rate than he is capable of …

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Can Uber-Marketing False “Green Awareness” Save Capitalism?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey’s Green New Deal is being unveiled today. https://www.vox.com/2019/2/7/18215290/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-ed-markey-green-new-deal

Democrats appear poised to take a page out of FDR’s New Deal promotional tactics with a media blitz of their own, pushing a “Green New Deal.”  Sorry, no fireside chats.  There will be an impressive electronic/digital media blitz.  Soon we will all hear the story.  It has been playing nonstop for a while now.  The trick is to gain consent.  By hook or by crook commoners will be taught to sing a single chorus line in harmony – all from the same green-energy/climate-change hymnal.

Is it time for a real shift toward conservation and protection of nature? Or are we – most of us passively – sitting on the sidelines, witnessing yet another clever ploy to coopt “the left” and once again, save capitalism and the two-party system (how many times is this now?) from recurring fatal flaws:  Greed, wage and wealth inequality (slavery) and ecological destruction.  In order to fully understand the implications of the Green New Deal, one must be familiar with the New Deal.  We only think we know what happened in the 1930s.

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iSpy?

This is neither theory nor opinion. I am merely recounting an experience for you to ponder.

I had a brief meeting the other day with an acquaintance who holds a fairly high position in local government. Our chat was mostly pleasantries, and so I did not broach the topic that was at the forefront of my mind from the moment I walked into his office: namely, the piece of electrical tape over his monitor’s camera lens.

I don’t know how I noticed it—it Continue reading “iSpy?” →

The Great Tylenol Scare and Coverup (1955- 2019)

Liver and Onions

By annspinwall and Steve Kelly

The (Extra Strength) Tylenol murders of September,1982 remains one of the great unsolved crimes in U.S. history.  The story we are supposed to believe is that 7 random individuals died after purchasing and consuming Tylenol deliberately dosed with cyanide.  Store shelves were not safe.  Panic in the marketplace led to a massive, nationwide (31 million bottles of capsules) recall by Tylenol manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson.  New, federal legislation initiated mandatory “anti-tampering” packaging, which magically gained J&J even greater market share in a few short weeks after the incident.  Excellent crisis management, or premeditated PR stunt? Was J&J in on it? We’ll never know for sure.

Here’s what we do know.  Tylenol has long been promoted as a “safe” alternative to aspirin and/or ibuprofen and other NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs).  Johnson & Johnson says so on the tv, and in magazines piled high at MDs’ offices throughout the world, so it must be true. 

Propaganda!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iksji1yZjoA   It works. 

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Montana Green Party Clears Another Ballot-Access Barrier

Say what you will about politics in general, or Montana politics in particular, but don’t put your popcorn away just yet.

Yesterday in Great Falls a federal district magistrate breathed new life into Montana Green Party’s chances of rising from the ashes of defeat by the Montana Supreme Court. The Supremes upheld the District Court’s Opinion, which removed Greens from the 2018 ballot over a small number of “irregular” signatures in several voting districts.

If Greens win in federal court, look for them to return stronger and a little wiser, appearing on the 2020 general election ballot with a fresh slate of candidates, including the Governor’s race.

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When Worlds Collide

 

by Patrick Jordan and Steve Kelly

A newsfeed came across our inboxes that promoted a notion that China was somehow misbehaving regarding the use of CRISPR to create edited humans.  The dialectic was a non-sequitur because earlier press releases on the efficiency of CRISPR read like a high school newspaper writing about the success of its stageplay being a success because it was over, yet was a total train wreck of a production.  CRISPR can indeed edit a genome for the target mutations, however there can be a hundred downstream changes that were neither intended or predicted or controllable.  That used to be called: The Operation Was A Success But The Patient Died.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0734975016301586

What is CRISPR?  CRISPR (/ˈkrɪspər/) (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found within the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnYppmstxIs

WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE ARE DOING BUT WE ARE DOING IT WITH GUSTO

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Bees die, we die

Honeybee populations have been dying off at an alarming rate for over a decade now. As researchers look for answers, it is becoming more likely that whatever “effective strategy” emerges to save bees, may in turn save man (man and woman) from extinction too. 

Over 30% of the national bee population has disappeared and nearly a third of all bee colonies in the U.S. have perished in less than a decade.  At the current annual rate of decline, the estimated financial loss is somewhere North of 30 billion dollars a year. I have seen no figures yet for the 2018 Farm Bill, but in 2014 the USDA responded with a paltry $3 million “investment” in farmer aid, which won’t scratch the surface of the breadth and seriousness of this largely man-caused pandemic. Continue reading “Bees die, we die” →

The Self Fulshilling Prophecy

This will be a shorter one compared to the Peculiar Plot series. I can understand people lack the attention span to read long pieces, but at the same time do not want to fall for that “Twitter 140 character soundbite” culture where 6 second attention span seekers with the patience of a ferret on crystal meth seem to rule, up to even people who are accustomed to read long pieces or listen to hours of talks, like people in their 50s and above, half or a full generation older than me.

The idea I want to share is the self fulshilling prophecy. It is one of my many neologisms; I like to invent new words to use because the language given to us is scripted to a large extent. By using our own ability to form language, we are humans after all, we can pinpoint what we mean much better without being compromised by agenda pushers.

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