‘We must make war more acceptable’: MOD urged to make repatriation ceremonies low-key and use more drones, SAS and mercenaries to reduce ‘body bag syndrome’

The report also recommends the increased us of drones to reduce casualties

Repatriation ceremonies for the remains of dead soldiers should have a lower profile in order to make war more palatable to the British public, according to a report for the Ministry of Defence.

It examines how to sway ‘casualty averse’ public opinion, a situation commonly known as ‘body bag syndrome’, and was published by the MoD’s strategy formulation unit.

The document suggests that the MoD should ‘reduce the profile of the repatriation ceremonies’ where coffins carrying deceased soldiers are brought back to UK bases such as RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.

It discusses ways to ‘reduce public sensitivity’ and methods of explaining that ‘risks are knowingly and willingly undertaken’ by armed forces personnel.

 

Suggestions included making greater use of the SAS and other special forces, as well as mercenaries, because it claims losses sustained by the elite soldiers and hired guns do not have the same impact on the public and press.

‘Neither the media nor the public in the west appear to identify with contractors in the way that they do with their military personnel. Thus casualties from within the contractorised force are more acceptable in pursuit of military ends than those from among our own forces.’

It added: ‘The public appear to have a more robust attitude to SF [special forces] losses.’

Reassurances are made in the paper that the British public may not be as ‘risk-averse’ as they appear, and suggests this is ‘based on recent, post-2000 experience’.

‘Historically, once the public are convinced that they have a stake in the conflict they are prepared to endorse military risks and will accept casualties as the necessary consequence of the use of military force,’ it says.

The report adds: ‘The public have become better informed and our opponents more sophisticated in the exploitation of the sources of information with the net result that convincing the nation of the need to run military risks has become more difficult but no less essential.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2434435/Ministry-Defence-urged-make-repatriation-ceremonies-low-key-reduce-body-bag-syndrome.html

Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of Plastic

Very sad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D41rO7mL6zM&feature=youtu.be&utm_content=buffer3dbac&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Buffer

21CenturyWire: Dawn of Singularity: ‘Superheroes of Science’ Insane Plan to Rescue Humanity From Itself

They cultivate a fear-based science masquerading as progress, administered by a class of detached super-nerds who are afraid to confront complex human conditions, and unwilling to confront the destructive debt-based system of enslavement – leads us to their version of the future. And it’s not a pretty picture.

In depth analysis by Activist Post breaks down the main archetypes in the bland futurist dreamscape of the future…

Nicholas West
Activist Post

Discussion of the “Singularity” — the moment when computer intelligence surpasses that of humans to such an extent that humans become practically redundant — has been gaining steam across the social spectrum. In 2006, Ray Kurzweil pointed to 2045 as the date of this tipping point, after which anyone unprepared for merging with machines would likely face a very unproductive future.

With the exponential rise of automation, and the announcement that Moore’s Law could lapse within 10 years, the tipping point might already be upon us, with The Singularity arriving as soon as 2029.

With the goals of transhumanists and futurists so close to full realization, the world’s leading scientists are beginning to voice their concern that general humanity might not comprehend the full weight of their discoveries. Scientists like Steven Hawking have formed a group of “scientific superheroes” who supposedly aim to ensure that humanity does not choose the lethal side of the double-edged sword of technology. Let’s see what they are planning to do to save humanity from itself at the dawn of The Singularity.

Our current position as we head toward The Singularity is being called The Hybrid Age by futurists, as discussed in the candid video below. It is an increasingly synthetic age of bio-computing, enhanced artificial intelligence and the merging of man and machine through augmented reality. Also stated below is the increasing indication that humanity is not the only biology susceptible to The Singularity; nature, too — the climate, for example — will be increasingly manageable and augmented.

The power available is a God-like one, giving us the divergent paths of Heaven or Hell. One slide from the presentation issues this stark assessment about the potential outcomes.

“Heaven”

• Re-make the planet (geo-engineering)
• Create new life (and new lifeforms)
• Re-engineer humanity (values and essence)
• Abundance and plenty for all (mastery over energy and material transformation)
• Super-intelligence (omniscience)
• Super-longevity (death as a disease to be cured, immortality)
• Better than well
• Transcendental experiences 
• “The cosmos wakes up” (as a new humanity moves off planet)

“Hell”

• Destroy the planet
• Plagues and pestilence (arising from genetic engineering)
• Enfeeble and divide humanity (as new technological divisions arise)
• Environmental catastrophe 
• Ubiquitous surveillance 
• Super-dictatorship
• Worse than the Dark Ages
• Nuclear holocaust (enabled by new weaponry)
• “Terminator enslavement” (artificial intelligence decides that humanity itself is the risk)

Read the full article here including video alongside this article

Dawn of Singularity: ‘Superheroes of Science’ Insane Plan to Rescue Humanity From Itself

Easter Island’s moai statues face environmental threat

If you have always been intrigued by the mysterious moai – the giant stone statues of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island – and they are on your must-do list, do not delay.

Seven moai of Au Akivi [Credit: ABC/Greg Wilesmith]

Make your way, whenever you can, to this small, rocky, triangular-shaped and extremely isolated island in the South Pacific, 9,354 kilometres due east of Brisbane.

“These objects are very friable, they’re fragile, they’re not going to last forever,” Dr Jo Anne Van Tilburg, an American archaeologist who has been studying the moai for 30 years, says.

Dr Van Tilburg’s co-director at the Easter Island Statue Project, Cristian Arevalo Pakarati, says there is evidence time is running out.

“I’ve been seeing already in 27 years statues being degraded to the ground,” he said. “It’s melted to the ground. It’s soil now. It’s not a statue anymore.”

Rapa Nui, a colonial possession of Chile, is particularly open to severe weather.

“We have the rain, we have the strong wind, we have these extreme temperatures in summer and winter where, for example, the statue would be exposed to the sun for eight hours with a very strong heat and then suddenly a cloud would appear,” Mr Pakarati says. 

“You can imagine the reaction of dropping (water) onto a very hot surface, so that would provoke a lot of breaking, microscopic breaking at that point, little by little on the surface of the stone.”

Dr Van Tilburg says the threat to the moai is very serious.

“We have a database that we can go back and look at the pictures of the statues whenever we feel like it over the years, and we can see when we visit them in the field that they don’t look the same,” she said. 

“Details are gone. But they live in Cristian’s drawings, they live in our photographs, they live in our biographies, our records.”

Scientists track weather patterns to find cause of erosion

Dr Van Tilburg and Mr Pakarati have documented and mapped every moai on Rapa Nui – all 1,045 of them.

The classic Easter Island profile [Credit: ABC/Greg Wilesmith]

Their current focus is moai 156, which they have been excavating in the inner crater of the extinct Rano Raraku volcano.

A small weather station has been erected in front of it.

“We’re monitoring the ambient temperature, the rainfall, the sun, the temperature, the wind direction, the wind velocity, all of these things,” Dr Van Tilburg says. 

“And at the end of a five-year period, when we complete our work in this, in this particular quarry, we’ll be able to report what we know is attacking the statue.”

Since the oldest moai may date back as far as 900 years, it is perhaps not surprising that some have not aged well.

Many of those that were erected on ceremonial platforms, known as ahu, and closest to the coast, are quite battered.

The definition of elongated ears, deep set eyes, long hands fashioned into wings and heads have been eroded or in some cases obliterated.

Equally, though, some statues, made of the hardest rock and in sheltered locations, remain in good shape. Some stand tall in dramatic locations, others are leaning over or lying back in the grass as though enjoying a siesta in the sun.

A significant number no longer stand, having either fallen or possibly been pushed over in the tumult of clan warfare. Face plants are common, particularly alongside the paths on which the multi-tonne monoliths were being transported to pre-determined locations.

http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/easter-islands-moai-statues-face.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheArchaeologyNewsNetwork+%28The+Archaeology+News+Network%29#.UkNoURC8A5c

Zeitgeist Versus the Market – Peter Joseph Debates Stefan Molyneux

Zeitgeist Versus the Market – Peter Joseph Debates Stefan Molyneux
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUtv5E6CkLE

Just sharing with you my thought current and what seems to be ever lasting research as regards anarchism, my long time investigation into an ideal system one such system Peter Joseph is also seeking and apparently arrived upon A (not thee) solution.
Here, Stefan Molyneux debates Peter Joseph of the Zeitgeist Movement on the nature and reality of the free market system.

For more information on Peter Joseph, The Zeitgeist Movement and the Culture In Decline series, please visit: http://www.peterjoseph.info – http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com – http://www.cultureindecline.com

Kenyan Terror Attack Designed to Open Up New ‘War on Terror’ Front in East Africa

OK. Everyone open up their textbooks to Chapter 11, entitled ‘Hegelian Fundamentals’. In paragraph one we find, Suitable Problem, Reaction, Solution Narratives. I know we’ve covered this before, but as you’ve figured out by now, this blunt technique is still a heavily favoured operational plan for the real global engineers of terror…

The latest epic terror siege and fire fight has taken place in Nairobi, Kenya this week, with scores shot dead, taken hostage, and speculation as to who did it, and most importantly – who planned it. Western media is currently profiling various “terror masterminds” possibly behind this latest horrible attack. Indeed, it was senseless, and it was horrific. But who did it – and why, is where your focus should really be.

The narrative is already set by US mainstream media: “Africa’s 9/11″, or “Africa’s 7/7″. You know it’s time to put on your fire suit when you read this type of rhetoric gushing out of an orifice of the US mainstream press:

“As on 9/11, terrorists are waging a war on our modern, democratic way of life. Today, we are all Kenyans.”

“The Nairobi shopping mall attack is heartbreaking. The stories could so easily be American stories.”

And what could possibly tug at the heart-strings of the American subconsciousness than the center of culture – the shopping mall? Moreover, what could possibly provide an international distraction to US President Barack Obama epic fail in getting his war on in Syria, than a giant terror event in his own Vaterland in Kenya?….

Kenyan Terror Attack Designed to Open Up New ‘War on Terror’ Front in East Africa

Announcement!

To anyone who used follow my blog,

I’m not really one to keep a hobby like blogging going all the time, it take a lot of dedication to write daily or weekly and put something original out there in the public domain. I admire everyone who can keep the dedication needed. Over the past few months I’ve either been working or researching subjects that I wish to share with you in the near future.

I’m going to revamp my blog and make the ‘news’ section more prevalent, I’ve brought a mic so now I’m going to make some short video’s breaking down my research and personal thoughts on a particular subject. My aim is to make at least one video a week and upload at least one news story a day onto the blog.

I set up a facebook page for this blog and if enough followers wish to like the page I’ll re-post each article onto the page so you don’t miss the latest updates. Unfortunately I don’t have time for every social media outlet so I’ll stick with blogging and facebook for now.

Have a great day