♪Antony & The Johnsons – Fistful Of Love

Enjoy! 🙂

Live Version: NPR presents ANOHNI

YouTube to add “fact check” propaganda messages to MMR vaccine videos in latest Orwellian attempt to override reality

Monday, August 13, 2018 by: Isabelle Z.

(Natural News) Not content to stop at banning videos, YouTube has decided to add “fact checks” and quotes to videos on topics that it feels are controversial, and the MMR vaccine is one of them.

Last month, the video sharing platform started placing a blurb of text beneath certain videos offering viewers a “scientific” explanation. For example, the text placed underneath some videos about climate change is taken from a Wikipedia entry on global warming and reads: ”Multiple lines of scientific evidence shows that the climate system is warming.” They’re also questioning sources, with a series of climate videos posted by the RT news site containing a description from Wikipedia about the publisher that says: ”RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government.”

The move comes after YouTube announced this spring that it will place descriptions taken from Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia alongside videos about topics that tend to attract conspiracy theories, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the moon landing. Although YouTube has not shared a full list of topics that will be given this treatment, some of the topics identified in a post to its administrators include global warming, Dulce Base, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Kecksburg UFO incident, the 1980 Camarate air accident, and the MMR vaccine.

The company has not notified the users who originally uploaded the videos in question that they will bear these propaganda messages. It is not clear why YouTube is lumping the MMR vaccine’s proven link to autism in the same category as conspiracy theories, but given their track record, politics almost certainly played a big role.

Mother Nature’s micronutrient secret: Organic Broccoli Sprout Capsules now available, delivering 280mg of high-density nutrition, including the extraordinary “sulforaphane” and “glucosinolate” nutrients found only in cruciferous healing foods. Every lot laboratory tested. See availability here.

The Chief Marketing Officer of PragerU, Craig Strazzeri, said YouTube’s new policy, which has affected some PragerU videos, shows its political bias.

He said: “Despite claiming to be a public forum and a platform open to all, YouTube is clearly a left-wing organization. This is just another mistake in a long line of giant missteps that erodes America’s trust in Big Tech, much like what has already happened with the mainstream news media.”

Others have expressed surprise that these blurbs are showing up on videos that are about science rather than conspiracies. YouTube says that even more videos will receive the labels in the months to come and that it is using an algorithm rather than people to determine which videos will be given the blurbs.

Right now, they are only visible to viewers in the U.S., and they are expected to be rolled out gradually. YouTube will be keeping track of how often viewers click on the blurb, which will link back to the original source.

https://www.real.video/embed/5817873555001

Angry users flocking to speech-protecting sites

People are growing increasingly fed up with YouTube’s attempts to control the narrative and influence what people believe by silencing views that oppose their own. This month, they came under fire for banning right-wing host Alex Jones’s channel, which was just the latest in a long string of moves against videos on topics like vaccines, climate change, natural health and guns.

If you’re looking for a place to post or watch videos without YouTube insulting your intelligence or controlling what you read and share, the free-speech alternative REAL.video is the place to go. With more than 300 new channels joining the platform each day and 1.5 million minutes of video served each week, it provides a destination for people who value freedom to discuss all manner of topics that are unwelcome elsewhere. Best of all, there is no user tracking, shadow banning, or long ads to sit through. As great and fair alternatives like this gain in popularity, one can only hope that YouTube’s reach will shorten dramatically.

Sources for this article include:

BuzzFeedNews.com

TheNewAmerican.com

Are libertarians intellectually dishonest?

Are libertarians intellectually dishonest?

https://www.quora.com/topic/Anarchism

Henry Walleski, Author Libertarian Philosophy and Economics

Answered Sep 20, 2017

I will address my personal experience with the only form of libertarianism that I’m intimately familiar with – namely American libertarianism as roughly defined by the LP platform – or in my case – what I consider (U.S.) constitutional libertarianism (hereinafter just ‘libertarianism’). As far as I know, this libertarianism has very little in common with anarchy – as the end goal of it is not absence of government.

Quite the contrary – it requires powerful government – but strictly limited to the functions of jealously protecting inalienable rights – those mentioned in the Declaration of Independence – and others flowing inexorably from them.

The question refers to intellectual honesty – which is a somewhat vague concept. I suggest a more useful concept is intellectual consistency – or coherence – meaning absence of contradiction.

A logical contradiction is the conjunction of a statement S and its denial not-S. In logic, it is a fundamental law- the law of non-contradiction- that a statement and its denial cannot both be true at the same time.

Libertarianism is an attempt to both construct a theory of the optimal conditions for the nature and existence of human beings as well as define and manifest a real-world political system to create and foster these optimal conditions.

Both of these objectives require coherence – a lack of contradiction – from beginning to end. They require building a model or theory based on verifiable objective reality and observation from direct human experience – and from that reality using reason and strict logic to draw conclusions – including formulation of underlying fundamental principles – and then test those conclusions and principles with subsequent empirical data and more logic and over a significant and relevant expanse of time.

Acceptance of contradiction at any point in this process will likely prove extremely detrimental – most especially in attempts to create or manifest political solutions – which by definition involve the use of force or the threat of the use of force.

In the political arena in the U.S. only libertarians seem to understand this necessity for strict elimination of contradictions – and for which they are widely criticized and ridiculed by participants on all sides of the political spectrum.

This is in part because elimination of contradiction is not intuitive – nor is it always emotionally comfortable – nor does it result in outcomes that accord with the political or popular correctness de jure.

In order to derive a set of principles – which themselves lack contradiction – and then construct a non-contradictory theory of human action from those principles – especially in the political and legal arena – requires the willingness and ability to completely separate one’s intellectual and cognitive process from one’s emotional attachments. This separation or detachment requires volition, training, practice, determination and massive effort.

Most people in my experience – even though they may be attempting to be ‘honest’ with themselves and others – are not capable of such detachment – even momentarily. Nor do they recognize when their cognitive functioning is being compromised by their emotional, cultural, religious, familial or other attachments. And this of course is assuming a baseline attempt at honesty – which assumption for the political class as a whole is completely unwarranted.

Thus the result is that contradictions are ubiquitous – as are their acceptance. In fact, most people can no longer even detect or comprehend contradictions – even blatant ones. There is in fact widespread cognitive dysfunction or malfunction in this regard.

For practicing libertarians, the process of detecting, defining and challenging contradictions is axiomatic and reflexive – it is almost by definition libertarian.

I’ll illustrate and end with one of dozens of modern examples I could provide – the issue of same-sex marriage contrasted with the state enforced minimum wage.

Many of those on the left hold the position that same-sex couples have a right to recognition of their marriage in equality with traditional married couples and that employers and employees may be forced by the state to pay or accept wage rates determined by legislative fiat.

Many of those on the right claim the state can determine which consenting adults may have a legally recognized marriage but employers and employees have a right to determine their own wage rates.

Both positions are blatant contradictions. The issue is the principle of self-ownership and the right to peacefully and voluntarily dispose of one’s property – which includes one’s mind and body – and the right to enter into contracts with their mind and body. Marriage is a contract – so is employment.

Libertarians therefore require a total of merely 10 to 20 seconds of consideration to determine the issue of same-sex marriage and the politically enforced minimum wage. The former is completely protected under the right to contract and the latter is completely unwarranted under the identical right to contract.

Protecting a business owner’s right to determine a wage rate – and an employee’s right to determine the rate at which they will accept – is identical to protecting the right of a same-sex couple to have legally recognized marriage contract.

If politically and legally you advocate for one position – then consistently and coherently you must also advocate for the other. Your personal preferences or attachments are completely irrelevant – as are the unprovable, idiotic and contradictory theories of the in vogue so-called social justice and economic fairness ‘ether’. [My note: They are so contradictorily ephemeral as to not deserve recognition as ‘movements’ – hence they are merely more akin to a nebulous gaseous substance of the atmosphere – i.e. ether]

What apparently neither those on the left or right comprehend is in both cases their acceptance of contradiction not only destroys the credibility of their position – it provides their political opponents precisely the principled rationale for the latter to insist on the very policies and positions the former object to.

This is the utter insanity of modern politics and why to many observers, libertarian consistency is both intellectually and emotionally incomprehensible – seemingly arising from a parallel unknown alien universe.

The wanton abandonment and disregard for principle – enabled by acceptance of contradictions – is also why the prospect of the magnificent political system of a constitutional republic we inherited has degenerated into a pathetic mobocracy. We now surrender the last vestiges of our actual political and economic freedoms to voting mobs and their enablers in the political class – all of which are either delusional or conniving – that get decide which arbitrarily defined identity groups shall be awarded newly minted pseudo-rights and their legal and political protection.

I will contend that at the heart of this degeneration of our political system is in fact the willingness to accept contradictions – or now more than ever – the widespread inability to even cognitively recognize them.

Yes, constitutional libertarians strive to be impeccably intellectually honest – meaning consistent and coherent – almost above all else.

9k Views · View Upvoters

Upvote · 183

Share

RecommendedAll

Alec Brady

Sep 20, 2017 · 12 upvotes including Henry Walleski

As someone on the left of politics, I find myself cordially agreeing with you – at least in the abstract.

However, the notion of a free contact of employment relies on an absence of coercion, including an absence of necessity. If I am dying of thirst, and the price you set on allowing me to have some of your ample water supply is that I enter your service as an indentured labourer, that contract is not free.

In some hypothetical primitive state I might be able to find my own water, hunt or grow my own food, clear a patch of forest to live in, and so on. In a capitalist state, where all land is owned and the raw materials and tools needed to pursue my trade have been concentrated in a small number of hands, we may legitimately decide that we should either compensate people for the lack of freedom in the work contracts they find themselves having to agree to, or remove the spur of necessity so that their contracts really are free. The former might include a legal floor under wages, or a legal ceiling on hours worked, or other limits on the freedom of employers. The latter might include food stamps or (my preferred left-libertarian option) a universal basic income.

The idea that, under capitalism, there could be such a thing as a free market in anything seems to me so idealistic, so divorced from current conditions, that I’m baffled that anyone could embrace it. I’m pretty much convinced, though, that with a well-designed UBI we could find a system that both Libertarians and left-libertarians could be comfortable with.

Reply

· Upvote

· Downvote

· Report

Henry Walleski

Sep 20, 2017 · 12 upvotes

Ok. As I said, my answer is from my specific perspective that relates to what you accurately characterize as capitalistic libertarianism. If you can find flaws in its principles and application of those principles then you negate its coherence and consistency.

You apparently believe you have identified such flaws – namely that…. ‘all land is owned and the raw materials needed to pursue my trade have been concentrated in a small number of hands…’

that results in…

‘lack of freedom in the work contracts [people] find themselves having to agree to’….

which you conclude means the contracts are not really freely entered into.

This presumably negates the voluntary requirement of libertarianism that in turns violates the NAP.

You thus conclude that under capitalism even the hypothetical that a free market could exist in anything is untenable and that there is no evidence in current conditions that could even support the possibility of the hypothetical.

I hope I’ve accurately conveyed your argument.

However, I reject your premises and what appear to be your argument and conclusion flowing from them.

I suppose it is possible that in the instance of your specific trade – which you don’t name – that all land and raw materials are concentrated into a small number of hands. But relatively few trades today require possession of land and raw materials – in the traditional sense of the latter – meaning substances from the earth.

Therefore, even if true in your case, to extrapolate this condition and its consequences throughout a modern division of labor capitalist economy on that basis is simply absurd.

The fact is, in modern capitalism, possession of land and access to traditional raw material is increasingly rarely a requirement for participation.

What is a requirement is access to the means of production. The means of production increasingly revolves around and is dependent upon computing power – i.e. the microchip and the functions of software and hardware that it enables. The cost of computing power according to Moore’s law decreases by 50% every 18 months.

There has never been a time or place in human history that the means of production have been so readily available to vast masses of individuals that can therefore pursue their individual personal and financial goals in the context of capitalism – that is- trading value for value with other individuals or collectives of individuals as business enterprises.

If you’re looking to blame capitalism or concentration of land and raw material ownership for the impediments in what should be a massive explosion of entrepreneurial capitalism and dynamic economic growth – you’re looking in the wrong place.

Moreover, you then propose an UBI – which is remedy for the ostensible coercion (lack of freedom) imposed on participants in modern capitalism – which argument for coercion is as I’ve said is based on faulty premises and logic. But the UBI itself is almost without doubt a form of coercion – as it necessitates redistribution of the amount of the UBI from the person or entity that earned it to someone who did not.

In summary, you erroneously characterize modern capitalism as necessarily resulting in coercion and your remedy is to impose unabashed coercion in the form of an UBI.

Reply

· Upvote

· Downvote

· Report

Alec Brady

Oct 5, 2017 · 4 upvotes

“You thus conclude that under capitalism even the hypothetical that a free market could exist in anything is untenable and that there is no evidence in current conditions that could even support the possibility of the hypothetical.

I hope I’ve accurately conveyed your argument.”

Yeah, that’s pretty good. It’s a little more rigid than I would argue for – I’m not sure that I’d want to deny that a free market could exist in anything, but I’d certainly say that there are enough instances of the coercion of necessity to challenge the idea that free markets are always available.

“I suppose it is possible that in the instance of your specific trade – which you don’t name – that all land and raw materials are concentrated into a small number of hands.”

I wasn’t intending to reference my actual trade, but to make a general point. However, as you ask: I’m retired now, but I was previously a nurse. I specialised in mental health, and went on to work for the NHS as a cognitive-behaviour therapist.

“But relatively few trades today require possession of land and raw materials – in the traditional sense of the latter – meaning substances from the earth.”

Certainly my work required buildings, heating, lighting, furniture, telephones, computers, beds, bathrooms, uniforms, security personnel, secretaries – and on a scale that wouldn’t be practical for a self-employed person to attempt.

“Therefore, even if true in your case, to extrapolate this condition and its consequences throughout a modern division of labor capitalist economy on that basis is simply absurd.”

My argument doesn’t require me to generalise it throughout the economy – only to observe that those conditions are common enough to undermine the assumption that free markets could ever be universal.

“The fact is, in modern capitalism, possession of land and access to traditional raw material is increasingly rarely a requirement for participation.

What is a requirement is access to the means of production. The means of production increasingly revolves around and is dependent upon computing power – i.e. the microchip and the functions of software and hardware that it enables. The cost of computing power according to Moore’s law decreases by 50% every 18 months.”

When you can make me a silicon chip in your garage – and mine your back yard for the rare-earth elements needed to make a cellphone – I will accept that access to the means of production is completely open.

The UK economy is 80% service-sector, but that service sector sits on top of a foundation that can’t be produced on a computer – roads, buildings, vehicles, fuel, food, copper, steel, concrete, rubber, plastics, glass, electricity, tap-water, fibre-optics, textiles. Without the workforce to produce these things (both domestically and overseas) the computers and telephones simply won’t work, and you won’t have any value to trade. Many of these industries require a labour force of thousands. Our economy relies on there being a lot of people drilling for oil, trucking stuff around the country, rolling steel, mining copper. If they all decide to set up in business as commodity traders we are…well, let’s just say Everybody Dies.

“There has never been a time or place in human history that the means of production have been so readily available to vast masses of individuals that can therefore pursue their individual personal and financial goals in the context of capitalism – that is- trading value for value with other individuals or collectives of individuals as business enterprises.”

I very much like the notion of trading with collectives of individuals (I belong to the Cooperative Party here in the UK, which has a vision of an economy founded mainly on cooperatives). But that isn’t capitalism as it has existed up to now. Walmart is not a collective of individuals, it is based on people engaging themselves as servants to a small managerial group. That’s true of all minimum-wage jobs. No-one is going to indenture themselves to a company for minimum wage for any other reason than necessity, and that means that they are not genuinely free.

“If you’re looking to blame capitalism or concentration of land and raw material ownership for the impediments in what should be a massive explosion of entrepreneurial capitalism and dynamic economic growth – you’re looking in the wrong place.”

Um…I don’t think that’s what I’m looking to do. I’m looking to challenge the idea that there can be freedom for everyone in a functioning capitalist economy. What I want, as a left-libertarian, is to maximise freedom for everyone. That can’t mean absolute freedom for everyone (as RH Tawney said, “freedom for the pike is death for the minnows”), but if we act intelligently, by rationing liberty somewhat, we can optimise the system for everyone.

“Moreover, you then propose an UBI – which is remedy for the ostensible coercion (lack of freedom) imposed on participants in modern capitalism – which argument for coercion is as I’ve said is based on faulty premises and logic. But the UBI itself is almost without doubt a form of coercion – as it necessitates redistribution of the amount of the UBI from the person or entity that earned it to someone who did not.”

There are various ways of structuring a UBI, not all of which require it to be funded through taxation. And the notion of “earning” what you make is problematic. But, yes, this would be one of the instances of limiting liberty for some in order to maximise it overall.

“In summary, you erroneously characterize modern capitalism as necessarily resulting in coercion and your remedy is to impose unabashed coercion in the form of an UBI.”

I disagree only with the word “erroneously” there.

Reply

· Upvote

· Downvote

· Report

Comment deleted · Sep 27, 2017

Alec Brady

Oct 5, 2017 · 7 upvotes

Well, I’m not sure how you get that “most”. Do you have a link to some data that can clarify that for me?

I don’t see it as contradictory to prefer protections for those who are close to destitution over those who are a long way from destitution. I don’t feel I have a duty to care about someone losing their job if they have a million in the bank – they’re not going to have a problem feeding their children. Someone who is one unlucky break away from disaster needs my concern far more.

When I talked about coercion I wasn’t thinking so much of payday loans, but of employment conditions. If the mine that you and your family have worked in for years closes down, you may find that the only jobs now available are low-paid with oppressive rules (e.g. limits on bathroom visits, no paid leave, body searches, no health insurance). You may not have the luxury of refusing that job, as you need to make your rent now, not six months from now when your (hopefully) brilliant entrepreneurial idea (for which you don’t have any seed capital) starts to bear fruit. This is the coercion of necessity, and it limits the freedom you have to choose what contracts you make.

Any theory that relies on the supposition of utter existential freedom to make or decline a contract is failing to engage with the reality of life for many working people.

Reply

· Upvote

· Downvote

· Report

Linda M Glenn

Mar 16

Great counterpoint, Alec!

Reply

· Upvote

· Downvote

· Report

Comment deleted · Oct 5, 2017

Alec Brady

Oct 5, 2017 · 3 upvotes

I don’t know how you put statistics on something like that – but then, I’m not the one who claimed that most people who have to accept bad terms are in a situation of their own making.

The coercion of necessity is not the same as being mugged, as that would be the coercion of violence. When Ayn Rand took social security payments, it was under the coercion of necessity, not because someone mugged her and forced money into her wallet.

You keep bringing up payday loans. I never mentioned payday loans, I have never claimed that anyone is forced to take out a payday loan. And yet you say that I have. Why is that?

And I haven’t said anything about fault either. Fault is entirely beside the point. Whether a person’s necessitous state is because of their own fault, or bad luck, or the malice of their enemies, or the folly of their spouse, or due to being shot in Las Vegas and having to find the money to pay their hospital bills – none of this changes the fact that some people are under the lash of necessity, and are therefore not free always to make the contracts they would choose.

Reply

· Upvote

· Downvote

· Report