It’s got a lot more difficult to find a clear pathway forward in the last decade. In 2010, when we decided to move to a homestead and start living off the land I was reasonably positive about the long term survival of the species. Yes, a great human dieoff was inevitable but I was confident that a significant population of humans would make it through the keyhole. Back then I thought resource depletion would trump global warming and environmental degradation ie I thought civilizational collapse would occur before climate and environmental damage became too severe.
Now, in 2019, I’m not so sure. Projecting forward climate and environmental data leads me to conclude the most likely scenario is human extinction this century. A month or two ago this thought provoking link was posted(I think by Robbie Robinson - thanks Robbie) http://www.catherineingram.com/facingextinction/
So how does one come to a place of peace in the face of these conclusions? One factor is taking out the blame. For example, what if this predicament has always been baked in to the planetary cake. Was there ever a time that catastrophe could have been averted (given that humans are humans) or was the fate of the planet sealed when fossil fuels deposits were laid down and pre-humans still scampered about in the trees.
At the Times,led by Hannah Fairfield is extraordinary.She uses graphics,data visualization and mapping as tools to teach and inform the public.You also have names like Vox partnering with major universities as well.When you have climate denying lunatics occupying cabinet positions to loot our natural resources on behalf of the Mercers and Kochs,education is a good thing…Always…
Doug-
Definitely back in the days of Nixon WAPO was credible - but these days, they might as well be the mouthpiece of the CIA, FBI, and NSA. Perhaps that’s because WAPO has changed owners - it is now owned by Bezos, who is in bed with our fine intelligence agencies. The TLA’s wanted to stomp Trump, and they used the Russiagate hoax and the willing media - who wanted to overturn the results of the 2016 election at all costs - to do it.
Are some individuals at WAPO good? I’m sure there are fine people that work for CIA too, but I don’t trust anything that comes out of that organization. I read history. They haven’t changed since Vietnam. Nor do I trust what comes out of WAPO. They now - from what I can tell - are doing the Agency’s bidding.
Clapper, Brennan, CIA, Strzok, Page, NSA, “we don’t collect data on Americans”, Assange should be arrested (for having the effrontery to report the facts), FISA warrants based on fabricated political opposition research, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, and yes, WAPO. They’re all reading from the same playbook.
Those agencies have way, way, way too much power. Anyone aligned with them is automatically suspect. Thank the Patriot Act - we now have turnkey high-tech tyrrany. Russiagate was the first time these abilities were publicly unleashed on a political actor. One wonders how many others have been coerced with information gleaned from TLA sources.
Again, I stand by my friendly advice. If you want to persuade more people here, you might consider picking more credible sources. Assuming persuasion is your goal, of course.
After reading a “real summary” of Clapper’s book, I can see your point. He said a lot more in his book than you commented on.
There is always a struggle between those whose actions destroy liberty “for all the right reasons”, and those who expose such conduct to the light of day - at the cost of their career and liberty. In that struggle, I side with the Snowdens, the Mannings, and the Ellsbergs, and I do not side with the Clappers and the Brennans.
The very fact that CNN chose Clapper as one of their paid contributors tells me where they stand, too.
Going back to the genesis of this thread - I believe the three I mentioned are “living in integrity” at great personal cost, while General Clapper managed to do quite well for himself lending his resume to the now-debunked Russiagate hoax for the past two years. Is he “living in integrity?”
Here, just in case you haven’t seen it, is the James Clapper Reality Check: under oath, testifying before Congress. Watch the full minute-long replay. Is Clapper “living in integrity?” To me he looks like a total weasel - like a dog caught by his master after having done something bad on the living room floor. He could not even meet the eyes of Wyden, the Congressman asking the very simple yes-or-no-question. Now, apparently, he says he “was confused” by the question. CNN apparently accepts his explanation. Do you?
FWIW, when I found this clip a year ago on youtube, it was easy to locate. Today, this clip was hard to find. Tomorrow, it might be be impossible to find. I wonder why that is?
Yoxa-
What I'm seeing in that video clip is an awkward answer to a poorly worded question. The question asked whether info was being collected about "millions or hundreds of millions" of Americans. To that he said no.It feels right now like I'm actually speaking with James Clapper. Remarkable. The question was not poorly worded. Wyden: ... So, what i wanted to see is, if you could give me a yes-or-no answer to the question, "does the NSA collect ANY type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper: No sir. Wyden: It does not? Clapper: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertantly, perhaps, uh, collect, but not wittingly. So Yoxa, at that very moment, NSA was collecting data on all Americans that owned telephones. Wittingly. The program was designed to track who called whom in America. Clapper's testimony was a lie. Rand Paul thought it was a lie. Wyden thought it was a lie. Snowden thought it was a lie - he knew exactly what NSA was collecting, and why, and he threw away his career over this particular lie. And even Clapper himself, said the following two things. First, in an apology letter to Feinstein AFTER Snowden's disclosure proved that he lied, he said he was confused by the question, that his answer was "clearly erroneous" - but it was just a big misunderstanding. He was sorry. But then later, to MSNBC, his story changed. Instead of being "clearly erroneous" and apologetic, he now felt that Wyden's question was a "are you still beating your wife" gotcha question: to which he answered "no", as the "least untruthful answer" he could give. This wasn't a gotcha question. Wyden was trying to see if there were any broad-based, indescriminate collection programs. Clapper said no, there weren't. Then Snowden leaked, Clapper got caught, and so Clapper apologised after being caught. But then when he wanted a job at CNN, he was no longer apologetic - it turned into a gotcha question. You may trust the guy. I don't. I think he's a lying weasel. He presided over egregious violations of the US constitution, and (today, at least) is completely unapologetic about it. CNN approves of his conduct. So do you, apparently. I do not. I think he, and people like him, have systematically constructed a technological panopticon in the United States that will, at some point in the future, be turned against us in ways we cannot fully conceive of at the moment.
Yoxa-
If you can tell me what I said that you found insulting - to you - I’d be happy to apologise for it.
Certainly if your name was James Clapper, you’d have the right to feel insulted. But I will not apologise to General Clapper, because he deserves my scorn.
I must confess I was a bit surprised that Clapper left out this “minor detail” about just how massive that metadata collection program actually was. But on reflection, it reinforces just how big a weasel he really is.
And given the size of this program was a key point in our (somewhat lengthy) discussion of whether Clapper lied or not, I was also a bit surprised that you didn’t know how large it was either.
I read a large percentage of the material that Snowden released (via Greenwald, and the Guardian), both to honor his sacrifice, as well as to see just how crazy my intel services had become. And the answer is: really, really crazy. Here are two minor examples:
Item #1: if you order a computer online, the NSA has the ability to intercept the shipment, install some “special purpose” hardware of their own - into your newly purchased computer before you get it - that does who-knows-what but presumably allows them to easily monitor the box at any time, and then they forward the shipment on to you. They have an entire organization dedicated to slipping hardware into people’s boxes en route. They don’t do this by ones and twos, the capability is much larger than that.
Item #2: they install malware on disk drive firmware. Zero the disk, and the malware reappears. There is literally no way to get rid of it short of throwing the drive away. Genius.
That’s just a couple of things among dozens, and dozens of things my government does. CIA has its own programs too, equally crazy. If we imagine they are just used on foreign targets - well, clearly they aren’t. The metadata collection program is one particularly egregious example. I really could go on and on. Read Snowden’s stuff. He tell stories of individuals within the agency who routinely used the agency’s capabilities to monitor girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, and so on. Who would call them out for this? Nobody. The agency is unsupervised, unaccountable, and if someone tried, they’d see them as an enemy (probably in cahoots with Putin) and they’d use their capability to take them down.
This is well known in Washington:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/schumer-warns-trump-intel-officials-have-six-ways-from-sunday-at-getting-back-at-you The new leader of Democrats in the Senate says Donald Trump is being "really dumb" for picking a fight with intelligence officials, suggesting they have ways to strike back, after the president-elect speculated Tuesday that his "so-called" briefing about Russian cyberattacks had been delayed in order to build a case. "Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Tuesday evening on MSNBC after host Rachel Maddow informed him that intelligence sources told NBC news that the briefing had not been delayed.FISA court judge, whose name escapes me, cited NSA for routine, egregious misuse of capability. Of course, nothing happened to NSA as a result. Who would dare? What I'm wondering is, after getting that FISA warrant, just how much of NSA's hardware hacking capability was unleashed on Trump and people in his orbit under the pretext of Crossfire Hurricane? Will the answer ever be known?
The question is the outermost question: “what I wanted to ask you, could you answer…?”
The answer was “no”.
Statement: What I wanted to ask you was, [Q: could you answer{Q: does the NSA collect data on americans(modify: hundreds of millions)}]
In fact, I called it a poorly worded question, but I am not a hundred percent sure that it wasn’t an excellently worded intentionally deceptive question.
Thanks Mark for coming to the rescue.
Isn’t it interesting that, after reading Clapper’s book, Yoxa wasn’t aware of the extent of the metadata collection program? I wonder why General Clapper didn’t see fit to inform his readers of that little detail. Perhaps it would have made his ex post facto justifications just a teensy bit less compelling to his readers.
NSA is totally out of control. That’s why Snowden did what he did. That’s why he risked a supermax cell for the rest of his life to tell us what was going on - it really is just that bad.
NSA has the capability to get “J Edgar Hoover” blackmail files on anyone they care to target - on anyone who stands in the way of their budget, or anyone who challenges the constitutionality of their activities.
One of the most credible computer security professionals in the world, Bruce Schnier, said after reading the Snowden releases:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance TAO has a menu of exploits it can serve up against your computer – whether you're running Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, or something else – and a variety of tricks to get them on to your computer. Your anti-virus software won't detect them, and you'd have trouble finding them even if you knew where to look. These are hacker tools designed by hackers with an essentially unlimited budget. What I took away from reading the Snowden documents was that if the NSA wants in to your computer, it's in. Period.That's way too much power for any organization to have - especially one who can and does lie to Congress with impunity. Did Bush rein them in? Did Obama? Did Trump? No. NSA is utterly out of control. Anyone who gets in their way almost certainly finds themselves blackmailed (excuse me, I mean "coerced") by an organization that can break into any computer anywhere. That last bit is speculation, but - any org who would lie to Congress and suffer no consequences is able to act above the law. And Clapper? He's the lying weasel that was providing them cover.
Dave, I came across Clapper’s book by chance and thought it looked interesting … precisely because it was about a world I know little about.
I’m enough of a grown-up to assume that anyone’s memoir will contain some sugar-coating. It takes deep knowledge to identify things that aren’t there. I’d have that in some topic areas but not others.
So please treat my questions as genuine, don’t just riff on them as fodder for insults…
As for the question of whether I’m related to Clapper, I’d say the odds that I share any genetic material with him are comparable to the odds that I share any with you: unknown, but probably greater than zero.
I can really sense Mr. Martenson’s heart in this post and I respect his personal passion to encourage us to have “integrity” in our lives. Yet I’m saddened by what I perceive to be his mishmashed focus on the trees (symptoms) while missing the forest (root causes). Additionally, his arguments for living with integrity are based on assumptions that no longer have authority in the marketplace of ideas. They have been cast upon the dustbin of history.
Chris says, “Integrity would mean that we are operating in a way that is right for the other species around us, including humans.” The concepts of what is right and wrong are entirely subjective and have no meaning in evolutionary theory. There are no sources of morality which bind all humankind, much less the other species. Survival is the primary goal, with reproduction the secondary. Therefore, I will do what I have to do to survive, and to the degree that altruism helps me, I may choose to engage in it - but only for as long as I perceive it helps me.
Chris says, “That we strive to do things that are right and good. [same point as above re: morality] That part of ourselves that’s calling for our hearts to be involved in the world and to believe in something that’s larger and more profound than ourselves is really an essential concept.” To which I ask, what is more larger and more profound than ourselves? The survival/reproduction of humankind as a whole, but not my own? The survival/reproduction of all current species here on earth, but not my own? I’m sorry, but screw that. Chris’ argument of some “greater good” is a tautology - it has no logical basis, no foundation upon which it rests. He is relying on residual meaning from the borrowed language of a bygone era when people generally believed there was a “higher power” who made such rules to which all people were accountable and who would reward altruistic behavior. Wrong! We are not the stewards of the world, nor of each other. We are a Johnny-come-lately species who, through force and intelligence, has dominated other species and harnessed the forces of nature to carve out a space on this hostile sphere. There is nothing greater to me than my personal survival/reproduction and your concept of morality may temporarily work in the 1st world where most of us don’t have to [literally] fight for our basic Maslow pyramid needs. But when the oil runs dry and life as we know it comes crashing down, the emptiness of your high-minded words will become apparent. The only overarching rule of the day is carpe diem. In other words, you’re a sucker if you play nice hoping everyone else will join you in a quest for meaning where none exists. Take the blue pill, Chris, and cease your flailing, desperate search for “truth” when the harsh truth is right before your eyes. Why do you kick against the goads?
<Reply> doesn’t seem to be working.
I do not subscribe to nihilism nor the idea that the individual is the most important or the only unit of analysis. I get that other people do. So in the interest of an exchange of ideas …
MathewThornton wrote: “The concepts of what is right and wrong are entirely subjective and have no meaning in evolutionary theory. There are no sources of morality which bind all humankind, much less the other species.”
I quite disagree. In fact, I believe that right and wrong are not subjective at all and that they are, in fact, central to evolution. Get it right and survive. Get it wrong and don’t. That seems like an absolute truth to me. It is true of individuals, groups of individuals, species, on up to whole living systems like the Earth.
I understand morality as our reptile + monkey + fore-brains trying to make sense of all this and codify it for ease of reference and use. As we know, ease of use opens the possibility for abuse and in a world populated mostly by unrestrained/unguided infant and young souls, it should come as no surprise that we look back at the sweep of human history and observe constant folly. Evolving/growing up is neither smooth nor necessarily enjoyable. Recognition of pain and suffering enables deeper learning. We should do some now.
As I mentioned in a post that got buried in the beginning of the Clapper dust up (#15), I believe the balance has tipped. Our species has entered its adolescence and adult and old souls will ascend to dominance. To spin Chris’ catch phrase just a bit, the next epoch will look nothing like the previous one. Whatever woo woo Utopian future this brings to your mind, delete it. It’s almost certainly not what I refer to. Except for the rare true visionary, I think we lack the imagination to really see the future, only permutations, extensions and modifications of what we already know.
When multiple levels of a system are mostly getting it right (individuals doing well embedded in stable groups embedded in healthy ecosystems, etc.), we experience coherence overall. When levels of the system are pulling or grinding against each other, like individuals and the main stream of society right now, we experience the chaotic transition to another stable state.
Right now I think the majority of pressure comes from destructive rather than generative impulses (which I think usually follow destructive ones - the time of differentiation before selection), so I suspect it will be a lower energy, stable state. But what do I know?!
I recognize that if you do not share my spiritual belief in the transmigration of souls and the concept of soul age, this will sound like utter nonsense to you. Know that nihilism and moral relativism sound like nonsense to me yet at the end of it, all I can say with certainty is I don’t know. I remain open to exploring alternative avenues of thought and the underlying assumptions.
PP is a special place and I would not share such thoughts in many other places, real or virtual. So thank you all!
I think we should be calling trolls out on what they’re doing and my impression is that MatthewThorton is a troll - or at least his attitude is trollish… even if he does believe what he’s saying. Ethics and morality? C’mon, he tells us, those are notions of a bygone era. According to Thorton the world won’t get better, so why try?
“Mr. Martenson,” he says [and btw, it is Dr. Martenson] you’re wasting your time and so are all the people on your site. I beg to differ. Part of what is wrong with our world is that we’ve lost our sense of reverence. I’m not advocating for any particular religion right now and I agree that you don’t need a religion to have a good moral conscience. But so-called “primitive man” had a sense of reverence for creation the the cycle of life. And those “primitives” weren’t so destructive like we moderns.
We believe in science and data now. In many ways that is a good thing. But we also recognize on this site the effectiveness of narratives. Let me assert that MatthewThorton’s “the world is getting worse so why try” narrative is not a good one. Thorton is a troll.
My troll indicator starts beeping wildly when I see a really long comment that says virtually nothing. It’s the tried and true “Dazzle them with brilliance or baffle them with bullshit” strategy. What really impresses me are the comments by Einstein and Gandhi that says so much with so few words.
Matthew Thornton is not a troll, just a sociopath. To not care about those around you unless you derive benefit from that interaction is the textbook definition of a sociopath. Though not all of us might take concern for others to the point that Kendrick Castillo and Riley Howell did, most people do recognize the value of altruism. It’s often said that sociopaths make up approximately 5% of the population. At that high of a percentage it’s not surprising that a few would be members of Peak Prosperity.
Chris,
I am short on details, but have heard that Britain was in a bad way once upon a time and proactively shed its empire to boost their way of life, vs heading deeper into collapse.
I wouldnt lose too much sleep over climate and environmental data, David. Almost every prediction made by the climate crowd has been dead wrong. The IPCC [ considered the gold standard of climate science by the UN ] produces regular climate report models. They have made 73 climate models so far with predictions…all 73 have been dead wrong BY ALOT. In fact there have been five official temperature data sets which have shown that the earth has not warmed AT ALL in the past 17 years. A monkey rolling dice could have done far better at predicting future temperatures than the IPCC’s models.
As for taking out the blame? Yeah of course. It never should have been brought in the first place. Humans are humans. Its like blaming a tree for growing to large and toppling over. More-over, no human being can predict what will happen, you can’t change it, and you shouldnt even if you could. We are semi-advanced, hairless chimps. It is not our place to worry about the universe.
