ACC scientists’ fraud fallout: the lawsuits are starting!

November 24, 2009 — xanthippa

While much of the mainstream media (MSM) is still sounding apoplectic apologetic about the ‘Global Warming Guilt’ scientists being caught in large scale fraud and subversion of the peer-review process, the documents leaked last week from UK’s University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) (I so do not want to use the term ‘ClimateGate’!), others are not so idle.

‘Watts Up With That?’, a well-regarded blog run by the outspoken and highly respected Anthony Watts, posted a story by Chris Horner of The American Spectator, entitled: ‘CEI Files Notice of Intent to Sue NASA GISS’.

Why, and how is it important?

CEI is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, which has focused on verifying whether or not ‘the government’ is releasing accurate statements, especially when it comes to issues with impact as pervasive as ‘Global Warming’ or ‘AGW’ or ‘ACC’ (whatever you want to call it).

NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (yes, the astronaut people) and GISS is NASA’s Goddart Institute for Space Studies.  And, in their own words, “Research at GISS emphasizes a broad study of global climate change.”

Dr. Hansen heads up GISS, and is perhaps one of the best known voices on this side of the Atlantic pond (aside from politicians and celebs) calling for drastic action to save us all from the inevitable catastrophe caused by man-made ‘climate change’.

The article starts out:

Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies’ refusal – for nearly three years – to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding “ClimateGate” scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries’ freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all of which appears to be affirmed by leaked emails, computer codes and other data from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK’s East Anglia University.

So – this is why it matters:

‘Good scientists’ – even the CRU scientists know this, as per the leaked documents – always hand over the ‘raw data’ (that means, exactly as it was collected (along with the methodology used, conditions under which it was collected), before it was processed or ‘normalized’ (scientific meaning of the word) in any way-shape-or-form), what they did with it and why, and their results along with their hypothesis and conclusions when they submit their work for peer-review.

This is really, really important:  errors or mistakes (not to mention fraud) can occur at any point of the work.  It can occur at the very point of data-collection.  For example, if a thermocouple ‘x’ were used to measure temperatures at 5 out of 15 points, and thermocouple ‘y’ was collected for the rest, it will be necessary for any reviewer to read up on both thermocouples to make sure they behave exactly the same way under all conditions.

Simplification:  consider 2 thermometers commonly used to measure fever.  One is an old fashioned mercury one, the other is the modern, stick-in-the-ear one.  If one takes a child’s temperature using the ear thermometer, they may get a different temperature than if they use the old-fashioned mercury one under the child’s arm.  Therefore, one would have to document taking the child’s temperature simultaneously with both temperatures and record the readings.  Then, one would ‘analyze the difference’ between the readings to see what the difference in readings is.  Then, if one recorded 5 temperatures with the ear thermometer, and 15 with the mercury one, then one would have to ‘normalize’ one set of the readings (by adding or subtracting the ‘normal difference’ between their readings) before one could lump all 20 together as one dataset.

When doing peer-review of another scientist’s work, making sure there were no errors or mistakes in how the data was collected (like lumping together readings from the two thermometers in the example above), that there were no mistakes in making any ‘normalization’, and so on. And, since errors or mistakes can occur at any point from here on, all the ‘work’ has to be subjected to scrutiny by one’s peers.

‘Good scientists’ consider this to be a necessary part of any peer-review process.

Yet, the ‘leaked documents’ demonstrate that many of their studies, on which so much policy is being based, have been submitted for ‘peer-review’ without supplying any of their actual data to the peer doing the reviewing!

They even threatened to stop publishing in journals which demanded to see all of their data and work!

That means that their work was not FULLY ‘peer-reviewed’!

That means we ought not put much weight in that body of work!

But, even worse:  the leaked emails show that, in multiple instances, some of these ‘alarmist scientists’ stated they would rather delete their data than release it for scientific review!!!

That is NOT what ‘good scientists’ do!

Which  brings us to the point of the Notice of Intent to File Suit:

CEI, using ‘Freedom of Information Act’ FoIA, requested GISS to release much of the data it used to make its predictions of doom and cataclysms.  It appears that, for years, GISS has not released it.

In addition, CEI appears to have requested access to the records of ‘discussions’ between various GISS employees about how the data was collected, processed and analyzed.  It would seem that they requested sort of similar-type material like was leaked, except from GISS instead of CRU.  And, it appears that GISS has not released it, either.

And, though I am no lawyer and people ought to draw their own conclusions, but it does seem to me that CEI is citing the information from the ‘leaked files’ that this ‘cabal of scientists’ was willing to deleted information requested under FoIA (which might constitute a pattern of behaviour among this group of scientists) to put NASA’s GISS on notice that if they do not release the requested information (as the law demands they do), they will indeed face a lawsuit.

As they say, we do live in interesting times…

Posted in debate, politics, science, society. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

IPCC scientists, hacked emails and largescale fraud

November 23, 2009 — xanthippa

By now, most people are aware that the University East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has had their database hacked and tons of documents –  including emails between scientists (if one can use that term, in light of the ‘now confirmed’ information revealed therein) which contain some extremely incriminating evidence of scientific fraud, collusion to defraud the public and systematic efforts to subvert the scientific ‘peer review’ process and turn it from an objective assessment into partisan shill.

To me, the last one is the most serious.  But, first I have to ask:  how come this has not been the leading story in every newspaper and newsprogram everywhere?

Most people have only had a chance to come across a few apologetic articles, like this one in the New York Times, which present tiny snippets of the information unearthed (I condemn the means – let’s get that straight from the beginning – but now that the info is out there, we must assess it), without reasonable context, in order to explain it away as ‘harmless’ and thus diffuse any resulting criticism.  SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!

I first came across this at The Reference Frame, and I recommend it for the following reasons:  Mr. ReferenceFrame himself taught Physics at MIT.  Dr. Lubos Motl is a respected Physicist in his own right, with ties and connections with scientists all over the globe.  These, he put to good use himself, verifying whether or not the data the hackers leaked is genuine or not and whether what it reveals can be trusted.  As a Physicist, he is much more thorough in this than I would trust most journalists to be, he has the knowledge to evaluate ‘things’, and, let’s face it, as ‘one of them’, most scientists will be more comfortable and open discussing things with him.  (The corollary, of course, is that many ‘bad’ scientists will feel more threatened by him because he’s trained to detect any scientific BS!)

Plus, he is updating his post to include the latest bits…

AND, he has posted a comprehensive list of sites which are analyzing/discussing this. Again, I much recommend it… overall, I find his post to be a most useful frame of reference!

In case the absence of the mass media coverage on this topic has left you wondering what it is I am jabbering on about, here is the tip of the proverbial (and growing, not melting) iceberg:

If you would like to check through all the ‘leaked documents’, you can download them from Junk Science, or Friends of Science.  Or, look through the database Lubo Motl provides  on The Reference Frame:  it is excellent.  There are many well written blogs (as opposed to news stories(!)) that give the ‘scoop’ on this!

What the emails appear to have revealed:

  • data had been altered to ‘hide cooling’
  • data had been forged to demonstrate a ‘warming trend’
  • Scientists lamented that their data did not demonstrate the conclusions they wanted:  this is nothing new.  What is new is that they sought advice from each other how to fiddle the data in order to hide what it shows and instead conform to their desired conclusion
  • Scientists threatened to destroy data rather than permit other scientists examine the un-altered dataset on which their study is based (this is an essential part of the peer review process – without examining the raw data, another scientist cannot possibly assess if it had been processed ‘correctly’:  it is unthinkable that a proper peer review could possibly be done without examining the raw data
  • Scientists knowingly passed only  the data that supported ‘Global Warming’ on to the IPCC panel for evaluation, suppressing existing data that opposed it.
  • Scientists intentionally manipulated ‘impartial’ scientists performing peer review on studies which had findings which did not support AGW/ACC point of view, tricking them into rejecting non-AGW/ACC supporting studies…

All this is bad.  Very bad.  BUT – and this is, in my never-humble-opinion, is something so vile and unforgivable, I am having trouble wrapping my brain around it:  THEY COLLUDED TO SUBVERT THE SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEW PROCESS!!!

Why is subverting the peer review process the thing that upsets me so much?

Because if people do ‘bad science’ – the peers reviewing it will, eventually, catch it and expose it.

Because if people are committing scientific fraud – the peers reviewing it will, eventually, catch it and expose it, and ruin the reputation of the scientist committing it.

Because if there is a group of scientists conspiring to defraud everyone – the peers reviewing it may take a while to catch on, but, eventually, they will catch it, expose it and make sure these conspirators never get near any science again!

The scientific peer review process relies on the honesty and integrity of scientists.  It is nothing more – and nothing less – than, when one writes up one’s experiment/scientific study, one submits BOTH the write-up AND all the supporting data and materials to other scientists who have expertise in this field.  These other scientists read the experiment’s/study’s hypothesis, then they examine the methodology used, data (the actual, physical data that was collected,  the method/means it was collected by, the ‘controls’ that were placed to limit other possible factors that might affect the data and so on, the methodologies and techniques used to analyze the data, and so on) and then they analyze whether or not the data, collected in the way it was, analyzed as it was, supports the hypothesis as proposed.

It is not an easy process – and it relies heavily on the integrity of the ‘peers’ doing the ‘review’!

That is why it is so highly valued!

There is no fame or fortune in it, yet it is hard (and necessary) work!  That is why most scientists take ‘peer review’ at face value!

By showing that this very process which is supposed to test (and thus assure) the integrity of scientific findings can be subverted, and subverted so easily, these people have ended the ‘age of innocence’ among the scientific community!

To sum it up – they have falsified science (and manipulated policymakers) in order to increase their own funding, they have subverted (and thus for ever destroyed the credibility of) the scientific peer review process and utterly destroyed the credibility of science and scientists!

I wish I could think of names vile enough to call them – but, there are none!  Their names will go down in history and become the worst possible insults a person can be called!

 

Posted in debate, politics, science, society. Tags: , , , , . 8 Comments »

‘Cap and Trade’ – a bedtime story (revised)

October 28, 2009 — xanthippa

Hat tip: The Reference Frame

P.S.  The original outrageous ad can be found here.

Posted in opression, politics, science, society. Tags: , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

To work, vaccines have to make you sick. Really.

October 20, 2009 — xanthippa

Recently, I found out that a lot of people are not aware that unless a vaccine actually made you sick, it did not work!

This is due to great sloppiness:  among the media, who report on ‘medical stuff’ without bothering to inform themselves on even the bare basics of the topic they are ‘reporting on’, among the educators (including Medical-school level), many of whom do not bother to actually understand the very things they are supposed to teach (or pretend not to, because of funding), and especially among the practicing medical professionals, who seem to think we are all so stupid that it is necessary for them to manipulate the information they permit us to have, so that we’ll make ‘the right choice’!

This is right out of several ‘pages’ of my ‘pet obsessive peeves’ book:  the ‘misrepresentation of science’ book, ‘bad/ignorant reporting’ book, ‘dumbed down education’ book, ‘state fascism’ – and a few more.  And, it makes me very, very angry.  Sorry if I am ranting too much….  So, what is the cause of my rant?

Recently, many Western news outlets (MSM, of course) carried the story that giving babies Tylenol (or, indeed, any other fever-reducing/anti-inflammatory medication) right before/after they get a vaccine greatly reduces the vaccine’s effectiveness.

OF COURSE!!!  THAT IS THEIR FUNCTION!!!

Why in the world would medical professionals – the very people who ‘cracked’ this amazing and life-saving process called ‘vaccination’ – need a study on something as obvious as this?  If you understand the process of how vaccines work, it is clear that taking analgesics and anti-infammatories will necessarily interfere with the very way vaccines work!

Doctors don’t know this?!?!?  D-ughh!!!

At this point, I am shaking my head and wondering where to start….

Let me walk you through the steps in process through which vaccines are supposed to work:

1. ‘Controlled Infection’

A dead or weakened version of the virus (or viruses, in case of vaccines which protect against multiple pathogens) is introduced into the body of a healthy person.  This is usually done by directly injecting the vaccine into the body or by applying them to the mucuous membranes and allowing them to permeate through there.

2. Immune system response

The immune system finds the ‘intruders’ and begins to fight them.  The methods our immune system employs in this include fever (most viruses do not reproduce effectively at higher temperatures – hence, fever is a potent weapon our immune system uses), hot-cold spells/chills (most viruses cannot handle sudden temperature changes, which is why our immune system uses this weapon to kill them…actually, this is also how the whole sauna/steam-room thing works, if performed properly:  people go get hot, then cool off extremely suddenly by rolling in snow or swimming in freezing water – and repeat this process 3x or more times within one hour: most germs will not survive these sudden temperature changes), inflammation (among other reactions, mucuous membranes try to trap germs, so this form of immune system defense may involve significant mucus generation), and so on.  In other words, the immune system will evoke all the symptoms we associate with ‘being sick’ in order to ‘learn’ this ‘germ’.

3. ‘Creating a memory’

The immune system, during this fight, ‘takes notes’, so to speak.  It creates an ‘entry’ in its ‘dangerous thingies memory bank’, where it records everything it has learned about each germ:  how to identify it (by the pattern of proteins on its ‘skin’) and how best to fight it (this may include specific antibodies the immune system ‘learned’ to produce, and the ‘systemic symptoms’ like fever, which are unpleasant but kill the germ way faster than they kill us, and so on).

4.  Future protection

A healthy immune system will keep this ‘record’ for many years, sometimes up to three decades:  the more dangerous the immune system judges the germ to be, the ‘deeper’ the ‘entry’ and the longer it will ‘remember it’ and recognize the germ, should it ever infect the body again.  This is important:  the germs which attack us will reproduce inside our body at an exponential rate.  If the immune system ‘recognizes’ the germ, it does not have to spend valuable time (sometimes days) trying to figure out how to fight it – time the germs would use to increase their number and, perhaps, overwhelm the immune system.  Instead, it can compare the ‘germ’ to its ‘database’, retrieve the information about what destroys ‘this germ’ most effectively and start fighting it very shortly after  the germ first enters the body.  This means the germ does not have time to produce millions of copies of itself before the immune system effectively destroys it – and the person is protected from a serious infection.

5.  The Trick!

Because the pathogen which was introduced through the vaccine was weakened or killed, it is not capable of reproducing (or, reproducing effectively) in the host (you).  That means that it cannot overcome your immune system while the immune system is trying to figure out how to fight it.

To sum it up:

The pathogens in the vaccine must be strong enough to make our immune systems ‘take them seriously’ and fight them (and thus ‘learn’ how to fight the full-strength germ, if it ever infects that person), but harmless enough so that they cannot overcome the immune system while it is trying to figure out what works against this germ.

This means that a vaccine which does not make your immune system go into high gear (make you ‘sick’) has not given you any protection!

So, if you get a flu shot – and you do not get ‘mild flu-like symptoms’ – the vaccine did not work!

And, if you take medication which suppresses fever, and so on, you will be directly interfering with the immune system’s ‘learning process’.  As in, the immune system will mistake the reaction to the pill for the reaction to the last thing it did to try to fight that germ!

Is it any surprise, then, that it does not ‘learn’ how to fight this pathogen effectively?

Doctors are said to still be taking the Hippocratic Oath:  ‘Do no harm’.  In a person with a healthy immune system, a vaccine will produce the symptoms of the harmful illness it is to prevent, but prevent the ‘harm’ that an actual full-strength infection would cause.

Vaccination is an important weapon in fighting disease.

But, like everything else, it can do more damage than good if it is not used properly.  If it is misrepresented and misunderstood, then people may sabotage the very process the vaccine is inducing, without knowing it.  Then, thinking they are protected, they will not act as cautiously as they might otherwise…

And that, in my never-humble-opinion, is a bad thing.

Posted in education, politics, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Perhaps Bill Gates is not evil…

July 16, 2009 — xanthippa

OK – we all know the guy’s image.

We all also know he’s thrown a lot of money around to change this image….with very little success.

But, with this one, he just might convince me!

Bill Gates is releasing all seven Messenger Lectures that Richard Feynman gave at Cornell in 1964.  With subtitles!!!  (And, let’s admit it – Richard Feynman’s accent was not all that easy to understand.  So, subtitles are a really, really good thing.)

Unless, of course, this is some trick to get us all to download some really invasive software in order to watch them:  ‘the Feynman lure’ would be iresistable to any mortal!

h/t:  The Reference Frame

Posted in society, technology. Tags: . 1 Comment »

How vaccination works

April 30, 2009 — xanthippa

One of the ways our society relies on to combat viral diseases is through vaccination.  But, how does that work?

First, let’s look at viruses:

http://medicineworld.org/images/blogs/11-2006/influenza-flu-virus-230.jpg

Diagram of an influenza virus from MedicineWorld.org

There are several important things to notice:

  • The coiled things on the inside, which look like springs or slinkies, are the genetic material of the virus.  Viruses only contain half the genetic material that a ‘normal’ living cell needs, so they cannot make more (reproduce) unless they invade another cell and hijack its reproductive system.
  • The wall of the virus (lipid envelope) is made up of two layers of lipid molecules.  This wall is an incredibly good barrier, preventing material from going through it.
  • The  yellow spikes and other bits that stick outside the wall are actually proteins which are embedded in the wall of the virus.  Because the double lipid wall is such a good barrier, these proteins are the ‘channels’ through which things can move across the wall.  All cells (not just viruses) have them:  they can move water and nutrients (and waste materials) through the bi-lipid cell wall, allowing a cell to ‘eat’, ‘breathe’ and communicate.

These proteins that ‘stick outside the wall’ are very important for another reason:  each type of virus (or other infecting cell) has a slightly different types of proteins sticking out, and they are arranged in slightly different ways.  Therefore, the ‘pattern’ and ‘shape’ of these proteins has become the easiest way to identify the virus.  (Scientists can also analyze the genetic structure of a virus, but this is not something our immune system can do!  So, our bodies recognize viruses by the ‘fingerprint’ of the proteins on their surface.)

An actual electron-microscope view of a virus looks like this:

http://blog.silive.com/health/2008/10/avian-flu-virus.jpg

Image on an avian influenza virus from Health&Fitness

As you can see, the proteins stick out on the outside of the wall of the virus, and they form a very specific pattern.  This is very important, because it is precisely by the specific proteins and the pattern they form that our immune system recognizes viruses (and other ‘pathogens‘, which cause infection).

Looking at the human immune system quickly will not be so easy, because it is much more complex than a simple virus is.  Let me give it a try…

When our body is infected by an ‘antigen‘ ( a pathogen which will cause our immune system to react and generate antibodies – as opposed to a poison, etc.), our immune system springs into action.  It follows a very specific chain of steps:

  • ‘General defense’:  the ‘generic’ cells which kill all kinds of ‘invaders’ are released by the immune system in hope of containing the infection within hours, before it can spread too far thoroughout one’s body.
  • If this does not work, the next line of defense begins:  this is when the body begins to defend itself against a ‘specific antigen’.
    • the body attempts to identify the infection by looking at the ‘fingerprint’ pattern of proteins on its skin/surface/cell membrane by comparing the current infection against its ‘memory database’ of past infections the body has successfully defeated
      • if it has no record of past infection that looks ‘like’ this one, it begins to ‘figure out’ the best way to fight it
        • once it figures out the best ‘antibody’ to produce, which would be most effective in fighting this specific infection, it will begin to produce it…but, figuring it out is a process of trial-and-error, and can take quite a while
      • if it finds a ‘match’ in its ‘memory database’ between the ‘fingerprint’ of the surface proteins – types and pattern – of this infection, it begins to produce the same antibodies which worked against it the last time
    • the body produces the antibodies which fight against this specific infection:  that is, it produces the very antibodies that it produced the last time it saw this pattern, and got better as a result
    • if these antibodies are strong enough to kill the infection faster than it can reproduce AND if the infection has not reached a critical level before the body can produce this antibody in sufficient amounts to conquer it, the person will survive the illness which is the result of the infection

So, how does vaccination fit the picture?

Vaccines are made up of either weakened viruses (viruses and bacteria are the most common forms of infection, and we have antibiotics to fight bacteria (viruses are too small/primitive to be killed by antibiotics)) or viruses that are dead and ‘ground up’.

When the the body ‘receives’ the vaccine, it perceives it as any other infection.  The vaccines are engineered to provoke the body to start manufacturing antibodies and the cells which recognize the’fingerprint pattern’ of the ‘antigen’ (weakened virus, or bits of the virus wall with the ‘fingerprint pattern’ of proteins on it which the body uses to recognize an infection).  In other words, the weak virus or bits of the wall of that virus will be fought – and catalogued for future use.

The theory is that if a virus (or another antigen) enters the body in the future, and the body will recognize it and produce antibodies which ‘recognize’ it and fight it.

By ‘recognizing’ the invader, the body can begin to produce the antibodies very quickly.  While some infections take a long time to overwhelm the body, other ones – the ones called ‘virulent‘ – can make one ill very, very quickly… faster than the body can find an antibody that would work!  (During the more virulent outbreaks of ‘black death‘, it was said that people could go to sleep feeling perfectly healthy, but die of the disease before the morning…)  This speed in the body’s ability to defend itself against an invading infection can mean the difference between life and death…or, at least, between a speedy recovery and an unpleasant illness.

Therefore, the philosophy behind vaccination is to introduce a non-lethat (not dangerous) form of a really bad pathogen to a body in order to get its immune system to figure out (without the danger of being ovewhelmed by the infecting disease) how to fight that specific germ, so that the body can store this information in its ‘pathogen database’.  Then, if it ever encounters the ‘full-strength’ germ, it will be able to ‘remember’ how to fight quickly – not giving the invading infection the time to become strong by spending valuable time trying to figure out how to fight it!

This is a beautiful theory!

And, like all such theories, it does actually work in many, many cases!  Unless a person has an atypical, stressed or diseased immune system, vaccination will be very effective in providing them with protection against a potential future infection.

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Posted in education, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

What is ‘Cultural Marxism’?

March 31, 2009 — xanthippa

One of the best things about life is that as long as we are breathing, we can continue to learn!

One of the best things about blogging is that the comments I receive are often insightful, well thought out and I can learn from them.  Usually, these just point out the ‘holes’ in my education/knowledge base:  something I appreciate because it points me in the direction of things I need to learn.

Yet, every now and then, there are comments which are an education in themselves!  Below is an excerpt (!) from one such comment:  I thought it so important and informative that I wanted to share it with everyone.  And, having received permission from the author, here is the answer to my question ‘What is ‘Cultural Marxism’?’:

CodeSlinger says:

Cultural Marxism is not Marxism-Leninism (which we usually just call Communism).

Marxism-Leninism is a system of political economics, which results from applying the so-called Marxist dialectic, developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in a process called critical analysis, which uses it to deconstruct Western democracy and capitalism, and to rewrite history in terms of economic class struggle (and we all saw how that turned out).

In the 1920’s, Antonio Gramsci and György Lukács adapted the methods of the Marxist dialectic and critical analysis to the cultural sphere and applied it to the task of undermining Western science, philosophy, religion, art, education, and so on. The result is called the quiet revolution, the revolution from within, the revolution that cannot be resisted by force. This is cultural Marxism.

Now, that was quite bad enough, but then along came a group of sociologists and psychologists — chief among whom being Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Jürgen Habermas — and they combined the Marxist dialectic with Freudian psychology to produce an exceptionally corrosive concoction called Critical Theory, which they use to deconstruct Western culture and values, and to rewrite history in terms of sexual and racial power struggles (and we can all see how that is turning out).

Collectively, these guys are called the Frankfurt School, because they originally got together under Horkheimer at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), which was domiciled in a little brick building belonging to the University of Frankfurt am Main in the early 1930’s. They all published their work in the Journal for Social Research (Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung), edited by none other than Horkheimer himself.

Then Hitler consolidated his control of Nazi Germany, so, seeing as they were all Jewish, they fled to the USA, more or less as a group, in 1934. In America, they affiliated themselves with Columbia and Princeton Universities. The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was renamed Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, and they really got down to business.

Horkheimer’s key idea was that Critical Theory could be used actively, to change society, in contrast to the traditionally passive role of sociology, which had been merely to understand society. These guys were not your typical academics, whose main interest is the pursuit of knowledge. On the contrary, these guys pursued an agenda: they wanted to find out why the Marxist revolution had failed in the West, and they wanted to remedy that situation. To that end, the group’s research addressed what to attack, how to structure the attack, how to deliver the attack, and how to measure the results of the attack.

Thus, for example, Adorno joined up with Paul Lazarsfeld, founder of the Bureau for Applied Social Research at Columbia, and began studying the effect of mass media on the population, and how to measure it. Starting in 1937, they collaborated on the Radio Project (bankrolled by the Rockefeller Foundation) which, among other things, produced the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast so they could measure its effects, and the Little Annie Project, which pioneered methods that quickly evolved into the Nielsen Ratings and the Gallup Polls.

Another example is the concept of intersubjective rationality, developed by Habermas, which replaces the individual process of reaching a conclusion based on the objective criterion that it follows from valid reasoning and known facts, on the one hand, with the social process of establishing a consensus supported by the subjective criterion that the group feels good about it, on the other hand. In today’s schools, those who do the former are maligned for being judgmental and demanding, while those who do the latter are praised for being good team players.

But, rather than go into pages and pages of detail right here and now, I’ll just list the titles of some of the major works of the Frankfurt School. Given the context, this combination of titles will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck:

Authority and the Family, Horkheimer, 1936
Escape from Freedom&amp, Fromm, 1941
Sex and Character, Fromm, 1943
The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno et al., 1950
Eros and Civilization, Marcuse, 1955
Repressive Tolerance, Marcuse, 1965
Communication and the Evolution of Society, Habermas, 1976

These are just a few of the core works; some are papers, some are books. The total volume of work by these guys, and their followers, is huge. The combined result, as I outlined in my very first post on this blog*, is something like the following:

It includes not only censorship of various kinds, but also the erosion of privacy, the debasement of the schools and the neutralization of the church. It includes the destruction of the family by setting wives against husbands and children against parents. It includes the disarmament of the public, the invalidation of self-defence and the incitement of fear. It includes the promulgation of the culture of victimhood, the promotion of immaturity and the reduction of society to a mob of narcissistic adult children. It includes the dogmatization of the universities. It includes the concentration of wealth, the concentration of ownership of corporations and the concentration of control of the media.

In sum, your description of all this as a descent into a new dark age** is exactly correct. And since you put it in those terms, I highly recommend an article by Michael J. Minnicino, called The New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness. It speaks your language, and it will make the big picture very much clearer! Another good place to start is The Origins of Political Correctness, which is a transcript of a talk given by Bill Lind at the Accuracy in Academia Conference in 2000.

Update: The reference list above has been updated to also include the following: Escape from Freedom, Fromm, 1941

Xanthippa’s  footnotes:

*  ‘first post on this blog’= ‘first comment’… on my post  ‘Limiting our freedoms – making sense of the ‘big picture’‘

** reference to my post:  ‘Fight the ‘Forces of Darkness’!‘

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Posted in education, freedoms, language, opression, philosophy, politics, religion, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 13 Comments »

Fight the ‘Forces of Darkness’!

March 27, 2009 — xanthippa

Do you remember reading about ‘The Dark Ages’?

They were called ‘Dark’ for several reasons.

Most of us are familiar with the first one:  because the state of learning had disintegrated so much that most of the people in Europe were plunged back to illiteracy, we have very few written historical records from this time period.  Thus, this era is sunk in ‘darkness’ – as in, ‘absence of knowledge’.

But, there is another reason:  because civilization had declined, most of the people had to eek out a meager existence off the land.  Therefore, they tended to live in small rural settlements, get up with sunrise and go to bed with sunset.  Gone were the parties which lit up the night with joy and revelry! No  longer were people wealthy enough to light up the night – nor would they have much reason to…

Much of Europe had been plunged into a physical, as well as philosophical darkness!

If you are not aware, there is a widespread campaign to plunge the Earth into darkness!

This coming Saturday evening (March 28th, 2009), the new forces of darkness have been guilting people into participating in a creepy, cultish ritual pretentiously called ‘Earth Hour’.

Are you familiar with the methods cults use to ‘break in’ new recruits?  How their brainwashing techniques work?

Here are some of the highlights:

  1. Find a victim: the more intelligent and caring, the better.  Ones who think they are immune to brainwashing make the best targets.
  2. Find or create a vulnerability.  Guilt is an excellent one.
  3. Offer them a solution for salvation (physical or spiritual or both).
  4. Feed them THE answer:  a simple solution, repeated over and over and over.
  5. Do not allow any questioning of the ‘solution’ (dogma).  Those who question it will be shut up or attacked/punished.
  6. Introduce rituals which reinforce the dogma and build bonds of the victim to the cult at large.
  7. Reinforce that adherence to the dogma and the rituals will bring salvation.

Now, please, apply this to the AGW alarmists:

  1. Most of us don’t think we – especially the society as a whole – could possibly be vulnerable
  2. We have THE highest standard of living, ever.  Christianity has filled us with guilt for the very act of living.  It is very, very easy to take these seeds of guilt and manipulate them:  the AGW forces of darkness are not the first, nor the last to exploit this wound on our collective soul.
  3. Salvation:  cut down Carbon Dioxide!  YES!  That is the only way to wash away our guilt for having a nice life!
  4. Humans caused Global Warming through our evil over-consumption!  We must make sacrifices, it will be painful, but we must atone for our sins of living well by destroying the little bits of our economy we still have left and pay, pay, pay!
  5. From David Suzuki (Canada’s AGW grand priest) calling for anyone who questions the AGW dogma to be jailed to hundreds of actual scientists now beginning to speak up (many from the relative freedom of retirement) and describing how their careers and even jobs would have been threatened had they dared speak the truth which was opposed to the dogma… this one is clearly fulfilled!
  6. Start recycling programmes.  Get people to turn out lights.  Simple games, repeatable rituals.  Easy as 3.14….
  7. Introduce ‘Earth Hour’ – and get schools to force kids to push it on their parents.  Those who dissent – well, we all know the story of little Pavlik Morozov…  (OK, so it is not so extreme here now, but… the pressure my 10-year-old has experienced in school to explain to his family why we should all conform to this is truly incredible:  from essays on how good it is, to reports on what their family is doing to ‘pull its weight’ are not just present in his class (actually, his teacher is really great), they are part of a large campaign which is greater than just one school, or one school-board:  with colourful pamphlets which feature ‘friendly characters’ and quote ‘undisputed science’…. it’s enough to make one want to home-school!

If you think I am exaggerating, if you prefer to believe the words of Al Gore, then, here are some of his own words from way back in 1993 (sic):

“Science will not intrude on public policy!”

Yes, the Guru himself knew, as far back as 1993, that science did not support his AGW policy.  But, such minor details were not allowed to interfere with his bid for money and power!  Of course, Gore profits from ‘carbon credit’ trading, having started one of the first such companies….  And, as I write this, more and more evidence is coming out that Obama is also in on the racket.

But, I got sidetracked… please, forgive me.

The beauty of this particular cult is that it reduces the populace’s access to the very things which enable it.  I should explain…

With the advent of the internet – and the ease of access to it – people have found new ways to educate themselves, AND new ways of holding their elected officials accountable.  This threatens a lot of people!!!

People can now communicate, and educate themselves, in an active way – instead of being passive receptacles into which ‘information’ in the form of ‘culture’ is deposited.  Controlling these channels of ‘culture-production’ controlled the evolution of the social culture.  The loss of this control which accompanied the rise of the internet is being addressed now, with the global war against the open internet.

On the governance front – things are no better.  Originally the privelage of very few, now, even ‘regular citizens’ could access the governance structures, the mandarins administeing them and the elected officials who are supposed to control them.  All it takes now is an email (with the ‘electronic fingerprint’ this leaves behind)!

This ‘electronic accountability’ has fundamentally altered our governance structures.  (I’ve spent about a decade evaluating this phenomenon, so I could go on and on about it for days… and, being an Aspie, I don’t know how much I ought to delve into it without boring my audience to death…so, I will simply pass on.  Yet, if you have questions, please, let me know and I will answer them in the comments!  Just, please, specify the level of detail you’d like on this….or it WILL go on and on and on!!!)

One of the most insightful writers ever was Frank Herbert, who wrote the ‘Dune’ series (if you are going to watch it, instead or read it, then watch the 3-part series – not the movie). The man was brilliant.  He was not only a highly skilled writer, he was also extremely insightful in how archetypes affect us – and how they can be used…  How religions arise, evolve, are used – the man was brilliant!

In his book (a bit into the series), ‘God Emperor of Dune’ (whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry missed the point of the book – nay, the series), the previously technologically advanced society of his dystopia (or, is it eutopia – he makes them hard to distinguish) has been reduced to ‘walking’.  High technology is still available, just that much of it has been outlawed and is permitted to be possessed only by ‘the state’ (meaning the Emperor and his minions).

The most wise Emperor, Leto II, says (and, I am paraphrasing, as if I tried to look up the quote, I would end up reading the book again and again, and would not post for weeks…):

“A population that walks is easier to control!”

And, make no mistake:  the symbolic, ritualistic plunging of the Earth into darkness for just one hour, every last Saturday evening in March, is very much and affirmation of the policy of the forces of darkness who fully understand the implications of Emperor Leto’s statement.  It is the first step in plunging the Earth into a much more permanent darkness:  physical as well as philosophical and scientific one, the better to control us all!

Don’t let them.

PLEASE!!!

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Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, religion, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

‘Ham radio’ internet

March 12, 2009 — xanthippa

OK, this is getting very, very scary.

A while ago, I wrote about a proposed idea to alter the way Canadians access the internet:  instead of ‘connecting’ to the ‘Great Wide Web’ and navigating it freely, this ‘model’ would more closely resemble the way Cable companies allow customers to access various TV channels.  The internet denier provider would ‘bundle’ the most ‘desirable’ websites, just like TV channels are ‘bundled’ by Cable providers.  Accessing anything outside of these bundles would be either very, very expensive – or not available at all.

Couple this with the calls by Barbara Hall of the Ontario ‘Commission for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice’ Human Rights Commission to shackle ALL journalists and bloggers with a ‘Canadian Broadcast Standards Council’– like body which would censor ALL the written (virtual or printed) words in Canada!  Not a pretty picture!!!

Yet, my beloved Canada is  not the only place under siege!

Now, the UK is proposing EXACTLY the same scheme!!!

This would mean that unless a website or blog was ‘influential enough’ to muscle its way onto the ‘approved’ list for a particular ‘bundle’ of websites ‘offered’ by an ISP, it would be 100% invisible and unaccessible to the UK internet subscribers!

Yes, this is even more limiting than the Canadian proposal, which sought to make ‘non-approved’ sites economically unavailable.  This model would make them ‘virtually non-existent’!!!

And, let’s not forget UK’s recently adopted policy of allowing the police to routinely hack into private people’s internet accounts without a warrant….

And, that is barely the tip of the proverbial ice berg!!!

Let’s look at the laws proposed for New Zeland:  at the end of March (miracle notwithstanding), ALL internet service providers will be legally forced to cease to provide any and all internet access to any IP address which has been ACCUSED of a copyright violation!

No, you did not misread this.  The mere ACCUSSATION by the movie/music industry that a person MIGHT be in violation of a copyright held by them (third party accussations would be ‘acceptable’) will LEGALLY BIND the ISP to STOP providing any and all internet access to that IP address!

All this is made ‘possible’ by Section 92A of the Copyright Act of New Zealand.  It was supposed to come into force at the end of February, but, due to the online petition opposing it, the NZ parliamentarians delayed the implementation for one month.

And what of Australia?

THEY have passed laws giving up any and all internet privacy rights – and the access to the internet – years ago.  These laws were passed in the name of ‘protecting children’ from the evils of the internet:  pornography and pedophelia.  Right…  As a parent, I take active part in the raising of my kids:  and I do NOT need ANYBODY ELSE to monitor my kids’ online activities!  And, I really, really resent the implication that I am (or, rather, the Australian parents are) so irresponsible or incompetent that the state has to step in and raise my kids for me!!!  This is insulting in the extreme!

Of course, most of the people in Australia had been lulled into a false sense of security because these laws had not actually been applied – to the full letter of the law – for quite a while.  So, if people NOW started to protest these laws – even though these had been in place for years – they would look silly….  Yet, it is only now that the Australian government has announced that they plan to enforce these laws to the EXTREME LETTER of the law!

This is a beautiful trick.  Governments draft a law – like the Australian government did with this law – to ostensibly ‘protect our children’.  Nobody (especially politicians) wants to look like they want to ‘enable pedophiles’ – so these types of laws often get passed quickly, with little dissent and little  close examination.

Yet, as I am fond of pointing out, if there is an ‘extreme’ way to interpret a law – especially if this extreme gives some decisionmakers the power over the populace – it WILL (eventually) be applied to such an extreme!!!

Of course, now we also have the UN attempting to FORCE its member states to make its ‘Blasphemy Resolution’ legally binding within their jurisdiction.

PLEASE – PUT ALL THIS TOGETHER!!!

Soon, we may loose the internet – in the form where we know it now!

Which is why I am putting out a challenge to each and every one of you:  let’s find a non-IP-dependant alternative!!!

Just like ‘ham radios’ operate without a central service provider, but rather form a wireless peer-to-peer network, so WE need to find a similar way to build an alternate internet network.

OK, so the’ham radio’ bandwidth is very, very narrow, and thus subject to jamming and environmental disruptions and all kinds of other problems.  Yet, it provides a useful model for us to emulate.

We need some of you, brilliant young scientists and hackers, to think long and hard – and find a working solution.

Yes, there was the idea of consumers actually owning their own internet connection….yet, under the current political climate, I doubt this will ever come to be – even if the technology is perfected and affordable.

So, please, get started on developing this new idea – no-provider, no-censor, no-control new-fangled version of the internet!  Because what we have now is about to die…and, without a ‘new generation’, this whole past 30-year period will be consigned to be no more than a note in dusty, locked-up and guarded (lest people read them) history books!!!

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Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , . 10 Comments »

Mischief or malice: laser attacks on airplanes

March 5, 2009 — xanthippa

Lasers are awesome!

While we are all familiar with red laser pointers, there is a new generation of easily available, green lasers.  Their beam penetrates much farther and they are much brighter than the tired old red ones.

For example, even this little green laser pointer has a range of over two and a half kilometers (about 2 miles).

And, this ad for a green laser claims it is 60x brighter than the ‘old’ red laser pointers.

And that does not even take into account the fact that the human eye is much more sensitive to light in the blue-green wavelengths than to light in the red end of the spectrum.

All of this, put together, should not be a bad thing,  ‘should’ being the operative word here….

It turns out that some people – for whatever reasons – are using good things for bad purposes.  Surprised?

With the easy availability of long-range, powerful green lasers, some people are shining them into the cockpits of airplanes trying to land at airports.

If this is done by silly people as a prank, it’s not funny.  Airplanes are not LOL cats!

Yet, this is an ‘easy’ form of sabotaging airplanes for any group of people who deem themselves above the laws of our society and callous enough to take human lives to further their ends.  Especially in heavily concentrated urban areas – like ones where many airports are located in – the potential for destruction is enormous.

Which begs the question:  what are we going to do about this?

And, please, don’t say ‘ban the lasers’ – banning things is just not a solution to anything.  It is a band-aid at best, because it ignores the underlying problem.  We have got to stop kidding ourselves that addressing the symptoms of a problem, without solving the underlying problem, will fix ‘stuff’.

Than always makes things worse in the long run.

Posted in society, technology. Tags: , , . 2 Comments »
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