By Paul Craig Roberts source: Counter Punch March 25, 2010
There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.
Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.
Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”
Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.
Lake Mendocino, a crucial reservoir in the Sonoma County Water Agency’s water supply system, completely filled its water supply pool Friday morning for the first time in three years.
The lake holds 68,400 acre-feet of water before it reaches into the flood pool, where the excess can be released into the Russian River by the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control purposes.
It is something the Water Agency didn’t expect even a month ago, before storms started in early January pelting the North Coast with much-need rainfall after three dry years.
Have you noticed how bad it is Haiti? Maybe you have seen the news images of corpses in the street. Sometimes piled high, or even being loaded into a tractor or bed of a 18 wheel truck. Many pictures within days of the earthquake contained scenes of crushed limbs peering through the rubble, or burning bodies on the street of Port Au Prince. Nevermind it was the French, U.S. , Central Banks and others that were keeping Haiti from being developed and prepared for an event like this.
Can you believe we have been at war for almost 9 years and still not seen the kinds of pictures from Iraq or Afghanistan that we have seen from Haiti. Where has the media been? What soldier was killed today, how, where, why? What did the soldier do for a living before being deployed? Will the soldiers remains be sent to the States, is there multiple pieces of the body, or is there even anything left of what used to be a son or daughter? Do the parents care?
What of the Afghan and Iraqi people, and Pakistan, Palestine? What do we know of the horrors in those lands committed by many including our own brothers and sisters? If you look through the internet you can find some bloody war pictures, but you will not find that material on the hourly CNN reports.
Haiti has a longstanding history of US military intervention and occupation going back to the beginning of the 20th Century. US interventionism has contributed to the destruction of Haiti’s national economy and the impoverishment of its population.
The devastating earthquake is presented to World public opinion as the sole cause of the country’s predicament.
A country has been destroyed, its infrastructure demolished. Its people precipitated into abysmal poverty and despair.
Haiti’s history, its colonial past have been erased.
The US military has come to the rescue of an impoverished Nation. What is its Mandate?
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. – Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom, 1918
Science and models
True science begins with observations and measurements. These lead to theories and models, which lead to predictions. The predictions can then be tested by further measurements and observations, which can validate or invalidate the theories and models, or be used to refine them.
This is the paradigm accepted by all scientists. But scientists being people, typically in an academic research community, within a political society, there can be many a slip between cup and lip in the practice of science. There are the problems of getting funding, of peer pressure and career considerations, of dominant political dogmas, etc.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Iraq War investigation that – whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction – he would have backed the Iraq war. As the Guardian notes:
He explained it was “the notion of him as a threat to the region” because Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people.
“This was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind. The threat to the region. Also the fact of how that region was going to change and how in the end it was going to evolve as a region and whilst he was there, I thought and actually still think, it would have been very difficult to have changed it in the right way.” Read the rest of this entry »
In the last several weeks we have learned several new facts about climate change research. First, climate scientists’ motives are biased. Second, scientists actively discussed how to achieve political ends through their research. Third, and more disturbingly, the public has learned of discarded data, attempts to keep opposing views silent, and total political adherence to an ideology. Yet, without thinking twice, the main stream media and President Obama have shrugged off the controversy and continued boldly with their partisan agenda. It is clear the science behind climate change is biased and disputed, leaving the propaganda machine as the only fact that remains. Read the rest of this entry »
Concern over global warming has spawned such a highly charged and polarised political movement, that real science has become sidelined in favour of sound-bites and simple messages. The real science is not as ‘settled’ as some politicians would have us believe.
There is a significant minority of climate scientists who look at the data and conclude that we are dealing with natural cycles that are peaking just as they have done on a regular basis over centuries.
These scientists are heavily outnumbered by the proliferation of computer specialists who have created their own virtual planet – people trained in maths and physics who may never have handled an ice-core, tree-ring apparatus, sediments or stalagmites and all of the proxy indicators of past temperature cycles.
Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States? Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further? What forces have created a demoralized, passive, disCouraged U.S. population? Can anything be done to turn this around?
Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them?
YES. It is called the “abuse syndrome.” How do abusive pimps, spouses, bosses, corporations, and governments stay in control? They shove lies, emotional and physical abuses, and injustices in their victims’ faces, and when victims are afraid to exit from these relationships, they get weaker; and so the abuser then makes their victims eat even more lies, abuses, and injustices, resulting in victims even weaker as they remain in these relationships.
More than 15,000 people will be gathering in Copenhagen for COP 15: the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Official delegations from 192 nations will mingle with the representatives of major multinational corporations, including Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, The representatives of environmental and civil society organizations will also be in attendance. Parties & Observers
It is worth noting that key decisions and orientations on COP15 had already been wrapped up at the World Business Summit on Climate Change (WBSCC) held in May in Copenhagen, six months ahead of COP15.
I know I don’t know. But I do have my opinions on the matter. I sold my vehicles long ago and made changes to my diet for myself and the environment. I do think I was misguided by Gore and general alarmism, and I don’t need climategate to tell me that. I do see problems in the way we have polluted our soils, air, water and minds. But I have for year now been looking with interest at data on both sides. I think these emails just point out the obvious; Corruption is rampant and there is no objective truth that is understood by the masses, because of direct manipulation by media, banks, investments, and intelligence agencies. Here are some selections from the numerous stories out there. Thanks to Jon Stewart for giving it a minute of coverage. All I want is the truth. -Brian
LONDON — Britain’s University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.
Here are a selection of quotes from the emails stolen from computers at the University of East Anglia. Many involve Phil Jones, head of the university’s Climatic Research Unit.
From: Phil Jones. To: Many. Nov 16, 1999
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
Critics cite this as evidence that data was manipulated to mask the fact that global temperatures are falling. Prof Jones claims the meaning of “trick” has been misinterpreted
From Phil Jones To: Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University). July 8, 2004
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Read the rest of this entry »
Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash regarding statistics for global warming.
A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term “Climategate” to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.
Posted by Brian 
