Think the Martin Sheen as the presidential candidate in Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone“. It’s that bad.
This was a feel-good policy, in which a sap-headed State Department took a major risk with the lives of our Embassy employees so that they could continue to nourish the delusion that facilitating the take-over of Libya by people whose loyalties we had no real way of assessing was good policy.
They wanted to believe the Libyans when they said that they could provide security. They did NOT want to doubt, for a moment, that the good guys had won, and the bad guys lost. “We came, we saw and he died”.
I would encourage people to watch that video. I think it is right to celebrate victory, to some extent, but the reality is that her personal involvement was little, and that regardless of what one thought of Gaddafi, I don’t think that it is dignified or appropriate to laugh about something like his brutal death. It is very much like his death was an abstraction to her. She has likely never smelled fresh blood, seen dismembered bodies, or heard a gun fired in anger. It’s like a board game to her, one with no consequences, except to her professional standing as a diplomat. That attitude, here, is what is important.
Returning to Benghazi, it seems obvious that early on they had real time footage of a full scale, planned attack. What did the State Dept. do? They called the militia. The militia likely said something along the lines of “we’re on the way”, so Hillary told other local assets to stand down. She did not want to embarrass her local hosts, and wanted to give them a chance to show what they could do.
What she failed to calculate on was conscious betrayal. As the hours dragged on, they kept saying they were on way, but in reality they were either participating, or standing back and watching. They number several prominent Islamists in their ranks, and that area is radicalized. There have been a number of attacks in that area, including a prior bombing of our Embassy itself, an attack on the British, and an attack on the Red Cross.
Anyone who studies Muslims needs to understand that their faith leads them to be tricky, manipulative, and treacherous, at least to non-Muslims; and if one studies their actual history, to one another, even though that is technically contrary to their faith.
I have thought long and hard about how to think of Islam. Plainly, not all Muslims are bastards. Many, likely most, are decent hard working honest people. But here is how I would put it: they are decent IN SPITE OF their religion, not because of it. The example of the Prophet himself allows pedophilia and rape.
A Muslim who rapes and murders a Christian child has not committed a crime, since non-Muslims have no rights, and really no standing for existence outright. A Christian who murders a Muslim child, on the other hand, very simply cannot justify it. If this doesn’t make your blood boil, please go jump in front of a bus, because you are a detriment to the human race.
Long story short, Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty, in going to the Embassy to protect our personnel, were DISOBEYING ORDERS, and Hillary–seeing that her carefully laid plan of facilitating Libyan only protection was going to be disrupted–chose to let them die.
When the facts come out, I think that will be very close to the truth.
And as far as Obama, I don’t think he cared IN THE SLIGHTEST. He was and is in campaign mode, and we have already established he is not a people person. He is, on the contrary, a full blown narcissist who only, even now, cares about the murder of four Americans because of how it might affect him politically.
He likely heard “some kind of something in Libya, blah, blah, blah”, and chose to let Hillary deal with it, while he planned his next campaign stops.
Now, I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that he is President in the first place, or that nearly half of America thinks something other than disaster will come from reelecting him, so I can’t step outside of that perceptual frame enough to say what an appropriate punishment might be, but it is clear that he entrusted the lives of people who trusted him to someone who plainly was living in a world of delusion, which is to say patent incompetence. Her inaction, based upon a horribly overoptimistic assessment of her own policy, created widows, grieving parents, and likely grieving children.
Fuck Hillary Clinton, Fuck Obama, and Fuck the American people who have STILL failed to see through this very thin veneer of illusion.
Postscript: In my pursuit of truth, I forgot to note that after Hillary’s indefensible fuckup, she LIED about it. Like most, I assumed initially that there was simply confusion about what happened. But we now know that they were watching a live feed virtually from the get-go. They had had previous attacks, and they knew that the area was dangerous. Stevens had repeatedly requested more guards. In theory, host countries provide security, but in reality embassies in volatile places like Libya ALWAYS have to assume the worst, at least when the leadership is competent.
So Hillary, knowing full well that it was her decision–repeated three times, in response to three requests for help–to let the SEAL’s die, chose, consciously, in front of cameras, to LIE.
Honest people don’t understand how dishonest people can tell bald faced lies. The simple reality is that some people have NO character, and exist in a constant fear that their vanity will be damaged, and their superficial appearance of being fully human caused to vanish or be compromised. Some people will say and do anything to avoid people finding out who and how they really are. Hillary is plainly such a person. I don’t think Barack would have needed to tell her to lie. She started testing stories the moment she realized the scale of the disaster.
This is contemptible. This is a fraction of what Nixon did to get to the point where he was going to be impeached. In Nixon’s case, he read about the break-in in the newspaper. He did not authorize it. He just did not admit, when he did start asking questions of his team, when they told him about it. That’s all.
This is the equivalent of Nixon AUTHORIZING the break-in, then lying about it. Congress needs to get Hillary under oath, and then Obama. Obama had to have known early on as well what happened.
I would like to suggest another meaning: when we feel beauty, what is happening is that something external to us is reacting to some latent part of our selves. It is like a sympathetic vibration, like when one tuning fork transmits its vibration to another. You have to have that receptive capacity.
I was walking out of the gym the other day, and the sun was shining brilliantly on an autumn yellow’d (why not?) tree, and it struck me that it was falling on some sensitive part of me that was reacting to it.
Would personal growth not consist in some measure in increasing our receptivity to beauty, to finding it often and in small things? Would that not ease problems of access to optimal states?
Their second idea is that as loans are repaid, the banks keep the interest income, but extinguish the money they created to make the loan. As I have pointed out, this will lead to monetary deflation, which will cause the real cost of all extant loans to rise steadily, and which will thereby force large numbers of both personal and business bankruptcies.
Their third idea is to have, effectively, an inflation commission, which dictates how much money the economy “needs”. Now, I have long argued that inflation is theft. There is no other credible way to look at it.
HOWEVER, I could make one exception. What follows is, I think, clever, and has never been tried to my knowledge. One could implement Ben Dyson’s idea for gradual extinction of bank created money, and use fiat money to erase the monetary pressure on those with extant loans. Effectively, they could be paid a stipend to compensate them for the extra money they would have to pay back, since they would be paying in pounds or dollars that would be worth more than when they took the loan out. This would eliminate the economic contraction that would otherwise inevitably attend the implementation of his ideas.
People who did not have loans would see steady increases in their buying power, and people with loans would, optimally (and measuring actual deflation or inflation is a notoriously difficulty process, not least because they are regional variations that are sometimes quite significant), simply pay back what they borrowed.
This is my gradualistic proposal. I will send it to Ben Dyson, but I suspect I am now on his shit list.
Yet, there is a C. The continuum does not stop with B. There are demonstrable, repeatable, empirical observations that can be made which do not exist within their domain; which CANNOT exist within their domain, if in fact the operative paradigms are in fact accurate; if in fact mind is matter, and nothing else.
OF COURSE different drugs create experiences similar to, say, out of body experiences: for example with ketamine. But does this imply that the experience is necessarily contained in the brain? Might we not posit that something within ketamine facilitates the temporary separation of consciousness from the body? Might we not, as an example, do experiments in which we put numbers or objects on top of objects the person could not see from where they are, and see if they could see them when in an altered state? That would be SCIENCE.
It would of course not be accurate to say that what neuroscientists do is not science, but it is categorically the case that what they do is science limited to a paradigm they never question, that of Materialism, which is an empirically invalidated and indefensible doctrine. If one surveys the history of science, the really big breakthrough, the really useful stuff, comes not from more measurements, but from new understandings of existing measurements. Quantum physics, as one example, has yielded more benefits, arguably, than any set of ideas since Newton’s Laws of Motion. But WE DON’T UNDERSTAND IT. We don’t know, really, what it means for light to be both particle and wave. We don’t know what a “quantum leap” really is, and even though most people think electrons “exist” this is really not an accurate understanding. They only exist if we ask them to.
“I don’t know” is perhaps the most useful phrase in science, as it permits progress. What we have now is many “I do know”‘s that aren’t so. We have false knowledge, that simply ignores all the paradigmatic challenges to it, that stamps it out, that forbids tenure to its apostles, that forbids publication of contrary opinions.
I would like to excerpt a part of the book “The First Psychic” to detail some of what “science” (really, Scientism) has ignored. The setup is that a famous scientist, William Crookes (who was knighted for his work, was a member of the Royal Society, and would like have won a Nobel Prize in our own era, having discovered thallium, been the first to isolate helium, invented the first de facto vacuum tube, having done work with cathode rays and more), decided to test medium Daniel Home under laboratory conditions. Home was famous for levitating heavy objects in clearly lit conditions, having hands mysteriously appear then disappear, having musical instruments play themselves, and the like.
Science, [Crookes] argued, could deal both with fraud and inadequate observation by providing properly controlled conditions and appropriate instruments of measurement. And a scientific man did not require the extravagance of human levitation, he merely asked that a power ‘which will toss a heavy body up to the ceiling, shall also cause his delicately-poised balance to move under test conditions. In the testing of the existence of any new force it was the quality, rather than the quantity that mattered. [italics mine: note that as an actual scientist he is thinking paradigmatically, which is to say qualitatively]. ‘The Spiritualist tells of heavy articles of furniture moving’, he pointed out. ‘But the man of science. . . is justified in doubting the accuracy of the former observations if the same force is powerless to move the index of his instrument one degree.’ It was in this attitude of open minded skepticism, and with complete faith in the objectivity of experimental measurement, that Crookes announced his intention to examine the phenomena, ‘in order to confirm their genuineness, or to explain, if possible, the delusions of the honest and to expose the tricks of the deceivers’.
Nobody else had shown such willingness as Daniel to be tested, or been so successful under scrutiny. . . And two of the many phenomena reported in Daniel’s presence were particularly suitable for scientific experiment: the alteration of the weight of objects; and the playing of instruments, normally an accordion, without human contact. Both could be tested in controlled conditions that eliminated the possibility of fraud, and neither could be dismissed as hallucination in the way that, for example, spirit hands might be. And so Crookes went about setting up a laboratory in his London home, and constructing foolproof test procedures that would rule out the possibility of lazy-tongs, self playing accordions, magic lanterns and such things. And if these experiments led to positive results, they would confirm the reality of Daniel’s feats.
When Daniel arrived, Crookes was not alone. With him were two men who would verify what was to happen, for Crookes did not want to be accused of inaccuracy, or lack of proper observation, or perhaps of having been mesmerized by Daniel. The force he was investigating was so controversial that sceptical scientists would suggest any alternative explanation rather than accept its existence. So in attendance was, firstly, William Huggins, a gentleman astronomer who had pioneered observation of celestial bodies. . .
Alongside Huggins was Edward Cox, a Serjeant-at-law [sic] and former MP who had a keen interest in the phenomena being tested. Cox had attended many seances, and was considered by some a balanced observer. He had denounced certain mediums as frauds, upsetting many spiritualists in the process, but he had no doubts that some of the extraordinary phenomena he had witnessed were genuine. . .
The somewhat strange apparatus for the first experiment was set up on one side of the room. There was a table and chair, and beneath the table a steel cylindrical cage. Inside the cage was a brand-new accordion that Crookes had bought himself, and which Daniel had neither handled nor seen before. Daniel sat down, placed his hand within the cage, and held the accordion, keys downward, with thumb and middle finger at the other end. From this position, with his every movement being watched by witnesses on either side, he was expected to have the accordion play.
‘Very soon’, Crookes reported, ‘the accordion was seen by those on each side to be waving about in somewhat curious manner; then sounds came from it, and finally several notes were played in succession.’ Crookes assistant went under the table and saw that Daniel’s hand ‘was quite still’, yet, ‘the accordion was expanding and contracting’. It then began ‘oscillating and going round and round the cage, and playing at the same time’. As the observers confirmed Daniel’s hands and feet had not moved, ‘a simple air was played’. Daniel then took the accordion out of the cage ‘and placed it in the hand of the person next to him. The instrument then continued to play, no person touching it and no hand being near it’ Moments later, they ‘saw the accordion distinctly floating about inside the cage with no visible support.’
Next they moved over to the other side of the room, to the scent of the second experiment. There was another table, and attached to its edge was the end of a thirty six inch mahogany board. The board extended horizontally from the table, its far end being supported by a spring balance that hung from above. Daniel placed his fingertips on the near end of the board, which was resting on a support at the end of the table. In this position, rather like having a seesaw with the fulcrum at one end, no amount of pushing down at this end could move the other end. Nevertheless, his task was to affect the weight of the board, which would be measured by they spring balance at the other end. Crookes and Huggins stood on either side, ‘watching for any effect which might be produced. . .Almost immediately, the pointer of the balance was seen to descend. After a few seconds it rose again. This movement was repeated several times. . The [far] end of the board was seen to oscillate slowly up and down during the experiment.’ Daniel then placed two small objects, a card matchbook and a small hand bell, between his fingers and the board, to show he was not exerting any downward pressure. ‘The very slow oscillation of the spring balance became more marked,’ Crookes reported, and Huggins saw it gradually descend to an additional downward pull of three and a half pounds. To check that Daniel could not have done it by pushing, Crookes stood on top of the end of the board, but even when he ‘jerked up and down’, he could not move the index more than two pounds.
In July Crookes made the announcement. It appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Science, of which he was also the editor. It might have been published elsewhere had his fellow scientists allowed it, and it might not have appeared at all had Crookes not been the editor. It went was follows: ‘These experiments appear conclusively to establish the existence of a new force, in some unknown manner connected with the human organization, which for convenience might be called the Psychic Force.
The term was certainly convenient: Cox had already suggested it. ‘I venture to suggest’, he had written to Crookes the previous month, that the force be termed Psychic Force; [and] the person in whom it is manifested in extraordinary power , Psychics.”
Daniel Home was literally the first person to be called “Psychic”.
Now, can this testimony be doubted? OF COURSE: by definition all scientific claims can be doubted. That is the point of experimental replication. We don’t believe in Cold Fusion because nobody could duplicate it.
But to the point here, any guesses how many other scientists sought out appointments with Home to see what he could do for themselves? None, to the extent of my awareness. That experimental setup was never replicated with Daniel, even though he always took all comers. As one more example of scientific abdication of responsibility, Michael Farraday was invited to a seance with Daniel, but refused to go because no one could tell him in advance EXACTLY what would happen.
This attitude is not skepticism. It is not scientific. It is a fear-induced negative hallucination, in which things which are plainly there are ignored and made to vanish so that a previously established world view can continue without challenge or interruption. Scientism, put another way, is no different in principle or practice from a religion premised on faith.