Category Archives: Propaganda

China syndrome: Media sanitizes brutal spacecraft return

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Photo: Mike Licht/Flickr CC

In case you’d forgotten how weird and controlling the Chinese government is, and how much of the news in China is the product of stagecraft, there’s this reminder, from The Raw Feed:

According to the official, Yang was subject to enormous G-forces during re-entry, splitting his lip and covering his face with blood. When the hatch was opened and the crew saw his bloody face, they cleaned him up, strapped him back in the seat and did a do-over for the cameras. The sanitized version of the hatch opening was presented to the Chinese viewing public as the live first-opening of the hatch.

via How China staged space capsule opening – The Raw Feed.

Childfree movement gets its greenwash

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Part of the problem. Photo: Alan Turkus

I am  sure that some in the childfree movement feel so self-conscious about their choice not to raise kids that they need, occasionally, to create a smug, in-your-face manifesto.

The latest missive from the childfree movement, which has been around since the 1960s, comes in awash in green.

Lisa Hymas, in an essay at Grist*, claims that humans who choose not nurture other humans are making an admirable choice for the planet, and their pocketbooks.

Hymas, a disciple of Al Gore and Stephanie Mills of the Post Carbon Institute (think about that one, for a moment), writes that being childfree is a “luxurious indulgence that just so happens to cost a lot less for me and weigh a lot less on the carbon-bloated atmosphere.”

Hymas does not avoids mentioning adoption, abortion or infanticide, issues that would have introduced some ethical complexity to the piece.

The green solution, according to a Grist editor and blogger.

Hymas also uses a hackneyed rhetorical technique — the false premise — to get her point across.

She suggests, without any supporting evidence, that people with kids typically look down on those who have none.

A link to HuffPo’s coverage of Hymas’ manifesto, is below.

via Ultimate Way to Go Green? Don’t Have Kids, Writer Lisa Hymas Says – AOL News.

*Note: I have written for Grist myself, about environmental issues.

Inventor of H-Bomb and Mars mining expert to fix spill

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The president has called together America’s most devastatingly brilliant men to fix the spill.

But who will deliver the explosive charge in that terribly dangerous world, 5,000 feet down?

Who’s writing this script?

Doug Owen at the Oracle Broadcasting Network suggested this week that depleted uranium be used to stop-op the Gulf oil spill. Place your bets…

“Dispatched to Houston by President Barack Obama to deal with the crisis, Chu said Wednesday that five ‘extraordinarily intelligent’ scientists from around the country will help BP and industry experts think of back-up plans to cut off oil from the well, leaking 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below sea-level.”

via Obama Sends Bomb, Mars Experts to Fix BP Oil Spill (Update1) – BusinessWeek.

Gulf oil spill a sucker punch to lazy science reporters

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The takeaway: Too many science journalists lack skepticism, and balls. — MB

Science reporters and bloggers are guilty of overstating the ability of microbes, nanobots and other technologies to prevent and to lap-up oil spills.

As a result, TV and Web viewers are being lulled into thinking there’s a fix for everything, including BP’s latest pooch-screw.

Here is the underlying problem: Rather than treating scientists and technologists as potential liars — as we are trained to do with pols, for example — we science journos typically treat our subjects with reverence.

To the science writer, I say, the next time any company puts a hard hat on you, and gives you the nickel tour of its facilities, wipe that look of astonishment off your face, and remember to ask, “Will this work?” “Is it safe?” “Where’s the documentation?” and “What if…?”

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There’s a stunning slide show, meanwhile, over at Boston.com. Here’s a snip from the text accompanying the images, via PuppetGov:

“While tracking the volume of the continued flow of oil is difficult, an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil possibly much more continues to pour into the gulf every day. While visible damage to shorelines has been minimal to date as the oil has spread slowly, the scene remains, in the words of President Obama, a ‘potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.’”

via The Big Picture: Disaster unfolds slowly in the Gulf of Mexico | PuppetGov.

Rodriguez making Latino "Birth of a Nation," Alex Jones says

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A typically hoarse, but not-too-hotheaded Alex Jones is waving the script to Roberto Rodriguez’s upcoming Mexican vs. white American violent thriller, “Machete,” saying it might spark racial warfare throughout the country this fall.

The trailer for “Machete” suggests the film is a vengeance story, in which whites are portrayed as the bad guys, and a parody of the blaxploitation films of the 1970s.

Jones calls the film “a psyop, straight out of hell,” crafted to put Whites and Hispanics at each others’ throats.

YouTube – Leaked Machete Script Confirms Race War Plot.

Obama's Emancipation Proclamation: Kill your PlayStation

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Photo: Emily and Alex/Flickr CC

That, and your iPod and iPad, and Xbox:

“‘With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,’ Obama said. He bemoaned the fact that “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.”

The president is, of course, onto something. These media are already having unanticipated consequences.

via AFP: Obama bemoans ‘diversions’ of IPod, Xbox era.

Singularity watch: US Airmen to serve in parallel universe

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Now in Second Life. Photo: US National Guard

The US Air Force, which already owns 12 regions in the virtual world, Second Life, now plans to give each new recruit a duplicate copy of himself to manage for the rest of his career.

The Airman in the first run of a proposed, permanent shift by the US military into virtual reality, will be assigned to a base that matches the one he has outside of Linden Lab’s servers, almost exactly.

The Airman’s avatar, meanwhile, will have a face that crinkles with age. His avatar will also rack up kills, and receive medals, in parallel with his real world rewards.

From a story about the proposal:

“This would take place in simulated worlds that mirror the service’s actual facilities. ‘Everyone who comes into the Air Force will be given an avatar, and that avatar travels with them, grows with them, changes appearance with them,’ said Larry Clemons, of the Air Education and Training Command. ‘It will provide them a history of where they’ve been and a notion of where they’re going.’”

The experiment also reiterates the US military’s commitment to mastering virtual reality — after most people are unable to distinguish between their first and second lives.

That’s what will happen in the Singularity, a forthcoming period of advanced technological development, in which genetics, nanotechnology and robotics converge, and humans achieve immortality.

The Singularity has been explored and described by Ray Kurzweil and others in the transhuman movement.

And only two years ago, the US Army attempted to define what it might mean to be a leader in the Singularity.

via Airmen to Live Out Their Careers In Cyberspace.

In US "water wars," industry is the aggressor

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Water shortages won't be her fault. Photo: D Sharon Pruitt/Flickr CC

270 gallons of H2O = 1lb of processed sugar. — MB

Think about this, the next time a TV actor implores you to skip shaving, or fix a leaky faucet: The US energy industry hogs almost half of country’s water supply each year for its largely inefficient plants.

And, for those of you seeking a “gotcha” on this one, the figure — from a first-of-its-kind study, looking at industrial water consumption — does not include hydroelectric power.

Agribusiness wastes water like crazy, as well. From the new report, an example:

“Manufacturers, farmers, shippers and others in the ‘supply chain’ use almost 270 gallons of water to put $1 worth of sugar on supermarket shelves, according to a new study documenting American industry’s water use.”

Direct and Indirect Water Withdrawals for U.S. Industrial Sectors – Environmental Science & Technology ACS Publications.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3589/3369921697_12e3599b18.jpg

Scientists: Vaccines provide "herd immunity"

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Naked apes. Photo: Peter O'Connor/Flickr CC

By using “herd,” the scientific community belies its insensitivity, if not its outright contempt, for the rest of humanity.

Dose the kids, protect the “herd.” That’s the language hardhearted epidemiologists are using to describe how vaccinations work to protect human populations:

“An unusual study done in 49 remote Hutterite farming colonies in western Canada has provided the surest proof yet that giving flu shots to schoolchildren protects a whole community from the disease. Although previous studies have demonstrated what scientists call ‘herd immunity,’ none have been so incontrovertible, because they were done in less isolated places with more sources of flu passing through.

Stanhope to English, Irish, herd: "Go to hell."

Credit Canadian conspiracy historian Alan Watt, for noting how scientists use the word, “herd,” in a way that fails to jibe with any citation in popular dictionaries.

The scientists are, however, using the same, precise language of that obnoxious prig, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield,  Philip Dormer Stanhope (click the excerpt below, for the full text):

via NYT: Flu shots in kids provide ‘herd immunity’ – The New York Times- msnbc.com.