BBC 9/11 Bollocks Triumphs Over Honest Citizen

Forty-nine-year-old Briton, Tony Rooke, refused to pay his TV license fee, proceeds of which fund the BBC, claiming that the BBC lied about 9/11.

Tony Rooke, representing himself at Horsham Magistrates’ Court, said he did not wish to give money to an organization 'funding the practice of terrorism'.

Rooke, who was found guilty of using an unlicensed TV set, said his refusal to pay the license fee was in accordance with Section 15 of the 2000 Terrorism Act, which states that it is an offense to obtain money for purposes of terrorism.

Rooke told the court:

I believe the BBC, who are directly funded by the license fee, are furthering the purposes of terrorism and I have incontrovertible evidence to this effect.

In support of this claim, Rooke said, was the fact that the BBC reported that World Trade Centre Building 7 had fallen 20 minutes in advance of the collapse. (The building could be seen in the background behind BBC television reporter Jane Standley as she reported  live from New York that WTC7 had already collapsed.)

Rooke said: The BBC reported it 20 minutes before it fell. They knew about it beforehand.

Mr. Rooke was granted a conditional discharges, which according to the Daily Mail, is "often used in political cases to indicate that the accused, though technically guilty, occupies the moral high ground."

Tony Rooke's supporters outside the Horsham Magistrate's court.

The case has been ignored by Britain's major news organzations, as noted by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky:

With the exception of London’s Daily Mail, the British mainstream media, including The Guardian and the Independent, chose to abstain from coverage or commentary of this historic court case, which points to a criminal process of media disinformation by the BBC.

The BBC chose to “cover up its own coverup.” Not a single word from the BBC to justify or explain or refute their lies, particularly regarding the collapse of WTC building 7 which had been announced by the BBC 20 minutes before the collapse took place, suggesting that the BBC and other media had advanced knowledge of the collapse of a WTC building 7 which was not even struck by an aircraft.

This is one among a string of BBC media fabrications including fake images and video footage.

We will recall that in August 2011, the BBC showed fake video footage of Libyans celebrating “Liberation” in Tripoli’s Green square, following NATO’s humanitarian bombings. Oops. They were waving Indian flags. They are not Libyans but Indians. “We made a mistake”, assuming that the British public would not see the difference.

It is our hope that Tony Brooke’s initiative will encourage people across the United Kingdom to question the legitimacy of the TV Licence fee, which supports an organization involved in outright war propaganda on behalf of the British government.

February 22, 2007: Lost BBC Precognition Tape Found on Internet Archive
On 22nd February 2007, an extensive collection of television broadcast footage covering the 9/11 attacks was discovered on the Internet Archive, and this was reported on 911 Blogger.

One activist then discovered that BBC World had reported the collapse of WTC7 23 mins before it happened and they produced the attached video. ...
Source: U.K. IndyMedia

February 27, 2007: Part of the conspiracy?
Richard Porter, Head of News, BBC World, responded (on a BBC blog site) to reports that, on 9/11, BBC News reported the collapse of World Trade Center Tower 7 more than 25 minutes in advance of the event. You can see these comments by following this link. (If they are still there, that is.) 

At the end of Mr. Porter's comment there is an invitation to respond, which I accepted. However, instead of posting my comment, the BBC responded to my response with the following notice followed by a bizarre sequence of additional announcements, suggesting extreme panic about public reaction to apparent BBC complicity in hiding the truth about its advance knowledge of an apparent controlled demolition WTC Building 7.

{My comments in response to the BBC's notice and subsequent announcements are in curly brackets} 

Problems with comments
* Host * 18 May 06, 12:51 PM
{Note that this message was actually delivered at around 2030 h PST on February 28, 2007, not on the date or at the time indicated above.}
 
At the minute, we've got a bit of a problem with comments not appearing promptly.
The number of comments you see after each post (and on the right hand side of the main blog page) is the number of comments that should be on each post. But we have some technical problems which slows this process...
{Actually, I saw no numbers, but it doesn't seem as though they meant a whole heck of a lot. Or not so as you could tell from their explanation, anyhow.}
 
Here's why it happens.. (you may have seen this explanation before, on Nick Robinson's blog..)
{Who the Dickens is Nick Robinson?}
 
"The difference is due to the way that the content of the blogs is published. Without going into too much heavy detail, when a blog is updated, certain bits of it are rebuilt and certain bits are automatically changed. These rebuilt sections are then transferred across multiple servers. Sometimes due to the heavy load on bbc.co.uk some of the bits find themselves stuck in a queue waiting to be published. The rebuilt bits can take longer to arrive than the others... and so there is sometimes a disparity between number of comments 'totals' and actual published numbers."
{Phew! I'm glad they didn't go into too much heavy detail.}
 
We are looking into a solution.
{That's great, but just in case the BBC loses my astute comment before they find the solution that they're "looking into," or "certain bits" of it (my comment that is) are "automatically changed" while transferrring "rebuilt sections across multiple servers", causing a "disparity" between what I said and what the BBC might eventually publish, here's what I said, which is pretty much what I've said before. But it seems to make a good point}:
 
The problem for the BBC is this. It cannot explain how it announced the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 in advance of the event without admitting that the collapse was known in advance. But the collapse could only have been known in advance if it was the result of human intervention: that is, if it was a controlled demolition. 

In fact, we know it was a controlled demolition because the building's lease owner, Larry Silverstein, bizarrely stated as much in the PBS documentary "Rebuilding America." 

However, until this point, the fact that it was a controlled demolition has not entered the 9/11 story as recounted by the mass media. Having blundered by pre-announcing the demolition, the BBC in effect demolished the official 9/11 account. But it did so, only for those few people whose attention has been drawn to the BBC blunder by a thousand or so blogs. 

So how does the BBC respond. With some fatuous comments on a blog site. In this way, the story remains out of the mass media and will likely so remain. And if you doubt it, search Google News for WTC7 +BBC and see how many mainstream news sites have covered the story (to date, 2030 h PST, February 28, none).

And this is a most significant fact. Many 9/11 "conspiracy theory debunkers" argue that, if 9/11 had been an "inside job," so many people would have been in the know that it would have been impossible to prevent the truth leaking out.

But here we see that the truth has leaked out, part of it anyway, yet the media won't mention it. So it doesn't count as the truth even though it is known to many people. It doesn't count as the truth because it can only be known to the majority of the people if the corporate media tells them about it. And what we see is that the corporate media, with remarkable discipline, will not mention the subject.

So even when thousands and probably millions of bloggers and their readers know the truth, the truth will never be publicly acknowledged. Thus, the truth will never become a political fact.

March 01, 2007: The MSM: The Dog that Wouldn't Bark
The News 24 "timestamp" footage of the BBC reporting the collapse of Building 7 26 minutes before it happened was uploaded to Youtube. But although the clip is under 30 seconds in length and clearly constitutes fair use, Google yanked the video after it was prominently featured in our article yesterday.
Source: PrisonPlanet

July 2, 2008: The BBC eventually explains everything: Just a "cock-up" not a conspiracy to conceal evidence
The way the BBC came by advance knowledge of the collapse of WTC7 is clearly vital evidence relating to a the greatest domestic crime in the history of the United States. The claimed disappearance of the BBC's archive tapes proving foreknowledge of the destruction of WTC7 suggests the deliberate destruction of evidence and the obstruction of justice. Forced to respond, the BBC declared: "Oh, it was just that we put the incriminating tape on the wrong shelf. Sorry about that."

POSTCRIPT
So even though Mr. Porter admits to a BBC "cock-up" (weird the expressions the British use), he's actually handled the situation quite deftly. The BBC admitted it "cocked-up" (if one can verbify a cock-up), but it won't go public with the story, as in an announcement on a major news broadcast. And so, the truth, although known, will not be widely known. For whether it is "catapaulting the propaganda" or simply informing the public, it's the mass media that still does the heavy lifting. Yep, it isn't for nothing that Mr. Porter is Head of News at BBC World.

9/11 News the Corpo Media Won't Cover
Search Google News for "WTC7 +BBC" this morning (1000 h PST) and you get one hit.* Search blogs for the same terms and you get 1,186 hits. And that does not cover hundreds maybe thousands of other news-following web sites (such as this one) that also covered the BBC's psychic advance announcement of the demolition of the World Trade Center Tower 7. 

So what's with the corpo. media? Are all their employees castrated as a condition of employment, or what?
 
In any case, this is the real smoking gun. If there was an easy way to dismiss the evidence that the BBC announced the collapse of WTC7 more than 20 minutes before it actually fell, you can be sure that The Globe and Mail, the National Putz, the Guruniard, Murdoch's Times, WaPo, the NYT, the Jerusalem Post and all the other rubbish papers that people so strangely pay good money to read, would obviously have dismissed it.
 
But the story cannot be dismissed, at least not on the basis of the truth, without admitting what is known on other grounds to be the case: namely, that the collapse of WTC7 was a controlled demolition, which many people, not just one reporter at the BBC, were informed about before the event. And if that is admitted, then it is clear that for five years the U.S. Government has been lying about WTC7, for the obvious reason that, if it is admitted that WTC7 was a controlled demolition, it makes controlled demolition a more plausible, indeed the most probable, explanation for the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2.
 
The failure of the corpo. media to touch this story, no, let us say the determination of the corpo. media not to touch this story, is enormously revealing for another reason.
 
Many conspiracy theory "debunkers" argue that, if 9/11 had been an "inside job," so many people would have been in the know that it would have been impossible to prevent the truth leaking out.
But here we see that the truth has leaked out, part of it anyway, yet the media won't mention it. So it doesn't count as the truth even though it is known to many people. It doesn't count as the truth because it can only be known to the majority of the people if the corporate media tells them about it. And what we see is that the corporate media, with remarkable discipline, will simply not mention the subject. 
 
So even when thousands and probably millions of bloggers and their readers know the truth, the truth will never be publicly acknowledged. Thus, the truth will never become a political fact.
Which leaves a fascinating question to resolve. How are the media controlled? How do they exercise such discipline?
 
A free subscription to the Canadian Spectator for the fist correct answer. Send your answer, together with a $10.00 contest entry fee too ... 

* That Google search was made in February 2007. Interestingly, if you repeat the search today, Feburary 2013, you get only six hits, four of them in foreign language publications. If you do the blog search today, you'll get over 83,000 hits. So who you gonna trust, the MSM or those lyin' blogs? 

 Other amazing instances of precognition about WTC7
It has now been discovered that CNN’s Aaron Brown reported that Building 7 "has collapsed or is collapsing" over an hour before it fell. ...
Jones Report

Actually, this isn't so amazing. Larry Silverstein, lease owner of the Trade Towers and Building 7, admitted during the PBS special "Rebuilding America" that they decided to "pull" Buidling 7: "and then we watched the building come down." So of course the collapse of the building was known in advance.
 
The only problem for the U.S. government is that it has been lying about the collapse of Building 7 for five years. And if it admits now that the collapse of WTC7 was a controlled demo, then the main argument against controlled demolition of WTC1 and WTC2, namely that there was no way the buldings could have been prepped for demolition in advance of 9/11 without anyone knowing about it, collapses like the towers themselves.

BBC: The Bizarro Broadcasting Corporation

9/11 Precognition: Part II
The Amazing Foresight of Jerome Hauer
On September 11, 2001, Jerome Hauer advised the White House to begin taking Cipro, an antibiotic which is effective against anthrax. .... "
Winter Patriot

Accidental precognition at the BBC
If we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error - no more than that.... "
Richard Porter of the BBC

BBC 9/11 Rebuttal Rebutted
How the BBC faked audio clips, provided fascinating details about Dylan Avery's laptop, gave a guided tour of Jim Fetzer's basement, and failed to explain how they knew WTC7 was coming down twenty minutes before it happened (see next item), and in general failed to deal with anything remotely relevant to the case for an inside job.
video.google.de/

Sere gute. The Germans really do understand bullshit better than most people. But then they have more experience of its disastrous consequences. 

And needless to say, Google has pulled this informative video.

More fascinating and colorful details about the total corruption of the BBC and its concealment of evidence of treason and crimes against children and humanity over at Aangirfan. 

And this: Jimmy Saville's paedophilia consistent with BBC culture.

 And this: UK man wins court case against BBC for 911 cover up

The End of American Freedom

Your Papers, Citizen: Gun Control and the Changing American Character

By Fred Reed

Fred on Everything: February 19, 2013: A staple of American self-esteem is that we Yanks are brave, free, independent, self-reliant, ruggedly individual, and disinclined to accept abuse from anyone. This was largely true in, say, 1930. People lived, a great many of them, on farms where they planted their own crops, built their own barns, repaired their own trucks, and protected their own property. They were literate but not educated, knew little of the world beyond the local, but in their homes and fields they were supreme.

If they wanted to swim buck nekkid in the creek, they swam buck nekkid. If whistle pigs were eating the corn, the family teenager would get his rifle and solve the problem. Government left them alone.

Even in the early Sixties, in rural King George County, Virginia, where I grew up, it was still mostly true. The country people built their own boats to crab in the Potomac, converted junked car engines to marine, made their own crab pots, planted corn and such, and hunted deer. There was very little contact with the government. One state trooper was the law, and he had precious little to do.

I say the following not as an old codger painting his youth in roseate hues that never were, but as serious sociology: We kids could get up on a summer morning, grab the .22 or .410, put it over our shoulder and go into the country store for ammunition, and no one looked twice. We could go by night to the dump to snap-shoot rats, and no one cared. We could get our fishing poles—I preferred a spinning reel and bait-casting tackle—and fish anywhere we pleased on Machodoc Creek or the Potomac. We could drive unwisely but joyously on winding wooded roads late at night and nobody cared.

Call it “freedom.” We were free, and so were the country folk on their farms and with their crabbing rigs. Because we were free, we felt free. It was a distinct psychology, though we didn’t know it.

Things then changed. The country increasingly urbanized. So much for rugged.

It became ever more a nation of employees. As Walmart and shopping centers and factories moved in, the farmers sold their land to real-estate developers at what they thought mind-boggling prices, and went to work as security guards and truck drivers. Employees are not free. They fear the boss, fear dismissal, and become prisoners of the retirement system. So much for Marlboro Man.

Self-reliance went. Few any longer can fix a car or the plumbing, grow food, hunt, bait a hook or install a new roof. Or defend themselves. To overstate barely, everyone depends on someone else, often the government, for everything. Thus we became the Hive.

Government came like a dust storm of fine choking powder, making its way into everything. You could no longer build a shed without a half-dozen permits and inspections. You couldn’t swim without a lifeguard, couldn’t use your canoe without Coast-Guard approved flotation devices and a card saying that you had taken an approved course in how to canoe. Cops proliferated with speed traps. The government began spying on email, requiring licenses and permits for everything, and deciding what could and could not be taught to one’s children, who one had to associate with, and what one could think about what or, more usually, whom.

With this came feminization. The schools began to value feelings over learning anything. Dodge ball and freeze tag became violence and heartless competition, giving way to cooperative group activities led by a caring adult. The female preference for security over freedom set in like a hard frost. We became afraid of second-hand smoke and swimming pools with a deep end. As women got in touch with their inner totalitarian, we began to outlaw large soft drinks and any word or expression that might offend anyone.

Read more

DEFEATING SINGLE ISSUE POLITICS

By Luke Hiken

Nobody to the left of Karl Rove would consider sending a petition to the Koch brothers to do anything that was in the interest of the people of this country. That’s because everyone realizes that these greedy, vicious dogs restrict their actions to stealing from the poor and causing whatever harm they can to the largest number of people.

Similarly, nobody in his/her right mind would send letters to General Betray-Us, McChrystal or any of the Pentagon power-brokers that define our foreign policy, asking them to stop murdering defenseless civilians around the world. People understand that the self-interested killers who run this country’s war machine are not concerned with what their fellow citizens think of permanent war, torture, or the slaughter of innocent people.

Even gullible Americans understand the principles set forth in the preceding paragraphs. Yet the number of well-intentioned activists who end their political analyses with the slogans: “sign this petition” and send it to Congress; or “write Obama” and tell him you want x, y, or z, is astonishing. Virtually every facebook blurb I read about politics ends with the admonition “we’re not going to take it anymore” and we’re going to write, petition, or beg someone important to change the situation for the better. What in the world are these people thinking?

It should be painfully obvious to everyone that there is little, if any difference between the Republican and Democratic parties -- both are owned by the corporate interests that define our foreign and domestic policies. Obama needed a billion dollars to win re-election. Who would believe that he got it from poor people? He has supported virtually every war the Pentagon asks for; every policy that Wall Street demands; every repressive piece of legislation that the Republicans want, and every anti-immigrant demand that the most racist Arizonian can conjure up. He would allow fracking directly underneath the White House, if an oil company magnate instructed him to do so.

Neither party proposes tax reforms that would shift wealth from the 1% to the masses. Neither party proposes to end our imperialist assaults throughout the world. Neither seeks meaningful change to our imprisonment of ¼ of the convicts on the face of the planet. Neither seeks to prevent the complete destruction of the environment, which is progressing at breakneck speed. You don’t create change by asking slave-owners to give up their property voluntarily.

Fights between the political parties in this country are like arguments between competing NFL football teams. They are meaningless! The teams are all owned and controlled by the same billionaires that make a fortune over these modern day gladiator fights. If you want to change the nature of professional football, you go after the owners, not the players and coaches. Only when the owners suffer will you change the nature of football.

We all belong to groups that espouse the issues of our choice: immigration reform; labor unions, environmental protection, abortion rights, gun control, affordable health care, educational opportunities, gay marriage, co-ops, etc. The lists seem endless. Nonetheless, until the advocates of these various issues/struggles understand the relationship between each of them, and unite around a politics that support ALL of them, they are kidding themselves. Unions now comprise less than 10% of the work force. The reason for this is that for decades they abandoned the rest of the nation to work on and profit from their own isolated causes. Advocates for each of the issues know their own topics from top to bottom. But there is absolutely no thread of consciousness that unites them.

Since the downfall of the "socialist" leaders (Russia, China, VietNam, Cuba, etc.) few in the Left have any vision of what a meaningful alternative to capitalism looks like, and it is impossible to build a counterforce to the Koch brothers without such a vision. The organizational solidarity needed to combat those who control the Congress and both political parties is simply non-existent at this time, and good feeling rhetoric is no alternative.

If we don’t find a way to build a meaningful alternative to the choke hold international capital currently has on the world, our self-serving, isolated struggles can’t succeed, even when we are multi-racial, working class, non-sexist and green.

If Americans can't fight for single payer healthcare that is available to all, and covered by the state, it is scarcely a beginning to fight for better healthcare services at any one hospital. Winning the struggle for same-sex marriage is a hollow victory if the earth around us has become unsustainable and toxic. The need to broaden our perspective and reach beyond our single-issue politics is paramount.

I certainly don't want to throw water on other people's pleasures: some like sports, some like co-ops, some like unions, or immigration struggles, or anti-prison work, etc. When people work on those issues, it's great that they are enjoying themselves, and seeking change. But without an overview that incorporates the ultimate goal of overthrowing capitalism, they each go nowhere.

The fear of authoritarian socialist bureaucracy has immobilized the Left to the extent that only isolated, fragmented movements, unrelated to each other, seem to provide an alternative for activism. To the extent that people see anti-capitalist work as supporting authoritarian, un-democratic bureaucracies, we’ve lost the fight. Democracy requires more than a two-party system owned by the same oligarchs. Elections are being held in every authoritarian kingdom in the world: they are little more than shams to rationalize the uncivilized ownership of capital by the 1%.

Active opposition to rapacious, unregulated capitalism requires an alternative vehicle for democratic control. Single issue politics do not provide that alternative. Douglas Lummis, in his book “Radical Democracy” described the broad spectrum of contexts in which democratic principles prevailed under the most astonishing circumstances. The creativity and substance of his vision need to be adopted and followed by Americans who seek to survive the attacks being waged upon us by the corporate magnates who presently control our lives.

__________________________________
Luke Hiken is an attorney who has engaged in the practice of criminal, military, immigration, and appellate law.

The Progressive Avenues website, www.progressiveavenues.org, is regularly updated in the “What’s Added, What’s New” link on the Home page, at http://www.progressiveavenues.org/Whats_New_Added.html

James Fetzer, Conspiracy Theories, and the Defence of the State Against the People

A conspiracy theory can be about anything, but as used by the media, the term "conspiracy theory" — sometimes preceded by the word "outrageous" — refers almost exclusively  to a theory postulating a state crime intended to defeat the will of the people.

Whether true or false, conspiracy theories, if widely believed, may seriously undermine the state, which means that they must be combated vigorously.

If a theory is false but widely disseminated, the most effective means to kill it is an impartial and open judicial inquiry or trial.

Conversely, if a conspiracy theory is true in some or all critical elements, then an open, impartial judicial investigation must be avoided, as in the cases of  9/11, the July 7 London Tube bombings, and the Kennedy assassination (the Kennedy assassination was the subject of a report by a commission of inquiry headed by a judge, but it was not an impartial inquiry. Among the Commission members was Allen Dulles, fired by President Kennedy as head of the CIA, the organization widely suspected of Kennedy's murder).

If a theory is true, there are many ways to discredit and intimidate its adherents, these being chiefly effected through media coverage and commentary. These include:

Cloaking in secrecy police action relating to the event, thereby providing opportunity for the destruction of evidence and the covering of tracks.

Lumping all conspiracy theorists together, then highlighting the wackiest theories, thereby implying that conspiracy theorists are mentally ill.

Launching plausible false theories that when debunked humiliate their adherents, thus discouraging future investment in conspiracy theories.

Creating false evidence to support false  theories for future debunking.

Launching false theories based on defective logic that is easily debunked

Associating conspiracy theorists with foreign enemies or with adherents of repugnant ideas.

Destroying or concealing real evidence concerning the crime. 

Threatening legal action against public speculation about the crime.

Most, if not all, of these techniques appear to have been deployed in the case of the Sandy Hook Massacre.

The police investigation, if any, is being conducted in secret.

Key witnesses, the parents of slain children, have been placed under police guard, which insures that they remain silent.

Key evidence has been, if not destroyed, carefully guarded from public view, e.g., the school's CCTV video that should have recorded the alleged entry of Adam Lanza into the school.

The public has been threatened with State and Federal prosecution for public speculation about the event.

Wild theories, based on seemingly faked photographic or other evidence, have been widely disseminated.

Which brings me to Professor James Fetzer.

Jim Fetzer is a distingushed professor emeritus of philosophy with an impressive publication record of works on the scientific method and related topics that, should I come across them, I would certainly look into with interest. In addition, Fetzer has made an intensive study of the Kennedy assassination, has written extensively about 9/11 and is currently engaged in the public discussion of the Sandy Hook Massacre.

Judging by his style of argument, Fetzer is a go-for-the-jugular kind of guy, an excellent trait under some circumstances, no doubt,  but perhaps less than excellent in a philosopher. In the field of conspiracy theory, the Fetzer, running amok approach seems highly counterproductive.

In December, within a week of the Sandy Hook Massacre, Fetzer published under the auspices of the press agency of America's currently most hated enemy, namely, Iran's PressTV, an article entitled Mossad death squads slaughtered American children at Sandy Hook, which aids the work of discrediting Sandy Hook conspiracy theories in four ways.

First, by associating conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook with an enemy of the United States.

Second by associating conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook with virulent anti-Semitism.

Third by associating conspiracy theories with defamation of the US Government.

Fourth, by associating conspiracy theorists with evidence-free speculation.

Taking the last point first, Fetzer's article adduces not a scrap of real evidence to support the theory he advances. His thesis is based solely on this:

When DHS is gearing up to conduct a massive civil war against the American people, what better excuse could there be for banning assault weapons than the massacre of 20 innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary School?

And who better to slaughter American children than Israelis, who deliberately murder Palestinian children?

Meaning, (a) if it would further the objectives of the state to kill 20 innocent children, then in a heart beat, that's what the administration of Barak Obama would do; and (b) such a vile act would naturally be outsourced to the Jews.

The premise that I have labelled (a) may have a certain plausibility, but it cannot be taken as proof of that which has to be proved. As for premise (b), that also is advanced without any evidential basis and thus serves only to characterize this conspiracy theory as highly anti-Semitic.

Emphasizing that the theory is largely based on a highly negative assessment of the Jewish state of Israel is the following quote, which throws in another wild anti-Semitic theory about the Breivic massacre in Norway:

Mike Harris of Veterans Today has exposed the pattern relating what happened there to earlier assaults: “This is exactly what Israel did in Norway; the political party that voted sanctions against Israel was retaliated against by a ‘lone gunman’ who killed 77 children. This is what Israel always does, they go after the children."

The article then continues with:

The most likely scenario, given what we know now, is that Adam Lanza and his mother killed the day before. Adam's body picked up by local police. He was attired in a SWAT outfit, including body armor, and stored in the school.

Ha! So now, without providing any evidence whatever, Fetzer introduces the Connecticut State Police as auxillary murderers providing those vicious Jewish child killers a dead patsy, a harmless vegan nerd, upon whom criminal responsibility will be laid.

To some, despite to total absence of evidence, Fetzer's theories will seem eminently plausible, which is why they are so harmful to the public interest.

Many people, some too busy to think things through, some simple-minded and easily gulled, some deeply prejudiced about Israel, or deeply opposed to the Obama administration will believe and disseminate such theories and thus expose all who wish to discuss Sandy Hook or other politically pivotal events to blanket condemnation as dupes of the lying Iranian propaganda apparatus, anti-Semites, disloyal Americans, mentally challenged individuals incapable of understanding that one cannot bandy about charges of monstrous criminality unsupported by evidence without destroying one's own credibility.

Which leaves one with a question. What kind of man is Jim Fetzer?

One suspects that to those who know him, he is a charming, highly intelligent and learned individual, able to bring a wide knowledge of ideas and events to bear on a multitude of questions in an engaging and informative way. Why then does he appear to be engaged in exercises in crude propaganda that seem to go entirely against the ethic of a professional philosopher?

The answer, perhaps, lies in Fetzer's past. Not only is he a distinguished professor emeritus in philosophy, he is also a former Marine Corps. Officer, a man committed, we may therefore assume, to the defense of his country, right or wrong.

That would explain a lot.

We Discover that PressTV Lies Like the New York Times

We are used to lies from the Western media.

Remember Judy Miller at the New York Times, raising a panic about Sadam's search for "thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium."

Or Fox News and  Sadam's drones of death, designed to launch "a chemical or biological attack on American cities through the use of remote-controlled "drone" planes equipped with GPS tracking maps."

Or the BBC running a Christmas tribute to its late resident pedophile, Jimmy Saville, instead of conducting an inquiry into his well-known proclivity for child abuse.

Then there's the Gruniard, the conscience of the Liberal left, with its resident climate warming alarmist and 9/11 Non-Truther, George Monbiot: A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world, but it has no basis in fact. Yeah, right, George.

When all these crooked information distributors gang up on some oil-rich country outside the orbit of the New World Order, the natural tendency is to consider whether the story emitted by the other side might not be closer to the truth than that of our own propagandists.

PressTV, a mouthpiece for the Iranian government, would seem, therefore, able to serve its masters well, providing only that it keeps to the truth or what is at least difficult to distinguish from the truth. Such a rule seems, however, to be beyond the comprehension of Press TV. The agency is capable of the lie not only direct, but easily identified as the lie direct, as we recently discovered.

In a December 19 report entitled Ottawa orders Canadian scientific journals not to publish Iranian articles, Press TV  stated:

The Canadian government has reportedly ordered the scientific journals of the country not to publish articles authored by Iranian researchers and scientists, Press TV has learnt.

And

In a recent move, the Canadian Journal of Psychiatric Nursing Research refused to publish an article by an Iranian assistant professor despite the earlier acceptance of the article.

The journal argued that it "will not be permitted to publish" the article as previously stated, citing the political and non-academic reasons.

Which seems pretty clear and prompted us to question whether John Baird, Canada's Minister of External Affairs, "is a moron" or whether Canada had been bribed, if not blackmailed or otherwise coerced, into acting as if the Minister of External Affairs is a moron. 

In this, it seems, we were granting PressTV all too much credibility. Which prompts us now to express our sincere apology to John Baird for suggesting that he is a moron. On the basis of the Press TV report, the idea that John Baird is a moron seems totally unsupportable, as we were to discover when an.anonymous commenter, referring to our post about the PressTV report, asked simply:

Besides this single unattributed article, is there any actual evidence that this has happened?

A search of the Web suggested that the answer was, no. We could find no other evidence that the incident reported by Press TV happened.

Thus confronted with the fact that we might have been a little naive in accepting without question the truth of the PressTV report, we asked the Editors of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatric Nursing Research, if the PressTV report was accurate.

The answer received was prompt and definitive:

... [The Press TV report] was fictitious. [The manuscript in question] was blind peer reviewed and many amendments suggested before publication could be considered.  The author ... did not comply. [And the author was] advised the article, in its present state, was unacceptable for publication. 

So rejection of the paper referred to by the PressTV report had nothing whatever to do with the John Baird or the Government of Canada. As often happens with articles submitted for publication in a learned journal, this article failed to make the grade, although the possibility was held out to the author of publication after revision.

But ever anxious to be fair to the Iranians who seem the target of so much hate speech from the Western mainstream media, we emailed the Directors of PressTV, informing them of the information provided to us by the Editors of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatric Nursing Research and requesting:

In the interests of fairness to the Editors of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatric Nursing Research, and of the avoidance of misunderstanding between the scientific communities of Iran and Canada, would you please check the details of your report and, as necessary, issue either a retraction, or evidence to substantiate the cited claims in your report.

Two days later, having received no reply from PressTV, we emailed the Directors again asking them to:

advise whether, as requested, the matter is being inquired into.

Failing such acknowledgment, [we will] assume that you intend no action concerning this apparently false report by PressTV.

Since no response has been received to this request, we can reasonably assume that PressTV has, by default, acknowledged that its report was false and that they don't give a damn.

Which seems a pity. A scrupulously honest news channel would be a rare and wonderful thing, which would surely have great value in any international war of words.

Anyhow, it's an idea we'll leave out there. Who knows, one of the Western news sources might adopt it.

AB

Do We Have Inflation, Deflation or the Two Co-existing

In How To End the Depression Now, I proposed that, instead of printing $89 billion a month to buy treasury paper, the US Government (a) abolish the minimum wage, (b) deny welfare to the able-bodied unemployed, (c) send every worker a monthly check equal in amount to the current minimum wage, thereby providing every worker with a living income, and (d) claw-back the free money from better paid workers, but at a rate that does not impose a severe marginal tax rate on the low paid.

These suggestions infuriated one commentator who repeatedly demanded to know why I thought:

... the current Fed policy of increasing the money supply by monetizing debt is inflationary, but wouldn't be if those same counterfeit dollars from thin air were sent to individual workers instead?

In fact, I do not think what that person thinks I think, and I never said that I did. What I said was that, if the Fed is to continue printing $89 billion a month, why not use the money for something more useful than buying government debt. In particular, I proposed the scheme outlined above for driving down wages of marginal workers to the market rate without forcing those workers  to starve.

Additional to the elimination of unemployment, benefits of the program would include (1) a huge saving in welfare costs and other costs associated with mass unemployment and under-employment, and (2) a boost to business and the GDP through the availability of several tens of millions of workers in North America and Europe prepared to work for wages comparable to those of the Third World.

To consider the inflationary consequences, if any, of current central bank money printing operations was not the objective of my earlier post. It is an interesting question however, that I will consider here.

In ordinary palance, inflation is taken to mean a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money. To economists, however, it is generally understood to be an increase in money supply, achieved either by debasing the currency, if based on precious metals, or by issuing additional paper (or digital) currency.

US Money Supply Growth to 2008. St. Louise Fed.

The terms monetary inflation and price inflation tend to be used interchangeably because it is generally assumed that monetary inflation leads to price inflation. But that is not necessarily the case as is evident from events since the finacial crisis of 2008, when the US Fed approximately doubled the US money supply as variously defined.

Prices of energy and food, it is true, have risen sharply, though they have not doubled, and the price of many things has actually declined. Automobiles, for example, cost roughly the same in America today as they did more than a dozen years ago, although they have undergone many technological improvements. Home construction costs in Canada are no higher today than several decades ago. And prices of all those hand-held electronic devices and the cost of network connectivity on which so many people spend so much of their income continually fall.

There are several reason why monetary inflation and price inflation are so loosely connected. One is that, for many goods and services, increased demand lowers the marginal cost of production, which in a competitive market will lower prices.

Cell phones, i-Pads and many other manufactured goods fall into this class. The big costs are the up-front costs of design, marketing, setting up a manufacturing process. But once those first-copy costs have been incurred, the cost of production may be relatively trivial. The economics of cellphone and internet access fall into this category. Likewise, digital products such as movies, downloadable music, e-books, learning solutions, etc.

Furthermore, although the marginal cost of some goods is higher than the average cost, e.g., food and energy, an increase in the availability of money may have little effect on demand for such goods. One can only eat so much in a day, however, much money one has to spend on food. Similarly, people won't necessarily raise the thermostat or drive more miles because their income has edged up a bit.

Curiously, therefore, insofar as central-bank-created money gets into the hands of consumers, its overall effect may be price deflationary.

There are many other things that could be said about this, a discussion of the role of credit in determining demand and its effect on prices being perhaps the most obvious.

What is clear, though, is that the price inflationary effects of money inflation are not immediately apparent, and that it is quite possible to have monetary inflation with price deflation and rising unemployment. Moreover, without arrangements that allows marginal workers to work for less than mandated by minimum wage laws, mass unemployment will likely be endemic in the West indefinitely.

Has the Sandy Hook investigator, Prof James Tracy, been targeted for total disruption of credibility by a drone named Jim Fetzer?

The best way to discredit those who point to evidence of a conspiracy against the public is to associate them with advocates of the wackiest conspiracy theories going. For instance the belief that on 9/11 the Twin Towers were brought down by space-based beam weapons, or that JFK was murdered by the Mafia or Fidel Castro, or both working in collaboration, or that Sandy Hook was the work of a Mossad assassination squad.

Professor James Tracy of Florida Atlantic University, who has raised important questions about the Sandy Hook Massacre, has now posted a letter from James Fetzer defending some of the most bizarre and factually unsupported theories about Sandy Hook, in particular, that a Mossad death squad was involved. In view of the, at present, complete absence of evidence of such involvement, such theories only bring discredit upon those who advance them and those who associate with those who advance them.

Perhaps Professor Tracy is playing a deep game,aiming ultimately to debunk those who promote nonsensical conspiracy theories to discredit plausible and probably theories. If so, we wish him luck. If not, we guess his credibility is permanently shot.

For information about the way in which credible conspiracy theories are discredited by association with ridiculous nonsense, see:

Discrediting By Association: Undermining the Case for Patriots Who Question 9/11

How Fetzer Aids Defenders of the Official Account

PostScript

Since writing the above, it has become clear from the comments on Prof Tracy's blog that Jim Fetzer, a veteran of extreme wacko conspiracy theories has, through his guest post, created rancor and dissension among Prof. Tracy's blog followers, leading to a vociferous debate about who, among the conspiracy theorists, is an anti-Semite.

My own last comments on Prof Tracy's blog, which though critical of Jim Fetzer were not irrational or hateful, have been censored. One has to conclude that the professor of Florida Atlantic University is either rather simple minded or that he has been hypnotized or blackmailed into making a travesty of his own inquiry into the Sandy Hook Massacre.

Post-Postscript

One of my comments on Prof. Tracy's MemoryHole blog post by James Fetzer has now been allowed. Specifically:

Discrediting By Association: Undermining the Case for Patriots Who Question 9/11.

While Professor Tracy, you may associate with whom you like, if you continually associate with those who propagate wacko conspiracy theories, many will draw the conclusion that your judgment about Sandy Hook and other matters is open to serious question.

This was followed by a trollish comment by a pontifical character posting under the name of Rev Dave, who states:

It sounds to me sir, like YOU have already made that decision – or maybe your employer made it and you’re just still here working that angle as well as you can? Seriously, if questions can somehow ‘hurt’ the story, then the story itself is shaky and won’t hold up, meaning there are genuine killers going free today, who need to be identified and prosecuted. If the ‘truth is out there’ already, then the questions can’t hurt, can they? So what is your real purpose or issue here?

A pretty feeble response for a vicar, it seemed to me, and thus prompted the following comment, which at this time of writing had yet to pass the censor.

The issue is not the questions being asked, the issue is the baggage that is being brought along with the questions. Also the wacky theories. For example:

"Most likely, Adam Lanza and his mother were killed the day before with Adam Lanza’s body picked up by police. He was attired in a SWAT outfit, including body armor, and stored in the school. "

"Most likely," indeed, except we ain't got one scrap of evidence.

LOL

Jim Fetzer has a history of crazy ideas advanced as "Most likely" (see the article I linked to above), which only discredits the intelligence of his adherents.

And, Rev. Dave, since you use the title Rev, would you mind telling us by which church you were ordained. I mean if the title is supposed to confer credibility, the name of the church is surely relevant.

And now Prof. Tracy has allowed another of my comments at the MemoryHole blog:

Jim Fetzer has done a great job, sewing rancor and dissension among the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists and tarring most of them with the anti-Semite brush. Good work, Jim. But I guess as with my earlier comment James Tracy will delete this one.

In fact, Prof. Tracy did allow that one, with the following comment:

[Your] previous comment was not deleted, yet it appeared inflammatory and unproductive, and thus was withheld. One does not have time to “background” every post and the assertion here that James Fetzer is a sower of discontent and the one previous (“wacky conspiracy theories”) do not in my view hold up to serious scrutiny.

Which prompted me to point out that Jim Fetzer was a veteran wrecker of independent inquiry into possible state crimes, having successfully ousted Prof. Steven Jones, a key 9/11 researcher, from Scholars for 9/11 Truth and organization that Fetzer then made his own.

I am strongly inclined to believe that Prof. Tracy is what he appears, a decent academic undertaking a risky investigation for the sake of truth. But I fear that he has been targeted for total disruption of credibility by a drone named Jim Fetzer.

But we will see.

The Latest

Happily, Prof. Tracy has now approved all my comments, which naturally confirms my view that he's a sound fellow. But I will not test his patience for a while with further comments. I hope, though, that others who think it proper to ask questions when state authorities and the media offer a highly questionable account of policy shaping events, will visit Prof. Tracy's blog and provide constructive support.

And more from Aangirfan about the mysterious invisibility of Adam Lanza during the years preceding Sandy Hook.

See also:

Hate Week in America: Targeting Sandy Hook Truthers

Quantum Theory and Deep-Frozen Life Extension

Crystal for entangling photons.

There are some who would like, at death, to be place on ice pending the development of a reliable resurrection technology.

This is not a wish that I share. It is bad enough that the industrial zones of so many North American cities are cluttered with mini-warehouse units where the divorced or otherwise unsettled deposit stuff for which they lack space to use. The addition of units for the storage of frozen cadavers would only add to the dismal character of such neighborhoods, and would, in the event of a power outage, create an intolerable stench.

One thing, though, that is appealing about the possibility of returning to life after a century or two, is the prospect of learning how certain presentday developments turned out, for example, problems in quantum physics.

In particular, one would like to know more about  what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," which is manifest when associated particles are shot off in different directions while nevertheless maintaining a mysterious connection, referred to as entanglement.

For example, if Bob examines one of a pair of entangled photons and determines that it is polarized up, he knows that its entangled partner, though perhaps light years away, will, if immediately examined by Alice, turn out to be polarized down, as Alice can report back by snail mail.

Now to anyone who is almost totally innocent of an understanding of quantum theory, as I certainly am, the obvious explanation for these facts is that the pair of photons that Bob and Alice examined always were polarized up and down, which is why Bob, discovering that his photon is polarized up, knows immediately that Alice's photon is polarized down.

But, say the physicists, no, the polarization of a photon is determined only when someone looks at it, and it is this fact that makes the instantaneous connection between entangled particles "spooky," because nothing, including information, travels faster than light, therefore this instantaneous relationship between the photons, however far apart they may be, is impossible.

Actually, the physicists don't say it's "impossible," since that's what they observe. But it's a problem.

The physicist David Bohm offered and explanation based on the postulated existence of "hidden variables." I hardly know what a variable is, but perhaps the idea is that although the polarization of a photon is not determined before you look at it, there is something traveling with a photon that tells it how to polarize when you do get around to looking at it. This thing, whatever it might be, I think Bohm called it a "signal wave," by accompanying both entangled particles could then dictate how each photon polarizes when examined.

If my interpretation of Bohm is correct (I hope some physicist will correct me if I am wrong), although the polarization of entangled photons is not determined until someone looks at them, the way each photon polarizes when looked at is predetermined.

Another idea, and this is my own original contribution to physics, is that information really does flow between entangled particles, and that although the speed of this information flow is restricted to the speed of light, communication between the particles appears instantaneous because the information travels via one of those extra dimensions that the string theorists talk about. You know, one of those little "curled-up" dimensions. Thus, particles at unimaginable distances in our four-dimensional space-time world could remain in intimate conversation, only millimeters apart, in some little rolled up dimension of which we are presently only rather uncertainly unaware.

The Rise of the West: Niall Ferguson's Six "Killer Apps." How Are They Working For Us Now?

China seems to have been long stationary, and had probably long ago acquired that full complement of riches which is consistent with the nature of its laws and institutions. But this complement may be much inferior to what, with other laws and institutions, the nature of its soil, climate, and situation might admit of.

Adam Smith, The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776

How, by the end of the 19th century, did the West come to rule most of the Rest?

Not, according to Niall Ferguson, because those of the West were smarter that those of the Rest, or because they were more fortunately endowed by geography, climate or natural resources. The reason  he argues can be found in a difference in institutions, which is to say the political arrangements and social rules and traditions that shape human action.

In particular, Ferguson attributes the divergence in political and economic success between the West and the Rest to six features of Western society, which he identifies by reference to their impact on human behavior and economic productivity. These features he refers to as "killer apps." by analogy with the programs that give functionality to computing devices.

Ferguson's six "killer apps." are: competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic.

Briefly, here is how these institutional factors served the West in its rise to global dominance in the half-millenium to the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

The Great Exposition: London 1851. Image source.

Competition: By competition, Ferguson has in mind the competition that existed among Europe's warring petty states during the West's rise to global hegemony: a competition that drove innovation in the means and methods of warfare, both on land and at sea, and encouraged technological innovation in tradable goods, such as textiles and machinery, and services such as banking and ocean transportation. But competition existed on other levels too, for example, between national and civic governments, and among profit maximizing business enterprises.

Science: Western science differed from the science of the Rest by its commitment to empiricism. The idea that science can advance only through observation and experiment was not uniquely Western. The great Muslim scholar Alhazen, for example, wrote:

[T]he seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration ...

But it was in Western Europe that the pursuit of knowledge by submission of ideas to argument, particularly mathematical argument, and experimental demonstration became a passion, not only among scholars, but also among landowners and members of the clergy.

Property rights: Even today, citizens of Western states lack absolute rights to the ownership of property. In England, for example, the crown has alloidal title to all property, i.e., title subject to no superior authority. Thus all private property may be expropriated by the government in the name of the crown, although, today, this can no longer be done without payment of compensation.

What is, in effect, the near absolute right to property ownership that exists in the West arose as a result of the decline of absolute monarchy. In England, the end of the autocratic monarchy happened almost overnight as a result of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which resulted in the creation of a parliamentary government under a constitutional monarch. The parliamentary government was largely comprised of great landowners (the House of Lords) and country gentlemen (in the House of Commons).

Between them, the Lords and country gentlemen, took steps to insure the legal protection of their property. Among other things, they were careful to limit the taxing power of the executive. The possession of these rights together with parliamentary influence made it both easier and more profitable to develop land for agriculture, mining, and industrial purposes, and the construction of canals and railways.

Medicine: The advance of medicine in the West, in particular the discovery of the role of microbes, rats and careless sewage disposal, in the causation and spread of disease, and the role of vitamins in deficiency diseases was no more than an aspect of the Western scientific revolution. Its effects was to greatly increase life expectancy, thus adding to the length of productive life relative to the unproductive years of childhood. Better health through limitation of disease and elimination of dietary deficiencies also enhanced the energy, physical strength and mental capacity of the population.

The Consumer Society: Increased consumption was a necessary concomitant of increased industrial production, and the relative freedom of trade among and within the European states, and the modification of sumptuary laws to promote the textile industry, insured that people were able to consume as much as they could afford.

The Work Ethic: The work ethic, like the consumer society, emerged as a result of commercial and industrial competition, and the establishment of property rights.The arrangements that made it possible for individuals to rise in wealth and political influence through competitive business activities and the exploitation of land — that is to say, the emergence of full-fledged capitalism — provided the incentive for individuals to display what is referred to as the work ethic.

So How Are the Six "killer Apps." Working For the West Today?

Competition: In Europe, the cradle of the Western world, political competition is in sharp decline. Much of Europe is now ruled by an unelected committee, the European Council, and its great bureaucracies. Within what remains of the nation states, independent centers of political power are being progressively eliminated. Under the influence of the EU, British governments since the time of Prime Minister Edward Heath have engaged in the demolition of local governments, including ancient corporations dating back to the 12th Century, and replacing them with larger units, the aim eventually being to abolish England's 48 county councils and replace them by nine regions reporting not to the government in London but to the EU. An apparent counter trend, in the creation of national assemblies in Scotland and Wales, serve not to promote local autonomy, but rather to diminish the only real power center in the United Kingdom, which is the parliament in Westminster.

In the worlds of finance, commerce and manufacturing, there is a similar trend to giantism and monopoly, facilitated by governments under the influence of special interests that both fund election campaigns and provide lucrative business and employment opportunities for politicians who have served the special interests while in government. 

The era of globalization has embarked the world on a new form of competition whereby not only goods flow among nations in accordance with supply, quality, novelty and demand, but labor, capital and technological know-how flows freely across international borders too.

The result is that a large proportion of the the workforce of the West has been brought into direct competition with the workforce of the Rest, with catastrophic consequences for tens of millions of workers in the US and Europe whose jobs have been off-shored to the Rest, together with the capital and technology to make those off-shored jobs as productive, and thus as difficult to repatriate, as possible.

Science: The West still does science. In fact, science has now become a huge industry, consuming approximately 3% of the GDP of the Western nations. However, much science is government directed, government direction itself being dictated by special interests, drug companies, arms makers, etc.

This arrangement is very different from that which prevailed during the heyday of Western Science, between the sixteenth and early twentieth century, when science was mainly the preoccupation of private individuals or scholars at privately funded institutions of learning.

How productive science directed according to state and corporate agendas will in the long-run prove to be remains to be seen. It is already apparent, however, that in this new and politicized environment powerful forces for the corruption of science are at work. Thus billions and tens of billions go into research on politically favored diseases such as AIDS, on politically favored industries such as pharmaceuticals, and on the verification of predetermined public policy positions on issues such as climate change. In the process, the pressures that are brought to bear on the scientific community encourage both bias and fraud in the conduct of research. It is to be expected, therefore, that the creative minds of the kind that propelled Western science since the time of Isaac Newton will be driven from the field by heavy-handed bureaucratic management and political meddling, when they are not simply elbowed aside by the often aggressive careerists and mediocrities that now populate so many laboratories.

Property rights: Westerners still have the right to the ownership of real property. However, over the last hundred years Western governments have hugely expanded and now consume around half of all national income, up from less than 10% a hundred years ago. This transformation in the scale of government has been achieved by expropriation of the majority of the income, i.e., intangible property of the more successful members of society, income that is then used to support a huge welfare system that rewards malingering and idleness, promotes crime, kills the work ethic and gives rise to a huge and hugely expensive welfare bureaucracy.

Medicine: In the West, the greatest gains in human longevity and health from advances in medicine had already been achieved by the early decades of the last century. But since then, the cost of medicine has escalated as governments have assumed the role of healthcare provider. That there has been no great benefit from state intervention in medicine is evident from international comparisons. For example, in the US, where state mandated medical insurance (Obamacare) will amount to about 10% of GDP, with private medicine adding another 5%, for a total cost of around $7,500 per person, life expectancy, at 78 years, is two years less less than in Jordan, where GDP, at $6000 per person is substantially less than US medical expenditure per person.

We can say, therefore, that Western medicine is now a parasite that weighs heavily upon Western prosperity and competitiveness. Moreover, insofar as medicine extends life beyond the years of productive work, that only adds to the drag that the medical services industry imposes on Western prosperity.

The Consumer Society: Westerners have certainly not lost their inclination to consume. And with globalization and the development of consumer credit the consumer society has placed the West in massive debt to the Rest, particularly China, now the workshop of the World.

The Work Ethic: The work ethic is an emergent phenomenon, dependent on the existence of opportunities for self-advancement by hard work. For tens of millions in the West, and perhaps for the great majority, opportunities for substantial upward mobility, either social or financial do not exist. The West is now an elitist society where connections, private schools and inherited wealth generally count for more than merit. Meritocracy, a prerequisite of the work ethic, has moved East.

In a talk about the six "killer apps." Ferguson ends with the words: "The great divergence [between the West and the Rest] is over, folks." Judging by the way the six "killer apps." are working for the West now, a new "Great divergence" is about to emerge, as the vast intellectual resources, ambitions and energy of the Rest are applied with growing effectiveness to the goal of World domination, economic, political and military.

See also

U.S. ranks first in healthcare spending but last in life expectancy

How to End the Depression Now — Part 1

US umemployment. Image source.

To an economist, a recession or depression is something measured by the depth and duration of a decline in GDP.

To those who live by means of a real job, recessions and depressions are marked by a decline in the availability of work at a decent wage.

The difference between definitions is important. It is possible for an economy to grow through increases in productivity, while jobs are lost and real wages decline, as has happened in the US during recent years.

It is possible for an economy to shrink through declining labor productivity, while jobs are gained, as has happened during the last four years in the UK.

So whatever the economists and politicians have to say about green shoots, and economic recovery, the economy for tens of millions of unemployed, under-employed or discouraged workers in the the US, Canada, and Europe is lousy, stinking, and depressed.

The reason for the massive shortage of jobs is simple: tens of millions of workers in the West are not worth hiring.

Why?

Two reasons.

First, globalization, which puts workers in the West in direct competition for most manufacturing and many service jobs with workers of the Rest, many of whom work for only pennies an hour.

How do you compete with that when there's a US Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and a European minimum wage twice as high?

Second, automation.

There was a time when robots cost a fortune and were used mainly to eliminate production-line workers in high-value manufacturing, such as car plants.  But no more. A general purpose readily trained robot can be had for a mere $22,000. With a rated life of 6000 hours, it provides precise, reliable service, 24/7, at a cost equivalent to half the US minimum wage.

And it's not just dumb jobs that will soon be eliminated by computerization and robotization. Watson, a pizza-sized computer diagnostic system from IBM is more accurate than the average physician.

How long before your physician is made redundant by a Web site or a computer-aided graduate in medical diagnosis earning about a tenth of what a physician expects to earn?

Many teachers and university professors are also likely to experience redundancy as online courses, examination systems and accreditation methods replace traditional institutions of learning.

Which means that millions of people, most people, in fact, are unnecessary in the modern economy.

Which no doubt explains the enthusiasm of some rich bastards  for wiping out most of the human race.

But for those disinclined to genocide, the question must be: how can wages of marginal workers in the West be made less than the value that such labor is able to generate, while insuring that workers nevertheless receive a living income?

This is not a hard problem.

The US Federal reserve is currently printing $89 billion a month to purchase treasure bonds, thereby increasing the money supply in an operation that appears destined to create not jobs but hyperinflation.

So what else could they do?

Take the $89 billion, double it and send every full-time worker a monthly check  for $1000.00. At the same time, all state and federal minimum wage laws would be abandoned.

The result?

The United States or any country adopting such a policy would have the cheapest labor resource in the World, i.e., wages could fall as low as a penny an hour (though competition would prevent significant quantities of labor being available at that price), which would provide a huge stimulus to entrepreneurial activity.

It would result in the rapid re-patriation by the West of jobs off-shored to Asia, the Middle East and Africa as workers in the West again manufactured shoes and shirts, car parts and computers that are now imported from sweatshops and slave plantations of China and elsewhere.

The economic resurgence would swell government revenues, slash welfare costs, including the costs of crime and mental illness that are accompaniments of mass unemployment.

These effects alone, would largely offset the cost of the job subsidy payments.

As necessary, the remaining cost could be recovered through a job subsidy claw-back  at the rate of, say, 10% on incomes between $12,000 and $132,000.

Related:

CanSpeccy:
How to End the Depression Now — Part 2

See also:

The Euro: A Weapon of Economic Mass Disruption

The Cause and Cure of the Second Great Depression

Why Economics Is Bunk and What That Means for the Economy

If Sandy Hook Was a Hoax

The nature, organization and control of weapons is the most significant of the numerous factors that determines what happens in political life

Carroll Quigley: Tragedy and Hope, p. 1,200

. . . We have democracy because around 1880 the distribution of weapons in this society was such that no minority could make a majority obey. If you have a society in which weapons are cheap, so that almost anyone can obtain them, and are easy to use — what I call amateur weapons — then you have democracy. But if the opposite is true, weapons extremely expensive and very difficult to use — the medieval knight, for example, with his castle, the supreme weapons of the year 1100 — in such a system, with expensive and difficult-to-use weapons, you could not possibly have majority rule. But in 1880 for $100 you could get the two best weapons in the world, a Winchester rifle and a Colt revolver; so almost anyone could buy them. With weapons like these in the hands of ordinary people, no minority could make the majority obey a despotic government.

Carroll Quigley: The Mythology of American Democracy

If the Sandy Hook Massacre was a hoax, then both the Connecticut State Police and the FBI, with whom Connecticut authorities are said to be coordinating a "massive investigation," must be complicit.

If the Feds are complicit, the Obama Administration, which has acted with such promptness to harness the emotional impact of the killings to Obama's anti-Second Amendment drive to disarm Americans must be complicit.

If the Obama Administration is complicit, then Obama is either, personally and directly complicit, or he is a puppet manipulated by hidden hands.

And if Obama is either directly complicit, or serving as a puppet under the control of a deep state, the government of the United States is without legitimacy.

And if the US Government is without legitimacy, the truth of Sandy Hook will never be officially acknowledged unless the US Government is overthrown and the likes of Clinton, Bush and Obama face a Nuremberg-style criminal court.

Which means, according to the logic of Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton's Georgetown University History prof, that Americans who wish to live under a semblance of a democracy would be well advised to hang onto their guns.

Ten Facts That Suggest Sandy Hook Was a Hoax

1. Connecticut's State Medical Examiner Wayne Carver's press conference remark:

   ... I hope the people of Newtown don’t have it crash on their head later.



2. The missing kids. Sandy Hook Elementary was said by some sources to have more than 600 students. But all but a couple of dozen are absent from any of the press photos and helicopter videos.

   

   Here they are: all seventeen of them. Source



3. Adam Lanza, nerd, 120-lb weakling and expert marksman.


4. Did Adam Lanza even exist during the last three years? Records say no:
   
   Adam Lanza, the Invisible Man


5. This Sandy Hook Elementary School grade-three student, Louis, tells Dr. Oz.: 

   Yes, I remembered that a lot, a lot of policemen were, um, in the school. Well, a lot, I was like hiding under ... When we were having a drill, we were hiding under, like ...

6. 
   
   Helicopter footage showing lots of policemen  outside Sandy Hook school, but no ambulances


7. And all those people at the fires station to which children were evacuated, just waking in circles. See at 4:30 in this video. And note that if there were 600 kids being reunited with their parents there should have been well over a thousand people milling around. As it is, there seem to have been no more than about a hundred or so walking in circles.


8. CNN's Anderson Cooper talking over fake video footage of Emergency First Responders at Sandy Hook, trashing Professor James Tracy for suggesting Sandy Hook was poorly covered by the mainstream media. Absurdy, Cooper argues that suggesting that kid may not have been murdered at Sandy Hook would be deeply offensive to the relatives of the, um, children not killed.
   
   


9. Did the Lanza's really have two sons? Evidence of doctored divorce papers.


10. The Bing Cache of December 13, 2012, With the text of the Newtown Bee's before-it-happened story on the Sandy Hook Massacre.

Actually, one could double the length of this list or multipy by ten. For example:

Gene Rosen Included In News Footage The Morning of 12/14/12
 
Photoshopped press images

Those devastated victim relatives 

Then there's Robbie Parker 

Corrections or suggestions for additions to this list welcome.
 
PS: Can anyone provide a link to the aerial footage of someone carrying a life-size dummy across the school yard? Or was it the fire station yard? 

The Corporate Media: Keeping You Uninformed About Sandy Hook

Ten things the media don’t want to 
discover about Sandy Hook 

By Jon Rappoport

nomorefakenews.com, February 9, 2013: Slashing through the bland authoritative front the media have presented, people want to know more about the Sandy Hook massacre. But the elite networks have no intention of answering the most obvious questions.

Why? Because the follow-up agenda of gun control is all important, and the official Sandy Hook scenario must stand, in order to forward that agenda.

Any return to the scene of the crime will:

divert media coverage from its all-out push to make guns into taboo objects of scorn, ridicule, fear, and hatred;

focus attention on reasons for the massacre that have nothing to do with guns;

engender deep distrust of the Sandy Hook police investigation and therefore, by association, throw into doubt the notion that law-enforcement personnel should be the only people carrying guns in America.

Here are 10 things the media doesn’t want to know about and has no intention of investigating. These are only the basics, amid a wider sea of unanswered questions:

Read more