As of November 1, 2012, Barack Obama had told the country 32 times that Al Qaeda was “decimated.” He’s also declared the war on terror “over.”
These claims were pivotal to his re-election campaign. Unfortunately they were lies. Al Qaeda was not defeated, it was gaining strength, especially in Africa:
As President Obama ran to election victory last fall with claims that al Qaeda was “decimated” and “on the run,” his intelligence team was privately offering a different assessment that the terrorist movement was shifting resources and capabilities to emerging spinoff groups in Africa that posed fresh threats to American security.
Top U.S. officials, including the president, were told in the summer and fall of 2012 that the African offshoots were gaining money, lethal knowledge and a mounting determination to strike U.S. and Western interests while keeping in some contact with al Qaeda’s central leadership, said several people directly familiar with the intelligence.
The gulf between the classified briefings and Mr. Obama’s pronouncements on the campaign trail touched off a closed-door debate inside the intelligence community about whether the terrorist group’s demise was being overstated for political reasons, officials told The Washington Times.
Many Americans believed when they voted in November that the president was justifiably touting a major national security success of his first term. After all, U.S. special operations forces succeeded in May 2011 in capturing and killing the al Qaeda founder and original leader, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan.
But key players in the intelligence community and in Congress were actually worried that Mr. Obama was leaving out a major new chapter in al Qaeda’s evolving story in order to bend the reality of how successful his administration had been during its first four years in the fight against terrorism.
A terrorist strike could unravel that theme, and upset the Obama re-election apple cart.
It should have, but for the lies.
It is now absolutely clear that a cover-up took place on the night of September 11, 2012. In the wake of the attacks on the US compound in Benghazi, the Obama regime scrambled to hide the facts. They knew full well that it was a planned attack. Everyone knew.
The CIA station chief testified that the attacks were not preceded by a protest.
Africa Command knew in real time what was happening and knew it wasn’t a protest but a planned attack and they knew who the perpetrators were.
“We felt it was Ansar al-Sharia,” a group affiliated with al Qaeda, Lovell said; and he said he came to that conclusion “very very soon” after the attack, “when we were still in the very early, early hours of this activity.”
The State Department knew it wasn’t the result of a protest.
“When [the Libyan Ambassador] said his government suspected that former Qaddafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told him the group that conducted the attacks—Ansar Al Sharia—is affiliated with Islamic extremists,” Jones reports in the email.
“The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous,” Megarif told NPR. “We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, pre-planned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate.”
Astonishingly, then-Deputy Director Mike Morrell inexplicably dismisses all the eyewitness and real-time accounts and knowledge and instead changes the narrative to “protests” allegedly based on what the “analysts” said despite the fact none of them was on the ground.
According to Morrell, he decided to buy into press accounts over his own station chief.
Morell said CIA analysts on Sept. 13 – two days before he received the email – came to the conclusion that the attack spun out of an anti-American demonstration. After receiving the email, he said he didn’t find the station chief’s arguments definitive because some press reports said there was a protest while others said there was no demonstration.
This does not pass the smell test.
Morrell also admitted lying to Congress about editing the talking points:
“In retrospect, what I wish I would have done was to say to you, Chairman, I do not know who took al-Qaeda out of the talking points, but you should know that I, myself, made a number of changes to the points,” Morrell said. “That’s what I should have said; I didn’t.”
The CIA previously had warned the White House about potential attacks. Victoria Nuland was worried less about the truth than the political fallout and subsequently the language was removed from the talking points because they “could be abused by members of Congress to beat the State Department for not paying attention to [C.I.A.] warnings so why would we want to seed the Hill.”
Lying has been a common thread all through the Benghazi debacle.
As to who edited the talking points, fingers were been pointed in all directions. Dan Pfeiffer didn’t want to talk about it, insisting it was “irrelevant.” We learned the talking points were altered 12 times, including the removal of a reference to “terror.” Congressman Peter King said David Petraeus told him the reference to terror was ermoved to downplay the issue. It appears that Victoria Nuland had the biggest role in diluting the talking points and exculpate the Obama regime. She objected to this point in particular:
“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”
This might lead one to correctly surmise that there was considerable danger to the consulate and they ignored it.
We have also learned that Barack Obama was not in the situation room during the attack. Where he was we still don’t know because the thoroughly juvenile NSC spokesman, Tommy Vietor believes that to be, like, so two years ago, dude.
Former White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor went on Fox News on Thursday, and after host Bret Baier grilled him over the issue of the talking points used after the attack, he finally responded with “Dude, this was like two years ago.”
At the moment the most likely person to have steered the topic away from the truth and to the video meme is Ben Rhodes. Rhodes sent the email that stated the goal:
“to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”
as well as make sure we make the boss look good.
“To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”
But it’s virtually impossible that he made the decision on his own.
The Obama regime sets new standards for audacity and disregard for the law. When they don’t approve of a law, they simply ignore it. When accountability is sought, they simply shrug their shoulders and deflect and delay as though if you ignore the cancer long enough it’ll just go away.
The House has finally found enough gumption to throw a roadblock in the fascist Obama steamroller. They have properly called the smothering of these emails “criminal.” John Boehner will be appointing a Select Committee to investigate Benghazi and Darryl Issa has subpoenaed John Kerry to explain what State did.
This is my analysis of how it all went down.
Obama wakes up one morning and decides he’s going to take Gaddafi down because he needs a foreign policy notch in the belt for the 2012 election.
President Barack Obama sought on Saturday to cast himself as a strong leader on foreign policy, highlighting a pullout from Iraq and the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as success stories.
In a message Obama is likely to push in his 2012 re-election campaign, he said his leadership had made it possible to turn the page on a decade of war and refocus on bolstering the economy and paying down the national debt.
He undertakes the illegal action and bombs Gaddafi to hell finally driving him into the arms of the rebels who sodomize him with a knife and then kill him. In the act of toppling Gaddafi 20,000 stingers go missing and most likely into the arms of AQIM and AAS among others. Along with the 20,000 stingers go RPG’s and heavy weapons (like mortars). Now Obama has a problem on his hands. He wants to send weapon to the Syrian rebels to help topple Assad but he also needs to try to retrieve the missing weapons. Assets (i.e. Doherty and Woods) are enlisted to help locate and destroy the missing MANPADS.
The CIA had an outpost in Benghazi. It had a number of purposes, not the least of which was….
Furthermore there was a CIA post in Benghazi, located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as “a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles” … and that its security features “were more advanced than those at [the] rented villa where Stevens died.”
Chris Stevens is dispatched to Benghazi to broker arms for the Syrian rebels:
The official position is that the U.S. has refused to allow heavy weapons into Syria.
But there’s growing evidence that U.S. agents — particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens — were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.In March 2011 Stevens became the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan opposition, working directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group — a group that has now disbanded, with some fighters reportedly participating in the attack that took Stevens’ life.
In November 2011 The Telegraph reported that Belhadj, acting as head of the Tripoli Military Council, “met with Free Syrian Army [FSA] leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey” in an effort by the new Libyan government to provide money and weapons to the growing insurgency in Syria.
Last month The Times of London reported that a Libyan ship “carrying the largest consignment of weapons for Syria … has docked in Turkey.” The shipment reportedly weighed 400 tons and included SA-7 surface-to-air anti-craft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.
Those heavy weapons are most likely from Muammar Gaddafi’s stock of about 20,000 portable heat-seeking missiles—the bulk of them SA-7s—that the Libyan leader obtained from the former Eastern bloc. Reuters reports that Syrian rebels have been using those heavy weapons to shoot down Syrian helicopters and fighter jets.
The ship’s captain was “a Libyan from Benghazi and the head of an organization called the Libyan National Council for Relief and Support,” which was presumably established by the new government.
That means that Ambassador Stevens had only one person—Belhadj—between him and the Benghazi man who brought heavy weapons to Syria.
In August of 2012 Stevens cables the State Department that there are about “ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi.”
Benghazi is hot but Obama and Clinton keep Stevens there. Also bear in mind that Zawahiri had promised revenge for Bin Laden’s death the day before the attacks.
Ayman al-Zawahiri mourned the death of a leading commander from Libya and urged his followers to puncture the “arrogance” of the “evil empire, America”.
This taped missive first appeared on jihadist websites on Monday. On Tuesday, an armed assault claimed the lives of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his colleagues.
The Libyans claim to have warned the US about the impending attacks two days prior:
The Independent has reported diplomatic sources who said that the threat of an attack against US interests in the region was known to the US administration 48 hours before it took place. The alert was issued by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, but not made public. A State Department spokesman maintained: “We are not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the US Mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”
But President Megarif told the American station National Public Radio: “We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, pre-planned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the US Consulate. A few of those who joined in were foreigners who had entered Libya from different directions, some of them definitely from Mali and Algeria.”
A senior official of the biggest militia in Benghazi, the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he had warned US diplomats of a rapidly deteriorating security situation in Benghazi three days before the attack. “The situation is frightening, it scares us,” he said he had stressed during the meeting. Mr Stevens had been back in Libya for only a short time before US security officials decided it would be safe to make the journey to Benghazi during the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The British consulate in the city was shut after an ambush of a convoy carrying Dominic Asquith, the UK ambassador, in which his bodyguard were injured. The UN and International Committee of the Red Cross offices had been bombed and there had been a spate of political assassinations.
On September 11, 2012 the attacks take place in Benghazi. No one knows where Obama is. Greg Hicks takes a phone call from Chris Stevens with Stevens saying
“Greg, we’re under attack.”
As noted above, almost immediately everyone knows it is an Al Qaeda-related Islamist militia attack. The truth would be a severe blow to the re-election aspirations of one Barack Obama since he regaled America with stories of Al Qaeda being “decimated” and “on the run.” With the election but weeks away a head fake is desperately needed. Sorry about those four dead “bumps in the road” but Obama’s personal wants are more important. There’s a lot here which could derail the Obama campaign train. It would have been fatal for Americans to learn that Chris Stevens was killed with the weapons Obama put into the hands of the Al Qaeda-linked militias. It would have been fatal to have Americans learn Obama was sending arms to Syrian rebels when the official policy was no lethal aid. Blaming the video was the solution.
Obama, Rhodes and probably a few others have a confab in which that the official response of the regime will be to blame the video for the attacks, occurring just coincidentally on 9/11. There’s simply no way that Ben Rhodes makes the decision to change the Benghazi theme from a well planned coordinated series of attacks conducted by Al Qaeda-linked militias in which four Americans are killed to a rag tag spontaneous protest over a video complete with RPG’s and mortars and the ability to use them accurately. Only two people have the juice to do that.
Valerie Jarrett and Barack Obama.
One or both made the decision to blame the video.
It’s rather breathtaking that the Deputy CIA Director could overrule the Director of the CIA as to information fed to the public, which makes me think David Petraeus was set up- a right wing icon put in a high profile position so he could be abused.
So let’s recap. Obama the narcissist topples Gaddafi to look like a hero. He wants also to knock off Assad and was employing Chris Stevens as an arms broker to furnish Syrian rebels with heavy weapons. A boatload of weapons falls into the hands of Al Qaeda linked militias and those weapons are used to kill four Americans in Benghazi, including a US Ambassador. If the news breaks that Obama is trafficking in weapons for Syria he’s got a major problem. If the Benghazi attack is seen for what it really was- a policy f**k-up Obama’s re-election goes down the toilet. If word gets out the Al Qaeda isn’t defeated as Obama proclaimed and the war on terror isn’t over as he bragged about he loses the election. So Obama’s minions laundered the talking points to take out any references to terror and any references to Al Qaeda. Obama and/or Jarrett concoct a bizarre scheme to frame a video maker and ultimately send him to jail as a scapegoat. Then, disgustingly, over the bodies of the dead Hillary promises the parents of the dead Americans that she’s gonna get that nasty video maker.
If you think this is a fake scandal, then you have to believe that Nixon got screwed. If you still believe that a protest took place in Benghazi (how could they know Stevens was there???) while nothing happened in the capital Tripoli you are an idiot.
They all knew immediately what this was- a terrorist attack- and they all knew who it was- AAS- and they told us it was a video. All to save Obama’s ass.
That’s a scandal. An honest to goodness, impeachable scandal.
Now watch the frenetic, shrieking nature democrats take on now. Jay Carney’s street-facing edifice crumbled yesterday as his Benghazi story disintegrated. Nancy Pelosi wants to talk about “something else.”
Buckle up.
Exit question: Could this be the first impeachment in history that the major networks wouldn’t even cover?
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
@Greg:
You could always read the study that the Daily Mail article reports on.
What’s even funnier is the notion of WikiPedia having muster.
@Greg:
This kind of statement just doesn’t have any real meaning, given that it’s coming from a drone that has repeatedly demonstrated a consistent inability to process reality correctly.
Was that an ad hominem attack?
@Kraken:
I checked out all the links in your comments. I didn’t find any that verified that what they were saying about Wiki is true, just that it is their opinion (intellectual laziness) that Wiki in not accurate.
A says that B is not accurate. No proof.
C says that A is not accurate. No proof.
B says that C is not accurate. No proof.
Well, to prove that A is accurate, here is an article in D that says that B is owned by Soros.
E says that D is not accurate about B. No proof.
Sounds like a circular firing squad.
Can you link me to an article that was written by a 14 year old on their mother’s laptop? Or perhaps to an article by a senile assisted living resident?
Why is it significant whether the 14 year old is using his mother’s laptop? Would it be more or less accurate if it were a computer in a public library? or one that belonged to the 14 year old?
@Greg:
This statement serves as a perfect example of what we can refer to as academic degradation.
Remember Greg, the description of a consensus encyclopedia that you’ve offered here, is exactly the very thing that makes WikiPedia entirely worthless. Consensus encyclopedias are worthless. That’s not my opinion, it’s a simple fact of reality.
A source of information need not be a encyclopedic compendium to be considered a citable source. Newspapers are not encyclopedic compendiums, yet they are routinely cited. In fact the WND article you are referring to, links to multiple news sources, that readers can examine for themselves. It’s almost as though the Collective compels you to contradict reality.
The ongoing revision is the problem. It’s not a feature, it’s a bug if you will.
So for instance I could make an argument that the Democrats caused the financial collapse and provide a link to a WikiPedia article that cites this video. You however, could go into that article and change that citation to lead to some of your unproven assertions here that Republicans caused the financial crisis. So my citation was changed unbeknownst to me, making my original statement appear something other than what it was intended. The fact that no one is able to go in and alter the WND article except WND is what makes it a far more reliable source.
What you’re doing here is attempting to defend the very consensus nature that makes WikiPedia worthless. Remember, quality and accuracy are the antithesis of consensus encyclopedias.
This is really remedial stuff. Why does it need to be explained to you?
@Redteam:
The problem is that the evidence is there, but you’re choosing not to find it because you like the false convenience of WikiPedia.
Again, there’s really no sense in arguing this point with you, if you don’t understand why it’s unwise to cite articles written by a 14 year olds or a senile assisted living residents.
It’s fairly evident that nothing is going to separate you from your attachment to WikiPedia. Just try to remember this conversation, when your error prone WikiPedia cited arguments are easily dismissed.
@Kraken:
OK, now I see why the Daily Mail didn’t provide a link to the study article they’re citing. It’s because 60% contain factual errors doesn’t actually refer to Wikipedia articles in general, as casual Daily Mail readers would most likely erroneously conclude. Instead, it refers specifically to articles about persons, companies, and organizations that have paid public relation firms to go in and edit Wikipedia articles about them to create a more favorable public image, breaking one of the basic rules Wikipedia expects its contributors to follow in the process.
Yeah, I’ll bet they were unfamiliar with the rule, or didn’t understand what it meant to them. What it meant was that they shouldn’t be doing what their clients were paying them to do. Now how would they have missed that?
@Kraken:
Would you agree that the information in a consensus encyclopedia is likely a result of the compiling of the consensus of information on a subject?
Since it is not an opinion, and is, in fact, a fact of reality, where could we find a consensus of opinion on that?
Do you routinely accept cited material to be factual, or just an opinion? Do you normally accept anything you read in the newspaper to be not written by a 14 year old on his mother’s laptop? Why? Would you accept an essay written by a 14 year old on his mother’s laptop to be more credible if it is in a Soros owned newspaper than in a Soros owned Wikipedia? Why?
Of what benefit is that? If the reader has no knowledge of the subject and is only reading a linked source, he has no knowledge if that source is owned by Soros or not and having no knowledge, has to make an ‘intellectually lazy’ judgement. Having multiple sources, all of which may be 14 year olds on their mother’s laptop appears to be no better than only one source, on their mother’s laptop.
Please link me to an example of this. I’d like to see how it is accomplished.
Are you saying this is only being done at Wiki? Are you saying if you write for someone else, that nothing ever gets changed? I’m not sure you could prove that what any writer writes is always printed completely unchanged everywhere except on Wikipedia. Can you?
Because thinking people can Google the name of the study and find it in less than 5 seconds?
Unless those casual readers read the following sentence from the article:
Persons, companies, and organizations make a sizable portion of WikiPedia entries. Regardless, there’s no reason not to assume that a similar treatment isn’t given to articles of a different nature from other activists and special interest groups. Remember, citing WikiPedia is analogous to citing bathroom stall graffiti, which uncoincidentally also undergoes ongoing revision.
It’s always amusing when the Collective thinks its little rules can’t be broken. It kind of reminds me of those Gun Free Zone stickers you see on campus.
@Kraken:
Wouldn’t that be intellectually lazy? Do you know who owns Google? Do you know that they link you to wikipedia as a reference? Why would you use a service that would link you to Wiki?
@Kraken:
I would really like for you to link me to an article written by a 14 year old on his mother’s laptop, or by a senile assisted living resident. Should be thousands of those articles, but just one will do.
@Redteam:
Here’s some articles that you may find of value. Or not.
Just remember, if the Internet had been available in the 70s and 80s, Ted Kaczynski would likely have been a WikiPedia contributor.
@Kraken: which of those is the 14 year old article?
@Kraken: The story about William Connolley. Don’t understand your point. That’s not a article by a 14 year old on his mother’s laptop. It a WUWT article about a person that has a Wiki article about him that clearly states that is has been editing on Wiki for years and that he has used his editing to heavily influence the world opinion on global warming. How do we verify that the article by WUWT wasn’t written by a 14 year old with his mother’s laptop? Or is WUWT implying that William Connolley is the 14 year old. You’re trying to make a point, just can’t figure out what that point is.
It seems rather clear from the info in the second link that Wiki’s self policing resulted in Connelly getting canned years ago and all that info is on Wiki, I don’t see where Wiki has tried to cover up any of it, and has laid it all out, much as WUWT has.
Had he been, and Wiki had the same thing in motion, he would have been detected and bounced.
are you saying that you now know something from WUWT that you wouldn’t know had you just read about Connelly on Wiki? It’s all there, on wiki.
@Kraken, #59:
There’s a very good reason not to assume that: Most Wikipedia articles aren’t written by PR firms that have been paid to create a favorable impression of the subject of the article. Being paid to manipulate public opinion makes all the difference in the world. It provides a monetary incentive to distort the facts.
@Greg:
Except that that isn’t a very good reason at all.
Assuming this also assumes that monetary incentives are the only incentives that exist. They are not.
The Collective’s incessant fascist activism teaches us this, if nothing else. Watching the smelly unwashed hippie wannabes of the SDS sit behind their tables full of moronic half-baked propaganda in the hallways and unions of our universities, it becomes clear that the vast majority of the Collective’s miscreants don’t have to be paid to engage in such acts. Simply the thrill of doing it seems to be reward enough for them. Take Mr. William Connelly for instance; he was an activist. In fact it turns out that some universities actually offer credit for distorting the information in WikiPedia. So college credit becomes a motivating factor.
Politics is a motivating factor. The Collective likes to sanitize entries that cast it in an unfavorable light, and express it’s feelings about the rest of the right’s cast of characters. Additionally, since we know that unions and other organizations within the Collective like to pay their activists to manipulate public opinion by marching, chanting, and holding up signs, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that these organizations would take their paid brand of activism online. In fact it’s unreasonable to assume that these organizations would simply stop with their known offline tantrums and not engage online at all.
And don’t dismiss emotional reactions as a motivating factor either. Take Collective’s emotional reactions toward Mia Love for instance.
Regardless, the bottom line here is that because so many WikiPedia users operate under pseudonyms, you have no way of knowing if the author(s) are “knowledgeable” or not, or whether they are paid activists or not. Indeed, you have no way of knowing what their agenda or expertise (if any) might be at all.
There’s a reason that Soros funds WikiPedia, and it’s not because he wants Americans to have easy access to accurate information.
@Kraken, #65:
Yes, you do. You can fact check any factual information you’re skeptical about by following the links provided back to the original sources. Or perform a Google search, and crosscheck with sources other than those listed.
I’ll tell you this: If you insist on relying on sources known to be politically biased or who have a horse in the race, you’re almost guaranteed to get distorted information. Wikipedia articles are generally open to correction by anyone who can make a factual case for whatever point they’re concerned about. Which is a hell of a lot more than can be said for organizations like The Heritage Foundation and the b.s. they constantly roll out.
Perhaps what offends you is that Wikipedia is by nature and design an open process that can’t be locked down and controlled.
@Greg:
No, you don’t. At best what you have is assumptions and/or educated guesses. There’s no way to know whether or not DaisyCrank425 is an expert in leech migration, or a just an SDS leech. Certainly anyone can fact check WikiPedia entries, but since every sentence therein is highly suspect given it’s known problems with distortion prone activists among other things, why bother? You may as well spend the week fact checking the Daily Show or Steve Colbert. At least you’ll get some chuckles.
Which of course is exactly what the problem is. Remember, it’s the consensus nature of the encyclopedia that is the foundation of its worthlessness. I’m not interested in reading about what Furious_Frankfurter has to say on matters, even if he’s off of parole, case or no case.
Except that the Heritgage Foundation isn’t populated by drug addled SDS activists who stupidly wave about flyers for the speaking engagements of ignorant communist agitators like Cian Prendville, Jodi Dean, Aviva Chomsky, Phyillis Scherrer, Toussaint Losier, etc., because they’re trying to ingratiate themselves to their idiot has-been hippie professors, who are trying to vicariously relive their misspent youth through highly impressionable 18-22 year olds who are too naive to understand that what they’re receiving under the pretense of education is as equally as worthless as WikiPedia. That’s what offends me most.
Hippies? You’re apparently still having problems processing events of the 1960s half-a-century later.
If you don’t like Wikipedia, don’t use it. You’ve always got its goofball twin, Conservapedia, which provides comic relief without even realizing it. Don’t expect to find much in there that’s useful or genuinely informative, however. Most topics that are covered in some detail on Wikipedia aren’t even on the Conservapedia map.
@Kraken:
Let’s see……pseudonym? kraken? “you have no way of knowing if the author(s) are “knowledgeable” or not,” is kraken knowledgeable or not? Do we have a way of knowing? yes? no? which?
” or whether they are paid activists or not. ” is kraken a paid activist? yes? no? how do we know? “knowing what their agenda or expertise (if any) might be at all.” What is kraken’s agenda? expertise? how do we know? Is he paid to discredit Wiki? how do we know?
Is kraken 14 years old and does he use his mother’s laptop?
Kraken, all of that above is written in jest, but it is to demonstrate to you that you are attempting to make a very silly argument that has no point. You are anonymous making claims that you can’t prove the very same as what you are trying to say about Wiki. I do agree that Wiki is not a place to put all your money if you have to bet on accuracy for political items, but otherwise ??????
@Redteam: I don’t want to take sides given that you, Kraken, and I agree on most subjects but as far as Wiki goes, if you were to use it as a source for a research paper your paper would not be taken that seriously. The general opinion in the scholastic world about Wiki is that in some, or perhaps most cases, it is okay for getting a general overview on a particular topic and for finding links to other sources, but to use it as a definitive source to back up a thesis would probably wreck the credibility of your paper and knock the grade down a notch or two. Personally, I’ve found bad information on there about subjects other than political items such as historical events and firearms.
@Greg:
Oh, come now Greg. We’ve had this conversation before. Hippies aren’t exclusive to the flatulent 1960s. You and I both know full well that today’s college professorship is populated primarily by elderly hippies on the cusp of retirement. I’m not sure why you would try to deny this, it’s not like it’s a big secret. Also, we’ve had to deal with the subsequent decades of the hippie subculture and the intellectual hangover that that these idiot professors continue to vomit onto our youth. You ought to know this, you’re one of those idiot professors, right? Just remember that hippies smell equitably, no matter what decade they’re born in. There’s no disenfranchised disparities there.
I don’t intend to. But I do intend to continue to mock it’s usage.
Conservapedia is another consensus encyclopedia, and therefore, equally as worthless as WikiPedia. Remember, biased politics is not the problem. Heck, I have no problem citing Hufftington Post from time to time. Rather, it’s the very nature of consensus encyclopedias that is the problem. The fact that you’re an educator, and have to be told this very basic and remedial stuff, would be disconcerting to me if I didn’t already know as much as I do about today’s worthless education system.
@another vet:
It’s ok, I’m not taking sides on this either, I’m just jerking Kraken’s chain. But most of us here on FA are not writing research papers and Wiki is usually a good place to start for info on a subject, but certainly should not be the definitive source on anything controversial or political. If I type in a subject on Google, I’ll get a whole page of sources for most subjects and I usually look through several of them. The last comment I made to Kraken is about him saying we don’t know about the people that write for Wiki, and I pointed out that we don’t know anymore about him than we do about the writers of wiki. As I said, all in fun.
@Redteam:
Redteam, I’ve been respectfully ignoring you because there’s no point in arguing this matter with you. You place a higher value on the false convenience of WikiPedia, than you do on maintaining accuracy. Nothing I say will convince you otherwise, because you will merely attempt to argue in favor of your desired conveniences.
So you’re going to have to learn the hard way. At some point, WikiPedia usage will burn you, and you’ll be called out for it. It is at that point, and at that point only, that anything I’ve said here will begin to make sense to you. Some people just have to learn for themselves.
@Kraken:
I think even Wiki would admit to that. (at least if the 14 year old is there banging on his Mom’s laptop)
I have heard (from a reliable source) that Huffpo has provided all their 14 years old essayists with their own laptops, they no longer have to borrow their Mom’s. But in all seriousness, I trust Huffpo much less than I do Wiki. Huffpo is very consensus driven.
@Kraken, #71:
You never really figured out who or what the hippies were to begin with. Consequently you imagine that they’re still all around you. You probably have a profile in your head, having to do with superficial matters of appearance or behavior. You probably imagine, for example, that all of the people who showed up at Woodstock were hippies. In reality, hippies related to a transitory social phenomenon specific to a certain time and place that ended a long time ago. People who were there understood that. They held a symbolic funeral marking the end of the era.
The era corresponded with a period of persistent social changes. Like them or not, one can’t roll back the clock. Time only moves one way.
@Kraken:
You’ve been ignoring me? Must be some 14 year old banging out all those responses to my comments above. Are you letting them post using your name?
That’s a rather large assumption, isn’t it? Where have I placed ‘any’ value on Wiki for anything? I’m just pointing out to you that what you write is just as anonymous as what I read on Wiki and has no higer or lower value, it’s only an opinion.
I don’t agree. I don’t use anything from Wiki to put myself into a position to be burned over. Just looking up Jeters career hits is not going to be used to win a $50,000 bet or anything. I don’t write research papers so no professor is going to grade anything I write based on Wiki. I feel as if my sense of judgment is such that I am able to judge whether or not the info I’m getting from any source is reliable or should be looked into further.
Are you implying that you’re not amongst those? Who do you take your info from ‘without question’? Have you learned to not do that? For yourself?
Keep reading and writing Kraken, I enjoy reading what you say. I’ll take your word for it that you’re not 14 years old writing on your Mom’s laptop, despite Wiki’s insistence that it is so.
@Greg:
Oh, they’re still around. Read about Bill Ayers on Wiki. (you might not recognize some of them because they did learn to take a shower and change clothes)
@RedteamI have weeded out sources on the Internet as well. I used to frequent Newsmax and WorldNet Daily until I came across too many articles where they would have a “juicy” title about Obama or something and then the contents contained therein didn’t back up the claim made in the title. Even though they report on stuff that the MSM ignores in order to protect their fellow lefties and can back most of it up, that turned me off because they are lowering themselves to the same type of hype that emanates from the left. Hopefully they have corrected that fault.
@Greg:
Greg, we’re not talking about the Founders from the 1700s here who are long dead. We’re talking about a recent subculture whose members are still very much alive and running today’s universities and schools. Furthermore, even though the flatulent 1960s have gone, we’re still feeling the nauseating after effects of their unfortunate existence in the world that they gave us which exists today.
Oh sure, there’s all of that. But there’s a bit more too.
Well that’s the romanticized mythology that elderly hippies like to teach about themselves in schools and universities, but here’s the actual reality.
Hippies were misbehaving teenagers and twenty-somethings who were sick of having to hear about all the great things that the Greatest Generation accomplished. They resented having to live in this long shadow of their superior forebears, and wanted to outdo them somehow. So instead of accomplishing great things, they took the easy route and engaged in heavy drug use, which of course they love to proudly tout in the idiotic documentaries they produce about themselves. The Boomer Generation, more accurately known as the Worst Generation, then barnacled themselves to already existing civil rights movements that would have happened with or without white suburbanite hippies vandalizing property. They then grew into adults physically, while their drug addled brains remained in adolescence throughout their lives. After which they destroyed America’s education system by taking it over. The generations of children who would have to experience their moronic, worthless, and expensive lessons in schools and universities, would then largely have to teach themselves employable skills after wards, since all the hippies would teach is nonsense about the disproportionate disparities of the disaffected disenfranchised, and other made-up gobbledygook that has no application in the real world at all. In essence, hippies lessened America. Now they live in their 60s and 70s, and they’re still stupidly trying to rebel against the Greatest Generation, never having grown up mentally. That’s how the Age of Aquarius ends; not with some New Age pagan ritual, but with a tired fart.
One can’t roll back the clock. But one can engage in restoration.
@Redteam, #77:
I don’t think hippies were particularly political. They tended to see politics as b.s. Mostly they wanted to get away from that sort of thing and back to a simpler lifestyle and more natural world. A lot of them tried that in experimental commune settings.
Ayers was probably more closely related to the Abbie Hoffman sort. They thought they could actually change society through political action. It was a different kind of idealism. I think the simple hippie souls were kinder and gentler, though possibly more naive.
There must have been a number of identifiable counter-cultural types back in the 60s. Young people were exploring a lot of different possibilities. Consider the Jesus Freaks, for instance. They wanted to get back to a simple, 1st Century Christianity, without all of the baggage that has accumulated over the centuries. Those I knew were nothing if not sincere.
It was an interesting time. It could also be a challenging time to grow up in. Plenty of people lost their way, in a lot of different ways. There were casualties. Of course there were also a lot of casualties among those who held fast to traditional views.
@Greg:
I disagree, I think the movement was 100% political. They saw themselves as the ‘opposition’ and the ‘answer’ to the greatest generation.
A political movement known commonly as ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’.
Would you put Charlie Manson in that kinder gentler category?
Greg, you need to go ahead and admit that Kraken is basically correct. The Hippies tried to take over, but realized that they had underestimated the ‘greatest generation’ and had to use different tactics. It didn’t take them long to figure out that if they got the young minds in the 1st grade and molded them through college, they would own them forever. That’s why people such as Ayers got involved with the universities. (Greg, don’t let Kraken know that I got some of this info from Wiki).
Mostly what they exploring was drugs. Some of which made them think they were Jesus or had wings and could fly. (Obama was in this group, according to himself)
I think there’s some misunderstanding there, as well. Psychedelics opened a door on states of consciousness that people who haven’t directly experienced them cannot even imagine. Unfortunately the context they appeared in wasn’t conducive to integrating those experiences back into society, except through music and the arts. It wasn’t long before society was approaching drugs hedonistically, which quickly led to the abuse of highly destructive feel-good substances such as amphetamines, cocaine, opiates, barbiturates, etc. The explorations of the 60s quickly degenerated into the excesses of the 70s, and it’s been downhill ever since. The typical substance abuser today is anything but a hippie-type.
Former psychedelic users include people who have been profoundly creative, not just in the arts. Some were true visionaries. Consider Steve Jobs, for example.
@Redteam, #81:
Let’s not forget that Jesus and his disciples chose to live in such a fashion.
I would put him in the category that contains homicidal psychopaths. They can turn up in almost any social context, and tend to gravitate toward those that they can most easily exploit.
More than anything else, I think they wanted to be free of society’s controls and controlling mechanisms. It’s hard to blame them. Many of them were being forcibly sent off to fight and die an a foreign war that half the country no longer believed in. They were often being targeted by an authority structure and authority figures that wanted to impose conformity in everything from appearance to thought. Communes were often founded in an effort just to get away and get some peace.
@Greg:
So did Jim Jones.
Indeed. Another psychopathic control freak, I think.
@Greg:
Let’s not unduly romanticize what actually happened here. Nobody went on some great vision quest. They laid on filthy couches and hallucinated. That’s it.
You don’t say.
This completely misses my point. Today’s drug users need not be hippies. The hippies, are the left-overs from the flatulent 1960s now running the schools and universities, and the generations of subsequent students that try to ingratiate themselves to them by embracing that moronic subculture. How many times do these things need to be typed? Are you on something?
It also includes people like this.
There’s nothing heroic, noble, respectable, or visionary, about destroying your mind with hallucinogenics. Our current state of government is evidence of that.
@Greg:
Greg, you’re attempting to re-write history.
remember we’re talking mid 60s here, which war would that have been. When did American troops first engage in military actions in Viet Nam. How had half the country come to not believe in that war by 1965?
elaborate a little, you’ve lost me on that.
I think you misunderstood the communes of the days. I think the primary purpose was group sex facilitated by use of drugs.
@Greg:
Right; a socialist.
@Greg:
Right, so they could institute societal controls and controlling mechanisms of their own making, which they now have. They would trade in their burned bras for hijabs. They burned draft cards and flew to Canada, but now entertain the thought of mandatory national civil service so they have someone to wipe their elderly derrières. They’ve imbibed all manner of who knows what, but decided they didn’t want to have to deal with an 18 year old drinking age. They cried about infringements on free speech, and now institute speech codes on campus. They’re really just despicable hypocrites.
Every generation before it had been sent to war as well. Self-absorption aside, there was absolutely nothing special about the Boomers whatsoever that should have set them aside from this standard patriotic duty aside from their own monumental stupidity and selfishness. They clearly misunderstood nearly every issue that exists, a product no doubt of the drug induced haze they liked to live in, and continue to do so. I mean, Hanoi Jane? Come on.
Justifiably so. Let’s be perfectly honest here, hippies were and are, miscreant detritus. I mean, they’ve proven themselves to be entirely worthless on every level imaginable. Just about every institution in our society reflects the unwise choices that that generation made, and now it’s up to subsequent generations to clean up the mess after their party.
@Kraken: One of the triggers of the Hippie age was television. No war had ever been fought before on tv every day on several networks where people saw things that they had only read about before.
No matter what the trigger, that generation let the country down. Wanting everything while wanting no responsibility for anything. Turn on and drop out fit them exactly.
@Redteam:
It’s ironic that Timothy Leary’s words only have validity now that they’re the ones in control of the education system.
Of course the drinking age was lowered to 18 at one time but highway accidents went way up so the age was changed back to 21. The accidents went back down.
@Redteam:
Well, for me that’s really beside the point. There’s no reason to expect someone to take on all the responsibilities of adulthood, and not also give them all the benefits as well. If people really want the drinking age to be 21, that’s fine. But then the age of adulthood needs to be raised back to 21, and the 26th Amendment repealed.
@Kraken:
There was two problems, at least. the persons didn’t ‘assume’ the responsibilities of adult hood. They didn’t seem to be able to handle drinking as adults. The other problem was that all the persons being killed on the highway were not the ones doing the drinking, they were the victims. I would rather feel safe driving on a highway than feeling good about letting an idiot drive a car drunk. I lived in S. Georgia back then and I started drinking semi regularly at 14 and I was 27 the very first time I was ever asked for an ID. (and that included 4 years in the Navy)
This is largely the opinions and the perceptions of the adults of the time, who no doubt engaged in the very same activities themselves when they were the same age. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for myself, the 21 year old drinking age played absolutely no role whatsoever in my or my friend’s ability to acquire alcohol and drink. What it did do however, was ensure that we we would be drinking without any supervision, which we might have had were we in a bar with bartenders, bouncers, and wait staff.
This problem was largely blown out of proportion by hysterical activist groups like MADD who would probably like to see the drinking age raised to 64. The states were essentially strong armed by the Federal Government into accepting a 21 drinking age or lose up to 10% of their highway funding. Deaths really didn’t have much to do with anything except in the horrible Super 8 films played in driver’s education courses that high school students rolled their eyes at and ignored. I’m not sure how many times society needs to learn this lesson, but history teaches us that prohibition simply never works. The drinking age has been 21 throughout the nation for a long time, and yet there are still idiots driving cars drunk, including those drinking under age. The drinking age does absolutely nothing to stop drunk drivers.
@Kraken, #86:
You might want to refrain from offering opinions on something you obviously know nothing about. Certain chemicals are capable of opening doors that reveal things those who have not passed through them can’t begin to understand. However it might have come about, there are chemical keys that perfectly fit locks that we’re born with. I would encourage no one to test that assertion. People who haven’t been there also have absolutely no clue how deep the water gets. The more tightly wrapped a person is, the greater the danger. Every imaginable certainty can totally disintegrate. We’re not talking about something that just makes a person feel different.
I’m not going to waste more words about this on someone who is both unwilling and unable to understand. I will say that it’s always struck me as very odd that our culture’s officially approved mind-altering substances dampen things down rather than revealing more. Our whole culture is filled with fear and anxiety. Much of people’s time and energy is spent trying to feel less fearful and less anxious.
@Greg:
Peace & Love and Karl Marx, man.
A topic you hate, in a reference you hate: An article on Entheogens, from Wikipedia.
@Greg:
Yes, yes. So glad that the world we now live in was orchestrated by idiots who think that imbibing hallucinogenic sacraments opened doors into anything other than fantasy and sometimes lunacy. Honestly, for people who bark about the supposedly anti-science crowd, you people sure do cling to a strange mixture of occult superstition. Where’s Madame Blavatsky when you need her?
@Kraken:
that may be, but the number of fatalities on the nations highways, involving alcohol, went up when the drinking age was lowered and the number of fatalities went back down when they raised the age back to 21. I don’t personally care what the legal age is. It now appears that cell phones are causing more highway fatalities than alcohol ever did and I doubt that we will ever make it illegal to have a cell phone in an automobile.