May 19, 2013

The Skepchick 12 Steps

Posted by franc hoggle under cranks, cults, drugs, education, new new atheism, pseudo-science | Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
[3] Comments 
serenity_prayer

The Skepchick Serenity Prayer – click to embiggen

A twelve-step program is a set of guiding principles (accepted by members as ‘spiritual principles,’ based on the approved literature) outlining a course of action for recovery from addiction, compulsion, or other behavioral problems. Originally proposed by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) as a method of recovery from alcoholism, the Twelve Steps were first published in the book Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism in 1939. The method was then adapted and became the foundation of other twelve-step programs. — the cesspit of lies

Powerlessness, Twelve-Stepism, and the Siege Mentality

    “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.”

The idea that he is powerless over alcohol lets the user off the hook by absolving him from personal responsibility for his addiction while simultaneously granting ultimate power to the addiction itself, power so great as to be invincible by human standards. (more…)

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March 14, 2013

The Threat Narrative

Posted by franc hoggle under gender, media, misandry, populism, propaganda | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
[4] Comments 

I always feel humbled by great examples of atyphia – where precision clarity is expressed in it’s most concise and simple form. Typhon Blue (also) explains in just over three and a half minutes what I have squandered untold thousands of words on.

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threat_framers

 

March 13, 2013

Ophelia Benson – It’s Not Link Whoring When I Do It

Posted by franc hoggle under disinformation, hyperreality, misandry, new new atheism, propaganda, pseudo-skepticism, puritanism, yellow journalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
[18] Comments 
ophelia_depends

Has Ophie ever done *anything* of value *anywhere*?

link whoring – (Internet, idiomatic) The practice of going out of one’s way to place links to one’s website on someone else’s webpage.

21 Ways to legally steal traffic to your blog from the big boys –

#3. Rant Aloud: Ranting to steal traffic legally is a great way you should go if you desperately need traffic to your blog site. Here, you go to where the sites you need are. All you need to do here is to rant…

Let’s face it – blatant link whoring is a vile practice, probably as old as spam itself (and it is, in effect, little more than spam). Many of us, at one time or another, have experienced spikes in blood pressure from repeat infringements by its more shameless abusers. (more…)

 

February 14, 2013

The Thought Terminating Cliche

Posted by franc hoggle under cranks, cults, disinformation, fascism, gender, hyperreality, Jacobins, misandry, new new atheism, nihilism, nonsense, populism, propaganda, pseudo-skepticism, puritanism, shrieking hysteria, stupidity, toilet slaves, yellow journalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
[6] Comments 
150px-Thought_Reform_Lifton

Cesspit of lies link

I’m going to pull an Ophelia Benson and just do a block text dump, add a line or two and pretend I’m a huge intellectual.

Loading the Language

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliche. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. In thought reform, for instance, the phrase “bourgeois mentality” is used to encompass and critically dismiss ordinarily troublesome concerns like the quest for individual expression, the exploration of alternative ideas, and the search for perspective and balance in political judgments. And in addition to their function as interpretive shortcuts, these cliches become what Richard Weaver has called “ultimate terms”: either “god terms,” representative of ultimate good; or “devil terms,” representative of ultimate evil. In thought reform, “progress,” “progressive,” “liberation,” “proletarian standpoints” and “the dialectic of history” fall into the former category; “capitalist,” “imperialist,” “exploiting classes,” and “bourgeois” (mentality, liberalism, morality, superstition, greed) of course fall into the latter. Totalist language, then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull: in Lionel Trilling’s phrase, “the language of nonthought.” (more…)

 

January 22, 2013

The Art Of Fearmongering

Posted by franc hoggle under conspiracists, cranks, cults, disinformation, hyperreality, Jacobins, misandry, moral panic, new new atheism, nihilism, populism, propaganda, pseudo-skepticism, shrieking hysteria, terrorism, yellow journalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
[10] Comments 
Ophelia Benson: "THIS is all YOUR fault!"

Ophelia Benson learns a new big word – stochastic

Blood libel (also blood accusation[1][2]) is a false accusation or claim[3][4][5] that religious minorities, usually Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays.[1][2][6] Historically, these claims—alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration—have been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.[4]

Blood libels typically allege that Jews require human blood for the baking of matzos for Passover, although this element was absent in the earliest cases that claimed (the contemporary) Jews reenacted the crucifixion. The accusations often assert that the blood of Christian children is especially coveted, and, historically, blood libel claims have been made to account for otherwise unexplained deaths of children. In some cases, the alleged victim of human sacrifice has become venerated as a martyr, a holy figure around whom a martyr cult might arise. Four of these have been previously canonized as saints, namely William of Norwich, Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, Simon of Trent (Simon was decanonized[7] in the 20th century), and Gavriil Belostoksky who remains canonized in the Russian Orthodox Church. — the Cesspit of Lies (more…)

 

January 20, 2013

Does Ed Brayton Realise How Stupid He Sounds?

Posted by franc hoggle under disinformation, hyperreality, new new atheism, propaganda, pseudo-skepticism, toilet slaves, yellow journalism | Tags: , , , |
[7] Comments 
southpark_wow2

“Thanks for the ‘heart surgery’ donations! LOL!!! What a bunch of chumps. But the ribs were delicious”1

Almost certainly. And given the median intellect of the knuckle-draggers that read him, it’s not an issue.

After close to a year of shadowy insinuation about Michael Shermer being some kind of monstrous misogynist and sexual predator, freefromthoughtblogs has now clicked into full gear and is openly demonising him. To the surprise of nobody.

The flag to release the hounds came when Shermer responded to a series of stock standard FfTB smears and misrepresentations directed at him by Ophelia “the prune that talks” Benson -

Nontheism and Feminism: Why the Disconnect?

At the time of writing, that article is offline, but the cache copy can be seen here.

This is more of the same quote mined gibberish that Benson barfs up on a daily basis – “context” is evidently a tool of patriarchal oppression which can be dismissed and reality is best defined by the cultural Marxist practice of selective editing and imbuing meaning to what they really said through the filter of guilt by association and social demographic. (more…)

 

January 17, 2013

The Face Of US Skepticism – Blocked By CFI

Posted by franc hoggle under disinformation, ethics, hyperreality, Jacobins, misandry, new new atheism, propaganda, pseudo-skepticism, toilet slaves, yellow journalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
[21] Comments 
cfi_blocked

How CFI deals with criticism under CEO Ronald A. Lindsay

There was I time when I would be surprised by this. That time is long gone. (more…)

 

January 15, 2013

Kicking 2012′s Carcass Out The Door, And Maybe CFI’s Too

Posted by franc hoggle under censorship, disinformation, gender, hyperreality, idiocy, Jacobins, misandry, moral panic, new new atheism, nihilism, populism, propaganda, pseudo-skepticism, yellow journalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
[27] Comments 
CfI-Logo

The Center for Ideology

Let me paint a landscape for you as 2012 ceased to be…

On November 12 2012, Russel Blackford, in a rare moment of absolute exasperation, tweeted what most folks actually feel, but restrain themselves from articulating -

I will NOT be attending any convention / conference that features Rebecca Watson as a speaker. What were the Australian Skeptics thinking? smh

— Russell Blackford (@Metamagician) November 12, 2012

dilbert_ignorance

dilbert.com

On November 10, Rebecca Watson took her very own brand of air-headed cluelessness to new heights in a talk at Skepticon 5, dragging evolutionary psychology through the mud as some kind of tool of patriarchal oppression. Whether Blackford’s tweet was a direct result of this exhibit of buffoonery or not is not known, but doesn’t seem likely given the video was not posted until November 20. If by some chance it did, it only vindicates Blackford’s outburst as Watson now consistently paints a picture of skeptics and atheists to the outside world as a bunch of ill-educated, poorly read, perpetually squabbling clowns. Remember Galileo Becky? No, that was not an excusable “slip up” – it’s basic junior high school level history/science knowledge. It reeked of the pig ignorance of a stupid girl-child that fills her vast expanses of idle time between booze ups playing video games and tweeting snark instead self-education – the latter being what many folks would assume came as a minimum responsibility for someone that feeds at the teat of the community and claims to represent it. (more…)

 

January 13, 2013

A desperate plea from an ex-muslim [external content]

Posted by franc hoggle under atheism, islam, media, middle east, politics, theocracy | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

“In despair I decided to make this video and I know almost no one will listen.”

– Aly Aly at the conclusion of the video

Well, we’ll see about that. I’m just going to leave your words as they are. They say all that needs saying -

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Direct video link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8LaNTrLeKU

References / links -

  • Aly Aly’s Youtube channel -

https://www.youtube.com/user/alyraly

(more…)

 

January 13, 2013

Adam Lee – The Toady’s Toady

Posted by franc hoggle under disinformation, ethics, fascism, hyperreality, Jacobins, misandry, new new atheism, propaganda, pseudo-skepticism, toilet slaves, yellow journalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |
[5] Comments 
wormtongue

Wormtongue – what Adam Lee hates seeing in the mirror

When you look at the whole menagerie of A+, freefromthoughtblogs and Skepchick and the various toilet slaves, snake oil peddlers, shills, frauds and confidence tricksters that squirm around it like maggots in carrion, it is a daunting task to try and determine which is the most obsequious toady of the lot.

I think that title has to belong to Adam Lee / DaylightAtheism though. He’s come from nowhere in the last few months, but with sheer bloody minded determination has made even yay-yap slugs like oolon look like ethical pillars of independent thinking, dignity and self-respect.

Adam’s first claim to fame was the glossy, clinically fact-free, propaganda advertorial he managed to inject into Salon – and leave a sour taste in many people’s mouths that Salon too can be consigned to the pile of online media portals that have “editorial integrity” as a marketing buzzword and not something that they actually waste any time on practising. (more…)

 

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