No One Cares If Straight Weddings Are Bombed

A barely noticed headline from last week showed that US forces are still killing Afghani citizens by the dozen.

Dozens of Afghan civilians are dead, local officials said Monday, following operations carried out late Sunday by U.S. and Afghan forces targeting al Qaida fighters. The incident in the southern province of Helmand, which came just days after a U.S. drone strike killed at least 30 farm workers in eastern Nangarhar province, highlights the fragile situation for civilians as the U.S. enters its 19th year of war in Afghanistan.

While the country was distracted by fake whistleblowers and fake climate activism, the government was busy dropping real bombs on real people for reasons we've lost track of. It's either because they want to prevent the rise of radical Islam there, or because we like having a permanent military based conveniently situated between China and Iran. I'm starting to think they've just realized that it's hard to start new wars these days so they're milking what they have for all it's worth. Obama failed to rally support for his proposed war in Syria, and America responded by electing a guy who's something of a peacenick by the US Presidential of the last few decades.

We can seem the cause the lack of sensationalist media coverage. The wedding was most likely a ceremony between a man and a woman who will have many kids and live their lives in obedience to their traditional religion. Yawn. Had it been a gay wedding the story would be an international news sensation, likely dwarfing even the impeachment coverage. There would be anti-war protests in major US cities for the first time since the Bush era, and righteous proclamations from lefties of "we told you Trump would start executing gays." Unfortunately for the Afghanis now entering the 19th year of US occupation, the wedding was not a degenerate festival serving to undermine the traditional order of the place, but a celebration of the creation of a new family. The Satanic media couldn't care less. Bomb them all.

Little Agents of Evil

The most important, and perhaps most fundamental, duty of civilization is to protect children from harm. From bodily harm, of course, but also harm to the mind and soul. It's generally understood that children should be protected from emotional abuse as well physical abuse. It's less understood that children should be protected from spiritual abuse as well. Consequently, our current society almost seems designed to destroy the human spirit.

The latest infatuation of the left is a 16-year-old girl from Sweden who engages in unhinged climate hysteria. Why a clearly disturbed teenager would be the new hero du jour merits some attention. An apparent reason would be that children are protected from criticism. Put your radical climate agenda into the mouths of babes and the right-wing opposition will be forced to proceed lightly in their response. E Michael Jones talks about how the elites forbid criticism of certain groups of people, then put those people in position of power to immunize the establishment from popular dissent. For instance, if you criticize Barrack Obama you are a racist, criticize George Soros and you are anti-Semitic, criticize Hillary Clinton and you are sexist, etc. However, children are not really given a protected status. There is no special hate word created for criticism of children and no organizations that rally around any perceived slight of a child. The left had no problem demonizing some Catholic boys without any evidence whatsoever, cowed Mini-AOC into submissions with a slurry of death threats, and have made abortion almost a right-of-passage for women to express themselves as independent. So, a culture of sanctifying children does not seem to be a proper explanation for the momentary elevation of this girl to rock-star status.

A common explanation for the tensions between the left and right is a disagreement on what virtues are. The left is as well-meaning as we are, they simply disagree on what is good, or on methods we employ to maximize commonly shared goals. I increasingly find this hard to believe. Sure, it applies to some degree. It seems to apply moderates of the left and right, but does not account for the major trends. The left are consistently drawn not to some other interpretation of good, but to evil itself. Why are they drawn to a deranged girl spouting woes of imminent doom? Infowars did a video segment showing that the girl seems to be possessed, in the literal sense. The left have some ability to find the demons that lurk in darkened hearts. They praise anyone spouting climate lies because they are attracted to The Lie, but even more so when it's a child because that violates the prime directive of society to protect children. The show they tune in for is the public exploitation of a tormented child, much like the dancing child tranny they are so fond of. The thing to keep in mind about Greta Thunberg and similar spectacles is they aren't really even acts of political action, but public expositions of the powerful evil forces that rule our collapsing society.

Meet The New Coup, Same As The Old Coup

Almost overnight, the mainstream Democrat consensus has switched from believing that impeachment would be a political landmine to it being the only sensible choice. If recent history is any precedent, the Democrats - who only need a House majority - will vote to impeach.

This is all eerily similar to the coup attempt that just ended. Donald Trump's opponent was revealed to have committed crimes and engaged in widescale corruption (not to mention literally practicing Satanism) after three different sets of Democrat emails leaked to the public. The response of the powers that be - the media, the bureaucracies, the bulk of the elected officials - was to spin the leaks into the story of treason committed by an unfairly elected president, by somehow colluding with Russia.

Those who say the coup attempt failed are wrong. Sure, they certainly would have rather used the federal justice system to nullify the unauthorized election, but that was never really in the cards. Still, they managed to distract from the Democrat emails, to put the Trump administration on its heels, and to use the power of the state to intimidate and impoverish Trump allies. For years, the mainstream narrative was: Trump is a criminal. To date, no one has been imprisoned for the Democrat emails or for an illegal coup attempt from within the Department of Justice. In fact, the only jail terms given were to Trump allies for process crimes, such as getting a date wrong in sworn testimony.

So where are we today? Let's see, Trump's opponent is accused of engaging in corruption while in power, which Obama allowed to happen. Gee, that sounds familiar. And the same song and dance begins. The media now says it was Trump, not Biden, who engaged in corrupt dealings with Ukraine. It's the Saul Alinsky tactic: accuse your opponent of what you've done, to sow confusion. Because Trump has been accused of doing what Biden actually did, the House Democrats are now compelled to impeach, for the same reason they pursued a DOJ special counsel against Trump for years without any evidence for a crime that didn't happened. Their choice is either to let the media narrative drift towards the truth (the Democrats are extraordinarily corrupt and abuse their power) or they can again inject lies into the system and put Trump on his heels for the rest of his term. We've seen what happens when there isn't a Trump witch hunt in the works. Since the Russian collusion case collapsed, we've seen the Democrats fracture, with AOC calling Pelosi a racist and Trump managing to frame "the squad" as the leaders of the Democrat party, and many leftists condemning the Democrat front run for be insufficiently liberal (and too white). They really have little choice but to launch Trump Witch Hunt 2.0.

The cost will be unification of Republican support behind Trump, and an inflamed base that will turn out in 2020. Further, it will be the increased erosion of legitimacy of the federal government, but at this point there is so little left, it's probably a price worth paying. If Trump is re-elected, then they will just find new lies to distract the nation. If he loses, then they will regain their seats of power (all they care about), but they will also inherent a government with no credibility among most Americans. Ultimately, they may just be rats scrambling for the highest positions on a sinking ship.

Contrabang! #22 Lysenko Lies

New NASA Mission To Investigate Europa For Signs Of Life (link)

A couple issues ago, we stated that we believe mainstream scientists are greatly misdirected in their understanding of moons that emit water-vapor jets, such as Saturn's Enceladus. While that misdirection might compel them to send probes to those moons in the search of life, those missions will not be total wastes, as the bulk of the evidence collected should contradict some false assumptions they are making. That isn't the same as saying the results of a single mission will overturn the academic consensus; several missions to comets and asteroids have returned "surprising" results, which have resulted in no major changes to the theories of comet and asteroid formation. Still, the evidence must still count for something. The more it accumulates, the more likely the old belief systems will start to crumble.

Thus, it is fine to hear Ethan announce that NASA is sending a life-seeking mission to Europa, which is something like Jupiter's equivalent of Enceladus, with a (theoretical) subterranean ocean of liquid water heated by tidal forces with hydrothermal vents.

Scanning electron microscope image at the sub-cellular level. While DNA is an incredibly complex, long molecule, it is made of the same building blocks (atoms) as everything else. To the best of our knowledge, the DNA structure that life is based on predates the fossil record. The longer and more complex a DNA molecule is, the more potential structures, functions, and proteins it can encode.

There isn't really a need for this paragraph in this "Mostly Mute Monday" article, except that Ethan will support any theory that the mainstream consensus tells him is true and will go out of his way to do so. (He is a cheerleader, not a rational agent.) While DNA does encode protein, there is no evidence to support the theory that it encodes structures or functions, as is assumed by the biological materialists that dominate the academic world.

Deep under the sea, around hydrothermal vents, where no sunlight reaches, life still thrives on Earth. How to create life from non-life is one of the great open questions in science today, but if life can exist down here, perhaps undersea on Europa or Enceladus, there’s life, too. It will be more and better data, most likely collected and analyzed by experts, that will eventually determine the scientific answer to this mystery.

How to create life from non-life is not just one of the great open questions in science today, but is likely the great blunder in science of all time, as there is no supporting evidence for the theory at all. The most likely outcome of missions to Europa and Enceladus will be numerous surprising observations and declarations by experimenters of the need to questions basic assumptions. The theorists will at best sprinkle in some additional complexity if needed, but generally continue on as if the new evidence did not exist.

Is LIGO About To Destroy The Theory Of A ‘Mass Gap’ Between Neutron Stars And Black Holes? (link)

Well there is a paradox. Will the bunk experiment disprove the non-existent mass gap? The problem with LIGO that it's not truly a science experiment. They massage a noisy signal until they get something that looks one of their 20,000 hypothetical event signatures. The mass gap is a fiction resulting from their theory of neutron stars - the most ridiculous construct in all of astrophysics. They've had to limit the theoretical size so the stars won't be destroyed by their own high rotation speeds. Thus, the gap.

The way you form stars is via the collapse of a molecular cloud of gas.

It's always worth pointing out that not only is Ethan incapable of thinking for himself, he is also a terrible writer. I, the reader, do not form stars. Only God could be doing that, but I'm sure Ethan wouldn't agree with that one case where his writing might be correct.

Quantum Physics Is Fine, Human Bias About Reality Is The Real Problem (link)

Here Ethan explores some of the consequences of quantum mechanics and comes to an unexpected conclusion.

Understanding the Universe isn’t about revealing a true reality, divorced from observers, measurements, and interactions. The Universe could exist in such a fashion where that’s a valid approach, but it could equally be the case that reality is inextricably interwoven with the act of measurement, observation, and interaction at a fundamental level.

Entertaining the notion that the universe might not be a sterile, soulless expanse ruled by randomness plus arbitrary laws of physics is not the expected answer from the foremost cheerleader of scientific materialism. Is Ethan actually developing independent, rational thought? Another paragraph gives a clue.

While Sean Carroll just argued in Sunday’s New York Times that physicists should care more about (and spend more time and energy studying) these quantum foundations, most physicists — myself included — don’t agree.

It's certainly not unexpected that Ethan would follow the herd, but that only pushes the question up one level. Why is the mainstream of scientists, who routinely ignore evidence that goes against the materialistic conclusion, opting for the less materialistic option in regards to quantum mechanics? I would expect them to choose the observer-independent model of the universe and rationalize all objections away. But that is not the case here. Truly a mystery of modern physics.

Government-Censored Science Doomed The USSR, And The USA May Be Next (link) 

In this one he tells the tale of Lysenkoism - when the Soviet government endorsed the opinions of one biologist (who wrapped it all in the guise of collectivist values) while discouraging dissent. Lysenko's promises of great agricultural breakthroughs never materialized. Thus, Ethan warns of the same possible trend in the US, where the government endorses certain scientific results over others.

It's certainly a concern here, particularly in the realm of climate change. Two years ago a scandal came out of NOAA, where scientists said they were receiving political pressure to have certain pro-warming results ready ahead of the upcoming Paris Climate Accords. A year before that, the state of Oregon banned any educational materials that included skepticism of global warming. In addition to that, the federal government controls the bulk of scientific funding. So there is room for concern.

Ironically, Ethan himself points to climate change science as his evidence of government interference, but alleges that it is Trump directing scientific outcomes! (This is the third time in Contrabang!'s 22 editions that Ethan has revealed his personal presidential preferences while supposedly writing on science. They just can't help themselves.) The reasoning was a supposed scandal in which Trump included Alabama in his public announcement regarding Hurricane Dorian. This led to criticism that Alabama was not likely to see significant effects and thus the warning would cause needless concern.

I reckon that Trump was acting out of an excess of caution because, in the off chance Alabama was hit, the media would call him careless for not alerting Alabama and responsible for any casualties. The storm tracks did show Dorian brushing by Alabama, so it was included. I did not follow this story closely, but I did see that, at one point, every single model showed Dorian making landfall in Florida. Thus, it was nearly certain that Dorian would make landfall in Florida, in the same way it was nearly certain that Dorian would not hit Alabama. But Dorian did not make landfall in Florida after all. It's not inconceivable that Dorian could have juked the other way.

The point is, Trump going above the official forecasts to give warning to Alabama is not at all a political or scientific scandal. It is not evidence of creeping Lysenkoism. Legislation to outlaw a particular scientific viewpoint, such as what was passed by the state of Oregon, is effectively Lysenkoism. Perhaps Ethan, who lives in Portland, should use his reach to rectify that particular government abuse of science.

Political Prayer

A few Sundays ago I took my daughter to the local Catholic church. Despite the problems we're having with the corrupt Vatican and the commie Pope, Catholicism still remains one of the more traditional of the major Christian denominations, and certainly the most classy church service.

Besides the Bible reading and the sermon, the only aspect of Catholic mass that varies from week to week is the prayer invocation. Near the end of the service, the congregation is prompted to pray regarding varies issues that are currently relevant. In this particular instance, the church body were asked to pray for an end to the death penalty, to which the congregation obliged. (I did not, although I did silently pray that God kill all the anti-social felons so we won't have to do it ourselves.)

There is something comical about a someone standing in front of a massive crucifix asking the congregation to pray to end the death penalty. It kind of makes sense, but then there would be no Christianity without the death penalty. Even if I did agree that the death penalty should end, it seems like a strange thing to ask the assembly to pray for. Do we pray for political outcomes now at church? Is that really the role of the Almighty? I wonder how we would limit ourselves of that was the case. "Dear Jesus, please fix the timing on the stoplight at 2nd and Main. I get burned by it everyday on my commute to work, and then again on the way home."

Politics is the realm of humans. Lobbying toward particular outcomes is political activism. If the Church wants to rally parishioners to some cause they can, and that's what they are doing, indirectly through a prayer invocation. It's a fake prayer. The goal is not to compel God to oppose the death penalty, but the parish. Despite no Biblical directive to oppose the death penalty, and certainly to Catholic tradition of opposing it, the Church leadership has a certain political bent and have decided that Churchgoers should as well. I've found another church that is not only more in line with my opinions on such things, but even more so isn't inclined to hijack prayer for politics.

Omni-Genocide

Last week we picked back up on the concept of Equality of Being after a panel set up by the mayor of New York recommended the elimination of gifted schools and programs. The concept was first predicted by watching how the definition of equality has changed throughout the country's history. Originally, it was a refutation of the King's divine right to rule. Then it become equality under the law, followed by equality of opportunity. Today we live under the big push for equality of outcome, which the left calls equity. So, even if you work twice as hard, or are twice as talented, you should be paid the same as the rest. It is common today for people to claim the a disparity of outcomes is proof of racism, sexism, or some other form of prejudice.

The final step of equality would then be equality of being. It's not enough that the man who's twice as smart gets paid the same as everyone else; he must be compelled to act at a low intelligence level to protect the feelings of the less gifted. That is the point of the New York panel's conclusions. Much of that is about race. It's hurtful to blacks and Latinos to see that the gifted students are mostly white and Asian, thus whites and Asians should be academically stunted. The policy won't have the intended effect. Evidence shows that policy will backfire and racial disparity will actually increase. But even if it didn't, even if scoring is doctored and curved so that all races come out even, everyone will still know who is smarter and what the patterns are, and all the policies to favor the low performers will only increase resentments on both sides.

This is why the left promote racial mixing at every opportunity. If there are no races, there can be no racial disparity. Many on the right are concerned with white genocide, of which there is plenty of evidence. We note that racial mixing seems to only be encouraged for white countries. But, at the end of the day, it's part of a more general antipathy to race. They are loudest now against white because of the tremendous success of western civilization, but ultimately they will seek omni-genocide; the destruction of all races by intermixing.

The same concept applies to gender. Consider this recent news story, where students are being taught the existence of over 100 genders. Conservatives call it absurd, a joke, but the whole point is to make it a joke. Mockery is the goal. If they can make gender and absurd concept, then it has no meaning. If they can trick the boys into acting like girls and the girls like boys, then - they hope - they can erase gender disparity as well. Again, it's likely to backfire, based on evidence. Sweden is the most feminist country on Earth, yet has high gender disparity in occupational choice. That is, the women tend to choose stereotypically female jobs, like nursing. It's a bit amusing that the Swedes will so enthusiastically agree with all the modern nonsense in conservation, yet go on living mostly normal lives anyway. (Unfortunately for them, that little cognitive bubble will have to be popped by reality eventually.)

In most aspects, we promote a philosophy that is pro-life, whereas the left is more like a death cult. We support omni-nationalism, the notion the nations have a right to their culture, language, self-determination, and borders. In the big picture, we are advocates of diversity. The left believe everyone should be genetically, culturally, and ideologically the same, and set on the impossible task of trying to force sterile uniformity on nature. They will fail, of course, and even if they did succeed in coercing uniformity on everyone they would still fail to eliminate disparity, because we are not the Borg. We are humans with souls, and their attempts to impose lifeless materialism on the global collective body of humanity will ultimately be rejected by the host.

Is Michigan Surrendering To Islam?

Today marks the day the 9/11 is all grown up, old enough to vote, move out, and start its own family. To reflect on the now generation-old terrorist event that triggered two wars and drastically altered American foreign and domestic policy, a Michigan Baptist church hosted a 2-day seminar themed 9/11 forgotten? Is Michigan surrendering to Islam? The results gave a definite yes in the most definitive way possible.

A Michigan church canceled a 9/11 event critical of the interfaith movement and Islamic supremacism after complaints from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and politicians.

Yes, a Michigan church was forced by Muslims to cancel to cancel an event questioning if Michigan is surrendering to Islam. Maybe they should hold an event asking if Michigan is surrendering to common sense and see what happens.

Anti Defamation Racket

Pewdiepie, the independent YouTuber with over 100 million subscribers, has donated $50,000 to the ADL. Why, because he likes what they do? They are an Anti Defamation League in the sense that the New York mafia was an Anti Broken Kneecaps League. They sought to reduce the number of "unfortunate accidents" that might befall a small-time shopkeeper, if ya know what I'm sayin'. In the same way, Pewpiepie (a white male!) can avoid being defamed by the ADL - called a racist, Nazi, bigot, etc - for a small protection fee.

Pewdiepie is no small shopkeeper, having made himself very rich and well-known. He should be able to weather the storm of some name calling, especially as people are starting to tire of it. Instead, he has not only helped fund the racket, but he's passing the defamation tactics on down to smaller people with less ability to withstand such abuse.

I am subscribed to Pewpiepie for the sole reason that I liked seeing an independent, non-corporate content creator hold top spot on YouTube, but I will be unsubscribing. Anyone who donates to the ADL is the enemy, even if it was a virtual shakedown.

Contrabang! #21 Enceladus Again

This will be an easy week, since Starts With A Bang! only generate three articles. We'll look at two of them.

This Is Why Time Has To Be A Dimension (link)

I'd hoped to critique this article but could't find any major technical or logical mistakes. My one bone is a statement from the concluding paragraph.

If time weren’t a dimension with the exact properties it possesses, special relativity would be invalid, and we could not construct spacetime to describe our Universe. We need time to be a dimension inextricable from space for physics to work the way it does.

Well, perhaps spacetime does not describe our universe. While some evidence is tough to shake off, such as gravitational bending measured by astronomers, other aspects of spacetime go beyond absurd, such as dark energy theory. There is still much we don't understand. There is still plenty of opportunity for spacetime to be thrown out of physics like the universal ether of yore. So when Ethan argues that time must be equivalent to a spacial dimensions in order for special relativity to hold, it is if anything an argument that challenges special relativity.

Happy 230th Birthday, Enceladus, Our Solar System’s Greatest Hope For Life Beyond Earth (link)

By sheer serendipity, we happened to discuss Enceladus in last week's edition.

From the electric universe perspective, all the strange features of Saturn are explained by the strong electrical activity of the planet: the rings, the heating, and the hexagonal atmospheric vortex (see here). Even the jets of Saturn's moon Enceladus are said to be the work of electric currents, similar to those that power the Earth's aurora, but stronger. Mainstream scientists believe the jets must be conventional geysers, thus they hint at a large subterranean ocean on the planet that could even support life. The life angle is beneficial. While the well-funded researchers won't spend money to confirm unconventional theories, they will be compelled to further explore any areas where life is postulated to be possible. We expect that any future exploration of Enceladus and other moons with jets (like Jupiter's Io) will indicate a cold, icy surface being etched away by electrical discharges.

Ethan is promoting the same "life angle" that I said would be indirectly beneficial. That is, a mission to find evidence of life on Enceladus is likely to reveal deep misunderstandings about the moon.

The standard model today is that Enceladus, the most reflective object in the solar system and thus one of the coldest, harbors a saltwater ocean under a crust of ice which is warmed by tidal action from Saturn. After it was discovered that the jets were emitting large amounts of molecular hydrogen, undersea volcanic vents were added to the model, as seen in this depiction from NASA.

While scientists would not expect the small, icy moon to to hold liquid oceans or display volcanic activity, those inclinations have been put aside to support the geyser theory of the Enceladus's south pole jets. I would predict that, if a mission is ever sent to explore them, it will find that the ejected material is being source from the surface itself, not from underneath.

Equality of Being Verified

A panel appointed by NYC Mayor De Blasio has advised that the city's schools phase out all gifted programs and "stop most grouping by academic ability." This is in response to recent claims that the city's gifted schools are racially biased, since they are mostly populated with whites and Asians.

Former NYC mayor Michael R. Bloomberg enacted education policies that allowed school choice, while boosting the amount of gifted and screened schools. These measures were implemented to combat decades of low performance, and they worked. Now, de Blasio wants to undo these policies and make the classroom more inclusive – even if that means shaming people of a certain race (white, Asian).

Kamala Harris recently praised the California city of Berkeley's compelled integration programs, where school rosters where driven more by desired racial mixes than residential proximity. That is, they didn't allow kids from white neighborhoods to go to most white school, and so on, instead busing kids around for maximum diversity points. The result has been not only subpar performance, but one of the largest racial gaps in academic performance in the whole country. On the other hand, New York City has done fairly well for a major city with its particular demographics.

Progressivism is not interested in using data to drive programs that benefit everyone, but in making sure that no one ever has to feel bad - at least not anyone with an oppression narrative. This ties into an idea put forth by this blog in Equality as a Gauge for Political Stance, where we showed the use of the term equality as it has progressed through four different definitions in our national history. We noted that the trajectory left for one final, hypothetical definition of equality: equality of being. Under equality of being, it's not merely enough that all outcomes are equal - all incomes equals, for example, which liberals call equity - but that people must be inherently equal.

In development, children with natural talents will be subdued, either psychologically or chemically. Society will strictly enforce conformity, and citizens will strive to downplay their status, wealth, or abilities at all cost.

That seems close enough to tally as a successful prediction. In New York, high achievers will not be allowed to move towards their true potential; they must be held back with the slowest in the pack. If the radical left have their way, America will cease being a productive country lead by its best & brightest, but a failed state restrained by its dullest & laziest.

Leader Of The Free World, Outranked By Press Corps

This blog said some time ago - although I can't find the link - that we'll know Trump is fully in power when he dismantles the White House Press Corps. This week, a federal judge has again declared that Trump is not allowed to suspend press passes even for disruptive or unruly behavior. Apparently it is the constitutional right of corporate media reporters to act however they want at official events. They have the right to threaten Trump's people with violence, if they want.

This all goes to show how little real power the president actually has. He can't defend his people from three years of heavy-handed shakedown by the Mueller special council, nor can he remove belligerent reporters from the White House. If Trump was a fraction of the tyrant he is made out to be, a number of the most bellicose media heads would already be sleeping at the bottom of the Potomac.

Propaganda Watch

There are a couple Bitchute videos from the last couple days with a common theme.

First is this video by the Corbett Report covering a recent study by the University of Alaska (pdf) that rebuts the NIST hypothesis for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 on 9/11 - which has been the standard explanation so far. They concluded that no scenario for fire-based collapse was feasible, and that only a "nearly simultaneous" failure of all core columns.

Corbett's video focuses on the media reaction to the study. Namely, that there isn't one. Challenges to the official imperial narrative are not allowed, and in this case there isn't enough public curiosity to overcome the mainstream media's control of the national discourse. Thus, the fact that an engineering department spent four years to determine that the official narrative is faulty... doesn't matter. The official narrative will remain the official narrative: some fires caused a beam to fail and then the whole building collapsed into its own footprint at freefall speed.

Second, Piero San Giorgi interviewed Noam Chomsky on the subject of media control. He states that the pro-empire bias of the mainstream media was actually stronger in past decades. While it's enraging today to see the media lie to support a false investigation meant to neutralize an undesired election, that rather pales compared lying to start a war that killed half a million people, which was only 16 years ago. The media has not gotten worse (in the context of pro-imperial bias); we've only become more aware of how bad it is.

Ironically, Noam Chomsky ridicules 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Perhaps he doesn't yet realize that in the post-Epstein world, everyone is a conspiracy theorist. I do agree with his general sentiment that conspiracy theories can detract from productive activism. (It has long been alleged that the US government was fueling stories of alien bodies at Area 51 to divert attention from the actual research being conducted there.) However, Chomsky should realize that conspiracy theories are often correct, and many have been proven correct. Much of what is categorized as conspiracy theory today is information that would be damaging to the narrative the media wishes to protect. In fact, Chomsky's major premise - that so-called independent media in the US is actually more powerful state propaganda than the state-owned outlets of authoritarian regimes - would itself be branded by the media as conspiracy theory, particularly if right wingers started sharing Chomsky memes on social media.

He brings up another good point, which is that the prevalence of blogs is starving actual reporting of resources. We are getting more analysis, but not necessarily more facts. We should keep that in mind when looking for conservative voices to support. There are some that actually work to produce raw information and should be supported. Sara A. Carter, Judicial Watch, Wikileaks, and Project Veritas come to mind, but there are others. Without them, we'd mostly just be analyzing the "facts" provided to us by the mainstream media. 

Contrabang! #20 Saturn's Electric Storms

Saturn, Not Earth Or Jupiter, Has The Largest Storms In Our Solar System (link)

Saturn is an enigma to astrophysicists. While someone like Ethan Siegel would assure us that everything about Saturn would be predictable by standard cosmology, that it not so, and as new observations come in, they normally affirm the theories of electric universe proponents at the expense of the mainstream scientists.

Most obviously, nothing in standard cosmology would predict the enormous - yet wafer-thin - rings for which Saturn is famous. Scientists struggle to find any model for the formation of the rings and to maintain their gravitational stability.

Another is that Saturn emits over twice the energy that it receives from the sun. That is quite interesting. So far, the reigning standard theory is that the heat is generated by helium rain falling down from the high clouds of the planet, which is another way of saying they don't know.

Now we learn that Saturn, not the much larger Jupiter, had the largest storm ever observed, which roared for nearly a year encircling the entire planet and glowed in infrared. It is not explained why the smaller planet would have larger storms. Also, he makes reference to a permanent storm at Saturn's north pole.

Atop Saturn’s north pole lies a hurricane centered inside a hexagonal-shaped vortex.

The linked article has images of the storm and its hexagonal vortex, but no explanation as to why there would be a permanent vortex at the Saturnian north pole, why it would maintain a complex geometric shape, or why it should also glow in infrared. It also omits that its discovery was a huge success for the electric universe people. In 2005, Earth-based observations showed a warm polar vortex at the Saturnian south pole, which was at the time pointed towards Earth and the Sun. It was said to be a consequence of the planet's equivalent of the midnight sun. At the time, electric universe people made the counter-intuitive prediction that the north pole would also exhibit a polar hot spot, because they believe the phenomenon to be electrical in nature, not a result of solar or internal heating. In 2008, Cassini confirmed a hot spot at the north pole. Cassini also detected great electrical activity in the Saturnian system, and even received a 200-volt shock when it flew near the moon Hyperion.

From the electric universe perspective, all the strange features of Saturn are explained by the strong electrical activity of the planet: the rings, the heating, and the hexagonal atmospheric vortex (see here). Even the jets of Saturn's moon Enceladus are said to be the work of electric currents, similar to those that power the Earth's aurora, but stronger. Mainstream scientists believe the jets must be conventional geysers, thus they hint at a large subterranean ocean on the planet that could even support life. The life angle is beneficial. While the well-funded researchers won't spend money to confirm unconventional theories, they will be compelled to further explore any areas where life is postulated to be possible. We expect that any future exploration of Enceladus and other moons with jets (like Jupiter's Io) will indicate a cold, icy surface being etched away by electrical discharges.

Ask Ethan: Where Is The Center Of The Universe? (link)

Ethan is asked if we know where to find the center of the universe - the site of the big bang.

There’s a misconception that an expanding Universe can be extrapolated back to a single point; this isn’t true! Instead, it can be extrapolated back to a region of finite size with certain properties (i.e., filled with matter, radiation, the laws of physics, etc.), but then must evolve according to the rules that our theory of gravity lays out.

Boy that clears it up. Fortunately, he also fields a different but more pragmatic answer.

The reason we cannot know the true nature of the Universe — the entire, unobservable Universe — is because the portion that we have access to is finite. There’s a finite amount of information we’re capable of gleaning about our cosmos, even if we develop arbitrarily powerful instruments and detectors.

Since we can't see to the edge of the universe, we can't say where the center would be, just as pre-Columbian sailors could not have pointed to the center of the Atlantic. In short, we know too little about the universe to even compose an intelligible answer (as Ethan demonstrated above).

We Must Invade Britain

The other day we reported on Senate Lindsay Graham's logic for remaining in Afghanistan.

There is no substitute for American forces in Afghanistan to protect the American homeland from radical Islam.

By that logic, we must now invade the UK, since it is directly funding Islamic terrorism, as reported by Jihad Watch. Belgian-born Anouar Haddouchi - also known as the "executioner of Raqqa" - received over $12,000 in from British welfare during the time he was in Syria beheading over 100 captives of ISIS. Not only that, it has been said that he was also helping fund operations in Europe.

Haddouchi was also allegedly involved in financing deadly terror attacks which slaughtered scores of people in Brussels and Paris.

We're told we must militarily occupy Afghanistan because the Taliban was harboring foreign Muslim terrorists (none of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghani). Britain is not only harboring foreign born terrorists, but funding them, which I don't believe even the Taliban were doing. It's clear that we must invade England to keep the royal government from harboring and funding radical Islamic terrorists.