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Moral Endo-skeletons and Exo-skeletons: A Perspective on America's Cultural Divide and Current Crisis

Andrew Bard Schmookler
nonesoblind.org
Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:44 UTC
Kant quote
© AZ quotes
Last week, in the posting in which I asked the NSB community for aid (see "The Wind Up, and Here's the Pitch"), I closed by saying, In the days to come, as a reminder of what NSB has contributed to the effort to address this national crisis, I will be posting some of the major statements from me that have appeared here over these several years. Here is the second such article: a piece that explores the psychology of different "moral structures" that tend to correspond with our political and cultural divides. "Moral Endo-skeletons and Exo-skeletons" appeared here first more than two years ago. It was also published subsequently in the journal, THE HUMANIST.

In the months after the 2004 election, when the Red States were said to have voted on the basis of their "moral values," it was noted by many observers that the sleazy TV and movies the traditionalist and Christian right denounce so energetically also tend to get their highest ratings in the same parts of the country most populated by such people. (It was noted, as well, that some of the family pathologies that traditionalists decry are found at high rates among these most vocal proponents of "family values.")

Some took this as a clear indication of the hypocrisy of the conservatives: what they denounce, they also secretly enjoy. They are not as concerned about morality, this critique declared, as they pretend to be. A posture of devotion to righteousness, all the while indulging forbidden impulses in hidden ways.
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Bad Guys

The Strategy of Tension: NATO's Secret War Against Europe

Silvia Cattori
Voltairenet
Sat, 20 Jan 2007 09:08 UTC
Translated by SOTT.net
Daniele Ganser, professor of contemporary history at Basel University (Switzerland) and chairman or the ASPO - Switzerland, published a landmark book about "NATO's Secret Armies." According to him, during the last 50 years the United States have organized bombings in Western Europe that they have falsely attributed to the left and the extreme left with the purpose of discrediting them in the eyes of their voters. This strategy is still present today, inspiring fear for the Islam and justifying wars on oil.
Silvia Cattori: Your book NATO's Secret Armies1 explains that the strategy of tension2 and the False Flag terrorism3 imply great dangers. It teaches us how NATO - together with the intelligence services or the West European countries and the Pentagon - utilised secret armies during the Cold War, hired spies among the extreme right wing, and organized terrorist acts for which they blamed the left. Becoming aware of this, we can wonder about what is likely to happen today behind our back.

Daniele Ganser: It is extremely important to understand what the strategy of tension truly represents the way it works nowadays. This can help us clarify the present and to see more clearly to what extent it is still in action. Only a few people know what the expression 'strategy of tension' means. It is very important to talk about it, to explain it. It is a tactic that involves carrying out criminal acts and attributing them to someone else. By the term 'tension', we mean emotional tension, all that which creates a feeling of tension.

Comment: While we agree with Ganser that Western nations, in particular the US, the UK and Israel, have sponsored false flag terror attacks on many occasions over the years, we do not believe that the entire dynamic is motivated by "peak oil". There is a wealth of evidence that "peak oil" is a hoax, that the planet is nowhere near the point of "running out of oil", chiefly because oil is unlikely to be a fossil fuel but rather a continually replenishing resource. See this link for more

If not "peak oil", what then is the purpose of the current war-mongering and demonisation of Islam as "terrorist"?

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Pharoah

Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation, Part 8

Dave McGowan
Center for an Informed America
Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:23 UTC
"No one here gets out alive"
Jim Morrison

Image
©Unknown
Dr. Strangelove

My apologies to readers for the long delay in getting this post up. These past several weeks have not been easy ones for your fearless host. Things started going south near the end of June, when our beloved family cat was taken ill and died upon arrival at the local vet's office. To many readers, this may seem a rather insignificant loss, but I have to say, in all honesty, that Thomas just may have been the coolest cat to ever prowl the streets of Los Angeles. His presence in our home is surely missed.


Comment: Continue to part IX

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Bell

When the Truth takes off Her Clothes, the World Disappears

Les Visible
Smoking Mirrors
Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:53 UTC
Telling the truth is like performing a strip tease. It is because of this that many people are offended. Nudity offends people who believe that their body, the visible and the more esoteric portions, is something to hide. Another reason that some people find the truth to be offensive is because they make personal profit from lies. It stands to reason that many people believe that the truth is ugly, or inconvenient. Why go to such lengths to conceal it otherwise? It can also be said that the truth is hidden because it stands in contradiction to the thing that conceals it.
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Info

The Unburdened Mind of the Psychopath

Christopher S. Putnam
Damn Interesting
Sun, 20 Jan 2008 06:50 UTC


©Unknown

In the public imagination, a "psychopath" is a violent serial killer or an over-the-top movie villain, as one sometimes might suspect Frank to be. He is highly impulsive and has a callous disregard for the well-being of others that can be disquieting. But he is just as likely to be a next-door neighbor, a doctor, or an actor on TV - essentially no different from anyone else who holds these roles, except that Frank lacks the nagging little voice which so profoundly influences most of our lives. Frank has no conscience. And as much as we would like to think that people like him are a rare aberration, safely locked away, the truth is that they are more common than most would ever guess.
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Eye 1

Psychopaths Among Us

Robert Hercz
Hare.org
Fri, 22 Jun 2001 13:15 UTC


Robert Hare
©Unknown

"Psychopath! psychopath!"

I'm alone in my living room and I'm yelling at my TV. "Forget rehabilitation -- that guy is a psychopath."

Ever since I visited Dr. Robert Hare in Vancouver, I can see them, the psychopaths. It's pretty easy, once you know how to look. I'm watching a documentary about an American prison trying to rehabilitate teen murderers. They're using an emotionally intense kind of group therapy, and I can see, as plain as day, that one of the inmates is a psychopath. He tries, but he can't muster a convincing breakdown, can't fake any feeling for his dead victims. He's learned the words, as Bob Hare would put it, but not the music.
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Better Earth

Cosmic Winter - A Lecture by Victor Clube

Victor Clube
kronia.com
Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:21 UTC


Image

Moderator: In introduction, I just should say that Victor is the author of two extremely intriguing books. The first is The Cosmic Serpent which was published in 1982, and the second is The Cosmic Winter, published in 1990 in collaboration with astronomer Bill Napier. And I think that today Victor is going to present a talk illustrated by slides which will continue along the lines that he developed in The Cosmic Winter, which is a book that I urge all of you to read if you can.
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Better Earth

The Nature of Punctuational Crises and the Spenglerian Model of Civilization

S.V.M. Clube
Vistas in Astronomy, Volume 39, Issue 4, Pages 673-698
Fri, 01 Dec 1995 13:42 UTC


Image

Abstract: Mankind's essentially untroubled state of mind in the presence of comets during the last two centuries has been fortified by the overall relative brevity of cometary apparitions and the calculated infrequency of cometary encounters with planets.

During the course of the Space Age, however, the fact of cometary splitting has also become increasingly secure and there is growing appreciation of the fact that mankind's state of mind can never be altogether relaxed. Indeed a watershed in the modern perception of cometary facts has evidently been reached with the most recent and devastating example of cometary splitting, that of the fragmen­tation of Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 and its subsequent bombardment of planet Jupiter.

Thus there is a recognized tendency now amongst comets, especially those in short-period orbits, due to the occasionally excessive effects of solar irradia­tion, planetary tides and small body impacts, which gives rise to individual swarms of cometary debris, and it is the resulting repeated penetration of such dispersed swarms by our planet which apparently increases the danger to mankind from time to time.

The danger comprises global coolings, atmospheric pollution and super-Tunguska events, the cometary debris being responsible for both high-level dust insertions and low-level multimegaton explosions in the Earth's atmosphere along with a generally enhanced fireball flux.
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Telescope

The Sky Is Falling

Gregg Easterbrook
The Atlantic
Wed, 14 May 2008 13:51 UTC
The odds that a potentially devastating space rock will hit Earth this century may be as high as one in 10. So why isn't NASA trying harder to prevent catastrophe?

Comet
©Stéphane Guisard, www.astrosurf.com/sguisard

Breakthrough ideas have a way of seeming obvious in retro­spect, and about a decade ago, a Columbia University geophysicist named Dallas Abbott had a breakthrough idea. She had been pondering the craters left by comets and asteroids that smashed into Earth. Geologists had counted them and concluded that space strikes are rare events and had occurred mainly during the era of primordial mists. But, Abbott realized, this deduction was based on the number of craters found on land - and because 70 percent of Earth's surface is water, wouldn't most space objects hit the sea? So she began searching for underwater craters caused by impacts rather than by other forces, such as volcanoes. What she has found is spine-chilling: evidence that several enormous asteroids or comets have slammed into our planet quite recently, in geologic terms. If Abbott is right, then you may be here today, reading this magazine, only because by sheer chance those objects struck the ocean rather than land.
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People

Quality of Life: French smokers abandon bars, clubs and restaurants for private parties

Adam Sage
The Times
Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:02 UTC


Image
©Unknown
Private smoking parties have flourished since the public ban came into force

Smokers in France are uniting to beat a ban on lighting up in public by organising open-house parties where they can puff on their Gauloises until the early hours.

The parties, held in flats and houses but also in clandestine clubs, often draw dozens of people for a drink, a chat, a dance and a cigarette. Some are paying, others are free, but all welcome the smokers who are deserting bars, bistrots and night clubs.

The movement has flourished since the introduction of a smoking ban in all public places on January 1, and has been compared to the speakeasies that secretly served alcohol during the Prohibition in the US in the 1920s. Internet networks have sprung up to link the partygoers and inform them of planned festivities.
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