Entertaining hypothesis vs Belief

Saw a study on "education reduces belief in conspiracy theories." The trouble with the study is that like many recent studies it was an exercise in confirmation bias. It is like doing a study announcing "education reduces ignorance on the subject studied." Well "duh", isn't that what it is supposed to do? 

That they have to present it as statistics speaks to flaws in our education system. Besides I don't see much anaecdotal evidence that smart people are less susceptible to the rabbit warrens of conspiracy theories and paranoia. There are "beautiful minds" everywhere. And drugs are no help when rumors abound presenting alternative narratives about life. The logic always comes with purported evidence and emotional triggers.

What helps with conspiracy theories is scientific method. The problem is not with entertaining the notions. For example, the premise that hacked autopilots were used to attack the targets of 911, is after all a premise based on a few facts. The planes did have autopilots. It was a plausible hypothesis. 

What leads one to reject that hypothesis is a preponderance of evidence.  But you have to verify and validate facts to get there. If you start rejecting facts as facts because you are attached to your first hypothesis that is the rabbit hole. Educated people fall down it too.

There are alternative explanations for facts. Those are called hypothesii. There are facts that are a priori and facts that are testable.  A testable fact can be falsified or verified.  The material world is best governed by testable facts. 

 

For example,  A commandment like "thou shalt not kill" can be an a priori statement of principle. But the margins require verification. Does the passage prohibit all killing all the time? Or does it refer solely to murdering fellow humans. When is killing permissable? When is it immoral and how much?. Is killing an annoying fly as big a sin as killing a chicken for dinner? Is killing a chicken for dinner the same as killing Uncle Joe? 

We learn [usually have to teach ourselves] Law and logic as a tool to try to establish nuance on life. The better educated one is, the more one understands the nuances.

 One is going to go down rabbit holes of conflicting stories. One is going to have to evaluate competing narratives. The trap is our emotions will tell us to reject some facts, either for the sake of the argument or because accepting them hurts. Not a good idea. Truth hurts the way a minor injury does. Lies feel good til the poison hits, or ones fall reaches bottom. Then the pain can be so bad, one goes numb to it. People die, fanatics, clinging to falsified beliefs that way.

 

Tended vs Untended

Years ago, before internet, I remember reading the article that described what came to be known as "broken glass theory." I went back to that subject in 2014. 

Tended vs untended behavior

The Atlantic article had been about tended, versus untended behavior. It had argued for the necessity of tending neighborhoods and the consequences of untended behavior. The article recommended replacing broken glass and improving neighborhoods.

ZERO TOLERANCE = Racism

Unfortunately Rudy Giuliani and others, interpreted "broken glass theory" to mean the proposition that unless you arrest people breaking windows and lock them up a long time, they commit worse crimes. It led to zero tolerance, 3 strikes and other laws that punished minor crimes. These policies targetted low status neighborhoods. People were arrested and murdered by police for selling cigarettes,  one at a time. But no windows were fixed.

Tended behavior as antidote

Anyone who has raised children, been in a loving relation or grown a garden, knows that creating happiness takes work. A garden has to be tended. It has to be worked, sewn, weeded, trimmed, taken care of.  Same with children and relationship. An untended garden quickly gets overgrown with weeds and the crops infected.

The analogy is so powerful its one of the first allegories in the bible. Tending others, neighborhoods, laws, whole countries, gives joy. Untended people kill their brother and carry around the mark of Cain.

My Sermon for the day.....

More on this

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/11/why-broken-windows-theory-was-corrupted.html

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-neighborhood-and-city-village-and.html

cruelty is not strong

Marco Rubio you are wrong.

For the authoritarian:

“Cruelty is strength”

“Truth is what the cruel fabricate.”

But calling a lie truth doesn't make the lie true.

Cruelty fails, leaving behind only rue.

 

Cruelty begets cruelty,

An eye for an eye, and all are blind.

They may claim it for legal,

...but all it is is crime.

And in the end all the cruel have left is hate.

 

Castro, Pinochet, Duvalier,

Hate looks strong,

Strongly wrong is an offkey song.

Dictators puff themselves up with their own fear.

They frighten allies more than enemies.

 

Look at the expression on the brutes they send.

Their only joy is violence,

they quail in fear.

They stand jaw set squarely,

to hide a cowardly racing heart.

 

But like all puffed up things

A single truth pricks.

A single tear wilts their con

And the weak pretending to be strong,

Deflate

Conservatives, Edmund Burke & despite of workers.

Edmund Burke:

Posted several blog entries on Edmund Burke and his revolt against John Locke. Ostensibly he wrote "Reflections on the Revolution" responding to the De-evolution of the French Revolution into the terror. But in truth he rebelled at the notion that "hair dressers and tallow-chandlers" should participate in government. To him it was visceral. He found common folks revolting 🤢 🤮 🤮.

He's the spiritual founder of the conservative movement.  That despite for barbers, butchers, bakers [add in electricians], continues. It also doesn't sell very well. Hence "conservatives" always turn to alliance with bigots, warmongering, white nationalism, etc.... trying to con the rest of us into keeping them in power & wealth.

When the white nationalists take over, conservatives pearl clutch. But the root of the problem is that conservatism & mostvconservatives mostly want to conserve power and influence, and really loathe being held to account by the rest of us. Principles are are for day laborers & butchers.

Chris Holte.

Incompetence as a terror weapon

Totalitarianism uses fear to control populations

When I looked at Donald Trump back in the Eighties, I saw a psychotic, narcissistic, criminal, ruthless and dishonest person. I never expected he'd lead a totalitarian movement.

I thought  "Totalitarian? That's crazy! Trump is an incompetent boob, not a terrorist!"

But then I thought, stupidity, ruthlessness and brutality go together. Stupid behaviors are frightening because they are mostly arbitrary and when they are all too predictable they are predictable in their violence, harm and the suffering they inflict.

So Stupidity and dictatorship go together like a horse and carriage.

Authoritarianism & Totalitarianism are also pathocracy

Totalitarian methods are not the policy of diabolical braniacs but of brutal, clever, but incompetent leaders trying to maintain an image and keep power in the face of the evident fraud of pathological ideologies and impractical lives.

Yes, Trump is authoritarian.  If he succeeds he'll fail, he'll break our country.

Just some thoughts. Stupidity is terrorism.

Andrew Lobaczewski and Pathocracy 

Andrew Lobaczewski developed the concept of "pathocracy"  based on experiences suffering Nazi & Soviet occupation in his birth home of Poland. Pathocracy is when:

"individuals with personality disorders 

(particularly psychopathy) occupy positions of power."

Trump exemplifies pathocracy but everything about him also follows Hannah Arendt's warnings in Origins of Totalitarianism.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201907/pathocracy

Subverting Reform In 1893!!

I frequently talk about monopolies Utilities and the distinction between marketable goods and services and things that should never be privateered.  This article by Rick Dimare explains how Henry Georges evolving understanding of privilege and economic rent went. But also shows how The Georgist movement was infiltrated and subverted.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/CommonWealthTax/permalink/1631768350269635/

Dogged Determination in the face of Totalitarianism

In 2016, I saw the reality we were up against authoritarianism and totalitarian tactics. But I didn't want to even concede it might prevail. So I focused my energy on fact checking, fighting trolls. I even made phone calls.  On election day I worked as a poll worker, despite knowing my town, Brunswick would likely go to Trump. Maryland went to Hillary and the benefit of helping everyone else vote, was I was too tired to watch TV all night. I went to sleep relieved. Woke up alarmed and depressed. Don't want that to happen this year.

TRUMPISM AS A TOTALITARIAN MOVEMENT

The thing is, Trumpism is a totalitarian movement that seeks total control of humans, often globally. Totalitarianism seeks total domination.  It is a movement that uses terrorism to control whole populations, starting with a mob and then applying terror to paralyze and inflame followers and enemies alike. One can argue that Trump runs a totalitarian movement. 

He certainly is succeeding in terrorizing his enemies. But he also terrorizes his friends. He uses fear of "the other" to mobilize fearful followers and inflame their racism. He is replacing a professionalized military with a militarized police. And he is using legitimate and illegitimate means to grab for totalitarian power.

And he was open about intentions in 2015.

TOTALITARIANISM IS ALIVE

The trouble with both fascism and communisim was they were totalitarian. China and Russia dumped their claimed ideologies, but have kept their use of terrorism as a means of control. In other formerly totalitarianism countries the former totalitarian governments receded into movements, political parties and mafias. Usually some went to jail. 

Often the fearless leader dies and becomes a totem for popular movements. In some cases, when the movement was less ideological than fan based, the movement splits between left and right. That happened to Peronism. 

Arendt saw totalitarianism as a novel form of government, but seeking total control is the goal of most utopian movements and nearly all tyrants.  Perhaps such movements are a spectrum of terror enabled by mass media. In any case fear is dangerous, because as Frank Herbert put it, it's the mind killer.  The antidote is awakening the brain.

Trump is a dark, totalitarian wannabe. He's explicitly oriented to Vladimir, and owned by, Putin. The Senate Intel committee released vol 5 of its intel report yesterday, confirming that Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian operative, his former employee Manafort, also, and Trump a Russian asset. What is going on in Belarus shows we need to march and vote.

Sources and further reading

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-releases-volume-5-bipartisan-russia-report

Tyranny - Madison

Madison defined Tyranny as:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” - James Madison

This follows the definition John Locke gave for tyranny.

Sources and Related Posts

https://21stcenturycicero.wordpress.com/tyrrany/madison-on-tyranny/

John Locke Definition Tyranny

The Right to Own One self

Is QAnon an FSB active measure?

Not Crazy - August 13 2020

QAnon are not crazy. They are fascist, totalitarian & subversive. Everything Q outputs is propaganda crafted to indoctrinate their followers, reinforce their fanaticism & divert attention from REAL CRIMES! I believe Q is probably an active measure from GRU/FSB & GOP operatives!!!

The vicious lie that people on the left are the real pedophiles and Trump was "undercover" is propaganda! It is a great example of Big Lie propaganda. Lies so big the credulous and cynical alike believe them. It plays on bigotry & emotion.

Q as Propaganda

Propaganda uses the technique of repetition and amplification to create a band wagon effect. Q gives credibility to rw propaganda and those sucked into it, in order to create a bandwagon more people are sucked into!

History of QAnon

Anonymous had been an alliance between left and right libertarians. They hacked into government agencies who were abusing power. And famously had, allegedly intervened in an election by preventing Karl Rove changing votes in 2012.

A lot of young people were attracted to various news groups, including one called 4 Chan. That group mostly attracted gamers. It became a place of conspiracy theories and grievence. The FSB & GRU saw potential before the 2015 election.

The first step to recruitment was to feed existing conspiracy theorists new or slightly tweekes conspiracy theories, some amptly founded on official misconduct and obtuseness - others manufactured out of whole cloth. Right Wing [RW] conspiracies recruit on grievence. The Trolls built up stories aimed at Obama and the Clinton. 4chan amplified and helped launder planted stories over to the mainstream media thru a network of semi legitimate journalists and talk radio/video stars.

In 2016 they circulated stories loosely based on hacked emails and mostly on psychological profiling creating trafficking allegations against the Clintons. That and other alleged crimes were tied to an imaginary conspiracy. They alleged a Pizza store was putting young women in a non existent basement.

The deep state was born.

This Pizza Gate narrative gained wildfire spread.  The FSB/GOP folks behind Pizza gate saw they needed a more credible and plausible sounding source than Cosy Bear so they invented Q, an omniscient source who could lay out "the real issues." Anonymous had been an army of individual hackers who sometimes played vigilante. Q is designed to mobilize a RW army with accusations and slander.

But not liberal.

The Anonymous folks had been resisting efforts to shut down free speech, interfere in elections, etc... for years.

It was a simple thing to hijack résistance on behalf of authoritarianism. The "deep state" is a sufficiently abstract entity that was used Aato tie together conspiracies. It recruited younger people enchanted by a Godlike voice.

People in Q  August 15

I'm 100% certain in my gut, but only 90% confident, formally, that Q is an active measure. That it actually is, is not easy to prove, so until someone with more resources me acts, I have to hedge a little.

Today's daily Beast provides an insight.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-promotes-pedo-ring-conspiracy-theories-now-theyre-stealing-kids 

Some main Q sources, disseminators & associates are:

1. Timothy Charles Holmseth
2. Field McConnell [Able Danger]
3. Chris Hallett and 
4. Kirk Pendergrass [E Claus]
5. Tracy Diaz [see update aug 19] 
6. Paul Furber
7. Jerome Corsi
8. Coleman Rogers [Pamphlet Anon]
9. Fredrick Brennan
10. James Arthur Watkins
11. His son, Ron Watkins

The Daily beast article profiles some of these. The abc article that came out later suggested 3 more. All of them exemplify the alternative hypothesis that Q is just a collection of  🦇💩 crazy people. But digging deeper one gets clues.

Since I wrote this 3 names popped up

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/men-qanon/story?id=73046374

All of this strengthens my suspicion that Q is an active measure team of a State Actor [probably Russia] working with RW propagandists/agitators who live here.  Somebody is paying for those Q Drops.

Able Danger - 911 Conspiracies

Field McConnell was a Naval Academy graduate back in the 60s, flew fighters, then graduated to flying for the airlines.  He was fired from the airlines after refusing psychiatric examination for pushing the [insane] theory that the planes used in 911 were on autopilot. 

He subsequently advanced conspiracy theories that Hillary was actually behind those 911 attacks. Once in the conspiracy theories, he pivoted to advancing pedophile conspiracies a few years later. They found this Holmseth character, who supposedly had inside knowledge and associated with eclause to organize Q.

Eclause

Is named after an 1810 passed, but never ratified amendment to the emoluments clause that states:

“If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain, any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them.”

Pendergrass claims in an article written years ago, that it actually in fact, had been ratified.  If that were true, I don't see how he could support Trump, but rightwingers never see themselves subject to the same rules. Eclaus is in trouble with the law right now. They don't seem to be on the up and up. 

Russia

Field McConnell's connection to Russia goes back to his 911 truther days. A website from the UK Boasts:

“Field McConnell's expertise has been used by Russia, Malaysia and Germany in explaining the four airliners takendown by the illegal modifications, which he first reported on 10 December, 2006.”

https://alternativeview.co.uk/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=49

The website is obvious propaganda, but Voice of Russia interviewed him in 2014.

He has been openly working with them. Admittedly circumstantial. But they no doubt amplify him. Last year thousands of troll accounts were purged from Twitter as coming from twitter.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/russian-troll-accounts-purged-twitter-pushed-qanon-other-conspiracy-theories-n966091

Admittedly these are bread crumbs. But if I can find these on a Sunday morning someone with better resources could crack Q's links to Russian FSB with better resources.

https://ssgreenberg.name/PoliticsBlog/2014/03/30/3-17-2014-voice-of-russia-interview-with-field-mcconnell/

https://www.pinterest.es/pin/369013763190154826/

August 19th 2020

NBC traces Qanon to 3 people and 4 chan. According to them:

"Qanon was just another unremarkable part of the “anon” genre until November 2017, when two moderators of the 4chan board where Q posted predictions, who went by the usernames Pamphlet Anon and BaruchtheScribe, reached out to Tracy Diaz, according to Diaz’s blogs and YouTube videos. BaruchtheScribe, in reality a self-identified web programmer from South Africa named Paul Furber, confirmed that account to NBC News."

Diaz denied she is Q. 

Jerome Corsi and Active Measures

The article goes on to describe:

"Dr. Jerome Corsi, an Infowars editor and a best-selling author of books about the “deep state,” had taken an interest in Q"

Info wars popularized Q.  Corsi, later backed of Q, but a fellow named Coleman Rogers, Pamphlet Anon decided to take it to the next level.

Rogers, his "wife, Christina Urso, 29,...launched the Patriots’ Soapbox,...YouTube channel for Qanon study and discussion. The channel is, in effect, a broadcast of a Discord chatroom with constant audio commentary from a rotating cast of volunteers and moderators with sporadic appearances by Rogers and Urso. In April, Urso registered Patriots’ Soapbox LLC in Virginia."

Rogers sometimes denies & sometimes intimates he is Q:

“Ten bucks says you see my face on national news within a few weeks, saying that I'm ‘the mysterious hacker known as #Qanon,’”

I suspect Rogers is part of the active measure. But it is even more suspicious that Jerome Corsi is.

Jerome Corsi is referred to on page 173 of the Senate Intel report as the confederate of Roger Stone who interacted with wikileaks, which had become a conduit for stolen by the FSB and then edited and weaponized emails to sew division and win votes for Donald Trump. Conspiracy theories about pedophiles and secret plots are designed to gaslight folks and discredit the very idea of democracy or truth. The above confesses that Q is a team of analysts. So were the FSB active measure team feeding wikileaks.

We need more evidence, but the circumstantial evidence suggests an investigation into Soapbox LLC. I've continued to study this. But Daniel Morrison lays out what probably happened really well:

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2021/02/qanon-is-psyop-daniel-morrison-lays-it.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna900531?__twitter_impression=true

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-releases-volume-5-bipartisan-russia-report

Postscript

Possibly related

https://busy.org/@sadcorp/field-mcconnell-got-his-intel-from-russia-4f3de50ecd72b/amp

Interesting finds

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a5659/debunking-911-myths-pentagon/