Newest video from Anonymous ends with Ayn Rand quote. What does it mean?
I know what the quote means, and I love it! But what does it mean when the global hacker movement Anonymous is quoting Ayn Rand? That's the kind of question I like as a discussion starting point in the Gulch! Here is the 6-minute video. I don't want to give you the spoiler of the quote until you've watched the video. Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaemI...
I forced myself to sit through that crap, without puking. It was so full of deviousness and outright lies that it was hard to stick with. The A.R. quote was totally out of context and could in no way be meant for the meaning it was squeezed into at the end of that very well produced bucket of glop. The silly bastards will probably blame the coming economic downturn on global warming.
Note the '80% of our original forests gone' item. From Matt Ridley's site (January 2013): "The latest and most detailed satellite data, which is yet to be published but was summarized in an online lecture last July by Ranga Myneni of Boston University, confirms that the greening of the Earth has now been going on for 30 years. Between 1982 and 2011, 20.5% of the world's vegetated area got greener, while just 3% grew browner; the rest showed no change." This tendency is now being challenged by the return to biomass burning due to the environmentally-induced transition to expensive green energy, but it is still true that we have more forests not fewer.
M.Williams Journal of Historical Geography,
26, 1 (2000) 28–46
"...[It] has been demonstrated during the last century and a half in the developed world where the intensification of agriculture on the most productive land has led to the abandonment of marginal land and its recolonization by trees. In the USA, for example, abandonment began in the diffcult-to-farm New England highlands from 1840 onwards, and then spread south throughout the eastern seaboard states, and was particularly noticeable in the South after the 1920s.
Between 1910 and 1979 a net 60·7 million acres (24·5 million ha) were added to the
forest,..."
Of course, the statement made in the Anonymous video is technically correct, because the forests that are greening the Earth are not the 'original' forests - few of those are left. I found the video emotionally stirring, but jarringly inaccurate. I would like to see a video that well produced which had a message I agreed with and which merited an Ayn Rand quote at the end.
Jan
assertion that oil is earth's "lifeblood" is silly; water is.
and 50 percent of u.s. tax dollars are not spent
on military stuff -- it's more like 16 percent. . and our
"exploitation of natural resources" is the capitalistic
system which Rand praised -- make the earth serve us,
not the other way around. . and our water supplies
are expanding, with more people accessing clean
water today than ever. . and the "poison food" statement
must be aimed at GMOs, which have made many
millions better off. . their message is a mess, IMHO. -- j
.
Jan
Jan
Next thing you know the uber rich and famous will become liberals and socialists... wait a minute... never mind...
.
Travel somewhere, but go someplace real, not someplace safe. Modern Mexico City is a cosmopolitan city with a ten mile safe zone and it is surrounded by thirty miles of tin and scrap lumber one and two room shacks with no running, potable water, and no electricity. They could fix this with 1 b of El Chapo's money or 1 year of US Foreign Aid, using it the way it was intended not as political bribes.
You're right, relatively few of the worlds people have new cars, cell phones and flat screen TV's. But a bigger percentage of them have something to eat than has been true in history.
There is room for improvement, but we won't improve by saying "this isn't working, we have to do something else" when what we are doing IS working.
I agree completely. When I hear people say modern civilization is on the verge of collapse, it sounds absurd to me. If there were something that destroyed modern civilization and what came next were closer to the norms for human history, it would be much less free and less prosperous.
If their approach to computer science were as ignorant and superficial as their views on global politics, I'd be surprised if they could save a document in MS Word, much less hack anybody's computer.
It's no different than conservatives quoting Rand despite having significant conflicts with her philosophy.
That video opines that we should leave oil in the ground so Gaia won't freaking bleed to death.
Give me a break!
"Today Europe! Tomorrow the world!"
I just quoted Adolf Hitler as if to validate my reply.
Why? Because I so desired to tack that on.
The problem is, it's not that simple. That plan would not work. Because what the video neglects to ask is why the million lbs of food is thrown away, and why the kids are dying of starvation.
If even one of these issues is even remotely understood, it becomes painfully evident why the kids aren't being fed with the wasted food.
And yes, there are starving kids, even in America. It is much less common here, which is only one reason people often prioritize the starving children in other countries higher when deciding which charities to support.
and I still don't believe that starving kids crap and won't until I see indictments against the so called social workers, the food bank operators, and the ass holes who are shipping needed food to other countries nor questions being seriously asked as to why they are intentionally starving kids in this country?
Anyone guilty on those charges should skip jail and go straight to a wall for a firing squad to cure their problem.
That includes the government who is shipping the needed food elsewhere and by the way it does not go to starving people when unloaded and can most often be seen in the local markets for sale if not reloaded and sold elsewhere.
I worked those ships and i've seen the results and it's far too common a sight. So I guess if you count the overseas food giveaway program the millions of pounds claim might make sense. it's thrown away to make some people rich beyond belief and support thugs and criminals and i don't want to hear that war lord crap either.
Does the public in the US give a s--t. Obviously not it's f'n common knowledge and has been for decades.
These kinds of foods have to be discarded immediately once they have been out of temp, or once they begin to spoil, because they are not food anymore but rather poison.
However, there are other reasons food gets thrown away. Did you know that in the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt ordered fresh produce t be incinerated, while people actually were starving? This was because of an ingnorant and fallacious scheme devised by his so called economists. They reasoned that the farmers weren't making enough money to stay in business because the price of their produce was too low, so they burned it in order to cause a shortage and artificially raise the price. They reasoned that the farmers would use the extra profits to plant more crops and make more food for everyone. It was a disasterous failure, and made things worse.
Why do children starve, when there is so much generosity everywhere? Because the principle, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," does not work. Human beings need to eat regularly. You can't merely give a homeless man a sandwich one time and think you've fixed his problem. In four hours he will need to eat again. In major cities, there are usually charities that try and supply food to the poorest people. But there are those who slip through the cracks, who don't know how to access the charities, and there are millions of people who don't live in cities. Even then, there are usually churches and generous people who will try and prevent someone from starving to death in front of them. But usually simply doesn't cover every case, and never could.
Some people starve their children from neglect. Some people starve because of drug addictions. Some starve because of physical illness, others because of mental illness.
But the majority of people on earth who are starving are in their situation for one simple reason only-- their governments prevent the means of production from advancing to the stage capable of supporting their population. What those people need is not gifts of charity, which will feed them for 1/3 of a day. They need capitalism, which will allow them not only to eat, but to flourish. Not only to live, but to make a living. That is something that can not be given to them, but must be taught, and possibly claimed by revolutionary means in some cases.
Be nice to have choices but if not cut them off at the ankles with recalls and initiatives... while they are still available..
As for the quote, How ever they frame their argument, misguided or not. Yea, I wouldn't be worried about the forests or sucking out oil from the earth; for a moment I thought I was in the presence of gaia or something, but I would like to see more recycling, hell, with some innovation it could be profitable...oh, I forgot, they don't like profit. Their whole motif comes from some evil anyway...long forgotten the story. But the fact is the general population is blind, unaware that they have been manipulated by the kakistocracy.. So ignoring the problems won't alleviate the consequences of those problems. Have we reached critical mass? max entropy?..no...but it will get more difficult the longer we ignore reality. We start that process by unrevising history and learning how to critically thing...grow a work ethic, stop crying. The threat is within government, fix that and all the other stuff the free market could fix. vote with your head on, vote with your feet and your dollar.
It was very ironic to quote Ayn Rand about ignoring reality while at the same time ignoring reality.
Nor,may I added the consequences of manufacturing a reality ....that isn't" Such as watching television.
is true, regardless. . maybe they're trying to hurt her
reputation by using her own quotation as ammo. -- j
.
consequences of ignoring reality." -- AR
.
.
Brother, they asked for it!
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/fil...
This is true, but things are better than in most of human history. The level of justice and liberty we have today is not normal. These are amazingly good times. We can admit that and still be committed to improving things.
A little elaboration- it is possible that maximum coverage of the earth by forests was around 1700 to 1800. Major timber cutting took place at the start of the industrial revolution for many purposes such as ships, building and especially iron smelting. Then, people found out how to use coal and then big deposits of coal were found. Coal was the savior of forests as well as the source of energy that enables our very much higher standard of living. Now, forests are actually increasing in extent partly as higher atmospheric CO2 levels, released by oceans, increases plant growth, and as commercial forestry grows, this being private capital not government intervention.
The good news is that there are massive amounts of coal still available. More good news is that burning coal produces CO2 (tho' a small amount compared to that from natural sources), more CO2 is beneficial to all earth life forms. The bad news is the power of the green movement, a socialistic puritanical mental derangement, sometimes mistakenly called environmentalism, which demonizes coal. Without coal, the standard of living even of 1700 could not be maintained for the current population level. That could be why they support a currently expanding death cult. More bad news- this kind of nonsense always exists but this one has become so widespread due to the masses of government money spent on publicity.