Why is this big? Because the speed of light in a vacuum is considered to be the closest thing to an "absolute" there is in the world of modern science. It is the touchstone upon which most of the empirical substrates of modern science. Every single theory of what we "know" goes in the trash can and we look for an entirely new model for subatomic physics if this turns out to be true.
BBC News - Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
A friend of mine recently asked:
Why do you mock conservatives and "neo-cons" when the REAL danger is the liberals in America?
Leaving aside the false premise that conservatives pose no threat to liberty..... (America is in danger from "conservatives" who gleefully give power to the state and promote perpetual war), it is because leftists are so BORING.
I mean, it is like shooting a couch for sport or something. How could you possibly miss? Tired cliched old hippies who have not had an original thought since that hit of orange sunshine in 1969. Bald ponytails and paunches with beards and passionate zeal that has to have viagra to advocate free love and metamucil to keep regular about it.
They really are not even worthy of a good vitriolic attack. A bit of mockery and a glass of prune juice will do:
Leaving aside the false premise that conservatives pose no threat to liberty..... (America is in danger from "conservatives" who gleefully give power to the state and promote perpetual war), it is because leftists are so BORING.
I mean, it is like shooting a couch for sport or something. How could you possibly miss? Tired cliched old hippies who have not had an original thought since that hit of orange sunshine in 1969. Bald ponytails and paunches with beards and passionate zeal that has to have viagra to advocate free love and metamucil to keep regular about it.
They really are not even worthy of a good vitriolic attack. A bit of mockery and a glass of prune juice will do:
Greece. Coming soon to a bond market near you.
The yield on 1 year Greek bonds is now over 129 percent. A year ago the yield on those bonds was under 10 percent.
Like the old Will Rogers saw :"The return OF your capital is more important than the return ON your capital."
Like the old Will Rogers saw :"The return OF your capital is more important than the return ON your capital."
Monday, September 19, 2011
Demographics, Investing, and the Stock Market
Picked up on this brilliant observation by a guy, which I had seen but never seen quite this way.
If America is graying (and it is) and a huge storm of baby boomers is heading into retirement (and they are) then one fact is inescapable..... more money is going to be coming OUT of the stock market than is going IN to the stock market over the next 30 or so years.
It does not take a math genius to see this. Since many many boomers have investment plans that focus on IRAs/Keoughs/401K plans, this means that huge eyepopping amounts of moneys will be leaving the market, as folks use it for what they planned to use it for.
Will the market overall continue to go up? Not unless the demographics change. Individual successful companies may go public or have public offerings which will succeed, or we may inflate the currency so that it seeks safety in investments. Both of these will account for some protection against what is going to be the overall trend, but the overall trend is inescapable. Current investors simply are not going to see the kinds of returns we have seen since 1970. It is a mathematical impossibility.
Younger guys in the market should take this into account. Simply buying a "value based fund" in Fidelity or Vanguard will be a losing proposition over the next 30 years.
If America is graying (and it is) and a huge storm of baby boomers is heading into retirement (and they are) then one fact is inescapable..... more money is going to be coming OUT of the stock market than is going IN to the stock market over the next 30 or so years.
It does not take a math genius to see this. Since many many boomers have investment plans that focus on IRAs/Keoughs/401K plans, this means that huge eyepopping amounts of moneys will be leaving the market, as folks use it for what they planned to use it for.
Will the market overall continue to go up? Not unless the demographics change. Individual successful companies may go public or have public offerings which will succeed, or we may inflate the currency so that it seeks safety in investments. Both of these will account for some protection against what is going to be the overall trend, but the overall trend is inescapable. Current investors simply are not going to see the kinds of returns we have seen since 1970. It is a mathematical impossibility.
Younger guys in the market should take this into account. Simply buying a "value based fund" in Fidelity or Vanguard will be a losing proposition over the next 30 years.
Friday, September 16, 2011
ZGBriefs, news of China
A friend of mine heads up the "Robert Morrison Project" which is an organization dedicated to bringing solid Reformed Theology books to press in China (this would have been unthinkable a short 10 years ago...... I knew of people who were still smuggling bibles in!), a place where people are becoming Christians by the boatload, but few tools for solid theological training exist. It is a fantastic organization and is worthy of support. You can learn more about them here.
The founder has a passion for China, lives there several months out of the year, and introduced me to one of the best sites to get a "summary view" of what is happening in China. ZGBriefs is NOT an evangelical site (though they are sympathetic to Christians and the Christian church in China). It is really a great "China in a nutshell" email brief. You can get on their mailing list and have it delivered to you free. I read it voraciously. It is a fascinating peek inside that tumultuous, pulsating, dynamic, unstable country which is changing at the speed of light. If you are a Christian, it is one of the most encouraging things you can read, especially if you live in the spiritually moribund and dessicated West. Here is a link to the site
ZGBriefs for September 8, 2011
You can sign up for the email newsletter or tweets.
The founder has a passion for China, lives there several months out of the year, and introduced me to one of the best sites to get a "summary view" of what is happening in China. ZGBriefs is NOT an evangelical site (though they are sympathetic to Christians and the Christian church in China). It is really a great "China in a nutshell" email brief. You can get on their mailing list and have it delivered to you free. I read it voraciously. It is a fascinating peek inside that tumultuous, pulsating, dynamic, unstable country which is changing at the speed of light. If you are a Christian, it is one of the most encouraging things you can read, especially if you live in the spiritually moribund and dessicated West. Here is a link to the site
ZGBriefs for September 8, 2011
You can sign up for the email newsletter or tweets.
Paging Lord Keynes!
I thought recession and inflation were inimical????? Helicopter Ben tells us that the CURE for recession is an inflationary money policy.
From the article
Inflation squeezing consumers in weak economy - Yahoo! Finance
From the article
Consumers are spending more to fill their tanks, feed their families and pay the rent. At the same time, the number of people applying for unemployment benefits has reached the highest level in three months.
The latest government data show that inflationary pressures and a depressed job market are hurting an economy that barely grew in the first half of the year.
Inflation squeezing consumers in weak economy - Yahoo! Finance
BBC News - Christians in China: Is the country in spiritual crisis?
Up to five per cent, maybe more, of China's population is Christian. God has done an amazing work in this country. Churches are exploding at a phenomenal rate of growth.
On an average Sunday, there are more people in church in China alone than in the entire continent of Europe.
HERE is a link from the BBC to a podcast recently done on this issue.
BBC News - Christians in China: Is the country in spiritual crisis?
On an average Sunday, there are more people in church in China alone than in the entire continent of Europe.
HERE is a link from the BBC to a podcast recently done on this issue.
BBC News - Christians in China: Is the country in spiritual crisis?
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
A call to peace. A call to calmness and joy. No arguments except to taste and see
I was recently introduced to a site that does me much good.
It is a daily (or close to daily) email from some farmer's wife (Ann Voskamp) in the Midwest (I think), somewhere.
There is a calmness, a radiance, a peace and just a plain GOODNESS that comes here without being syrupy or maudlin. It is a daily reminder to be happy, to be aware, to be thankful, to be respectful, to be humble......, in a word, to WORSHIP.
The woman is a fabulous artist and has a real gift for photography. She captures peace and glory together in her pics. She is also a wordsmith of the first order, and arranges sentences to buttress the messages she sends.
Finally, the subject matters are simplicity itself. Common life experiences of a very ordinary person become extraordinary, full of life and worth sharing.
I am not ashamed to say that I weep sometimes when I look at it.
I hope you enjoy the link.
A Holy Experience
It is a daily (or close to daily) email from some farmer's wife (Ann Voskamp) in the Midwest (I think), somewhere.
There is a calmness, a radiance, a peace and just a plain GOODNESS that comes here without being syrupy or maudlin. It is a daily reminder to be happy, to be aware, to be thankful, to be respectful, to be humble......, in a word, to WORSHIP.
The woman is a fabulous artist and has a real gift for photography. She captures peace and glory together in her pics. She is also a wordsmith of the first order, and arranges sentences to buttress the messages she sends.
Finally, the subject matters are simplicity itself. Common life experiences of a very ordinary person become extraordinary, full of life and worth sharing.
I am not ashamed to say that I weep sometimes when I look at it.
I hope you enjoy the link.
A Holy Experience
Wikileaks: China buys gold and why
From Zero Hedge
Wondering why gold at $1850 is cheap, or why gold at double that price will also be cheap, or frankly at any price? Because, as the following leaked cable explains, gold is, to China at least, nothing but the opportunity cost of destroying the dollar's reserve status. Putting that into dollar terms is, therefore, impractical at best, and illogical at worst. We have a suspicion that the following cable from the US embassy in China is about to go not viral but very much global, and prompt all those mutual fund managers who are on the golden sidelines to dip a toe in the 24 karat pool. The only thing that matters from China's perspective is that "suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the U.S. in maintaining the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency. China's increased gold reserves will thus act as a model and lead other countries towards reserving more gold. Large gold reserves are also beneficial in promoting the internationalization of the RMB." Now, what would happen if mutual and pension funds finally comprehend they are massively underinvested in the one asset which China is without a trace of doubt massively accumulating behind the scenes is nothing short of a worldwide scramble, not so much for paper, but every last ounce of physical gold...
From Wikileaks:
As the old investing guru Marty Zweig used to be fond of saying "Don't Fight the Fed." This was advice based on the idea that the Fed (Federal Reserve) had way more bullets than anyone else, so "fighting" them would be suicide. But in this case the fed is clearly outgunned by China and the Eastern bloc nations, who hold all its debt.
In this case, the Fed is fighting China, and it will lose. I want to go with the winner here.
Did you get the above? This is not just monetary, not just banking, not just some accountant with a visor cap and a gooseneck lamp poring over columns of figures. This is worldwide political machinations, power struggles, and entire nations vying for supremacy. One nation has transferred almost its entire manufacturing base to the other, borrows money from the other, and has the world's reserve currency. The upstart nation has the mightiest industrial capacity in the world (and is growing), owns the debt of the former nation, and most importantly, BELIEVES THAT THE FORMER NATION IS ATTEMPTING TO SUPPRESS THE PRICE OF GOLD TO KEEP THE DOLLAR AS THE WORLD'S RESERVE CURRENCY. It is openly buying gold in an attempt to undermine the dollar and replace the dollar with the yuan.
In one sense, it does not matter what happens between China and the US, as far as "who wins." To me it seems pretty clear that China will win, but the real winner will be the holders of gold.
If China is correct - and I think they are - the spectacular losers will be those who hold dollar denominated assets.
Wondering why gold at $1850 is cheap, or why gold at double that price will also be cheap, or frankly at any price? Because, as the following leaked cable explains, gold is, to China at least, nothing but the opportunity cost of destroying the dollar's reserve status. Putting that into dollar terms is, therefore, impractical at best, and illogical at worst. We have a suspicion that the following cable from the US embassy in China is about to go not viral but very much global, and prompt all those mutual fund managers who are on the golden sidelines to dip a toe in the 24 karat pool. The only thing that matters from China's perspective is that "suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the U.S. in maintaining the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency. China's increased gold reserves will thus act as a model and lead other countries towards reserving more gold. Large gold reserves are also beneficial in promoting the internationalization of the RMB." Now, what would happen if mutual and pension funds finally comprehend they are massively underinvested in the one asset which China is without a trace of doubt massively accumulating behind the scenes is nothing short of a worldwide scramble, not so much for paper, but every last ounce of physical gold...
From Wikileaks:
3. CHINA'S GOLD RESERVES
"China increases its gold reserves in order to kill two birds with one stone"
"The China Radio International sponsored newspaper World News Journal (Shijie Xinwenbao)(04/28): "According to China's National Foreign Exchanges Administration China 's gold reserves have recently increased. Currently, the majority of its gold reserves have been located in the U.S. and European countries. The U.S. and Europe have always suppressed the rising price of gold. They intend to weaken gold's function as an international reserve currency. They don't want to see other countries turning to gold reserves instead of the U.S. dollar or Euro. Therefore, suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the U.S. in maintaining the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency. China's increased gold reserves will thus act as a model and lead other countries towards reserving more gold. Large gold reserves are also beneficial in promoting the internationalization of the RMB."
Perhaps now is a good time to remind readers what will happen if and when America's always behind the curve mutual and pension fund managers finally comprehend that they are massively underinvested in the one best performing asset class.
As the old investing guru Marty Zweig used to be fond of saying "Don't Fight the Fed." This was advice based on the idea that the Fed (Federal Reserve) had way more bullets than anyone else, so "fighting" them would be suicide. But in this case the fed is clearly outgunned by China and the Eastern bloc nations, who hold all its debt.
In this case, the Fed is fighting China, and it will lose. I want to go with the winner here.
Did you get the above? This is not just monetary, not just banking, not just some accountant with a visor cap and a gooseneck lamp poring over columns of figures. This is worldwide political machinations, power struggles, and entire nations vying for supremacy. One nation has transferred almost its entire manufacturing base to the other, borrows money from the other, and has the world's reserve currency. The upstart nation has the mightiest industrial capacity in the world (and is growing), owns the debt of the former nation, and most importantly, BELIEVES THAT THE FORMER NATION IS ATTEMPTING TO SUPPRESS THE PRICE OF GOLD TO KEEP THE DOLLAR AS THE WORLD'S RESERVE CURRENCY. It is openly buying gold in an attempt to undermine the dollar and replace the dollar with the yuan.
In one sense, it does not matter what happens between China and the US, as far as "who wins." To me it seems pretty clear that China will win, but the real winner will be the holders of gold.
If China is correct - and I think they are - the spectacular losers will be those who hold dollar denominated assets.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Taser Cam
Very Funny Video
Everyone I know has been critical of out-of-control cops. Me too.
This vid reminds you that MOST of the time, the bad guys, liars and punks are the people the police confront.
You gotta smile at this.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Nature, EMP preparedness, Design and Worship
I recently met with a friend who shared with me an email list from the Australian Observatory site which tracks the emission of solar "flares." These are bursts of energy that escape the sun and have extremely high xray "flux" or rates of energy transfer in the form of x-rays. These are important in that they contain at times enough energy to mimic the effects of say, an EMP attack, effectively summoning William Forstchen's world of "One Second After."
It has been a long time since my days of research in molecular biophysics and even then I was not an astronomer type physics guy, so I had to google to understand what was being said.
Whenever I do this kind of stuff, I am humbled, both at ALL the crap I don't know, don't know anything about, and probably won't ever understand in this life. I look at this and am amazed at the brilliance of the early scientists who even devised metrics of measurement (Watt, Faraday, Joule) for these items. I feel little when I see the amazing complexity of the elements necessary to support life here on the planet and how the moving parts "fit together."
Just one very very small example here. Our sun is a star, and is classified by astronomers as a "G" star according to its size. At its core, it is a continuous series of constant thermonuclear explosions, emitting energy in amounts equal to multitudes of nuclear bombs or reactors. This energy is transmuted several times, from xrays to various other forms to (finally) light, which supports and sustains life here on earth. Other stars emit energy, but few have this "baffling" effect of such a large percentage of energy becoming light before it leaves the star. Further, even stars that are like ours are usually more variant. The sun alters on a historical basis by as much as 1% of the amount of light energy that comes to the earth. This (along with the earth's rotational "wobble" and certain astmospheric condiditons) is responsible for the history of "ice ages" and temperate ages, where massive changes in the relative heat of the earth occurred. The thing that struck me was a comment by the Australian Observatory as "most interesting" about the sun. It is remarkably stable as stars of this size go. Most have fluctuations of 4% or more in their energy emission rates, and some have much larger changes, on a much more consistent periodic basis. Were the sun to do so, almost all life forms we know on the planet would cease to exist.
Some will tell you that with the billions upon billions of stars, that the chances of finding one (maybe one of several, we don't know) so uniquely suited to life is just an interesting statistical anomaly. Just the luck of the draw. Maybe. Maybe as well, "life" would have evolved quite differently in a heat and energy source that had more "normal" +/- 4% fluctuations. I suppose it has to do with the suppositions you draw about life, design, and God.
Me? I cannot help but marvel at the infinite wisdom of God, and His power in stringing the universe together (quaintly described by the psalmist as "the work of your fingers".... fingers daintily placing this here and there, not a rolled up sleeve exercising applied strength with a grunt and shove). I see so many "just so" things in nature that I am flummoxed by those who tell me that belief in a sovereign God is an "effort." The universe reeks of design, care, wisdom and a master engineer. The cosmos is an appeal to worship and feel our smallness. Every once in a while I get it. Mostly, I am blind, but sometimes the truth of it just comes and slaps me in the face. When it does, I worship. As I should.
It has been a long time since my days of research in molecular biophysics and even then I was not an astronomer type physics guy, so I had to google to understand what was being said.
Whenever I do this kind of stuff, I am humbled, both at ALL the crap I don't know, don't know anything about, and probably won't ever understand in this life. I look at this and am amazed at the brilliance of the early scientists who even devised metrics of measurement (Watt, Faraday, Joule) for these items. I feel little when I see the amazing complexity of the elements necessary to support life here on the planet and how the moving parts "fit together."
Just one very very small example here. Our sun is a star, and is classified by astronomers as a "G" star according to its size. At its core, it is a continuous series of constant thermonuclear explosions, emitting energy in amounts equal to multitudes of nuclear bombs or reactors. This energy is transmuted several times, from xrays to various other forms to (finally) light, which supports and sustains life here on earth. Other stars emit energy, but few have this "baffling" effect of such a large percentage of energy becoming light before it leaves the star. Further, even stars that are like ours are usually more variant. The sun alters on a historical basis by as much as 1% of the amount of light energy that comes to the earth. This (along with the earth's rotational "wobble" and certain astmospheric condiditons) is responsible for the history of "ice ages" and temperate ages, where massive changes in the relative heat of the earth occurred. The thing that struck me was a comment by the Australian Observatory as "most interesting" about the sun. It is remarkably stable as stars of this size go. Most have fluctuations of 4% or more in their energy emission rates, and some have much larger changes, on a much more consistent periodic basis. Were the sun to do so, almost all life forms we know on the planet would cease to exist.
Some will tell you that with the billions upon billions of stars, that the chances of finding one (maybe one of several, we don't know) so uniquely suited to life is just an interesting statistical anomaly. Just the luck of the draw. Maybe. Maybe as well, "life" would have evolved quite differently in a heat and energy source that had more "normal" +/- 4% fluctuations. I suppose it has to do with the suppositions you draw about life, design, and God.
Me? I cannot help but marvel at the infinite wisdom of God, and His power in stringing the universe together (quaintly described by the psalmist as "the work of your fingers".... fingers daintily placing this here and there, not a rolled up sleeve exercising applied strength with a grunt and shove). I see so many "just so" things in nature that I am flummoxed by those who tell me that belief in a sovereign God is an "effort." The universe reeks of design, care, wisdom and a master engineer. The cosmos is an appeal to worship and feel our smallness. Every once in a while I get it. Mostly, I am blind, but sometimes the truth of it just comes and slaps me in the face. When it does, I worship. As I should.
Monday, September 05, 2011
Doug Casey on Conspiracies
Doug Casey:
Doug Casey on the Continuance of the Greater Depression and the Brighter Prospects for Gold by Anthony Wile
I don't believe in conspiracies because it's hard to even get two or three friends to decide what movie to see or what restaurant to go to. So as hard as that is, and as hard as it is to even get my secretary to do what I want her to do, it seems it would be impossible to get hundreds of the most corrupt and powerful people in the world to agree on an agenda like that. I think the reason it looks like conspiracy is because these people are sociopaths. They are essentially destructive, but their interests are occasionally roughly aligned in some ways. So it looks like a conspiracy but it's not.
Doug Casey on the Continuance of the Greater Depression and the Brighter Prospects for Gold by Anthony Wile
Alan Greenspan: WE CAN ALWAYS PRINT MORE MONEY - YouTube
I had recently heard of the superaggressive purchase by the Chinese of farms, oilhead production, and fishing rights in Africa.
I initially thought this was just China flexing its muscles as a fledgling superpower. There may be some of that, but it is deeper. China has a crapload of US dollars/US Treasuries, and the leaders are sending more and more and more blatant signals.... they are going to "pay the debt down" alright. They are going to do it with worthless, hot off the press dollars.
The Chinese are not stupid (although the American public certainly is). They are trying to offload dollars into some substantive assets. Africa has a vast glittering wealth of the things that have been poo poohed by the west for years with our highly specialized debt margined economies. The rest of the world is waking up to the need to avoid the rush to the dollar exits as well, which is why gold and silver are going vertical. The dollar is like the old maid card. No one is going to want to get stuck with it. The people who WILL get stuck with it will be those who have their assets denominated in US Dollars (ALL of America's middle class, and a huge swathe of the rest of the world). They are going to be completely wiped out. This is is going to be the greatest bonfire of denominated assets in the history of the world. I am as sure as I can be sure in this world of two things: 1) We are headed for utter financial doom, I would say within the nest 2-5 years 2) There will be what there always is when such jaw dropping dissolutions of wealth occur, and that is war. The latter keeps the masses distracted and gives them someone to blame besides the leaders who created the problem in the first place. Do you have a passport? Do you have a SECOND passport? Just sayin'.
Alan Greenspan: WE CAN ALWAYS PRINT MORE MONEY - YouTube
I initially thought this was just China flexing its muscles as a fledgling superpower. There may be some of that, but it is deeper. China has a crapload of US dollars/US Treasuries, and the leaders are sending more and more and more blatant signals.... they are going to "pay the debt down" alright. They are going to do it with worthless, hot off the press dollars.
The Chinese are not stupid (although the American public certainly is). They are trying to offload dollars into some substantive assets. Africa has a vast glittering wealth of the things that have been poo poohed by the west for years with our highly specialized debt margined economies. The rest of the world is waking up to the need to avoid the rush to the dollar exits as well, which is why gold and silver are going vertical. The dollar is like the old maid card. No one is going to want to get stuck with it. The people who WILL get stuck with it will be those who have their assets denominated in US Dollars (ALL of America's middle class, and a huge swathe of the rest of the world). They are going to be completely wiped out. This is is going to be the greatest bonfire of denominated assets in the history of the world. I am as sure as I can be sure in this world of two things: 1) We are headed for utter financial doom, I would say within the nest 2-5 years 2) There will be what there always is when such jaw dropping dissolutions of wealth occur, and that is war. The latter keeps the masses distracted and gives them someone to blame besides the leaders who created the problem in the first place. Do you have a passport? Do you have a SECOND passport? Just sayin'.
Alan Greenspan: WE CAN ALWAYS PRINT MORE MONEY - YouTube
Saturday, September 03, 2011
August 2011 Business Outlook Survey - Indicators Suggest Activity Is Near Steady - Philadelphia Fed
This report by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve can only be classified in the "oh sh*t!" category. Despite the bureaucratese in the title, the report is as bleak as one can imagine.
I have never seen such a nightmarish outlook.
This can only be categorized as "disaster."
I hope everyone is prepared for this thing and getting more that way. We are headed for some very tough times. Think "Greece."
August 2011 Business Outlook Survey - Indicators Suggest Activity Is Near Steady - Philadelphia Fed
I have never seen such a nightmarish outlook.
The survey’s broadest measure of manufacturing conditions, the diffusion index of current activity, decreased from a slightly positive reading of 3.2 in July to -30.7 in August. The index is now at its lowest level since March 2009 . The demand for manufactured goods, as measured by the current new orders index, paralleled the decline in the general activity index, falling 27 points. The current shipments index fell 18 points and recorded its first negative reading since September of last year. Suggesting weakening activity, indexes for inventories, unfilled orders, and delivery times were all in negative territory this month.
Firms’ responses suggest a deterioration in the labor market compared with July. The current employment index fell 14 points, recording its first negative reading in 12 months. About 18 percent of the firms reported an increase in employment, but 23 percent reported a decrease. The percentage of firms reporting a shorter workweek (28 percent) was greater than the percentage reporting a longer one (14 percent). The workweek index fell 9 points.
This can only be categorized as "disaster."
I hope everyone is prepared for this thing and getting more that way. We are headed for some very tough times. Think "Greece."
August 2011 Business Outlook Survey - Indicators Suggest Activity Is Near Steady - Philadelphia Fed
Thursday, September 01, 2011
OUTRAGE OF THE DAY: Do You Realize That The Government Is Still Paying Banks Not To Lend...?
Wonder why with all the trillions of dollars flushed into the system recently, why small business owners are having a hard time getting loans?
OUTRAGE OF THE DAY: Do You Realize That The Government Is Still Paying Banks Not To Lend...?
OUTRAGE OF THE DAY: Do You Realize That The Government Is Still Paying Banks Not To Lend...?
Minutes after his Sept. 8 address to Congress is set, Obama bashes both houses - latimes.com
This is the picture from the LA Times blog.
Within minutes of agreeing with congressional leaders Wednesday night on an address to a joint session next week, President Obama flashed out an email to millions of supporters criticizing the chambers, their members and vowing to pressure them to enact his as yet unspecified job creation ideas.
"It's been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American peoplObama during his address to the American Legion 8-30-11e need them to be focused on," the Democrat charged in an email with the subject line: "Frustrated."
It's not exactly clear how long "a long time" Obama was thinking of. But until midterm voters produced a historic House turnover to Republicans last November, Obama's Democratic Party controlled both houses with substantial majorities and gave him vast spending, reform and healthcare programs.
It was, at least in part, voter reaction to such legislation that produced the divided government in D.C. now.
This evening's email is likely revealing of the strategy this White House intends to follow for the 2012 presidential election, blaming Congress for what hasn't happened in the economy and employment sectors.
Polls show approval of Obama's economic leadership now down around 1 in 3, with 2 out of 3 feeling the country is on the wrong track.
Speaking of his joint session address Sept. 8, Obama's email says:
Next week, I will deliver the details of the plan and call on lawmakers to pass it. Whether they will do the job they were elected to do is ultimately up to them. But both you and I can pressure them to do the right thing.
We can send the message that the American people are playing by the rules and meeting their responsibilities -- and it's time for our leaders in Congress to meet theirs. And we must hold them accountable if they don't.
Other than the chief executive's threats and the lousy job performance review of both parties, it looks like Obama and Congress are in for a really nice working relationship in coming months.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Minutes after his Sept. 8 address to Congress is set, Obama bashes both houses - latimes.com
Within minutes of agreeing with congressional leaders Wednesday night on an address to a joint session next week, President Obama flashed out an email to millions of supporters criticizing the chambers, their members and vowing to pressure them to enact his as yet unspecified job creation ideas.
"It's been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American peoplObama during his address to the American Legion 8-30-11e need them to be focused on," the Democrat charged in an email with the subject line: "Frustrated."
It's not exactly clear how long "a long time" Obama was thinking of. But until midterm voters produced a historic House turnover to Republicans last November, Obama's Democratic Party controlled both houses with substantial majorities and gave him vast spending, reform and healthcare programs.
It was, at least in part, voter reaction to such legislation that produced the divided government in D.C. now.
This evening's email is likely revealing of the strategy this White House intends to follow for the 2012 presidential election, blaming Congress for what hasn't happened in the economy and employment sectors.
Polls show approval of Obama's economic leadership now down around 1 in 3, with 2 out of 3 feeling the country is on the wrong track.
Speaking of his joint session address Sept. 8, Obama's email says:
Next week, I will deliver the details of the plan and call on lawmakers to pass it. Whether they will do the job they were elected to do is ultimately up to them. But both you and I can pressure them to do the right thing.
We can send the message that the American people are playing by the rules and meeting their responsibilities -- and it's time for our leaders in Congress to meet theirs. And we must hold them accountable if they don't.
Other than the chief executive's threats and the lousy job performance review of both parties, it looks like Obama and Congress are in for a really nice working relationship in coming months.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Minutes after his Sept. 8 address to Congress is set, Obama bashes both houses - latimes.com
World Trade Center Building 7 and Conspiracy Theories
This analysis of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists (not just 9-11 truthers) in general by Gary North is SO VERY GOOD that I decided to just post the whole thing here.
Outstanding, reasoned, articulate, cogent and level headed.
A couple of points:
1) The conventional wisdom may not be correct, but it give a quasi organized semblance of intellectual coherence. It gives a framework of structure and bounds for reason. Once you stray off the reservation, you meet up with bizarre whacko insane freakazoids who will believe anything. I DO NOT WANT TO BE CATEGORIZED WITH THESE PEOPLE and so tend to avoid straying off the reservation. We all do. This has nothing to do with truth but rather about our emotional states. We want to be accepted as reasonable people and fear being associated with "those people." I certainly do. In looking for an explanation, I find that men choose beliefs NOT on the basis of rationality but for deeper social and emotional factors. For example, I am a Christian, and believe that this is similar to the "reasons" men reject God. In the final analysis, they do so not because of a paucity of evidence but rather because they do not like what the evidence shows them.
2) The second point is similar to the first, at least with regard to belief systems. It is a soul-shattering and an emotionally difficult thing to come to the point that you no longer believe in "God country and apple pie" as a mix. It is deeply disturbing to look around and say "so we aren't the good guys after all!" and have to reassess your loyalty to country. North cites one of my favorite authors, Whittaker Chambers, who tells about how psychologically difficult this was for Communist defectors. It is literally like abandoning a belief in God. It also explains the hostility one will face if you bring it up to people. It is far far easier emotionally to just tune in to Rush and Sean and assume the bad guys are Obama, George Soros, and some "RINO" congressmen...., and that "America" really is the vision of a city on a hill.., we have just lost it and can recover it. If you question this, you will be resisted with the same emotional intensity as if you questioned the infallibility of the Pope, or stated that Mohammed was an infidel, or questioned the resurrection of Jesus. I do question the first two, and believe the third passes a reasonable test, by the way. The point is that these beliefs are often held for NON RATIONAL REASONS and attacks will come with an irrational fury. You are, after all, attacking someone's civic religion.
3) When you move from a position of trust in the leadership of a country to a position of deep cynicism, it affects the way you think about all of government. You start to question everywhere whether leaders are serving the rule of law and the public, vs simply expanding their own power and furthering their own economic interests. The operative phrase becomes "I wonder what else they have lied to me about?" The temptation here is to become extremely cynical and bitter, like a woman who thought she could trust her husband and finds out he has had a mistress on the side and supporting her and her children secretly for years.
4) It is good and proper for Christians to be deeply suspicious and cynical of the social and political structures of men, though. There is only one good King, and a misplaced belief in the systems of men (at their very very best!) is, at it's root, idolatry. Nowhere do I see this as more true than the misplaced trust of Christian Conservatives in our government (when it is Republican!). We should expect corruption, lies, deceit, coverup, theft, manipulation, and hypocrisy. It is appropriate, and even Christian duty to ask the question "I wonder what else they lied to us about."
Yet my cynicism may not be utter and thorough. Men are not devils, but men. Not only that, but God is sovereign in and over the affairs of men. He has a good plan which involves HIS goal, which is the ultimate redemption and renewing of the cosmos. For this reason, I will not despair, even though I have contempt and disdain for the "oh my goodness! Our country and its leaders would NEVER do THAT!" responses. No, maybe in fact they would. Men are capable of great evil and American conservatives are no exception.
This was posted on August 30 on one of GaryNorth.com site's forums regarding the pancake-like collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings on 9-11:
"All three are clearly controlled demos. Everyone that views it knows it."
I cannot imagine a more inaccurate statement. Hardly anyone who views them knows "it." Almost every adult American has seen the videos of the collapse of the North & South towers. On September 11, 2001, the videos were shown over and over on the networks, all day long.
Only a handful of experts have ever publicly argued that the cause of the bildings' collapse was a system of controlled demolition. Anyone who dares to mention the pancake collapse of the third tower is rejected derisively as a conspiracy theorist.
If the critic then goes on to point out that
there were no plane debris at the alleged crash site in Shanksville, Pennsylvania -- --
the parts were scattered for miles, indicating that the plane exploded in mid-air
he is dismissed as a nut case. Why? Because such a scenario raises an obvious question: Did the military shoot it down? This in turn questions the "Let's roll" scenario of heroes on board Flight 93 who stormed the cabin.
Millions of believers in the government's "Let's roll" version of the crash look at the small empty hole and do not see what is missing: debris. They see an empty hole and conclude that a plane crashed there. In their case, not seeing is believing.
This leads me to a conclusion: Seeing is not always believing. Not seeing is very often believing.
This is why conspiracies have gotten away with a great deal in history.
I have faced this all of my adult life. I started out in 1958 with a high school term paper on whether Roosevelt knew an attack on Pearl Harbor was coming. I concluded that he knew an attack somewhere in the Pacific was coming. I have not changed my mind. In 1972, when I was awarded my Ph.D. in American history, as far as I knew, I was the only historian age 30 or younger with a Ph.D. in history who believed this. Even today, I am one of maybe a dozen men with a Ph.D in American history who believe this and say so in public. I am guessing about the number. The ones I can name -- fewer than half a dozen -- are so old as to be retirement age. No one without tenure would dare to teach Pearl Harbor revisionism as factually accurate in a college classroom. He would be not have his contract renewed. The account has never gotten into a textbook. Yet as early as 1947, George Morgenstern's book, Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War, revealed a great deal of the truth. It was published by an obscure right-wing publishing house, Devin-Adair. He wrote it first as a series of articles in 1946 because he was employed by the Chicago Tribune, owned by Col. McCormick, who hated Roosevelt. The book is still unknown.
The most widely known books on Pearl Harbor that forcefully argue the case for FDR's prior knowledge of the attack are John Toland's Infamy, which is 25 years old, and Robert Stinnett's Day of Deceit, which is over a decade old. Neither of the authors was a Ph.D.-holding scholar.
CONSPIRACY THEORIST!
The phrase, "conspiracy theorist," is literally a career-killer in academia.
Murray Rothbard identified the issue of conspiracy theories in 1977.
Anytime that a hard-nosed analysis is put forth of who our rulers are, of how their political and economic interests interlock, it is invariably denounced by Establishment liberals and conservatives (and even by many libertarians) as a "conspiracy theory of history," "paranoid," "economic determinist," and even "Marxist." These smear labels are applied across the board, even though such realistic analyses can be, and have been, made from any and all parts of the economic spectrum, from the John Birch Society to the Communist Party. The most common label is "conspiracy theorist," almost always leveled as a hostile epithet rather than adopted by the "conspiracy theorist" himself.
It is no wonder that usually these realistic analyses are spelled out by various "extremists" who are outside the Establishment consensus. For it is vital to the continued rule of the State apparatus that it have legitimacy and even sanctity in the eyes of the public, and it is vital to that sanctity that our politicians and bureaucrats be deemed to be disembodied spirits solely devoted to the "public good." Once let the cat out of the bag that these spirits are all too often grounded in the solid earth of advancing a set of economic interests through use of the State, and the basic mystique of government begins to collapse.
In a recent interview on the offbeat RT channel, a reporter questions the theories of a man who thinks the #1 of motive for NATO's toppling of Qadaffi was Qadaffi's policy of not borrowing from Western banks or the IMF. She pressures him: "Are you a conspiracy theorist?" He denies it, calling himself a "deep geopolitics" thinker. Nice try; no cigar. He is a conspiracy theorist.
Alex Jones was one of the first to broadcast videos with comments on the collapsing Building 7. He is openly a conspiracy theorist. The fact that he promoted the event as a conspiracy pretty well dooms others who also promote the official account's implausibility. This is why the producer of the forthcoming DVD on the controlled implosions hastened to assure viewers that he is not interested in conspiracy theories.
Yet he is inescapably a conspiracy theorist. When your video presents experts who argue that the buildings were blown up from inside by means of explosives planted weeks or months before, rather than caused by fires started by the planes, your explanation inherently must rely on the existence of a conspiracy and a subsequent government cover-up. The elephant in his living room is his denial of offering a conspiracy theory.
LIES, SPIN, AND COVER-UPS
My point is simple: every Establishment rules in terms of lies, spin, and cover-ups. Most of the citizenry is vaguely aware of the lies and the spin on this or that minor matter, but voters side with the regime on the big lies. To do otherwise is to call into question their own wisdom. I is to admit that you were successfully taken in on some major matter -- you and millions of others. This undermines the religion of democracy. It means that republican patriotism is based on widespread gullibility. "Fool me once, shame on the government. Fool me 20 times, shame on me." So, once the masses have adopted the Official Party Line, to abandon it means abandoning your old self and your old world of political legitimacy. It means that you are now on your own -- an outlaw, a pariah.
The defectors from Communism who went into print about their defections all described this gut-wrenching, soul-searching loss of faith in Stalin's Party Line. The most famous account was (and remains) Whittaker Chambers' book, Witness (1952). Different events triggered these defections: the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, Khrushchev's 1956 "secret" speech on Stalin, or the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
To make the switch on any major historical issue -- to explain it in terms of hidden connections -- is to open yourself to making the switch on a dozen others. You must re-think a great deal of the past. No one has the time to do this. This is Alex Jones' problem. He never can be sure, based on his own detailed reading, which takes lots of time, that the guy he just interviewed is not a nut case, or naive, or ill-informed, or whatever.
Only God can connect all the dots. That's why dot-connecting is a hazardous pastime.
I have met some disturbed people who are full-time nut cases, so overwhelmed are they with conspiracy theories. They are close to the Mel Gibson character in Conspiracy Theory. I have traveled in circles that attract such people for 50 years. If you travel in similar circles, you meet them. They are emotionally paralyzed. Sometimes, they have cut themselves off from their families. They have no theory of history, other than "they did it." It is not clear who "they" are. These people live in the Matrix world in search of the right-colored pill. They never find it. They live to discover new links to the One Big Conspiracy. My father-in-law, R. J. Rushdoony, who accepted many conspiracy theories and who was a skilled revisionist historian, referred to these people as gravediggers. They dig their own graves, psychologically speaking.
Most people interested in public affairs sense the cost of abandoning the publicly held view of Big Events. The cost is very high. There is almost no positive payoff. In academia, there is none. The payoffs are negative.
BUILDING 7
So, for most Americans, seeing is not believing. Most Americans do not remember this event. The media do not mention it. They never did. The 9-11 Commission report did not mention Building 7. For those few people who have seen the videos of its collapse, this can be somehow explained, they insist. They cannot say how the collapse made sense physically, any more than NIST could, even after 6 years of investigating, beginning in 2002. NIST blamed Building 7's fires on debris from the other two buildings, yet those buildings both collapsed without warning -- no signs of burning debris. The debris is assumed to have caused the fires. There is no cause-and-effect evidence. It is assumed to have been the cause.
According to NIST's site, the specific objectives of the investigation were these:
* Determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed following the initial impacts of the aircraft and why and how WTC 7 collapsed;
* Determine why the injuries and fatalities were so high or low depending on location, including all technical aspects of fire protection, occupant behavior, evacuation, and emergency response;
* Determine what procedures and practices were used in the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of WTC 1, 2, and 7; and
* Identify, as specifically as possible, areas in current building and fire codes, standards, and practices that warrant revision.
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc
Yet Building 7 is not mentioned in the next page of findings. Notice objective 3: "Determine what procedures and practices were used in the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of WTC 1, 2, and 7. . . ." On the next page, we read: "Objective 3: Determine what procedures and practices were used in the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of WTC 1 and WTC 2." Building 7 was dropped down the memory hole one page later. This is how blatant the procedure was.
[Note: Orwell's term, "memory hole," was apt. He created a powerful metaphor by writing into 1984 a device that served the government as a kind of shredder of documents and therefore a shredder of history. The phrase has stuck -- one of the best rhetorical tools available to a conspiracy theorist.]
NIST wanted to avoid the elephant in the living room: Building 7. NIST got away with it. Only the DVD of the 1,500 architects and engineers, not yet released -- due on September 11 -- has offered a frontal assault by experts. This will have no effect on the general public. Not a decade late, it won't.
And so it goes, case by case.
This is why the Official Party Line works, decade after decade. The cost of pursuing the truth is too high. The payoff is too low.
Conclusion: the following is not true. "All three are clearly controlled demos. Everyone that views it knows it." Almost no one who views it knows it, and anyone who points out the obvious -- the pancake collapse of all three -- risks either ostracism or patronizing smirks.
If you want an example of the effect of a personal cost-benefit analysis, consider the case of an academic expert in demolitions who, on 9-11, identified the collapse of the three towers as the work of a system of controlled demolition. He was vice president for research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. I remember his statement at the time. I was amazed that an academician would say this. I was therefore not amazed a week later when he retracted his statement. This is how the world of academia works. It is paid by civil governments to work this way. It is accredited by civil governments to work this way. It is self-policed to work this way.
CONCLUSION
The Web is undermining the Establishment's control over information. The number of conspiracy theories is constantly increasing. This is undermining confidence in the state and its official explanations. But with respect to any one conspiracy theory, none gains the widespread acceptance of the official explanation. Conspiracy theories are more like termites than controlled demolitions. There will come a day when the building will collapse.
I can tell you what will trigger this. Washington's checks will bounce, or just as bad from the recipients' point of view, not buy anything. That will be the day when the central bank-sustained house of economic cards, sustained by lies, comes crashing down. That will be the day of collapsing faith in the government's biggest lie of all: its promise of endless checks, free of charge to the recipients. "They lied! They lied!" Indeed, they did.
"I wonder what else they lied about."
The footnotes are out there. The textbooks are not.World Trade Center Building 7 and Conspiracy Theories
Outstanding, reasoned, articulate, cogent and level headed.
A couple of points:
1) The conventional wisdom may not be correct, but it give a quasi organized semblance of intellectual coherence. It gives a framework of structure and bounds for reason. Once you stray off the reservation, you meet up with bizarre whacko insane freakazoids who will believe anything. I DO NOT WANT TO BE CATEGORIZED WITH THESE PEOPLE and so tend to avoid straying off the reservation. We all do. This has nothing to do with truth but rather about our emotional states. We want to be accepted as reasonable people and fear being associated with "those people." I certainly do. In looking for an explanation, I find that men choose beliefs NOT on the basis of rationality but for deeper social and emotional factors. For example, I am a Christian, and believe that this is similar to the "reasons" men reject God. In the final analysis, they do so not because of a paucity of evidence but rather because they do not like what the evidence shows them.
2) The second point is similar to the first, at least with regard to belief systems. It is a soul-shattering and an emotionally difficult thing to come to the point that you no longer believe in "God country and apple pie" as a mix. It is deeply disturbing to look around and say "so we aren't the good guys after all!" and have to reassess your loyalty to country. North cites one of my favorite authors, Whittaker Chambers, who tells about how psychologically difficult this was for Communist defectors. It is literally like abandoning a belief in God. It also explains the hostility one will face if you bring it up to people. It is far far easier emotionally to just tune in to Rush and Sean and assume the bad guys are Obama, George Soros, and some "RINO" congressmen...., and that "America" really is the vision of a city on a hill.., we have just lost it and can recover it. If you question this, you will be resisted with the same emotional intensity as if you questioned the infallibility of the Pope, or stated that Mohammed was an infidel, or questioned the resurrection of Jesus. I do question the first two, and believe the third passes a reasonable test, by the way. The point is that these beliefs are often held for NON RATIONAL REASONS and attacks will come with an irrational fury. You are, after all, attacking someone's civic religion.
3) When you move from a position of trust in the leadership of a country to a position of deep cynicism, it affects the way you think about all of government. You start to question everywhere whether leaders are serving the rule of law and the public, vs simply expanding their own power and furthering their own economic interests. The operative phrase becomes "I wonder what else they have lied to me about?" The temptation here is to become extremely cynical and bitter, like a woman who thought she could trust her husband and finds out he has had a mistress on the side and supporting her and her children secretly for years.
4) It is good and proper for Christians to be deeply suspicious and cynical of the social and political structures of men, though. There is only one good King, and a misplaced belief in the systems of men (at their very very best!) is, at it's root, idolatry. Nowhere do I see this as more true than the misplaced trust of Christian Conservatives in our government (when it is Republican!). We should expect corruption, lies, deceit, coverup, theft, manipulation, and hypocrisy. It is appropriate, and even Christian duty to ask the question "I wonder what else they lied to us about."
Yet my cynicism may not be utter and thorough. Men are not devils, but men. Not only that, but God is sovereign in and over the affairs of men. He has a good plan which involves HIS goal, which is the ultimate redemption and renewing of the cosmos. For this reason, I will not despair, even though I have contempt and disdain for the "oh my goodness! Our country and its leaders would NEVER do THAT!" responses. No, maybe in fact they would. Men are capable of great evil and American conservatives are no exception.
This was posted on August 30 on one of GaryNorth.com site's forums regarding the pancake-like collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings on 9-11:
"All three are clearly controlled demos. Everyone that views it knows it."
I cannot imagine a more inaccurate statement. Hardly anyone who views them knows "it." Almost every adult American has seen the videos of the collapse of the North & South towers. On September 11, 2001, the videos were shown over and over on the networks, all day long.
Only a handful of experts have ever publicly argued that the cause of the bildings' collapse was a system of controlled demolition. Anyone who dares to mention the pancake collapse of the third tower is rejected derisively as a conspiracy theorist.
If the critic then goes on to point out that
there were no plane debris at the alleged crash site in Shanksville, Pennsylvania -- --
the parts were scattered for miles, indicating that the plane exploded in mid-air
he is dismissed as a nut case. Why? Because such a scenario raises an obvious question: Did the military shoot it down? This in turn questions the "Let's roll" scenario of heroes on board Flight 93 who stormed the cabin.
Millions of believers in the government's "Let's roll" version of the crash look at the small empty hole and do not see what is missing: debris. They see an empty hole and conclude that a plane crashed there. In their case, not seeing is believing.
This leads me to a conclusion: Seeing is not always believing. Not seeing is very often believing.
This is why conspiracies have gotten away with a great deal in history.
I have faced this all of my adult life. I started out in 1958 with a high school term paper on whether Roosevelt knew an attack on Pearl Harbor was coming. I concluded that he knew an attack somewhere in the Pacific was coming. I have not changed my mind. In 1972, when I was awarded my Ph.D. in American history, as far as I knew, I was the only historian age 30 or younger with a Ph.D. in history who believed this. Even today, I am one of maybe a dozen men with a Ph.D in American history who believe this and say so in public. I am guessing about the number. The ones I can name -- fewer than half a dozen -- are so old as to be retirement age. No one without tenure would dare to teach Pearl Harbor revisionism as factually accurate in a college classroom. He would be not have his contract renewed. The account has never gotten into a textbook. Yet as early as 1947, George Morgenstern's book, Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War, revealed a great deal of the truth. It was published by an obscure right-wing publishing house, Devin-Adair. He wrote it first as a series of articles in 1946 because he was employed by the Chicago Tribune, owned by Col. McCormick, who hated Roosevelt. The book is still unknown.
The most widely known books on Pearl Harbor that forcefully argue the case for FDR's prior knowledge of the attack are John Toland's Infamy, which is 25 years old, and Robert Stinnett's Day of Deceit, which is over a decade old. Neither of the authors was a Ph.D.-holding scholar.
CONSPIRACY THEORIST!
The phrase, "conspiracy theorist," is literally a career-killer in academia.
Murray Rothbard identified the issue of conspiracy theories in 1977.
Anytime that a hard-nosed analysis is put forth of who our rulers are, of how their political and economic interests interlock, it is invariably denounced by Establishment liberals and conservatives (and even by many libertarians) as a "conspiracy theory of history," "paranoid," "economic determinist," and even "Marxist." These smear labels are applied across the board, even though such realistic analyses can be, and have been, made from any and all parts of the economic spectrum, from the John Birch Society to the Communist Party. The most common label is "conspiracy theorist," almost always leveled as a hostile epithet rather than adopted by the "conspiracy theorist" himself.
It is no wonder that usually these realistic analyses are spelled out by various "extremists" who are outside the Establishment consensus. For it is vital to the continued rule of the State apparatus that it have legitimacy and even sanctity in the eyes of the public, and it is vital to that sanctity that our politicians and bureaucrats be deemed to be disembodied spirits solely devoted to the "public good." Once let the cat out of the bag that these spirits are all too often grounded in the solid earth of advancing a set of economic interests through use of the State, and the basic mystique of government begins to collapse.
In a recent interview on the offbeat RT channel, a reporter questions the theories of a man who thinks the #1 of motive for NATO's toppling of Qadaffi was Qadaffi's policy of not borrowing from Western banks or the IMF. She pressures him: "Are you a conspiracy theorist?" He denies it, calling himself a "deep geopolitics" thinker. Nice try; no cigar. He is a conspiracy theorist.
Alex Jones was one of the first to broadcast videos with comments on the collapsing Building 7. He is openly a conspiracy theorist. The fact that he promoted the event as a conspiracy pretty well dooms others who also promote the official account's implausibility. This is why the producer of the forthcoming DVD on the controlled implosions hastened to assure viewers that he is not interested in conspiracy theories.
Yet he is inescapably a conspiracy theorist. When your video presents experts who argue that the buildings were blown up from inside by means of explosives planted weeks or months before, rather than caused by fires started by the planes, your explanation inherently must rely on the existence of a conspiracy and a subsequent government cover-up. The elephant in his living room is his denial of offering a conspiracy theory.
LIES, SPIN, AND COVER-UPS
My point is simple: every Establishment rules in terms of lies, spin, and cover-ups. Most of the citizenry is vaguely aware of the lies and the spin on this or that minor matter, but voters side with the regime on the big lies. To do otherwise is to call into question their own wisdom. I is to admit that you were successfully taken in on some major matter -- you and millions of others. This undermines the religion of democracy. It means that republican patriotism is based on widespread gullibility. "Fool me once, shame on the government. Fool me 20 times, shame on me." So, once the masses have adopted the Official Party Line, to abandon it means abandoning your old self and your old world of political legitimacy. It means that you are now on your own -- an outlaw, a pariah.
The defectors from Communism who went into print about their defections all described this gut-wrenching, soul-searching loss of faith in Stalin's Party Line. The most famous account was (and remains) Whittaker Chambers' book, Witness (1952). Different events triggered these defections: the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, Khrushchev's 1956 "secret" speech on Stalin, or the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
To make the switch on any major historical issue -- to explain it in terms of hidden connections -- is to open yourself to making the switch on a dozen others. You must re-think a great deal of the past. No one has the time to do this. This is Alex Jones' problem. He never can be sure, based on his own detailed reading, which takes lots of time, that the guy he just interviewed is not a nut case, or naive, or ill-informed, or whatever.
Only God can connect all the dots. That's why dot-connecting is a hazardous pastime.
I have met some disturbed people who are full-time nut cases, so overwhelmed are they with conspiracy theories. They are close to the Mel Gibson character in Conspiracy Theory. I have traveled in circles that attract such people for 50 years. If you travel in similar circles, you meet them. They are emotionally paralyzed. Sometimes, they have cut themselves off from their families. They have no theory of history, other than "they did it." It is not clear who "they" are. These people live in the Matrix world in search of the right-colored pill. They never find it. They live to discover new links to the One Big Conspiracy. My father-in-law, R. J. Rushdoony, who accepted many conspiracy theories and who was a skilled revisionist historian, referred to these people as gravediggers. They dig their own graves, psychologically speaking.
Most people interested in public affairs sense the cost of abandoning the publicly held view of Big Events. The cost is very high. There is almost no positive payoff. In academia, there is none. The payoffs are negative.
BUILDING 7
So, for most Americans, seeing is not believing. Most Americans do not remember this event. The media do not mention it. They never did. The 9-11 Commission report did not mention Building 7. For those few people who have seen the videos of its collapse, this can be somehow explained, they insist. They cannot say how the collapse made sense physically, any more than NIST could, even after 6 years of investigating, beginning in 2002. NIST blamed Building 7's fires on debris from the other two buildings, yet those buildings both collapsed without warning -- no signs of burning debris. The debris is assumed to have caused the fires. There is no cause-and-effect evidence. It is assumed to have been the cause.
According to NIST's site, the specific objectives of the investigation were these:
* Determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed following the initial impacts of the aircraft and why and how WTC 7 collapsed;
* Determine why the injuries and fatalities were so high or low depending on location, including all technical aspects of fire protection, occupant behavior, evacuation, and emergency response;
* Determine what procedures and practices were used in the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of WTC 1, 2, and 7; and
* Identify, as specifically as possible, areas in current building and fire codes, standards, and practices that warrant revision.
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc
Yet Building 7 is not mentioned in the next page of findings. Notice objective 3: "Determine what procedures and practices were used in the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of WTC 1, 2, and 7. . . ." On the next page, we read: "Objective 3: Determine what procedures and practices were used in the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of WTC 1 and WTC 2." Building 7 was dropped down the memory hole one page later. This is how blatant the procedure was.
[Note: Orwell's term, "memory hole," was apt. He created a powerful metaphor by writing into 1984 a device that served the government as a kind of shredder of documents and therefore a shredder of history. The phrase has stuck -- one of the best rhetorical tools available to a conspiracy theorist.]
NIST wanted to avoid the elephant in the living room: Building 7. NIST got away with it. Only the DVD of the 1,500 architects and engineers, not yet released -- due on September 11 -- has offered a frontal assault by experts. This will have no effect on the general public. Not a decade late, it won't.
And so it goes, case by case.
This is why the Official Party Line works, decade after decade. The cost of pursuing the truth is too high. The payoff is too low.
Conclusion: the following is not true. "All three are clearly controlled demos. Everyone that views it knows it." Almost no one who views it knows it, and anyone who points out the obvious -- the pancake collapse of all three -- risks either ostracism or patronizing smirks.
If you want an example of the effect of a personal cost-benefit analysis, consider the case of an academic expert in demolitions who, on 9-11, identified the collapse of the three towers as the work of a system of controlled demolition. He was vice president for research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. I remember his statement at the time. I was amazed that an academician would say this. I was therefore not amazed a week later when he retracted his statement. This is how the world of academia works. It is paid by civil governments to work this way. It is accredited by civil governments to work this way. It is self-policed to work this way.
CONCLUSION
The Web is undermining the Establishment's control over information. The number of conspiracy theories is constantly increasing. This is undermining confidence in the state and its official explanations. But with respect to any one conspiracy theory, none gains the widespread acceptance of the official explanation. Conspiracy theories are more like termites than controlled demolitions. There will come a day when the building will collapse.
I can tell you what will trigger this. Washington's checks will bounce, or just as bad from the recipients' point of view, not buy anything. That will be the day when the central bank-sustained house of economic cards, sustained by lies, comes crashing down. That will be the day of collapsing faith in the government's biggest lie of all: its promise of endless checks, free of charge to the recipients. "They lied! They lied!" Indeed, they did.
"I wonder what else they lied about."
The footnotes are out there. The textbooks are not.World Trade Center Building 7 and Conspiracy Theories
The Road From Capitalism to Socialism
After decades of the government (which destroys wealth) becoming a larger part of the economy while the private sector (the one that creates wealth) shrinks, this graph is about to complete what dirty minded technical analysts refer to as a "phallyic" chart pattern. The "shaft" part of the formation began in the 1960s and things turned even worse after the "head" formation began to be traced out after the 1990s.
Now with government spending about to cross over and become more of the economy than private spending it will complete the phallyic formation. It's only fitting that this chart has drawn out the shape of a penis after all these decades because now, due to all this government involvement in the economy, the US is good and truly screwed over.
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