I hate these computer programs that destroy formatting and make sentences hard to read when you struggle to do the opposite. It is an example of the kind of generic scientific thinking that I was referencing. they would love it if everything was written completely in lowercase with no inference or inflection. Meanwhile Vigo, Lawry, here is an article about what we were talking in tomorrow's NYTimes. Morphic Resonance maybe:>))
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/israels-fading-democracy.ht ml?hp REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2012 8:33 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] It's always been Eastasia Vigo, Lawry, The Christians say that the gospel is the "Good News" - that death is defeated and we are once again in a covenant with God through Jesus' sacrifice. They are honor bound to "share" the "Good News" with everyone, because of their own experience, whether those someones want it or not. Traditional Indigenous Peoples say we chose to come here from the Lifegiver, for learning and that the choice we made, prior to birth, is sacred and that we must work our way through and back to the ab-original truths. So, to the peoples that the UN calls Indigenous, the idea of proselytizing to convince someone to leave their path (as an act of argument) is a (maybe THE) primary sin. The sin of idolatry, since you are already "connected and responsible" whether you admit or not. To the Traditional Faiths you are connected by being born at all. The question around all hoarding, warmongering, status and power seeking whether individual, group, community or nation is: "To what purpose?" Or as the CEO of a prominent international corporation said to his ambitious son: "You eat, you shit you work and then you die." So, what for one is a great "gift" is for another a profane act. As a musician I remember when I was taught by the Germanic School of musical thought (Music school in Tulsa, Oklahoma via pre WWII Juilliard School of Music in New York), that Art and Music are universal but that the ones that are the true "Universal," or should I say "Catholic," music is from the German school. (Sorry Vigo, they didn't think much of the Danes so they didn't even bring it up. Of course now I know how great the Danish National performing arts ensembles are because I am stunned by them when they visit New York.) However, my teachers thought enough about the French and Italians to say they were shallow and irrelevant and the Russians were sentimental and lacked discipline. In fact the CIA used to make the same claims about the Russians even though we were taught they would kill us on the spot if we weren't observant. As for the Jews? They are Fourteen and one half million people in the world with a land the size of one of the smallest of U.S. states. In that state of 7 and one half million people, roughly 75% are Jewish, 17% are Islamic and the rest are various forms of Christian. How many Christians in the world? 2 billion. How many Islamic in the world? 2.1 billion. How about wealth? This Pew Poll at: http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf# page=61 is very interesting. If I'm reading right, Jewish people constitute 4% of the population in America above $100,000. While Christians constitute 74% of the population above $100,000. What is the Jewish population percentage of the U.S.? But you can read it for yourself. One of the reasons for the statistics is to diffuse the whole story about the "super Jew" holding the rest of the world hostage or at bay. It might do everyone some good to actually get to know some Jewish people who are culturally Jewish and who read what the Christians call the "Old Testament." There is a story there about Gideon and how 300 clever soldiers with lanterns rout thousands of troops in the darkness. But in the daylight, the memory of the rout can make demands on the 300 that are impossible to meet yet are believed by the majority, even of their friends. It helps to study the statistics and make your own judgments apart from group assumptions. Just because the "priors" align doesn't mean the story is true. Only that it COULD be true. Like that Cherry Blossom fertility festival held every spring in Washington when the legislators ride through the streets of Washington, D.C., in automobile convertibles with young maidens and any child born as a result is considered sacred. That ties in with the ancient European Spring Fests when the Catholic Priests would wait for the husband to leave and visit the wife for his one sexual encounter a year with the child being sacred if one occurred. You can see it in the movies of Godard and the "Wandering Scholar" opera by Gustav Holst, so it must be true and the Cherry Blossom Festival is a remnant. right? (Vigo, this story is untrue and I apologize if I didn't make that clear. I certainly couldn't talk to you, as you did to us impressively in English, in your language.) The relationship with the Jewish people is often stated in terms of bigotry. For example, the Jews refused to assimilate in the Soviet Union, (i.e. give up being Jews) and so they were stripped of their rights. The Christians were hiding out but many prominent Jews wouldn't accept the script. Some of them, like the scientists and artists were fantastic in their professions but with a primal myth of Rabbi Akiva refusing to give up his religion to the Romans as they slowly skinned him alive, what would you expect? They had just come through a holocaust where the whole ethnicity was suffering from "Post Traumatic Survivor Syndrome" and in the Soviet Union "why treat the children of Karl Marx with such abuse?" It seems strange but maybe not. I suspect if George Washington's descendants refused to convert to democracy they would probably be tarred and feathered here as well. Come to think of it we do have a resurgence of "Tory Burkians" who are rewriting American History and the Civil War. Mitt Romney is one of them or so he claims. Vigo, I find your "romance" not to be surprising although I choose not to answer or judge it other than to say that. We all suffer from believing that: "once we are all in a room together, the lights are turned out and we are stripped of our clothing then we are all basically alike." "Generic." The reality is that only when the gas is turned on are we all truly the same. That assumption of "sameness" is one of the problems of Western Science and should point out why the Domain of Science should be more carefully studied and regulated lest, like economic science, it pretend to ultimate values. I work with Jews, live in community with them and for the first 17 years of my life, didn't know any. I also had almost no assumptions about them and what assumptions there were, were contained in words like "cheap" and turned out to be untrue projections grounded in the poverty of the great Depression. That means I truly learned about Jewish culture at the same time as I learned about musical eras in college. In short, I learned to think systematically about all white cultures at the same time that I learned to think systematically and theoretically about music. As a Cherokee, I have a lot in common with the treatment of the Jews by European culture over the past couple of thousand years and over the last 75 in particular. I've sat at religious remembrance ceremonials (shiva) with families from the Holocaust and listened as they spoke the same reality my family experienced over the last three generations (since 1838) down to the present here in the US. Whether actual death marches, prejudicial/ignorant mythologizing or just old fashioned political manipulation, our experiences have paralleled. (That is not to mention the sexual abuse that everyone speaks about with such self-righteousness in today's world.) I have a whole community library of books written from the last 500 years here where and I eat, sleep and sense the story daily. It is a part of my fabric and my DNA structure. When I first moved to NYCity 42 years ago, I found the Jewish community here to be generous, homelike and a pleasure to attend and study with. I liked the way they treated books. I still find it so. I can't imagine living in Israel with the constant bi-polar political reality of being surrounded by and complicit with events that slowly destroy one's sense of universal "righteousness." "The House of Prayer for all Nations" is a tough everyday reality, for all three middle eastern faiths. However, the only one of the three faiths that will accept my reality, my culture and my faith is Judaism. Christianity and Islam both warmonger in my reality and insult and infantilize my ancestors and my cousins around the world and their science is even worse in its assumptions and self-righteous actions. That is true here in North America and it is true wherever these two faiths have political power over the society and has been for more than a thousand years. Every culture has it's sleazy, seamy side and the prejudice that Mitt Romney showed in Jerusalem with his wealthy advisors, who were Jewish, doesn't mean that they are at the center of Jewish ideals or traditions. Every culture has its own barbarians. Recently an Israeli settler with the same last name as Moshe Dayan, wrote a defense of the status quo in the Jewish settlements and attacked a state for the Palestinians. It was published in the NYTimes and answered bluntly by many letters from prominent American Jewish writers. I am told that it is even more blunt in the Newspapers of Israel. It was a Cherokee Scholar who first mentioned your comments after 9/11 about "Chickens Coming Home to Roost" to America due to American actions in the world. That writer was "drawn and quartered," dismissed from his University job (even though he won his court case) abandoned by his people (for stirring the beast in the dominant society against them) and for generally believing, like some on this list, that his words would not be held against him. History will vindicate him and the cowards who abandoned him will be disgraced. The enemies who used him for their political purposes are still fighting to win. If they do, he will disappear and someone else will take up the truth as he had because a falsehood is a reality that doesn't exist except in someone's mind. The biggest point against the uber conspiracy is that the "small group" strategies are no better than they have ever been in history where they always confront, "you eat, you shit, you work and then you die." And that is everyone. No one escapes. People remember Verdi but few know who Count Bardi was and the battle between the followers of Vincenzo Galileo and his son is still going on in scientific circles. Recently a prominent physicist referred to the great aesthetic theorist Vincenzo Galileo as a local lute player. Do we suppose that was a "put down" or did the physicist just walk out onto public television without his pants? I suspect that Frank Herbert and his "Heaven Makers" which is a combination of planetary aliens, Christian transubstantiation with a bit of Indigenous Animism thrown in for spice, is as good an explanation as any of the conspirators from the Aliens to the Illuminati down to the present. That doesn't mean that I don't take any of these fanatics, from any of these groups, seriously just as I take American police and military seriously when they play game theory on the average American of color. I have no doubt that there are people who would tie radio wires around the genitals of children and make them write confessions only to be executed for fun, just as people are sometimes thrown out of helicopters. The Demon does exist and it's between the ears of those who intensely feel "repressed rage." The problem is and has always been one of reconciliation. Religions who fail at that are failures at everything even if there are billions of adherents and they have all of the wealth of the world in their pockets. Their hearts are eaten by the ants. REH PS: Welcome to the conversation. It's good to read your voice. REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Viggo Andersen Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2012 2:53 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] It's always been Eastasia At 11:37 04-08-2012 -0400, you wrote: >Greetings, Viggo > >Quick thoughts and questions re. the points you bring up: > >1. Do you have a citation for the BBC report, especially the date? I >have a pretty extensive collection of UbL statements and interviews, but not this very interesting one. I only know about it from the list. Are we closing in on fraudulent conspiracy evidence? Is that what it smells of to high heaven? >2. At the time of the September 11 attacks, and generally under the >Bush administration, US foreign policy was under the control of what we call the US neocons. About 80% of the most influential neocons are Jewish. This does NOT mean that they put US interests second to their perception of Israel's interest. Rather, one has to look at the positions that they advocated and implemented and decide whether those policies were in the best interest of the US. And while it is possible to be very critical of those policies -- impacts of which we are still paying for today -- we have to consider that nonetheless the American neocons in positions of responsibility to the US thought that what they were doing was in the US interest. And this leads us into the very interesting relationship between the US neocons and the Likkud party. Anyway, this is a long and complex story. It goes without saying that as a Dane I don't take much interest in American politics. But here I find it more necessary to use the phrase "Keep the eye on the ball" and then ask the question: Who or what is the ball to keep an eye on? If we are to talk conspiracy, then my ball is the conspiracists. They are far outside of the meaning of the word politics, and they have an agenda of their own, which is anti-government. And now I wonder how the "secret government" in the US is supposed to be perceived? As consisting of 100% neocon Jews?? If it's 80% out in the open for everybody to know about in plain normal politics? >Unfortunately, because Israel is so readily and automatically called >"the Jewish State," it has been easy for too many analysts and observers to confuse "Israeli" with "Jewish." When Israel was viewed, rightly or wrongly, as a heroic and moral state, this redounded to the benefit of "Jews" worldwide. But now that Israel's behavior is coming under heavy and deep criticism, rightly or wrongly, "Jews worldwide are being identified with this behavior. This is, in my opinion, very unfortunate. The growing insistence among Likkudists on the identical identity of "Jews" and "Israel" suggests that this situation will become worse: criticism of Israel is identified as "anti-semitic" by the Likkudists, and by anti-semites, all Jews are being blamed for the actions and characteristics of Israel. In this lies a tragedy in the making. I did not see this coming. If it hadn't been for her parents I would, as far as anybody can know, have married an Jewish/Israeli penpal in 1969 after her 2 year draft service and after a couple of years with her here in Denmark have moved with her to Israel for good. In early June 1967 I was returning home from Sweden to be met on the railway station of a newspaper poster about war having broken out down there. What to do, I decided to go forward with my plan to hitch-hike through Europe to visit her. I stayed with her, her parents and her brother for 3 weeks. The only effect of the war for their village had been a rocket hitting a water tower that had been taken out of use long ago. Her parents were both Holocaust survivors, her mother a Russian having fled 3000 km to survive, her father was in Poland, but apparently he never ever talked about his experiences. The daughter born 1946, conceived while Hitler was still alive! There is something about that, which I still don't know and would love to find out: Where were they, what were they thinking, how could they already have been married, and what did he have to do to survive, is that why he never talked about it, he was ashamed of it and didn't want anybody to know about it (I know a thing or two from survivor interviews, that's why I suspect it). So suddenly this hits close to home here. In late 2009 I decided to try to track her down, and when 2-3 months of searching the net had let to nothing I got the idea, I have to hire a gumshoe, I can't do it alone, so I paid an agency in Israel. That cost me some $1300, and after a couple of false leads they came up with the right one, and I had my first phone talk ever with her in January 2010. After 2 months and 1 week I had to give up having any more contact with her ever again. She remembered nothing whatsoever since opening the door for me in her parents house or the remaining 15 months of our past relationship and refused to take it seriously! One night after having tried for a couple of weeks to beg and plead and threaten her to see a therapist I simply deleted my Skype connection to her and the Gmail account I had been using. I didn't bother to email her first. I'd rather defend myself against a rabies-infected dog than her and her now both dead parents. I thought I owed her to find her again for her fights with her parents for 15 months about marrying me. I had done that, it was all for nothing for the second time with her attacking and insulting me in defensiveness about her parents (!), so enough already, I owe her nothing anymore. Lawry, as coincidence would have it you used the word for it right below here: dysfunctional! That's her and her family with her brother being a possible exception, but whether he is or not I have no way of knowing. Obviously I wasn't visiting him in 1967, and he wasn't much around in the house anyway, so I've never had much of an impression of him. So yes, I know something about Israel and Israelis. I have had to. Oops, I got your paragraph moved all the way to the left here: ====== 3. Much of American politics -- and I am not sure how far back this goes, but it could be argued that it goes back to the first European settlers in America -- is based upon having at hand an existential and demonized enemy. The British, the Spaniards, the Native Americans, the Chinese, the communists, Islam have all been systematically and dysfunctionally identified by main-stream Americans (with the focused goading of parts of the press, big business, politicians, etc.) as a massive, powerful existential enemy. Given the habituation of the American people to this kind of thinking, it is not hard to line up a "new" enemy whenever one is needed by this os that interest group. And now me: Yes, I'm aware of that, of course. But on the other hand, if you treat someone as the new enemy even just in national politics you are going to get one, the same one. You're stepping on corns, and they don't appreciate it. They want you off, even if they have to shoot you a bullet between the eyes first. So to speak. Isn't that what 9/11 was all about? Is there anything implausible about it? Americans don't just get out of their country as tourists. They have armed forces all around the globe. It's gotta piss somebody mightily off once in a while. >But of course, this is a two-edged sword, as today's "ally" can become easily become tomorrow's "enemy." > >4. I am not aware of any scientist who fell for Geller. Specifically, I know that the scientists at Stanford Research Institute who spent quite a bit of time testing Geller through many tries ended up merely insisting that it was impossible from their study to conclude that Geller was doing any of any scientific validity, and that somehow every time he showed up to be put through an experimental protocol he refused to stay within the protocol. They terminated the study when they concluded that Geller was doing this deliberately. Hmm - some of it I remember now that you say it. I remember vividly how he was. Am I mistaken about the scientific validation from at least one physicist, or do I mix it up with something else? I would have to dig deep into my archives to find out. I had to jump to welfare issues instead in late 1998, so it's a really long time since I've been involved in that stuff. I have a habit of checking and re-checking, but it didn't occur to me that I might not remember correctly about Uri Geller. >I hope these observations are of interest. Absolutely, Lawry! Not the least the Geller business. But I don't mind being filled in about something I don't take primary interest in. The neocon perc. Jews I didn't know about, but hey, that's the name of the game, you can't know everything about everything before uttering an opinion. Viggo. >Cheers, >Lawry > > >On Aug 3, 2012, at 10:36 AM, Viggo Andersen wrote: > >> >>>I offer no speculation as to who did it, nor have I studied the >>>myriad conspiracy theories that do so. I guess that the myth will control the public history of the matter. >>> >>>Cheers, >>>Lawry >> >>I've spent years on everything from science to newage beginning 20-25 >>years ago. Not specifically 9/11 more than skimming here and there, >>but the general knowledge - expertise is a bit much - that I have is >>still very invaluable for any such subject. >> >>You are right about "the myth", because it's either that or someone >>fessing up. The UFO mania has been tugging along for decades and is >>never going to get resolved, because it is just as impossible to do >>that as it is to solve every single crime on the planet. >> >>The latter, mysteriously, has not been turned into a conspiracy or a >>claim about "reptile aliens dunnit!". Well, don't give up hope, it can >>still happen. >> >>I'm a bit rusty with these subjects, I've done other stuff in later >>years, but I was actually writing on something about the bin Laden >>quotes. It's as good as it can get I think, so here goes: >> >>======== >>> I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United > >>States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a > >>government within a government within the United States. The > United >>States should try to trace the perpetrators of these > attacks within >>itself; to the people who want to make the > present century a century >>of conflict between Islam and > Christianity. That secret government >>must be asked as to who > carried out the attacks. ... The American >>system is totally in > control of the Jews, whose first priority is >>Israel, not the > United States. -- Osama bin Laden (Reported >>by BBC) >>======== >> >>Am I the only one that can see from this that bin Laden had been >>reading American conspiracy literature? The only statement I'm not >>sure about is the one about the Jews. The character of it, yes, that's >>typical American conspiracy reasoning, but I am not sure about >>anti-semitism or attitude towards Jews among those people. In any case >>the claim is absurd. What nonsense it is that the first priority of >>Jews, many of them, in the US should not be Israel, it's not even news >>to anybody, and of course Jews have influence in the US, but that does >>not translate into full control. >> >>Other than that, the 9/11 conspiracy claim is done away with very >>fast, because something so mind-blowing and horrifying could never >>have happened in America without conspiracists crawling all over it to >>"disprove" the official explanation and attempting to replace it with >>their own "alternative" and "real truth" version, because that is what >>they always do, and they have been doing it for decades. They start >>with their conspiracy framework that the government can never be >>trusted, and then they go looking for something to support it, and >>what do you know, you can even find (or fabricate!) support for just >>about anything that is provably false. >> >>Occam's Razor and a Bullshit Meter are required tools here, otherwise >>you're risk getting bamboozled. Conspiracists may be incompetent in >>all other respects, but not when it comes to believing their own >>bullshit and getting others to do the same. You also need more, a >>critical mind, the willingness to seek out opposing views, reading >>scientific and other fields of knowledge. First and foremost, don't >>just believe anything! If you don't feel sure one way or the other >>about something, so what, you don't have to. Unfortunately, those who >>care about such advice probably don't need it, and those who need it, >>well, they don't even want to hear it. >> >>Personally I don't care "who dunnit" meaning: can it be pinned on bin >>Laden. What's interesting to me is not that, but why so many will seek >>out fringe explanations supported by piles of evidence amounting to >>nothing while at the same time ignoring that if their own government >>was responsible, then it requires a confession as proof, because it is >>unheard of for a democratic society! Extraordinary claims require >>extraordinary evidence. Without it the plausible and established >>explanation stands until proven wrong with that confession. >> >>If 9/11 had occurred just 3-4 years earlier I would have known a lot >>more specifics about related conspiracy claims, but today I don't feel >>a need to go in-depth with it, because it is well within human >>capacity to fly passenger planes into skyscrapers on a >>suicide/massmurder mission into an enemy country. It is entirely >>plausible without a shadow of doubt in sight, and the same goes for >>motive in the political context. >> >>It's right here too in the bin Laden quote. He knew nothing for a fact >>about a "secret government in a government" in the US, because then he >>would have had to have a man at the top US government level, and how >>would that have been possible? It's just a claim he made, he didn't >>substantiate it in any way, but then it's worth nothing. He had read >>it somewhere or made it up himself (don't think so, he clearly - >>judged on the other claims - wouldn't have needed it), and he probably >>believed it, who cares. >> >>There's still the possibility that he was lying through his teeth >>despite his insistence to the contrary. He wanted to point the finger >>at his arch enemy, the government of the country that he was not at >>peace with himself no matter whether he had anything to do with 9/11. >>SOB. Blaming the victimized country for having massmurdered a large >>number of its own citizens and some from elsewhere, all innocent >>people (just like the American conspiracists). Then he insists that as >>a Muslim he was against doing something like that. Are you kidding me? >>Peace-loving pacifist and oh so humane bin Laden? War also means >>killing innocent people incl. kids, because try as hard as you may >>it's just not possible to avoid. And it is a very long time ago that >>it was. >> >>The only 9/11 claim I can remember from previously is the one about >>the impossibility of the towers coming crashing down the way they did >>without explosives having been ignited inside the buildings, something >>like that. Who says they couldn't? No problem for a conspiracist, he >>just finds someone with appropriate credentials that will confirm it >>and substantiate it in some way, because it is always possible to find >>at least one somewhere that will do it. >> >>That's not the way you prove anything. I'm not going to make the point >>here that the majority is always right, but that the equivalent in >>science is consensus. Science is not a one-man-show. If you don't have >>the support of your peers for something it is at best science on >>standby, until and unless you can get it. >> >>It may be unknown to many, but yeah! Scientists can also be crackpots >>inside or completely unrelated to their field! Remember the testing of >>Uri Geller, the "spoon-bender"? Physicists validated that. But >>magicians did not, and he couldn't stand having them hanging around >>and much less letting them do the testing. Then he couldn't "perform". >> >>There's a sucker born every minute, and a higher education is not >>necessarily a cure of it or a guarantee against it. >> >>Viggo. >> >>P.S. I should probably say that I'm not Canadian, American, British >>etc. I'm Danish. And I'm not new to the list. I think it's the first >>time I post, but I've actually been subscribed since - uuh - 1998? >>Something like that. So yes, I'm also aware of Pete on the list, but I >>don't know if he would have anything to say about any of this. But I'm >>sure he will if he has. My age, 67. Old geezers and nothing much else >>on mailing lists anymore - those of us that used them long before >>webfora existed. >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>Futurework mailing list >><mailto:[email protected]>[email protected] >>https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > >_______________________________________________ >Futurework mailing list >[email protected] >https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
