the_last_blog_left

Ron Paul interview with Haaretz - you won't see this at anti-semitic sites.

2012-01-23T03:25:00.004Z

Q. What was your reaction to your exclusion from the function held by the Republican Jewish Coalition, to which all the rest of the candidates were invited?

Paul: Well, it was a bit surprising and disappointing. I believe that Israel is one of our most important friends in the world. And the views that I hold have many adherents in Israel today. Two of the tenets of a true Zionist are “self-determination” and “self-reliance.” I do not believe we should be Israel’s master but, rather, her friend. We should not be dictating her policies and announcing her negotiating positions before talks with her neighbors have even begun.

Q. Were you disappointed with the lack of collegiality of the other candidates, who did not insist that you be invited as well?

Paul: No. I did not ask or expect them to boycott the event or insist to the organizers that I be invited.

Q. The RJC characterized your views on Israel as “misguided and extreme”. Why do you think they view your views in that way?

Paul: I do not know, as I am the one candidate who would respect Israel’s sovereignty and not try to dictate to her about how she should deal with her neighbors. I supported Israel’s right to attack the Iraqi nuclear reactor in the 1980s, and I opposed President Obama’s attempt to dictate Israel’s borders this year.

Q. Do you think that the American debate on Israel is stifled?

Paul: There is no question that the problems of the Middle East have been intractable and may take new solutions and ideas. These ideas should all be openly discussed. I believe that my opinions have been distorted by those who want to continue America’s current role as world policeman, which we don’t have the money or manpower to sustain.

My philosophy, like that of the Founding Fathers, is that we should use our resources to protect our nation. Our policies of intervention and manipulation in Iran and Iraq and other places have led to unintended consequences and have not made Israel safer. Many in the Jewish community share my opinion, and it’s vital for both nations that we continue to have an open dialogue.

Q. In a 2007 clip that is on YouTube, you say, “Israel should be treated like everybody else”. Is that still your position, or do you believe that Israel and the United States have a “special relationship”?

Q. Well, we do have some unique arrangements. We trade intelligence in areas when it serves our mutual interest, for instance. But I believe we have gone too far, to Israel’s detriment. Instead of being her friend, we have dominated her foreign policy.

Q. In that same clip, you also say that the motivation of al-Qaida for the 9/11 attacks was American support for Israel. Do you still believe that?

Paul: I think most people in the Middle East and probably in Israel would agree that this was a major factor. That in itself does not make our policies right or wrong. Our policies need to be discussed on their own merits, but as a matter of course, yes, our support of Israel has made us enemies.

Other U.S. policies, such as our stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia and our support for repressive regimes in the region, also play a role in hostilities to the U.S. Those in the Arab world who object to the U.S.’ support for dictatorships and to our military presence there often see Israel as the agent of the U.S. Thus, not only do Israel’s relations with the U.S. cause some negative feelings toward America, but they further Arab hostility toward Israel, which is one reason why Israel would be better off without U.S. aid.

Q. In the Fox News presidential debate you expressed understanding and even sympathy for the Iran having nuclear weapons. But Israelis view an Iranian nuclear capability as an existential threat to their country. Do you disagree? Do you not believe Iranian leaders who say that Israel should be “wiped off the map”?

Paul: I am against the spread of nuclear weapons. But I do understand why other nations want them and why they don’t accept the nuclear monopoly as it now stands. You cannot change an opinion you don’t understand. I understand it and would try to change it.

However, there’s a key fact that it seems is being overlooked when my positions are discussed. I believe I’m the only candidate who would allow Israel to take immediate action to defend herself without having to get our approval. Israel should be free to take whatever steps she deems necessary to protect her national security and sovereignty.

Q. Do you support completely cutting all foreign aid, including the aid to Israel?

Paul: Yes, I am personally against all foreign aid. We give $3 billion to Israel and $12 billion to her avowed enemies. How does that help Israel? And in return, we act like her master and demand veto power over her foreign policy.

If I were President, such aid would not end until the Congress agreed and voted for it to end, because I would be President as the U.S. Constitution defines it. I am not running for dictator.

But I believe that federal foreign aid is absurd. We’re broke! We are like a man who used to be rich and is in the habit of paying for everybody’s meals and announces at a lavish dinner that he will pay the bill, only to then turn to the fellow sitting nearby and say, “Can I use your credit card? I will pay you back.” It is ridiculous for us to be borrowing money from China and giving it to Pakistan.

I have described foreign aid as taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries. I know that many in other nations are hurting, but I also know that the American people are a generous people. While we should end the unconstitutional federal foreign aid program, I would encourage Americans to continue to voluntarily contribute to the needs of other nations.

Q. In the past, you have been accused by various groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, of accepting the support of racist and anti-Semitic elements and of not doing anything to distance yourself from them. What is your reaction to this accusation?

Paul: I have always made it clear, and will continue to do so, that my message is based on the rights of all people to be treated equally. Any type of racism or anti-Semitism is incompatible with my philosophy. Ludwig von Mises, the great economist whose writing helped inspire my political career, was a Jew who was forced to leave his native Austria to escape the Nazis. Mises wrote about the folly of seeing people as part of groups rather than as individuals. Therefore, for me to advance anti-Semitism in any way would be a betrayal of my own intellectual heritage.

SOURCE
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Don't expect Alex Jones, Mike Rivero or Rys2Sense to acknowledge this interview. It so contradicts their own positions and support for Ron Paul that for them it just doesn't exist.

What would the "anti-Zionist" Rivero and Rys2Sense make of Paul's (correct) claim that Zionism means "self-determination" and "self-reliance"?

Or how about Paul's support for Israel to attack Iran, and for its past attack on Iraq?

SILENCE. Doesn't exist. Never said it. So no contradiction with their own views and support.

Where's Rivero's outrage this time?

2012-01-12T03:29:00.004Z

The Guardian has an interesting report today:

"Russia's apparent military support for the Syrian regime emerged on Wednesday when a Russian ship carrying 60 tonnes of arms for Damascus was stopped in Cyprus.

The MV Chariot, which set off from St Petersburg in early December, was forced to pull into the Greek Cypriot port of Limassol because of stormy seas. It had been on its way to Turkey and Syria, inspectors said.

Customs officials who boarded the ship discovered four containers. They were unable to open them but concluded that they contained a "dangerous cargo". State radio in Cyprus went further, alleging that the Chariot was carrying "tens of tonnes of munitions".

Russia is one of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's few remaining international allies. Moscow resents what it regards as western encroachment on its traditional sphere of influence and has continued to supply Damascus with advanced weapons and other arms, to the annoyance of Washington.

For its part, Syria gives Russia a strategic foothold in the Mediterranean via a shared naval maintenance facility in the port of Tartus.

The cargo ship was apparently heading to the Syrian port city of Latakia. As well as blocking a UN resolution last October in the security council, condemning Syria's human rights resolutions, the Kremlin is sending its warships to call on Syrian ports this summer.

The Cypriot foreign ministry said the boat was allowed to continue its voyage after assurances from the Russian owners it would not go to Syria. The Chariot, a St Vincent and Grenadines-flagged ship, technically broke an EU arms embargo to Syria, imposed amid Assad's continued violent crackdown against peaceful demonstrators.

The embargo does not apply to Russia or Turkey, non-EU members. The vessel left , apparently en route to Turkey. Turkey, once a close partner of Syria, is now one of the regime's most strident critics, and has afforded refuge to its opposition leadership.

Cyprus's Greek-language Politis newspaper reported that the vessel was carrying ammunition of various calibres and that the recipient was the Syrian ministry of defence. Another newspaper, Simerini, said initial reports suggested it was carrying 35 tonnes of explosives, weapons and munitions.

Last summer Cyprus suffered a disaster after it confiscated munitions aboard another cargo ship heading to the Middle East. In February 2009 officials seized 85 gunpowder-filled containers from a Cypriot-flagged ship that was suspected of transporting them from Iran to Palestinian militants in Gaza through Syria.

Those containers, left piled in an open field at a naval base, blew up in July, killing 13 people and wrecking the island's main power station in the island's worst peacetime military accident.
SOURCE

I thought Rivero liked getting upset about blockades (and arms supplies and suppression of the popular will.) But this is Syria and Russia we're on about, so it's fine. Not even news.

From elsewhere at the Guardian:

• Arab League observer Anwar Malek has resigned because he said the monitoring mission was a farce. He told al-Jazeera that Syria is failing to implement any of the League's proposals and engaging in fabrication and deception.

• Syria's embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, yesterday blamed "foreign conspiracies" supported by Arab states for the crisis in his country and promised to crack down on terrorism with "an iron fist". In a defiant speech at Damascus university he said: "We cannot relent in the battle against terrorism. We strike with an iron fist against terrorists who have been brainwashed."
------

So, Rivero will be tearing into Syrian leadership for using terrorism as an excuse for its own militarism, right? Right?

Of course he's not - this is Russia and Syria, the great bastions of freedom and democracy......

Reading Burt Blumert's Fucking Awful Book

2012-01-10T04:22:00.002Z

His book (I'm loathe to use the word) is an abomination. My god! Read it!

Burt writes,

"Frankly, it’s not easy to watch inferior people degrading Ron Paul from one TV channel to the next. "

Notice that easy use of 'inferior'?

There's a lot that is revolting about this book.

Read it only if you dare!!!

Everything about it is weird. He mentions his wife's views but I feel certain he has just invented them, substituting his own. He mentions a supposed media-friend's analysis and it seems obvious he's just making it up - to say exactly what he wants to say himself. God, it's AWFUL. No more, please......make it stop....!!!

Who is Burt Blumert?

2012-01-10T03:54:00.003Z

Burton S. Blumert (born February 11, 1929 in New York City, died March 30, 2009) was the president of the Center for Libertarian Studies in Burlingame, California, chairman of the Mises Institute, and the publisher of LewRockwell.com. Before his retirement in 2008, he bought and sold precious metals as the proprietor of Camino Coin Company.
----------

Ah.

Bought and sold precious metal? Just like Mr Alex Jones and co? And just like Mr Ron Paul, with his $1m investments in precious-metal mining.

But don't all these people attack the "spivs" making money out of nothing, trading currency as commodity?

And is the Mises Institute itself especially productive and efficient, market-driven and "free"? Hmmm.

Burt Blumert, eh?

As an aside, I believe a major thing arises from Ron Paul's attempts to explain away the issue over the newsletters - How do we now know when something with Paul's name on it actually represents Paul?

And does Paul believe it? Or not? When do we find out?

Does it represent his view on policy, or not? People really deserve to know. Not 20 years later.

If the Paul camp issue a newsletter tomorrow, for example on education, should anyone believe it? Is it subject to complete revision and repudiation later - as with previous 'gross errors' in the now infamous newsletters?**

** - recognising, of course, that once in power no such repudiation would be necessary.

Old Bookmark I had - on Ron Paul, Libertarianism and Nazism.

2012-01-10T03:45:00.003Z

Ron Paul debacle exposes the racist underbelly in the Rockwellian camp.

01.09.08 (9:58 pm)

This blog, part time that it is, has been trying to warn people about the infestation of bigots and racists who have invaded the libertarian movement. Starting in 2005 we issued our first warning and we did our best to link to the sources and show evidence. Unfortunately much of the evidence is personal experience, simply knowing the people involved.
Our warnings were basically ignored. And now the whole issue has exploded with the shocking (to some) revelations of Ron Paul’s newsletter and the vile statements that were published there.

The Paul newsletters were usually a joint project between Paul, Lew Rockwell and Burt Blumert. Perhaps they all were but I will only say what I’m confident about. Paul really did provide the name and the public face. He was the bait to attract the subscribers. The money came from Blumert to set things up and Rockwell did much of the writing. Of course Paul was fully aware of the newsletters and can’t really argue that he didn’t know what was published.

After all these articles appeared over a period of years. We are talking multiple issues and multiple years. To say Paul didn’t know implies he was totally comatose. It went on too long and in too many issues for him to feign ignorance.

The New Republic article accurate notes that to understand Paul you have to understand the Mises Institute -- the fount from which so much racism in the movement comes. And it noted that the crowd at the Mises Institute “are nothing like the urbane libertarians” at Cato or Reason. In fact they are unlike the libertarians I knew most of my life. As we have shown here repeatedly, people connected with Rockwell and his misnamed Institute regularly hang out with racists, bigots, anti-Semites and hate-mongers for all kinds. This article was correct to point out how the Mises Institute and Rockwell play a prominent role in the disastrous newsletters that were recently republished.

My understanding over the years has been that the newsletter was in fact written by Lew Rockwell. Mr. Rockwell is notorious in libertarian circles for having been the author. The problem is that this was one of those issues that was so widely known that no one archived the evidence. It just was. And Rockwell is refusing to talk. Paul is refusing to the name the individual who wrote the hate material.

So why won’t Paul name him? He has referred to him as a “former aide”. People assume that means he and the individual are no longer associated. That is a false assumption. Many people who are “former aides” merely move higher in the hierarchy. Rockwell was a former aide. He was also Paul’s business partner in the newsletter and has remained a major confidant and adviser to Paul. I suspect that Paul won’t name names because his previous answers were intended to imply he was so shocked by the content that he dismissed the writer.

Paul could get away with that excuse when it was limited to one issue of the newsletter. Now it covers many issues over many years and that doesn’t wash. The rumor is that Rockwell was the author and he remained Paul’s close ally and ghost writer for many years. They are still closely linked. So Paul’s previous answer would be exposed as intentionally misleading if he were to reveal that he and the actual author were still working together. If Paul was ever actually embarrassed by the content, and there is zero evidence he was, then he clearly wasn’t embarrassed enough to severe his connections with the alleged author.

Rockwell’s group publishes Paul’s books. I think we’d find that Rockwell, or other Mises Institute individuals, actually author much of Paul’s work. Paul’s books are on a far higher level than some of his rambling answers or explanations when he is interviewed. That seems a strong indication that Mr. Paul didn’t write his own books.

So I do, in large part, buy Paul’s story that he didn’t write much of this material. Though I can’t rule out that he wrote some of it. But the line that he didn’t read it or know about it is just too absurd to be believed. Nor do I buy that he was repulsed by the content of these newsletter since it looks to me that he has continued his close allegiance with the likely author of the pieces.

Does Paul agree with the hateful comments. I don’t know. He’s smart enough to know not to say such things on the campaign stump. And my interactions with Paul were always in the role of questioning him on things where he was defensive and trying to cover his ass on unlibertarian votes or positions he took.

The reason for this blog was to warn people about this festering sore before it really did a lot of damage. But Paul, who is closely allied to this vipers nest of Rockwellians, rose to some prominence mainly due to his strong opposition to the war -- one issue where he is right I might add. Unfortunately Paul’s close alliance with bigots meant that at some point the sordid newsletters would be exposed.

Every increase in the Paul campaign also increased the chance that these newsletters would be made public. I suspect Paul and Rockwell were counting on the relative obscurity of the publication and time to make that impossible. I believe some of the later years, without the racism, are available on line but neither Paul nor the Mises Institute would put the early issues on line. In fact Paul claimed he didn’t have any copies and couldn’t release them. But copies were found and that is what brought forth the rather unpleasant publicity.

The real tragedy here is that libertarianism itself is smeared because of this. Ron Paul was promoted as some sort of icon. Rockwell’s site published the claim that “’the Ron Paul question’ constitutes a litmus test for libertarians. Simply put, the ‘Ron Paul questions’ consists of determining whether or not a person supports Dr. Paul. If so, as I see matters, he passes the test and can be constituted a libertarian; if not, his credentials are to that extent suspect.”

What cheek!

Here is what is absurd. The racists at Stormfront have been cheering Paul all along. Many of these people are open about their race hatred and their support for Hitler or some form of racialist agenda. But they support Paul. According to Rockwell’s site, if someone supports Paul, “he passes the test and can be constituted a libertarian”. So apparently the Nazis are libertarians but many prominent libertarians are “suspect” because they don’t support Paul. Well, since Mr. Paul’s racist newsletters were exposed the number of libertarians in the world apparently dropped because lots of people are now sorry they were backing Paul.

I will state my main thesis again. It is lethal and destructive for any libertarian to be associated with bigotry and racism. Not only is it destructive to the cause of liberty but I would assert that it is morally wrong and contemptible. I don’t care how “pure” this individual pretends to be -- in fact many of the most racist types around the Rockwell circles brag about “anarcho-capitalist s” though their anarchism consists of massive state aggression against immigrants. Libertarians need to take back their movement from the racists and the bigots and let they people know they are not welcome. Maybe the bad publicity associated with the Paul debacle will do that, but I won’t hold my breath.

SOURCE: http://rightwatch.tblog.com/post/1969971088

The Ron Paul Conspiracy

2011-12-31T17:13:00.002Z

20 years ago Paul and his kooky friends cooked-up a conspiracy to attain high office and change America:

In 1991, a newsletter asked, “Is David Duke’s new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?” The conclusion was that “our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom.”
SOURCE

Funny how Paul's supporters see conspiracy everywhere yet this sort of thing by their own candidate passes unnoticed as 'the usual stuff of politics'.

The Libertarian cabal? The Libertarian conspiracy? Oh no! Only other people conspire.....only other people build up networks.....etc. lol.

For anyone but themselves this stuff would be self-evident proof of malevolent conspiracy, but for the conspiracists supporting Paul it's all perfectly normal and absent the least possible whiff of anything sinister. Funny.

What's a little hypocrisy amongst friends?

2011-12-31T16:36:00.002Z

Ron Paul: Gingrich taking Freddie Mac money 'immoral'

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) on Sunday called Newt Gingrich's acceptance of more than $1 million from a government-controlled mortgage lender "immoral."

Paul, who has called on Gingrich to apologize for the $1.6 million he received in his role with Freddie Mac, said while the former House speaker isn't under any legal obligation to return the funds he should consider the move.

"I wouldn't have taken their money just for the fact that I think it's an immoral thing," Paul said Sunday morning on NBC's "Meet the Press."

SOURCE

Paul wouldn't have taken the money because it's 'immoral'. But then compare what Ron Paul obviously considers moral - accepting campaign finance from Neo-Nazi Don Black (Stormfront):

Paul keeps donation from white supremacist

Aide: Candidate to take money and 'try to spread the message of freedom'

Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has received a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist, and the Texas congressman doesn't plan to return it, an aide said Wednesday.

Don Black, of West Palm Beach, recently made the donation, according to campaign filings. He runs a Web site called Stormfront with the motto, "White Pride World Wide." The site welcomes postings to the "Stormfront White Nationalist Community."

"Dr. Paul stands for freedom, peace, prosperity and inalienable rights. If someone with small ideologies happens to contribute money to Ron, thinking he can influence Ron in any way, he's wasted his money," Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said.

"Ron is going to take the money and try to spread the message of freedom."

"And that's $500 less that this guy has to do whatever it is that he does," Benton added.

SOURCE

So, taking money from Freddie Mac is immoral, but taking money from Nazis is fine. Bizarre sort of morality.

Stormfront, Spotlight, Willis Carto......Ron Paul

2011-12-31T16:10:00.002Z

From the New York Times article on Ron Paul and the controversial newsletters:

Mr. Black of Stormfront said the newsletters helped make him a Ron Paul supporter. “That was a big part of his constituency, the paleoconservatives who think there are race problems in this country,” Mr. Black said.

“We understand that Paul is not a white nationalist, but most of our people support him because of his stand on issues,” Mr. Black said. “We think our race is being threatened through a form of genocide by assimilation, meaning the allowing in of third-world immigrants into the United States.”

Mr. Black said Mr. Paul was attractive because of his “aggressive position on securing our borders,” his criticism of affirmative action and his goal of eliminating the Federal Reserve, which the Stormfront board considers to be essentially a private bank with no government oversight. “Also, our board recognizes that most of the leaders involved in the Fed and the international banking system are Jews.”

Mr. Paul is not unaware of that strain among his supporters. Mr. Crane of the Cato Institute recalled comparing notes with Mr. Paul in the early 1980s about direct mail solicitations for money. When Mr. Crane said that mailing lists of people with the most extreme views seemed to draw the best response, Mr. Paul responded that he found the same thing with a list of subscribers to the Spotlight, a now-defunct publication founded by the holocaust denier Willis A. Carto.

SOURCE

Egyptian forces raid NGOs

2011-12-30T04:29:00.002Z

The Guardian is reporting "US 'deeply concerned' after Egyptian forces raid NGO offices in Cairo."

Relations between Egypt's military rulers and the United States threatened to hit a new low after Egyptian security forces launched unprecedented armed raids on a series of high profile human rights and pro-democracy organisations.

The 'usual suspects' are named in the article, including IRI, NDI and Freedom House:

The raids included targeting the US-government funded National Democratic Institute – founded by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright – and the International Republican Institute, whose chairman is Republican senator John McCain. Both organisations are affiliated with the two major US political parties.

Security forces also raided the offices of Washington-based Freedom House.
SOURCE

Hmmm.

Ron Paul's newsletters drawing justified criticism (finally)

2011-12-29T22:59:00.006Z

The following is a selection of commentary on Ron Paul's newsletters. Pleased to say they generally closely validate and support all the things I've been saying about him (and his supporters eg 911 Troof) these last 5 years or more.

Paul knows where his bread is buttered. He regularly appears on the radio program of Alex Jones, a vocal 9/11 and New World Order conspiracy theorist based in his home state of Texas. On Jones’s show earlier this month, Paul alleged that the Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador on United States soil was a “propaganda stunt” perpetrated by the Obama administration.

In light of the newsletters and his current rhetoric, it is no wonder that Paul has attracted not just prominent racists, but seemingly every conspiracy theorist in America. The title of one of Paul’s newsletter series – the Ron Paul Survival Report – was a conscious appeal to followers of the “survivalist” movement of the 1990s, whose ideology blended white supremacy and anti-government militancy in preparation for what Paul himself termed the “coming race war.”

As Paul told The Times last week, he has no interest in dissuading the various extremists from backing his campaign, which is hardly surprising considering he’s spent three decades cultivating their support. Paul’s shady associations are hardly “bygone” and the “facts” of his dangerous conspiracy-mongering are very much “in evidence.” Paul has not just marinated in a stew of far-right paranoia; he is one of the chefs.

Of course, it is impossible to know what Ron Paul truly thinks about black or gay people or the other groups so viciously disparaged in his newsletters. What we do know with absolute certainty, however, is that Ron Paul is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who regularly imputes the worst possible motives to the very government he wants to lead.
SOURCE

Here's an old video of Ron Paul taking credit for the newsletters he now disavows:

On the strategy which produced the newsletters:

This is new to the Paper of Record, but Julian Sanchez and I wrote about this -- these two exact essays -- nearly four years ago.
Rockwell explained the thrust of the idea in a 1990 Liberty essay entitled "The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism." To Rockwell, the LP was a "party of the stoned," a halfway house for libertines that had to be "de-loused." To grow, the movement had to embrace older conservative values. "State-enforced segregation," Rockwell wrote, "was wrong, but so is State-enforced integration. State-enforced segregation was not wrong because separateness is wrong, however. Wishing to associate with members of one's own race, nationality, religion, class, sex, or even political party is a natural and normal human impulse."
The most detailed description of the strategy came in an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement." Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks," which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited, by exposing an "unholy alliance of 'corporate liberal' Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America."
Why has it taken four years for these public domain facts to become "news"? How did Paul slide through a year of televised debates, where his rivals were asked about their opinions of "submission" in marriage and accusations of affairs, and never get a question about this stuff? Paul's associations haven't changed in four years. His explanations haven't changed. You can see why Paul's fans might get annoyed or paranoid about this. They thought they'd litigated this stuff already, and earned a pass.
SOURCE

Again, on the writers of the report:

Ron Paul doesn't seem to know much about his own newsletters. The libertarian-leaning presidential candidate says he was unaware, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of the bigoted rhetoric about African Americans and gays that was appearing under his name. He told CNN last week that he still has "no idea" who might have written inflammatory comments such as "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks"—statements he now repudiates. Yet in interviews with reason, a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul—all named the same man as Paul's chief ghostwriter: Ludwig von Mises Institute founder Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.

Financial records from 1985 and 2001 show that Rockwell, Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982, was a vice president of Ron Paul & Associates, the corporation that published the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report. The company was dissolved in 2001. During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives," producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic. To this day Rockwell remains a friend and advisor to Paul—accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman's recent writings and audio recordings.

Rockwell has denied responsibility for the newsletters' contents to The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick. Rockwell twice declined to discuss the matter with reason, maintaining this week that he had "nothing to say." He has characterized discussion of the newsletters as "hysterical smears aimed at political enemies" of The New Republic. Paul himself called the controversy "old news" and "ancient history" when we reached him last week, and he has not responded to further request for comment.

But a source close to the Paul presidential campaign told reason that Rockwell authored much of the content of the Political Report and Survival Report. "If Rockwell had any honor he'd come out and I say, ‘I wrote this stuff,'" said the source, who asked not to be named because Paul remains friendly with Rockwell and is reluctant to assign responsibility for the letters. "He should have done it 10 years ago."

Rockwell was publicly named as Paul's ghostwriter as far back as a 1988 issue of the now-defunct movement monthly American Libertarian. "This was based on my understanding at the time that Lew would write things that appeared in Ron's various newsletters," former AL editor Mike Holmes told reason. "Neither Ron nor Lew ever told me that, but other people close to them such as Murray Rothbard suggested that Lew was involved, and it was a common belief in libertarian circles."

Individualist-feminist Wendy McElroy, who on her blog characterized the author as an associate of hers for many years, called the ghostwriter's identity "an open secret within the circles in which I run." Though she declined to name names either on her blog or when contacted by reason, she later approvingly cited a post naming Rockwell at the anonymous blog RightWatch.
SOURCE

Here's TNR's "A Collection of Ron Paul’s Most Incendiary Newsletters"

Lots of good links in that one.

Why Don’t Libertarians Care About Ron Paul’s Bigoted Newsletters?

A Libertarian’s Lament: Why Ron Paul Is an Embarrassment to the Creed

Given that the most shocking racist and homophobic content from his actual newsletters is reprinted in the span of just one eight-page mailer, it offers a stark picture of just how focused the publication was on these conspiracy theories. You can read the full letter here.
SOURCE

I especially liked the libertarian criticism of Ron Paul as it reflects some of my own criticisms against Paul (and his support) - for example, the incongruency of a belief in 'Liberty' versus support for secure borders and opposition to immigration. This is a difficulty Paul's supporters, such as Alex Jones and the 911 Troofers have never managed to properly address - they've managed to avoid all serious criticism until now, because they control their own media and refuse to embrace any criticism.

Well, now RP is out in the open, such criticism cannot be avoided. In such a light, I guess it can only be a positive thing RP is attracting significant support in his Presidential run - finally he (and his belief system) are attracting attention in places where Paul and his supporters cannot exercise control, as they do at Prisonplanet and WhatReallyHappened.com etc. Good.

The party is over, conspiro-nuts! Great. Whilst the conspiros obviously won't reconsider anything, the coverage should at least successfully delegitimise their creed in the eyes of 'normal' people. Success.

Ron Paul under scrutiny - racism? Whooops.

2011-12-23T02:58:00.005Z

Source: FoxNews

It's also featured in the Guardian.

Ron Paul: racist newsletter scandal won't go away
Ron Paul says he knew nothing of a racist newsletter published under his name two decades ago. But he hasn't offered a convincing explanation – and that could hurt him in Iowa

And it's at their source too, of course..

Honest Ron. sure.

Paul has claimed that the newsletter, which compared African Americans to zoo animals, warned of a coming race war, and generally promoted racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia views, was written by other authors and he was unaware of its content — even passages written from his perspective. He has not offered up any of the names of the six to eight writers he said were responsible for writing the incendiary material, however, and reporters are pressing him for more details

"racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia views" - never! I mean, why would racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia views be found amongst Ron Paul's racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia support?

He now says he disavows such views. Maybe someone should tell his "racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia" supporters that he's disavowed them?

Why hasn't Paul ever told them?

** ETA - Here's a link to one of Ron Paul's solicitations for subscription to his "newsletters".

Super-committee fails - shock!

2011-11-22T11:00:00.003Z

The Guardian reports that "...the 12-member committee announced on Monday that after months of talks it was unable to bridge the deep ideological divide between Republicans and Democrats."

Who is surprised?

Republicans are concerned that the automatic cuts in military spending, amounting to $600bn over 10 years, will severely damage the Pentagon's ability to maintain national security.

The cuts in military spending will be matched by $600bn in domestic spending.

Defence secretary Leon Panetta has described the size of the military cuts as "devastating".

Two Republican senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, issued a joint statement saying: "As every military and civilian defence official has stated, these cuts represent a threat to the national security interests of the United States, and cannot be allowed to occur."
SOURCE

Substantial military cuts? Excellent!!

The deadlock on the supercommittee was blamed by the Democrats on a long-time Republican political lobbyist, Grover Norquist, who leads a campaign against tax rises. Norquist has persuaded Republican members of Congress over the years to sign pledges never to raise taxes. All six Republicans on the committee had done so.

If they had agreed to tax rises, they would be open to charges of reneging on the pledges they gave to Norquist, potentially damaging when they stand for re-election.

But the Repubs knew this when they decided on those 6 members of the committee? The answer was decided then, obviously.

So, no tax-rises but automatic spending cuts. Just what the 99% asked for? Well, some of them certainly did, not that you'd get that impression if you asked OWS......

But again, it's more evidence of how divided the nation is, how divided the people and their representatives are. Conspiracists like to make out that there's some great conspiracy subverting democracy and moving events to some predetermined end. But the reality is people cannot agree amongst themselves, neither can the representatives they elect. It isn't that everyone agrees on everything - rather people strongly disagree across the aisles, even though they're politically very close (there's no raving socialists in the Congress, for example).

The super committee came about because of an inability to agree over the budget, re the debt-ceiling (some wanted cuts, some opposed cuts). So it's no surprise the committee can't agree a few months later (and why should a committee of 12 decide it anyway?) 12 can't agree, 300 million can't agree. This is not evidence of a coherent 99%. Not at all - they are split, near 50-50.

Reductions in fuel-duty tax -- paid for by cuts in social security benefits

2011-11-22T00:09:00.007Z

How despicable is that? There's the measure of your 99%!!! Cut fuel duty, and make people on benefits pay for it. The poorest are being made to suffer so as to subsidise travel costs of industry and commuters. Brilliant! How many on benefits have cars? Not many, obviously.

The very poorest are being made to make life more bearable for the many, rich and poor alike. Seems fair, right? It follows a campaign by Britain's best-selling newspaper, The Sun, which is read by working-class audiences whom one might presume to be most supportive of the 99% thing. But no.....

These are the people Occupy need speak to, not bankers and stockbrokers and 'the powers that be'.

Despicable. Let's see the outrage of the 99% now? Keep looking, I suspect.

I had previously asked how OWS (and the 99%) would respond to proposals to cut benefits. We shall see.

OWS/OLSX included in its first list of demands the abolition of the Royal Mayor of London! Laughable. Nobody gives a shit. Whereas Benefits cuts will effect millions of the very poorest and most vulnerable. Lets see some action?

Spain shifts right

2011-11-20T23:17:00.007Z

Spain has elected the conservative right. After all those protests about cuts etc? Now they are in for even more. So much for the revolutionary 99%.

Spain has evicted the incumbents. Just as happened in UK. And whilst people protest cuts, they elect parties which will deliver even more stringent cuts.

BBC says:

Correspondents say many are angry with the Socialists for allowing the economy to deteriorate and then for introducing tough austerity measures.

So now they're going to get even more cuts? Err....K.

People are simply reacting against the ruling parties, and electing the opposition - regardless of the policy. This certainly doesn't speak of a major sea-change shift leftwards....certainly not towards some class-conscious revolution as OWS supporters seem to claim. Rather it speaks of the 99% not really knowing what to do, other than throw out the incumbent. People want change but not any particular ones. 'Socialists' are thrown out for conservatives, conservatives are thrown out for 'socialists'. Difficult to see that as a changed political landscape - rather it's reaction.

Greece had an election in 09, in which the socialists were elected over the incumbent conservatives (who were blamed for the crisis.) Now the socialists are being blamed for the ongoing crisis. We might say the same of America - Bush out, Obama in - with Obama suffering from the fallout and the ongoing crises.

But in Spain (and UK) 'socialists' were blamed for the crisis - as the incumbents - and were voted out in favour of conservatives.

Has it made any difference to the respective outcomes?

Clearly there's little reason to crudely blame either party exclusively because both parties have been in power in different places and all face similar problems. So electing the opposition in place of the incumbents is hardly likely to seriously address the issues.

I wish somewhere would at least have the nerve and audacity to try a seriously leftwing approach to the problem. Maybe we can look at Venezuela as an example, but it's an oil economy, and a developing one not a mature mixed economy like a major European state.

In ways it'd be most interesting if Ron Paul won in upcoming US elections (next year?). At least he'd finally be proven as ineffectual, or highly destructive, or - what would be a big shock - successful. At least it'd be something different instead of this ineffectual musical chairs thing.

Whilst supposed 'socialists' vie with 'conservatives' for power, we see there really isn't much difference in the policies, nor the outcomes. No-one is trying genuinely socialist or radical policies.

This is the roar of the 99%?

The 99% are the problem

2011-11-18T21:43:00.006Z

All organisations and institutions must submit to democratic, parliamentary authority. That battle has already been won, generally, in the West at least.

The problem is the use the 99% put their vote to. Wall St must already submit to Congress - the London Stock Exchange must already submit to Parliament.

The problem is the electorate - not Wall St - not the London Stock Exchange.

Most of the voices claiming to speak for and with the authority of the 99% have nothing to offer - they have nothing to replace that which they seek a revolution to dispose. This is the height of stupidity.

I applaud the sentiments of OWS etc, but it's laughably vacuous imo. Abolish "greed"? Yes, sure. How? SILENCE.

Reduce inequality? Sure. HOW? Silence.

Oppose bank bailouts? Sure - and then we have no banks and the role they play in the economy is gone.....with the effect that....what? There's no economy? Nobody can borrow money to start a business? Great!

And what of the depositors? If the banks are allowed to fail, the depositors lose all their money. The depositors are the 99%. Did OWS forget, or do they not know?

Printing money costs nothing - and moderate inflation only hurts those with money saved: anyone on index-linked pensions, benefits and wages is safe. The wealthy with money hate inflation more than anyone else - debtors love it. Creditors hate inflation - debtors love it.

OWS speaks of public ignorance and self-interest imo. It's framed in rhetoric of concern and class solidarity but I think all that is a fraud. The public never much cared for class solidarity on the way up, only on the way down. Indeed, on the way up that was exactly what they threw overboard - I AM ALRIGHT JACK. Has everyone forgotten? It seems so.

Surprised? I'm not. I think OWS is full of shit. I'm sure lots of people really believe in what they're doing, but they're late to the party and we really need ask why. Well, they're upset because their "I'm alright Jack" paradigm isn't working, and so now they're asking for social/class solidarity. Oh right.....now you insist on it?

I'm appalled by the responses I have been getting from OWS supporters to my criticisms. I'd suspected OWS might be prone to fascism and the responses I have had are outrageously (verbally) violent and aggressive. Hardly dissuades me from my original position. It's grotesque.

Black smoke means cool fire? Rubbish

2011-11-17T23:55:00.012Z

911 Troof has frequently claimed that black smoke in fires is evidence of a "cool" fire. FireEngineering.com say otherwise: they say the blacker smoke, the hotter the fire. They call energetic, dense black smoke "black fire" and say that it can reach temperatures of 1000F, that it causes damage to steel and that it should be treated 'like fire'.

In the UK there was a major fire at a oil storage depot - Buncefield. The fires produced highly energetic, dense black smoke. Nobody can say they were 'cool' fires (they melted the storage tanks). For example:

Troofers have been known to claim about 911 fires that

the smok [SIC] in the clip I posted is very BLACK smoke meaning the fires aren't as hot. Whiter smoke means a more hotter fire.

SOURCE

How can they be taken seriously? Here's another photo of an oil fire, in Pembrokeshire during WW2:

I think you can just about make out the black smoke, right?

The fire burned for three weeks and is the largest single seat fire in UK ever.It took 650 firemen to fight it. But according to 911 Troof, it wasn't a "hot" fire.

Sure.

FireEngineering.com have an article called 'THE ART OF READING SMOKE'. It says

"the more black the smoke, the hotter the smoke."

“Black fire” is a good phrase to describe smoke that is high-volume, turbulent velocity, ultradense, and black. Black fire is a sure sign of impending autoignition and flashover. In actuality, the phrase “black fire” is accurate-the smoke itself is doing all the destruction that flames would cause-charring, heat damage to steel, content destruction, and victim death. Black fire can reach temperatures of more than 1,000°F! Treat black fire just as actual flames.....
SOURCE

Oh, and oil-fires can't melt steel?

robertlindsay.wordpress.com on Curt Maynard

2011-11-14T01:54:00.001Z

I don't know if I agree with this dude on racism, but there we go. It's here for the record - what Curt Maynard was.

-------------------

The other White Supremacist death is that of Curtis Maynard, another WN nutcase, just like Barrett. I had read Maynard’s blog a few times, and it was really over the top! Ranting, raving, screaming, yelling and racist as all get out. He struck me more as a raving nut as opposed to your often cool-headed White racist. It turns out, incredibly, that Maynard, like Barrett, was also sampling some interracial sexual forbidden fruit (What is it with these guys, anyway?)

His ex-wife was Hispanic. They had a big messy divorce and breakup, and the other day Maynard went over to her house with a shotgun and chased her around the yard. She hid, terrified, with her young child, in the bushes.

Maynard found her and shot her dead.

Then he ran to his truck and drove away. A neighbor came out with his rifle but decided it was too dangerous to engage Maynard. The police quickly caught up with him and pulled him over.

Maynard pulled out his shotgun and blasted a round in his skull.

The strange saga of Curt Maynard was over.

I must say I don’t understand these guys. If they hate non-Whites so much, why can’t they stop fucking them? Fucking’s about as intimate as you can get. If you as a White person want to screw non-Whites of your own, the opposite, or both sexes, by all means help yourself, but why be a White Separatist at the same time? Something tells me a lot of these WN types are just not right in the head.

It’s a common line these days, mostly promoted by anti-racist Jews after the Holocaust, that racism is some sort of a mental disorder, and racists are all mentally disturbed, if not stark raving nuts. They’re all portrayed as dysfunctional fuckups and societal outcasts. I doubt if this is true. It’s understandable the Jews want to get back at their enemies for what was done to them, but there’s no reason to lie. A lot of this stuff is coming out of the Frankfurt School in Germany, where Jewish sociologists recast anti-Semitism and racism as a mental illness.

The Old South was extremely racist, and much of the rest of the US was too. Racism against Indians, Blacks and others was simply normal. Even in most of this century, casual White racism was the norm. In Germany, an entire nation went over to wild racism during World War 2. The Arab and Muslim World is furiously anti-Semitic.

I seriously doubt that the majority of Southerners, Germans, Arabs or Muslims are mentally ill, dysfunctional societal fuckups and losers. Racism isn’t all that healthy, but a society seething with racism is not a society of the mentally ill losers, outcasts and fuckups. Forget it. Many people can be well-adjusted in spite of their virulent racism.

The reason so many WN”s are whacked-out mentally disturbed loons nowadays is that White Supremacism is proscribed, thanks to decades of hard work by us anti-racists. As a condemned and disparaged philosophy, most normal Whites will shy away from it, whether they have tendencies that way or not. A society of outcasts will tend to attract a lot of flaky people who are already on the margins of society in addition to more normal folks.

This is the reason there are so many kooks and whackjobs on the WN scene.
SOURCE

Banned from Big Dan's Little Fascist Blog - Again

2011-11-13T19:09:00.013Z

So confident of their "Troofiness" are Big Dan and his side-kick-parrot, Plunger, that they can't stand the least criticism. When asked to stand up claims about the dancing Israelis and UMS being MOSSAD (claims made by their Fascist sources but which Dan, Plunger and 911 Troof repeat ad nauseum as FACT) they blathered various vague and inconsequential rubbish about Jews - even citing 1954 and such like. All the usual rubbish, but nothing to substantiate the claims of their fascist sources - AmericanFreePress and Chris Bollyn.

Big Dan's is yet another little fascist, conspiracy hole that purports to criticise fascism whilst promoting Fascist sources, Fascist views, Fascist news.

Big Dan's Little Fascist Blog links to former AFP writer Chris Bollyn under the heading, "Fighting Fascism". It includes a listing for Willis Carto's American Free Press under the heading "NEWS" and Mike Rivero's WhatReallyHappened appears under a heading of "THE BEST NEWS".

Big Dan defends his use of the Fascist Press on the grounds it is "more honest" than mainstream. Dan offered Bollyn's book on 911 (which scapegoats Jews, obviously) as evidence.

Anyway, after proving Bollyn, Big Dan and Plunger to be liars making claims based on nothing, they banned me, and deleted my comments. Again. The usual response of the Troofy wing of the Fascist party.

For some previous on 'Big Dan's Little Fascist Blog' - here.

Highlights include recommendation to read Hitler's Last Testament, so as to get the real lowdown on Jooos. Other sources include various Carto organs, Benjamin Freedman, Father Coughlin, William Luther Pierce....you know, the usual leftwing, liberal and anti-fascist stuff, right? Sure. Far-right dude! Errr, I mean "Far out!"

Dr Larry Simons, the world's leading expert on 911 proven Wrong, Wrong, Wrong (again)

2011-11-08T01:33:00.011Z

Dr Larry Simons, the world's pre-eminent expert on the new pseudo-science of Conspiracism-ism, was tonight refusing to answer calls to his BlogSite.

Meanwhile, pressure mounts around the world for Dr Larry to simply admit he was "Wrong Wrong Wrong". So far, Dr Simons' only response is to continuously delete posts to his website.

This follows an incident earlier this week when, in a shocking new development, Larry Simons put his entire spoonful of credibility behind his own claim that

the smok [SIC] in the clip I posted is very BLACK smoke meaning the fires aren't as hot. Whiter smoke means a more hotter fire.

Responding to this shocking outburst, the Peoples' Champion and fearless blogger, the_last_name_left responded by quoting an article published by FireEngineering.com which completely refutes Larry Simon's claims.

The FireEngineering.com article in question is called 'THE ART OF READING SMOKE' and is freely available online. Refuting Larry's claims entirely the expert publication clearly says

"the more black the smoke, the hotter the smoke."

Moreover, to make the point more clear, the article proceeds to explain what it calls "Black Fire":

“Black fire” is a good phrase to describe smoke that is high-volume, turbulent velocity, ultradense, and black. Black fire is a sure sign of impending autoignition and flashover. In actuality, the phrase “black fire” is accurate-the smoke itself is doing all the destruction that flames would cause-charring, heat damage to steel, content destruction, and victim death. Black fire can reach temperatures of more than 1,000°F! Treat black fire just as actual flames.....

Readers should note here that "black fire" (thick, energetic, dense black smoke) is stated by real experts to represent fires that can be burning at temperatures of over 1000F - the temperature at which steel loses half it's strength.

As the shock of the world-renowned-expert Larry Simons being proven completely wrong (again) reverberated around the world of the blogosphere, Simons responded by repeatedly deleting the offending posts by the_last_name_left.

Pressure was said to be growing on Simons as his own claims to be 'a fearless troof-seeker' were proven completely untenable. However, Simons - who claims to be a doctor, architect, fire-expert and world-renowned Conspiracist - has released the following confusing statement -

"the definition to "black fire" is not mentioning what the COLOR of the SMOKE is...it is simply the name given to the FIRE----NOT the SMOKE"

But even supporters of Dr Larry The Architect were last night heard to be mumbling about how he was talking "so much shit" and how the phrase "Black Fire" clearly meant 'smoke', and not fire - as Dr Larry claims.

As fears for Dr Larry's sanity grow, pop-psychologists suggest Larry's only possible response is to admit he had indeed been proven WRONG WRONG WRONG and that his entire basis for claiming 'the fires weren't that hot' has been securely refuted by experts in the field.

Meanwhile, back at the_last_headquarters_left, internet-blogger the_last_name_left was once again busy sipping nice cold beer, and between smiles reflecting that "it's all in a day's work", girls.....

"Far right is on the rise across Europe....."

2011-11-06T18:28:00.006Z

The Guardian today reports on a publication by thinktank Demos:

The far right is on the rise across Europe as discontent with the fallout from globalisation reverberates across the continent, a study has revealed ahead of a meeting of politicians and academics in Brussels to discuss the rapid spread of hardline nationalist and anti-immigrant groups.

The study reveals a continent-wide spread of hardline nationalist sentiment among the young, mainly men. Deeply cynical about their own governments and the EU, their generalised fear about the future is focused onto cultural identity, with immigration – particularly a perceived spread of Islamic influence – a big concern.

"We're at a crossroads in European history," said Emine Bozkurt, a Dutch MEP who heads the anti-racism lobby at the European parliament. "In five years' time we will either see an increase in the forces of hatred and division in society, including ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, or we will be able to fight this horrific tendency."

.... experts say, the polling booths and demonstrations are only part of the picture: online, a new generation is following these organisations and swapping ideas, particularly through Facebook. For most parties the numbers online are significantly bigger than their formal membership.
SOURCE

Well, there's no doubt about that.

.....others argued that Islam is simply antithetical to a liberal democracy, a view espoused most vocally by Geert Wilders, the Dutch leader of the Party for Freedom, which only six years after it was founded is the third-biggest force in the country's parliament.

This is a "key point" for the new populist-nationalists, said Matthew Goodwin from Nottingham University, an expert on the far right. "As an appeal to voters, it marks a very significant departure from the old, toxic far-right like the BNP. What some parties are trying to do is frame opposition to immigration in a way that is acceptable to large numbers of people. Voters now are turned off by crude, blatant racism – we know that from a series of surveys and polls.

"[These groups are] saying to voters: it's not racist to oppose these groups if you're doing it from the point of view of defending your domestic traditions. This is the reason why people like Geert Wilders have not only attracted a lot of support but have generated allies in the mainstream political establishment and the media."

While the Demos poll appears to show economics playing a minimal role, analysts believe the current eurozone crisis is nonetheless likely to be a recruitment boon to vehemently anti-EU populist parties which are keen to play up national divisions. "Why do the Austrians, as well as the Germans or the Dutch, constantly have to pay for the bottomless pit of the southern European countries?" asked Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the Freedom Party of Austria, once led by the late Jörg Haider.What is indisputable is that tSuch parties have well over doubled their MPs around western Europe on a decade ago. They have also spread geographically. "What we have seen over the past five years is the emergence of parties in countries which were traditionally seen as immune to the trend – the Sweden Democrats, the True Finns, the resurgence of support for the radical right in the Netherlands, and our own experience with the English Defence League," said Goodwin.

The phenomenon was now far beyond a mere protest vote, he said, with many supporters expressing worries about national identity thus far largely ignored by mainstream parties.

Gavan Titley, an expert on the politics of racism in Europe and co-author of the recent book The Crises of Multiculturalism, said these mainstream politicians had another responsibility for the rise of the new groups, by too readily adopting casual Islamophobia.

"The language and attitudes of many mainstream parties across Europe during the 'war on terror', especially in its early years, laid the groundwork for much of the language and justifications that these groups are now using around the whole idea of defending liberal values - from gender to freedom of speech," he said.

"Racist strategies constantly adapt to political conditions, and seek new sets of values, language and arguments to make claims to political legitimacy. Over the past decade, Muslim populations around Europe, whatever their backgrounds, have been represented as the enemy within or at least as legitimately under suspicion. It is this very mainstream political repertoire that newer movements have appropriated."Jamie Bartlett of Demos, the principal author of the report, said it was vital to track the spread of such attitudes among the "new generation" of young, online activists, far more numerous than the formal membership of such parties.

"There are hundreds of thousands of them across Europe. They are disillusioned with mainstream politics and European political institutions and worried about the erosion of their cultural and national identity, and are turning to populist movements, who they feel speak to these concerns.

"These activists are largely out of sight of mainstream politicians, but they are motivated, active, and growing in size. Politicians across the continent need to sit up, listen, and respond."

Hmmmm. What a horrible affirmation of what I have suspected. I'd rather be wrong......
---------------------------------

*ETA - over 600 public comments on the thread already.

I haven't read all the comments (yet) but I notice it's difficult or impossible to distinguish whether the respondents are actually socialists or National Socialists (Nazis). And nobody seems to be making the point that they're hard to distinguish, even though the article itself made the point.

Who knows if the respondents are actually National Socialists? (The Guardian has to be the premiere english-speaking left-wing newspaper? But it's a target of far-right propagandists, speaking under the protection and promotion of the liberalism of the Guardian. And so how do we tell if its respondents are socialists or National Socialists? How do we tell? And BTW is there no more an english word for premiere than....that french word? Oooops - I've succumb! Latinus aberrantum Caecillius. Or something.)

Here's a challenge to OWS - benefits

2011-11-03T17:26:00.003Z

Ministers are considering alternatives to an inflation-linked rise to benefits, government sources have said.

Benefits are due to go up by 5.2% from next April, in line with September's inflation figures.

But the government is worried about the cost of such hikes and the impact on public opinion given the current low wage increases.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the government would "not balance the books on the backs of the poor".

He said "difficult decisions" would have to be taken, but he would not "provide a running commentary on decisions and debates which haven't even been held in government yet".

Sources would not say what other options were being considered instead of an inflation-linked rise. It is not thought that any change to the planned 5.2% rise in pensions is being considered.

The BBC News channel's chief political correspondent Norman Smith said one possible option could be raising benefits in line with the average inflation rate for the year, rather than the September figure.

Freezing payments
The Financial Times is reporting that Chancellor George Osborne has asked officials for alternative models, including a rise in line with average earnings growth of about 2.5% or freezing some payments.

It is understood the government will have "resolved" the options by early December when the uprating of benefits is presented to Parliament.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has calculated that the 5.2% September inflation figure will add £1.8bn to welfare spending next year.

It said freezing all benefits and pensions would save about £10bn and linking benefits increases to wage rises would save £5bn.

A further option of switching from the September inflation figure to an average inflation figure calculated over six months could save about £1.4bn, the IFS added.
SOURCE - BBC
===========

Let's see OWS - and the fabled 99% fiercely support raising benefits at least in line with inflation. If they don't, then they are acquiescing in a cut to the income of the very poorest.

This is a big challenge to the notion that the 99% support social solidarity, and protection for the poorest. We shall see. I don't hold any expectation that benefits will rise in line with inflation - none whatsoever. Nor do I expect the country at large to support doing so: the supposed class solidarity of the 99% is a myth.

RIP Elouise Cobell

2011-11-01T01:28:00.005Z

For 14 years Elouise Cobell fought a legal battle to recover billions of dollars that had been systematically plundered from Native Americans by the US government.

During the action it emerged that the government's Bureau of Indian Affairs had, over the previous 100 years, sold off Indian land to farmers and prospectors but failed to pass the money on.

A qualified accountant, Yellow Bird Woman, as Cobell was known in her native Blackfoot nation, raised the huge sums of money necessary to fight the case.

Along the way she encountered opposition from the various US administrations she had to tackle but eventually, on the election of Barack Obama, the government paid out more than $3bn (£1.9bn) in what became the largest class action in US history. The sum was a lot less than the $27bn (£16.9bn) Cobell estimated had been stolen from Native Americans over the century.

Great article on OWS - by Brendan O’Neill @ Spiked-online.com

2011-10-29T21:27:00.001+01:00

In the increasingly whiffy camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, amid placards declaring ‘The End is Nigh’, apparently a new kind of politics is being born. Young women talk about ‘politics starting again’. The media cheerleaders of the Occupy movement claim it represents ‘a substantive change not just to the nature of modern politics, but to the way in which it is done, demanded and delivered’. From New York to Madrid to Tokyo, the inhabitants of the so-called tent cities proudly declare themselves ‘citizens of a new world’.

Is all this occupying really the start of something new? No. And not only because on the rare occasion when the protesters issue a coherent demand they end up echoing ideas we’ve heard a thousand times before. (Their call for tougher independent regulation of the financial industry was pilfered from the Financial Times.) More fundamentally, their globally contagious protest represents the death agony of something old rather than the birth pang of something new. What we’re witnessing is the demise of the progressive left, but – and here is the Occupy movement’s twist – that demise is dolled up as something good, something positive, where instead of addressing the vacuum at the heart of modern left-wing thinking, the occupiers make a virtue out of it.

Around the world, the occupiers are adapting to the decayed state of radical left-wing thinking, moulding themselves around the organisational and political disarray of the left. All the negative things about the left today – the lack of big ideas, the dearth of daring leaders, the withering of organisational structures – are repackaged as positives. Leaderlessness is transformed into a virtue, the enabler of a fairer, more consensual form of politics. The absence of overarching ideology is sexed up as ‘liberation from dogma’. Even the thoughtlessness of the Occupy movement, both in terms of its lack of deep thinking and the way it has spread across the globe in a fairly thoughtless, meme-like fashion, is turned into a good thing: this is ‘unthought’, declares one observer, where creeds emerge ‘without much articulation of why they’re necessary, [almost] as reflexes’.

Time and again, the Occupy movement makes a virtue of vacuity. Consider its celebration of leaderlessness. A placard at Occupy London says: ‘We have no leaders.’ Writing in the Washington Post, a supporter of Occupy Wall Street says ‘this is a leaderless movement’. The celebration of leaderlessness is meant to sound radical, proof that these people don’t need a Trotsky-style orator to tell them how to think or what to do. They’re free-spirited creatures who, in the words of the BBC’s resident Wannabe Marxist, Paul Mason, are ‘independent of any democratic structures and party hierarchies… living the dream of a communal, negotiated existence’.

Yet leadership isn’t simply about charismatic men bellowing instructions to crowds of nodding bods. Real political leadership represents the embodiment of an ideal, a goal, which people subscribe to and are willing to fight for. In eschewing leadership, or rather in celebrating the objective reality of a lack of decent leaders, the occupiers are actually turning their noses up at idealism and political purpose, at the very basic idea of having a goal and a strategy for achieving it. Indeed, the Washington Post piece says the wonderful thing about this ‘leaderless movement’ is that it doesn’t have ‘an official set of demands… there are no projected outcomes, no bottom lines, no talking heads’.

Here, we can glimpse what the celebration of leaderlessness really represents: an accommodation to the dearth of visionary thinking on the modern left. The great irony, of course, is that far from this leaderless movement being a hotbed of original, out-there thinking, ‘liberated from dogma’, there’s an extraordinary level of political conformism amongst the occupiers. They actually acknowledge this, but once again it gets sexed up, turned from an obvious fault into a ‘new way of doing politics’, a ‘reflex’ or ‘unthought’. One sympathiser writes about the phenomenon of ‘thought contagion’, where these protests are being ‘memetically reproduced’ around the world. The idea that this movement is really a meme – a meme being ‘an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person’ – is now repeated everywhere in pro-Occupy literature. Some even cite Dawkinite theories of the ‘Meme Machine’ to explain the speedy spread of the Occupy movement.

That the occupiers are happy to discuss themselves in evolutionary biologist terms, as a contagion, is remarkable. Here, they’re making a virtue out of their lack of political consciousness, borrowing phrases from tomes on culture and evolution to try to make their inability to decide what they’re for sound like something sexily ‘reflexive’.

The phenomenon of ‘thought contagion’ – where we see the same ideas, slogans and even public-speaking methods being adopted in all the occupations – is actually a consequence of the occupiers’ eschewing of leadership. Far from liberating them from dogma, their refusal to organise, to lead, to draw up and distribute coherent demands makes them susceptible to all kinds of lazy thinking. Where a group that knows what it is for is, to a certain extent, insulated from external pressure, sustained by its own inner logic and principles rather than being constantly remoulded by faddish thinking, the fantastically amorphous Occupy movement is shaped and reshaped, like putty, by whimsy, style, the needs of the media.

So, at the St Paul’s camp there was much uncritical parroting of utterly mainstream ideas, from the demand that we have a ‘knowledge economy’ instead of a manufacturing one (copyright New Labour) to the notion that material aspiration causes mental illness (a bizarre idea born in academia and since embraced by political leaders). The thing that the occupiers imagine makes them free from bourgeois ideas that have apparently invaded the masses’ brains – their rejection of leadership and ideology – actually makes them susceptible to being clobbered by new received wisdoms.

The most striking thing at St Paul’s is the protesters’ obsession with ‘process’. All they talked about was the process of organising the camp: how to recycle, contact the camp doctor, engage with the police. Unable to say what the occupation is for, they have become myopically obsessed with simply ensuring that it chugs along, that it stays put. And of course, this existential stasis also gets sexed up. As one radical reporter puts it, a ‘common theme’ in the various Occupy camps around the world is ‘the fetishisation of form and process over ideology’. A Guardian commentator implores the occupiers to ‘resist the pressures to clarify their aims’ and instead to ‘dig in and fortify their camps’. He reckons the occupiers shouldn’t give in to the ‘nutter multitudes’ – that’s you and me – who want everything to be pigeonholed.

This is a see-through attempt to repackage serious ideological disarray as a daring refusal to bow to the external pressure to define one’s objectives, to stake one’s claim. The irony is that the Occupy movement has actually allowed itself to be utterly defined by external forces, becoming impressively conformist in both its outlook and its style. Every mainstream eco-piety finds expression in this movement. David Cameron-style demands for the punishment of bankers are here, too. Placards bombard you with trendy buzzwords like ‘sustainability’ and ‘empathy’. The low-horizoned thinking of the decadent modern bourgeoisie is widespread in the camps; indeed, according to Der Spiegel, top European politicians are ‘firmly on the side of the demonstrators’. When Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto, they aimed to make ‘the ruling classes tremble’. The Occupy movement, having made a virtue of its own shallowness and lack of big humanistic vision, merely makes the ruling classes smile with patronising approval.

SOURCE

Rivero - American Nationalist - Buys Japanese

2011-10-29T05:43:00.003+01:00

Rivero's posted a picture of a Nissan he's having to use whilst his own car (another Nissan) is in for repairs. He says he misses his old Honda.

I know his cars are manufactured in USA, but nevertheless, the point remains. He could buy a Ford, or GM, or....

If he buys domestically produced Japanese cars because they're cheaper, then he can hardly complain that companies choose to offshore production. If they didn't, whilst others do, they will lose sales because of higher costs.

If he buys domestically produced Japanese cars because they're better quality, then he can hardly blame the US government policy and its supposed encouragement of offshoring for the decline of American manufacturing.

OWS London

2011-10-28T21:06:00.004+01:00

OWS London have successfully managed to turn the subject of their protest into a legal/ethical fight with St Paul's Cathedral.

By camping outside St Paul's the protesters have managed to transfer responsibility for dealing with them onto the church, completely sidelining the Stock Exchange, Lombard St, capitalism, etc. Now the church is wracked by debate about how to deal with the protesters - it is the church that has been forced to undertake legal action to remove them, not "international capitalism" etc. Pathetic.

The protesters made a big deal about the initial words of support the protest received from the Cathedral's clergy. But now those same people have asked the protesters to move on, they are refusing. Cynical. Obviously they don't really care about the respect due to the church and its ministers, they were simply exploiting it for political gain. Disgusting.

Get up, and move somewhere else. Like the Stock Exchange? Doesn't take Sherlock Holmes, does it?

Rivero supports OWS, but not revolt in Syria

2011-10-28T20:34:00.007+01:00

How does that make sense? As if Syria is more liberal and democratic than USA? As if USA is more repressive and despotic than Syria? What a joke.

BBC are reporting that "Syria protesters call for no-fly zone". Why? Because "at least 37 people have been killed in crackdowns during protests calling for the downfall of the government held across Syria after Friday prayers."

Rivero goes crazy about one person in USA being severely hurt in OWS protests. Well, sure. But in Syria 37 people died in one night! According to the BBC, "More than 3,000 people have died in the unrest since protests broke out in March."

But check WRH's Syria section? See if Rivero expresses any outrage about it? Rather he's played it down, making out it is all a western inspired movement designed to topple a legitimate Arab leader. Incredible. As if Assad is some liberal Arab leader.....

BBC says : "Foreign journalists have been largely prevented from reporting from the country, making it difficult to confirm events on the ground."

Rivero doesn't care. Surprised?

When a US Congressman expressed a desire to aid Syrian revolt, Rivero responded thus:

Ah, of course, no (Hawaiian) Americans need concern themselves with Israel....errr...I mean Syria. Dude's a total joke. Why doesn't anyone notice?

Back in June Rivero reported a story which was headlined as "Russia, China Shield Syria from Possible UN Sanctions". Rather than get outraged at repressive nations protecting Syria, Rivero's comment was : "The leadership of both Russia and China are correct on this"

Nevermind that Rivero was originally agitating for support for Libyan uprising, and still supports "the Arab Spring" in principle. But clearly, what Rivero supports is uprising and revolt in western-friendly nations, whilst he totally opposes similar revolt in nations hostile to the West (and Israel, of course.)

Rivero seeks to protect regimes hostile to America (and Israel) no matter how repressive or authoritarian they might be or how popular the revolt might be. At the same time, he supports revolt in nations which are 'friendly' to American interest and influence. That's how he determines his view - the actual conditions of the people and the regime matter not in the least.

Rivero's radio on "Freedom" and "Freespeech" - With Paul Fromm

2011-10-28T07:12:00.010+01:00

Here's Rivero introducing Mark Lemire and Paul Fromm as guests on his radio show:

Rivero says: "If you go and look at the issue of freespeech in Canada, there are two names that consistently show up as champions of freespeech and freedoms and human rights....and those would, of course, be Mark Lemire and Paul Fromm."

Here's a picture of 'champion of freedom', Paul Fromm, with some of his 'friends' - white power - world wide:

The radio show is about how Lemire and Fromm want to abolish the Canadian Human Rights legislation because it protects minorities from the filth that people like Fromm spew. Rivero makes out this is is a freespeech issue, of course, eliding the rights of minorities to be free of Fromm's hate which is designed to limit the freedom of minorities, if not annihilate them all together.

Frederick Paul Fromm (born January 3, 1949), known as Paul Fromm, is a Canadian White Nationalist, based in Port Credit, Ontario, with a radio show on the Stormfront web site and ties to former KKK members David Duke and Don Black (white nationalist) through Stormfront. He has been described by national media as "one of Canada's most notorious white supremacists".

Yet Rivero calls him a 'champion of freedom'.

And Lemire?

Marc Lemire is a figure in the Canadian white supremacist movement. He works closely with leader Paul Fromm, and is the webmaster of the Hamilton, Ontario-based Freedom-Site which he began in 1996. Lemire was the last president of the often violent Heritage Front organization from January 1, 2001 until the organization folded around 2005. Lemire's involvement with Wolfgang Droege and the neo-Nazi Heritage Front group began while he was a teenager in the early 1990s. Droege was found shot to death on April 13, 2005.

Champions of freedom! Rivero's radio show is described thus: "Mike's September 1st 2007 broadcast discusses the ADL's Marxist censorship tactics being employed in Canada and Free Speech patriot Marc Lemire's Constitutional Challenge response."

Freespeech patriot. AKA Nazi.

Here's a good one - Rivero, Ron Paul, OWS and Taxes

2011-10-28T06:34:00.002+01:00

Here's Ron Paul speaking of taxes in his "Restore America" manifesto:

Lowers the corporate tax rate to 15%, making America competitive in the global market. Allow American companies to repatriate capital without additional taxation, spurring trillions in new investment.

And here's Mike Rivero, supporter of Ron Paul, writing about the repatriation of corporate taxes:

In an iconic example of how Congress puts big-money interests above others, bipartisan momentum is growing on Capitol Hill for a repatriation tax holiday — a huge, temporary reduction in the tax rate on money brought back to the U.S. from offshore tax havens. Critics say the repatriation tax holiday is a multi-billion-dollar tax giveaway to the world’s biggest multinational companies, with nothing in it for domestic businesses or ordinary Americans.
SOURCE

Hmmm. Hypocrite.

Advocates of spending cuts now lament spending cuts

2011-10-28T05:42:00.005+01:00

Previously Rivero et al had criticised the lack of spending cuts. Now they want a General Strike because of.....spending cuts.

Rivero supports Ron Paul, whose recent plan to "restore America" plans for $1 trillion cuts immediately.

Moreover, for years Rivero and co have been touting abolition of income tax and also claiming it is unconstitutional. They've promoted "Freedom to Fascism" and such junk....but now they protest cuts in spending.

Where's the sense to this? It's complete opportunism. Anything goes, so long as it's critical of government.

Here's another example of the confusion/hypocrisy: this was posted at WRH -
Rivero's response?

I don't think this really came from OWS. It's another "They are all socialists" propaganda hoax.

Ah, it's a hoax. Rivero knows these things.

Criticism of "structureless groups"

2011-10-27T01:34:00.005+01:00

Found this at a socialist website, writing specifically about OWS:

This is the "ideology of structurelessness" analysed by the American feminist, Jo Freeman, in 1970 in her essay on The Tyranny of Structurelessness.

At that time in the womens movement the same emphasis was placed "on what are called leaderless, structureless groups as the main focus of the movement" as Occupy Wall St does today.

Freeman showed that there was in fact no such thing as a structureless group, only formally and informally structured groups:

"Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion...the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others.

This hegemony can easily be established because the idea of structurelessness does not prevent the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones...Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power...For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit...

An unstructured group always has an informal, or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites...

When informal elites are combined with a myth of structurelessness, there can be no attempt to put limits on the use of power. It becomes capricious..."
SOURCE

The full essay can be read here. Very good it is too.

You have been blocked by the owner of this video

2011-10-26T20:24:00.001+01:00

http://youtu.be/wdAywGX_Nb0

David Duke - Occupy (Zionist) Wall Street

2011-10-26T09:34:00.004+01:00

Odd. But it makes perfect sense, of course. Maybe nothing (except opposition to Iraq war, and 911 Troof) shows the growing seduction of the ignorant left by the (far) right so much as OWS.

How many times does he say "zionist"? Yes, we get the point, Duke.

Certainly the (national) socialism of fools. He criticises Ron Paul, whilst Ron Paul supporters also support OWS - even at lewrockwell.com

What a mess of nothing: everyone supports it, apparently, because it means all things to all people. Can't please all the people all the time? OWS almost manages it? Doesn't do a thing for me....

Ron Paul supporters at OWS - cut taxes

2011-10-26T07:02:00.005+01:00

According to the IRS, the top 1% of income earners for 2008 paid 38% of income tax revenue, while earning 20% of the income reported.

The top 5% of income earners paid 59% of the total income tax revenue, while earning 35% of the income reported.

The top 10% paid 70%, earning 46% and the top 25% paid 86%, earning 67%.

The top 50% paid 97%, earning 87% and leaving the bottom 50% paying 3% of the taxes collected and earning 13% of the income reported.

The Tax Foundation stated that for 2007, the top 1% of earners paid more than the bottom 95% combined
===========

And Ron Paul supporters want to cut taxes! And they seem to support OWS movement. Crazy.

The 1% (as OWS likes to call them) are paying 38% of taxes. Ron Paul's solution? Cut taxes. Yet the bottom 50% are paying just 3% of tax revenue, apparently. Hardly makes sense, does it?

Figues for calendar year 2009 here.

From their summary:

The amount of individual income tax paid steeply declined by $166 billion, twice the decline from 2007 to 2008. Nationally, average effective income tax rates were at their lowest levels since the IRS began tracking them in 1986. The average tax rate for returns with a positive liability went from 12.24 percent in 2008 to 11.06 percent in 2009.

As the data below show, incomes reported by tax returns at the high end of the income spectrum fell from 2008 to 2009, as did their share of the nation's income and income taxes paid. In 2009, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 36.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 16.9 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI), compared to 2008 when those figures were 38.0 percent and 20.0 percent, respectively. Both of those figures-share of income and share of taxes paid-were their lowest since 2003 when the top 1 percent earned 16.7 percent of adjusted gross income and paid 34.3 percent of federal individual income taxes.

Each year from 2005 to 2007, the top 1 percent's constantly growing share of income earned and taxes paid set a record. The 2008 reversal of this trend continued in 2009. In fact, the income share for the top 1 percent of tax returns was lower in 2009 than in 2000, largely due to differences in capital gains.

Another indicator of this reversal in the income and tax shares of the top 1 percent is that, as in 2008, the top 1 percent no longer pays a larger percentage of total income tax than the bottom 95 percent. This trend was exacerbated by the aforementioned precipitous drop in AGI in 2009. During 2009, the bottom 95 percent (AGI under $154,643) paid 41.3 percent of the total collected, a larger share than the 36.7 percent paid by the top 1 percent (AGI over $343,947).

The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers (AGI equal to or greater than $154,643), however, still paid far more than the bottom 95 percent. The top 5 percent earned 31.7 percent of the nation's adjusted gross income, but paid approximately 58.7 percent of federal individual income taxes.

======================

I think that goes some way to supporting the idea that OWS is not a reaction to a realisation that the system is unjust and becoming more so (the figures say different), but rather a reaction to the fact cheap credit for the middle and working classes has been switched off, and their own security and self-interest has taken a hit. They didn't care previously, when the top 1% were doing even better than they are now. After all, who takes the real hit when the stock market crashes? Do the poor own shares? Of course not - not even by proxy via pensions and suchlike. Imagine how much some of the wealthiest have lost these last years? The evidence is there in the tax returns......capital gains returns are way down....so much so that it has caused the top percentile's tax returns to decrease as a share of the national return.

Interesting comments on OWS

2011-10-25T22:06:00.001+01:00

Guardian

Ron Paul's Restore America Rubbish

2011-10-25T01:04:00.002+01:00

Here's his plan:

SPENDING:
Cuts $1 trillion in spending during the first year
of Ron Paul’s presidency, eliminating five cabinet
departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and
Education), abolishing the Transportation Security
Administration and returning responsibility for security
to private property owners, abolishing corporate
subsidies, stopping foreign aid, ending foreign wars, and
returning most other spending to 2006 level

Wow. Eliminate 5 departments, just like that! Including the department of education!? lol

a 10% reduction in the federal workforce

More unemployed. Fewer people spending money. Great.

Lowers the corporate tax rate to 15%, making America competitive in the global market. Allows
American companies to repatriate capital without
additional taxation, spurring trillions in new
investment. Extends all Bush tax cuts. Abolishes the
Death Tax. Ends taxes on personal savings

The 1% will be gutted, I bet. Are you listening Mr Rivero? And how about you OWS folks? Crikey.

Bill Mitchell - a Modern Money Theory guy - on Ron Paul's "Plan to Restore America"

2011-10-25T00:44:00.002+01:00

The full, and loooong blogpost is here.

When an Excel spreadsheet runs wild

US Presidential candidate Ron Paul released his – Plan to Restore America – yesterday, saying that it will deliver a balanced budget within three years – cutting public spending by $1 trillion in year one, slash “regulations” and “reign in the Federal Reserve and get inflation under control”.

The 11 -page document has lots of tables and graphs and says that “America is the greatest nation in human history” (plaudits) but if you search for some theoretical framework or some evidential-basis for the numbers presented you will be very disappointed.

You will read that Americans have a “respect for individual liberty, free markets, and limited constitutional government” and that returning (public) spending (mostly) to 2006 (nominal) levels is somehow good. Cutting federal employment by 10 per cent is also good. Cutting all regulations is also good.

But that is about as far as the textual rendition goes before you hit the tables and graphs. When I read the document I couldn’t help thinking that someone had run wild with an Excel spreadsheet.

The Bloomberg Editorial yesterday (October 19, 2011) – Hidden Utility of Ron Paul’s Balanced-Budget Plan – saw some benefit in Ron Paul’s plan.

They said that “American voters … enthusiastically embrace the need to cut, cut, cut. But they baulk when asked to name specific programs to downsize or lop off” and so Paul’s proposal:

… performed a valuable public service this week when he unveiled a budget plan that shows exactly what balancing the $3.8 trillion budget through spending cuts would look like.

The fact is that the proposal doesn’t show “exactly” anything other than that someone can manage a spreadsheet with some formulas. The Plan to Restore America is devoid of economics which renders it a useless piece of rhetoric – strong on ideology but weak (tragically so) on analytical clout.

The Bloomberg Editorial says that:

In broad terms, Paul … [would be] … slicing $1 trillion from the budget in his first year in office … He would pare back most other programs to 2006 spending levels … would also starve the revenue side of the ledger. Corporations would see tax rates drop to 15 percent from 35 percent. He would extend all the Bush-era tax cuts, abolish taxes on estates and investment income. He wouldn’t end Social Security, but he would let young people opt out of the retirement program. As for that $1 trillion sitting in the overseas bank accounts of U.S. corporations, Paul would allow the money to come home tax-free …

True to his libertarian principles, Paul takes care of that problem by trimming the federal workforce by 10 percent …

And, it goes on.

The Bloomberg Editorial provides some local knowledge to tease out some of the practical implications – for example, “there would be no agency to oversee national parks, federal lands and offshore drilling. Land would have to be auctioned off to the highest bidders, most likely oil-and-gas, coal and timber companies”.

Further, “(e)ach state would have to become the regulator of its financial, manufacturing and health-care industries. A patchwork of rules would result. States might soon engage in a dangerous game of regulatory competition” and some “25 million elderly households … [who] … now depend entirely on Social Security for income … [would be left] … unable to buy food or pay heating bills”.

They also say that “(l)ow-income families would be hit the hardest” by the changes to Medicaid and food stamp programs – effectively culling them of all value.

Even on its own terms (that is, if the spreadsheet doodling was a reasonable representation of what can be achieved) the plan is drastic and likely to be chaotic and damaging to the ordinary citizen. The irony of US politics at present is that the grass roots support for the conservative austerity push is coming from working class Tea Partiers who will be the most damaged by the very policies they in their moments of frenzy seem to be supporting.

But, of-course, the Ron Paul exercise stands in denial of the underlying macroeconomics. It is one thing to make up some numbers and relate them to specific government departments that would have to close to get those numbers etc. But if you do not understand how these aggregates relate over time then the exercise become futile and a gross misrepresentation of what is possible and what is likely.
....
The Proposal reads as if Ron Paul thinks the net government outlays do nothing. Even if we agreed that a lot of government spending was not desirable in terms of the way in which the real resources were deployed (so we might say wasteful with better uses indicated) from a macroeconomic perspective the spending still creates income which multiplies throughout the rest of the economy. There is no getting away from that.

What do the 10 per cent of federal employees do each day with the incomes they earn? They go into shops and spend it which creates output and further employment. What does all these other outlays do? They create economic activity (however desirable in substance) throughout the US economy.

The overwhelming evidence is that private spending is subdued because households are in fear of unemployment and business firms already have enough productive capacity to meet the current level of spending and have no incentive to invest in further productive capacity.

Rising unemployment and falling demand (from the near $US1 trillion cuts in 2013) would further undermine private confidence.

The Plan to Restore America considers that the spending cuts will be replaced by the private sector. But that hope is not supported by any credible evidence. The evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion.

It is all very well to preach to the Americans about how great their nation is and to swathe your narrative in terms of patriotism but the market system doesn’t respond to that level or type of discussion. If people are losing their jobs they won’t increase their consumption. Firms will not invest if sales are falling.

And if the private sector further contracts, it is also unlikely that the government’s budget will be able to achieve the sort of outcomes that Ron Paul has in the later columns of his spreadsheet (2014 and on).

Clearly, Ron Paul thinks that by scrapping a swathe of regulations this will create growth.

I recently considered that view this blog – Some further thoughts on the OWS movement. I examined the evidential validity of the claim that growth is being stifled in the US at present by government regulations and intervention. This is the constant Republican (and Ron Paul) narrative and stands in total denial of the lack of spending explanation for the stagnant growth and persistently high unemployment.

The evidence provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics – their Extended Mass Layoffs data – overwhelmingly supports the claim that American firms have been sacking workers because there is a shortage of demand (spending). The firms that volunteered “government regulations/intervention” as the reason for laying off their workers constituted a minuscule proportion of the total.

No-one who was familiar with this data would conclude that business regulation is choking the American labour market or was in any way responsible for the substantial drop in labour demand and the rise in unemployment.

The tax debate is similarly compromised. Why would a firm employ more workers if they cannot sell the product even if they can lower the price somewhat if costs fall? I will consider that topic in another blog.

Ron Paul’s plan is in denial of these macroeconomic linkages and will fail before year one is over.

Conclusion

The Bloomberg editorial says that the Plan to Restore America is not a sound approach. They claim their is an “egalitarian way for Americans to share in the burden of achieving fiscal responsibility, but there’s no reason for entire Cabinet departments, the social safety net and the economy to be crushed in the process”.

It is interesting that they hold their “egalitarian” austerity plan out as being reasonable. In fact it also involves drastic and likely to be damaging cuts in net public spending. That they present this as the “reasonable” approach tells you how extreme the public debate in the US about fiscal policy has swung to the conservative (and uninformed) right.

Confused much?

2011-10-24T19:06:00.004+01:00

OWS.....Peter Schiff. Crikey.

So now it's a lack of capitalism that OWS are protesting about? Right, I see.....

Schiff was Ron Paul's 'economic advisor' in 2008. He's an extreme free-marketeer - a Miseian Austrian twit. So he thinks Wall St is over-regulated. Sure.

Is he one of the 99%? Emphatically no! Wiki says

Peter David Schiff is an American businessman, author and financial commentator. Schiff is CEO and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a broker-dealer based in Westport, Connecticut and CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC, a gold and silver dealer based in New York City.

If Rivero or anyone else imagines Schiff is part of the 99%, well, they already had their say:

In the Republican primary, held on August 10, 2010, Schiff lost the nomination to Linda McMahon.

The results were:
49% Linda McMahon
28% Rob Simmons
23% Peter Schiff

Ultimately, the election was won by the Democratic Party primary winner, Richard Blumenthal.

So, he couldn't win amongst the Republicans, and the Republicans couldn't win against the Democrats. Some 99%.

From Schiff's blog:

Ah, ok then. At least Schiff knows the score.

Wow - ain't that some propaganda?

2011-10-24T18:36:00.006+01:00

Fairplay, that's a pretty inclusive bit of propaganda: Libya, the Federal Reserve, conspiracy, NY Cops, OWS and assassination. Laughable. But Rivero considers it worth promoting and commenting upon.

Interesting to compare his attitude to this obvious rubbish with his attitude to the supposed Iranian-backed assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador, in Washington. He dismissed that immediately, as propaganda. But this nonsense is just "unconfirmed". Funny sort of critical faculty he has.

And where does this rubbish originate? Rivero sources it to www.Presscore.ca - a Canadian registered site which appears to have the shortest registration information on record - Sibernet domain services. Ho hum. Very reliable source, I'm sure. Article begins:

The Federal Reserve bankers have offered $billions to the CIA mercenaries in Libya to come to the United States and start a bloody rebellion. The Federal Reserve bankers sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make their offer and terms. According to high ranking U.S. military officials the plot by the Federal Reserve bankers calls for Libyan mercenaries to enter the United States as guest of the Federal Reserve banks.

Ehm.....it's a joke? It should be, but I don't think the writer is kidding anyone but their self.

Why would the Federal Reserve bankers finance protests that call for their being abolished? The European controlled Federal Reserve bankers have been trying to destroy the United States as we know it. First by financing the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. That assassination started WWI. Then they orchestrated the Great Depression. Then they financed a little known Austrian named Adolf Hitler who they ordered to start WWII. Then the Korean War and the Vietnam War. When all those attempts failed to destroy the United States – through war, they tried through debt. They illegally took the gold and silver backed U.S. dollar out of circulation and began issuing their own worthless interest bearing counterfeit Federal Reserve Notes. Their intent was to cause the United States to be destroyed through debt.
Now that the United States is bankrupt the Federal Reserve bankers want another major war – WWIII. They need a war in order to bring about the Vatican’s Fourth Reich – aka New World Order.

Oh Lordy. It makes for a pretty amusing parody of Rivero and co. What a joke.

Presscore.ca's ABOUT page says

This past year alone over 38 million people have visited PRESS Core.ca. Why? PRESS Core is your source for in depth investigative reporting on news that affects us all. PRESS Core publishes what others refuse to publish – the truth. PRESS Core presents the FACTS, not FICTION.

PRESS Core was originally called nbGazette.com, created in 2001 by Paul W Kincaid, formerly of Upper Dorchester, New Brunswick Canada.

HAHA. 38 million people have visited the site? Sure. This Kincaid dude is a well-known "nut" which makes him highly suitable to be amongst Rivero's sources.

Rivero WRONG, Again

2011-10-24T05:05:00.008+01:00

Here's Rivero just a week ago, claiming that what Gadaffi did wrong was refuse to buy into usury and central banking (his usual stupid complaint):

And here's Rivero making the same point more clearly, back in August earlier this year:

Yet today, we have the News Agencies reporting that the new Libya will have

"....an Islamist tint, Islamic Sharia law would be the "basic source" of legislation in the country and existing laws that contradict the teachings of Islam would be nullified.

......new banks would be set up to follow the Islamic banking system, which bans charging interest. For the time being, he said interest would be canceled from any personal loans already taken out less than 10,000 Libyan dinars (about $7,500).
SOURCE

So, Rivero is DEAD WRONG AGAIN. The new Libya is going to be Islamist, with Sharia Law and opposed to usury - which completely contradicts Rivero's analysis and predictions. AGAIN.

Moreover, the Libyan transitional leader was said to have "wished anti-government protesters in Syria and Yemen "victory". Again showing Rivero's analysis to be DEAD WRONG.

See here, here and here, for Rivero's earlier shameful and hypocritical volte-face over Libya.

He's been wrong again and again - even changing position totally, only to be proven wrong again. What a klutz.

Avira Free Anti-virus screws with Fruity Loops

2011-10-24T01:19:00.003+01:00

Avira Free Anti-virus screws with Fruity Loops

Performance in Fruity Loops 9 was awful after installing the Oct 2011 update (new version) of Free Avira AV.

Uninstall it, back to normal. Thanks Avira. Get lost.

David Icke on OWS - He's Discovered Fractional Reserve Banking (lol)

2011-10-23T21:30:00.004+01:00

He makes out that it takes 'research' to discover fractional reserve banking (FRB). He also seems to blame recession on it, rather than the business cycle.

He says if OWS is to mean anything it must end the ability of private banks to lend money by FRB. [Errr.....you *want* a credit crunch, Dave?]

He repeats the fallacy of there being insufficient money to pay off the debt.

Clearly he's a financial neophyte.

Boom and bust are "manufactured" he says. 'They flood credit, then find an "excuse" to remove the credit from circulation."

Hmmm. Very sophisticated.

He says in a recession the banks take back land and houses, taking "the real wealth"....because they weren't paid back the money they "made from fresh air" and which "never existed, and never will exist".

Funny, how can people buy "real wealth" with "money that doesn't exist"? If people borrow 'phony cash' from the bank for a property mortgage, then how phony is the money? He doesn't mind people borrowing phony money to exchange for "real wealth", he only complains when the bank exercises its contractual right to reclaim the security - suddenly it's "phony money" and a scam. Rubbish.

Don't like it? Don't do it. Stop blaming the banks. If one can buy "real wealth" with this "phony money" then this "phony money" is real wealth too. Duh.

Then he says "some group" are behind banks, government and industry. A handful of people. And they want total control over humanity.......it's called globalisation he says.....yawn. World government that will dictate all major laws. A world bank. A world army.....(apparently he means NATO). Libya he says. Rah rah rah.

"The Euro wasn't supposed to work....." - supposedly evidence of a move to a one-world currency. Eh?

"The EU is a fascist dictatorship......or a communist dictatorship.....whatever you want to call it...."

hahaha. Yeah, call it whatever you like, words don't mean a thing, right?

I can't take anymore.

Dancing Israelis? Bullshit

2011-10-23T18:11:00.005+01:00

Bullshit.

There's absolutely no evidence for it. But don't let that get in the way. Rivero's link goes to here, his "5 dancing Israelis page".

See this for a little more consideration.

Iraq - Imperial Dominion, or Not?

2011-10-23T18:00:00.006+01:00

We'll see what happens, but if this is correct it undermines the arguments of those of us who claimed the entire thing was an imperial project, that America would never leave, blah blah blah.

Good for the Iraqis.

But maybe it only says American policy didn't come to fruition, even though the intent was always to subjugate Iraq? Nevertheless, if this happens it does seriously undermine notions about Iraq being an American outpost and part of a grand Imperial strategy. Yes, they might have intended otherwise, but if so, the fact they fail is even more important.

If America really does leave, and Iraq builds a relatively successful and democratic society then.....maybe in 20 years it will be impossible to conclude other than "it was worth it"? I never thought I'd say it....and I haven't yet.....but.....

Occupy.....St Paul's Cathedral

2011-10-22T18:01:00.002+01:00

....and cost it £15,000 a day in donations.

Great.

I am getting sick of seeing OWS described as "anti-capitalist". Look at their demands, they are not anti-capitalist in the least. Their demands even include assertions that stock-markets should be run "properly".

Their most progressive lines are those which appeal to inequality, and the implied need for redistribution. But there's not a jot about how to do so. Ho hum.

Russian Revolutionary Architecture

2011-10-21T21:10:00.012+01:00

In the courtyard of London's Royal Academy of Arts stands the 20th century's most avant-garde strand of architectural genetics. The veering red spiral, intersected by a girder jutting through it like a rocket launcher, is a copy of the original model of the Monument to the Third International, designed by Vladimir Tatlin in 1920. Had it been built to its intended scale as the headquarters of the Communist party, it would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower. In a world awash with "iconic" architecture, nothing comes even close to radiating the raw potency of this truly revolutionary form.

That is why the Royal Academy's new show, Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-35, deserves to be stampeded. The word "revolution" has become discredited, and this show thoroughly re-energises its meaning in art and architecture. The key fragments of Russian revolutionary creativity still glow like radium, living on in its remaining art and buildings, and hard-wired into the imaginations of some of the 20th and 21st century's most influential architects.
SOURCE

Rivero blames Greek Government

2011-10-21T01:10:00.003+01:00

Oh, so it's the Greek government's fault, now, is it?

What happened to the Joooos? And Central Banking? And Globalist Cabal? And blah blah blah.....?

BBC - Lawyers (Still) Debate Whether Declaration of Independence Is Illegal

2011-10-20T15:32:00.004+01:00

What a coincidence, considering recent comments here. BBC article is here:

In Philadelphia, American and British lawyers have debated the legality of America's founding documents.

On Tuesday night, while Republican candidates in Nevada were debating such American issues as nuclear waste disposal and the immigration status of Mitt Romney's gardener, American and British lawyers in Philadelphia were taking on a far more fundamental topic.

Namely, just what did Thomas Jefferson think he was doing?

Called the Declaration of Independence, it was a blow for freedom, a call to war, and the founding of a new empire.

It was also totally illegitimate and illegal.

At least, that was what lawyers from the UK argued during a debate at Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Hall.

American experiment
The event, presented by the Temple American Inn of Court in conjunction with Gray's Inn, London, pitted British barristers against American lawyers to determine whether or not the American colonists had legal grounds to declare secession.

For American lawyers, the answer is simple: "The English had used their own Declaration of Rights to depose James II and these acts were deemed completely lawful and justified," they say in their summary.

To the British, however, secession isn't the legal or proper tool by which to settle internal disputes. "What if Texas decided today it wanted to secede from the Union? Lincoln made the case against secession and he was right," they argue in their brief.
=======

They still disagree. :)

Let's end the myths of Britain's imperial past

2011-10-19T23:39:00.002+01:00

www.guardian.co.uk

Let's end the myths of Britain's imperial past

The rebellions and resistance of the subject peoples of empire were so extensive that we may eventually come to consider that Britain's imperial experience bears comparison with the exploits of Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun rather than with those of Alexander the Great. The rulers of the empire may one day be perceived to rank with the dictators of the 20th century as the authors of crimes against humanity.

MMT

2011-10-17T19:17:00.001+01:00

http://hir.harvard.edu/debt-deficits-and-modern-monetary-theory

governments don’t have to tax or borrow in advance of spending

Anyone thinking OWS is 'socialist' is kidding themselves

2011-10-17T17:35:00.002+01:00

Here's a list of proposed OWS demands:

Posted Sept. 28, 2011

TACTICS FOR "DEMANDS FOR CONGRESS"

We should make the demands below very publicly at a press conference a few days after arriving in DC. When doing so, we should give a clear deadline of 3 days for a firm written commitment with signatures from at least 60% of members of House and 60% of the members of the Senate to pass these bills by the end of the year. If this commitment on the full slate of demands is not met by midnight on the 3rd day (which it won't be) we should be prepared to non-violently block access to all or part of the Capitol complex the next morning by traditional proven non-violent tactics. The purpose is to bring the leaders of the House and Senate to the negotiating table.

LIST OF PROPOSED "DEMANDS FOR CONGRESS"

CONGRESS PASS HR 1489 ("RETURN TO PRUDENT BANKING ACT"

THIS REINSTATES MANY PROVISIONS OF THE GLASS-STEAGALL ACT.
The repeal of provisions of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act in 1999 effectively removed the separation that previously existed between investment banking which issued securities and commercial banks which accepted deposits.

Radical huh? lol

USE CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY AND OVERSIGHT TO ENSURE APPROPRIATE FEDERAL AGENCIES FULLY INVESTIGATE AND PROSECUTE THE WALL STREET CRIMINALS who clearly broke the law and helped cause the 2008 financial crisis in the following notable cases

Radical, huh? lol

CONGRESS ENACT LEGISLATION TO PROTECT OUR DEMOCRACY BY REVERSING THE EFFECTS OF THE CITIZENS UNITED SUPREME COURT DECISION which essentially said corporations can spend as much as they want on elections.

Wow?

CONGRESS PASS THE BUFFETT RULE ON FAIR TAXATION SO THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE & CLOSE CORPORATE TAX LOOP HOLES AND ENACT A PROHIBITION ON HIDING FUNDS OFF SHORE.

Big deal.

CONGRESS COMPLETELY REVAMP THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION and staff it at all levels with proven professionals who get the job done protecting the integrity of the marketplace so citizens and investors are both protected.

Errr yeah....really socialist.

CONGRESS PASS SPECIFIC AND EFFECTIVE LAWS LIMITING THE INFLUENCE OF LOBBYISTS AND ELIMINATING THE PRACTICE OF LOBBYISTS WRITING LEGISLATION THAT ENDS UP ON THE FLOOR OF CONGRESS.

Says the OWS lobby group, which seeks the above demands.....lol

CONGRESS PASSING "Revolving Door Legislation" LEGISLATION ELIMINATING THE ABILITY OF FORMER GOVERNMENT REGULATORS GOING TO WORK FOR CORPORATIONS THAT THEY ONCE REGULATED.

Oh wow. Pathetic.

ELIMINATE "PERSONHOOD" LEGAL STATUS FOR CORPORATIONS. The film "The Corporation" has a great section on how corporations won "personhood status".

Errr....yeah...whatever.

Real radical socialism, right? Come off it.

New York Elections - September 13 2011

2011-10-16T17:19:00.002+01:00

Election results for New York Special Election, 9th Congressional District, 13th September 2011

Republican: 37,342
Democrat : 33,656
Socialist : 143

SOURCE

Says it all.

Try occupying the voting booth, not Wall Street?

Some more on OWS, and populism

2011-10-16T15:40:00.002+01:00

I went looking for some socialist criticism of OWS. I found an interesting article which mentions some theorist arguing for a left populism. It seems to echo my ill-formed thoughts on the matter:

The unity between the various identity groups, according to Laclau, must come by way of their organization around an antagonism with some ‘nemesis’ or enemy. It is by way of their unified opposition to this subjective enemy that political alliances are formed between the various political-cultural groups. Certainly this nemesis can be something like global capital or the financial class. However, Slavoj Žižek warns that this kind of populism has the potential to degenerate into some form of neo-Fascism.
SOURCE

That's part of my concern with OWS, for sure.

Populism, according to Žižek, obfuscates the objective violence of the system of capitalist exploitation by displacing it onto some external, subjective, enemy/intruder who disrupted the stability of the system. A populist perspective, in other words, sees nothing wrong with the system itself, internally, but instead perceives the intrusion of some external factor as that which caused the disruption. Nazi anti-Semitism is the clearest example of Fascist populism, which, rather than locating the cause of the crisis of the 1930s in something internal to capitalism, displaced the class struggle onto the anti-Semitic figure of the Jew.

Indeed. This can be seen in Rivero and the 911/Truth Movement's criticism of (degenerate) capitalism, rather than capitalism itself. For example, the support for extreme free-marketeering approach of Mises, supported by the Truth Movement's candidate of choice, RonPaul.

Unlike the Rightist Tea Party movement, which lays blame for the current crisis using racist, sexist, and homophobic rhetoric, OWS does not appear to be organized around some kind of populist politics, at least not in the sense used by Laclau or Žižek. The movement, though, is popular in the Gramscian sense, as evinced by the language of the ‘99%,’ which seems to be articulating popular frustration precisely in terms of ‘class warfare.’

I think the key words there are "seems to be".....in terms of class warfare. Only it isn't. One could claim fascism made calls which "seemed to be" in terms of class warfare, enough to persuade Roehm et al at least.

Undoubtedly there's some worth to OWS, for example the somewhat anti-capitalist and egalitarian rhetoric which might make new space for a more proper and newly viable leftwing alternative. But it isn't all good.

For one thing, the use of leftwing/socialist rhetoric by a movement which is self-consciously absent a socialist agenda is deeply problematic imo. Won't socialism be tarred with whatever failings the OWS eventually succumbs to? And if OWS is absent class-based politics, and absent socialism, isn't it essentially an endorsement of capitalism from a populist position....aren't they merely criticising "degenerate capitalism"....principally the same idea criticism fascism proposed. True, OWS is seemingly essentially absent of anti-semitism, but then what is its explanation for the 1%, absent class analysis and socialism? What exactly do they hold as "degenerate" about the capitalism they criticise and supposedly oppose, and what are the reasons for it?

I find OWS quite troubling in many ways. I do see the potential for a fascism within it, especially when reading the American-centric rhetoric of its (non) leaders. It's a national movement.....imbued with a lot of American rightwing populist ideas that have long been bubbling along in American working-class dialogue.

Hopefully my concern is misplaced......time will tell?

Occupy XYZ "Movement"

2011-10-16T04:01:00.005+01:00

It's a "movement"?

A movement with no leaders? And no demands? Is that really a movement?

There's no mention of socialism.....but of "social justice"...."wealth inequality"..."the 99%"...etc. And lots of mentions of "End the Fed"....whatever that's supposed to mean.

Strikes me this is too vague and idealistic to be a "real" social political movement. I'm very cynical about it all.

It's great that people feel motivated to complain.....that they want change.....but what change? These people think socialism was just invented? Oh, but they don't actually want socialism, do they, so....who knows....

They keep saying "we". Who is this "we"? What do this "we" want? "An end to the neo-liberal global banking blah blah blah". Oh, right, very good......what does that MEAN??? And what is it FOR? IF it's FOR an alternative - socialism - then say so? Otherwise, what is it FOR? All the "End the Fed" stuff smacks of the usual ignorant, vague, (far) right-wing American dross.

They say about themselves: "the protesters are fed up with both mainstream parties". AND SO WHAT??? Being "fed-up" is easy. What are you going to do instead? WHAT???

As a decentralized leaderless movement, in our opinion, there is no one group, organization, website or individual who can speak for the movement as a whole.

....and that's going to last how long? And err.....WHAT DO YOU WANT???

We will not be co-opted by hierarchical organizations. No matter how wonderful their cause may be.

WE won't? A decentralised leaderless movement speaks as "we"....? I don't see how it can.

I think they're making all the usual mistakes and forgetting much in the process.

We Are Winning

Every once in a while, in the course of some enormous struggle, those driven, tired, frazzled fighters have a moment or two to stop and think, to pick our heads up and look ahead. I had a moment like that a few days ago, and that’s when it hit me – like a blow to the head: We are winning. We are winning.

Sure, we haven’t captured government institutions, haven’t smashed the banks and the classes that control them, haven’t even won concrete reforms or come up with solid institutions to protect our gains. We aren’t even close to finishing the fight or creating the world we wish to live in. But – alongside revolutionaries around the world – we have helped to unlock the hidden and slumbering potential of millions of people, ready to believe again that there is an alternative.

Yes, people need to believe in the possibility of an alternative.

BUT WHAT IS IT?

Nobody knows.....oh, how reassuring!!

What Do We Want?

The media and politicians call us muddle-headed, and confused. They claim we have no demands or purpose. Well, let’s set the record straight. It’s not that we don’t have demands; it’s that we speak them in a different language. We speak them with our struggle. Our movement is made up of people fighting for jobs, for schools, for debt relief, equitable housing, and healthcare. We are resisting ecological destruction, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and crony-capitalism. We are doing it all in a way that is participatory, democratic, fierce, and unwavering. There is nothing very vague about that.

But we do not stop there. That, perhaps, is what sets us apart from those who wish to use our tremendous and growing power for small gains or modest reforms. We want more. We want it all. We want a political and economic system that we all actually control together, one that is equitable and humane, one that allows for people to self-manage but act in solidarity, one that is participatory and democratic to its core. We want a world where people have the right to their own identities, communities, and cultures, and the freedom from oppression and constraint. We want a world with institutions that take care of our youth, our elderly, and our families in ways that are nurturing, liberating, and consensual. We want a world in which community is not a hamper on individual freedom, but rather an expression of its fullest potential.

If that’s not a clear enough statement of demands for you, CNN, I don’t know what to tell you. And you know what? We’re only getting warmed up.

As we keep fighting, we will continue to ask ourselves difficult questions. What world do we envision? What values do we want to live by? What institutions do we need in order to live those values? What structures will we build to protect what we’ve won and create a platform for continued struggle? What will we win for ourselves, and what will we win for generations to come? How will we fight these enormous battles in a way that is both effective and reflective of the new world we are ushering in?

Hmmmm. You (whoops, I am supposed to say "we", right?) want all that.......but don't ever mention socialism. You're kidding yourselves if you think you are going to get any further than making a big noise. The moment it comes to making the first decision the entire thing will fall apart into factions of left and right. End of.

It's just a lot of pissed-off people. Big deal.

Not that it's worthless, not by any stretch. But it might be even worse than that.

A look at their "economic" manifesto or whatever is like looking at a student publication, or somesuch. And no socialism. Who do they think they are kidding?

Look at the agenda, and consider no mention of "socialism"....and apparently "no demands", "no manifesto" etc.....:

--Mass Unemployment

--Working More for Less

--The Rise of the Economic Elite

--Costs of Living

Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won

It’s time for 99% of Americans to mobilize and aggressively move on common sense political reforms.

We will obviously have many differences on how our country should be run, but we can all come together to dismantle the Economic Elite by making several pivotal political reforms. As long as the game is rigged in favor of the Economic Elite, we will all lose. So let’s find common ground and focus on several obvious battles that we need to win, and can win:

Election Reform

Governmental Policy Formation

Information Platforms

Healthcare

* Medical Costs: We have disagreements on how to best provide healthcare, but we all agree that whatever the method, the result needs to be lower costs.

Real Economic Competition

* Most Americans Believe in Competition

* Redistribution of Wealth: Due to the rigging of our economic and political system, vast sums of wealth have been hoarded by the Economic Elite over the past 40 years. This money must be redistributed to the 99% of Americans who have been robbed and exploited. There will be much heated debate over how this money should be distributed, but we all need to agree that we must first hold the Economic Elite accountable and our wealth must be seized from them.
SOURCE

Oh Lordy, I can't go on with this.....it's a lot of vague populist rot. Astonishing they can get people off their arses, especially for that vague populist rubbish they're touting. Though that's probably why they can manage to motivate people to protest....it's all so vague and obviously hollow that there's no room for disagreement....just vaguely shared sentiment and dis-satisfaction.

No wonder they're so fearful and concerned about being co-opted. What's the alternative? Continue just mouthing complaints?

The empty, populist tone is worrying.

Semi Final of the World Cup: Come on Boyos

2011-10-15T00:45:00.002+01:00

Consciousness

2011-10-12T19:14:00.002+01:00

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work before. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.

With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.

Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we can not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production.

No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.

Therefore, mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois modes of production as so many progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism.

This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.

Preface to 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy' (1859) Marx

Rivero's phony anti-fascism

2011-10-10T07:55:00.005+01:00

Here's Rivero, laughably defining Capitalism, Socialism, Commmunism and Fascism:

Okay, one more time, and please take notes; there may be a quiz on this material next class!

A Capitalist system is one in which if you make a lot of money you get to keep it, and if you lose a lot of money you have to pay off that debt all by yourself. That is what the United States started out to be.

Socialism, or communism, is a system where if you make money, it is taxed from you and spent on society and if you lose money, society's taxes are used to cover the loss. That is what they used to do in the USSR and still do in many European nations with high living standards.

Fascism is where if you make money you get to keep it, but if you lose money all of society is forced to cover the losses. And after $27 trillion in bailouts taken from the American people to pay for Wall Street's criminal mortgage-backed securities fraud (the biggest financial swindle in history), it is obvious to any unbiased observer that the United States, for all its pretensions to the contrary, has failed as a capitalist system and has devolved to a fascist economic state.

So, what OccupyINSERTYOURTOWNHERE is protesting against is not Capitalism, but Fascism. And the next question is, unless you abuse yourself to pictures of Benito Mussolini late at night, why aren't you out there standing shoulder to shoulder with them?

Since when was fascism about crony capitalism and corporate welfare? When did this become the definition of fascism? Rather, fascism made this type of criticism against capitalism.

Why doesn't Rivero say this to his friends and fellow-travellers, such as Willis Carto, The American Free Press, The IHR, the Adelaide Institute, John De Nugent, etc? If loving Mussolini is so bad, why do so many of his favoured sources do it?

Setting up a false definition of fascism means one can attack a strawman whilst avoiding being identified one's self as the real thing.

Fascism is ultra-nationalism if it is anything, a characteristic entirely absent from Rivero's phony definition. Fascism was also anti-socialist and sought not the abolition of class (as communism does), but rather a means to bind the classes in subservience to a greater idea - that of the nation - blood and soil. Crony capitalism would be a betrayal of fascism, of sorts, exploiting the people for the sake of 'the few'. Similarly, 'globalisation' is antagonistic to fascism, as it is an internationalisation of capital which pits pursuit of capital interests against those of nationalism (eg offshoring of production, loss of jobs overseas, capital flight.)

Fascism's anti-capitalism was really anti-degenerate-capitalism ie anti-Jewish capitalism: the Jews were blamed for the degeneracy, much as Rivero blames them (and their supposed lack of commitment to national interest). The classic idea is of the stateless Jew, interested in greedy pursuit of capital at the expense of the 'host' nation's interest and those of it's "real" citizens - the essence of Rivero's complaint.

In an earlier post by Rivero about the OccupyWallSt protests, and Glen Beck's response to it, Rivero says that

"this movement isn't about left or right; the old paradigms have ceased to work"

Well, actually that's an historic claim of fascism which fashioned itself as "the third way". Rivero also says:

what I have seen happening over the last decade is this country pursuing immoral wars without end, which are not making Americans any safer; a deliberate destruction of the middle class, through offshoring; the impoverishment of people who now cannot make their house payments, getting pushed into abject poverty, and sleeping in homeless camps through no fault of their own.

Remember, Rivero is no socialist. So what is he really saying there? Rivero adds:

I see a government which is so co-opted by corporate influence that this country now has a government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.

Oh, suddenly it's corporate influence that controls America.....not Tel Aviv....as it was last week. However, if we read "corporate influence" as meaning the influence of "degenerate Jewish capitalism" then we have essentially the same meaning as blaming Tel Aviv. Rivero again:

I see a parasitical Federal Reserve....

In a previous comment the same day Rivero claims:

Israel wants #OccupyAMERICA destroyed.

Hmmmm. And this:

Rush Limbaugh is an idiot serving his Israel masters by trying to discredit OccupyAMERICA

Israel has issued their orders to all the servants in the US Government and media to derail Occupy AMERICA by any means necessary

Is that the "corporate influence" Rivero says is running and ruining America? Just a few days ago Rivero was complaining that:

These Congressional Committees have demonstrated, without a shadow of a doubt, in this move to whom they report; and it is not to We the People of the United States, but those in the bowels of power in Tel Aviv.

So, corporate influence.....or Tel Aviv? Or are they actually the same thing for Rivero?

John Birch Paranoid Blues

2011-10-05T21:41:00.000+01:00

Rivero's hypocrisy.....yes more of it

2011-10-04T21:03:00.005+01:00

I saw this at WRH today:

It reminded me that just a few days ago Rivero quoted himself saying:

Funny. He must imagine nobody is actually reading anything he writes, or they're too dumb to notice or care about his constant hypocrisy.

Rivero's Sedition

2011-10-03T23:04:00.008+01:00

Rivero's been openly engaging in sedition. It's certainly a crime in most states (whether it's a crime or not in the USA, I do not know*). Here's an example:

Here's what seems to be the relevant USA Law, as it stands today:

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 115 > § 2385

§ 2385. ADVOCATING OVERTHROW OF GOVERNMENT

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

As used in this section, the terms “organizes” and “organize”, with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units of such society, group, or assembly of persons.
-------------

What an idiot.

More of Rivero's sedition:

Egypt and Iceland taught us all that revolution is indeed possible. It can succeed. An angry populace, tired of living looted lives, can throw out the criminal bankers and the criminal government.

And....

It is simple.

Revolution equals a better life.

And.....

"We're gonna start building gallows!"

And he says he supports "non-violence"? Oh, sure.

You don't try to bring a cancer under tighter political control.

You kill it.

Well, seems pretty clearly seditious. Contrary to Rivero's idea that he's living in a police-state with total information control, he's apparently quite allowed to engage in sedition without penalty. If he thinks that's the same thing going on in Egypt, and the Arab Spring/Summer, he's crazy. Here's Wiki's definition of sedition:

Sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power. Sedition is encouraging one's fellow citizens to rebel against their state, whereas treason is actually betraying one's country by aiding and abetting another state. Sedition laws somewhat equate to terrorism and public order laws.

Arguing to change policy or government - or even the Constitution is allowed, so long as it is pursued through democratic methods. Gallows and revolution are not democratic and clearly not constitutional.

Prediction

2011-10-01T10:42:00.003+01:00

The Independent is reporting that the USA is threatening to cut aid of $200m to Palestine if they pursue statehood at UN.

Back in March, Rivero said : "the US should be using foreign aid as a "stick" as well as a carrot".

Let's see what Rivero says about the USA using foreign aid as a stick against Palestine. There's no news at WRH for October 1st as of yet (it's still AM here in UK).

Somehow we know he won't be applauding.
----------

UPDATE. Rivero/WRH's response is in. Are they applauding the use of foreign aid as "a stick"? No. Big shock. There are several articles about the story linked at WRH. Here's Rivero's own responses:

These Congressional Committees have demonstrated, without a shadow of a doubt, in this move to whom they report; and it is not to We the People of the United States, but those in the bowels of power in Tel Aviv.

And:

Report: US blocks $200 million in aid to PA

Which the Saudis immediately cover! So, I guess Israel will throw another tantrum that it cannot have its way and torment the Palestinians without interference, and order the US Government to attack Saudi Arabia, spilling lots more American blood into the dust of the oil fields.

Rivero's hypocrisy.....again

2011-09-28T13:19:00.007+01:00

Here's Rivero's 'Thought for the Day' - written by himself: about how borders are just 'lines on a map'.

Yes, sure, great sentiment. Nothing new to international socialism, but there we go.

However, here's a selection of Rivero's previous comments relating to immigration - what happened to his sentiment expressed in 'Thought for the Day'?

And those are just the 'immigration' stories Rivero has commented under the section 'Immigration/NAU'. There are many other articles promoted there, all anti-immigration, just Rivero hasn't directly commented. The articles wouldn't be promoted at WRH if Rivero didn't agree.

Hypocrite.

And of course, over Israel/Palestine Rivero's call for ignoring borders is in sharp contrast to his real views:

MR: Another claim that Israel likes to make is that Palestine never really existed to start with.

Again, maps tell a different story.

Oh, now those lines on the maps are suddenly very important. Right.....

Hypocrite.

Killing of an American Nazi

2011-09-27T03:23:00.009+01:00

Killing of an American Nazi

By his 10 yr old son

Look at those idiots?

The Nazi killed by his son had previously stood for election in California - receiving 30% of the vote, so they claim. wow.

The photo-journalist who spent 12 months with the NationalSocialistMovement before the murder was Julie Platner, her website is here.

Sad.

-----

Seems he ran in an election for the local water board (whatever that is)

October 19, 2010|By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times
Political newcomer Jeff Hall has run a discreet campaign trying to unseat an incumbent on an obscure Riverside County water board. He hasn't posted any signs, didn't show up to a candidates forum and lists no occupation on the November ballot.

But Hall is well-known as a white supremacist.

Hall's bid for a seat on the board of directors of the Western Municipal Water District has drawn outcry from community groups dismayed that a neo-Nazi who has held racist rallies at a day laborer center and a synagogue wants to administer their water — or at least gain publicity in the quest to do so.
SOURCE

Running the water board? Ah well.

Hypocrisy that's hard to beat

2011-09-27T03:02:00.005+01:00

a joint military offensive with Iran against their common enemy: Kurdish rebels......

Oh, so that's fine then. Clearly, Kurds aren't Palestinian or Arab so they don't matter. Or more likely, they aren't being attacked by Jews so they don't matter.

Sheesh. Rivero is disgusting. Is it credible to imagine that if Palestine was populated by Kurds Rivero would care as little about them as he does today? It isn't violence Rivero opposes - it's who does it that matters: if it's American or Israeli violence, it's bad whereas Turkish and Iranian violence is fine, apparently. Despicable.

Rivero's Idiocy

2011-09-26T17:01:00.005+01:00

Well, ok, but what about the constitution of the following Islamic states?

Pakistan: Whereas sovereignty over the entire Universe belongs to Almighty Allah alone, and the authority to be exercised by the people of Pakistan within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust....Islam shall be the State religion of Pakistan

Iran: The form of government of Iran is that of an Islamic Republic, endorsed by the people of Iran on the basis of their longstanding belief in the sovereignty of truth and Qur'anic justice

Saudi Arabia: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its religion; God's Book and the Sunnah of His Prophet, God's prayers and peace be upon him, are its constitution…

Sudan: Those working for the state and those in public life should worship God in their daily lives, for Muslims this is through observing the Holy Quran and the ways of the Prophet, and all people shall preserve the principles of religion and reflect this in their planning, laws, policies, and official work or duties

Malaysia: Islam is the religion of the Federation; but other religions may be practiced in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation

Indonesia: …the national independence of Indonesia shall be formulated into a constitution of the sovereign Republic of Indonesia which is based on the belief in the One and Only God…

Iraq: Islam is the religion of the State

Egypt: Islam is the Religion of the State. Arabic is its official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).

Jordan: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is an Independent sovereign Arab State…Islam is the religion of the State and Arabic is its official language.

Tunisia: Tunisia is a free State, independent and sovereign; its religion is the Islam, its language is Arabic, and its form is the Republic

Morocco: An Islamic and fully sovereign state whose official language is Arabic, the Kingdom of Morocco constitutes a part of the Great Arab Maghreb

Kuwait: Kuwait is an Arab State, independent and fully sovereign....The religion of the State is Islam…

Afghanistan: The Republic of Afghanistan is an independent, unitary and indivisible and Islamic State, having sovereignty over the whole of its territory…

Yemen: Islam is the religion of the state and Arabic is its official language

Syria: The religion of the President of the Republic has to be Islam....Islamic jurisprudence is a main source of legislation

Bahrain: Bahrain is an Arab Islamic State, independent and fully sovereign and its people are part of the Arab nation

Libya: The Libyan people are part of the Arab nation. Islam is the religion of the State and Arabic is its official Language.

Oman: The Sultanate of Oman is an independent, Arab, Islamic, fully sovereign state with Muscat as its capital

Bangladesh: The state religion of the Republic is Islam

SOURCE

My Friday Night

2011-09-24T02:43:00.002+01:00

I made a couple of tunes. Need some work, but not bad for a few hours.

Tax Rises and Class War

2011-09-21T15:46:00.005+01:00

If tax-rises on the wealthy are class-war then it must follow that not having tax-rises are class-war on the poor.

Can't have it both ways.

And funny how class is only recognised when taxes for the the wealthy are mentioned. No such thing as class, apparently.....until taxes on the wealthy are considered....then it's suddenly class-war.

From 'The Economist' :

BARACK OBAMA'S proposal to raise tax rates on the rich has resulted in the usual ruckus. Republicans have declared class war. Mr Obama has replied: "This is not class warfare—it's math".
SOURCE

Remarkably the writer adds

Mr Obama claims to be on the side of the working and middle-classes, but I would submit that this sort of tax policy is in fact trivial. It's electoral public relations. The edges are precisely what this sort of thing is around. Our economy is riddled with a multitude of deeply-embedded structural flaws that allow the well-connected to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us, but nobody will do anything about it. There is a class war in this country, a war between the subsidy barons, the regulatory arbitrageurs, the patent monopolists and the rest of us. Mr Obama is a class warrior. The trouble is he's on the wrong side.

That may be so, but at least Obama is now exposing the Republicans' real interest and their commitment to class war (against the masses). It also puts the heat on The Tea Party and their ridiculous "No more taxes" line. Very smart, methinks.

From The Guardian:

With unemployment now at 9.1% and income inequality at record levels, the president is hoping to put pressure on Republicans who have staunchly rejected any tax increases and have called for deep cuts in government spending on the US's Medicare, Medicaid and social security programmes.
SOURCE

They add the usual statistics which the left has been banging on about for.....100s of years:

Last week the US census revealed that 46 million Americans – one in six – now live in poverty, the highest number ever.

• In 2010, the top 20% of Americans earned 49.4% of the nation's income. The top 1% account for 24% of all income.

• People who make money from investments pay far lower taxes than those who earn it from their wages.

• Last year Warren Buffett, who has a $50bn personal fortune, paid $6.9m in federal taxes – 17.4% of his taxable income. The other 20 people in his office paid between 33% and 41%.

Rivero Cunt -- Number 3655 in a long, long list

2011-09-21T02:09:00.006+01:00

That's a very strange thing for Rivero to quote when Rivero insists the Holocaust never happened.

So what is he really saying? That several American companies dealt with IG Farben et al who were involved with Auschwitz.....which was afterall merely a factory which provided swimming pools for its 'staff' and which never did anything wrong at all, really? Yada yada.

Fuck off you cunt/.

And let's not forget some of Rivero's best chums and fellow travellers are Nazis. So what is he saying?

Larry jumps the shark - as they say

2011-09-14T00:27:00.011+01:00

Larry aka RealTruthOnline has "jumped the shark" as they say.

For years, Larry (and all the other conspiracist twats) have been arguing that Al Qaida was really a false-front for American Imperialism. They said AQ was really the CIA, and everything it did was working to further American (elite) interests.

Now, however, Larry (along with many others - including Ron Paul) is arguing that Al Qaida and 911 shows that interventionist American foreign policy is a problem. They argue that "Get out of supporting Israel (and being the world's policeman) then there will be no Al Qaida attacks."

But if one is to believe that, and one accepts the conspiracy premises, it would mean the CIA and the "real power" behind America wants America to be non-interventionist. That's despite Larry and all the conspiracist crazies arguing that the supposed false-flag Al Qaida stuff is designed to get America TO intervene and that AQ exists merely to provide a justification for global intervention - the war on terror etc.

It doesn't make any sense. (Don't let that surprise you!)

Larry writes that Ron Paul said this (about interventionism) :

“As long as this country follows that idea, we’re going to be under a lot of danger. This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and they’re attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, they have been explicit and they wrote and said that we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment and you have been bombing…[crowd boos]…I didn’t say that, I’m trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombing. At the same time, we had been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years. Would you be annoyed? If you’re not annoyed, there’s some problem.”

So Ron Paul is saying AQ attacked America because of its intervention in the Mid East, whatever. But people like Larry have been saying for 10 years that AQ is a false-front, and that their purpose (a la 911) is legitimising intervention in the Mid East etc.

You can't have it both ways.

If you are going to argue AQ is an extension of the CIA blah blah blah, and that it is designed to legitimise American intervention in the Middle East, legitimise American wars, legitimise Israeli wars for Israeli interests....you cannot then argue that AQ represents genuine Arab opinion and is caused by American interventionism.

If you are going to argue (as Ron Paul is doing) that the 911 attacks illustrate why the USA should not be involved abroad (especially the Mid East) - because it generates terrorism ---- you CANNOT then argue that AQ is a false-flag operation designed to enable American intervention in the Mid East etc.

Wow.

Ron Paul is in deep shit over this. Or at least he should be.

All anyone has to do to finish Ron Paul is put it to him -

1) are AQ representing genuine muslim/MidEast issues with American interventionism/Imperialism - in which case we(USA) should withdraw if we want to avoid terrorism (the anti-interventionist line)

or

2) are AQ a false-flag, CIA-run organisation providing a justification for American intervention in MidEast etc (the usual conspiracist rendition of the situation)

It's quite amusing how much of RP's support rests upon both premises without ever seeing the dichotomy. A la Larry.

If one accepts the conspiracist angle, as so many Ron Paul supporters do, we can rewrite Ron Paul's speech like this:

The CIA (via their controlled asset, Al Qaida) are saying that ......"we attacked America because you had bases on holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment and you have been bombing....and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years."

Does anybody believe that represents the real beliefs of those in the CIA? Does anybody think that is what the CIA is really about? Yet if the conspiracists are to be believed, and AQ is merely a CIA front, then that represents the real intent of the CIA - the real reason for the CIA running Al Qaida.

What complete (and self-evident) rubbish!!!

Ron Paul is playing it both ways. He is either taking the 911 Troofers for fools (why not?) or he is playing Joe Public as a fool. Either way, RP has dropped Troofers right in it.

Not that they will notice. Larry didn't.

Larry writes:

It turns out that Ron Paul is correct. In a 1998 interview conducted by ABC’s John Miller, Bin Laden said these words:

“The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target."

So, you see, if AQ is a CIA-run front organisation, then what the CIA and "the real power behind America" wants is.....a cessation of the war against Islam, cessation of meddling in the affairs of Islam, an end to support for oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regimes. etc. haha. It's scarcely credible is it? Ron Paul is either trying to deceive the American public, or he's just crapped over the whole idea of AQ as a false-front, CIA entity. Troofers please take note? You can't have it both ways.

911 and a frenzy of conspiracy to commemorate the big 10

2011-09-13T17:27:00.007+01:00

So, the 10th anniversary of the 911 attacks has been commemorated. As far as 911Troof is concerned that means a frenzy of reiterating the same old crap they've been churning out every day, month and year since it happened. Nice. Respect, huh?

I've been going through WhatReallyHappened's list of bullshit, and responding in my usual sceptical way and my comments have been deleted at an unprecedented rate.

It's quite funny to post scepticism at all these places only to have it deleted (and rubbished as the work of Mossad, of course. When do my cheques arrive for all this work, Mossad? Everyone says I'm due a payment.....and I could do with it thanks very much.)

Usually I'd document the instances of censorship, but really, what's the point? I'm tired of doing it, especially as it achieves nothing. This isn't an argument about evidence, though that's what Troofers like to claim it is. Material evidence doesn't impact upon faith - and that's what 911 Troof is really about - faith. The censorship undertaken by Troof is a material fact, aside from the facts of the matter regarding 911 itself, and that's why I have always tried to document it. But I'm tired of the whole thing. I'm still nevertheless fascinated by it. It's a socio-political phenomena, which transcends 911 conspiracy eg Hofstader's "Paranoid Style". I find it fascinating, especially as it informs my view of the rise of Nazism which previously I could never comprehend. Nazism was conspiracism, and its appeals are echoed throughout conspiracism, including 911 Troof. So, as stupid as it is, it is important, only not for the reasons Troofers and all the other kooks imagine.

I suspect this will probably be the last year that 911 Troof has any real significance as a popular meme. It's going to increasingly become part of the mythology of conspiracism, rather than an active political force by itself. Good riddance. Maybe we can move on to some real issues now?

The problem is, when Troof moves onto other issues (if it does) then it's going to be anti-semitism - the mother-lode of conspiracism. But at least with 911 forever increasingly passing into history, fascism's opportunity to exploit it will also be receding at the same pace.

WRH - Turkey - Drones - All cool

2011-09-12T23:08:00.004+01:00

That passes without comment at WRH. So, Turkey wanting predator-drones stationed in Turkey to aid its war against Kurdish insurgency is.....fine. Need I point out the hypocrisy?

While we're at it, American-sponsored Turkish military equipment put to use against Israel is fine too, right? It's "criminal" when Israel is involved but perfectly fine when it's Turkey?

What's the explanation, if not anti-semitism?

Everywhere is war.....

2011-09-12T19:44:00.005+01:00

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey's prime minister said Monday that Israel's raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last year was "cause for war" but added that his country showed "patience" and refrained from taking any action.

Erdogan made the comments before departing for a visit to Egypt later on Monday, where he will seek to boost his government's already high standing in the Arab world — a position he has achieved in part by challenging Israel on the world stage.

Erdogan, intent on broadening Turkey's influence in the Middle East and the Arab world, will also visit Tunisia and Libya, two other countries where popular uprisings have ousted autocratic leaders.

Erdogan told Al-Jazeera television in a recent interview that the Israeli raid, which killed eight Turks and a Turkish American on board a Turkish ship trying to break Israel's naval blockade of Gaza, occurred in international waters and was "unlawful."

His comments were carried by Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency late Sunday.

"It is a cause for war, but we decided to act in line with Turkey's grandeur and showed patience," Erdogan said.

An Israeli government spokesman was not immediately available for comment, but Israel insists its naval commandos acted in self-defense after being attacked by some of the activists.

Israel has expressed regret for the loss of lives aboard the flotilla and said Tuesday it was time for the two countries to restore their former close ties.

A U.N. report into the raid, released earlier this month, said Israel's naval blockade was legitimate but accused Israel of using "excessive and unreasonable" force in the raid.

Turkey has been angered over Israel's refusal to apologize for the raid.
In response, Turkey this month suspended its military ties with Israel, expelled top Israeli diplomats, pledged to campaign in support of the Palestinians' statehood bid and vowed to send the Turkish navy to escort Gaza-bound aid ships in the future.

On Monday, a Turkish newspaper, Sabah, said three navy ships have begun preparations ahead of their deployment in the east Mediterranean to escort ships that would carry aid to the Gaza Strip in the international waters of the Mediterranean. Turkey's military would not comment, and Turkey's Foreign Ministry said it had no information on any possible deployment. Sabah did not say when the ships would set sail.

Israel insists there is no need for aid to Gaza since it eased restrictions on imports through land crossings, labeling the flotillas political provocations.

Erdogan's visit to Egypt coincides with increasingly troubled ties between Cairo and Israel following an attack on the Israeli embassy there. Israel fears that it is being left increasingly isolated by the Arab Spring, which is changing the power dynamics in the region, alongside tense relations former ally Turkey.

Erdogan "will try to impress (the Arab) public opinion by giving messages clearly emphasizing Turkey's rift with Israel," said Mustafa Turkes of the Middle East Technical University's International Relations Department.
SOURCE

Of course, Rivero and other anti-semites cheer this. Along with Al Qaida, HAMAS, Nazism and every other opponent of Israel. What a motley crue.

People need wake up, before it's too late.

FBI documents on "5 dancing Israelis"

2011-09-12T01:41:00.006+01:00

Someone has used FOIA to obtain the FBI documents for their investigation into the infamous "5 dancing Israelis" of 911, often supposed by conspiracists to be direct evidence of Israeli responsibility, an 'inside job', whatever.

The documents are available via a blogpost, here. The website is called, Zionism Stinks. At least they proclaim their bias, eh?

Read the entire document as I did (500 pages of forms) and one is left with the near-certainty that there's absolutely nothing to this story. Absolutely nothing.

The real story is how such a paucity of cause has led to 10 years of suspicion, and direct claims of Israeli-state involvement. Ridiculous.

I can only see the whole thing as an illustration of prejudice. How else to explain 10 years of claims about (Jewish/Israeli) conspiracy? The documents simply do not provide any justification for it.

People like Rivero use people like Ryan Dawson to make outrageous claims, all to serve an anti-semitic and conspiracist agenda. People like Ryan Dawson bleat that they aren't anti-semitic, yet they embrace and promote people such as Mike Rivero, and sources and audiences such as WhatReallyHappened.com

The fact is, the far-right seek to discredit and undermine confidence in the democratic-liberal state, whilst simultaneously blaming Jews for it. They make use of whomever and whatever they can.

This "dancing Israeli" rubbish is just one vector for the process.

Of course "Israeli" doesn't quite strictly mean "Jew", but it's close enough for the anti-semite. That's the value of people like Ryan Dawson to Rivero - Dawson doesn't have to say "JEW", Rivero can say it, and each of their audiences understands what is meant anyway. Who doesn't? To illustrate:

Dawson writes explicitly that "911 was the Mossad." Attempting to innoculate himself from charges of anti-semitism, he adds: "Understand that Israel is not Jewish people OK please get that through your warped heads."

(Why does he think every reader's head is warped?)

So, 'Israel is not Jewish people'? Ok. But then what race and religion is he referring to here when he expounds on the real perps:

[Mossad]is not an Israeli intelligence agency per say it is a terrorist agency for the military industrial complex which feeds off of the hatred of the bigots and useful idiots concentrated in Israel. The US and Israel are not really different countries in a way. The US and Israeli agencies and their Neocon governments work for their own interests and those interests are guided by a racist, political ideology mixed up with a fascist version of a religion and Straussian philosophy.

Sorry, but the carefully avoided word there is "JEW" - in both the religious and ethnic senses. If they are guided by racism, then what race is meant if not Jew? And likewise the 'fascist religion' - what does that mean if not Judaism? It's disingenuous of Dawson to claim he doesn't target Jews or Judaism - he clearly does - but in a convoluted fashion.

This is how "dancing Israelis" becomes anti-semitism.

I noted previously how Dawson had turned the "dancing Israeli" story from myth and conjecture into solid fact. He claims:

"individuals were caught on 911 with explosives.....and worked for an intelligence agency of a foreign country that benefited from 911.....and lied about Anthrax, the war and everything that followed it..."

Mossad and Israel....which according to Dawson supposedly run America for their own interests - ie of the Jewish race and the Jewish religion.

The utility of this to the anti-semitic far-right is obvious and seems the most likely reason for Rivero's patronage and promotion of Dawson.

But check the actual FBI documents and there is absolutely no reason to imagine the 'dancing' Israelis were Mossad agents. They're a bunch of punks, at least one of which was found in possession of a hash bong-pipe (illegal). They were working for a boss who purposefully employed illegals so as to underpay them and to avoid payroll taxes - and whom one employee described to the FBI as "a crook". Another interviewee described one of the supposed perps as "a clown" and incapable of involvement in 911. Moreover, none of the photos the 'dancers' took showed the WTC before the first plane had hit. They, along with the rest of NewYork, only took an interest in the WTC after the first plane had hit and the building began burning/smoking.

The FBI (seemingly perfectly appropriately) concluded there was no reason whatsoever to imagine these people were involved and so handed jurisdiction to the INS (because of visa expiry issues) before their subsequent deportation. There seems to be absolutely nothing in any of it re 911, Mossad, inside-job, explosives, truck-bombs.......NOTHING.

Yet in the hands of 'the Real 911 Troof movement" - such as Dawson and Rivero - this non-story becomes the foundation of a vast anti-semitic tale of unchecked Israeli and Mossad subversion of America explaining everything from the Anthrax attacks to the banking crisis, the Iraq war and most everything else.

Even as Dawson claims he doesn't target Jews or Judaism, he clearly does. Moreover, his work (outrageous unsupported cconspiracism) is promoted by anti-semites such as Rivero, with Dawson's full consent and support. Dawson even stated he was 'happy to get the traffic' when David Duke promoted him.

When the ADL (accurately) criticise such people for using their outrageous unfounded claims to promote anti-semitic conspiracism, Dawson & Rivero et al just add the ADL to the conspiracy, and flat-out deny the charges (which they nevertheless feel a need to misrepresent rather than properly address).

911 conspiracy is the biggest lot of rot I have ever come across. It is no surprise that in 10 years 'the movement' has produced nothing of substance and has gained no traction, crackpots notwithstanding. What a waste of 10 years.

ADL criticise Ryan Dawson

2011-09-11T07:46:00.003+01:00

The ADL have criticised 911 Troof conspiracism, including Ryan Dawson, AKA Rys2Sense.

Dawson responded in an open letter thus:

It seems to me that the ADL wants to quickly paint questioning 911 as akin to racism in order to prevent investigation.

Dawson says this even though in his own most recent video he himself criticises the presence of Joooo obsessed Troofers in his 'movement' - including people promoting William Pierce's National Alliance and "jew this, jew that".

So Dawson's own video vindicates the general point of the ADL's criticism of 911 Troof.

But anyway, WhatReallyHappened linked to a website carrying the ADL's criticism of 911 Truth and Ryan Dawson. The website is called 'theinfounderground', the specific page is here.

Ryan Dawson's letter appears in a thread introduced as "ADL goes after Ryan Dawson and Mike Delany".

Folowwing the letter, there are some revealing responses. The first:

Fuck the ADL
We support our 2 friends

Word for Word truth from our 2 friends

Friends? Third response:

Yeah... I guess our buddies Mike D. and Ryan D. are "capturing" the younger generation to a degree...their Anti-Jew Scam videos on 9/11 must have hit a "magic" number... ADL Scam J'Tards always fear the next generation is going give them the boot!

Buddies? Their Anti-Jew Scam videos on 911?

This is right after Dawson's letter in which he is claiming his 'movement' is not anti-semitic, and that the ADL uses criticism of anti-semitism as a means to protect Israel!

Well, Dawson is either ignorant of his precious 'movement' or he is being dishonest about its (anti-semitic) character.

A later entry in the thread links another page elsewhere but which was also directly linked to from WhatReallyHappened. At this page the first lines read:

"Being labeled an "anti-Semite" is an honor these days. All it means is someone who is against the Jewish criminal gang that dominates the global power structure."
SOURCE

The old anti-semite as hero malarkey.

This was linked to from a site of which Ryan Dawson is a member - WhatReallyHappened.com. Dawson and the webmaster Mike Rivero seem pretty chummy, they've long been promoting each other, now they're calling themselves "the real truth movement" yada yada.

But Dawson isn't an anti-semite.....and his movement isn't either. So he says.

Well, what about WhatReallyHappened.com linking direct to these clearly anti-semitic places and them treating Ryan Dawson as a friend and buddy? These people are yanking the chain on anti-semitism.......yet they consider Ryan 'anti-racist' Dawson a friend!

Peculiar.

According to Dawson, himself and Rivero are 'the real Truth movement'.

Whilst Dawson is opining about how 911 Troof is not anti-semitic we have his ally Rivero linking to all sorts of crud and proving that it most certainly is anti-semitic.

And these people - Rivero and Dawson - are supposedly "allies"?

Hardly makes sense, does it?

Seems they say the same things, except Dawson denies anti-semitism whilst Rivero promotes it.

Rys2Sense - a slowly evolving consciousness?

2011-09-11T03:48:00.010+01:00

Rys2Sense aka Ryan Dawson webmaster of anti-neocons.com has a new video. For once there's a novelty - at least a few minutes of genuine interest.

Somewhere in the middle of this video Ryan Dawson seems finally to be properly recognising some of the problems with Troofiness, anti-semitism and the far-right.

Nevertheless he immediately switches back to claiming Israel did 911, and Zionism this, and Zionism that, rah rah rah. But for a few moments he seems to be actually beginning to distinguish racism, anti-semitism and the presence of the far-right within what he calls "the movement" (911 Troof Movement). He even mentions people saying "jew this, jew that". (What about Zionist this, Zionist that? Doh!)

It will be interesting to see what sort of response he gets. I suspect he seriously underestimates the influence of fascism on 911 Troof and his audience. One example - he claims himself, Sibel Edmonds and Rivero are 'the real truth movement'.

It's quite astonishing for him to say such a thing considering his video and the criticism of racism in "the movement". Likewise when one sees him responding in the comments thread over at WhatReallyHappened, surrounded by obvious and blatant anti-semitism conjured for the purpose of exploitation.....by Rivero.

What are the comments of a supposed 'anti-racist' like Ryan Dawson doing amongst the anti-semitism of WhatReallyHappened? Why does Dawson think Rivero attracts such people? Can't he see it? Can't he see how absurd it looks to be found amongst that crowd - saying what they do - at the same time he's criticising racism within 'the movement' in his video?

But not only has Ryan Dawson been amongst such people for years he even claims Rivero/WRH is "the real 911 Truth Movement".

Oh, so it must be just bad luck that Rivero attracts the audience he does. And it's just blind chance that Ryan Dawson is to be found amomgst them, sharing much of the same audience. It's got nothing to do with people actually digging the Jew-bashing.......? It's got nothing to do with the fact their content attracts the far-right, racists and anti-semites? Sure.

In the video Dawson relates some tale about getting a little too mixed-up with people into William Pierce. To his credit he disowns them. However, Dawson doesn't seem to quite understand the issue - how is it he is getting too close to such people in the first place? They're your audience Ryan......that's Rivero's audience, his friends and colleagues, his fellow-travellers. It isn't LUCK.

I mean, does he understand Rivero or even his own audience? Doesn't he read what Rivero writes? Doesn't he read the comments from his fellow WRH members? Doesn't he see the comments at YouTube and at his website when he posts stupid Holocaust denial videos? Does he not pick-up the far-right agenda and memes running throughout his own website forum?

Perhaps he's beginning to notice. I sense something a little changed in his consciousness and I can only imagine it will develop, especially now he's mentioning the problem. What will his audience say? How will his beloved Troof Movement respond? It can surely only confirm what appears to be his emerging, more conscious thoughts.

Here's the vid, dated Sept 10th, 2011:

It's worth comparing his position on the video with the article and comments he responded to at WRH on the same day. [Go to bottom of entry for Dawson and others' comments.] Example:

We know WHO did 9/11.

9/11 was jews.
9/11 was Israel.
9/11 was zionists.

How many rats have to carry the plague, before you start exterminating rats?

Anti-semitic? You betcha. If you're not anti-semitic, my question to you is; WHY NOT?

Ryan Dawson hasn't quite got his eyes open yet, has he? He's got a way to go.

I wonder how much of an audience he will have left if he continues pursuing these themes and developing his consciousness so. Interesting to watch what will happen.

----------

Lots of things to complain about in the video. Taking just one - he says "individuals were caught on 911 with explosives.....and worked for an intelligence agency of a foreign country that benefited from 911.....and lied about Anthrax, the war and everything that followed it..."

ISRAEL!!! TADA!!!!

Surprise?

But who was found with explosives? And did they work for Mossad, or some such? It isn't as simple as Ryan Dawson believes. Not at all.

Does he seriously think an operation to demolish the twin towers was setup just that morning? They only just finished rigging the demolition early that day hence they were driving around NYC in a van of explosives on 911.....? Seriously?

Anyway, here's an excellent page debunking this story.

Troofers and haters quote the original news sources from 911, but never the corrections which followed a few minutes later. The corrections added that contrary to earlier reports the trucks DID NOT contain explosives. Apart from that, there's nothing else to the story.

Dawson not only claims rumours from the day as fact (truck-bomb attack against Washington Bridge), he mixes up the story with another about "the 5 dancing Israelis". The 5 dancing Israelis suddenly become the truck-bombers......and as they simply must work for MOSSAD then for Dawson the whole story of 911, Anthrax and 'the wars' explains itself. Zionism!!! Dun Dun Dun!!! Surprised, right?

That's how these Troofers roll.......

---

Oh, and I can't comment directly on RyanDawson's YouTube video because I am still banned - he refuses to allow me to post. Troof.

The New Anti-semitism - WRH 2011 style

2011-09-11T00:00:00.008+01:00

WRH's Rivero gives his whole game away early on:

So now comes the ADL once more screaming "Anti-Semitism" at anyone questioning the official story of 9-11, even if the question in particular does not involve Israel!

The simple fact is that anti-semitism need have nothing to do with Israel. The cynical anti-semite's favourite defence is to claim there's a real distinction between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism. Now Rivero's complaining the ADL mentions anti-semitism without anyone referencing Israel. Well, indeed, Mr Rivero - it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it: anti-semitism exists aside from Israel.

That one sentence seriously undermines Rivero's entire spiel. But he uses it as his foundation. Rivero wants to attack Jews and the ADL (as defenders of Jews, presumably). He wants to pin the blame for 911 on Jews. It's done in a very particular way - it's propaganda. Screw me trying to analyse it...just look at it out of context a little. Here's Rivero's version of anti-semitism, as seen by the ADL:

Researcher: "Why did BBC report the collapse of World Trade Tower 7 twenty six minutes before it happened?"

ADL: "YOU'RE JUST BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE!!!!!!!"

But there's clearly nothing anti-semitic about simply mentioning that story by the BBC and nobody would ever complain there was.

Researcher: "How did the Secret Service know that President Bush was safe where he sat reading about pet goats?"

ADL: "YOU'RE JUST BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE!!!!!!!"

But there's clearly nothing anti-semitic about saying that and nobody would ever complain there was.

Researcher: "How could the hijacked planes fly over 8 United States Air Force bases without having a single warplane come up to intercept them?"

ADL: "YOU'RE JUST BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE!!!!!!!"

But there's clearly nothing anti-semitic about saying that and nobody would ever complain there was.

Researcher: "Who ordered the fighters from Andrews Air Force Base 180 miles out into the Atlantic making it impossible for them to intercept the aircraft headed for the Pentagon?"

ADL: "YOU'RE JUST BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE!!!!!!!"

But there's clearly nothing anti-semitic about saying that and nobody would ever complain there was.

I know this is getting boring already, but blame Rivero/WRH.

Researcher: "What order did Dick Cheney let stand, according to Norman Mineta?"

ADL: "YOU'RE JUST BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE!!!!!!!"

But there's clearly nothing anti-semitic about saying that.........

Researcher: "Why do load-bearing beams in the ruins of the World Trade Towers show clear signs of demolition charges?"

ADL: "YOU'RE JUST BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE!!!!!!!

But there's clearly nothing anti-semitic about saying that.........

Researcher: "How can the wreckage from Flight 93 be spread out over 8 miles of countryside when the official story says the plane augered into the ground during a fight between the passengers and the hijackers?"

ADL: "YOU'RE JUST BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE!!!!!!!"

Researcher: "Why are the names of the accused hijackers not on the actual passenger manifests of the flights as issued by the airlines?"

ADL: "YOU'RE JUST BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE!!!!!!!"

Researcher: "Why do we hear explosions the moment building 7 starts to collapse?"

ADL: "YOU'RE JUST BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE!!!!!!!"

There's simply nothing explicitly anti-semitic about anything the "researcher" says. What is of anti-semitic nature is the inclusion of the spurious ADL responses, a purposeful misrepresentation of the position of anyone who protests the racism of anti-semitism.

This is the neuro-linguistic-programming method applied to anti-semitism? Rivero concludes:

You see what I mean. The ADL is acting like they have something to hide.

Only the ADL never complained about those things, rather that those saying such things are anti-semites who blame 911 (and everything else) on Jews.

The comments added by WRH readers are fascinating, if gruesome:

z00mcopterdown
if you want to get technical about it, if you say the truth about history itself, you're bound to be anti-zioturd (which they conveniently morphed into a race which happens to be the race of their arch enemies, the palestineans and the syrians, i.e. the semites).

09/10/2011 - 15:28
2
one more time !
Old_Logan
You see what I mean. The ADL is acting like they have something to hide.

(*ADL: "YOU'RE JUST BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE!!!!!!!" )

09/10/2011 - 12:26
3
I was personally attacked in
dawson
I was personally attacked in the ADL hit piece the Jpost and Haaretz

www.rys2sense.com/anti-neocons

09/02/2011 - 09:12
4
I am soooooooooooooooooooooo
Mike Rivero
I am soooooooooooooooooooooo jealous.

Michael Rivero
webmaster
What Really Happened

09/02/2011 - 11:06
5
We'll never be allowed the truth about HOW they did 9/11...
Esso
But we know WHO did 9/11.

9/11 was jews.
9/11 was Israel.
9/11 was zionists.

How many rats have to carry the plague, before you start exterminating rats?

Anti-semitic? You betcha. If you're not anti-semitic, my question to you is; WHY NOT?

Even dogs are smart enough to be able to make the determination between being stumbled over and being kicked.

09/02/2011 - 09:03

Notice Rys2Sense responds in the comments? Rys2Sense is Dawson ..... Ryan Dawson ...anti-neocondos.com

Dawson's the 'anti-racist' whom opposes Jewish self-determination even as he helps rehabilitate Nazism.

Click the links on the right somewhere.

How can Rys2Sense/Dawson seriously posture that he's anti-racist and anti-fascist when he's so involved with people speaking like that? Dumb.

How can Rivero posture that he isn't anti-semitic? Why does he bother? Oh....that's not hard to answer is it?

And so many of these people are blabbing about a spectre of fascism. Now that really is Orwellian.

Turkey Threatens to Provoke War with Israel

2011-09-10T04:42:00.005+01:00

Turkey has offered to escort all ships transporting aid and arms to any nation on earth. Oh, my mistake.....it's just those sailing for Gaza. This is a provocation, and if they go through with it, a prelude to war. Turkey would be better off securing aid for the PKK, but somehow that's not so urgent, apparently. But seeing as the Turks think aid so important one might expect they'd gladly accept a 'freedom flotilla' sailing with supplies for the PKK, right? Sure. It's just food....honest.

A little context about our 'humanitarian' hero, Turkey:

--According to human rights organisations since the beginning of the uprising 4,000 villages have been destroyed, in which between 380,000 and 1,000,000 Kurdish villagers have been forcibly evacuated from their homes. Some 5,000 Turks and 35,000 Kurds, including 18,000 civilians have been killed, 17,000 Kurds have disappeared and 119,000 Kurds have been imprisoned by Turkish authorities. According to the Humanitarian Law Project, 2,400 Kurdish villages were destroyed and 18,000 Kurds were executed, by the Turkish government. Other estimates have put the number of destroyed Kurdish villages at over 4,000. In total up to 3,000,000 people (mainly Kurds) have been displaced by the conflict, an estimated 1,000,000 of which are still internally displaced as of 2009.
---

More recently, from August 2011:

A sharp escalation in fighting between Turkey and the Kurdish separatist PKK over the past three weeks has bucked the trend of recent years that saw Turkey inching towards a peaceful solution to three decades of conflict with its restive Kurdish minority.

Fighter jets began bombing PKK positions in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on Wednesday, following a PKK ambush that killed eight Turkish soldiers. The Turkish military has lost some 40 soldiers this month to PKK attacks, and pro-government newspapers have begun entertaining a 'Sri Lankan model' - a massive military blitz akin to the one that destroyed Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger insurgency at a cost of hundreds of lives, aimed at destroying the PKK in the Kurdish southeast and the northern Iraqi mountains.
==============

Set sail oh flotilla of peace and plenty! No? Oh, ok then.....Kurds aren't fighting Jews, so what do they matter?

Wiki has a figure of 14,500 casualties (1948-2009) for the Israel/Palestine conflict - spanning 60 years, an average of approx 250 per year.

Whereas the Turkish/Kurdish conflict casualties are usually given in the region of 40,000. That's in less than 30 years, giving an average casualty rate of 1300 - 5 times higher than I/P.

But no-one cares about the Kurds and Turkey.....only Israel and Palestine.

We can raise the same issue for Sri Lanka and the Tamils - a far worse conflict than I/P but one which received very little coverage.

The United Nations released an estimate on the number of people killed in Sri Lanka's 27 year civil war: 80,000 to 100,000 people were killed in the war between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels. That's approx 3000 casualties per year - twelve times more than the I/P conflict.

Any concerns for Palestine and Palestinians which fail to address Kurdish or Tamil issues similarly are open to accusations of heavy bias against Jews. Else what's so special about Palestine? Making Palestine so important denigrates Tamil and Kurdish suffering, their separatist movements and their respective conflicts.

Any UN votes about Turkey coming up? Or Sri Lanka? No. Thought not. No Jews involved, so nobody cares.

================

Turkey 'to escort Gaza aid ships' amid row with Israel

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country will in future escort aid ships travelling to the Gaza Strip.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mr Erdogan also said Turkey had taken steps to prevent Israel unilaterally exploiting natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean.

He spoke amid a growing row over Israel's refusal to apologise for a deadly raid on an aid ship last year.

Turkey has already cut military ties and expelled Israel's ambassador.
It has also said it will challenge Israel's blockade of Gaza at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Relations between Turkey and Israel have worsened since Israeli forces boarded the Mavi Marmara aid ship in May last year as it was heading for Gaza. Nine Turkish activists were killed during the raid.

Israel has refused to apologise and said its troops acted in self-defence.
In his comments to Al-Jazeera, Mr Erdogan said Turkish warships were "authorised to protect our ships that carry humanitarian aid to Gaza".

"From now on, we will not let these ships to be attacked by Israel, as what happened with the Freedom Flotilla," he said, referring to the Mavi Marmara incident.
The BBC's Jonathan Head in Istanbul says Turkey's decision to increase its naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean - and not just to deter Israeli operations against Gaza activists - is a serious one.

Turkey is protesting against the exploration of gas reserves by the government of Cyprus, because it does not recognise the area as Cypriot territorial waters.
Israel has recognised them, and hopes to source future natural gas supplies there.
This could spark a conflict that mixes the current Turkish-Israeli friction with the 50-year-old dispute over Cyprus, our correspondent says.

"You know that Israel has begun to declare that it has the right to act in exclusive economic areas in the Mediterranean," said Mr Erdogan.

"You will see that it will not be the owner of this right, because Turkey, as a guarantor of the Turkish republic of north Cyprus, has taken steps in the area, and it will be decisive and holding fast to the right to monitor international waters in the east Mediterranean."

In response to Mr Erdogan's comments, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying: "This is a statement well-worth not commenting on."
SOURCE: BBC
-------

Look familiar?

2011-09-05T01:57:00.004+01:00

Game over?

These videos were in response to the Troofy argument that runs thus:

Then why do controlled demolition people take the time to rig a building if all they had to do was blow up a top portion and have it come hurling through the bottom portion of it?

The videos show that it's perfectly possible, indeed, they closely resemble the WTC collapses imo.

It's simply a physical fact a certain level of mass would smash even a reinforced WTC tower (or anything else) straight down to the ground, at a tiny fraction less then freefall.....given sufficient mass/momentum.

Beacon Hill School - 'the Russell School'

2011-09-04T23:38:00.008+01:00

"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."
Plato

I found what seems a good paper on Beacon Hill School, founded and ran by Dora (and Bertrand) Russell. The author is 'Deborah S. Gorham, Distinguished Research Professor', so likely it's pretty sound.

I've only read the first few pages so far, but it seems very good. I post it for anyone interested.....all those millions clamouring for more on Beacon Hill.....

Link to full paper here

Indirect Link

The Introduction

This essay examines Beacon Hill School, founded in 1927 by Bertrand and Dora Russell. I consider the roles of the school’s two founders and the signiﬁcance of the school as an educational and social experiment, situating its history in the context of the development of progressive education and of modernist ideas about marriage and childrearing in the ﬁrst half of the twentieth century. Although Bertrand Russell played a crucial role in founding Beacon Hill, it was primarily Dora Russell’s project, and it was exclusively hers from 1932 until the school ceased to exist in 1943.

For more than a century, progressive ideas about children, childFrearing and education have gone in and out of favour. In the 60s a “free school” movement ﬂourished in North America and in Britain, and in Britain progressive ideas had a signiﬁcant eﬀect on the State school system.

Today, in contrast, progressive ideas are largely out of favour as school authorities and parents focus on achievement and worry about “attention deﬁcit disorder” when little boys and girls cannot sit quietly in seats once again arranged in uniform rows.

Interest in progressive education was at its zenith in the early twentieth century. It ﬂourished in Britain in the inter-war period, which saw the founding of the New Education Fellowship and the establishment of several well-known progressive schools, including A. S. Neill’s Summerhill and the Elmhirsts’ Dartington Hall. Beacon Hill School, the subject of this paper, founded in  by the eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell and his second wife Dora Black Russell, was one of the best
known of the inter-war British progressive schools.

In this paper I examine the role of the school’s two founders and the signiﬁcance of Beacon Hill School as an educational and social experiment. I explore progressive and libertarian ideas about children and education, and I focus on a number of overlapping social and moral questions that were of importance to the Russells and others. These include modernist views about marriage and monogamy, sexuality, parenthood and feminism.

Beacon Hill opened in September 1927 full of promise. Its ﬁrst location was Telegraph House on the South Downs, Sussex, near Petersﬁeld, Hampshire. The Russells’ daughter Katharine Tait recalls the “200 acres of woods and valleys, with deer and rabbits and stoats and weasels and huge yew trees we could jump into from higher trees and absolutely magniﬁcent beech trees for climbing … [t]he real freedom to learn, to roam, to experiment—it was incomparable.”
....

.....[T]he school was a success even during its last few years, when ﬁnancial pressures and the exigencies of wartime forced Dora Russell to move Beacon Hill to its ﬁfth and ﬁnal home, Carn Voel, her own relatively modest family house near the village of Porthcurno, a few miles from Land’s End. One former pupil recently reminisced about his experiences at Beacon Hill in the 1940s:

One of my fondest memories is of the Natural History lessons with Dora, based on the study of that great tome ‘The Science of Life’ (by H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley & G. P. Wells). Dora encouraged us to question, to follow our curiosity … into all sorts of highways & byeways of phenomena of life; to speculate; to wonder … I remember sheer fascination and a sense of the inﬁnity of the ﬁeld of knowledge that was waiting to be explored.

David Correa-Hunt wrote those words more than 60 years after he and his sister Susan had been day pupils at Beacon Hill, and they stand as a tribute to Dora Russell’s success as an educator.
---------------

Tories - remove benefits from offenders

2011-09-04T19:26:00.007+01:00

It makes sense on some some level - why should law-abiding taxpayers support people who are resorting to fraud and other crimes? But it's ridiculous and simply exacerbates the problem. I don't see how the British government can remove financial support from anyone.....it's supposed to be the minimum the law says one needs to live. And if you're going to take it away from people who are already causing problems......and make them destitute and totally impoverished by removing the bare minimum needs of life.....well....what's gonna happen? Nothing? Sure. No, they are going to go to jail, after causing a shitload more problems. That's obvious - and vicious. And it's no solution.

Hilarious to hear the Tories raising 'loafers on welfare' in the current jobs climate. 1980s remix. Horrible.

They want to remove benefits from people for 3 years. How do benefit claimants survive for 3 years with no income and no home? What are they supposed to do? If they're already rioting, who thinks 3 years with nothing will ease the grief? How stupid (and vicious) need one be to support it?

-----

Benefit fraud - how extensive is it?

209 of the 6,300 people convicted of stealing public cash last year were locked up. Yet the equivalent figures for 1999-2000 were 445 jailed from 8,768.

SOURCE

6000 people? So they want to institute a vicious regime for everyone so as to deal with just 6000 cases.....that's madness. Why punish millions of claimants and people on the edge of extreme poverty by ratcheting up the level of oppression to deal with just 6000 offenders?

Meanwhile, in never-never land we hear

The Attorney General’s Annual Fraud Indicator report of January 2010 states that £30bn of fraudulent activity takes place each year in the UK, with benefit fraud accounting for just £1.1bn. Meanwhile tax fraud, which receives negligible coverage in the mainstream press, accounts for £15.2bn, just over half of the UK’s total fraud bill.

Personally I think most everyone in Britain undertakes fraud as a matter of routine. Most everywhere I have worked, at whatever level, everyone has been on the take to the extent they are able. And everyone criticises everyone else for doing it. One of those irregular verbs - I get perks, he takes the piss, they commit fraud.

WTC

2011-09-04T18:08:00.006+01:00

Here's a picture of WTC collapsing. It shows a remarkable angle of tilt - the greatest of any of the pictures, I think.

Here's what that roughly translates to in diagram form:

Here's what would be necessary for the block to have toppled over:

Clearly such a condition was never reached.

Seems to me what Mackey said must be right (or what I understand Mackey to have said, rather.) As columns fail, the upper block rotates and falls one way, to which the intact structure resists, transferring the weight towards the other side. But the other side now has fewer columns to support the (greatly increased dynamic, falling load) and so they fail too, and the block falls and rotates again the other way.....and back and for....until the block is destroyed and the whole lot falls on the structure below, with level after level failing consecutively.....right to the ground.

I liked how someone summed it up - you can balance a brick on your head no problem perhaps, but lie down on the floor, and let someone drop it onto your head. You know there's a major difference - so much so you would never do it. The dynamic load is crucial.

Anyway, the upper block never got anywhere near toppling, so it fell.....down....not sideways.

So why all this stuff about how it should have toppled over? I thought so too, intuitively at first. But it surely isn't possible when you think about it....and it certainly never tilted enough to do so.

Just to be clear......on neo-liberalism and Ron Paul

2011-09-03T19:45:00.006+01:00

Neoliberalism is a label for the market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics *(see below) that stresses the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the state. The term is typically used by opponents of the policy and rarely by supporters
SOURCE

neoclassical theories of economics:

The term was originally introduced by Thorstein Veblen in 1900, in his Preconceptions of Economic Science, to distinguish marginalists in the tradition of Alfred Marshall from those in the Austrian School.

"No attempt will here be made even to pass a verdict on the relative claims of the recognized two or three main "schools" of theory, beyond the somewhat obvious finding that, for the purpose in hand, the so-called Austrian school is scarcely distinguishable from the neo-classical, unless it be in the different distribution of emphasis. The divergence between the modernized classical views, on the one hand, and the historical and Marxist schools, on the other hand, is wider, so much so, indeed, as to bar out a consideration of the postulates of the latter under the same head of inquiry with the former." - Veblen
SOURCE

So, according to Veblen, whom coined the phrase, the Austrian school is indistinguishable from neo-classical.

So neo-classical includes Austrian school (mises, hayek, rockwell etc) of which Ron Paul is a supposed fully subscribing member.

Therefore......Ron Paul as an Austrian is a neo-classicist, which crudely means a neo-liberal.

So why is he offered as a candidate against neo-liberalism? Because he isn't. At least not in any coherent way as expressed by his cheerleaders, such as Alex Jones and Mike Rivero.

Alex Jones publishes OpEd News.....attacking Bilderberg and 'neo-liberalism'

2011-09-03T18:57:00.004+01:00

An interesting mix - Alex Jones who is a paid-up and active Ron Paul supporter publishes OpEdNews articles, a place which describes itself as "Liberal Progressive Tough". The OpEdNews article at Prisonplanet attacks privatisation of neo-liberalism, writing of the Trilateral Commission that:

Many of its members are also Bilderbergers with the same mutual interests for the development of globalization, the so-called economics of 'neo-liberalism' including wholesale privatization of anything that moves, the new world order and corporate capitalist totalitarianism.
SOURCE

Now there's clearly something amiss here.

OpEdNews claims to be 'progressive liberal and tough'. But its article has been published at Alex Jones' Prisonplanet. Nevermind that Jones thinks even traditional conservatives are socialists....? That Obama's a commie.....and that it's a bad thing. So what's he doing publishing a supposedly 'liberal' opinion piece? And what is a supposedly progressive opinion piece doing at Prisonplanet?

One would imagine from OpEd news that they'd like a far more progressive Presidency than Obama's. And yet their opinion piece can be published at ultra-conservative Alex Jones' Prisonplanet......

And criticising privatisation and neo-liberalism too? If Ron Paul stands for anything it is surely privatisation - he seeks to abolish taxation and the entire federal government welfare program.

Aside from Ron Paul's tactic of playing to American Nationalism he is basically inseparable from neo-liberalism.

Elsewhere Alex Jones (and Mike Rivero et al) attack Pinochet's Chile as neo-liberalism, as part of the Chicago Boys complaint.

Sure, but quite how Ron Paul is so different to what went into the Chile experiment is never explained. Because it is impossible to explain - Ron Paul supports all the things of the Chile experiment.

Ron Paul is a supporter of privatisation, and generally of what has come to crudely be called 'neo-liberalism' - liberalisation of markets, finance, labour, regulation etc. In principle he would fully support what is usually meant by 'neoliberalism', and he would support the measures undertaken in Pinochet's and The Chicago Boys' Chile.

So what are Alex Jones and Mike Rivero doing when criticising neo-liberalism and Chile whilst supporting Ron Paul? It's incoherent.

Again, here's INFOWARS this time:

Iceland Pushes Back Against Neolib Bankers
SOURCE

If they're going to criticise privatisation, why support Ron 'privatisation' Paul?

If they're going to criticise neo-liberalism, why support Ron uber-liberal Paul?

And likewise, if OpEd News are going to criticise those things, what on earth are they doing bringing in the Illuminati and Bilderberg? What on earth are they doing publishing things that Alex Jones sees fit to print? How 'progressive' can it be if Alex Jones will print it?

Really, they're all saying the same things......without a clue as to what they're really saying. Neither supposed 'progressive' nor supposed 'conservative' really understand their own position, else they would recognise their own contradiction.

So, they either don't understand what they're doing......and it's just a mess.....or they do understand what they're doing, and it's a controlled purposeful cross-message.
----

The original OpEdNews article is here.

It's authored by someone called Rory Winter whom has a blog "Chimes of Freedom - A Dissident's Take on the News that the Corporate Media Lie About".

The most recent entry is July, "France Says NATO Bombing Has Failed - By FRANKLIN LAMB". Yes, well......not surprised they haven't posted since. Nevermind reality, eh?

One of the blogs recent entries read thus:

Decentralized Global Rebellion against Neoliberal Economic Policies

In this edition of Press TV's On the Edge with Max Keiser, Max discusses the link between the worker's struggle in Wisconsin and the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia with the journalist and blogger, David DeGraw.

DeGraw believes what we are seeing in Wisconsin, Egypt, Tunisia and all over the world is a decentralized global rebellion against neo-liberal global economic policies. He believes the Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, the IMF and the World Bank are the constituents of this destructive force.

The post includes a ubiquitous PRESSTV (Iranian state media) report. (Conspiros always have PRESSTV or RussiaToday (RT) videos. Text is too much - it has to be a vid. And it has to come from Russia or Iran to be truly believable. lol)

THE WORKER'S STRUGGLE IN WISCONSIN EH??? Should be workers', no? But what a strange thing to see from someone published at Prisonplanet. The Workers' Struggle......sounds like......Lenin and Marx...not Prisonplanet...and certainly not Ron Paul (RP believes American workers are cosseted and overpaid.)

A few Truths for lying Troofers Pt1

2011-09-03T18:31:00.004+01:00

Seeing as it's almost the anniversary of their cult......

Not freefall collapse, and not 'into their own footprint'.

The towers

The debris is freefalling. It is closer to the ground than the collapse zone - therefore the collapse zone could not have been at freefall. Note that the horizontal velocity of any debris has no effect of slowing freefall - it falls at freefall regardless of any horizontal speed.

WTC7:

A leaning collapse - therefore not symmetrical, not into it's own footprint and not at freefall. Else there could be no lean.

It's so self-evidently true that the collapses were not at freefall and not within their own footprint. It's now difficult to understand how the meme ever got started.

More here and here and here

Fisk, 911, Israel

2011-09-03T13:24:00.000+01:00

Robert Fisk has written about 911 and Israel in an article headlined "For 10 years, we've lied to ourselves to avoid asking the one real question."Fisk believes the question "why?" has not been asked. He suggests it is has not been asked because to do so would undermine USA/Israeli relations. Not because he believes "Israel did it" but because the enemies of Israel did it, attacking USA because of its protection of its ally and client, recognition of which (so Fisk seems to believe) would drive USA away from Israel. Hence no "why" has been asked.Fisk writes

"The motivation for the attacks was "ducked" even by the official 9/11 report, say the authors. The commissioners had disagreed on this "issue" – cliché code word for "problem" – and its two most senior officials, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, were later to explain: "This was sensitive ground ...Commissioners who argued that al-Qa'ida was motivated by a religious ideology – and not by opposition to American policies – rejected mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... In their view, listing US support for Israel as a root cause of al-Qa'ida's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy." And there you have it.

The interesting thing about that is its mutually exclusive to the idea "Israel did it": if Israel's enemies did it to try to cleave apart USA and Israel, then it can't be said "Israel did it". And conversely, if it's said "Israel did it" (as so many of the conspiracist theories do) then it can't be said that American support for Israel was the cause. (The implication also seems to be that if USA supported Israel even more, and attacked Islam/Arabs/Israel's enemies more, it would be safer. Because attacking them doesn't breed terrorism.....not attacking them does.....apparently.)

The upshot of all that - it is conspiracy theories which "lie to themselves to avoid asking the one real question".Conspiracy theory targeting Israel elevates Israeli/Jewish influence above that of real socio-political conditions and reaction in the Mid East and 'Islam'. It implicitly asserts the socio-political conditions are themselves incapable of generating such terrorism, at least amongst Arabs/Islam. (It also suggests Israel embraces it voluntarily as policy.) It negates Al Qaida as a real force, and denies it has any real support - thereby denying the forces, conditions and history which generated Al Qaida (including Israel/Palestine). (Whilst asserting supposed better conditions in Israel do generate terrorism.)

Yet that isn't what the conspiracists actually say. Rather they litter their claims about 911 conspiracy with wider political issues, most notably Israel/Palestine... But consider, why would Israel do "it" and blame Al Qaida - an organisation known for attacking USA because of its support for Israel? Are they really suggesting Israel did it so as to undermine American support for Israel? That's obvious nonsense.

And if conditions in Palestine and the Arab-world are so bad, as the conspiracists keep complaining - and if all the blame lies on America and her support for Israel and tyrannical Arab regimes - why wouldn't those conditions produce terrorism against USA? Likewise, if (as the conspiros claim) there's no such thing as AQ or Islamic terrorism, how can anyone claim things are really so bad in Gaza, Golan, Yemen, Afghan, whatever......

Conspiros claim "It's war for Israel!" - that Israel manipulates the USA into attacking its enemies, like Iraq, for example. 9/11 was a singularly instrumental chapter in this, apparently. And Palestine is part of the reason too because Israel wants US support so it carried out 911 and blamed Arabs...guaranteeing American support of Israel and greater hostility towards her (arab/islamic) enemies. So the conpiracist narrative usually goes.

But this makes no sense at all, if Fisk is right.

For Fisk, it was American support of Israel (and wider social-political conditions) which produced Al Qaida.......but the conspiracists implicitly deny this by saying Al Qaida is "fake", it's a CIA/MOSSAD front, etc. If AQ is fake and is not motivated by Palestine and wider social conditions, then we don't have a problem with terrorism over Israel/Palestine or wider social conditions. So why do the conspiracists go on about it all the time if it really isn't anything to get bothered about? If the conditions are serious and unjust (as they claim) why do they deny that Al Qaida might be an expression of them?

If conditions are so bad, why shouldn't we expect them to generate terrorism and reaction? Not so for conspiracism - because the reaction is supposedly fake we can assume there is nothing to react to. Else there would be genuine reaction, right?

Clearly the idea of an Israeli conspiracy obviates any discussion about support for Israel and the wider social conditions as causes of terrorism. [Even if it were agreed that support for Israel was generating terrorism, it wouldn't necessitate an end of such support. You don't stop doing something that's right simply because it is resisted by people who think it wrong.]

Thatcher / 80s / monetarism

2011-09-02T03:16:00.003+01:00

A very brief but good look at Thatcher, early 80s.

And then the boom:

Yes, Minister

2011-09-02T02:23:00.002+01:00

Commies

2011-09-02T02:13:00.002+01:00

Monty Python's famous Larry sketch.

Tories OK child-abuse

2011-09-01T22:12:00.010+01:00

Ministers are scrapping a requirement for teachers to record instances when they use physical force, as part of a wider move to "restore adult authority" in the wake of the riots in England.

The education secretary, Michael Gove, said that he wanted greater numbers of men teaching, particularly in primary schools, so as to provide children with male authority figures who could display "both strength and sensitivity".

In a speech delivered at Durand academy, in Stockwell, south London, Gove said the regulations on the use of force inhibited teachers' judgment.

He said: "So let me be crystal clear, if any parent now hears a school say, 'sorry, we can't physically touch the students', then that school is wrong. Plain wrong. The rules of the game have changed."

BBC
=======================================

Sure, they'd never say they are giving the OK to child abuse, but they make it more likely. And how are male teachers supposed to display "strength" (or sensitivity) in a fashion female teachers can't? Teaching is hardly the most machismo or physically demanding role, so what do they mean? Sounds like a lot of cock and bull to justify physical abuse, the rough manhandling of schoolchildren, an urge to return to the cane.....a short sharp shock. etc.

I think people make a big mistake when thinking about the past and how obedient and respectful people were. If they even were all that 'respectful'. I don't think that's a given. But even assuming they were, there are cultural changes which fashion the minds of youth in ways their antecedents never experience. People weren't more deferential (if they were) in medieval times simply because of the cat-o-nine-tails, or whatever. Rather, they lived in that culture, and they lacked a philosophical position like individualism from which to resist, and on which to rest their dissent. Likewise up until post-war period....to some degree or another.....but since then popular culture has embraced ideas of liberation, individualism, even anarchism. To imagine that reintroducing the cane, for example, because it was used at a time of (supposed) greater deference for authority, and will therefore bring about the same deference once again, is to surely mistake the power of the cane, and underestimate the importance of wider culture and philosophy (even at level of popular culture).

The cane (and ANY punishment imo) are evil. And much of popular culture holds the same view, despite capital punishment also being popular (even, maybe especially, where it is outlawed). An interesting paradox, I think.

I like the sound of Bertrand Russell's school. Go to lessons if you want. If you don't, it's your loss.....

In Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance the teacher (Phaedrus) stopped scoring homework, with interesting results.

----

I was interested what was on the web about the Russell school, and I came across Spartacus' telling of Russell's wife, Dora Black, Dora Russell. What an incredible life story.

Seems Russell's school is perhaps better described as Dora Black's school.

Anyway, Spartacus says:

Dora Black, the daughter of Frederick Black, a senior Civil servant, was born in London in 1894. Black held strong progressive views and believed that girls had the right to as good an education as boys. Dora responded well to her father's encouragement and won scholarships to Sutton High School and Girton College, Cambridge. At university she gained a first-class honours degree in modern languages.

Dora met Bertrand Russell in 1916 and soon afterwards he asked her to marry him. Dora's feminism involved a belief in sexual freedom and although she was willing to live with Bertrand, she rejected his proposal of marriage. Dora saw marriage as a restriction on women's liberty, and although Bertrand accepted her philosophical argument on the subject, he wanted a son and legitimate heir to the family title.

In the First World War Dora joined Russell's campaign against military conscription. After Russell was released from Brixton Prison in 1918 for his role in the struggle against the Military Service Act. Dora and Bertrand visited Russia and China together.

When they returned to England in 1921 Dora agreed to marry Bertrand Russell. After giving birth to her first child Dora became involved in the birth control movement. The 1923 Dora along with Maynard Keynes, paid for the legal costs to obtain the freedom of Guy Aldred and Rose Witcop after they had been found guilty of selling pamphlets on contraception. The following year, Dora, with the support of Katharine Glasier, Susan Lawrence, Margaret Bonfield, Dorothy Jewson and H. G. Wells founded the Workers' Birth Control Group. Dora also campaigned within the Labour Party for birth-control clinics but this was rejected as they feared losing the Roman Catholic vote.

Dora did a considerable amount of writing during this period. With Bertrand she wrote The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923) and two years later she published her book, Hypatia: Women and Knowledge. The book was severely attacked by people who disapproved of Dora's theories on sexual freedom for women.

In 1927 Dora and Bertrand Russell opened their own progressive boarding school, Beacon Hill, near Harting, West Sussex. The school reflected Bertrand's view that children should not be forced to follow a strictly academic curriculum. Other aspects of the school illustrated Dora's ideas on education. The school was run on the principle that freedom, if understood early enough, would result in maturity and self-discipline. Dora also emphasized co-operation rather than competition and believed that the best way to teach the benefits of democracy was to run the school on democratic lines. Dora's educational philosophy was expressed in her book In Defence of Children (1932).

Both Bertrand and Dora continued to have sexual relationships with other partners. This resulted in Dora having two children with the journalist, Griffin Barry. In 1935 Bertrand Russell left Dora for one of his students, Patricia Spence. When Barry returned to the United States, Dora continued to run Beacon Hill School on her own until the Second World War when she went to work for the Ministry of Information.

Dora was active in the peace movement after the war and in 1958 joined with Bertrand Russell, J. B. Priestley, Vera Brittain, Fenner Brockway, Victor Gollancz, Canon John Collins and Michael Foot to form the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Later that year Dora organised the Women's Caravan of Peace and toured with it through much of Europe.

After retiring to Cornwall in 1962, Dora wrote Religion and the Machine Age (1982) and three volumes of autobiography, The Tamarisk Tree (1977, 1981, 1985).

Dora Russell died in 1986.

SOURCE

Bertrand Russell is often cited as one of the arch evils of the New World Order. That seems a vicious and poisonous accusation considering the brief biography of Dora alone. I've seen so many 'patriot' and conspiracist attacks on Russell. I'm a big fan of Bertrand Russell, and I know something of him - the attacks on him are crazily vicious and.....ignorant. I've seen Russell described as the most evil man on the planet (because he was called the cleverest man in England, presumably).

Russell is useful to the conspiracists because he links old British (English) aristocracy to modern liberalism and socialism.

Nevermind that Russell wrote an essay "Why I am not a communist". How much more clear need he make it? He didn't believe in Marx's historical materialism at all, and one thing Russell was good at was history, it seems to me.

Russell got Einstein onboard for CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) IIRC. He was jailed for pacifism in WW1, but a supporter of war against Nazism.

Wiki says "In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.""

Well, that's where my interest in Russell came from, I think. His humanitarianism and freedom of thought. And his great liberalism. Strange then to see him so maligned amongst the American patriot/libertarian movement.

The school? This gives a little flavour. I didn't know it was W Sussex. Shame.

Beacon Hill School
Having children of their own and being dissatisfied with the existing educational methods Dora and Bertrand Russell became increasingly interested in the problems of the education of children. They became convinced that a fundamentally new approach to education, especially primary education was required.

With this in view they founded in 1927 Beacon Hill School at Telegraph House, Harting, Petersfield, Sussex, where they educated on progressive principles a small group of young children together with their own children. They hoped their school would lay the foundation for modern education by combining all that was best in available academic knowledge (inv.no. 75).

Religious education was excluded and science, history and politics were all treated on progressive lines. In addition to classes there were many activities, such as arts and crafts, plays and puppet shows and the care of the children's personal gardens and pets.

Discipline was minimal and free expression was encouraged. There was self-government by a council of adults and children, in which everyone had one vote.

The children were divided into three groups, called: 'bigs', 'middles' and 'smalls'.

Special attention was given to teaching methods, psychological theory and practice, nutrition and health.

After Bertrand Russell left the school in 1932, Dora Russell ran the school by herself. In 1934 Bertrand Russell wanted the school to vacate Telegraph House, which belonged to him after the death of his brother. The school was then moved to Boyles Court, South Weald, near Brentwood, Essex, and later in 1937 to Kingwell Hall, near Bath, Somerset, since the outbreak of war was thought likely. In 1940, when invasion threatened, the War Office requisitioned Kingwell Hall. No compensation was forthcoming and the school faced ruin. Dora Russell managed to carry on with a small group at her private home in Porthcurno, Cornwall, near Land's End until 1943, when she was forced to close down.

While Bertrand Russell was connected with the school he wrote popular books to keep the school going. After he had left, the school had recurring financial difficulties.
Her closest colleague in the later years of the school was Gordon (Pat) Grace, whom she married in 1940. He died in 1949. Along with A.S. Neill 'Summerhill' Beacon Hill School was the best known model reform school before the Second World War.
SOURCE

What an incredible woman.

Reality vs Patriot/Truther Conspiracism

2011-09-01T18:36:00.005+01:00

I'll do this in reverse, for once.

Here are some of the facts of the matter (which took all of 10 minutes to find): Gibson Guitars have been raided under suspicion of trading in illegal wood. Again.

This from just one source of many:

Gibson Guitar under federal investigation for alleged use of illegal rainforest timber from Madagascar
mongabay.com
November 19, 2009

Federal agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raided Gibson Guitar's factory Tuesday afternoon, due to concerns that the company had been using illegally harvested wood from Madagascar, reports the Nashville Post.

No one from the company was arrested during the raid but agents seized boxes of guitars, wood, computers, and boxes of files. The Fish and Wildlife Service took action under the Lacey Act, which holds U.S. companies to environmental laws in the countries from where they source plant and wildlife products.

Madagascar's rainforests have been plundered in recent months for rosewood and ebony, the woods Gibson Guitar is accused of using. The illicit harvesting to hardwoods in Madagascar has occurred in the aftermath of a coup which disposed the island nation's president. Illegal logging has also been linked with the slaughter of endangered lemurs.

U.S. authorities have recently intensified customs monitoring and inspection of wood products from Madagascar to stem illegal trade.

So it's not the first time they have been investigated. This was the second time Gibson have been investigated for these offences. More on the previous investigation:

In September 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported to a U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agent the import of a shipment of Madagascar ebony wood at the port of Newark, N.J., from a Germany company called Nagel to Gibson Guitars.
Its import declaration package and invoices were for 5,200 pieces of sawn ebony and 2,133 pieces of sawn Madagascar black ebony, with a total value $76,437.
Gibson had placed the order via Nagel GMBH and Co KG of Hamburg, Germany, which exported the ebony through its affiliate Hunter Trading Corp. of Westport, Conn.
When the wood entered the U.S. en route to Gibson, it was missing the plant products declaration required by the Lacey Act. This looks like it's where Gibson got caught.
When the declaration was made a day later, it was listed as ebony harvested from Madagascar.
Madagascar has had rules in place restricting the harvest and export of ebony and rosewood since 2000. From what I've read, it does authorize some shipments of fallen timber. But mostly, that ebony is illegal timber.
Nagel has been Gibson's exclusive supplier of imported Madagascar ebony since 2006 and continued to import from it after the Lacey Act Amendments came into effect on May 22, 2008.
Nagel purchased the timber from its exclusive supplier of Madagascar timber, Roger Thunam, whose business dealt "almost exclusively in sawn wood or logs which at least as of 2006 were illegal to export from Madagascar," court documents said.

How much did Gibson know about this?

"[A] Gibson employee…wrote that '[t]he true Ebony species preferred by Gibson Musical Instruments is found only in Madagascar (Diospryos perrieri). This is a slow-growing tree species with very little conservation protection and supplies are considered to be highly threatened in its native environment due to over exploitation.' In fact, [he] 'spent two and a half weeks in Madagascar this June [2008],’ writing on his return, 'I represented our company along with two other guitar manufacturers.... All legal timber and wood exports are prohibited because of wide spread corruption and theft of valuable woods like rosewood and ebony.'"

The federal prosecutors say that while Gibson knew of the questionable timber, and even acknowledged it as such, the guitar-maker went ahead with buying ebony from Nagel, a supplier in Germany.

"Gibson sourced its unfinished ebony wood in the form of blanks (for use in the manufacture of fingerboards for Gibson guitars) from Nagel (in Germany), which obtained it exclusively from Roger Thunam (a supplier in Madagascar). Madagascar prohibits the harvest of ebony wood as well as the exportation of unfinished ebony wood."

Clearly a case to answer, on the face of it.

But let's look at how the Patriot/Conspiracist movement reports it?

Here's how the story appears at WhatReallyHappened, with a comment by Mike Rivero:

US Department of Justice orders Gibson Guitar to SEND JOBS OVERSEAS!!!!!!!!!
Tags: DICTATORSHIP ECONOMY
It seems that the Department of Justice wasn’t satisfied with merely raiding the law abiding factories of Gibson Guitar with armed agents, shutting down their operation costing them millions, and leaving the American company in the dark as to how to proceed without going out of business.

Now, according to CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, agents of the United States government are bluntly informing them that they’d be better off shipping their manufacturing labor overseas.

Mike Rivero: The government hands Trillions of YOUR dollars to Wall Street with the promise that somehow this will create manufacturing jobs for Americans, and then that same government orders a US company to send their jobs overseas?
WTF????

The link leads to an article in which the CEO of Gibson is interviewed, claiming that:

The Gibson Guitar saga has taken a sinister turn. .... In an interview with KMJ AM’s “The Chris Daniel Show,” Juszkiewicz [Gibson] revealed some startling information.

CHRIS DANIEL: Mr. Juszkiewicz, did an agent of the US government suggest to you that your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of American labor?

HENRY JUSZKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that in a pleading.

CHRIS DANIEL: Excuse me?

HENRY JUSKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that it [sic] a pleading.

CHRIS DANIEL: That your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of our labor?

HENRY JUSKIEWICZ: Yes

SOURCE

Sinister? It's ridiculous and senseless not sinister. And why say Gibson is "law-abiding"?

Isn't it easy to turn any story into some sinister extension of the police state? Rivero and co include this story so as to suggest just such a creeping Police State, and they thereby completely distort the import of it. Ha - illegally imported wood, from rainforests being plundered in wake of political turmoil and an ABSENCE of government and regulation. Not the point they'd ever seek to make.

The story is filed under "Dictatorship" at WRH.

So, what's Freedom mean then, if not to plunder Madagascar? Freedom is relief from laws preventing the plunder of wood from Madagascar. Right.

Stromfront on Black Dominance in Athletics/Sports - lol

2011-08-30T22:43:00.006+01:00

After the BBC article on black dominance in athletics sprinting I thought I'd take a look at Stromfront's view. It's just what one might expect, if not more so. I expected to find what I did, but it's shocking. It's also very funny to consider these people feel so threatened by apparent black athletic success, and how they can turn their own views upside down so as to explain it.

For instance, SF links to a 'pro-white' football website which complains black dominance in American Football is because of.....discrimination against whites. Sure, every football team purposefully neglects whites in their search for victory, no matter how skilful or athletic? That's quite some claim. Here it is:

NationalCrusader14: Another stormfront member brought up this website about racial issues in sports and it turns out whites are discriminated in sports. http://www.castefootball.us

SOURCE - STORMFRONT [NAZIS]

NationalCrusader14? Catchy nym.

The conversation is quite interesting......in a laughing-at-you way. Here's some of the tone:

People in this country need to boycott and stop worshiping these savages...I personally have quit watching professional sports due to the fact that the majority of players are filthy, no good people.

So, an admission that pro sports is dominated by non-whites. Though it makes no difference to whether they are "filthy, no good people" or not, apparently. So in what terms do they judge it? Clearly a supposed dominance in sporting athletics and skill isn't a factor. Jesse Owens all over again? No matter. Pity the poor maligned super-human Aryan, eh? How ridiculous is it?

Another amusing addition - Psychosword (!) says:

All the crazy things these proto-humans do creates drama. And organized professional sports is all about the drama. Even the announcers are fixated on it. It's not as much about winning or losing anymore. That's a side issue. It's all about what color did the buck dye his hair today. Or.. the buck's cousin/brother/father was shot in a drive-by last week and he's playing this game for them..

I don't think many people will be found arguing that pro-sport is no longer about winning and losing. Most people believe the converse instead, obviously. And these 'proto-humans' create drama? Which is now a big thing in sport? I see. And drive-by shootings, even amongst millionaire sportsmen (because they're black/non-white). Incredible. Very funny in ways (to mock it) but very disturbing too.

Some more sage advice on the matter from SF member WaffenSS (!):

"I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal..." -Abraham Lincoln

The whole country is now hopelessly negrified; worship of black athletes, whites loving rap music and acting negro while hating their own culture, Now a black president. All of this is the result of jewish infiltration and domination

What a disciplined and well-taught Nazi. Wow. Crude isn't it?

Another SF member, this time Great White Beast (!) adds a personal touch:

Just recently I was riding back home from a weekend hunting trip with a buddy and his dad. My friends dad was listening to the Cowboys game and began to sing the praises of black ball players, talking of there wonderful, amazing athletic abilities. I tried to explain to him that blacks are not more athletic than white, but that there ability to run fast for a short period of time is greater than most.

HAHA. As if 'running fast for a short period of time' isn't important? Brilliant. Gotta admire someone so self-aware and self-critical. Wow. Hunting trip too.....who'd have guessed?

Great White Twit adds:

"what I also pointed out that whites are discriminated against in professional sports as with many or all professions. Both, my friend and his dad are what I would call racially aware but still so brainwashed by the FREAKIN T.V. Change is in the air though, even they will admit that...

Christ, doesn't that fill one with optimism? Hardly. Notice how racially prejudiced equals racially aware in the commenter's view.

Someone with over 12000 posts at SF says:

It is absolutely amazing what a person can see,(including children), when they are not completely influenced by the television. You should hear my kids talk. They are not disrespectful, and don't talk of hate, but they talk about what they see with their own eyes. I have to say very little.

Very little, daddy? Sure. That's some moral and intellectual giant speaking, obviously - vindicated by the views of his own children. Wow.

At least this one has a sense of humour, laden as it is with prejudice, mind you:

I'll watch tennis if it's men's, since it's guaranteed to be void of the jungle sisters. Almost all white guys in men's pro tennis. I'd rather go fishing or browse Stormfront than watch football. The way I see it, if you want to watch a bunch of sub-saharan primates run across a field, flip to the Discovery channel. At least then you'll learn something.

I might as well stop here. But I can't.....

Here's another 'gem' (they come thick and fast at Stromfront):

US college and professional sports are biased toward black athletes. Every year White high schools dominate state championships, and every year colleges recruit the same black trash and maintain the fiction of the "student athlete." Black athletes are a menace on campus. It's always the same story of drugs, alcohol, shootings, stabbings, rape, and illegitimate pregnancy. Professional sports in the US are the worst. The tickets are over priced. The fans are rude and drunk. The players only care about their paycheck. I wouldn't waste my time or dollar.

I've noticed that Lacrosse is gaining popularity around the country. That's a good White sport.

Yeah, I imagine Lacrosse ain't massive 'in the ghetto'. I've never seen anyone playing Lacrosse. It isn't big in S Wales.

At Stormfront whatever the subject might be all the same things always come tumbling in - the contents of Nazism. It's incredibly intellectually dull but it's as preposterously funny as it is horrifying. I find it hard to imagine such stuff can really catch on, this day and age. But.....who knows?

It's interesting to witness how self-delusion can act...how seemingly complete it can be, whilst the thinker himself is totally unaware of the most obvious contradictions of his thoughts. Funny, but worrying. It's difficult to see these folks as a serious threat......but....

More from SF - all from the same 4 page thread (the stupidity is rich there):

If you watch these "great" black athletes you'll notice that they are constantly botching the plays, making mistakes, and getting called for fouls. It doesn't matter how fast or how strong you have conditioned your body to be (anybody can do that with the time and motivation), if you're too stupid to remember the plays, the formations, and the rules of the game you're not a great athlete. These black athletes are boring to watch because they can only execute on the handful of plays that they have run in practice repeatedly hundreds of times. Ask any coach who works with black players, it takes hundreds of "reps" for those players to get something down where they can run it. I was watching a college game recently with some friends, and someone made the comment "that coach is so conservative." My reply was, the coach isn't conservative the players are too stupid to try and do anything else without having to work on it everyday for two months.

What a great illustration of how racial prejudice is used to make sense of the world.....and how it shapes understanding. Seemingly (for Nazis) black success is because of supposed pro-black/anti-white discrimination (environmental cause) whereas 'white success' is proof of supposed white superiority (a genetic, innate cause).

We could probably find threads at SF highlighting the preponderance of 'whites' in various industries or whatever, and SF'ers touting it as proof of whites' racial superiority.

The same contradiction arises in Nazis view of Jews - they always complain how successful Jews are, how they dominate everything, how they have all the power, rah rah rah. Yet this doesn't prove to the racial Nazi that Jews are a superior race.....rather it shows the opposite. Somehow.

I've put that argument to Nazis before; I suggested if Jews rule the world then likely they deserve to do so.....I don't fancy the job, thanks. And I'd rather Jews did it than Nazis, if it's simple choice. lol. Nazis don't have an answer for it.

Back to the fascinating insights of SF members? Raised By Wolves says:

I just don't think they're athletes. Sports games are built on the premise of team strategies. With blacks it's all about them. Individvual blacks and even teams of blacks can do little compared to a team of whites in any sport.
I can't stand people that even talk about them in a postive way.

So they're not athletes now?

One real true believer adds:

Professional sports teams are owned by Jews and their henchmen. Sports, like entertainment, are used as a means to an end to promote race-mixing.

You cannot cover up the genetics of players from various racial/ethnic backgrounds as 'team' members with artificial uniforms and put them on 'one team' to be united as 'one'. Blood unites the spirit and the spirit is in essence the team, the rest is an well crafted illusion.

Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Football Team. Hmmm. Blood and soil, and football.

Bitter White Man (yes he's called that) says:

I would love to start a NBA and NFL boycott, but I think it would be futile in this liberal, negro loving coutry that is the USA.

HA! Well, good! Some would say that was what the USA was supposed to be about. But there we go, Mr poor maligned Nazi.

The saying goes "White men can't jump." Well, black men can't skate.

OR drive racing cars.....oh but wait.....

Christ it's ridiculous. But fascinating, somewhat too. I'll stop here though, just halfway through page 3 of their 4 page thread. Quite amazing thread, no? I imagine it is typical.....it's the first one I picked to look at. What a crowd.

The amazing thing to me is that all this harsh judgement and hostility making an entire worldview is about....skin colour. As it stands, skin colour is a simple and small genetic component of every human. Beyond coding for skin colour, what's to say about it? The understanding of genetics is primitive atm - single genes can be isolated as related or causal, but they don't work in a simple on/off fashion, and there isn't a black genetics and a white one, there's just human genetics. I've never understood racial prejudice like that. I understand it as an expression of the innate human suspicion of 'difference', something everyone has, I believe. People pile on their own justifications (race 'science', even) but at root-cause it's just suspicion (and distaste) for the unusual and different. So, as humans it's legitimate (in so far as it's almost inevitable) to feel racial prejudice....but that's no justification for racial prejudice as a worldview, rather it means we need be aware of how it colours our view, and how distorted WE are by it, so as to fight it.

Retreating Sea-Ice

2011-08-28T22:05:00.001+01:00

The Arctic sea ice has been melting fast this year, and for a while it appeared set to break the 2007 record for the smallest minimum area in the satellite record.

However, in recent weeks it has been running a narrow second to 2007.

"The minimum ice extent is still three to four weeks away, and a lot depends on the weather conditions over the Arctic during those weeks," said Leif Toudal Pedersen, senior scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute.

"Whether we reach an absolute minimum or not, this year again confirms that we are in a new regime with substantially less summer ice than before.

"The last five summers are the five minimum ice extent summers on record."

The volume of sea ice continues to decline annually.
SOURCE

Is it wrong to note 100m winners are always black? [BBC]

2011-08-27T21:44:00.003+01:00

Is it wrong to note 100m winners are always black?

The conclusions that are drawn from black athletes dominating the 100m final go a long way to explaining attitudes in wider society, argues Matthew Syed.

The 100m final at the World Athletics Championships this weekend will be won by a black athlete.

Every winner of the 100m since the inaugural event in 1983 has been black, as has every finalist from the last 10 championships with the solitary exception of Matic Osovnikar of Slovenia, who finished seventh in 2007.

Assuming that this success is driven by genes rather than environment, there is a rather obvious inference to make - black people are naturally better sprinters than white people. Indeed, it is an inference that seems obligatory, barring considerations of political correctness.

Logically flawed

But here's the thing. This inference is not merely false - it is logically flawed. And it has big implications not merely for athletics, but for the entire issue of race relations in the 21st Century.

To see how, let us examine success not in the sprints but in distance running, for this is also dominated by black athletes. Kenya has won an astonishing 63 medals at the Olympic Games in races of 800m and above, 21 of them gold, since 1968. Little wonder that one commentator once described distance running as "a Kenyan monopoly".

But it turns out that it is not Kenya as a whole that usually wins these medals, but individuals from a tiny region in the Rift Valley called Nandi. As one writer put it: "Most of Kenya's runners call Nandi home."

Seen in this context, the notion that black people are naturally superior distance runners seems bizarre. Far from being a "black" phenomenon, or even a Kenyan phenomenon, distance running is actually a Nandi phenomenon. Or, to put it another way, "black" distance running success is focused on the tiniest of pinpricks on the map of Africa, with the vast majority of the continent underrepresented.

The same analysis applies to the sprints, where success is focused on Jamaicans and African-Americans. Africa, as a continent, has almost no success at all. Not even West Africans win much.

The combined forces of Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, the Republic of Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Niger, Benin, Mali, the Gambia, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Gabon, Senegal, Congo and Angola have not won a single sprinting medal at the Olympics or World Championships.

The fallacy, then, is simple. Just because some black people are good at something does not imply that black people in general will be good at it.

Labelled box

Imagine a similar argument using the Central African Bambuti, a black tribe more commonly known as Pygmies. With an average height of 4ft we could assert that the Bambuti are naturally better at walking under low doors. Would it be legitimate to extrapolate that black people in general have a natural advantage at walking under low doors?

Our tendency to generalise rests on a deeper fallacy - the idea that "black" refers to a genetic type. We put people of dark skin in a box labelled black and assume that a trait shared by some is shared by all.

The truth is rather different. There is far more genetic variation within racial groups (around 85%) than there is between racial groups (just 15%). Indeed, surface appearance is often a highly misleading way of assessing the genetic distance between populations.

This evidence demonstrates how absurd it is to engage in racial generalisations - how crazy it is to witness a tiny group of black people winning at, say, the 10,000m and to infer that all people who share the same skin colour share an aptitude for 10,000m running.

But our subconscious assumptions about race have more than merely sporting implications.

Consider an experiment by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, two American economists. They drafted 5,000 CVs and placed archetypal "black" names such as Tyrone or Latoya on half of them and "white" names such as Brendan or Alison on the other half. They then divided the white CVs into high and low quality and did the same with the black CVs.

A few weeks later the offers came rolling in from employers, and guess what? The "black" candidates were 50% less likely to be invited to interview. Employers were using skin colour as a marker for employment potential, despite the fact that the candidates' CVs were identical.

But that's not all. The researchers also found that although high-quality "white" candidates were preferred to low-quality "white" candidates, the relative quality of "black" CVs made no difference whatsoever.

It was as if employers saw three categories - high-quality white, low-quality white and black candidates. To put it another way, the subliminal assumption that causes us to think that black people are all the same has powerful real-world consequences.

For many economists, this assumption, which gets under the radar of our conscious thought, explains why black people still lag behind white people in economic development more than four decades after the introduction of race-relations legislation.

Recognising that we have these biases is a good place to start in trying to combat them. And a good way of tracking progress is to watch a 100m final and see whether we fall into the trap, when seeing eight contestants with black skin, of inferring that black people are naturally better sprinters.

Matthew Syed is the author of Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice

SOURCE

Iran supports Rebels - what will Rivero say now?

2011-08-23T09:51:00.008+01:00

0847: Iran has expressed its backing for the Libyan rebels, BBC Monitoring reports. A statement by the foreign ministry in Tehran says Iran "supports the people's uprising in Libya and hopes that the Libyan people can decide independently on their future".
-BBC

The people's uprising? Rivero's invariably in lock-step with Tehran, so how will he bridge this divide? Just ignore it?

Fisk writes today asking "And how soon..[]..before the people of Europe demand to know why, if Nato has been so successful in Libya – as Cameron and his mates now claim – it cannot be used against Assad's legions in Syria, using Cyprus as a territorial aircraft-carrier, devastating the regime's 8,000 tanks and armoured vehicles as they besiege the country's cities."

Well, indeed. Rivero isn't very keen on "the people's uprising" in Syria either.

Counter to Rivero, Fisk says of Syria (and Israel): "Or must we heed the neighbours; Israel still secretly hopes (as it shamefully did in the case of Egypt) that the dictator [Assad] will survive to be a friend and make an ultimate peace over Golan."

They surely can't both be right.

Under the heading "Syria" at Rivero's WRH, there is a story posted by Wake up From Your Slumber blaming Israel......surprise surprise!

It quotes some US document before adding its own spin:

After the 1969 coup, Qadhafi closed American and British bases on Libyan territory and partially nationalized all foreign oil and commercial interests in Libya. He also played a key role in promoting the use of oil embargoes as a political weapon for challenging the West, hoping that an oil price rise and embargo in 1973 would persuade the West, especially the United States, to end support for Israel.
No doubt israel stands to gain richly from a more western allied government in tripoli -- willing to sell its oil to israel.

In fact, if you read this Congressional Report from March 2011: Middle East and North Africa Unrest: Implications for Oil and Natural Gas Markets (PDF), paying close attention to the second half which lists each MENA country and its strategic importance (IRAQ, LIBYA, SYRIA, IRAN and EGYPT among others) you will discover the reason for every political and military intervention by the US and Europe in MENA over the past 10 years.

It's been none other than one massive continuous initiative by the Zionist manipulated West to control the flow of oil from MENA countries.

All roads lead to OIL and the country that stands to benefit most from control over MENA oil is ISRAEL.

HAHA - get that? It's all about oil.....and apparently Israel stands to gain "the most" from its control, which it obtains by "Zionist manipulation of the West". Lordy, how ridiculous.

It makes no sense to argue from a position asking "Who stands to gain the most?" And how does Israel stand to gain the most anyway? Oil is a precious resource for everyone - for those who have it and those who don't.

This is all just rationalisation for anti-semitism. The readiness of people to swallow such nonsense is an expression of the same.

Rivero's published results of Guardian poll, asking whether Syria should be "next" for intervention....

MegaPhoney networks....oh, y, that's when other people organise, not Rivero. I see. When Rivero does it, it isn't propaganda - it's setting the record straight!

I'm very averse to military intervention. However, actually supporting Assad and Gadaffi against popular democracy movements is unconscionable. [Are they popular democracy movements? I don't know.] Has it not occurred to Rivero why these places have needed 'democracy movements'? He keeps insisting that the prevention of peaceful revolution makes violent revolution inevitable.....only that doesn't count for Syria...or Iran...and it didn't count in Libya. As 'enemies of Israel' he seeks to protect these awful regimes, nevermind democracy or the will of the people.

Western hostility and aggression towards regimes which loathe it (Syria, Iran, Libya, Iraq, NK etc) drives Rivero to warn his readers (and world leaders! lol) that these nations have mutual defence pacts, and that aggression against Syria and Iran, say, might trigger WW3 by bringing in Russia on the side of Iran. But when considering western/american defence of Israel, against Syria or Iran, say, suddenly things like defence pacts, alliances and mutual aid are symptoms of Zionist manipulation of the West - rather than legitimate acts of self-defence which reasonably should persuade aggressors of caution (which is how Rivero treats them when used against Israel/the West.)

Rivero and Libya

2011-08-22T17:29:00.011+01:00

Rivero's had to concede he was completely wrong again - though he doesn't explicitly say it, of course. Seems Gadaffi is done and the rebels managed to depose him without the need for NATO ground troops - something Rivero said was impossible.

This is how he is spinning it:

He says "...no matter how many Libyans have died, Libya's state bank (the one Goldman Sachs screwed over) is destroyed, the gold dinar is dead, and the world is now safe for private central banking and debt-based currencies!"

Err.....ok.

But if we look back at what Rivero was saying a few months ago it was a very different picture - back then he was calling the rebels "the democracy movement" and accusing Gadaffi of being supported by Israeli mercenaries.

Here's Rivero back in March, when he was clearly agitating for intervention against Libya:

What a hypocrite. He agitated for intervention, claiming that Israel was supporting a Gadaffi dictatorship and was crushing the Arab Spring....rah rah rah. Fast forward a few months and we now have Rivero attacking the intervention on behalf of the rebels (because it ...crushes the Arab Spring....and benefits Israel and Bankers. Whereas back in March he was saying not intervening was crushing the Arab Spring, and helping.... Israel.

Rivero agitated for intervention on behalf of "the democracy group" as he called them - the rebels. He said there would be no intervention because Israel would never allow it - Rivero was certain.

But the UN did vote for intervention, and that's the moment Rivero changed tack - suddenly the intervention was a bad and nasty imperialism - a war crime; the rebels were no longer "the democracy movement" and Gadaffi was transformed into some heroic nationalist leader of Arabism and anti-imperialism. What happened to Gadaffi's supposed 50,000 Israeli mercenaries, Mr Rivero? What happened to the Gadaffi tyranny...the dictatorship....the democracy movement? lol.

Here's Rivero from March again, when he promised the USA (on behalf of Israel) would veto any intervention:

Just compare that to his position now? Hilarious.

More on Rivero's hypocritical, opportunist transformation over Libya here and here.

This same thing is happening with Syria - somehow Rivero (and the conspiracists) believe the protests in Syria to be illegitimate, that they aren't part of the Arab Spring, that Assad is actually a very nice chappie....just like they did with Iranian protests.

Clearly, the thing that determines Rivero's view is how hostile to the West (and esp. Israel) any particular nation is. That determines Rivero's entire position. Of course that's so....because his anti-semitism is central to his grand conspiracy, and Gadaffi can be tyrant or hero one day to the next depending entirely on the demands of an anti-semitic narrative - nothing else. Nevermind local conditions, all that matters is the relationship to Israel. Ridiculous.

Rivero's Bullshit edition number 9,382

2011-08-22T06:45:00.004+01:00

I had wanted to post this earlier - but didn't get to it, so I'll do it now.

Here's Rivero making some bold claim.

" the absolute catastrophic situation in Libya, which has not a chance of being won by the Western-backed rebels without the introduction of Western ground troops."

Is that so? Right at this moment it looks like being proven very false very quickly.

ETA - from the BBC : 22 August 2011 Last updated at 07:44

Libya conflict: Fighting rages near Gaddafi compound

Libya conflict Live

Heavy fighting is taking place in Tripoli around the compound of embattled Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi after rebels seized control of much of the city on Sunday.

Throughout the night, jubilant crowds remained in central Green Square, previously the scene of nightly pro-Gaddafi demonstrations.

Rebels met little resistance as they swept in from east, south and west.
=====

So much for Rivero's assertions. lol

And what happened to all those mercenaries who were supposed to be fighting for Gadaffi on behalf of the Joooos? And what happened to the Arab Spring? Libya's different? Just like Syria is different? What crazy-arse principle is Rivero applying here? Seemingly, any anti-western (or Islamic) state that gets threatened with the Arab Spring Thing and Rivero thinks it's the evil work of the Jooooos to undermine a legitimate state (a la Syria, Libya and Iran.) But where the government is pro-western, any Arab Spring is then wholly justified in Rivero's eyes - suddenly it's a true expression of the people, liberty! a revolution... blah blah blah. (a la Egypt and Tunisia).

His judgement depends solely upon whether the regime is (A) friendly to USA and (B) Islamic. Or not. That's ridiculous. No assessment of local conditions.....everything judged against position re America (and Israel). Ridiculous. One is good, the other bad. What a binary moron.

free-market Nationalism

2011-08-22T04:39:00.008+01:00

Related to a thread I was going at in comments earlier: libertarianism as "free market nationalism."

The article is by Lew Rockwell. It's interesting in light of Breivik's manifesto citing Rockwell as an influence (it's about immigration).

[Lew Rockwell is Miseian economics dude, Ron Paul supporter.......and here he is making a nationalist appeal. Interesting. Clearly he doesn't see (all) nationalism as problematic. But how well does he hang his free markets to a nationalist appeal? Not very successfully, imo. And he seems to completely fail to consider any of the sentiment from nationalism about the anti-nationalism of his wider view.

Nationalism and the Immigration Question

The State Department doesn't like the revival of nationalism, but those of us who believe in national independence can only applaud. Socialism isn't the only reason the Soviet Union collapsed; the captive nations wanted their own traditions, institutions, and languages. They rejected the messianic universalism of Communism, which is why they will prove a barrier to the New World Order.

In thinking about nationalism, we must distinguish between two sorts. One, as in Croatia, is pro-freedom and anti-imperial, and therefore good. The other, as in Serbia, is pro-imperial and anti-freedom, and therefore evil. We see its results in blasted cities and murdered civilians.

Both nationalisms are nothing new in Europe, but it's been some time since we saw healthy nationalism in America. It could not be more timely, for we are under attack by a fifth column of multiculturalists. Western civ courses at top universities are one long libel, and that's only a sign of the deep anti-Western bias of the elites. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, "the idea of liberty is Western," and whatever the enemies of our civilization claim, they "look with envy upon its achievements, want to reproduce them, and thereby implicitly admit its superiority."

Nationalism puzzles most economists because it is bound up with what Mises called "extraeconomic" considerations: language, history, religion, manners, and private life. But he did some of his most subtle and brilliant writing on the subject.

The classical liberal economists showed that a world of free trade and free migration would tend toward the most suitable uses of labor and capital. But, with almost the sole exception of Mises, they ignored nationalism.

If the classical liberals were guilty of oversight, the socialists were blind. They assumed that nationalism could be literally abolished in the long march towards a world state.

The classical liberals were concerned about emigration and governments that treated citizens like prisoners. We should always be free to leave with all our property. But the "right to immigrate" seems less persuasive.

In 19th-century America, our booming free market easily absorbed everyone who wanted to work, and if someone didn't want to work, he was out of luck. There was no welfare, no ideology of victimhood, no inferiority complex about our heritage, and no attack on English. Immigrants became English-speakers because they wanted to become Americans. "What is specifically national lies in language," says Mises, and "individuals belong only to one nation." After he emigrated to America, Mises wrote and spoke English.

Today, our economy is disabled, victimology is rampant, welfare is abundant, and English is demeaned. In the New York City public schools, classes are held in 82 languages. This tax-funded multi-lingualism is an attack on English and therefore the American nation.

Bitter social conflict is inevitable when the dominant culture and language are displaced by immigrants – as Americans in border towns know. Mises, who favored the free immigration ideal, said fears of majority displacement in a mixed economy were "justified." "As long as the state is granted the vast powers which it has today," he wrote in 1919, "the thought of having to live in a state whose government is in the hands of members of a foreign nationality is positively terrifying."

Leftists claim that group antagonisms can be cured with togetherness, but that's utopian nonsense. Under present circumstances, as Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming points out, open borders would only subvert American liberty. Anyone could arrive, have his children educated in the public schools in an alien language, be hired and promoted through affirmative action or go on welfare, lobby for more "civil rights," and be feted by the national media as superior to the plain taxpayers – just for showing up.

Is there a case, in 1992, for a slow rate of immigration and preference for those from compatible cultures? Certainly businessmen should be able to hire foreign contract workers, as they could before the trade unions had their way, and we need to reexamine the idea of citizenship.

Citizenship is a civil convention, not a right, yet we grant it automatically to anyone born here. Former Congressman Ron Paul, an obstetrician, tells about the legions of pregnant women who arrive illegally from Mexico at his Texas hospital, receive free medical care (which the doctor and hospital must provide), and then leave with their newborn American citizens. As my daughter's favorite magazine says, What's Wrong With This Picture?

Shouldn't naturalization at the least require a long residency, good behavior, and proficiency in English? Aristotle praises Pericles for denying the franchise to those not of "citizen birth by both parents." That was classical democracy; today it's a hate crime.

Mises argued that private property would help solve the immigration question. Certainly we should seek to make our commercial districts private and therefore as safe and bum-free as malls, and private residential areas could be closed to anyone not invited or hired by the owners.

Immigration policy is no easy matter in the age of the new nationalism, but as in other areas, if we put the liberties of the American people first, we cannot go far wrong.

SOURCE

==========

He says of socialists - "They assumed that nationalism could be literally abolished in the long march towards a world state."

Yes, but in fact the Empire of Tsarist Russia was far less sensitive to nationality than the Bolsheviks. Lenin's argument on nationalism is similar to Rockwell's in so far as there are good and bad nationalisms, depending whether they are imperial or anti. Lenin wrote on the National Question. There is no simple assumption there that Nationalism will be "abolished". One might not agree with what Lenin says, but nobody can say it simply 'assumes nationalism will be abolished'. It doesn't.

Rockwell says: "Leftists claim that group antagonisms can be cured with togetherness, but that's utopian nonsense." It isn't Utopian nonsense it's just obviously sensible and reasonable.

And this part seems so obviously to pose a threat to 'liberty', yet Rockwell doesn't see it: "Certainly we should seek to make our commercial districts private and therefore as safe and bum-free as malls, and private residential areas could be closed to anyone not invited or hired by the owners."

Doesn't seem especially liberty-minded, does it?

But this is what I was getting at - that Ron Paul as a supposedly free-market dude and a supposedly nationalist guy, has to carry the two parts. And it's difficult. I don't think Rockwell succeeds in this piece at all, but he was obviously aware of the issue....the conflict between nationalism and free-markets.

As I said elsewhere already, someone at OpEdNews was making the common-enough complaint about Corporations not serving national interests. (They even suggested this corporate anti-nationalism was 'fascist'.) And yet others were proclaiming fascism was a successful and complete combo of state and corporation. Well, both things can't be true, can they? Depends on how you define "national interests" perhaps.

And notice this bit - Rockwell says: "Under present circumstances, as Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming points out, open borders would only subvert American liberty. Anyone could arrive, have his children educated in the public schools in an alien language, be hired and promoted through affirmative action or go on welfare, lobby for more "civil rights," and be feted by the national media as superior to the plain taxpayers – just for showing up. "

Anyone could arrive! Just imagine! Strange to hear a supposed libertarian complain like this. And notice how it is American liberty he is concerned about, rather than Liberty per se? Liberty has borders, or so it seems.

Regardless, this Monday morning the entire world is concerned about "libertarianism, free-markets and the National Question". I have no doubt.

Happy Birthday to me!

2011-08-20T18:04:00.002+01:00

No-one especially famous shares my birthday. [Ron Paul does.....Grrrrr lol]

Most relevant to me, on this day....

1858 – Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.

1940 – In Mexico City exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramon Mercader. He dies the next day.

Hmmm.

No mention of me in the list......yet.

Money Growth does NOT cause Inflation

2011-08-19T18:20:00.002+01:00

Money Growth Does Not Cause Inflation! [As published in that hotbed of socialism, Forbes.com]

It is conventional wisdom that printing more money causes inflation. This is why we are seeing so many warnings today of how Quantitative Easing I and II and the federal government’s deficit are about to lead to skyrocketing prices. The only problem is, it’s not true. That’s not how inflation works. Hence, this is yet another of the false alarms being raised (along with the need to balance the budget) that is preventing us from doing what we need to do to recover from the worse recession since the Great Depression.

Explaining inflation would be much simpler if not for the need to first spend so much time debunking the popular view. But, that’s the way it is. And so, let me start with the “money growth ==> inflation” view. This is based on the equation of exchange:

MV = Py

where M is equal to the supply of money, V the velocity of money (or the average number of times each dollar bill is spent), P the average price of goods and services, and y the total quantity of all goods and services sold during the time period in question. Thus, if there were 100 goods and services that sold for $10 each (on average), then that means a total of $1000-worth of transactions took place. Were there 200 one-dollar bills in this economy, then it must be that each was used 5 times (hence the “velocity” of money, or how fast they were spent again).

MV = Py 200 x 5 = 10 x 100

It is important to note here that the above is not the least bit controversial. No economist disagrees with the basic equation MV=Py. The arguments arise when additional assumptions are made regarding the nature of the individual variables. For example, this is what is assumed in the “money growth==>inflation” view:

M: That which is money is easily defined and identified and only the central bank can affect it’s supply, which it can do with autonomy and precision.

V: The velocity of money is related to people’s habits and the structure of the financial system. It is, therefore, relatively constant.

P: The economy is so competitive that neither firms nor workers are free to change what they charge for their goods and services without there having been a change in the underlying forces driving supply and demand in their market.

y: The economy automatically tends towards full employment and thus y (the existing volume of goods and services) is as large as it can be at any given moment (although it grows over time).

Now let’s go through an example, recalling the mathematical example from above:

MV = Py 200 x 5 = 10 x 100

Consider the assumptions made regarding each of the variables. P can’t change on it’s own, y is already as large as it can possibly be given current technology and resources, and V is constant. Only M can change in the short run and it must therefore logically be the starting point of any fluctuation we introduce. Furthermore, according to our assumptions, the central bank has the power to (for example) double the money supply at will. In Milton Friedman’s example from “The Optimum Quantity of Money,” a helicopter is used to accomplish this. Now what happens?

MV = Py 400 x 5 > 10 x 100

There is clearly a problem here which could be solved in one of three ways (assuming we don’t just lower M back to 200): 1) y could rise to 200, but of course it can’t because it’s already at its maximum; 2) V could fall to 2.5, but it is constant (something Friedman takes pains to emphasize in the original article); or 3) P could rise to 20. It is of course the third that proponents of the “money growth==>inflation” view say will occur.

MV = Py 400 x 5 = 20 x 100

Equality again!

Let me reemphasize why this is the only logical outcome. We have assumed that y and V are constant. Friedman says that y is constant at the level associated with the natural rate of unemployment, while V is indirectly related to agents’ demand for cash. When people want to hold more cash, V, the rate at which they spend cash, naturally falls, and vice versa. But, Friedman further specifies that V is relatively constant and so, therefore, is the demand for cash. Thus, when the central bank raised the supply of cash from 200 to 400, this meant that people were holding more cash than they wished to have in their portfolios. The Fed had created a situation in which the supply of money (newly raised) exceeded the demand (still at the original level). The result was that people, in the language of the “money growth==>inflation” view, rid themselves of excess money balances by spending that cash. They hoped to buy more goods and services but since, in aggregate, more did not exist, they only bid up their prices: money growth led to inflation.

This is this standard view. It makes for a great lecture in an intro or even intermediate macro class and I’ve done it many times (in fact, I just did it this week in my summer course). But the problem is that after the course is over, people only remember this:

increase M ==> increase P

What they don’t recollect are all the assumptions we made to get there! And not only are some questionable, they are downright inconsistent with other lectures we make in the very same class.

Take for example y. One need only look out the window to see that it is not currently at the full-employment and therefore maximum level. Hence, given this scenario:

MV = Py 400 x 5 > 10 x 100

there is no reason that this could not lead to the rise in y shown below as those spending their “excess money balances” actually cause entrepreneurs to raise output to meet the new demand:

MV = Py 400 x 5 = 10 x 200

This is, of course, the goal of the government deficit spending that so many economically-ignorant people are trying to stop right now.

In addition, there is a great deal of evidence that the velocity of money IS NOT constant. As one would expect, it tends to decline in recessions when people do, in fact, want to hold more cash. Hence, if we assume that the central bank undertakes the above policy during such a period (as we see today), the final result might be this:

MV = Py 400 x 2.5 = 10 x 100

Or it could be some combination of a rise in y and a fall in V–this would make perfect economic sense. Notice how the process of making the initial assumptions of this approach more realistic is making it far from certain that a rise in M leads to a rise in P, particularly during an economic downturn.

But that’s not the worst of it. There is actually a much more fundamental problem with the “money growth==>inflation” approach. Recall the original assumptions for M:

M: That which is money is easily defined and identified and only the central bank can affect it’s supply, which it can do with autonomy and precision.

What is “money” in a modern, credit-based financial system? Is it that stuff you carry in your pocket, the 1′s and 0′s of the electronic entries in your bank account, the available balance on your credit card, your checking account, your savings account? In practice, this question is so difficult to answer that economists actually offer several possible definitions, just in case! Suffice it to say that for present purposes, the idea that we can precisely identify the current “supply of money” in our economy is suspect. This by itself causes problems for operationalizing the above equation.

To make matters worse, the financial sector can create and destroy money without direct action by the central bank. Every time a loan is made, the supply of money increases. The bank is creating money out of thin air, with only a fraction of the total necessary to have already been in the vault as reserves. And when loans are repaid or there are defaults, the supply of money contracts. Hence, the private sector has a great deal of control over M.

But perhaps the real nail in the coffin of the “money growth==>inflation” view is this: the phenomenon that Milton Friedman identifies as key to the whole process, i.e., the excess of the money supply over money demand, cannot happen in real life. The irony here is that something else we already cover in the intro macro class makes this evident. How is it that the Federal Reserve increases the money supply? Remember that Friedman used a helicopter–indeed, he had to, for there was no other way to make the example work. This wasn’t just a simplifying device, it was critical, for it allowed the central bank to raise the money supply despite the wishes of the public. However, that can’t happen in the real world because the actual mechanisms available are Fed purchases of government debt from the public, Fed loans to banks through the discount window, or Fed adjustment of reserve requirements so that the banks can make more loans from the same volume of deposits. All of these can raise M, but, not a single solitary one of them can occur without the conscious and voluntary cooperation of a private sector agent. You cannot force anyone to sell a Treasury Bill in exchange for new cash; you cannot force a private bank to accept a loan from the Fed; and private banks cannot force their customers to accept loans. Supplying money is like supplying haircuts: you can’t do it unless a corresponding demand exists.

The bottom line is that the “money growth==>inflation” view makes perfect sense in some alternate universe where all those assumptions regarding the variables DO hold, but not here, not today, not in the United States of America in 2011. That’s not how it works. It’s a damn shame, I know, because it’s so simple and intuitively appealing and it would make controlling inflation really simple. But, if we are to develop useful policies then we need a model better suited to the way the modern financial system works.

There’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water, so let’s retain the equation. However, we need new assumptions with respect to M, V, P, and y:

M: A precise definition and identification of money is elusive in a modern, credit-money economy, and its volume can change either with or without direct central bank intervention. In addition, the monetary authority cannot raise the supply of money without the cooperation of the private sector. Because central banks almost always target interest rates (the price of holding cash) rather than the quantity of money, they tend to simply accommodate demands from banks. When private banks communicate that they need more reserves for loans and offer government debt to the Fed, the Fed buys it. It’s the private sector that is in the driver’s seat in this respect, not the central bank. The central bank’s impact is indirect and heavily dependent on what the rest of the economy is willing to do (which is, incidentally, why all the QE and QE II money is just sitting in bank vaults).

V: The velocity of money is, indeed, related to people’s behavior and the structure of the financial system, but there are discernable patterns. It is not constant even over the short run.

P: While it is true that factors like production bottlenecks can be a source of price movements, the economy is not so competitive that there are not firms or workers who find themselves able to manipulate the prices and wages they charge. The most important inflationary episode in recent history was the direct result of a cartel, i.e., OPEC, flexing its muscle. Asset price bubbles can also cause price increases (as they are now). The key here, however, is that P CAN be the initiating factor–in fact, it has to be, since M can’t.

y: The economy can and does come to rest at less-than-full employment. Hence, while it is possible for y to be at its maximum, it most certainly does not have to be.

A number of scenarios can be described based on this more realistic alternative and it would be nice to go through each. Unfortunately, as I suggested above, the big problem with this topic is that it takes to long just to reject the popular view! So, I’ll avoid the temptation to write a book here and offer just a quick example (maybe a future post can go over some other interesting possibilities).

As already mentioned, the most important inflationary episode in post-WWII history was that during the 1970s and early 1980s. From 1968 through 1972, consumer price inflation averaged 4.6%. Over the next ten years it was 7.5%. What happened? What caused this sudden and dramatic acceleration in prices? Did the Fed accidentally print too much money? As already explained, that can’t happen–you simply can’t raise the money supply above the demand. M did rise, however, and largely proportionally to the increase in P. This is a much more realistic story of those events.

As the price of oil skyrocketed, so costs of production rose for many, many US businesses. Because there is a lag between purchasing inputs and selling output, most firms have to borrow money (working capital) to bridge the gap. As the ripple effect of the OPEC price increases moved throughout the economy, the demand for cash by these businesses rose. Quite reasonably, private banks and the Fed did what they could to accommodate. These were fair requests on the part of US entrepreneurs. Loans were extended and government debt sold by the private sector to the central bank. This raised the supply of money. Therefore, the rising prices led to an increase in the supply of money and not the other way around. QE, QE II, and the federal government deficit cannot by themselves cause inflation.

And this is how it really works, at least until the Fed starts using helicopters for monetary policy.

SOURCE

Age of Love / A Pagan Place

2011-08-18T20:20:00.002+01:00

Several times, in nineteen ninety something......at 3am.....on LSD.......here:

What a song. What a crowd. What a place.....what a time.

I love that song. The empty spookiness. A chick with a fabulous foreign accent, and shw sings like an angel to the driving drum and bass. And that mad, super-extended siren whine..... I'd never heard anything like it. Along with LSD and XTC, a lot of genuinely brilliant people, and the setting of Llyn Brianne.....as pictured.....what a time.

I went to parties there, at Llyn Brianne: everyone was a friend of a friend, they had generators, DJs, dance music, fire and drugs. It was quite the deal. I remember meeting stragers at the fire in the dead of night, and they'd explain they had no idea where they were, having travelled all day, and driven all night. It gave me a strange delight to know how impressed they would be at daybreak, because everyone always is. There's something very evocative about the Welsh mountains. The Welsh landscape provides a very particular mood. For one thing, it feels "old", and on LSD out in the woods listening to music like this, I enjoyed imagining myself a primitive, with knowledge of nothing, just desire and a full heart. I'd climb trees, feeling like I was looking on unseen land, as if I had never seen a map. I felt like I was doing things all humans have done. Something very primitive. But more than that, the sound of that song in the hills of Wales, alongside a fire, and with the drugs......and the primitivism of it all....there was something else there too. All the things together brought out something else....something very dark. Not quite malevolent, but.....something. I feel sure that "something" I sensed deeply was what the pagans were on about. There's something in those hills. Wales is a pagan place.

walter-benjamin - Marxism 2007

2011-08-18T03:47:00.002+01:00

www.radio-rouge.org/Users/resistancemp3/walter-benjamins-marxism-a-michael-lowy.mp3

From: www.resistancemp3.org.uk
Marxism 2007

Lots of good audio there.

There's another piece on Benjamin there too:
www.radio-rouge.org/Users/resistancemp3/walter-benjamin-and-the-politics-of-commemoration-esther-leslie.mp3