The Big Lie

The cultural trope of the dogged reporter in rumpled suit with a large view camera and fedora with a press card tucked in the hat band is an illusion that many of us still labor under.  Somewhere in our subconscious, we link this trope to the blow-dried puffballs that read teleprompters and who haven't been in the field researching for years, if ever.

In recent months, there has been somewhat of a backlash against this kind of "news" reading, with more and more folks realizing just how manipulated the audience is.  Our perceptions of the world at large are completely controlled by massive "information" corporations, many of which share board members and shareholders.

These corporations spend little or nothing on actual research.  They depend almost entirely on wire feeds like AP or Reuters that "gather" the news and distribute "stories" to paid accounts like FOX, CNN, and any of the other alphabet outlets.  One might notice the occasional difference in which "stories" lead off the broadcasts, but overall, there is almost zero difference in content between any of the outlets.

The local affiliates do some news gathering.  They have "reporters" and cameramen who run around in satellite trucks beaming news conferences from city hall, or images of chalk outlines and crime-scene tape.  This is hardly news, but it keeps the rubes happy and buying advertisers' products.  Pays well, too, if you're a puffball.

Few people stop to consider that ALL news is fake, though.  All of it at all times in all places.  It may be reporting actual events, but there is a catch:

The second a cameraman starts recording, you are only seeing what the cameraman (and his producer/reporter) what you to see.  He cannot possibly, nor does he try, to record the entire context of the scene.  He is busily getting interesting pictures and "coverage" of the scene, but it is only his perspective - influenced by his desire to get noticed and advance up the food chain - further influenced by the producer/reporter's orders to "get this".

The producer/reporter, in turn, is looking for a certain angle that will get him or her noticed so they can move up the food chain - perhaps go to national.  So they are looking for the most sensational aspects of the "story", a hook that will get attention.

So far, two people have had direct influence over what we the audience can see and learn about the "story".

Back at the news room, the Executive Producer and Assignments Editor are using corporate guidelines to decide what stories get aired, and which angle of the story they want to show.  They give direct orders to the producer/reporter - in many cases even before they arrive at the scene - on what the Management wants to see.  Is it a crime involving drugs that would support the official narrative of the Drug War?  What races are involved in the story and can that be spun into narrative support?  What genders are involved, and can that be spun?  Even the section of town - poor vs. rich areas - influence whether and how a story gets reported.

By now, dozens of people have influenced a story, and it hasn't even gotten to editing.  At this point, the producer/reporter will scribble a few notes, being sure to get all of Management's agenda points in, and then record a stand-up.  Even for live reports, this is not necessarily done at the scene, and can even be separated by large amounts of time from the actual footage at the scene.  In some cases (that I have actually been involved with) the cameraman is the only person on the scene and the stand-up is done much later after Management decides what angle they want to show.  The producer/reporter was not even at the scene and can be manufacturing a story out of whole cloth, choosing pictures that roughly match the "story".

At this point, the editor takes over.  The footage and producer/reporter's stand-up are assembled by someone making additional choices about what looks good, cuts together well and adds to the narrative.  The "story" is given a time slop of, say, thirty seconds, so the editor must figure out how to cram as much (or little) information in the slot given.

The finished story is reviewed by the producer/reporter, who may make changes.  It is then passed by the Executive Producer, who checks the story for "relevance" and ensures that it does not violate any of the political dictates of Management.

The finished video is cured for air and a "wrap-around" narrative is written for the puffballs to read off the teleprompters.  Occasionally, the anchor puffballs may kill a story, usually just to exert their authority, because they are considered part of the Editorial Staff.

By now, clearly a great many people have influenced a "story" before we even get to the Advertisers, who exert an inordinate amount of influence over content.  Certainly, any stories that are detrimental to their products or company are killed, but they are known to influence stories touch on the corporations' political agendas, as well.

If a story has passed what is now hundreds of influencing forces, it gets aired, where the audience decides how much importance and credibility they place on the "story".  The audience reaction - whether tongue-clucking or rioting - has been carefully contrived through multiple layers of "gate-keeping". It is a science of manipulation.

Clearly, it is ALL fake news.  Any given "story" may have varying degrees of "truth" in it, but from the moment the camera starts recording until the light and sound impedes on our senses, the process of "reporting" news is designed to remove "truth" and insert "agenda".  The news we watch is no more "real" than a blockbuster superhero movie.

If we all approached the media with the understanding that it is ALL FAKE NEWS, we would be a long way down the road to protecting ourselves from manipulation science.  Of course, the best option is to turn it all off completely, but this is a rather difficult option, since the media has infused vast amounts of our lives.

Being aware of the vast pressure of agendas on every frame of video and every word of narrative will erect a wall of defense against manipulation.  Additionally, being aware that manipulation is coming from every direction all the time is another line of defense.  Even a 24/7, live-streaming webcam cannot show us truth, since it can never show what is behind the camera.

IT IS ALL FAKE NEWS.  The image at the head of this column of an ABC report faking a crime scene report is not the exception, it is the rule.

This Ain't Your Daddy's Pizza

"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out!"

Thus declared Claudius, at both the beginning and end of Robert Graves' brilliant I, Claudius.

At the end of empires, the foul rot that lies at the heart of power is always revealed.  Ultimately, the revelation is at least a proximal cause of the collapse, but equally is it the moral and ethical decay it represents a reason for implosion.

Whether historically or contemporaneously, all centers of power and wealth rot out.  The debauchery of power always eats itself like a parasite until the host dies.  It is as inevitable as sunset.

Throughout history, one of the primal signals that an empire was about to collapse has been the complete abandonment of propriety and moral standards.  Rome, of course, serves as an iconic symbol of such decay.  That empire only survived past the first century anno domini because of the mass conversion of the empire to Christianity and the return of some moral compass.  That was enough to keep the empire going for another three centuries, until even the Roman Church had corrupted.

Only one thing is more sure than the decay of empire, and it is that the decay is commensurate with the scale of wealth and power that the empire wields.  The greater the pile of gold on which the emperor sits, the more fetid and debased will be the spirits that dwell at the seat of power.

At its lowest point, the heart of the empire resorts to sacrificing innocents lives, drinking their blood and sexual practices that would make even the most liberal mind reel in shock and horror.  At this point, there are no longer factions or divisions; you are either in or out.

Empires also work like secret societies: in order to ensure the absolute fealty of its members, they must commit the most heinous crimes in front of witnesses who will use it to destroy any member who steps out of line.  The lure of unending riches and plate-fulls of the most forbidden fruits is more than even the most resolute of minds can resist.  No matter how idealistic one's initial state, unbridled power will drag one down.  After all, who of us would not eventually taste the fruit if all consequences of law and shame were removed?  Once tasted, then there could be no turning back.

At which point we come to PizzaGate.

Back during the waning days of the US presidential election, WikiLeaks began dumping thousands of email, most especially that of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager.  Researchers began noticing a patter of odd pizza references that were strangely out of context.  It was a police investigator in New York City who mentioned that pizza references were common code among pedophiles, which he had investigated for several years.

At that time, I noted on the Farcebook feed that folks should keep an eye on PizzaGate.  It was going to become a major story, and indeed it is, with at least one major news story per week cropping up in various parts of the US.  There are a lot of dogged private investigators out there, some who have been at this story since at least the early 1980s, who needed just that bit of information to finally pry the lid off the rotten core of empire.

The story broke a couple of years ago with the revelations concerning Jimmy Seville, a UK celebrity who happened to be known for his "charity" work for children.  Despite fierce resistance, that investigation has already ensnared a number of the elite, including now a former Prime Minister.

Americans have blissfully ignored the story until now, and even in the face of mounting evidence and even several arrests, most continue to ignore or deny that such a thing could exist at the heart of their empire.  When faced with information too horrible to contemplate, the mind will default to the "everything is just fine" position in protection mode.

The fact is, though, that pedophilia and human sacrifice have appeared repeatedly throughout recorded history wherever wealth and power condense.  As if under some spell from outside, those at the centers of power come to believe that having sex with, drinking the blood of and sacrificing the lives of innocents will transfer even more power and perhaps even eternal life to their blackened hearts.

Throughout the Western world, so-called Child Protective Services (CPS) have been set up to procure children for the elite.  In the Middle East, especially Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Bacha Bazi boys have been around for at least as long as Islam, and probably much longer.  In Asia, Thailand is notable for providing children for sex.  Institutions like the Roman Church have long been seething cesspools of child abuse, but most major European churches are involved in the system.

Most of the children are street urchins or orphans.  They would not be missed if they disappeared.  The Western CPS systems evolved to identify abandoned and abused children who could vanish without much fuss, and the legal system was adjusted to allow these organizations the right to take children from their families under an entire spectrum of sanctioned conditions.  They identify potential sources of fresh meat, then literally prey on them until they can find some means to take the children into custody and place them with "foster" families, where they are conditioned for the elite "market".

PizzaGate and its various related scandals around the world, threaten to expose one of the oldest and best kept secrets of the global elite.  This practice is one of the most vital sources of power that the elite have, and they will do virtually anything to protect themselves and their sicknesses.  It is their most vulnerable point, but also the source of their cohesiveness.  It binds them together more tightly than social institution, like marriage.

There is a literal war being carries out before our collective eyes.  Some factions of the elite are still human and find the practice revolting, but they have their own vulnerabilities that can be exposed.  It is a stalemate of mutual destruction: sociopath versus sociopath.

Nearly every major news story right now has at its core this elite perversion.  Middle Eastern wars on "terror" are an ideal means of creating orphans and displaced children.  The children are shipped around under the guise of "refugee relocation" programs, where they can disappear into "social services" networks with almost no oversight or accountability.  Once the elite are done with them, they are simply killed off in ritual murders and no one is the wiser.

Those who think Trump will champion an investigation have not considered the significance of the so-called "Russian prostitute" dossier that made the rounds.  It was most likely fake, but it served notice on Trump that he is vulnerable regardless of his innocence in any given accusation. Even if the elite have no substantial charge (highly unlikely), they have the means to fabricate evidence and disseminate it within hours to their media blow-hards.

The die is cast.  The poisons in the mud will hatch out.  It is the nature of crumbling empires to have their darkest secrets brought to light.  It will not be simple or without collateral damage, though.  Deep secrets, like the elite pedophile system, will cause widespread injury and death as they struggle to keep their most vile practices under wraps.

This is by far not the only scandal that is coming to light, but it is the most visceral.  Economic manipulation, vast deception and wars for profits are horrible, but at least comprehensible to most people.  The elite pedophilia is something that cannot be repaired or covered up.  Once made common knowledge, the vast majority of normal people will demand blood.  Once the lid is off this can of worms, there is no going back.

Stay alert.  Not only has PizzaGate just begun, the depth and breadth of its revelations will shock even the most jaded mind.

As Claudius Caesar admonished, "Let all he poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out."

From Hell's Heart I Stab At Thee

The most common argument invoked to silence those of us who are rightfully dubious of vaccines is analogous to saying a chocolate cake is still delicious, despite the presence of arsenic in the recipe.  The other part of the argument is that if a little chocolate cake is delicious, then four-and-a-half tons of it in one sitting is even better.

In the Far Side's ongoing rant against vaccines, the most common criticism we receive is that we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Vaccines, they say, are obviously good, so what's a hundred thousand acute and/or chronic illnesses per million, when compared to the glories of induced immunity?

When it is you or your child that is incapacitated for life, we must conclude that 1-in-10 is unacceptable, especially when both the efficacy and safety of vaccines have been dramatically called into question in the past couple of years.

Most recently, the Italian national science agency discovered significant quantities of heavy metals and unknown bio-contaminants in over 40 tested human vaccines, the German high court found no evidence for a measles virus, and outbreaks of disease among vaccinated populations have highlighted issues regarding the efficacy of vaccines.

A recent RAND study of over 20,000 published papers found little strong evidence for associations between vaccines and common complaints:

CONCLUSIONS: There is evidence that some vaccines are associated with serious adverse events; however, these events are extremely rare and must be weighed against the protective benefits that vaccines provide. Careful consideration should be given to the investigation of research gaps, including patient risk factors that may be associated with AEs; however, important factors must be taken into account when determining whether studies are warranted, including the severity and frequency of the AE being studied and the challenges of conducting sufficiently powered studies when investigating rare events.

However, this study doesn't appear to address so-called "tobacco science," in which data is cherry-picked to arrive at the desired outcome, nor does it address the powerful influence that vaccine manufacturers have over which papers are published and/or allowed public access.  Furthermore, in the US in recent years, the manufacturers have been inoculated against liability for their products and special "secret" courts set up that don't allow class-action suits. This can easily be interpreted as a virtual admission of guilt, not to mention a blatant example of government and industry colluding in a protection racket.  It is also a sure-fire recipe for abuse of public trust.

Into this mess rides Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  Long a champion of the vaccine safety issue, he has issued a US$100,000 reward for anyone who can produce evidence that Thimerosal - a mercury compound commonly used in vaccines as a preservative - is safe for human injection.  It also appears that the Trump administration will name Kennedy as head of a special investigative panel on vaccines.

One is tempted to feel a glimmer of hope that the global reign of terror by Big Pharma may be coming to an end, but I am reticent to indulge just yet.  The prospect of losing billions in ill-gotten profits, plus the decades of potential lawsuits in nearly every jurisdiction on Earth would tend to make the industry willing to fight dirty.

Take the MMR vaccine as an example.  The German court's findings mean that at least one-third of the vaccine is completely imaginary, since no measles virus exists.  Thus, the millions of doses given worldwide, with at least some part of the price being completely without cost, as no processing is required to inoculate against fantasy.  That's a tidy little income with virtually no expense to achieve it.  How many of the vaccines are equally imaginary?

We have only the say-so of Big Pharma to guarantee the safety of vaccines, since government regulators seem more than willing to sell us out for free vacations and cushy revolving-door jobs at the end of every rainbow.

We are faced with severely entrenched forces whose ability and desire to poison humanity for profit is increasingly clear.  It is an uphill battle with both industry and government sided against those of us who are sick of being told what is good for us at the expense of our children's futures and the general health.  It will not be easy to pry the truth out of the system.

Nevertheless, we can be encouraged that the tide is turning against the Big Pharma leviathan and even little victories are worth celebrating.

Pretzel Logic

I came across a video that does a fine job of placing left-wing absurdity on display.  It places the insanity of identity politics in stark relief, especially in the hallowed halls of academia.

For instance, rockets are sexist because the aerodynamic shape resembles a phallus.  Noted, but as far as I can see, the shuttle was vulva shaped, but required three phalli to get it off the ground.  A vulva-shaped craft that could launch and land without a phallus would probably be welcomed by the space industry, as it would likely save quite a bit of money and effort.

Recently, the "University" of Washington-Tacoma declared that grammar itself was "racist" and "sexist".  How they arrived at that conclusion is a complete mystery, though they claim that the grammatical "hierarchies" lead to biased language structure.  I suppose they had to overlook "it" and "one" as gender-neutral pronouns, or that "black and white" and "color" as adjectives for printing and photography obviously place non-white in higher regard, hierarchically speaking.  Perhaps they are referring to the standard order of adjectives in the English language: Quantity or number, Quality or opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Proper adjective (often nationality, other place of origin, or material), Purpose or qualifier.

The only thing I can figure is that Size and Shape coming so high up the list makes this grammatical convention sexist, while Color coming so far down the list and in close proximity to Proper adjectives makes it racist.  In any case, I am flummoxed by the claim, since this is a common convention, but does not preclude a little mix and match.

Regardless of all the histrionics on the part of the left, there are only two sexes, represented by the X and Y chromosomes within our genetic structure.  Gender, on the other hand, is nothing more than grammatical constructs representing the natural dichotomy.  How do they plan to attack German, which assigns nouns one of three genders (seemingly at random), which is integral to the language's structure and affects all sorts of other things in the grammar?  Perhaps they intend to eliminate the masculine and feminine, and use only the neuter?  While this would greatly simplify the language, it would also make it incomprehensible to most German speakers.

Even more tortured is the leftist logic that science can be racist, sexist or nationalist.  By this logic, the molecular structure of water must be racist and sexist because it was first proposed (in primitive form) by Empedocles in 450 BC, a white European male.  Disregarding the fact that two hydrogens and one oxygen have been shown to be the structure of water throughout the Universe, our fundamental concept of this molecule must be skewed by racial, sexual and ethnic bias.

Forget that Neil DeGrasse Tyson promotes "white" science, or that male and female skeletons display objectively quantifiable differences, this is all a racist, sexist plot to dominate the world!

Forget that Sickle Cell Anemia statistically affects more blacks, or that Fanconi Anemia C statistically affects more Ashkenasi Jews, or that by definition you must have a uterus to contract uterine cancer, its all a racist, sexist plot!

While the basic impulse is correct - everyone should be treated equally according to their skills and talents - identity politics is conceived and implemented solely for divisive purposes.  As George Carlin so lucidly put it, "they" want to keep us fighting with each other while "they" run to the bank with our money.  It is so perfectly Machiavellian that even a most cursory read of The Prince would highlight the technique.

"Divide and conquer" is one of the oldest and most fundamental of military strategies, right up there with "Fish in a Barrel" strategy, that it is amazing how many people have fallen for it.  One has to tip the hat,though, to the brilliant addition of Orwellian "Double Think," wherein the lefties have convinced themselves that dividing everyone into smaller and smaller groups constantly fighting each other is called "Diversity" and is praised and honored among the loftiest aspirations of humanity.

The left has got itself so twisted into 'pretzel logic that it has literally become a parody of itself.  It seeks truth by declaring there is no truth.  It declares solidarity in diversity.  It employs war to establish peace.  It espouses genderlessness by recognizing dozens of genders.  It decries racism by employing it.  Honestly, don't these people recognize their own glaring inconsistencies?

I had to laugh.  An article yesterday said that independent cinemas in the US would show the brilliant film 1984, on April 4th, as a protest against Donald Trump.  Do they think they are making a comment about Trump's administration, or are they pining for a world that could have been in an alternate reality.  I don't think even they can clearly answer that.

Another article declared that a website allows leftists to live in an alternate reality.  Frankly, I hardly think they need encouragement.

Oui Oui Monsoon

It's another of those lovely tropical monsoon mornings, when the rain and lightning have gone on all night and one discovers all the leaks in the roof that formed during the dry spell.  As is typical of these types of things, the leaks form directly over or next to the most valuable electronics in the house, in this case the laptop and the cable converter box which delivers my outside link to the world at large.

Contrary to common misconceptions, the monsoon rarely involves torrential downpours.  Instead, it rains steadily for days with only occasional breaks.  It is the incessant wetness, combined with the Indonesian habit of covering every horizontal surface with glazed tiles, that makes this time of year grate on the nerves.

The non-stop rains also lead to more dangerous situations.  Here in the city, flash floods and cresting rivers are common problems.  It is so regular, in fact, that it is a normal way of life.  Our important appliances, like the refrigerator, sit on 18-inch stilts, should the waters rise high enough to overtop the first floor, which is already 2 feet above street level.

There is also the obligatory reports of landslides across the country, and mountains are slowly whittled down into molehills.  This occasionally leads to exciting moments when the passable part of a road is barely wide enough for a car to pass, while a gaping hole leads to a heart-thumpingly sheer drop into oblivion.

This past night, we were treated to a bonus: an hours-long electrical display of extraordinary proportions.  There has been over the past few hours a nearly non-stop lightning storm, with overlapping flashes - some quite close by - followed by the mournful crash and rumble of split air.  The ionized atmosphere has the dubious effect of causing the three young cats to go completely nuts, running around in circles, simultaeouslyleaping onto furniture and skidding across the room into rolling tackles.

Other than the occasional streams of water pouring off the stairs and landing on the desk within inches of my valuable electronics, it is not so bad, until one has to venture out into the wild.

The most annoying aspect of monsoon season is the inevitable traffic snarl.  Jakarta has world-class epic traffic jams without any help from Nature.  When it rains, however, the poorly constructed roadbeds rot under the pounding of thousands of vehicles, turning large sections of road into little more than finely crushed gravel.  Additionally, people naturally slow down in the rain so that the usual crawl is reduced to barely more than a squirm.  It is not unusual to sit in one spot for over two hours while folks try to solve the puzzle of 30 cars trying to occupy the same point in space and time simultaneously.

Carrying rain gear and a change of socks, using rubberized shoes and leaving at least four hours before any scheduled appointments are among the many adaptive behaviors one uses to get through monsoon.  Any more, umbrellas are not for one's self, but to protect the ubiquitous electronic devices one needs for daily life these days.  The four-hour lead time is not just for travel hitches, but also to allow an hour or so at the coffee shop to dry off before meeting an important client.

Having grown up in subtropical Houston, I had little problem with this change in weather, but many of the ex-pats I know complain endlessly about the rain and floods and the constant feeling of being wet.  I know many who bought houses in areas prone to noahide floods.  I have heard tales of using bathtubs as row boats from second story windows to get to the market.  They are not exaggerating.  I see scenes like this at least once a year - all taken in stride as a consequence of geography and fluid dynamics.

One often overlooked benefit of monsoon is a break from the overbearing heat.  As I write, it is about 20 degrees Celcius, which is roughly 5 degrees cooler than usual at five in the morning.  There is also a mild but refreshing breeze coming in the open doorway, where the young cats are tearing in and out doing their best cheetah impressions.  The water in front of the house is about 30cm deep, at the moment, but the rain is letting up a bit, so there is hope that I don't need to move the first floor up to the second at the moment.

It is blissfully quiet, as well.  The usual vendors with their various calls are home in bed and the sound of rain is drowning out the four mosques within 300 metes of the house.  There is only the ongoing, overlapping claps of thunder, as hardly any of the normal daily activities have been delayed.

The rain has been steadily falling for the last 24 hours, and the light show has been ongoing since about 11 last night.  With any luck, it will abate in the next few hours and the stream of water coming down the upstairs wall and cascading off the stairs onto my desk will finally stop.  Yet it would not be unusual for this to continue another day or two.  The local news shows have no weather reports, since they are rather pointless.  There are only the breathless reports of landslides, flooding and traffic jams that accompany monsoon.

The lightning has slowed to about five per minute now, so there is hope.

A Lesson In Entropy

California is once again proving the utter idiocy and uselessness of socialism.  For decades, the state has been a hive of left-wing busy-bodies who love giving charity with other people's money.  Now those choices are coming home in rather dramatic fashion.

The problem with socialism is that it is not a natural, organic state for human beings.  We don't like being forced to support others, especially when we can barely take care of our own.  Ultimately in socialism, people discover it is easier to give up trying and take the free hand-outs, which leaves no one to do productive work.  The system ultimately collapses under its own idealism.

The first step always seems reasonable.  "Hey!  We'll carve off a little pie to share with folks who are down on their luck," is how it begins.  Everyone thinks it's not a bad idea giving an extra nickel or two a month to help out.  Then the inevitable happens: a bureaucracy springs up to administer the "charity", which requires additional layers of bureaucrats to watch the watchers, while more people are included in the largess and the ballooning costs require a marketing campaign to keep people volutarily paying into the system.

After a while, you've got an uncontrollable bureaucracy administering vast sums of money taking care of ever-swelling groups of qualified recipients while the bite of productive people's pie is getting bigger, eventually forcing 100% of the population into the hand-out system and no one doing the work, all the while being head-bashed with slick ad campaigns saying how wonderful it all is.

Naturally, the whole thing collapses in a dramatic heap of failed idealism.

Back to California.

For decades, the state has prided itself (read marketing campaign) on being a left-wing paradise.  Food dripped from trees, eternal sunshine bathed golden beaches, everyone had everything while doing nothing.  It was glorious, until...

Along comes a winter with storm after noahide storm, caused as much by natural cycles as by Fukushima radiation literally boiling the Pacific Ocean.  The vast and sudden dump of water on the state has exposed huge gaps in infrastructure maintenance caused by enormous amounts of the state's budget going to handing out charity to millions of people who have no intention of becoming productive members of society and eventually paying into the system.

Since the state's educational system was devoted almost entirely to marketing the glorious socialist paradise, no one apparently learned the Laws of Thermodynamics.  All systems require constant input of energy to maintain order or they will collapse to a neutral state of being.

Thus, a dam or a street require a certain level of constant input of energy in order to keep them functioning as intended.  If that energy is siphoned off for other things, then at some point the systems must collapse.

This is the inherent fallacy of socialism: once every part of a system is taking energy out, then no energy is being put into maintaining it, and it will (usually dramatically) implode.  California's socialist paradise has come at the expense of productive input.  Even the state's energy must come from outside because it has regulated the energy industry into non-existence so as not to ruin the views from Malibu with oil rigs and gas pipelines.

The storms this year are one of those unexpected events that catalyze the collapse of systems.  Under normal circumstances, the system erodes so slowly that most people don't notice it right away.  They slowly adjust their expectations to compensate for the minor changes, thus normalizing the decay.

But along comes a serious of massive storms, or perhaps a devastating earthquake, or some similar event.  The system, already weakened from years of neglect, falls in on itself in a sudden and dramatic event - much like the collapse of the Soviet Union.  This is the nature or and ultimate outcome of all socialist systems, from the fall of Rome to the collapse of California infrastructure.  It is as inevitable as the sunrise.

In the end, this is why a global government can never last, especially one based on the unfeasilbe theory of socialism.  The system would be so complex that at some point it would require all available resources to maintain the status quo, meaning the sacrifice of growth.  In this delicate equilibrium, one sudden event would topple the entire thing.

The only viable solution is small, controllable systems that are uniquely tailored to each community.  The infrastructure develops according to the resources available at the local level and the ingenuity of the local inhabitants.  This is far easier and cheaper to maintain.

One-size-fits-all systems require far more energy input, are much less flexible, and exceed the resources of any one community to maintain.

We are likely, sooner rather than later, to start seeing more and more systems collapse in California fashion.  The century-long goosestep to socialist paradise must reduce itself to rubble, as it has no choice in the matter.  It is the nature of the system, whether the systems are corporate or national.

California is a microcosm of what is coming down the pike globally.  As systems collapse, they will absorb more resources to maintain until the number of collapsing systems will overwhelm the productivity and resources available.  It is a Universal Truth that cannot be legislated or bureaucratized away.

Only small, agile and adaptive systems at a community level, interlinked to its immediate neighbors, can answer the demands of a global civilization.  Global solutions are doomed from the start by the weight of their own demands on resources.  Global corporations and government are not the solutions, they are the problems, and California is our test tube example du jour, since we have obviously forgotten the lesson of the Soviet Union.

Mark well California's demise.

The Blue, The Gray And The Dead

There is so much going on around the world right now that it is very difficult to narrow down just what to write about.  So much of it is interlinked just under the surface, and so much gets covered in local or regional news, but doesn't make it to the global "fake news" mill.  In fact, it is rather interesting to note which seemingly important stories don't surface in the Corporate Media outlets.

Take the murder of Kim Jong-nam, for instance.  The half-brother of the Beloved Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, was assassinated under rather curious circumstances in Malaysia.  Two women from Indonesia and Vietnam, and one man from Malaysia have been arrested in Malaysia for the murder.

What grabs my attention is that the two women pulled off the attack, Kim was traveling under an alias (Kim Chol), and he was killed presumably by something sprayed in his face.  The spray sounds suspiciously like ricin, though no autopsy results are as of yet unavailable, but just a few micrograms inhaled or injected can kill an adult rather quickly.  Death is caused by more or less a lethal allergic reaction, and considering Kim died on the way to the hospital, that would likely be the scenario in ricin poisoning.  It is not hard to make ricin, though it would take some expensive toys to purify it to a weaponized form.

Whatever the toxin was, the method was so unusual - why not just shoot, stab or otherwise physically assault the victim - as to draw attention to itself.  This is one of those spy-game scenarios that used to occur during the Cold War, when defectors were hit with tiny pellets of ricin, slowly killing the victim over 4 or 5 days.  In other words, this sounds like an organized and professional hit, rather than some homegrown political activists, and is obviously intended to send a message to Kim Jong-un.

The other curious story that is receiving quite a bit more attention is the increasingly obvious civil war being played out in the United States.  The various factions within the federal government are increasingly open about their animosities and efforts to oust each other.

I tend to reduce this war to the Capitalists versus the Financiers.  One could tack a lot of other names on to the two sides, but I view it as the Means of Production against the Financial Interests, or more simply Industrialists versus Bankers.

For those who are not yet aware, the United States is a corporation set up in 1871, under "An Act to Provide a Government for the District of Columbia."  As the rest of the States were dragged into the corporation as assets, along with the population under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, this effectively placed the country under Administrative Law and negated the Common Law and Constitution.  The latter is maintained as a showpiece, though is hardly worth the paper it is written on in US courts.

Like most corporations today, there is a constant battle between those who do the work, and those who play the odds.  One side produces actual products and employs people, while the other shuffles assets, liabilities and revenues around for profit.  If you've been keeping score, the Financiers have been winning the battle since more or less the time of the US Robber Barons.

The Financiers, a.k.a. Mercantilists, use equity and debt as weapons, harvesting the productivity of real work and products for their own profit, laying waste to everything in pursuit of the bottom line.  Note that Mercantilism is often mistakenly called Capitalism, but it not, as the latter produces real, tangible products, while the former produces nothing and only leeches off the real economy.

The Financiers have run the US for well over a century now, sucking up vast sums of money while doing nothing and producing nothing.  They simply lend money and buy equity, then profit from interest rates and playing high-low.  Great job if you can get it.

Trump, on the other hand, represents the Capitalists.  These folks have an adversarial relationship with Financiers, since they actually work and produce things while having to bow to the money folks who control the game with purse strings.

At least since Kennedy, the Financiers have enjoyed an endless stream of compliant occupants in the White House, who have simply enforced whatever regulations made the Financiers richer at the expense of the productive economy.  Thus, the national debt has spiralled out of control, the Bankers have held the country to ransom - as in 2008 - to extort vast sums of unearned money, and created wars that required endless borrowing to maintain.

Trump has threatened the Financier hegemony over the nation by focusing on infrastructure, business climate, reduced taxes, and ending wars - all things the Financiers really hate to hear, as these efforts do not profit them.

Consequently, the Financiers (a la George Soros, et al.) have declared open war against the Capitalists, who somehow managed to subvert the system they have carefully built up over the past century.  It is already a nasty war, and will get a lot worse.  Trillions of unearned dollars are at stake, and if things get really nasty, then history tells us a lot of Bankers will be hanging from lampposts - at least metaphorically if not literally - in the near future.

This war also explains the animosity against Russia, who has spearheaded the effort to create an alternative to the Dollar-Dominated Global Financial System, by way of the BRICSA alliance (Shanghai Accord).

The war has only just begun, and it will get very ugly before it is over.  The apparent tactic at the moment seems to be to keep the Trump Administration so busy with infighting and suspicions that it is rendered ineffective.  Any effort left over must be focused on things like the Oroville dam and other emergency situations.  In other words, keep starting fires to distract the enemy and tie up their time and resources.

Stand by...this is going to be a hell of a ride.  As Bill Hicks would say, "The world is just a ride...it has ups and downs, thrills and chills, and is very brightly colored."  Might want to buckle up before the first big drop.

Needle And The Damage Done

UPDATE: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talks about vaccines and autism.

Yesterday, we had the case of one individual - albeit a very credible one - blowing the proverbial whistle on NOAA "climate change" data manipulation.  Naturally, the debunking machines got into high-gear to discredit Dr. John Bates and control the damage done.

Today's story is a bit harder to sweep under the "conspiracy" rug, since the information comes from the Italian government itself, and involves a large study and paper published on the topic.

The topic is vaccines, and the story is that a government science agency has found toxins, carcinogens and bio-debris of unknown origin in a number of human-rated vaccines.  Furthermore, it appears that animal vaccines have greater purity restrictions than the crud being pumped into people from infancy.

Yesterday, we saw that one of the top science types at NOAA told the world that one of the most trusted climate data agencies around "massaged" date in order to manipulate world leaders into accepting a huge boondoggle whose sole purpose was to institute a global tax scheme that, by default, created a world government.

The Science Sacred Cow that we are about to slaughter the health and well-being of virtually every human being on Earth.  In fact, one of the possible conclusions of the new information is that someone or some group is trying to make the global population mentally incapacitated and quite possibly to "shut off" our lives at roughly the time we are no longer productive enough to significantly add to the global economy.

Lest the reader think that the new information on vaccines is coming from some questionable "conspiracy theory" factory, let's clarify right up front that the source is the National Council of Research of Italy and the Scientific Director of Nanodiagnostics.  The study was published in the Journal of Vaccines and Vaccinations.  Serious study from serious people published in a serious science journal.

According to the paper, the group sampled 44 common vaccines and found that they contained anomalous amounts of heavy metals and "bio-debris", like red blood cells from unknown sources.  The substances found are known carcinogens and toxins, and/or sources of autoimmune dysfunction.

Let that sink in for a moment.

The study also noted that some samples of animal vaccines from France were purer due to strict regulations that control drugs for livestock, but not for humans.

Let that sink in for another moment.

There is a whole laundry list of metals that are known or suspected of causing mental impairments, such as Alzheimer's and autism.  All of them are bio-accumulative, hard to flush out of the body and have additional toxicity when combined.

Some more sinking.

If this information doesn't piss you the hell off, then please go immediately to a doctor and have your pulse and blood pressure checked.  You may be dead already.

Ladies and gentlemen, not only are these vaccines being pushed on us - in some cases under penalty of law - for massive profits, there may well be a provable case here for malice aforethought with intent to poison humanity for some nefarious end.

Sink...sink...sink.

This is beginning to sound like the plot from Tim Burton's Batman, where the Joker has seeded toxins across a range of products, so that any one of them is harmless, but in combination cause serious health problems, including death.

Sink-a-roo.

At the very least, Big Pharma stands accused this moment of criminal neglect, absent proof of intent.  They have obviously poisoned a significant amount of humanity by not taking the necessary steps to ensure clean, safe products.  If malicious intent could be proved, this is nothing short of a massive conspiracy to poison all of humanity.

Sinkage.

I do not think I overstate the case when I say that we are collectively under attack by a group or groups with a death wish for humanity that is so callous as to want to profit off their efforts.  We are being manipulated mentally and physically in the way cattle or crops are manipulated, so that we produce a product (money, labor) and then die off when we are no longer useful.

Both the climate data manipulation and the vaccine contamination stories have been neatly slid under the carpet of the news cycle.  The information has been quietly laid out in the public domain in such a way as to provide plausible deniability.  "Gosh," they could say, "we released the information, but no one acted on it, so we just let it slide."

If all you've done is read my two columns, you should at least feel your pulse quicken and your blood pressure rise.  If you've clicked through to look at the links, then you should be taking stock of your ammo supply about now.

These are absolutely stunning revelations.  We have (provably) been lied to, manipulated and treated with the most cynical hands of real-life conspirators.  On top of that, the deception has been going on for at least the past 50 years of stabs, jabs and climate panic.

We now have objective proof in our hands that some number of individuals and organizations are out to get us.  At the very least, we have solid grounds to question the motives of government agencies and corporations.  The very foundations of science and transparent reporting by agencies and media are seriously eroded, like a certain dam in California, and we should all be in the process of evacuating.  We are no longer able to brush these issues aside as "tin foil conspiracies".

Now, the questions is, what are we going to do about it?

Global Warming Is Neither

After five days without internet access at the house, I finally managed to get my euphemistically titled "service" provider.  As with everything Indonesia, the fault was vaguely defined as "something in the line," though from all the sweating and grunting outside, it was clear that I didn't break anything.  It might have something to do with the fact that the cable is strung through a palm tree across the way, but then maybe I'm thinking too much.

Anyway, two remarkable events happened this past week that fall directly in line with some of my pet peeves, namely "climate change" and "vaccines."  Climate I will address today, and vaccines tomorrow.

In case you missed it, which wouldn't be hard to do seeing the massive effort put into keeping the report quiet, the Mail on Sunday reported that Dr. John Bates - the guy responsible for protocols at America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the world’s leading source of climate data - had denounced a seminal paper put out in 2015 as being based on "cooked" data.

In as brief as summary as possible, various reports had claimed that "global warming" paused, or even reversed in the years since 1998.  In 2015, six months before the infamous Paris Convention on Climate was to take place, NOAA released a major study by the rather dense title of "Possible Artifacts of Data Biases in the Recent Global Surface Warming Hiatus."  The paper claimed that not only was there no "pause" in global warming, but in fact temperatures had continued to rise

The paper was almost single-handedly responsible for pushing the various leaders convened in Paris to ignore the "pause" reports and to take drastic action to battle the jabberwock of "climate change"  The Paris Accord stipulated that a group of wealthy nations would set up a fund to render aid to poorer nations damaged by global warming.  The fund reaches into the hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 20 years.

The agreement would, of course, require the "donating" governments to raise taxes and penalties to pay for the fund, and the fund would require a global bureaucracy to administer it.  This, for all intents and purposes, would create a global government, as only governments are empowered to levy and disburse tax revenues.

If the bastards can't get a global government the old-fashioned way, they will back us into it with scare tactics.

In any event, Bates' original blog post at Climate Etc. claimed that the NOAA paper was purposely rushed and that various data were "massaged" in order to achieve the desired result.  This led to a Texas congressman calling for hearings, NOAA saying it will "review" and a whole bunch of auto-bot responders on Twitter and Facebook leaping into action to try and staunch the bleeding.  The Mail on Sunday claims its article has been linked over 150,000 times in less than a week.

Obviously, people are tired of being lied to and corralled into climate panic...especially after more than 30 years of this crap.

One can be quite sure that a bunch of bureaucrats and "scientists" were roused from slumber to muddle through record cold and snow to the office to repair the global warming damage.

The fact reamins that we have been and continue to be lied to.  In this instance, the deception is so massive as to undermine the foundations of science and politics (to the extent that there is a distinction any more).  If history has not yet taught us to do so, this episode should finally get people to question anything that self-proclaimed "experts" say, and to wisely look askance at government pronouncements and "certainties".

It should also prompt us to question science itself, at least in its current form of a secular religion.  There is no such thing as "settled science".  It is a myth if not a dangerous farce.  The whole point of science is to ask questions, especially when it comes to commonly held beliefs and dogma.  The nature of science itself is a denial of the logical tautology, its only gospel is the rejection of gospel truths.

In human nature, whenever an individual or group is set up as an unquestionable source of truth, it is ripe for abuse.  Humans will use this invulnerable position for personal gain every time.  History repeatedly proves this case.  Unquestioned "truths" lead to dogmatic intransigence, which leads to authoritarian dictatorship.

If one major scandal like this comes to light, then we must conclude that more have yet to surface.  As Benjamin Disraeli warned us, the world is full of "lies, damn lies and statistics."  In the case of NOAA, we have been duped by the worst of the three.  If there is one thing we should have learned well by now, it is that "authorities" will stop at nothing to herd us in whatever direction suits them.

It is high time we realize that we are better off being each our own authority.  If there is a purpose to life, it is that we have a prefrontal cortex.

Only The Yogurt Has Culture

What remains of Western Civilization hardly seems worth defending.  I studied and ultimately made a living off of the Arts because I saw the inherent nobility and elevation of the human condition in creating art.  However, there is precious little left to call art in the West, and the virus of depravity is spreading worldwide.

Once upon a time, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte was considered to crass for the Vienna National Theater because it was in German and dealt with common gods and faeries.  Now, most people can't even tell me what an "aria" is, much less have ever seen an opera.  At least in my generation, The Who and Frank Zappa wrote "rock" operas and more or less achieved something memorable.

What passes for culture in the West now is little more than "schlock and ooh".  "Performers" prance around in tiny "costumes", "singing" repetitive "lyrics" to entrancing bass beats that only just meet the criteria for having rhythm.  Furthermore, I can hardly distinguish one "song" from the next.  They are all virtually identical, and in the case of DJs, they aren't even original - just digital samples of utter crap.

When Georges Seurat created the art movement of pointilism, he was exploring the qualities of light and vision using the newly discovered properties and physiology of his era.  Roy Lichtenstein, though, simply magnified the printing process, which used the pixels pioneered by Seurat, to explode comic book illustrations to enormous proportions.  Don't get me wrong, I like Lichtenstein and would happily display his work in my den next to the black velvet dogs playing poker and Elvis portraits, but as art, it hardly qualities as anything other than a quaint addition to kitsch collections.

Don't get me started on Andy Warhol.

I did my art history thesis on Claes Oldenburg's Giant Soft Fan and Henri Matisse's Four Backs.  While Oldenburg's piece is an interesting attempt to explode a common item to massive proportions to enhance its design aspects, it is more of a playful exercise than art.  Matisse, on the other hand, deconstructs a feminine back across four panels from its organic presentation to its geometric components.  This is an interesting study in the mathematics of Life and forces one to examine Nature in a new light.

Today, someone can accidentally drop a pair of glasses on the floor of a "museum" and attract a crowd of awed spectators trying to figure out what state of mind the "artist" was in when "creating" such a piece.  Don't believe me?  Read the article.

Compare also the grand cathedrals of Europe, or even the highly functional castles, to the glass blocks of today's modern city.  The cathedrals defied the massive stone blocks from which they were constructed, soaring far above the viewer's head, and the walls were constructed almost entirely of colored glass windows - art in themselves - that created a floating, other-worldly effect.  Combined with an east-west orientation - using the natural surroundings - they even created special effects at certain times of the year, when light streamed through the rose window and struck the nave, causing it to glow eerily in the murky darkness on the interior.  Magic and masterpiece!

Few even stop now to consider the magnificent technological achievement of placing a dome on a box using an ingenious device called a pendentive.  Nor do they stop to admire the incredible artistry and engineering involved in a cathedral's flying buttresses that keep the walls from flying outward under the strain of their loads.

Can anyone name a work as elevating as the Sistine Chapel or Beethoven's 9th Symphony created in the last 50 years?  How about a script as linguistically entrancing as William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette?  In fact, has any form of art moved you to tears, or left you breathless, or induced a feeling of elation that was created in the past 30 years?

Nowadays, architecture refers to game engines, the visual arts have been reduced to graphics, music has been debased to little more than a repetitive bass cleft with foul words spewed over it, and performance has devolved to computer generated movement and explosions.

Honestly, when the conversation occasionally turns to discussing the defense of Western culture, I can hardly think of anything in the past two generations worth preserving.  Fortunately, the West's greatest achievements are largely available online for everyone to access, but in terms of modern society, I find nothing of value - just a bunch of whiny, unevolved children with no sense of history, art or appreciation for anything outside the lint in their navels.

Oh sure, Donald Trump wants to revitalize America, saving American jobs and American business, but to what end?  So we can be abused into consuming more senseless crud from the country's "artists"?

It used to be that business created wealthy people, who in turn used their wealth to endow artists and talented technicians, who then created monumental works for all posterity to enjoy.  Instead, we get Bill Gates forcing the world to slime their bodies with vaccines, Elon Musk building fun toys and Puckerberg walling himself into his Hawaiian retreat.

So much for culture.

It's long past time for the West to ask itself what it is fighting for?  Without a decent answer, then what's the point?

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”

A Game Of Souls

I'm sure you are familiar with the classic, if not trite - horror movie trope where the hero lands a brutal blow on the bad guy and turns to walk away, thinking he's done his job.  Then suddenly, a figure rises up in the dark and looms behind the hero and strikes a mighty blow from behind.

This is precisely what has happened to 60-someodd Americans who voted for Trump.  They figured getting their guy in office and defeating the wily Clinto-Beast put an end to 50 years of New World Order take-over.  Then, as everyone signed in relief and went back about their business, the monster rose up and began a full-scale onslaught from behind.

Regular readers here may recall me saying many times that the only way to defeat the existential threat to liberty represented by the Global Cabal is to completely dismantle the Beast, burn them and scatter the ashes to the wind.

A few Executive Orders and removing all references to Global Warming are not going to reverse decades of stacking the deck.  The US government is owned and operated from the highest offices to the lowest lackeys.  One good smack to the solar plexus is not going to bring the Beast to heal.

I am reminded of the closing scene from the great Terry Gilliam flick Time Bandits.  The late Sir Ralph Richardson has just barbecued Evil and dramatically exploded the charcoaled figure into a hundred pieces.  He commands the Bandits to clean up the mess, saying, "Do be careful! Don't lose any of that stuff. That's concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs."

Of course, a single piece is left behind and sets up the resurrection of Evil in the closing shot, though it looks an awful lot like the smoking remains of the family's Sunday joint.  It is an apt metaphor, though.

It is in the nature of good guys to not be ruthless and merciless.  They always stop just short of complete annihilation because they always hold hope that the bad guy can be reformed.  Good guys don't want to believe that pure Evil exists and believe that a sound defeat will cause Evil to suddenly realize the error of its ways.  The real world never works that way.

Donald Trump sold himself as a Marvel superhero, able to resist even the strongest enemies by dint of his virtue and vision.  He was emboldened by a massive outpouring of support that was able to defeat a seemingly invincible foe.  But even superheroes have their limits, and Trump has been bashed and lashed for nearly two years now.

With his support going back to sleep, Trump is increasingly surrounded by less-than-supportive characters.  Furthermore, Trump supporters, weaned on generations of Hollywood fantasy, are little prepared for a real fight.  They believe in a world where things like elections really make a difference, and Mr. Smith can go to Washington and change things before the final credits roll.

Trump's enemies learned from his ability to double down and call the bluff.  They have turned from political activism to outright revolt, with damage and destruction becoming their modus operandi.  Trump will inevitably be forced to do the same or admit defeat - and he doesn't strike me as the type to do that.  Trump has a rather Machiavellian/Sun Tsu nature about him.  He will answer by escalation.

This is a true war and the other side has already proved that it will go as far as needed to get their way.  The question is do Trump and his supporters have the necessary fortitude to bring the fight back to the Globalists?

This is not a gentelman's slap-fight, this is the real thing and the prize is the future and the world itself.

The Globalists got right up to the finish line before the goal posts were moved quite a bit further away.  One does not get that close to the taste of victory after centuries of effort to just give up and admit defeat.  They will answer with all-out war, leaving nothing untouched to get their prize.

Two pressing questions linger: 1) will Trump match the Globalists blow for blow, and 2) and do the majority of Americans have the stomach for a scorched-earth battle?

In every sense of the term, the US is facing another Civil War, and both sides will need to decide how brutal they are willng to be in order to achieve their goals.  The Globalists have shown their hand.  It is up to the opposition to decide whether to double down or fold.

Which will it be?

The Free Speech Muzzlement

Once upon a time, 50 years ago, in a land called America, there was a place called UC Berkeley that became synonymous with the free speech movement (FSM).

Back then, demonstrators more or less peacefully demanded that the university administration remove its ban on political activities, particularly anti-war rallies - and publicly recognize the right of students to open inquiry and free expression of ideas.

In 2017, what appears to be students destroyed private property, caused personal injury and hid their faces like terrorists while demanding that the university shut down free speech, ban political activities and prevent a gay man from presenting his reasoned arguments.

It is rather sad and quite disturbing that the American youth have become so spoiled and inarticulate that they must resort to forcefully silencing those with whom they disagree, and well as lashing out in violent fits, much like a brat falls on the floor and screams at the supermarket when mom won't buy his choice of breakfast poison.

The liberal/progressive/SJW groups are so profoundly incapable of holding open debate that they are committing hate crimes against "protected" individuals (homosexuals being singled out for special treatment by the left) and defying every point that once defined the left.

And apparently they don't see their own internal contradictions.

The liberals are openly calling for assassination of the US president, which is primarily founded on the fact that the president is a white male.  This, folks, is called racism.

The liberals are calling for the curtailment of certain speech because they might be offended.  This, folks, is called censorship.

The liberals are calling for open immigration in violation of dozens of laws that have been on the books, in some cases, since the founding of the country.  This, folks, is called sedition.

The Democratic Party, once the party of the working classes, is seriously considering a leader who is ashamed of her genetics, but which, of course, doesn't stop her from wanting to lead the party.

The idiocy, self-hatred, lack of common sense, and profound inability to reason shows the depravity of the American educational system.  An entire generation has been created who think that "self-esteem" without achievement is the pinnacle of existence.  They fervently believe that everyone should look alike, think alike and act alike, so that the world can be "diverse".  They are so incapable of eloquence and articulation that burning cars and hurting people is the only way to express themselves.

In other words, the War on Terror has produced terrorists.

Like Mao's Lost Generation in China, they were taught that they deserve everything while doing nothing.  The world owes them whatever they want, and they will not kicking, screaming and throwing tantrums until they get it.

The vivid demonstrations of Orwellian Double Think is chilling: War is Peace, Diversity is Sameness, Freedom is Conformity.  Even Darwin would shudder, since he believed Intelligence and Reason were products of Natural Selection, not generational layers of education.

The most worrisome part of what the world is witnessing in the US is not current events, but the fact that this new Lost Generation still has about 50 or 60 more years of damage ahead of them.  Given that most of these kids are just reaching their 20s, imagine what the country will be like in 20 more years, when they reach their prime earning years and start to take the reins of power.  Incapable of higher reasoning and discernment, one trembles at the thought of what destruction they will unleash.

Ironically, this generation is the ultimate responsibility of the same generation that launched the Berkeley FSM.  In their efforts to create a liberal paradise, where everyone lives together in peace and harmony, they forgot about human nature and the need for real education in order to protect and defend oneself.  Being able to support one's self and one's family requires creativity and hard work - both anathema to the liberal paradise.  Life also requires the ability to think clearly and quickly to adapt to changing situations - an ability only received through logic, rhetoric and grammar studies...also denied in the liberal paradise.

Banning guns does not get rid of them, it only makes them illegal.  Banning kinds of speech does not stop the thoughts, it only drives it underground.  Banning racism does not get rid of it, it only forces it to express in more subtle ways.

Once upon a time, a liberal was someone who believed in more - not less - freedom, both for the individual and society.  Now, we are forced to use that word to describe those who would forcefully and painfully destroy liberty and freedom.

In fact, the US has become so factionalized and fragmented that one cannot even define certain groups without using a half-dozen hyphens and slashes.  There are no clearly defined boundaries because the language has been so tortured and twisted that classical roots and definitions no longer apply.

The societal damage on display in the media coming out of the US may be irreparable at this point.  An entire generation has been lost, and unless something drastic happens, the cultural chain may be permanently broken.

That damage is likely by design, but everyone is at fault for standing by and allowing it to happen.  We all bought into the psycho-babble and feel-good snake oil salesmen.  We all were duped into thinking ignorance was bliss.  We have all failed an entire generation out of political expediency.

The most vital question at hand now is not jobs or immigration, it is what can be done to remedy the damage done and limit its effect on future generations.

Whatever the final answer will be, it will start with real education, real freedom and real liberty.  That much begins with the right of the people to peaceably assemble and present their ideas in a calm, rational manner and allow the Marketplace of Ideas to do its job.

Selling A Bridge In Brooklyn

I am increasingly coming to the opinion that most of what we know about the Apollo Moon landings is a fraud.  This is not to say that I am convinced no one went to the Moon, only that the public spectacle was staged all or in part.

As soon as I was able to rationally take apart an argument, say around 12 or 13 years old, I began to question certain aspects of the Apollo landings.  There were things that didn't make sense, or were at least unclear, such as how the "moonsuits" exchanged heat in a vacuum.

I dismissed most of this as idle speculation.  Being a child of the 60s, I practically idolized astronauts and voraciously consumed every tidbit that escaped the NASA PR machine.  It was all so amazing and exciting.  Yet, it was the PR aspects and the amazement generated that eventually led me to question what I had seen even more deeply.

As I grew older, I developed a very healthy and abiding distrust of anything a government said or did.  There was the constant finger-pointing at Soviet media with the mantra that it was all propaganda.  If the Soviets could do it, I reasoned, so could the US.  Further study of Leni Riefenstahl's films for the Nazi regime

I came to the conclusion that all mass media was little more than cheerleading for whatever government it served.  When I read the theories of Edward Bernays, and the ability of media to influence behavior and beliefs, I began to see the mechanics of the media in action every time I sat in front of the TeeVee.

Once I began my career in media, I not only saw, but learned how to do it and made a decent living doing it.  However, the better I go at it, the less I consumed it, and finally, the more I questioned anything I had ever seen in the media.

And that, despite my early indoctrination - especially through the space program - led me to carefully research any and all assumptions I made, figuring a vast amount of my beliefs were pounded into my brain through the media.

Ultimately, I have been forced to give up one of my sacred cows: the belief that everything the public was told about the space program and the Moon landings was false from top to bottom.

I haven't given up my conclusion that someone went to the Moon, but the story and images we were fed in the public were primarily fabricated for mass consumption.  The strongest argument in favor of this view is simply that the US could not afford to fail because, 1) the amount of money spent had to be justified to the public with results, 2) the geopolitical war for hearts and minds against the Soviet Union had to be won, and 3) a strong cover story for the real space program had to be concocted .

The Apollo program consumed US$29.3 billion by 1972, when the program was cancelled.  That would be well over US$120 billion today.  Furthermore, the public goal of reaching the Moon by 1969, combined with the massive pressure to defeat the Soviets in the propaganda wars would have made a successful landing mandatory.  An accident would have delayed the program at least a year, as the Apollo 1 fire did, and a failure to meet the public goals would have meant Congressional hearings and investigations into where all that money went.

The Cold War was one of pure ideology.  A Soviet success, particularly the "first-evers", was a major defeat for the Capitalists.  If the Soviets were perceived to have a better system than the West by dint of their technological wizardry, it was seen as a defeat for the "free" world which obviously could not compete.  This was seen as dangerous for its ability to attract other nations into the Soviet sphere of influence.  This was unthinkable in the US weltanschauung.

In the end, though, the public space program was a necessary cover for the real space program.  Showing the public the "current" state-of-the-art in space travel made for plausible denial of the much more exciting, but highly secretive technology in use by the "dark" programs.

It is a fact publicly acknowledged that NASA operated two space programs.  On the one side were the "space planes" like the X-15 that were close to achieving orbit (if they hadn't already).  On the other hand, there was the rocket program that was less elegant and more brutish, but if everyone believed that was the only way to get "out there", then the US' enemies would put all their efforts into building their own rockets, rather than competing with simple and reusable planes.

The cover story aspect also explains why the public space programs of the world have not progressed beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) in the last 50 years.  Despite the fact that space technology was born practically overnight in historical terms, it has virtually stalled in the last half-century.  By convincing the public that rockets were the "only" answer to achieving orbit, no one would believe that more advanced and exotic propulsion existed, and would keep the world focused in the wrong direction while the real tech was developed.

Once we accept that three very powerful motivations existed to falsify the public record, then everything else becomes suspect.  Money, humiliation and ideological failure would make any government seriously consider falsifying huge events, since it is well established that swallowing huge lies is much easier than small ones, as we have clearly seen with the JFK assassination and the 9/11 attacks, which provide historical bookends to the Apollo program.

Having decided that the public spectacle of Apollo would have had to be faked, due to the tremendous pressures placed on it, then it is only a matter of analyzing the evidence, looking for the "seams" in the fabric.

The are many eloquent and detailed investigations out there that detail all the various evidence for fakery. Everything from the laws of physics to photographic retouching have been put forward.  The only response from NASA is either silence or a condescending snicker at the "absurdity" of such a thing.  However, neither of these responses is an answer, only a dismissal.

Certainly, the behavior of the 12 men who comprised the faces of the "Man on the Moon," is telling in its own right.  The public and private statements and actions from Gus Grissom and Neil Armstrong to Ed Mitchell and Pete Conrad do little to allay suspicions, and in some cases appear to purposely increase them.

As for NASA, they have done little but present some fuzzy orbital photos of the "landing" sites and have dared the world to set foot near those sites.  That sounds more like an agency covering something up, rather than celebrating a magnificent triumph.

If you still cling to the fantasy of NASA's Apollo program, then consider this: the RS-18 ascent rocket used on the return part of the lander produced 3,500 pound-feet of thrust using Aerozine-50 fuel with N2O4 oxidizer in a hypergolic reaction.  The engine had no throttle.  The astronauts stood at their stations with no support of any kind.

When that RS-18 rocket lit up, the astronauts would have been flattened against the floor for at least a few seconds during acceleration.    Furthermore, Aerozine-50 and N2O4 produce thick red clouds of exhaust when combined.  Watch any of the videos showing the LM launching from the Moon and listen to the audio, as well.  The astronauts are not flattened against the floor.  In fact, they don't even grunt trying to resist the force of acceleration.  Nor do the ascent videos show any sign of thick red smoke, or even exhaust of any kind.

I have very little doubt that people have been and continue to go to the Moon.  However, I find little convincing evidence that the Apollo program that the public was fed had anything to do with the events they purport to document.

Unraveling the Apollo Lie is the first step in trying to figure out what is really going on in space.  I imagine the answer is likely far more mind-blowing than most of us are ready to accept all at once.

King Of The World

If you are one of the many millions of people in the world right now who are trying to make sense of global events and keep score at home, you are probably confounded by labels like, "socialist," "nationalist," "globalist," and "populist".  Let me try to sort it out for you.

There are two competing versions of the same thing: Globalism.  Each side is firmly entrenched in their version and neither side wants to give an inch.  One could think of them as the Old World Order and the New World Order.  More vividly, one could think of them as Feudalism 1.0 and Feudalism 2.0.

Feudalism 1.0 believes that God created religion and governments to control people.  On this side, you have Pope Francis I, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.  This group thinks that it creates all human institutions and regulates them by Divine Order.  In a sense, this is the Devil We Know.  At this point, they are called the fascists.

Feudalism 2.0 believes that corporations are the source of wealth and profits, and that they are self-ordained to create, market and sell products that keep us all busy.  This group is represented by George Soros, Bill Gates and James Cameron.  They don't believe in God and think that corporations empower governments to do their dirty work so they can keep on milking the populace for the privileged few.  Think of this as the Devil We Don't Know.  At this time, they are called the socialists.

The 1.0s want to regulate corporations so that they don't disturb the flow of money to the religious and government elites.

The 2.0s want to regulate governments so they don't get regulated and can keep the flow of money into the hands of the corporate elite.

In the end, the whole argument boils down to, into whose hands the money flows, and thus who gets to make the rules of the game.  It's all rather quite simple really.

There is a separate New World Order, often called libertarianism.  This third way believes that every single human being is their own religion and government, and get off my back thank you very much.  Needless to say, this view isn't very popular because there are no elites into whose hands the wealth can be concentrated.  So we'll leave them out for now.

The 1.0s are often called conservatives because they want to "conserve" the Old World Order.  The 2.0s are called liberals because they want to "liberate" the corporations from regulatory control.  In neither case do any of them give a rat's ass about individual human beings.

I personally have far less sympathy for the 2.0s.  Ultimately, they want to be free to set up their headquarters on some prime piece of real estate wherever they so choose, and then operate with a single set of rules worldwide.  They hate having to have offices in every single country they operate in, follow separate and often conflicting regulations in different nations, and pay different tax rates and wages wherever they produce and sell their wares.  They would really like corporations to be above the law, or better, to BE the law so they can untangle all the regulatory environments, limit their liabilities and run rough-shod over the rest of us.

Bad idea.  Has been extremely harmful wherever they have succeeded, like the EU.

In contrast, the 1.0s want complete and utter control over everything based on them being Divinely Ordained by a fictional God who speaks only the the select few and hands down lists of "shalt nots" that must be fanatically followed to the letter.  They want to dictate every aspect of life from conception to after-life, with absolute obedience on the part of every single human.  The individual is to be grateful that they were given life and have absolute conviction that he or she will be rewarded in the after-life.

Both of these systems are fine for those who ordain themselves to be the leaders.  Popes, kings, presidents and CEOs live the high life and get all of their rewards in the here and now.  With the 1.0s, you'll get yours after you die.  With the 2.0s, you can have a little taste now if you knuckle under and kiss the right asses.

Both systems hold out the carrot that anyone can become one of the elite, but then they publish these arcane road maps that are nearly impossible to follow, meaning the elite get to pick whomever they please.

In either case, 99.99991% of us are pretty much screwed.

And that's the part they dont' want any of us to figure out.

Instead, they want us all fighting over the scraps from the elite tables.  Both sides try to drop a few bones with some meat still on them so that the rubes (us) will think their system is betterthan the other and follow dutifully to the bitter end.

In the final accounting, though, it's all scraps no matter how you slice it.  They want to have full control over which scraps go to which sheep, and at any cost, don't want us to figure out that there are other ways to do this where everyone gets a slice of pie.  Whether it's priestly mumblings or legalistic horseshit, it's all designed to keep the majority of us in line and rowing the barge.

Oh sure, occasionally one of us oarsmen get promoted to drum-beater with an extra portion of gruel and a sip of wine, but that's just a shiny bauble to keep us hard at it.

When the REAL awakening comes, you will see millions of people walking away from both sides.  That will be the point when most of us have seen the truth that both sides are the same coin, and that perhaps it's time to try another coin.  At that point, there won't be any World Orders, just free and happy individuals.

If you want to see a REAL revolution, wait till you see that one!