Absurdity Rules the World

By Siv O'Neall, Axis of Logic

The absurdity of the world today is so blinding that we can barely see through the fog to discern what went so wrong.

Plans had been spun for years in the dark underground caves by the enemies of man. The Neoconservatives had it all planned, but one factor was missing.

Propaganda had already been working its insidious misinformation. The mass media were already more than willing to play the game of Big Money. Americans were thoroughly indoctrinated to toe the line of Big Power. Respect for power and blind obedience were the result of the US educational system. “I pledge obedience to the flag of the United States of America …” Millions and millions of yes-men had been molded out of the clay of propaganda and history books.

Yes, the Neoconservatives had it all in hand. Ronald Reagan had taken the first big step to load the dice. Anybody with a conscience was now going to be deprived of any realistic means of resetting the scales to a just balance. This was the beginning of the policy of “starving the beast.” The little people had no say. Only Big Money weighed heavily enough to tip the balance. Bill Clinton continued in the steps of his predecessors and the famous climbing ladder, supposed to be available to all Americans, became more and more of an illusion.

But the real introduction of lawlessness and the total contempt for the needs of the masses, that were soon to follow, were still only in the sick minds of the Neocon cavemen. In order to carry out their destructive projects, one factor was standing in their way. The people might become a powerful force against their openly unconstitutional planned take-over. Could even the Supreme Court be relied on to take the side of the Neocon monsters? The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) may well have as its goal the promotion of American global leadership, but would the end justify the means? Could this little clique of psychopaths do their deeds and clear the hurdles that were still in clear view?

The path to world domination is made possible

September 11 made it all possible. Whatever really happened on that fateful day will probably never be known to the public, even though theories abound. But what we do know is that mass hysteria was awakened in the American people and the surgeons could now come in and chop away at human rights, spread fear instead of showing a reasonable calm, and all this without being hampered by any humanitarian considerations. The homeland had been attacked. All means were from now on considered legal.

The cheerleaders were in full swing, flags were waving all over America the beautiful. National pride was steered towards revenge with an unstoppable force, constantly nurtured by radio, television and bumper-sticker propaganda.

Patriotism had its field day and barely any questions were asked. The tiny clique of cavemen made preposterous statements, unsupported by any real facts and the citizens lapped it up blindly, without the slightest attempt at verifying the truth of the accusations. Mass hysteria snowballed.

A country was pointed out as being behind this incomparably heinous deed. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but people didn’t pay any attention. The propaganda channels were screaming: “Never in the history of mankind has a deed been wrought that was more evil, more undeserved, more incomprehensible. What do they have against us? There’s absolutely nothing in the world that we have done that would deserve an attack like this one.”

The rah-rah chorus got louder and louder. “Our country, the most civilized, the most moral and the most powerful country in the world has been attacked by an evil country. How did they dare?”

The patriotic screams covered over any voice that dared point out that the entire show didn’t make any sense.

The ingenious invention -- the WAR ON TERROR

Now the doors were open for the United States of America to put their underground plans into action. From that day on, any lies were accepted without so much as a question as to the logic and credibility of the claims brazenly made.

The US President became an ever more powerful actor on the world stage. He could wage wars that were not wars. He could kill civilians who were not civilians. He could initiate invasions of nations that were not invasions. Up was down and down was up. Sense and logic had given up the stage to hysteria and illusions. Non-sense is the rule of the day.

How was this possible? Because of an attack on two skyscrapers that collapsed like sand castles because two airplanes flew into them and a third one that did so without anything hitting it? No, that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t quite that simple.

They had to invent a WAR ON TERROR. Never was a shrewder invention made in human history. Everybody who opposes our holy war on terror is a terrorist. Et voilà. As simple as that.

The fear and pride in their country made Americans blind to what was really going on in the aggressive US politics. Countries were invaded and torn apart, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, lost their homes, were made to flee their countries. Families were disunited, parents were searching for their children, children were crying for their lost parents. The horror that spread through the world was hidden from the American people due to the corruption of the mass media. What they saw on their television screens was theater à la carte. What they heard and read was that the United States was saving the world from tyranny and introducing freedom and democracy.

The overall purpose of the PNAC people, the Neoconservatives, is to control the planet at whatever cost. Cost in human lives, cost in destruction of the environment, cost in the destruction of other people’s cultures. Millennia of traditions are of no importance. 

To this end slogans are made up that fit their goal. Muslims are terrorists. Everybody who is against the War on Terror and Washington’s all-means-justify-the-end principle is a terrorist and should be sent to lifelong imprisonment or killed outright. Drug traffic is evil, unless it’s run by the United States. US military are all good people and are justified in doing whatever they are doing. Except for a few bad apples, of course.

Whatever country does not cooperate fully with the United States is corrupt and should be made to see the light. See Libya. See Syria. See Iran. And first of all there was of course Afghanistan and Iraq. Any country which has valuable resources that they don’t willingly turn over to US-based corporations must be taught to rethink their policies. Or they will become the victims of invasions and ghastly killing sprees.

Washington’s sore toe

Latin America was once considered the US backyard and it is against nature itself that those countries now have the gall to run their own business. So Paraguay happens. So Mexico happens. How long will they be able to run business in Colombia? When will the freedom fighters (the ‘terrorists’ of course) manage to stop the corrupt and deadly US influence over the running of this nation?

When will the other September 11 be repeated, the one in Santiago, Chile, in 1973, when Salvador Allende was killed and a murderous dictatorship installed? Oh yes, the neoliberalism of Milton Friedman and the Chicago boys dates back much farther than to the Neoconservative fanatics.

A coup was tried again in April of 2002, this time against Hugo Chávez, but the rage of the people made this coup a miserable failure. Chávez was reinstalled after two days of rightist brainless celebrations. If the mass media had done their job, the power behind the coup, that is the United States, would have become a worldwide laughingstock.

Caring for the people is communist-inspired soft-headed nonsense

Socialism is for the weak of heart, and a strong nation doesn’t need nationalized enterprise. Private ownership is what makes for progress and private profit is what makes the world go round. Real men are capitalists.

The people are of no importance. They are all collateral damage. Who needs the local store owner? Who needs the industrial worker since labor is so much cheaper elsewhere. Who needs the small farmer since agribusiness is so much more profitable to the corporations?

The United States is busy wielding its secret power in any country that becomes a threat to the Empire -- any country that might possibly be won over to democracy in a popular uprising. Egypt looked at first like a promise to the world of freedom, but there is not a chance that a new regime will ever heed the voice of the people who fought so bravely in Tahrir Square over a year ago. The military and the Muslim Brotherhood will no doubt do whatever Washington tells them to do.

Libya was callously and stealthily destroyed. Tripoli and much of the rest of the country was bombed to smithereens. And what had Gaddafi made himself guilty of? Making Libya the richest country in Africa after its having been the poorest. But he threatened to nationalize the oil and gas and that is strictly verboten if the US can have a say. And they made sure they did. Gaddafi had to go since Libya is essential for US control over the Middle East.

And then comes Syria, an increasingly bloody mess, waiting for its turn to be submitted to the same destiny.

And who is in collusion with Washington in all this western imperialism? NATO, of course. The EU with all its puppets called Barroso, Christine Lagarde (IMF), Cameron, Sarkozy/Hollande (in spite of Hollande’s empty talk of ending austerity measures), Merkel, who might well be the one honest prime minister/leader in Europe, since she seems to be acting for Germany more than for the Empire.

But Washington is the preserver of freedom and democracy in the world and no country is as free or has the moral rectitude of the United States. Follow the example of Washington and all will be well. We will all be little Americans and we will all be eating big Macs at MacDonald’s and buying our T-shirts at Walmart’s.

The way the Empire runs its mission of saving the world is by ignoring any humanitarian needs at home or abroad. The standard of living is steadily going down in the Western world. Who cares? People are dying by the hundreds of thousands all over the world and in particular in the countries that have become the special targets for Washington since they are considered essential for US absolute global domination.

The corporations are getting together to make the poor farmers in Africa a mass of starving slaves of Big Money, the victims of the monstrous proceedings of the totally immoral corporate agribusiness.

The absurd world

We are living in a theater of the absurd. Our world has been emptied of all real meaning. The substitute for real living is accumulating -- whatever. Mainly money, of course. Or things. Anything. In the absence of money, we accumulate debt. Our reason for living has become adding one gadget to another, or one million to another, and then, finally, sitting on top of a tower of failed hopes and ambitions.

Communication is getting limited to incessant blabber on our mobile phones to say -- nothing. People have let their own hearts and minds go stale and they are now only occupied with a semblance of communication which has become an obsession without any meaning. With no ideals, no goals in life, what are we going to become? Empty vessels of hate and fear, exactly the robots that the monsters in power were planning on.

Politics have become entertainment, another soap opera to distract the masses. There is no sense in participating in the election game since all elections are rigged in advance. The stage is set for the Corporations to run the planet Earth into the ultimate abyss.

Have people even noticed that democracy is dead?

Conclusion

The predator hawks are flying across the skies, swooping down to attack wherever there is a vague sign of populism, combined with resources of any kind that can be turned into money.

All this is made possible in the thick fog spread over the world by the WAR ON TERROR. Anything goes. People are totally ignorant of how the Corpocrats are busy destroying their lives and the environment. The blind and deaf people, the propaganda victims, are the perfect, easily manipulated human robots that the Neocons were depending on for their total success.

Unless we can relearn to use our brains and our critical sense, our ability to see the reality through the fog of fear and indolence, not only will we ourselves be done away with through the gradual “starving of the beast,” but the whole planet will be made a sterile desert. At the end of the day the predators will be found begging for the crumbs of food left over from the few self-supporting farmers who managed to withstand the corporate predators.

Siv O’Neall was born and raised in Sweden where she graduated from Lund University. She has lived in Paris, France and New Rochelle, N.Y. and traveled extensively throughout the USA, Europe, and other continents, including several trips to India. Siv retired after many years of teaching French in Westchester, N.Y. and English in the Grandes Ecoles (Institutes of Technology) in France.

World War III has not yet started

The website of Syria’s news agency SANA is constantly subjected to fierce DDoS (distributed denial of service attacks) and cannot be accessed from here. In the last year the internet has become a bloody battleground with the video site YouTube swamped by rebel videos and hundreds of rebel accounts set up on all social networking sites. Professional commenters (shills) are skimming comment sections of popular news sites to slander Assad and to shout down Syria supporters.

Together with the colluding mass media this allows total message control and is is increasingly difficult to get reliable information from within Syria.

According to the Israeli news agency DEBKAfile, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have substantially stepped up the flow of weapons to the rebels. The supplies are reaching combatants inside Syria as well as the trainees at Turkish and Jordanian military facilities.

The rebel numbers have risen to 50,000 armed men who are efficiently organized in 17 brigades. Fighting inside the country are 260 military units, each consisting of one or two battalions, which mostly range from 1,000 to 1,500 men. By the first week of July, the rebel army had put in place an efficient logistical system.

Regional operational commands are working in most provinces and hi-tech communications equipment connects the provinces and links them to the FSA’s high command in Turkey. A well-organized arms smuggling ring transfers weapons from one command to another as required for local attacks on Syrian military and security forces. This pipeline is fed by Turkish, Saudi and Qatari suppliers via Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey.

Foreign military advisers are posted at each provincial command center. They are usually special forces experts mainly from British, French, Turkish, Saudi, and Qatari armies.

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The efforts to built up a military structure seems to pay off and the rebels have significantly increased the efficiency of their attacks.

FSA fighters have converged on Damascus for a major offensive which they call "Damascus Volcano and Syrian Earthquake" and shortly seized the district of Midan. Most shops in Damascus are closed, the usually crowded boulevards are empty and only few people are outside.

The FSA rebels have also overrun the Abu Kamal/Qaim border post to Iraq and the Bab al-Hawa and Jarablus border posts to Turkey. Eyewitnesses from the Iraqi and Turkish side of the border reported, that the captured Syrian border guards were summarily executed which is corresponding with previous reports that FSA rebels usually execute captured security and army personal on the spot.

 A bombing assassination, which bears all the hallmarks of a Mossad or CIA operation, killed defense minister Daoud A. Rajha (the most prominent Christian in the government), his deputy Asef Shawkat, and assistant vice president Hassan Turkmani. Syria's intelligence chief Hisham Bekhtyar died later from his wounds.

Rebel officials told Britain’s Daily Telegraph that there were two bombs -- one hidden in a flower arrangement and one in a chocolate box, which had been smuggled into the meeting days earlier by FSA members working closely with the drivers and bodyguards of the crisis management cell.

This is probably not the real story but it seems likely that this attack has been carried out with the collaboration of regime insiders and it again proves the widely held view that the Syrian intelligence services are corrupt and infiltrated by Mossad.

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Russia and China still stand firm to Syria but the European Union plans to inspect aircraft and ships for violations of the EU arms embargo against Syria, prompting Roman Pukhov, director of Russia’s Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technology to declare: “The EU has no international legal right to inspect aircraft and ships belonging to countries that are not its members, including Russia.

The USA in the meanwhile is bringing more and more forces into the Persian Gulf in a military build-up that the Gulf has not seen since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The USA already has two aircraft carriers and the accompanying strike groups in the region and plans now to send the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier strike group there.

In April an undisclosed number of F-22 stealth fighters were moved to the Al Dhafra air base in the UAE. In June four Navy minesweeping ships arrived in the Gulf, doubling the Navy's minesweeping force; the Navy has also positioned the USS Ponce in the Gulf, an amphibious assault ship now reconfigured as an "afloat forward staging base.”

Qatar has agreed to host a long-range X-band missile defense radar site, adding to similar sites the United States already operates in Israel and Turkey.

Though the US military build-up at first glance seems to be targeted at Iran, it could be as well used for a military intervention into Syria. The USA and NATO allies will not miss any chance to humiliate Russia and China and will also not be deterred by the looming danger of a military escalation.

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Western leaders, like Wall Street bankers and corporate CEO’s, are by nature high stake gamblers. The reward of this particular gamble in the Middle East could be huge both in military strategic and in economic terms. Petroleum and natural gas are one of Syria's most vital natural resources and would be needed in Europe, water from the Golan Heights and South Lebanon is wanted by Israel.

The destruction of Syria would open the door to Iran, the destruction of Iran would open the door into the South Caucasus and Central Asia, leading to the destabilization of the former Soviet republics and southern Russian provinces with Islamic populations. Saudi Arabia funded terrorists are already active in Ingushetia, Dagestan, and Chechnya.

G.W. Bush was not very bright and thought, that it needs a military invasion and “boots on the ground” to subdue other nations. Barrack Obama is more clever and knows, that the same result can be achieved by arming religious fanatics, gangsters, and desperadoes.

Western leaders are not interested in nation building, they are only interested in resource exploration, which can easily be done in a failed state by bribing warlords and gang leaders. The scheme was first tested in Africa (Somalia, DRC) and is now applied to the Middle East (Libya, Syria). US strategists are confident, that Russia and China will not risk a dangerous escalation and finally give in and that Russia subsequently will break up into smaller and smaller pieces.

It is high stake gambling, and if Russia stands firm this could result in a military confrontation between two or more nuclear armed adversaries.

Reason, Science, Technology, and the strange Higgs Boson

I was provoked to write this text by the post of a fellow blogger who wrote about the reported breakthrough in the quest for the Higgs boson by physicists using the gigantic Hadron Collider of the CERN research facilities near Geneva in Switzerland.

Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez titled her blog post provocatively “What Good is a Higgs Boson When the Planet is Burning?” and caused quite a stir, evident by many mostly negative and often acrimonious comments on her blog and on the news aggregator site Common Dreams, where the text also was published.

I didn’t take part in the ensuing discussion because I wanted to think about the matter thoroughly. Many of the negative comments raised eminent questions and contained interesting and at first glance reasonable points which could not be easily dismissed.

I also generally refrain from taking part in comment thread disputes because the exchanges in comment sections often descent into cock fights or even name calling. Many comment sections of popular news sites or blogs are infiltrated by professional spoilers, agent provocateurs, shills (paid agents), dupes, and other non-categorizable idiots.

Common Dreams a few month ago found out (probably by checking the IP addresses) that some notorious commenters had created up to 50 fake identities and the website administrators changed their comment section regime to get rid of spoilers but it seems they didn’t succeed.

The new system can be nearly as easily duped as the old one because people again are able to set up various accounts using proxy servers and many people don’t even need proxies because they have dynamic IP’s which change every time the user logs in. Government agents will not need to go to such lengths, as they will have any number of computers and/or internet IPs to their disposal.

Furthermore the Internet IP alone is not enough to recognize an individual and even the MAC number, which identifies the hardware (usually the network adapter in a computer) can be faked with software tricks and MAX number identification is not a fail-safe method.

Fortunately!

I don’t visit Common Dreams anymore (for reasons I explained in earlier blog posts) but I was interested in the reaction to the disputed text of Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez and checked the comments on Common Dreams in addition to the comments on her blog.

Not surprisingly the comment section there is still highjacked by the same clique of macho windbags, braggarts, clownish raconteurs, and narcissists that irritated me in former times when I still occasionally was visiting the site.

The macho crowd was infuriated that a woman had dared to write about a scientific issue because they regard science and technology as an exclusively male area. They used formulations like:

“Sorry, Jennifer, but the way you’re thinking about science is ridiculous.”

“Your post is strikingly dyspeptic.”

“This article reflects an unfortunately common and narrow minded view about science.”

“This kind of vulgar utilitarianism is not only radically anti-intellectual, it's also deeply complicit in the logic of the capitalist system itself.”

“...your ridiculous attack against the people that INCREASE knowledge."

“Just because SHE isn't excited, then we shouldn't be excited. I don't get that attitude. This could have been a positive article, and it is just a whine-fest.”

“The professor is missing the point. What's more, she actually knows she's missing the point, but does not recognize her cognitive dissonance.”

“...this seems a tad anti-intellectual.”

“She is unfortunately very close to giving us an example here of left-wing anti-intellectualism.”

“The confusion de Hernandez expresses about how science works reminds me of Carl Sagan's Westminster Project.”

“Where is Michelle Bachmann's byline on this piece? Surely Michelle could find a kindred spirit in many of the views expressed.”

Many of the comments were culminating in the conclusion that Jennifer (like all women of course) simply doesn’t understand science. It was also denounced several times that she uses the internet, a technical invention which was only made possible by advanced physical understanding and in which Tim Berners-Lee, NASA, and CERN played a role. A few commenters stated that the authors field, which is comparative literature and gender studies, doesn’t contribute anything to solving the problem of climate change and that alone for this aspect she was not well positioned to criticize scientists in other fields.

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There were a few voices of reason and they made the following points:

The physics necessary to invent radio and television came from a direction that no one would have predicted and the space program in the 60s seemed pointless to many who were concerned about the Vietnam War. Yet out of the space program came the technologies that allowed Personal Computers and several other helpful technologies to evolve.

It still takes the scientific method to prove or disprove something. This is best done in an environment free of political or social agenda. Instead, the polarization of our society has fostered a harsh climate for scientific research that rivals the Inquisition and Galileo's experience.

Instead of telling the scientists what they should be doing, as the article suggests, we should tell our governments and industries and society to do all they can to support science, to fund it, to teach it correctly in our schools, to provide scholarships for future scientists. The more scientists we have studying everything, the better!

CERN is a relatively expensive publicly funded research institution committed to pure science and exemplifies a European model of research that is dying in the USA. Although CERN was not created to address global climate change, it is exactly the sort of large, international, cooperative scientific venture -- acting in the “public good” -- that will be required to address climate change.

One comment was especially well formulated and convincing:

Science is one of the few areas where humans actually seem able to showcase transcendent values. Some of the keenest human minds are grappling with mind-bogglingly complex mathematics & research to dig out the fundamental secrets of the universe.

Higgs and the other physicists are not searching for new ways to trap students in debt, novel methods of crowd control, or ever more lethal drone technology. That's the corporate plutocracy working hand in glove with the their friends at the Pentagon.

The CERN research is collective knowledge pursued in a spirit of "public good" by some of the most committed intellects on the planet, and deserves accolades -- not petty, sour, and ill-informed humbuggery.

Maybe if more people are inspired by this sort of grand vision then we might yet succeed in saving the planet from human greed and myopia.

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Well, these are a lot of skillful combined words to argue in favor of an expensive scientific laboratory (the Large Hadron Collider), yet in order to judge the merits of the formulations one has to be aware that the commenters base their argumentation, their reasoning on certain axioms (principles) which may or may not be universally accepted or shared by others.

Axioms are basic beliefs which we were told in our youth or which arose from experience. I try to keep my belief system lean, basically I believe in the scientific method (trial and error) and in love, empathy, kindness. That’s it.

I have written about that all in earlier blog posts and I intend to write about it again and shed a light on these issues from different angles but right here now for practical reasons I only want to recall some definitions that will make my final conclusions more understandable. As I titled my blog post Reason, Science, Technology, and the strange Higgs Boson I will restrain myself to the in the title used terms.

Basic Definitions

Reason: In most dictionaries reason is defined as the basis or motives for an action, decision, or conviction. I define reasoning as the computation process in the working memory (also called central executive) which is using words, symbols, and graphics as representations of complex matters. This process is often described as common sense, grammar, logic. Reason is a powerful tool of the human brain but vastly overrated in comparison to pattern recognition, which is used by intuition, imagination, fantasy.

Science: Two dictionary definitions are useful, one defines science as the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena, the other sees it as the systematic study of structures and behaviors of the physical and natural world. I personally view science as the systematical investigation and exploration of the world, the creation of speculative theories to explain natural phenomenas and the testing of these theories with trial and error, the accumulation of knowledge and the passing of this knowledge across generations via oral traditions, pictures, books, film, digital storage.

Technology: There are a myriad of definitions but in the end they all mean, that technology is the practical application of knowledge. Technology is the creation of tools using the findings of science. Technology is possible by our adept and deft fingers, who enabled our ancestors to split stones, to weave and plait branches, to make fire, and from there on to create more and more sophisticated tools and weapons to achieve supremacy in the animal world.

Elephants, dolphins, whales would have been all intelligent enough to rule the world but they didn’t have the skilled fingers to create tools.

Higgs Boson: The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle with zero electric charge, zero spin, and mass greater than zero, predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics. The Higgs boson is postulated to interact with other particles in such a way as to impart mass to them and its existence would explain the masses of the elementary particles.

That says it all!

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I have found over the years, that multi-language capabilities are very helpful. Bilingual or multilingual speakers are in average more intelligent and capable than their monolingual peers. I explain this with the fact, that the memory patterns in our brain representing words and symbols are the modules / blocks / particles that we use for reasoning.

To have more words and symbols at ones disposal, even if they mean the same item, is helpful because one word alone can mean different things and is often not sufficient to describe and pinpoint exactly the meant item.

If I would have time I would like to learn Chinese (Mandarin) and I would also like to increase my capabilities in mathematics (a field which I consider to be in fact a language). I always enjoyed boolean algebra (AND, OR, NOT), which I needed for developing digital circuits and for programming.

The definition of the Higgs boson is not using a separate language, but it uses special terms that refer to instances and equations of physical mathematics. The Higgs Boson is not something that any human being ever will be able to see or feel or understand, it is a mathematical construct to make a speculative scientific theory (the Standard Model of Particle Physics) work.

We have to face it, our senses are limited, our brain capacity is limited.

We hear only a part of the audio waves (between 16 and 18,000 hertz) we see only a tiny part of the electro magnetic spectrum (the visible light), and there may be many physical phenomena that we are not aware of because our senses are not able to detect them.

The working memory areas in our brain can keep not more than 8 to 16 neuronal clusters activated at the same time, which means that not more than 8 to 16 items can be combined, compared, correlated, equated at the same time. That is not much when the world around us indeed is, as many scientist now agree, a nonlinear dynamical system (chaos theory, statistical mathematics, information theory).

Pattern recognition is more powerful and can discover, compare, merge, blend complex structures which our rational thinking (reasoning) with its 8 to 16 item limit never would be able even to detect. But pattern recognition cannot easily interact (be connected via an interface) with our external (outsourced) memory and intelligence (often also described as extended mind), which is provided by pictures, books, calculators, computers, electronic controllers, digital databases, search engines.

So we are stuck with reason, enhanced by written down mathematical equations, helped not insignificantly by pattern recognition fueled intuition, in our quest to extend the boundaries of scientific knowledge and in our restless effort to create more and more sophisticated technical tools based on physical phenomena that our senses cannot detect and our brain cannot really understand.

Before I forget, the hardwired “seeking system” in our brain which evolved in many million years of evolution to prompt the search for food and a mate explains perfectly our quest for scientific discoveries. Researching, exploring, discovering lies in our blood, it is part of our nature. Who can blame the theoretical physicists who get excited when they have a powerful toy as the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at their disposal?

The LHC is basically trial and error to find out if some speculative scientific theories like  the Standard Model of Particle Physics, String Theory, Big Bang Theory, Dark Matter Theory have any merit and can be used for developing new technologies (meaning new tools and new weapons).

Maybe the scientific experiments of CERN will show us new ways to tinker with physics and enable us to develop devices and apparatuses even more powerful than nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants.

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I always was fascinated by technology and started in my youngest years with disassembling discarded mechanical clocks and old radios. Later I built my own computers (with 6502 and 68000 CPUs) and even wrote an operating system in assembler. I still have some texts written on the home made computers. I used a self designed RS-232 interface to transfer them to the Atari ST computers which replaced my old machines. From there the texts were transferred via floppy disk to the Macs which I use today.

I’m glad that Fert and Gruenberg discovered GRM (giant magnetoresistance, also referred to as anisotropic magnetoresistance, a property of materials that arises from electron spin-orbit coupling). Without GRM, my computer hard drives would not be able to store 2,000 Gigabyte of data.

I use now of course flash memory based solid state drives for all boot volumes, but the GRM based hard drives are still my prime mass storage devices. Flash memory btw utilizes also some wicked technological tricks and the algorithms of the firmware are only understandable to experts with solid mathematical training. The same applies for mathematical algorithms of data packet transfers, of coding, compressing, routing, segmenting - reassembling, and other processes which together make internet and cell phone transmissions possible. All this is beyond the understanding of an average person which means that most of us depend on the knowledge of the technical experts.

Well, I see some potential in new technologies and maybe one day scientific discoveries will let my dream come true and will enable ethical engineers and technicians to develop and manufacture tools that disable weapons and explosives or render them unreliable, thereby hurting the warriors themselves.

Maybe one day the ammunition will explode in the pockets of the soldiers, mercenaries, insurgents, terrorists, bombs will fail to go off, drones will turn back and destroy their own basis.

I’m just dreaming...

Back to reality again and back to the prospect that new scientific discoveries will rather be used to build more horrific weapons instead of disabling weapons. Albert Einstein saw it coming, documented by his often cited statements: “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive.” And: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

I don’t know what I could do beyond completely reorganizing my life and writing these blog posts to promote a new kind of thinking, a paradigm change.

Any ideas, hints, advice would be appreciated!

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Returning to Jennifer’s blog post about the Higgs Boson.

I’m against big and expensive technological projects like nuclear power plants, space exploration, big industrial facilities. I also oppose large-scale infrastructure projects like dams and river diversions, highway networks and long tunnels, planned cities and skyscrapers.

All these mega-projects need unimaginable high sums of money, provided by wealthy corporations or the tax payer. The investments may pay off or not, it always is high risk gambling on a large scale -- a mega scale. Most of these projects limit the risks for the private stakeholders and like in every other area of the economy the profits are private while losses are socialized (for example: TEPCO, the owner of Fukushima Daiichi, is now nationalized and will be dismantled).

The LHC certainly falls into this category of mega projects. It took ten years to build and it consists of a 27 kilometer long tunnel with 1,600 superconducting magnets, cooled down to minus 271 degree Celsius with 100 tons of liquid helium. The total costs will be between 6 and 10 billion US$, the power consumption is 120 megawatt (the capacity of nuclear reactors reaches from 600 to 1,200 megawatt).

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I did not take part in the discussion because I didn’t want to set up an account on Common Dreams, on Jennifer’s blog there was only one rogue individual criticizing the post and this person was easily repelled by her loyal readers.

I did not take part in the discussion but I support Jennifer’s conclusion that the expenses for CERNs LHC are not justifiable in the omnipresence of droughts, food shortages, polluted water, and human misery in general. The world is in dire straits and I wish there was money spent to stop the chemical pollution of the biosphere, the habitat destruction, the biodiversity loss, and the human caused climate change. Scientific research in all areas and of course also in particle physics should be maintained, but not in the form of mega-projects.

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I did not take part in the discussion because I don’t completely agree with Jennifer’s text and there was no way to voice my reservations without the appearance of colluding with the macho crowd.

Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez writes: "We have the technology now to engineer a rapid shift to renewable energy sources that will immediately curb the pace of global heating to keep our planet livable."

And continues two paragraphs later: “Hell, it will be good for business! We are potentially at the start of a whole new age, where demand for brand new products like solar panels and geothermal pumps could keep factories running for decades.”

This is factual wrong, because no combination of green technologies is sufficient to replace the resources that fossil fuels today are providing to Western consumers. Alternative energy supplies only would be sufficient if everyone in the West would be willing to adopt a modest lifestyle as it is common in third world countries.

Accomplishing a stop of global warming and a recuperation of the biosphere will not only require massive changes in technology but also fundamental changes in society and a very different way of life.

Todays Western societies are characterized by competition (instead of cooperation), by big and powerful organizations (corporations, lobbying groups, governments), by personal wealth and heritage (the 1,200 Forbes billionaires, of which 370 inherited their money).

It is surely difficult for an US-American to envision any solution where businesses are not making profits, where factories are not constantly producing new stuff, where user demand and the GDP doesn’t endlessly grow. 

Lets go shopping for solar panels and geothermal pumps, its win-win for everybody!

Except for the population near the Chinese factories where the solar panels are produced and except for the population of the areas where the minerals for the new stuff are extracted and refined. For these unfortunate humans its lose-lose.

In 2008 the average energy consumption of US inhabitants was 87,216 kWh, of Europeans 40,821 kWh, of Chinese 18,608 kWh, of Indians 6,280 kWh. Europeans lead quite splendid lives with less than half the energy US-Americans need and apart from that fact Europeans would even easily be able to cut their energy consumption in half without experiencing much discomfort.

Question: Why does nobody promote energy saving and higher energy efficiency as solution to environmental problems?

Answer: There are no insane profits to be made, the economy will shrink, people will have to change their life, learn new ways, and forget about anything they were told throughout their lives by mass media advertising; people will have to start thinking and searching for intelligent solutions instead of going to the mall and indulge in shopping.

Creative thinking, thinking by oneself can be very demanding and exhausting....

==========

When I red the title of Jennifer’s blog post I thought first, that the formulation “...When the Planet is Burning” meant the raging wars all around the world, the steadily increasing weapons production, the military buildup, the vast amounts of resources that are wasted by the military machines.

I thought that she would be writing about the wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, about the worldwide military expenditures of between 1,6 and 2 trillion US$, about Agent Orange, leaks of mustard gas and sarin depots, white phosphorus in Gaza, depleted uranium in Serbia, Iraq (Fallujah), Libya, the toxic “burn pits” in Afghanistan, the massacres of wales and dolphins by military sonar pings, the eight nuclear powered submarines that have sunk until now.

The US military uses as much oil as Sweden, the US military budget is 670 billion US$ (including the hidden and misnamed budget positions rather one trillion US$).

The 6 to 10 billion US$ for the Large Hadron Collider are nothing compared to that, the new Ohio-class submarines for the US-Navy SSBN(X) would cost at least 10 billion US$ each.

==========

Dear Jennifer, I hope that my objection to your blog post will not complicate our until now amiable and fruitful exchange. We all have to find our own way at our own pace, please do not misunderstand my response to your text as lecturing -- who am I to lecture somebody else?

Peace!

Give it up!

An illustrated version of this post can be found on http://mato48.wordpress.com/

It seems that climate change denial and the denial of environmental problems in general doesn’t cut it anymore because the signs of ecological destruction are so obvious that a significant part of the commoners have become alert and are questioning the narrative that they were spoon-fed now for many years via TV, internet, and press.

Which means that the imperial corporate media has to change tactics because continuing with the denial scheme would diminish further what is left of its journalistic credibility.

Normally I try to avoid traditional news media which are just mouthpieces of the establishment and not overly informative but occasionally I check news sources like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal to find out what the officially sanctioned narrative is.

Yesterday the New York Times published an article that could be a harbinger of the new tactic that mass media journalist will use to please their bosses. The article had the title “A World Without Coral Reefs” and the message of this piece was very clear: The coral reefs are dying and there is nothing we can do to save them.

The core part of the article opened with the statement: “There will be remnants here and there, but the global coral reef ecosystem -- with its storehouse of biodiversity and fisheries supporting millions of the world’s poor -- will cease to be.” And continued: “Overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution are pushing coral reefs into oblivion.”

It went on like this until finally a few paragraphs later the author was presenting his conclusion and main message:

“Overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution have two features in common. First, they are accelerating. They are growing broadly in line with global economic growth, so they can double in size every couple of decades. Second, they have extreme inertia -- there is no real prospect of changing their trajectories in less than 20 to 50 years. In short, these forces are unstoppable and irreversible.”

=============

I don’t know what the main motivation of the author Roger Bradbury for writing this text was, but the New York Times, which for sure gets hundreds of scripts a day, most probably chose this piece for its projection of inevitability and helplessness.

We well see more and more articles like this in future and the message will become clear and unmistakable.

It is a message from the ruling class to the tree-huggers, the consumerism dropouts, the humanists, the peace activists, the ant-globalists, the dreamers of a smooth transition to a harmoniously into nature integrated lifestyle, and anybody else who interferes in the rulers lucrative businesses of making money by producing crap, by creating environmental catastrophes, by starting wars. The message in cleartext:

Give it up!

Your opposition, your resistance is futile, hopeless. Your cause is lost, humanity has past the point of no return. Alea iacta sunt (addressing the humanists). You’re fired! Game over! (addressing the TV watchers).

Future messages will be fine-tuned and become more detailed and include additional advice or raise questions like this:

What is bad about denying reality or indulging in fantasies about magic technological fixes? 

Why not trust the corporations who employ thousands of scientists in research laboratories all over the world and who pay them to work tirelessly to replace nature with their synthetic environment?

What is bad about just following the crowd and living a life along the guidelines shown by the media celebrities?

=============

Roger Bradbury, the author of the New York Times article about dying coral reefs, is assumably not related to Ray Bradbury, the science fiction writer who last month died at the age of 91 and who had become famous with his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451.

Roger Bradbury is an ecologist, who does research in resource management at Australias National University. If he would be inclined to write a dystopian novel like his famous namesake Ray he would be well placed, because the implications of a coral reef collapse are huge and the corals annihilation will together with the collapse of other ecosystems like rain forests and wetlands usher in a truly dystopian future.

Roger Bradbury writes: “...it will be a disaster for the hundreds of millions of people in poor, tropical countries like Indonesia and the Philippines who depend on coral reefs for food [...] countries like Mexico and Thailand will have both their food security and tourism industries badly damaged.”

“What we will be left with is an algal-dominated hard ocean bottom, as the remains of the limestone reefs slowly break up, with lots of microbial life soaking up the sun’s energy by photosynthesis, few fish but lots of jellyfish grazing on the microbes. It will be slimy.”

Which sounds very impressive and would be well suited for apocalyptic scenarios, where slime, the jellyfish with its gelatinous umbrella-shaped bell and trailing tentacles, and a murky brew of heavily polluted water would create the right ambience to start with.

The author would though face tough competition, because his text is not the first report painting a grim picture and warning about dying coral reefs. The famous marine biologist John Veron, like Bradbury hailing from Australia, wrote in 2010 a piece with the title: “Is the End in Sight for The World’s Coral Reefs?”

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/is_the_end_in_sight_for_the_worlds_coral_reefs/2347/

But Veron’s message was different, as he concluded:

“Yet here I am today, humbled to have spent the most productive scientific years of my life around the rich wonders of the underwater world, and utterly convinced that they will not be there for our children’s children to enjoy unless we drastically change our priorities and the way we live.”

To “drastically change our priorities and the way we live” is of course not a line that ever will have a chance to appear in the New York Times or in other corporate media businesses.

John Veron writes: “You may well feel that dire predictions about anything almost always turn out to be exaggerations. You may think there may be something in it to worry about, but it won’t be as bad as doomsayers like me are predicting.”

“Coral reefs speak unambiguously about climate change. They survived Ice Age sea-level changes of 120 meters or more with impunity. They once survived in a world where CO2 from volcanoes and methane was much higher than anything predicted today. But that was over 40 million years ago, and the increase took place over millions of years, not just a few decades, time enough for ocean equilibration to take place and marine life to adapt.”

“What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime, and they will stay that way.”

“Reefs are the ocean’s canaries and we must hear their call. This call is not just for themselves, for the other great ecosystems of the ocean stand behind reefs like a row of dominoes. If coral reefs fail, the rest will follow in rapid succession, and the Sixth Mass Extinction will be upon us.”

Veron’s piece from 2010 was outlining a doomsday scenario just like Bradbury’s text, with the big difference that Veron calls for action, calls for a drastic change of our priorities and of the way we live.

=============

Many other pieces about coral reefs have been published in the last years and all point out the seriousness of the threat and warn about the dire consequences. All call for instant and decisive action.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/environment/2010-03-26-coral-reefs_N.htm

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/42139

http://www.coral.org/node/434

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/09/12/316476/coral-reefs-gone-climate-change-and-ocean-acidification/?mobile=nc

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2008/07/corals-reef-on.html

http://www.tos.org/oceanography/issues/issue_archive/issue_pdfs/20_2/20.2_caldeira.pdf

I don’t want to discuss the scientific details here because they are laid out sufficiently in the linked reports yet a few sentences about the consequences of coral reef destruction may be appropriate at this point:

It is not only that the coral reefs will be replaced by a disgusting and toxic slimy mass of algae and bacteria, the loss of biodiversity together with ocean acidification will decrease marine life further and also reduce the ability to absorb CO2 and to clean the waters of the inflowing rivers from the toxic substances that humans are pouring into the rivers.

Fish stocks will be depleted everywhere and millions of people will lose their livelihoods. Earth's food security will be further threatened and seafood will become a luxury, only affordable to affluent people. One billion humans face hunger today, their number will at least double.

Desperate people in the search for food will kill the last remaining wild animal populations and destroy the last intact habitats. We are already seeing this in Africa with the rise in bush-meat demand due to the decrease in fish catches.

=============

The death of coral reefs together with ocean acidification will reduce biodiversity, will cause explosive growth of some robust species like jellyfish and algae, and lead to algae blooms which could culminate in widespread dead zones where no life is able to exist because of lack of oxygen. The oxygen content of the oceans will decrease dramatically anyway as a result of warmer water.

Algae normally act as scavengers and bury toxic pollutants like mercury in the sediments, while various microorganisms break up organic pollutants into non toxic materials. Oceans with big dead zones will not be able anymore to absorb and decompose our pollutants and our waste. Clean drinking water will become rare, the chemical contamination of water and food will significantly increase up to the point where people even in affluent countries will be left only with the choice between starving or slowly poisoning themselves.

Singing a new song

It is unlikely that such scenarios will be discussed in the mass media, which for many years were denying that the coral reefs are in any danger and have run a relentless campaign of disinformation, outright lies, and character assassinations of eminent reef scientists.

Most media pundits start from the ideological position that any kind of environmental concerns are fabrications by the wicket “water-melons” of the Left (meaning: Communists with a Green veneer), designed to derail the economy and destroy capitalism.

Until recently this method worked quite well but the media pundits now will have to learn a new song, because not only the scientific evidence, but also the evidence right in front of peoples eyes is overwhelming and everybody who is able to separate her/himself from the TV screens, computer screens, tablets, smart-phones, video game boxes for more than a moment and put her/his nose out into fresh air or maybe make even a walk outside into one of the remaining patches of nature will see the clear and unmistakable signs that the natural world is declining.

Like on so many occasions before the New York Times is the trail blazer and shows the way. You remember:

Overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution have two features in common. First, they are accelerating and growing broadly in line with global economic growth. Second, they have extreme inertia -- there is no real prospect of changing their trajectories. These forces are unstoppable and irreversible.

You want economic growth and prosperity? Forget about the coral reefs.

You need your car, your tablet and/or smart-phone, your air-condition, your dish washer, cloth dryer, electric bread slicer, your super-automatic espresso machine, your occasional air flight? You like to go shopping and replace some old cloth or furniture or various paraphernalia and gadgets with new items?

Forget about endangered species and destroyed habitats. Modern day comfort, technological and economic progress have their price. Be assured, even if the corals are gone, you still will be able to download thousands of pictures and movies of coral reefs, you will even be able to install a beautiful rendition of a coral reef as a screen saver and watch it as long as you want. All this from the comfort of your armchair and with not much more effort than a few mouse clicks.

=============

Do the media propagandists change their tune because the data mining and sentiment analysis of public discussions shows that the population doesn’t buy their lies anymore and that the number of people who are ready to change their lifestyle and to drop out of the consumerism rat race has reached a critical mass? This would be a for the plutocrats disturbing trend which could significantly impair their business and diminish profits.

Is it maybe only a precautionary move to discourage dissidents?

Whatever prompted the publication of this piece, we certainly will see more of this kind. We will be presented thoughtful analysis predicting a bleak future but assuring us that the situation will be manageable by using new technologies.

We will be told that the serious effects will only be felt in poor countries and the Western nations will mostly be spared. We will hear more reports about devastating droughts, famine, epidemics caused by polluted drinking water, unrest, chaos, and failed states.

We will slowly getting accustomed to the idea that the worlds ecosystems are breaking down and that we have to buy everything what nature formerly provided for free from private companies. Pristine nature will disappear at an accelerated rate and will only live on in the memory of a few elderly people.

As I wrote before in earlier blog posts, I am pessimistic but I’m not without hope. We don’t know the whole picture and there could be unexpected developments.

The Western world’s financial system is troubled, it could implode at any time and bring an end to the consumer economy as we know it now. New exceptional scientific discoveries could make it possible to disable weapons or render them unreliable or dangerous for the warriors themselves. The pollution of drinking water by hormones could reduce male fertility and eliminate the problem of overpopulation.

It may well be that one day the political leaders and generals will sit in their underground bunkers at Denver airport or Cheyenne Mountain and watch the computer displays till the screens suddenly go black.

While the until then powerless and helpless people will breath fresh air and will continue organizing in small neighborhood communities and continue building up their local economies.

Just dreaming -- nevertheless, my alternative advice (as always) is: Keep on resisting, organizing, planning, building, and never, never give it up!

Syria – an alternative view

The following post consists of two opinion pieces published on RT News. The author is Dr. Veronika Krasheninnikova, Director General of the Institute for Foreign Policy Research and Initiatives in Moscow.

Washington’s new tricks

The latest round of the war against an independent Syria unfolded in Paris last week at the gathering of the “Friends of Syria”.

Russia and China very rightly did not attend this “amoral” -- in the diplomatic language of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- meeting. At the meeting western champions of the war insisted on their interpretation of the one-week old Geneva agreements: “transition government based on mutual consent” means “Bashar al-Assad must go,” affirmed French President Hollande.

This recent round of pressure highlights two new tactics employed by Washington: word games and an end-run around the United Nations itself.

First, the new formula “transition government”. The authoritative Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “regime” as “government” and “change” as “transition.” Thus, for those who reject “regime change,” a euphemism was created that has much better chances to go through.

Interestingly enough, this term was promoted by an expert of Russian origin, Dmitri Trenin, Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. On June 28, 2012 Trenin published a suggestion in his piece “Syria: A Russian Perspective”: “Russia might be willing to cooperate with the US and other countries if the goal moves towards ‘transition’ rather than “regime change” -- what has been dubbed the “Yemen model.”

So who is Mr. Trenin? This retired Soviet colonel was a Senior Research Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome just before he was recruited in 1993 to join the Carnegie Moscow Center, created the same year by none other than Michael McFaul, the current US Ambassador in Moscow. After nearly 20 years in the pay of the Americans Trenin was rewarded with his current post as director by his former boss, Rose Gottemoeller, who left Moscow in 2008 to join the State Department where she is now Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. Big shoes to fill for Mr. Trenin, but in Washington they know how to pick their cadre.

The board of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington features -- this world is truly small -- Kofi Annan himself. Among the Endowments “Funders and Supporters” are George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the US National Intelligence Council, the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the US Defense Department, and a collection of other private and public enthusiasts.

Of course the “transition government” and “Yemen model” are nothing other than “regime change.” Honestly: we, Russians, brought up on Tolstoy and Chekhov, should be able to miss Washington’s elementary-school semantic traps.

Secondly, unable to push anti-Syrian resolutions through the UN Security Council due to Russia and China’s staunch resistance, Washington is building up a group of more than hundred nations more pliable to US pressure. Such “coalitions of the willing” have been put together before, but this time the number of countries makes it look like a parallel anti-UN construct acting as if it is replacing the UN General Assembly itself.

Such a gathering, despite the total absence of legitimacy, is not just a talking platform. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told “Le Parisien” that the Paris meeting would push for a Chapter VII United Nations resolution to enforce the transition plan. A Chapter VII resolution can authorize the use of military force “to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

In the short term, the United States may attempt to institutionalize this ad hoc grouping into a mechanism to implement a “final solution” to President Al-Assad. In the long term, Washington may try to solidify such structure into an anti-U.N. body of sycophants, ready and willing to approve any US initiative.

Now, from tactics to strategy. Looking at the type of leaders that are seizing power in the Arab world with American assistance, a normal person is perplexed: why does the United States, with the assistance of their local satellites, keep on removing moderate secular governments and bringing to power, in one country after another, increasingly radical extremists -- that same type of people who committed 9/11, the greatest tragedy in US post-WWII history?

Indeed, this question is not solvable by listening to Washington’s official line of arguments. But take a look at the policies of the US and its European partners during the in the 1930s. Then, America and its ever so reasonable and civilized European allies provided the financial, industrial and political support encouraging the highly energized, violent extremist Nazi and fascist movements in Europe. With a purpose: to direct its violence against Russia. According to the plan, Germany and Russia were to exhaust themselves so that the US would emerge dominant.

Similarly, the earlier use of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and again today the encouragement of various Muslim extremists including elements of the Muslim Brotherhood are part of the plan to create a regional movement which could be thrown against Iran, Russia and China. Such a furnace of war and chaos in the Middle East, the Caucuses and Central Asia will permanently disable all three of America’s strategic rivals and allow Washington to rise to uncontested world domination.

We should be able to decipher not only US language, but also US strategy. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union was at the front line of the fight against fascism in Europe. Today, Russia owes it to its history and to the fallen in the anti-fascist struggle to recognize and before it is too late avert American designs.

We must prevent Russian and other people from being drawn into a bloodbath of mutual extermination in the voracious interest of Washington’s drive for global hegemony.

In June Dr. Veronika Krasheninnikova published the following article on RT News:

Using Russia to oust Assad

­As the G20 summit opened in Los Cabos, Mexico, Western media ran headlines saying President Obama would pressure Vladimir Putin over Syria. For Moscow this is an opportunity to act as an independent player and send a message of confidence to allies. Indeed, the fate of Syria largely depends upon Russia, which is evident to both the US and Damascus.

The White House has already acknowledged its key role in delivering arms for the Syrian insurgency. The shipments have been sponsored lavishly by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. US officials are also negotiating a “second front” with the Kurds in eastern Syria to draw Syria’s pro-government forces from the western part of the country, which is now home to a concentration of rebel forces. The much trumpeted Kofi Annan plan has actually done nothing more than buy the insurgents some time to get trained and receive their arms shipments.

“They used to be described as ‘rabble,’ but I would no longer call them that,” says Jeoffrey White, a retired reconnaissance specialist. “What they look like now is an increasingly combat-efficient guerilla force.”

So how do the Syrian rebels get their military supplies? Reports of arms shipments to Syria first emerged as early as the summer of 2011. Several “parcels” carrying firearms or money were subsequently intercepted in Lebanon.

On April 27, a combined force of the Lebanese navy and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) captured the vessel Lutfallah 2 off the Lebanese coast. The ship was en route to Lebanon which is the nearest sea port to the city of Homs, Syria -- a rebel stronghold where British and Qatari military instructors give the Syrian insurgents their drills. According to the Automatic Identification System, the vessel was registered in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and had departed from Libya.

The Lebanese military have meticulously documented every step of the discharge procedure, leaving about 500 photos identifying the freight and its markings.

There is more to it. According to industry magazine The Maritime Executive, the ship is owned by Khafaji Shipping Co., which is registered in Honduras -- a country that has a longstanding record of serving as a front for covert US operations.

Following a visit to Lebanon by UN special representative for the Middle East Terje Rod-Larsen on May, 8, it became public that the UN envoy had instructed the Lebanese government to refrain from similar searches of other ships coming from Libya.

It has evidently become standard foreign policy practice for the United States to use freshly “liberated” countries as a beachhead for penetrating other nations, which are just in for a “regime change.” One year ago, Egypt was aiding the insurgents in Libya.Today, the victorious Libyan rebels are supplying the militants in Syria. This is classic Domino Theory: regimes toppled one by one, each revolution being used to influence a neighboring country.

The US administration has been persuading Russia to support the West in deposing regimes that have fallen out with Washington. Should Moscow cave in, this would hardly make Russia more secure. On the contrary, “weakness is provocative,” as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld liked to say.

Russia’s area of influence presently borders on Syria and Iran. If the Kremlin agrees to play ball with the White House on Syria, Russia may soon wake up to find the red line shifted right up to the Caucasus and Central Asia. In a worst-case scenario, we might even end up being “liberated” with help from the very “new democracies” we have failed to prevent.

How to choose an echo chamber

This is a post from last year with various text amendments and an updated list of links.

The working of our brain is mainly based on pattern recognition and memory. It is further based on feedback loops resulting in a steady adaptation and reorganization of brain structures, and to a lesser degree also on rules of common sense, grammar, and logic (functions that are made possible by the special ability of the working memory areas to keep several patterns active at the same time).

Humans like to see themselves as intelligent and logical acting creatures but the influence of common sense and logical reasoning in our daily life is small, most decisions are made intuitively (gut decisions) and are only rationalized afterwards. Intuition, like creativity, imagination, and phantasy is a function of pattern recognition.

How does a child learn mathematics? First it counts its fingers (that is why we use a decimal system and not a binary or hexadecimal system which both would have advantages -- unfortunately we have only ten fingers and not sixteen). After the child has memorized the numbers from one to ten it learns the sums and differences of single digit numbers and later the multiplication tables and some neat tricks how to write down numbers and conduct multiplications and divisions.

If the child knows, that 7 times 7 is 49, it doesn't mean, that the brain is able to process multiplications, it means, that the child remembers the multiplication tables. And as the education goes on from arithmetics to algebra and from there to calculus and from there to more advanced mathematics like nonlinear dynamics/chaos theory and statistics/probability theory and various branches of applied mathematics and finally ends up with quantum mechanics, it doesn't mean, that the brain has acquired some new functions.

The working of the brain is still mainly pattern recognition and memory. New connections -- forming additional rules and categories -- between clusters of patterns have been established and many new patterns have been created, but the principle working of the brain is still not different from the time when we were counting with the help of our fingers. 

E=mc2

Einstein acquired much of his education as an autodidact, but his findings nevertheless were based on the work of others (for instance Newton's classical physics). One of Einstein's famous quotes is: "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants".

===========

What I want to say with the preceding paragraphs is, that we are depending on the findings of other people in all our judgements and in every decision that we make. Our wisdom is based on the wisdom of many generations of our ancestors. We didn't invent the wheel, we didn't invent the combustion engine. If all car drivers would have to invent and construct their cars by themselves there would be not much traffic.

We are depending on local, regional, even global support systems. We are depending on support systems (i.e. on other people) in every aspect of our complicated modern life and we are also depending on other people to sort and evaluate the news.

If we had instant access to all the media streams in the world, we would not be better informed than we are now because we would not be able to process the terabytes of information by ourselves. We would not be able to sit day and night and sort out the important facts from the garbage, distinguish the important data from the constant background noise of useless or false data.

We need to find news organizations that do this for us. We need professionals, specialists, who do this for us. We need somebody who helps us to make sense of all the information and who helps us to get an idea of what is really going on.

===========

There are quite a few news organizations, many news analysts, talk show hosts, pundits, and renowned experts who offer help. Can we trust them?

We get advice from distinguished and supposedly reasonable persons to avoid the echo chamber effect and to take opinions from all corners of the political spectrum into account. Don't take that advice! The people who make such recommendations are nothing else than con men of the establishment, who are payed to spread confusion and to obscure facts.

Western societies are characterized by mass media (press, radio, internet portals, TV, Hollywood, YouTube) which are assigned to constantly persuade, instruct, indoctrinate, brainwash, condition the citizens. The mass media organizations are tightly controlled and coordinated and can easily drown out dissident voices and confine them to remote and cordoned off corners of the media landscape called “alternative media” and “the blogosphere.”

In former ages compliance and allegiance of the populace to the ruling classes was achieved by cult traditions, tribal traditions, and religious indoctrination, but modern societies became secularized when superstition, cult traditions, and religious myths were increasingly contradicted and invalidated by science.

The role of religion therefore has partly be assumed by mass media and in modern times the sermons are delivered not only from the pulpit but also via TV screens and computer screens. Religious indoctrination is still an important tool for the ruling elites but citizens with a certain level of education and intellectual capacity need the additional treatment of mass media brainwashing.

===========

I don't believe in "fair and balanced" news (and certainly I don't believe Fox News). I also don't believe in unbiased, even-handed opinion. Every news organization is filtering, every reporter interprets events according to her/his view of the world. Corporate media applies strict criteria to news reporting.

Informations that reveal inequality, corruption, injustice or threaten the stability of the political system are suppressed or twisted or accompanied and countered by contradicting informations. This is the real meaning of "fair and balanced". If information cannot be suppressed the media outlets try at least to confuse the public with a barrage of lies, knowing that nobody is able to check every single fact in this age of information overflow.

One striking example of this method was presented when the New York Times took the effort to find a Jesuit priest who denounced and scolded the Syrian government in order to counter the various reports about the persecution of Christians and the ethnic cleansing by the FSA (Free Syrian Army).

I was aware since long time, that renowned news organizations like Washington Post, New York Times and New Yorker were only a shadow of themselves and adhering to no other moral standards than the morality of money and wealth. Something similar to a Watergate investigation would be impossible today, investigative journalism is dead (at least in the corporate media domain) and has been replaced by "embedded journalism."

In the last years Western media outlets have become increasingly "gleichgeschaltet" (brought into line, synchronized) and in addition to that have refined the process of suppressing, distorting, fabricating news and creating a virtual reality that keeps the masses sedated and the money elites pleased. The motto is not anymore: "All the News That's Fit to Print" as stated in the upper left hand corner of the front page of the New York Times, it rather is: "All the News We Fit to Print."

===========

The agenda of corporate media is not my agenda. I'm not a billionaire, not even a millionaire, I don't own any corporate shares. I'm not a banker, I'm not in the business of weapons production, I don't have to advertise crap, I don't need to make a quick buck with selling crap. I don't have to compete in a tight market, I don't have to cheat and bluff and mislead.

I have revealed my view of the world quite explicit in the blog entries that I published until now, therefore I don't discuss it here again, but I want to present a list of the news sources that I use. The news outlets in this list are not even-handed, not neutral, not impartial or dispassionate. These news outlets have an agenda, it is roughly the same agenda that I have, the same agenda that drives me to write this blog entries.

The list of news sources has changed dramatically in the last two years, as I found out that many sources that I perceived as trustworthy and following high journalistic standards were in fact co-opted and corrupted by the establishment and were used to hide, obfuscate, and obscure the truth instead of providing reliable information. So called “progressive” or “liberal” media organization were in addition to that in the business of weakening, irritating, splitting emerging grassroots movements.

The tragic end of the Libyan green revolution and the destruction of Libya by NATO warplanes became the ultimate benchmark test for evaluating media sources. The Western media propaganda blitz to promote this war, disgusting as it was, enabled me to sort out the bad apples and discover the hidden gems in the information garbage dump.

===========

What I did not comprehend fully until then -- though I had noticed the signs -- was the corruption of the liberal and progressive media enterprises. Many of them are not more than news aggregators who are just parroting Reuters and Associated Press. I never believed in the Huffington Post or AlterNet, but I used The Guardian, The Independent, Mother Jones, Salon, The Nation, Democracy Now, Common Dreams, among others as news sources.

I'm finished with that now. I still hold Amy Goodman in high regard, she deserved the Right Livelihood Award in 2008 and her achievements are indisputable but it appears that she has lost her sharp analytical mind and judgement. I'm sad about Common Dreams, Lina Newhouser would have deserved a better legacy. Mother Jones was always boring but Salon, though somehow clownish and geekish was worth a visit because of Glenn Greenwald and David Sirota.

I will not waste my time anymore with these sites. They are just regurgitating the same complains, worries, memes, slogans again and again without presenting any useful visions and without showing alternatives. This is the art of collective hand wringing at its best, celebrated with texts that are often skillful and powerful worded but nevertheless nothing else than totally inconsequential cassandra calls. 

There are countless articles where the authors implicitly acknowledge, that the system is flawed and screwed up beyond reform or repair, yet they never call for the abolishment or the replacement with something radically different. This is a line that obviously must not be crossed. Is it self censorship or fear of a new and radical different life style?

US liberals are gleeful over the fact that president Obama is personally in favor of same-sex marriage (although it doesn't actually change a thing, except he received one million campaign dollars within an hour) while not protesting either in word or deed Obama's “kill list”, the drone program, and the wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen.

It appears that many US-American intellectuals, who consider themselves as liberal or progressive -- whatever that means -- until now have not realized or did not come to terms with the realization, that they are still a part of the problem and not a part of the solution. They will remain a part of the problem as long as they don't change their elitist, supremacist, exceptionalist attitude and their consumer-oriented lifestyle. But that is another issue for another blog post.

The bloggers and independent journalists who are worth reading are biased just as the media workers of the establishment. They are often enthusiastic, occasionally overly optimistic or pessimistic, and often exaggerating. Even the most experienced and bright people like Sharmine Narwani, Pepe Escobar, Michel Chossudovsky, James Petras, Tony Cartalucci will view news worthy developments from a personal angle and will occasionally be carried away by their sentiments, thus presenting a picture which is distorted by their special way of thinking.

Yet, as I know (and mostly concur with) the world view of these journalists it is easy to reconstruct from their reports the situation as I personally would see it.

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Reconstructing the original picture from corporate and “alternative” media reports is not that easy, because there are too many players and intermediaries involved, but checking established media organizations like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal is sometimes useful to give information about the officially sanctioned narrative.

Most news organizations follow the official line so slavishly that one wonders if there are “political commissars” sitting in the news rooms. Of course, the “political commissars” exist, they are called editors and they are scrutinizing carefully every text to cut out information that their underlings may have placed and written between the lines.

In these days of high unemployment and social insecurity not many journalists will take the risk to lose their job and if they want to have any kind of career they know what they have to write. There may be a few individuals like for instance Daniel Simpson or Chris Hedge, who cannot stand the hypocrisy and the Orwellian situation anymore, but most media workers leave their conscience in the wardrobe and obey. The rare examples of dissent (Natasha Lennard) are dealt with swiftly and surely.

Reading or viewing mainstream news or commentary is revealing and sometimes even amusing but bears the danger of being exposed to a certain kind of psychological manipulation which works like this:

In most mass media offerings the lies are so obvious and the comments so dumb that educated and intelligent readers inevitably will feel insulted and become angry, even infuriated. This is intentional, the critical readers, the dissidents are targeted by this technique to show them how powerless they are, how disrespected they are, how futile and hopeless their struggle is.

This psychological technique will either cause a dissenter to give up, resign, surrender, or it will radicalize her/him up to a point, where she/he makes some careless, unwary move that could be interpreted as aggression or a precursor to violence or a preparation of a violent act, giving the authorities the chance to label the dissenter as terrorist or as supporting terrorism.

The Israelis are the unchallenged masters of this technique, they have it exhaustively and successfully applied to the Palestinians from 1948 till today.

What follows from that?

Mainstream media has to be consummated with extreme moderation, it is not only distraction, propaganda, mind control, reeducation, it is also provocation, mockery, contempt, insult.

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Following is an excerpt of my browser bookmarks. This list is momentary and changes nearly every day. In a dynamically evolving media landscape it can easily happen that important sources and places are overlooked -- I gladly accept any suggestion of other links and I’m open to objections against list entries.

I have also updated the link list on the right side of my blog, the links in the "Politics" category are the news sources who passed the test. Please have a look!

News, comments, analysis, opinions

http://www.counterpunch.org/ USA

http://blackagendareport.com/ USA

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/ USA

http://www.moonofalabama.org/ Germany

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ Canada

http://rabble.ca/ Canada

http://www.voltairenet.org/en France

http://www.4thmedia.org/ China

http://en.cubadebate.cu/ Cuba

http://rt.com/politics/ Russia

http://english.al-akhbar.com/ Lebanon

http://www.presstv.ir/ Iran

Websites about peace, social and economic equality

http://warisacrime.org/

http://truth-out.org/

http://www.wsws.org/

http://www.bdsmovement.net/

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/

http://www.greenleft.org.au/

http://www.axisoflogic.com/

Websites about sustainability, protection of animals and habitats

http://news.mongabay.com/

http://www.wrm.org.uy/

http://www.rainforests.net/

http://enenews.com/

http://nuclear-news.net/

http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/

http://www.bornfree.org.uk/

http://thedailymaul.com/

http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/

http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/

http://www.earth-policy.org/

http://earthjustice.org/

http://www.worldwatch.org/

http://agriculturedefensecoalition.org/

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/

http://www.greenfacts.org/en/

http://www.energybulletin.net/

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/

http://www.cornucopia.org/

http://www.greenlivingonline.com/

http://sustainableppn.asla.org/

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/

http://www.genewatch.org/

http://www.naturalnews.com/

http://www.organicconsumers.org/

http://farmwars.info/

http://www.permaculture.org.uk/

http://www.transitionnetwork.org/

http://www.transitionus.org/

http://www.treehugger.com/

http://www.organicgardening.com/

http://www.weekendgardener.net/

http://www.pioneerthinking.com/

Blogs about peace, social and economic equality

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/

http://petras.lahaine.org/

http://bethechange2012.wordpress.com/

http://crimsonsatellite.wordpress.com/

http://lizzie-phelan.blogspot.com/

http://syria360.wordpress.com/

http://resistance-episteme.tumblr.com/

http://raniakhalek.com/

http://vivalibya.wordpress.com/

http://nsnbc.wordpress.com/

http://en.cubadebate.cu/category/reflections-fidel/

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/

http://www.tomdispatch.com/

Blogs about sustainability, protection of animals and habitats

http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/

http://drstevebest.wordpress.com/

http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/

http://sustainablealternatives.wordpress.com/

http://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/

http://animalconnectionac.wordpress.com/

http://liberationbc.org/blog/

http://www.banbloodsports.com/

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php

Websites and blogs about women rights

http://feminism.alltop.com/

http://womensenews.org/

http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/

http://www.feminist.com/

http://www.womankind.org.uk/

http://www.womensearthalliance.org/

http://feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswire.asp

Uncategorized

http://mediamatters.org/

http://whatreallyhappened.com/

http://morallowground.com/

http://microwavenews.com/