What are we doing here? What can we do here?

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What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby FourthBase » Thu Aug 31, 2006 10:21 am

Just been pondering what we do here in this forum, and what we could be doing here. In an amateur sense, I feel like this community of posters (among others) can or does mimic certain functions/professions:<br><br>- investigative police work<br>- intelligence analysis<br>- scientific peer review<br><br>There are other possibilities, like:<br>Futurology, protest planning, therapy...<br><br>Granted, like I said, we're amateurs.<br>But I think Jeff's concept of rigorous intuition is powerful.<br><br>To take one example from above...<br>What do intelligence analysts do? Doesn't a big part of the job description for many involve scouring periodicals for news items, interpreting their significance, making associations to other news items? The data dump here could be seen as a sort of cabinet of "files", no? (Especially if it were more regularly used.) <p></p><i></i>
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Re: What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby bvonahsen » Thu Aug 31, 2006 2:44 pm

I'd say none of the above. <br><br>The reason I am here is to see if I can't figure out this strange universe I'm in. I havn't made much progress, but it is interesting. I would suspect that the reason a lot of people are here is partly that, but there are social reasons too. People want to be among others who think like they do... or close enough. People "need" that, but we also need others to push us and confront us, to challenge our belief systems. In a healthy community, this is done without alienating or abusing other members. In cults and cliques that is not true, it's a matter of balance.<br><br>There are plenty of places to go like RI, I have been to a few and they leave me with a cold feeling. Most of the time in a place like that, wierd conspiracy sites and forums, the level of real critical thinking is very low in my opinion. It is important to me to hold my rational mind in my right hand, creative, emotional mind in my left, and to then somehow find the middle path. It's pretty tough going and I find my opinons on what I believe or don't believe change and flip around quite a bit. If I were the kind of person that "needed" stability in such things I'm not sure I would be here. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby FourthBase » Thu Aug 31, 2006 2:51 pm

Cool, thanks for the response bvonahsen. But instead of asking why, which I'm sure would elicit a number of great replies like yours, I mean to specifically ask <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>what</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby bvonahsen » Thu Aug 31, 2006 3:13 pm

oh.. yeah.. well, getting fat sitting in front of my PC reading this when I sould be outside? You mean that?<br><br>There isn't much one can really <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>do</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> over the internet. It can serve as a catalyst to action in the real world. It can serve to form and organize interest groups but action needs to happen in the world at large. To that... I am politically active... I volenteer in a group of former homeless people helping the others who aren't as lucky as we have been. I'm part of an outreach commity in my church, and I do what I can to help OutFront, a local GLBT political action group.<br><br>That what you mean? <p></p><i></i>
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Re: What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby FourthBase » Thu Aug 31, 2006 4:27 pm

There are charities, grassroots communities, "grassroots" communities, political lobbies, flash mobs, thinktanks, etc. that get stuff done via the internet all the time. I'm also just talking about the pure exchange of information, imagination, intuition. Figuring shit out <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>is</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> also <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>doing something</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->. Discourse on the internet is not just mutual intellectual masturbation. Or at least, it doesn't have to be.<br><br>I guess to figure out what we <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>can</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> do (in terms of action in so far as it is possible in a pixelized world), we might have to look at what others <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>have</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> done and are doing. There's always a lot of talk about meme spreading, but I don't think memes are enough. Although it would be nice to have, say, the #1 rated YouTube viral video or something. Online petitions are useless, right? I tried to foment a "signs project" a while back, but that's asking for people (and me) to actually turn the computer off and get up off their (and my) ass. How have other communities/organizations/loose e-congregations used the internet to some <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>effect</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->? Or maybe none have? <p></p><i></i>
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Re: What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby bvonahsen » Thu Aug 31, 2006 5:24 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Figuring shit out is also doing something. Discourse on the internet is not just mutual intellectual masturbation.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I agree with you there. Same with "There's always a lot of talk about meme spreading, but I don't think memes are enough." No, but they are important. Laying down the philosophical frame within with ideas and entire movements live and breathe is the first step. Professor Pan's quote from PK Dick gets it right on the button. You can manipulate ideas and perceptions that way and as PK explains, he was well aware that as an author he was in the very same business himself. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby thrulookingglass » Thu Aug 31, 2006 5:31 pm

I'm with you 4thbase. What good are we doing discussing this stuff? It is my belief that our knowledge of (for lack of a better term) "a grander conspiracy" also makes us complicit (to a degree). It is one thing to fain ignorance or to not question the current paradigm, it is another to sit and do nothing about it. It may seem an insurmountable task and we certainly have less resources than our foes, but as the song goes: it has to start somewhere! Look what Code Pink has done or Billionares for Bush. I'm sick of the banter, and I'm as guilty as the rest. There has to be more than this. I'm sorry I cannot think of a place for us to start. Mario Savio at Berkeley lays it out...cut and dry...<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby LilyPatToo » Thu Aug 31, 2006 6:04 pm

If we all go away from our time at this forum better informed, then it's been worth it, to my way of thinking. People have a tendency to want to avoid the nastier stuff, but even if that's avoided/ignored/disbelieved, there is still learning going on. If minds aren't challenged, a lot of them stagnate. It's a rare person who delves into the less popular "conspiracy" fare all on their own. The rest of us need the stimulation of being exposed to the "man behind the curtain" material and that's what is found here. <br><br>The reason I'm here as much as I can manage is Jeff's very rational take on it. This is a field where it's dead easy to get so far off-track that you're in Woo-Woo Land before you know it. I'm willing to explore that territory, but I want reality-connected friends with me as I do it.<br><br>This is a place where things that are avoided elsewhere are discussed openly. But unlike many other forums I've read over the years, the mix of minds here is biased toward serious inquiry rather than sensationalistic wallowing. That's important to me, since the subject that drew me here (government mind control) is one that has been sensationalized and thoroughly polluted by deliberate deception. I'm not looking for more hysterical emoting at this point--instead I want more and higher-quality information and I want more people to consider its reality. RI has the potential to do all that and more. So I hang out here.<br><br>LilyPat <p></p><i></i>
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Re: What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby darkbeforedawn » Thu Aug 31, 2006 6:04 pm

How about this: Right at your local Federal Building. Hold up a sign there for an hour or so a week. Let the sign read something like 9-11 was an inside job, or We Demand Freedom of Press Now, or Katrina=Genocide. Stand there and talk to lots of folks. Hand out a small half page flyer with a bunch of websites on it. Simple. <p></p><i></i>
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Changing reality, pretty much

Postby starroute » Fri Sep 01, 2006 1:30 am

There was a point some years ago when I spent a lot of time tracing back certain fundamental sets of philosophical assumptions -- those of modern science, for example -- and trying to discover when and where they came from and who started them. <br><br>What I found was that the genuinely major shifts in thought didn't just emerge spontaneously or everywhere at once. Instead, they were a lot like genetic mutations. They appeared in very limited areas among a small number of individuals. Then, if they were evolutionarily useful, they would gradually spread and develop and take on greater intellectual range.<br><br>It also became clear that the originators of anything genuinely new were inevitably isolated and obscure. Just as scientists can never pinpoint evolutionary leaps in the fossil record because they take place among small, marginal populations, intellectual leaps are also most likely to occur among small groups which have come under environmental pressure, are feverishly generating intellectual mutations, and are sufficiently insulated from the outside world to give those mutations time to develop and cross-breed.<br><br>Groups like this one here.<br><br>No -- don't laugh, and don't accuse me of being grandiose. There are no Chosen Ones in evolution -- and no prizes for being the first fish to climb up out of the water and slither across the mud into the next puddle. But the next major paradigm shift has got to come from somewhere, the Net as a whole is (at least for now) a highly active laboratory in philosophical R&D, and this particular corner of it is more open, more varied, and more engaged than most. At the very least, it's a damned good petrie dish.<br><br>There's something else, though. In tracing the history of ideas, I also was struck by the extent to which the people who came up with materialism and social Darwinism and that whole set of -isms in the 1800's *knew* that what they were doing could have bad effects on society and morality and higher values in general, but kept doing it anyway because they thought they were just telling the Truth.<br><br>We can see now that their Truth was not so true after all, and was moreover the product of a particular social agenda. That their mechanistic, valueless, survival-at-all-costs universe was both the product and the goal of cutthroat capitalism -- and that it is the people who believe most fervently in that universe (even, or especially, the ones who also imagine themselves to be Christians) who are screwing all of us over now.<br><br>This means that we have to evaluate our ideas for something more than their apparent truth, or their novelty, or their ability to epater la bourgeoisie. As the Rumi quote Jeff has on the blog says, "Whenever a feeling of aversion comes into the heart of a good soul, it's not without significance. Consider that intuitive wisdom to be a Divine attribute, not a vain suspicion."<br><br>If the 19th century materialists and Darwinians had paid serious attention to the feelings of aversion they were experiencing towards their own philosophy -- instead of telling themselves they were made of sterner stuff than that and just pushing them aside -- we might not be having the problems we are today.<br><br>If we can generate new ideas, bounce them off one another, *and* test them by the wisdom of the heart, we may yet turn out to be the humble, isolated, obscure wellspring of a better and more honorable world.<br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=starroute>starroute</A> at: 8/31/06 11:33 pm<br></i>
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Declaration of Grievances against FEDs

Postby darkbeforedawn » Fri Sep 01, 2006 1:41 am

<br>posted at the Progressive Independents forum<br>Declaration of Grievances Against Federal Officeholders of the United States<br><br>When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to petition for redress against the political body that oppresses them and to assume among their rightful powers to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the underlying letter and spirit of the Constitution of the United States requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to seek remedy and reparations for injustices done against them, yet in their name.<br><br>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans are endowed by their creator with an affinity for justice that is aggrieved when their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is preempted by deference to institutions and officeholders. That when they who derive their just powers from the consent of the Governed, yet act destructive of these ends, it is the people’s duty to seek their ejection from office and the institution of new officeholders in their place, so that great care to most likely effect the safety and happiness of the Governed is restored. All experience hath shown that humankind are more disposed to ignore the suffering of others or suffer evils unless pressed to action otherwise, than to right themselves against the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design of degeneracy and despotism, it is the people’s duty, to throw off such rule of law, and to rightfully provide new guards for their security.<br><br>---Such has been the patient sufferance of these petitioners; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to petition the Governed for redress of their grievances. <br><br>The history of the federal courts of law is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, leading to the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these petitioners. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.<br><br>Officeholders of the federal judiciary have upheld a most unwholesome and improper law, detrimental to the public good, in dereliction of duty and in violation of oath of office as established by the Constitution.<br><br>The Constitution, ordained by need for commercial harmony among the states and a “profound love of liberty,” granted them lifetime tenure of office and assurance of continued compensation so that they might have “complete independence” from the agencies inclined to participate “in passing bad laws.” <br><br>They were granted powers, along with the legislative and executive, for the purpose of “carrying into effect the objects disclosed in the Preamble” -- “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” <br><br>Though the Framers themselves were not immune to impaired judgment, and caused to be excluded large numbers of persons from being fully vested in the government by presumption of inferior capacity based on skin color, gender, or other unfounded considerations, this does not diminish the Framers’ aim toward human ideals as ordained in the Preamble. <br><br>Contrary to these ideals, officeholders of the federal judiciary have allowed false evidence to be used in the establishment of unwholesome and improper law, in violation of the standard of justice, giving their assent to acts of pretended constitutionality; using judge-contrived rule of law and term of art such as “rational basis,” they uphold prohibition, draconian penalties, and maladministration of the peoples’ resources, in excess of billions of dollars annually, by explaining, “we have never required Congress to make particularized findings in order to legislate.”<br><br>Contrary to these ideals, they have allowed severe criminal penalties without showing causation of harm for conduct made criminal by false evidence and thus have allowed the arbitrary exercise of federal power to supercede the preeminence of liberty over unnecessary and improper government action, permitting a bill of attainder, in practical effect, to which they explain--“the relevant question is simply whether the means chosen are ‘reasonably adapted’ to the attainment of a legitimate end.”<br><br>Disregardful of their duty “to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void” and to keep the legislature within the “limits assigned to their authority,” they give deference to Congress and a presumption of constitutionality to their enactments, an unconstitutional and unconscionable delegation of duty, reconstituting the judiciary into an extra-executive arm operating in super-prosecutorial capacity against petitioners. <br><br>They have obstructed the administration of justice, by substituting the letter and spirit of the Constitution with judge-contrived rule of law based on depression-era economic case law to justify an aggressive police economy for the purposes of carrying on a war against people.<br><br>To pursue this policy of persecution they have allowed a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and pilfer their substance.<br><br>They have upheld legislation passed in places distant, proclaiming such constitutional by presumption, yet refuse to allow the details of the legislation, particularly the draconian penalties, to be disclosed to the citizen-juror, who sits in judgment, for the sole purpose of herding the citizen-juror into compliance with a legislated verdict.<br><br>Though the First Amendment recognizes that humankind does not live by bread alone, they have upheld federal preemption over personal sovereignty by prohibiting individual choice even though it is not the place of government nor is it possible to make the world fit only for a child.<br><br>Though the Fourth Amendment recognizes the right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches, they have upheld urine testing, body cavity searches, strip searches, dog sniffs, pretext detainments, and SWAT force raids, in deference to legislators, US attorneys, law enforcement officers, prison officials and other policy makers or executives -- the poisoned fruit of these sanctioned standards being drug task force sweeps against children in schools and abuse as practiced at Abu Ghraib, Guatanamo, and countless American prisons.<br><br>They uphold state sovereignty so that the Fifth Amendment may be abridged to allow an individual “to be twice put in jeopardy,” by separate state and federal prosecutions for the same government pretended offense, but they deny state sovereignty, in states where prohibition has been lifted, in the name of regulating commerce. <br><br>They uphold government policy that is racist in origin and in practical application, violating equal protection under the laws.<br><br>They uphold warrants that have been issued on the basis of “informants” but the accused are not allowed to confront these witnesses against them.<br><br>They have upheld long term incarceration without basis in necessity for non-violent conduct among consenting adults and for conduct without causation of harm.<br><br>They have upheld long term incarceration without basis in deterrence enabling America to have the highest incarceration rate in the world, making mockery of the constitutional preeminence of liberty.<br><br>They have upheld mandatory minimum sentencing, imposing long term incarceration, million dollar plus fines and asset forfeiture, yet such “mandatory” sentencing policy has been suspended where relatives of legislative or executive officials have been involved. <br><br>They have upheld seizure of social security contributions and other federal returns, even though, in some cases, the forced payroll deductions in the government social security program long preceded enactment of the unwholesome law that allows these hard earned contributions to be confiscated.<br><br>Though the Ninth Amendment provides that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” they have by judge-contrived rule of law subjugated the presumption of liberty to their term of art “fundamental right” to deny and disparage all rights not deemed by them as “fundamental.”<br><br>They have refused to allow, in the name of commerce, laws passed by referendum for the accommodation of large segments of people, demanding these people should relinquish the right to self-determination, a right inestimable to them and formidable to totalitarianism.<br><br>They have allowed, by upholding unwholesome law in the name of commerce, for millions of individuals to suffer assault, battery, degradation, wrongful incarceration, deprivation of property, deprivation of liberty, and, in some cases, deprivation of life at the hands of government actors. <br><br>They have allowed, by upholding unwholesome law in the name of commerce, for precious resources of the people to be diverted to a police economy of federal agencies, task forces, informants, prisons, drug testing industries, and other related persons or operations that degrade rather than “promote the general welfare.”<br><br>They have allowed, by upholding unwholesome law in the name of commerce, for the constitutional preeminence of justice to be subjugated by rule of law contaminated with corruption and degeneracy. <br><br>In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered with repeated injury – they direct us to write letters to Congress in cavalier disregard for the imbalance of power of petitioners when weighed against the influence of such special interests as pharmaceutical companies, law enforcement associations, prison guard unions, security industries and the like – “for nothing is more natural to men in office than to look with peculiar deference towards....<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby professorpan » Fri Sep 01, 2006 1:54 am

Speak truth.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: What are we doing here? What can we do here?

Postby Seamus OBlimey » Fri Sep 01, 2006 3:48 pm

Share, care and make aware<br>Prod, poke and make a joke <p></p><i></i>
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