August 2007

I recall that pandemics were discussed amongst our leaders at the SPP summit in Montebello.

NORTHCOM is already taking initiative. LINK

What in the sweet fack is up with this one. This just reeks for some reason. It’s either a huge hoax or something worth your attention.

http://wonkette.com

Here’s a fun question for Tony Snow: Why might the president and his family need a 98.840-acre ranch in Paraguay protected by a semi-secret U.S. military base manned by American troops who have been exempted from war-crimes prosecution by the Paraguyan government?

Interestingly, as the article mentions, Bush will be living right beside Reverend Moon, as Jeff Wells has blogged before.

The Governor of Alto Paraguay, Erasmo Rodríguez Acosta has admitted to hearing that George Bush Sr. owns land in the Chaco region of Paraguay, in Paso de Patria. Acosta says that rumor has it that Bush owns near to 70 thousand hectares (173,000 acres) as part of an ecological reserve and/or ranch. However, the governor said he had no documents to prove the rumor. Acosta said that some stories credited the land to the Fundación Patria, which Bush would be a member of.

Chaco, Paraguay is the place to be!

wiki

I thought this was a pretty decent read. No wonder people thing I work for CSIS. I’m sure they have some sort of file on me. I always get the twice-over during air travel.

The craft of CIA analysis was designed to be an all-source operation, meaning that we analysts were responsible – and held accountable – for assimilating information from all sources and coming to judgments on what it all meant. We used information of all kinds, from the most sophisticated technical collection platforms to spies to open media.

It helps to have training from past masters of media analysis, which began in a structured way in targeting Japanese and German media in the 1940s. But, truth be told, everyone with a high-school education can do it. It is not rocket science.

http://www.antiwar.com

I don’t suppose many people caught this little highlight, from Statistics Canada, regarding interprovincial migration to and from Alberta:

The estimates show a slowdown in interprovincial migration for Alberta, a trend that started in the last quarter of 2006. The province, whose population has been booming since the second half of 2004, had a net inflow of +7,400 people in the first quarter of 2007, less than half the net in-migration of +15,600 people observed between January and March 2006.

Saskatchewan’s population rose 0.23% as it continued to receive people from Alberta. Saskatchewan recorded its highest first-quarter interprovincial migration net gains since 1976.

You read it right - interprovincial migration, during the first quarter of this year, was just half of what it was one year ago. That’s definitely going to weaken demand for housing.

Why is this happening? People are leaving Alberta as they are priced out of the housing market. I know quite a few people who are cashing out and moving to Saskatchewan and B.C..

You should see the neighbourhood of Grandin - there are for sale signs everywhere.

One thing I appreciate about the Globe & Mail, as opposed to, say, CanWest media, is the G&M’s willingness to at least cover subjects such as the Bilderberg meetings, along with the subject of the SPP, and other so-called conspiracies, particularly in today’s online edition, which forms the subject of today’s blog post.

You can read the article HERE.

In today’s article, Ivor Tossell takes on Zeitgeist and Loose Change, two internet videos making the rounds. Someone has offered commentary on Tossell’s piece, which is more of a summary of the two videos than a thorough de-bunking of conspiracist thinking.

Personally, I am not an apologist for 9-11 conspiracies, but I am definitely an advocate of thinking critically about the ‘official’ 9-11 storyline, as laid out by our governments. That bias stems from my inherent distrust of governments and corporate elites, for I am forever haunted by two men, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Eric Hoffer. I mean, everyone knows that governments never lie to their people, right?

Tossell advances appeal to authority in his article, citing the Popular Mechanics de-bunking of 9-11 myths:

The funny thing about this stuff is that it’s all been thoroughly debunked for years. Everyone from Scientific American to Popular Mechanics have produced reports puncturing the central claims of the 9/11 theory, and when you look gullible next to Popular Mechanics, you know you’re in trouble.

This is an appeal to authority, and for the average Joe who’s unwilling to dig deeper, an explanation from Popular Mechanics often suffices to satiate one’s appetite for knowledge of 9-11. Popular Mechanics says A, therefore A must be true. Therefore, whenever I yell “September 11!” you yell out “Popular Mechanics!”.

Yes, in fact, Popular Mechanics may have a true explanation; but does that mean it is infallible, and can therefore be exempted from criticism? This tactic was used along a different vein by Penn & Teller, who likened dissent from the official 9-11 conspiracy theory, as posited by the United States Government, to a lack of patriotism, or worse, a violation of the graves of the many who died in the Twin Towers.

Some critics have argued that Popular Mechanics set up a 9-11 ‘straw man‘, an easily-refuted or misrepresented version of the real argument meant to be de-bunked. Find out for yourself and discern your own truth on that one.

But of course, that point itself is a straw-man that Tossell has set up for the reader. The issue is not de-bunking, but how lone-wolf researchers gain credibility in the conspiracy culture just by being rejected by their peers. Tossell writes:

Evidently, debunking isn’t the issue. You can’t argue aliens with someone who has an “I want to believe” poster on his or her office wall. Nor can you cite the findings of the professional, journalistic, and academic consensus to someone who’s decided that having credibility means being under the sway of shadowy forces. To that line of thinking, an expert who is rejected by his peers — say, for lunatic conspiracy thinking — gains credibility just for being ostracized.

I can offer one of many answers to Tossell’s conundrum, posed by my friend, Don Hill:

Son, I’ll tell you three things, and three things only. Number one - in the absence of fact, myth prevails. Number two - change the myth, change the culture. And finally, treat everything I say as lies.”

Let’s treat every explanation of 9-11 as a possible lie, and instead of saying ‘that’s too crazy’, we ought to ask ourselves if a particular theory is crazy enough.

There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge. The whole history of thought is absorbed into science and is used for improving every single theory. Nor is political interference rejected. It may be needed to overcome the chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo. LINK

Tossell is not frustrated with 9-11 conspiracy thinking, for it is but a manifestation of the internet’s impact on our culture. The internet is by nature, a populist-enabling technology that is often at odds with the mainstream model of media that engenders the idea of the ‘journalist as professional’. In the absence of the internet, would these theories find as much presence in our mainstream, retail media?

Tossel’s troubles continue:

What troubles me the most is that, for all the talk of skepticism, conspiracy counterculture is really an anti-intellectual, populist movement — much like Intelligent Design. For all their absurdity, conspiracy theorists try to drag everything back to the level of common sense.

In Ivor’s world view, the conspiracy crowd is anti-intellectual, and populist. In his perspective, for one to be regarded as an intellectual, they must be in synch with the status-quo or consensus of prevailing knowledge, probably in the way Galileo was immediately revered by his peers for positing a heliocentric view of the universe [sarcasm alert]. The internet movement in search of the ‘truth’ behind 9-11 is populist in nature, and therefore bad. The antonym of populism is elitism, so Ivor is potentially in favour of a little more elitism in regards to understanding truth.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer

I would argue that there are no conspiracies. Everything is done out in the open. Most of this information is out there, and it is up to each of us to search out the facts, knowing full well that either the inclusion of false facts or the omission of true facts will definitely taint one’s interpretation of the ‘truth’. I agree with Ivor in the sense that people filter facts according to their own subjective biases. But it happens on all sides of the issue. We all see what we want to.

Having said that, I’m leaning to a PoMo verison of 9-11 - let everyone believe what they want to, and let’s try to view 9-11 through as many lenses and perspectives as possible before writing off dissenting views as kooky thinking. None of us is omniscient regarding 9-11. No, not even our governments, professional elites, nor the common man. To the class of people who feel conspired against by the status quo, a conspiracist version of history offers them an explanation. To the class of scholars with perks like tenure to risk, going against the mainstream consensus of truth can be professional suicide. And, finally, let’s let the class professional of journalists believe that all views that do not fit within the constraints of retail media (advertisers, editors, status-quo readership) can be derided as ‘kooky’, so that they can go on believing they too, are ‘right’. It’s a win-win solution.

When is the last time you read and/or wrote a Sunday morning blog entry?

When is the last time you went out into your city, and just looked at the lights?

Man, my girlfriend names her pets regular names, right. Like her dog’s name is Jake, but she calls him ‘Pooty-bum’. All her pets have had nicknames. Yesterday, she was on the couch, snuggling with my Dad’s dog, Tony. She said he was ’so snuggley. awwww. Snuggles’. So I’m all ‘what? are you gonna call him ‘Snuggles’ from now on? my dog, Tony? Pooty bum, and Snuggles? Is that what you really want to call them?’

Pets are good to have. They can teach you things about yourself, mostly because they are mirrors of your personality and moods. The trainer often becomes the trainee.

Friend, My Name is Aaron. And when I die, they will ask:’What is it about that guy? he just wrote shit down; only God knows why.”

HERE is a link to some pictures of really, really small cars.

Here is one artist’s rendition of the AMERO - the joint currency between Canada, US and Mexico:

LINK

h/t

Check this out. Thanks, Paul.

LINK

declare this an emergency
come on and spread a sense of urgency
and pull us through
and pull us through
and this is the end
this is the end of the world

proclaim eternal victory
come on and change the course of history
and pull us through
and pull us through
and this is the end
this is the end of the world

- Muse, Apocalypse Please

Jose Saramago’s latest book, Seeing (reviews here and here) is an allegory about how governments respond in the face of unknowable enemies. Saramago presents a particular conondrum brought about when a democracy votes to reject the type of democracy presently being offered:

The novel opens with an elegant deception, a form of bluff. There is terrible weather in the city on election day; no one is showing up at the polling booths. Perhaps no one will come at all, and this will be the country’s first election with absolutely no votes cast. But the weather clears up, and people start voting even in the rain. Absence is not the problem. The problem is the votes themselves: 13 percent for the party on the right, 9 percent for the party in the middle and, 2.5 percent for the party on the left. The rest of the votes, more than 70 percent, are blank. The government, in consternation but still clinging to the constitution, has the mandatory second election the following week. This time 83 percent of the votes are blank. The people of the city have not abstained from voting, and they have not spoiled their ballots. They have not written in candidates. They have democratically objected to the particular form of democracy on offer.

Most reviews leave out the Orwellian tone of this book. In order to understand why the electorate has voted this way the incumbent government sends out spies (who have all signed oaths testifying that they did indeed vote, and did not cast blank ballots) in order to understand the psyche of the average voter. In both elections, neither reporters nor exit pollsters can get to the root of the issue behind the vote. No voter is lawfully required to say who they voted for, and all of them exercise this right.

The government sends out spies to listen in on voters standing in line during the second election, and they implement powerful tools of analysis to speculate the implied meaning of conversational snippets as innocent as “nice weather”. Since there is no obvious bitching amongst the voters about issues while standing in line, government spies have to resort to imputing nefarious meanings to innocuous phrases in order to deconstruct the electorate’s psyche. They do this through video recording and subsequent analysis of body language. It turns out that the idea is not too far from reality.

Unable to discern the reason behind the odd voting pattern, the government sends out some brownshirt types to round up a random sample of voters, who are then interrogated and psychologically assessed in an effort to understand the root of the issue. The problem - none of them are lawfully obliged to comment on their voting behaviour.

So, guess what the government does in the capitol city? It declares a state of emergency. Bombs are set off and blamed on terrrists. Things get dark.

This book is quite intense in its allegorical nature and it presents an interesting question: in an age of electronic voting vis-a-vis Diebold machines, what happens to blank ballots? Can a voter spoil their ballot if it is electronic? I can’t find anything on whether or not Diebold voting machines allow voters to cast blank ballots, thereby voting against all brands of democracy offered during an election.

As we head into the next US election, some are speculating that Bush, with his newly found near-dictatorial powers, is one ‘event‘ away from declaring a national emergency and thereby suspending all constitutional priveledges.

Election included.

What if Saramago is onto something here?