Fact #1: Only one country in the Middle East has nuclear weapons – Israel. The quantity is unknown, with estimates of the Israeli arsenal range between 60 and 400 bombs, the upper range of 200-400 being the most often cited. Fact #2: Only one country in the Middle East has refused to the sign the Non Proliferation Treaty – Israel. These two facts are not in dispute.
While most observers (except for the leadership of Israel and its agents of influence in the west, especially the US) believe making the Middle East a nuclear free zone would be a positive step toward peace, no one is pressuring Israel to give up its weapons. The goal of a nuclear free zone may be great for raising grant money, but without a commitment to pressure Israel into giving up its weapons, it will remain a pipe dream.
On the other hand, Israel and the US claim the unilateral right to insure that all of the Middle East other than Israel remains a nuclear free zone, by preemptive military action, if either country deems it to be necessary. To this end Israel, attacked the Osirak reactor without warning in Iraq (1981) and an alleged Syrian nuclear site without warning in 2007. Ironically, at the time of the Osirak attack, the Iraqi program was moribund and going nowhere, but the attack spurred Saddam into developing a more vigorous covert program. [Pillar] The real purpose of the alleged “nuclear” site in Syria remains in dispute, with some arguing that recent evidence proves it was a textile factory. Ironically, the Osirak attack set in course a chain of events that eventually combined to lead to the US attacking and destroying Iraq in 2003, justified primarily by false claims that Saddam Hussein was close to fielding nuclear weapons.
Now Iran is in the crosshairs for the same reason, although Iran is complying with IAEA nuclear safeguards and inspection requirements. Given the sorry history of “nuclear preemption,” perhaps it is time to ask the unmentionable question: So what? What is the debate really about? The attached essay by William Pfaff takes a stab at this question. One interesting point, an Israeli general indirectly confirmed Pfaff's hypothesis about Israel's real reason for going beserk over the possibility of Iran getting a nuclear weapon — you can find it here, but read Pfaff's op-ed first.
PARIS — The obsession of the American foreign policy community, as well as most American (and a good many international) politicians, by the myth of Iran's “existential” threat to Israel, brings the world steadily closer to another war in the Middle East.
Economic imbalances and social inequality risk reversing the gains of globalization, warns the World Economic Forum in its report Global Risks 2012. These are the findings of a survey of 469 experts and industry leaders who worry that the world’s institutions are ill-equipped to cope with today’s interconnected, rapidly evolving risks. The findings of the survey fed into an analysis of three major risk cases: Seeds of Dystopia; Unsafe Safeguards and the Dark Side of Connectivity. Report also analyses the top 10 risks in five categories – economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological.
Phi Beta Iota: The report fails to address the absence of both intelligence and integrity among all “institutions” be they public or private. This is the entire point of the global Occupy movement. This is also the entire point of this website, which predates Occupy by some time.
From a perspective of elementary epistemology, the difference between practice of religion and practice of science is really quite simple: in religion, one changes one's observations about reality to fit one's conception or model of reality ; in science, one changes one's model of reality to fit one's observations about reality. At the heart of this distinction are the notions of incontrovertible truth on the one hand and conditional (or convertible) truth on the other. Each has its place in the human affairs, and differences in place implies acceptance of one does not necessarily mean rejection of the other.
Of course the real world is more complex than this simple distinction implies and the different notions of truth coexist and overlap. Indeed, notions of Truth revealed though religious study, for example, have in fact changed over the long term, often in unwilling response to the progress of science. The causes of thunderstorms in antiquity were in realm of religion and explained as acts of gods; today those causes can be explained by advancements in scientific knowledge. The Catholic church successfully suppressed the views of Galileo in the short term, but in the long term adapted its religious dogma to them, ditto for the ideas of Darwin. In contrast, the practice of science views “facts” in the context of a conception of truth, be it convenient or inconvenient, that is by definition conditional or controvertible in the short term and always subject to refutation. All scientific theories are conditional hypotheses about reality, and as the historian of science Thomas Kuhn has shown, these hypotheses may be accepted as truth during the normal practice of fleshing out scientific knowledge, but they are nevertheless alway subject to refutation. In fact, to be a valid hypothesis, a scientific theory must be stated in a form that can be falsified by logic or experiment or both — and while its truth may be accepted by the scientist, he recognizes that his/her acceptance is always conditional and subject to change. Indeed, many of the greatest experiments in science are those that falsify generally-accepted theories of reality, like Galileo's observations of Jupiter's moons or the Michelson-Morley experiment. The other necessary condition for the practice of science, namely that its efforts must be transparent and subject to replication by other scientists, flows naturally from the notion of conditional truth — hiding data, suppressing competing views, and political or hidden agendas have no place in the scientific ideal.
Now, I urge you read the attached letter by 16 scientist/engineers, and ask yourself if the theory and practice of the incontrovertible “truth” of global warming is evolving along a religious or scientific vector of knowledge creation? Are its practitioners treating it as as a theory — an hypothesis — subject to falsification or as a dogmatic truth that should not be questioned?*
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* Of course, you can dismiss this letter. After all, it appeared in the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by the arch climate denier (itself a revealing epithet) Rupert Murdoch. On the other hand, if you are more openminded and want to determine for yourself if the anti-scientific behaviours alluded to in this letter are atypical isolated examples, I recommend you start by reading A.W. Montford's “The Hockey Stick Illusion,” which goes to the core of the question of whether or not it is an incontrovertible truth that the temperature increases since 1850 are unprecedented. But there is more — a lot more — readers interested in learning about alternative scientific hypotheses might explain the dynamics of climate change since 1850 can start their journey by reading Professor Akasofu's paper on the subject [here].
There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize' the world's economy.
Wall Street Journal [ op-ed], 27 January 2012
Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed below:
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.
Does Google have a responsibility to help stop the spread of 9/11 denialism, anti-vaccine activism, and other fringe beliefs?
By Evgeny Morozov|Posted Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, at 7:43 AM ET
In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse—a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips. That much has happened—but with a twist: In addition to borrowing existing items from its vast collections, we, the patrons, could also deposit our own books, pamphlets and other scribbles—with no or little quality control.
Such democratization of information-gathering—when accompanied by smart institutional and technological arrangements—has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them. Is it time for some kind of a quality control system?
Robert Steele: I am disengaged from Phi Beta Iota most of the time, but this piece was brought to my attention with the observation that it combines a claim to legitimacy involving Stanford University and Foreign Policy (no longer a serious rag, now a sub-set of secrecy & rendition apologist The Washington Post), and that it appears to be an early shot in a new national security propaganda theme aimed as neutralizing the use of the Internet for self-education. When Obama said in the State of the Union that it is known kids do better when they are forced to stay in school until graduation, I was sharply critical–the reality is that the best and the brightest leave school as soon as they can pass the GED, realizing that rote learning of old knowledge from poorly-paid burn-outs is not the way to “jack in.” What we have here is a very troubling indicator that the New America Foundation (wittingly) and Slate (perhaps unwittingly) are now part of the domestic propaganda arm of the military-industrial complex. The idiocy and illegitimacy of this piece should not have to be pointed out, but since Slate, which I thought had educated leadership, evidently saw nothing wrong with this piece, I will just point them to several books that will explain to them why collective intelligence, open source everything, and the three values of clarity, diversity, and integrity, are all essential to resilience and sustainability. Transparency, truth, and trust are the heart of the matter. This article is a disgrace to Slate and to Stanford, and confirms my growing disdain for the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy.
and then of course there are all the other books that in the aggregate would suggest to any intelligent reader that Slate has just published the biggest piece of crap in the recent history of digital journalism.
Phi Beta Iota: The puported article is totally inept, using students and a very narrow range of information provided to the students to attempt to replicate a much more nuanced and comprehensive range of networks with access to vaster information resources. The article also does not provide for new sources coming into the public domain, with the inevitable result that the truth ultimately comes out, for example, on the JFK and MLK assassinations, the USS Liberty, and increasingly, 9/11 as a mix of let it happen, make it happen, and cover it up.
Lead Author Responds:
Thanks for your interest in the SPPS article. In response to your queries in the linked blog post, we didn't seek to inform people about particular theories in any great detail, to provide a model of the broader communities which advocates conspiracy as an explanation for world events, or to model opinion change as new information is presented. While those are interesting topics and we certainly hope to examine them in some detail in the future, they are beyond the scope of this rather small study, in which we attempted to extend previous work on correlations in beliefs between different conspiracy theories and examine the source of that correlation through multiple regression analysis of some novel data. As such we pass no judgement on the truth or falsity of any of the theories discussed; while the media may attempt to spin the study as “those crazy conspiracy theorists!”, be assured that this wasn't our intention, and in the paper itself we make the point that apparent contradictory belief is probably present in many different contexts, populations, and ideologies, rather than unique to people who hold particular opinions about geopolitics.
Yours,
Michael Wood
Ph.D. Candidate & Associate Lecturer, School of Psychology
Keynes College, University of Kent
In JFK: What We Know Now That We Didn’t Know Then (Veterans Today, 21 November 2011), Dr. James H. Fetzer provides a valuable summation of recent advances in JFK assassination research, including the discovery of the written notes of Detective Will Fritz concerning Oswald’s whereabouts during the shooting, as mentioned above. That Oswald told Fritz that he was “out in front with Bill Shelley” contravenes the established belief that he said he was in the lunchroom, where he was shortly before and would be confronted shortly after. Here are those notes:
. . . . . .
The Demise of the “Lone Nut” Theory
In conclusion, even though a lot of manipulation went into transforming Oswald into Lovelady, it didn’t work. We can still tell that it’s him, Oswald–and I would bet my life on it. The preponderance of the evidence is overwhelming, and the meager challenges to it are riddled with suspicion and doubt. The worst thing that ever happened to the JFK research community was relinquishing Doorway Man.
We need to take him back. We need to add the Altgens photo to the list of physical evidence that the conspirators altered and corrupted. We need to shout from the rooftops that Oswald could not have killed Kennedy because he was standing outside in front of the building at the time. This settles it. This ends it. This is checkmate for THE WARREN REPORT (1964).
The cover-up of the murder of President Kennedy, by our government and our media, has been going on for 48 years, and it must stop. It has been poisoning us as a people, that is, our society and our culture. To heal, to recover, and to start anew, we need to know the truth.
Killing Obama – Andrew Adler in an Emotional Video Apology
Update: Atlanta Jewish Times Editor Andrew Adler – a Victim of Israeli Iran Threat Hype – Classic Game Theory Warfare on Steroids
Jim W. Dean
Veterans Today, 24 January 2012
Atlanta Interfaith Broadcasters got an exclusive interview with Andrew Adler, below. They are a long time non profit broadcast booster to the Atlanta faith community, providing a pooled resource platform. VT is happy to offer you a front row seat to hear his story.
What you are about to view is a classic broken man…with no acting going on. Those of us who have seen this numerous times, you can always tell. So I think now that we have a true blue believer here that got wound up a little too tight. More on that later.
Please pay close attention to the part where he let says that in an interview show he had with the Deputy Israeli General Consul for the Southeast, that he was upset by her description of the dire threat that Israel was living under…the 15,000 rockets.
This is pure Israeli-Iran threat hype, of course. It should be prosecutable under the Nuremberg precedents, ‘waging an offensive war’, and all of us here look forward to the day where we can watch the trials online.
We have written many times that Iran is of no offensive threat to the U.S. or Israel, with their military totally deployed in a defensive mode which it has to be from the threat of Israel’s Weapons of Mass Destruction umbrella.
Phi Beta Iota: Fascinating at multiple levels, including the exploration of current best-selling book in Israel, Israeli political crime families, and more.
Microsoft founder and one of the world’s wealthiest men, Bill Gates, projects an image of a benign philanthropist using his billions via his (tax exempt) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to tackle diseases, solve food shortages in Africa and alleviate poverty. In a recent conference in California, Gates reveals a less public agenda of his philanthropy—population reduction, otherwise known as eugenics.
Gates made his remarks to the invitation-only Long Beach, California TED2010 Conference, in a speech titled, “Innovating to Zero!.” Along with the scientifically absurd proposition of reducing manmade CO2 emissions worldwide to zero by 2050, approximately four and a half minutes into the talk, Gates declares, “First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”1 (author’s emphasis).
In plain English, one of the most powerful men in the world states clearly that he expects vaccines to be used to reduce population growth. When Bill Gates speaks about vaccines, he speaks with authority. In January 2010 at the elite Davos World Economic Forum, Gates announced his foundation would give $10 billion (circa €7.5 billion) over the next decade to develop and deliver new vaccines to children in the developing world. 2
