Work and Play on the Computer

Posted on November 9, 2011 by ehurst

Much discussion and gnashing of teeth over at Slashdot on Do We Really Hate All New GUIs?
Yes, we do. That is, unless our only contact with computers is as phones and tablets, which is apparently now the majority. So we accept that for them and agree they should have what they need. It’s not an input device, but an output device. You want stuff to display and make noise, and your only input may be vocal, using it like a telephone. But don’t try to foist that crap on people who use keyboards and mice.
As correctly noted elsewhere, the difference between GNOME 3 and Unity is insignificant from the user perspective. Both have completely destroyed all standard expectations for desktop users. The developers gleefully assert you will love it, and come near to calling for a Predator drone to shut you up if you don’t love it. Open Source has always been somewhat unconcerned with user reactions, but that has slowly drifted over to open hostility.
And God forbid we should simply keep it working for more than a week before adding new features and geometrically larger quantities of new bugs to go with it. GNOME 2 was adequate, but it was never even moderately bug-free. KDE 3 seems to have come close, but nobody had time to every quite finish the job, because the developer-centric model caters to the brilliant ideas of creative genius and users be damned. When you can point out what’s wrong with KDE 4, they tell it’s a feature, not a bug. Sound familiar? Get a clue, KDE developers: We want simplicity where we want it, and options where we want them. If you choose to ignore our peculiar mix of needs, and pursue your own bizarre wet dreams, we will go away.
It’s not just my own position, but of every user I’ve talked to: Nothing will ever top KDE 3.x as the very pinnacle of what Linux GUIs might have been. As noted in the comments on the Slashdot article, it matters not a whit that most users never touch the majority of features. Each user has their own selection of must-have features from the common set typically available, and damn you if you try to remove them. There is simply no good reason for dumping on users and abandoning that truly lovable desktop model for anything else. The KDE folks have only themselves to blame for their stupidity. All those “new” features were a regression away from actual usability. Now it’s just a shiny toy for junkies. You could have easily kept the interface when moving to QT4. Don’t pretend you’ve done us any favors. (I’ve previously commented I know about the Trinity Project, but I don’t believe there are enough people working on it for it to be viable; it needs most of the current KDE folks who have no interest.)
Having examined the GPL in all it’s manifestations, and read the crotchety religious self-righteousness of its founders, I still don’t understand what kind of arrogant hatred it takes to refuse to negotiate with hardware vendors on behalf of users. No, RMS and his friends simply make impotent demands, so users have, at best, horribly inconvenient work-arounds for a lot of common hardware. The few vendors who actually like having more users are permitted to put a non-GPL “blob” in the kernel and those vendors trust you not to examine the code. When Open Source people start thinking about users instead of their petty electronic gods, perhaps it will mean something and Linux will see something more than a 1% user base among computer users.
How about the way Apple used to deal with some tech support calls? “You don’t need to know how to do that.” Such was the response to asking how to change some settings which hindered your work flow. Nowadays you simply don’t have the option to call and ask such questions. I reject any discussion of Apple which does not assume the basic fact it’s always more about fashion and coolness than actual usability. Most of those even conscious of computer technology agree with me. I’ve used Macs enough to know they shine in only one place, and that is graphics applications. If that’s really important to you, then Mac is a blessing. Otherwise, your only reason for touching one is sheer hateful arrogance, and we who have no use for it hate you back.
Windows is the Borg. They hate users, too, but at least realize users are a useful commodity to deliver to advertisers, their real customers. Because of that, MS has in the past done some decent work, in realizing the user has to get something done or they won’t hang around. Right now, Windows 7 is about as good as it will ever get for people who actually need a computer. Windows 8 will go down like Vista and ME for those of us who don’t want or need to touch a tiny screen. I’ve shifted all my work over to Windows 7, because the control and security of Open Source simply isn’t worth the trouble any more.
I’m tired of futzing with computers. I have work to do, a calling from God. I have tech support clients in my computer ministry who need as much love and support as they can get, and it won’t come from anyone who actually makes this stuff. I have enough work explaining what computers can and can’t do. If you want my support, the least you could do is stay out of my way. Aside from something like Ubuntu 10.04 with some tweaking for kids’ computers, I have no use for Linux. I realize those who actually do work with computers are probably a dwindling population, but we happen to have more mass buying power than the cell-phonies and tablet-heads still. Ignore us at your peril.
Addenda: It occurs to me one final word is needed. Back when Windows 95 first appeared on the scene, a lot of folks never noticed just how much MS had invested in UI design testing with all those human behavioral scientists. Their aim was to examine what users wanted to do, liked to do, and could be persuaded to do with a computer keyboard and mouse while interacting with what was on the screen. You’ll notice it really hasn’t changed much up through Windows 7. Boring? Kiss my patootie, because that’s how humans operate. It’s the best compromise between what ought to be and what can be. There is no sin in aping the Windows layout and functions in terms of GUI design. No two people like exactly the same thing, but the mass of humanity can at least find their own place in that common user experience package.
When enthusiasts stop trying to remake humans into their image of how users ought to be, when Open Source developers realize they do not represent the cream of humanity in their wacko “innovations” and begin to care about the rest of the human race, then they’ll stop making such dramatic changes in the desktop. Just once, how about fixing something which worked so well?

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Curmudgeonry for the Week

Posted on November 8, 2011 by ehurst

Just a quick laundry list of short items.
1. We are trying to bring Afghanistan under the boot heel of our empire, on one level. We could win, but we won’t. The single greatest factor is incomprehensible to the military and foreign policy wonks: the economy. There is a way to appeal to their Islamic moral fervor and build up the economy, too. The Taliban wouldn’t stand a chance if the people had anything to lose by listening to them. No one in charge has bothered because that was never the real objective. Part of the real objective was destroying our own economy, and shattering our military power. It’s working.
2. OWS is dead. It was vulnerable from day one because they hadn’t taken the time to school the protesters. There are only two ways to keep something like this coherent, and that’s ties of blood/covenant, or a strong orthodoxy like communists use. Whether we like it or not, given the vagaries of human political behavior, any kind of revolt demands a unity rather like a religion. Not just any religion, but one with a stern sense of commitment to something concrete which takes on the aura of holiness. While there have been some brilliant flashes of rhetoric, it never reflected enough of the protesters to keep the political infiltrators from destroying it. The protests have been hijacked by several other strong agendas, and will probably continue on that thread for some time to come. The name is the same, but whatever it was at first is long past.
3. There’s a good chance Herman Cain will survive this kerfuffle over sexual harassment, in part because that card has been played too often. If current trends continue, he could easily be the next president. Should that happen, we will most certainly have a World War III, and the US will see conscription on a scale making Vietnam look piddly. More, when draft protesters flee to other lands, Cain is the kind of man who will send execution squads after them. And most evangelical churches will applaud that move.
4. I’m tempted to believe there is something in this provocation of Iran we aren’t being told by much of anybody. While I don’t quite agree with the wild conspiracy theories espoused by Duff at Veterans Today, I do have to wonder at all the posturing from both sides. It seems almost surreal, with an all too public slow-motion march into an obvious, foregone conclusion. It’s hard to imagine how any part of this can yield the surprise attack sort of thing which actually works. Am I the only person who thinks the anxiety leading up to any action is a major, if not the whole, objective? And is there anyone else who wonders if maybe this is all some feint while preparing some other attack entirely?
Most of what you think you see is theater.

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Picking a Church

Posted on November 7, 2011 by ehurst

My wife and believe we have found a place which can tolerate us.
Every church is first and foremost a human political organization. Okay, that’s redundant, since all human organization is inherently political. Shorn of emotional imbuing, “politics” is the broader term for how humans come together and use each other, the numerical mass, as a means to some end. Even a marriage has politics. Thus, every church has politics because it involves fallen humans.
It has become popular to make the joke when someone complains a church is filled with hypocrites, they should go ahead and join because there’s room for one more hypocrite. Humans are inherently hypocritical. It’s part of the fall, so there won’t be any other type of humans available for any organization, including churches.
Being involved in a church requires the same basic cynicism which comes from fully realizing this plane of existence is broken, and won’t be fixed. Churches are going to have problems, so the question is simply a matter of selecting one with problems you know how to handle. Because it’s a voluntary thing, it’s not like some things where you hold your nose and choose the one least offensive. For example, for good or ill, some sort of computer with some sort of Net access is becoming virtually essential for interacting with almost any agency, government or otherwise. Without one, you officially don’t exist for most bureaucrats. Everything about computer use sucks, but if you don’t have one, you are out in the cold on too many things, these days. That’s the nature of human existence.
So all churches have leaders, and those truly democratic don’t last long enough to get much done. From one generation of leadership to the next, fundamental changes are actually rather rare. So examining the track record, the history of controversies, is part of the process. No church of any worth is without controversies, because if you do anything at all, someone will get terribly upset and cause a scene. On top of that, the Savior we claim to emulate in our churches was condemned to the Cross by His own religious leaders.
After several years of working alone in house church, my wife and I found ourselves tired of isolation. You can have splendid spiritual purity in isolation, but little place for using that purity. So we began investigating via the websites. Granted, really savvy Net marketing is deception in itself,  but a complete lack of Net savvy was unacceptable. We made several false starts, but stayed with it. Finally, we found something where we believe we won’t be much of a problem if we follow our convictions.
It’s actually a sort of franchise type church, with “campuses” all over the US. They even have a Web Church of sorts, where you can be a member without ever showing up in person at any of the campuses (or so it seems). It’s called Life Church. They are a branch of the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). I did the research, reading their statement of faith, some of the criticisms leveled at them, and felt pretty much at home with it. That is, complaints and accusations leveled at them would probably be aimed at me, should I gain enough attention from the same accusers, though for different reasons. You learn a lot about an accuser from their selection of targets, just as you learn much about a church from the accusations made against them.
I suppose I’ll have to dodge a bunch of Purchase Purpose Driven stuff, and similar garbage, but I’m guessing such is not a test of faith, as it were. They permit female pastors, but not many churches have one. However, the two items I find most intolerable are absent: (1) wrapping faith in the US flag and (2) slavishly supporting modern Israel. I didn’t catch so much as a whiff of Dispensationalism in any of the reading material, and there wasn’t any hint of celebrating Veterans Day Sunday yesterday. It’s fine if restaurants and other businesses want to give us freebies, but I’m a veteran who doesn’t want battle flags polluting my worship.
We’ll give them a try, and see how it works out.

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What's Shaking? Oklahoma Edition

Posted on November 6, 2011 by ehurst

Here in central Oklahoma, we are down at the southern tip of the Humboldt Fault.
I know a little about seismology. It became a childhood fascination after we moved to Anchorage, Alaska just a year following the Bad Friday Earthquake in 1964. (That would be the common Alaskan pun on Good Friday, when the quake struck.) When I was in college studying for my teacher’s exams, I chose that as my project. I still have all the slides somewhere. The USGS did a massive study of it, and the college library had the whole thing, two full shelves of stuff. Over several months I read as much as I could understand without taking senior level mathematics.
All that math the scientists developed for it doesn’t help us here in Oklahoma. They have no idea why things are shaking here. We had a 5.6 in the middle of the night, about 3 miles (4.8km) deep. Apparently where we now reside is somewhat isolated from whatever is shaking, because all we got was an audible rumble and the mobile home shook just enough to wake me. Since our house has never sat tightly on the pilings, we usually don’t feel the minor stuff. But it’s anchored, so we would have to have a truly major shake locally to even shift it noticeably.
Unless the ground actually reshapes itself under us, a mobile home is about the safest place to live in a fault zone. We are more worried about the water tower 30 feet (9m) from the back of the house.
But there’s not much chance of this being the result of any nukes or other skulduggery around here. This is flyover country. Nothing ever really happens here. We can’t even get the economy to crash decently, since we are one of those exporting states: oil, gas, food, water, etc. The tornadoes and wildfires are a bigger threat here. Wish we could export those.

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If I Could, I Would

Posted on November 5, 2011 by ehurst

Yep, if I had as much money as he does:

[Ventura] vowed to apply for Mexican citizenship so he can live there more months of the year….
“I will never stand for a national anthem again. I will turn my back and I will raise a fist,” he said.

He is entirely right. If he had done as the judge said, it would go before a panel of judges and be buried. There would be no point if he couldn’t get a jury, which would be guaranteed to side with him in almost any jury pool I can imagine. That’s why the judge refused the case. Rare is the judge still willing to so much as appear to kick back against the hand that pays him.
We all know, of course, this is grandstanding. It’s what you do when you have a pass to enter the grandstand. Ventura does.
We don’t. We have to do something else. Of course, things aren’t so sweet in Mexico anymore, anyway. But I’m sure Ventura has the leverage to keep the Narcos away from his door down there. For whatever reason. I’d pick places farther south. No, no place is utterly safe, but given what we can know about things in general, Tierra del Fuego is looking better all the time.
The roads don’t run from here to there, far as I can determine. Couldn’t afford the gas, anyway. And there is some hostile territory to pass through, so biking isn’t an option.
Without a pass to the grandstand, all we have is what we have and can get. I decided long ago the stars and stripes were not an object of veneration. How easily we forget it has always been a purely war emblem. It’s called a “battle flag.” You aren’t supposed to fly it in peacetime, or over any administrative office not under literal military attack. But I don’t bother to insult it, either. Even if it hangs around awhile, it will never again mean what it once did, which was bad enough. Nor has it ever meant what most people think it means, which turns out to be even worse. As it is, I figure we won’t be seeing it officially much longer.
As the song says, “Pledge allegiance to the flag, whatever flag they offer…” I’m a citizen of Heaven, and My King says He only loans me out to lesser authorities at His discretion.

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Windows 7: Converting Flash Videos to MP3 Music Files

Posted on November 5, 2011 by ehurst

While some of the same tools are available for both Linux and Windows, there is simply no point learning the command line stuff in converting Flash videos on Windows.
The hardest part is learning how to search the cache for your browser. Since I don’t use IE, you’ll have to work that out for yourself. I no longer use Firefox, so I can’t help you with that, either. However, the primary trick is when you start the video in question, notice where FlashPlayer shows both the download progress (usually gray) ahead of the running progress bar (red). Note the exact time to the minute, because that’s part of the trick to finding it.
In Opera, you’ll need to drill down into:

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Opera\Opera\cache

Several folders will present themselves, usually labeled in the format g_000x. One or more will show about the right time stamp. Simply drop down into each one close to or after that point until you see a bunch of files labeled in the format opr000xx.tmp. Notice what sizes they are. Most will be in KB, but your video will easily be in MB. Since few items in your cache is likely to be that large, copy that file to your Video folder and rename it properly. For example, I usually label it: Artist-ShortSongTitle.flv.
If you use Google Chrome, it’s even easier. The location is:

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache

All the files are in there labeled: f_00000x and it should be easy to pick out the giant file which matches your time hack. Same trick, just copy with a new name according to whatever scheme suits you.
The conversion is pretty easy, just visit Cocoon Software and download their “Quick Media Converter” in a zip file named “Install-Hd-4-5-0-2.zip” (as of this writing). Unzip it and you’ll have the installer with a similar name. In the process, the installer will pull down the latest FFMPEG and all the goodies that go with it. The application is simply a front-end which keeps the dirty details away from you.
Warning: It comes bundled with the Ask Toolbar. Don’t select the simple install, but choose the advanced, and unclick all that crap. These days you just about cannot get anything useful without running interference this way. But if you somehow miss that, you can always uninstall it later. At least it’s not genuine spyware, just close to it. The other issue is they nag you for a donation every 20th use. I can stand that, especially because this is one of the smartest tools for doing this job.
After it’s installed, run it. You first need to find your video using the buttons on the left side. Look for the “add” button, then navigate to your Video folder. It will probably remember this location as default. Click on the FLV file in the list, then select from the top row of buttons along about the middle, a CD with a note over it. If you aren’t sure, hover your mouse and you’ll be told that is for converting to audio only. Select MP3 from the dropdown list that comes from that button. Then in the row of large buttons across the bottom, select the one which determines the output folder. You gotta pick one, so I use my Music folder. Next, just click the “convert” button there next to that and wait for it. You’ll get a progress bar and so forth.
Check to see if it landed in your Music folder. Test it; the sound quality should be at least as good as the Flash video you watched in your browser. Digging through your browser cache can be a real mess if you don’t clear it once in awhile. Either using the browser controls or something like BleachBit daily, at least.

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Leader or Not?

Posted on November 4, 2011 by ehurst

Sometime back in the 1980s, the US Army leadership decided every soldier will take leadership training. All personnel were presumed leaders in training, and anyone who didn’t like it was out the door. They did away with the entire premise of there being a technician class within the ranks, folks who could be promoted up their own scale without standard leadership training. A minor manifestation of this was removing all the Specialist grades above E-4 — no more Specialist 5, 6 or 7. If you weren’t a troop leader, a sergeant, you didn’t get promoted above that.
One major problem: The entire culture of leadership was corrupted by the bean-counter management mentality. In actual practice, it was little more than pasting the command leadership labels over corporate supervisory training. The proud talk of combat leadership and real battle courage continued, but if you weren’t a craven fake, an organizational team player, you often didn’t get promoted. This become even more pronounced in the officer ranks. Generals have always been politicians, but soldiers are terribly ineffective when they are transformed into dependent psychopaths.
This is part of why we have the most extravagant military budget in human history and can’t defeat the Taliban with their ancient rifles and no armor. Modern American military culture is a vast layer of mythology lying atop one of the sickest societies in history.
In any society or culture, there is a place for the non-leaders. However, the bulk of them are rightly presumed leaders in their own homes. That’s fundamental to very definition of manhood. While we expect a certain portion of ruined and broken dependents of both sexes and at all stages of life, a society is dying when the bulk of men aren’t men. An essential element in manhood is a sense of mission, something which makes the world a better place. Every society depends on that for existence as a society.
It’s not cowardice to avoid things for which you possess no talent or skill, and no interest. Manhood does not necessitate every social skill and grace. Rare are the men equipped for that, and they are rightly legendary. The cream rises to the top, but manure floats even better. We see today the social corruption which purchases command for the worst of society, because we have forgotten how to keep the process sanitary. The mythologies of Western Civilization are now close to completing the process of destruction. You cannot simply imagine an ideal structure and proceed forcing people into Utopian roles by external conditioning. Every man can excel at something, and it’s usually related to his mission, his divine calling in life.
Wisdom sees all this and recognizes you must cynically participate on some level. Only the most rare individual should expect to rebel completely, or it is meaningless. Most of us have to find a place in the system where we can pursue our mission, and bring what little good we can to our world. No sane man seeks control and power for its own sake, but accepts the necessity of leading in some contexts as the means to their mission. This is why we learn Game, for example, because it introduces an element of sanity into the process. Much of what makes Game work in socio-sexual contexts is fundamental to human nature in all contexts. In our world, we can ill afford to ever cut loose and follow our pure instincts.
One of the deepest longings of human nature is acceptance as we are. Right now, that comes at a very high price. Don’t expect to get much of it, and maybe none at all. The primary reason people get drunk or high is for the excuse it offers to drop all the artificial social constraints of our broken society, and act however much a fool we all can be. It’s the moment we let loose all our raw emotions, and in most cases, it’s really ugly. It’s also totally honest. Only among our most trusted confidants, in the most protected and secure environments — which paradoxically might also mean in a context where we are totally unknown and can’t be traced later — can we afford such a luxury. As our world continues to deteriorate, you can easily give up trying and let it all hang out, because you simply cannot win. Or you can learn to measure out such extravagance with the greatest care, and keep on your game face all the rest of the time.
The US military service has become a microcosm, a leading indicator of where our world is headed. A great many service members simply come apart after short exposure to any austerity, never mind combat stresses. They may be functional in that environment, just barely useful because the military can’t afford to dismiss that high proportion from what they can get. Some will keep a good grip and get promoted faster than their peers up to a middling level. Most will do no more than absolutely necessary to keep life going. The combined trends of what we see around us today will soon put us all in a battle environment.
Nobody in their right mind wants to control other people. However, if you have any hope of sanity, you will take the lead in some fashion or another, or you’ll find a place to hide and withdraw from it all as far as you can get.

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Cain Don't Know Game

Posted on November 3, 2011 by ehurst

As a management tool, nothing compares to Game.
Be the man. Your number one concern in life is the mission. Know what that is for you, and never deviate from the course. It’s largely the same for men and women, but when a women decides her mission isn’t her man, she needs to be a man.
A genuine Alpha Male would get away with the minor crap for which Cain is accused. From what little we know of the accusations, they arise from encounters where he forgot himself. Few men can remain Alpha all the time. The rest of us have to do what we can to obtain some of the benefits of Game. As always, I note this has nothing to do with scoring, and everything to do with sanity and keeping your mission intact.
The best way to avoid charges of sexual harassment is never think of any female coworker as a real friend. Please notice the double standard inherent in the PC social culture. A woman is free to act as randy as she likes, making all sorts of naughty jokes, but men are not. That’s because women are born with angel’s wings and every man is a rapist, or so the mythology goes. Let the women act as friendly as they like, but always maintain that barrier with any female who isn’t family or spouse. Only those who pay the price earn the right to see what is inside. If you happen to be working in the wider world outside some small family-run operation, that means no female coworker is your friend, guys.
Yes, there are exceptions to every rule, but then there rules for the exceptions. Even if you are looking to score, never do it with coworkers. Every woman who comes onto you at work is a threat, someone looking for leverage to control you. Context is everything. Tie a string around it, dudes. Make her work long and hard to get you to open up. The risk is too high if you have genuine ambitions of any sort.
Game itself teaches you to develop a standard operating procedure in all social situations, to the point it actually becomes who you are. The reason we learn about Game is because we have all the wrong instincts, all the wrong behavior patterns, and we need to break them and change how we act all the time. It teaches you to become adjustable, but teaches you to understand when you are deviating from the underlying basic rules. It teaches you to be deeply cynical about women in general. If you don’t absorb the truth about socio-sexual interactions, and how they factor into virtually every human interaction in every setting, you can’t expect to get anywhere in this world.
There are other lessons I may write about dealing with skeletons in the closet, but here the point is: Look what it costs Cain to not know Game. At some point he tried to be friends with female coworkers, and it threatens to destroy him politically and tarnish his reputation. Never mind what I think of Cain as a political candidate; learn from his mistakes. Men get into such messes by thinking they can be nice to any female coworker without putting, and keeping, the barricades in place first.
Let the women be as social as they like. You don’t have to be cold, but you place your mission on such a high priority you don’t have time for such things. Learn early to be regal and masterful. Scripture uses the phrase “put a knife to your throat” when dealing with someone who has power over you, and in our modern workplace, that’s every whiny female. Learn to evaluate personality types and learn caution. As you would not trust yourself, don’t trust anyone else. Know how females act, not what propaganda says we should expect from them.
In modern Western society, the successful man can’t afford to be warm and friendly until he is in a situation which can’t be turned against him.

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Truth No Hindrance to Oppression

Posted on November 2, 2011 by ehurst

Whether through the fraud of Global Warming taxes or some other mechanism, oppression is not going to suffer the slightest hesitation in the coming days.
Whenever any particular group of people gain some economic ascendancy, regardless how it happens, they will use their wealth to purchase the power to keep their ascendancy. It’s not enough they keep theirs, but the fallen human instinct is to make sure others don’t get any. That’s what history proves again and again.
I believe we have been given a mandate from God to take care of His Creation. Even after the Fall, wherein nature is subjected to all sorts of vanity and human lusts, and knowing beyond all doubt He will return and destroy the universe as we know it, there is no excuse for poor stewardship of this fallen world. My ranting about the moral fabric of the universe includes the necessity of respecting Creation as a gift from God.
But we can’t rely on outright lies in proceeding to take care of this world. Global Warming is a lie. It’s been proved false again and again, but it keeps coming back. There is a heavy vested interest in using this propaganda as a means to clamping down on the economic choices available to you and I.
Even if we managed to bury this crap once and for all, it will not stop the oppression and tyranny. They will simply find another lever to pull. It’s coming; count on it. In this case, I insist they will succeed, and any revolt will be feeble, at best. The only revolutions we see will be false ones, which actually serve to advance the Illuminati rule. We will have a crushing global government as evil as all your worst nightmares, though I warn it is not precisely what we have been led to expect. The images drawn up for us are almost universally mistaken, because they are sponsored by the same folks who are going to be doing the ruling. It’s to create fear and dread, but also to keep us distracted from the bigger picture.
Don’t get too excited if we win this battle, because the war is just begun.

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The Bernays Effect

Posted on November 1, 2011 by ehurst

There are probably other names for it, but the Bernays Effect is simply convincing everything they can’t do what they’ve been doing for centuries, and should have to pay money for something which supplies an inferior result.
Thus:

In the last few decades, thousands of babies in Third World countries have died from contaminated baby formula. Wait, did I say amusing? I typed the wrong word there. Anyway, what happens is the mothers mix the baby formula with contaminated water, because sanitation is poor. So why the hell do the mothers feed their infants poison formula when they can just produce milk, for free, from their own bodies? The answer is that they do it because the manufacturer of the formula, Nestle, ran lots of ads telling them to.

There are a zillions ways we’ve been robbed, and our lives have been turned upside down. Thanks to guys like Edward Bernays we think of breakfast as “bacon and eggs” instead of all the stuff our forefathers used to eat in the morning. Granted, we’ve drifted away from it a bit, but that’s only because of another horrendous lie called “The Food Pyramid.”
This is why I despair of any good from things like OWS or any other protest, rebellion, etc. So now we have had our blood in the streets in several of the cities where OWS is happening, and it’s just got going good. Meanwhile, the same crazy lies put us in the position to see the whole financial world crash because someone dared to suggest the Greek citizens stuck with the bill should have a say in paying it. Greece got into this mess through a thousand lies for which OWS is only partially attacking.
I’m ready to come home, Lord.

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