They Must Have a Good Reason

There is a strange idea hovering about that if you don’t know something then it doesn’t exist. Kind of like the image of the proverbial ostrich with his head in the sand. But it goes beyond denial. Ignorance is when you don’t know something at all, denial is when you know it, but you ignore it.

What I am talking about here is when you know something and do not deny it, but simply rationalize it away with a statement like “they must have a good reason for doing that,” or similarly, “maybe we don’t know all that there is to know about that.” Which is often followed with, “and I don’t have the time, (inclination, care, interest, curiosity, ability, intelligence, etc.) to look into it further.”

Does Life Flash Before the Eyes Upon Dying?

Study: Specific Patterns of Waves Recorded in a Dying

Death has always been a mystery to human beings. What can people see or feel when they are dying? Scientists who recorded the brain waves of a dying patient may have insights into the mystery.

When using continuous electroencephalography (EEG) to record the brain waves of an 87-year-old epileptic man, an international team of scientists monitored his brain activity as he suffered a heart attack and died. The study was published in the February 2022 issue of Front Aging Neuroscience.

The Patrushev Oversight

In a recent interview with Russian media, Nikolay Patrushev, an intelligence officer who is the former director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the current secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council, spoke about the nature of power in the West. In keeping with the previous address of President Putin at Valdai, Patrushev shared many of the criticisms made by disillusioned Western commentators.

While some observers may think aspects of Patrushev’s critique accurate, fewer seem to have noticed that many of his criticisms are equally applicable to the Russian state and its “partners.” It’s as if the practically identical power structures are considered, for some unfathomable reason, different in Russia.

On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine

A short history of neo-Nazism in Ukraine in response to NewsGuard’s charge that Consortium News published false content about its extent.

The U.S. relationship with Ukrainian fascists began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.  Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives. 

Science! Blessed be Thy Name

Freedom of Religion can no longer bring about the freedom that it could have in past ages had it actually been implemented; only a Freedom of Belief System could do that today. The reason for this is straightforward; Freedom of Religion would have been a big deal back when the dominant belief system was a religion; Freedom of Religion would have meant the freedom not to have the dominant belief system imposed upon you.

But Freedom of Religion can no longer shield you from having the dominant belief system imposed upon you because today the dominant belief system is The Science as dictated by the state. The Science now serves the same role for rationalizing political power that the church used to do.