The Need to Clue in
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The Causes of Dogmatism
Sociological, Psychological, Bioevolutionary and Physiological Foundations
In part I of this series, following the work of Judy J. Johnson in What’s so Wrong with Being Absolutely Right: The Dangerous Nature of Dogmatic Belief, we identified dogmatism — not as the content of a particular ideology but as a process of thinking, emoting and acting. We distinguished dogmatism from fanaticism and clarified the differences between dogmatism and open-minded thinking. I spent most the article defining 14 characteristics of dogmatism. Five are cognitive, four are emotional and five are behavioral.
In this article, Part II, we …
My Lai, “Killing Ideology,” and Disobeying Orders
55 Years Ago
“We weren’t there to kill human beings, really. We were there to kill ideology.” (Lt. William Calley)
Officially termed an “incident” (as opposed to a “massacre”), the events of March 16, 1968, at My Lai — a hamlet in South Vietnam — are widely portrayed and accepted to this day as an aberration. While the catalog of U.S. war crimes in Southeast Asia is far too sordid and lengthy to detail here, it’s painfully clear this was not the case.
In fact, on the very same day that Lt. William Calley …
Two Sessions Summary
News on China No. 139
This week’s News on China in 2 minutes.
• Two Sessions Summary
• New National Data Office
• China’s Historical Mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia
• Modern Feminism in China
How and Why Obama Downed the MH17 Passenger Plane on 17 July 2014
Before the MH17 passenger plane was shot down over the civil-war zone in Ukraine on 17 July 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama needed to persuade 9 EU countries that were opposed to adding more sanctions against Russia — needed to force them to approve adding those sanctions. He needed to supply them with ‘evidence’ that Russia was doing heinous things in Ukraine’s civil war. On 15 July 2014, Russia’s RT headlined “9 EU countries ready to block economic sanctions against Russia,” and reported that:
France, Germany, and Italy …
The Not-So-Winding Road from Iraq to Ukraine
U.S. soldiers breaking into a home in Baquba, Iraq, in 2008 Photo: Reuters
March 19 marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. This seminal event in the short history of the 21st century not only continues to plague Iraqi society to this day, but it also looms large over the current crisis in Ukraine, making it impossible for most of the Global South to see the war in Ukraine through the same prism as U.S. …
Is Vindication Coming for COVID Skeptics?
Some may say that vindication has already arrived for COVID skeptics.
Destruction of the Amazon Rainforest Destabilizes the World
A new 40-year study discovered the eye-opening fact that what happens in the Amazon Rainforest impacts the entire Earth system. This puts an exclamation point on the fact that the Amazon Rainforest, the planet’s most crucial source of life support [NASA and NOAA attribute about half of the oxygen production on Earth to the ocean, thanks largely to phytoplankton — DV ed], is in deep trouble mainly because of massive deforestation.
The Amazon River Basin is the world’s largest rainforest, larger than the next …
It’s Your Human Right to Access Russian News and Analysis Sites in English if You Want
Collage © Jan Oberg 2023
The human right to freely seek information is laid down in the American Convention on Human Rights from 1968. Article 13 states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought and expression. This right includes freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds.”
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights …
Every St Patrick’s Day, Everywhere, All at Once
A Disaster for Ireland
Patrick banishing the snakesMarch 17 is traditionally St Patrick’s Day, a day when ‘Irishness’ is celebrated all over the world. This date is traditionally held to be the date of the death of St Patrick (c.?385 – c.?461), the patron saint of Ireland. It is marked by parades through the main cities and towns of Ireland, and in recent years it has become popular as a festival around the world with famous buildings being lit up green and major rivers being dyed green.
However, in recent decades the …
Never Trust a Member of the Parasite Class™
Especially when they talk about Jesus
One of my favorite New Testament stories can be found in John 2:13-16:
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the Temple courts, he found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the Temple, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves, he said: ‘Get out of here.’
…
Birth Again the Dream of Global Peace and Mutual Respect
On 24 February 2023, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a twelve-point plan entitled ‘China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis’. This ‘peace plan’, as it has been called, is anchored in the concept of sovereignty, building upon the well-established principles of the United Nations Charter (1945) and the Ten Principles from the Bandung Conference of African and Asian states held in 1955. The plan was released two days after China’s senior diplomat Wang Yi …
Graeme MacQueen: The Indispensable 9/11 Writer’s Latest Book
This free eBook — The Pentagon’s B-Movie: Looking Closely at the September 2001 Attacks (rat haus reality press, 15 March 2023) — by Graeme MacQueen contains a collection of his articles and essays on the attacks of September 11, 2001, the subsequent anthrax attacks, and analyses of other false flag operations. They are profoundly important and shatter the official versions of those events. No one reading this book can come away from it not convinced that the U.S. government is a terrorist state. …
North Carolina Strives To Extend and Increase Low-Performing Virtual Charter Schools
Brick-and-mortar charter schools are notorious for being low-performing schools, even though they often cherry-pick their students to get the “best test results.” Poor academic performance is one of the three main reasons charter schools, which are privately-operated, close every week, leaving many parents, students, and teachers high and dry. Mismanagement and financial malfeasance are the other two key reasons charter schools close every few days. All three usually occur together. Not surprisingly, such chaos and anarchy leave a bad taste in the mouths of many.
But virtual charter schools, also known as cyber charter schools, perform even worse than …
Tuning in to the Monopoly Media
Get your daily does of fear, hype, and prevarication.
Trashing Asylum: The UK’s Illegal Migration Bill
He was standing before a lectern at Downing Street. The words on the support looked eerily similar to those used by the politicians of another country. According to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Stop the Boats was the way to go. It harked back to the same approach used by Australia’s Tony Abbott, who won the 2013 election on precisely that platform.
The UK Illegal Migration Bill is fabulously own-goaled, bankrupt and unprincipled. For one thing, it certainly is a labour of love in terms of the illegal, as the …
Israel’s Supreme Court is No Friend of the Palestinian People
Mass Protests and False Hope
As hundreds of thousands, throughout Israel, joined anti-government protests, questions began to arise regarding how this movement would affect, or possibly merge, into the wider struggle against the Israeli military occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
Pro-Palestine media outlets shared, with obvious excitement, news about statements made by Hollywood celebrities, the likes of Mark Ruffalo, about the need to “sanction the new hard right-wing government of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu”.
Netanyahu, who sits at the heart of the current controversy and mass protests, struggled to find a single pilot for the flight carrying him …
Freeing America from the Quagmire of Inequality
The levels of wealth inequality we are currently witnessing in this country are unprecedented and alarming. The very richest among us have succeeded in grabbing ever more of the proverbial pie, and the trend is only worsening. Wealth inequality is proving disastrous for America. On both collective and individual levels, we are suffering because of the ever-growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny few. What is to be done? As we explain below, raise taxes on the topmost bracket of earners, and begin realizing the potential and promise …
First, They Spied on Protesters. Then Churches. You’re Next
I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
— Senator Frank Church on Meet The Press, 1975
If you give the government an inch, it will always take a mile.
This is how the slippery slope to all-out persecution starts.
Martin Niemöller’s warning about the widening net that ensnares us all, a warning issued in response to …
The Variant Spread Conundrum
An important question to consider about the protection conferred by the so-called COVID vaccines.
Video Proves Joe Rogan WAS RIGHT About Bill Gates!
Bill Gates is not a medical doctor, not a virologist, not a scientist and not even a college graduate, yet we as a society hang on his every word when it comes to proper response to a viral pandemic. Why? It probably has something to do with the millions of dollars he’s “donated” to the World Health Organization and otherwise spent to become a go-to mouthpiece for a range of financial interests, from food to vaccines. Jimmy and guest Robert F. Kennedy jr. discuss how Gates made $500 million off of the COVID vaccines he was wildly promoting, then cashed …
January 6 Was Not a Revolution
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
Likewise, an incompetent, historically ignorant, politically naive, diplomatically challenged, shallow, impulsive, narcissistic reality show host elected by a conned citizenry to the highest office in the land can occasionally get a few things right as well.
I won’t get into a spitting contest over whether the election was rigged to an extent necessary to “steal” it from Trump. Every election is rigged, to varying degrees. To deny that is to be out of touch with how fundamentally corrupt our electoral system is at all …
The Untainted Eyes of the Unschooled
One year in Italy with their eyes open would be worth more than three at Oxford; and six months in the fields with a platyscopic lens would teach them strange things about the world around them that all the long terms at Harrow and Winchester have failed to discover to them. But that would involve some trouble to the teacher.
What a misfortune it is that we should thus be compelled to let our boys’ schooling interfere with their education!
— Grant Allen, Post-Prandial Philosophy, 1894 ((See the Quote …
The Cell Phone Is a Pair of Red High Heels
It is comical how easily one can be ignored for pointing out that new technology is dangerous and fetishistic. So-called “smart” cell phones are a prime example. For years I have been pointing out their dangers on many levels. To say most people are devoted to them is an understatement. Maybe it is an exaggeration to say they revere them, but if asked, they will say they couldn’t live without them. It’s sort of like saying I don’t revere my partner but couldn’t live without her or him. Ah love!
But what’s love got to do with it? Love and romance are out of date. Sex …
Protest at the White House, March 18, Against US Proxy War in Ukraine
On March 18, protesters will gather at the White House to call for an end to Joe Biden’s cruel proxy war. “Cruel” is the operative word, because the war cynically uses Ukrainians as cannon fodder to weaken Russia and bring about regime change.
We should all be there – or at one of the 5 sister demonstrations in other cities listed here.
The March 18 Rally is organized by a variety of progressive organizations, including ANSWER Coalition, Black Alliance for Peace, Code Pink , The People’s Forum and UNAC (United National Antiwar Coalition). (A more complete …
Why Would Anyone Ever Assume We’re Not Being Manipulated 24/7?
So many people I know get very defensive when I discuss the plandemic machinations. They either can not accept that manipulation is the standard operating procedure for those in charge or that they would ever be gullible enough to be tricked on a regular basis.
That’s when I tell them about the Gruen Transfer.
Victor Gruen was an Austrian architect who loved the cafes and public squares of Vienna. Upon starting work in the U.S., Gruen was responsible for something …
The AUKUS Submarine Announcement
The Warring Peace
History is filled with failed planners and plans, threats thought of that did not eventuate, and threats unthought of that found their way into the books. The AUKUS agreement is an attempt to inflate a threat by developing a number of fictional capabilities in an effort to combat an inflated adversary.
The checklist of imminent failure for this security pact between the United States, the UK and Australia is impressive and comically grotesque. In terms of the nuclear-powered submarine component, there are issues of expertise, infrastructure, hurdles of technology transfer, the hobbling feature of domestic politics, and national considerations. There …
Blood Does Not Wash Away Blood
Those who have an insatiable appetite for war seldom heed the wreckage they have left behind
The extraordinary March 10, 2023 announcement that China’s top diplomat, Mr. Wang Yi, helped broker a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran suggests that major powers can benefit from believing that, as Albert Camus once put it, “words are more powerful than munitions.”
This concept was also acknowledged by General Mark Milley, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff who said on January 20, 2023, that he believes Russia’s war in Ukraine will conclude with negotiations rather than on the battlefield. In November of 2022, asked about prospects for diplomacy in Ukraine, Milley noted that the …
The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami
On Friday, March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and was taken over by federal regulators. SVB was the 16th largest bank in the country and its bankruptcy was the second largest in U.S. history, following Washington Mutual in 2008. Despite its size, SVB was not a “systemically important financial institution” (SIFI) as defined in the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires insolvent SIFIs to “bail in” the money of their creditors to recapitalize themselves.
Technically, the cutoff for SIFIs is $250 billion in assets. However, the reason they are called “systemically important” is not their asset size but …
Defending the Weelaunee Forest
My creed of nonviolence is an extremely active force. It has no room for cowardice or even weakness. There is hope for a violent man to be some day non-violent, but there is none for a coward. I have, therefore, said more than once….that, if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by the force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting.
Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenceless, …