fr0id posted:

there are millions of people who directly watched trump do the things that they know false pretenders do and still believe he is sent to us from god. Like do you think qanon is real because millions of people believe it? I know we’re talking about witnessing an event but I’m bringing up people who witnessed trump talking and were later convinced by other parties interpreting it. there’s a lot of science pointing out how the Fatima people could be wrong. there are a large series of events that need to happen for this to be suppressed that are deeply unlikely.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Okay, this is going to be a little scattershot, because "Nixon's removal was a deep state coup" has been rolling around in my head for a while, but there's no way to talk about it except to talk about it, so here it goes.

Yes, I was referring to Mark Felt, otherwise known as "Deep Throat". He was the guy drip-feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein about the Watergate break-in, specifically how to trace and track the trail of money from the Plumbers back to John Mitchell, Nixon's lawyer, and from Mitchell back to the White House.

Even in Watergate histories that didn't try to portray Felt as the Robert Mueller of the 1970s, the most I ever heard of his background was that he was senior leadership in the FBI, and that he was passed over for promotion, and this was the reason why he decided to rat-out Nixon. That's a load of BS, of course, having reduced a Presidential impeachment to the level of petty office politics, but I just never looked further into it until today. For the guy who ran what's possibly the largest domestic intelligence operation in the country (at least up until that point) to also be the guy who left a trail of breadcrumbs that would lead to Nixon's ouster? Come on.

___

The other thread I want to pull at is James W. McCord, one of the Plumbers that was involved in the Watergate break-in.

McCord wrote a letter to Judge John Sirica in March of 1973 in which he categorically denied that the break-in was a CIA operation. And I quote "I know for a fact that it was not." - this was a "bombshell" moment in the Watergate investigation because Nixon's plan for the cover-up (the cover-up that he was impeached for) was to have the FBI stop investigating the break-in on the basis that it was a CIA operation, and therefore had to be left alone for reasons of national security. McCord having denied it, the story no longer held water, and the investigation continued.

Setting aside the basic logical inference that the only way McCord could have known it "for a fact" would be if he had some direct insider knowledge about what the CIA was or wasn't doing... McCord actually was a CIA officer! He joined the FBI in 1948 working in San Diego and San Francisco, and then in 1951 joined the CIA. In 1962 he was assigned to Europe, where he was posted to the "Physical Security" division - McCord was apparently very good at lockpicking and working with security systems.

By 1970, McCord retires with a commendation after 25 faithful years of Federal service at the age of just 46 years old... and then just two years later floats back into The Game working for the Commitee to RE-Elect the President, CREEP, where his expertise in "Physical Security" is tapped by the Plumbers for him to be their main break-in guy.

[Aside: in 1961, McCord headed up a counter-intelligence operation against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. This is a link to JFK and Cuban emigres, since Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of the Committee]

I make a point to highlight McCord's expertise in physical security, because the specific timeline of the break-in (for reference, June 17, 1972) tends to cast some aspersions on it:

1. McCord goes into the Watergate hotel while it's still open, and puts tape on the stairwell doors so that they won't lock (and therefore the team can pass through them later unobstructed). He placed the tape horizontally across the latch, which meant it could have been seen from the outside.

2. Later that evening, the team goes into the hotel for the actual break-in, only to find that the doors were locked - someone must have found the tape (because McCord placed in a way that it could be found) and removed it.

3. The Plumbers go all the way back across the street to their hideout because they think the operation has been blown. McCord insists, over everyone else's objections, to go back in that same unit, with one of the Plumbers to pick the locks.

4. The team goes back into the hotel... except as E Howard Hunt and the Cubans will testify, McCord disappears for five minutes to do... something that neither they nor he has ever admitted to. The team puts another round of tape on the door latch so that it'll stay unlocked for McCord when he comes back.

5. McCord comes back, and they pointed ask him if he removed the tape on his way back. He replies in the affirmative.

6. McCord asks the team to turn off their walkie-talkies, because there's apparently too much static on the line.

7. Security guard Frank Willis discovers the tape, which McCord apparently did NOT remove, and calls for police.

8. The police arrive not five minutes later, and the team is arrested.

It doesn't follow that someone who's worked as a security specialist for over a decade would also make so many mistakes in the execution of this mission.

These are by no means the only inconsistencies with McCord and the CIA, but these are the ones I really wanted to get into, because it has all the makings of a set-up, regardless of everything else that came (for everything else, I point to Carl Oglesby's "The Cowboy and Yankee War")

___

Finally, and what first set me on this path, was this somewhat anodyne passage in Tim Weiner's "One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon":



That says May 11 when Haig reads these so-called "memcons" from the current CIA director. The year would be 1973. May 11, 1973 - the CIA director types up a series of memoranda that documents all the conversations that Vernon Walters had with Haldeman and Ehrlichmann, including the White-House-hatched plan for a cover-up by using the CIA to shield the break-in from the FBI.

Now, if you check the timeline of the Watergate investigations, it wouldn't be until July 13, 1973, some two months later, when White House staffer Alexander Butterfield would reveal that there was a taping system installed in the White House.

Three days after that, Archibald Cox subpoenas the tapes, and thus begins the long legal battle to acquire them.

The first transcripts of the tapes wouldn't be released until April 29, 1974, almost a year later. Three months later, on July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court rules that the tapes can't be protected by executive privilege. Nixon releases the tapes to the public six days after the ruling.

On August 5, 1974, the White House releases what would be known as "The Smoking Gun" tape, which describes the cover-up plans in detail, when it was being discussed back in June of 1972. The contents of this tape would be the thing that allegedly sealed Nixon's fate by confirming that there was a cover-up.

... but Congress had already known about this for over a year! CIA Director Walters sent them the memcons in May 1973, and then in August 1974 they find proof of a cover-up in the tapes, but the CIA had already provided them with an accounting of the cover-up in writing. Congress had to have known what they needed to look for in order to sell the story to the public, because the CIA already told them about it!

gradenko_2000 posted:

Robert Vesco, who in 1974 gave an interview to Walter Cronkite alleging that he knew of a plot to use a deliberately bungled burglary attempt to be used to depose President Nixon weeks before the actual Watergate break-in, was an intelligence asset, controlled through senior CIA agent Lucien Conein, who was Daniel Ellsberg's mentor when he was still working for the government in Vietnam.

Riot Bimbo posted:

maybe yeah but chalking everything up to mass hallucination and generally having contempt for the intelligence of the average person is completely thought terminating and also it's loving boring

gradenko_2000 posted:

Consensus reality is real

Perry Mason Jar posted:

How does biology enable a hyper-real experience in a dying or dead brain?

quote:

Religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only particular modes of production, and fall under its general law. The positive transcendence of private property as the appropriation of human life, is therefore the positive transcendence of all estrangement – that is to say, the return of man from religion, family, state, etc., to his human, i.e., social, existence. Religious estrangement as such occurs only in the realm of consciousness, of man’s inner life, but economic estrangement is that of real life; its transcendence therefore embraces both aspects. It is evident that the initial stage of the movement amongst the various peoples depends on whether the true recognised life of the people manifests itself more in consciousness or in the external world – is more ideal or real. Communism begins from the outset (Owen) with atheism; but atheism is at first far from being communism; indeed, that atheism is still mostly an abstraction.

quote:

Meanwhile the Continent also had its scientific spiritseers. A scientific association at St. Petersburg – I do not know exactly whether the University or even the Academy itself – charged the Councillor of State, Aksakov, and the chemist, Butlerov, to examine the basis of the spiritualistic phenomena, but it dbes not seem that very much came of this. On the other hand – if the noisy announcements of the spiritualists are to be believed – Germany has now also put forward its man in the person of Professor Zöllner in Leipzig.
For years, as is well known, Herr Zöllner has been hard at work on the “fourth dimension” of space, and has discovered that many things that are impossible in a space of three dimensions, are a simple matter of course in a space of four dimensions. Thus, in the latter kind of space, a closed metal sphere can be turned inside out like a glove, without making a hole in it; similarly a knot can be tied in an endless string or one which has both ends fastened, and two separate closed rings can be interlinked without opening either of them, and many more such feats. According to the recent triumphant reports from the spirit world, it is said now that Professor Zöllner has addressed himself to one or more mediums in order with their aid to determine more details of the locality of the fourth dimension. The success is said to have been surprising. After the session the arm of the chair, on which he rested his arm while his hand never left the table, was found to have become interlocked with his arm, a string that had both ends sealed to the table was found tied into four knots, and so on. In short, all the miracles of the fourth dimension are said to have been performed by the spirits with the utmost ease. It must be borne in mind: relata refero, I do not vouch for the correctness of the spirit bulletin, and if it should contain any inaccuracy, Herr Zöllner ought to be thankful that I am giving him the opportunity to make a correction. If, however, it reproduces the experiences of Herr Zöllner without falsification, then it obviously signifies a new era both in the science of spiritualism and that of mathematics. The spirits prove the existence of the fourth dimension, just as the fourth dimension vouches for the existence of spirits. And this once established, an entirely new, immeasurable field is opened to science. All previous mathematics and natural science will be only a preparatory school for the mathematics of the fourth and still higher dimensions, and for the mechanics, physics, chemistry, and physiology of the spirits dwelling in these higher dimensions. Has not Mr. Crookes scientifically determined how much weight is lost by tables and other articles of furniture on their passage into the fourth dimension – as we may now well be permitted to call it – and does not Mr. Wallace declare it proven that fire there does no harm to the human body? And now we have even the physiology of the spirit bodies! They breathe, they have a pulse, therefore lungs, heart, and a circulatory apparatus, and in consequence are at least as admirably equipped as our own in regard to the other bodily organs. For breathing requires carbohydrates which undergo combustion in the lungs, and these carbohydrates can only be supplied from without; hence, stomach, intestines, and their accessories – and if we have once established so much, the rest follows without difficulty. The existence of such organs, however, implies the possibility of their falling a prey to disease, hence it may still come to pass that Herr Virchow will have to compile a cellular pathology of the spirit world. And since most of these spirits are very handsome young ladies, who are not to be distinguished in any respect whatsoever from terrestrial damsels, other than by their supra-mundane beauty, it could not be very long before they come into contact with “men who feel the passion of love"; and since, as established by Mr. Crookes from the beat of the pulse, “the female heart is not absent,” natural selection also has opened before it the prospect of a fourth dimension, one in which it has no longer any need to fear of being confused with wicked social-democracy.

Enough. Here it becomes palpably evident which is the most certain path from natural science to mysticism. It is not the extravagant theorising of the philosophy of nature, but the shallowest empiricism that spurns all theory and distrusts all thought. It is not a priori necessity that proves the existence .of spirits, but the empirical observations of Messrs. Wallace, Crookes, and Co. If we trust the spectrum-analysis observations of Crookes, which led to the discovery of the metal thallium, or the rich zoological discoveries of Wallace in the Malay Archipelago, we are asked to place the same trust in the spiritualistic experiences and discoveries of these two scientists. And if we express the opinion that, after all, there is a little difference between the two, namely, that we can verify the one but not the other, then the spirit-seers retort that this is not the case, and that they are ready to give us the opportunity of verifying also the spirit phenomena.
Indeed, dialectics cannot be despised with impunity. However great one’s contempt for all theoretical thought, nevertheless one cannot bring two natural facts into relation with one another, or understand the connection existing between them, without theoretical thought. The only question is whether one’s thinking is correct or not, and contempt of theory is evidently the most certain way to think naturalistically, and therefore incorrectly. But, according to an old and well-known dialectic law, incorrect thinking, carried to its logical conclusion, inevitably arrives at the opposite of its point of departure. Hence, the empirical contempt of dialectics on the part of some of the most sober empiricists is punished by their being led into the most barren of all superstitions, into modern spiritualism

. . .

In fact, mere empiricism is incapable of refuting the spiritualists. In the first place, the “higher” phenomena always show themselves only when the “investigator” concerned is already so far in the toils that he now only sees what he is meant to see or wants to see – as Crookes himself describes with such inimitable naivété. In the second place, however, the spiritualist cares nothing that hundreds of alleged facts are exposed as imposture and dozens of alleged mediums as ordinary tricksters. As long as every single alleged miracle has not been explained away, they have still room enough to carry on, as indeed Wallace says clearly enough in connection with the falsified spirit photographs. The existence of falsifications proves the genuineness of the genuine ones.

.

Tighclops posted:

I mainline this thread and the UFO thread daily and I've only become more powerful

fr0id posted:

biology creates the brain in which that experience occurs. environment will obviously impact that brain. but its basic structures and functions are going to mostly be intact.

it’s like you’re asking why a machine acts oddly shortly before it stops working.

fr0id posted:

I don’t think it’s about denigrating the intelligence or critical thinking of the average person. it’s about trying to get past the indoctrination from childhood of most Americans (guess what our public schools do) about the legitimacy and necessity of our current system. some of the most brilliant people to exist still believe in ridiculous ideas they haven’t given real thought to. intelligence in itself is a term that only has value for educational systems of children. I don’t think it’s boring to look at what has effectively taken over the minds of most people and think of how to take them back rather than regress into esoterism.

Trabisnikof posted:

The layfolk explanation that makes sense to me is that there is an evolutionary advantage to feedback systems that reduce the trauma of NDE because those make you and our offspring more likely to survive and reproduce.

Perry Mason Jar posted:

People weren't getting resuscitated on the regular when H. sapiens was evolving, and even now NDEs only occur in a minority of resuscitated near-deaths (4-15%, commonly assumed as ~10%).

Also if it evolved as some sort of thanatophpbia salve (which I can't really see why nature would select for this at all tbqh) then it would be pretty odd that there's more skepticism about NDEs and its associated phenomena/implications than belief.

Actually NDEs are strongly associated with divorce! Exactly because they are so socially repellent or incongruent. The experiencer often finds that their spouse doesn't believe them about what is the most momentous happening in their life. Or, their newfound spirituality conflicts with the religious-dogmatic belief of their spouse. NDErs are only really able to alleviate thanatophobia in persons who do not have conflicting prior beliefs; atheists, agnostics, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and so on, are not routinely swayed or routinely supportive. People by and large don't like NDEs and don't want to hear about them. Like the guy in the video I posted said, "My colleagues told me I better shut up about this stuff so I did"

Trabisnikof posted:

You don’t need to have modern medical intervention to have a NDE and survive, history is absolutely filled with examples.

And the same mechanism that aids post-survival outcomes can still be occurring even if it doesn’t quality as an NDE according to someone’s experience. The biochemical mechanisms that aid memory integrations and reduce memory of pain then get interpreted by the higher order functions into discrete memories and experiences. But we only count certain of those experiences as NDE based on a socially derived filter.

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1616242764395741185?t=LXQ9_TdcyruCIO95mTT3Kg&s=19

He is right, of course

Perry Mason Jar posted:

But we're not talking of simply "discrete memories and experiences".

We are talking of the most vivid memory in that person's life - able to be recalled in complete detail twenty years after the event without error. This memory is one which is more phenomenologically coherent, rational, structured, detailed, consistent, and epistemically rich than any memory of every day waking life, dreams, or hallucinations (and any current experience of waking life as well). This memory is also capable of retrieving veridical information about objects, events, and persons, to which the dying person has no local access. This memory will also transform the experiencer into a believer who will describe themself as spiritual, not religious, who will report a close relationship with God, who will believe in the afterlife, and who will be open to reincarnation. This memory will transform the experiencer and orient their personality towards service, compassion, empathy, and away from ambition, success, pride, and wealth. This memory has a reasonable chance to induce experiences of paranormal events or abilities, typically mediumship, psychic healing, and other psychic abilities. All of which is irrespective of the personality prior to the experience.

ram dass in hell posted:

Gödel, Epstein, West: An Internal Mental AIDS

fr0id posted:

Trabisnikof posted:

The layfolk explanation that makes sense to me is that there is an evolutionary advantage to feedback systems that reduce the trauma of NDE because those make you and our offspring more likely to survive and reproduce.

Mola Yam posted:

i wanna hear from someone who fully died.

Trabisnikof posted:

tbf i think there’s decent evidence it’s not just drone testing, but electronic warfare testing too, like the tic tac most logically seems to me to be testing a system capable of projecting a broad spectrum decoy that only exists in the positive interference patterns of the technology that generates it

Chamale posted:

I was clinically dead and didn't have a near-death experience. Just fragmentary memories from when I passed out to a moment in the ambulance, to waking up in the ICU.

The interesting thing is that I had a strong sense of impending doom for hours before my heart stopped, so I had spent the night translating an old poem about death. I started speaking Latin to the paramedics as they were putting me on the stretcher.

Chamale posted:

I was clinically dead and didn't have a near-death experience. Just fragmentary memories from when I passed out to a moment in the ambulance, to waking up in the ICU.

The interesting thing is that I had a strong sense of impending doom for hours before my heart stopped, so I had spent the night translating an old poem about death. I started speaking Latin to the paramedics as they were putting me on the stretcher.

mark immune posted:

ndes are like dreams, no one gives a poo poo