Eisenhower's other warning

Submitted by gjohnsit on Sun, 10/04/2020 - 10:46pm

There's a good possibility that you are aware of President Eisenhower's farewell speech about the dangers of the Military-Industrial-Complex. It's unquestionably a prescient warning.
What gets totally overlooked and forgotten is what he says in his speech immediately after the MIC warning. Skip ahead to the 9:30 mark.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It's tempting to think of this scientific-technological elite controlling public policy like Lagado in Gulliver's Travels.
What Ike is actually talking about is more familiar and more insidious.

In a technocracy the citizens don’t really have a put option—they are stuck with bad policy ideas, like it or not, since those in charge are not elected. Technocrats therefore have a strong incentive to keep on implementing policy ideas, even if they are bad policy ideas since their authority and legitimacy depends on them being viewed as the experts, and the rules allow them to ignore popular pressure to deliver better outcomes. In this case, the put option cannot be exercised and the bad ideas persist.

It's not hard to think of bad ideas that the ruling elites support that never seem to go away: free trade agreements, trickle-down economics, wall street bailouts, endless wars, just to name a few.
Technocracy is inherently undemocratic. That's why bad ideas can persist long after they've been a proven failure.
You can also see it today in the blaming of the poor for not getting the "right" education.

"The technocratic illusion is that poverty results from a shortage of expertise, whereas poverty is really about a shortage of rights.
The sleight of hand that focuses attention on technical solutions while covering up violations of the rights of real people is the moral tragedy of development today....Morally neutral approaches to poverty do not exist. Any approach to development will either respect the rights of the poor or it will violate them. One cannot avoid this moral choice by appealing to ‘nonideological’ evidence-based policies."

“too many policy decisions in the realm of politics and too few in the realm of technocracy.”
- Alan Blinder

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Submitted by mimi on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 2:45am

Does that fit in here?

[video:https://youtu.be/XIU3ML3xHng]

CENSORSHIP From Billionaire-Backed Professional Activists!

I think it does but apologize if not. Couldn't find the original essay Max Blumenthal had written. Would appreciate if you could post a link to Blumenthals's essay.

I just am happy that we all could go back to be natives and live in huts and tents.

Submitted by Lookout on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 6:46am

Here you go mimi

@mimi

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by mimi on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 8:42am

Thank You, I am under the water a bit

@Lookout
because me and my son have lost a very loved one person. It's a blow and as it has many consequences for us personally, so my head is not working as it should. Thank You.

Submitted by Lookout on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 9:18am

sorry to hear of your loss

@mimi

Best wishes to you and your son.
I like singing this old Carter piece.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ab5RF79m0]

I like this one too
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUym6n_bAjE]

"When We're Gone, Long Gone"

Trouble, we have known trouble
In our struggle just to get by
Many times the burden's been heavy
Still we carried on side by side

And when we're gone long gone
The only thing that will have mattered
Is the love that we shared
And the way that we cared
When we're gone, long gone

And when we're walking together in glory
Hand in hand through eternity
It's the love that will be remembered
Not wealth, not poverty

And when we're gone long gone
The only thing that will have mattered
Is the love that we shared
And the way that we cared
When we're gone, long gone

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by Granma on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 10:51am

Mimi, I'm sorry for your loss and grief

@mimi please take care of yourself. I wish you comfort in your sorrow.

Submitted by ovals49 on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 8:11am

Capitalism will continue to shape-shift

@mimi
in an effort to continue its dominant global position and protect the interests of the uber wealthy. Capitalism requires growth and increased consumption, which is exactly what we don’t need more of if we are to continue to survive on this planet.

Trust but verify applies more than ever as we wade through a flood of propaganda and spin that passes for news and entertainment today.

—

“What the herd hates most is the one who thinks differently; it is not so much the opinion itself, but the audacity of wanting to think for themselves, something that they do not know how to do.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Submitted by mimi on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 8:44am

sick and tired of trusting, more sick and tired of verifying

@ovals49
but I know what you mean. for the time being I don't trust anything and therefore there is no need to verify for the time being.

Hope it will pass soon.

Submitted by ggersh on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 8:45am

Thanks for the video mimi, it's a must watch

@mimi neolibs/oligarchs buy everything for profit, nothing is
being done for humanity.

Neoliberalism/Capitalism need to be destroyed.

—

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Submitted by Snode on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 9:01am

Good one, again.

I keep saying we don't "think right" anymore. It's becoming we can't think right anymore. With government, commerce (capitalism) and now technology reinforcing each other it becomes impossible to question any aspect of the three. The interlocking of the three support the validity of the one in question, invalidating criticism even though your lying eyes tell you differently.

Submitted by The Wizard on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 9:40am

It's worse than Ike warned

Today professors in universities have to go out to corporations for grants to fund research. Of course the research is strictly based on the needs of the corporations. Government has cut basic research money, but not defense related research. So you know where research activities are focussed.

I attended a conference on climate change two years ago at MIT. One presenter talked about his project funded by the power company to evaluate the change in expected lifetime of power transformers, the big ones, because of global temperature increase. Now put some perspective on this. We are facing an civilization ending global climate catastrophe and researchers at MIT are working on power transformers for National Grid???? I sat with a group of professors at lunch. They all complained that they spend most of their time writing grant applications and that government money for basic research has dried up. I guess this is the wonderful outcome of our great system of capitalism (snark). It's gotten so bad that they are hiring professors for their ability to write grants and not to teach or do research. This is, of course, all tied into the mechanism of economic rent. Tuition at MIT has skyrocketed ($53,790), and they have an enormous endowment but cannot afford to do basic research, even when labor is supplied almost free by students.
Because the research funded by grants is so specific, the professors complained about their student's skills to do the work.
By the way, since they were not doing basic research on climate change and lacked the knowledge of basic facts, they were asking me questions, for instance, what percentage of forest cover has been cut down since the beginning of civilization?(46%)

Just one more data point. A local friend here in town is a placement specialist at MIT for students. She cannot place students in basic research or technology today. She can place them with weapons manufacturers and the financial sector. Great use of all of that education across scientific disciplines?

My feeling is that the very powerful engine of basic research has been destroyed by Capitalism. I just hope that the world recognized this as the Western capitalist nations go down the tubes.

—

Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

Submitted by The Voice In th... on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 10:51am

I had an opportunity to have a stipend for my thesis

@The Wizard
The US Army had a grant to study the reflection of laser light on metals. Wonder why they were interested in this? /snark
Instead I did my paper on He-3 rich solar flares. No money but pure science.

$2,500 was not to be sneezed at in the late '70s. The professor offering it was one I respected. He told me "The important thing is to get your PhD, then you can work on things that interest you."

Today professors in universities have to go out to corporations for grants to fund research. Of course the research is strictly based on the needs of the corporations. Government has cut basic research money, but not defense related research. So you know where research activities are focussed. I attended a conference on climate change two years ago at MIT. One presenter talked about his project funded by the power company to evaluate the change in expected lifetime of power transformers, the big ones, because of global temperature increase. Now put some perspective on this. We are facing an civilization ending global climate catastrophe and researchers at MIT are working on power transformers for National Grid???? I sat with a group of professors at lunch. They all complained that they spend most of their time writing grant applications and that government money for basic research has dried up. I guess this is the wonderful outcome of our great system of capitalism (snark). It's gotten so bad that they are hiring professors for their ability to write grants and not to teach or do research. This is, of course, all tied into the mechanism of economic rent. Tuition at MIT has skyrocketed ($53,790), and they have an enormous endowment but cannot afford to do basic research, even when labor is supplied almost free by students. Because the research funded by grants is so specific, the professors complained about their student's skills to do the work. By the way, since they were not doing basic research on climate change and lacked the knowledge of basic facts, they were asking me questions, for instance, what percentage of forest cover has been cut down since the beginning of civilization?(46%) Just one more data point. A local friend here in town is a placement specialist at MIT for students. She cannot place students in basic research or technology today. She can place them with weapons manufacturers and the financial sector. Great use of all of that education across scientific disciplines? My feeling is that the very powerful engine of basic research has been destroyed by Capitalism. I just hope that the world recognized this as the Western capitalist nations go down the tubes.

—

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Submitted by Blue Republic on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 11:02am

You may be correct

@The Wizard

My feeling is that the very powerful engine of basic research has been destroyed by Capitalism. I just hope that the world recognized this as the Western capitalist nations go down the tubes.

But was it not under capitalism that the "very powerful engine of basic research" arose in the first place?

Today professors in universities have to go out to corporations for grants to fund research. Of course the research is strictly based on the needs of the corporations. Government has cut basic research money, but not defense related research. So you know where research activities are focussed. I attended a conference on climate change two years ago at MIT. One presenter talked about his project funded by the power company to evaluate the change in expected lifetime of power transformers, the big ones, because of global temperature increase. Now put some perspective on this. We are facing an civilization ending global climate catastrophe and researchers at MIT are working on power transformers for National Grid???? I sat with a group of professors at lunch. They all complained that they spend most of their time writing grant applications and that government money for basic research has dried up. I guess this is the wonderful outcome of our great system of capitalism (snark). It's gotten so bad that they are hiring professors for their ability to write grants and not to teach or do research. This is, of course, all tied into the mechanism of economic rent. Tuition at MIT has skyrocketed ($53,790), and they have an enormous endowment but cannot afford to do basic research, even when labor is supplied almost free by students. Because the research funded by grants is so specific, the professors complained about their student's skills to do the work. By the way, since they were not doing basic research on climate change and lacked the knowledge of basic facts, they were asking me questions, for instance, what percentage of forest cover has been cut down since the beginning of civilization?(46%) Just one more data point. A local friend here in town is a placement specialist at MIT for students. She cannot place students in basic research or technology today. She can place them with weapons manufacturers and the financial sector. Great use of all of that education across scientific disciplines? My feeling is that the very powerful engine of basic research has been destroyed by Capitalism. I just hope that the world recognized this as the Western capitalist nations go down the tubes.

Submitted by The Voice In th... on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 2:04pm

Actually military research, not capitalism

@Blue Republic
jet aircraft, nuclear power, computers, integrated circuits (leading to the Intel 8080), the internet. All (off the top of my head) force fed research by DoD. Hell, Bill gates got his start ripping off the Naval postgraduate school (CBASIC).

—

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Submitted by Blue Republic on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 10:10am

Prescient warning from Ike

thank you for the reminder.

The authoritarians like to claim the authority of "science" but what is actually delivered
is more often "scientifical" - something that sounds at least superficially credible and attractively packaged but which may in fact be subject to debate among scientists, dangerous and promoted for altogether different reasons than those publicly stated.

Of course, this is facilitated by a dumbed down populace from which every effort has been made to strip of critical thinking ability and instill fear of voicing opinions that depart from official narratives.

Control of research institutions and scholarly journals reinforced by sycophantic mainstream media and censorship of social media all reinforce the above, and if that is not sufficient you can go the route of Australia and just start arresting anyone who dares question your edicts.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn0wWVNXmks]

Or consider the fate of whistleblowing Dr. Li-Meng Yan (PhD. MD.) - takes great personal risk to inform the world about the imminent danger from COVID-19 back in January and manages to escape to the US, only to be censored on social media and unable to publish in mainstream journals regarding (what she contends are) the lab-made origins of the virus. Yan opened a Twitter account after being interviewed on Tucker Carlson - gained 60,000 followers in two days, at which point Twitter terminated her account.

An earlier interview with her on UK TV is below - I can't tell you how impressed I
am with this woman - and how disheartening it is to see the efforts to suppress and discredit her.

Link to Yan and her co-authors' paper

"Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route"

is here

Submitted by Roy Blakeley on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 7:16pm

Just so you know

@Blue Republic This woman is from the Rule of Law Society https://www.rolsociety.org/ and Rule of Law Foundation, not from a scientific institution. They are charitable front organizations set up by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/business/stephen-bannon-guo-wengui-ch... who is a billionaire fugitive from China wanted for fraud, money laundering and bribery. They even have Bannon and Guo Wengui front and center on their web page. The paper on which this is based is not from a peer reviewed publication, but rather from a public database. Key publications cited in the manuscript are not peer reviewed. In other words, this has no scientific credibility. And no the scientific community is not suppressing this. It is just crap.

Submitted by Blue Republic on Tue, 10/06/2020 - 9:57am

Just so you know

@Roy Blakeley

- and you would, if you had bothered to read your own Tech Times link, that Dr. Yan is from the University of Hong Kong - which I'm pretty sure qualifies as a scientific institution - where she was on a post-doctoral fellowship until she resigned from it.

@Blue Republic This woman is from the Rule of Law Society https://www.rolsociety.org/ and Rule of Law Foundation, not from a scientific institution.

even her Wikipedia bio describes her as a ophthalmologist and virologist and PubMed has 42 entries showing her as co-author on articles published as late as March of this year in journals including New England Journal of Medicine, Nature and Lancet. PubMed source

I could care less that she is being supported in some way by Bannon and Guo Wengi - they couldn't hold a candle criminality-wise to the leadership of the CCP.

Given the undisclosed conflicts of interest, editorial bias in what gets published, funding bias and the demonstrated willingness of some journals to accede to Chinese censorship demands - the fact that the work linked to is not published in a peer-reviewed recognized journal does not by itself negate its validity - I'm not welling to assume, given pervasive censorship everywhere else, that unacceptable content rather than poor quality of research may limit or exclude the possibility of publishing in a "respectable" journal.

As someone who would not not recognize a furin cleavage site if it jumped up and said 'boy, howdy!' I'm more than willing to accede to the more qualified evaluation of the substance of the claims of Yan and her colleagues. But that's what the focus should be on: substance - not Steve Bannon.

Hey, if you think Yan is that FOS or incompetent then challenge her to a public debate - I'm sure Bannon could give you a segment on his show for it.

Submitted by Blue Republic on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 8:12am

Consistent with past practice

@Roy Blakeley

RoyBlakely posts and disappears when challenged on his statements.

Making much of the fact that the paper by Dr. Li-Meng Yan and three colleagues

"Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route"

not having been published in a peer-reviewed journal. (Yet he seems to have nothing concrete to say about the quality of the evidence they present nor whether their conclusions are consistent with it)

Well, it turns out that there are quite a few other works out there questioning various aspects of the official CCP/WHO narrative of this being a naturally-evolved virus that got into the human population in a zoonotic event - that have been rejected for publication and have been limited to pre-print status.

Quite a list in this article: "Journals censor lab origin theory for SARS-CoV-2" (July 16, 2020)

Meanwhile several scientific papers putting forward the possibility of a lab origin and/or genetic engineering in the virus's history have languished on pre-print websites for some time. Pre-print websites give scientists a chance to air their findings publicly and obtain feedback from peers prior to approaching a journal. In some cases, journals will proactively approach the authors and offer to put forward the paper for peer review with a view to publishing it.

These papers include a study led by Dr Alina Chan of the Broad Institute, MIT, USA. Dr Chan and colleagues explain that SARS-CoV-2, even at very early stages of its detection in humans, was already highly adapted for human infectivity. In this respect it is different from the earlier SARS virus, SARS-CoV (sometimes now called SARS-CoV-1), which caused a human epidemic in 2003. The earlier SARS-CoV was initially far less well adapted to infecting humans and had to acquire mutations gained though many rounds of infectious cycles to reach peak infectivity. This type of progressive adaptation (mutation and selection) is exactly what is expected to happen in animal-to-human virus disease transmission. The fact that there is no evidence as yet for SARS-COV-2 having adapted in this way casts doubt on the zoonosis theory of the virus’s origin. Dr Chan and colleagues conclude that the possibility of a lab escape "should be considered regardless of how likely or unlikely".

Another study, led by Dr Nikolai Petrovsky at Flinders University in Australia, similarly concludes, "Overall, the data indicates that SARS-CoV-2 is uniquely adapted to infect humans, raising questions as to whether it arose in nature by a rare chance event or whether its origins lie elsewhere." The authors conclude that the possibility cannot be excluded that "SARS-CoV-2 was created by a recombination event that occurred inadvertently or consciously in a laboratory handling coronaviruses, with the new virus then accidentally released into the local human population".

Yet another paper available only in pre-print form, authored by Rossana Segreto of the University of Innsbruck, is baldly titled, "Is considering a genetic manipulation origin for SARS-CoV-2 a conspiracy theory that must be censored?"

Segreto argues, "Genetic manipulation of SARS-CoV-2 may have been carried out in any laboratory in the world with access to the backbone sequence and the necessary equipment. New technologies based on synthetic genetics platforms even allow the reconstruction of viruses based on their genomic sequence, without the need of a natural isolate [of the virus]."

However, she adds, "Unfortunately, theories that consider a possible artificial origin for SARS-CoV-2 are censored by international scientific journals as they seem to support conspiracy theories."

Precisely the sort of situation Eisenhower was trying to warn us could happen.

Submitted by Roy Blakeley on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 7:18pm

More information

@Blue Republic https://www.techtimes.com/articles/252635/20200917/fact-check-research-p...

Submitted by Blue Republic on Mon, 10/05/2020 - 11:15am

About to head home and pass out

but checking my e-mail came across this from the Ron Paul Institute -

Seems germane, so I'll just quote the whole thing:

Dear (Blue Republic),

In the Soviet Union it was forbidden to dispute the wisdom of the “party line.” That’s because Marxian communism was viewed as the scientifically inevitable progression of mankind. For Marx and Lenin, the “science was settled.” Therefore anyone speaking out against “the science” of the Soviet system must be acting with malice; must actually want destruction; must want people to die.

Anyone voicing opposition to the “settled science” of Marxism-Leninism soon found their voice silenced. Oftentimes permanently.

Ironically, just 30 years after the “science” of Marxism-Leninism imploded for all the world to see, we are witnessing a resurgence here in the US of the idea that to question “the science” is not to seek truth or refine understanding of what appears to be conflicting evidence. No, it is to actually wish harm on one’s fellow Americans.

And while we who question “the science” are not being physically carried off to the gulags for disputing the wisdom of our “betters” in the CDC or the World Health Organization, for example, we are finding that the outcome is the same. We are being silenced and accused of malicious intent. The Soviet Communists called dissidents like us “wreckers.”

Last week on my daily news broadcast, the Ron Paul Liberty Report, we reported on two whistleblowers from inside the CDC and Big Pharma who raised serious and legitimate questions about the prevailing coronavirus narrative. The former Chief Science Officer for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Dr. Mike Yeadon, has stated that from his experience he believes that nearly 90 percent of the current tests for Covid produce false positives. That means that this massive expansion in “cases,” used to justify continued attacks on our civil liberties, is simply phony.

As Dr. Yeadon said in a recent interview about the Orwellian UK coronavirus lockdown, “we are basing a government policy, an economic policy, a civil liberties policy, in terms of limiting people to six people in a meeting...all based on, what may well be, completely fake data on this coronavirus?”

Is Dr. Yeadon correct in claiming that based on his scientific observation there is no “second wave”? We don’t know. But we do know that his claims that the massive increase in “cases” in Europe used to justify new lockdowns are not in any way being matched with a similar increase in deaths. The EU’s own charts prove this. Deaths remain a flat line near zero while “cases” skyrocket to match the massive increase in testing.

Yet when we reported on Dr. Yeadon’s findings on the Liberty Report last week we found that for the first time ever, our program was removed by YouTube.

YouTube, owned by Google, which is firmly embedded into the deep state, was vague in explaining just where we violated their “community standards” by simply reporting on qualified scientists who happen to disagree with the mainstream coronavirus narrative.

But they did offer this shocking explanation in an email sent to us at the Ron Paul Liberty Report: “YouTube does not allow content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of the World Health Organization.”

Incredible!

It’s not the science that is settled. What appears to be “settled is the impulse to silence anyone who asks “why”?

In liberty,

Ron Paul

Good night, y'all...

Submitted by gjohnsit on Tue, 10/06/2020 - 1:09pm

Here's a good addition

link

The other practical difficulty of maintaining a republic when it aspires to empire is that the technologies created to fight wars abroad end up undermining republican government at home. In imperial Rome, the legions themselves became a threat to domestic order; in the present U.S. the domestic attacks are more subtle.
Numerous media reports indicate, for example, that an anti-Trump PAC, Defeat Disinfo, is employing retired Army General Stanley McCrystal to deploy a Defense Department-developed Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool to counter candidate Trump’s social media posts and to create “counter-narratives” using a network of “paid influencers.” The AI technology was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to counter the propaganda of terrorist groups overseas. The culture of our present officer corps seems a long way from that of General George Marshall who once remarked to Eisenhower, “I may make a thousand mistakes in this war, but none will be the result of political meddling!”

McCrystal’s deployment of anti-terrorism technology to manipulate domestic political opinion during an election is surely incompatible with republican values. One would have thought that the McCrystal revelation would have generated more controversy as it comes on the heels of the astonishing abuse of another anti-terrorism tool, NSA surveillance, by FBI agents who submitted phony warrants to the FISA court in order to frame Trump campaign operatives.

As observers from both parties have noticed, military technology and tactics have bled into domestic policing with local police departments deploying armored vehicles and drones. One need not be a Trump partisan, nor a rabid libertarian, to conclude that the technologies developed to maintain the American empire are now being used to undermine our republican traditions.