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Member's Off-site Blogs
toning down, town gas and gaslighting...
It has been suggested by one lonely astute reader that I should tone down my "insults" aimed at various people — from the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison to the sensitive writers of the Murdoch media. This name calling, I have thus been told, makes me appear infantile and stupid — which I am with no regrets — but devalues my otherwise excellent arguments on whatever subject I fall into, like a pink pig falls into a deep well, by bringing me down to their low level of the gutter. Fair enough. So, from now on, I will try my best to muzzle the satirical pantomime into a more scientific psychological evaluation. Thank you...
Here I explain what "gaslighting" means, apart from bringing light to the streets of Londinium.
I thus borrow the excellent work of Stephanie A. Sarkis Ph.D., who gives the main 11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting...
Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to gain power. And it works too well.
Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn't realize how much they've been brainwashed. For example, in the movie Gaslight (1944), a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind.
In her book Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People - and Break Free, Stephanie A. Sarkis detail how gaslighters typically use the following techniques...
Read more:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701...
- By Gus Leonisky at 7 Jan 2020 - 3:22pm
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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from coal gaslight to global warming...
An argument that the gas industry was the first integrated large-scale technological network and that it signaled a new wave of industrial innovation.
In Progressive Enlightenment, Leslie Tomory examines the origins of the gaslight industry, from invention to consolidation as a large integrated urban network. Tomory argues that gas was the first integrated large-scale technological network, a designation usually given to the railways. He shows how the first gas network was constructed and stabilized through the introduction of new management structures, the use of technical controls, and the application of means to constrain the behavior of the users of gas lighting.
Tomory begins by describing the contributions of pneumatic chemistry and industrial distillation to the development of gas lighting, then explores the bifurcation between the Continental and British traditions in distillation technology. He examines the establishment and consolidation of the new industry by the Birmingham firm Boulton & Watt, and describes the deployment of the network strategy by the entrepreneur Frederick Winsor. Tomory argues that the gas industry represented a new wave of technological innovation in industry because of its dependence on formal scientific research, its need for large amounts of capital, and its reliance on business organization beyond small firms and partnerships—all of which signaled a departure from the artisanal nature and limited deployment of inventions earlier in the Industrial Revolution. Gas lighting was the first important realization of the Enlightenment dream of science in the service of industry.
Read more:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/progressive-enlightenment
At this stage we need to blame sciences for having led us astray into the arms of global warming. It would have been better to carry on with burning candles, especially dedicated to the Virgin Mary, in churches, believing in god, rather than trusting those awful sciences. Amen. Am I skating on thin ice or is this acceptable satire? please understand that my twisted mind has difficulty to cope with subtle contradictions...
russian gas versus US frackos...
US strategy and what the gas pipeline war is costing us
by Manlio Dinucci
After having forbidden the Chinese company Huawei to compete in the calls for tender for the 5G network, the United States are now forbidding the Europeans to increase their supplies of Russian gas. While the first decision was aimed at maintaining the coherence of NATO, the second is not a result of Russophobia, but of the 1992 « Wolfowitz doctrine » - preventing the EU from becoming a competitor of the « American Empire ». In both cases, the point is to infantilise the EU and keep it in a situation of dependence.
Although they were locked in a convoluted struggle concerning the impeachment of President Trump, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate laid down their arms in order to vote, in quasi-unanimity, for the imposition of heavy sanctions on the companies participating in the construction of North Stream 2, the doubling of the gas pipeline which delivers Russian gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea. The main victims were the European companies which had helped finance the 11 billion dollar project with the Russian company Gazprom. The project is now 80 % finished. The Austrian company Omy, British/Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, French Engie, German companies Uniper and Wintershall, Italian Saipem and Swiss Allseas are also taking part in the laying of the pipeline.
The doubling of North Stream increases Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, warn the United States. Above all, they are preoccupied by the fact that the gas pipeline – by crossing the Baltic in waters belonging to Russia, Finland, Sweden and Germany – thus avoids the Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary), the Baltic States and Ukraine. In other words, the European countries which have the closest ties to Washington through NATO (to which we must add Italy).
Rather than being economic, the goal for the USA is strategic. This is confirmed by the fact that the sanctions on North Stream 2 are included in the National Defense Authorization Act, the legislative act which, for fiscal year 2020, hands the Pentagon the colossal sum of 738 billion dollars for new wars and new weapons (including space weapons), to which must be added other posts which bring the US military expenditure to approximately 1,000 billion dollars. The economic sanctions on North Stream 2 are part of a politico-military escalation against Russia.
An ulterior confirmation can be found in the fact that the US Congress has established sanctions not only against North Stream 2, but also against the Turk-Stream, which, in its final phase of realisation, will bring Russian gas across the Black Sea to Eastern Thrace,the small European area of Turkey. From there, by another pipeline, Russian gas should be delivered to Bulgaria, Serbia and other European countries. This is the Russian riposte to the US action which managed to block the South Stream pipeline in 2014. South Stream was intended to link Russia to Italy across the Black Sea and by land to Tarvisio (Udine). Italy would therefore have become a switch platform for gas in the EU, with notable economic advantages. The Obama administration was able to scuttle the project, with the collaboration of the European Union.
The company Saipem (Italian Eni Group), once again affected by the US sanctions against North Stream 2, was severely hit by the blockage of South Stream – in 2014, it lost contracts to the value of 2.4 billion Euros, to which other contracts would have been added if the project had continued. But at the time, no-one in Italy or in the EU protested against the burial of the project which was being organised by the USA. Now German interests are in play, and critical voices are being raised in Germany and in the EU against US sanctions against North Stream 2.
Nothing is being said about the fact that the European Union has agreed to import liquified natural gas (LNG) from the USA, an extract from bituminous shale by the destructive technique of hydraulic fracturation (fracking). In order to damage Russia, Washington is attempting to reduce its gas exports to the EU, obliging European consumers to foot the bill. Since President Donald Trump and the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, signed in Washington in July 2018 the Joint Statement of 25 July: European Union imports of U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), the EU has doubled its importation of LNG from the USA, co-financing the infrastructures via an initial expenditure of 656 million Euros. However, this did not save European companies from US sanctions.
Manlio Dinucci
Translation
Pete Kimberley
Source
Il Manifesto (Italy)
https://www.voltairenet.org/article208723.html
visions for the sanity of this little planet...
"An ill-wind is blowing on satire and cartoons, and 2019 has been a dark year," said the director of Courrier International and the Cartooning for Peace association. Some people point to the growing influences of social networks.
Five years after the Charlie Hebdo massacre and despite the wave of support for freedom of expression that followed, cartoons remain a threatened genre, between increasingly chilly newspapers and social networks quick to protest with indignation.
"Everywhere, an ill-wind is blowing on satire and cartoons in general, and 2019 has been a dark year in this field", deplore Claire Carrard, editorial director of Courrier international, and Kak, president of the association Cartooning for peace, in the supplement “2019 in cartoons”, currently on newsstands.
The thunderbolt of 2019 came from the prestigious New York Times, which decided in June to stop publishing any press cartoons in the pages of its international edition, after a controversy linked to a caricature deemed anti-Semitic. Although not the author, the newspaper's historical cartoonist, Swiss Patrick Chappatte, found himself on the sidelines.
"We live in a world where the moralizing horde gathers on social media and falls like a sudden thunderstorm on newsrooms. This forces publishers to take immediate countermeasures, paralyzes all thinking, blocks all discussion.”
Patrick Chappatte
"Less and less tolerated"
"Network pressure intimidates traditional media"
Chez Charlie, where the publication of caricatures had paid a high price 5 years ago with an attack that left 12 dead including several figures of the editorial staff like Cabu and Wolinski, we wonder if "satirical drawing is a form of freedom of expression endangered”, in a recent special issue “Caricature, user manual”.
"We get the impression that drawing is less and less tolerated, that it is a form of expression which even in the media is cumbersome. A little too atypical, a little too free…”, explains the editorial director Riss. "Even in the big newspapers, the drawings become extremely consensual, there is not much editorial risk-taking, the drawings become a bit tasteless."
The satirical weekly [CH] had become the target of Islamists after having published several caricatures of Muhammad in 2011, 2012 and 2006, where it reproduced, like several European newspapers, those of the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten. Would he republish them today? "We could do it, but what sense would it have?" Wonders Riss."Today, the notion of blasphemy has gone beyond mere caricatures. Many things are felt like blasphemy or aggression, there are lots of little blasphemies that have appeared.", judges the one who must regularly defend the satirical spirit of the newspaper, as in December against the French army after cartoons on the deaths of 13 soldiers in Mali.
“The pressure from the owning networks intimidates the traditional media. (…) It's the panic. What we forget is that Twitter is not our readership. It is an amplifier of anger, a vector of massive and uncontrollable phenomena", analyzes Patrick Chappatte in Courrier International.
Censorship
"Economic survival remains a problem, and the digital hordes who manipulate the political correctness to triumph over their intolerance and their closed-mindedness also represent a danger which must be combated", abounds with his colleague from Nicararagua Pedro Molina, today in exile.
A popular genre in the 19th and 20th centuries, the caricature would also suffer from an old-fashioned image.
"When we say that it is a genre in obsolescence, it is as if we said that freedom of expression is a genre in obsolescence", retorts June, young cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo, recalling that "it is a genre which has always been threatened”, notably by political censorship in the last century.
Censorship that persists today in many countries, where cartoonists are threatened, dismissed, prosecuted or even imprisoned.
Cartooning for peace, with the support of organizations such as Human Rights Watch or Reporters Without Borders, campaigns for the recognition of press cartoons as a fundamental right by Unesco.
Riss is not convinced by the approach: "I think that freedom of expression is already a sufficient fundamental value".
"This genre has a future if the designers have the courage to give their drawing strength. If it’s just to do nice illustrations and drawings that don't bother anyone, you might as well not draw anything at all.”
Riss
Read more:
https://www.sudouest.fr/2020/01/07/cinq-ans-apres-l-attentat-a-charlie-h...
Meanwhile we need to celebrate Albert Camus...:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/01/05/the-searching-life-and-enigmatic-dea...
Read from top.
Translation by our trusted friend, Jules Letambour...
the fudge is coming in from holidays, fast...
The Prime Minister says decisions by national leaders to head overseas during deadly bushfires – including Defence Minister Linda Reynolds who holidayed in Bali – has not hindered the national response to the crisis.
The New Daily revealed on Sunday night that Scott Morrison approved Linda Reynolds’ break during which she jetted off with her family to Bali where she owns a holiday house.
On Monday afternoon, Mr Morrison brushed off questions about his decision or the fact the Defence Minister was overseas as the crisis unfolded.
“I gave you the details last night. It was a full response and that addresses the situation,” he said.
“What I know has taken place in the last two weeks, over time you been talking about, is we have called out up to 3000 Defence Force reserves, put in place the biggest force to act on a disaster since Cyclone Tracy.
“Not one decision has been hindered by those arrangements, not one deployment, it has all continued to present and at the end of the day that is what matters to people…’are things getting done on the ground?’
“And when you get 1100 people evacuated out of Mallacoota by HMAS Choules, I think what has happened on the ground speaks for itself – and Australians are interested in the results we’re getting and the actions we are taking.”
Read more:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2020/01/05/linda-reynolds-bali-...
We are not worried about the PM directing the fight against the orstrayan fires, from the moooooooon (is there enough o's?) should he had been there (wasn't he?), but we're annoyed the response is coming like a bigger than cyclone Tracy packet of used Band-Aids (trademark) thrown at the last minute by a doctor in hurry to go home, from a passing car with no brakes... What needs to be done is clear: desists from the Adani coal mine, delete the new fossil fuel power stations (not) "announced" at Xmas (paid for with your tax moneys), take global warming seriously and pay the people whose live has been destroyed...
Read from top.
guess who wrote this...
...
There are simply no more excuses. We cannot allow political prejudice and vested interests to hold us up any longer.
If ever there was a crisis not to waste, it is this one. Morrison has the chance now to reinstate the Neg with higher targets. Both he and Josh Frydenberg were among its strongest supporters .... . They abandoned it in the lead-up to an election, to pacify the right wing of the Coalition that sabotaged it in the first place.
The election is won, and the fires have surely demonstrated that an integrated climate and energy policy is vital if we are to be serious about cutting emissions.
At the same time as we move rapidly to deliver clean and affordable energy we need to make sure that we can respond to the consequences of global warming that cannot be avoided. That too will require careful consideration and planning. The time for spin and bluster is over.
We will need to substantially enhance our firefighting resources, which will have to be done in close consultation with the state firefighting agencies not by dictation from Canberra. Respect, consultation and collaboration are the keys here.
There are many other implications from a hotter, drier climate. Water will be scarcer, droughts more frequent and longer.
But there will be rain again, and good seasons too, so we must not become complacent when the immediate crisis abates. The global warming trend is clear, and it is not our friend.
We can adapt to a hotter drier climate. But the lies of the deniers have to be rejected. This is a time for truth telling, not obfuscation and gaslighting. Climate change is real. As real as the fires that only a month into summer have consumed nearly 10 million hectares. And our response must be real too – a resilient, competitive, net zero emission economy – as we work to make our nation, and our planet, safe for our children and grandchildren.
• This essay was originally commissioned as part of Guardian Australia’s forthcoming 2020s Vision series, in which we are asking prominent Australians for ideas that will make Australia better in the next decade. It is published today because of its relevance to the current debate.
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/12/scott-morrison-ca...
Read from top.
May as well have been written by Gus Turnbullski.... Read from top.
Read also:
http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/27068
the happy clappies support the happy coalies..
your eden is on fire... quo vadis? quibus infernum sanguinum es? nero's song...
selfish promotion of a bloated narcissist evangelical...
winters like summer and summers like hell... where the bloody hell are you?
if I say shake my bloody hand, shake my bloody hand before I turn away...and many more...