I was invited to be on the Murnaghan programme on Sky News this morning – which I always find a great deal more intelligent than the Andrew Marr alternative on the BBC. I declined because I did not want to get up and get a 7.30am train from Ramsgate on a Sunday morning. I had a meeting until 11.30pm last night planning a conference on human rights in Balochistan [I still tend to say Baluchistan], and I have a newly crowned tooth that seems not to want to settle down. But I am still worried by my own lack of energy, which is uncharacteristic. Is this old age?
I also have some serious work to do on my Burnes book, and next week I shall be staying in London to be in the British Library reading room for every second of its opening hours. So there may be a bit of a posting hiatus. I have in mind a short post on an important subject on which I suspect that 99% of my readership – including the regular dissident commenters – will strongly disagree with me.
This is a peculiarly introspective post, perhaps because my tooth is hurting, but I seem to have this curmudgeonly spirit which wishes to react to the huge popularity of this blog by posting something genuinely held but unpopular; a genuine view but one I don’t normally trumpet. The base thought seems to be “You wouldn’t like me if you really knew me”.
Similarly when I wrote Murder in Samarkand I was being hailed as a hero by quite a lot of people for my refusal to go along with the whole neo-con disaster of illegal wars, extraordinary rendition and severe attacks on civil liberties, sacrificing my fast track diplomatic career as a result. My reaction to putative hero worship was to publish in Murder in Samarkand not just the political facts, but an exposure of my own worst and most unpleasant behaviour in my private life.
I am in a very poor position to judge, but I believe the result rather by accident turned out artistically compelling, if you don’t want to read the book you can get a good idea of that by clicking on David Tennant in the top right of this blog and listening to him playing me in David Hare’s radio adaptation.
Anyway, that’s enough musing. You won’t like my next post, whenever it comes. Promise.
Clark – time is short – you get me?
Chris, I don’t want to listen to Tarpley. In my reckoning, he’s either deliberately deceptive, or my intellectual inferior. Either way, he’s no use to me.
I’ll listen you, because you are here, we can converse. But I’m not interested in Tarpley’s ideas, I have already discounted them.
Craig, on the other hand, is cleverer than me. Him, I can learn from.
“At what point would I become non-conscious? Would my spirit leave my body bit by bit, or what? From external observation, there would presumably be no change noticeable…”
Ok, I’ll answer that although I should be asleep since hours.
Let’s say that you are the driver of a car. All the parts of the car are replaced while you sit inside, would that affect you in the sense that would become another person? No, same with the body.
Sunflower, Glenn gets very cross about this. Building the bridge between our intuitive and our rational aspects is the important bit. There are many of us crossing that bridge, from opposite directions.
Best wishes to you, too.
Clark – it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe what he or anyone else is saying – for gods sakes just look at the evidence these people are presenting…GLobal 2000,Club of Rome etc etc…how can you dispute any of this? It exists – there is no dispute
Clark – i hate to say it but Tarpley is vastly superior in understanding in general-on this issue;compared with yourself and Murray etc , he is,alas, vastly more aware of the messed up future plan…
Chris: “time is short”… I agree there. A crisis seems to be almost upon us. I’m glad World War Three didn’t break out last week; I thought it would, with all those ships going to the Strait of Hormuz.
Chris, I think you’re letting sensationalist claims cloud your thinking. For instance, why has the US Homeland Security ordered 1.25 billion rounds of ammo? Ben, I don’t know how true that is, but I’ve read reports that could be credible. What about FEMA camps? I’ve read that they have been built. Ben, again, you’re nearer the evidence.
Well, what would have happened if Israel had tried to attack Iran? Iran would have closed the strait of Hormuz, wiping a third off world oil supplies.
Chris, do you remember the tanker drivers blockade of the oil refineries? ’98 or ’99 wasn’t it? It was about a week before the food started to run short. Remember?
Sunflower: I’m not asking you to entertain me. I’m responding to your attacks on science in general.
You are fond of tossing out blithe assertions about the corruption of science, the god-like aloofness scientists purportedly hold, the “brainwashing’ of children, on and on. And I’m wondering just what you’d prefer in the place of science.
Chris, the Club of Rome sincerely believe that Earth is nearing its limit of supporting humans. Their warnings are honest. They aren’t suggesting that loads of people be killed. Same with what’s-his-face that Tarpley was quoting. These people are calling for reduction of the birth rate, not mass slaughter.
Malthus wasn’t anyone evil. He just said if the population gets too big, some people go with too little food. That wasn’t wrong.
Governments are preparing for civil disturbance because such claims have some truth in them. It could be sorted with fairer distribution, but the “haves” wouldn’t be pleased with losing a lot of their wealth to the “have nots”.
” 1.25 billion rounds of ammo? Ben, I don’t know how true that is, but I’ve read reports that could be credible. What about FEMA camps? I’ve read that they have been built. Ben, again, you’re nearer the evidence.”
I have seen the reports, and I have no reason to doubt. It’s all about controlling the populace.
Fear is the mind-killer and the Authoritarians depend upon this. During the hurricane Katrina, the contractors (Halliburton) and local police located persons with weapons and confiscated them.
They want us totally dependent on their support mechanisms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hedIexysvK4
Proposal: the most immediate concern is restriction of the oil supply due to war in the Middle East. This would cripple the functioning of societies highly dependent upon liquid fuel, the foremost being the US, then Japan, Europe, Australia, etc. The food and water supplies would become compromised pretty quickly. This is why we’re seeing strengthening of systems of authoritarian control.
Clark; Have you seen Children of Men? Is, as the film suggests, the UK the most likely genesis of this Brave New World?
Evidence for my above proposal: Chris, you posted this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9545597/Armada-of-international-naval-power-massing-in-the-Gulf-as-Israel-prepares-an-Iran-strike.html
And then Mary posted this:
There were no PMQs today. Instead this took place. What’s it about?
http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/joint-ministerial-committee-communique/
Note the presence of the aviation minister. Limited fuel for the planes, see?
Clark; the second link had this; ” The Prime Minister thanked the leaders of the “Devolved” Administrations …
Is this a typo? Or is it a cultural muddle for linguistics?
Ben, I haven’t seen Children of Men, so I can’t say.
I think the governments of all the most “developed” nations are likely in the much the same position, though. Mainland Europe seems to be in about the best position. UK and Japan; very bad due to being densely populated islands; restricted fuel, restricted imports. The US gets it badly because their fuel use per capita is highest, but they do have land and resources, the population density isn’t as high. But the US administration is the most paranoid, because so much US power depends upon their military, and it’s a real gas-guzzler.
“Devolved” Administrations …
Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland. They have their own parliaments now, but with limited powers.
I think Chris has gone off in a huff, ‘cos I don’t rate Tarpley. Probably Glenn, too. Sunflower announced departure for bed. I should head that way, too, I s’pose.
[Mod/Clark:Oops, transposed the names. corrected!]
“Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland” Heh.
Clark; I’m half Irish- 1/4 Scot so I understand this unintended pejorative. 🙂
“I think Chris has gone off in a huff”
I think the poor chap is exhausted.
Pleasant dreams, to all. And to all a good night.
@ Clark and Sunflower
I have been following your meandering debate for days, delightful variations on a theme. I’ve read some top-notch discussion on this blog but I don’t believe I’ve seen any enacted with such patience, eloquence, intelligence and courtesy. Thank you both for the entertainment, education and for setting such a good example.
Now I’ve buttered you up, here’s my tuppenceworth ….
Nobody swallows the mainstream media’s interpretation of world’s events in its entirety. We go through childhood believing everything we are told, then reach a stage where we dare to question. From then on, our world view comprises a combination of what we are told, and what we have worked out for ourselves. Examples from our personal experience, trusted sources, and logical deduction teach us that we are sometimes lied to. Our world view makes sense of this initially by dismissing the discrepancies as aberrations but the more we discover, the harder it is to reconcile these aberrations with good faith on the part of our information providers, and the more sceptical our world view becomes. Our personality and experience dictate whether we bury our heads in the sand or continue to try to make sense of it all. Most of the contributors to this blog, and certainly you two, are of the latter persuasion.
What I have observed is that there is a general rule : the more you look, the more sceptical you become. Stick a pin into a newspaper and research the item it lands on. No news story bears close examination, and the more important the story, the larger the nest of vipers you will uncover. I would say that Sunflower is more sceptical of the mainstream view than Clark, but I would bet that you are both more sceptical than you were last year, and not as sceptical as you will be next year. To enquire about the world is to grow more sceptical. The question is : where does this progression end?
I don’t know, but I don’t think I’ve reached the end yet. My world view now encompasses beliefs which I would have scoffed at a few years ago. I haven’t arrived at them overnight, but by gradual stages, accumulating corrections to my world view which led to a paradigm shift. But I’m still discovering “facts” I believed in which were lies, and beliefs I had which were brainwashing, so my personal journey continues. I am yet to meet anyone who shares my views exactly, in fact I’ve never known of any two people who share the exact same views. This, I explain to myself, is because the world from which we glean the clues to form our world view is full of misinformation, infiltration, and misdirection, some of it crude, a lot of it subtle. I think it likely that all of us “truth seekers” are carrying in our baggage some “facts” which are lies and brainwashing that we haven’t discovered yet.
So when I nightly return to this thread to check out the latest instalments of your genuinely enjoyable dialogue, and I wonder how it happens that two intelligent people can adopt such seemingly entrenched opposing views, I tell myself that actually these are two people, not so far apart on the same path, moving in the same direction, differing in only their temporary perspectives.
Carry on.
And thank you.
Clark:
JS is another vector for exploits, certainly – usually to do with insecure websites rather than flaws in a particular JS implementation. But:
You don’t need JS to do this – every web asset you request sends a “User Agent String”, which contains those details. In some browsers you can turn this off or modify it, but it is still sent if you turn off JS.
Excellent discussion ‘tween you and Sunflower, btw 🙂
Jon, yes I forgot to mention the User Agent String. Have you noticed a Mozilla 5 compatible BingBot in the blog’s logs, that behaves a lot more like a contributor than a search engine web crawler? That’s me.
You could help me out by explaining about MAC addresses, and whether it is worth going to the trouble of faking them. Can they be retrieved from the far end? I’ve looked into it, but got bogged down in the technical description.
Jon,
“JavaScript is the major vector for exploits, and increasing in importance” is how I’d have put it. It used to be that nearly all the malware/crackers went after Window$, because (1) Window$ was easy, and (2) Window$ was 95% of the computer population. But SmartPhones, Tablets, PDAs etc. are now increasingly important, so we’ll be seeing a shift of effort away from OS exploitation, and towards whatever is common across different platforms. What fits that description, Jon?
Hey Clark. MAC addresses, sure. They’re semi-hard-wired* into all network devices, so you’ll have one in every mobile modem, wifi device and ADSL router you own. It’s a hex string six bytes long, I think, with (iirc) the first byte being a manufacturer code.
Your ISP gets to see the MAC address of the device you connect with (so if you connect computer -> wifi -> router, then they’ll just see the MAC address of the modem in your router, and not your router’s wifi MAC address, nor your computer’s wifi MAC address, nor your computer ethernet’s MAC address). The address they do get is not passed on to websites at all, or at least should not be. You can see what information is passed when you visit a website in the HTTP headers, and it is generally innocuous (tracking cookies aside).
* I say semi, since some devices can be reprogrammed, so you can change your MAC address at your outer edge if you wish. But there’s no threat here from general websites you visit, since they can’t see this identifier.
@Chris Jones. Thx for Tarpley link. I think he is spot on. What he says fits well with what is going on in the world.
@21st Scent Tree
Thx, for kind words.
“What I have observed is that there is a general rule : the more you look, the more sceptical you become. …To enquire about the world is to grow more sceptical. The question is : where does this progression end?”
I agree, it’s especially valid for us living in the present day matrix style designed society. Scepticism is no end goal in itself, but it’s a good start. It helps one to start the journey away from illusion towards reality. I think scepticism can bring a soul all the way to where the Vedanta-sutra starts.
“Athato brahma jijnasa” or “Now is the time to start the inquiry of Brahman, or the soul”
It will be difficult for many since “‘You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system (the Matrix), that they will fight to protect it.”
I chanced across the following interview today and immediately thought of this thread since there was so much bullshit being discussed regarding medicine, science, truth etc
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028160.200-a-field-guide-to-bullshit.html
I apologise to all for suddenly disappearing from this thread. Other events occurred, and this is my first chance to return.
Jon, regarding MAC addresses, is it the case, then, that MAC addresses are only exchanged between adjacent devices in the chain of communication?
Jemand, thanks for the New Scientist link, which I’m still reading.
Ben, from the start of the New Scientist article:
This reminds me of a line from the introduction of one of Casteneda’s Don Juan books. From memory, it read something like: