Iran is not Our Enemy! Let's Stop this War Insanity!

     Everybody “knows” that Iran is thinking of developing nuclear weapons, but no one seems to have solid information to back it up. Okay, they’ve been enriching uranium to 20%. That’s pure enough for use in hospitals and medical research, both of which Iran has in abundance. After all, Iran is a modern nation with modern hospitals. In fact, Iran is an important destination for medical tourism.  (Contrary to impressions that war propagandists may have given you about Iran and intolerance, the medical tourism photo above was taken in Iran.)

     The most oft-given “reason” for believing that Iran is building nuclear weapons runs something like, “With all that oil Iran has, they have no need of nuclear power plants; therefore, they must be planning to build nuclear weapons.” There are three problems with that argument.

1. It’s based on a lack of knowledge rather than fact. The speaker says, in effect, “I don’t know what else it could be; therefore, it must be what I suspect it is.” The fact is, there are uses for radiation other than bombs and power plants.

2. It presupposes that the more oil a country has, the less need it has for nuclear power plants. The fact is, the United States is awash with oil, yet the United States claims need of nuclear power plants.

3. Finally, the argument is based on the idea that anything that seems to be true must be true. Experience has often shown otherwise.

     But aren’t our government leaders telling us that Iran is working on a nuclear bomb? Yes, they are. They also told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Afghanistan wasn’t willing to cooperate with the United States in dealing with Al Qaeda; and they knew at the time that these claims were lies.

     What about the United Nations inspectors? In paragraphs 2-13 of the UN’s IAEA Report on Iran, the UN said that there was no evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb.

Why would our government lie to us about something as serious as this? I could suggest possible answers to that question, but I could be wrong. We do know, though, that they have lied before and that they’re lying now.

     Iran hasn’t started a war in 360 years. How many wars have the United States, England, and Israel started in the last 65 years?  For that matter, how many countries has the United States invaded in the last 360 days?  We were at peace with Yemen, Libya, and Pakistan at the time we attacked them.  Not long before that, we were at peace with Afghanistan and Iraq at the time we attacked them—and we're worried about Iran attacking?  Attacking whom, and how?  It's a lie.
     If we're told that the Iranians have sunk the USS Enterprise (perhaps as early as April), we'll know it's a lie.  Someone in the governments of Israel or the U.S. may sink the Enterprise, but Iran won't.

     The words of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, spoken in 1935, speak to our time. A career marine officer from 1898-1931, Butler was one of only 19 people who received the Medal of Honor twice. Early in his career, he was brevetted because, at the time, marine officers weren’t allowed to receive the Medal of Honor. So, he was only one of two men who earned the Medal of Honor three times. He became an outspoken opponent of America’s meddling in other countries’ affairs, and this often got him into trouble with American political leaders. At an American Legion meeting, he made a memorable speech called “War is a Racket.” In a YouTube video, an actor performs his speech. General Butler later expanded his speech and had it published as a book.

     Here's the late George Carlin's take on America's affinity for war (be prepared for some rough language):

     I’m a Vietnam combat veteran—a four-time volunteer who fought as part of Task Force 117, Mobile Riverine Force, Mekong Delta. I also served in Danang and the Parrot’s Beak. Having invested that much of myself in a war, it’s hard to accept that war—especially a war in which I served and sacrificed—is a racket.   Like it or not, it's the truth: War is a racket.

     I don’t want to visit that kind of evil on this generation of young people. The best way we can support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is to bring them home. We can support the troops or we can support the war; we can’t do both. And we certainly don’t need another war based on lies.

     War is a racket. Under Article I, Section 8, of the United States Constitution, only Congress can declare war. They can also refuse to declare war. "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" Click here to write your congressman.

The Quaint Custom of Beauty Pageants, Part 3

     In the first two parts of this series, I showed that beauty pageants are exercises in futility.  The system of judging all but determines that real beauty and talent will be eliminated from consideration, and that in all other respects, beauty pageants are a barbaric custom based on objectification of women.  

     The final round in the competition is judged on the basis of the contestants' personalities.  The women are judged by such standards as shallowness, glibness of speech, and hypocrisy.  Remember that some of these beauty pageants, to disguise their true intent, are called "scholarship" pageants, as though they are designed to choose scholars deserving of higher education. 

     This round has two parts.  In the first, the judges will converse with each contestant in private. A conversation lasting no more than a few minutes is expected to reveal to the judges everything they need to know about whether the contestant deserves a higher education.

     I couldn’t tell you the subject of the private conversation the contestant would have with a judge. Since the conversation is private, I think that the judges are not as interested in what she says as they are in what she can keep from saying. You can imagine what her chances would be if she told the judges that 9/11 was an inside job.  

     Once the contestants, in private, have assured the judges that they won't spill the beans about 9/11 or question global warming, the approved contestants move to the next step in this quasi-masonic process. I'm referring, of course, to the obligatory public display of insincerity. Each one of a certain number of finalists—probably five—will be asked a question which probably will have nothing to do with the scholarship candidate’s chosen field of study. Thoughtful answers will count against the contestant, for several reasons:

1. They might be controversial;

2. They probably would not be understood by the average person who watches that kind of event; and

3. The answers are supposed to be heartwarming rather than informative.

     Her answer must be as pleasing as possible to as many of the judges as possible without going over anyone’s heads. Her answer must appeal to the lowest common denominator, and she must be glib in her delivery.

     To demonstrate this, let’s revisit what is probably the most painful memory of a young girl’s life. I’m referring to the Miss Teen U.S.A. contest, in which Caitlin Upton, Miss South Carolina, was asked, “Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?” Her embarrassing answer is recounted in a video clip from the corporate-owned media program the Today Show.

     Please notice two things in particular in this clip  below.  For one, Caitlin's face is not covered with more make-up than Bozo the clown, as it was in the Miss Teen USA Pageant.  Looking natural, she looks great.  For another, even though she had a day or so to come up with a different answer to the pageant interviewer's question, her answer is still shallow, vacuous, and obviously insincere.  That is, her revised answer is the sort of answer that would have pleased the pageant judges.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQKNvPn3V-8

     If you do a Google video search for "dumb blonde," her gaffe comes up in third place.  Do an image search, and she's number one.  

     I really think that it was an unfair question and that she got a bum rap for not coming up with a heartwarming answer. Wouldn’t it be more productive if the judges bothered to do their homework and ask the contestants questions related to their areas of expertise? For that matter, if she had given an intelligent, informed answer, she would have been toast. Here’s what she could have said:

     “I personally believe that Americans are unable to do so because most geography teachers are so boring that their students could learn more in a cave. Most school administrators have so little respect for geography as a course that they think that anybody can teach it. Instead of assigning geography classes to teachers with a real passion for the subject, they assign them to teachers who can fit the classes into their schedules. Most Americans really love geography even if they don’t know it. They really love books and movies about travel and people in other lands, and they’re eager to learn about other cultures. Unfortunately, when they enter a geography class, the teacher has them memorize national capitals, population densities, where stuff is on a world map, and a lot of other meaningless trivia they can easily find on line if they wanted to know it. Students’ eyes glaze over and they don’t learn anything that they don’t quickly forget. If geography teachers taught students what they really wanted to know, students would eagerly learn about other people and their cultures. They might even realize that some of the practices of so-called third-world cultures make more sense than this dumb-old contest we’re having tonight. They’d develop a deep appreciation for the different peoples of the world and their concerns, and this increased understanding would help to promote (sigh) world peace.”

     You can imagine what a beauty contestant’s chances would be if she gave an answer like that one. Even the prattle about world peace wouldn’t sway them.

     In case you're wondering whatever became of the would-be scholar Caitlin Upton, her Chickipedia biography isn't much more informative than her Wikipedia bio or any other bio.  They all say that she "planned" or "plans" to attend Appalachian State University to study graphic design.  Apparently, her failure to win the scholarship has put her educational plans on hold while she struggles to make a living as a fashion model, either in North Hollywood or (yuk) for Donald Trump in New York.  Baseline said that she actually attended Appalachian State University, but I couldn't find any source saying that she had graduated.  Maybe ASU's courses in geography, logic, and elocution are overly difficult.

     One must wonder how many would-be Nobel Prize recipients missed out on educational opportunities due to their failure to give properly insincere answers in a "scholarship" pageant.  Probably none.  Somehow, I don't think she would have found a cure for cancer if she had won the "scholarship."

     Beauty contests are a dumb idea from the get-go. Truly beautiful women don’t stand a chance of winning the beauty portion of the contest. Truly talented women don’t stand a chance of winning the talent competition. The “personality” portion of the show tends to reward personality traits that no human being should possess.

     I wouldn’t favor abolishing beauty contests. Participating in them or watching them should be a private decision. My private decision is to change channels or turn off the television and spend my time doing something more productive. If the idea of having beauty contests were only recently introduced, wouldn’t you think it was bizarre?
(Back to Part 1)  (Back to Part 2)

The Quaint Custom of Beauty Pageants, Part 2

     In the first part of this three-part series, I examined four features that most national and international beauty pageants have in common.  In each area, the beauty pageant, or scholarship pageant, or whatever the promoters call it, fails to deliver what the promoters promise.  In this second part of the series, I examine the "beauty" and "talent" competitions, which all but doom the chances of winning for most beautiful or talented contestants.

     Seriously. Think about the famous women who are said to be world-class beauties. With few exceptions, most of them have some facial feature that a minority of people would call ugly. To most other observers, though, each of these features is the woman's most appealing feature.     

     Think of Anne Hathaway’s wide-set eyes, Elle MacPherson’s impenetrably dark eyes, Karen Mok’s large teeth, Angelina Jolie’s full lips, or Julia Roberts’s wide mouth. People who don’t find those features appealing might say that Anne Hathaway’s eyes were practically on the sides of her head; that Elle MacPherson’s eyes were spooky, like an android’s; that Karen Mok could eat an ear of corn through a picket fence; that Angelina Jolie’s lips look like two slabs of raw liver; or that Julia Roberts’s mouth reminds you of a crocodile.

     A woman whose face had all those features would look like a monster. With just one of these features, she can be a world-class beauty. Given a panel of, say, seven judges, probably one of them would give any one of these aforementioned beauties low enough marks to cause a blandly attractive woman to win that part of the competition.

     Let me give you an example of two former beauty contestants versus a beautiful young woman who wouldn’t stand a chance in a beauty contest.

     In Taiwan, there’s a female singing and acting group called S.H.E. The name stands for Selina, Hebe, and Ella. Selina and Hebe were teenage beauty contestants, and they have the generic prettiness of beauty contestants. Ella was never in a beauty contest, and she’s noted for a tomboyish appearance; yet she was always the most popular member of the group, and many people consider her the most attractive of the three. Now that Hebe is 28 and the others are 30, Selina and Hebe are still generically pretty, but Ella is a radiantly beautiful woman. She still probably wouldn’t stand a chance in a beauty contest because her face is rounder than most judges prefer.

     Now let’s come to requirement #6 of what it takes to win a (ahem!) “scholarship” contest.

     Once the leg and cleavage part of the competition is over, the contestants have to compete on the basis of something else that has nothing to do with scholarship. With tongue-in-cheek, it’s called the talent competition. All the contestants display some degree of training or practice at what they do, but it’s quite a stretch to call it talent. Rarely is it even entertaining, unless you happen to have a perverse sense of humor—like the people who deliberately watch terribly made movies for the express purpose of laughing at how bad they are. The trouble is, these performances are not bad enough to be risible, but they don't show enough talent to be interesting. Let’s face it: technical proficiency is not the same thing as talent.

     Among a panel of judges, true talent would be doomed to failure, and for the same reason that a world-class beauty would have no chance in a beauty contest. Talent involves creativity. True creativity will please some people but offend others. Low marks from just one judge out of seven would doom a contestant’s chances of winning. Only the least objectionable material—that is, the lowest common denominator—has a chance of winning.

     If you think I’m kidding, compare the two videos below. In the first, a national beauty contestant with a piano is displaying the high degree of technical proficiency that passes for talent at these events.  



     Chances are, you didn't watch all of it.  In the second video clip, Chico and Harpo Marx are displaying their talents on a piano.  Chances are, you will watch all of it.

  

     A beauty contestant playing with talent like Chico's and Harpo's would not have a chance of winning the talent competition. A low mark from even one of the judges would kill a talented contestant’s chances of winning.

     In the third and final article in this series, I’ll treat the “personality” portion of beauty contests. The kind of personality that’s rewarded is not the kind of personality that most men would want to marry.  I don't blame the contestants; I blame the judges.  Their questions and expectations are unfair.

(Back to Part 1) (See Part 3)

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The Quaint Custom of Beauty Pageants, Part 1

     This is the time of year that local and state beauty contests are held in preparation for national and world-wide beauty contests. I helped a civic group organize a statewide beauty contest back around 1980, so I got a chance to see the event from the inside. I kept asking myself, “Why am I doing this? It’s just a dog and pony show. It’s dumb.”

     Swaziland's Umhlanga Reed Festival, which raises eyebrows in the West, makes more sense to me. At least it has a point that I can respect.

     In this three-part series of articles, I’ll address seven features that most national and world-wide beauty contests have in common. I’ll show that world-class beauties have less chance of winning than blandly nondescript pretty women; that, in the “talent” contest, mediocrity is preferred over talent; and that, in the “personality” segments of the contest, the most winning qualities are shallowness, glib deliveries, and insincerity.

     It’s a truism that ugly buildings, politicians, and bizarre customs come to be considered respectable if they stay around for a long time. That seems to be true of beauty pageants—only the organizers of many beauty pageants have become sensitive enough to changing times that they've come to call their event something other than a beauty pageant.

     A certain well-known beauty pageant in the United States is called a scholarship pageant. That makes it sound as though it’s an educational process to determine which needy student most deserves to go to the college of her choice. If that’s the case, why are needy young men are disqualified from consideration?

     Let’s pretend for a moment that the event is called a scholarship program rather than a scholarship pageant or a contest. As it is with the so-called scholarship pageant, this event is presented as a public service for educational purposes, and the event’s organizers wanted to choose the most deserving scholar. Of course, you would want do know what criteria they use for determining which scholar is the most deserving. Here is what they would tell you:

1. She must be female, single, under thirty years of age and pretty. (Right away, anyone in his right mind would get suspicious.)

2. She doesn’t even have to use the scholarship money to further her education. After a year of behaving virginally, she could—if she so desired—use the money to buy a franchise in a Central American drug cartel.

3. She must publicly compete with about fifty other would-be scholars. Only one of them will receive the scholarship. In the unlikely event that the winner falls under a bus or reveals her belief in reptilian shape shifters before the year is out, the first runner-up will receive the scholarship prize.

4. Her means of competition for the scholarship has absolutely nothing to do with anything scholarly. If fact, if she gives any indication that she has scholarly inclinations—such as showing that she is smarter than the judges or in any way has a mind of her own—it will be counted against her. 

      In full view of the judges and a national television audience, she must parade across the stage half naked, like the women at right. Then she must do the same thing in an evening gown. Her body movements and even her body itself will be judged by an motley panel such as cosmetics marketers, fashion magazine editors, and washed-up actors. Not just any standard of beauty will do. She must fit the standards of bland “beauty,” heavily larded with make-up, like the women on the covers of fashion magazines. Under all those layers of make-up, natural beauty must be indistinguishable from the painted-on variety. Likewise, there’s no room for facial characteristics that many people find appealing, such as overbites or freckles.

     In tomorrow’s installment of this three-part series, I’ll show you that truly world-class beauties would have little or no chance of winning one of these "beauty" contests.
(See Part 2)  (See Part 3)

Melting Glaciers, Rising Sea Levels, and—What—Global Warming?

     It’s no secret that glaciers are melting. It’s no secret that global sea levels are rising. Melting glaciers and rising sea levels are probably the most oft-cited “evidence” that global temperatures are rising.

     Before we proceed further, let me stress that I consider myself an environmentalist. I’m strongly opposed to drinking poisoned water, breathing toxic fumes, and eating things containing ingredients or residues I can’t pronounce. Almost everywhere I go, I walk, bike, or take mass transportation. Back when I had a garden, onion plants served to deter pests; and compost served as fertilizer.

     Recycling? I recycle, downcycle, upcycle, reuse, and loop close every chance I get. In my purchasing habits, I try to focus on the benefits I want rather than the products that the advertisers try to con me into buying. The latter idea is my own innovation, and I know of no one else who practices it.

     Don’t expect me to hug a polar bear, though. Those critters are among the ten most dangerous species of animals on Earth.

     Not one of the aforementioned practices, however, has anything at all to do with alleged global warming. You can do any or all of them without believing that it’s hot, especially during a record-breaking cold snap in which hundreds of people freeze to death. On the other hand, the Key deer, the Formosa landlocked Salmon, the Yonaguni Monument, and the Inuit people have much to do with melting glaciers and rising sea levels, though they are effects rather than causes of rising sea levels.

     The Key deer, a sub-species of the white-tailed deer, is endemic to the Florida Keys. It developed apart from the white-tailed deer when rising sea levels transformed the Florida Keys into islands apart from the mainland. All this took place during the centuries following the end of the Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago.

     Rising sea levels and tectonic shifts also brought into being the world’s only species of landlocked salmon. They’re found in Taiwan.

     Although Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa) is part of the Philippine tectonic plate and not the Eurasian plate, there once was a land bridge between present-day China and Taiwan. Austronesian peoples, including the Ryukyu islanders of southern Japan, used that land bridge as they populated the Pacific islands. After the Ice Age, the land bridge became the Taiwan Strait.

     The Yonaguni Monument was either built or modified (researchers can’t agree which) when that part of the Ryukyu island of Yonaguni was on dry land. In those days, there was no Yellow Sea; and the Sea of Japan was an inland sea. So, you see, it wasn’t just ice that joined Japan and Taiwan to the Asian mainland. Over the past 10,000 years, sea levels have risen about 130 feet (39 meters).

     If you live in the Western Hemisphere, you learned in elementary school that the ancestors of our native peoples originally came from present-day northern China. During the Ice Age, there was a land bridge spanning what is now the Bering Strait. As the ice melted and sea levels rose, this land route was cut off.  Among the last of these peoples were the Inuits.

     Yes, glaciers really are melting, and sea levels really are rising. That has been happening for 10,000 years. That doesn’t mean, though, that global temperatures have been steadily rising for 10,000 years.

     Let’s mentally try an experiment. Imagine a large block of ice in a freezer. Let’s say the temperature inside the freezer is 0 degrees Fahrenheit.

Let’s gradually turn the temperature up until it reaches 25 degrees. It’s getting warmer, but the ice isn’t melting. It’s not melting, because temperatures are still freezing. (The Ice Age is still with us.)

     Around 3:00 P.M., let’s unplug the freezer and open the door. (The Ice Age is over.) Of course the ice will start melting. As night falls and temperatures also fall, watch what happens. The ice will continue to melt even as temperatures are falling. Why? It’s very simple. Ice melts when it’s no longer freezing. Even if temperatures fall, ice will continue to melt as long as temperatures remain above freezing.

     That’s why glaciers are melting and sea levels are rising. We’re no longer in an Ice Age, and I thank the Lord for that. I wouldn’t like for the glaciers to come back and cover most of Argentina and Kansas—unless Argentina and Kansas would rather have glaciers than tornados. Dorothy might never have wanted to leave Oz.

     Over the past few thousand years, there have been periods of warming and cooling. Several periods have been much warmer than it is today, and several others have been much cooler. Through warm spells and cool ones, glaciers have been melting and sea levels have been rising. Take a look at the chart below.  (Source)

     H. L. Mencken provided an explanation for the global warming hoax:

     "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

     It’s the Problem Reaction Solution Paradigm. The problem and the solution are cooked up in the same laboratory. The social or political change agent supplies the problem, whether it is real or imagined. The target to be manipulated provides the reaction. Then the change agent provides the appearance of a solution. The “solution,” of course, is for the target to give more power or other resources to the change agent—a “solution” to which the target would never have agreed in the absence of the contrived problem. 

     If you have trouble accepting my harsh judgment of the global warming hoaxers, consider a couple of observations.

     If man’s survival depended upon cutting back our consumption, why don’t global warming enthusiasts take it seriously enough to cut back on their consumption? Al Gore’s ocean-front palatial mansion in California (see photo), for example, consumes 20 times the electricity that the average Americans house consumes.  He has installed solar panels on his Nashville, Tennessee, palatial mansion, which once used 24 times the average American levels of electricity.  How many palatial mansions can a person have and still be called environmentally responsible?

     On the average, food travels 1,500 miles from farm to table, polluting and using up resources along the way. Food from home gardens travels only a few yards. So why is the federal government making it more difficult to have home gardens?

     Why is it that practical, non-governmental solutions are not even considered?

     You can probably come up with a few other examples of the gap between the words and actions of the powers that be.

     Toxic pollution, resource depletion, and other forms of environmental degradation are real. Global warming and other government schemes are hoaxes. Government scaremongers can not save us. We can only save each other, albeit with practical solutions.  Here, here, and here are just a few of many.

The 9/11 Truth Deniers' Question that will not Go Away: Part 2

     As 9/11 truth deniers frequently tell us, if elements of the U.S. government and the Israeli Mossad carried out the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, it had to have involved thousands of conspirators. How, we are asked, could that many people have kept it a secret?

     As promised, I explained in the first part of this series just how secrets of that magnitude are kept. In a nutshell, no one is told any more than he needs to know; and, in all but a few cases, those involved don’t have the faintest idea what the secret is. They may even be unaware that there is a secret.

     Let’s take another look at the original question and its underlying assumption. The question was, “How could that big a conspiracy be kept a secret?” The underlying assumption is that the conspiracy really was kept a secret.

     That assumption is completely false. That 9/11 was an inside job hasn’t been kept a secret from anyone but the willfully ignorant. Almost every major claim of the “official” story of 9/11 has been thoroughly discredited either by credible eyewitnesses or by highly qualified professionals examining the evidence. These facts are well known to anyone who cares to look.

     The 9/11 truth deniers demand something that can never be. They’re demanding that we produce someone who is capable of revealing everything about how the attacks were carried out. Considering how secret projects of that magnitude are compartmentalized, it’s highly unlikely that any one person has all the answers. If he did, he’d face arrest, trial, and the death penalty for speaking out.

     As it is, hundreds of eyewitnesses to 9/11 have spilled the beans, and some of them have died violent deaths since then. Additionally, tens of thousands of experts in various fields related to the “official” explanation for 9/11 have used facts well known in their respective fields to reveal the secret. While they can not “prove” how the false flag was carried out, they have accomplished two ends:

1. They have proven that almost every assertion in the “official” story is a lie; and,

2. They have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that 9/11 was an inside job.

     It would not be possible to refute more than a few of the hundreds of claims of the “official” story, but I’ll mention some that prove that the conspiracy was not limited to nineteen hijackers and the “former” CIA asset Osama bin Laden.
     William Rodriguez, a janitor at the World Trade Center North Tower, was the last survivor of the collapse. Having saved the lives of hundreds of people in the North Tower, he has no need of further glory or for lies. He testified that he heard and felt a tremendous explosion in the basement beneath his feet just before the first plane hit the North Tower. 

     Kenneth Johannemann, a part-time janitor at the North Tower, was on another lower floor when he had a similar experience. His version of events strongly supports the testimony of Rodriguez.  On August 31, 2008, Kenneth Johannemann died of a gunshot wound to the head. It was ruled a suicide.

     Barry Jennings, who worked for the City Housing Department, was trapped for several hours in Building 7. He heard explosions all during that time. In fact, he’d heard explosions before either the North or South Tower came down, and the explosions continued for the next several hours. Firemen who rescued him reported many explosions in the building. As they crossed the downstairs lobby to get out of the building, they saw many dead bodies and signs of explosions on the first floor.

     The cause of Building 7’s destruction was not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. After years of pressure from thousands of architects and engineers as well as other concerned Americans, the National Institute for Standards and Technology released its report on Building 7. The report was released two days after Barry Jennings died of “undisclosed causes.” Try as I did, I was unable to find any source that claimed to know what those “undisclosed causes” were. 

     Michael Hess, New York City’s corporate counsel was with Barry Jennings that fateful day in September. After the NIST Report was released, he said in an interview that NIST had lied in its report. 
     This is just a small sampling of the hundreds of eyewitnesses who have said, from experience, that the "official" version of events is a lie.  Now let us turn to the tens of thousands of expert witnesses who have examined the "official" version of events and say that, from their training and expertise, they know that the "official" story is a lie.

     Thousands of pilots examined the evidence for amateur pilots flying the planes and hitting the buildings and have disproven the “official” story. To give one example, some commercial airline pilots, impressed by what they had “seen” in the famous videos purporting to be Boeing 757’s crashing into the World Trade Center, decided to use a simulator to see if they could duplicate the feat. Ten commercial airline pilots with many years experience flying large commercial airliners took the test several times each. Not one of them was able to duplicate the feat, even after several tries.

     Likewise, it has been impossible for the 9/11 conspirators to keep their inside job a secret from thousands upon thousands of professionals who have disproven countless points of the “official” story. A few of the groups whose areas of expertise have been instrumental in “spilling the beans,” include, but are not limited to, fire fighters, military officers, scientists,  architects and engineers, journalists and other media professionals, political leaders, medical professionals, scholars (here and here), and Muslims and Jews.

     The truth deniers’ question, “Why hasn’t anyone spilled the beans?” is entirely dishonest or incredibly lazy and gullible, especially since hundreds of eyewitnesses and tens of thousands of expert witnesses have come forward.  Anyone who cares to research the facts can easily learn who had the means, the motive, the opportunity, control over the boundary conditions, and the ability to cover it up. Here is a start.
     To read Part 1 of this series, click here.

The 9/11 Truth Deniers' Question that will not Go Away: Part 1

     Theories of how the September 11, 2001, attacks were carried out present us with a dilemma. Seemingly, two groups of mutually contradictory theories are impossible to believe.

In the official theory, nineteen poorly trained young men carrying out impossible feats of skill amid a dizzying array of coincidences and disproven excuses for the failure of every relevant part of the U.S. government to follow standard operating procedure. In alternative theories, hundreds or even thousands of people were involved in a massive conspiracy. How, we are asked, could that many people have kept something that big a secret from the American people?

     Propagandists for the first theory have been so successful that it has become the default theory. Rather than following simple logic by rejecting this impossible scenario, almost everyone falls into the belief that it can’t be rejected until an alternative theory has been proven. No, logic demands that the impossible first scenario must be rejected outright and that the puzzling second scenario be examined further and explained.

     Logic also demands that we question everything. In the first part of this series, I’ll cover well-trod ground by trying to answer the first question: How could that many conspirators keep that big a secret from the American people? In the second part of this series, I’ll question the basic assumption of that question and disprove it.

     If 9/11 was an inside job, it would have to have involved President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, WTC owner Larry Silverstein, the Israeli Mossad, other Israeli officials, several private security firms, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the corporate-owned media, and many others. The number of people involved must have run into the thousands.

     In answering the question as asked, whole systems thinking requires us to ask two counter questions: Are there other known instances of government successfully keeping that big a secret? If so, how did they manage it?

     The Manhattan Project, to build the world’s first atomic bomb, was just such a secret. The above top secret Manhattan Project involved 130,000 people, and it was kept a secret until the time the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

     Everyone who has ever watched a spy thriller has heard a line similar to, “All information is on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know.” That’s how the Manhattan Project was conducted. 

     Let’s look at only 1,196 people involved in keeping the big secret, and how little they actually knew. You can imagine how more than 100,000 other keepers of the secret were similarly given the mushroom treatment.

     In mid-July 1945, a Portland-class cruiser named the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) delivered two atomic bombs within striking distance of Japan. Not one of the 1,196 officers and enlisted men aboard the Indianapolis knew what they were delivering. No one at the delivery point yet knew what the two crates contained. Even the location of the Indianapolis was top secret. When the Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine, its distress signal was assumed to be a Japanese trick, since no American ship was known to be in the area. When the Indianapolis failed to return to port, no one missed them because no one knew anything about them. The survivors spent the next few days going mad from hunger, thirst, and shark attacks. They were rescued only because a pilot on anti-submarine patrol accidentally noticed them in the water. Of approximately 900 men who had survived the sinking, only 317 survived the shark attacks. In the worst naval disaster in American history, 879 men took the secret of the Manhattan Project to their deaths, and not one of them even knew what the secret was.

     That’s just one vignette from the big secret known as the Manhattan Project. I’ve just described hundreds of people involved in a top secret. Not one spilled the beans, because not one of them knew enough to spill anything. Not even President Truman knew about the Manhattan Project until he “needed to know.”

     Look up from your computer for a moment. Suppose you had wanted to keep the building and furnishing of a home like yours a secret, and suppose it were hidden in a remote location.  Do you think that the furniture manufacturers knew that they were making the furniture for your home? Did the appliance manufacturers know? What about the lumber jacks and hardware suppliers? Thousands of people supplied your home, but only a few knew the location of your home.

     That’s how it was with the Manhattan Project and a number of other projects of the federal government. Use your favorite search engine to search the following: “Manhattan Project” secret “need to know.” You’ll find references to the stealth bomber, the CIA’s black budget, health issues, Area 51, and others.

     For agencies of the federal government, keeping big secrets from the American people is the norm. Whole books, praise by highly respected sources, have been written on the subject. The book Secrets: The CIA’s War at Home, is given favorable treatment by the American Journalism Review.  A Culture of Secrecy: The Government Versus the People’s Right to Know is praised by Seymour Hersh the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who uncovered such secrets as the My Lai Massacre and America’s Abu Ghraib torture chambers. 

     The federal government’s best-kept secrets, however, are the secrets that wishful thinkers keep from themselves. Though there are many, I will delve into only one: the 9/11 false flag attacks, which I’ll present in the second part of this series.
    For more information on the September 11, 2001, false flag terror attacks, click here.

The Republican Presidential Nomination is Being Stolen! (Part 2)

     (This is part two of a two-part article about vote fraud and potential vote fraud in the 2012 Iowa caucuses, and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. Today, we treat the South Carolina primaries, repeating the last two paragraphs of yesterdays's article.)

     We also know that around 90% of New Hampshire’s ballots are cast via a form of gambling called e-voting. Their machines are programmed by a company that has already been found guilty of criminal behavior and convictions. (here)

     In South Carolina it was worse. The usual suspects programmed 100% of the voting machines. (here)  That amounts to 100% faith-based voting.

     The Internet is buzzing with talk that 953 posthumous ballots were cast in the recent South Carolina Republican Party primary. Actually, this news item was based on a letter that S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson wrote to U.S. Attorney two days before the primary. He wrote that, in recent elections, 953 such ballots had been cast in “recent elections.” Additionally, he wrote that 4,965 ballots had been cast by voters who were no longer qualified to vote because they had moved from the state. We’re talking about a total of 5,918 illegal ballots. Wilson was concerned that this may also happen in the 2012 Republican Party primary. (link to PDF) 

     Did it? It’s hard to say just yet, but several anomalies and irregularities have come to light.

     In the video The Ron Paul Fix is In, the narrator points out that Newt Gingrich, who went on to “win” the South Carolina primary, had to cancel a Charleston engagement due to lack of interest. At the same time, Ron Paul attracted over 1,000 supporters in the Holy City (a sobriquet for Charleston).

     That, by itself, would not be enough to convince me that something was rotten in the Palmetto State (another sobriquet). After all, the “lesser of two evils”—the other being Mitt Romney—doesn’t generate the same level of enthusiasm as “the President America needs.”

     Admit it: The only reason I’ve ever heard anyone give for “supporting” Romney or Gingrich is the belief that one or the other has the best chance of beating Obama in the November presidential election. I’ve even heard people say with astonishing shortsightedness that beating Obama was their “ultimate goal.” Actually, it barely qualifies as a short-term goal. A long-term goal should be to elect the kind of President that America needs. A longer-term goal should be to bring about a better future for America. The ultimate goal should be of a religious nature.

     What I found particularly suspicious was the reported behavior of the people who “tallied” the vote. At poll watcher Christopher Lawton reported many suspicious irregularities at many precincts all over the state, as it was with the count in Iowa and New Hampshire, if irregularities were the rule in one precinct, it’s reasonable to wonder about the other precincts. (link)

     No one is saying that the Gingrich campaign had anything to do with the voting irregularities in South Carolina. Voter fraud could have been more strategic than that.

     As long as Ron Paul is in the race, two other candidates must also be in the race for vote fraud to be harder to detect. No one would have believed that a majority of South Carolinians would vote for disaster capitalist Mitt Romney, a nose-in-the-air elitist who amassed a $240 billion fortune by buying up businesses and crashing them—the sort of thing Goldman Sachs does to whole countries such as the U.S. and Greece. (here) 

     Enter Newt Gingrich, whose platform on virtually every issue is the opposite of his actual self—kind of like Zorro in reverse. Zorro feigned weakness to disguise his heroic self. Gingrich feigns a heroic persona to disguise the opposite.

Military adventures overseas? When Gingrich was of draft age during the Vietnam War, he avoided having to take a moral stand for or against the war. In short, his actual self is a selfish coward.

     Family values? Ha! That’s like Jeffrey Dahmer posing as a vegetarian.

     A super patriot? Not the way he genuflects before the Israeli government and vigorously advocates using American servicemen as janissaries for that regime.

     Limited government? Not the way the military-industrial complex borrows and spends our money with his blessings.

     Fiscal responsibility? He was a hired hit man for Fannie Mae. If you liked the 2007-2008 housing and credit collapse, you’ll love Newt Gingrich.

     Honesty? He lies so much that he has to get somebody else to call his dog for him.  Not even Congress, in which so much corruption takes place that it's scarcely noticed, could stomach his conflicts of interest.  They censured him for corruption in 1997, when he was Speaker of the House.

     Because Newt Gingrich talks a good game, even with all his noxious faults, he makes a more convincing designated winner than the patronizing, high-pressure salesman Mitt Romney. Romney comes across as so stuck up that he runs the risk of drowning when it rains.

     At this writing, the Florida primary has just ended, and—if "news" reports are to be believed—the silver spoon cruncher trounced the Grinch 46.4% to 31.9%, with Sanitarium and St. Paul trailing behind with 13.4% and 7.0% of the vote, respectively.
     Since no more than 5% of the delegates have been gathered, we can be sure that Romney and either Gingrich or Santorum will remain in the race, if only to maintain the illusion that Ron Paul isn't getting enough votes to be taken seriously.  After all, if it were a two-man race between  Romney and Paul, the vote fraudsters would have only two alternatives—either of which would wreck their well-cultivated myth that Ron Paul is just a fringe candidate.  Either they could award Romney more than 90% of the votes, which even the most gullible citizens would question; or they could make it a 70%-30% split, which would place Paul too close to the mainstream to be ignored at the national convention during the final week of August.
     For this reason, we can be sure that either Santorum or Gingrich will stay in the race to provide protective camouflage for vote thieves.  Those of you who live in states that have not yet had primaries or caucuses must watch them carefully. It’s not enough to read their lips; watch their hands.