Banksters And The Straw Man

I come from a long line of "conspiracy theorists."  Of course, back in the day, we didn't have a name for it.  Back then, they just called it history, or research, or something stupid like that.

Anyway, before my dad went into politics, he was an history teacher.  He got his Masters degree from University of Houston and his Bachelors from University of St. Thomas.  So when I was going up, I not only got hours-long lectures on history at home, but I was the go-to student in history classes as the one who could answer any question the other kids weren't willing to attempt.

In short, it sucked.  There I was trying to be cool, but because my dad had drilled this stuff into my head, I always came out looking like the nerd, although secretly my classmates thought it was pretty cool that I knew all that stuff.

Later, "that stuff" became known as "conspiracy theories," and was generally frowned upon and dismissed as complete bunk.  In other words, in less than a generation, it went from being cool to know history (even if only in secret) to being weird and even...dare I say it...a little crazy.

More to the point, Dad wrote his Master Thesis on a guy called Colonel Edward Mandell House.  House was a Texan, from Houston no less, who to the casual observer was a political and diplomatic mover and shaker.  He was eventually fired by Woodrow Wilson, who suspected him of lying about key events in Europe during WW1.  Dad's word for this guy was "traitor."

Before I go on, I should stop and talk about a particular "conspiracy theory" called the Strawman.  In logic, a straw man is a fallacy where a polemicist sets up a false premise and attacks it, appearing to refute the other guy's argument, but in reality is attacking his own unrelated concept.  This particular technique is very popular in political debates, where a candidate will address a topic unrelated to the question asked and then pretend as if the question was fully handled.  Rhetorically, this form of fallacy uses the passive voice so as to disguise the subject of the sentence and put emphasis on the object.

The concept comes from ancient warfare, where fake armies were built up out of straw dummies, and while the enemy attacked the decoys, the real army would sneak around and attack from the rear.  One particularly good depiction of the technique was shown in the Mel Gibson film "The Patriot," when Gibson's character used fake British soldiers to negotiate the release of American prisoners.

The Strawman Conspiracy posits that the banksters have created legal fictions, or straw men, for every citizen, using the Birth Certificate as a means to create a massive amount of debt on the average lifelong economic output of each person.  The person, in turn, can never pay off the debt because he doesn't know it exists, and thus remains a prisoner for life to the system created in his or her name.  The hook is the Social Security system, which acts as a kind of "carrot on a stick" to keep everyone paying into the system, but never getting back more than a fraction of the amount taken.

It's a form of indentured servitude involving a contract of which one party is completely ignorant, and which is often entered into involuntarily before the age of majority status - usually at birth these days.

The system is so devious and insidious that most people never become aware of it.  Those who do mostly dismiss it out of hand as a "conspiracy theory," and those who actually begin the years of research to figure out how it works and (rarely) how to get out of it never pursue it till the conclusion.  Thus, the system perpetuates itself for generations with all but a tiny few ever figuring out what is going on.  The vast majority actually believe it to be a benefit to them.

For the reader interested in this highly complex, but fascinating topic, I highly recommend my interview with Frank O'Collins, and a visit to his library will provide many hours worth of research and education.

But back to Colonel House.  This slimy bastard, for lack of a more polite but accurate term, was a major player in setting up the Social Security system in the US.  He was under no illusions about what the system was designed to do.  His own words are much better at describing the design and intent of the "Strawman" system.  I don't usually quote other sources at great length, but for those truly interested in liberty, or curious why I say that the System cannot be reformed from the inside and must be torn down completely, I offer a fairly long quote from the man himself in a letter to President Woodrow Wilson.  Though it has never been clear, this program may have led - in part - to Wilson and House falling out with each other.  So I leave you with this:

"Very soon, every American will be required to register their biological property (that's you and your children) in a national system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a charge back for our fiat paper currency. 

"Every American will be forced to register or suffer being able to work and earn a living. They will be our chattels (property) and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading (Birth Certificate) to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, secured by their pledges.

 "They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two should figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability. After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debts to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges.

 "This will inevitably reap us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor to this fraud, which we will call “Social Insurance.” Without realizing it, every American will unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope for their redemption and we will employ the high office (presidency) of our dummy corporation to foment this plot against America."  - attributed to Colonel Edward Mandell House

Note that the Federal Reserve Bank was created on 23 December 1913, in a midnight voice vote while most of Congress was away on Christmas vacation.  The Social Security Act was signed into law by FDR on 14 August 1935, in (surprise) Austin, Texas.  The Social Security Act was written and supported by John D. Rockefeller, Jr,, and a number of large corporations like General Electric, all of which derived financial benefits from the System.  Similar systems have been set up worldwide, especially in nations where the US has had strong influence over the 20th century.

Food for thought on this December day.  Think about it next time you vote for someone who promises to reform the system from the in

The Last Word

Much to the joy of many readers, I'm sure, this will be my final analysis of the election.  It has taken me some time to absorb and dissect the events of last week, and there are still a few observations left to express before I move on to more interesting things in the future.

To begin with, I believe at this point, that Trump was not part of whatever it was that got him elected.  The look on his face as he sat in the Oval Office with Obama was priceless and shown through even his best attempts to mount a poker face.

The look in his eyes said that, a) he had learned some things in his new level of intel briefings that he was wholly unprepared to know, and b) he was actually cowed by the realization that within two months, he would occupy the White House.  His conciliator tone towards the Clintons in recent days tells me that his world just exploded.

That is a major clue that the entire world has just been victim of a psy-op, but one that the players, Hillary included, were not ready for, meaning whoever pulled it off was not part of anyone's inner circle.

This is doubly true for the pundits and the general public.  I have little sympathy for the media heads.  They have knowingly and with full complicity been a part of the mass mind control that is the center of today's column.  I feel sorry for the general public, though.  They have gone through an "Awakening" without any preparation or desire on their part.

Most of the people who come here regularly are already awake, to one extent or another.  We have all been through the process of having our eyes opened to the "real" world and have powered through the shock, pain and disorientation that comes with it.  But imagine the worlds of millions of people who are literally hypnotized by the media suddenly being exploded under them.  It is no wonder there is literal wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Though they bear a significant responsibility for not having pushed themselves beyond their conditioning, it is fair to say that most do not have the tools to do so, thanks to the so-called Education System.

An Awakening is a powerful moment, when the scaffolding that has supported your worldview for however many years suddenly collapses.  Most folks are not ready for this and for the most part don't want it.  \

My Awakening was brought on by a conscious choice and effort to achieve it.  Even with the express goal, having sought out information and teachers to help me achieve it, when it actually happened, it was a truly terrifying experience.  I can only imagine what people are feeling, whose entire framework of reality is suddenly gone with no preparation or warning.

It is the reaction of the general public that intrigues me the most.  Someone set out to purposefully achieve this effect, the purpose of which remains to be seen.  Furthermore, the party or parties who pulled it off had access to the network of voting machines, had carefully orchestrated expectations and had timed events for maximum effect.  It was every bit as planned and executed as the JFK assassination or the 9/11 attack.  From a strictly objective viewpoint, it was masterfully choreographed, leaving no trail that has been uncovered so far as we know.

What is truly astounding is the global effect the election results had.  Leaders in nearly every major nation seem as stunned and mystified as everyone else.  Many rolled over and made a complete about-face almost immediately.  Canada and Mexico surrendered NAFTA.  The EU threw up its hands over TTIP.  Only China seems unfazed and is still demanding adherence to both the TPP and the Paris Climate Accords, which I find a rather interesting reaction.  Even stone-faced Putin seemed momentarily shaken, having fully prepared for and expected war with the NeoCons in the near future.

Most curious, though, was Trump himself.  I believe he had resigned himself to a loss sometime during election day.  One thing is quite certain, watching him in the days since, he was not prepared to win.  Having spent his life on the sidelines with politicians kow-towing to him for money and attending formal functions with government types had him thinking it was not all that difficult.  He obviously has had a rude awakening of his own.

One very alarming result of all this is the way so many people are going around reciting words like "misogynist," "xenophobe" and "racist," seemingly without knowing what they are doing.  It seems to be some kind of programming that has been installed that has been triggered by certain events.  Many of the people reciting these mantras strike me as not even having a clue what the words mean, they are just automatically spewing them in response to specific stimulae.  The Teens and Tweens I have seen using the words are not putting them in any kind of meaningful context, they are just reciting them in response to any unpleasant situation.

Related to this were the reports of a great many adults unable to function on an adult level.  Classes were cancelled, people didn't go to work, and a great many reports came in of university students reverting to childish behavior, part of which I blame on the self-esteem/exceptional conditioning, but there seems to be an additional dimension to it.  That they would revert to a child-like state, rather than just go into a daze or shock was very curious.

At this point, we need to ask ourselves, to what purpose was this forced Awakening done? Here we are no longer able to observe, we must speculate on the motives of a group or groups unknown.  Without further data, it is very difficult to say what the desired outcome is.  But let's try anyway.

First of all, who did it?

We can safely say that there are a number of competing factions within the US deep state.  At the very least are the Industrialists and the Financiers represented by the two major candidates.  However, given that both the candidates were obviously shocked, it is safe to assume that neither of these two groups pulled this off.  Which is not say that they weren't trying to effect their own operations, but they were overridden by a third party.  To my mind, at least, that much is clear.

The obvious culprits would be Russia and China.  China had more to lose with Trump's election, since they clearly wanted certain agreements and relationships represented by the Hillary faction.  Russia, on the other hand, stood to lose quite a bit if Hillary were elected.  They would very likely end up in a real shooting war with the US, had Hillary been installed.  However, Russia also stood to lose a great deal if their tracks were ever uncovered.  They couldn't afford to give any ammunition to the war hawks that would so clearly give cause to go to war.  With so much at risk, I believe that Russia can be ruled out.  It seems to me that they had better options, such as blackmail, to control the Hillary faction.

No other countries seem to benefit from Trump being elected.  Nearly every major power had some reason to want Hillary installed, if for no other reason than to maintain the status quo.  Even Japan would stand to lose more in trade with a protectionist president, than it would have to gain in its geopolitical positions with Russia and China.  Certainly, Hillary would be far more likely to back-up Japan militarily should anything go wrong in the South China Sea or the Kuril Islands.

What we are left with is a non-state entity.  That would include multi-national corporations, private associations and other similar groups.  In this case, the corporations would seem to have an interest in Trump being elected, in the sense that they would benefit from tax cuts and reduced regulation, but that would come at the price of protectionist treaties, such as TPP and TTIP, that offer them much greater benefits, not to mention the ability to offshore jobs to low-wage countries - something that Trump has promised to curtail.

That leaves NGOs and billionaire busy-bodies like George Soros.  Nearly every entity included in this group, even Soros, benefit greatly from a globalist NeoCon environment.  It seems quite clear, at least from Trump's campaign rhetoric, that none of these groups would derive much benefit from a Trump presidency.  They would encounter significant opposition to their operations that they do not have under a Hillary administration.  In fact, they would have had nearly free rein in that case.

By process of elimination, we are left with a nationalist/patriot faction within the US deep state, or a third party that is completely hidden from the cast of usual suspects.

The nationalist/patriot faction seems plausible.  They would want a protectionist - preferably outsider - president who might even be "grateful" once he found out what had been done on his behalf.  They would also benefit from a mass awakening from media programming, so as to clear the channels for installation of new programming.  This must be confirmed by what messages start getting broadcast to the general public.  If the media or other outlets started taking on a distinctly nationalistic tone, this would serve to confirm in part this particular scenario.

The other prime option is Richard Dolan's Break-Away Civilization.  Based on well reasoned arguments put forth by Dolan, Farrell and others, it is safe to assume that there could be a new civilization, completely divorced, or nearly so, from what most of us know.  This group is reasoned based on supposed advances in technology, including the ability to traverse vast distances in space.  This technical superiority would increasingly isolate this group from the rest of us here on terra firma to the point that ultimately it would simply break off and form its own unique culture.

Due to the nature of this supposed entity, its motivations and abilities are unknown to us and any attempt to fathom them is pointless without more information.  We cannot even speculate on whether Trump's victory would be a benefit or detriment to them, since we don't know what their needs or desires are.  By necessity, we must eliminate this possibility until additional information is available.

So that leaves us with the Nationalist/Patriot faction of the deep state as the most likely culprit.  In this regard, we have several data points, including the mysterious Steve Pieczenik and his coup/counter-coup.  He has continued to update his website and frequently posts rather cryptic messages on his Twitter account aimed at a rather bizarre assortment of people, leading to further speculation that this is an ongoing psy-op.  These posts contain thinly veiled threats regarding who will and won't be allowed to join the administration.  This strongly suggests a deep state actor, but we must be careful, as that impression is likely to be a deliberate misdirection in itself.

Suffice it to say that this has been a most unnerving election on all fronts.  There are far more pieces in play than is comfortable to ponder.  Going forward, all of the players bear close examination as we try to get a handle on what happened and will happen.  Without a doubt, though, 2017 and beyond will be a most interesting experience for most of humanity.

Fungal Monday

Ever have one of those days where you feel like you've done pretty much all you're going to get done and everything from this point on will be anti-climactic?  Yeah, me neither.

Don't know what I did right, but for the past week, Russia has been lighting up like a Christmas tree.  We've been getting about 1,000 hits a day from there, in addition to the regular traffic.  And there's no rhyme to the hits.  It's like folks are randomly reading the entire archive...which is fine.  About time someone did.  I figure it's the CIA using Tor to pop out in Moscow to cover their tracks.  Makes me feel important.  But, to all our new friends in Russia: Добро пожаловат!

At any rate, been a busy weekend, what with shooters and bombers and the Indonesian National Police knocking off the Number One Most Wanted Guy Around Here (NOMWGA).  As usual (here or anywhere else), this has little effect on controlling terrorism.

See?  The fundamental flaw in the War on Terror is that every time you get one, two more spring up because all this whole mess achieves is pissing off more people.

Look at the States.  First, they ban drugs, so that creates a blackmarket, which increases prices and attracts more unwanted types, who start fighting the law enforcement, so the cops get military style weapons and training, so the the bad guys do too, which makes the cop twitchy and start killing folks, who get pissed off and start killing cops.

It's all just one endless circle.  Violence begets violence, one smart guy once said.  The more you piss in someone's Wheaties, the more they want to poop in your garden.  You get nastier, so they get meaner.  You up the ante, so they raise the stakes.  All of these Warons (copyright and registered) will eventually lead to complete collapse, and at this point, I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing.

One thing I am absolutely sure of is that someone is making a fortune off all this mess.  In the West, they say, "Order out of chaos," and in the East they say, "Opportunity in chaos."  Pretty much the same thing.  Stir up some shit and then sit back and invest in the outcome.

In the end, we are all to blame for it since we buy into it.  We obey authority.  We bow to governments.  We swallow our pride and dignity to serve corporations.  Worst of all, we consume the society that was created for us, and it was created for us because on an individual level, I don't know anyone who wants all this crap.

And so we come to the axiom that a person is smart, but people are stupid.

We've all been conditioned to turn to authority figures any time life gets out of hand.  The problem is that those same authority figures are the one causing life to get out of hand.  The result is that we increasingly depend on authority to save us from...in effect, authority.

What's worse is that we have been further conditioned to call anyone who sees this particular insanity "conspiracy theorists," even though just a brief read of history tells us that pretty much all of history is one big conspiracy.

Like mushrooms, the visible caps are just a tiny part of the organism.  Beneath the soil are massive networks of interconnecting filaments that ultimately create a network of seemingly unrelated items.  I call this the Fungal Theory of History (FTH), and we are the ones being kept in the dark and fed shit.

In the rich loam of society, the tendrils of FTH spread out and suck nutrients out of each of us.  The FTH has no chlorophyll and depends on decay and rot to feed its massive network.

I am afraid that the only way to rid the Earth of this subterranean infestation is to completely uproot society.  The more we fight and kill, the more rot and decay we create to feed the fungus.  We must remove the food source - move into the light where fungus is scorched and dies.  Without the shadow and the rot, fungus cannot survive, since it cannot convert light into food.

Where I lose hope is that uprooting involves some pain.  There won't be any more TeeVee or PokemonGo sucking our life-force out of us, but only by disconnecting from this digital infestation can we hope to rid our world of this slimy parasite.  However, looking around, I see little will to do the necessary.  Folks are pretty happy handing their lives over, it seems.

I'm not a Neo-Luddite and I think the internet is the greatest learning tool every devised by humans, but the Fungus is working overtime to distract us from realizing the incredible promise that is literally at our fingertips.

I am afraid that the whole thing must come to a crashing halt.  There doesn't seem to be a way out otherwise.  One could, say, buy a huge ranch and set it up under a set of rules that are written into the deed restrictions, but that violates my love of free will and sovereign ownership.  However, I am unable to think of another way to demonstrate the benefits of complete freedom from the FTH and the "authoritarian" mentality.  It is so completely bound into society and culture now, and the "education" system has robbed us of the ability to think independently.

So on this fatalistic Monday, I pull back from the Fungus and wonder what the result will be of this infestation.  In the end, by the time we figure out what's happening, we are old and the young folks have been taught to dismiss us.  By the time they are old and realize we were right, then their kids won't be listening.

It's a vicious circle...kind of like a Fairy Ring.

Chika-Lika-Zika

Know what?

I could start a global health crisis tomorrow with the help of about three people.  I could do it alone, but I might break a sweat, and that wouldn't do.

I get my camera buddy and a Western actor, preferably female.  I put her in a lab coat...no, even better, an environmental suit.  We all go down to one of Indonesia's Level III wards - those are the ones with 20 people in one room, no A/C or TeeVee, just basic ultra-cheap medical care.  There's always someone moaning, since one room can have everything from a mild flu to a sucking chest wound.  The folks on that ward don't worry about things like Talent Releases and the families are just happy to be on TeeVee.  They don't care about privacy or any of those abstract ideas.

Now, I stage the shot a bit: open some of the curtains, pay a couple of nurses and families to mill around in the background.  I stand my actress in front of the scene, making sure I have a second mic picking up the environmental sounds of pain and suffering.  I have her spout some medical-sounding gobble-di-gook about viruses, lack of innoculation and throw in mention of WHO and Doctors Without Borders, just for good measure.

We wrap it up and head back to the office, stopping for a hot bowl of bakso on the way.

Back in the office, I put my white girl behind the camera and dress my Indo guy in a nice suit and put him in front of a green screen.  I give him a script to read - in Indonesian, of course, because stupid Americans can barely speak English, much less some tropical language.

When he's done, I drop some subtitles over the "doctor" and CGI a news set on an Indo network.  Doesn't even matter if it's a real organization, no one will ever search it to see if the network actually exists.

I upload it to YouTube and blast the link to my social network of two or three thousand folks.  I also call my buddies at CBS and Fox and tell them I've got a hot news story for them.  It gets picked up, I manufacture a couple more videos - let's say out in the jungle this time - and viola!  I just created a global health scare.  With the proper setup, I could do this in an afternoon, with another day to do some follow-up videos about an hour south of Jakarta in the mountains.

Since folks believe anythng they see on TeeVee, and almost never check facts, I could create...oh, I do't know, how about a virus called Zika that was discovered in Africa in the 50s, but somehow is causing...um, what sounds really scary?  Ooh!  How about babies born with micro-brains!  I'll get my chums over at the CDC to release some pseudo-facts and BS statistics on a weekly basis.  No need to actually show anyone suffering from the virus.  Just need to tell them that it is spreading and coming way too close to their home town.  That should scare the shit out of them.

Hell, while I'm at it, I'll issue a travel warning to Indonesia.  After all, there are "thousands" affected and we don't want it to spread.  That should kill the tourist trade and punish those evil Indonesians for not passing that bankster friendly law last month.

It's that easy folks.

Takes about a week and most of it is paperwork and phone calls.

And since you will believe anything on the TeeVee, and can/will never check the facts, and will panic on command, I will always win.

Honestly, before a few months ago, had you ever heard of Zika?  Most of the info I can find on it is only a couple of years old, even though it was supposedly discovered in Africa in the 1950s.  On top of that, I live in the tropics, and everyone here has had, or knows someone who has had most of the nasty little bugs that live in the tropics - dengue, yellow fever, hemorrhagic fever, amoebic dysentery, typhus, etc. ad nauseum.  But I can't find a single person who ever heard of Zika, much less had it before, and all references that are easily scared up on Google are within the past few hours or days.

Suddenly, just before the Rio Olympics and just when President Rouseffe was under fire for thinking her country's oil and mineral wealth belonged to the Brazilians, this Zika virus comes out of nowhere, infects thousands of folks, causes microcephaly (lit. small brain) births, spreads all over North America, and is transmitted by casual and sexual contact.

Pardon me if I don't buy this truck-load of horseshit for a moment.

OK, so it causes microcephaly, and you can show me all kinds of pictures of rashes, deformed babies and people suffering, but I have no way of knowing if these photos are connected to Zika.  You can show me live video of someone with fever and all sorts of nasty things, but I couldn't tell you if it was a virus or chemical poisoning, much less Zika,  There are no test results posted anywhere that I can find, and even if there were, there is no chain of evidence proving that the results are tied to any particular patient, and even if there were, I have no way to verify that the patient actually exists, since I know precisely how to manufacture such "evidence" with exactly the same "look and feel" as anything I can find in the media.

There may be thousands of people in Brazil and elsewhere suffering some kind of symptoms, but do you have ANY proof whatsoever that they are suffering from Zika infection?  As for the microcephaly, do you have any way of knowing that it was caused by a virus and not, say...Monsanto products?  In fact, do you have any way of verifying that any of these cases exist at all, other than reports in controlled media?

I didn't think so.

It is so easy to manufacture false stories.  I can destroy people's lives and mark them for life with nothing more substantial than a well-spun story.

We, the masses, never stop to ask questions.  We just sit in front of our TeeVees and absorb the party line.  Global events can be completely manufactured in minutes or hours with no more than about 10 people who know the truth.  More than 99% of the population will believe anything that has the smell of "authority" on it.  That's no more than a group of high school chums creating the news that drives the world of seven billion people.

When you think about it, the only reason we think there are seven billion people is because an "authority" gave us that number.  Have you verified the data?  Have you ever researched how that number is created?  Have you ever thought about anything you've been told is true?

All I need is some yahoo in a lab coat with a stethoscope spouting gibberish, and you'd never know the difference.  Especially if I can call on two or three buddies to help spread the word.

I am personally responsible for shooting video that was sold to the world as a race riot in South Africa, when in fact it was a blood feud between two black families over some chickens.  Even now, my confession will change nothing.  And you really think a conspiracy cannot be propagated without someone knowing the truth?  I know the truth.  I can give you dates, times and which major media network published it, and on which dates.  It won't change the fact that South Africa was destroyed over a manufactured problem to achieve goals that had nothing to do with human rights.

I quit mass media with a promising career because I had too much integrity to take money for fooling millions of people.  In the theater, people pay for tickets both knowing and wanting to be fooled, but with mass media, we assume that what we see is true.  It's frightening...really frightening.

Question everything!

For Hate's Sake I Spit At Thee

For years now, the public discourse - at least from certain sectors - has focused on something called "hate speech."  If you try to figure out just exactly what "hate speech" is, you end up with circular references and vague definitions akin to "pornography."  No one really knows what it is, but hey, they know it when they hear it.

I looked up the definition of "hate speech" on Google and got this, "Hate speech is speech that offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits."  So, according to this definition, almost every human alive in every context and every day commits "hate speech."

Schoolboy taunts are "hate speech."  Calling Nazis evil is "hate speech."  Saying that Attila the Hun was an invader rather than an immigrant is "hate speech."  Hell, even referring to "white privilege" is "hate speech," except that it's quite in vogue right now.  And therein lies the issue.

"Hate speech" is one of those amorphous things used to paint anyone we don't like with the brush of "political correctness."  You see, it's OK to bash the white race, and for non-white races to bash each other, but it is a sin of the highest order for white folk to say even the least derogatory thing about anyone else.  It's OK to bash Nazis and fascists, but not socialists and communists.  In fact, the borders of "hate speech" keep moving to suit whatever the Gatekeepers want.  In other words, "hate speech" is a tool of a controlling elite to stifle free and open discourse on whatever topic they don't like.

There is no right not to be offended or insulted.  Sorry, but that is a fact.  Trying to skate through life without someone somewhere offending and insulting you is a hopeless and ridiculous exercise.  For example, if you are fat, then at some point in your life, someone will call you "fat."  It is an accurate description of you.  It's a fact, get over it.  If it offends or insults you, then shutting up the person saying it will not change the fact.  Only direct action on your part to lose weight will do that.  If you don't take action, then you have chosen to be fat, and if you are insulted by someone noting that fact makes you an oversensitive idiot, as well.

Since records began, humans have had prejudices.  Every sub-group of society bashes every other sub-group to make themselves look superior and thus attract and keep members in the group.  Exclusivity is a selling point.  People want things that no one else has, and feel superior when they have them.  Whether your group feels snobbish because you eat at the finest restaurants, or your group has a lock on eternal salvation, everyone everywhere at all times has felt superior because of their membership in some group - and they have bashed other groups for not having the same thing.

Every race has bashed every other race for being inferior.  Every religion has bashed every other religion for not having the secrets to eternal truth.  Every political party has bashed every other political party for not having the answers.  And every individual has bashed some other individual for not being in their group.

It is a fact of life and the human condition that we define ourselves in opposition to others.  It is also a fact that at some point in our life, we will feel insulted or slighted in some way.  For crying out loud, siblings fight at the dinner table because one of them got a piece of pie that was slightly larger than another.  People get their feelings hurt.  So what?

The thing about "hate speech," and other terms, like "conspiracy theorist," is that they are a way to stifle thought and expression that are not in line with our own.  And when you put the deadly force of law behind it, you have a formidable weapon to shut down dissent and control the boundaries of public discourse.

Puppeteers control their marionettes using strings and sticks to animate the bodies and mouths.  Ambiguous terms like "hate speech" are nothing more than those strings and sticks making us dance to whatever tune the Puppeteers wish.

The terms are so vague that they seem reasonable, until you think a little deeper, but the Puppeteers control thinking with "conspiracy theorist" to prevent folks from doing that.  It's a vicious merry-go-round designed to entice people to jump on for the ride, and then slamming the gates behind them so they can't jump off.  All the pretty lights and organ music make the ride seem so cool and reasonable, but you are not allowed to wonder why you would want to ride in endless circles.

In the end, "hate speech" can be defined as just about anything the Puppeteers want, while at another level it's a means of having society itself limit each other from expressing opinions and facts that might hurt someone's feelings.  Anyone who speaks against a protected group or idea is using "hate speech."  You can't even defend freedom of speech without crossing this arbitrary border.

If you start thinking for yourself and offering alternatives to the sanctioned mindset, then you are a "conspiracy theorist," and again free speech is shut down.

The truly amazing thing is that this form of "political correctness" is a classic case of Double Think.  In effect, the individual ends up suppressing others' right to free speech by labeling what they say as "hate speech," while at the same time the individual believes he is protecting free speech.  It's a ghastly mind twist that has been installed in our minds.

Finally, these labels release us from having to think.  We don't need to respond intelligently, or formulate arguments to refute, we just utter "hate speech" and walk away.  No effort.  No thought.  No danger of actually using our minds and reason.  Good little marionettes.

It is time to eradicate these terms from our vocabulary.  They are too glib and vague to be useful in the best case, and deeply dangerous and controlling in the worst.  The control is not on others, it is on ourselves.  We close and lock our own cages when we use these terms.

There is no right to be un-offended, un-insulted or inconvenienced.  You have a right to pursue happiness, which means you can walk away or change the channel.  The other guy has the same right and is using his speech to seek that happiness.  He doesn't have a right to force you to listen, but you don't have a right to shut him up.  This is what used to be called being an adult.

If someone says or publishes something untrue about you, we have slander and libel laws to protect you, and if someone incites violence, there's laws for that too.  Otherwise, get over it and deal with it like an adult.

(By the way, the title of this article is taken from Moby Dick, so sue Herman Melville)

Dots, Defects and Dangers

Today, we're going to do a little theoretical mental exercises.  Don't let that scare you.  I just want to put that up front so that everyone knows this is a mind experiment and not an accusation against several very litigious companies who make money off of trademarking natural processes and suing small farmers.

First, so readily available facts from Google searchers: Brazil is noted to be the epicenter of the Zika virus outbreak in April 2015; Brazil is noted to have one of the highest levels of glyphosate use in agriculture and consumption; glyphosate is noted to cause cancer and birth defects; Brazil has released large numbers of GM mosquitoes in the past to combat disease vectors.

To lay this out a bit, a relatively benign tropical virus discovered in Africa (Zika forest monkeys) in the 1950s, suddenly becomes a major health threat centered in Brazil where they have copiously consumed GM plants, animals and used lots and lots of glyphosate (Round-Up), where it suddenly began causing microcephaly (lit. "small head") and other birth defects.

Now, to my admittedly suspicious mind and overactive imagination, these dots link up to suggest one of two things:
1) The Zika virus mutated in contact with GM cells in the guts of manufactured mosquitoes, and may have been aided and abetted by GM foods and/or the use of glyphosate;
2) The birth defects are actually caused by glyphosate and the Zika virus is being used to cover and "explain" the problem, using a natural cause and vector, rather than face decades of lawsuits and the banning of a very lucrative product (see "DDT").

I do not rule out that the virus may be the actual cause of birth defects and other issues, but given that there is almost no literature discussing these problems before April of 2015, I am hard-pressed to believe that the virus was not modified, either by design or contact with GM genes in plants or animals.  In either case, the culpability of certain malevolent corporations is easily demonstrated.

In sequencing the genome of the Zika virus, one would think it easy to look for patented genes, or even serial numbers (a la Blade Runner) on individual cells.

I perfectly willing to accept that this is all circumstantial and that viruses can mutate naturally, even becoming far more dangerous over time.  However, this kind of event clearly shows the dangers involved in tampering with the genomes of living creatures without a lot more knowledge and practice than we currently have.

If one thing can be learned from the history of science, it is that the Law of Unintended Consequences reigns supreme.  When we begin juggling the foundational substances of Life itself, we are staring the "butterfly effect" straight in the face and daring Fate.  There are many examples of massive boulders resting precariously on tiny pebbles, and to remove even the smallest of them many cause the entire mass to avalanche.

It is the ultimate in hubris and stupidity (often synonymous) to think that humans, with a few decades of trial and error under our belts, can release genetically modified organisms into the wild and not have some kind of blow-back from it.  It is a dangerous and extremely risky game we are playing with the mass of Nature resting on such tiny pebbles.

And while this mucking about with DNA is bad enough, to think that a corporation would purposely modify a virus to cover up the poisonous effects of one of its most successful products if even more horrifying, but to take another lesson from history, it is neither unthinkable nor unprecedented.  Perhaps this situation calls for a much closer look at the origins of the problem.

BurP: Now What?

Leonard Horowitz and Sherry Kane Step In Some Truth

In case you're not up to date on the latest conspiracy slang, LIHOP means Let It Happen On Purpose, and MIHOP means Made It Happen On Purpose.


To review: the evil BP was drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) in about 10,000 feet of water in a block named Macando. They were leasing one of the most advanced deepwater rigs in the world from TransOean, and there were a number of sub-contractors on the rig to handle various aspects of operations, such as the Dynamic Positioning system, the drilling, mudding, casing, and so on. Such operations are at the bleeding edge of technology. The pressures and tensions involved in working in 2 miles of water depth are astounding. The weight of the drill string required incredibly powerful machines to grip and hold the pipe. The water pressures require the use of remote operated vehicles (ROVs) to keep a visual on the well-head, as well as manipulate various geer, since divers cannot go that deep. Huge thrusters are used to keep the rig stationed over the well, since anchors are impractical in water that deep.

There are many other considerations, but you get the idea that the people who operate out there are not dummies. They are highly trained and skilled technicians who are fully aware that if they make a mistake, it is most likely catastrophic.

The top man on the rig is the Company Man. There are two of them working in 12-hour shifts, overseeing all operations and approving every step of the process. The top guy on the Deepwater Horizon was one of the best inthe business, and he was pulled off the rig a couple of days before the disaster, during a critical phase of casing the well, or pumping cement down the hole and up the outside of the steel tube inserted into the well, to keep the hole from collapsing.

The process was under the control of a VERY well-known and respected contractor. They are in charge of the mix for the concrete and calculating the number of spacers that are inserted, and the flow rate, and a number of other variables involved. These are carefully calculated and nothing is left to chance. The contractor specified using over 100 spacers for the casing, because of the pressures involved and the geology of the well. Amazingly, the BP company man who had replaced the #1, who was pulled off to get some useless training landside, overrode the contractor and reduced the number of spacers to around 20.

Now I don't know about you, but when I hire experts to do something, I tend to listen to them.

The contractor was so alarmed by this action that they pulled their people off the rig the morning of the explosion with an unscheduled helicopter pick-up. Hours later, the well blew out, the rig sank and the rest is history...or is it?

You see, the damage is not yet finished and the well itself may still be spewing. We don't really know. Here's why...

During the capping operations to try to stop the well from dumping millions of gallons of oil into the GOM, a hurricane blew in. Following policies long established, all top-side operations stopped when the storm reached a certain distance, and crews and vessels were pulled back to port when the storm reached another 'line in the sand.'

Until that point, an ROV had been parked on the sea floor streaming video of the well head to the world via the internet. If you hunt around, you'll find pre-storm video feeds. Look carefully. Notice all the data on the screen. Find the latitude and longitude numbers and punch them into your GPS. Now, find video after the storm, when BP announced they had miraculously capped the well. Now note the lat/lons and punch those into your GPS. What do you notice?

Hmmmmmmmm...

Looks to me like they are different wells. Looked that way to Matt Simmons, too. Now you may recall that Simmons is, oops I mean was, one of the foremost commentators on the oil patch and was followed religiously by investors in the sector. Now he noticed a slight problem with the lat/lons on-screen. He did a little homework and found that the new coordinates matched a previous well, known as "Macando A", that BP had capped previously because it had become unstable and threatened to blow out.

Now you may not have heard Simmon's warnings. They were squelched by the media just days before he was 'heart-attacked' and 'drowned.'

Maybe you haven't noticed that the Company Man who was responsible for the spacer decision has 'taken the fifth' at the Gulf Hearings, conducted by the Crimin...I mean the Feral Gummint.

Skip ahead a bit.

The GOM is responsible for a lot of weather in the norther hemisphere. Ocean currents come up from the south and swirl around in the GOM for a while, where they get nice and warm. They then proceed up the east coast of North America and slide across the Atlantic, where they slam into the west coast of Ireland. This process, known as the Gulf Stream, releases enough heat to moderate the climate in Europe, which is why it rarely snows in Ireland and England, and places like Holland, France and Germany enjoy less-than-deadly winters, despite being a hair's breadth from the Arctic Circle.

Now, let's play a thought game. Suppose you were to squelch the release of heat from the Gulf Stream, or even modify it, with, oh I don't know, let's say OIL. That tiny bit of warming, enough to raise temps a degree or two, vanishes and what happens? Massive snow storms. Record low temperatures. Hundreds if not thousands die from the cold. Records that are centuries old fall.

Oh, and let's not forget that the GOM also provides enough warming in North America that it keeps deadly winters from striking there, as well. So, it that heat is trapped by, oh I don't know, let's say OIL, then what happens? How about blizzards, record lows, hundreds of deaths. Even Cancun, which is an island off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula at the southern most boundary of the GOM might experience record low temps during, oh I don't know, the Global Warming Conference, let's say.

If that were the case, and I'm not saying it could happen, then that would make BP directly and indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths on two continents, as well as global weather modification, destruction of incredibly sensitive habitats, and so on.

And all that would happen because the top Company Man was pulled off a rig days before a major blow-out caused by his replacement who ordered a highly respected contractor to reduce the number of spacers they had carefully calculated and which they claimed to have capped even though a respected analyst had noticed that the lat/lons were wrong shortly before he died an untimely death.

It's a darned good thing this is all just hypothetical. Otherwise I'd be tempted to say that this was a MIHOP terrorist event on a scale that makes 9/11, 7/7 and Mumbai pale by comparason. And then I'd have to look over my shoulder all the time to make sure I didn't get 'heart-attacked.'

It could never happen, right?

Just in case you're wondering how some goombah living in Indonesia could know all this, well...in my past llfe I worked for 10 years in offshore construction as a marketing and business development specialist. I know a lot of people who know things about this mess.

Nuff said.