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Question Everything!
MEN OF PEACE
"I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive - nor will we deserve to." Leonard Peltier
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Confidence vs Humility
Confidence vs Humility
I view the video below as evidence of a powerful and often self-destructive instinct in most people to follow anyone who speaks with great confidence. People don’t much care about what’s being said. They do care about the apparent confidence of the speaker. Most people don’t care if the speaker speaks truth or lies, but they do care if he speaks with confidence.
If you speak without confidence–even if you’re telling a profound truth–most people won’t believe you. Most people won’t follow you.
But if you speak with great confidence, people don’t care if you’re a pathological liar–they will follow you, they’ll obey you, they’ll give you lots of money. Most salesmen, leaders, politicians, bankers and “men of power” understand this principle. If you would win, if you would rule, you must speak with unbridled confidence. Obama is a classic example of this phenomenon.
Adolph Hitler also understood this principle and called it the “big lie”. If you told a lie big enough, no one would doubt it. Perhaps Hitler could’ve labeled the phenomenon the “confident lie”. I.e., if you tell a lie with sufficient confidence, very few will doubt it.
I suspect that we respond to confidence because it’s easy to see. Truth, is far more complex, debatable and even confusing. Trying to evaluate the truth of an idea requires hard work, diligence and persistence. Trying to evaluate a speaker’s confidence, on the other hand, is comparatively easy. If he doesn’t speak with confidence, screw him. If he speaks with humility, screw him. He won’t attract a following or achieve much power. Therefore, he–and the truth or falsity of whatever ideas he espouses–can therefore be ignored.
The subject of the following video claims to be the Anti-Christ. He makes his claims with great confidence and has attracted a following. His followers contributed $1.4 million to him last year. Confidence works. Confidence sells.
But I’m reminded of the Messiah who reportedly spoke without great confidence but instead spoke with humility.*
I think I might understand the Messiah’s humility. When you speak with humility, the only subject is the truth or falsity of the ideas you present. When you speak with humility, you are not the issue. The humble man is not the subject of interest. The subject of interest is the idea he’s trying to express. Speaking with humility, you become almost irrelevant. The audience is not deceived into believing your ideas by your confidence, showmanship, or charisma.
Speaking with humility may not attract much of an audience (at least not at first), but it makes your ideas be the only subject for the people to consider. Those ideas are not obscured or even hidden behind a cloak of the speaker’s confidence.
• In A.D. 1964, Marshal McLuhan wrote a book entitled Understanding Media; The Extensions of Man. In that book, McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” He argued that the objective content of the message (ultimately its truth, falsity or relevance) was less important than the “medium” (radio, tv, print) in which that message was communicated. If advertisers could create a good “medium,” their message would be accepted and embraced by the consumers–regardless of the objective content of the message.
I’m reminded of the “Marlboro Man” as an application of McLuhan’s “medium is the message”. Back in the 1960s and 70s, Marlboro cigarettes used the image of a rugged, masculine cowboy with movie-star good looks to sell millions of packages of cigarettes.
I remember the ads. Full page. Color photo. A cowboy smoking while he rode a horse, saddled a horse, hauled a bale of hay, savored a sunset or did something else that was quintessentially “cowboyish”. Virtually no text other than the word “Marlboro”. The essential content of objective “message” of the Marlboro ads was “tobacco kills”. But the “medium” used to convey or even conceal that “message” was the image of that rugged cowboy whose rugged, masculine confidence seemed enormous and irrefutable.
Result? Millions of Americans bought Marlboro cigarettes based on the “medium” (confident cowboy) rather than the essential message (“tobacco kills”).
It occurs to me that McLuhan’s catchphrase (“The medium is the message”) may help illustrate the phenomenon of most people “buying” a particular “message” based on the “medium” (the speaker’s confidence) rather than on the truth or falsity of the underlying facts. The “medium” often conceals the objective “message” and thereby becomes the “message”.
• Which brings me back to the Messiah. It’s my understanding that he not only spoke with humility but also wasn’t a particularly handsome man. If you saw the Messiah walking down the street, he didn’t “glow”. He didn’t look like Clark Gable or George Clooney. The Messiah’s appearance was unremarkable and might just as easily have been that of a street sweeper as of a savior.
For me, that unremarkable appearance is consistent with my notions about humility. Because of the Messiah’s ordinary looks and humble presentations, most people would not be seduced by the “medium” (the Messiah) but instead could only hear and evaluate the truth or falsity of whatever actual “message” he conveyed. In the case of the Messiah, the “medium” was not the “message”. The objective “message” (the Gospel) was the “message”.
Result? With an unremarkable, humble Messiah, the “message” of the Gospel might not have made as much immediate “market penetration” as would’ve been possible if Gable, Clooney or the Marlboro man had been fronting for the Gospel. But, it may well be that the actual “message” (the Gospel) caught on and became powerful in large measure because it was not initially presented by some “golden boy” speaking with “great confidence” and charisma. If “the medium is the message,” then if the Messiah had been a super-confident “medium” we might never have really considered and grasped the underlying “message”.
From this perspective, the New Testament is not about the Messiah so much as the Word.
In a sense, it might even be argued that the “medium” (the Messiah) might have to “disappear” before his underlying “message” could be fully understood.
Speculating along these lines, I’m reminded that Jews rejected the Messiah because they wanted a “king”. They wanted a “golden boy” filled with confidence and charisma to lead them and fight their battles. They didn’t want to “hear” whatever the Messiah had to say. They wanted to follow wherever the Messiah would lead them. It might be argued that Jews didn’t want the actual “message”–they wanted the “medium”.
In any case, here’s a short video of a man who speaks with sufficient confidence to convince people that he’s the Anti-Chist and attract enough followers to take in over $1 million a year in contributions. He hasn’t attracted a lot of followers. I’d bet the number is a few tens of thousands. Still, he’s attracted enough to collect $1.4 million a year. I doubt that he could’ve done that without great confidence.
There might be a lesson here. If the real Anti-Christ appears, he will almost certainly speak with great confidence and no humility.
video 00:03:34
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=452320554907675&set=vb.100003892040712&type=2&theater
A Citizen Against Hunger
Dear young people of every language and culture, a high and exhilarating task awaits you: that of becoming men and women capable of solidarity, peace and love of life, with respect for everyone. Become craftsmen of a new humanity, where brothers and sisters — members all of the same family — are able at last to live in peace. ~Blessed John Paul II
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https://www.booster.com/acitizenagainsthunger02
I view the video below as evidence of a powerful and often self-destructive instinct in most people to follow anyone who speaks with great confidence. People don’t much care about what’s being said. They do care about the apparent confidence of the speaker. Most people don’t care if the speaker speaks truth or lies, but they do care if he speaks with confidence.
If you speak without confidence–even if you’re telling a profound truth–most people won’t believe you. Most people won’t follow you.
But if you speak with great confidence, people don’t care if you’re a pathological liar–they will follow you, they’ll obey you, they’ll give you lots of money. Most salesmen, leaders, politicians, bankers and “men of power” understand this principle. If you would win, if you would rule, you must speak with unbridled confidence. Obama is a classic example of this phenomenon.
Adolph Hitler also understood this principle and called it the “big lie”. If you told a lie big enough, no one would doubt it. Perhaps Hitler could’ve labeled the phenomenon the “confident lie”. I.e., if you tell a lie with sufficient confidence, very few will doubt it.
I suspect that we respond to confidence because it’s easy to see. Truth, is far more complex, debatable and even confusing. Trying to evaluate the truth of an idea requires hard work, diligence and persistence. Trying to evaluate a speaker’s confidence, on the other hand, is comparatively easy. If he doesn’t speak with confidence, screw him. If he speaks with humility, screw him. He won’t attract a following or achieve much power. Therefore, he–and the truth or falsity of whatever ideas he espouses–can therefore be ignored.
The subject of the following video claims to be the Anti-Christ. He makes his claims with great confidence and has attracted a following. His followers contributed $1.4 million to him last year. Confidence works. Confidence sells.
But I’m reminded of the Messiah who reportedly spoke without great confidence but instead spoke with humility.*
I think I might understand the Messiah’s humility. When you speak with humility, the only subject is the truth or falsity of the ideas you present. When you speak with humility, you are not the issue. The humble man is not the subject of interest. The subject of interest is the idea he’s trying to express. Speaking with humility, you become almost irrelevant. The audience is not deceived into believing your ideas by your confidence, showmanship, or charisma.
Speaking with humility may not attract much of an audience (at least not at first), but it makes your ideas be the only subject for the people to consider. Those ideas are not obscured or even hidden behind a cloak of the speaker’s confidence.
• In A.D. 1964, Marshal McLuhan wrote a book entitled Understanding Media; The Extensions of Man. In that book, McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” He argued that the objective content of the message (ultimately its truth, falsity or relevance) was less important than the “medium” (radio, tv, print) in which that message was communicated. If advertisers could create a good “medium,” their message would be accepted and embraced by the consumers–regardless of the objective content of the message.
I’m reminded of the “Marlboro Man” as an application of McLuhan’s “medium is the message”. Back in the 1960s and 70s, Marlboro cigarettes used the image of a rugged, masculine cowboy with movie-star good looks to sell millions of packages of cigarettes.
I remember the ads. Full page. Color photo. A cowboy smoking while he rode a horse, saddled a horse, hauled a bale of hay, savored a sunset or did something else that was quintessentially “cowboyish”. Virtually no text other than the word “Marlboro”. The essential content of objective “message” of the Marlboro ads was “tobacco kills”. But the “medium” used to convey or even conceal that “message” was the image of that rugged cowboy whose rugged, masculine confidence seemed enormous and irrefutable.
Result? Millions of Americans bought Marlboro cigarettes based on the “medium” (confident cowboy) rather than the essential message (“tobacco kills”).
It occurs to me that McLuhan’s catchphrase (“The medium is the message”) may help illustrate the phenomenon of most people “buying” a particular “message” based on the “medium” (the speaker’s confidence) rather than on the truth or falsity of the underlying facts. The “medium” often conceals the objective “message” and thereby becomes the “message”.
• Which brings me back to the Messiah. It’s my understanding that he not only spoke with humility but also wasn’t a particularly handsome man. If you saw the Messiah walking down the street, he didn’t “glow”. He didn’t look like Clark Gable or George Clooney. The Messiah’s appearance was unremarkable and might just as easily have been that of a street sweeper as of a savior.
For me, that unremarkable appearance is consistent with my notions about humility. Because of the Messiah’s ordinary looks and humble presentations, most people would not be seduced by the “medium” (the Messiah) but instead could only hear and evaluate the truth or falsity of whatever actual “message” he conveyed. In the case of the Messiah, the “medium” was not the “message”. The objective “message” (the Gospel) was the “message”.
Result? With an unremarkable, humble Messiah, the “message” of the Gospel might not have made as much immediate “market penetration” as would’ve been possible if Gable, Clooney or the Marlboro man had been fronting for the Gospel. But, it may well be that the actual “message” (the Gospel) caught on and became powerful in large measure because it was not initially presented by some “golden boy” speaking with “great confidence” and charisma. If “the medium is the message,” then if the Messiah had been a super-confident “medium” we might never have really considered and grasped the underlying “message”.
From this perspective, the New Testament is not about the Messiah so much as the Word.
In a sense, it might even be argued that the “medium” (the Messiah) might have to “disappear” before his underlying “message” could be fully understood.
Speculating along these lines, I’m reminded that Jews rejected the Messiah because they wanted a “king”. They wanted a “golden boy” filled with confidence and charisma to lead them and fight their battles. They didn’t want to “hear” whatever the Messiah had to say. They wanted to follow wherever the Messiah would lead them. It might be argued that Jews didn’t want the actual “message”–they wanted the “medium”.
In any case, here’s a short video of a man who speaks with sufficient confidence to convince people that he’s the Anti-Chist and attract enough followers to take in over $1 million a year in contributions. He hasn’t attracted a lot of followers. I’d bet the number is a few tens of thousands. Still, he’s attracted enough to collect $1.4 million a year. I doubt that he could’ve done that without great confidence.
There might be a lesson here. If the real Anti-Christ appears, he will almost certainly speak with great confidence and no humility.
video 00:03:34
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=452320554907675&set=vb.100003892040712&type=2&theater
A Citizen Against Hunger
Dear young people of every language and culture, a high and exhilarating task awaits you: that of becoming men and women capable of solidarity, peace and love of life, with respect for everyone. Become craftsmen of a new humanity, where brothers and sisters — members all of the same family — are able at last to live in peace. ~Blessed John Paul II
https://www.booster.com/acitizenagainsthunger02
Out of the Mouths of Babes
Out of the Mouths of Babes
Three, sixteen-year old American girls have won Google’s “global science competition” prize. These three girls leaned that many crops germinate in direct proportion to the presence of a particular bacteria in the soil. Thus, they hypothesized that by increasing the amount of that bacteria in the soil, crops might germinate more quickly and produce greater yields. They tested their hypothesis over a period of eleven months and discovered that by increasing the concentration of bacteria in the soil, some crop yields might be increased by up to 50%.
This is no small thing. Increasing crop yields by 3% is interesting and profitable. Increasing crop yields by 50% can save lives. This increase might help feed millions of hungry people. These three teenage girls have achieved a ground-breaking scientific discovery in their kitchens and backyards that’s eluded college-educated scientists working in the multi-million-dollar laboratories of major corporations. Children with little more than laptops, test tubes, seeds, patience and an understanding of the scientific method may have changed the world.
Google gave the girls $50,000 college scholarships, a trip to the Galapagos Islands and and an opportunity to participate in a summer program for possible astronauts.
Here’s a video of these three teenagers (sometimes wearing ill-fitting laboratory smocks like little girls dressed up in their mom’s dresses and high heels) which explains how they achieved their extraordinary discovery.
I’m blown away.
I don’t know if the world’s major corporations are impressed or terrified. It’s not news, but it’s more evidence that the world of scientific discovery is no longer confined to big money and big corporations. Even kids can change the world. This capacity for individuals defies the ideas of “central planning” and “central control” that underlie the New World Order and global government.
video 00:04:46
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Incidentally, I’m not a scholar–or even a student–of GMO crop issues. But, if I understand correctly, GMO plants include a built-in genetic pesticide to help protect them from insects and such. More, GMO plants are designed to be resistant to herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup (glyphosate). As a result, farmers can plant GMO seeds, spray the field with glyphosate and thereby kill other plants (weeds) that would compete with the GMO crop. By killing the weeds and leaving the GMO crop, yields can be increased. The GMO theory seems irresistible.
GMO practice reportedly leaves something to be desired. Insects are developing resistance to glyphosate and are becoming something like “super-bugs”. Persistent use of glyphosate may cause long-term damage to the soil.
So, I’m wondering–if the three girls are right and increasing the concentration of certain, beneficial bacteria in the soil can increase crop yields by up to 50%–is it possible that the Roundup/glyphosate used as an herbicide with GMO plants not only kills weeds, but also stunts or kills the beneficial bacteria in the topsoil? If so, once the beneficial bacteria were killed, how long would it take before that bacteria were naturally restored to the topsoil? What would happen to crop yields so long as the beneficial bacteria were reduced or eliminated? Could repeated applications of glyphosate “sterilize” the topsoil and render it incapable of growing crops?
Again, I’m not knowledgeable about GMO science. Bacteria are not exactly animals, insects or plants. But the GMO technology is supposed to kill just about every other plant and pest in the field other than the GMO plant. So, I can’t help wondering if glyphosate can kill weeds, can it also kill bacteria? And, if glyphosate can kill bacteria in the soil, would the increased yields that we might get by using GMO seeds and glyphosate today be worth whatever diminished yields might result tomorrow?
I’ll probably have to find some teenager to answer that question for me.
(When I was a kid, we always thought we were smarter than our parents–but we weren’t. Today, thanks to the internet and computers, kids may not only think they’re smarter than their parents–they might even be right.)
.png)
https://www.booster.com/acitizenagainsthunger
Three, sixteen-year old American girls have won Google’s “global science competition” prize. These three girls leaned that many crops germinate in direct proportion to the presence of a particular bacteria in the soil. Thus, they hypothesized that by increasing the amount of that bacteria in the soil, crops might germinate more quickly and produce greater yields. They tested their hypothesis over a period of eleven months and discovered that by increasing the concentration of bacteria in the soil, some crop yields might be increased by up to 50%.
This is no small thing. Increasing crop yields by 3% is interesting and profitable. Increasing crop yields by 50% can save lives. This increase might help feed millions of hungry people. These three teenage girls have achieved a ground-breaking scientific discovery in their kitchens and backyards that’s eluded college-educated scientists working in the multi-million-dollar laboratories of major corporations. Children with little more than laptops, test tubes, seeds, patience and an understanding of the scientific method may have changed the world.
Google gave the girls $50,000 college scholarships, a trip to the Galapagos Islands and and an opportunity to participate in a summer program for possible astronauts.
Here’s a video of these three teenagers (sometimes wearing ill-fitting laboratory smocks like little girls dressed up in their mom’s dresses and high heels) which explains how they achieved their extraordinary discovery.
I’m blown away.
I don’t know if the world’s major corporations are impressed or terrified. It’s not news, but it’s more evidence that the world of scientific discovery is no longer confined to big money and big corporations. Even kids can change the world. This capacity for individuals defies the ideas of “central planning” and “central control” that underlie the New World Order and global government.
video 00:04:46
<
Incidentally, I’m not a scholar–or even a student–of GMO crop issues. But, if I understand correctly, GMO plants include a built-in genetic pesticide to help protect them from insects and such. More, GMO plants are designed to be resistant to herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup (glyphosate). As a result, farmers can plant GMO seeds, spray the field with glyphosate and thereby kill other plants (weeds) that would compete with the GMO crop. By killing the weeds and leaving the GMO crop, yields can be increased. The GMO theory seems irresistible.
GMO practice reportedly leaves something to be desired. Insects are developing resistance to glyphosate and are becoming something like “super-bugs”. Persistent use of glyphosate may cause long-term damage to the soil.
So, I’m wondering–if the three girls are right and increasing the concentration of certain, beneficial bacteria in the soil can increase crop yields by up to 50%–is it possible that the Roundup/glyphosate used as an herbicide with GMO plants not only kills weeds, but also stunts or kills the beneficial bacteria in the topsoil? If so, once the beneficial bacteria were killed, how long would it take before that bacteria were naturally restored to the topsoil? What would happen to crop yields so long as the beneficial bacteria were reduced or eliminated? Could repeated applications of glyphosate “sterilize” the topsoil and render it incapable of growing crops?
Again, I’m not knowledgeable about GMO science. Bacteria are not exactly animals, insects or plants. But the GMO technology is supposed to kill just about every other plant and pest in the field other than the GMO plant. So, I can’t help wondering if glyphosate can kill weeds, can it also kill bacteria? And, if glyphosate can kill bacteria in the soil, would the increased yields that we might get by using GMO seeds and glyphosate today be worth whatever diminished yields might result tomorrow?
I’ll probably have to find some teenager to answer that question for me.
(When I was a kid, we always thought we were smarter than our parents–but we weren’t. Today, thanks to the internet and computers, kids may not only think they’re smarter than their parents–they might even be right.)
https://www.booster.com/acitizenagainsthunger
A LETTER ADDRESSED TO "THE SHEEPLE" FROM "THE GLOBALIST NEW WORLD ORDER"
A LETTER ADDRESSED TO "THE SHEEPLE" FROM "THE GLOBALIST NEW WORLD ORDER"
(with added details of THE ONLY WAY to DEFEAT the NWO and bring True and Lasting Peace and Justice to Planet Earth)
*The original letter (in plain text) was received from an American contact and has not been altered in any way, it purports to come from a New World Order elitist. All notes and references in italics have been added later.
Dearest Citizen of the World,
I believe the time has come to reveal to you some of the perplexities you have faced in recent decades. It is well for you to understand some of these things so that you might know how to behave in the New Order now taking shape on the earth. We want you to be able to become fully involved and integrated into our new society. After all, this is for your best interest if you will do.
First of all, it is well that you understand some of our purposes so that you may more fully co-operate. I cannot tell you the hard times you will face if you resist us. We have ways of dealing with resisters. I am only telling you this now, since it is much too late to turn things around. The days of putting a stop to us have long since past. We have full control of the earth and its finance, along with the major media propaganda, and there is simply no way any nation or power can defeat us.
We have eyes in every level of government in every nation of the world. We know what is being planned, for our ears and eyes are ever present.
State secrets are fully known to us. China recently accused the media in the U.S. of lying about Kosovo. Oh, you silly people, of course we lie*. In this way we can keep the people unbalanced and always facing controversy which is very helpful to us. Have you not seen the talk show spectacle? Some of you believe we are the liberals and the good people are the conservatives. In reality, both serve our purposes. Each camp merely serves with the stamp of our approval but they are not allowed to present the real issues. By creating controversy on all levels, no one knows what to do. So, in all of this confusion, we go ahead and accomplish what we want with no hindrance.
* Ye are of [YOUR] father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the Truth, because there is no Truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father (inventor) of it.
- John 8:35
Consider the President of the United States. Even though he regularly breaks every known check on his power, no one can stop him. He goes ahead and does whatever we want him to do anyway. The Congress has no power to stop him.
He does what we want since he knows if he does not, because of his rather dark character, we can have him removed in a moment's time. Is not that a rather brilliant strategy on our part? You cannot take us to court because you can't see us and the courts are our servants as well. We run everything, yet, you do not know who to attack. I must say this hidden hand is wonderfully devised and without any known historical precedent on this scale. We rule the world and the world cannot even find out who is ruling them.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil (and his advocates the NWO).
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places].
Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God**, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
- Ephesians 6:10-13
This is truly a wonderful thing. In our media we present before you exactly what it is we want you to do. Then, as if in a flash, our little servants obey. We can send American or European troops to wherever we like, whenever we like, and for whatever purpose we like, and you dutifully go about our business. How much more evidence do you need? We can make you desire to leave your homes and family and go to war merely at our command. We only need to present some nonsense to you from the president's desk or on the evening news and we can get you all fired up to do whatever we like. You can do nothing but what we put before you.
YOUR VAIN RESISTANCE
When any of you seek to resist us, we have ways of making you look ridiculous as we have done with your militia movement. We have delighted to use this movement to show the world how impotent any resistance is. They look so silly marching around with their guns as if they were some match for our military. Look at what we did near Waco. Did the Davidian's little store of weapons help them? We have generously taxed you and used that money to make such sophisticated weapons you can in no way compete. Your own money has served to forge the chains we bind you with, since we are in control of all money.
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell-fire.
- Matthew 10:28
Some of you think you may escape by buying some land in the country and growing a garden. Let me remind you that you still pay us ground rent. Oh, you may call it property taxes, but it still goes to us. You see, you need money no matter what you do. If you fail to pay your ground rent to us, we will take your land and sell it to someone who will pay us. Do you think we cannot do this?
And with your ground rent we pay for the indoctrination of your children in the public schools we have set up. We want them to grow up well trained into the system of our thinking. Your children will learn what we want them to learn, when we want them to learn it, and you pay for it through your ground rent.
Those funds are also used for other projects we have in mind and our contractors are paid handsomely for their work. You may doubt that we own your children, or have such control, but you will find that we do. We can declare that you abuse your children when you spank them and have them confiscated.
If they do not show up for school indoctrination, we can accuse you of neglect, thereby, giving them to us. Your children are not yours. They are ours. You must inoculate them, you must bring them to our hospitals if we decree or we will take them from you. You know this and we know this.
Through our electronic commerce we are able to see where you are, what you are buying and how much you have to buy things with. Where do you suppose we come up with our monthly financial statistics? Through the Internet and other sources we can even know how you think and what you say. It is not especially important to us what you believe as long as you do what we say. Your beliefs are nonsense anyway*. But if you think you have a following, and we perceive that you might be somewhat dangerous to our agenda, we have ways to deal with you.
* Here is where the NWO's weakness lies their dis-belief in God and His Infinite Power is the root of their arrogance and complacency.
"Don't under-estimate The Force. The ability to destroy a planet (weapons of "mass destruction", etc.) is insignificant next to The Power of The Force (God's Powers)" Please read the "Starwars, fact not fiction" booklet at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/2012/starwar.htm for a more detailed explanation of this statement.
We have a Pandora's box of mischief with which to snare you. We can have you in court so long you will never get out. We can easily drain away all your assets over one pretext or another. We have an inexhaustible fund with which to draw from to pay our lawyers. These lawyers are paid by you in the form of taxes.
You do not have this vast supply of wealth. We know how to divide and conquer. Have we not brought down rulers of countries through our devices? Do you think your tiny self will be any match for us?
When his disciples heard [it], they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?
But Jesus beheld [them], and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
- Matthew 19:25-26
And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:
- Matthew 12:25
YOUR VAIN ORGANIZATIONS
And, let us consider your religions and the "moral majority." The "moral majority" is neither moral nor is it in the majority. We have delighted to use this wet noodle of a movement to make ridiculous the Christian faith. The silly men who run that organization always end up with egg on their faces*. We have always put them in defense of themselves as we have so successfully done with the NRA. We can make it seem by our media propaganda that the National Rifle Association is actually the New Radical Attackers.
* Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch (or Pit).
- Matthew 15:14
Have we not turned the American conservative movement on its ear? If it serves our purposes we can use the conservatives to turn the liberals on their ear. It makes no difference to us but it serves to make you believe there are two sides struggling for their particular position. This helps to make things seem fair and free since everyone has a voice. Actually, there is only one side now with all kinds of masks on, but you are unable to penetrate our purposes.
You see, we can do whatever we like and you can do nothing about it. Does it not seem reasonable that you simply obey and serve us?* Otherwise, you get eaten up in the resistance you suppose will liberate you.
* Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him ONLY shalt thou serve.
Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.
- Matthew 4:8-11
You cannot be liberated. Imagine how you can. We supply your fuel for your cars. We can turn it off whenever we like claiming that there is some sort of fuel shortage. What if your car breaks down? You cannot get parts for it without us. We supply all the money you use. At any whim of our desire we can stop the money supply or cause a complete crash all together. We can then order the president to declare all money worthless and that we will have to have new money. All of your stashes of cash will go up in smoke in a moment's time.
Don't you need food? If necessary, we can cause a trucker's strike which would stop deliveries of food to your local store. We can starve you whenever we like. You only have food because we have provided it to you from our table.
During the great depression we controlled the food. We heaped mountains of food behind fences and let it rot. The hungry were then made to work in our labour camps even though there was enough and more to feed them. Do you really think you can beat us? You say you will hoard gold coins so you will still have money in the time of the crash. We can simply pass a law which outlaws the possession of gold as we have done in the past. If we find gold in your possession, we would simply confiscate it and put you in prison for breaking the law.
While in prison you would be required to work in one of our prison industries. We have so formed a picture of the labour camps in our prisons these days that no one seems to object to them. We tell people that murderers should pay for their own keep.
No one seems to consider that we have the power to put tomato growers there also. We can pass laws that prohibit gardens and then make up some scientific reason why you may only buy food from our sources. If someone sees you growing tomatoes, they will report you to us and then we will have you in our fields working for us. Oh, silly nationalists, there is no escape for you, for since long before you were born, we were planning your capture. Your teachers and ministers have been forming your thoughts for us for generations now. You have no idea how to pull out of our influence short of suicide. Go ahead and commit suicide, it will only help us to deal with the excessive population. You cannot hurt us, find us, or even imagine what we are up to.
I am throwing you these few crumbs only so that you may, if you have a little good sense, obey and follow our orders.
And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind.
For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.
But rather seek ye the Kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.
- Luke 12:29-32
YOUR CONTROLLED MIND
We run Hollywood. The movies such as Terminator and Armageddon, along with a great host of others, were simply created to get you thinking according to our directions. You have been made to delight in violence so that when we send you off to kill some bad man we have put before you, you move without a whimper.
We have placed violent arcade games in your malls to prepare your young minds in the art of battle. We have made you to view our armies and police as the good forces and you submit to things that were unthinkable just a few decades ago. Our artful programs, are all designed to help you submit and even help the New World Order.
Star Trek, and other such creations, have taught you to simply obey orders from the new international rulers. Oh, silly people, you thought you were being entertained, while you were actually being educated. Dare I use the words, "brainwashed" or "mind control?" By the way, have you seen the new Star Wars?
What a masterpiece of mental manipulation. Humans confer with nondescript beasts of all shapes and sizes and they confer in English. I wonder where those space beasts learned English. Oh, the simpleness of the mind of the citizen. He never considers he is being taken into fairyland. We have placed advertisements for Star Wars almost everywhere you go. You will find them in Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Taco Bell and a host of our institutions of commerce. There is something we want you to learn from this movie. Or, perhaps it could be said, there is something we do not want you to learn, from Episodes 4-6. Either way, we will have what we want in the whole affair.
For a full explanation of, and the reason why "they" don't want you to learn from episodes 4-6 of the Starwars films, please study the "Starwars, fact not fiction" Booklet at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/2012/starwar.htm
Of course, to keep you off guard we have instructed our elected officials to appear to be correcting the evil of our violence. President Clinton is now speaking against violence in Hollywood movies. This will not solve the problem, but will only make the people believe the problem is being worked on. Sex and violence are the very best powers to use to help us gain our advantage. How the people loathe to give up their sex and violence, so we place all they want before them. In this way, we keep them so occupied they do not have the integrity or brain power to deal with the really important matters which are left entirely in our hands. President Clinton has been very helpful to us. We knew of what character he was before we placed him as president. Exposing him was very helpful in adjusting the moral habits of the youth downward. This is to our advantage.
Even more agreeable to us were the vain efforts of those who thought they could remove him against our will. He is useful to us and he will not be removed by anyone until we are ready to have him removed. Excuse me if I seem to be mocking your system of beliefs, but they are rather outdated. Have you no eyes to see your vain liberties and your righteous pontifications are nothing before us? You can only do what we say you can do. We remove presidents when we are ready and the leader we set up will be there until it serves us to have another.
At that time we place our proposed leader before you and you vote for what we want. In that way we give you the vain voting exercise in the belief you had something to do with placing your president in office.
We use the nations for what we want to use them for. Everyone knows that they must yield to us or die. Fortunately, we have had a few resisters such as Saddam and Milosevic that have been helpful in showing the world leaders what we will do to them if they do not submit.
There is only glory in following our purposes and doing what we say. If one does not, there will be such a sad and tragic result. I would really have you spared of such an end. But, then, again, if you are not spared, it is of no consequence to us. We will use you to alleviate some of the overpopulation problem.
YOUR SILLY REBELLION AGAINST OUR DOMINION
Some of you have thought you could stop us by placing a bomb in one of our abortion clinics or in a government building. Silly souls! How can that hurt us?
All that does is give us an example to use so that we might place more controls and heavy burdens on the population. We love it when you rebel and blow something up. You are our reason for making more laws against all those things which might contribute to your freedom from us. If someone did not blow something up on occasion, we would have no justification in placing more hedges about you. Can't you see how impossible it is for you to resist us? The more you wriggle, the more we squeeze.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, Do not resist evil (with evil): but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheeck, turn to him the other also (and thereby neutralize the evil with good).
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have [thy] cloak also.
- Matthew 5:38-40
Our kingdom is the kingdom of money. Excuse me, but I must confess that we are the rulers of the kingdom of non-money. You must see the humour in that statement. We have given you a piece of paper or some numbers on a computer screen that we have termed money. It is backed up by nothing and proven by nothing but what we say it is. We create it from nothing, we print it, we loan it, we give it its value, we take its value away. All things that have to do with money are in our hands. Think of it, what is it that you can do against us without money? If you try to resist, we can cancel your credit or freeze your accounts. Your cash is easily confiscated. We have made so many rules in the realm of living that you cannot live without money.
Camp on government land and you must move in two weeks. You cannot grow much of a garden in two weeks. Many of our wilderness trails are entered by permit only. We have passed laws that do not allow you to live in trailers over a certain period without moving to another location. Have you not thought it ridiculous that we will allow a man to live in a box full time but we will not allow a man to live in an RV full time unless he is in a taxpaying campground?
Please study Matthew chapter 23 in its completeness for Christ's opinion of all lawyers, politicians and priests of every denomination.
OUR UNFATHOMABLE MYSTERIES
ur recent war in Serbia has many purposes to it but we do not speak of these things openly. We let the talk show hosts blather all sorts of nonsense but none of it touches the core. First of all, there is a wealth of natural resources in Kosovo that we must have complete control of. Kosovo has large supplies of uranium in its soil and uranium is very helpful to our regime. Also, it suits us to keep all such minerals out of the hands of potential enemies.
Milosevic has not been helpful in giving those resources into our hands so we simply make things difficult for him until he does. Even now victory over Yugoslavia is imminent.
We are reducing that proud nation to the level of humility we require from all people. After the war, if Mr. Milosevic does not sufficiently humble himself, we will take him to the world court charged with war crimes. We made up that term; rather ingenious, don't you think? How could there be such a thing as a war crime? The very nature of war is that the rules are off. It is so entertaining to watch the nations try to fight war according to the laws we have placed before them. The only war crime there really is only involves the crime of being against us. Anyone against us is violating our law. As you have seen when someone is for us we do not care what they do. Was not Nelson Mandela a bomb-toting terrorist who killed many of his enemies? We made a hero of him.
We observe no laws when it comes to war. We do what we want, when we want and where we want. We can starve nations to death, we can ruin civilians and any other horror for which we would take our enemies to court. Look at our example.
We bomb Serbia out of its wits, bomb Kosovans out of their homes, poison their rivers and streams, turn off their electricity making a grand crisis in that country, and then we masterfully make it appear it is all Mr. Milosevic's fault and he needs to go to court for it. It is the same way we made our inferno at Waco look like Mr. Koresh's fault. Then there was our chief villain, Saddam with all of his weapons of mass destruction. Bad men are a dime a dozen and we can conjure one up whenever it suits us. This is really quite funny when you think of it. I am not one who is usually given to humour, but I do catch myself laughing sometimes at the absolute absurdity of the notions we place before you and you readily accept.
Do you wonder that the leaders of the world tremble at our presence? They know they have no power except the power we give them. We have no fear of Russia or China for we are already in full control of their system of things. China knows that we can freeze any number of its corporations in America and all of its capital at the stroke of a pen.
We want you to be in the system. When you are buying a house, we not only receive the tax revenue to use for our purposes, but we gain large increases from the interest on the loan. You may pay for your house two or three times over from the interest alone. The interest is also taxed which is again placed for use in those sectors of influence we choose.
We do not want you to escape free and that is why we have made it as we have. You are our property. We will not permit you to buy or sell unless you submit to our mark of authority*. If you go to court against us, we will wear you out there and in the end you will lose. If you use violence, we will end up having you in one of our labour camps, more specifically called prison industries. You need our money, our entertainments, our fuel, and our utilities to function and if you don't have them, you feel deprived. By this, you are made to yield to our will.
* And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast (system), or the number of its name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of man (created 6th day); and its number [is] Six hundred threescore [and] six (man, man, man).
- Revelation 13:16-18
(with added details of THE ONLY WAY to DEFEAT the NWO and bring True and Lasting Peace and Justice to Planet Earth)
*The original letter (in plain text) was received from an American contact and has not been altered in any way, it purports to come from a New World Order elitist. All notes and references in italics have been added later.
Dearest Citizen of the World,
I believe the time has come to reveal to you some of the perplexities you have faced in recent decades. It is well for you to understand some of these things so that you might know how to behave in the New Order now taking shape on the earth. We want you to be able to become fully involved and integrated into our new society. After all, this is for your best interest if you will do.First of all, it is well that you understand some of our purposes so that you may more fully co-operate. I cannot tell you the hard times you will face if you resist us. We have ways of dealing with resisters. I am only telling you this now, since it is much too late to turn things around. The days of putting a stop to us have long since past. We have full control of the earth and its finance, along with the major media propaganda, and there is simply no way any nation or power can defeat us.
We have eyes in every level of government in every nation of the world. We know what is being planned, for our ears and eyes are ever present.
State secrets are fully known to us. China recently accused the media in the U.S. of lying about Kosovo. Oh, you silly people, of course we lie*. In this way we can keep the people unbalanced and always facing controversy which is very helpful to us. Have you not seen the talk show spectacle? Some of you believe we are the liberals and the good people are the conservatives. In reality, both serve our purposes. Each camp merely serves with the stamp of our approval but they are not allowed to present the real issues. By creating controversy on all levels, no one knows what to do. So, in all of this confusion, we go ahead and accomplish what we want with no hindrance.
* Ye are of [YOUR] father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the Truth, because there is no Truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father (inventor) of it.
- John 8:35
Consider the President of the United States. Even though he regularly breaks every known check on his power, no one can stop him. He goes ahead and does whatever we want him to do anyway. The Congress has no power to stop him.
He does what we want since he knows if he does not, because of his rather dark character, we can have him removed in a moment's time. Is not that a rather brilliant strategy on our part? You cannot take us to court because you can't see us and the courts are our servants as well. We run everything, yet, you do not know who to attack. I must say this hidden hand is wonderfully devised and without any known historical precedent on this scale. We rule the world and the world cannot even find out who is ruling them.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil (and his advocates the NWO).
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places].
Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God**, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
- Ephesians 6:10-13
This is truly a wonderful thing. In our media we present before you exactly what it is we want you to do. Then, as if in a flash, our little servants obey. We can send American or European troops to wherever we like, whenever we like, and for whatever purpose we like, and you dutifully go about our business. How much more evidence do you need? We can make you desire to leave your homes and family and go to war merely at our command. We only need to present some nonsense to you from the president's desk or on the evening news and we can get you all fired up to do whatever we like. You can do nothing but what we put before you.
YOUR VAIN RESISTANCE
When any of you seek to resist us, we have ways of making you look ridiculous as we have done with your militia movement. We have delighted to use this movement to show the world how impotent any resistance is. They look so silly marching around with their guns as if they were some match for our military. Look at what we did near Waco. Did the Davidian's little store of weapons help them? We have generously taxed you and used that money to make such sophisticated weapons you can in no way compete. Your own money has served to forge the chains we bind you with, since we are in control of all money.
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell-fire.
- Matthew 10:28
Some of you think you may escape by buying some land in the country and growing a garden. Let me remind you that you still pay us ground rent. Oh, you may call it property taxes, but it still goes to us. You see, you need money no matter what you do. If you fail to pay your ground rent to us, we will take your land and sell it to someone who will pay us. Do you think we cannot do this?
And with your ground rent we pay for the indoctrination of your children in the public schools we have set up. We want them to grow up well trained into the system of our thinking. Your children will learn what we want them to learn, when we want them to learn it, and you pay for it through your ground rent.
Those funds are also used for other projects we have in mind and our contractors are paid handsomely for their work. You may doubt that we own your children, or have such control, but you will find that we do. We can declare that you abuse your children when you spank them and have them confiscated.
If they do not show up for school indoctrination, we can accuse you of neglect, thereby, giving them to us. Your children are not yours. They are ours. You must inoculate them, you must bring them to our hospitals if we decree or we will take them from you. You know this and we know this.
Through our electronic commerce we are able to see where you are, what you are buying and how much you have to buy things with. Where do you suppose we come up with our monthly financial statistics? Through the Internet and other sources we can even know how you think and what you say. It is not especially important to us what you believe as long as you do what we say. Your beliefs are nonsense anyway*. But if you think you have a following, and we perceive that you might be somewhat dangerous to our agenda, we have ways to deal with you.
* Here is where the NWO's weakness lies their dis-belief in God and His Infinite Power is the root of their arrogance and complacency.
"Don't under-estimate The Force. The ability to destroy a planet (weapons of "mass destruction", etc.) is insignificant next to The Power of The Force (God's Powers)" Please read the "Starwars, fact not fiction" booklet at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/2012/starwar.htm for a more detailed explanation of this statement.
We have a Pandora's box of mischief with which to snare you. We can have you in court so long you will never get out. We can easily drain away all your assets over one pretext or another. We have an inexhaustible fund with which to draw from to pay our lawyers. These lawyers are paid by you in the form of taxes.
You do not have this vast supply of wealth. We know how to divide and conquer. Have we not brought down rulers of countries through our devices? Do you think your tiny self will be any match for us?
When his disciples heard [it], they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?
But Jesus beheld [them], and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
- Matthew 19:25-26
And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:
- Matthew 12:25
YOUR VAIN ORGANIZATIONS
And, let us consider your religions and the "moral majority." The "moral majority" is neither moral nor is it in the majority. We have delighted to use this wet noodle of a movement to make ridiculous the Christian faith. The silly men who run that organization always end up with egg on their faces*. We have always put them in defense of themselves as we have so successfully done with the NRA. We can make it seem by our media propaganda that the National Rifle Association is actually the New Radical Attackers.
* Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch (or Pit).
- Matthew 15:14
Have we not turned the American conservative movement on its ear? If it serves our purposes we can use the conservatives to turn the liberals on their ear. It makes no difference to us but it serves to make you believe there are two sides struggling for their particular position. This helps to make things seem fair and free since everyone has a voice. Actually, there is only one side now with all kinds of masks on, but you are unable to penetrate our purposes.
You see, we can do whatever we like and you can do nothing about it. Does it not seem reasonable that you simply obey and serve us?* Otherwise, you get eaten up in the resistance you suppose will liberate you.
* Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him ONLY shalt thou serve.
Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.
- Matthew 4:8-11
You cannot be liberated. Imagine how you can. We supply your fuel for your cars. We can turn it off whenever we like claiming that there is some sort of fuel shortage. What if your car breaks down? You cannot get parts for it without us. We supply all the money you use. At any whim of our desire we can stop the money supply or cause a complete crash all together. We can then order the president to declare all money worthless and that we will have to have new money. All of your stashes of cash will go up in smoke in a moment's time.
Don't you need food? If necessary, we can cause a trucker's strike which would stop deliveries of food to your local store. We can starve you whenever we like. You only have food because we have provided it to you from our table.
During the great depression we controlled the food. We heaped mountains of food behind fences and let it rot. The hungry were then made to work in our labour camps even though there was enough and more to feed them. Do you really think you can beat us? You say you will hoard gold coins so you will still have money in the time of the crash. We can simply pass a law which outlaws the possession of gold as we have done in the past. If we find gold in your possession, we would simply confiscate it and put you in prison for breaking the law.
While in prison you would be required to work in one of our prison industries. We have so formed a picture of the labour camps in our prisons these days that no one seems to object to them. We tell people that murderers should pay for their own keep.
No one seems to consider that we have the power to put tomato growers there also. We can pass laws that prohibit gardens and then make up some scientific reason why you may only buy food from our sources. If someone sees you growing tomatoes, they will report you to us and then we will have you in our fields working for us. Oh, silly nationalists, there is no escape for you, for since long before you were born, we were planning your capture. Your teachers and ministers have been forming your thoughts for us for generations now. You have no idea how to pull out of our influence short of suicide. Go ahead and commit suicide, it will only help us to deal with the excessive population. You cannot hurt us, find us, or even imagine what we are up to.
I am throwing you these few crumbs only so that you may, if you have a little good sense, obey and follow our orders.
And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind.
For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.
But rather seek ye the Kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.
- Luke 12:29-32
YOUR CONTROLLED MIND
We run Hollywood. The movies such as Terminator and Armageddon, along with a great host of others, were simply created to get you thinking according to our directions. You have been made to delight in violence so that when we send you off to kill some bad man we have put before you, you move without a whimper.
We have placed violent arcade games in your malls to prepare your young minds in the art of battle. We have made you to view our armies and police as the good forces and you submit to things that were unthinkable just a few decades ago. Our artful programs, are all designed to help you submit and even help the New World Order.
Star Trek, and other such creations, have taught you to simply obey orders from the new international rulers. Oh, silly people, you thought you were being entertained, while you were actually being educated. Dare I use the words, "brainwashed" or "mind control?" By the way, have you seen the new Star Wars?
What a masterpiece of mental manipulation. Humans confer with nondescript beasts of all shapes and sizes and they confer in English. I wonder where those space beasts learned English. Oh, the simpleness of the mind of the citizen. He never considers he is being taken into fairyland. We have placed advertisements for Star Wars almost everywhere you go. You will find them in Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Taco Bell and a host of our institutions of commerce. There is something we want you to learn from this movie. Or, perhaps it could be said, there is something we do not want you to learn, from Episodes 4-6. Either way, we will have what we want in the whole affair.
For a full explanation of, and the reason why "they" don't want you to learn from episodes 4-6 of the Starwars films, please study the "Starwars, fact not fiction" Booklet at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/2012/starwar.htm
Of course, to keep you off guard we have instructed our elected officials to appear to be correcting the evil of our violence. President Clinton is now speaking against violence in Hollywood movies. This will not solve the problem, but will only make the people believe the problem is being worked on. Sex and violence are the very best powers to use to help us gain our advantage. How the people loathe to give up their sex and violence, so we place all they want before them. In this way, we keep them so occupied they do not have the integrity or brain power to deal with the really important matters which are left entirely in our hands. President Clinton has been very helpful to us. We knew of what character he was before we placed him as president. Exposing him was very helpful in adjusting the moral habits of the youth downward. This is to our advantage.
Even more agreeable to us were the vain efforts of those who thought they could remove him against our will. He is useful to us and he will not be removed by anyone until we are ready to have him removed. Excuse me if I seem to be mocking your system of beliefs, but they are rather outdated. Have you no eyes to see your vain liberties and your righteous pontifications are nothing before us? You can only do what we say you can do. We remove presidents when we are ready and the leader we set up will be there until it serves us to have another.
At that time we place our proposed leader before you and you vote for what we want. In that way we give you the vain voting exercise in the belief you had something to do with placing your president in office.
We use the nations for what we want to use them for. Everyone knows that they must yield to us or die. Fortunately, we have had a few resisters such as Saddam and Milosevic that have been helpful in showing the world leaders what we will do to them if they do not submit.
There is only glory in following our purposes and doing what we say. If one does not, there will be such a sad and tragic result. I would really have you spared of such an end. But, then, again, if you are not spared, it is of no consequence to us. We will use you to alleviate some of the overpopulation problem.
YOUR SILLY REBELLION AGAINST OUR DOMINION
Some of you have thought you could stop us by placing a bomb in one of our abortion clinics or in a government building. Silly souls! How can that hurt us?
All that does is give us an example to use so that we might place more controls and heavy burdens on the population. We love it when you rebel and blow something up. You are our reason for making more laws against all those things which might contribute to your freedom from us. If someone did not blow something up on occasion, we would have no justification in placing more hedges about you. Can't you see how impossible it is for you to resist us? The more you wriggle, the more we squeeze.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, Do not resist evil (with evil): but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheeck, turn to him the other also (and thereby neutralize the evil with good).
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have [thy] cloak also.
- Matthew 5:38-40
Our kingdom is the kingdom of money. Excuse me, but I must confess that we are the rulers of the kingdom of non-money. You must see the humour in that statement. We have given you a piece of paper or some numbers on a computer screen that we have termed money. It is backed up by nothing and proven by nothing but what we say it is. We create it from nothing, we print it, we loan it, we give it its value, we take its value away. All things that have to do with money are in our hands. Think of it, what is it that you can do against us without money? If you try to resist, we can cancel your credit or freeze your accounts. Your cash is easily confiscated. We have made so many rules in the realm of living that you cannot live without money.
Camp on government land and you must move in two weeks. You cannot grow much of a garden in two weeks. Many of our wilderness trails are entered by permit only. We have passed laws that do not allow you to live in trailers over a certain period without moving to another location. Have you not thought it ridiculous that we will allow a man to live in a box full time but we will not allow a man to live in an RV full time unless he is in a taxpaying campground?
Please study Matthew chapter 23 in its completeness for Christ's opinion of all lawyers, politicians and priests of every denomination.
OUR UNFATHOMABLE MYSTERIES
ur recent war in Serbia has many purposes to it but we do not speak of these things openly. We let the talk show hosts blather all sorts of nonsense but none of it touches the core. First of all, there is a wealth of natural resources in Kosovo that we must have complete control of. Kosovo has large supplies of uranium in its soil and uranium is very helpful to our regime. Also, it suits us to keep all such minerals out of the hands of potential enemies.
Milosevic has not been helpful in giving those resources into our hands so we simply make things difficult for him until he does. Even now victory over Yugoslavia is imminent.
We are reducing that proud nation to the level of humility we require from all people. After the war, if Mr. Milosevic does not sufficiently humble himself, we will take him to the world court charged with war crimes. We made up that term; rather ingenious, don't you think? How could there be such a thing as a war crime? The very nature of war is that the rules are off. It is so entertaining to watch the nations try to fight war according to the laws we have placed before them. The only war crime there really is only involves the crime of being against us. Anyone against us is violating our law. As you have seen when someone is for us we do not care what they do. Was not Nelson Mandela a bomb-toting terrorist who killed many of his enemies? We made a hero of him.
We observe no laws when it comes to war. We do what we want, when we want and where we want. We can starve nations to death, we can ruin civilians and any other horror for which we would take our enemies to court. Look at our example.
We bomb Serbia out of its wits, bomb Kosovans out of their homes, poison their rivers and streams, turn off their electricity making a grand crisis in that country, and then we masterfully make it appear it is all Mr. Milosevic's fault and he needs to go to court for it. It is the same way we made our inferno at Waco look like Mr. Koresh's fault. Then there was our chief villain, Saddam with all of his weapons of mass destruction. Bad men are a dime a dozen and we can conjure one up whenever it suits us. This is really quite funny when you think of it. I am not one who is usually given to humour, but I do catch myself laughing sometimes at the absolute absurdity of the notions we place before you and you readily accept.
Do you wonder that the leaders of the world tremble at our presence? They know they have no power except the power we give them. We have no fear of Russia or China for we are already in full control of their system of things. China knows that we can freeze any number of its corporations in America and all of its capital at the stroke of a pen.
We want you to be in the system. When you are buying a house, we not only receive the tax revenue to use for our purposes, but we gain large increases from the interest on the loan. You may pay for your house two or three times over from the interest alone. The interest is also taxed which is again placed for use in those sectors of influence we choose.
We do not want you to escape free and that is why we have made it as we have. You are our property. We will not permit you to buy or sell unless you submit to our mark of authority*. If you go to court against us, we will wear you out there and in the end you will lose. If you use violence, we will end up having you in one of our labour camps, more specifically called prison industries. You need our money, our entertainments, our fuel, and our utilities to function and if you don't have them, you feel deprived. By this, you are made to yield to our will.
* And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast (system), or the number of its name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of man (created 6th day); and its number [is] Six hundred threescore [and] six (man, man, man).
- Revelation 13:16-18
America’s Dirty Little Secret: Sex Trafficking Is Big Business
You don’t hear much about domestic sex trafficking from the media or government officials, and yet it infects suburbs, cities and towns across the nation
America’s Dirty Little Secret: Sex Trafficking Is Big Business
“For every 10 women rescued, there are 50 to 100 more women are brought in by the traffickers. Unfortunately, they’re not 18- or 20-year-olds anymore. They’re minors as young as 13 who are being trafficked. They’re little girls.”—25-year-old victim of trafficking
“Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.”—John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
The mysterious disappearance of 18-year-old Hannah Graham on September 13, 2014, has become easy fodder for the media at a time when the news cycle is lagging. After all, how does a young woman just vanish without a trace, in the middle of the night, in a town that is routinely lauded for being the happiest place in America, not to mention one of the most beautiful?
Yet Graham is not the first girl to vanish in America without a trace—my hometown of Charlottesville, Va., has had five women go missing over the span of five years—and it is doubtful she will be the last. I say doubtful because America is in the grip of a highly profitable, highly organized and highly sophisticated sex trafficking business that operates in towns large and small, raking in upwards of $9.5 billion a year in the U.S. alone by abducting and selling young girls for sex.
It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged sex workers in the U.S. The average age of girls who enter into street prostitution is between 12 and 14 years old, with some as young as 9 years old. This doesn’t include those who entered the “trade” as minors and have since come of age. Rarely do these girls enter into prostitution voluntarily. As one rescue organization estimated, an underaged prostitute might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period of servitude.
This is America’s dirty little secret.
You don’t hear much about domestic sex trafficking from the media or government officials, and yet it infects suburbs, cities and towns across the nation. According to the FBI, sex trafficking is the fastest growing business in organized crime, the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns. It’s an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are sold to 50 men each day for $25 apiece, while their handlers make $150,000 to $200,000 per child each year.
The Baltimore-Washington area, referred to as The Circuit, with its I-95 corridor dotted with rest stops, bus stations and truck stops, is a hub for the sex trade
In order to avoid detection by police and cater to male buyers’ demand for sex with different women, pimps and the gangs and crime syndicates they work for have turned sex trafficking into a highly mobile enterprise, with trafficked girls, boys and women constantly being moved from city to city, state to state, and country to country. The Baltimore-Washington area, referred to as The Circuit, with its I-95 corridor dotted with rest stops, bus stations and truck stops, is a hub for the sex trade.
With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women who can be targeted for abduction, this is not a problem that’s going away anytime soon. Young girls are particularly vulnerable, with 13 being the average age of those being trafficked. Yet as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out, “Let’s think about what average means. That means there are children younger than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds.”
Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry. In Georgia alone, it is estimated that 7,200 men (half of them in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month, averaging roughly 300 a day. It is estimated that at least 100,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.
As one news center reported, “Finding girls is easy for pimps. They look on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks. They and their assistants cruise malls, high schools and middle schools. They pick them up at bus stops. On the trolley. Girl-to-girl recruitment sometimes happens.” Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime targets for traffickers.
With such numbers, why don’t we hear more about this? Especially if, as Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children insists, “this is not a problem that only happens in New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco. This happens in smaller communities. The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it.”
Unfortunately, Americans have become good at turning away from things that make us uncomfortable or stray too far from our picture-perfect images of ourselves. In this regard, we’re all complicit in contributing to this growing evil which, for all intents and purposes, is out in the open: advertising on the internet, commuting on the interstate, operating in swanky hotels, taking advantage of a system in which the police, the courts and the legislatures are more interested with fattening their coffers by targeting Americans for petty violations than actually breaking up crime syndicates.
One particular sex trafficking ring that was busted earlier in 2014 caters specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states
Writing for the Herald-Tribune, reporter J. David McSwane has put together one of the most chilling and insightful investigative reports into sex trafficking in America. “The Stolen Ones” should be mandatory reading for every American, especially those who still believe it can’t happen in their communities or to their children because it’s mainly a concern for lower income communities or immigrants.
As McSwane makes clear, no community is safe from this danger, and yet very little is being done to combat it. Indeed, although police agencies across the country receive billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment, weapons and training that keeps them busy fighting a losing battle against marijuana, among other less pressing concerns, very little time and money is being invested in the fight against sex trafficking except for the FBI’s annual sex trafficking sting, which inevitably makes national headlines for the numbers of missing girls recovered.
For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to end. Those being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years, and those years are a living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging, humiliation, degradation, threats, disease, pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, torture, pain, and always the constant fear of being killed or, worse, having those you love hurt or killed. A common thread woven through most survivors’ experiences is being forced to go without sleep or food until they have met their sex quota of at least 40 men. One woman recounts how her trafficker made her lie face down on the floor when she was pregnant and then literally jumped on her back, forcing her to miscarry.
Holly Austin Smith was abducted when she was 14 years old, raped, and then forced to prostitute herself. Her pimp, when brought to trial, was only made to serve a year in prison. Barbara Amaya was repeatedly sold between traffickers, abused, shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, trafficked, beaten, and jailed all before she was 18 years old. “I had a quota that I was supposed to fill every night. And if I didn’t have that amount of money, I would get beat, thrown down the stairs. He beat me once with wire coat hangers, the kind you hang up clothes, he straightened it out and my whole back was bleeding.”
As McSwane recounts: “In Oakland Park, an industrial Fort Lauderdale suburb, federal agents in 2011 encountered a brothel operated by a married couple. Inside ‘The Boom Boom Room,’ as it was known, customers paid a fee and were given a condom and a timer and left alone with one of the brothel’s eight teenagers, children as young as 13. A 16-year-old foster child testified that he acted as security, while a 17-year-old girl told a federal judge she was forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a night.”
One particular sex trafficking ring that was busted earlier in 2014 caters specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states, especially the Carolinas and Georgia, although it’s a flourishing business in every state in the country. Traffickers transport the women from farm to farm, where migrant workers would line up outside shacks, as many as 30 at a time, to have sex with them before they were transported to yet another farm where the process would begin all over again.
What can you do?
Stop feeding the monster. This epidemic is largely one of our own making, especially in a corporate age where the value placed on human life takes a backseat to profit.
Call on your city councils, elected officials and police departments to make the battle against sex trafficking a top priority, more so even than the so-called war on terror and drugs and the militarization of law enforcement.
Insist that law enforcement agencies in the country at all levels, local, state and federal, funnel their resources into fighting the crime of sex trafficking. Stop prosecuting adults for victimless “crimes” such as growing lettuce in their front yard and focus on putting away the pimps and buyers who victimize these young women.
Educate yourselves and your children about this growing menace in our communities. The future of America is at stake. As YouthSpark, a group that advocates for young people points out, sex trafficking is part of a larger continuum in America that runs the gamut from homelessness, poverty, and self-esteem issues to sexualized television, the glorification of a pimp/ho culture—what is often referred to as the pornification of America—and a billion dollar sex industry built on the back of pornography, music, entertainment, etc.
Stop feeding the monster. This epidemic is largely one of our own making, especially in a corporate age where the value placed on human life takes a backseat to profit. The U.S. is a huge consumer of trafficked “goods,” with national sporting events such as the Super Bowl serving as backdrops for the sex industry’s most lucrative seasons. Each year, for instance, the Super Bowl serves as a “windfall” for sex traffickers selling minors as young as 13 years old. As one sex trafficking survivor explained, “They’re coming to the Super Bowl not even to watch football. They’re coming to the Super Bowl to have sex with women and/or men or children.”
Finally, as the Abell Foundation’s report on trafficking advises: the police need to do a better job of training on, identifying and responding to these issues; communities and social services need to do a better job of protecting runaways, who are the primary targets of traffickers; legislators need to pass legislation aimed at prosecuting traffickers and “johns,” the buyers who drive the demand for sex slaves; hotels need to stop enabling these traffickers, by providing them with rooms and cover for their dirty deeds; and “we the people” need to stop hiding our heads in the sand and acting as if there are other matters more pressing.
By John W. Whitehead
America’s Dirty Little Secret: Sex Trafficking Is Big Business
“For every 10 women rescued, there are 50 to 100 more women are brought in by the traffickers. Unfortunately, they’re not 18- or 20-year-olds anymore. They’re minors as young as 13 who are being trafficked. They’re little girls.”—25-year-old victim of trafficking
“Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.”—John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
The mysterious disappearance of 18-year-old Hannah Graham on September 13, 2014, has become easy fodder for the media at a time when the news cycle is lagging. After all, how does a young woman just vanish without a trace, in the middle of the night, in a town that is routinely lauded for being the happiest place in America, not to mention one of the most beautiful?
Yet Graham is not the first girl to vanish in America without a trace—my hometown of Charlottesville, Va., has had five women go missing over the span of five years—and it is doubtful she will be the last. I say doubtful because America is in the grip of a highly profitable, highly organized and highly sophisticated sex trafficking business that operates in towns large and small, raking in upwards of $9.5 billion a year in the U.S. alone by abducting and selling young girls for sex.
It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged sex workers in the U.S. The average age of girls who enter into street prostitution is between 12 and 14 years old, with some as young as 9 years old. This doesn’t include those who entered the “trade” as minors and have since come of age. Rarely do these girls enter into prostitution voluntarily. As one rescue organization estimated, an underaged prostitute might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period of servitude.
This is America’s dirty little secret.
You don’t hear much about domestic sex trafficking from the media or government officials, and yet it infects suburbs, cities and towns across the nation. According to the FBI, sex trafficking is the fastest growing business in organized crime, the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns. It’s an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are sold to 50 men each day for $25 apiece, while their handlers make $150,000 to $200,000 per child each year.
The Baltimore-Washington area, referred to as The Circuit, with its I-95 corridor dotted with rest stops, bus stations and truck stops, is a hub for the sex trade
In order to avoid detection by police and cater to male buyers’ demand for sex with different women, pimps and the gangs and crime syndicates they work for have turned sex trafficking into a highly mobile enterprise, with trafficked girls, boys and women constantly being moved from city to city, state to state, and country to country. The Baltimore-Washington area, referred to as The Circuit, with its I-95 corridor dotted with rest stops, bus stations and truck stops, is a hub for the sex trade.
With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women who can be targeted for abduction, this is not a problem that’s going away anytime soon. Young girls are particularly vulnerable, with 13 being the average age of those being trafficked. Yet as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out, “Let’s think about what average means. That means there are children younger than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds.”
Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry. In Georgia alone, it is estimated that 7,200 men (half of them in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month, averaging roughly 300 a day. It is estimated that at least 100,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.
As one news center reported, “Finding girls is easy for pimps. They look on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks. They and their assistants cruise malls, high schools and middle schools. They pick them up at bus stops. On the trolley. Girl-to-girl recruitment sometimes happens.” Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime targets for traffickers.
With such numbers, why don’t we hear more about this? Especially if, as Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children insists, “this is not a problem that only happens in New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco. This happens in smaller communities. The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it.”
Unfortunately, Americans have become good at turning away from things that make us uncomfortable or stray too far from our picture-perfect images of ourselves. In this regard, we’re all complicit in contributing to this growing evil which, for all intents and purposes, is out in the open: advertising on the internet, commuting on the interstate, operating in swanky hotels, taking advantage of a system in which the police, the courts and the legislatures are more interested with fattening their coffers by targeting Americans for petty violations than actually breaking up crime syndicates.
One particular sex trafficking ring that was busted earlier in 2014 caters specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states
Writing for the Herald-Tribune, reporter J. David McSwane has put together one of the most chilling and insightful investigative reports into sex trafficking in America. “The Stolen Ones” should be mandatory reading for every American, especially those who still believe it can’t happen in their communities or to their children because it’s mainly a concern for lower income communities or immigrants.
As McSwane makes clear, no community is safe from this danger, and yet very little is being done to combat it. Indeed, although police agencies across the country receive billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment, weapons and training that keeps them busy fighting a losing battle against marijuana, among other less pressing concerns, very little time and money is being invested in the fight against sex trafficking except for the FBI’s annual sex trafficking sting, which inevitably makes national headlines for the numbers of missing girls recovered.
For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to end. Those being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years, and those years are a living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging, humiliation, degradation, threats, disease, pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, torture, pain, and always the constant fear of being killed or, worse, having those you love hurt or killed. A common thread woven through most survivors’ experiences is being forced to go without sleep or food until they have met their sex quota of at least 40 men. One woman recounts how her trafficker made her lie face down on the floor when she was pregnant and then literally jumped on her back, forcing her to miscarry.
Holly Austin Smith was abducted when she was 14 years old, raped, and then forced to prostitute herself. Her pimp, when brought to trial, was only made to serve a year in prison. Barbara Amaya was repeatedly sold between traffickers, abused, shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, trafficked, beaten, and jailed all before she was 18 years old. “I had a quota that I was supposed to fill every night. And if I didn’t have that amount of money, I would get beat, thrown down the stairs. He beat me once with wire coat hangers, the kind you hang up clothes, he straightened it out and my whole back was bleeding.”
As McSwane recounts: “In Oakland Park, an industrial Fort Lauderdale suburb, federal agents in 2011 encountered a brothel operated by a married couple. Inside ‘The Boom Boom Room,’ as it was known, customers paid a fee and were given a condom and a timer and left alone with one of the brothel’s eight teenagers, children as young as 13. A 16-year-old foster child testified that he acted as security, while a 17-year-old girl told a federal judge she was forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a night.”
One particular sex trafficking ring that was busted earlier in 2014 caters specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states, especially the Carolinas and Georgia, although it’s a flourishing business in every state in the country. Traffickers transport the women from farm to farm, where migrant workers would line up outside shacks, as many as 30 at a time, to have sex with them before they were transported to yet another farm where the process would begin all over again.
What can you do?
Stop feeding the monster. This epidemic is largely one of our own making, especially in a corporate age where the value placed on human life takes a backseat to profit.
Call on your city councils, elected officials and police departments to make the battle against sex trafficking a top priority, more so even than the so-called war on terror and drugs and the militarization of law enforcement.
Insist that law enforcement agencies in the country at all levels, local, state and federal, funnel their resources into fighting the crime of sex trafficking. Stop prosecuting adults for victimless “crimes” such as growing lettuce in their front yard and focus on putting away the pimps and buyers who victimize these young women.
Educate yourselves and your children about this growing menace in our communities. The future of America is at stake. As YouthSpark, a group that advocates for young people points out, sex trafficking is part of a larger continuum in America that runs the gamut from homelessness, poverty, and self-esteem issues to sexualized television, the glorification of a pimp/ho culture—what is often referred to as the pornification of America—and a billion dollar sex industry built on the back of pornography, music, entertainment, etc.
Stop feeding the monster. This epidemic is largely one of our own making, especially in a corporate age where the value placed on human life takes a backseat to profit. The U.S. is a huge consumer of trafficked “goods,” with national sporting events such as the Super Bowl serving as backdrops for the sex industry’s most lucrative seasons. Each year, for instance, the Super Bowl serves as a “windfall” for sex traffickers selling minors as young as 13 years old. As one sex trafficking survivor explained, “They’re coming to the Super Bowl not even to watch football. They’re coming to the Super Bowl to have sex with women and/or men or children.”
Finally, as the Abell Foundation’s report on trafficking advises: the police need to do a better job of training on, identifying and responding to these issues; communities and social services need to do a better job of protecting runaways, who are the primary targets of traffickers; legislators need to pass legislation aimed at prosecuting traffickers and “johns,” the buyers who drive the demand for sex slaves; hotels need to stop enabling these traffickers, by providing them with rooms and cover for their dirty deeds; and “we the people” need to stop hiding our heads in the sand and acting as if there are other matters more pressing.
By John W. Whitehead
Science is for Stupid People
Science is for Stupid People
Every ideology needs to believe in its inevitability. Religions get their inevitability from prophecies; secular ideologies get theirs from the modernist fallacy.
The modernist fallacy says that history is moving on an inevitable track toward their ideology. Resistance is futile, you will be liberalized. Marxism predicted the inevitable breakdown of capitalism. Obama keeps talking about being “on the right side of history” as if history, like a university history curriculum, has a right side and a wrong side. All everyone has to do is grab a sign and march “Forward!” to the future.
The bad economics and sociology around which the left builds its Socialist sand castles assume that technological progress will mean improved control. Capitalism with its mass production convinced budding Socialists that the entire world could be run like a giant factory under technocrats who would use industrial techniques to control the economic production of mankind in line with their ideals.
The USSR and moribund European economies broke that theory into a million little pieces.
The dot com revolution with its databases and subtle tools for manipulating individuals on a collective basis led to a Facebook Socialism that crowdsources its culture wars and “nudges” everyone into better habits, lower body masses and conveniently available death panels.
The iSocialist, like his industrial predecessor, assumes that technology gives superintelligent leftists better tools for controlling everything. The planned economy failed in the twentieth because the tools of propaganda posters, quotas and gulags were too crude. This time he is certain that it will work.
Intelligence is to leftists what divine right was to the crowned kings of Europe. They frantically brand themselves as smart because in a technocracy, superiority comes from intelligence. Their vision is the right one because they are the smart ones. Their shiny future is backed by what they call “science”.
Science, the magic of the secular age, is their church. But science isn’t anyone’s church. Science is much better at disproving things than at proving them. It’s a useful tool for skeptics, but a dangerous tool for rulers. Like art, science is inherently subversive and like art, when it’s restricted and controlled, it stops being interesting.
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s defenders reacted to his basic errors by asserting that even if he had made a mistake, science, collectively, was right. Science is of course neither right nor wrong; its methodology can be used to determine whether something is right or wrong.
In Tyson’s case, science determined long ago that at least one of his claims was wrong. Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t embody science. No individual does. What Tyson embodies is manufactured intelligence. Manufactured intelligence is how we knew that Obama was smart. But manufactured intelligence has the same relationship to intelligence as a painting of the ocean does to the real thing.
The real ocean is complicated and messy. So is real intelligence. Manufactured intelligence is the fashion model playing a genius in a movie. Real intelligence is an awkward man obsessing over a handful of ideas, some of them ridiculously wrong, but one of which will change the world.
Real intelligence isn’t marketable because it doesn’t make an elite feel good about its power.
Biblical fake prophets were often preferred to real prophets because they made rulers feel comfortable about the future. The modern technoprophet assures a secular elite that it can effectively control people and that it even has the obligation to do so. It tells them that “science” is on their side.
The easy way to tell real religion from fake religion is that real religion doesn’t make you feel good. It doesn’t assure you that everything you’re doing is right and that you ought to keep on doing it.
The same holds true for science. Real science doesn’t make you feel smart. Fake science does.
No matter how smart you think you are, real science will make you feel stupid far more often than it will make you feel smart. Real science not only tells us how much more we don’t know than we know, a state of affairs that will continue for all of human history, but it tells us how fragile the knowledge that we have gained is, how prone we are to making childish mistakes and allowing our biases to think for us.
Science is a rigorous way of making fewer mistakes. It’s not very useful to people who already know everything. Science is for stupid people who know how much they don’t know.
A look back at the march of science doesn’t show an even line of progress led by smooth-talking popularizers who are never wrong. Instead the cabinets of science are full of oddballs, unqualified, jealous, obsessed and eccentric, whose pivotal discoveries sometimes came about by accident. Science, like so much of human accomplishment, often depended on lucky accidents to provide a result that could then be isolated and systematized into a useful understanding of the process.
Modernism is a style that offers a seamless vision of perfection that doesn’t exist. The accomplishments of our age haven’t changed human nature and they have not made us infallible.
Real science tells us that we are basically stupid. A close study of history proves it. And that’s a good thing. Stupid people can learn from their mistakes. Self-assured elites convinced of their own superior intelligence can’t. Everyone makes mistakes. The future belongs to those who recognize them.
The inability of Neil deGrasse Tyson and his defenders to acknowledge that he is wrong is a revealing look at the rotten core of the liberal elite which is incapable of admitting its errors, but sneers and smears its way out of a moral reckoning every time. Its ideology with its assumption of central control over lives and economies is too dependent on its own illusion of genius not to lie about its failures.
It is too big to fail and that makes its failure inevitable.
Tysonism is why ObamaCare suffered a disastrous launch, why the VA reorganization didn’t work and why we’re back in Iraq. Technocrats don’t make mistakes. They can’t. They’re only at the top because they’re smart. If they ever admitted to being stupid, they would lose their right to rule.
Like Lysenkoism, Tysonism uses ideology to determine the outcomes of science. That’s how we keep ending up with Global Warming as settled science no matter how often the actual science contradicts it.
Tysonism appropriates science without understanding it. Its science consists of factoids, some right and some wrong, which simplify and clarify everything. Its manufactured intelligence makes people feel smart without actually giving them the critical tools to question the false assumptions of a Tyson.
What the left calls science is really a hypothesis accepted as a fact without the skepticism. Its intelligence is a conclusion without bothering to determine whether it’s true. Science and intelligence are perpetual processes that are never truly settled. But in law and government, as in all other fields, the left discards the process and asserts an inevitable outcome by virtue of its superiority.
Intelligence as ideology is at the heart of the left. Its Orwellian twist discards the need for using intelligence to question its ideology by asserting that the issue is settled. To be smart is to be left and to be left is to be smart. And only stupid people would question that.
There is no need to think about anything because the smart people have already done all the thinking. You can show you are smart by accepting their conclusions or show your stupidity by questioning them.
Science and skepticism are the tools of stupid people. As Socrates put it, I know that I know nothing. We have the most to fear from the smart people who don’t know and will never admit how little they know.
Posted by Daniel Greenfield
Every ideology needs to believe in its inevitability. Religions get their inevitability from prophecies; secular ideologies get theirs from the modernist fallacy.
The modernist fallacy says that history is moving on an inevitable track toward their ideology. Resistance is futile, you will be liberalized. Marxism predicted the inevitable breakdown of capitalism. Obama keeps talking about being “on the right side of history” as if history, like a university history curriculum, has a right side and a wrong side. All everyone has to do is grab a sign and march “Forward!” to the future.The bad economics and sociology around which the left builds its Socialist sand castles assume that technological progress will mean improved control. Capitalism with its mass production convinced budding Socialists that the entire world could be run like a giant factory under technocrats who would use industrial techniques to control the economic production of mankind in line with their ideals.
The USSR and moribund European economies broke that theory into a million little pieces.
The dot com revolution with its databases and subtle tools for manipulating individuals on a collective basis led to a Facebook Socialism that crowdsources its culture wars and “nudges” everyone into better habits, lower body masses and conveniently available death panels.
The iSocialist, like his industrial predecessor, assumes that technology gives superintelligent leftists better tools for controlling everything. The planned economy failed in the twentieth because the tools of propaganda posters, quotas and gulags were too crude. This time he is certain that it will work.
Intelligence is to leftists what divine right was to the crowned kings of Europe. They frantically brand themselves as smart because in a technocracy, superiority comes from intelligence. Their vision is the right one because they are the smart ones. Their shiny future is backed by what they call “science”.
Science, the magic of the secular age, is their church. But science isn’t anyone’s church. Science is much better at disproving things than at proving them. It’s a useful tool for skeptics, but a dangerous tool for rulers. Like art, science is inherently subversive and like art, when it’s restricted and controlled, it stops being interesting.
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s defenders reacted to his basic errors by asserting that even if he had made a mistake, science, collectively, was right. Science is of course neither right nor wrong; its methodology can be used to determine whether something is right or wrong.
In Tyson’s case, science determined long ago that at least one of his claims was wrong. Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t embody science. No individual does. What Tyson embodies is manufactured intelligence. Manufactured intelligence is how we knew that Obama was smart. But manufactured intelligence has the same relationship to intelligence as a painting of the ocean does to the real thing.
The real ocean is complicated and messy. So is real intelligence. Manufactured intelligence is the fashion model playing a genius in a movie. Real intelligence is an awkward man obsessing over a handful of ideas, some of them ridiculously wrong, but one of which will change the world.
Real intelligence isn’t marketable because it doesn’t make an elite feel good about its power.
Biblical fake prophets were often preferred to real prophets because they made rulers feel comfortable about the future. The modern technoprophet assures a secular elite that it can effectively control people and that it even has the obligation to do so. It tells them that “science” is on their side.
The easy way to tell real religion from fake religion is that real religion doesn’t make you feel good. It doesn’t assure you that everything you’re doing is right and that you ought to keep on doing it.
The same holds true for science. Real science doesn’t make you feel smart. Fake science does.
No matter how smart you think you are, real science will make you feel stupid far more often than it will make you feel smart. Real science not only tells us how much more we don’t know than we know, a state of affairs that will continue for all of human history, but it tells us how fragile the knowledge that we have gained is, how prone we are to making childish mistakes and allowing our biases to think for us.
Science is a rigorous way of making fewer mistakes. It’s not very useful to people who already know everything. Science is for stupid people who know how much they don’t know.
A look back at the march of science doesn’t show an even line of progress led by smooth-talking popularizers who are never wrong. Instead the cabinets of science are full of oddballs, unqualified, jealous, obsessed and eccentric, whose pivotal discoveries sometimes came about by accident. Science, like so much of human accomplishment, often depended on lucky accidents to provide a result that could then be isolated and systematized into a useful understanding of the process.
Modernism is a style that offers a seamless vision of perfection that doesn’t exist. The accomplishments of our age haven’t changed human nature and they have not made us infallible.
Real science tells us that we are basically stupid. A close study of history proves it. And that’s a good thing. Stupid people can learn from their mistakes. Self-assured elites convinced of their own superior intelligence can’t. Everyone makes mistakes. The future belongs to those who recognize them.
The inability of Neil deGrasse Tyson and his defenders to acknowledge that he is wrong is a revealing look at the rotten core of the liberal elite which is incapable of admitting its errors, but sneers and smears its way out of a moral reckoning every time. Its ideology with its assumption of central control over lives and economies is too dependent on its own illusion of genius not to lie about its failures.
It is too big to fail and that makes its failure inevitable.
Tysonism is why ObamaCare suffered a disastrous launch, why the VA reorganization didn’t work and why we’re back in Iraq. Technocrats don’t make mistakes. They can’t. They’re only at the top because they’re smart. If they ever admitted to being stupid, they would lose their right to rule.
Like Lysenkoism, Tysonism uses ideology to determine the outcomes of science. That’s how we keep ending up with Global Warming as settled science no matter how often the actual science contradicts it.
Tysonism appropriates science without understanding it. Its science consists of factoids, some right and some wrong, which simplify and clarify everything. Its manufactured intelligence makes people feel smart without actually giving them the critical tools to question the false assumptions of a Tyson.
What the left calls science is really a hypothesis accepted as a fact without the skepticism. Its intelligence is a conclusion without bothering to determine whether it’s true. Science and intelligence are perpetual processes that are never truly settled. But in law and government, as in all other fields, the left discards the process and asserts an inevitable outcome by virtue of its superiority.Intelligence as ideology is at the heart of the left. Its Orwellian twist discards the need for using intelligence to question its ideology by asserting that the issue is settled. To be smart is to be left and to be left is to be smart. And only stupid people would question that.
There is no need to think about anything because the smart people have already done all the thinking. You can show you are smart by accepting their conclusions or show your stupidity by questioning them.
Science and skepticism are the tools of stupid people. As Socrates put it, I know that I know nothing. We have the most to fear from the smart people who don’t know and will never admit how little they know.
Posted by Daniel Greenfield
False Flag Events–Martial law–WW III * Transhumanism *
False Flag Events–Martial law–WW III * Transhumanism *
In the 1990’s, I was a Maricopa County volunteer first responder. This meant that if there was a pandemic or a chemical/biological attack, I would be expected to help dispense treatment. This also meant that my family would be first in line for any treatments. The program was eventually absorbed by FEMA. From the absorption, I began a friendship with a FEMA employee, his expertise was bioterrorism based pandemics.
In the fall of 2012, he “early” retired as did many of his colleagues. Unbeknown to me, he and several of his colleagues had been preparing a “bug out” location in a remote area. He was one of the people that I wrote about in the last article who went into hiding to avoid what they believe is coming.
My friendship with this person became a part of my awakening process. In the course of the last couple of decades, I learned, firsthand, how many of our alphabet soup agencies are not about protecting the public interest. In effect, they are fascist in nature and serve to protect the interests of Big Pharma, other major corporations and the eventual imposition of martial law. Today, this is not a stunning revelation. Nearly 20 years ago, these notions were considered to be on the extreme fringe.
From several intense conversations I had with this individual, I can now clearly see the unfolding of the collapse of this nation, step by step. In the following paragraphs, I will detail how various false flag attacks will fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in order to achieve this aim.
False Flag Events Before the Imposition of Martial Law
Any discussion, except for the fact that false flag events are coming, is supposition to some degree. However, there is enough historical precedent in this area, to accurately determine that these coming events will follow a very narrow path of possibilities. What was once the great unknown is now a predictable set of events with very clear goals. Based upon what I have learned from all of my sources, the following events represent my choices as the most likely candidates for the coming false flag attacks which will be employed as a prelude to martial law. And the imposition of martial law will spell the end of America as we know it.
A Nuclear “Terrorist” Attack
nuclear bombAt one time, this kind of event would have been high up on my list. However, the military is not in support of this and have worked to keep nuclear weapons out of the control of this administration which partially explains why over 260 senior military command officers have been fired by Obama including the entire leadership of the nuclear weapons program. Although this event remains a possibility, this event seems less likely as time goes on because a nuclear attack is a single point in time and a single location event. If the intent of a false flag event is to paralyze a society, a nuclear event will not accomplish this goal. A nuclear attack would be an excellent attention getter, but the probability of this being a pervasive debilitating event is limited. Therefore, I cast this as a low probability event.My FEMA source does not think this lies in our future.
EMP Attack
emp burstTaking down the power grid, according to both Congressman Trent Franks and the Naval War College would result in 90% of the country being dead within 24 months with 60% of the population dying off within a year. An EMP attack would completely subjugate the country, but at what cost? The infrastructure would be destroyed and it would take years to rebuild. An EMP attack upon the power grid would be the act of an extreme psychopathic mind. However, the major drawback to this event would be that if the intent was to create martial law as a prelude to World War III a destroyed infrastructure does not lend itself to a sustained war effort. However, a limited EMP attack, practiced for in the Grid EX II drill of November 13-14, 2013, was foretold by my FEMA source over a year in advance of the Grid EX II drill. A limited EMP attack, say on Wall Street, would destroy banking, currency, the Stock Market and the housing market would follow. My FEMA source said a limited and strategically placed EMP attack was in our future and he said you will see preparation for this event as he foretold the Grid EX II drill.
Currency, Banking, Stock Market and Housing Collapse by a Cyber-Attack
Last fall, DHS and FEMA participated in a series of cyber security drills in which the banks fell victim to a cyber-attack and all banking records were destroyed. If you cannot prove how many computer digits you have in the bank, then you will own none of the computer digits. Americans will try to present paper records to prove their case, but the banks and the government will dismiss your paperwork as a fraud or lacking proof that you did not spend your money in between the time of your written bank statement and the cyber attack. In short, if you have your money in the bank, at the time of the collapse, you will effectively own nothing. You will have no way to pay your rent, mortgage and buy food. You will be at the complete mercy of the state.
Famine will be the quick result of this kind of false flag attack. Hordes of looters will go house to house and neighborhood to neighborhood seeking life-sustaining resources. The need for martial law will be immediate. If you want to eat, you will go to a “community center” where you will be promised “three hots and a cot”. This represents how some people could be rounded up. A currency collapse set into motion by a cyber-attack upon the banks, although it would paralyze the economy, could bring about martial law, would not be totally debilitating. Yes, there would be some famine and civil unrest. However, this is not a near extinction level event as the bulk of the country could survive through means such as bartering and trading. In terms of moving the country into martial law, this is a high probability event in narrow, not a broad sense.
Chemical and/or Biological Attack
This mode of attack fits the desired requirements for a martial law takeover. The results are devastating, the event is longstanding, the event can multiply on its own, the event leaves the basic infrastructure in place and the event could be halted with the right antidote.
A series of chemical and/or biological attacks at select places around the country would leave the country debilitated and the misery could keep spreading from community to community. However, like a neutron bomb, which kills its intended targets while leaving structures undamaged, the infrastructure would be largely left in place. The perpetrators would have to have already developed an antidote to survive. Although the following statement is speculation, I believe that has already been done.
In a previous article, I documented that an Ebola vaccine was developed in 2004 by Crucell, in conjunction with the CDC, the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Army Infectious Disease and Virus unit at Ft. Dietrich and an infusion of cash from Bill Gates. The only results that are published about the Crucell vaccine consist of a statement that the vaccine was not contraindicated for use on humans. No published results for the 32 humans that were tested, were ever published. I strongly suspect that with the Army’s involvement, the results are classified and I further suspect that the second vaccine being developed by Monsanto and GSK is only meant for you and me. It is not much of a leap in logic to conclude that of the two vaccines, one is going to be a lot more effective than the other. Care to take a guess on which vaccine we are going to be forced to take?
http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-cdc-nih-bill-gates-own-patents-on.html
http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/09/17/the-cdc-nih-bill-gates-own-the-patents-on-existing-ebola-related-vaccines-mandatory-vaccinations-are-near/
These beliefs are supported by the notion that my FEMA contact stated that whatever is released upon the people, there will be a pre-existing antidote.
One other item should be mentioned. I was further told that the Army was in possession of a series of bioweapons that the “world had no idea” of what we possessed. The weapons are exotic and dangerous. Most were of the pandemic variety and all had been weaponized. Among the leading contenders for release is Ebola and he stated that multiple strains will be released thus, making it more difficult to identify and to treat.
Certainly, Ebola is not the only designer virus that we have to be concerned about, but given the present climate, it is the most likely.
The Endgame
Many now expect that brutal martial law will be ushered in through the use of a series of false flag cocktails, with each event designed to peel back the onion that was once the United States.
Although this is a different topic for a different article, if one wonders what life will be like for those who survive the imposition of martial law and the coming World War III , I would suggest reading everything you can get your hands on with regard to Agenda 21, for phase one, and transhumanism, for phase two of the New World Order which could be only a matter of years away. A good place to start reading is Steve Quayle’s work entitled Xenogensis. This book writes the ending of where this entire scenario is ultimately headed.
The end of humanity as we know it.
by Dave Hodges
In the 1990’s, I was a Maricopa County volunteer first responder. This meant that if there was a pandemic or a chemical/biological attack, I would be expected to help dispense treatment. This also meant that my family would be first in line for any treatments. The program was eventually absorbed by FEMA. From the absorption, I began a friendship with a FEMA employee, his expertise was bioterrorism based pandemics.
In the fall of 2012, he “early” retired as did many of his colleagues. Unbeknown to me, he and several of his colleagues had been preparing a “bug out” location in a remote area. He was one of the people that I wrote about in the last article who went into hiding to avoid what they believe is coming.
My friendship with this person became a part of my awakening process. In the course of the last couple of decades, I learned, firsthand, how many of our alphabet soup agencies are not about protecting the public interest. In effect, they are fascist in nature and serve to protect the interests of Big Pharma, other major corporations and the eventual imposition of martial law. Today, this is not a stunning revelation. Nearly 20 years ago, these notions were considered to be on the extreme fringe.
From several intense conversations I had with this individual, I can now clearly see the unfolding of the collapse of this nation, step by step. In the following paragraphs, I will detail how various false flag attacks will fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in order to achieve this aim.
False Flag Events Before the Imposition of Martial Law
Any discussion, except for the fact that false flag events are coming, is supposition to some degree. However, there is enough historical precedent in this area, to accurately determine that these coming events will follow a very narrow path of possibilities. What was once the great unknown is now a predictable set of events with very clear goals. Based upon what I have learned from all of my sources, the following events represent my choices as the most likely candidates for the coming false flag attacks which will be employed as a prelude to martial law. And the imposition of martial law will spell the end of America as we know it.
A Nuclear “Terrorist” Attack
nuclear bombAt one time, this kind of event would have been high up on my list. However, the military is not in support of this and have worked to keep nuclear weapons out of the control of this administration which partially explains why over 260 senior military command officers have been fired by Obama including the entire leadership of the nuclear weapons program. Although this event remains a possibility, this event seems less likely as time goes on because a nuclear attack is a single point in time and a single location event. If the intent of a false flag event is to paralyze a society, a nuclear event will not accomplish this goal. A nuclear attack would be an excellent attention getter, but the probability of this being a pervasive debilitating event is limited. Therefore, I cast this as a low probability event.My FEMA source does not think this lies in our future.
EMP Attack
emp burstTaking down the power grid, according to both Congressman Trent Franks and the Naval War College would result in 90% of the country being dead within 24 months with 60% of the population dying off within a year. An EMP attack would completely subjugate the country, but at what cost? The infrastructure would be destroyed and it would take years to rebuild. An EMP attack upon the power grid would be the act of an extreme psychopathic mind. However, the major drawback to this event would be that if the intent was to create martial law as a prelude to World War III a destroyed infrastructure does not lend itself to a sustained war effort. However, a limited EMP attack, practiced for in the Grid EX II drill of November 13-14, 2013, was foretold by my FEMA source over a year in advance of the Grid EX II drill. A limited EMP attack, say on Wall Street, would destroy banking, currency, the Stock Market and the housing market would follow. My FEMA source said a limited and strategically placed EMP attack was in our future and he said you will see preparation for this event as he foretold the Grid EX II drill.
Currency, Banking, Stock Market and Housing Collapse by a Cyber-Attack
Last fall, DHS and FEMA participated in a series of cyber security drills in which the banks fell victim to a cyber-attack and all banking records were destroyed. If you cannot prove how many computer digits you have in the bank, then you will own none of the computer digits. Americans will try to present paper records to prove their case, but the banks and the government will dismiss your paperwork as a fraud or lacking proof that you did not spend your money in between the time of your written bank statement and the cyber attack. In short, if you have your money in the bank, at the time of the collapse, you will effectively own nothing. You will have no way to pay your rent, mortgage and buy food. You will be at the complete mercy of the state.
Famine will be the quick result of this kind of false flag attack. Hordes of looters will go house to house and neighborhood to neighborhood seeking life-sustaining resources. The need for martial law will be immediate. If you want to eat, you will go to a “community center” where you will be promised “three hots and a cot”. This represents how some people could be rounded up. A currency collapse set into motion by a cyber-attack upon the banks, although it would paralyze the economy, could bring about martial law, would not be totally debilitating. Yes, there would be some famine and civil unrest. However, this is not a near extinction level event as the bulk of the country could survive through means such as bartering and trading. In terms of moving the country into martial law, this is a high probability event in narrow, not a broad sense.
Chemical and/or Biological Attack
This mode of attack fits the desired requirements for a martial law takeover. The results are devastating, the event is longstanding, the event can multiply on its own, the event leaves the basic infrastructure in place and the event could be halted with the right antidote.
A series of chemical and/or biological attacks at select places around the country would leave the country debilitated and the misery could keep spreading from community to community. However, like a neutron bomb, which kills its intended targets while leaving structures undamaged, the infrastructure would be largely left in place. The perpetrators would have to have already developed an antidote to survive. Although the following statement is speculation, I believe that has already been done.
In a previous article, I documented that an Ebola vaccine was developed in 2004 by Crucell, in conjunction with the CDC, the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Army Infectious Disease and Virus unit at Ft. Dietrich and an infusion of cash from Bill Gates. The only results that are published about the Crucell vaccine consist of a statement that the vaccine was not contraindicated for use on humans. No published results for the 32 humans that were tested, were ever published. I strongly suspect that with the Army’s involvement, the results are classified and I further suspect that the second vaccine being developed by Monsanto and GSK is only meant for you and me. It is not much of a leap in logic to conclude that of the two vaccines, one is going to be a lot more effective than the other. Care to take a guess on which vaccine we are going to be forced to take?
http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-cdc-nih-bill-gates-own-patents-on.html
http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/09/17/the-cdc-nih-bill-gates-own-the-patents-on-existing-ebola-related-vaccines-mandatory-vaccinations-are-near/
These beliefs are supported by the notion that my FEMA contact stated that whatever is released upon the people, there will be a pre-existing antidote.
One other item should be mentioned. I was further told that the Army was in possession of a series of bioweapons that the “world had no idea” of what we possessed. The weapons are exotic and dangerous. Most were of the pandemic variety and all had been weaponized. Among the leading contenders for release is Ebola and he stated that multiple strains will be released thus, making it more difficult to identify and to treat.
Certainly, Ebola is not the only designer virus that we have to be concerned about, but given the present climate, it is the most likely.
The Endgame
Many now expect that brutal martial law will be ushered in through the use of a series of false flag cocktails, with each event designed to peel back the onion that was once the United States.
Although this is a different topic for a different article, if one wonders what life will be like for those who survive the imposition of martial law and the coming World War III , I would suggest reading everything you can get your hands on with regard to Agenda 21, for phase one, and transhumanism, for phase two of the New World Order which could be only a matter of years away. A good place to start reading is Steve Quayle’s work entitled Xenogensis. This book writes the ending of where this entire scenario is ultimately headed.
The end of humanity as we know it.
by Dave Hodges
The Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria
The Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria
EDUCATE! GOVERNMENT, ISIS, MEDIA, MILITARISM, SYRIA, WAR
As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval.http://thehill.com/policy/defense/218656-pentagon-isis-campaign-could-last-years
http://news.yahoo.com/u-says-no-specific-threat-u-homeland-islamic-165127981.html
The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore.
The unveiling of this new group was performed in a September 13 article by the Associated Press, who cited unnamed U.S. officials to warn of this new shadowy, worse-than-ISIS terror group:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-enterprise-al-qaidas-syrian-cell-alarms-us
While the Islamic State group [ISIS] is getting the most attention now, another band of extremists in Syria — a mix of hardened jihadis from Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Europe — poses a more direct and imminent threat to the United States, working with Yemeni bomb-makers to target U.S. aviation, American officials say.
At the center is a cell known as the Khorasan group, a cadre of veteran al-Qaida fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to link up with the al-Qaida affiliate there, the Nusra Front.
But the Khorasan militants did not go to Syria principally to fight the government of President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials say. Instead, they were sent by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to recruit Europeans and Americans whose passports allow them to board a U.S.-bound airliner with less scrutiny from security officials.
AP warned Americans that “the fear is that the Khorasan militants will provide these sophisticated explosives to their Western recruits who could sneak them onto U.S.-bound flights.” It explained that although ISIS has received most of the attention, the Khorasan Group “is considered the more immediate threat.”
The genesis of the name was itself scary: “Khorasan refers to a province under the Islamic caliphate, or religious empire, of old that included parts of Afghanistan.” AP depicted the U.S. officials who were feeding them the narrative as engaging in some sort of act of brave, unauthorized truth-telling: “Many U.S. officials interviewed for this story would not be quoted by name talking about what they said was highly classified intelligence.”
On the morning of September 18, CBS News broadcast a segment that is as pure war propaganda as it gets: directly linking the soon-to-arrive U.S. bombing campaign in Syria to the need to protect Americans from being exploded in civilian jets by Khorasan. With ominous voice tones, the host narrated:http://www.cbsnews.com/news/al-qaeda-khorasan-syria-bigger-threat-to-us-than-isis/
This morning we are learning of a new and growing terror threat coming out of Syria. It’s an Al Qaeda cell you probably never heard of. Nearly everything about them is classified. Bob Orr is in Washington with new information on a group some consider more dangerous than ISIS.
Orr then announced that while ISIS is “dominating headlines and terrorist propaganda,” Orr’s “sources” warn of “a more immediate threat to the U.S. Homeland.” As Orr spoke, CBS flashed alternating video showing scary Muslims in Syria and innocent westerners waiting in line at airports, as he intoned that U.S. officials have ordered “enhanced screening” for “hidden explosives.” This is all coming, Orr explained, from ”an emerging threat in Syria” where “hardened terrorists” are building “hard to detect bombs.”
The U.S. government, Orr explained, is trying to keep this all a secret; they won’t even mention the group’s name in public out of security concerns! But Orr was there to reveal the truth, as his “sources confirm the Al Qaeda cell goes by the name Khorasan.” And they’re “developing fresh plots to attack U.S. aviation.”
Later that day, Obama administration officials began publicly touting the group, when Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned starkly: “In terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State.” Then followed an avalanche of uncritical media reports detailing this Supreme Threat, excitingly citing anonymous officials as though they had uncovered a big secret the government was trying to conceal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/world/middleeast/us-sees-other-more-direct-threats-beyond-isis-.html
On September 20, The New York Times devoted a long article to strongly hyping the Khorasan Group. Headlined “U.S. Suspects More Direct Threats Beyond ISIS,” the article began by announcing that U.S. officials believe a different group other than ISIS “posed a more direct threat to America and Europe.” Specifically:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/world/middleeast/us-sees-other-more-direct-threats-beyond-isis-.html
American officials said that the group called Khorasan had emerged in the past year as the cell in Syria that may be the most intent on hitting the United States or its installations overseas with a terror attack. The officials said that the group is led by Muhsin al-Fadhli, a senior Qaeda operative who, according to the State Department, was so close to Bin Laden that he was among a small group of people who knew about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before they were launched.
Again, the threat they posed reached all the way to the U.S.: “Members of the cell are said to be particularly interested in devising terror plots using concealed explosives.”
This Khorasan-attacking-Americans alarm spread quickly and explosively in the landscape of U.S. national security reporting. The Daily Beast‘s Eli Lake warned on September 23 — the day after the first U.S. bombs fell in Syria — that “American analysts had pieced together detailed information on a pending attack from an outfit that informally called itself ‘the Khorasan Group’ to use hard-to-detect explosives on American and European airliners.” He added even more ominously: “The planning from the Khorasan Group … suggests at least an aspiration to launch more-coordinated and larger attacks on the West in the style of the 9/11 attacks from 2001″ (days later, Lake, along with Josh Rogin, actually claimed that “Iran has long been harboring senior al Qaeda, al Nusra, and so-called Khorasan Group leaders as part of its complicated strategy to influence the region”).
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/23/al-qaeda-plotters-in-syria-went-dark-u-s-spies-say.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/25/will-iran-sell-out-al-qaeda-for-nukes.html
On the day of the bombing campaign, NBC News’ Richard Engel tweeted this:
https://twitter.com/RichardEngel/status/514553546381852672
That tweet linked to an NBC Nightly News report in which anchor Brian Williams introduced Khorasan with a graphic declaring it “The New Enemy,” and Engel went on to explain that the group is “considered a threat to the U.S. because, U.S. intelligence officials say, it wants to bring down airplanes with explosives.”
Once the bombing campaign was underway, ISIS — the original theme of the attack — largely faded into the background, as Obama officials and media allies aggressively touted attacks on Khorasan leaders and the disruption of its American-targeting plots. On the first day of the bombing, The Washington Post announced that “the United States also pounded a little-known but well-resourced al-Qaeda cell that some American officials fear could pose a direct threat to the United States.” It explained:http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/22/the-elusive-figure-u-s-officials-fear-as-much-as-the-islamic-state/
The Pentagon said in a statement early Tuesday that the United States conducted eight strikes west of Aleppo against the cell, called the Khorasan Group, targeting its “training camps, an explosives and munitions production facility, a communications building and command and control facilities.”
The same day, CNN claimed that “among the targets of U.S. strikes across Syria early Tuesday was the Khorasan Group.” The bombing campaign in Syria was thus magically transformed into an act of pure self-defense, given that ”the group was actively plotting against a U.S. homeland target and Western targets, a senior U.S. official told CNN on Tuesday.” The bevy of anonymous sources cited by CNN had a hard time keep their stories straight:http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/22/world/meast/al-qaeda-syria-khorasan/
The official said the group posed an “imminent” threat. Another U.S. official later said the threat was not imminent in the sense that there were no known targets or attacks expected in the next few weeks.
The plots were believed to be in an advanced stage, the second U.S. official said. There were indications that the militants had obtained materials and were working on new improvised explosive devices that would be hard to detect, including common hand-held electronic devices and airplane carry-on items such as toiletries.
Nonetheless, what was clear was that this group had to be bombed in Syria to save American lives, as the terrorist group even planned to conceal explosive devices in toothpaste or flammable clothing as a means to target U.S. airliners. The day following the first bombings, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed: “We hit them last night out of a concern that they were getting close to an execution date of some of the plans that we have seen.”
CNN’s supremely stenographic Pentagon reporter, Barbara Starr, went on air as videos of shiny new American fighter jets and the Syria bombing were shown and explained that this was all necessary to stop a Khorasan attack very close to being carried out against the west:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/22/world/meast/al-qaeda-syria-khorasan/index.html
What we are hearing from a senior US official is the reason they struck Khorasan right now is they had intelligence that the group — of Al Qaeda veterans — was in the stages of planning an attack against the US homeland and/or an attack against a target in Europe, and the information indicated Khorasan was well on its way — perhaps in its final stages — of planning that attack.
All of that laid the fear-producing groundwork for President Obama to claim self-defense when he announced the bombing campaign on September 23 with this boast: “Once again, it must be clear to anyone who would plot against America and try to do Americans harm that we will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who threaten our people.”http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/23/statement-president-airstrikes-syria
The very next day, a Pentagon official claimed a U.S. airstrike killed “the Khorasan leader,” and just a few days after that, U.S. media outlets celebrated what they said was the admission by jihadi social media accounts that “the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Khorasan group was killed in a U.S. air strike in Syria.”http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/28/us-mideast-crisis-qaeda-fadhli-idUSKCN0HN0E620140928
But once it served its purpose of justifying the start of the bombing campaign in Syria, the Khorasan narrative simply evaporated as quickly as it materialized. Foreign Policy‘s Shane Harris, with two other writers, was one of the first to question whether the “threat” was anywhere near what it had been depicted to be:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/23/is-the-khorasan-group-as-dangerous-as-the-white-house-claims
But according to the top U.S. counterterrorism official, as well as Obama himself, there is “no credible information” that the militants of the Islamic State were planning to attack inside the United States. Although the group could pose a domestic terrorism threat if left unchecked, any plot it tried launching today would be “limited in scope” and “nothing like a 9/11-scale attack,” Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in remarks at the Brookings Institution earlier this month. That would suggest that Khorasan doesn’t have the capability either, even if it’s working to develop it.
http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/09/03/counterterrorism_chief_says_islamic_state_is_not_planning_an_attack_on_america
“Khorasan has the desire to attack, though we’re not sure their capabilities match their desire,” a senior U.S. counterterrorism official told Foreign Policy.
On September 25, The New York Times — just days after hyping the Khorasan threat to the homeland — wrote that “the group’s evolution from obscurity to infamy has been sudden.” And the paper of record began, for the first time, to note how little evidence actually existed for all those claims about the imminent threats posed to the homeland:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/world/middleeast/khorasan-a-terror-cell-that-avoided-the-spotlight.html
American officials have given differing accounts about just how close the group was to mounting an attack, and about what chance any plot had of success. One senior American official on Wednesday described the Khorasan plotting as “aspirational” and said that there did not yet seem to be a concrete plan in the works.
Literally within a matter of days, we went from “perhaps in its final stages of planning its attack” (CNN) to “plotting as ‘aspirational’” and “there did not yet seem to be a concrete plan in the works” (NYT).
Late last week, Associated Press’ Ken Dilanian — the first to unveil the new Khorasan Product in mid-September — published a new story explaining that just days after bombing “Khorasan” targets in Syria, high-ranking U.S. officials seemingly backed off all their previous claims of an “imminent” threat from the group. Headlined “U.S. Officials Offer More Nuanced Take on Khorasan Threat,” it noted that “several U.S. officials told reporters this week that the group was in the final stages of planning an attack on the West, leaving the impression that such an attack was about to happen.” But now:http://bigstory.ap.org/article/70dba5b999be4a3583ddd55dad9215dd/us-offers-more-nuanced-take-khorasan-threat
Senior U.S. officials offered a more nuanced picture Thursday of the threat they believe is posed by an al-Qaida cell in Syria targeted in military strikes this week, even as they defended the decision to attack the militants.
James Comey, the FBI director, and Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, each acknowledged that the U.S. did not have precise intelligence about where or when the cell, known as the Khorasan Group, would attempt to strike a Western target. . . .
Kirby, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said, “I don’t know that we can pin that down to a day or month or week or six months….We can have this debate about whether it was valid to hit them or not, or whether it was too soon or too late…We hit them. And I don’t think we need to throw up a dossier here to prove that these are bad dudes.”
Regarding claims that an attack was “imminent,” Comey said: “I don’t know exactly what that word means…’imminent’” — a rather consequential admission given that said imminence was used as the justification for launching military action in the first place.
Even more remarkable, it turns out the very existence of an actual “Khorasan Group” was to some degree an invention of the American government. NBC’s Engel, the day after he reported on the U.S. government’s claims about the group for Nightly News, seemed to have serious second thoughts about the group’s existence, tweeting:https://twitter.com/RichardEngel/status/514829810015547392
Indeed, a Nexis search for the group found almost no mentions of its name prior to the September 13 AP article based on anonymous officials. There was one oblique reference to it in a July 31 CNN op-ed by Peter Bergen. The other mention was an article in the LA Times from two weeks earlier about Pakistan which mentioned the group’s name as something quite different than how it’s being used now: as “the intelligence wing of the powerful Pakistani Taliban faction led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur.” Tim Shorrock noted that the name appears in a 2011 hacked Stratfor email published by WikiLeaks, referencing a Dawn article that depicts them as a Pakistan-based group which was fighting against and “expelled by” (not “led by”) Bahadur.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/31/opinion/bergen-american-al-qaeda-suicide-bomber-syria/
http://www.latimes.com/world/afghanistan-pakistan/la-fg-pakistan-refugees-20140715-story.html
https://twitter.com/TimothyS/status/516252546172604417
https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/70/708073_pakistan-pakistan-report-notes-differences-between-militant.html
There are serious questions about whether the Khorasan Group even exists in any meaningful or identifiable manner. Aki Peritz, a CIA counterterrorism official until 2009, told Time: “I’d certainly never heard of this group while working at the agency,” while Obama’s former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said: ”We used the term [Khorasan] inside the government, we don’t know where it came from….All I know is that they don’t call themselves that.” As The Intercept was finalizing this article, former terrorism federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review that the group was a scam: “You haven’t heard of the Khorosan Group because there isn’t one. It is a name the administration came up with, calculating that Khorosan … had sufficient connection to jihadist lore that no one would call the president on it.”
http://time.com/3430960/obama-isis-khorasan-terrorism/
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/388990/khorosan-group-does-not-exist-andrew-c-mccarthy
What happened here is all-too-familiar. The Obama administration needed propagandistic and legal rationale for bombing yet another predominantly Muslim country. While emotions over the ISIS beheading videos were high, they were not enough to sustain a lengthy new war.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/23/nobel-peace-prize-fact-day-syria-7th-country-bombed-obama/
So after spending weeks promoting ISIS as Worse Than Al Qaeda™, they unveiled a new, never-before-heard-of group that was Worse Than ISIS™. Overnight, as the first bombs on Syria fell, the endlessly helpful U.S. media mindlessly circulated the script they were given: this new group was composed of “hardened terrorists,” posed an “imminent” threat to the U.S. homeland, was in the “final stages” of plots to take down U.S. civilian aircraft, and could “launch more-coordinated and larger attacks on the West in the style of the 9/11 attacks from 2001.””
As usual, anonymity was granted to U.S. officials to make these claims. As usual, there was almost no evidence for any of this. Nonetheless, American media outlets — eager, as always, to justify American wars — spewed all of this with very little skepticism. Worse, they did it by pretending that the U.S. government was trying not to talk about all of this — too secret! — but they, as intrepid, digging journalists, managed to unearth it from their courageous “sources.” Once the damage was done, the evidence quickly emerged about what a sham this all was. But, as always with these government/media propaganda campaigns, the truth emerges only when it’s impotent.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/04/media-challenging-arguments-war-baying-blood/
By Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain, www.firstlook.org
EDUCATE! GOVERNMENT, ISIS, MEDIA, MILITARISM, SYRIA, WAR
As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval.http://thehill.com/policy/defense/218656-pentagon-isis-campaign-could-last-years
http://news.yahoo.com/u-says-no-specific-threat-u-homeland-islamic-165127981.html
The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore.
The unveiling of this new group was performed in a September 13 article by the Associated Press, who cited unnamed U.S. officials to warn of this new shadowy, worse-than-ISIS terror group:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-enterprise-al-qaidas-syrian-cell-alarms-us
While the Islamic State group [ISIS] is getting the most attention now, another band of extremists in Syria — a mix of hardened jihadis from Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Europe — poses a more direct and imminent threat to the United States, working with Yemeni bomb-makers to target U.S. aviation, American officials say.
At the center is a cell known as the Khorasan group, a cadre of veteran al-Qaida fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to link up with the al-Qaida affiliate there, the Nusra Front.
But the Khorasan militants did not go to Syria principally to fight the government of President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials say. Instead, they were sent by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to recruit Europeans and Americans whose passports allow them to board a U.S.-bound airliner with less scrutiny from security officials.
AP warned Americans that “the fear is that the Khorasan militants will provide these sophisticated explosives to their Western recruits who could sneak them onto U.S.-bound flights.” It explained that although ISIS has received most of the attention, the Khorasan Group “is considered the more immediate threat.”
The genesis of the name was itself scary: “Khorasan refers to a province under the Islamic caliphate, or religious empire, of old that included parts of Afghanistan.” AP depicted the U.S. officials who were feeding them the narrative as engaging in some sort of act of brave, unauthorized truth-telling: “Many U.S. officials interviewed for this story would not be quoted by name talking about what they said was highly classified intelligence.”
On the morning of September 18, CBS News broadcast a segment that is as pure war propaganda as it gets: directly linking the soon-to-arrive U.S. bombing campaign in Syria to the need to protect Americans from being exploded in civilian jets by Khorasan. With ominous voice tones, the host narrated:http://www.cbsnews.com/news/al-qaeda-khorasan-syria-bigger-threat-to-us-than-isis/
This morning we are learning of a new and growing terror threat coming out of Syria. It’s an Al Qaeda cell you probably never heard of. Nearly everything about them is classified. Bob Orr is in Washington with new information on a group some consider more dangerous than ISIS.
Orr then announced that while ISIS is “dominating headlines and terrorist propaganda,” Orr’s “sources” warn of “a more immediate threat to the U.S. Homeland.” As Orr spoke, CBS flashed alternating video showing scary Muslims in Syria and innocent westerners waiting in line at airports, as he intoned that U.S. officials have ordered “enhanced screening” for “hidden explosives.” This is all coming, Orr explained, from ”an emerging threat in Syria” where “hardened terrorists” are building “hard to detect bombs.”
The U.S. government, Orr explained, is trying to keep this all a secret; they won’t even mention the group’s name in public out of security concerns! But Orr was there to reveal the truth, as his “sources confirm the Al Qaeda cell goes by the name Khorasan.” And they’re “developing fresh plots to attack U.S. aviation.”
Later that day, Obama administration officials began publicly touting the group, when Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned starkly: “In terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State.” Then followed an avalanche of uncritical media reports detailing this Supreme Threat, excitingly citing anonymous officials as though they had uncovered a big secret the government was trying to conceal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/world/middleeast/us-sees-other-more-direct-threats-beyond-isis-.html
On September 20, The New York Times devoted a long article to strongly hyping the Khorasan Group. Headlined “U.S. Suspects More Direct Threats Beyond ISIS,” the article began by announcing that U.S. officials believe a different group other than ISIS “posed a more direct threat to America and Europe.” Specifically:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/world/middleeast/us-sees-other-more-direct-threats-beyond-isis-.html
American officials said that the group called Khorasan had emerged in the past year as the cell in Syria that may be the most intent on hitting the United States or its installations overseas with a terror attack. The officials said that the group is led by Muhsin al-Fadhli, a senior Qaeda operative who, according to the State Department, was so close to Bin Laden that he was among a small group of people who knew about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before they were launched.
Again, the threat they posed reached all the way to the U.S.: “Members of the cell are said to be particularly interested in devising terror plots using concealed explosives.”
This Khorasan-attacking-Americans alarm spread quickly and explosively in the landscape of U.S. national security reporting. The Daily Beast‘s Eli Lake warned on September 23 — the day after the first U.S. bombs fell in Syria — that “American analysts had pieced together detailed information on a pending attack from an outfit that informally called itself ‘the Khorasan Group’ to use hard-to-detect explosives on American and European airliners.” He added even more ominously: “The planning from the Khorasan Group … suggests at least an aspiration to launch more-coordinated and larger attacks on the West in the style of the 9/11 attacks from 2001″ (days later, Lake, along with Josh Rogin, actually claimed that “Iran has long been harboring senior al Qaeda, al Nusra, and so-called Khorasan Group leaders as part of its complicated strategy to influence the region”).
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/23/al-qaeda-plotters-in-syria-went-dark-u-s-spies-say.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/25/will-iran-sell-out-al-qaeda-for-nukes.html
On the day of the bombing campaign, NBC News’ Richard Engel tweeted this:
https://twitter.com/RichardEngel/status/514553546381852672
That tweet linked to an NBC Nightly News report in which anchor Brian Williams introduced Khorasan with a graphic declaring it “The New Enemy,” and Engel went on to explain that the group is “considered a threat to the U.S. because, U.S. intelligence officials say, it wants to bring down airplanes with explosives.”
Once the bombing campaign was underway, ISIS — the original theme of the attack — largely faded into the background, as Obama officials and media allies aggressively touted attacks on Khorasan leaders and the disruption of its American-targeting plots. On the first day of the bombing, The Washington Post announced that “the United States also pounded a little-known but well-resourced al-Qaeda cell that some American officials fear could pose a direct threat to the United States.” It explained:http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/22/the-elusive-figure-u-s-officials-fear-as-much-as-the-islamic-state/
The Pentagon said in a statement early Tuesday that the United States conducted eight strikes west of Aleppo against the cell, called the Khorasan Group, targeting its “training camps, an explosives and munitions production facility, a communications building and command and control facilities.”
The same day, CNN claimed that “among the targets of U.S. strikes across Syria early Tuesday was the Khorasan Group.” The bombing campaign in Syria was thus magically transformed into an act of pure self-defense, given that ”the group was actively plotting against a U.S. homeland target and Western targets, a senior U.S. official told CNN on Tuesday.” The bevy of anonymous sources cited by CNN had a hard time keep their stories straight:http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/22/world/meast/al-qaeda-syria-khorasan/
The official said the group posed an “imminent” threat. Another U.S. official later said the threat was not imminent in the sense that there were no known targets or attacks expected in the next few weeks.
The plots were believed to be in an advanced stage, the second U.S. official said. There were indications that the militants had obtained materials and were working on new improvised explosive devices that would be hard to detect, including common hand-held electronic devices and airplane carry-on items such as toiletries.
Nonetheless, what was clear was that this group had to be bombed in Syria to save American lives, as the terrorist group even planned to conceal explosive devices in toothpaste or flammable clothing as a means to target U.S. airliners. The day following the first bombings, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed: “We hit them last night out of a concern that they were getting close to an execution date of some of the plans that we have seen.”
CNN’s supremely stenographic Pentagon reporter, Barbara Starr, went on air as videos of shiny new American fighter jets and the Syria bombing were shown and explained that this was all necessary to stop a Khorasan attack very close to being carried out against the west:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/22/world/meast/al-qaeda-syria-khorasan/index.html
What we are hearing from a senior US official is the reason they struck Khorasan right now is they had intelligence that the group — of Al Qaeda veterans — was in the stages of planning an attack against the US homeland and/or an attack against a target in Europe, and the information indicated Khorasan was well on its way — perhaps in its final stages — of planning that attack.
All of that laid the fear-producing groundwork for President Obama to claim self-defense when he announced the bombing campaign on September 23 with this boast: “Once again, it must be clear to anyone who would plot against America and try to do Americans harm that we will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who threaten our people.”http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/23/statement-president-airstrikes-syria
The very next day, a Pentagon official claimed a U.S. airstrike killed “the Khorasan leader,” and just a few days after that, U.S. media outlets celebrated what they said was the admission by jihadi social media accounts that “the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Khorasan group was killed in a U.S. air strike in Syria.”http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/28/us-mideast-crisis-qaeda-fadhli-idUSKCN0HN0E620140928
But once it served its purpose of justifying the start of the bombing campaign in Syria, the Khorasan narrative simply evaporated as quickly as it materialized. Foreign Policy‘s Shane Harris, with two other writers, was one of the first to question whether the “threat” was anywhere near what it had been depicted to be:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/23/is-the-khorasan-group-as-dangerous-as-the-white-house-claims
But according to the top U.S. counterterrorism official, as well as Obama himself, there is “no credible information” that the militants of the Islamic State were planning to attack inside the United States. Although the group could pose a domestic terrorism threat if left unchecked, any plot it tried launching today would be “limited in scope” and “nothing like a 9/11-scale attack,” Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in remarks at the Brookings Institution earlier this month. That would suggest that Khorasan doesn’t have the capability either, even if it’s working to develop it.
http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/09/03/counterterrorism_chief_says_islamic_state_is_not_planning_an_attack_on_america
“Khorasan has the desire to attack, though we’re not sure their capabilities match their desire,” a senior U.S. counterterrorism official told Foreign Policy.
On September 25, The New York Times — just days after hyping the Khorasan threat to the homeland — wrote that “the group’s evolution from obscurity to infamy has been sudden.” And the paper of record began, for the first time, to note how little evidence actually existed for all those claims about the imminent threats posed to the homeland:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/world/middleeast/khorasan-a-terror-cell-that-avoided-the-spotlight.html
American officials have given differing accounts about just how close the group was to mounting an attack, and about what chance any plot had of success. One senior American official on Wednesday described the Khorasan plotting as “aspirational” and said that there did not yet seem to be a concrete plan in the works.
Literally within a matter of days, we went from “perhaps in its final stages of planning its attack” (CNN) to “plotting as ‘aspirational’” and “there did not yet seem to be a concrete plan in the works” (NYT).
Late last week, Associated Press’ Ken Dilanian — the first to unveil the new Khorasan Product in mid-September — published a new story explaining that just days after bombing “Khorasan” targets in Syria, high-ranking U.S. officials seemingly backed off all their previous claims of an “imminent” threat from the group. Headlined “U.S. Officials Offer More Nuanced Take on Khorasan Threat,” it noted that “several U.S. officials told reporters this week that the group was in the final stages of planning an attack on the West, leaving the impression that such an attack was about to happen.” But now:http://bigstory.ap.org/article/70dba5b999be4a3583ddd55dad9215dd/us-offers-more-nuanced-take-khorasan-threat
Senior U.S. officials offered a more nuanced picture Thursday of the threat they believe is posed by an al-Qaida cell in Syria targeted in military strikes this week, even as they defended the decision to attack the militants.
James Comey, the FBI director, and Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, each acknowledged that the U.S. did not have precise intelligence about where or when the cell, known as the Khorasan Group, would attempt to strike a Western target. . . .
Kirby, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said, “I don’t know that we can pin that down to a day or month or week or six months….We can have this debate about whether it was valid to hit them or not, or whether it was too soon or too late…We hit them. And I don’t think we need to throw up a dossier here to prove that these are bad dudes.”
Regarding claims that an attack was “imminent,” Comey said: “I don’t know exactly what that word means…’imminent’” — a rather consequential admission given that said imminence was used as the justification for launching military action in the first place.
Even more remarkable, it turns out the very existence of an actual “Khorasan Group” was to some degree an invention of the American government. NBC’s Engel, the day after he reported on the U.S. government’s claims about the group for Nightly News, seemed to have serious second thoughts about the group’s existence, tweeting:https://twitter.com/RichardEngel/status/514829810015547392
Indeed, a Nexis search for the group found almost no mentions of its name prior to the September 13 AP article based on anonymous officials. There was one oblique reference to it in a July 31 CNN op-ed by Peter Bergen. The other mention was an article in the LA Times from two weeks earlier about Pakistan which mentioned the group’s name as something quite different than how it’s being used now: as “the intelligence wing of the powerful Pakistani Taliban faction led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur.” Tim Shorrock noted that the name appears in a 2011 hacked Stratfor email published by WikiLeaks, referencing a Dawn article that depicts them as a Pakistan-based group which was fighting against and “expelled by” (not “led by”) Bahadur.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/31/opinion/bergen-american-al-qaeda-suicide-bomber-syria/
http://www.latimes.com/world/afghanistan-pakistan/la-fg-pakistan-refugees-20140715-story.html
https://twitter.com/TimothyS/status/516252546172604417
https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/70/708073_pakistan-pakistan-report-notes-differences-between-militant.html
There are serious questions about whether the Khorasan Group even exists in any meaningful or identifiable manner. Aki Peritz, a CIA counterterrorism official until 2009, told Time: “I’d certainly never heard of this group while working at the agency,” while Obama’s former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said: ”We used the term [Khorasan] inside the government, we don’t know where it came from….All I know is that they don’t call themselves that.” As The Intercept was finalizing this article, former terrorism federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review that the group was a scam: “You haven’t heard of the Khorosan Group because there isn’t one. It is a name the administration came up with, calculating that Khorosan … had sufficient connection to jihadist lore that no one would call the president on it.”
http://time.com/3430960/obama-isis-khorasan-terrorism/
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/388990/khorosan-group-does-not-exist-andrew-c-mccarthy
What happened here is all-too-familiar. The Obama administration needed propagandistic and legal rationale for bombing yet another predominantly Muslim country. While emotions over the ISIS beheading videos were high, they were not enough to sustain a lengthy new war.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/23/nobel-peace-prize-fact-day-syria-7th-country-bombed-obama/
So after spending weeks promoting ISIS as Worse Than Al Qaeda™, they unveiled a new, never-before-heard-of group that was Worse Than ISIS™. Overnight, as the first bombs on Syria fell, the endlessly helpful U.S. media mindlessly circulated the script they were given: this new group was composed of “hardened terrorists,” posed an “imminent” threat to the U.S. homeland, was in the “final stages” of plots to take down U.S. civilian aircraft, and could “launch more-coordinated and larger attacks on the West in the style of the 9/11 attacks from 2001.””
As usual, anonymity was granted to U.S. officials to make these claims. As usual, there was almost no evidence for any of this. Nonetheless, American media outlets — eager, as always, to justify American wars — spewed all of this with very little skepticism. Worse, they did it by pretending that the U.S. government was trying not to talk about all of this — too secret! — but they, as intrepid, digging journalists, managed to unearth it from their courageous “sources.” Once the damage was done, the evidence quickly emerged about what a sham this all was. But, as always with these government/media propaganda campaigns, the truth emerges only when it’s impotent.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/04/media-challenging-arguments-war-baying-blood/
By Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain, www.firstlook.org
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