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

Obama: the Unconstitutional President

Obama Admin Offers Justification For Any Breaking of Any Law 
By Any “Informed, High-level Official of the U.S. Government

By Andrew Napolitano

Taki's Magazine, February 11, 2013: After stonewalling for more than a year federal judges and ordinary citizens who sought the revelation of its secret legal research justifying the presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas—even Americans—claiming the research was so sensitive and so secret that it could not be revealed without serious consequences, the government sent a summary of its legal memos to an NBC newsroom earlier this week.

This revelation will come as a great surprise, and not a little annoyance, to U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon, who heard many hours of oral argument during which the government predicted gloom and doom if its legal research were subjected to public scrutiny. She very reluctantly agreed with the feds, but told them she felt caught in “a veritable Catch-22,” because the feds have created “a thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.”

She was writing about President Obama killing Americans and refusing to divulge the legal basis for claiming the right to do so. Now we know that basis.

The undated and unsigned 16-page document leaked to NBC refers to itself as a Department of Justice white paper. Its logic is flawed, its premises are bereft of any appreciation for the values of the Declaration of Independence and the supremacy of the Constitution, and its rationale could be used to justify any breaking of any law by any “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.”

The quoted phrase is extracted from the memo, which claims that the law reposes into the hands of any unnamed “high-level official,” not necessarily the president, the lawful power to decide when to suspend constitutional protections guaranteed to all persons and kill them without any due process whatsoever. This is the power claimed by kings and tyrants. It is the power most repugnant to American values. It is the power we have arguably fought countless wars to prevent from arriving here. Now, under Obama, it is here.

Read more

Adam Lanza's Marksmanship

Corporate Media’s “Lone Gunman” Storyline Loses Ground

Adam Lanza: Expert Marksman?

Memory Hole, February 9, 2013: A cross section of kill-to-injury ratios of major mass shootings suggests that if Adam Lanza acted alone in carrying out the Sandy Hook Elementary School carnage he was among the most accurate killers in modern history, exceeding even the lethal damage meted out by Al Capone’s machine gun-wielding henchmen in the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.


Read more

Sandy Hook Elementary Student: There Were Lots of Policemen While We Were Having a Drill

Aangirfan's most recent report on Sandy Hook draws attention to a remarkable interview conducted by Dr. Oz (Mehmet Oz) with Sandy Hook Elementary School Third-Grader, Louis.

Dr Oz:

We're here with some of the children and their parents who experienced the Newtown tragedy first hand ... I asked all the kids what questions they want me to ask because, obviously, this is a sensitive topic.

So, Louis, you wanted me to ask you about what you remembered from that day?

Louis:

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 ... 

Dr. Oz: 

Take your time. Don't hurry ... Let me ask you: what would you like to say to your teachers about Friday? 

Louis: 

I dunno, but. It's like ...

Dr. Oz.

You appreciate your teachers? 

Louis:

Yeah. 

"When we were having a drill, we were hiding under ..."

"Take your time ..."

Bit late there with the redirection, Dr. Oz.

Until now, the MSM opinion moulders have sought to stifle any suggestion (and here) that Sandy Hook was a drill, by indignantly accusing any who raise the possibility of insulting the memory of the victims and outraging their loved ones.

But with a witness to the event telling us they were having a drill, the possibility cannot be denied that there were either no victims, or if there were victims, that they were victims of a drill that went live. In the latter case, their memory is best served by demanding the truth about the outrageous official incompetence or criminality that resulted in their deaths.

What Men Live By

Debunking God is good business. With more than two million copies sold, the profits from Richard Dawkins's,The God Delusion, must be gratifying to publisher and copyright holder alike. Chris Hitchens's God Is Not Great has surely been no less rewarding, while Monty Python's Life of Brian has been earning for its creators for over 30 years now. Such works focus primarily on the Christian god, the god of Western civilization, for who, after Salman Rushdie's run-in with the Ayatolahs, wants to tackle Allah. As for ridiculing the god of Judaism, that would be unthinkable. But the Christian god is an easy target, defended feebly, when defended at all, by priests and bishops many of whom appear themselves to be atheists, more like apostles of the Welfare State and the ethic of Political Correctness, than of Christianity. The attack that such works make against God are based on the rather obvious fact that there is not the slightest verifiable physical evidence for God's existence. From this fact, the leap is made to the conclusion that the whole scheme of religion is a contemptible hoax, the proponents of which are deserving of both loathing and ridicule. What such critics fail to acknowledge is that whether Jesus performed miracles or not, whether he arose from the dead or not, whether he was born of a virgin or not, or whether he even existed or not, has not the slightest bearing on whether there is a moral value and a spiritual wisdom in the story of the life of Jesus. So why should anyone care about John Cleese's adolescent contempt for Christianity justified by the claim that we cannot be sure if the gospels record the actual words of Jesus; that we do not know who wrote the gospels; and that we do not even know in what language the gospels were originally written? Equally, who cares if Hitchens considered religion the fount of irrationalism, intolerance, racism, tribalism and bigotry? There is none of any of those things among the teachings of Jesus. And who of those who have reflected on what Jesus taught, considers Richard Dawkins's passionate proselytism for rational atheism of the slightest significance? The answer to all such arguments is provided with irrefutable logic by Nikolay Nikolayevich in Boris Pasternak's novel, Dr. Zhivago: What you don't understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels. What matters about the story of Jesus is the story itself. And to deny the relevance of the story about Jesus is to deny the moral foundations of Western civilization. That, precisely, is the point of the aggressive atheism of the agents of the New World Order: to destroy the coherence and moral basis of the West. In What Men Live By, Leo Tolstoy, shows why stories about gods and angels are of everlasting relevance to mankind's moral and spiritual welfare.

By Leo Tolstoy
 

"We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death." —1 "Epistle St. John" iii. 14.

"Whoso hath the world's goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither with the tongue; but in deed and truth." —iii. 17-18.

"Love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." —iv. 7-8.

"No man hath beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abideth in us." —iv. 12.

"God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him." —iv. 16.

"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" —iv. 20.

A shoemaker named Simon, who had neither house nor land of his own, lived with his wife and children in a peasant's hut, and earned his living by his work. Work was cheap, but bread was dear, and what he earned he spent for food. The man and his wife had but one sheepskin coat between them for winter wear, and even that was torn to tatters, and this was the second year he had been wanting to buy sheep-skins for a new coat. Before winter Simon saved up a little money: a three-rouble note lay hidden in his wife's box, and five roubles and twenty kopeks were owed him by customers in the village.

So one morning he prepared to go to the village to buy the sheep-skins. He put on over his shirt his wife's wadded nankeen jacket, and over that he put his own cloth coat. He took the three-rouble note in his pocket, cut himself a stick to serve as a staff, and started off after breakfast. "I'll collect the five roubles that are due to me," thought he, "add the three I have got, and that will be enough to buy sheep-skins for the winter coat."

He came to the village and called at a peasant's hut, but the man was not at home. The peasant's wife promised that the money should be paid next week, but she would not pay it herself. Then Simon called on another peasant, but this one swore he had no money, and would only pay twenty kopeks which he owed for a pair of boots Simon had mended. Simon then tried to buy the sheep-skins on credit, but the dealer would not trust him.

"Bring your money," said he, "then you may have your pick of the skins. We know what debt-collecting is like." So all the business the shoemaker did was to get the twenty kopeks for boots he had mended, and to take a pair of felt boots a peasant gave him to sole with leather.

Simon felt downhearted. He spent the twenty kopeks on vodka, and started homewards without having bought any skins. In the morning he had felt the frost; but now, after drinking the vodka, he felt warm, even without a sheep-skin coat. He trudged along, striking his stick on the frozen earth with one hand, swinging the felt boots with the other, and talking to himself.

Yes, We Can Kill Ya

Via WRH

See also: Reality Check: President Obama's Rules for Assassinating U.S. Citizens

Judge Napolitano: Obama's Drone Strike Policy 'This Is the Power Claimed by Kings and Tyrants'  

Fascism, American-Style, By Sherwood Ross

And Naomi Wolf: The End of America, fascism in ten easy steps

Mike Adams: How the post-Sandy Hook gun control push spectacularly backfired in America

Sandy Hook: CT's State Attorney Indicates Adam Lanza May Not Have Acted Alone

Digital Journal, February 5, 2013: Connecticut State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky has argued that unsealing warrants in the Sandy Hook case might "seriously jeopardize" the investigation by disclosing information known only to other "potential suspects." 

 

Sedensky said that unsealing the warrants would also: "identify persons cooperating with the investigation, thus possibly jeopardizing their personal safety and well-being."  

 

The statement by the CT prosecutor's office is the first indication from state authorities that Adam Lanza may have not acted alone. 

 

A Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory

What follows is a theory, not an assertion of what happened.  Since the Connecticut State Police have disclosed no information about their presumed investigation into the crimes committed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012 — even as to such seemingly minor details as the ownership of the black Honda in which Adam Lanza is supposed to have driven to the school on the day of the shootings; and in view of the political capital being made from the Sandy Hook shootings by those intent on denying Americans their constitutional right to bear arms against a tyrannical government; and taking account of the totalitarian measures being adopted by the US Police state, including the use of drones to assassinate American citizens without legal process, the hypothesis concerning the Sandy Hook shootings advanced by Professor James Fetzer cannot be dismissed as beyond the realm of possibility. Indeed, after 9/11, no plausible theory of a US Government conspiracy against the people can be ruled out as inherently improbable. It should be noted, however, that in the absence of evidence from a competent forensic investigation, Fetzer's theory is merely one of many conceivable scenarios to account for events at Sandy Hook. Moreover, it is not necessarily the most plausible. In this connection, it should be noted that Fetzer has a history of seemingly far-fetched conspiracy theories, which may suggest to some, that his claims may serve better to discredit those who quite reasonably question the official account of Sandy Hook, 9/11, or the Kennedy assassination than to reveal the underlying truth of those events.

By Prof. James Fetzer

MemoryHoleBlog, February 6, 2013: A theory is simply an interpretation of facts in a given case. When the police investigate a crime, they form a theory of the case. In courts of law, prosecutors and defense attorneys usually offer alternative interpretations. With Sandy Hook, figuring out what happened poses special challenges.

The facts are not obvious. There were inconsistencies from scratch. The suspect, Adam Lanza, was a student there; then he was not. His mother was a teacher there; then she was not. The principal called the local paper to report the shooting; then she was among the first to die.

The coroner reported all the dead were shot with a Bushmaster; then NBC News reported that four handguns had been found with the body and that the AR-15 had been left in the car. (Check out YouTube, “Sandy Hook shooting — AR-15 rifle was left in the car!”)

Even if Lanza, 20, had done some shooting, the ratio of kills to targets was remarkable. As a Marine Corps officer, I qualified with a .45 four years in a row and also supervised recruits of his age in their marksmanship training. I don’t see how he could have done it.

Police radio in real-time reported two suspects headed toward the officer calling in, one of whom was apprehended. The other was tracked into the woods, as police helicopter footage shows. We have no idea what became of these suspects. So what happened?

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.

I argue a three-man team entered the school. One was arrested in the school, cuffed and put on the lawn. Two went out a back door; one of them was arrested and the other apparently escaped.

Those arrested currently are not in police custody; their names were never released. That is a telling sign that we are being sold a story based on fiction rather than on fact.

Does anything else matter? Most Americans are unaware the Department of Homeland Security has acquired 1.5 billion rounds of .40 caliber, hollow-point ammunition, which is not even permissible during combat under the Geneva Conventions.*

A subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security has issued a study of 680 reports from “fusion centers” that integrate federal, state and local anti-terrorism efforts. It found no evidence of any domestic terrorist activity.

The absence of any terrorist threat and the existence of more than 300 FEMA camps and special boxcars to carry dissidents to them have been deliberately withheld from the public.

Since Homeland Security has no foreign commitments, those camps and ammunition have to be for domestic consumption. Homeland Security appears to be gearing up to conduct a civil war with the American people — but 80 million armed families stand in its way.

What better excuse could there be for banning assault weapons than the slaughter of 20 innocent children? Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., has a gun control proposal that would lead to the confiscation of virtually every semi-automatic weapon in the nation.

That’s my interpretation of Sandy Hook.

Jim Fetzer is a McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

* The Hague Convention of 1899, Declaration III, prohibited the use in international warfare of bullets that easily expand or flatten in the body. This is often incorrectly believed to be prohibited in the Geneva Conventions and is a continuance of the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868, which banned exploding projectiles of less than 400 grams, as well as weapons designed to aggravate injured soldiers or make their death inevitable. NATO members do not use small arms ammunition that is prohibited by the Hague Convention. Source

The Economic Implosion of America: The Death of Detroit

Bankrupt, Decaying And Nearly Dead: 24 Facts About The City Of Detroit

By Michael

Michigan Central Station, Detroit. Closed 1988. Image source

The Economic Collapse, February 3, 2013: If you want to know what the future of America is going to be like, just look at the city of Detroit.  Once upon a time it was a symbol of everything that America was doing right, but today it has been transformed into a rotting, decaying, post-apocalyptic hellhole.  Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, and in 1960 Detroit had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation.  It was the greatest manufacturing city the world had ever seen, and the rest of the globe looked at Detroit with a sense of awe and wonder.  But now the city of Detroit has become a bad joke to the rest of the world.  Unemployment is rampant, 60 percent of the children are living in poverty and the city government is on the verge of bankruptcy.  They say that Detroit is just a matter of "weeks or months" away from running out of cash, and when Detroit does declare bankruptcy it will be the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States.  But don't look down on Detroit, because the truth is that Detroit is really a metaphor for what is happening to America as a whole.  In the United States today, our manufacturing infrastructure has been gutted, poverty is absolutely exploding and we are rapidly approaching national bankruptcy.  Detroit may have gotten there first, but the rest of the country will follow soon enough.

Back during the boom years, Detroit was known for making great cars.  Today, it is known for scenes of desolation and decay.  It is full of vandalized homes, abandoned schools and empty factories.  The following description of what Detroit looks like at this point is from an article by Barry Yeoman...

It’s hard to describe the city’s physical landscape without producing what Detroiters call “ruin porn.” Brick houses with bays and turrets sit windowless or boarded up. Whole blocks, even clusters of blocks, have been bulldozed. Retail strips have been reduced to a dollar store here, a storefront church there, and a whole lot of plywood in between. Not a single chain supermarket remains.

So what caused the downfall of one of the greatest cities on earth?
Well, here is a hint...

Between December 2000 and December 2010, 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.

When you are a manufacturing area, and you lose half of your manufacturing jobs over the course of a single decade, of course things are going to get really, really bad.

So just how bad have things gotten in Detroit?

The following are 24 facts about the city of Detroit that will shock you...

#1 Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, and it was once home to close to 2 million people.  But over the last several decades people have been fleeing in droves.  According to the 2010 census, only 713,000 people now live in Detroit, and city officials admit that the population has probably slipped under 700,000 at this point.

#2 The population of Detroit has declined by about 25 percent over the past decade.  The last time the population of Detroit was this low was all the way back in 1910.

#3 Today, Detroit is only the 18th-largest city in America.  It is now smaller than Austin, Texas and Charlotte, North Carolina.

#4 Back in 1960, the city of Detroit had the highest per-capita income in the United States.

#5 Today, the unemployment rate in Detroit is more than 18 percent, which is more than twice as high as the nation as a whole.

#6 According to a report that was just recently released, approximately 60 percent of all children in Detroit live in poverty.

#7 Approximately one-third of Detroit's 140 square miles are either vacant or derelict.

#8 The city government of Detroit has closed dozens of schools and has decided to cut off public services to the "heavily blighted areas".

#9 According to one estimate, there are 33,500 empty houses and 91,000 vacant residential lots in the city of Detroit today.

#10 The median price of a home in Detroit is just $9,000, and there are some areas of Detroit where you can still buy a house for $100.

Read more

See also:

What Does the Constituion Say About NAFTA, GATT and Other Bad Free Trade Deals?

Peter Hitchens Trashes Britain's New Generation of War Criminals

It has sometimes crossed my mind to wonder, is it just me?, or does it seem to any thoughtful person that now and for the last several decades Britain's leadership has comprised individuals of remarkable personal insignificance whose incompetence, cupidity and subservience to the plutocratic and American imperial interests can have nothing but disastrous consequences for the people of the country they lead. First, there was John, Very-Nice, Mr. Major, then the marvelous People's Tony Blair, followed by today's precious duo of Cameron, the PR operative ever ready to fly to Washington or Moscow to have a word on behalf of BP with Obama or Putin, and Cameron's suavely inane deputy Clegg faced by an opposition leader, the son of an illegal immigrant, who advocates the cultural and racial genocide of the English though mass immigration. Well, evidently it is not just me. In this splendid rant, Peter Hitchens demolishes the present crop of war criminals and idiots posing as the national leadership of Great Britain, the men chiefly responsible for what he describes as "the cesspool we have made out of our country."

We need a Commons rebellion: not a stupid war in Timbuktu

Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column, February 3, 2013: MALI CONFLICTThis is why I despise almost all Members of Parliament: our Prime Minister is taking us into yet another stupid war, and most MPs do not even care. Where is the rebellion? Where is the Opposition? Where are the demands for an emergency debate in which our motives and reasons for this latest nonsense are examined, torn to pieces and flung on the floor?

There is no case at all for Britain to send soldiers to Mali, or any other part of North Africa. We have no interest there, never will have and never have had. If we truly fear terrorism so much, then this adventure is doubly moronic.

It will give terrorists a pretext to attack our country that they did not have before. Like the Afghan war, it will also allow terrorists to kill us without needing to travel here. We will send our servicemen there, where the terrorists can more easily shoot them or blow them up.

If, three or four years hence, British soldiers are returning from North Africa in coffins, the empty-headed cretins of our political class will place their hands reverently upon their chests and burble solemn tributes, as they do now when the dead come back from our equally futile mission in Afghanistan.

Much less is said about the far larger numbers of terribly wounded young men, each of them worth 10,000 MPs, who will remain maimed or disfigured or both, long after those responsible are drawing plump pensions or being applauded by American matrons on the lucrative lecture circuit.

How is it that people who know so little, and who are so incapable of learning anything from experience, dominate both politics and the higher levels of political journalism? In the past two years we have cheered on the installation of an Egyptian president who said in September 2010 that Israelis are descended from apes and pigs, and created a lawless, failed state in Libya so chaotic that we have to urge our own citizens to run from Benghazi for their lives. But you would barely know these things from either Parliament or the heavyweight media.

It is not just that the Premier and his senior advisers plainly know no history. They seem also to have been asleep during the Blair years, when crude propaganda and cruder lies drove an expedition so foolish that those responsible should be so ashamed that they never show their faces in public again. Then there is Comrade ‘Doctor’ ‘Lord’ John Reid, the unrepentant former communist who gets hoity-toity when reminded that he sent British troops into deadly danger in Afghanistan while piously hoping that ‘we would be perfectly happy to leave in three years’ time without firing one shot’.

Remember that piece of naive drivel when you examine our current Premier’s sudden transformation into the Warlord of the Maghreb, which began with promises of no boots on the ground and continued with an almost instant breach of that promise.

Read more

No Evidence of Only One Shooter at Sandy Hook

Ben Swann: Release the Surveillance Video



Ben Swann's 'Release the Sandy Hook Surveillance Tapes' Video Goes Viral, Swann Smeared for Asking Questions

How Sandy Hook Came to Be Announced Before It Happened

Sandy Hook Massacre: The People v. Crisis Management Institute

 

By Dr. Eowyn

 

Fellowship of Minds, January 26, 2013: This thread is a continuation of the January 26 post, “How we know a guide on counseling children about Sandy Hook predated the massacre.“

For the back story of this, see “Guide on how to talk to children about Sandy Hook 4 days BEFORE massacre,” Jan. 16, 2013.

Peter, the author of “How we know a guide….,” continues to make his case with “Exhibits” on some highly technical aspects of “How we know….” I will be adding to this post, so please check back for updated material.

If you write a comment, please refer to the particular Exhibit to which you’re addressing, as in “re. Exhibit #1″ or “re. Exhibit #2.”

Peter will present his case as a prosecutor at a criminal trial. Let’s call it “The People v. Crisis Management Institute-Arlington Red Devils.” Below is his “Opening Statement.” I will be adding his Exhibits, as he writes them.

~Eowyn

The People v. Crisis Management Institute-Arlington Red Devils

So that I can place all the information I have for you to consider here in an orderly fashion I will present it in the fashion of a prosecutor in a criminal trial.

At the start of a Criminal Trial the Prosecutor makes a statement explaining what the Crime consists of, who he thinks is the criminal, and outlines how he intends to provide evidence showing that his case is accurate.

Read more