General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Context and the Assange case. [View all]AikidoSoul
(2,150 posts)on DU to enjoy the company and intelligence of those who are worthy of respect.
I was glad to see that some of the more respected DUers did come to your thread to support you by making cogent remarks.
The Assange story is a very important one. I was happy to participate.
I'm worried about Assange's future. To me he is a hero, but doubt that enough people will understand his significance in our lifetime to give him the supreme reward of being vindicated for educating the public so that we can take appropriate steps to right the wrongs that continue...and in fact are getting worse each day.
Your comments about the devolution of DU are on target. I lurked here for awhile and it seemed OK to start posting things, but I frankly have been horrified at the responses I get to many of my threads. And since it happens repeatedly I have often shied away from starting threads on DU. It seems that the same DUers show up everytime I write about toxic injury -- a topic that I know well. DU has a bad reputation for being a forum where scientific discussions devolve into shallow, uneducated attacks with very little valid documentation.
There is adequate evidence that many posters are paid by groups and corporations to create controversy about topics that if the truth is known, would cost them a lot of $$. The paid posters create "Google Alerts" with key words which instantly surface in their emails so they can immediately go on the attack. There are plenty of Liars for Hire funded by chem/pharm. Many of them are scientists. Even chairs of universities' and their departments are funded heavily and kept in line by wealthy corporations. I only liason with independent researchers and scientists who are horrified at what is happening to our brains, DNA, behavior, etc.
When I do post something about toxic injury I've noticed that ugly comments surface within a couple of minutes. Usually it's a short sentence or two denigrating the post with ugly, frivilous comments. Unfortunately, when other DUers see the first four or five petty attacks, most of them just back off and the post dies a quiet death probably because it just looks so ugly and un-appealing. If they didn't shy away and stayed to fight the battle, it would perhaps help to keep the Witchfinders at bay.
I wish there were more people who are educated about toxic injury. Toxic injury is one of the main reasons why people are so incredibly stupid in the USA. Recently I posted an important international study documenting the fact that citizens of the US have nearly four hundred times as many early onset dementia deaths as other countries. There are good reasons for that. Ubiquitous neurotoxins reduce IQ. That has been repeatedly proven scientifically. But like lemmings, despite the scientific revelations, we continue to bombard ourselves with neurotoxic chemicals in almost everything we touch, eat, wear and breathe! Europe will not allow approximately 30,000 of the nearly 90,000 synthetic chemicals in the market. The U.S. has no such restrictions.
I pray that Bernie gets some real security soon. I'm uneasy about looking to one person (along with Elizabeth Warren and a few others) to lead us into a different direction, but in my lifetime Bernie is the only presidential candidate that seems to understand and articulate the enormous problems that we now face. I give Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, Bobby Kennedy and Jack Kennedy and others who made it to the top leadership a lot of credit for doing much to make the world a better place. But it's a much more dangerous time now and the challenges are much more dangerous. What is good and different I think is that many more of us know how we got where we are, and the tactics used to rig the system. So while we have an awful lot of dumbasses in our midst, at least the information is more available now than ever before. If you have a decent IQ and are capable of critical and lateral thinking... the political/economic realities come into sharper focus.
I know you are not religious, and while I was raised a Catholic and went to parochial schools -- I never felt much in the way of admiration for Catholic religious leaders with the exception of those who died in Central America trying to find justice for the poor and afflicted. But now there is Pope Francis, and he has teamed up with Naoimi Klein in an effort to create a palatable message about the urgency of doing something about climate change. That excites me greatly. Francis is the only pope I've ever seen in my lifetime who represents the teachings of Christ by doing his best to emulate His behavior. This of course, as you already know, can be boiled down to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
Thank you very much for doing the work that you do. When I can, I wil join in to offer support to keep the discussion going. I think you have valuable contributions to make to our often frustrating discussion forum.