Saturday, December 24, 2016

Anthony Watts, Tim Ball, Christopher Monckton, and Willie Soon and chemtrails, HAARP, and the New World Order

I'm of the view that one shouldn't get on the same platform with people who aren't credible. It gives them an undeserved legitimacy and you'll end up confusing anyone ignorant of the subject.

Anthony Watts, who runs a  "climate hoax" conspiracy blog wattsupwiththat.com, doesn't agree. He gives a platform to greenhouse effect denying "sky dragon slayers", despite weakly protesting on occasion that he "believes in" the greenhouse effect. However if you've read about Tim Ball and Christopher Monckton of Brenchley before, you know they are more than mere science quacks, they are wacky conspiracy nutters. Anthony Watts frequently promotes them and their silly ideas on his blog. Today I discovered they are associated with a whole society of utter nutters. A group, or if you like, a collective of individualists, wanting to take over the world. (Seriously.)

At WUWT, Anthony posted another conspiracy-laden article by Tim Ball, where he said: "Recently I spoke at the Freedom Force Conference in Phoenix on Climate Change. " So off I trotted to see what this "Freedom Force" group was all about.


Freedom Force - a conspiracy collective to get rid of collectivists


Freedom Force was founded and is run by a chap called G. Edward Griffin. I'd never come across him before. He's a strange one. Media Matters wrote about him, and he has a Wikipedia entry, which starts with:
G. Edward Griffin (born November 7, 1931) is an American conspiracy theorist, author, lecturer, and filmmaker. He is the author of The Creature from Jekyll Island (1994), which promotes conspiracy theories about the motives behind the creation of the Federal Reserve System.[1][2] Griffin's writings put forth a number conspiracy theories regarding various political, defense and health care interests. His book World Without Cancer argues that cancer is a nutritional deficiency that can be cured by consuming amygdalin, a view regarded as quackery by the medical community.[1][3][4] He is an HIV/AIDS denialist, supports the 9/11 Truth movement, and supports a specific John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory.[1] Also, he believes the actual geographical location of the biblical Noah's Ark is located at the Durupınar site in Turkey.[5]
His group must surely suffer perpetual collective cognitive dissonance. They are a bunch of people who have come together to, among other things:
remove collectivists from control of the power centers of society and replace them with individualists.
That's right. This group of individualists have formed a collective to get rid of collectivists!

That's not all.  They are setting themselves up as the "who's who" of fruitcakes. They tout all the usual conspiracy theories, ranging from HAARP and chemtrails to control people, through "New World Order" and onto "climate science is a hoax".




Freedom Force's Climate Hoax Speakers


Here is what the speakers at the climate change conference were talking about:

Let's ask Anthony Watts to post a guest article by Jim Lee. I bet his fans would just love it.


A power grab to stop people who care about people


Now I said up top how these Freedom Force people must suffer hugely from cognitive dissonance. I said that not just because they have to deal with multiple conspiracy theories (global warming isn't happening, CO2 is plant food, it's the sun, it's a soviet plot, it's bankers, etc). The other reason is that these are a group of people who claim to be individualists and loathe collective action, fear people in power, and oppose those who they think want to control them and the world, and this is what they propose as a solution.

Form a collective and take over the world.

They've even got a "Creed of Freedom", which is about property and power (taking it not using it). Their threefold mission is:
  1. To be keeper-of-the-flame for the ideals expressed in The Creed of Freedom
  2. To bring unity to the global freedom movement. 
  3. Using parliamentary action, to remove collectivists from control of the power centers of society and replace them with individualists. 

So far this mob hasn't been very successful at wresting power from politicians, from the look of things. I don't recognise any names outside the known climate conspiracy theorists. I don't know if they took delight in the election of Donald Trump, but I cannot imagine that they approve of everything he represents, like his worship of Russia (going by the Russia comment on the website). On the other hand, they'd probably be very pleased to see that Donald Trump is appointing a bunch of war-mongering anti-science types to key posts, poised to destroy the United States and the world.

If you want to explore the depths of the delusions of the Freedom Force collective, here's a direct link.

If you've time, you can watch a video debunking chemtrails, by WarblesOnALot from Australia.


Tim Ball goes on a conspiratorial Gish gallop


Tim's WUWT article was the usual mishmash of conspiracy theories and outright lies. For example, he claimed (my links): "CRU was creation of RealClimate". What?

He also seems to think that he is entitled to all the information produced by years of hard work by scientists. Sure, scientists and research organisations make a lot of data freely available but I've yet to see Tim Ball make good use of it. He wouldn't know where to start even if he wanted to.

Mostly, though, his article was about how America is the only place on earth where people are free and can own land, and how the election of Trump is the final stage of the Revolution. He puts it down to the Internet, where people were free to look for and find whatever lie they felt like believing, and ignore reputable sources of information. He's not far wrong about that last point, and I'd say that was his meaning though he might not know it. On his "revolution" notion I'd argue that it's not the final stage of the Revolution (with a capital R), it's the early stages of the Devolution (with a capital D).

I've written enough about Tim Ball in the past and really cannot be bothered spending any more time on him today. Such a grubby little man.




7 comments:

  1. It's interesting to see that the Happerition has gone right round the bend. It shouldn't be surprising, I suppose, given that in the past he found it perfectly reasonable to expect students to solve a problem in weekly problem set 3 using the variational method. Which was right there in the syllabus, to be taught at week 6. Apparently his hold on reality has always been tenuous.

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  2. I'd say I'm surprised, but that would require me to lie. I do wonder how many of Anthony's fans are following him down the rabbit hole.

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  3. We have entered the post truth world, and here are the people who would drag us into the post sanity world.

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  4. The embarrassing thing about this last screed of Ball's is that he must have had some good, solid historical training to complete his dissertation. What he writes now iswhat one might see in an American Christian-Fundamentalist history text. Presumably Ball knows he is speaking to a not very sophisticated batch of xenophobic Americans and is playing to his audience.

    Mostly, though, his article was about how America is the only place on earth where people are free and can own land,

    Unfortunately, from my experience, quite a large number of Americans believe that and many other remarkable things.

    You may be just as surprised to learn that Australia is a colony of England (not the UK) as I was to discover Canada was ruled by England. I was also a bit surprised to learn that guns are illegal in Canada. People in Dublin may not be aware that they are still part of the UK.

    Perhaps I should not be to critical. I remember an exchange on a mailing list a few years ago where one young Canadian was spluttering, “Queen Elizabeth is Queen of Canada? Why wasn't I told?” to which the reply was “Whose picture do you think is on the coins, Madonna's?”

    Tim Ball …Such a grubby little man.

    Well yes but this latest thing it's so bad that … words fail me.

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  5. Agree with johnny vector. Interesting to see Happer in with this lot. I didn't realise how far into outright crankery he has gone.

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  6. People will look back in years to come and shake their heads in disbelief that these lunatics were once taken seriously by people in positions of power.

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  7. Your fellow Australian Jim Jefferies has a great routine on America's Freedom. Sums it up quite nicely!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjeq3NYUw2M

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