Saturday, January 25, 2014

Obama ordered $1 billion worth of disposable coffins for use in FEMA camps? More BS fear mongering.

Reblogged from Is that a FEMA Camp?

Recently the old FEMA camp myth has once again reared it's ugly head around internet, this time making it appear that President Obama has ordered $1,000,000,000 worth of "disposable coffins", as you can clearly see from this screen shot below:


And from this article here.

When I was reading the article one of the first things that clued me in that this was just a bunch of BS and anti-government fear mongering were the pictures.

All of these pictures have been spreading around the internet for years now in various conspiracy theorist websites and forums.

Despite what the website wants you to believe, these pictures are actually pretty old. Infact they've been around since the George W. Bush administration, as have these claims.

The pictures were also taken at a storage facility for Vantage, a company that manufactures plastic coffin liners, not some government storage facility. If it was a government storage facility the people who took the photos would most likely not have been given access to the facility for various security and liability reasons, or at the very least they would have been escorted around the facility to make sure they didn't hurt themselves or damage something.

Also, these so called "disposable coffins" are neither disposable nor coffins. They're meant to hold to coffins, and they're meant to stay in the ground for who knows how long.

While some coffin liners are bought by the government for things like military funerals, most of these purchases are made by funeral home to be used in private funerals.

The second thing I noticed about the article was the total lack of any references to back up all the claims made. All there was were some old pictures, an old video from 2 1/2 years ago that shows nothing but a few documents that means nothing and also has no links to the documents that are mentioned, and some ignorant people who clearly do not know that a coffin goes inside a coffin liner, and also makes up some outrageous claims without any sort of documents or evidence to back up these claims.

The fact is that there is nothing new about this story. This type of "story" has been floating around in one form or another for years and predates President Obama.

President Obama didn't order $1,000,000,000 worth of coffins, and Marshall Law is not about about to be implemented. All this is is more classic fear mongering being promoted by people who are very paranoid, or who hate the government, or (usually) both.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

The best Videos of the Week for 2013

Last year I started putting up on this page one video per week.

Now I've had a lot of videos on here that were just great, and today I've decided to have a look back at what I consider to be the five best videos of the week for 2013:

5. Alex Jones As Alien Lizard Explains Obamacare

Probably every skeptic around the world knows who Alex Jones. While many skeptic bloggers have atleast written up a couple of articles to either discredit him and/or show what kind of a fool he is, still by far the best person to discredit Alex Jones and to make him look like a fool... is Alex Jones.

This clip from Right Wing Watch's Youtube page clearly shows why that's true:



4. Debunking 9/11 conspiracy theorists part 6 of 7 - The psychology behind a 9/11 truther

From late 2012 to early 2013 Myles Power created a seven part series that is in my opinion one of the best 9/11 conspiracy theory debunking videos that I have ever seen, and the sixth video in the series, which explains the psychology and mindset of a 9/11 Truther, and infact most conspiracy theorists, could have itself been a stand alone video apart from the series.



3. Five Stupid Things About the Anti-Vax Movement

Steve Shives is one of my favorite vloggers on Youtube, and his Five Stupid Things segment is my favorite of all of his video segments, and in this video he rips the anti-vaccination movement a new one, showing not only how all of their claims are completely bogus, but also how dangerous it is not to vaccinate your child, or yourself for that matter.



2. Dumbest Anti-Gay Comments (Compilation)

How best to expose the leaders in the anti-gay movement as the homophobic bigots they really are? Actually you don't have to. They do a good enough exposing themselves by making the most vile comments about homosexuals, and do so in public for all the world to see as this clip from Secular Talk shows:



1. Psychic Char Margolis fail on WGN Morning News

I know I might sound a little bit malicious for this, but I love it when a psychic fails, and not only fails, but fails on live TV for the whole world to see! In this clip from WGN News "psychic" Char Margolis fails to make a psychic reading (or what is better known as a cold reading) and pretty much makes a fool of herself infront of the world:

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Anti-Vaccination Critics shutdown: How Facebook should prevent and punish Anti-Vaccination supporters (or anyone) who wrongfully get their critics banned from Facebook?

Over the past couple of weeks it's been revealed that Anti-Vaccination groups and their supporters on Facebook have been launching false flag attacks (and I don't mean types that Alex Jones thinks happens every time a shooting or a bombing or a natural disaster occurs in this country) against groups that are pro-vaccination and/or critical of anti-vaccination groups and their supporters and propaganda. These false flaggings have unfortunately resulted in the temporary (yet still wrongful) banning of multiple people and groups from Facebook who are critics of the Anti-Vaccination movement. This needs to stop. Infact not only does this need to stop, but the people who are making these false flag reports need to be punished.

While many of you have some ideas on what should be done inorder to curb false flag reporting (which I would love to hear from you in the comments section) I have a few suggestions of my own:

The first thing that needs to happen is that Facebook needs to make it easier to challenge a complaint and a ban. While you can do this even now, it's not an easy process. Plus a person should be given a chance to defend themselves before a ban is about to occur. No more automatic bans unless a certain amount of time has gone by after a complaint was sent (I say a minimum of six hours).

Now the second thing that should happen to help curb false flagging abuse on Facebook is that those that do abuse the reporting system need to have their ability to report posts and groups and individuals that they don't believe should be on Facebook more difficult. Granted I'm not saying they should be left unable to report someone or some group that really does contain offensive or illegal content (unless they continue to abuse the system even after restrictions have been placed on them, then their ability to report groups and people should be taken away, and they should be banned temporarily) but the process should be made more difficult for those that abuse the system, and probably should include a screen shot of any content that is being reported upon, as well as include more details about why something is being reported.

Going along side with the second suggestion that I believe Facebook needs to do inorder to curb false flagging abuse, after a person has already had restrictions put against for false flag abuse, if they do report someone or some group for their content and Facebook determines that it doesn't violate their policies, the person or group should be informed that someone sent a complaint against them that was struct down, and the person or group should be told whom that person is, and given the option of whether or not they want to block that individual.

Now these couple of suggestions might help against individuals who abuse the reporting system, but what about groups that do the same thing and organize their followers to report individuals and groups inorder to silence them (this can apply to any group, not just the anti-vaccination groups)?

First, for groups that do frequently abuse the reporting system, first give them a warning, then a ban if they continue, then a longer ban with a warning that if they continue to abuse the reporting system that their page will be removed and deleted, and if they continue to abuse the system, then Facebook should remove and delete that group.

The second thing that should be done to these groups that abuse the reporting system is that they should have the ability to control what is and isn't posted on their page and who can and cannot post on their page restricted as well.

Anti-vaccination groups (along with chemtrail, anti-GMO, fundamentalist groups, and generally any group that promotes conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and bigotry) are notorious for blocking people and deleting any posts that they make that either counter-argues something that was posted in the group, or criticizes the group. One of the things that Facebook can do as a way to punish a group that abuses the reporting system is to alert the person whom has had a post deleted, or has been blocked, and give that person a chance to dispute the deletion or blocking. If they chose to try to prove that the deletion or blocking was unwarranted and didn't violate any of Facebook's rules, then Facebook will restore the post or unblock the person from the group, and also leave the group unable to delete anything else from that person, or block that person.

Now, do I believe that Facebook would do any of the things that I have suggested here? No, but I think that we all can agree that Facebook does need to do something inorder to curb false flag abuse.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

I am Anti-Organic Foods

Anyone whom has read this blog is probably aware that I don't like the Anti-GMO movement. I find the movement to be highly deceptive and uses propaganda and fear mongering in order to get people to buy "organic" food, and to reject all GMO foods no matter what.

Normally in spite their BS I would still have bought and eaten organic foods, not because I believed it was healthier for you (although I admit I at one time I did believe that) but because it tasted a little better, but now knowing more facts about the Anti-GMO movement and the extremes that they have gone to, and about organic food and it's sustainability, as well as the organic food industry itself, I can no longer consciously buy and/or eat organic foods. To put it bluntly I am now Anti-Organic Foods, and I have several reasons (besides what I just what said here) why.

My first and foremost reasons for why I am now Anti-Organic Foods is because of the Anti-GMO movement itself and what it's highly deceptive propaganda and fear mongering has done, which is to cause governments around the world to pass completely moronic Anti-GMO laws that is based off of fear rather than legitimate science, and has at times because of these laws hampered research into GMO foods, and to cause normally intelligent to reject GMO foods without any reason other than what lies the Anti-GMO movement has told them.

Another reason why I am now Anti-Organic Foods is because of the deaths that have been caused by the Anti-GMO movement and their propaganda, particularly in developing in certain developing countries where the leaders of those countries actually rejected food donations because they were lead to believe (most notably by Greenpeace) that the food may have contain GMO foods and was (according to these Anti-GMO groups) poisonous. This type of deception has resulted in thousands of deaths, and possibly more.

My third reason why I have rejected organic foods is because of the physical destruction caused by the Anti-GMO movement, particularly of experimental GMO food crops due to the perception that these crops were dangerous. This destruction has caused millions of dollars worth of damage, not to mention the lose of valuable research data. The fact that many Anti-GMO groups (including Greenpeace) often praise this destruction, and have been accused of directly or indirectly responsible of being the cause of such destruction only makes the whole Anti-GMO movement look so much worse to me.

Now my fourth reason for rejecting organic foods isn't because of the Anti-GMO movement, but because of organic foods itself.

Organic foods are luxury foods. That's all they are. They are not any healthier or better for you, they just taste better. They won't solve the world's food supply problems, and infact will make them worse due to organic foods having lower crop yields than GMO crops, and also not being able to be grown in as many places as GMO crops can.

Organic crops are also not as environmentally friendly as they're made out to be and require far more land to grow on than GMO crops do, and require far more pesticides inorder to keep insects away than GMO crops (and despite what you have been told a lot of farmers that grow organic foods actually do use pesticides, and lots of it).

My fifth reason for rejecting organic foods is because of the organic food industry itself, particularly with the self created perception that the organic food industry is a small and humble force. It is not.

Some of the farmers in the organic food industry might be small and humble, but the industry as a whole is a huge, multi-billion dollar industry (Whole Foods Market, one of the largest organic foods supermarkets, made over nine billion in 2010) so in my opinion it's very deceptive how the whole organic food industry has made itself out to be.

My final reason why I have rejected organic foods is because of the self imposed perception that organic foods are ethical.

In my opinion organic foods are not ethical. It's perceived ethicalness is based off of lies created by a group do-gooder no-nothings who believe that because something that is created by a multi-billion dollar corporation then it must be evil and dangerous. This type of belief has lead to both the creation of the most outrageous lies and have been the cause of many deaths, all inorder to force people to eat luxury foods.

Because of all this I have decided to avoid eating organic foods when and where I can. I just don't feel right eating something that is based off of lies.

Monday, January 6, 2014

10 reasons why the Anti-GMO and the Anti-vaccination movement are a lot alike.

The Anti-GMO movements and Anti-vaccination movements are probably two of the biggest and most well known pseudoscience movements out there, with millions of people that adhere to their claims.

Besides the fact that both groups do have millions of proponents world wide and promote pseudoscience, both groups are a lot alike in other ways as well. Infact I've come up with about ten different reasons why they are so much alike, starting with the fact that...

Proponents of both get very emotional when you criticize and/or debunk them.

Ever get into an online discussion with someone whom either promotes Anti-vaccination or Anti-GMO nonsense, and you start to tell them what they claim is BS, and tell them why what they are claiming is BS? If you've answered yes then you know what usually ends up happening, and that is that they tend to go off the deep end and use all of these made up "facts" and logical fallacies and conspiracy theories, and in the end threats and accusations of being a shill are often made.

A proponent of one tends to be a proponent of the other.

It shouldn't be to surprising, but usually if someone is an Anti-GMO proponent, they usually tend to be an Anti-vaccination proponent as well, and vice-verse.

While this isn't necessarily true many websites that promote Anti-vaccination nonsense also tend to promote Anti-GMO nonsense as well. Infact some websites that claim to be "natural health" websites promote both equally instead of one overshadowing the other. Also, another thing about proponents of both are...

They tend to promote alternative medicine.

It shouldn't be to surprising that people in the Anti-vaccination movement are big proponents of alternative medicine, but it shouldn't also be to surprising that people in the Anti-GMO movement are also big proponents of alternative medicine as well.

Infact many people in the Anti-GMO movement will, besides just promote the usual alternative medicine nonsense, claim that organic foods can heal you of just about anything and everything as well (including stuff that doesn't even exist).

The only papers they've ever had published in creditable scientific journals have been debunked and retracted.

There are lots of studies that have been published over the years about the "dangers" of vaccines and GMO foods, and while the number of papers published may look impressive to some the reality is that it isn't, especially when you consider the fact almost all of these papers are published in "scientific journals" that a person pays to be published in.

Infact the only Anti-vaccination and Anti-GMO papers that I know of that have ever been published in credible scientific journals are the Wakefield study (published in the Lancet) and the Séralini study (published in Food and Chemical Toxicology) both of which have been formally retracted by the respective journals that they were published in after it was found that both studies data was founded off of both unethical experiments and fraudulent data, and they were only retracted long after both studies had been thoroughly debunked.

They both claim the same things about the products in terms of health effects.

Both the Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination movements not only claim that both GMO foods and vaccines are bad for you and cause a large amount of health problems (all of which have been proven to be untrue), but they also claim that they cause the same health problems!

Both most notably are claimed to cause autism, but both are also claimed to cause the spreading of diseases, and increases in infant mortality, and sterility, and cancer, and who knows what else. It almost seems like Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination movements are claiming that GMO foods and vaccines causes something new every week.

They both claim that the products have ingredients in them that they do not.

One of the biggest and most obvious BS things that both the Anti-vaccination and the Anti-GMO movement tend to do is that they both claim that the respective products that they believe are bad for you also contain ingredients that infact they do not contain at all.

For the Anti-vaccination movement they sometimes claim that vaccines contain the remains of aborted human fetuses (they do not) and the Anti-GMO movement claims that GMO foods contain animal DNA in them (they do not). While these are the more outrageous claims made by both respective movements, both also claim that the products that they are protesting against contain other chemicals in them that infact they do not.

Both groups claim that there is little to no regulation in either industry.

One of the main "claimed" reasons by so many people in the Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination movements is that they believe that GMO foods and vaccines are dangerous because they believe that there is very little to no testing and safety regulations what so ever in either industry.

In fact this couldn't be further from the truth for either one. Both the vaccine industry and the GMO foods industry are heavily regulated and go through numerous testing stages, and have to go through numerous government agencies before they are able to put their products onto market.

Both groups make claims of a conspiracy.

Both the Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination movements claim that the respective industries that they are protesting are involved in some kind of conspiracy. These conspiracy theories range from the plausible, but still disproven corporate greed and not caring about the health of others and putting out a product that has very little to no testing type of conspiracy theories, to some type of New World Order mass depopulation type of conspiracy theory (which if true then they've done a horrible job at it).

Also both groups claim that there is a conspiracy to suppress "information" (i.e. Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination claims) about the "truth" about GMO foods and vaccines. If this happened to be true then whoever is suppose to be suppressing this "information" has clearly done a terrible job at it because there are thousands of Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination websites, not to mention multiple groups that promote their beliefs.

Both groups have caused deaths.

One of the dark yet well known little secrets of both of these groups is that both groups have caused the deaths of thousands of people.

For the Anti-GMO movement the deaths caused by their propaganda comes in the form of people in developing countries starving to death because the leaders in some of these countries refused to accept food donations because they believed that the donations contained GMO foods (wouldn't matter if it did or didn't) and believed the Anti-GMO movement's claims that such food were poisonous.

For the Anti-vaccination movement the deaths caused by their propaganda comes in the form of children who's parents believed the Anti-vaccination movement's claims and didn't vaccinate their children, and their children got an infection from a disease that was completely preventable if they had been vaccinated, and the child died from that disease. Also the deaths are by children who were to young to be vaccinated, or couldn't be vaccinate for some medical reasons, but got a disease from a child that was infact old enough to be vaccinated but wasn't, and they died because of some other parent's carelessness.

While this fact about both groups are often ignored by both groups, it is not however ignored by skeptics and critics of the Anti-GMO and the Anti-vaccination movements.

Both groups don't talk about the good things what they protest have done.

Both groups just love to talk about all the "bad" stuff (i.e. made up stuff) about GMO foods and vaccines. What they don't tell you is all of the good things that GMO foods and vaccines have brought us, such a extending our life expectancy, and suppressing and even eliminating certain diseases, and over all improving our quality of life, as well as helping prevent people from dying.

Infact talking about all of the good things about GMO foods and vaccines almost seems like a kind of blasphemy to these Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination groups...

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Was an alien spotted near where I live?

The other day I was searching through Youtube looking for "alien caught on camera" videos (I actually do look for that stuff when I'm bored) one thing lead to another and I eventually came across this article about an alleged alien encounter that occurred not only in my home town... but also about only a mile or so from my home (although it happened over two years ago and nothing like this has occurred near here ever since).

Suffice to say that if I believed that this close encounter of the third kind actually did occurred (read about it here) I might be scared out of my mind. Of course I don't believe it. I believe it to be a hoax, and I'll explain why:

First, lets examine the description of the "alien" by the eye witness:

  • There was a grey figure, about 6'5" with very long fingers, no eyes, mouth or nose that I could see. The grey color of it was lighter on the bottom, and faded into a darker shade towards it's chest. And it's fingers were at least 10" long.
Now that's a very detailed description of this creature. What detail that was not given was how far away this person was from the creature, or where exactly was this creature was (I'm well aware of the area and how it looks like having lived here all my life and driven past this place hundreds of times, so I can tell you after reading the report that the person gave is that either the person is a local as well, or has passed through that section of road enough times to remember what it looks like)? Was the creature on the hill in the wooded area, or in the middle of the road, or across the street at the little pond next to the apartments that are at that intersection, or on the side of the road?

Also it was at 2:00 PM in the summer time, and according to the report given, it states that:

  • Traffic was at a stand still as there were at least 7 cars stopped as we watched it walk up a hill into the forest on the side of the road. Eventually a couple of Roanoke county police came, and one went into the woods, only to come out pale and shaking.
So there are atleast nine other eye witnesses to this incident, and probably a lot more than that, yet this is the only report about this alleged incident that I can find, and no one there (including the person whom made this report) had enough sense to take a picture of this creature? In fact why hasn't more people come forward and said that they saw something? I can understand maybe a few people not wanting to have anything to do with this incident, but certainly there must have been atleast more that one person willing to come forward and tell what they saw?

Now there is actually one alleged picture of this creature, and it was taken at night via a trail camera:

Photo Taken by Game Cam of Unknown Creature in Roanaoke, VA.
Photo Courtesy of Unsolved Mysteries and Paranormal Society of Virginia.
http://www.paranormalsocieties.com/view_society.cfm?id=1528 

Now besides the fact that this photo is blurry and really doesn't show anything (and before you point out that the year is wrong that really is not that significant as the person who set up this camera could have set the year wrong) there is no way of knowing if this photo really is from Roanoke, or from the area which is being talked about? This is the only photo provided and as far as I'm concerned it provides no proof that this incident even occurred at all, or that it's in any way connected with it.

Another thing that makes me believe that this is a hoax are the last to sentences of this report:
  • I have searched all over the local news to see if there has been any reporting on this incident because where it happened is a very populated area about half a mile from Tanglewood shopping center (at the intersection of Ogden and Colonial Road). I have found nothing in the local news.
My question isn't why wasn't this in the news, but why didn't the person whom made this report tell the local news stations themselves? I would have if I thought it was real and not just a hoax, and that there were multiple eye witnesses, and that it was in the middle of the day time...

In conclusion I believe this to be a hoax. While the details of the creature is very descriptive, there's very little other information (such as where exactly the creature was when the person first spotted it, and how far away the person believes that they were from the creature). This, combined with the fact that no one else has come forward to back up this story, nor did the person themselves report this to the news, and the lack of a follow-up interview the try to get more information (and a note in the report did state that the person did provide full contact information) has lead me to conclude that this is a hoax.