Posts by Bernard M. Orwell 1177 publicly visible posts • joined 12 May 2010
" what makes anyone suitable for president".
Selection by the illuminati, CFR and the Federal Reserve. Secondary approval by The Bilderberg group and performance monitoring by our Alien Lizard Overlords.
" how many past holders of that post (never mind the present one) have been qualified?"
All of them. Except JFK. He failed his probation period.
[/END channeling_alex_jones]
"Take the rap, pay the fines, and carry on? Sounds unlikely"
Not as unlikely as you may think. There is a common economic practice in business called "Managed Externalities". At its basic level it involves passing costs out of your business to some third party. For example, you might engage a courier to deliver all your internal mail as running the deliveries yourself is more costly (or you might outsource your IT call centre to a cheap, off-shore company...).
Externalities can, however, be used for much darker purposes, such as in the case of pollution where companies rely on environmental programs and charities to clean up their mess rather than pay for it themselves.
In one case a certain Airline had suffered a number of fatal crashes over a period of time and were hauled up by aviation authorities to explain themselves. It turned out that the airline had failed to install all of the safety equipment and perform the safety checks they should've. Their excuse was the cost involved vs the "low incident" of crashes. The Courts disagreed and set astronomical fines for each and every life lost or injury inflicted due to the failing of safety procedures - the idea was that the airline would find it cheaper to see to safety than to pay the fines.
Instead, the airline used externalization to solve the problem - they raised flight fares to cover the potential cost of paying the fines and blamed "new legislation" for the price hike.
Its entirely possible that FB and co. will simply raise their advertising rates for the same reason and thus externalize the entire problem. Given that they have already failed to externalize the moral issues to legal process and/or user behavior I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them take this path, or possibly even charging the users a nominal fee and covering it up as a "premium, no advertisements or unsolicited material" style account.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_externalizing
"For nudes, replace the word with something (digital) of yours that was private that you care about and didn't want publicised to the world."
It's not fine for any digital media to be hacked, copied/stolen etc. and I'm not going to bite at your strawman argument about people with differing opinions to me, but I will try an example of some other digital media that might be seen in the same way...
Celeb has a wedding in secret, much fuss is made of it in the media. Celeb refuses to give out pictures because privacy. After fuss dies down, Celeb does exclusive deal with tat magazine to release pictures. Later, pics are stolen by hacks and sold to lots of other magazines....
Celeb goes to court to sue hack and other magazines....because privacy!
Can we not see the hypocrisy involved? Happy to get naked for cash on screen, but "embarrassed" when pics emerge elsewhere having been pirated like any other digital media.
In order to make legal purchases from Amazon, you need to provide them with a credit or debit account identified by a series of numbers that are issued/protected (in theory) by a registered banking institution.
How does that compare to taking a nude selfie and storing it? You don't *need* to do that for any reason, do you?
The comparison is surely invalid?
[Footnote: If I did have to provide nudes in order to make purchases online, my credit rating wouldn't be good at all.]
"Can't that be countered by simply learning EVEN MORE about that facet than him"
Yes indeed, providing your facts stand up to better scrutiny than the opposition brings to the table...
...of course, you also have to be prepared to be called a conspiracy theorist yourself just for understanding the subject and questions put forth, and also be ready to be left with some questions that are difficult, if not impossible, to answer. Also, you'll be dismissed out of hand by a lot of smug people who think that they know the Truth, regardless of whether they are pro- or anti-conspiracy and don't bother to ask questions of themselves, only others.
You're doing the right thing though - Question everything.
"BTW, I was one of your upvoters, you made a good point"
Thank you! I consider myself a sceptic, or if you are familiar with the concept or term, a Fortean Sceptic. Unless I am presented with evidence to support a claim, I treat the claim with scepticism. I make no distinction between sources only between verifiable evidence; I ask questions and expect the experts on the subject to be able, and willing, to answer. I also expect the answer to be clear and intelligible.
By way of example, I gave a lot of consideration to the suggestion that we, as a species, had not really visited the moon and that the footage was fake. I made a list of all the available claims that people had made against the landings, put a line through each claim that offered no evidence, found a metric ton of evidence we've been there and foiled nearly each and every claim where some evidence was offered, but I was left with a question or two that are yet to be answered. I also found some evidence to suggest that not everything may be as obvious as we may think. Let me be clear; this does not mean that I think we didn't go to the moon, we clearly did, but that doesn't mean that every single question has been answered or that all contrary evidence is invalid.
My own current belief, on this particular subject, is that the Apollo missions took place as recorded, but were possibly embellished in order to reinforce the propaganda value of the missions; Additional pictures may have been created for newspaper circulation because the original pictures may not have been of a suitable standard, or the US wanted to convince the USSR that the technology employed was vastly superior to anything they might have had access to, and there is some evidence to support that notion.
I try to apply this method of thinking to all theory and I get frustrated when otherwise intelligent people fall back to logical fallacies to defend their point of view.
"you're a nutjob, and if you don't turn around, I guarantee you'll soon believe that..."
Your one downvote is from me, because your statement above irritates me. Just because someone might have questions about one event, it does not follow that they will swallow any and all conspiracy theory. For instance, you might believe that the rapture is about to happen but completely reject the idea of UFO abduction. You may think that we never went to the moon, but reject the flat earth nonsense.
Millions of people all over the world believe in a sky-fairy for which they have no proof, tentative or otherwise, but we don't assume they all believe that 9/11 was an inside job. Stop conflating things to make your argument, it's a weak standpoint.
If someone says we didn't go to the moon then ask for their evidence (which should be extraordinary) and then work towards countering that evidence with rational argument and research. Just dismissing it out of hand doesn't educate anyone or inform the argument. If all we did was dismiss such notions, we'd still think that mountain gorillas were fictional, that Watergate never happened because surely the president of the USA is beyond reproach, or that the Iran-Contra affair never happened. These were all conspiracy theories, remember, until evidence and debate were presented. If you want a more topical example, take a look at the WMD claims in the Iraq Conflict.
It is foolish to assume that everything we are told by TPTB is accurate, truthful and beyond question, and equally foolish to assume that because someone believes in X they will also believe in Y.
After all, Google have clearly told us that they aren't doing anything dodgy at all, and we're just conspiracy theorists claiming that they're tracking us for their own purposes all the time, even when we don't want them to!
Conspiracy theorists fall down when they refuse to accept the answers and evidence provided to them. Anti-Conspiracists fall down by not questioning "official" accounts of events.
"UKGBNI Government "
UK == Scotland, Northern Ireland, England & Wales
GB == Scotland, England & Wales
NI == Northern Ireland
British Isles == Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland & assoc. islands.
Notice the redundancy in your preferred acronym.
"the £350million per week not going to the EU, everyone knew it was metaphorical."
Bullshit was it. It was a direct statement of alleged fact that had no basis in reality. In any other sphere that would be false advertising at best and fraud at worst. I'll call it what it was; bullshit propaganda and lies.
"People in the UK were either severely affected by the EU policies"
Care to name one that's actually factual, or are you going to go on about the shape of bananas, the colour of your passport or how lenient we have to be on prison inmates? All of which are bullshit lies too.
"People wanted change - and they voted accordingly."
Yeah, that's right, democracy at work! The people voted for Boaty McBoatface too and they didn't get that because....drum roll...it was a referendum, advisory and not politically binding.
"For Brexit, the brexit bus could have said everyone gets a free corn fed chicken at Christmas, and people will still have voted to leave"
This much is true, because stupid is as stupid does. Also, I hope you look forward to your corn-fed chicken coming freshly bleached from the U.S.
"You don't need pouches, just turn off location when you are not on company business."
Not necessarily sufficient to turn off location reporting these days:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/your-smartphone-can-be-tracked-even-if-gps-location-services-are-turned-off/
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-admits-tracking-users-location-even-when-setting-disabled/
"Perhaps we should just leave this EU single market thingy."
Last night, the Commons voted to transfer all EU law into UK law in a very short period of time. Once that exercise is complete, those laws can then be "amended" to suit the UK governments vision of Things to Come.
It'd be nice to think that they'd spot this particular one and throw it out, saying "we won't stand for our nations internet users uploads being spot checked for....ahem...copyright infringement! That's against our nations strong stance on freedom of speech and expression."
But, if I thought, for even one second that they are actually going to something like that, I might just find some worth in Brexit after all.
I believe that this particular issue may be a real red flag for anyone who believe in the "taking back sovereignty" slogan.
Does anyone else notice how, throughout this technical and complicated international discussion about the future of border security, intelligence sharing and anti-terrorist initiatives that there is zero mention of things such as public safety, effective policing or common defence?
Anyone would think that the PtB aren't concerned with such things really and that this is just another dick-measuring contest as they try to grab power over each other.
People may think that they've expressed their will and that Brexit is now the implementation of that will, but they'd be wrong. Its just a vehicle for realigning power to suit those that wield power.
It's not about us at all.
So, you want to be able to shoot down drones over US airspace if you have suspicions about the intention of the operator. Ok. And to reinforce your argument, you showed footage of a drone, operated by ISIS, dropping a hand-grenade? Ok, good.
Where was that footage obtained? Was it in the US? How many ISIS cells are currently buying drones and hand-grenades in the US? How many times has ISIS undertaken any operation on the US mainland?
What do you think the range of one of these drones actually is?
"What is it about elected officials that they don't understand "
Oh no; they understand alright. They understand it well enough indeed.
What they are relying on is that 90% of the population doesn't understand it, which means they can subvert it easily and use it for their own ends. It means the veneer of an excuse, a dismissive handwave at "experts", a few bespoke scary words and some technomumble will be enough for them to reach their goal of a universal panopticon.
Why do they want such a thing? Because they know that their methods of social control are out of date and threatened by the speed of direct modern communication. In order to retain power they must control the internet and all digital communication must be monitored.
"I'm not sure how they would get political persuasion "
Believe it or not, the products you buy can provide indicators of your probable political persuasion. Do you buy sustainable products or frozen ready meals? Cheap alcohol or expensive spirits? Certain newspapers or magazines? All of this and more can puff up that all-important profile...
Here's one of many studies on that very subject examining the purchase of GMO products and political preferences.
www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/3/9/1555/pdf
"That this is insanity is obvious. Has anyone run into problems from not having an account?"
If you're travelling to the US regularly, and you don't have an account, I'd be wary of pissing someone off who knows you or working for a company that has a less than stellar reputation. There's always the chance that someone will create a facebook profile in your name, with a smattering of details and pictures, and then link it to all sorts of anti-US or extremist sites etc.
It might be hard to convince the morons in the US that not having a social media profile is not a crime, but I bet it'd be way harder to convince them that all those twitter, facebook and linked-in connections aren't really you.
Whilst I am a facebook user, regularly, (seeded with misinformation and carefully curated to avoid brain-cell losing nonsense), I have created various other accounts on various other platforms to prevent someone hijacking my identity on them.
I find it most irritating that I have to do that, but better safe than sorry?
"life is a ruthless competition in which only the strong succeed"
It needn't be. All we have to do is drop that base animal attitude, be civilized to each other and disadvantage those that use that method to succeed at the cost of others. We can be better, and stopping the bullies is a good early step. It'd solve many of this worlds issues.
"Etsy, Tumblr, and Foursquare."
Tumblr?! Oh, you're screwed now! There'll be shrieking, and half-baked, unresearched opinions about how it makes them feel in seconds! If you're not careful, they'll follow up with an article about eejit pies tailors and ten things you didn't know bout the word neutraility.
"Rouguelike games are a very niche concern these days"
Nuh-Uh. Do a quick search on Steam for Roguelike and goggle at the myriad returns. Of course, us old school purists might gripe that many of them are not really Roguelike, but it remains they are still very present as a concept in gaming.
Now, back to Dwarf Fortress with me.
"you'd have formalised that arrangement with an indefinite visa or a British passport and/or kept hold of the evidence of when you arrived"
Or, you know, we could assume they are in the right and take a look at other records to determine the validity of that. Records like NI contributions, educational history, health records, electoral role, tax payments...
But no, far better to assume that they are illegal and ignore all other evidence to the contrary. Typical of May and Cronies.
"And the same thing applied in the UK's 2016 Brexit referendum when it was Cambridge Analytica's sister firm in the SCL group, AggregateIQ, that did that same kind of work that secured the marginal win for the Leave campaign."
Here's a thought: We might consider CA to be the final balancing factor in the Brexit vote, yes, but it can be argued that surely one company can't have had the clout to be that final factor.... ...But what if CA isn't alone? What if the PtB used more than one company/method to rig/sway/influence the vote and we've only found ONE conspirator so far? If I were seeking to "influence the outcome" of such a pivotal and crucial vote I'd certainly not trust the result to a single actor.
Allow me a brief summation of the repeated, ongoing conversation between zucks and the US-PtB....
Senate: Zucks! You make good donation! You make money! Is good American Dream.
Zucks: Hi. Yes. Sorry. I'll try to do better.
Senate: Zucks, how internet work?
Zucks: because people let me. Sorry. I'll try to do better.
Senate: How you make money?
Zucks: I sell adverts. Sorry. I'll try to do better.
Senate: You make lot money?
Zucks. Yes. Its the American Dream. Sorry.
Senate: *open mouthed breathing & Confused looks*
Senate: what is internet?
Zucks: *smirks* Sorry. I'll get someone on that.
Repeat ad nauseum.
If it's easy for a company to ignore the equal pay law, which it appears to be if any of this is true, and if there is a deliberate intention to subvert that law and pay women less than men, which seems to be the acceptable face of conspiracy theory, and if that gender pay gap is in a range of 12% - 70%, Depending on which source you are taking as authorative,) and if women are provably just as good at any job as any man, despite there being so many less women in STEM roles...
...why don't companies employ more women than men?
"demand an 18.6% pay rise"
Or, a 18.6% paycut for men due to "Legislative requirements *shrug*. Sorry" or, better still, only have female employees and save your company 18.6% in salaries each year. Nice.
It's all utter crap anyway; the ONS itself takes age range into consideration and it can be seen there that women under 30 tend to earn more than men across the board, whereas the largest gap is seen in comparing women and men over 50, where the gap is indeed substantially in favour of men. Now, why would that be? Could it possibly be that newer contracts follow the equal pay legislation that exists whereas the older contracts don't? Oh, what a shock!
These headline grabbing stats are highly manipulated. They ignore sector, age range, contracts, legislation and all sorts of other factors. Indeed, in some cases the biggest "gaps" are found by comparing part-time, low skill, female workers over the age of fifty against young, highly skilled, professional full-time+ male roles. Guess what? if you compare Mrs. Part-Time tea lady to Mr. CEO of Big Pharma, you get a big difference! Another shock!
Anyway, if we are going to uplift women who earn less then men are we also going to uplift men who earn less than men or women? No? Why not?
"...if someone is a victim of an “Internet-enabled crime”, they should sue the platform involved."
I see. So those people who have been a victim of the recent spate of terror incidents involving cars running into crowds should sue the car manufacturers, sales divisions and perhaps even rental companies involved for allowing them to become the victim of a "vehicle-enabled crime"?
*slow clap*
" who doesn't want to make life miserable for the greedy vermin who are constantly clawing private data and manuring the web with their pathetically awful adverts?"
Hmm. I don't like clawing, greedy vermin of any kind. Whether they are advertisers, or bankers, or lawyers, or finance lenders, etc. etc. They are all out to get their sticky hands in your pockets, and little else. Most of them see this as a morally good thing to do, despite it not being.
The issue is, if we do away with the advertising market, then how do we get these "free" services? I know, I know, I'm the product, but here's the thing - this trade of "I'll read your adverts, you harvest data from my habits to sell to the advertisers, who then advertise to me hoping I'll read it." is a form of barter isn't it? If we kill advertising, then the question surely becomes "how do we want to pay for that?", and that could, possibly, be the thin end of a wedge against net neutrality?
I know there are less scrupulous uses of my personal data going on (election rigging, for example), and that needs addressing, but is that a separate concern to targeted advertising? Are we trying to hammer all harvesters of data with the same club, and should we be doing so? Are some worse
I'm not sure I want a range of paid subscription based services that are probably still going to monetize my data/activity on their site - Perhaps the adverts that I generally block or ignore are preferable? Am I barking up the wrong tree here?
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