Immanuel Velikovsky died in 1979. The following passage is from his book Mankind in Amnesia, published in 1982. I found it, like him, profoundly insightful. He describes a situation that has not changed in the intervening years. It is, in fact, much, much worse. We are surrounded not just by stagnated and bureaucratic science, but with corrupt science. Warm your globe on that.
Campaign of Illusions: Where the Zero Cut Movement to Save the National Forests Went Wrong
Zero-Cut No Commercial Logging again? A quarter century after it became the banner and guiding star for much of the grassroots forest movement, and then over a decade of semi-retirement, the campaign for this legislation is trying to mount a national revival. My question is simple: Is it the best strategy for a collapsed forest movement, daily confronting the debacle of rapidly increasing logging and roadbuilding in the national forests?
The combination of President Trump and an overtly hostile Republican-controlled Congress has shocked the grassroots, non-collaboration forest movement. Awakening from over a decade of a sort of slumber, these forest defense activists are daily burning up internet chat rooms with news chronicling cascading losses in Agriculture and Interior Department rules, regulations, administrative edicts, and newly-passed laws and congressional riders that roll back decades of environmental laws and court victories.
They are stunned to see the reality that their strategy of timber sales appeals and lawsuits are no longer holding back the bulldozers and chain saws of the timber industry and its U.S. Forest Service puppet. As they ponder these mounting losses, they watch their local forests logged with increasing ferocity, a comprehensive assault on public lands with transgressions that few imagined they would live to see. Continue reading “Campaign of Illusions: Where the Zero Cut Movement to Save the National Forests Went Wrong”
What is up with 8, 11 and 33?
Find the next two numbers in this series:
1,2,2,4,8,11,33
The answer, as shown here, is 37 and 148. This has no significance in regard to this post, but I thought it kind of funny that the three numbers I will be discussing, 8,11 and 33, just happened to pop up. That is a coincidence.
I was listening to Ab over at Fakeologist some time ago, one of his call-in podcasts, and in it he said something to the effect that he does not pay much attention to numerology. I tend to agree with him, but only to a degree. I do not think there is any particular significance to any number any more than there is to any one hair on my head. Numbers serve a useful purpose. They help us quantify and measure things.
I know that some numbers have unusual properties, 9 for example – any time two numbers are transposed, 18 for 81 for example, the difference is divisible by nine. There is a such a thing called the “rule of 72”: Divide the rate of return on an investment into 72 and the answer is how many years it will take to double. It works. A 6% return doubles in 12 years, and a 12% return doubles in 6 years.
That is just fun and games, however, and has no cosmic significance. There is, however, something going on with numbers and public hoaxes and fake events. There may be superstition beneath it – if so, I do not care. Numbers still mean nothing. Superstitious people often have odd beliefs.
I am going to go through some numbers here, taken right out of real events, just to demonstrate the importance of what I once heard a man named Michael Parenti say: “Just because we don’t know what they are doing does not mean that they don’t know what they are doing.”
Taxes Part 2: The Tax on Social Security Benefits
Note to readers: Part one of this two-part essay was about FICA, and how a hidden tax affecting only people who work for wages is used to levy a heavy tax on those workers. Part of the strategy behind that tax is to hide half of it behind the employer, calling it a matching tax.
This part of the essay deals with another tax, this one not so hidden, but its creeping nature slowly taking more and more benefits from Social Security recipients each year. The means by which they accomplished this were diabolically clever.
This essay will be a bit more complicated than the one before, so if you find the calculations incomprehensible, merely skim them, as I will describe the outcome in understandable terms.
As Johnny Carson used to say of comedy, “If you buy the premise, you buy the bit.” The premises behind taxation of Social Security benefits are two: (1) The program is in dire straits, and will soon run out of money, and (2) Recipients receive a gift in the form of the employer match, so that it is just to levy income tax on half of the benefits paid.
Continue reading “Taxes Part 2: The Tax on Social Security Benefits”
The Plausibility Index
Our friend and fellow writer, Tyrone McCloskey, has started a new blog called The Plausibility Index. I urge all readers to pay it a visit. He has a unique writer’s voice.
I don’t wish to detract attention from Kevin’s very interesting piece below, but wanted to get this publicity out there. Though we are five writers on a common blog here, we are often of five minds about various matters. Ty chose to use a separate outlet to voice some of his personal reflections, but is still on board here, and for that I am thankful. .
How to Rig a U.S. Senate Election
I realize for many POM readers this is nothing out of the ordinary. There is, however, the possibility that a little explaining may move others from their constant state of cognitive dissonance to a better understanding of the electoral fraud perpetuated every two years in the U.S. by an army of actors, “players” (and other predator types) and funders. Citizen-voters are the mark, always have been.
This particular example is being played out in Montana, USA. I will be short. Here https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2018/06/11/montana-senate-candidates-debate-forums/692623002/ we can see on public display another key element — media manipulation of political debates — of the anatomy of a “rigged election.” This element alone cannot sway an entire election, but helps enforce the myth that there’s an organic “two-party” system. No journalism, no democracy, no moral foundation, just power and money talking.
As a Green Party candidate, thousands of signatures of registered voters must be gathered just to qualify to appear on the ballot. Montana has cleverly created a petition deadline in March. I’m usually skiing from November through March. So, we can add the March (winter) deadline for third-party signature requirements to the other obstacles erected to eliminate competition. This year Greens qualified for the ballot.
Add the $1,750 filling fee for U.S. Senate and U.S. House candidates. In a state with a median annual income of less than $50,000, that can be a significant barrier to any prospective candidate.
Reacting to Greens qualifying for the November ballot, Democrats sued the Montana Secretary of State for certifying “irregular” signatures in key voting districts. Democrats are desperate to disqualify and remove the Green Party from the ballot. This lawsuit is pending in state district court, which effectively grinds any Green Party campaign to a halt because of the uncertainty it creates. Try fundraising in this atmosphere? Who wants to spend money promoting a Green candidate when it could all end tomorrow by judge’s order? There is a bit of irony to all this, of course. For decades Democrats have been screaming about voter suppression by Republicans. They even have an entire plank https://www.democrats.org/party-platform#voting-rights in the party platform on protecting voter’s rights. So, we can add the list Democrats suing to oust Greens from the ballot and suppress any possibility of voters choosing a Green Party candidate in November’s general election.
Now cometh the Montana Broadcasters Association, cheerfully putting its thumb on the scales of fair competition and open debate. Alone, this corporate meddling may not be a game-changer, but when added to the other obstacles thrown down to stop competition in American elections, it is significant. Rigging debates could be the final nail in Montana’s so-called “democratic-elections.”
The “our democracy” meme is a huge lie we all live with daily. Repeated ad nauseam in the mainstream media, we’re keeping the illusion alive for unsuspecting voters. This could be called the “Tinkerbell effect.” Clap if you want to keep democracy alive.
So, here in Montana, we’re working hard to make sure you cannot vote for the candidate of your choice (association and free speech). Third party candidates threaten the fake two-party system, and therefore cannot be treated equally under the law, or anywhere in the media either. The First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution have no real meaning in everyday American life. Free and fair elections simply do not exist today. And, yes, journalism is as rare as bird shit in a cuckoo clock.
Why is modern music so awful?
I had fun with this video. At twenty minutes in length it asks for more of your time than you are likely willing to give, so if that is the case, jump ahead to minute 7:00 where Thoughty2 discusses modern songwriting. He credits most of the big hits of our era to two men, a Swede named Max Martin, and American Lukasz Gottwald, or Dr. Luke. Sure enough, a quick search shows that these two men are acknowledged to be behind many hundreds of songs.
Thoughty2 talks about many other aspects of our modern music scene, why the tunes and lyrics seem so mediocre, why LOUDNESS drowns out lack of quality. Last year my wife and I were in a station on a mountain side in Switzerland waiting for a tram. We had about forty minutes before it arrived. Even though we were the only people there, loudspeakers were blaring popular tunes. It was horrible! I now consider it to have been a near-death experience (NDE). I had to leave the building.
A bitter fog of deceit
I was asked by a friend of the blog to read a book and report on it … it was my intent to do so, but it is so out of the ordinary for me, that is, I don’t want to simply read a book and report its findings as if every word were true. So I decided that I would highlight the book for blog readers, and suggest they too read it, and pass along some thoughts.
The book is called A Bitter Fog: Herbicides and Human Rights, by Carol Van Strum. It is available on Kindle for free – I don’t own one and so downloaded it for a few bucks.
The book was first published in 1983, and recounted a long battle between local residents of Oregon and the Forest Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Dow Chemical, local government about the use of chemicals containing dioxin (including but not limited to 2-4-5-T and 2-4-D, the former known as “Agent Orange” when used in Vietnam.)
The destruction of forests and harm to people and animals, as outlined in this book, is distressing. The fact that the same chemicals keep appearing under new names equally distressing, but more than that, I found the same story I encountered when I read about AIDS, and AZT, Zika, climate change … systemic and deep corruption. I will outline just a few aspects:
POW images from the past highlighted on Facebook
The above photo has been making the rounds on Facebook.I originally assumed it was of Hanoi Hilton vintage, as it reminded me of the one beneath, which I covered in my post called St. John’s Warts. In my opinion the John McCain POW story was just propaganda designed to sheep dip him and prepare him for the presidency.
Continue reading “POW images from the past highlighted on Facebook”
Trial by Fire
Last evening I participated as one of five presenters in a live-audience, multi-media discussion/presentation with a group of foresters, a smoke jumper and State of Montana’s tourism specialist in the Dept. of Commerce. The topic was “Can we manage wildfire; Should we manage wildfire.” As the lone “tree-hugger” on the stage, I tried to probe other panel members for the reasons for their beliefs – most believed in management as a “solution” to our wildfire “problem.” Needless to say, the anthropocentric viewpoint predominated.
Soldiering on, I tried very hard to interject a few self-evident truths about nature and fire’s natural role in the continuous mystery of life in its many forms. When cornered with truth, however, the other participants simply lied to escape reality. I’m sure they believed their lies, but even to the live audience lying seemed obvious, but generally an acceptable answer to a confrontation with an inescapable truth. Continue reading “Trial by Fire”
Piece of Mindful 