Conspiracy: was Pearl Harbor an inside job?

Conspiracy: was Pearl Harbor an inside job? | HistoryExtra 

"'Relations between Japan and Germany were, technically they had a treaty, but in spirit they weren't really that fond of each other. So the theory that by going to war with Japan, we would go to war with Germany was a little shaky but it in fact happened. A few days after Pearl Harbor Germany did declare war on the United States, in one of Hitler's oddest decisions... 

If Germany had not declared war, what would have happened in Europe? It was a fatal decision on his part much like attacking Russia in 1941... 

By starting a war in the Pacific, the US now had to be wary on two fronts, not one. It had to be wary in the Pacific and the Atlantic. Within hours and days of the attack, the US began shifting more ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That hardly helped the British. The US had to reduce its military forces in the Atlantic because it had suffered such terrific losses in the attack on Pearl Harbor. In addition, the Japanese on December 7th didn't just bring the United States into the war, they went to war with Great Britain...

Britain had another enemy: Japan. So war in the Pacific hardly improved the situation of the British... over and over, Franklin Roosevelt said, in effect, I can't afford a war in the Pacific. I don't have the forces for it at this point... the American Navy and American Army had told him: we're not ready for war in the Pacific. They didn't expect to be ready for war in the Pacific till 1942. So the idea that he was helping the British by instigating a war in the Pacific frankly just defies common sense... 

If the United States knew that a Japanese fleet was on its way to Hawaii, there were far simpler and more productive ways to get into the war than by allowing principal fighting force in the Pacific to be crippled... they could take their fleet to sea, set up on a route they knew that Japan would likely take and ambush the ambushers... I don't think anyone on earth would've objected to what was a, would be a legitimate, sensible, rational  exercise of the right to self defence if the US had encountered a Japanese fleet crossing the North Pacific with six aircraft carriers'... 

‘People often cite the oil embargo as an out of nowhere belligerent act intended to leave the poor Japanese starving at home because they had no oil. And what it really was was, at long last the United States taking a definitive and powerful step to tell the Japanese: you have to stop what you're doing. They had already attacked China in 1937. That war was still going on. They had basically extorted North Vietnam, what is today North Vietnam or what was North Vietnam from the French after the French were defeated in 1940. Japan was an aggressor. It was on the move in the Pacific and the oil embargo came after it extorted, Japan extorted all of Indochina from the French, and Roosevelt said, that's it, we're cutting off your oil, which mostly came from the United States. It was in response to Japanese actions not a weapon to get them to declare war on the US’... 

‘The evidence suggests that FDR was as dumb struck as anyone on December 7th. He had not foreseen this coming, and the first shot, let's take that quote at face value. If that's true that he wanted them to take the first shot it didn't mean that he wanted Pearl Harbor attacked. The Philippines were, as I said, an American possession and it seemed incredibly likely that as the Japanese Naval forces moved Southwest to invade Indochina, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaya, they wouldn't leave the American colony of the Philippines right smack in the middle of all those new conquests. They would be leaving the US in a position to reverse what Japan was doing, and the fear that the Philippines were going to be attacked was so great that after he received the war warning message that I mentioned earlier, the American Naval commander in the Philippines took his fleet to sea and scattered it to save it, because he was so convinced that what was coming was a Japanese invasion of the Philippines. Which indeed happened, on December 8th, Japan invaded the Philippines. If there had been no Pearl Harbor, the United States would have been at war simply because the Japanese attacked an American possession. And so if FDR meant I have to maneuver them into taking the first shot, he assumed I think that it would be the Philippines.’... 

'Let me offer what I think is one of the most telling reasons why I don't think there was a conspiracy. FDR was not a one-man gatherer of intelligence. He didn't have personal spies in Japan who reported directly to him. He couldn't decrypt Japanese messages all by himself. He certainly didn't speak Japanese. Once you decrypt a a Japanese message you still have to translate it from Japanese to English. FDR sat at the apex of a pyramid of people, I don't how many, I don't know. Dozens, hundreds of radio operators, translators, code breakers, their immediate commanders, White House aides. All of those people would have had to know and elected not to do anything about it and it defies human experience that all of those people would have gone to their grave possessing this astonishing secret evidence of what would have been the most treasonous act in American history. The deliberate sacrifice of thousands of sailors and many warships just to get the United States into the war when there was so many other ways to do it... 

I don't think people appreciate what was going on in the Atlantic at the time of Pearl Harbor. The United States had advanced far beyond the the laws of neutrality in its effort to help Great Britain. An American Admiral said after the war that the that Germany would have been well within its rights to declare war based on American Naval activity in the Atlantic'... 

‘Whenever you have an event that is so shocking, so unfathomable, I think you've got a table set for conspiracy… when the word spread across the country of what had just happened that Sunday in Pearl Harbor there were a group of New York Elites having Sunday dinner an early Sunday dinner at a house in the suburbs of New York City. And the telephone rang. And the person who answered it came back and told the assembled smart people that Japan had just attacked Pearl Harbor, and one of the savviest members of that group told the others don't worry about it it's a hoax. He, they simply couldn't comprehend what had just happened. A member of Congress the next day said that America was stunned beyond belief. This was, this violated every sense of what they thought about the world. 

And why was that? Well I can give you several reasons. 

The American people have been told over and over and over again that their Navy was the best Navy in the world. On the morning of December 7th, copies of the New York Times arrived on the doorsteps of the East Coast with a story that had been printed the night before, and before the attack. And the headline of that story was: ‘Navy Superior to all others’. Well, by the time people read that story, much of the Navy was burning in Pearl Harbor. And so people were trying to reconcile how this great Navy could have been surprised and I think on one level the answer to them was oh there must have been a conspiracy. 

I'll give you a couple of others. 

Over and over the public had been told that Pearl Harbor was, an incredible fortress. It was called the Gibralter of the Pacific. It was, could not be conquered, and that it was searching far out to sea to make sure that it was safe. 24/7, said one newspaper were the air searches going around Hawaii. If anyone was approaching they would be detected long before they could reach the islands. Well that wasn't true. There were no searches. There never were any searches but that's what the public was told and I I assume it's just because newspaper reporters got carried away and kind of, to help everyone at home feel comfortable, boasted of something that simply wasn't happening. So the fact that an air raid had surprised Pearl Harbor conflicted with people's prior knowledge of what was supposed to be going on at at Pearl Harbor. 

Also, and I think this is really important, the Japanese had been repeatedly described to the American public as an inferior military power. Their planes were second rate. Their aircraft carriers were not like America's. They suffered, in one astounding allegation, from limited eyesight, and a bad sense of balance because they had been carried on the backs of their mothers as children and it upset their inner ear. You know people were who worked in Japan were told: don't fly on Japanese Airlines because you'll crash. And suddenly here were these supposedly inferior people surprising the best Navy in the world at Pearl Harbor’"

UFO sightings: an otherworldly history

UFO sightings: an otherworldly history | HistoryExtra

"‘Am I right in saying this is an example historically speaking of culture influencing the way in which political agencies operated?’

‘Yes. Absolutely. Bo doubt about. it I mean UFOs were created out of the Cold War, out of the Cold War tensions. The the UFO idea that we currently have in our minds, that's not to say that odd things hadn't been seen in the sky before um the Second World War, because they certainly had. If we go back to just before the First World War for instance, if you look at any English newspaper or British newspaper, um just before the outbreak of the First World War, don't don't look for flying saucers and UFOs, but you will see story after story about people seeing strange lights in the sky, beams of light coming down to the ground, long elongated objects moving around around that they were convinced were zeppelins sent by the Germans to spy on the British Isles. This is in 1909, 1913, and lots of people are absolutely convinced that this was going on but if you look at the the descriptions, the they're UFOs. And they are the same things that people are now reporting as UFOs. And they are things like stars, meteors, there were no space junk back then but there were certainly balloons and other meteorological things that people because they had, they were worked up and they were anxious and they knew there was a war coming, and they'd been told yeah when the war comes the Germans will be sending their airships over to drop bombs on us, and they were seeing all kinds of odd things in the sky and I think there's a similar situation going on now that, we are all primed to see UFOs. You cannot escape from the subject... 

It's only about 15 years ago, the newspapers were full of stories about alien fleets that had been seen over all the main, major cities of the UK. What did they turn out to be? Formations of Chinese lanterns... People in the UFO community have this odd sort of cognitive dissonance in that A), they say that they don't trust anything, that the government say on the subject, that it's all part of cover up to hide the truth, i.e that the you know aliens have been here and crashed and it's all being kept secret from us, but then again you get someone from the military or from the politician side who who sort of chimes up and says you know I believe that UFOs as alien craft exist and that we should be taking it seriously and those people then are elevated to this sort of special status that because they work for the government therefore they must be telling the truth... 

Lord Mountbatten… he was hugely influential and back in 1950 he spoke anonymously to one of Britain's Sunday newspapers… ‘I believe in flying saucers’ and it was like one of the most important people in the British government has said that um these things are real. And he he described them as like you know they're like the Shackletons coming from Mars to explore Earth. And he really really believed in this for a few years and eventually he went on to become the chief of Defense staff, i.e. the most senior military official in the British government. But I've sort of gone through all his personal papers and you can see the change as he becomes more and more aware of the facts and he talks to some of the military um people who've, who've dealt with reports that have been made to the RAF and the Royal Navy and he becomes more and more skeptical so that by, sort of the early 1960s there's there's a little memo from him to um the chief scientist at that time saying should we open a study of UFOs and flying saucers? And this Chief scientist comes back to him and says um well what would be gained from it? It would be almost like opening a study of whether the Loch Ness monster exists. And you know, we know that there isn't a Loch Ness monster and even if we drained Loch Ness completely and there was no monster at the bottom of it, um they'd say that it had nipped out for a few minutes while we were doing the draining and it's now back in...

‘There's absolutely clear correlation between films and TV programs about UFOs and alien life, and sudden spikes in the number of reports that have been passed on to the authorities. I mean it's it's a very crude metric. You can't say it's like cause and effect, because there's this continual drip drip drip now. Be very difficult to make any correlation now, but certainly looking at those earlier decades, as I mentioned 1977, 1978 with the release of Close Encounters, I mean the Ministry of Defense, the number of reports that they received I think literally tripled. It went from sort of an average of a couple of hundred per year to you know heading for a thousand and there was even, I remember seeing reports in there saying, you know I saw an object in the sky over London that looked exactly like the spaceship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind... 

There is this correlation and also it's not just with films and pop culture because the,  the last statistic we had from the Ministry of Defense files was 2008 to 2009, that sort of period. And that's when they decided that it was costing an awful lot of money to keep tabs on this subject and this is during the first period of um the financial crash of that time when Gordon Brown was prime minister… then people make Freedom of Information requests to see this stuff and it's costing an awful lot of money, so they just pulled the plug. But 2008 to 9 again was the most massive spike of all, even taking into account the 1970s with the film, the late 1990s with the X-Files, Independence Day. A massive increase in in numbers then. But 2008 to 9 there wasn't any big film but what there was was all the publicity about the release of the files at the National Archives...

The whistleblower… I just read this. And I just thought here we go again. Because this is nothing unique if we go back to 1989 there was a guy called Bob Lazar that came forward. Very similar to the current whistleblower who said that he'd worked to Area 51, his security clearance was so high that um no one could check his credentials and he'd actually seen these grounded flying sources that the American government were secretly back engineering etc etc. So so he, this current person that's come forward is just the latest in a long line of so-called whistleblowers, the story that the American government has got secretly hidden away in a hanger somewhere in the desert or in Area 51 is now preferred isn't a new story. It it first surfaced in 1950. 

Um as long ago as that, that's 73 years ago when a guy called Frank Scully published a book called Behind the Flying Saucers and he said that he'd heard from two top secret  scientists who worked on the project that the Americans had retrieved I think it was six or seven crashed discs that had come down in the Arizona desert, that they were covered in hieroglyphs, the American um army had secretly removed them, and that triggered off whole similar series of questions and statements as like what we're seeing today, and this was three years after Roswell. And that story is a good story. It's effectively an urban legend. That's what it is, it's been classified as an urban legend by Professor Jan Brunvand who is the inventor of you know the phrase urban legend. It's called the landed martians. And and the legend is that the American government have secretly relieved this crash. So this guy that's come forward is is repeating a very well-known urban legend that has been circulating for at least 70 years. And the fact is he, if you actually pare down what he's saying, where's the evidence? Has he seen the evidence? And when you actually look carefully at what he said, no. He's heard from someone else that this is the case. He hasn't actually seen any of this. 

So basically he's spreading a friend of a friend story. It's a classic urban legend, it's like alligators in sewers and phantom hitchikers etc etc. And the and this simple idea that because he used to work in US intelligence, therefore he must be telling the truth. I find that bizarre. So why should we believe this hoary old tale that's been regurgitated every few years and that dates back to 1950? But because there's this sort of bandwagon rolling and people are stressed out, they're anxious because of the cost of living crisis, the aftermath of Covid. Isn't it nice to think that somewhere hidden away in the hangers there are these fantastic spaceships of aliens that have ridden across the universe like the seventh cavalry to, to rescue us? It, it's too good to be true’...

'All you've got to do is apply common sense to it. I mean just think. If all these spacecraft had come here and crashed, why have they all crashed in the United States? For instance why have none crashed in North Korea or Venezuela? And there is not a single subject that all the governments of the world agree on. You only have to go and listen to the meetings of the United Nations to see this. So are you telling me that all the countries of the entire world got together and agreed on one subject to hide the fact we're being visiting by aliens from the general public. It just does not make sense, there's got to be a more common sense explanation'"

The History & Mystery Of UFOs

The History & Mystery Of UFOs | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra

 "‘The military interest in it is purely from the point of view of military intelligence. Are any of these things that have been seen and detected enemy craft of some kind or enemy? I mean, we're not even talking about craft now. Because these these drones that the these two adverse or three adversaries, you've got America, Russia and China now, and the the technology that they're working on, these these tiny drones that are capable of hypersonic speeds. And it's quite obvious if you read some of the descriptions of the pilots that have reported some of these things in the Atlantic and Pacific, they’re talking about tiny objects. I mean, one of them describes the thing that he saw near his aircraft as being suitcase sized. Either that's come from the other side of the universe with little diddy aliens inside it, or it's a drone. So the the most likely explanation, and this is interesting, because the report that was done way back in 1954, Winston Churchill, employed something called Occam's Razor. Where he looked at the evidence and Occam’s Razor simply says, it's a basic scientific principle that if you've got a problem, and you need an explanation for, you choose the most likely explanation, not the one that requires the most ridiculous sort of explanation...

There's actually three different names for these things. And the one that's triggered it all off was flying saucer. Is the guy the the again, it was a journalist who coined the phrase flying saucer, because the fact. the very first sort of modern sighting, which was in 1947, was a chap, that American pilot that saw this formation of nine objects that he described as like Batwing-shaped that were flying above the Cascade Mountains in Washington. He was out looking for a crashed plane and he saw these things in the distance and they were traveling at some fantastic speed. And when he landed the the news reporters said to him, well, how would you describe it? He said, it was like, you can imagine getting a getting a saucer and skipping it across a pond. So he wasn't talking about they were saucer shaped, but some sub editor came up with flying saucer and then everyone started seeing saucer shaped objects even though this guy hadn't actually described them as being saucer shaped...

The military intelligence people sometime in the 1990s have thought we need to get we need another acronym, move away from UFO, because we know that most of these things that have been seen the most interesting ones aren't objects… So that's how they came up with UAP unidentified aerial phenomena… So when people have been asking, do you investigate UFOs, like with the British minister of defense, oh, no, we don't investigate UFOs. And they're not lying. Because from their point of view, they're looking at UAPs…

The British Minister Ministry of Defense, they commissioned a study… I found out about this using the Freedom of Information Act, and managed to persuade them to release it... And the amazing conclusion there is that these things exist, there's no doubt about it, quite a stunning conclusion in there. That they can, they can, you know, they can fly around at incredible speeds, land, take off, this, that and the other. And I was reading this and thinking, this is a Ministry of Defense report that concludes this, but the rope was, that there's no evidence that these things are alien, that something exists, the tiny proportion of sightings that they can't explain, some of them, you know, by pilots and qualified observers. But the author of the report says that these things that we can't explain are some kind of atmospheric phenomena. This is where we get to the UAP. And he proposed something called, that he called atmospheric plasmas. Now, if you, if you've got the patience to wade through this huge report, he claims that there's evidence that meteors that impact on the Earth's atmosphere burn up and they create some kind of plasma that continues to sort of exist in the atmosphere. And his theory was that this is what the pi-, pilots were seeing, you know, like the Aurora Borealis, you know, so a luminescent blobs of light that have their own sort of volition that can move around and, and this is what he proposes... he's proposing one unexplained thing that we don't know about to explain another unexplained thing that we don't know about...

UFOs are the greatest modern myth, it is impossible to kill them... You can't prove a negative... If you put the whole GDP of the Western world into investigating it, and every time someone saw a light in the sky, you had a big X Files sort of investigation? You might be able to say, right, well, yeah, that was a planet or that was a, you know, that was a an aircraft, but the UFO believers will always come back to say, well, yes, you've explained that one. But what about this one? You've got to accept that this is something that is not going to go away. It's got semi religious aspects to it...

You've got TV and film, you've got things like The X Files that really revive the subject in the 1990s. All the big films, for example, like Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind that was released in 1978. If you, if you plot those, as I have, against, say, the Ministry of Defense's UFO log, and they used to keep a log of how many sightings were reported to them, you see these massive spikes, and those spikes aren’t, well there's more aliens visited us in 1978, than in 1997, it's simply that people have watched and seen those TV films and gone to the cinema. And they come out of the cinema. And rather than looking at the ground, or at the bag of chips or whatever, they've looked up at the sky and seen something and thought, well, maybe that's one of those UFOs that I've just seen on the, on Steven Spielberg's film’...

‘The conclusion, what was the conclusion? You see, this was the interesting thing. And I actually found these 23 Squadron, logbook that actually talks about it. And it says, we concluded it was a balloon, a balloon’

‘A balloon, it just sounds suspicious, you can see why conspiracy theorists would be like, a balloon caused that much of a… it doesn't add up’...

‘You can see how people looking at that with a conspiracy frame of mind years later would say that can't possibly be a balloon. But from the point of view of the pilots, they were saying it's something that we've never seen before, and we've been scrambled loads of times, this was the one thing that stood out as the most unusual in their entire flying career. But they weren't saying, we think it was aliens, they were saying, thinking about it logically, this was a stationary object that could be seen on radar from the ground, we could see it on our airborne radar, stationary. That's why we couldn't intercept it, because we kept zooming past it, and then having to sort of circle round and come back. What's the most logical explanation for what it was? A balloon. But you see, people will say, how can a balloon move in the fantastic speeds that the Americans said it was moving out, from the ground? Well, the thing is, with a lot of these UFO cases, it’s not one thing. And if you look at when this happened August the 13th, and the night of August the 13, August the 14th. Now if you're an astronomer, you will immediately see relevance in that date, because that is the height of the Perseids meteor shower, and they're zooming around in the sky, and they can be picked up on radar. So it's possible that what triggered it off was the meteor shower. And that's what the Americans had detected. We sent up the aircraft and it just so happened that there was a stray balloon, maybe a meteorological balloon or something like that. And that's what then became the UFO. And it's, it's a mixture of psychology, and expectation, and the will to believe and, all mixed in with with government secrecy. And pop culture. It’s not one thing that creates UFOs. That's the only way really, I can explain it all.’"

The power of suggestion and mass hysteria. But of course the credulous still believe all the sightings

Alan Moore on Conspiracy Theories

"In the mid 1980s I was asked by an American legal institution known as the Christic Institute, to compile a comic book which would detail the murky history of the CIA from the end of the 2nd World War to the present day. Covering things such as the heroine smuggling during the Vietnam War, the cocaine smuggling during the war in Central America, the Kennedy assassination and other highlights.

What I learned during the frankly horrifying research that I had to slug through to accomplish this, was that yes there is a conspiracy. In fact there are a great number of conspiracies that are all tripping each other up. And all of those conspiracies are run by paranoid fantasists and ham-fisted clowns.

If you are on a list targeted by the CIA., you really have nothing to worry about. If however, you have a name similar to somebody on a list targeted by the CIA then you are dead.

The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting.

The truth of the world is that it is chaotic.

The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that is in control.

The truth is far more frightening.

Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless."

--- The Mindscape of Alan Moore

Conspiracy Theorists in Heaven

Two conspiracy theorists die and go to Heaven.

When they get there God says they can ask any question they want and God will answer because God knows all.

So they say, "are GMOs dangerous?"

God says "no".

Then one turns to the other and says, "wow, the conspiracy goes up even further than we realized!"

(via comment)

On Changing Someone's Mind (and Conspiracy Theorists)

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 156 - David McRaney on “Why it’s so hard to change someone’s mind”

"It's very rarely do people have this epiphany, completely changing everything in one second. It would be catastrophic to the organism. It would be catastrophic to any human mind to do something like that.

In fact, the people that I've interviewed, I've interviewed some people who are former members of the Westboro Baptist Church. I've interviewed former cult members. I've interviewed a variety of people who have experienced that 100%, press the reset button, delete everything and start over and it was completely catastrophic...

[On trying to convince 911 truthers] The straw that broke the camel's back was that when they met the mother of a person who actually died in this tragedy and they had listened to the audio already of his last words to his mother, they all believed that it was faked in some way, either they did it with a computer and tricked her or that she, herself, was an actress or something.

They spoke to an expert who said, "Yeah, maybe you could do this, but it would take a lot of work to make a computer version of this person's voice and maybe, I don't know, possibly." They go to her and she is absolutely a real, honest, true human being living on a farm and she's horribly distraught and when she's telling the story of losing her son and hearing his last words right before he dies and living through the fame of that moment and the ...

It's not just losing your child, but you're reliving that entire experience every anniversary of this event with the rest of the nation.

She's crying and Charlie's crying, but he looks at the other people who are with him and they seem to be like huh, whatever. They're eye rolling about it.

He said to me, he's like, "I just thought they were animals. And I realized that I was in a cult. I was in a cult that -- for you to deny it at this point seems cult-like."

Not only was he swayed by the evidence, but he had the benefit that many of us don't have when we're isolated at our computers, of actually being right next to people who are not being swayed by the evidence that you are being swayed by.

The finale of his story is that he went on YouTube before he was even finished filming that show and said, "You know what? I think I've changed my mind."

The response was people all throughout the internet are still trying to ruin his life. They went so far as to find his sister's Facebook page, find pictures of his nieces and nephews. Someone, some people Photoshopped their actual real faces onto child pornography and then sent that to his mother by email...

If you want for the facts to work on people, just the plain facts, that's how far you would have to go. You would have to actually take them and put them on an airplane and take them to a ...

An internet link to a thing that you found on Google, it’s not -- it has to be so powerful. The person must come in contact directly with the evidence if they're a strong naysayer. That's how far you had to go...

Out of 5 people that went, he was the only one that it worked on. Of course, the truther community thinks that he was a secret agent the whole time now or that he was an infiltrator or that he was put in room 101 and they electrocuted his genitals and made him change his mind or some weird stuff like that"

Conspiraception

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS118 - Live From Baruch College With Dr. Steven Novella:

"I had a friend of a friend who was kind of a professional, a troll for good, if you will.

And he spent, I don't know, at least a couple weeks hanging out with the 9/11 truther crowd, saying that he was making a documentary about how the 9/11 truther movement was created by the government to draw attention away from the actual conspiracy.

And he kept wanting to interview them.

They were like: "No no no. No. There isn't, we're not part of a conspiracy. They're the conspiracy". He was like, "That's exactly what you'd say. Duh!"

It drove them crazy."

"al-shabab is being used as "a tool of the west to destroy, colonise and exploit africa""

A: "Violent Extremists" murder about 150 people in Kenya. Now, if only we know the ideology that drives them, we may have a chance...

Mourning Turns to Anger in Kenya After College Massacre | TIME

B: The way forward is for Kenya to go in full force into somalia and finish off the terrorists. Kenyans are capable of it too. The West will try to prevent this as this terror group is also a tool of the west to destroy, colonise and exploit africa.

A: can you cite me your sources that al-shabab is being used as "a tool of the west to destroy, colonise and exploit africa.". I am intrigued.

B: who created Taliban? Who created al Quaida? Who created IS?

As someone who has worked in those parts of the woods I know what western "diplomats" do along with "missionaries" to sow unrest and discontent. Europe is one of the major financiers of shabab and other terrorist organisations in Somalia by readily paying millions as ransom. instead of that the west ought to have gone in and stamped out their own frankinsteins. Now they are too big and the way forward is fraught with danger and the break point will be when a dirty bomb explodes in the west

Me: When they go in they are accused of being imperialists and being there only for oil

B: Even after the attack a major general of US airforce was talking bullshit to calm the Kenyans so that their assets are not destroyed or neutralised.

Ho? izzat so? Europe LOVEs to intervene in Africa. Pray!! Whats International Criminal Court? any idea?

A: I asked about al-Shabab. Do you have any evidence to support your claim?

B: do you know why the genocide in Sierra Leone took place? Do you know what bullshit is "Blood diamonds"?

yes i worked in that area and have seen US special Forces train them

A: now THAT is interesting. Has anyone else corroborated this?

B: do u know the quantom of monet given by Europe to them?

you will LOVE this

Paying Ransoms, Europe Bankrolls Qaeda Terror - NYTimes.com

you think there is any difference between the various terror groups other than name? Who trained the taliban? Houris or US forces? Who trained al Quaida? tell me

Never for a moment forget al-shabab is an affiliate of Al-Quaida
who is aiding the IS thats killing Europeans and americans most brutally?

A: I am interested in Al Shabab. So apart from your eyewitness account, there has been no independent corroborating report?

B: Don't get upset when a mirror is shown to you :P
ask the British High Commission Staff. They travelled with me on that mission

A: Can you give me the contact details?
Of the British High Commission staff?

B: well I have to look up my reports. I will
But A is it OK to compartmentalise things when islamic terror is a SINGLE octopus? Why are you not interested in Taliban, Al Quaida and IS?

A: Great, thanks. I hope you understand, its like when Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians that 50 people saw the risen Jesus. We do not, in that case, have 51 eyewitnesses (St Paul + 50), but still only one who claims 50 others saw it.

B: yet people take it as "gospel truth" lol

A: I am interested in Taliban Al-Qaeda etc. And it is no secret, even Hillary Clinton came out recently condemning American strategy of fighting a proxy war in Afghanistan by training the forerunners of the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. If they are doing it in Somalia, it shows they haven;t learnt their lesson!

B: I found a link!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! just a sentence but enough to show you LOL

SYRIA THE LATEST TARGET OF THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRATIZATION “CONTACT GROUP” INDUSTRY | SYRIA 360°

"The US and NATO also have a role to play in the emergence of the pirates phenomenon that has turned the Gulf of Aden into “pirate alley.”"

sif you "know" it is OK and the sin is forgiven?

A: But the pirates and al-Shabab are different groups. See this link...
Al Shabab Fights the Pirates - NYTimes.com

B: thats two groups temporarily fighting for turf :)

A: Yes, but your evidence of US creating al-Shabab is the pirates. But if they are different groups, then the evidence is incorrect.

B: they are just part of SAME group.
same philosophy
did you read the drivel on The Time about a US AFGeneral trying to pacify Kenyans?

A: Where is your evidence for this "sameness"? Same philosophy doesn't cut it. The Tamil Tigers have the "same philosophy" of suicide bombing as Al Qeada but it does not make them the :same group".

But the "pacifying of the Kenyans" really proves nothing. It does not directly link to your claim. There could be many reasons why they would want to "pacify the Kenyans"...

B: no. Read the links I provided and the times report also says Al-Shabab is part of al-quaida

A: So we are back to square one, as far as corroborating evidence goes...

B: Like saving their proteges

A: But your claim that the US was DIRECTLY involved in the formation of al-Shabab not via Al-Shabab being the "proteges" of Al-Qaeda. Remember you said you saw US forces traning them.

B: in the same page is the article "Former Ambassador: Look Beyond Garissa Attack To See Progress in Kenya"

A: Are you now modifying your claim?

B: he is advocating bullshit

A: "advocating bullshit" is not evidence that the US created al-Shabab.

B: You think we in india have no experience with the same bullshit by US to save its protege pakistan - the terror central? LOL

A: So we are back to square one, no corroborating evidence.

B: so without corrobarating evidence west will do NOTHING?

A: It's not a matter of who will do what, I am merely interested in your claim that the US created al-shabab. You have taken me to Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Kenya and Pakistan with all your links but still no direct evidence.

B: hallo?

A: At best all you have shown is that is is something that the US may POSSIBLY have done, given what they have done elsewhere, but "possibility" does not prove that it was "probable".

B: so what direct evidence or corroboration did you have to Iraqu WMD? yet west attacked based on lies and destroyed a prosperous Nation. Same thing with Libya. What was this Arab Spring but a CIA operation to destabilise North frica that was peaceful?
waspossiblity of WMD with NO EVIDENCEand FULL KNOWLEGDE it is not there enough to attacka country?

A: So your defence of having no evidence to back up your claim is to bring up previous cases of people making claims with no evidence?? I find the logic very hard to follow..

B: it is called "prrof based on previous action' an acceptable prima facie evidence even under British law :)

we can show a HUNDRED instances of western involvement based on lies

I know what happened to me when I started zeroing in on the perpetrators of the first action in western planned drama of genocide in Rwanda. LOL

A: That is not the issue that we are discussing.You make a SPECIFIC claim that the US created al-Shabab and indeed added another claim that you actually witnessed this traning in Somalia. Yet all I have seen so far is some rather far fetched and tenuous arguments...

So if "A" lies about "B", it follows that "A" also lies about C, D,...ad infinitum???

B: I stand by that
ask any british lawyer what "previous conduct"means in law. i am a lawyer

A: It does not matter what you "stand by" - what matters is the evidence you can bring up to support your claim. I guess we can conclude that, aht the moment, you do not have any.

B: not just one off instance but a series spanning decades if not centuries

so for west they need "evidence" when they want to deny and they need just lies when they want to act?Thats not logic

Do you know the numbers killed by western planned actions with only aim of furthering their exploitation of people and nature?

A: I am asking for independent reports of what you have claim. Whether the US denies it or not, it another issue. Note that the US was not able to hide behind the Iraqi WMD lies for long. If they are involved in the formation of al-Shabab, the evidence will come out.

B: Al-Shabab is just ONE of many ADMITTED transgressions

A: who "admitted" to thwe Al Shabab transgressions...

B: well i have to search my reports. There is one in which i expressed aprehension that this sort of training will backfire. i was shooed by an american above me LOL
my dear A!! di you read my sentence? please revisit again?

A: Great, I look forward to hearing from you on this.
revisit what?

B: Al-Shabab is just ONE of many ADMITTED transgressions
taliban, alquaida, IS and many many rebellions in frica and South america was spawned in the west. And it is admitted.

A: what do you mean by " admitted transgressions". Who "admitted"to it?
Again, no direct evidence for al-Shabab??

B: We in India had the same idiots try to create a party to destabilise India without knowing indian ethos or culture. they failed

A: Now, India. Back to Al-Shabab please.

B: so according to you taliban, alquaida, IS and many many rebellions are passe?

A: Paul Tobin Oh sorry. you promised to come back later on this. Do let me lknow as I am getting tired to this going around in circles.

B: read that article by the american and tell me whether it is part carrots and part threat

Later yes
you forget i am retired now. i have to go through 20 years' papers to find that one report

did you read the bullshit by that american THREATENING KENYANS against action against al-shabab? why should USA threaten a wronged country?

Oh by the way i forgot that the US was collaborating with the terrorist jihadi bunch by sending an american CIA spy to spy for them so that they can attack india on 26/11. For them 20 westerners killedwas mere collateral damage.

the west did try again. but this time west had no control over Government and they were shown the middle finger and they stopped
so don't you think it is illogical that when ALL the terror groups in existence since 60s are of western creation, al-shabab ALONE is different. why is it the oddman out?

A you did not say why al-shabab is different and lovable than the other riff-raff terror groups created by the west to enhance the neo-colonialist agenda of the west and to destabilise the non-western world. But the idiots will realise their folly when the first (of many) dirty bombs start exploding in the west. It is a folly to think west is insulated and they can do anything everywhere else. already Britain is on the way to becoming Britainistan. Many European countries are being islamised and some areas in Northern Europe are already no-go area for westerners. Thats birds coming home to roost. Even now there is time. India will survive despite western sabotage. so will china and russia.

A: when did I say Al-Shabab is "lovable"???

You wrote: " ALL the terror groups " so you are saying that Hezbollah, Tamil Tigers, Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia, Abu Sayaf in the Philippines, Hamas are all "western creations"????

C: there are no "birds coming home to roost". Terrorism is terrorism, whether religiously motivated or otherwise. There are no excuses for terrorism

it's a conspiracy, man. the juice did it.

B: As for Tamil Tigerscheck norwegian attempts at supporting them :)

Feminism <-> Conspiracy Theories

"In order to preserve your self-respect, it is sometimes necessary to lie and cheat." - Robert Byrne

***

It's sad that even scienceblogs.com has feminist nonsense:

You May Be A Mansplainer If... : Thus Spake Zuska
(among other things - what does this have to do with science?)

A short summary: "Mansplaining" is when a man tells a woman she is wrong, when she is actually right. This is, naturally, always chalked up to sexism and never a genuine mistake; strictly speaking the original definition says that it's mansplaining if (but, crucially, not iff) it is "delivered with the rock-solid conviction of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course he is right, because he is the man in this conversation", but you will see that people go crazy in the comments, so I feel justified in judging that they have departed from the original definition.

The chief problem in this case is the assumption of infallibility and that evidence that might disprove the theory is taken, contrawise, as proof of its validity.

You find this in conspiracy theory thinking also. But then at least the conspiracy theorists do not discriminate against certain groups of people (people who disagree are just deluded or part of the conspiracy), so in that sense they are more respectable.

Here, any disagreement a man has with a feminist theory is because he's male and automatically sexist.

Sample comments from the first 100:

A: I hardly think this is a behavior confined to a single gender. More like human behavior.

Also, what do you call a woman who insists you're being a "mansplainer" but is actually wrong herself?

B: OMG did someone just try to mansplain mansplainin'? Oh the irony!

C: Shades of Freudian analysis.

If you deny the allegation, that's just more evidence that you're guilty, and you haven't stopped beating your wife.

I can't wait for the thread for venting about being victims of such womanalysis.


I actually went into a 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Forum to find comments using parallel "logic" and similar dismissals of contrary opinions by begging the question, but in general:

- there was less groupthink
- there was less begging of the question (most of the conspiracy theories actually attempted to make arguments instead of dismissing the skeptics)
- they were more polite
- the grammar and spelling was worse

So I stopped.


D: I don't really get the hostility toward Michael H. I thought he raised his points respectfully and got a lot of shit thrown in his face without his points ever being
thoroughly addressed. I read this situation as: he disagrees with you, and explains why; everyone jumps on him and calls him condescending for not understanding the problem in the first place.

E: Members of every gender, race, height, sexual orientation, and religion on this planet probably "explain" things in a way that is condescending. What's condescending is trying to make it momentarily exclusive to men just because you're a woman.


As one person observed:

"You've sort of created a perfect system, in that it seems to be immune to criticism, but of course you already knew that. :)"

And of course he got slammed:

"Hey, passive-aggressive smiley Jon, maybe you need to focus less on criticism for its own sake and just listen for a while."

In other words: if someone disagrees with you, it's because he's wrong (at least he wasn't called a troll, clueless or a bigot - or at least not in the first 100 comments).

His response covering most bases:

"That's a fantastic response

1. Assume that if someone responds with a criticism (indirectly or directly), they must be doing so for the sake of criticism itself.
2. Assume that if someone disagrees with what's been said, they're not listening. They need a lesson.

You've also seen past my passive-aggressiveness. Very clever! And here I thought I was being subtle!

Suggestions for further interactions:

(1) If interlocutor is female, accuse her of being a FemaleMansplainer.
(2) Accuse interlocutor of not "getting it" or misunderstanding the point of the discussion.
(3) If interlocutor poses a question you don't want to answer, tell them that this isn't the appropriate place for such a discussion.
(4) If interlocutor is male and appropriately humble, kindly explain to him that this discussion isn't for "them" or about "them," returning to (3).
(5) Ask why men always have to intrude on discussions that don't have anything to do with them.
(6) Make sure your concepts are as vague as possible so there's always a moving target."


Perhaps the saddest thing is that feminism is not the only field where we see this happening (ergo the "pc" label for this post)

No wonder we have a Mason Lodge!

And here I was thinking Singapore was too trivial for the Illuminati to bother about:

"Is Singapore a New World Order society? What are the connections of our founding fathers and rulers to the illuminati? Is the country free or the people in it under a covert system of enslavement? Why did our early leaders make use of secret societies as part of their operation to establish dominance and order in Singapore? Have you realized how our entire education, national service and employment system was designed to condition people to become automated drones fully suited for the NWO?"

(Idea for Singapore Philosophy Meetup)

Someone: I don't think any of the Illuminati spoke Malay.

The Lonesome Planet Travelers’ Advisory

"All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often." - Stanislaw J. Lec

***

The Lonesome Planet Travelers’ Advisory
Tim McDaniel

Here is the latest update, brought to you by the Lonesome Planet Travelers’ Advisory Board, as certified by the Local Group. Those of you who—like us—have been here awhile may find little new here, but remember it’s our task to set the newcomers straight. Things are a little different here than you may be used to back home.

Stealth

l Keep your blurifiers on at all times—you never know who is carrying a camera these days. Some of these people even have cameras in their phones, although our researchers have yet to determine why.

l Having said that, buzzing Air Force jets and installations is fine—they never tell anyone what they see, as per our agreement.

l Finally, I know the big head/almond eye masks are a pain, but please, people, keep them on. If they saw our real faces ... well, let’s just say it would engender a really negative reaction. How negative? Remember the robot rebellions of the Lost Arm? Like that.

Relaxation

l Mutilations. Okay, we’ve all been there. Fun is fun, but there have to be some rules. Cows, now, are okay to mutilate—we all know we can’t resist those lips, those genitals! One of my podsisters does things with a cow’s genitals that are only legal in the Lesser Magellenic Cloud. That’s right—the Lesser!

l Off limits, however, are dogs (of course), pandas (still), giraffes (again), three-toed sloths (for obvious reasons), and adolescent beluga whales (don’t ask).

Playmates

l Of course, now and then we just have to abduct a local. Again, the Advisory Group is not one to stand in the way of tradition. Please remember, however, that only some of the locals are eligible for abduction. Stick to the smaller northern continent, and remember that people in poor, country neighborhoods make the best abductees. The rule of thumbs: “If you live in a trailer, it’s okay to nail yah.” Don’t take anyone from a gated community, and if you take a public figure, such as a politician or pop star, do not send them home again afterwards. Instead, consider replacing them with a symboid or replimonster.

l What’s okay to stick where? Inserts are fine, but make them small. Nasal passages and teeth are the most popular places, but why not get creative? The natives have several other interesting cavities! Unfortunately, some few of the natives have discovered that wearing tinfoil hats blocks some of our control-rays, so check out the penetrating power of your transmitter before spending a lot on fancy inserts.

l Now, as to what may be done with abductees. Exams are fine, and sexual practices are expected. Eating or collecting trophies, however, is frowned upon.

l Just a reminder: It’s fun to give the abductees a little lost time—a mystery to occupy their thoughts.

l Please don’t bother the Men in Black—remember, they’re on our side. If they weren’t covering our tracks, things would be a lot more complicated than they are already. Ditto the big fast food chains—which are, incidentally, another great source for the nether parts of cows.

Health

l A warning: Don’t drink the water that is made available for public consumption in certain parts of the planet. It very well may contain fluoride. More than one visitor has come home with enflamed gums, swollen pulgassods, and an awkward gait after sipping a local beverage. And stay away from Dr Pepper unless you have a private place and an open-minded partner handy.

l Vaccinations may be a pain in the asses, but they are required for anyone who expects to come into close contact with the natives. Slime-based lifeforms, as always, may use suppositories in lieu of injected vaccines.

Monoliths

l With the ratification of the Concord of C57D, construction of pranks such as Stonehenge, black transforming monoliths, and pyramids of the types placed in Egypt, Mexico, and Atlantis are now tightly regulated. Unfortunately, at present only those travelers with expensive legal counsel and copious amounts of patience should consider such activities.

I hope these guidelines will help you make the most of your visit here. This planet can be a wonderful vacation spot, but we all must keep in mind that we are only visitors here. Take nothing but memories and cow genitals, and leave nothing but confused natives and enigmatic patterns in croplands. And let’s keep those crop circle messages clean, by the way. It’s just common courtesy.

(Orignally from Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine)

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." - Rene Descartes

***

The Straight Dope: Why does Heinz ketchup say "57 varieties"? I only see one variety

Q: In case you're not aware, you've uncovered another Illuminati agent in Henry J. Heinz. Let me expand briefly. The Illuminati are an extremely secret sect, and have been among mankind practically from the beginning, originating, it is believed, in the Lost Continent, Atlantis. Being a secret, powerful, occult sect, the Illuminati gathered great mystical power from their use of the number 5. Five is an extremely strong number, still used in the worship of Satan, the power of our military, the logic of our digits, the points of our extremities, our senses, and a great many other things rooted in our collective psyche. Also important, and perhaps more powerful, is the combination of the numbers 2 and 3, equalling 5, of course. Two is the symbol for symmetry, and three, the divinity and others. It is a blatant game that the Illuminati are extremely fond of, flaunting their symbols to each other — the more bizarre the better, the more flagrant the waste of money, the better yet. Keeping this in mind, think again of the giant pickles, the man whose "mysterious" number is 57. (Remember, 7 is simply the repeating 2 + 3 cycle, i.e., 2 + 3 = 5 + 2 = 7 + 3 = 10 or 5 x 2.) Now observe the phone number — 237-5757. Ergo, buying Heinz products finances the Illuminati.

P.S.: Notice how many letters in his first and last names.

A: Very interesting, Dan, and just the kind of thing we expect from a Baltimorean. I should point out, by way of amplification, that by using the digits 2 and 3 in appropriate combinations you can generate every integer (including 1, if you allow subtraction). In other words, the very foundations of mathematics are infected with Illuminism. Those guys are everywhere.

"A lifetime is more than sufficiently long for people to get what there is of it wrong." - Piet Hein

***

Lexington: Still crazy after all these years | The Economist

"Hofstadter, writing at the time of Barry Goldwater’s insurgency, argued that political paranoia—a mix of anger, heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy—was most evident on the extreme right. And there are plenty of examples of right-wingers peddling nutty tales. Isolationists in the 1940s accused Franklin Roosevelt of deliberately letting the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour to provide an excuse for war. Talk-radio crackpots in the 1990s accused the Clintons of having Vince Foster, a depressive friend of theirs who killed himself, murdered.

But the left is hardly immune to such fantasies. Some people, including Mr Obama’s own former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, believe that AIDS was cooked up by the government to kill blacks. A staggering 18% of Americans think that the government of George Bush probably knew in advance about the attacks of September 11th 2001 but allowed them to proceed anyway. Some even contend that Mr Bush orchestrated the attacks himself, to create an excuse for invading Iraq. To believe this, you have to believe that the Bushies were both wicked enough to murder thousands of Americans and brilliant enough to execute such a mind-bogglingly sophisticated plot without a single leak—in a culture where Richard Nixon could not even hush up a burglary.

Belief in conspiracy theories can be comforting. If everything that goes wrong is the fault of a secret cabal, that relieves you of the tedious necessity of trying to understand how a complex world really works. And you can feel smug that you are smart enough to “see through” the official version of events. But widespread paranoia has drawbacks. For a start, it makes calm, rational debate rather tricky. How can you discuss the trade-offs of health-care reform, for example, with someone who thinks the government is plotting to kill grandma? It does not help, either, that politicians on both sides are willing to fan the flames. Sarah Palin calls Mr Obama’s health-care proposals “evil”. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, calls the protesters who loudly oppose them “evil-mongers”. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, calls them “un-American”."

"I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life." - George Burns

***

Deceptive Deceptions



"Was Princess Diana really killed in the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster? Is the Loch Ness Monster actually a descendent of Jesus's Magic Dog? Did the Twin Towers really ever exist?

The clues are everywhere, if one chooses to make stabs in the darkness.

Who *are* the shadowy elite that tell the lies which the rest of humanity believes? They are more powerful than the government. Than even the Freemasons and the Illuminati.

Their all-seeing eye watches you with your technology - from your money, and your reflective surfaces. It is these eyes whom the late Tupac Shakur refers to in the title of his album, "all eyez on me".

He caught their attention when he sang the words, "Vice President Quayle... Eat a Dick Up."

Three years later, he was murdered. But not before appearing in the 1991 film "Nothing But Trouble" with John Candy and Dan Aykroyd. The same Dan Aykroyd who starred in Candy Shack II with Jackie Mason. Mason. Freemason...

Adolf Hitler. A cyberganic demon created by the same Nazi Scientists who were later behind to form the fake agency called NASA, which was necessary to keep the public believing that space travel was something new.

When non-Freemason president John F. Kennedy declared that we should put a man on the moon within 9 years, he unknowingly enraged the powerful league, prompting his own Tupac-esque assassination, later explored in the film JFK. Which also featured - John Candy"

"My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world." - George Bernard Shaw

***

Veggie vision: who will watch the vegetarian channel? - "Even as a life-long and committed vegetarian, my first thoughts on hearing about the new vegetarian internet TV channel Veggie Vision was, what's the point?... Marsh points out that the world's coolest people are vegetarian. Pamela Anderson is her example. Case closed... Also on the channel is a nice interview with Benjamin Zephaniah in which he tells the story of how he once beat a boy up at school for calling him a vegan – he was vegan but he didn't know the word and thought it was a racist insult of some sort."
Bigotry! Culinarism!

Franka Hummels: The sweet taste of a cigarette in a can - "It looks like an energy drink, but its inventor, Martin Hartman, stresses it's nothing of the kind. The promo leaflet puts it like this: "Liquid Smoking has a slight energising effect, followed by a euphoric sense of calming and relaxation." I fiddle with the red-and-white can, and nervously eye the stark "no warning needed" sign. Hartman promises I won't get addicted. "There is no nicotine in it, just a South African herb used by the bushmen since the 14th century."

Benefit Crashers : The Leveraged Sell-Out - "When you put 150,000 bankers out of a job, the people most significantly affected are not the bankers themselves or even the citizens of our country. No, it’s the poor children of developing nations who suffer the most—the kids... “This weekend, our entire village stayed up all night praying someone would buy the Lehman Brothers.” Candle-lit midnight vigils like these were not uncommon in rural enclaves across the globe; it was a rational thought—that God might listen to the poor just once, so the rich could stay rich. But, alas, even that didn’t work. Jose shook his head as he looked over at his youngest sibling, a 14-year old boy reading the Cliff’s Notes to 100 Years of Solitude. He pointed at him in disgust: “Now, he will be like this forever.”"

Borin' Warren - "Hate speech laws, both in the criminal code and the human rights commissions, are applied arbitrarily and don't deal with real threats to real rights... Hate laws aren't really about hate. They're about abusing and stretching the criminal code to criminalize political dissidents... Why wasn't the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, Mohamed Elmasry, charged with a hate crime when he went on TV last year, stating that every adult Jew in Israel -- which would include pregnant women, old men, young folks at a pizza parlour or dance club -- are legitimate targets for Palestinian terrorism?"

Middle-Aged White Guy Sues Columbia for Discrimination - "What you have at Columbia University is, you have a Women's Studies program. Guys can take classes in it, guys can study it, but they won't benefit it. The whole program is about benefiting females and teaching that guys are evil and that guys are responsible for all the world's evils... 51-60% of students in college are women... If feminists want a quota-ocracy, then along with the 51% of the best of society, they should be getting 51% of the worst of society, too. They talk about the glass ceiling but never the tombstone basement. Did you know, of the 25 most dangerous occupations in America, 90% of them are held by guys? You never hear feminists fighting for those jobs. You never hear about them fighting to get ladies into the tombstone basement... According to the high school teachers I talk to, high schools have changed their grading systems to benefit girls instead of boys. Boys are good at competition, at cramming for tests and that sort of thing. Girls are better at doing their homework consistently, and that skews the grades... Title IX says that if Columbia University has varsity sports for men, it has to provide equal varsity sports for women... Columbia University has to provide a Men's Studies program if they want to be equal."

Kanojo Toys » Japanese sex toy foods and drinks get big - "A while back we blogged about some “novelty” green tea lotion that has an uncanny resemblance to the real thing. This is what we love about sex toys in Japan: They have more than once dimension to them! Not only are these good for getting off, but you can enjoy them as ideas as well. Am I looking into it to deeply???"
Damn Japs. I've a picture of these incidentally.

ST Forum It's time we all did the right thing - "Thankfully, there are still some remaining values and practices in society that continue to protect us from eventual moral erosion. They serve as the cornerstone of a country's continued success. Singapore as a small state must never compromise these noble truths and laws... Fines against smoking in public places... Abstinence from premarital and extramarital sex to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as Aids and herpes... Irresponsible and immoral adults hate good laws. That is why the unjust foreign media often lambastes Singapore for its honourable standards. Likewise, the pornography industry uses the term 'adult movies' to disguise its obscene shows."
HAHAHAHAHA I think this is the new title holder of the "Worst. Straits Times Forum Letter. Ever" record. To think that a few years ago one of our "noble truths and laws" would've been a ban on gambling...
Danholy has an archive of his past letters

Going Dark: China's Computer Screens - "Others had a bit of fun. Last night, drawn by media reports that black screens were imminent, hundreds crowded the discussion room in Douban.com, named “black screen countdown,” waiting for the blackout to come. “It’ll be so exciting to have a live broadcast when thousands of computers go black!” wrote a netizen from Guangzhou. Some preset the system time on their computers to view the blackout, with help from online instructions. Some even made their own blackscreen wallpaper to make fun of Microsoft’s new anti-piracy measures. One read, “absolutely pirated edition/voluntarily black screened.”"

SEX ED 601 (Unit 2): Provided in the public interest by the OLCC (Open Love Christian Community) - "Golden Nuggets = frozen urine that may be thrown as abuse. The subject may be required to suck the nuggets as a source of nourishment and debasement."
Some of this sounds dodgy. The name of the community doesn't help. But in my attempt to verify one particular tidbit I found:

Growing Up Sexually: Japan - "Western observers even today often notice that Japanese mothers masturbate their young children during the day in public and at night in the family bed-in order, they say, "to put them to sleep”. The average Japanese mother sleeps with her children until they are ten or fifteen years old, traditionally sleeping “skin-to-skin” (dakine) while embracing her child because the father-as in the traditional gynarchy-is usually absent, over two-thirds of Japanese husbands being involved in extramarital intercourse. Japanese mothers often teach their sons how to masturbate, helping them achieve first ejaculation in much the same manner as with toilet training. A “mental health hotline” in Tokyo recently reported being flooded with calls about incest, 29 percent of them with complaints such as that the mother would offer her body for sex while telling the son, “You cannot study if you cannot have sex. You may use by body”, or “I don’t want you to get into trouble with a girl. Have sex with me instead”. Wagatsuma reports “Japanese mothers often exhibit an obsession with their sons’ penises...[they are] usually brought in by their mothers who fear that their sons’ penises are abnormally small”, with the result that Japanese marriage clinics find “60 percent of their patients are afflicted with the 'no-touch syndrome”, that is, they will have no physical contact with their wives for fear that it will lead to sex...[termed] the “I love mommy' complex”"
This is cited from 7 different sources. The page cites a lot from the "Journal of Psychohistory" though.

YouTube - Goldfish Training Kit from ThinkGeek - "Eat and swim - that's all your goldfish knows how to do... until now!"

Manwolf's Howls & Growls: UNSOLVED HISTORY - Roswell (Partial Review) - "The show... [posits] that over time, memories could have been distorted and perhaps combined... unsuspecting witnesses [go] to a fake UFO crash site, complete with yellow tape and military guards. Each participant is equipped with a helmet camera, so the scientists can determine what each observer actually saw and when. The scientists then collect the data and, a month later, interview the witnesses. And what they discover is striking: even after just a month, the witness testimonies are highly inaccurate and seem to have been heavily influenced not only by what the other witnesses initially said they saw, but by preconceived ideas of what a UFO crash site incident should be like. Some subjects even swear to events that never happened and claim to have seen things their helmet cams show they didn't see... If witnesses are unreliable after 1 month, how reliable can they be after (now) 60 years?... the simplest explanation for the so-called Roswell Incident is the one offered by 1990s Air Force report: a classified balloon crash and subsequent tests with "witness" memories distorted by time."
It's all part of the conspiracy!!!
Keywords: This is a good reason to dismiss most conspiracy theories. whether about aliens or otherwise.

The Bewbs / Katarn's Avatar - "Where possible I've included a picture of their role in C&C as well as a non C&C one. This does not hold true for all cases, but as a general rule, its there."
Pictures of C&C 1-2 and RA 1-2 actresses in-game and out. It didn't solve the "mystery" of why Tanya in RA2 is always bending down though (hurr hurr). I wonder what it's like in RA3

"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable." - Louis D. Brandeis

***

"WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1"

It's ridiculous how people who encode TV shows and put them online rage and throw fits about "thieves" who "steal" their encodes. If those people are thieves, what are they?

It seems no one has used the term "strawmisogynist" online. I shall thereby have the honour of inaugurating its first appearance.

Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, if they can read through long lists of policies and throw them back at those who revert their edits, and on top of that follow the guidelines of editors' consensuses which aren't in the official policy pages.

There're Google Ads on Facebook which are for Facebook (they appear only when you bypass the Facebook ads). Presumably clicking repeatedly on them will bankrupt them since they'll just be paying themselves - after giving a cut to Google.

Starhub's customer service is the pits. What one customer care consultant tells you can never be relied upon, as on at least two occasions what I had earlier been told has been contradicted by another staff member later. I was considering taking down the names of everyone I deal with, but not only is that a good deal of trouble, their turnover is so high it probably doesn't make a difference. The sad thing is that I have a feeling the other mobile service providers are as bad.

I saw an ad which read "Why lose precious memories to a computer crash?". I thought it was going to be an ad for computer backup, but it turned out to be a Fuji ad for photo printing. Nice try.

"Digital downloads probably have a positive impact on merchandising. You've no clue the number of toys and collectibles I've purchased solely due to shows that I never would have had access to without the ability to download them."

The Chestnut ice cream in Megumi Japanese Restaurant at Sunset Way comes with a version of adzuki (sweet red bean paste). Unfortunately, it is screwed up - a mixture of whole red beans and crushed red beans, rather than the semi-smooth paste it is supposed to be.

Kevin: "Was enjoying my new Nescafe coffee from Malaysia when I discovered a mosquito in the drink. Haven't seen mosquitos in Buffalo before. Hmm..." Malaysia Boleh!

I tasted what was supposedly pure honey with no sugar and no water. Besides its high price, I saw why people usually consume honey with sugar and water in it - it was disgusting. It was off-sweet rather than sweet, and had a bitter aftertaste.

I think it's telling that the word "misogyny" dates from 1650-60 and "misandry" from 1945-50 (when feminism was gaining steam). Basically women have been a pain in the ass for centuries, and feminism is about hating men.

At Jalan Besar I saw 2 Indians on a bicycle, with one sitting in front of the one on the seat, like lovers.

One factor advanced for belief in conspiracy theorists is having a knowable, identifiable and understandable enemy (as opposed to being at the mercy of fate and disorder) - the same reason why it is easier to blame things like alcoholism on 'demons' than on real and more complex socio-personal factors.

It seems that sex shops which sell pornography tend to be manned by men, and those which don't tend to be manned by women.

The refrain that "it's a relationship, not a religion" is especially odd, given how James 1:27 specifically calls it a religion.

Despite having an Intelligent Designer, bacteria and virii are curiously unable to be mutated by Him in the face of drug cocktails (though He is Intelligent enough to mutate them in the face of single drugs).

There's a "Polish-Russian group for difficult matters". I love the translation.


Seen in a shop in Chinatown:

"No camera. Photo taking $5"

I'd be interested to see them enforce this in a court of law. At most, they'd be able to chase you from their premises.

The next shop was even better:

"No camera allowed. Fine $50"

"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning." - Bill Gates

***

On VR3: The Coils of Hate

"Life in the decadent city of Godorno is not easy on the Judain minority. A shrewd people of mystics and merchants, they are often accused of usury and witchcraft and anything else that happens to be amiss. Now the ruler has declared them outlaws and mobs immediately form to go about waving pitchforks and smashing shop windows. The Judain, huddling in their underground congregations, just want to go and find the Promised Land where the Chosen People can live under the one true God. I have searched this premise long and hard for real-world parallels, but nothing seems to
leap out."


On repairing wet gadgets:

"Vronko relates an unusual story in which his cell phone was on his lap during his drive home. When he got out of his car, the phone fell onto the driveway and that night was covered by 12 inches of snow. He didn't find the handheld until spring, two months later.

When he found the phone, he didn't have time to work on it, so he threw it into a freezer for another two months.

Once he found the time, Vronko cleaned out the phone with a solvent and made sure it was thoroughly dry. As a result, the phone worked just fine.

"Certain electronics don't like freezing temperatures," Vronko notes, so he doesn't recommend this approach for everything. "But, in this case, the cold kept the delicate parts from oxidizing."


"I think Mas Selamat was abducted by aliens. This is a giant conspiracy hatched by the CIA and FBI, in conjunction with the Vatican and the Illuminati.

They landed a UFO at the detention center and used mind controlling devices to wipe off the memories of the guards, who are really grand masters of the Knights Templar in disguise. The aliens then flew him to a top secret underground facility in Area 51 to be interrogated by a team of vampires and werewolves.

And do you know why they did this? Because Mas Selamat is The One --- that's right, he is Elvis Presley --- the sole descendant of the Holy Grail bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.

I fear for his fate. If they do not get what they want from him, I am afraid they will get the Abominable Snowman to feed him to the Loch Ness monster."

"In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk." - Rita Rudner

***

Why People Believe Conspiracies

"There is not a shred of evidence that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy, but that is entirely irrelevant to those who choose to believe that there was one. The lack of evidence only reinforces their belief that a conspiracy has been hidden...

Why, then, do people believe in these and other conspiracies? (Of course, there are known conspiracies -- Osama bin Laden and others conspired in the 9/11 plot -- but there are no successful hidden conspiracies. I cannot think of one in my lifetime.) There are at least six major reasons:

1. Many people find it impossible to believe that a few utterly unimpressive individuals can do so much damage. Lee Harvey Oswald, a man who can best be described as simply a loser, could change history all by himself? It doesn't seem to make sense.

2. Many people want to blame those they loathe for as much of what they do not like as possible. Just about everyone who believes in hidden conspiracies attributes those conspiracies to those they hate. People who hate President George W. Bush blame him and his administration for 9/11. Egyptians who hate Israel have blamed AIDS on Israeli prostitutes. Indeed, attributing to Jews hidden conspiracies -- the "world Jewish conspiracy," the Protocols of the Elders of Zion -- is the oldest and most common belief in a hidden conspiracy.

3. One should never underestimate the power of boredom -- and the subsequent yearning for excitement -- to affect people's thinking and behavior. Belief in a hidden conspiracy is far more exciting than accepting prosaic truths. Figuring out the "mystery" of who killed JFK is a much bigger thrill than accepting that one jerk was responsible. Deciphering who was "really" responsible for 9/11 is a lot more interesting than accepting that 19 Arabs with box cutters did it.

4. People who feel powerless over their own lives are far more likely to believe that some invisible force controls their fate than people who believe that they are the masters of their lives.

5. There is, apparently, a great yearning among many people to believe that there is hidden knowledge and that they have access to it. It makes them feel special, perhaps even superior to the rest of us who do not have access to this hidden knowledge.

6. In Western societies, it appears that secular people are more likely to believe in hidden conspiracies than the more religious. It may be that the religious already believe in an invisible power that governs the universe -- God -- and therefore seem to have much less of a psychological or emotional need to believe in invisible powers on earth."

"Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them. My mother cleans them." - Rita Rudner

***

The official story is that Mas Selamat escaped while visiting the toilet. Frankly, that's a very cock reason.

More than one person has asked me if I think the Powers That Be are lying, and more than one person has suggested, very seditiously, a possible true reason for his escape.

I pointed out that if they are lying, they are irresponsible. If they are not lying (even if it's an "honest mistake"), then they look like cocks. Either way, they look bad.

The lesson from conspiracy theorists is that they thrive in the lack of information, so if you do not want people to "speculate now as to what and how it happened", you need to do better than giving answers which even MPs seem to be unsatisfied with (meanwhile, a much less serious issue like misplacing a form gets the speculations [accusations, even] flying hard and fast).

In any case, I am not too worried, because I know that our perennially vigilant police have been busy gaining valuable experience in preventing terrorists from disrupting law and order in our fair city:




Some of the more novel observations about Mas Selamat's escape:

Thoughts and pieces: Escapes of Selamat Kestari - "Even while doing our exams in university in Singapore, going to toilet involves having an invigilator following you up to the toilet door and peeking back and forth inside the toilet to ensure that we are not doing anything strange. I wonder what's the reason that detainee like a the terrorist is not given the same 'nice' and 'careful' treatment."

ZUCO'S BLOG - "If there was a proper opposition in Singapore's parliament, the minister of home affairs and the PM will definitely get seriously grilled like they do in the UK when some shit (like the lost of CDs containing sensitive government data) hits the fan. In Singapore, they will probably get a slap on their hands with no calls for their resignation."

Hard Hitting in the Lion City: JI leader escape in Singapore - "If this escape has happened in Indonesia, there would be wall-to-wall almost gleeful articles in the Strait Times, but because this was in 'safe' Singapore, there had been almost no news at all."

Ezra Klein: Backs Patted, Arms Tired

"[Blogs]'re a flawed and problematic medium. They encourage polarization and extremism rather than debate and understanding. They turn on snark and mockery more often than facts and agile argument. They've not become a space for muckraking so much as hackery, where each side touts their independent credentials each time they deliver another blow to their traditional enemies. We don't take on sacred cows nor unexamined institutions, we hit the long-hated "Mainstream Media", the other side's propaganda outlets, or opposing politicians. We boast a combination of people who can write, people who can report, people who can crack jokes, and people who can do none of the above. If we've democratized some information -- poll results being the type I can think of -- we've done so without context or education, leaving readers more informed but, in many case, less knowledgeable. We fire off missives without time to think, desperate to fill our internal quotas. At the same time, the few worthwhile writings that do emerge from our caffeinated rips are quickly pushed down the page by useless quoting and snarky pointing, forever denied the chance to make a difference or change some minds. We link to funny stats, to easy facts, to things we can talk about, but rarely to the thoughtful and worthwhile writings of our peers. I'm glad we donate some money, do some activism, and talk some politics, but I'm far from convinced that we've helped a too-polarized country become any better of a place.

I've not yet -- and not for lack of trying -- found the blog where smart and engaged partisans are respectfully speaking to each other, where naturally skilled reporters are unearthing the crucial issues of the day, where the point is to inform and enrich rather than enrage and destroy. And until I do, I can't stand talking about this transformative and enlightened medium. Because until that day, all we've really got is a couple of technogurus proselytizing for us because it advances their careers and puts their breathless exclamations into the (mainstream) media, a couple of gems whose readers are lucky to have found them, and an endless army of critics well equipped to carp and stab at minute flaws in their betters, but rarely able to excel in the skill they find so easy to judge. We've got a medium where the editor rejects nothing, where our articles achieve an acceptance rate of 100%, and we suffer for it. We're the D&D players in the back of the class who mock both the math whizzes and the jocks, simultaneously jealous and contemptuous of what they do better than us and delighted whenever we can nail them for a misstep. And then, through the transcendent and healing power of mockery, we convince ourselves of their incompetence and our transformative achievements through the use of snark. Congratulations us."


(After a partial quote from the above):

"And according to C. W. Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle, "That’s what makes those who are going to live in this brave new world of [blog-enhanced] politics a little nervous. [Bloggers are] talk radio without the FCC, opinion columnists without the editors." Adds West Texas A&M University professor Leigh Browning, "Blogs are inevitably going to have more impact on the extreme left and extreme right."

Pay attention to the word "extreme." For although it is certainly true that bloggers did not invent extremist politics—indeed, the deepening divisions within America are the long-simmering outgrowth of myriad and complex forces having to do with the growing sense of alienation and powerlessness in society—there can be no doubt that blogging has given new voice and new reach to the extremist strain in American society.

This extremism has lain at the periphery of American politics throughout our long history. More than forty years ago, in fact, the historian Richard Hofstadter published a famous article in Harper’s Magazine entitled "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." In it, he described the key features of the extremist conspiracy theories that have played such a dark role in American political life since even before the Revolution. Hofstadter wrote:

The paranoid [extremist] sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms. As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, [which] only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

Doesn’t that sound a bit too much like the two bloggers quoted at the be ginning of this essay? Multiply them by many thousands more—and instead of an audience of thousands, as such people spoke to in bygone eras, give them now an audience of millions—and you begin to grasp the heightened danger. Right now, today, they are preaching to us that the government is ruled by a conspiracy of the right (or the left), that the 9/11 catastrophe was knowingly aided and abetted by Big Business (or the Jews) anxious to give the American people an external enemy to focus on instead of the disastrous economic situation that has resulted from their own perfidy and greed, that Osama Bin Laden has (depending on their political stance) either already been captured and is waiting to be trotted out at the appropriate time or else could have been captured were it not for the machinations of America’s hidden traitors. No matter how preposterous the claim, I guarantee that you can find it argued eloquently and vociferously somewhere in the blogosphere, supported by an encyclopedia of "facts."

But lest we all have a good laugh at the absurdities often found on the Internet, we would do well to heed Hofstadter’s principal point: “The idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.” And what makes it especially dangerous today, of course, is that they are attempting to fill the vacuum left by an enfeebled mainstream media.

Still, as a blogger who goes by the name "Scottxyz" noted, "The polarization that blogs have produced is problematic, but the alternative—a homogenized media—is worse." His point is well taken. As William Powers wrote recently in the Atlantic magazine, "The fractious, disunited, politically partisan media of the nineteenth century heightened public awareness of politics, and taught the denizens of a new democracy how to he citizens. Maybe [they were] on to something.""

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