American government told the whole world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. America used this as justification to invade Iraq and murder its people. It turns out there were no weapons of mass destruction after all.
This is why I don't trust any government trying to justify any warlike behavior. It's all a scam. There is no justification good enough for civilians and young men to suffer and die.
The politicians play chess and we die
This is slightly extreme. Go tell Europeans in the late 30s and early 40s that there's no justification for going to war against Germany. There are always exceptions.
We didn't go to germany, germany came to us.
Just like usa did many times.
And i don't think it was so obvious at the time. Russia was massing weapons, middle east had problems, and tensions were everywhere.
You're being obtuse about the definition of "go to war". If they invade your country and you fight back you're still going to war.
Fair enough. But in the context of usa it never had a defensive war, always the agressor. And the propaganda was "they have bio weapons of mass destruction and will use them", and later "they terrorists". None of which was true. Iran was far from innocent either.
Ok I concede there are exceptions but I think even in justified war the government is full of shit. The propaganda gets pumped out in full force during military actions.
Like how Japanese internment in America wasn't justified, even if involvement in WW2 was.
Now there's something that sounds like an insane conspiracy theory but actually happened.
I still don't trust the government. Obviously defending yourself is justified war. For example Ukraine fighting Russia. But there's been many documented cases of Ukrainian propaganda outright lying. They are not unique so I am not trying to single them out - there are many many many examples in modern times and historical. One of the most famous examples in the Ukrainian war was the "Ghost of Kyiv", early on into the war.
They came up with the idea of a legendary ace fighter pilot that was going around and shooting down a bunch of Russian planes. However that pilot never existed. The government even acknowledged a few months later, after this idea had become viral and spread around everywhere - effectively already accomplishing its purpose - that it was a fabrication.
This is sort of what I mean. During war, propaganda goes off the charts. There's a fog of war and the government uses that as a tool to totally flood people with fake knowledge. And sure, you might argue that it's justified because they are trying to raise their population's morale and potentially lower the morale of the enemy - but I'm a guy who wants to know the truth. So I don't trust governments when it involves any military action.
They may be telling the truth so I don't discount it entirely but I'm immediately skeptical and will try to confirm using sources that aren't directly from the government.
so like a psyop
Since giving waterboarding a go I've found myself disgusted by any government that allows the use of waterboarding on anybody - governments that encourage it are even worse, and the way the Americans handled Gitmo is fucking disgraceful.
Gitmo is still open, there's no past tense involved
And our buddy DeSantis oversaw torture there and laughed about it.
Since giving waterboarding a go
...I feel like there's some missing context here but I'm not sure I want to ask
I’m not a big fan of Whoopie Goldberg, but her way of telling (starts at 7min 53sec) about Iraq and WMD has always stuck with me. It’s worth a watch. It’s the perfect amount of funny mixed with reality.
Not just America unfortunately. The UK government did this too, their part should not be forgotten.
I always thought poppy production in Afghanistan had something to do with it. In 2001 the Afghan government sucessfully eradicated poppies, and again recently after the American occupation ended.
P×dophiles are flocking to churches because they're unregulated by the government. They're becoming a safe haven for these sick fucks because they often attempt to handle conflict and scandals within their own walls. Also, due to a high need for childcare, often no background check is needed!
A "scandal" is bad for business attendance numbers, so they like to keep it quiet, if they can.
My family has gone to so many churches throughout the years, and at least 5 or 6 have had the sexual abuse of a child come to light within church leadership.
I am dead serious about this: KEEP YOUR KIDS OUT OF CHURCHES!!!!
But even some non-church-going folks with drop off their kids at "youth group" essentially for free childcare and debatable "moral development."
It's true. There will be some volunteer that has inappropriate behavior with a minor that gets kicked out then just does the same at a different church. No one tells the police because of the intense sexual shaming and stigma. This is when you're lucky enough to be somewhere where the church doesn't outright protect the abuser and force the abused out.
This is true, they try to hide this type of activity, and if you fight it they'll take you down too. Source: personal experience.
The MOVE bombing. The fact that the Philadelphia police dropped not one but TWO explosive devices on the roof of their house via helicopter is still nuts to me. What made it even worse was the fact that the fire department showed up and let it continue to burn, destroying 61 evacuated neighboring homes and leaving 250 people homeless.
Any time I tell someone about it that hasn’t heard the story, they’re skeptical.
Another one is the time I learned that I was under local surveillance for being an activist that was part of a local non-violent black liberation org. The police would send a unit weekly to check my whereabouts and movements. I learned through a friend of a friend that didn’t even know who I was, but knew my name and that I was on a surveillance list. Pretty sure they were checking in on everyone involved.
Edit: if this comment has taught me anything, it's that you're better off not engaging with pointless nitpickers and police apologists. Fuck me for having an opinion.
I just looked up MOVE after reading this comment. Amazing power dynamics (from wikipedia):
In 1978, a standoff resulted in the death of one police officer and injuries to 16 officers and firefighters, as well as members of the MOVE organization. Nine members were convicted of killing the officer and each received prison sentences of 30 to 100 years.[2] In 1985, another firefight ended when a police helicopter dropped two bombs onto the roof of the MOVE compound, a townhouse located at 6221 Osage Avenue.[3][4] The resulting fire killed six MOVE members and five of their children, and destroyed 65 houses in the neighborhood.[5]
The "city" was found to have used excessive force, and compensation in these cases comes from taxpayer money.
The Philadelphia police wanted MOVE gone because they bucked the system and were at odds with the police over the ongoing murder of their people. That’s why they went to such lengths to eradicate them at their main row house. I remember reading about how it was essentially a shooting gallery for the police. As people tried to escape the building, police fired upon them.
It was an insanely careless plan borne out of hubris, hatred towards black liberation groups in a time of high racial tensions, and the police (again) thinking that they were above the law. I’m actually shocked there was even a lawsuit that stuck. That alone shows how fucked their whole plan was. Even the city and a federal judge couldn’t overlook this one.
The fire department showed up and the move members started shooting at them, which is why the fire department moved back.
Police and MOVE were still exchanging gunfire, so the firefighters were ordered to back away.
Also, to add some intent, the police plan was to make a hole in the roof through which they could shoot year gas and force MOVE members to evacuate. Witnesses did see officers on the adjoining buildings ready to go. It was a stupid plan.
The conspiracy part comes in, though, because we really only have the word of the police on all of this, since all but two of the MOVE people died, and one was a child
Isn't most tear gas flammable? What the fuck is wrong with our cops and why are they so stupid?
You said above “the fire department showed up and let it continue to burn”
This is a completely inaccurate statement.
The fire department was there from the beginning and were ordered to move back because of the gunfire.
Your statement is saying that the fire department showed up at sometime during the event and just waited around and let it continue to burn, which is absolutely untrue .
It’s not inaccurate. That’s what happened because the police decided to corner MOVE members in their home and then fired at them as they tried to move outside. The goal from the start was to kill everyone there and in their rage, they devised easily one of the stupidest plans ever. The police forced people into a corner and they retaliated. The police also got hit with a lawsuit in federal court for use of excessive force and illegal search and seizure.
We can split hairs on phrasing, but the police are to blame for the entire thing and crafted a scenario where the fire department’s hands were tied.
The goal from the start was to kill everyone there
[citation needed]
It was well known that the police disliked MOVE as a collective. That’s why they got slapped with a lawsuit by a federal judge for excessive force, illegal search and illegal seizure. They killed women and children with their plan because of their carelessness, and fired upon anyone that ran from the building they set on fire with their bombs.
Your “citation” is cops and their interactions with black folk on the daily. I’m not gonna play this game where the opposition picks apart the irrelevant parts of a stance to try to weaken it.
They killed women and children with their plan because of their carelessness
So, it wasn't intentional.
Your “citation” is cops and their interactions with black folk on the daily
So, cruelty, indifference, but not an actual desire to murder all of them?
Edit: here’s your citation
I can't read that because it requires a subscription, but I very much doubt it says "the police plan was to kill everyone, and here's the evidence for that".
If that wasn't the intended plan with what they carried out, it was definitely a benefit based on the fact that police were already at odds with MOVE. So sure, no one sat at a table in a backroom and said "we're going to kill them all" while cackling, but it was definitely not something they were opposed to based on their actions (which involved so much overreach and violation of rights that even the city and a federal judge couldn't put a lid on it).
The article talks about how all of the deaths involved in the MOVE shootout were eventually re-categorized as homicides instead of their initial categorization of "accidental".
After nearly four decades, Philadelphia has acknowledged that it was no accident when six adults and five children died in the MOVE bombing.
The decision to amend the death certificates followed an independent investigation released this summer into how victims’ remains from the MOVE bombing languished in a cardboard box on a basement shelf at the Medical Examiner’s Office until 2021. The negligence led to widespread outrage and resignations. Reclassifying the deaths as homicides was among the recommendations in a 257-page report released in June that traced the office’s failures.
It's really not a stretch to think that the police didn't want all of MOVE completely eliminated. They were unwilling to work with MOVE and MOVE was unwilling to bend to an organization that constantly violated the civil rights of the black community.
the deaths involved in the MOVE shootout were eventually re-categorized as homicides
Homicides? Do you mean first degree murder? Because to clear the bar you're attempting to clear you need to prove that "The goal from the start was to kill everyone there".
I’m not going to keep arguing with a bad faith bootlicker.
In other words, "I can't defend my words, so I'll ad-hominem the person who challenged them."
None of it would’ve taken place if the police weren’t so fucking stupid with their plan. I get why the fire dept. held back, but the police created that entire scenario.
Got cheap, no-name, unbranded LED bulbs off of eBay. Years later, not one of them had broken.
But Philips LED bulbs? Those things don't last a year. In fact, none of the high-rated, "high quality," top-ten-list, LED light bulbs have ever outlasted an incandescent in my experience.
If you want your LEDs to last, buy the no-name bulbs, guys. The Phoebus Cartel is still out there.
Boy do I have a video for you. It's regarding the cartel and light bulb engineering if you'd be interested:
I will say in regards to LEDs, it's a bit of a tricky thing. Philips in general are terrible, I don't know what they do, but they're also really pretty. Amazing for rarely-active mood lighting. For actual lighting, I use the white-tone-changeable Ikea bulbs, and they seem to last forever, hot as they get.
That's the weirdest thing: The Ikeas run hotter than the Philips, yet still last longer. I really get the feel that Philips optimizes purely for color, smoothness and softness. They know what people use their overly expensive stuff for since in some areas they got little competition. It's annoying, but for those purposes it also works really well.
I love that man, his brain and how he probes any subject matter which comes across his party.
The way my head absorbed what you said was:
Phillips is the Apple of the LEDs. If you want something longer lasting, stick with the "ol reliable" brand such had to innovate to sell cheaper.
I wonder if people have done experiments..
I will say that maybe Philips' regular LED bulbs are bad, but I have Hue bulbs I've been using since 2015 without issues still. They've been extremely reliable.
Do not remember the video but isn't that the whole problem: LEDs like to be cooler. Bright pretty LEDs get hoter. People buy smaller prettier bulbs.
Things have a tradeoff independent of price. A small bright LED that is in an enclosed space will not last long. Recommend buying pretty LEDs and using them without enclosure or buying dimmable and setting them to 50% on default.
I have Philips hue leds in daily use that are actually 6 years old.
Gonna add on to your comment by suggesting ESP-based lights running WLED for any fans of smart lighting; having smart lights that run FOSS firmware, don't need an external internet connection to work, and integrate well with reactive lighting solutions like HyperHDR and LedFX is pretty dang nifty!
I was involved in the BLM protests of 2021. The cops were legitimately pulling people off the street into unmarked, black vans. Some of the people that were grabbed were not even involved in the protests, they were just outside past the citywide curfew.
I had heard about this happening in Oregon and Washington through the ever reliable internet, but I didn't actually believe it until I saw it happen in my moderately sized Midwestern city.
And yet they let a bunch of reactionary fascists storm the capitol with minimal resistance.
Yeah, about that... let's talk about a conspiracy theory. I remember reading, I think on Twitter, either just before, or maybe it was a retweet after the fact, someone local to DC saying that the security that had been established around town (or maybe around the capitol specifically) that day in preparation for the demonstrations was weaker than they had ever seen for any run of the mill event there. This would seem very strange because word was very much out that something was going to go down that day, so one would have expected a much higher level of security to have been established. Although I didn't look very closely into what happened that day and the days surrounding it, it still seems strange that I've never heard this discussed since I read it.
Conspiracy fact. I watched on video as cops moved barricades to let rioters in, took selfies with rioters, then literally held the hands of rioters as they walked down the capitol stairs.
At the BLM protests in Buffalo a cop dropped his helmet. When a bystander tried to give it back to them, the cops gave him brain damage.
Conspiracy fact. I watched on video as cops moved barricades to let rioters in, took selfies with rioters, then literally held the hands of rioters as they walked down the capitol stairs.
Thanks, but that's not what I meant though. What that person described was that an unusually low, insufficient level of security had been established before the event, in comparison to any other run of the mill event that had taken place in that area in the past. The exact opposite should have been done, since everyone expected there to be trouble.
In terms of conspiracy theory, there are two possibilities I can think of: a) someone in power under-secured the event in the expectation that the riot would succeed and become a coup, or b) someone in power under-secured the event in the expectation that the riot would not succeed but would be enough of a spectacle that it could then be used against the people who were involved with facilitating and encouraging it. However, this all hinges on that observer's evaluation being accurate that the event had indeed been unusually under-secured.
So here's the head of the DC national guard saying that they were purposely delayed in their response and that the people from the army who testified in front of the jan 6 committee were, his words, "absolute and unmitigated liars".
Here are jan 6 rally organizers saying they knew before it happened that the rally was going to involve an unpermitted match in the Capitol. They say they called white house chief of staff Mark meadows about it and were ignored. The person who claimed to have made the call now says they didn't and the white house was unaware of the plans to march on the capitol. Given the number of rioters who showed up in bespoke tshirts that said "storm the capitol" it's fair to say that if the white house didn't see this coming they were the only ones who didn't. The article also establishes that Enrique tarrio, Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes were there and that organizers put up with their openly abhorrent beliefs because they can "push bodies where we point". This is relevant because it means that people we've proven were in contact with the white house before 01/06 were there to cause a riot and knew it.
The above link also shows that capitol police knew what was coming. The released a memo on Jan 3 saying “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence, may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike." An internal email from 12/31 said that rally permit requests were “being used as proxies for Stop the Steal” and that those requesting permits “may also be involved with organizations that may be planning trouble” on Jan. 6.
Another thing of note from that source is that no march on the capitol was permitted, but plans among organizers including those known to have been in direct contact with the white house publicly talked about the rally ending in a march on the capitol. It wasn't until after those plans were published that Trump tweeted that he would personally attend the rally.
It's also important to know that the DC national guard is unique in that it's deployment is managed by the white house directly, rather than by state governors as other national guard groups are. The above source says that capitol police requested national guard support 6 times, including after violence erupted, and were denied all 6 times. Muriel Bowser, mayor of DC at the time, had also requested NG support ahead of the rally and had been denied.
So the white house was aware in advance of the rally, including that it would involve an unpermitted march on the capitol. Some organizers were so concerned that violence would erupt that they reached out to white house chief of staff mark meadows about it. They knew violence was coming. After the more openly violent elements announced that they would illegally march on the capitol, Trump tweeted that people should attend the rally and that he would be there personally. They took steps to amplify the violence. Trump also had the power to deploy the DC national guard. The guard was requested both before the rally by the mayor of DC and during the violence 6 times by capitol police. These requests could have been granted by Trump, but were instead denied. The trump white house took steps to hamper the response to the violence.
What else would you need in order to believe that this was a planned assault on democracy, coordinated directly with the white house and designed to take advantage of a legitimate peaceful protest?
What else would you need in order to believe that this was a planned assault on democracy, coordinated directly with the white house and designed to take advantage of a legitimate peaceful protest?
I know it was a planned assault on democracy. I never said otherwise. I also know who had fomented and planned the assault: the people in the White House and all their die-hard followers. None of that is in question. What I was unsure about was who had fucked up and allowed it to happen that day. I had never looked very closely at the details of the events of that day, but I read the NPR and Politico stories you sent. The picture that those paint to me is that a lot of people primarily responsible for securing this event fucked up leading up to it. With all that intelligence that shit was going to go down, the local authorities should have had their shit together, ready for it. They could have asked the National Guard to be in place ahead of time, but didn't think it was necessary despite having access to the intelligence and were worried about what had happened previously with the BLM protests. If they're having to call the National Guard after people start rushing the capitol, it's way too late. From the time that the crowd reaches the security lines at the capitol until the time that the protester is shot trying to enter the House chamber is less than 1 hour 45 minutes. And it sounds like the call goes out to the NG after the crowd reached the capitol.
I didn't realize or recall that Michael Flynn's brother was one of the generals involved in the decision to send in the National Guard. WTF, he was probably in no hurry to send in the troops. However, I still argue that the people who were intent on securing the event should not have given anyone the opportunity of a delayed response that could have been obscured by the chaos. Aside from that, what are the chances that the situation could have potentially been even worse had the NG been involved? Can you imagine the endless whining from the MAGAs if more of them had been mowed down by the NG?
they could have asked for NG support before the event
The mayor of DC did, and was denied.
I didn't realize Michael Flynn's brother was responsible for sending in the troops
Look up when he was appointed. Trump put him in place during the lame duck period after the election specifically so that he could sabotage security ahead. No one "screwed up" security, they all did exactly what they were there to do. Capitol cops put up a token resistance then waved rioters in, NG was held away from the event until it was well too late, the only people who screwed up were the gangs of terrorists embedded in the crowd who failed to capture any government officials who could potentially have been ransomed in exchange for Trump being appointed. I'm usually a big fan of Hanlon's razor but in this particular situation that would require a lot of competent people to become very stupid for exactly one day in a way that just so happens to benefit themselves greatly.
Going by that timeline and narrative, it doesn't seem like Mayor Bowser asked for a large contingent of the NG until the attack was already under way. I now also understand better why she may have erred in that way, because of what had happened in the previous BLM protest.
Wow, that Flynn appointment timing definitely looks shady as hell. As for the Capitol cops, I wouldn't be surprised if they put up token resistance. Cops in general seemed to be on Trump's and his fans' side, what with all the back the blue rhetoric and all that. So now after this discussion I'm definitely leaning more towards any possible conspiracy being all on the side of the people who wanted the insurrection to succeed, with some lucky help in the form of some people on the other side having acted with incompetence.
Thanks again.
Some of those who work forces.
I remember the livestreams. Did anyone ever find out what happened to those poor people?
They fucking shot people on their own porches. They fucking arrested a journalist just standing doing nothing live on the air.
The fact we all did not revolt and overthrow those assholes at that point is a moral failing on our part.
They went into people's houses to arrest them for being out after curfew.
They fired tear gas into people's houses because they were suspected of giving water to protestors.
In Minneapolis a group of cops went around off duty, out of uniform in an unmarked van and fired irritant paintballs at everyone they saw. When someone shot back they arrested him for assauting an officer, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, etc. He was eventually acquitted because he stopped shooting as soon as they ID'd themselves.
The police are fucking animals roaming the streets and inflicting violence anywhere they can get away with it.
Probably mostly just shaken up and released. I think it was the National Guard, but I wasn't about to get close enough to ask.
Someone needs to go investigate. They could've been protest leaders disappeared somewhere for all we know
It happened in Pittsburgh too. Undercovers in unmarked vans were just snatching people up off the street. Cops were shooting at people who were on their knees with their hands in the air. Someone plowed their car through a crowd of protesters on video, with the license plate and cops said there was nothing they could do.
Theres a huge network of private surveillance cameras, microphones, and other sensors constantly collecting everyone's information and selling it to whomever can pay, or just straight up giving the feds access to the data.
I like to refer to that corporation as "Little Brother".
I was driving with a friend on in Louisiana about 3am one night in the late 90s. I thought I saw something ahead in the right lane so I moved into the left lane just in case.
As we got closer there was a giant shadow of some kind with only tiny reflectors at the edges. It was a HUGE matte black boat filling the lane on a matte black trailer with no plates. Closest comparison I can come up with would be one of those river patrol boats from the Vietnam war.
We were on cruise so it took a few seconds to pass them. The boat was being towed by a matte black F-550 (?) MDT with no plates and no lights other than headlights.
I did not look up at the driver when we passed. I have no idea if this was a drug thing, an intel thing, or what.
It could be many things, but I'd guess it's just someone who thinks it's cool to have matte black everything. I had a neighbor (who was a cop) who really liked matte black vehicles. It's not like it's illegal or anything. (Although, being a cop, he very well may have been a drug dealer also, so who knows?)
And isn't there some special paint that is the most light absorbing black possible?
I kind of imagine some Dale Gribble type driving it...
Vanta Black.
There is a huge amount of fake and bot accounts on social medias, probably as much as the population of many cities, made and used to manipulate the public opinion.
That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s been studied and shown true over and over.
Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.
Yeah, something I truly can't believe it happened.
And it's worse than that because about half the country MEANT to do that the first time...
Well significantly less than half because of voting percentages.
COINTELPRO. Since I learned about that the whole Ehrlichmann story about criminalizing drugs to oppress black communities and possibly even CIA involvement in the opoid and crack epidemics seem pretty plausible to me.
ITT: People who don’t understand the topic.
Yeah OP didn't ask us "what's the latest conspiracy theory you read about on Truth Social."
The people in charge in the U.S. want to eliminate transgender people so that they can have men and women in neat, separate boxes and continue to oppress women as they have been for centuries.
I personally think it's more about manufacturing an 'other' to blame everything on and unite people in hate.
There's little benefit to targeting women for oppression in the modern economy - they're just more undifferentiated labour to be exploited (though it remains possible to pay them less). I think this was meaningfully different when living off a single income was a realistic proposition.
I think it has to do with the fact that they can't run on "make abortions illegal" anymore so now they have turned to "lgbt bad"
It's really whatever gets people riled up that week
There's no single unified group of "people in charge in the U.S.". There are various people with varying amounts of power. Some of them are religious nutters who interpret their religion as saying that anything other than traditional gender roles is satanic. Some of them are opportunists who see religious nutters as useful idiots, they rile them up over transgender issues in order to get their support for other things (i.e. tax cuts / loopholes for special interests, etc.). Some of them are somewhat liberal, but are still uncomfortable with transgender people and see their political opponents using transgender issues to rile up their base while they do really destructive things (tax cuts / loopholes for special interests, etc.), so they focus their efforts not on defending transgender people, but in trying to attack what they see as the real issues. A small minority of "people in charge in the U.S." are transgender, or very concerned with transgender issues, and are doing everything they can to fight for transgender rights.
Don't forget that the majority of the "people in charge in the U.S." are over 60 years old, and so even basic gay rights are a major departure from the world they were raised in.
It’s pointless to argue. Anyone who says “the people in charge” when talking about a government have no idea how the world really works.
And the people who think there are "people in charge" other than a government are deluded fools. Yes, rich people lobby and get special loopholes and exemptions from laws. But, they're hardly a cartel that agrees about things, makes decisions collectively and then implements those decisions by simply passing laws or whatever. Rich people have more influence, but they're not in charge, and they're certainly not working together. If you know anything about the ultra-rich, it's that they're sociopaths. People like that don't work together, they backstab each-other, have vendettas against each-other, etc. They're not "in charge", they're just the loudest voices in the room.
And they're doing startlingly well in their attempts...
sounds like a conspiracy theory
Remember that democracy is not something done to you. It is something you do.
The Green Party in my country is blocking the development of green alternatives to the industry that is one of the highest emitters of greenhouse gasses and various other pollutants (there's a reason most of our rivers are no longer safe to swim in and the levels of certain cancer-causing compounds are 10-100x the EU safe limit in some areas' water supplies), while private corporations and the main right-wing party are pushing for their legalisation.
A certain local indigenous group (which is technically a registered corporation) doesn't really like people mentioning the fact that they're currently driving an endangered native animal extinct by turning the only area they inhabit into dairy farms.
Also most of the politicians in this country are liars and/or sociopaths, but that kinda goes without saying lol
Might as well name your country?
New Zealand!
Until you said that I thought you might be talking about Canada.
But you're not from lemmy.nz 🤔
I just kinda liked beehaw when I was first switching to lemmy - was one of the first few people to join the Te Wai Pounamu community when it initially got started a few months back though!
There's nothing nefarious about it. For some reason conspiracy loons have latched onto it and think it says things that it doesn't say.
Can you please point me to the WEF stating it's their goal? Like any line or paragraph of text which says that?
Everything I've read with the WEF taking about the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development is about very easy to agree on goals like ending poverty, hunger, giving access to health care and education, clean water and sanitation, affordable clean energy, decent work and economic growth, innovation industry and infrastructure, sustainability, responsible consumption, climate action, ecological protections, peace, justice, and equality.
They don't seem to have any aim of ending personal or private property, rent seeking corporations like Adobe and BMW would love you to pay them endless and ever increasing subscriptions but that's nothing to do with the WEF.
Then why is everything I own actually owned by a bank?
So you mean like you borrowed money to buy things and haven't finished paying it back yet? If so then that's your answer I guess.
Celestial Seasonings tea and Shen Yun both have ties to cults. With Celestial Seasonings the cult that founded it no longer own or profit off it thankfully, but their tea is shit so I still don't recommend buying it.
Shen Yun doesn't hide it. Their show is all about Falun Gong. Although they don't advertise it as such. Went to one of their shows with my wife and mother thinking it would just be about Chinese artistic culture and then BAM - Two hour long Falun Gong propaganda piece.
Isn't that show expensive or am I thinking of something else?
Ticket prices are about mid-range relative to other live performance shows in the same category, $100-$200 depending on seating.
Wife and I saw Hamilton recently and tickets were $300 each, for example.
I mean they post posters up in every Chinese food restaurant within a major metropolitan area, I wasn't expecting it to be anywhere near Hamilton or even regular theater pricing off that odd advertisement technique...
Oneida cutlery too. The cult died, the cutlery survived.
I've seen a UFO while I was truck driving. Most amazing thing I have seen to date.
Edit: On the night of the Dec 11th 2020 at 9:30ish I had stopped for the night to sleep whiledriving towards Colorado on I25 in New Mexico. I had stopped at a truck parking area maybe 10 miles away from Old Sunshine gas station and parking area. I was gazing at the stars and milkyway and enjoying the lack of light pollution when I witnessed it. Where the sky had previously been black and full of stars a blue light appeared for 10 or so seconds and then shot directly upward in an ice blue streak. At first I didn't think anything of it until it moved incredibly fast straight up. It was instantaneous. I used to be ing the Air Force so I have seen all kinds of Arial vehicles. Never seen anything like this.
I couldn't find a mile marker but the coordinates are "35.3965167, -105.4138241".
Would you care to elaborate internet friend?
I added the event to my original post.
We all see unidentified objects all the time. Most of us don't make a big deal about not being able to identify something though.
I drove by a house in my neighborhood. There was a pure white van, no windows, license was VAN 3. A man was walking towards the van dressed in white coveralls and gloves.
As I passed, I stared at him. He stared at me with cold murderers eyes. I've seen that look twice before and both guys turned out to be murderers.
Sounds like you have more stories to tell.
VAN3 relative begs to differ
Sounds like you passed a painter who works at a company with at least two other vans. I thought painters only wearing white was an old time movie thing, but the one we hired wore all white. His van AND trailer were white too. Normal eyes tho, didn't murder us.
Wouldn't a company that bothered to get vanity plates for their van put a logo on it?
I saw something weird like that in Portland once...
This was almost 10 years back, but it's still fairly vivid in my mind due to the apparent mysteriousness of the sighting.
It was a weekday morning, probably around 8, and I was driving home after my regular shift at the mortuary. There was a man walking on the sidewalk of a busy street in an upper-middle class neighborhood. He kinda stuck out because his outfit looked to be of high quality, expensive pieces, which kind of drew the eye, yet he also looked like a straight up Bond villain, with black pants, a black, leather, car coat type jacket, rolled-up stocking cap, and leather gloves, all topped off with Eastern European features on a serious looking face. He was also carrying full-size bolt cutters, which were tucked upwards under one arm, like he was trying to casually conceal them and hope no one noticed.
I obviously don't know why he was carrying bolt cutters down the street like that, but I figured parking sucks in PDX, and maybe he got stuck with a shitty spot around the block from where he was either delivering a much-need tool to a friend in a pinch or doing a B&E while hunting Jason Bourne.
I only saw him for about 10 seconds as I slowly passed by while driving and, ever since, he pops back up in my mind from time to time and frustrates my thoughts with a lack of closure as to what he was actually getting up to that morning.
If been in courses and workshops where people from the government party in my country teach people how to use twitter, specifically to boost the president and ministers posts. So they were training real people to act as bots and generate artificial engagement.
Also they are 100% using bots, and when bot accounts are removed they loose followers and claim that "imperialistic social media want to censor us".
Shills? Yeah I think that's a common accusation.
Media has been using nonviolence as a propaganda tool to quash rebellions and silence dissent in the U.S. for decades.
Think about it: almost every single story you ever see across all media that has the heroes using violence in a positive light, especially revenge content, will always portray that character's actions as a negative even when objectively they are not. They always look to the same playbook of cliched arguments, one-liners, and tropes to do this. They are all oversimplified caricatures of or misrepresentations of nonviolence, violence, and revenge, justice, forgiveness, etc. A lot are just outright lies or ad-homs.
It's even departmental policy in some companies to force writers to write their scripts in such a manner.
The only director I've ever seen rebel against it is Quentin Tarantino and I don't think he has been doing it deliberately.
It's definitely more complicated than this. A fundamental premise of enlightenment democracy is the establishment of a framework for the mediation of political power without the need for violence. So that ideal of nonviolence goes back much farther than both the US or the fourth estate, and it can be argued that it is actually a starting point for much of the modern world's political philosophy.
But in general, it doesn't take a ton of thought to imagine why cycles of political violence are unsustainable and unproductive. If violence becomes a primary form of political expression, then you will simply have every different group trying their hand. This is why we prescribe the state with a monopoly on violence - a principle even older than democracy.
That isn't to say that violence is never just. Ironically, contemporary existentialism tackles this issue pretty nicely by establishing some imperatives which revolve around the relationship between oppressor and oppressed. Primary among them is the acknowledgement that the most sustainable and desirable form of change is done through conversation with the oppressor (as in liberal democracy), and that anyone who rejects this imperative acts in bad faith, just as the oppressor does when they refuse to treat.
Simply put, to engage in violence is to ordain yourself the oppressor, and understanding the heavy implications of this action is critical to just violence. De Beauvoir argues that idealism is therefore one critical aspect of justice in all forms, as it seeks, by nature, to preserve transcendent humanity in others. And this is the ambiguity of the freedom fighter - the classic dialectical struggle will always reduce itself to mystification because ideals are not fixed like the flesh, against which violence acts. Therefore, while violence can be just, it cannot be justice, because it does not directly serve any ideal. As such, our morality must be "opposed to the totalitarian doctrines which raise up beyond man the mirage of Mankind" and "freedom can only be achieved through the freedom of others."
I'm talking specifically about modern media which is very plainly obviously propaganizing itself with the agenda I laid down. It's so obvious it's hard not to notice. Older media wasn't like that; there were anti-revenge stories back in the day but most were neutral or pro, and that only changed in like the mid 20th century when, for whatever dumbass reason, Hollywood and U.S. media in general decided to do this.
You don't even usually see it in other countries, though there are outliers like Hayao Miyazaki though that's easily chalked up to WW2 and how that war completely ratfucked Japan (and given what their government did, was well-deserved and a minority of their people like him knew it ...)
Simply put, to engage in violence is to ordain yourself the oppressor,
Oh, I get it. You're just one of those types out here defending it. 😕
No, I'm literally quoting a very well known, in depth discussion of the issue from Ethics of Ambiguity
Actually no, what you're doing is taking a specific claim about media exploiting nonviolence and using it as propaganda, to proselytize nonviolence itself, using an old book.
If what I am saying isn't true, why would you feel the need to do that?
Also, why would it even matter how old nonviolence is? I said media et al. is using nonviolence, not that they invented it.
Why are you assuming they're arguing in bad faith?
The age of the book is irrelevant, the philosophical ideas are still worth engaging with, even if you don't agree with them
Because of the fact he went off topic to proselytize, for one.
That and I have dealt with many of his ilk in my life. The reason why he did that is because he, like all of his kind, are fundamentally insecure in their position of moral and intellectual dominance over American discourse, and they fear anyone challenging or questioning their behavior. It's why so many social media sites ban such talk as mine under inciting violence, because it's an unspoken paradigm that's taboo to challenge in our culture. I saw it happen on Reddit all the time.
What he's really hankering after is to stop anybody else thinking about it or challenging nonviolence. It's how people like that operate. They don't care about the common man.
It's weird as fuck that they do this but it's true. You actually can get banned from Facebook or Reddit just from talking about violence in a philosophical light unlesss you're opposing it, and fuck your so-called freedom of speech in the process.
And whenever you do anyway, someone like him always slinks around to pander from what really comes off as a sales script. The same old tired arguments, most of them from movies or games because those are the means by which the media indoctrinates people with those beliefs.
If you don't believe me, try it.
I can't say I got that impression from them to be honest. Feels like you have assumed a lot from a couple of comments (though I totally get being jaded after a while of seeing the same kind of thing).
I think this could be a really interesting thing to explore both sides of the argument as I do think you have a point. Just seems like you're both interpreting it differently in terms of tone (which I guess fits in a way, given your stances)
There has to be an instance where it's possible to do it without risking being banned. I'm surprised the mods here didn't delete anything I said yet.
The media is very much establishment. So, even liberal media is old and establishment liberal. Old and establishment liberal are the kinds of people who tend to trade power with the old and established conservatives. (Or, at least they did until the establishment conservatives went nuts and went Tea Party then Trump.)
If you can expect to regularly get power every few years, there's no reason to take radical action.
As for Hollywood, it's even more conservative than most media. They want to make movies that appeal to audiences worldwide. They don't want to challenge their audiences, or offend them. They just want their money.
🤔🤔🤔
There has to be something we can do. What they did prevented Americans from overthrowing their government when they should have, leading to tyranny and the destabilization of the U.S. Perhaps if we created new franchises that opposed and refuted their paradigm, we could help our people move on from their awful garbage.
Are you familiar with revenge porn like Taken? I think your argument falls flat, because on one side there are tons of movies where problems are solved by violence and the hero still comes out looking good. And on the other side promoting violence is not viable long-term for any society that doesn't want to drown in murder and self-justice.
I saw UFO's. I don't want to believe in aliens, but I witnessed it when I was with a pretty big group of friends and we all remember it and none of us have a better explanation. The people who saw it first were outside smoking pot, the rest of us didn't believe them until we went outside and saw it ourselves. I was sober that night fwiw. We tried recording it but no one's phone had good enough dark recording to pick up anything, and no one had a real camera on hand. The flight style didn't match any craft any of us knew of - it was an array of lights that moved together, and then separated into smaller groups, and eventually individually. They moved unnaturally, with near-instant acceleration, deceleration, and extreme direction changes. It was too high up to be likely to be drones or helicopters, and right above a major Canadian city, not near any military base. If this was, like, Nevada or something, I would assume it was a government test craft. The closest match I've ever heard was in an interview with a pilot who saw UFO's, and that scared the shit out of me. I'd love to find a non alien explanation, because I don't want to believe and also I know it sounds crazy. Like, I myself probably wouldn't believe someone else telling me this story.
You know, UFO's are unidentifiable flying objects. So, any obscure flying objects is an UFO...
Rarely I'll get a feeling that someone is going to die. The feeling hasn't been wrong yet. It's not like within 5 minutes but like this person is going to die this year. I've been wanting to call it confirmation bias but I've not gotten the feeling and has someone live for over a year.
It's not so much what I witnessed but what I didn't witness. For a short amount of time, I used to live in an area of the world that gets a lot of coverage for the absolute wrong reasons. What kind of stuff did I see there? Absolutely nothing of notoriety.
Could you tell us where?
I was sleeping one night about 16/17 years ago and heard something that I could only describe as a UFO. I didn't get a chance to look out my window, but I heard this rapidly pulsating droning sound VERY close to the roof, as if it was tracking me. I heard it fly overhead where my bed was, and it paused for a few seconds, but the sound could still be heard.
Probably lasted for about 10 seconds before it rapidly flew off. I've never heard anything in my life that sounds anything like this; it gives me the chills just remembering what I heard that night!
I was scared completely shitless.
Could that be Exploding head syndrome?
Exploding head syndrome (EHS) is an abnormal sensory perception during sleep in which a person experiences auditory hallucinations that are loud and of short duration when falling asleep or waking up.[2][4] The noise may be frightening, typically occurs only occasionally, and is not a serious health concern.[2] People may also experience a flash of light.[5] Pain is typically absent.[2]
Wow. I have this. Sometimes on the cusp of sleep there's a loud, metallic buzzing sound that scares the crap out of me. No light though
I have had this one time when I was very little. Around 6 or 7 years old or so, but I remember it very clearly. For me, it was like a gunshot went off right next to my head only a couple minutes after I fell asleep. I remember jolting awake and asking my brother and mother what it was, but they had no idea what I was talking about. Maybe some people have different experiences, but mine couldn't be mistaken for a UFO sound.
I had this but to me I saw a bright flash of light and heard a universe tearing type of noise. I immediately jolted awake and went to my window because I thought something exploded outside. Every animal in my house was undisturbed and sleeping and my entire family heard nothing.
It's only happened once in my life, but I didn't have any visual flashes or anything of the sort, just the sound.
I was a bartender in Virginia when Andrew Youngkin was running for governor. He had a secret panel of businessmen gather together in a private room that I happen to be serving drinks in. A "circle of trust" as they called it where all the donors to his campaign told Youngkin what they demanded from him if he won.
American government told the whole world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. America used this as justification to invade Iraq and murder its people. It turns out there were no weapons of mass destruction after all.
This is why I don't trust any government trying to justify any warlike behavior. It's all a scam. There is no justification good enough for civilians and young men to suffer and die.
The politicians play chess and we die
This is slightly extreme. Go tell Europeans in the late 30s and early 40s that there's no justification for going to war against Germany. There are always exceptions.
We didn't go to germany, germany came to us.
Just like usa did many times.
And i don't think it was so obvious at the time. Russia was massing weapons, middle east had problems, and tensions were everywhere.
You're being obtuse about the definition of "go to war". If they invade your country and you fight back you're still going to war.
Fair enough. But in the context of usa it never had a defensive war, always the agressor. And the propaganda was "they have bio weapons of mass destruction and will use them", and later "they terrorists". None of which was true. Iran was far from innocent either.
Ok I concede there are exceptions but I think even in justified war the government is full of shit. The propaganda gets pumped out in full force during military actions.
Like how Japanese internment in America wasn't justified, even if involvement in WW2 was.
Now there's something that sounds like an insane conspiracy theory but actually happened.
There are people alive today who survived the Japanese internment. For example George Takei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Takei
Aside from literal defense from invaders
I still don't trust the government. Obviously defending yourself is justified war. For example Ukraine fighting Russia. But there's been many documented cases of Ukrainian propaganda outright lying. They are not unique so I am not trying to single them out - there are many many many examples in modern times and historical. One of the most famous examples in the Ukrainian war was the "Ghost of Kyiv", early on into the war.
They came up with the idea of a legendary ace fighter pilot that was going around and shooting down a bunch of Russian planes. However that pilot never existed. The government even acknowledged a few months later, after this idea had become viral and spread around everywhere - effectively already accomplishing its purpose - that it was a fabrication.
This is sort of what I mean. During war, propaganda goes off the charts. There's a fog of war and the government uses that as a tool to totally flood people with fake knowledge. And sure, you might argue that it's justified because they are trying to raise their population's morale and potentially lower the morale of the enemy - but I'm a guy who wants to know the truth. So I don't trust governments when it involves any military action.
They may be telling the truth so I don't discount it entirely but I'm immediately skeptical and will try to confirm using sources that aren't directly from the government.
so like a psyop
Since giving waterboarding a go I've found myself disgusted by any government that allows the use of waterboarding on anybody - governments that encourage it are even worse, and the way the Americans handled Gitmo is fucking disgraceful.
Gitmo is still open, there's no past tense involved
And our buddy DeSantis oversaw torture there and laughed about it.
...I feel like there's some missing context here but I'm not sure I want to ask
I’m not a big fan of Whoopie Goldberg, but her way of telling (starts at 7min 53sec) about Iraq and WMD has always stuck with me. It’s worth a watch. It’s the perfect amount of funny mixed with reality.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/csaYMydO1Hg?si=CySZF0rFr8AVpMcB
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Not just America unfortunately. The UK government did this too, their part should not be forgotten.
I always thought poppy production in Afghanistan had something to do with it. In 2001 the Afghan government sucessfully eradicated poppies, and again recently after the American occupation ended.
It was oil, not poppies.
P×dophiles are flocking to churches because they're unregulated by the government. They're becoming a safe haven for these sick fucks because they often attempt to handle conflict and scandals within their own walls. Also, due to a high need for childcare, often no background check is needed!
A "scandal" is bad for
businessattendance numbers, so they like to keep it quiet, if they can.My family has gone to so many churches throughout the years, and at least 5 or 6 have had the sexual abuse of a child come to light within church leadership.
I am dead serious about this: KEEP YOUR KIDS OUT OF CHURCHES!!!!
EDIT: I forgot to mention that most clergy are not bound by laws that would make them mandated reporters for child abuse.
Even better, stop going to churches at all.
I mean, yeah, that's how I deal with it.
But even some non-church-going folks with drop off their kids at "youth group" essentially for free childcare and debatable "moral development."
It's true. There will be some volunteer that has inappropriate behavior with a minor that gets kicked out then just does the same at a different church. No one tells the police because of the intense sexual shaming and stigma. This is when you're lucky enough to be somewhere where the church doesn't outright protect the abuser and force the abused out.
This is true, they try to hide this type of activity, and if you fight it they'll take you down too. Source: personal experience.
The MOVE bombing. The fact that the Philadelphia police dropped not one but TWO explosive devices on the roof of their house via helicopter is still nuts to me. What made it even worse was the fact that the fire department showed up and let it continue to burn, destroying 61 evacuated neighboring homes and leaving 250 people homeless.
Any time I tell someone about it that hasn’t heard the story, they’re skeptical.
Another one is the time I learned that I was under local surveillance for being an activist that was part of a local non-violent black liberation org. The police would send a unit weekly to check my whereabouts and movements. I learned through a friend of a friend that didn’t even know who I was, but knew my name and that I was on a surveillance list. Pretty sure they were checking in on everyone involved.
Edit: if this comment has taught me anything, it's that you're better off not engaging with pointless nitpickers and police apologists. Fuck me for having an opinion.
I just looked up MOVE after reading this comment. Amazing power dynamics (from wikipedia):
The "city" was found to have used excessive force, and compensation in these cases comes from taxpayer money.
The Philadelphia police wanted MOVE gone because they bucked the system and were at odds with the police over the ongoing murder of their people. That’s why they went to such lengths to eradicate them at their main row house. I remember reading about how it was essentially a shooting gallery for the police. As people tried to escape the building, police fired upon them.
It was an insanely careless plan borne out of hubris, hatred towards black liberation groups in a time of high racial tensions, and the police (again) thinking that they were above the law. I’m actually shocked there was even a lawsuit that stuck. That alone shows how fucked their whole plan was. Even the city and a federal judge couldn’t overlook this one.
The fire department showed up and the move members started shooting at them, which is why the fire department moved back.
Police and MOVE were still exchanging gunfire, so the firefighters were ordered to back away.
Also, to add some intent, the police plan was to make a hole in the roof through which they could shoot year gas and force MOVE members to evacuate. Witnesses did see officers on the adjoining buildings ready to go. It was a stupid plan.
The conspiracy part comes in, though, because we really only have the word of the police on all of this, since all but two of the MOVE people died, and one was a child
Isn't most tear gas flammable? What the fuck is wrong with our cops and why are they so stupid?
You said above “the fire department showed up and let it continue to burn” This is a completely inaccurate statement. The fire department was there from the beginning and were ordered to move back because of the gunfire. Your statement is saying that the fire department showed up at sometime during the event and just waited around and let it continue to burn, which is absolutely untrue .
It’s not inaccurate. That’s what happened because the police decided to corner MOVE members in their home and then fired at them as they tried to move outside. The goal from the start was to kill everyone there and in their rage, they devised easily one of the stupidest plans ever. The police forced people into a corner and they retaliated. The police also got hit with a lawsuit in federal court for use of excessive force and illegal search and seizure.
We can split hairs on phrasing, but the police are to blame for the entire thing and crafted a scenario where the fire department’s hands were tied.
[citation needed]
It was well known that the police disliked MOVE as a collective. That’s why they got slapped with a lawsuit by a federal judge for excessive force, illegal search and illegal seizure. They killed women and children with their plan because of their carelessness, and fired upon anyone that ran from the building they set on fire with their bombs.
Your “citation” is cops and their interactions with black folk on the daily. I’m not gonna play this game where the opposition picks apart the irrelevant parts of a stance to try to weaken it.
Edit: here's your citation
So, it wasn't intentional.
So, cruelty, indifference, but not an actual desire to murder all of them?
I can't read that because it requires a subscription, but I very much doubt it says "the police plan was to kill everyone, and here's the evidence for that".
If that wasn't the intended plan with what they carried out, it was definitely a benefit based on the fact that police were already at odds with MOVE. So sure, no one sat at a table in a backroom and said "we're going to kill them all" while cackling, but it was definitely not something they were opposed to based on their actions (which involved so much overreach and violation of rights that even the city and a federal judge couldn't put a lid on it).
The article talks about how all of the deaths involved in the MOVE shootout were eventually re-categorized as homicides instead of their initial categorization of "accidental".
It's really not a stretch to think that the police didn't want all of MOVE completely eliminated. They were unwilling to work with MOVE and MOVE was unwilling to bend to an organization that constantly violated the civil rights of the black community.
Homicides? Do you mean first degree murder? Because to clear the bar you're attempting to clear you need to prove that "The goal from the start was to kill everyone there".
I’m not going to keep arguing with a bad faith bootlicker.
In other words, "I can't defend my words, so I'll ad-hominem the person who challenged them."
He didn’t say that. It was a different person. Read the usernames.
None of it would’ve taken place if the police weren’t so fucking stupid with their plan. I get why the fire dept. held back, but the police created that entire scenario.
Also, my statement isn’t wrong.
Got cheap, no-name, unbranded LED bulbs off of eBay. Years later, not one of them had broken.
But Philips LED bulbs? Those things don't last a year. In fact, none of the high-rated, "high quality," top-ten-list, LED light bulbs have ever outlasted an incandescent in my experience.
If you want your LEDs to last, buy the no-name bulbs, guys. The Phoebus Cartel is still out there.
Boy do I have a video for you. It's regarding the cartel and light bulb engineering if you'd be interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
Monopolies are scary though, especially if they can make such collective actions without telling anyone.
Oi that's my boy Technology Connections!
He's on Mastodon, btw
Unsurprising tbh
Ha, I was about to dig out that video.
I will say in regards to LEDs, it's a bit of a tricky thing. Philips in general are terrible, I don't know what they do, but they're also really pretty. Amazing for rarely-active mood lighting. For actual lighting, I use the white-tone-changeable Ikea bulbs, and they seem to last forever, hot as they get.
That's the weirdest thing: The Ikeas run hotter than the Philips, yet still last longer. I really get the feel that Philips optimizes purely for color, smoothness and softness. They know what people use their overly expensive stuff for since in some areas they got little competition. It's annoying, but for those purposes it also works really well.
I love that man, his brain and how he probes any subject matter which comes across his party.
The way my head absorbed what you said was: Phillips is the Apple of the LEDs. If you want something longer lasting, stick with the "ol reliable" brand such had to innovate to sell cheaper. I wonder if people have done experiments..
I will say that maybe Philips' regular LED bulbs are bad, but I have Hue bulbs I've been using since 2015 without issues still. They've been extremely reliable.
Do not remember the video but isn't that the whole problem: LEDs like to be cooler. Bright pretty LEDs get hoter. People buy smaller prettier bulbs. Things have a tradeoff independent of price. A small bright LED that is in an enclosed space will not last long. Recommend buying pretty LEDs and using them without enclosure or buying dimmable and setting them to 50% on default.
And not buying the integrated shit.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I have Philips hue leds in daily use that are actually 6 years old.
Gonna add on to your comment by suggesting ESP-based lights running WLED for any fans of smart lighting; having smart lights that run FOSS firmware, don't need an external internet connection to work, and integrate well with reactive lighting solutions like HyperHDR and LedFX is pretty dang nifty!
I was involved in the BLM protests of 2021. The cops were legitimately pulling people off the street into unmarked, black vans. Some of the people that were grabbed were not even involved in the protests, they were just outside past the citywide curfew.
I had heard about this happening in Oregon and Washington through the ever reliable internet, but I didn't actually believe it until I saw it happen in my moderately sized Midwestern city.
And yet they let a bunch of reactionary fascists storm the capitol with minimal resistance.
Yeah, about that... let's talk about a conspiracy theory. I remember reading, I think on Twitter, either just before, or maybe it was a retweet after the fact, someone local to DC saying that the security that had been established around town (or maybe around the capitol specifically) that day in preparation for the demonstrations was weaker than they had ever seen for any run of the mill event there. This would seem very strange because word was very much out that something was going to go down that day, so one would have expected a much higher level of security to have been established. Although I didn't look very closely into what happened that day and the days surrounding it, it still seems strange that I've never heard this discussed since I read it.
Conspiracy fact. I watched on video as cops moved barricades to let rioters in, took selfies with rioters, then literally held the hands of rioters as they walked down the capitol stairs.
At the BLM protests in Buffalo a cop dropped his helmet. When a bystander tried to give it back to them, the cops gave him brain damage.
Thanks, but that's not what I meant though. What that person described was that an unusually low, insufficient level of security had been established before the event, in comparison to any other run of the mill event that had taken place in that area in the past. The exact opposite should have been done, since everyone expected there to be trouble.
In terms of conspiracy theory, there are two possibilities I can think of: a) someone in power under-secured the event in the expectation that the riot would succeed and become a coup, or b) someone in power under-secured the event in the expectation that the riot would not succeed but would be enough of a spectacle that it could then be used against the people who were involved with facilitating and encouraging it. However, this all hinges on that observer's evaluation being accurate that the event had indeed been unusually under-secured.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/06/jan-6-generals-lied-ex-dc-guard-official-523777
So here's the head of the DC national guard saying that they were purposely delayed in their response and that the people from the army who testified in front of the jan 6 committee were, his words, "absolute and unmitigated liars".
https://www.propublica.org/article/new-details-suggest-senior-trump-aides-knew-jan-6-rally-could-get-chaotic
Here are jan 6 rally organizers saying they knew before it happened that the rally was going to involve an unpermitted match in the Capitol. They say they called white house chief of staff Mark meadows about it and were ignored. The person who claimed to have made the call now says they didn't and the white house was unaware of the plans to march on the capitol. Given the number of rioters who showed up in bespoke tshirts that said "storm the capitol" it's fair to say that if the white house didn't see this coming they were the only ones who didn't. The article also establishes that Enrique tarrio, Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes were there and that organizers put up with their openly abhorrent beliefs because they can "push bodies where we point". This is relevant because it means that people we've proven were in contact with the white house before 01/06 were there to cause a riot and knew it.
The above link also shows that capitol police knew what was coming. The released a memo on Jan 3 saying “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence, may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike." An internal email from 12/31 said that rally permit requests were “being used as proxies for Stop the Steal” and that those requesting permits “may also be involved with organizations that may be planning trouble” on Jan. 6.
Another thing of note from that source is that no march on the capitol was permitted, but plans among organizers including those known to have been in direct contact with the white house publicly talked about the rally ending in a march on the capitol. It wasn't until after those plans were published that Trump tweeted that he would personally attend the rally.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/11/955548910/ex-capitol-police-chief-rebuffs-claims-national-guard-was-never-called-during-ri
It's also important to know that the DC national guard is unique in that it's deployment is managed by the white house directly, rather than by state governors as other national guard groups are. The above source says that capitol police requested national guard support 6 times, including after violence erupted, and were denied all 6 times. Muriel Bowser, mayor of DC at the time, had also requested NG support ahead of the rally and had been denied.
So the white house was aware in advance of the rally, including that it would involve an unpermitted march on the capitol. Some organizers were so concerned that violence would erupt that they reached out to white house chief of staff mark meadows about it. They knew violence was coming. After the more openly violent elements announced that they would illegally march on the capitol, Trump tweeted that people should attend the rally and that he would be there personally. They took steps to amplify the violence. Trump also had the power to deploy the DC national guard. The guard was requested both before the rally by the mayor of DC and during the violence 6 times by capitol police. These requests could have been granted by Trump, but were instead denied. The trump white house took steps to hamper the response to the violence.
What else would you need in order to believe that this was a planned assault on democracy, coordinated directly with the white house and designed to take advantage of a legitimate peaceful protest?
I know it was a planned assault on democracy. I never said otherwise. I also know who had fomented and planned the assault: the people in the White House and all their die-hard followers. None of that is in question. What I was unsure about was who had fucked up and allowed it to happen that day. I had never looked very closely at the details of the events of that day, but I read the NPR and Politico stories you sent. The picture that those paint to me is that a lot of people primarily responsible for securing this event fucked up leading up to it. With all that intelligence that shit was going to go down, the local authorities should have had their shit together, ready for it. They could have asked the National Guard to be in place ahead of time, but didn't think it was necessary despite having access to the intelligence and were worried about what had happened previously with the BLM protests. If they're having to call the National Guard after people start rushing the capitol, it's way too late. From the time that the crowd reaches the security lines at the capitol until the time that the protester is shot trying to enter the House chamber is less than 1 hour 45 minutes. And it sounds like the call goes out to the NG after the crowd reached the capitol.
I didn't realize or recall that Michael Flynn's brother was one of the generals involved in the decision to send in the National Guard. WTF, he was probably in no hurry to send in the troops. However, I still argue that the people who were intent on securing the event should not have given anyone the opportunity of a delayed response that could have been obscured by the chaos. Aside from that, what are the chances that the situation could have potentially been even worse had the NG been involved? Can you imagine the endless whining from the MAGAs if more of them had been mowed down by the NG?
The mayor of DC did, and was denied.
Look up when he was appointed. Trump put him in place during the lame duck period after the election specifically so that he could sabotage security ahead. No one "screwed up" security, they all did exactly what they were there to do. Capitol cops put up a token resistance then waved rioters in, NG was held away from the event until it was well too late, the only people who screwed up were the gangs of terrorists embedded in the crowd who failed to capture any government officials who could potentially have been ransomed in exchange for Trump being appointed. I'm usually a big fan of Hanlon's razor but in this particular situation that would require a lot of competent people to become very stupid for exactly one day in a way that just so happens to benefit themselves greatly.
Thanks for the additional info and explanation. That makes sense, but I realize now that I must have made a mistake. The NPR piece I was referencing was not the one you linked but another one that I had pulled up when I was trying to learn more about this: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/956842958/what-we-know-so-far-a-timeline-of-security-at-the-capitol-on-january-6
Going by that timeline and narrative, it doesn't seem like Mayor Bowser asked for a large contingent of the NG until the attack was already under way. I now also understand better why she may have erred in that way, because of what had happened in the previous BLM protest.
Wow, that Flynn appointment timing definitely looks shady as hell. As for the Capitol cops, I wouldn't be surprised if they put up token resistance. Cops in general seemed to be on Trump's and his fans' side, what with all the back the blue rhetoric and all that. So now after this discussion I'm definitely leaning more towards any possible conspiracy being all on the side of the people who wanted the insurrection to succeed, with some lucky help in the form of some people on the other side having acted with incompetence.
Thanks again.
Some of those who work forces.
I remember the livestreams. Did anyone ever find out what happened to those poor people?
They fucking shot people on their own porches. They fucking arrested a journalist just standing doing nothing live on the air.
The fact we all did not revolt and overthrow those assholes at that point is a moral failing on our part.
They went into people's houses to arrest them for being out after curfew.
They fired tear gas into people's houses because they were suspected of giving water to protestors.
In Minneapolis a group of cops went around off duty, out of uniform in an unmarked van and fired irritant paintballs at everyone they saw. When someone shot back they arrested him for assauting an officer, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, etc. He was eventually acquitted because he stopped shooting as soon as they ID'd themselves.
The police are fucking animals roaming the streets and inflicting violence anywhere they can get away with it.
Probably mostly just shaken up and released. I think it was the National Guard, but I wasn't about to get close enough to ask.
Someone needs to go investigate. They could've been protest leaders disappeared somewhere for all we know
It happened in Pittsburgh too. Undercovers in unmarked vans were just snatching people up off the street. Cops were shooting at people who were on their knees with their hands in the air. Someone plowed their car through a crowd of protesters on video, with the license plate and cops said there was nothing they could do.
Theres a huge network of private surveillance cameras, microphones, and other sensors constantly collecting everyone's information and selling it to whomever can pay, or just straight up giving the feds access to the data.
I like to refer to that corporation as "Little Brother".
That beautiful
I was driving with a friend on in Louisiana about 3am one night in the late 90s. I thought I saw something ahead in the right lane so I moved into the left lane just in case.
As we got closer there was a giant shadow of some kind with only tiny reflectors at the edges. It was a HUGE matte black boat filling the lane on a matte black trailer with no plates. Closest comparison I can come up with would be one of those river patrol boats from the Vietnam war.
We were on cruise so it took a few seconds to pass them. The boat was being towed by a matte black F-550 (?) MDT with no plates and no lights other than headlights.
I did not look up at the driver when we passed. I have no idea if this was a drug thing, an intel thing, or what.
It could be many things, but I'd guess it's just someone who thinks it's cool to have matte black everything. I had a neighbor (who was a cop) who really liked matte black vehicles. It's not like it's illegal or anything. (Although, being a cop, he very well may have been a drug dealer also, so who knows?)
And isn't there some special paint that is the most light absorbing black possible?
I kind of imagine some Dale Gribble type driving it...
Vanta Black.
There is a huge amount of fake and bot accounts on social medias, probably as much as the population of many cities, made and used to manipulate the public opinion.
That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s been studied and shown true over and over.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-020-0340-4
https://medium.com/@robhat/an-analysis-of-propaganda-bots-on-twitter-7b7ec57256ae
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/social-media-and-democracy/bots-and-computational-propaganda-automation-for-communication-and-control/A15EE25C278B442EF00199AA660BFADD
https://headlineusa.com/china-bots-boost-propaganda/
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/computational-propaganda/
Yeah man that's the point of this thread. The idea is it's things that aren't conspiracy theories. They just sound like them.
Right
Correct
So true
Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.
Yeah, something I truly can't believe it happened.
And it's worse than that because about half the country MEANT to do that the first time...
Well significantly less than half because of voting percentages.
COINTELPRO. Since I learned about that the whole Ehrlichmann story about criminalizing drugs to oppress black communities and possibly even CIA involvement in the opoid and crack epidemics seem pretty plausible to me.
ITT: People who don’t understand the topic.
Yeah OP didn't ask us "what's the latest conspiracy theory you read about on Truth Social."
The people in charge in the U.S. want to eliminate transgender people so that they can have men and women in neat, separate boxes and continue to oppress women as they have been for centuries.
I personally think it's more about manufacturing an 'other' to blame everything on and unite people in hate.
There's little benefit to targeting women for oppression in the modern economy - they're just more undifferentiated labour to be exploited (though it remains possible to pay them less). I think this was meaningfully different when living off a single income was a realistic proposition.
I think it has to do with the fact that they can't run on "make abortions illegal" anymore so now they have turned to "lgbt bad"
It's really whatever gets people riled up that week
There's no single unified group of "people in charge in the U.S.". There are various people with varying amounts of power. Some of them are religious nutters who interpret their religion as saying that anything other than traditional gender roles is satanic. Some of them are opportunists who see religious nutters as useful idiots, they rile them up over transgender issues in order to get their support for other things (i.e. tax cuts / loopholes for special interests, etc.). Some of them are somewhat liberal, but are still uncomfortable with transgender people and see their political opponents using transgender issues to rile up their base while they do really destructive things (tax cuts / loopholes for special interests, etc.), so they focus their efforts not on defending transgender people, but in trying to attack what they see as the real issues. A small minority of "people in charge in the U.S." are transgender, or very concerned with transgender issues, and are doing everything they can to fight for transgender rights.
Don't forget that the majority of the "people in charge in the U.S." are over 60 years old, and so even basic gay rights are a major departure from the world they were raised in.
It’s pointless to argue. Anyone who says “the people in charge” when talking about a government have no idea how the world really works.
And the people who think there are "people in charge" other than a government are deluded fools. Yes, rich people lobby and get special loopholes and exemptions from laws. But, they're hardly a cartel that agrees about things, makes decisions collectively and then implements those decisions by simply passing laws or whatever. Rich people have more influence, but they're not in charge, and they're certainly not working together. If you know anything about the ultra-rich, it's that they're sociopaths. People like that don't work together, they backstab each-other, have vendettas against each-other, etc. They're not "in charge", they're just the loudest voices in the room.
And they're doing startlingly well in their attempts...
sounds like a conspiracy theory
Remember that democracy is not something done to you. It is something you do.
The Green Party in my country is blocking the development of green alternatives to the industry that is one of the highest emitters of greenhouse gasses and various other pollutants (there's a reason most of our rivers are no longer safe to swim in and the levels of certain cancer-causing compounds are 10-100x the EU safe limit in some areas' water supplies), while private corporations and the main right-wing party are pushing for their legalisation.
A certain local indigenous group (which is technically a registered corporation) doesn't really like people mentioning the fact that they're currently driving an endangered native animal extinct by turning the only area they inhabit into dairy farms.
Also most of the politicians in this country are liars and/or sociopaths, but that kinda goes without saying lol
Might as well name your country?
New Zealand!
Until you said that I thought you might be talking about Canada.
But you're not from lemmy.nz 🤔
I just kinda liked beehaw when I was first switching to lemmy - was one of the first few people to join the Te Wai Pounamu community when it initially got started a few months back though!
🤣
"You will own nothing. And you will be happy"
That's a line from a piece of creative writing, not s conspiracy theory
A piece of creative writing presented at the WEF and baldly stating the goal of agenda 2030.
It's not the goal of agenda 2030. You can read it online here:
https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda
There's nothing nefarious about it. For some reason conspiracy loons have latched onto it and think it says things that it doesn't say.
Can you please point me to the WEF stating it's their goal? Like any line or paragraph of text which says that?
Everything I've read with the WEF taking about the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development is about very easy to agree on goals like ending poverty, hunger, giving access to health care and education, clean water and sanitation, affordable clean energy, decent work and economic growth, innovation industry and infrastructure, sustainability, responsible consumption, climate action, ecological protections, peace, justice, and equality.
They don't seem to have any aim of ending personal or private property, rent seeking corporations like Adobe and BMW would love you to pay them endless and ever increasing subscriptions but that's nothing to do with the WEF.
Then why is everything I own actually owned by a bank?
So you mean like you borrowed money to buy things and haven't finished paying it back yet? If so then that's your answer I guess.
Celestial Seasonings tea and Shen Yun both have ties to cults. With Celestial Seasonings the cult that founded it no longer own or profit off it thankfully, but their tea is shit so I still don't recommend buying it.
Shen Yun doesn't hide it. Their show is all about Falun Gong. Although they don't advertise it as such. Went to one of their shows with my wife and mother thinking it would just be about Chinese artistic culture and then BAM - Two hour long Falun Gong propaganda piece.
Isn't that show expensive or am I thinking of something else?
Ticket prices are about mid-range relative to other live performance shows in the same category, $100-$200 depending on seating.
Wife and I saw Hamilton recently and tickets were $300 each, for example.
I mean they post posters up in every Chinese food restaurant within a major metropolitan area, I wasn't expecting it to be anywhere near Hamilton or even regular theater pricing off that odd advertisement technique...
Oneida cutlery too. The cult died, the cutlery survived.
I've seen a UFO while I was truck driving. Most amazing thing I have seen to date.
Edit: On the night of the Dec 11th 2020 at 9:30ish I had stopped for the night to sleep whiledriving towards Colorado on I25 in New Mexico. I had stopped at a truck parking area maybe 10 miles away from Old Sunshine gas station and parking area. I was gazing at the stars and milkyway and enjoying the lack of light pollution when I witnessed it. Where the sky had previously been black and full of stars a blue light appeared for 10 or so seconds and then shot directly upward in an ice blue streak. At first I didn't think anything of it until it moved incredibly fast straight up. It was instantaneous. I used to be ing the Air Force so I have seen all kinds of Arial vehicles. Never seen anything like this.
I couldn't find a mile marker but the coordinates are "35.3965167, -105.4138241".
Would you care to elaborate internet friend?
I added the event to my original post.
We all see unidentified objects all the time. Most of us don't make a big deal about not being able to identify something though.
I drove by a house in my neighborhood. There was a pure white van, no windows, license was VAN 3. A man was walking towards the van dressed in white coveralls and gloves.
As I passed, I stared at him. He stared at me with cold murderers eyes. I've seen that look twice before and both guys turned out to be murderers.
Sounds like you have more stories to tell.
VAN3 relative begs to differ
Sounds like you passed a painter who works at a company with at least two other vans. I thought painters only wearing white was an old time movie thing, but the one we hired wore all white. His van AND trailer were white too. Normal eyes tho, didn't murder us.
Wouldn't a company that bothered to get vanity plates for their van put a logo on it?
I saw something weird like that in Portland once...
This was almost 10 years back, but it's still fairly vivid in my mind due to the apparent mysteriousness of the sighting.
It was a weekday morning, probably around 8, and I was driving home after my regular shift at the mortuary. There was a man walking on the sidewalk of a busy street in an upper-middle class neighborhood. He kinda stuck out because his outfit looked to be of high quality, expensive pieces, which kind of drew the eye, yet he also looked like a straight up Bond villain, with black pants, a black, leather, car coat type jacket, rolled-up stocking cap, and leather gloves, all topped off with Eastern European features on a serious looking face. He was also carrying full-size bolt cutters, which were tucked upwards under one arm, like he was trying to casually conceal them and hope no one noticed.
I obviously don't know why he was carrying bolt cutters down the street like that, but I figured parking sucks in PDX, and maybe he got stuck with a shitty spot around the block from where he was either delivering a much-need tool to a friend in a pinch or doing a B&E while hunting Jason Bourne.
I only saw him for about 10 seconds as I slowly passed by while driving and, ever since, he pops back up in my mind from time to time and frustrates my thoughts with a lack of closure as to what he was actually getting up to that morning.
If been in courses and workshops where people from the government party in my country teach people how to use twitter, specifically to boost the president and ministers posts. So they were training real people to act as bots and generate artificial engagement.
Also they are 100% using bots, and when bot accounts are removed they loose followers and claim that "imperialistic social media want to censor us".
Shills? Yeah I think that's a common accusation.
Media has been using nonviolence as a propaganda tool to quash rebellions and silence dissent in the U.S. for decades.
Think about it: almost every single story you ever see across all media that has the heroes using violence in a positive light, especially revenge content, will always portray that character's actions as a negative even when objectively they are not. They always look to the same playbook of cliched arguments, one-liners, and tropes to do this. They are all oversimplified caricatures of or misrepresentations of nonviolence, violence, and revenge, justice, forgiveness, etc. A lot are just outright lies or ad-homs.
It's even departmental policy in some companies to force writers to write their scripts in such a manner.
The only director I've ever seen rebel against it is Quentin Tarantino and I don't think he has been doing it deliberately.
It's definitely more complicated than this. A fundamental premise of enlightenment democracy is the establishment of a framework for the mediation of political power without the need for violence. So that ideal of nonviolence goes back much farther than both the US or the fourth estate, and it can be argued that it is actually a starting point for much of the modern world's political philosophy.
But in general, it doesn't take a ton of thought to imagine why cycles of political violence are unsustainable and unproductive. If violence becomes a primary form of political expression, then you will simply have every different group trying their hand. This is why we prescribe the state with a monopoly on violence - a principle even older than democracy.
That isn't to say that violence is never just. Ironically, contemporary existentialism tackles this issue pretty nicely by establishing some imperatives which revolve around the relationship between oppressor and oppressed. Primary among them is the acknowledgement that the most sustainable and desirable form of change is done through conversation with the oppressor (as in liberal democracy), and that anyone who rejects this imperative acts in bad faith, just as the oppressor does when they refuse to treat.
Simply put, to engage in violence is to ordain yourself the oppressor, and understanding the heavy implications of this action is critical to just violence. De Beauvoir argues that idealism is therefore one critical aspect of justice in all forms, as it seeks, by nature, to preserve transcendent humanity in others. And this is the ambiguity of the freedom fighter - the classic dialectical struggle will always reduce itself to mystification because ideals are not fixed like the flesh, against which violence acts. Therefore, while violence can be just, it cannot be justice, because it does not directly serve any ideal. As such, our morality must be "opposed to the totalitarian doctrines which raise up beyond man the mirage of Mankind" and "freedom can only be achieved through the freedom of others."
I'm talking specifically about modern media which is very plainly obviously propaganizing itself with the agenda I laid down. It's so obvious it's hard not to notice. Older media wasn't like that; there were anti-revenge stories back in the day but most were neutral or pro, and that only changed in like the mid 20th century when, for whatever dumbass reason, Hollywood and U.S. media in general decided to do this.
You don't even usually see it in other countries, though there are outliers like Hayao Miyazaki though that's easily chalked up to WW2 and how that war completely ratfucked Japan (and given what their government did, was well-deserved and a minority of their people like him knew it ...)
Oh, I get it. You're just one of those types out here defending it. 😕
No, I'm literally quoting a very well known, in depth discussion of the issue from Ethics of Ambiguity
Actually no, what you're doing is taking a specific claim about media exploiting nonviolence and using it as propaganda, to proselytize nonviolence itself, using an old book.
If what I am saying isn't true, why would you feel the need to do that?
Also, why would it even matter how old nonviolence is? I said media et al. is using nonviolence, not that they invented it.
Why are you assuming they're arguing in bad faith?
The age of the book is irrelevant, the philosophical ideas are still worth engaging with, even if you don't agree with them
Because of the fact he went off topic to proselytize, for one.
That and I have dealt with many of his ilk in my life. The reason why he did that is because he, like all of his kind, are fundamentally insecure in their position of moral and intellectual dominance over American discourse, and they fear anyone challenging or questioning their behavior. It's why so many social media sites ban such talk as mine under inciting violence, because it's an unspoken paradigm that's taboo to challenge in our culture. I saw it happen on Reddit all the time.
What he's really hankering after is to stop anybody else thinking about it or challenging nonviolence. It's how people like that operate. They don't care about the common man.
It's weird as fuck that they do this but it's true. You actually can get banned from Facebook or Reddit just from talking about violence in a philosophical light unlesss you're opposing it, and fuck your so-called freedom of speech in the process.
And whenever you do anyway, someone like him always slinks around to pander from what really comes off as a sales script. The same old tired arguments, most of them from movies or games because those are the means by which the media indoctrinates people with those beliefs.
If you don't believe me, try it.
I can't say I got that impression from them to be honest. Feels like you have assumed a lot from a couple of comments (though I totally get being jaded after a while of seeing the same kind of thing).
I think this could be a really interesting thing to explore both sides of the argument as I do think you have a point. Just seems like you're both interpreting it differently in terms of tone (which I guess fits in a way, given your stances)
There has to be an instance where it's possible to do it without risking being banned. I'm surprised the mods here didn't delete anything I said yet.
The media is very much establishment. So, even liberal media is old and establishment liberal. Old and establishment liberal are the kinds of people who tend to trade power with the old and established conservatives. (Or, at least they did until the establishment conservatives went nuts and went Tea Party then Trump.)
If you can expect to regularly get power every few years, there's no reason to take radical action.
As for Hollywood, it's even more conservative than most media. They want to make movies that appeal to audiences worldwide. They don't want to challenge their audiences, or offend them. They just want their money.
🤔🤔🤔
There has to be something we can do. What they did prevented Americans from overthrowing their government when they should have, leading to tyranny and the destabilization of the U.S. Perhaps if we created new franchises that opposed and refuted their paradigm, we could help our people move on from their awful garbage.
Are you familiar with revenge porn like Taken? I think your argument falls flat, because on one side there are tons of movies where problems are solved by violence and the hero still comes out looking good. And on the other side promoting violence is not viable long-term for any society that doesn't want to drown in murder and self-justice.
I saw UFO's. I don't want to believe in aliens, but I witnessed it when I was with a pretty big group of friends and we all remember it and none of us have a better explanation. The people who saw it first were outside smoking pot, the rest of us didn't believe them until we went outside and saw it ourselves. I was sober that night fwiw. We tried recording it but no one's phone had good enough dark recording to pick up anything, and no one had a real camera on hand. The flight style didn't match any craft any of us knew of - it was an array of lights that moved together, and then separated into smaller groups, and eventually individually. They moved unnaturally, with near-instant acceleration, deceleration, and extreme direction changes. It was too high up to be likely to be drones or helicopters, and right above a major Canadian city, not near any military base. If this was, like, Nevada or something, I would assume it was a government test craft. The closest match I've ever heard was in an interview with a pilot who saw UFO's, and that scared the shit out of me. I'd love to find a non alien explanation, because I don't want to believe and also I know it sounds crazy. Like, I myself probably wouldn't believe someone else telling me this story.
You know, UFO's are unidentifiable flying objects. So, any obscure flying objects is an UFO...
Rarely I'll get a feeling that someone is going to die. The feeling hasn't been wrong yet. It's not like within 5 minutes but like this person is going to die this year. I've been wanting to call it confirmation bias but I've not gotten the feeling and has someone live for over a year.
How often did you get it?
Freak accidents? Or health?
It's not so much what I witnessed but what I didn't witness. For a short amount of time, I used to live in an area of the world that gets a lot of coverage for the absolute wrong reasons. What kind of stuff did I see there? Absolutely nothing of notoriety.
Could you tell us where?
I was sleeping one night about 16/17 years ago and heard something that I could only describe as a UFO. I didn't get a chance to look out my window, but I heard this rapidly pulsating droning sound VERY close to the roof, as if it was tracking me. I heard it fly overhead where my bed was, and it paused for a few seconds, but the sound could still be heard.
Probably lasted for about 10 seconds before it rapidly flew off. I've never heard anything in my life that sounds anything like this; it gives me the chills just remembering what I heard that night!
I was scared completely shitless.
Could that be Exploding head syndrome?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome
Wow. I have this. Sometimes on the cusp of sleep there's a loud, metallic buzzing sound that scares the crap out of me. No light though
I have had this one time when I was very little. Around 6 or 7 years old or so, but I remember it very clearly. For me, it was like a gunshot went off right next to my head only a couple minutes after I fell asleep. I remember jolting awake and asking my brother and mother what it was, but they had no idea what I was talking about. Maybe some people have different experiences, but mine couldn't be mistaken for a UFO sound.
I had this but to me I saw a bright flash of light and heard a universe tearing type of noise. I immediately jolted awake and went to my window because I thought something exploded outside. Every animal in my house was undisturbed and sleeping and my entire family heard nothing.
It's only happened once in my life, but I didn't have any visual flashes or anything of the sort, just the sound.
I was a bartender in Virginia when Andrew Youngkin was running for governor. He had a secret panel of businessmen gather together in a private room that I happen to be serving drinks in. A "circle of trust" as they called it where all the donors to his campaign told Youngkin what they demanded from him if he won.
Alien bodies in Peru.