These AreSome Who Put the Skank in Skankstream Media

When we heard about the famous "JournoList" media cabal, and its determination to consciously slant the news coverage which is made available to the general public, we were naturally curious as to what type of fascist skank would involve himself in such a conspiracy. Like the ideologue editors of Wikipedia who work night and day to keep contrary ideas and points of view off the public page, like the Orwellian news editors who worked tirelessly to revise history -- over and over again -- the JournoList gang of skanks worked behind the scenes to frame the story and shape the spin of news and opinions, day after day.

We only now ran across a list of many of those who put the skank in the skankstream media. What a sorry crew. And yes, they are still out there, doing pretty much the same thing. But they are being more careful about the orchestration now that at least a few people know who they are, and how far they are willing to go.

1. Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, TheAmerican Prospect
2. Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal
3. Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO
4. Mike Allen - POLITICO
5. Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America
6. Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic
7. Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation
8. Ryan Avent - Economist
9. Dean Baker - The American Prospect
10. Nick Baumann - Mother Jones
11. Josh Bearman - LA Weekly
12. Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report
13. Ari Berman - The Nation
14. Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute
15. Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University
16. Brian Beutler - The Media Consortium
17. Lindsay Beyerstein - Freelance journalist
18. Joel Bleifuss - In These Times
19. John Blevins - South Texas College of Law
20. Sam Boyd - The American Prospect
21. Ben Brandzel - MoveOn.org, John Edwards Campaign
22. Shannon Brownlee - Author, New America Foundation
23. Will Bunch - Philadelphia Daily News
24. Rich Byrne - Playwright
25. Jonathan Chait - The New Republic
26. Lakshmi Chaudry - In These Times
27. Isaac Chotiner - The New Republic
28. Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic
29. Michael Cohen - New America Foundation
30. Jonathan Cohn - The New Republic
31. Joe Conason - The New York Observer
32. Lark Corbeil - Public News Service
33. David Corn - Mother Jones
34. Daniel Davies - The Guardian
35. David Dayen - FireDogLake
36. Brad DeLong - The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkeley
37. Ryan Donmoyer - Bloomberg News
38. Adam Doster - In These Times
39. Kevin Drum - Washington Monthly
40. Matt Duss - Center for American Progress
41. Gerald Dworkin - UC Davis
42. Eve Fairbanks - The New Republic
43. Henry Farrell - George Washington University
44. Tim Fernholz - American Prospect
45. Dan Froomkin - Huffington Post, Washington Post
46. Jason Furman - Brookings Institution
47. James Galbraith - University of Texas at Austin
48. Kathleen Geier - Talking Points Memo
49. Todd Gitlin - Columbia University
50. Ilan Goldenberg - National Security Network
51. Arthur Goldhammer - Harvard University
52. Dana Goldstein - The Daily Beast
53. Andrew Golis - Talking Points Memo
54. Jaana Goodrich - Blogger
55. Merrill Goozner - Chicago Tribune
56. David Greenberg - Slate
57. Robert Greenwald - Brave New Films
58. Chris Hayes - The Nation
59. Don Hazen - Alternet
60. Jeet Heer - Canadian Journolist
61. Jeff Hauser - Political Action Committee, Dennis Shulman Campaign
62. Michael Hirsh - Newsweek
63. James Johnson - University of Rochester
64. John Judis - The New Republic, The American Prospect
65. Foster Kamer - The Village Voice
66. Michael Kazin - Georgetown University
67. Ed Kilgore - Democratic Strategist
68. Richard Kim - The Nation
69. Charlie Kireker - Air America Media
70. Mark Kleiman - UCLA The Reality Based Community
71. Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect
72. Joe Klein - TIME
73. Robert Kuttner - American Prospect, Economic Policy Institute
74. Paul Krugman - The New York Times, Princeton University
75. Lisa Lerer - POLITICO
76. Daniel Levy - Century Foundation
77. Ralph Luker - Cliopatria
78. Annie Lowrey - Washington Independent
79. Robert Mackey - New York Times
80. Mike Madden - Salon
81. Maggie Mahar - The Century Foundation
82. Dylan Matthews - Harvard University
83. Alec McGillis - Washington Post
84. Scott McLemee - Inside Higher Ed
85. Sara Mead - New America Foundation
86. Ari Melber - The Nation
87. David Meyer - University of California at Irvine
88. Seth Michaels - MyDD.com
89. Luke Mitchell - Harper’s Magazine
90. Gautham Nagesh - The Hill, Daily Caller
91. Suzanne Nossel - Human Rights Watch
92. Michael O’Hare - University of California at Berkeley
93. Josh Orton - MyDD.com, Air America Media
94. Rodger Payne - University of Louisville
95. Rick Perlstein - Author, Campaign for America’s Future
96. Nico Pitney - Huffington Post
97. Harold Pollack - University of Chicago
98. Katha Pollitt - The Nation
99. Ari Rabin-Havt - Media Matters
100. Joy-Ann Reid - South Florida Times
101. David Roberts - Grist
102. Lamar Robertson - Partnership for Public Service
103. Sara Robinson - Campaign For America's Future
104. Alyssa Rosenberg - Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive
105. Alex Rossmiller - National Security Network
106. Michael Roston - Newsbroke
107. Laura Rozen - POLITICO, Mother Jones
108. Felix Salmon - Reuters
109. Greg Sargent - Washington Post
110. Thomas Schaller - Baltimore Sun
111. Noam Scheiber - The New Republic
112. Michael Scherer - TIME
113. Mark Schmitt - American Prospect, The New America Foundation
114. Rinku Sen - ColorLines Magazine
115. Julie Bergman Sender - Balcony Films
116. Adam Serwer - American Prospect
117. Walter Shapiro - PoliticsDaily.com
118. Kate Sheppard - Mother Jones
119. Matthew Shugart - UC San Diego
120. Nate Silver - FiveThirtyEight.com
121. Jesse Singal - The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly
122. Ann-Marie Slaughter - Princeton University
123. Ben Smith - POLITICO
124. Sarah Spitz - KCRW
125. Adele Stan - The Media Consortium
126. Paul Starr - The Atlantic
127. Kate Steadman - Kaiser Health News
128. Jonathan Stein - Mother Jones
129. Sam Stein - Huffington Post
130. Matt Steinglass - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
131. James Surowiecki - The New Yorker
132. Jesse Taylor - Pandagon.net
133. Steven Teles - Yale University
134. Mark Thoma - The Economists' View
135. Michael Tomasky - The Guardian
136. Jeffrey Toobin - CNN, The New Yorker
137. Rebecca Traister - Salon
138. Tracy Van Slyke - The Media Consortium
139. Paul Waldman - Author, American Prospect
140. Dave Weigel - Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent
141. Moira Whelan - National Security Network
142. Scott Winship - Pew Economic Mobility Project
143. J. Harry Wray - DePaul University
144. D. Brad Wright - University of NC at Chapel Hill
145. Kai Wright - The Root
146. Holly Yeager - Columbia Journalism Review
147. Rich Yeselson - Change to Win
148. Matthew Yglesias - Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly
149. Jonathan Zasloff - UCLA
150. Julian Zelizer - Princeton University
151. Avi Zenilman - POLITICO _thevailspot_via_instapundit

The skankstream is self selected and inbred -- much like a college faculty or a political party. They will tell you what they want you to think you know, and nothing else.

Any writer willing to involve himself with such a group of brainwashers is unlikely to ever become an honest broker of ideas or truthful reporter of happenings.

Most of you do not need us to tell you to be sceptical of the motives of mass opinion shapers. But it never hurts to be reminded of the level of corruption in the skankstream.

The News Media's Curious Slant on the Fukushima Incident

Due to the tragic earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, over 25,000 Japanese are dead or missing. At the Fukushima nuclear reactors, no one has died. Yet the news media has been stuck on full-hysteria mode over the Japanese nuclear reactors. The media is clearly focused on a goal other than reporting the important news of the day. What could it be?

As the situation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant slowly winds down, the salient facts remain the same as they have been throughout: nobody has suffered or will suffer any radiological health consequences. Economic damage and inconvenience resulting from the quake's effects on nuclear power have been significant, but tiny in comparison to all other human activities – the nuclear power plants in the stricken region have suffered less damage and caused less trouble to local residents than anything else that was there.

Despite this background, the details of which are now largely uncontested, hysteria continues to grip large sections of the news media and the internet. _Register

It is natural to be concerned about a disaster which might conceivably affect you or someone you care about. But intelligent people use such natural concerns as motivation to inform themselves on the facts. For a more balanced look at what is going on at the Fukushima reactors:

News roundup from Idaho Samizdat Nuclear Notes

A measured perspective on Fukushima from Brave New Climate

An interesting article published in The Atlantic suggesting that small modular nuclear reactors may receive a boost from higher level bureaucratic and political reaction to Fukushima. (H/T NEI Nuclear Notes)

The post-earthquake, post-tsunami incident at the Fukushima reactors is an economic and energy setback for the Japanese, as well as a public relations nightmare for the Japanese and the nuclear industry in general.

But the reason why the nuclear industry is being tarred so badly is because the world's media has focused its brightest lights on the reactors -- and decided to spew the most radioactively deceptive and misleading "reporting" as possible.

Yes, the world is becoming an Idiocracy -- it doesn't require a genius to see that. Corrupt and dysfunctional government school systems are not entirely to blame, either. Clearly the news and entertainment media play an even greater role in the education and informing of most citizens than the school systems, in the long run. If the media has chosen to dumb down and mislead the public, who will watch the watchers?

Am I saying not to worry about it, that nothing can go wrong? Just the opposite. I am saying to worry about it -- worry about everything. Worry so much that you are prepared for the worst that may come your way. Then hope for the best. Worry is just your brain's way of telling you to get off your lazy arse and learn what you need to learn, do what you need to do, and make whatever preparations you need to make.

No one should need to tell you to be very sceptical of anything you read or hear.

More on how the Fukushima incident may change the direction of the nuclear industry toward more "fail-safe" reactor designs.

Closed Minded Investigators Circle Wagons Against Wild Truths

There is always a tension, as [AF: an investigator], between asking open-ended questions that allow an interview subject to explain something and pressing or challenging them on accuracy or details. But if you think you already know the subject, or already have a story angle half-formed in your head, it's easy to overlook the first part. _Atlantic

Pundits, journalists, and investigators and researchers of all types most frequently go wrong when they begin their investigation with a pre-conceived opinion, a pre-fabricated conclusion. This bias is most clear in mainstream climate science, but it is also abundantly clear in just about any mainstream media investigation of a politically charged topic. If the journalist assumes a person is stupid, their stories will display abundant evidence of the person's stupidity. If journalists consider a person brilliant, the story will be built around the "evident" brilliance of the subject. Bias, bigotry, inflexible prejudice. And these people are the gatekeepers of "the truth."

In his new book, How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer cites a research study done by U.C. Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock. Tetlock questioned 284 people who made their living "commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends," asking them to make predictions about future events. Over the course of the study, Tetlock collected quantitative data on over 82,000 predictions, as well as information from follow-up interviews with the subjects about the thought processes they'd used to come to those predictions.

His findings were surprising. Most of Tetlock's questions about the future events were put in the form of specific, multiple choice questions, with three possible answers. But for all their expertise, the pundits' predictions turned out to be correct less than 33% of the time. Which meant, as Lehrer puts it, that a "dart-throwing chimp" would have had a higher rate of success. Tetlock also found that the least accurate predictions were made by the most famous experts in the group.

Why was that? According to Lehrer,

"The central error diagnosed by Tetlock was the sin of certainty, which led the 'experts' to impose a top-down solution on their decision-making processes ... When pundits were convinced that they were right, they ignored any brain areas that implied they might be wrong."

Tetlock himself, Lehrer says, concluded that "The dominant danger [for pundits] remains hubris, the vice of closed-mindedness, of dismissing dissonant possibilities too quickly." _Atlantic

In part, this is the phenomenon of the True Believer.  Humans are social animals and like reassurance that they are considered a valued part of the group.  It is also a manifestation of mental laziness.  It takes effort to change one's mind.  A person's entire life and lifestyle may be overturned by a justified and seemingly simple change of opinion.  In addition, as individuals age, they sink more deeply into the mental architecture they have constructed.

Personal opinions are fortified to protect the individual from the wildness and unpredictable threat "outside."  Stray too far from the safe, warm confines of personal prejudice and cognitive dissonance will swiftly set in.  Most modern humans are unequipped to deal with high levels of cognitive dissonance.  They quickly retreat back to the familiar. (PDF) They circle the bandwagons against the wild and unruly truths that howl in the night.(PDF)

This is our world, a world where college professors indoctrinate rather than educate, where journalists roam as a pack and savage anyone who threatens the dominant social and political memes, where scientists latch onto a theme which is popular with grant agencies and publishers -- and run with it despite all objective reality.

What would you like to do about it?

H/T Chicago Boyz

Fools Who Once Were Smart

Edge.orgThe title is somewhat ironic, since we are all fools in our own way. But some people set themselves up -- via the mainstream media -- as quasi-infallible authorities over topics they could not know very much about. I am referring particularly to such journalists, writers, and intellectuals as George Monbiot, Bruce Sterling, Carl Zimmer, and a host of other celebrities who have used their public platforms and facility with language as a weapon against people who knew more than they (or had a much better perspective) about the complex mechanisms of climate.

Now that the religion of carbon hysteria is collapsing of its own fabrications and contradictions, how will these knowledgeless know-it-alls (on that topic at least) explain their complete and utter mistakenness? Will they apologise to all of those they have derided and accused of being in the pockets of the oil industry? Not likely. More likely they will try to find scapegoats to blame for misleading them, like Monbiot -- who is now demanding ClimateGate's Phil Jones' head on a platter.

Over the past several weeks, several important supports of the climate catastrophe orthodoxy have come crashing to ground. Yet another pillar of the orthodoxy of carbon hysteria has collapsed with a recent publication by Professor Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science (hosted at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton). The study demonstrates that climate scientists are unable to predict anthropogenic effects upon the climate into the future, due to a totally inadequate and incomplete picture of what the climate would be like without anthropogenic impacts.

According to the 'anthropogenic hypothesis', long-term climate impacts of man's deforestation activities and early methane and carbon dioxide emissions have artificially held us in warm interglacial conditions, which have persisted since the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,400 years ago.

...The researchers found that the current interglacial has indeed lasted some 2.0-2.5 millennia longer than predicted by the currently dominant theory for the way in which orbital changes control the ice-age cycles. This theory is based on the intensity of solar radiation reaching the Earth at latitude 65 degrees North on 21 June, the northern hemisphere Summer solstice.

But the anomaly vanished when the researchers considered a rival theory, which looks at the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth the same latitude during the summer months. Under this theory, sea levels could remain high for another two thousand years or so, even without greenhouse warming.

"Future research should more precisely narrow down the influence of orbital changes on climate," said Rohling: "This is crucial for a better understanding of underlying natural climate trends over long, millennial timescales. And that is essential for a better understanding of any potential long-term impacts on climate due to man's activities." _SD

Another study taking a different approach arrived at a similar conclusion: The precise influence of anthropogenic CO2 on long term climate change is currently unkown.

No doubt all of these "slow-to-catch-on" champions of the climate catastrophe orthodoxy of holy warmers are personally competent in some ways. Else, how would they have achieved the influence they have achieved?  Yet, somehow in the act of intentionally and knowingly influencing the views of millions of people, these individuals -- mere journalists (and sometimes politicians) -- set aside the necessary humility that persons of sound judgment require in such circumstances.

By mocking and deriding everyone who disagreed with them -- in front of an audience of millions -- they set themselves up for a fool's pratfall when those whom they mocked were proven right.

No, they are not total fools. Just foolish enough to fall into the hole they dug for themselves. Just try not to repeat their mistakes.

Best Online Television Websites

Cable and satellite television providers are finding it more difficult to compete with internet TV. Here are 5 reasons why:

Go straight to the networks. ABC, the CW, MTV, VH1, and many others offer full episodes, almost as soon as a program airs, on their websites. And NBC offers current shows as well as classics like “Alfred Hitchcock Hour” and “The A-Team.”

Hulu has name recognition for a reason. The site brings together offerings from more than 190 content companies, meaning that you get current shows the morning after they air, plus loads of old shows, movies, documentaries, and web originals.

CastTV is well organized with shows and movies listed by title rather than genre. Find a show and click on it to see all available seasons and episodes. I’ve sneakily been keeping abreast of “Friday Night Lights” here since it’s not airing on NBC for several more months while the season is already mid-way through on DirecTV.

Streamick doesn’t look like much, but it’s a site that allows you to live-stream 263 channels in real time, including NBC, BBC, ESPN, and Cartoon Network. The site eventually hopes to boost the number of available channels to 900.

TIOTI, an abbreviation of Tape It Off The Internet, is part television hub and part social networking site. You can watch your favorite TV shows and share episodes you like with friends. Plus, they have a section for entertainment news. _Frisky

Then of course, YouTube and all the other video sharing sites compete for your time with an ever expanding inventory of user-provided content.  Hardware manufacturers are making it easier for people to combine television and the internet.  Gateway and Apple were among the first, but the stampede is now on -- including popular game players and smart phones.

Web television history and trends

The trend is toward "billion channel television" with increasing fragmentation and individualisation of markets.  This presents product marketers with a bit of a challenge, but for those of us who like unlimited choice, the trend is favourable.

How's That Lobotomy Working Out, Gallup?

Results are based on aggregated telephone and face-to-face interviews with 259,542 adults, aged 15 and older, in 135 countries from 2007 to 2009. The 135 countries surveyed represent 93% of the world's adult population. _Gallup

Image Source:Let A Thousand Nations Bloom
Gallup conducted surveys in 135 countries, and condensed the findings into the above map. But if they collected data from 135 countries, why does the map only show 5 result categories? Can you see how in this map Gallup has managed to destroy most of the meaningful information it obtained from its multi-national surveys?

This is typical of how large news and information sources distort, skew, and make invisible the information that humans need for making informed decisions. These mega corps are in bed with national governments and international inter-governmental organisations to keep you in the dark.

Grassroots movements such as the US Tea Party movement are admirable in their goals to return their nation to its revolutionary, anti-statist origins. But there was a reason the US was founded on a relatively virgin continent, rather than in the middle of Europe. All of the vast inter-connecting webs of information, power, wealth, education, and influence tend to work together to maintain the current power structures.

Hyper-statism has finally grabbed virtual total control of the US, in the Obama - Pelosi reich. We should expect our news to consist of cartoon cutouts that convey no information, such as the Gallup map above.

Ayn Rand portrayed a similar hyper-statism in Atlas Shrugged. Orwell has his 1984, and Bradbury his Fahrenheit 451. The map above is just another reminder that we are living in a dystopian idiocracy, which is only likely to get worse unless an anti-statist revolution can be successfully carried out.

The internet and other new media is the biggest thorn in the side of our hyper-statist reich. China and North Korea have found ways to neuter most of the effects of new media. The US reich would like to do the same -- if it were not for that pesky constitution and a matter of inconvenient elections that never seem to stop. Obama - Pelosi believe they have ways of dealing with those problems, however.

Government Workers Get Paid Even When No One Else Does

Image via Economist

...many are disturbed by the expansion of government that followed the crash. Voters particularly dislike the way the state is using their money to reward deadbeats, says Mr Brooks. They themselves work hard and live within their means. They see their neighbour, who borrowed more than he could afford to buy a fancy house, getting a bail-out to save him from the consequences of his own poor judgment. They see reckless bankers getting bailed out too, and the ill-managed carmakers of Detroit likewise. And they resent it.

...they can see that one group of Americans has been practically unaffected by the recession: government employees. Their hours have not been cut, their benefits are gold-plated and they are almost impossible to sack. In good times, few Americans notice these things, but in bad times, the disparity grates. Cops and firefighters can retire in their 40s and draw defined-benefit pensions for life. With overtime, one tenth of the police in Massachusetts made more than the governor’s annual salary in 2006, according to the Boston Globe. Including benefits, the average employee of New York City makes more than $100,000, according to Forbes, while some Californian prison guards “sock away $300,000 a year”.

And what do taxpayers get for their generosity?... Union contracts force the postal service to pay thousands of unneeded workers to do nothing. In New York, public-school teachers who can’t be trusted to teach but can’t be sacked either are paid to sit and do crosswords.

.....Most Americans admire firemen, teachers and cops. They like receiving government benefits, too. And roughly half of them will pay no federal income tax at all this year. The problem is that this is not sustainable. During his election campaign, Mr Obama promised not to raise taxes on anyone except the rich, but with the deficit so vast, the question is not whether he will break this promise but when.__Economist

The bankrupt US media has actively ignored the simmering discontent of the American taxpayers and unemployed, during the continuing Obama depression. But there is a limit to how long the skank media can keep the lid on this pressure cooker. When hundreds of thousands of protestors stormed Washington DC September 12, 2009, to protest government spending and taxation -- the media could not be bothered to cover the story. When last weekend a few thousand gay and lesbian protestors walked around the US capital, it was headlined in all the media as a "huge protest."

It is becoming a race between the US government and the US media to see which can self-destruct the soonest.

Sure, We Still Kiss the Same Way as Always -- But We Use Protection When We Have Sex

With more than 100 people dead in Mexico and almost 30 infected in the US and Canada, the threat of a flu pandemic is gripping the world. Although there had been hopes that the emergency could be contained to the North American continent, Europe saw its first confirmed case on Monday. _Spiegel

A world-wide panic over swine flu is on, and the news media is primed and ready to pump up the panic to the popping point. Suddenly bird flu is out and swine flu is in? If I were a bird I would think about suing CNN for neglect. Nothing excites journalists so much as people dying unexpectedly.

In the real world, people die of flu, cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, diabetes, accidents, violence ... in large numbers every day -- but in "newsworld" all deaths are unexpected. They have to be unexpected to be news. Several "unexpected" deaths attributed to the same cause will make a newsroom positively giddy for days on end. Especially if the media can paint the cause of death as a threat to viewers and readers. That kind of threat has the makings of panic, and panic sells papers.

With the first case of swine flu confirmed in Europe, the world is gripped by fear of a global pandemic. German newspapers on Monday examine the measures taken to contain the disease and some warn against the spread of panic. _Spiegel

Global markets are down on swine flu fears -- at least partially. Of course, in an Obama depression global markets need little reason to be down. Coincidentally, Felipe Solis, an archeologist in Mexico who recently shook Obama's hand, and spent a great deal of time in close proximity to the narcissist in chief, died of swine flu shortly thereafter.

Panic, damn you! We're the government-media complex. We're here to help you. And we can't really help you unless you are thrashing about helplessly, gripped by an uncontrollable panic. So panic, already!

The Only Hope for Democracy is for the People to Wake Up and Act In Their Own Interests

Update 17 April 2009: PJTV provides multimedia coverage from dozens of sites of Tea Party Celebratory Protests. Over 500,000 persons attended the celebrations in the US alone.
Update: Multiple links to Tea Party coverage w/ comments from multiple points of view. It seems the map below grossly underestimates the number of cities, towns, and communities that hosted Tea Party celebratory protests today.It has been a long time since regular working Americans could find a cause that would get them to pack up the babies, grab the old ladies, and have everyone go to the protest. Today's tax day Tea Party protests are likely to be atypically calm and peaceful, compared to your average left-wing moneybags organised angry spittle bussed in outing. Not that your clueless leftist agitproper is likely to let the opportunity go to waste:

The Left’s response to Tax Day Tea Party events has been pure Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals: Ridicule. But in the Chicago socialist’s day, the tool kit did not include embedding bogus newsie posers at opposition events. Beware such chicanery today. From DKos via MM:

“Tomorrow, my husband and I will be venturing into the wilds disguised as a news crew to do some in person interviewers with teabaggers here in Rhode Island (if we can find any) … We’re going to ask open ended questions that seem to have a slight conservative bent to (hopefully) get them to open up and just start ranting. Then, we take any examples of racism, hatred, ignorance, and stupidity that we catch on camera and make a little movie out of it. Probably a YouTube special. Here’s the list we have so far

* What are you celebrating (The Boston Tea Party), and can you explain its historical relevance? [We're hoping to get some hilarious flubs from this one]

* Do you approve of Michael Steele’s plan to expand the GOP through a “hip-hop urban-suburban marketing strategy”? [hoping to get some juicy racist stuff from this question]

* (as an intentional misunderstanding/follow up, presuming that someone complains about wasteful government spending) “So you disapprove of your tax dollars going to the Iraq War?” [should elicit some confusion]

Anyways, it’s a start… but I’d love to have some suggestions for questions that sound fine, but should prompt an outpouring of crazy.” _TaxDayTeaParty

Anything to get the old bags out of the house, I always say. There will no doubt be a lot of selective editing going on, but this time there will be plenty of unedited video from many cameras, so that we can all judge what really happened. Not like the political interviews by CBS or ABC news in the past election, where everything that didn't fit with the message was left on the cutting-room floor.

The Obama / Pelosi reich may very well be the Waterloo of the US news and entertainment media. They worked so hard to gain control of "the message." But just like Ceausescu or Mussolini, things eventually fall apart. This may be the age to see it happen.

Democracy is worthless unless the people have genuine choices and genuine options for redress of grievances. The modern US political system does not provide either.

Living In "The Dollhouse" For Real

"Dollhouse" is an American television drama series set in modern day Los Angeles. The Dollhouse is a subsidiary of a large bioscience corporation that traffics in human lives and human minds. Possessing the power to erase memories and re-program minds with the recorded memories of others, The Dollhouse sends its programmed human mannequins out to fulfill the wishes of very wealthy clients.

The underlying idea -- that human minds can be erased, then re-programmed -- is absurd and likely to remain absurd into the indefinite future. But there is a sense in which The Dollhouse is very real, influencing tens and hundreds of millions of people -- some of whom you probably know. Human minds are being "erased and re-programmed" every day. A little at a time, using subtle psychological techniques at the beck and call of powerful interests.

The existence of this behavioral dream team — which also included best-selling authors Dan Ariely of MIT (Predictably Irrational) and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago (Nudge) as well as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman of Princeton — has never been publicly disclosed, even though its members gave Obama white papers on messaging, fundraising and rumor control as well as voter mobilization. All their proposals — among them the famous online fundraising lotteries that gave small donors a chance to win face time with Obama — came with footnotes to peer-reviewed academic research. "It was amazing to have these bullet points telling us what to do and the science behind it," Moffo tells TIME. "These guys really know what makes people tick."

President Obama is still relying on behavioral science. But now his Administration is using it to try to transform the country. Because when you know what makes people tick, it's a lot easier to help them change. _Time_via_SimoleonSense

These leftist academics were more than willing to lend their expertise to the Obama campaign -- and to continue to do so. The Obama campaign, after all, never ends.

But Obama was not the beginning of deep mind manipulation of the American public. The same machine that has turned the doubtful campaign of an inexperienced baby senator into the steamrolling movement that knocked America's doors down, has been running wide open for over a decade now.

[Leftists] have created a powerhouse propaganda machine that helped Moveon.org smear a four-star general, promotes endless environmental scares and brags it can place its left wing themes in the nation's leading newspapers.

Fenton Communications pitches for trial lawyers, collectively the largest contributors to the Democrat Party, as well as for the hard line environmental group Greenpeace; Venezuela's socialist leader Hugo Chavez; anti-war demonstrator Cindy Sheehan; and gay and abortion advocates.

...Fenton, as do other [leftist] strategy groups, has a big advantage over their conservative counterparts. When a Fenton executive pitches a story to the New York Times et al., they are treated as a credible source trying to expose corporate or political evil. When a right-leaning PR firm tries to float a story, the [leftist] news media makes them the story: the vast right wing conspiracy trying to destroy an innocent [leftist].

Remember, trial lawyers are among Fenton's biggest clients. In this case, it not only handles their PR. With with the help of its client environmental groups, Fenton handed them a class-action law suit that may reap law firms millions of dollars.

Remember also that trial lawyers as a group are the largest contributors to the Democratic Party. Democratic lawmakers stop virtually every Republican effort to rein in huge jury awards that drive up the cost of health care and put some companies out of business. _HE

It's a great scam, if you don't mind being a complete slime. The left dominates the news media, academia, trial lawyers, labour unions (including teachers' unions and public employees' unions), government bureaucracy at many levels, and most of the arts and entertainment industry.

Unwitting public consumers of the news, of entertainment, and of education - cum - indoctrination ride the constantly turning mind - dump and mind - wipe carousel most of their lives, without ever being any the wiser. Like the hapless inhabitants of the world of George Orwell's "1984", these somnambulists walk through their lives never quite remembering who is at war with whom, or who is an ally and who an enemy.

It is hard to blame them -- these zombies of the modern age. No one ever gave them what they would have needed to resist the dominant themes blowing over them day after day, year after year. And so they sway with the wind, drift with the currents. It is becoming a perfect world for the mind - shapers. The really big money is certainly behind them now.

We are all dolls now.

What Is Really Important In Life, And What Does That Have to do With Europe?

The same self-absorption in whiling away life as pleasantly as possible explains why Europe has become a continent that no longer celebrates greatness. When life is a matter of whiling away the time, the concept of greatness is irritating and threatening. What explains Europe’s military impotence? I am surely simplifying, but this has to be part of it: If the purpose of life is to while away the time as pleasantly as possible, what can be worth dying for? Murray

In a recent American.com article, Charles Murray talks about "The Europe Syndrome", and how European public policy (and the current batch of Euro-copycats in American government) affects the things that he sees as truly important for a well-lived life.

To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don’t get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it (hence the cliché “nothing worth having comes easily”). And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.

There aren’t many activities in life that can satisfy those three requirements. Having been a good parent? That qualifies. A good marriage? That qualifies. Having been a good neighbor and good friend to those whose lives intersected with yours? That qualifies. And having been really good at something—good at something that drew the most from your abilities? That qualifies.

...The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation, and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality—it drains some of the life from them. It’s inevitable....If we knew that leaving these functions in the hands of families and communities led to legions of neglected children and neglected neighbors, and taking them away from families and communities led to happy children and happy neighbors, then it would be possible to say that the cost is worth it. But that’s not what happened when the U.S. welfare state expanded. We have seen growing legions of children raised in unimaginably awful circumstances, not because of material poverty but because of dysfunctional families, and the collapse of functioning neighborhoods into Hobbesian all-against-all free-fire zones.

...Drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their “child-friendly” policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers, and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. Those same countries are ones in which jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And they, with only a few exceptions, are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, least often seen as a vocation, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest.

What’s happening? Call it the Europe syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few of the twenty-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase “a life well-lived” did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.

...

If that’s the purpose of life, then work is not a vocation, but something that interferes with the higher good of leisure. If that’s the purpose of life, why have a child, when children are so much trouble—and, after all, what good are they, really? If that’s the purpose of life, why spend it worrying about neighbors? If that’s the purpose of life, what could possibly be the attraction of a religion [AF: or moral theory] that says otherwise?

....We are seeing that infiltration appear most obviously among those who are most openly attached to the European model—namely, America’s social democrats, heavily represented in university faculties and the most fashionable neighborhoods of our great cities. We know from databases such as the General Social Survey that among those who self-identify as liberal or extremely liberal, secularism is close to European levels. Birth rates are close to European levels. Charitable giving is close to European levels. There is every reason to believe that when Americans embrace the European model, they begin to behave like Europeans.

_______________

This is all pretty depressing for people who do not embrace the European model, because it looks like the train has left the station. The European model provides the intellectual framework for the social policies of the triumphant Democratic Party, and it faces no credible opposition from Republican politicians.

...Over the last half century, it can be demonstrated empirically that the new generation of elites have increasingly spent their entire lives in the upper-middle-class bubble, never even having seen a factory floor, let alone worked on one, never having gone to a grocery store and bought the cheap ketchup instead of the expensive ketchup to meet a budget, never having had a boring job where their feet hurt at the end of the day, and never having had a close friend who hadn’t gotten at least 600 on her SAT verbal. There’s nobody to blame for any of this. These are the natural consequences of successful people looking for pleasant places to live and trying to do the best thing for their children.

But the fact remains: It is the elites who are increasingly separated from the America over which they have so much influence. That is not the America that Tocqueville saw. It is not an America that can remain America. _American.com

Murray seems to believe that America's elites will somehow wake up to the fact that the foundations of their most deeply held beliefs are without substance. That will never happen. The existence of echo chambers such as the JournoList is a sign that leftist elites will never admit error or misunderstanding publicly.

And America can never be like Europe. Even Europe is finding it harder and harder to be like Europe these days, thanks to a suicidal drop in birth rates and a masochistic immigration policy. Europe's days are numbered by its own "Europe Syndrome" of being about essentially nothing -- like Seinfeld.

America will go broke and experience a painful re-construction along more sustainable lines, before it will approach the lack of relevance of today's Europe. Leftist elites have been wagging the dog for so long they believe it is their right to continue doing so indefinitely. But America cannot afford it much longer. Obama is the dream president for the elitist tail end of America, and he will be the instrument of its demise, as he continues to act out the script (however telepromptered).

Most Americans have not yet discovered how they have been "had" by the pompous idiots who have been telling them how to live, what to think, and who to vote for. When enough Americans finally discover the sad truth, there is no telling what they may do.

Are You One of the Atholes Offended by a Cartoon? Then What Are You Doing Here?

There are plenty of left wing and Muslim insane asylums where such perpetually offended atholes would feel more at home than at this blog. Cartoon riots are common in the Muslim world, and now under Barak Obama we are seeing cartoon riots in the US. Do these morons actually believe that they have the right not to be offended?

In protests this week, students at a New York college urged boycotts, began burning newspapers (a hop, skip and jump away from burning books) and demanding that anyone involved with the cartoon be fired. Fair enough.

But now the Reverend Al has ordered a meeting with the Federal Communications Commission so he — a man who has set off more chaos, loathing and racism in New York than any cartoonist — can discuss the ownership of The New York Post. The FCC, according to Sharpton, has acquiesced to meet in Washington.

As an antiquated government entity, the FCC controls the public airwaves and ownership of media companies. What if it meets with Sharpton and then moves against the New York Post's owner?

We've largely avoided the corrosive trend of chilling free speech — though discussions about the "Fairness Doctrine" (and its derivatives), which allows government to dictate what opinions Americans should hear on the public airwaves, remains a hobbyhorse for some lefties.

...Recently, Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who produced the film "Fitna" — which asserts that Islam is a threat to enlightened Western values — was refused entry into England because of that nation's policy to "stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages."

The Brits proved Wilders' point about Islam's influence by suppressing his right to free expression. Wilders, who is in the U.S. right now, offers a cautionary lesson: Feel free to be indignant and hurt. Feel free to boycott and to cast nasty aspersions on the decency of those who offend you. But let's keep government out of it.

The war against offensive speech can, if we're not careful, morph into a war against free speech. _DenverPost_via_Instapundit

The war against free speech has been on ever since the leftists took over the university. Leftist faculty and staff prevent non-leftists from speaking on campus. Leftist professors prevent non-leftist academics from obtaining tenure, and give non-leftist students poor grades if they dare to contradict the professor's viewpoint. These academic indoctrination camps have been going full steam for decades now.

Under D'oh-bama is it so surprising that the war against free speech would escalate to take in the entire news and entertainment media, all of popular culture, and every aspect of public (and soon private) life in America?

So if you are offended by a cartoon that makes fun of Nancy Pelosi, and takes crude advantage of a real life "chimp gone mad" that had to be put down, then go ahead and be offended, athole. But do it somewhere else.

Putin Tightens Noose on Russia, Pleased With Election of Obama

Vladimir Putin's Russia bears the imprint of the former KGB functionary more clearly every day.

...as suicides among the economically depressed increase, Russia responds not with counselors but by reportedly [7] moving Internal Forces troops to cities hit hardest by layoffs, and thus more likely to demonstrate. Though Gennady Gudkov, the deputy chair of the State Duma Security Committee, told newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, “It could happen that no amount of Internal Forces will be enough.” _PJM

Evidence about Putin's complicity in the ongoing murders of Russian journalists continues to accumulate.

As the murders of Russian journalists go unsolved, there are increasing signs that the impunity of Russia's contract killers is not accidental. One reason for the lack of progress may be that the law enforcement organs that are responsible for investigating the murders of Russian journalists are actually involved in carrying them out. _Forbes

Putin appears to have reason to believe that Obama will be easier to "do business with" than his predecessor has been. Putin can see in Obama exactly what any other person of experience can see: lack of experience, lack of qualifications, lack of competence.

While Putin's Russia displays all of the advanced characteristics of "Animal Farm", Obama's US is just passing through the earlier stages. First the animals must be trained properly. To do that, one must have a firm control over the media and educational establishment (animal trainers).

Obama has achieved that critical goalpost. The media and academia are largely in his pocket. Without control of the media, a budding president-for-life is always in danger of having his propaganda contradicted in a much-too-public manner. Without control of academia, the would-be dictator cannot be sure of the future allegiances of his subjects.

Putin makes fascism seem so easy. Obama will learn that it takes a lot of work. So be a good little animal, stop reading this cognitive dissonance, and go back and listen to your trainers.

CSpan Spoof from SNL Explains Bailout Plan

This particular video clip has been the subject of much frantic search and speculation. Bruce Hall located a copy at Sweetness and Light.

The amazing thing about the clip is that Saturday Night Live--a left leaning comedy "improv" show, did the skit at all, since it skewers several prominent US Democratic Party legislators and financial backers including George Soros. In other words, I am less surprised that the clip went missing for so long, than that it was actually found again.

If SNL and other entertainment and news media outlets actually treated all political parties and viewpoints as equally worthy of satire and critique, right wing radio talk shows would be out of business.

Media Aims to Shoot Sarah Palin Like Rabid Dog

The news media has aligned itself with extreme leftist websites in the attempt to destroy Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and her family if needs be. Three high-powered reporters on terrorism have been deflected from covering the nation's enemies, to digging up dirt on Sarah Palin.

Editors in the print media are shifting terrorism experts on their staffs towards investigations of political candidates. At least three such reporters at three major papers are now chasing Sarah Palin stories... _Counter-Terrorism

Even the "queen of American media", Oprah Winfrey, has taken a stand against Palin--refusing to bring Palin on her show. It seems she has already committed her resources and reputation to getting Barak Obama elected. Sorry, sister Sarah. You're just not "the one" in Opra's eye.

It is disingenuous to now pretend Oprah is not a big story this campaign season. Oprah has a perfect right to act in a partisan way, but please stop with the whining when that is pointed out. Oprah injected herself into the political campaign. And now she has to take her lumps for it, as would any other media figure who did what Oprah has done. _TalkLeft

Roughly 90% of American journalists and media personalities support the Democratic Party candidate, so one naturally expects their bias to shine through--as it so frequently does. But there is more than a little outright sexism and blatant double standard in how the media is looking at the second woman candidate for US Vice President. And this undeniable and outspoken bias by the media is just about ready to turn around and bite---the media itself!

Rasmussen has a new poll out that suggests that piling on Mrs. Palin may do more to harm the media's own image than hers.

According to Rasmussen, fully 68% of voters believe that "most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win." And -- no surprise -- 49% of those surveyed believe reporters are backing Barack Obama, while just 14% think the media is in the tank for Sen. McCain. _WSJ

Even feminists--long die-hard supporters of the party--are starting to notice that the Democratic Party / Media Industrial Complex has jumped the shark, into the tank for Obama--and against women.

The party has moved from taking the female vote for granted to outright contempt for women. That's why Palin represents the most serious conservative threat ever to the modern liberal claim on issues of cultural and social superiority. Why? Because men and women who never before would have considered voting for a Republican have either decided, or are seriously considering, doing so. _SFGate

Until now, there has always been at least a thin veil of deniability protecting the media from full-out exposure as partisan, biased mouthpieces for the DP, DNC, and George Soros. Now that veil has been dropped by both the news media and the popular media.

We are soon to see something the media never dreamed could happen--a full-fledged backlash against know-nothing partisan "journalists." Because now, there are millions of news outlets where before there were only 3 or 4 for broadcast and 2 or 3 of record, for print. Old media interests are beginning to lose advertising revenue and readers/viewers to the new media. This is a new age for media, and the blood-letting in the old media has just begun.

More on Sarah Palin and the media here and here and here

Update: Cyber-vermin are busy vandalising Palin's Wikipedia page

Leftist media "is disgusted" at little Piper Palin's loving care of her baby brother

The Washington Post uses propaganda tactics in an attempt to turn a non-story into a scandal about Palin

And even Steve Sailer--who early on took gratuitous potshots at Palin's fertility--has begun to notice the ultra left bias of media coverage of Palin

Is Palin a form of "locoweed" for the media--driving them viscerally insane? Or does the media still have time to recover from its quasi-suicidal anti-Palin insanity, and attempt to portray itself as objective again?

Oakland, Gaza, Paris, Kenya, Sao Paulo--Governments not Prepared for Gangs

On the streets of Oakland, California, young black men want what most young men want--respect, the attention of young females, to survive. But the environment of Oakland's streets is remarkably like a maximum security prison environment--without the bars.

...the meanest rise to the top. It's a survival skill that ensures ownership of drug corners, a sense of self-worth, female attention and protection from attack....

There are entire blocks without a single two-parent family, where drug dealers have become the predominant male role models, and children fend for themselves in crowded, chaotic homes where they are routinely exposed to drugs, sex and guns.

Criminal families are on their third and fourth generations. Grandparents - the ones who have historically stepped in to help raise fatherless boys and instill a sense of right and wrong - are dying off.

sfgate
The youth gang violence in Gaza is different. In Gaza, children are taught to hate from the cradle. Bedtime stories from grandparents and parents focus on ethnic and religious hatred. The children are programmed into violence from within two parent, deeply religious households. They are confirmed into hatred and violence by schoolteachers and religious authorities. Youth gangs, but on a "mission from god."

Hamas, Al Aqsa Brigade, and various jihadi organisations are the well armed, well-organised result of lifelong religious gang preparation--and the doom of Gaza.The youth violence in Paris is a combination of the social dysfunctionality of the Oakland streets with the religious and ethnic intolerance of Gaza. The worst of the middle east meets the worst of the dissolute west.

In Sao Paulo (and Rio), huge slums breed endemic gang violence. Gangs possess hand grenades, automatic weapons.

...In at least 100 separate attacks on Friday, Saturday and [Monday], groups of criminals brandishing hand grenades and automatic weapons swept across the metropolis, gunning down members of the security forces as they worked. At least two bystanders died in the crossfire.

Simultaneous rebellions broke out in 51 of the state’s prisons, where more than 240 prison guards were being held hostage yesterday.

source

In Kenya and other African countries, gang violence grows more prominent--leading to significant areas of loss of state control.

The fighting has emptied out an entire slum in central Nairobi, and on Thursday, women fleeing with mattresses on their backs slogged through the streets, while men with hammers knocked down the metal shanties that used to be their homes, selling their very walls for scrap.

The bloodshed began with a bootlegging dispute, but it has been fueled by ethnic rivalry. The epicenter is Mathare, a cluster of slums with approximately 500,000 people, crammed between downtown Nairobi and an affluent neighborhood where many ambassadors live.

source

These isolated reports are the tip of the iceberg. The actual malignant social dysfunction has become endemic to these disparate neighborhoods from divergent cultures, distant continents.

Demographic "youth bulges", where human young are rapidly produced into an adult culture unprepared or unwilling to raise them in less violent, more productive ways, tend to produce youth violence, youth gangs.

In the affluent western world, where birthrates are typically low, most of the youth violence is occurring in immigrant communities, or within minority communties where traditional authority has broken down, for a variety of reasons. In the Islamic world, youth violence is seen as Islam's best weapon against the dominant western infidels. Youth violence is encouraged by large numbers of Islamic clerics and wealthy muslim donors. In the non-muslim third world, youth violence is a natural outgrowth of rapid procreation leading to huge slums of impoverished humans, immersed in learned helplessness. Gang violence appears the only means of self-assertion to many, the lone alternative to giving up.


A social analysis of patterns of gang violence suggests that immigrants, transplants from rural to urban environments, and other "fish out of water" situations are largely responsible for youth violence. That is quite true--the loss of cultural and traditional authorities and guides leave the stage clear for drug dealers and violent criminals to serve as authorities and leaders.

In the early days of New York City, gang violence was the work of immigrants from Ireland or Italy. Now the violent immigrants may be from Santo Domingo, Vietnam, or Lagos.

It is easy to look at the perpetrators of most violence, and match them with population average IQs accumulated by various IQ researchers. Certainly the correlation between IQ and crime is significantly inverse. But it is important to keep in mind the history of gang crime that suggests that social factors are just as relevant as IQ. Executive Function is also no doubt involved in personal decisions about whether to engage in violence and crime.

Russia appears to be something of an outlier, where violence is instigated (or tolerated) by the government to create an atmosphere where ordinary people are terrified to stand out and express themselves. Russia, once a great world power, has become a "hunker-down" society.

Clearly the governments of the world are largely unprepared for the undertow of youth violence that appears to be barely kept under the media radar. For now the media is happy to be entranced by Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Global Warming, and other insignificant headliners. Genuine newsworthy phenomena must wait in the wings until they become too large to ignore.

Hat tip Clayton Cramer

Journalistic Culture--Vacuous, Jejune, Absurd

It is obvious that there is something wrong with modern journalism. Fewer intelligent people trust the news media every day--with good reason. Journalistic fraud is so commonplace as to become a redundant phrase. How did this happen?

We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual elite, full of ideas about how the country should be run. Being naive in the way institutions actually work, we were convinced that Britain’s problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge of the country.

This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world.

We were not Marxists but accepted a lot of Marxist social analysis. We also had an almost complete ignorance of market economics. That ignorance is still there. Say “Tesco” to a media liberal and the patellar reflex says, “Exploiting African farmers and driving out small shopkeepers.” The achievement of providing the range of goods, the competitive prices, the food quality, the speed of service and the ease of parking that attract millions of shoppers does not register on their radar.

...

Source

Modern journalistic culture is a culture of authority from ignorance. It is fiction and propaganda served as objective reporting. Who in their right minds would accept anything produced by this culture at face value?

And that cuts to the heart of the problem. In a world of the psychological neotenate, the academically lobotomised narcissist, what does it mean to be of sound mind?

Groupthink breeds groupthink. Next level humans think for themselves.


Journalistic culture and university academic culture both fall neatly into the groupthink category. The self-censorship of both groups extends to membership restrictions--who can become a tenured member of the in-group (and who will be ejected if they display sufficiently independent thought). Think about it:

* Having an illusion of invulnerability
* Rationalizing poor decisions
* Believing in the group's morality
* Sharing stereotypes which guide the decision
* Exercising direct pressure on others
* Not expressing your true feelings
* Maintaining an illusion of unanimity
* Using mindguards to protect the group from negative information

This describes collectivist thinking very well. George Orwell in 1984 (chapter summaries and fulltext) portrayed a society where groupthink was unconscious and all pervading. If you have not read and contemplated the society of "1984" . . . nevermind.

Thinking for one's self is time consuming and requires effort. Many people are unwilling to devote the time and effort required to become independent thinkers. This has always been true, but is particularly true in cultures where the educational system discourages independence and encourages consensual groupthink.

That is where North American culture finds itself now. Dominant forces in society--the news media, government education, much of higher academia, popular media, many church organisations--all of these encourage immersion into the group mind at the expense of developing independent thinking.

Those of us who can see beyond what exists today, and a simplistic extrapolation of modern trends into the future, can identify each other by several means, and carry on a generally "beneath the radar" conversation about realities and necessities.

It is a many dimensional problem. The solution will probably contain at least as much complexity.
Update: More on the absurdity of journalistic culture here.

European Anti-Americanism--A Study in Media Bigotry

This video gives a fascinating glimpse into Euro-media instigated anti-American attitudes in Europe. Even though the US saved Europe three times in the 20th century from hot and cold wars, and continues to provide an expensive defensive umbrella over all of Europe, European media continues to successfully promote anti-Americanism among Europeans.

The American media has not covered this rather egregious display of Euro-media bigotry, but published book accounts and blog accounts describing the bias are common.

Much more at David's Medienkritik

It is sad to see a continent turning on a nation that has spilled so much blood to protect its freedoms. What is so perverse about this media-inspired and driven hatred of America, is the imminent threat to Europe from another direction altogether--Islamist jihad and imperialist supremacy. If the Europeans do not wake up to this threat, and stop wasting so much time and energy generating imaginary phantom threats from across the Atlantic, there may not be a free Europe for many decades longer.

Hugo Chavez Threatens to Shoot YouTube, Destroy the Internet

What must an ambitious dictator do to silence his political opponents? El Presidente Hugo Chavez closed down the broadcast station that had challenged his authority. But the station refuses to stay down!

Over at YouTube, El Observador Online is posting videos of its newscasts on a special YouTube channel available to anyone in the world over the internet.

So Chavez has succeeded in shutting down the old media that challenged him--the transmitters, the broadcasts--but the content continues being produced and disseminated. The media revolution has only begun to be felt by the dictators of the world.

Chavez means to recreate the successes of Mugabe's Zimbabwe and Fidel's Cuba, in his own little dictatorship. But Venezuela was a democracy before Chavez began destroying the rule of law, and many Venezuelans may not wish to join Zimbabweans and Cubans in the 17th century existence they enjoy.

The real revolution is what the new technologies are bringing to all of the world. Decentralisation of information, of the means of production, of the means of distribution. The internet is only the beginning, Hugo. You can try to shoot YouTube and destroy the internet--but that would make you a reactionary--a couter-revolutionary. You would be buried and never missed.

Better re-consider your plans, Hugo. The times, they are a changing.

Update: See this CNN newsreporton the YouTube insurrection, and click on the CNN news video reporting on the use of text messaging in the Venezuelan opposition movement.

Hormone Replacement Therapy Alarmism--Mind the Hype

Mainstream journalists are typically incompetent in reporting scientific and medical findings. A good example is a recent TIMES ONLINE headline: HRT Alert After More Than 1,000 Women Die.

Women were advised yesterday to think “very carefully” about taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after evidence was published showing that it has killed 1,000 women in Britain since 1991 by increasing their risk of ovarian cancer.

HRT increases the risk of the disease by 20 per cent, the biggest investigation of links between HRT and cancer has found. Although the absolute risk is low, millions of women took HRT in the 1990s and so the total impact is large: an extra 1,300 cases of the disease and 1,000 deaths between 1991 and 2005, according to the Million Women Study.

The Times bases its "20%" increase in risk on the relative risk attributed to HRT for ovarian cancer by the Million Women Study in Britain, 1.2. (see also here) A relative risk of 1.2 is generally seen by most epidemiologists as not significant, given the large number of potential confounders in this type of study.

The excellent number auditor Numberwatch also has some serious concerns about the history of the study author, and the hyperbolic conclusions attached to the study results.

Many thousands of newsworthy stories go unreported in the mainstream news every day, yet "journalists" feel it necessary to report pseudostories as if they were major breaking news. Perhaps mainstream media should require journalists who report on science and medicine to actually be trained in science and medicine? That approach may very well reduce some of the more egregious blunderings. Unfortunately the hyper-partisan political approach of most of the media virtually guarantees that this sort of nonsense will continue for the indefinite future.