Entries by Jan

Henry Louis Mencken | And what is a good citizen?

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"And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps."

Henry Louis Mencken

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky | It is curious to note too

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"It is curious to note too, that most of the bodies (Secret societies) which work these (sacred rites), such as the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Rite of Avignon, the Order of the Temple, Fesslors Rite, the Grand Council of the Emperors of the East and West, Sovereign Princes (of) Masons, etc, etc, are nearly all the 'offspring' of the Son's (Jesuits) of Ignatius Loyola. The Baron Hundt, Chevalier Ramsey, Tschoudy, Zinnendorf, and numerous others, who founded the 'grades' in these rites, worked under instructions from the General of the Jesuits."

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Frantz Fanon | Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong

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"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief."

Frantz Fanon

Baron Arthur Ponsonby | 10 principles of war propaganda

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Wir wollen den Krieg nicht
Das gegnerische Lager trägt die Verantwortung
Der Führer des Gegners ist ein Teufel
Wir kämpfen für eine gute Sache
Der Gegner kämpft mit unerlaubten Waffen
Der Gegner begeht mit Absicht Grausamkeiten, wir nur versehentlich
Unsere Verluste sind gering, die des Gegners enorm
Künstler und Intellektuellen unterstützen unsere Sache
Unsere Mission ist heilig
Wer unsere Berichterstattung in Zweifel zieht, ist ein Verräter.

Neil Armstrong | We leave you much that is undone

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"We leave you much that is undone. There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers. There are places to go beyond belief. Those challenges are yours -- in many fields, not the least of which is space, because there lies human destiny"

Neil Alden Armstrong

Rainer Mausfeld | More than 50 years of elite democracy have shown us

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"More than 50 years of elite democracy have shown us where this road leads. It is the path of destruction. The destruction of community, the destruction of the idea of community, the destruction of life by the millions, the destruction of cultural and civilizational substance - especially in the Third World - and the destruction of our ecological foundations. The beneficiaries of this destruction have no reason to change this path of destruction. The necessary energy for change can only come from below - from us. That is our task and that is our responsibility."

Professor Dr. Rainer Mausfeld,

Alan Hirshfeld | the pendulum of belief had swung irreversibly to the Copernican side

in

"In Newton’s day, the Ptolemaic system and the Keplerian version of the Copernican system were taught side by side in the universities of the world. But the pendulum of belief had swung irreversibly to the Copernican side. In the minds of most scientists, the heliocentric universe had become fact…Yet there remained a crucial missing element in what was otherwise a complete and compelling picture of the universe: Not one shred of indisputable observational proof existed that the Earth moved through space.Here then was the holy grail of many an astronomer. To prove that the Earth in fact revolved in a wide orbit around the Sun, the parallax of just one star – any star – had to be detected. The hunt for stellar parallax was on."

Alan Hirshfeld

Albert Einstein | The struggle, so violent in the early days of science

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“The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, “the Sun is at rest and the Earth moves,” or “the Sun moves and the Earth is at rest,” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS.”

Albert Einstein

Lawrence Krauss | we are truly the center of the universe

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“But when you look at CMB map (Cosmic Microwave Background), you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That's crazy. We're looking out at the whole universe. There's no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun - the plane of the earth around the sun - the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe. The new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong and we're the center of the universe, or maybe the data is (s)imply incorrect, or maybe it's telling us there's something weird about the microwave background results and that maybe, maybe there's something wrong with our theories on the larger scales.”

Lawrence Krauss

Dr. Jacques Vallee | the UFO beings of today belong to the same class of manifestation

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"The symbolic display seen by the abductees is identical to the type of initiation ritual or astral voyage that is embedded in the [occult] traditions of every culture...the structure of abduction stories is identical to that of occult initiation rituals...the UFO beings of today belong to the same class of manifestation as the [occult] entities that were described in centuries past."

Dr. Jacques Vallee

Dr. Jacques Vallee | is reminiscent of the medieval tales of encounters with demons

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"The 'medical examination' to which abductees are said to be subjected, often accompanied by sadistic sexual manipulation, is reminiscent of the medieval tales of encounters with demons. It makes no sense in a sophisticated or technical framework: any intelligent being equipped with the scientific marvels that UFOs possess would be in a position to achieve any of these alleged scientific objectives in a shorter time and with fewer risks."

Dr. Jacques Vallee, Konfrontationen, S. 13

Wernher von Braun | likelihood of a successful mission to the Moon

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"It is commonly believed that man will fly directly from the earth to the moon, but to do this, we would require a vehicle of such gigantic proportions that it would prove an economic impossibility. It would have to develop sufficient speed to penetrate the atmosphere and overcome the earth’s gravity and, having traveled all the way to the moon, it must still have enough fuel to land safely and make the return trip to earth. Furthermore, in order to give the expedition a margin of safety, we would not use one ship alone, but a minimum of three … each rocket ship would be taller than New York’s Empire State Building [almost ¼ mile high] and weigh about ten times the tonnage of the Queen Mary, or some 800,000 tons."

Wernher von Braun

John Francis Clauser | climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science

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“The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis. There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science.”

John Francis Clauser

Vladimir Lenin | Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed?

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"Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?"

Vladimir Lenin