@Clark – I don’t like “arguments” that depend solely on shouting loaded phrases either. But let’s unpack that very carefully so as not to fall into the trap of doing the same thing. In a nutshell, what happens is that assumptions are slipped through as hidden premises. The classic example is the question “When did you stop beating your wife?” This is the standard methodology of the moron who hasn’t thought about a topic very deeply at all (or about anything), but who can’t admit it to himself and who likes to address those who have thought about it more deeply than he has, or indeed who may have only thought about it equally or comparably deeply, or who are simply asking intelligent questions so as to improve their understanding, as themselves being morons. Morons do even this without thinking about it! Nobody ever advances their understanding by habitually behaving like that. All they do is stay sunk in the mud. You can can think of it as “character armour” or whatever. You get it all over the internet. It’s a major disease of our time. It’s like a plague. It’s particularly bad in Britain, where sarcasm is its usual vehicle and where the dominant culture is one of caste-upholding putdowns. Britain is absolutely chockful of the browbeaten. (Just look at how people in Britain look up to medics, whom they call “doctors”. It’s not like that in Russia.) If I had a pound for every time I’ve been patronised by a stupid ignorant moron in Britain I’d be very rich. Morons hate it that someone who isn’t from the elite thinks for themselves. They think the person wants to be “Mr Posh”. The person irritates something inside of them – namely their unverbalised knowledge that they have actually chosen to be morons and keep on choosing to stay being morons.
You do battle in passing (and it’s important that it’s in passing) against the notion that you describe as the idea that “Nature [the journal] is part of a global scientific conspiracy to rob the poor”. I suggest without any sarcasm or intent to be patronising that you cogitate some more about the nature of social exploitation, the use of the concept of “science”, and the function of the hierarchy of academic journals.
I note that you refer to the “corporate media” but not “corporate science”. Seriously if you can criticise the way the media works you ought to be able to criticise the way scientific “opinion” works, and the system in which decisions are made regarding what actually gets researched by “scientists” and what doesn’t. (We can agree that those decisions affect scientific opinion, right?) It’s all about money and power and jobsworthery and it’s highly centralised.
An awful lot is slipped through with the use of words such as “science”, “scientist” and “expert”. I see their usage as akin to the use of words such as “Aryanology” in Nazi Germany. They mostly mean “shut the f*** up and salute the flag”.
We really are living under fascism, and it really is only in a very early stage. That’s not exaggeration. In Britain within the space of 8 months it has already slaughtered, what, a few tens of thousands in old people’s homes, in which the residents are (or were) among the most isolated people in a culture that has an awful lot of isolation. The notion of “be grateful to your betters” has spread from health treatment to Christmas. Soon it will spread to food.
Economic production practically stopped for a few months, it is about to stop again, and meanwhile the government has announced its plan to increase military spending dramatically.
“The new normal” is a great phrase to use. Anybody who doesn’t realise that the rulers really are turning the ratchet and that they do NOT intend to reach a point where they remove all the anti-socialisation restrictions but on the contrary they plan to INCREASE them, and not gradually but in sudden jumps, must be some kind of Pollyanna whose address is “Cloud Cuckoo Land”.f
Resisting the planned mega-cull is impossible unless one gets a handle on what it will be all about. I use the future tense, because we “ain’t seen nothing yet”. As they ask on the Cryzine website, “When the “helpy gas” vans roll into the “social housing” estates, what identification letters will they carry on their sides?” (Answer: “NHS”.) That’s an excellent way of putting it because it can make hearers’ blood run cold, which for some may be exactly what’s needed to jolt them onto the road of wising themselves up.