Questions about the “911” damage to the Pentagon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArcFnPCuS3k&feature=related
1. What happened to the 8,600 gallons of jet fuel?
2. Why is the date on a single Pentagon photo showing a remote fire flash dated “Sept 12th”
3. Why did the plane hit a section of the Pentagon that had no military personnel?
4. Why did the plane leave a much smaller hole in the Pentagon than its size.
5. Why was there very little fire damage considering a full gas tank, when the planes hitting the Twin Towers showed considerably more flames.?
6. With all the surveillance cameras available at the Pentagon, why are there not anymore photos available?
7. Why was the film from a surveillance camera on a nearby gas station hurriedly confiscated by FBI agents and not shared with the public or 9/11 Commission.
8. Why does the damage to the Pentagon looked like it was caused by a missile explosion?
9. Why were no parts of the “757” plane found at the crash site?
10. Why would the so called “Terrorists” not fly the alleged plane into the top of the Pentagon where it could do more intense damage?
11. Why is the major media who are controlled by major corporations such as : GE, VIACOM, ABC DISNEY, Rupert Murdoch’s FOX NEWS suppressing articles that are other than the “Official Story” for public reading?
12. If the “Official Story” is indeed the actual truth why is the government and major power centers holding it from the public?
13. It was like a “Cruise Missile” with wings. Quoted by a viewer.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Bible: Myth or History
Many people will tell you that the Bible is only a collection of fables, but they’re not telling you the whole story.
Can you believe the Bible? The implications are enormous.
by Scott Ashley
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You’ve read the articles. You’ve watched the reports and listened to the stories. Routinely they allege or at least suggest that the Bible isn’t really believable.
By now everyone knows, they imply, that the Bible’s stories could not have happened the way they are written. After all, plenty of reporters, professors and scientists tell us such is the case--that the Bible is mostly myth.
But is it? Or is a different myth being foisted off on us?
Surveys show that belief in the Bible is declining at an astounding rate. According to pollster George Gallup: "As recently as 1963, two (Americans) in three viewed the Bible as the actual word of God, to be taken literally, word for word. Today (1999), only one person in three still holds to that interpretation" (George Gallup Jr. and Michael Lindsay, Surveying the Religious Landscape: Trends in U.S. Beliefs, 1999, p. 36).
Only two years later, in 2001, the Gallup poll showed that only 27 percent of Americans--barely one in four--still believed the Bible to be the inspired Word of God and literally true in every respect.
In other countries belief that the Bible is the true Word of God is far lower. A 1991 survey found that only 25 percent of the Irish, 20 percent of Italians, 13 percent of Britons, Norwegians and Dutch and 10 percent of former West Germans believed the Bible was absolutely true and should be taken literally. A 1999 poll in Britain indicated that fewer than half its respondents believed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Even more startling, 14 percent said they knew nothing at all about Him. More than one in five believed He was "just a story." Almost half of those polled had never attended a church service.
What’s behind these trends? Only a generation ago the common view among most Americans, and much of the Western world, was that the Bible is literally true--and the direct revelation of God and of His will. Now why do so many people, including many professing Christians, distrust or disbelieve what the Bible says?
Read the full article at www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn39/biblemythhistory.htm
Can you believe the Bible? The implications are enormous.
by Scott Ashley
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You’ve read the articles. You’ve watched the reports and listened to the stories. Routinely they allege or at least suggest that the Bible isn’t really believable.
By now everyone knows, they imply, that the Bible’s stories could not have happened the way they are written. After all, plenty of reporters, professors and scientists tell us such is the case--that the Bible is mostly myth.
But is it? Or is a different myth being foisted off on us?
Surveys show that belief in the Bible is declining at an astounding rate. According to pollster George Gallup: "As recently as 1963, two (Americans) in three viewed the Bible as the actual word of God, to be taken literally, word for word. Today (1999), only one person in three still holds to that interpretation" (George Gallup Jr. and Michael Lindsay, Surveying the Religious Landscape: Trends in U.S. Beliefs, 1999, p. 36).
Only two years later, in 2001, the Gallup poll showed that only 27 percent of Americans--barely one in four--still believed the Bible to be the inspired Word of God and literally true in every respect.
In other countries belief that the Bible is the true Word of God is far lower. A 1991 survey found that only 25 percent of the Irish, 20 percent of Italians, 13 percent of Britons, Norwegians and Dutch and 10 percent of former West Germans believed the Bible was absolutely true and should be taken literally. A 1999 poll in Britain indicated that fewer than half its respondents believed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Even more startling, 14 percent said they knew nothing at all about Him. More than one in five believed He was "just a story." Almost half of those polled had never attended a church service.
What’s behind these trends? Only a generation ago the common view among most Americans, and much of the Western world, was that the Bible is literally true--and the direct revelation of God and of His will. Now why do so many people, including many professing Christians, distrust or disbelieve what the Bible says?
Read the full article at www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn39/biblemythhistory.htm
Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'
People with higher IQs are less likely to believe in God, according to a new study.
Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the "intellectual elite" considered themselves atheists than the national average.
A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.
But the conclusions - in a paper for the academic journal Intelligence - have been branded "simplistic" by critics.
Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking intelligence to race and sex, said university academics were less likely to believe in God than almost anyone else.
A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers.
A separate poll in the 90s found only seven per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God.
Professor Lynn said most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence - and their intelligence increased - many started to have doubts.
He told Times Higher Education magazine: "Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God."
He said religious belief had declined across 137 developed nations in the 20th century at the same time as people became more intelligent.
But Professor Gordon Lynch, director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, London, said it failed to take account of a complex range of social, economic and historical factors.
"Linking religious belief and intelligence in this way could reflect a dangerous trend, developing a simplistic characterisation of religion as primitive, which - while we are trying to deal with very complex issues of religious and cultural pluralism - is perhaps not the most helpful response," he said.
Dr Alistair McFadyen, senior lecturer in Christian theology at Leeds University, said the conclusion had "a slight tinge of Western cultural imperialism as well as an anti-religious sentiment".
Dr David Hardman, principal lecturer in learning development at London Metropolitan University, said: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief. Nonetheless, there is evidence from other domains that higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability - or perhaps willingness - to question and overturn strongly felt institutions."
Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the "intellectual elite" considered themselves atheists than the national average.
A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.
But the conclusions - in a paper for the academic journal Intelligence - have been branded "simplistic" by critics.
Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking intelligence to race and sex, said university academics were less likely to believe in God than almost anyone else.
A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers.
A separate poll in the 90s found only seven per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God.
Professor Lynn said most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence - and their intelligence increased - many started to have doubts.
He told Times Higher Education magazine: "Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God."
He said religious belief had declined across 137 developed nations in the 20th century at the same time as people became more intelligent.
But Professor Gordon Lynch, director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, London, said it failed to take account of a complex range of social, economic and historical factors.
"Linking religious belief and intelligence in this way could reflect a dangerous trend, developing a simplistic characterisation of religion as primitive, which - while we are trying to deal with very complex issues of religious and cultural pluralism - is perhaps not the most helpful response," he said.
Dr Alistair McFadyen, senior lecturer in Christian theology at Leeds University, said the conclusion had "a slight tinge of Western cultural imperialism as well as an anti-religious sentiment".
Dr David Hardman, principal lecturer in learning development at London Metropolitan University, said: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief. Nonetheless, there is evidence from other domains that higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability - or perhaps willingness - to question and overturn strongly felt institutions."
Friday, February 26, 2010
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth Throws Down the Gauntlet
If you don't read the newspaper, you're un-informed. If you do read the newspaper, you're mis-informed. – Mark Twain
On the morning of February 19, 2010, in a press conference in the city of San Francisco, Richard Gage, AIA, gave the mainstream American media an opportunity to prove Mark Twain wrong. Standing with him in thirty-eight cities around the world, members and supporters of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, held concurrent press conferences and offered the same opportunity to the mainstream media everywhere. Their message: Over 1,000 architectural and engineering professionals agree that the official government reports on the three worst structural failures in American history are scientifically inadequate, and that a real, independent investigation of these failures is now of paramount importance to the nation and to the world.
In a truly free and open society, that message would spread like wildfire. Yet more than eight years after the event, and nearly four years since Mr. Gage founded his professional organization and began calling for an independent investigation, questioning 9/11 is still treated as taboo. Any deviation from the government's official conspiracy theory, no matter how scientifically sound and thoroughly researched, is, for the most part, derided or ignored in the mainstream press — in the United States. Outside the country, however, the situation has begun to change dramatically over the last year, as described in Elizabeth Woodworth's excellent survey The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Recent examples include fair and balanced coverage of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth in Canada's Financial Post, Germany's Focus Money, New Zealand's "Close Up," and Japan's Asahi Shimbun Magazine – all major national titles.
The AE911Truth press conference of February 19 gave US mainstream media a chance to join this growing global trend. Invitations to attend the event, and the press release itself, were sent to virtually every news outlet in the US. Early indications were good – by February 18, KCBS, KGO, and Clear Channel, for example, had confirmed that they would cover the event, and KTVU said they would bring a crew. Reuters also was expressing "great interest." Why didn't they show?
The press release offered media outlets like these several highly-explosive angles to the story (in addition to the obvious bombshell that over 1,000 architects and engineers are now demanding a new investigation of 9/11). These were:
1) That on February 19, in conjunction with the press conference, the AE911Truth petition would be delivered to every single congressional representative. As part of this, government officials would be notified that "Misprision of Treason," US Code 18 (Sec. 2382), is a serious federal offense which requires those with evidence of treason to act.
2) That at the press conference, AE911Truth would call for a grand jury investigation of two NIST officials, Shyam Sunder and John Gross, due to the demonstrably "insufficient, contradictory, and fraudulent" nature of the 9/11 reports they oversaw.
3) The fact that AE911Truth's findings "may have a profound impact on the forthcoming Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial" – a recent and ongoing controversial topic in the mainstream press.
Any one of those announcements should be a journalist's golden ticket to the front page. AE911Truth's compilation and dissemination of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt of explosive controlled demolition," as Mr. Gage announced during the press conference, and our 1,000+ petitioners, are arguably the most important news item of the day – because the implications are so enormous and so profound.
Yet the US media response to the press conference has, so far, been strikingly quiet. Quiet, but not completely silent. The Washington Times ran a surprisingly fair and candid story with this outstanding hook: "How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds?" Also, the Defense Daily Network, Yahoo!, Forbes, and many other websites picked up the press release. KPFA 94.1 FM (Berkeley) broadcasted a nearly four minute piece on the event the following Sunday evening, which included a clip of Dr. Steven Jones discussion at the press conference of the scientific paper he co-authored, which describes the discovery of advanced nano-thermitic composite materials in the World Trade Center dust. And A-Channel News (Victoria, BC) covered fairly AE911Truth's big announcement, airing an excellent interview with a local engineer and AE911Truth petitioner, Werner Simbeck.
But this, of course, is not yet enough. We can only hope in good faith that the gathering momentum of the foreign media's openness toward the scientific evidence of 9/11 will also be experienced by the US media soon, and that the press conference will prove to be the turning point in public perception.
Whether this press conference turns out to be the decisive event for a shift in the mainstream American media's handling of 9/11 Truth, or whether future AE911Truth actions will accomplish this goal, we can say with confidence that the event was a great success. Over 500 people registered to watch the different live webinars of the conference (hopefully many of them journalists who will be publishing their reactions soon!) Approximately 150 people packed the room in which the press conference was held. Tickets for the luncheon afterwards were completely sold out. Attendees of both the conference and the luncheon were treated with clear, pointed, and inspiring talks by Dr. David Ray Griffin, Dr. Steven Jones, and Erik Lawyer, founder of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. The AE911Truth strategy mini-conference after the luncheon was also packed out. This was a time for fellow AE911Truth petitioners to meet one another and brainstorm a future vision for the organization, as well as encourage one another to keep up the effort for the truth about 9/11. Many of the petitioners spoke to the group and gave their own professional perspectives on why a new investigation of 9/11 is needed. During the session, Anders Björkman, who had flown from France to attend the press conference, presented a "poignant and humorous" summary of his paper, Debunking the Conspiracy Theories of Prof. Bazant and NIST - Why WTC 1 Could Not Be One-Way Crushed Down by its Upper Part. An encouraging letter from structural engineer Ron Brookman (an AE911Truth petition signatory) to the attendees was also read aloud. Mr. Brookman closes his letter in this way:
A representative of NIST Media Relations has said that NIST stands by its reports. The obvious question is: does anyone else stand behind the NIST reports? … We know there are thousands of well-informed citizens worldwide including architects, engineers, and scientists of every discipline that do not accept the NIST conclusions regarding the likely cause of collapse of WTC 7, and they do so with excellent reasons. So far there are few who will endorse the NIST reports other than those who created them. Many questions remain, but one that puzzles me the most is: why are so many thoughtful people with technical training reluctant to reveal their opinion if there is nothing to hide from the public? As you have demonstrated in the last two years, a high percentage of alert and open-minded individuals who spend time studying the facts agree. Shocking? Yes, but there is nothing radical or extreme about the truth.
Yes, and eventually, we hope, the truth about 9/11 will become mainstream, and we'll look back on this time, when it was taboo to question the official story of 9/11, as a strange time. The AE911Truth press conference of February 19 has sent a clear signal that the tide is turning.
"How could this not be known for so long?" a member of the Japanese press asked Mr. Gage after the conference. "In fact, most architects and engineers know nothing about the third worst structural failure in modern history," responded Mr. Gage. "It's a matter of media control. In this country, five corporations own 90% of the media and that is a significant problem for the truth."
Will those five corporations let legitimate questions about 9/11 breathe in an atmosphere of openness and freedom? Will they disprove the dictum of Mark Twain?
On the morning of February 19, 2010, in a press conference in the city of San Francisco, Richard Gage, AIA, gave the mainstream American media an opportunity to prove Mark Twain wrong. Standing with him in thirty-eight cities around the world, members and supporters of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, held concurrent press conferences and offered the same opportunity to the mainstream media everywhere. Their message: Over 1,000 architectural and engineering professionals agree that the official government reports on the three worst structural failures in American history are scientifically inadequate, and that a real, independent investigation of these failures is now of paramount importance to the nation and to the world.
In a truly free and open society, that message would spread like wildfire. Yet more than eight years after the event, and nearly four years since Mr. Gage founded his professional organization and began calling for an independent investigation, questioning 9/11 is still treated as taboo. Any deviation from the government's official conspiracy theory, no matter how scientifically sound and thoroughly researched, is, for the most part, derided or ignored in the mainstream press — in the United States. Outside the country, however, the situation has begun to change dramatically over the last year, as described in Elizabeth Woodworth's excellent survey The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Recent examples include fair and balanced coverage of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth in Canada's Financial Post, Germany's Focus Money, New Zealand's "Close Up," and Japan's Asahi Shimbun Magazine – all major national titles.
The AE911Truth press conference of February 19 gave US mainstream media a chance to join this growing global trend. Invitations to attend the event, and the press release itself, were sent to virtually every news outlet in the US. Early indications were good – by February 18, KCBS, KGO, and Clear Channel, for example, had confirmed that they would cover the event, and KTVU said they would bring a crew. Reuters also was expressing "great interest." Why didn't they show?
The press release offered media outlets like these several highly-explosive angles to the story (in addition to the obvious bombshell that over 1,000 architects and engineers are now demanding a new investigation of 9/11). These were:
1) That on February 19, in conjunction with the press conference, the AE911Truth petition would be delivered to every single congressional representative. As part of this, government officials would be notified that "Misprision of Treason," US Code 18 (Sec. 2382), is a serious federal offense which requires those with evidence of treason to act.
2) That at the press conference, AE911Truth would call for a grand jury investigation of two NIST officials, Shyam Sunder and John Gross, due to the demonstrably "insufficient, contradictory, and fraudulent" nature of the 9/11 reports they oversaw.
3) The fact that AE911Truth's findings "may have a profound impact on the forthcoming Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial" – a recent and ongoing controversial topic in the mainstream press.
Any one of those announcements should be a journalist's golden ticket to the front page. AE911Truth's compilation and dissemination of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt of explosive controlled demolition," as Mr. Gage announced during the press conference, and our 1,000+ petitioners, are arguably the most important news item of the day – because the implications are so enormous and so profound.
Yet the US media response to the press conference has, so far, been strikingly quiet. Quiet, but not completely silent. The Washington Times ran a surprisingly fair and candid story with this outstanding hook: "How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds?" Also, the Defense Daily Network, Yahoo!, Forbes, and many other websites picked up the press release. KPFA 94.1 FM (Berkeley) broadcasted a nearly four minute piece on the event the following Sunday evening, which included a clip of Dr. Steven Jones discussion at the press conference of the scientific paper he co-authored, which describes the discovery of advanced nano-thermitic composite materials in the World Trade Center dust. And A-Channel News (Victoria, BC) covered fairly AE911Truth's big announcement, airing an excellent interview with a local engineer and AE911Truth petitioner, Werner Simbeck.
But this, of course, is not yet enough. We can only hope in good faith that the gathering momentum of the foreign media's openness toward the scientific evidence of 9/11 will also be experienced by the US media soon, and that the press conference will prove to be the turning point in public perception.
Whether this press conference turns out to be the decisive event for a shift in the mainstream American media's handling of 9/11 Truth, or whether future AE911Truth actions will accomplish this goal, we can say with confidence that the event was a great success. Over 500 people registered to watch the different live webinars of the conference (hopefully many of them journalists who will be publishing their reactions soon!) Approximately 150 people packed the room in which the press conference was held. Tickets for the luncheon afterwards were completely sold out. Attendees of both the conference and the luncheon were treated with clear, pointed, and inspiring talks by Dr. David Ray Griffin, Dr. Steven Jones, and Erik Lawyer, founder of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. The AE911Truth strategy mini-conference after the luncheon was also packed out. This was a time for fellow AE911Truth petitioners to meet one another and brainstorm a future vision for the organization, as well as encourage one another to keep up the effort for the truth about 9/11. Many of the petitioners spoke to the group and gave their own professional perspectives on why a new investigation of 9/11 is needed. During the session, Anders Björkman, who had flown from France to attend the press conference, presented a "poignant and humorous" summary of his paper, Debunking the Conspiracy Theories of Prof. Bazant and NIST - Why WTC 1 Could Not Be One-Way Crushed Down by its Upper Part. An encouraging letter from structural engineer Ron Brookman (an AE911Truth petition signatory) to the attendees was also read aloud. Mr. Brookman closes his letter in this way:
A representative of NIST Media Relations has said that NIST stands by its reports. The obvious question is: does anyone else stand behind the NIST reports? … We know there are thousands of well-informed citizens worldwide including architects, engineers, and scientists of every discipline that do not accept the NIST conclusions regarding the likely cause of collapse of WTC 7, and they do so with excellent reasons. So far there are few who will endorse the NIST reports other than those who created them. Many questions remain, but one that puzzles me the most is: why are so many thoughtful people with technical training reluctant to reveal their opinion if there is nothing to hide from the public? As you have demonstrated in the last two years, a high percentage of alert and open-minded individuals who spend time studying the facts agree. Shocking? Yes, but there is nothing radical or extreme about the truth.
Yes, and eventually, we hope, the truth about 9/11 will become mainstream, and we'll look back on this time, when it was taboo to question the official story of 9/11, as a strange time. The AE911Truth press conference of February 19 has sent a clear signal that the tide is turning.
"How could this not be known for so long?" a member of the Japanese press asked Mr. Gage after the conference. "In fact, most architects and engineers know nothing about the third worst structural failure in modern history," responded Mr. Gage. "It's a matter of media control. In this country, five corporations own 90% of the media and that is a significant problem for the truth."
Will those five corporations let legitimate questions about 9/11 breathe in an atmosphere of openness and freedom? Will they disprove the dictum of Mark Twain?
"9/11" -Is there a major coverup supported by the "9/11 Commision"?
I would hope that you could keep an open mind about this issue. I have a problem with certain people "Condemning America" as well as yourself. This issue is about having a government that can be as free as possible from "Underhanded" manipulation by certain high level people of the power elite. It's about Integrity and restoring our citizens faith in this country and not pushing illicit activity under the rug. Finding out the truth is not an indictment of most Americans. Every country through history has had "Bad actors". The present trust factor in our government is down to 22% from a high of 80% in 1964. I respect your knowledge and experience as a fireman, but honestly both your and my experience pails in relation to the engineers and scientists who have gathered the evidence, and have done the research. I have not been able to find any objective scientific rebuttal to my position that there were other forces beside "Muslin Radicals" that brought on this terrible event.
The truth is an empowering thing. The "9/11 Commission" did little or nothing to deal with "Forensic" issues or causes of "9/11", what it addressed was mainly what to do in the future. It would be naïve of us to expect an administration to conduct an objective investigation of itself. The Bush administration was also resistant to a thorough and in depth investigation. Many of the "Commissioners" were very frustrated due to the lack of transparency. The "commission" was mainly run and shrouded by Phillip Zelikow a "Bush" administration insider and close colleague of Condi Rice. When someone resists being investigated it is usually indicative of some "Unacceptable Behavior".
Some people may want to go into denial about the many emerging facts that are raising serious questions about "9/11", but the reality is that if we want to have a nation of trusting Americans the truth must prevail.
The truth is an empowering thing. The "9/11 Commission" did little or nothing to deal with "Forensic" issues or causes of "9/11", what it addressed was mainly what to do in the future. It would be naïve of us to expect an administration to conduct an objective investigation of itself. The Bush administration was also resistant to a thorough and in depth investigation. Many of the "Commissioners" were very frustrated due to the lack of transparency. The "commission" was mainly run and shrouded by Phillip Zelikow a "Bush" administration insider and close colleague of Condi Rice. When someone resists being investigated it is usually indicative of some "Unacceptable Behavior".
Some people may want to go into denial about the many emerging facts that are raising serious questions about "9/11", but the reality is that if we want to have a nation of trusting Americans the truth must prevail.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
When will the American people get it?
Paul Craig Roberts
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, February 25, 2010
The Washington Times is a newspaper that looks with favor upon the Bush/Cheney/Obama/neocon wars of aggression in the Middle East and favors making terrorists pay for 9/11. Therefore, I was surprised to learn on February 24 that the most popular story on the paper’s website for the past three days was the “Inside the Beltway” report, “Explosive News,” about the 31 press conferences in cities in the US and abroad on February 19 held by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of professionals which now has 1,000 members.
I was even more surprised that the news report treated the press conference seriously.
How did three World Trade Center skyscrapers suddenly disintegrate into fine dust? How did massive steel beams in three skyscrapers suddenly fail as a result of short-lived, isolated, and low temperature fires? “A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7,” reports the Washington Times.
The paper reports that the architects and engineers have concluded that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology provided “insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction” and are “calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials.”
The newspaper reports that Richard Gage, the spokesperson for the architects and engineers said: “Government officials will be notified that ‘Misprision of Treason,’ U.S. Code 18 (Sec. 2382) is a serious federal offense, which requires those with evidence of treason to act. The implications are enormous and may have profound impact on the forthcoming Khalid Sheik Mohammed trial.”
There is now an organization, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. At the main press conference in San Francisco, Eric Lawyer,the head of that organization, announced the firefighters’ support for the architects and engineers’ demands. He reported that no forensic investigation was made of the fires that are alleged to have destroyed the three buildings and that this failure constitutes a crime.
Mandated procedures were not followed, and instead of being preserved and investigated, the crime scene was destroyed. He also reported that there are more than one hundred first responders who heard and experienced explosions and that there is radio, audio and video evidence of explosions.
Also at the press conference, physicist Steven Jones presented the evidence of nano-thermite in the residue of the WTC buildings found by an international panel of scientists led by University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Professor Niels Harrit. Nano-thermite is a high-tech explosive/pyrotechnic capable of instantly melting steel girders.
Before we yell “conspiracy theory,” we should be aware that the architects, engineers, firefighters, and scientists offer no theory. They provide evidence that challenges the official theory. This evidence is not going to go away.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
If expressing doubts or reservations about the official story in the 9/11 Commission Report makes a person a conspiracy theory kook, then we have to include both co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission and the Commission’s legal counsel, all of whom have written books in which they clearly state that they were lied to by government officials when they conducted their investigation, or, rather, when they presided over the investigation conducted by executive director Philip Zelikow, a member of President George W. Bush’s transition team and Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a co-author of Bush Secretary of State Condi “Mushroom Cloud” Rice.
There will always be Americans who will believe whatever the government tells them no matter how many times they know the government has lied to them. Despite expensive wars that threaten Social Security and Medicare, wars based on non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, non-existent Saddam Hussein connections to al Qaida, non-existent Afghan participation in the 9/11 attacks, and the non-existent Iranian nukes that are being hyped as the reason for the next American war of aggression in the Middle East, more than half of the U.S. population still believes the fantastic story that the government has told them about 9/11, a Muslim conspiracy that outwitted the entire Western world.
Moreover, it doesn’t matter to these Americans how often the government changes its story. For example, Americans first heard of Osama bin Laden because the Bush regime pinned the 9/11 attacks on him. Over the years video after video was served up to the gullible American public of bin Laden’s pronouncements. Experts dismissed the videos as fakes, but Americans remained their gullible selves. Then suddenly last year a new 9/11 “mastermind” emerged to take bin Laden’s place, the captive Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the detainee waterboarded 183 times until he confessed to mastermining the 9/11 attack.
In the Middle Ages confessions extracted by torture constituted evidence, but self-incrimination has been a no-no in the U.S. legal system since our founding. But with the Bush regime and the Republican federal judges, whom we were assured would defend the U.S. Constitution, the self-incrimination of Sheik Mohammed stands today as the only evidence the U.S. government has that Muslim terrorists pulled off 9/11.
If a person considers the feats attributed to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, they are simply unbelievable. Sheik Mohammed is a more brilliant, capable superhero than V in the fantasy movie, “V for Vendetta.” Sheik Mohammed outwitted all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies along with those of all U.S. allies or puppets, including Israel’s Mossad. No intelligence service on earth or all of them combined was a match for Sheik Mohammed.
Sheik Mohammed outwitted the U.S. National Security Council, Dick Cheney, the Pentagon, the State Department, NORAD, the U.S. Air Force, and Air Traffic Control.
He caused Airport Security to fail four times in one morning. He caused the state-of-the-art air defenses of the Pentagon to fail, allowing a hijacked airliner, which was off course all morning while the U.S. Air Force, for the first time in history, was unable to get aloft intercepter aircraft, to crash into the Pentagon.
Sheik Mohammed was able to perform these feats with unqualified pilots.
Sheik Mohammed, even as a waterboarded detainee, has managed to prevent the FBI from releasing the many confiscated videos that would show, according to the official story, the hijacked airliner hitting the Penagon.
How naive do you have to be to believe that any human, or for that matter Hollywood fantasy character, is this powerful and capable?
If Sheik Mohammed has these superhuman capabilities, how did the incompetent Americans catch him? This guy is a patsy tortured into confession in order to keep the American naifs believing the government’s conspiracy theory.
What is going on here is that the U.S. government has to bring the 9/11 mystery to an end. The government must put on trial and convict a culprit so that it can close the case before it explodes. Anyone waterboarded 183 times would confess to anything.
The U.S. government has responded to the evidence being arrayed against its outlandish 9/11 conspiracy theory by redefining the war on terror from external to internal enemies. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on February 21 that American extremists are now as big a concern as international terrorists. Extremists, of course, are people who get in the way of the government’s agenda, such as the 1,000 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The group used to be 100, now it is 1,000. What if it becomes 10,000?
Cass Sunstein, an Obama regime official, has a solution for the 9/11 skeptics: Infiltrate them and provoke them into statements and actions that can be used to discredit or to arrest them. But get rid of them at all cost.
Why employ such extreme measures against alleged kooks if they only provide entertainment and laughs? Is the government worried that they are on to something?
Instead, why doesn’t the U.S. government simply confront the evidence that is presented and answer it?
If the architects, engineers, firefighters, and scientists are merely kooks, it would be a simple matter to acknowledge their evidence and refute it. Why is it necessary to infiltrate them with police agents and to set them up?
Many Americans would reply that “their” government would never even dream of killing Americans by hijacking airliners and destroying buildings in order to advance a government agenda. But on February 3, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that the U.S. government can assassinate its own citizens when they are overseas. No arrest, trial, or conviction of a capital crime is necessary. Just straight out murder.
Obviously, if the U.S. government can murder its citizens abroad it can murder them at home, and has done so. For example, 100 Branch Davidians were murdered in Waco, Texas, by the Clinton administration for no legitimate reason. The government just decided to use its power knowing that it could get away with it, which it did.
Americans who think “their” government is some kind of morally pure operation would do well to familiarize themselves with Operation Northwoods. Operation Northwoods was a plot drawn up by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff for the CIA to commit acts of terrorism in American cities and fabricate evidence blaming Castro so that the U.S. could gain domestic and international support for regime change in Cuba. The secret plan was nixed by President John F. Kennedy and was declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. It is available online in the National Security Archive. There are numerous online accounts available, including Wikipedia. James Bamford’s book, Body of Secrets, also summarizes the plot:
“Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman [Gen. Lemnitzer] and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.”
Prior to 9/11 the American neoconservatives were explicit that the wars of aggression that they intended to launch in the Middle East required “a new Pearl Harbor.”
For their own good and that of the wider world, Americans need to pay attention to the growing body of experts who are telling them that the government’s account of 9/11 fails their investigation. 9/11 launched the neoconservative plan for U.S. world hegemony. As I write the U.S. government is purchasing the agreement of foreign governments that border Russia to accept U.S. missile interceptor bases. The U.S. intends to ring Russia with U.S. missile bases from Poland through central Europe and Kosovo to Georgia, Azerbaijan and central Asia. [see www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17709 ] U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke declared on February 20 that al Qaida is moving into former central Asian constituent parts of the Soviet Union, such as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Holbrooke is soliciting U.S. bases in these former Soviet republics under the guise of the ever-expanding “war on terror.”
The U.S. has already encircled Iran with military bases. The U.S. government intends to neutralize China by seizing control over the Middle East and cutting China off from oil.
This plan assumes that Russia and China, nuclear armed states, will be intimidated by U.S. anti-missile defenses and acquiesce to U.S. hegemony and that China will lack oil for its industries and military.
The U.S. government is delusional. Russian military and political leaders have responded to the obvious threat by declaring NATO a direct threat to the security of Russia and by announcing a change in Russian war doctrine to the pre-emptive launch of nuclear weapons. The Chinese are too confident to be bullied by a washed up American “superpower.”
The morons in Washington are pushing the envelop of nuclear war. The insane drive for American hegemony threatens life on earth. The American people, by accepting the lies and deceptions of “their” government, are facilitating this outcome.
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10 Responses to “The Road to Armageddon”
Mister_Ed Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
I like the 1st sentence of the last paragraph–The morons in Washington are pushing the envelop of nuclear war. That’s exactly what they’re doing. It’s not real to them. In fact, the more this crap goes on the more I get the feeling it’s a gamble of total world domination at all costs–even death to the purveyors (if not also everyone else) if they fail.
A madman sits in a fortified penthouse of the tallest building in the city, demanding the city turn all its powers and moneys over to him. A noble handful of police try to stop him by breaking through his various booby traps, false floors, tripwires, etc. Slowly, they reach the penthouse, only to discover the madman’s sitting on a nuclear bomb. “If I can’t have it, nobody can have it!”–and he sets it off.
Or a bioweapon.
Or a doomsday device–like all the HAARPs in the world jacked-up to full power and pointed at the n/s poles.
That’s what I’m seeing. I’m seeing an incredible game played by the peerage that steers the New World Order in the western hemisphere, a very real game of all-or-nothing. And with human entities, at least, it would “absolute power corrupts absolutely” is now a very real possibility. Maybe they’ll screw-up. Maybe their insiders and security staff will turn on them, pull the plug on them. But I think the final chapter of this particular “End Game” is sour grapes to the billionth power. Something to think about.
Reply
STARMAN Reply:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
EVEN SATAN LOVING LUCIFER BOOT LICKING WHORES
http://www.serve.com/Tracts/StealkillBS.html
CAN’T DENY THE TRUTH ABOUT 9 ONE ONE
Reply
Dr. StrangeFlu Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Ditto and the Really really TOP end Elites have that really cool secret base or a couple of them. THEY always do…..
Reply
"Wilbur" Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
I think you may be right………
Reply
Dr. StrangeFlu Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
any used “subs” anywhere
Reply
Annette Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Good article. Well made points , good comments as well. especially the one about the Madmen in control. it’s true they cannot distinguise fantasy from real facts and the human toll behind their actions. Only monsters behave in this manner because they dont have these functions to keep the lower nature in line.
Reply
Annette Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Plus I like the remark about the shiek having super human powerss. Smater than V by a long shot. I gotta admit he did outsmart all the super power survallience agencies.
I just dont know where such evil or blackness of heart comes from, yet there it is again and again in everyday life, just not on the grand scale of the Madmen.
th
Reply
Dairy Air Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
they are psychopaths
Reply
Dairy Air Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
http://video.google.com/videop.....582476851#
Reply
Dairy Air Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
they dont think of themselves as evil, they have a brain imbalance these guys might push the button just to see what earth would be like as a smoking ruin they are probably just that crazy
Reply
Leave a Reply
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Website
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Prison Planet.com
Thursday, February 25, 2010
The Washington Times is a newspaper that looks with favor upon the Bush/Cheney/Obama/neocon wars of aggression in the Middle East and favors making terrorists pay for 9/11. Therefore, I was surprised to learn on February 24 that the most popular story on the paper’s website for the past three days was the “Inside the Beltway” report, “Explosive News,” about the 31 press conferences in cities in the US and abroad on February 19 held by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of professionals which now has 1,000 members.
I was even more surprised that the news report treated the press conference seriously.
How did three World Trade Center skyscrapers suddenly disintegrate into fine dust? How did massive steel beams in three skyscrapers suddenly fail as a result of short-lived, isolated, and low temperature fires? “A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7,” reports the Washington Times.
The paper reports that the architects and engineers have concluded that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology provided “insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction” and are “calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials.”
The newspaper reports that Richard Gage, the spokesperson for the architects and engineers said: “Government officials will be notified that ‘Misprision of Treason,’ U.S. Code 18 (Sec. 2382) is a serious federal offense, which requires those with evidence of treason to act. The implications are enormous and may have profound impact on the forthcoming Khalid Sheik Mohammed trial.”
There is now an organization, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. At the main press conference in San Francisco, Eric Lawyer,the head of that organization, announced the firefighters’ support for the architects and engineers’ demands. He reported that no forensic investigation was made of the fires that are alleged to have destroyed the three buildings and that this failure constitutes a crime.
Mandated procedures were not followed, and instead of being preserved and investigated, the crime scene was destroyed. He also reported that there are more than one hundred first responders who heard and experienced explosions and that there is radio, audio and video evidence of explosions.
Also at the press conference, physicist Steven Jones presented the evidence of nano-thermite in the residue of the WTC buildings found by an international panel of scientists led by University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Professor Niels Harrit. Nano-thermite is a high-tech explosive/pyrotechnic capable of instantly melting steel girders.
Before we yell “conspiracy theory,” we should be aware that the architects, engineers, firefighters, and scientists offer no theory. They provide evidence that challenges the official theory. This evidence is not going to go away.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
If expressing doubts or reservations about the official story in the 9/11 Commission Report makes a person a conspiracy theory kook, then we have to include both co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission and the Commission’s legal counsel, all of whom have written books in which they clearly state that they were lied to by government officials when they conducted their investigation, or, rather, when they presided over the investigation conducted by executive director Philip Zelikow, a member of President George W. Bush’s transition team and Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a co-author of Bush Secretary of State Condi “Mushroom Cloud” Rice.
There will always be Americans who will believe whatever the government tells them no matter how many times they know the government has lied to them. Despite expensive wars that threaten Social Security and Medicare, wars based on non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, non-existent Saddam Hussein connections to al Qaida, non-existent Afghan participation in the 9/11 attacks, and the non-existent Iranian nukes that are being hyped as the reason for the next American war of aggression in the Middle East, more than half of the U.S. population still believes the fantastic story that the government has told them about 9/11, a Muslim conspiracy that outwitted the entire Western world.
Moreover, it doesn’t matter to these Americans how often the government changes its story. For example, Americans first heard of Osama bin Laden because the Bush regime pinned the 9/11 attacks on him. Over the years video after video was served up to the gullible American public of bin Laden’s pronouncements. Experts dismissed the videos as fakes, but Americans remained their gullible selves. Then suddenly last year a new 9/11 “mastermind” emerged to take bin Laden’s place, the captive Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the detainee waterboarded 183 times until he confessed to mastermining the 9/11 attack.
In the Middle Ages confessions extracted by torture constituted evidence, but self-incrimination has been a no-no in the U.S. legal system since our founding. But with the Bush regime and the Republican federal judges, whom we were assured would defend the U.S. Constitution, the self-incrimination of Sheik Mohammed stands today as the only evidence the U.S. government has that Muslim terrorists pulled off 9/11.
If a person considers the feats attributed to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, they are simply unbelievable. Sheik Mohammed is a more brilliant, capable superhero than V in the fantasy movie, “V for Vendetta.” Sheik Mohammed outwitted all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies along with those of all U.S. allies or puppets, including Israel’s Mossad. No intelligence service on earth or all of them combined was a match for Sheik Mohammed.
Sheik Mohammed outwitted the U.S. National Security Council, Dick Cheney, the Pentagon, the State Department, NORAD, the U.S. Air Force, and Air Traffic Control.
He caused Airport Security to fail four times in one morning. He caused the state-of-the-art air defenses of the Pentagon to fail, allowing a hijacked airliner, which was off course all morning while the U.S. Air Force, for the first time in history, was unable to get aloft intercepter aircraft, to crash into the Pentagon.
Sheik Mohammed was able to perform these feats with unqualified pilots.
Sheik Mohammed, even as a waterboarded detainee, has managed to prevent the FBI from releasing the many confiscated videos that would show, according to the official story, the hijacked airliner hitting the Penagon.
How naive do you have to be to believe that any human, or for that matter Hollywood fantasy character, is this powerful and capable?
If Sheik Mohammed has these superhuman capabilities, how did the incompetent Americans catch him? This guy is a patsy tortured into confession in order to keep the American naifs believing the government’s conspiracy theory.
What is going on here is that the U.S. government has to bring the 9/11 mystery to an end. The government must put on trial and convict a culprit so that it can close the case before it explodes. Anyone waterboarded 183 times would confess to anything.
The U.S. government has responded to the evidence being arrayed against its outlandish 9/11 conspiracy theory by redefining the war on terror from external to internal enemies. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on February 21 that American extremists are now as big a concern as international terrorists. Extremists, of course, are people who get in the way of the government’s agenda, such as the 1,000 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The group used to be 100, now it is 1,000. What if it becomes 10,000?
Cass Sunstein, an Obama regime official, has a solution for the 9/11 skeptics: Infiltrate them and provoke them into statements and actions that can be used to discredit or to arrest them. But get rid of them at all cost.
Why employ such extreme measures against alleged kooks if they only provide entertainment and laughs? Is the government worried that they are on to something?
Instead, why doesn’t the U.S. government simply confront the evidence that is presented and answer it?
If the architects, engineers, firefighters, and scientists are merely kooks, it would be a simple matter to acknowledge their evidence and refute it. Why is it necessary to infiltrate them with police agents and to set them up?
Many Americans would reply that “their” government would never even dream of killing Americans by hijacking airliners and destroying buildings in order to advance a government agenda. But on February 3, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that the U.S. government can assassinate its own citizens when they are overseas. No arrest, trial, or conviction of a capital crime is necessary. Just straight out murder.
Obviously, if the U.S. government can murder its citizens abroad it can murder them at home, and has done so. For example, 100 Branch Davidians were murdered in Waco, Texas, by the Clinton administration for no legitimate reason. The government just decided to use its power knowing that it could get away with it, which it did.
Americans who think “their” government is some kind of morally pure operation would do well to familiarize themselves with Operation Northwoods. Operation Northwoods was a plot drawn up by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff for the CIA to commit acts of terrorism in American cities and fabricate evidence blaming Castro so that the U.S. could gain domestic and international support for regime change in Cuba. The secret plan was nixed by President John F. Kennedy and was declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. It is available online in the National Security Archive. There are numerous online accounts available, including Wikipedia. James Bamford’s book, Body of Secrets, also summarizes the plot:
“Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman [Gen. Lemnitzer] and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.”
Prior to 9/11 the American neoconservatives were explicit that the wars of aggression that they intended to launch in the Middle East required “a new Pearl Harbor.”
For their own good and that of the wider world, Americans need to pay attention to the growing body of experts who are telling them that the government’s account of 9/11 fails their investigation. 9/11 launched the neoconservative plan for U.S. world hegemony. As I write the U.S. government is purchasing the agreement of foreign governments that border Russia to accept U.S. missile interceptor bases. The U.S. intends to ring Russia with U.S. missile bases from Poland through central Europe and Kosovo to Georgia, Azerbaijan and central Asia. [see www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17709 ] U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke declared on February 20 that al Qaida is moving into former central Asian constituent parts of the Soviet Union, such as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Holbrooke is soliciting U.S. bases in these former Soviet republics under the guise of the ever-expanding “war on terror.”
The U.S. has already encircled Iran with military bases. The U.S. government intends to neutralize China by seizing control over the Middle East and cutting China off from oil.
This plan assumes that Russia and China, nuclear armed states, will be intimidated by U.S. anti-missile defenses and acquiesce to U.S. hegemony and that China will lack oil for its industries and military.
The U.S. government is delusional. Russian military and political leaders have responded to the obvious threat by declaring NATO a direct threat to the security of Russia and by announcing a change in Russian war doctrine to the pre-emptive launch of nuclear weapons. The Chinese are too confident to be bullied by a washed up American “superpower.”
The morons in Washington are pushing the envelop of nuclear war. The insane drive for American hegemony threatens life on earth. The American people, by accepting the lies and deceptions of “their” government, are facilitating this outcome.
Prison Planet.tv Members Can Watch Fall Of The Republic Right Now Online - Don't Miss Out! Get Your Subscription Today!
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10 Responses to “The Road to Armageddon”
Mister_Ed Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
I like the 1st sentence of the last paragraph–The morons in Washington are pushing the envelop of nuclear war. That’s exactly what they’re doing. It’s not real to them. In fact, the more this crap goes on the more I get the feeling it’s a gamble of total world domination at all costs–even death to the purveyors (if not also everyone else) if they fail.
A madman sits in a fortified penthouse of the tallest building in the city, demanding the city turn all its powers and moneys over to him. A noble handful of police try to stop him by breaking through his various booby traps, false floors, tripwires, etc. Slowly, they reach the penthouse, only to discover the madman’s sitting on a nuclear bomb. “If I can’t have it, nobody can have it!”–and he sets it off.
Or a bioweapon.
Or a doomsday device–like all the HAARPs in the world jacked-up to full power and pointed at the n/s poles.
That’s what I’m seeing. I’m seeing an incredible game played by the peerage that steers the New World Order in the western hemisphere, a very real game of all-or-nothing. And with human entities, at least, it would “absolute power corrupts absolutely” is now a very real possibility. Maybe they’ll screw-up. Maybe their insiders and security staff will turn on them, pull the plug on them. But I think the final chapter of this particular “End Game” is sour grapes to the billionth power. Something to think about.
Reply
STARMAN Reply:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
EVEN SATAN LOVING LUCIFER BOOT LICKING WHORES
http://www.serve.com/Tracts/StealkillBS.html
CAN’T DENY THE TRUTH ABOUT 9 ONE ONE
Reply
Dr. StrangeFlu Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Ditto and the Really really TOP end Elites have that really cool secret base or a couple of them. THEY always do…..
Reply
"Wilbur" Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
I think you may be right………
Reply
Dr. StrangeFlu Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
any used “subs” anywhere
Reply
Annette Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Good article. Well made points , good comments as well. especially the one about the Madmen in control. it’s true they cannot distinguise fantasy from real facts and the human toll behind their actions. Only monsters behave in this manner because they dont have these functions to keep the lower nature in line.
Reply
Annette Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Plus I like the remark about the shiek having super human powerss. Smater than V by a long shot. I gotta admit he did outsmart all the super power survallience agencies.
I just dont know where such evil or blackness of heart comes from, yet there it is again and again in everyday life, just not on the grand scale of the Madmen.
th
Reply
Dairy Air Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
they are psychopaths
Reply
Dairy Air Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
http://video.google.com/videop.....582476851#
Reply
Dairy Air Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
they dont think of themselves as evil, they have a brain imbalance these guys might push the button just to see what earth would be like as a smoking ruin they are probably just that crazy
Reply
Leave a Reply
Name (required)
Mail (will not be published) (required)
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Click to cancel reply
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Are we the greatest Nation in the World?
I listen to these "Flag Waving" zealot "Patriots" extolling the mantra that we are the Greatest Country in the world. Well if we are then we should be first in: Human Rights, Caring for the Poor, Health Care for All, Exemplifying Integrity in Government, Putting Peace before War Profits, Reasonable regulation of Capitalistic Greed, Education, Environmental Stewardism, Respecting the Value of Working People over Profits. Do you think we are? A true Patriot cares about the interests of the many not the elite few. I see some definite room for improvement.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Clear evidence of Thermite &C4 explosives at WTC
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=thermite+torch+spectre&sitesearch=#
Note the intense temperatures produced by “Thermite” and great destructive forces of “C4” plastic explosive on a 1.5” steel plate. Evidence of these chemicals were found at numerous locations at the World Trade Center disaster.
You can also go to: http://www.journalof911studies.com/beginners.html for Beginners' Guide to 9/11 Truth
The above information does not address questions that should have been in the “9/11 Commission Report” and the “NIST Report”
You can also view many slides and videos of the destruction on “9/11” at : ae911truth.org
If you are still skeptical about the possibility that the official “9/11 Report” is incorrect, and ultimately we were not being told the truth by our government, then please contact me with your specific questions. At this point “9/11” is not a partisan issue anymore, as the Obama administration is probably as culpable as the Bush administration in their refusal to re-examine the important details.
Note the intense temperatures produced by “Thermite” and great destructive forces of “C4” plastic explosive on a 1.5” steel plate. Evidence of these chemicals were found at numerous locations at the World Trade Center disaster.
You can also go to: http://www.journalof911studies.com/beginners.html for Beginners' Guide to 9/11 Truth
The above information does not address questions that should have been in the “9/11 Commission Report” and the “NIST Report”
You can also view many slides and videos of the destruction on “9/11” at : ae911truth.org
If you are still skeptical about the possibility that the official “9/11 Report” is incorrect, and ultimately we were not being told the truth by our government, then please contact me with your specific questions. At this point “9/11” is not a partisan issue anymore, as the Obama administration is probably as culpable as the Bush administration in their refusal to re-examine the important details.
Rush Limbaugh the Unfriendly Clown
Its not about Limbaugh, its about the "Ignorant Racist fools" that switch him on. Limbaugh is the "Drug not the addict"
Monday, February 22, 2010
Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution
For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of
> Congress. Many citizens had no idea that Congress members could
> retire with the same pay after only one term, that they didn't pay
> into Social Security, that they specifically exempted themselves
> from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from
> any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary
> citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt
> themselves from the Healthcare Reform that is being considered...in
> all of its forms. We should not have an elite that is above the
> law applied to ordinary citizens . I truly don't care if they are
> Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving
> must stop. This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time
> has come.
> Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:
> "Congress shall make no law that applies to the
> citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the
> Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that
> applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply
> equally to the citizens of the United States".
> Each person contact a minimum of twenty
> people on their Address list, in turn ask each of those to do
> likewise.
> Then in three days, all people in The United States
> of America will have the Message. This is one proposal that really
> should be passed around
>
> Congress. Many citizens had no idea that Congress members could
> retire with the same pay after only one term, that they didn't pay
> into Social Security, that they specifically exempted themselves
> from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from
> any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary
> citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt
> themselves from the Healthcare Reform that is being considered...in
> all of its forms. We should not have an elite that is above the
> law applied to ordinary citizens . I truly don't care if they are
> Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving
> must stop. This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time
> has come.
> Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:
> "Congress shall make no law that applies to the
> citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the
> Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that
> applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply
> equally to the citizens of the United States".
> Each person contact a minimum of twenty
> people on their Address list, in turn ask each of those to do
> likewise.
> Then in three days, all people in The United States
> of America will have the Message. This is one proposal that really
> should be passed around
>
The Controlled Demolition of the WTC Buildings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-0Ms7mId34&feature=related
There is no way that carbon based jet fuel caused these explosions. This plot could have not been done without the complicity of : Silverstein Properties(Master Lessee), the building security contractor run by Marvin Bush(cousin of George W), and the US Government.
Any intelligent rational person who would believe otherwise is doing so because:
1. Their loyalty to the Bush administration is paramount to their sense of morality and honesty. Who likes to admit that they supported the “Bad Guy” team.
2. The thought of the US being complicit in a major conspiracy of this magnitude is so distasteful, that the person sets up an emotional block of denial to preserve their sense of faith in American government leaders acting in their best interests. It’s like the example of a child who could never believe that their parent would hurt them.
Just for the benefit of the policeman, fireman, rescue workers, and office workers killed in “9/11” we need to press our government to open their files and make an honest in depth investigation. The “9/11 Commission Report” or “Sham” is an insult to the victims and American people as a whole.
Please contact your US Senators and Congress people for a “Thorough” investigation of this disaster.
There is no way that carbon based jet fuel caused these explosions. This plot could have not been done without the complicity of : Silverstein Properties(Master Lessee), the building security contractor run by Marvin Bush(cousin of George W), and the US Government.
Any intelligent rational person who would believe otherwise is doing so because:
1. Their loyalty to the Bush administration is paramount to their sense of morality and honesty. Who likes to admit that they supported the “Bad Guy” team.
2. The thought of the US being complicit in a major conspiracy of this magnitude is so distasteful, that the person sets up an emotional block of denial to preserve their sense of faith in American government leaders acting in their best interests. It’s like the example of a child who could never believe that their parent would hurt them.
Just for the benefit of the policeman, fireman, rescue workers, and office workers killed in “9/11” we need to press our government to open their files and make an honest in depth investigation. The “9/11 Commission Report” or “Sham” is an insult to the victims and American people as a whole.
Please contact your US Senators and Congress people for a “Thorough” investigation of this disaster.
War is a Racket By General Smedley D. Butler
War is a Racket
By General Smedley D. Butler
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That war is a racket has been told us by many, but rarely by one of this stature. Though he died in 1940, the highly decorated General Butler (two esteemed Medals of Honor) deserves to be heralded for his timeless message, which rings true today more than ever. His riveting 1935 book War is a Racket merits inclusion as required reading for every high school student, and for every member of our armed forces today. Below is a ten-page summary of the best of this powerful exposé. For a concise, two-page version, click here.
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Foreword
Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by General Smedley Butler, USMC
War is just a racket. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
CHAPTER ONE: War Is A Racket
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. [Please note these are 1935 U.S. dollars. To adjust for inflation, multiply all figures X 10 or more]
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.
There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making. Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?
Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. The publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "And above all, Fascism… believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace…War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."
Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Yugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later. Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace.
Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. The trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.
Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well. Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.
But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children? What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits? Yes, and what does it profit the nation?
Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000.
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.
CHAPTER TWO: Who Makes The Profits?
The World War cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 [over $4,000 in today's dollars] to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are 6, 8, 10, and sometimes 12%. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – 20, 60, 100, 300, and even 1,800% – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it. Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples.
Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? How did they do in the war? Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910 - 1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914 - 1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!
Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914 - 1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad. There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else.
A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times. Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910 - 1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914 - 1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year. Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910 - 1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910 - 1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000. A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent. Does war pay? It paid them.
But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather. For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000 – a leap of 1,400 per cent.
International Nickel Company – and you can't have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent. American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.
Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.
And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.
Here's how other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.
Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.
Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!
Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam. There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.
Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.
Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them – a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers – all got theirs. When the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time.
There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.
One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.
The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up – and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.
It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.
The Senate committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface. Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee – with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator – to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.
Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.
There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed. Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.
CHAPTER THREE: Who Pays The Bills?
Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.
Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.
Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face"! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.
In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.
There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn't stand it.
That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.
But don't forget – the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too. Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share – at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.
Napoleon once said, "All men are enamored of decorations...They positively hunger for them." So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.
In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army. So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...It is His will that the Germans be killed. And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month. All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed.
But wait! Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.
Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days. We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back – when they came back from the war and couldn't find work – at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!
Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly – his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.
When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too – as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.
And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.
CHAPTER FOUR: How To Smash This Racket!
Well, it's a racket, all right. A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers – yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!
Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds. Why shouldn't they? They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are! Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.
Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people – those who do the suffering and still pay the price – make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.
Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant – all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war – voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms – to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.
It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide – and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.
A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.
At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.
Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh. The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast. The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.
The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket: 1.) We must take the profit out of war; 2.) We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war; 3.) We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
CHAPTER FIVE : To Hell With War!
I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war. Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die. Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?
Money.
An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:
"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars. If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't. So....."
Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."
Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy. And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.
Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?
The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments. The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.
There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane.
So...I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!
Note: Imagine if we took General Butler's advice and in wartime forced corporations to join our soldiers in making sacrifices for their country. We could pass laws which guarantee that corporate profits decrease during war rather than increase. Do you think that wars would still drag on for years as in Vietnam and Iraq? Please help to make this a reality by sending this information to your friends and colleagues and contacting your government representatives.
By General Smedley D. Butler
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That war is a racket has been told us by many, but rarely by one of this stature. Though he died in 1940, the highly decorated General Butler (two esteemed Medals of Honor) deserves to be heralded for his timeless message, which rings true today more than ever. His riveting 1935 book War is a Racket merits inclusion as required reading for every high school student, and for every member of our armed forces today. Below is a ten-page summary of the best of this powerful exposé. For a concise, two-page version, click here.
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Foreword
Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by General Smedley Butler, USMC
War is just a racket. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
CHAPTER ONE: War Is A Racket
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. [Please note these are 1935 U.S. dollars. To adjust for inflation, multiply all figures X 10 or more]
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.
There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making. Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?
Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. The publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "And above all, Fascism… believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace…War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."
Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Yugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later. Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace.
Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. The trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.
Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well. Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.
But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children? What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits? Yes, and what does it profit the nation?
Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000.
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.
CHAPTER TWO: Who Makes The Profits?
The World War cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 [over $4,000 in today's dollars] to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are 6, 8, 10, and sometimes 12%. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – 20, 60, 100, 300, and even 1,800% – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it. Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples.
Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? How did they do in the war? Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910 - 1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914 - 1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!
Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914 - 1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad. There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else.
A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times. Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910 - 1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914 - 1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year. Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910 - 1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910 - 1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000. A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent. Does war pay? It paid them.
But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather. For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000 – a leap of 1,400 per cent.
International Nickel Company – and you can't have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent. American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.
Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.
And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.
Here's how other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.
Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.
Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!
Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam. There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.
Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.
Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them – a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers – all got theirs. When the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time.
There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.
One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.
The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up – and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.
It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.
The Senate committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface. Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee – with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator – to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.
Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.
There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed. Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.
CHAPTER THREE: Who Pays The Bills?
Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.
Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.
Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face"! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.
In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.
There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn't stand it.
That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.
But don't forget – the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too. Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share – at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.
Napoleon once said, "All men are enamored of decorations...They positively hunger for them." So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.
In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army. So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...It is His will that the Germans be killed. And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month. All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed.
But wait! Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.
Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days. We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back – when they came back from the war and couldn't find work – at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!
Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly – his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.
When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too – as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.
And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.
CHAPTER FOUR: How To Smash This Racket!
Well, it's a racket, all right. A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers – yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!
Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds. Why shouldn't they? They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are! Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.
Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people – those who do the suffering and still pay the price – make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.
Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant – all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war – voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms – to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.
It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide – and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.
A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.
At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.
Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh. The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast. The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.
The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket: 1.) We must take the profit out of war; 2.) We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war; 3.) We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
CHAPTER FIVE : To Hell With War!
I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war. Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die. Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?
Money.
An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:
"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars. If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't. So....."
Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."
Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy. And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.
Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?
The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments. The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.
There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane.
So...I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!
Note: Imagine if we took General Butler's advice and in wartime forced corporations to join our soldiers in making sacrifices for their country. We could pass laws which guarantee that corporate profits decrease during war rather than increase. Do you think that wars would still drag on for years as in Vietnam and Iraq? Please help to make this a reality by sending this information to your friends and colleagues and contacting your government representatives.
Over 50 top Miltary/Government Leaders Refute 9/11 Report
http://www.wanttoknow.info/officialsquestion911commissionreport
When over 50 Republicans and top Military leaders refute the validity of the “9/11” report directly inferring that “9/11” was a “Dick Cheney Special” how can anyone accept that this disaster was the total work of bin Laden. The people of this country deserve the truth.
Contact your legislature for a full reinvestigation of “9/11”
When over 50 Republicans and top Military leaders refute the validity of the “9/11” report directly inferring that “9/11” was a “Dick Cheney Special” how can anyone accept that this disaster was the total work of bin Laden. The people of this country deserve the truth.
Contact your legislature for a full reinvestigation of “9/11”
Sunday, February 21, 2010
“9/11” The Biggest Crime Cover Up of the Century
There are many questions about “9/11” that remain unanswered. The resistance of the government to adequately fund and expedite an in depth investigation based on the magnitude of this horrific event also points to “smoking Guns” relating to the strong possibly that the Bush Administration was a major party engineering and executing “9/11”. In any crime one always looks to motive. There are many documented motives: (1) A horrific event to move people into approving the Iraq invasion, (2) Control of Middle East oil and gas reserves, (3) Justification to increase military spending and place more military bases in the Middle East, (4) The PNAC ( Partnership for a New American Century) spearheaded by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Krystol, who’s goal is to have US world domination(Google PNAC to see what they are about).
The families of the victims of “9/11” had to really push hard to get the Bush administration to even investigate “9/11”.
History has revealed many conspiracies by top level leaders to start wars or assassinate top officials. Examples are: Spanish American War, Nazi Blowup of German Government Building, Kennedy Assassination, Gulf of Tonkin Attacks, Cuban “Bay of Pigs”, etc.
Given the credibility gaps of the Bush/Cheney group, one would also have to question the “Government Truth” about the extent of Osama Bin Laden’s sole role in the “9/11” disaster.
40 Unanswered Questions
1. The failure of standard operating (SOP) to intercept American Airlines Flight 11. 8:46 AM AA Flight 11 crashes into WTC North Tower.
2. The failure of SOP to intercept United Airlines Flight 175. 9:03 AM UA Flight 175 crashes into WTC South Tower.
3. The failure of SOP to intercept American Airlines 77 that allegedly hit the Pentagon.
4. The fact that the official story as to these failures changed a few days after “9/11”.
5. The fact that according to this second version of the official story, the order to scramble jet fighters to intercept Flights 11 and 175 went to Otis Air Force base instead of the nearer base, McGuire.
6. The fact that according to this second version of the official story, the order to scramble jet fighters to protect Washington went to Langley Air Force base instead of the nearer base, Andrews.
7. The fact that, even given NORAD’s timeline and the greater distances the pilots had to cover from Otis and Langley, their fighter jets, flying at full speed(1,800 mph), should have reached New York and Washington in time to prevent the attacks on the South Tower and the Pentagon.
8. The fact that according to this second version, the fighter jets that were too late to intercept Flights 11 and 175 were not ordered to Washington, even though it was then known that Flight 77 had been high jacked and, according to the official story, was headed back toward Washington.
9. Secretary of Transportation Mineta’s report of a conversation that may have reflected a stand-down order by Cheney. Cheney was running this “Show”, as “Bush” was just the puppet for appearances.
10. The fact that in New York on 9/11, three steel-framed high rise buildings, for the first time in history, collapsed because of fires - quite localized fires at that, especially in the South Tower and Building 7.
11. The fact that the South Tower fell first even though, according to the hypothesis that the buildings collapsed because of fire, this tower, having been hit second and having the smaller fire, should not have collapsed first.
12. The multiple types of physical evidence that the Twin Towers and Building 7 collapsed by means of controlled demolition. Individuals and fire crews reported the incidence of many explosions. The small dust like size of the debris could only be produced by heavy explosive force. Demolition crews quickly removed the structural steel and shipped it off to foreign scrap yards. Little effort was made to do any forensic testing of the evidence.
13. Larry Silverstein’s (owner of the WTC) statement that he and the fire department decided to “pull” WTC-7, combined with the evidence that the fire department had prior knowledge of its collapse, despite the lack of any physical evidence indicating imminent collapse. This building only had two small fires and came down in free fall within a minute.
14. Mayor Guiliani’s statement that he knew in advance that the Twin Towers were going to collapse.
15. The quick removal of the steel from all three buildings – especially Building 7, where there would have been no victims – before it could be examined.
16. The fact that photographic evidence shows that a hole created in the Pentagon was much smaller than a hole created by a Boeing 757would be.
17. The fact that photographs show that there were no remains of a large airliner in front of the crash site, even though, given the small entrance hole, not all of the Boeing 757 could have gone inside.
18. The fact that witnesses also reported seeing no remains of a large airliner inside the Pentagon.
19. The fact that the west wing, far from being the most likely part of the Pentagon for terrorists to target, was the least likely, as well as technically difficult to hit.
20. The fact that any non-military plane, not having a transponder sending out a “friendly” signal, would have been automatically shot down by the Pentagon’s battery of missiles.
21. The extreme unlikelihood that a hijacked 757 could have flown undetected through American airspace, especially toward the Pentagon, for some 40 minutes. Why ere surveillance tapes, taken by a hotel across from the Pentagon quickly seized by the FBI, and their contents kept from the public?
22. The evidence that the Bush administration lied about not having shot down Flight 93.
23. The fact that President Bush gave the impression upon his arrival at the Sarasota school, even after a telephone conversation with Condoleezza Rice, that he was unaware that two more airliners, beyond the one that had crashed into the North Tower-WTC, had been hijacked.
24. The fact that Bush, after being told about the attack on the South Tower, did not act like a commander in chief who was surprised to learn that the United States was suffering the greatest terrorist attack in its history.
25. The fact that Bush and his entourage, including his Secret Service detail, showed no sign of fear that they would be attacked while in Florida, even though at that time they – assuming the truth of the official account – would have known neither how many planes had been hijacked, nor what the terrorists’ targets were.
26. The multiple denial, by Bush administration officials that they had had any idea that planes might be used as weapons in a terrorist attack against the United States, even though such knowledge was widespread – partly because of warnings the Bush administration itself had received that terrorists were in fact planning such an attack.
27. The fact that the FBI must have had specific advance knowledge of the attacks, given (a) its confiscation of a film of the attack on the Pentagon within five minutes, (b) its confiscation of student files from Florida flight schools within 18 hours, and (c) the reported testimony of FBI agents (to David Schippers and the New American [John Birch Society publication]) that they knew the dates and targets of the New York attacks months in advance.
28. The repeated denial by Bush administration officials that they had received any specific advance knowledge about the attacks of 9/11, contradicting strong evidence to the contrary, including that provided by the timely coincidental purchases of enormous amounts of “Put Options” on United Airlines, American Airlines, and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. The Bush administration refused to reveal the identities of those who purchased the options.
29. The evidence that although Osama bin Laden was officially America’s “most wanted” criminal, he was treated by an American surgeon and visited by a CIA agent in an American hospital in Dubai two months prior to 9/11. The bin Laden family has a 20 year history of a close relationship with the Bush family.
30. The evidence that local FBI agents in Minnesota, New York, and Chicago were prevented by FBI headquarters from carrying out investigations that could have uncovered the plot.
31. The harassment and demotion of DIA agent Julie Sirrs after she brought back information about a plan in Afghanistan to assassinate Ahmad Massood.
32. The evidence that the Bush administration had already determined by July of 2001 that it would attack Afghanistan “by the middle of October at the latest, “combined with the fact that the attacks of 9/11. By occurring on that date, gave the US military sufficient preparation time to begin its assault on October 7.
33. The evidence that during the “Hunt for Bin Laden” after 9/11, he and his Al Qaeda forces were repeatedly allowed to escape.
34. The evidence that the Bush administration sought in multiple ways to conceal the connections between “9/11” Pakistan’s ISI( their CIA). The US, through ISI was used to funnel money to the Taliban during the USSR invasion of Afghanistan.
35. The fact that the FBI, the Justice Department, and Air Force all refused to answer questions about the report that many of the (alleged) hijackers had received training at US flight schools.
36. The multiple reasons to doubt the official conspiracy theory’s tale of “Arab-Muslim hijackers”
37. The firing and subsequent gagging of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds after she reported that a “9/11” related investigation was being sabotaged by a spy.
38. The fact that while people such as Julie Sirrs and Sibel Edmonds have been punished, there have been no reports of punishment for anyone who acted incompetently or obstructively in relation to “9/11”; whether in the FAA, the FBI, the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, the Justice Department, the White House, NORAD, the Pentagon, or the US military more generally.
39. The fact that the Bush administration has not revealed the identities of those who purchased the put options on UA, AA, and Morgan Stanley three days before “9/11”.
40. The fact that the White House repeatedly obstructed the attempts of the “9/11” Commission – as feeble as they appear to have been – to learn how the attacks of “9/11” could have succeeded.
One would have to ask the “Big Question”: If the Bush administration was concerned about transparency, integrity, Patriotism[means do what I say and agree], and the needs of the majority of Americans, why would they work so steadfastly to suppress any investigations or uncovering of the truth?
The families of the victims of “9/11” had to really push hard to get the Bush administration to even investigate “9/11”.
History has revealed many conspiracies by top level leaders to start wars or assassinate top officials. Examples are: Spanish American War, Nazi Blowup of German Government Building, Kennedy Assassination, Gulf of Tonkin Attacks, Cuban “Bay of Pigs”, etc.
Given the credibility gaps of the Bush/Cheney group, one would also have to question the “Government Truth” about the extent of Osama Bin Laden’s sole role in the “9/11” disaster.
40 Unanswered Questions
1. The failure of standard operating (SOP) to intercept American Airlines Flight 11. 8:46 AM AA Flight 11 crashes into WTC North Tower.
2. The failure of SOP to intercept United Airlines Flight 175. 9:03 AM UA Flight 175 crashes into WTC South Tower.
3. The failure of SOP to intercept American Airlines 77 that allegedly hit the Pentagon.
4. The fact that the official story as to these failures changed a few days after “9/11”.
5. The fact that according to this second version of the official story, the order to scramble jet fighters to intercept Flights 11 and 175 went to Otis Air Force base instead of the nearer base, McGuire.
6. The fact that according to this second version of the official story, the order to scramble jet fighters to protect Washington went to Langley Air Force base instead of the nearer base, Andrews.
7. The fact that, even given NORAD’s timeline and the greater distances the pilots had to cover from Otis and Langley, their fighter jets, flying at full speed(1,800 mph), should have reached New York and Washington in time to prevent the attacks on the South Tower and the Pentagon.
8. The fact that according to this second version, the fighter jets that were too late to intercept Flights 11 and 175 were not ordered to Washington, even though it was then known that Flight 77 had been high jacked and, according to the official story, was headed back toward Washington.
9. Secretary of Transportation Mineta’s report of a conversation that may have reflected a stand-down order by Cheney. Cheney was running this “Show”, as “Bush” was just the puppet for appearances.
10. The fact that in New York on 9/11, three steel-framed high rise buildings, for the first time in history, collapsed because of fires - quite localized fires at that, especially in the South Tower and Building 7.
11. The fact that the South Tower fell first even though, according to the hypothesis that the buildings collapsed because of fire, this tower, having been hit second and having the smaller fire, should not have collapsed first.
12. The multiple types of physical evidence that the Twin Towers and Building 7 collapsed by means of controlled demolition. Individuals and fire crews reported the incidence of many explosions. The small dust like size of the debris could only be produced by heavy explosive force. Demolition crews quickly removed the structural steel and shipped it off to foreign scrap yards. Little effort was made to do any forensic testing of the evidence.
13. Larry Silverstein’s (owner of the WTC) statement that he and the fire department decided to “pull” WTC-7, combined with the evidence that the fire department had prior knowledge of its collapse, despite the lack of any physical evidence indicating imminent collapse. This building only had two small fires and came down in free fall within a minute.
14. Mayor Guiliani’s statement that he knew in advance that the Twin Towers were going to collapse.
15. The quick removal of the steel from all three buildings – especially Building 7, where there would have been no victims – before it could be examined.
16. The fact that photographic evidence shows that a hole created in the Pentagon was much smaller than a hole created by a Boeing 757would be.
17. The fact that photographs show that there were no remains of a large airliner in front of the crash site, even though, given the small entrance hole, not all of the Boeing 757 could have gone inside.
18. The fact that witnesses also reported seeing no remains of a large airliner inside the Pentagon.
19. The fact that the west wing, far from being the most likely part of the Pentagon for terrorists to target, was the least likely, as well as technically difficult to hit.
20. The fact that any non-military plane, not having a transponder sending out a “friendly” signal, would have been automatically shot down by the Pentagon’s battery of missiles.
21. The extreme unlikelihood that a hijacked 757 could have flown undetected through American airspace, especially toward the Pentagon, for some 40 minutes. Why ere surveillance tapes, taken by a hotel across from the Pentagon quickly seized by the FBI, and their contents kept from the public?
22. The evidence that the Bush administration lied about not having shot down Flight 93.
23. The fact that President Bush gave the impression upon his arrival at the Sarasota school, even after a telephone conversation with Condoleezza Rice, that he was unaware that two more airliners, beyond the one that had crashed into the North Tower-WTC, had been hijacked.
24. The fact that Bush, after being told about the attack on the South Tower, did not act like a commander in chief who was surprised to learn that the United States was suffering the greatest terrorist attack in its history.
25. The fact that Bush and his entourage, including his Secret Service detail, showed no sign of fear that they would be attacked while in Florida, even though at that time they – assuming the truth of the official account – would have known neither how many planes had been hijacked, nor what the terrorists’ targets were.
26. The multiple denial, by Bush administration officials that they had had any idea that planes might be used as weapons in a terrorist attack against the United States, even though such knowledge was widespread – partly because of warnings the Bush administration itself had received that terrorists were in fact planning such an attack.
27. The fact that the FBI must have had specific advance knowledge of the attacks, given (a) its confiscation of a film of the attack on the Pentagon within five minutes, (b) its confiscation of student files from Florida flight schools within 18 hours, and (c) the reported testimony of FBI agents (to David Schippers and the New American [John Birch Society publication]) that they knew the dates and targets of the New York attacks months in advance.
28. The repeated denial by Bush administration officials that they had received any specific advance knowledge about the attacks of 9/11, contradicting strong evidence to the contrary, including that provided by the timely coincidental purchases of enormous amounts of “Put Options” on United Airlines, American Airlines, and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. The Bush administration refused to reveal the identities of those who purchased the options.
29. The evidence that although Osama bin Laden was officially America’s “most wanted” criminal, he was treated by an American surgeon and visited by a CIA agent in an American hospital in Dubai two months prior to 9/11. The bin Laden family has a 20 year history of a close relationship with the Bush family.
30. The evidence that local FBI agents in Minnesota, New York, and Chicago were prevented by FBI headquarters from carrying out investigations that could have uncovered the plot.
31. The harassment and demotion of DIA agent Julie Sirrs after she brought back information about a plan in Afghanistan to assassinate Ahmad Massood.
32. The evidence that the Bush administration had already determined by July of 2001 that it would attack Afghanistan “by the middle of October at the latest, “combined with the fact that the attacks of 9/11. By occurring on that date, gave the US military sufficient preparation time to begin its assault on October 7.
33. The evidence that during the “Hunt for Bin Laden” after 9/11, he and his Al Qaeda forces were repeatedly allowed to escape.
34. The evidence that the Bush administration sought in multiple ways to conceal the connections between “9/11” Pakistan’s ISI( their CIA). The US, through ISI was used to funnel money to the Taliban during the USSR invasion of Afghanistan.
35. The fact that the FBI, the Justice Department, and Air Force all refused to answer questions about the report that many of the (alleged) hijackers had received training at US flight schools.
36. The multiple reasons to doubt the official conspiracy theory’s tale of “Arab-Muslim hijackers”
37. The firing and subsequent gagging of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds after she reported that a “9/11” related investigation was being sabotaged by a spy.
38. The fact that while people such as Julie Sirrs and Sibel Edmonds have been punished, there have been no reports of punishment for anyone who acted incompetently or obstructively in relation to “9/11”; whether in the FAA, the FBI, the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, the Justice Department, the White House, NORAD, the Pentagon, or the US military more generally.
39. The fact that the Bush administration has not revealed the identities of those who purchased the put options on UA, AA, and Morgan Stanley three days before “9/11”.
40. The fact that the White House repeatedly obstructed the attempts of the “9/11” Commission – as feeble as they appear to have been – to learn how the attacks of “9/11” could have succeeded.
One would have to ask the “Big Question”: If the Bush administration was concerned about transparency, integrity, Patriotism[means do what I say and agree], and the needs of the majority of Americans, why would they work so steadfastly to suppress any investigations or uncovering of the truth?
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Abortion: Some History and Perspectives
Liberated Christians
PO Box 55045, Phoenix Az 85078-5045
Promoting Intimacy and Other-Centered Sexuality
COPYRIGHTED 1997 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MAY BE REPRINTED OR QUOTED FROM ONLY IF CREDIT IS GIVEN LIBERATED CHRISTIANS, MAILING ADDRESS IS SHOWN AND WE ARE SENT A COPY OF PUBLICATION.
History Of Abortion: Men Controlling Women's Bodies
The history of abortion shows it is just another way for men to exercise control over a women's body. Abortion has been available forever, since the beginning of time. It was prevalent in biblical days but nothing was ever written about it in scriptures.
Abortion was not an issue in early American history and was done by mid-wives and women's knowledge. In 1858 the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld laws to protect women saying the purpose was "not to prevent the procuring of abortions so much as to guard the health and life of the mother against the consequences of such attempts." Two rulings by Mass Courts in 1812 and 1845 declared abortion was allowable before "quickening" and most other state courts did the same.
With the Puritan obsession with sin the legal view changed - that abortion allowed the unwed women to avoid the shame of her sin. The Comstock Law of 1873 allowed the NY Society for the Suppression of Vice, to wage war on everything from pornography to abortion. This view was shown regarding using anesthesia in childbirth. Many protested it would be a sin to deprive women of the "privilege" of suffering in childbirth.
Physicians (men) decided abortions could only be done surgically, therefore only MD's could do them. They got laws passed against mid-wives and made it a punishable crime for women to share their abortion knowledge.
Now women are demanding taking back control of choice over their bodies from men. It is all about women being empowered to make their own choices. Fundies twist scriptures that say nothing about abortion. Movies such as The Silent Scream which have been shown to be a fraud stir up the emotions to the point some seem to have much more emotional attachment to a fetus than a born women. Such a shame and pity.
It is time for people to stop trying to control the lives of others. If you don't favor abortion don't have one. For those that do.....its none of your business - butt out! You would be much better off fighting for realistic sex education (not just abstinence), making condoms available to teenagers which would go a long way to reducing the need for abortions.
It's Only About Respecting A Women's Choice
The issue is not whether you believe abortion is good or bad, it is about differing views on when life begins - is it a fetus with potential or a baby?
Medically it seems clear that in the first trimester (when 90% or all abortion are done), there is no upper brain stem function so no pain, no brain. But how about spiritually?
For Catholics the issue is very clear. A Catholic is under the Church s authority, not God s. A good Catholic just obeys the Church authority. Abortion is wrong, period, end of discussion, like it or leave (as many do).
For Christians there is a great deal of argument since many ignore the teachings of scripture. Ex 21:22 is very clear that a fetus is not a life. But for Christian s its often too emotional just to accept God s clear teaching.
For Jews the issue is also clear. They don't understand what all the fuss is about, since their biggest dispute is if the soul comes when the head comes out or the shoulder. Under Jewish law, a women may be REQUIRED to have an abortion in some situations, not just in the first trimester, but up until birth!
It seems very simple. If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one. But what gives, say a Catholic, the right to try and pass laws to force their anti-choice, male superior agenda on either Biblical Christians, Jews or those of any other belief?
Why can't the anti-choice, anti-women zealots learn to respect the rights of women to make this difficult decision based on their beliefs, not yours, or some old men in Washington, if married, far too old for it even to be an issue.
Women are no longer under male domination and bondage. Women can now think for themselves! Women is the issue, their rights and freedom from male s controlling their reproductive lives and free to follow their spiritual beliefs rather than just man s.
For Catholics, either get out of the Church of never have an abortion, as Catholic women will always be subservient to male teaching in the Church. For Christians, it is their personal decision since the Bible teaches the fetus is not a life. For Jews, it is their choice unless they are required to have an abortion by their God. For other religions it varies.
That s what its about folks. Simply choice and women s rights to control their own bodies.
PO Box 55045, Phoenix Az 85078-5045
Promoting Intimacy and Other-Centered Sexuality
COPYRIGHTED 1997 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MAY BE REPRINTED OR QUOTED FROM ONLY IF CREDIT IS GIVEN LIBERATED CHRISTIANS, MAILING ADDRESS IS SHOWN AND WE ARE SENT A COPY OF PUBLICATION.
History Of Abortion: Men Controlling Women's Bodies
The history of abortion shows it is just another way for men to exercise control over a women's body. Abortion has been available forever, since the beginning of time. It was prevalent in biblical days but nothing was ever written about it in scriptures.
Abortion was not an issue in early American history and was done by mid-wives and women's knowledge. In 1858 the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld laws to protect women saying the purpose was "not to prevent the procuring of abortions so much as to guard the health and life of the mother against the consequences of such attempts." Two rulings by Mass Courts in 1812 and 1845 declared abortion was allowable before "quickening" and most other state courts did the same.
With the Puritan obsession with sin the legal view changed - that abortion allowed the unwed women to avoid the shame of her sin. The Comstock Law of 1873 allowed the NY Society for the Suppression of Vice, to wage war on everything from pornography to abortion. This view was shown regarding using anesthesia in childbirth. Many protested it would be a sin to deprive women of the "privilege" of suffering in childbirth.
Physicians (men) decided abortions could only be done surgically, therefore only MD's could do them. They got laws passed against mid-wives and made it a punishable crime for women to share their abortion knowledge.
Now women are demanding taking back control of choice over their bodies from men. It is all about women being empowered to make their own choices. Fundies twist scriptures that say nothing about abortion. Movies such as The Silent Scream which have been shown to be a fraud stir up the emotions to the point some seem to have much more emotional attachment to a fetus than a born women. Such a shame and pity.
It is time for people to stop trying to control the lives of others. If you don't favor abortion don't have one. For those that do.....its none of your business - butt out! You would be much better off fighting for realistic sex education (not just abstinence), making condoms available to teenagers which would go a long way to reducing the need for abortions.
It's Only About Respecting A Women's Choice
The issue is not whether you believe abortion is good or bad, it is about differing views on when life begins - is it a fetus with potential or a baby?
Medically it seems clear that in the first trimester (when 90% or all abortion are done), there is no upper brain stem function so no pain, no brain. But how about spiritually?
For Catholics the issue is very clear. A Catholic is under the Church s authority, not God s. A good Catholic just obeys the Church authority. Abortion is wrong, period, end of discussion, like it or leave (as many do).
For Christians there is a great deal of argument since many ignore the teachings of scripture. Ex 21:22 is very clear that a fetus is not a life. But for Christian s its often too emotional just to accept God s clear teaching.
For Jews the issue is also clear. They don't understand what all the fuss is about, since their biggest dispute is if the soul comes when the head comes out or the shoulder. Under Jewish law, a women may be REQUIRED to have an abortion in some situations, not just in the first trimester, but up until birth!
It seems very simple. If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one. But what gives, say a Catholic, the right to try and pass laws to force their anti-choice, male superior agenda on either Biblical Christians, Jews or those of any other belief?
Why can't the anti-choice, anti-women zealots learn to respect the rights of women to make this difficult decision based on their beliefs, not yours, or some old men in Washington, if married, far too old for it even to be an issue.
Women are no longer under male domination and bondage. Women can now think for themselves! Women is the issue, their rights and freedom from male s controlling their reproductive lives and free to follow their spiritual beliefs rather than just man s.
For Catholics, either get out of the Church of never have an abortion, as Catholic women will always be subservient to male teaching in the Church. For Christians, it is their personal decision since the Bible teaches the fetus is not a life. For Jews, it is their choice unless they are required to have an abortion by their God. For other religions it varies.
That s what its about folks. Simply choice and women s rights to control their own bodies.
How The U.S. Economy Performed Under Democrat and Republican Presidents
If the economy is the primary factor for most voters, why have a lot more people not voted Democratic. I believe the answer is due to two primary areas. (1) Since Reagan, the Republicans have been more manipulative, focused, seductive of the working middle class voter, and tenacious in their campaign strategies. (2) But I feel that the greatest swing vote factor has been the Republican parties ability to attract the: anti-environmental, anti-intellectual, anti-abortion, pro capital punishment, racist, religious zealot, homophobic, gun loving, anti-human rights element of the country. Republicans have been successful in courting Southern Democrats and States Rights advocates. Are these Swing Element voters people that America should be proud of having as citizens in the 21st century?
To be objective the author should also factor in the behavior of the legislature, but I still believe that his conclusions are reasonable. Why would the two wealthiest men in America, B, Gates and W. Buffet, plus most of the major wealthiest real estate owners endorse Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama if they are bad for the country. I will take the counsel of Gates & Buffet over most “Red Neck” middle class white guys any day of the week.
http://currencythoughts.com/2008/08/19/how-the-us-economy-performed-under-democrat-and-republican-presidents/
During the forty years from 1961 through 2000, the United States had a Democrat as president half of the time (1961-68, 1977-80, and 1993-2000) and a Republican president for the other twenty years (1969-1976 and 1981-1992). Power was shared, and the switch-overs occurred infrequently, so that it is fair to associate performance with the ruling presidential party. It’s hard for a party to blame its record on the previous incumbent, if they had eight or even twelve years to straighten things out. I chose five vital economic signs to grade each party’s performance: real GDP growth, growth in employment, consumer price inflation, the change in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the change in the dollar against the mark and/or euro after 1998. I normalized all the percentage changes to a per annum basis so that they could be easily compared, and I aggregated each party’s data. Thus, the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton are counted as one 20-year-long presidency, and the same is done for the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush41. GDP growth was measured from fourth quarter to fourth quarter. Since presidents are sworn in on January 20th, January was counted as a month for outgoing administrations in the cases of employment and consumer price figures. Stock price and dollar data are measured from January 20th or the last business day before that. Also, since the dollar was fixed, not floating, in the 1960’s, that comparison leaves out the Kennedy/Johnson years and thus comprises just 12 years under Democratic rule.
The Bush43 presidency has had its performance shortcomings and if included with the other 20 years of Republican rule would have resulted in uneven terms in office. So in fairness to the Republicans and because the Bush43 presidency is still going, albeit 94.7% complete, I tallied that administration separately from its four immediate Republican ancestors.
With twenty years on each side and since some of the ups and downs of the U.S. business cycle lie beyond the direct control of policymakers, one would expect similar results in the two groups. Not so. Instead, one discovers below a significant advantage when a Democrat occupied the White House in each of the five categories.
% Per Annum Democrat Republican Bush43
GDP Growth 4.1% 2.9% 2.2%
Employment 2.9% 1.7% 0.5%
CPI 4.0% 5.1% 3.0%
DJIA 8.1% 6.5% 0.9%
Dollar +0.8% -3.6% -5.9%
Postscript (September 30, 2008): Because of the wide traffic to this blog entry, follow-up examinations were published for each of the five vital economic signs during the week to September 26th. These additional studies disaggregate the information to each of the nine presidencies since 1961 and can be visited by clicking the links below:
Stock Market Performances Under Different Presidencies
Consumer Price Inflation During The Last Nine Presidencies
U.S. Employment Growth During Different Presidencies
Dollar Performance During Different Presidencies
U.S. Real Economic Growth Under Different Presidencies
To be objective the author should also factor in the behavior of the legislature, but I still believe that his conclusions are reasonable. Why would the two wealthiest men in America, B, Gates and W. Buffet, plus most of the major wealthiest real estate owners endorse Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama if they are bad for the country. I will take the counsel of Gates & Buffet over most “Red Neck” middle class white guys any day of the week.
http://currencythoughts.com/2008/08/19/how-the-us-economy-performed-under-democrat-and-republican-presidents/
During the forty years from 1961 through 2000, the United States had a Democrat as president half of the time (1961-68, 1977-80, and 1993-2000) and a Republican president for the other twenty years (1969-1976 and 1981-1992). Power was shared, and the switch-overs occurred infrequently, so that it is fair to associate performance with the ruling presidential party. It’s hard for a party to blame its record on the previous incumbent, if they had eight or even twelve years to straighten things out. I chose five vital economic signs to grade each party’s performance: real GDP growth, growth in employment, consumer price inflation, the change in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the change in the dollar against the mark and/or euro after 1998. I normalized all the percentage changes to a per annum basis so that they could be easily compared, and I aggregated each party’s data. Thus, the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton are counted as one 20-year-long presidency, and the same is done for the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush41. GDP growth was measured from fourth quarter to fourth quarter. Since presidents are sworn in on January 20th, January was counted as a month for outgoing administrations in the cases of employment and consumer price figures. Stock price and dollar data are measured from January 20th or the last business day before that. Also, since the dollar was fixed, not floating, in the 1960’s, that comparison leaves out the Kennedy/Johnson years and thus comprises just 12 years under Democratic rule.
The Bush43 presidency has had its performance shortcomings and if included with the other 20 years of Republican rule would have resulted in uneven terms in office. So in fairness to the Republicans and because the Bush43 presidency is still going, albeit 94.7% complete, I tallied that administration separately from its four immediate Republican ancestors.
With twenty years on each side and since some of the ups and downs of the U.S. business cycle lie beyond the direct control of policymakers, one would expect similar results in the two groups. Not so. Instead, one discovers below a significant advantage when a Democrat occupied the White House in each of the five categories.
% Per Annum Democrat Republican Bush43
GDP Growth 4.1% 2.9% 2.2%
Employment 2.9% 1.7% 0.5%
CPI 4.0% 5.1% 3.0%
DJIA 8.1% 6.5% 0.9%
Dollar +0.8% -3.6% -5.9%
Postscript (September 30, 2008): Because of the wide traffic to this blog entry, follow-up examinations were published for each of the five vital economic signs during the week to September 26th. These additional studies disaggregate the information to each of the nine presidencies since 1961 and can be visited by clicking the links below:
Stock Market Performances Under Different Presidencies
Consumer Price Inflation During The Last Nine Presidencies
U.S. Employment Growth During Different Presidencies
Dollar Performance During Different Presidencies
U.S. Real Economic Growth Under Different Presidencies
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
United States Standing in the World
Birth Rate:
We rank 72nd. Site: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html
Capital Punishment:
The US is notoriously bad. We are the only western nation with capital punishment and execute far and away the most people. The abuses of the system are mammoth, from defense lawyers sleeping through trials to judges refusing to admit potentially exonerating DNA evidence. In executing persons under 18, we are in an elite league with states like Malaysia and Iran. In California we spend over $200 million/year on our CP system, primarily due to extensive legal costs. We have executed 13 in the last 30 years.
Charitable Giving
The US is first, with the UK and Canada running next. See Graph below, page 3.
http://www.cafonline.org/pdf/International%20Comparisons%20of%20Charitable%20Giving.pdf
Education:
Among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. is ninth among industrialized nations in the share of its population that has at least a high school degree. In the same age group, the United States ranks seventh, with Belgium, in the share of people who hold a college degree.
By both measures, the United States was first in the world as recently as 20 years ago, said Barry McGaw, director of education for the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Development. The 30-nation organization develops the yearly rankings as a way for countries to evaluate their education systems and determine whether to change their policies.
Energy Usage:
The United States is the largest energy consumer in terms of total use, using 100 quadrillion BTUs (105 exajoules, or 29000 TWh) in 2005. The U.S. ranks seventh in energy consumption per-capita after Canada and a number of small countries.[1][2] The majority of this energy is derived from fossil fuels: in 2005, it was estimated that 40% of the nation's energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 23% from natural gas. The remaining 14% was supplied by nuclear power, hydroelectric dams, and miscellaneous renewable energy sources.[3]
Environmental Performance:
We are 39th. WHO site: http://www.photius.com/rankings/environmental_performance_index_2008.html
Foreign Aid
As a percentage of GNI(gross national income) we are .16% or 22nd, with Norway being the most generous at .95%. All the Scandinavian countries are at the top. They also have a quasi-Socialized Economy making them more comfortable with sharing.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/us-and-foreign-aid-assistance#Aidmoneyisactuallywaybelowwhathasbeenpromised
Gender Inclusion:
GDP per Capita:
We are 9th. Site: http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/gdp_per_capita_2008_0.html
Happiness Index:
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, based on interviews of more than 100,000 people so far, shows that 47% of Americans are struggling and 4% are suffering. Forty-nine percent of respondents are reported to be thriving based on a personal assessment of how they feel about their lives at the time of the survey, and where they think they'll be in five years. Just as the U.S. is not No. 1 when it comes to health measures, it also is not No. 1 in well-being, he said. For example, 83% of the residents of Denmark are classified as thriving versus 1% who are suffering. The US is tied for 16th place,. Site: http://rankingamerica.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/chart-of-life-satisfaction.jpg
Health Care:
A first-ever comparison of healthcare quality could give more impetus to change the US private-public system. Americans spend twice as much on healthcare as other countries, but it turns out that they're not getting twice the quality for the price when they go to the doctor or hospital. The US is the only one of the five countries studied that doesn't have some kind of government-sponsored universal healthcare system. Instead, the US has a mix of private and public insurance programs, with private companies providing the bulk of care. The World Health Organization ranks the US 37th. For the top minority of Americans the quality of health care is one of the best in the world. Unfortunately overall we are sub-standard in our ability to provide adequate and cost effective health care.
Infant Mortality:
We are 41st. Singapore having the lowest. Site: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html
Longevity:
US is 24th amongst developed nations. See WHO: www.photius.com/rankings/healthy_life_table2.html
Mental Health:
Nutrition:
Obesity:
The U.S. weighs in at No. 9, with 74.1% of those over 15 years old considered overweight. Mississippi has the greatest degree of obesity, poverty, and poorest education of any state.
Site: http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/worlds-fattest-countries-forbeslife-cx_ls_0208worldfat.html
Penal System & Justice:
Poverty:
12% of our population is under the poverty line level. Most European countries have levels below the US.
Public Transportation:
Racism:
With the exception of Switzerland, the US is one of the most racist countries relative to other modern developed nations. Site: UN
Sanitation:
A new international ranking of environmental performance puts the United States at the bottom of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and 39th among the 149 countries on the list. European nations dominate the top places in the ranking, which evaluates sanitation, greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural policies, air pollution and 20 other measures to formulate an overall score, with 100 the best possible.
Sexual Health:
War and Peace:
We are 97th in our ability to be a peaceful nation. The US in 08’ spent 713,100,000,000 (48%) out of total 1,470,000,000,000 in total world expenditures. We have 705 military bases in 130 countries around the world. We spend approximately 5% of GDP on defense. Site:www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings.php
We rank 72nd. Site: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html
Capital Punishment:
The US is notoriously bad. We are the only western nation with capital punishment and execute far and away the most people. The abuses of the system are mammoth, from defense lawyers sleeping through trials to judges refusing to admit potentially exonerating DNA evidence. In executing persons under 18, we are in an elite league with states like Malaysia and Iran. In California we spend over $200 million/year on our CP system, primarily due to extensive legal costs. We have executed 13 in the last 30 years.
Charitable Giving
The US is first, with the UK and Canada running next. See Graph below, page 3.
http://www.cafonline.org/pdf/International%20Comparisons%20of%20Charitable%20Giving.pdf
Education:
Among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. is ninth among industrialized nations in the share of its population that has at least a high school degree. In the same age group, the United States ranks seventh, with Belgium, in the share of people who hold a college degree.
By both measures, the United States was first in the world as recently as 20 years ago, said Barry McGaw, director of education for the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Development. The 30-nation organization develops the yearly rankings as a way for countries to evaluate their education systems and determine whether to change their policies.
Energy Usage:
The United States is the largest energy consumer in terms of total use, using 100 quadrillion BTUs (105 exajoules, or 29000 TWh) in 2005. The U.S. ranks seventh in energy consumption per-capita after Canada and a number of small countries.[1][2] The majority of this energy is derived from fossil fuels: in 2005, it was estimated that 40% of the nation's energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 23% from natural gas. The remaining 14% was supplied by nuclear power, hydroelectric dams, and miscellaneous renewable energy sources.[3]
Environmental Performance:
We are 39th. WHO site: http://www.photius.com/rankings/environmental_performance_index_2008.html
Foreign Aid
As a percentage of GNI(gross national income) we are .16% or 22nd, with Norway being the most generous at .95%. All the Scandinavian countries are at the top. They also have a quasi-Socialized Economy making them more comfortable with sharing.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/us-and-foreign-aid-assistance#Aidmoneyisactuallywaybelowwhathasbeenpromised
Gender Inclusion:
GDP per Capita:
We are 9th. Site: http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/gdp_per_capita_2008_0.html
Happiness Index:
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, based on interviews of more than 100,000 people so far, shows that 47% of Americans are struggling and 4% are suffering. Forty-nine percent of respondents are reported to be thriving based on a personal assessment of how they feel about their lives at the time of the survey, and where they think they'll be in five years. Just as the U.S. is not No. 1 when it comes to health measures, it also is not No. 1 in well-being, he said. For example, 83% of the residents of Denmark are classified as thriving versus 1% who are suffering. The US is tied for 16th place,. Site: http://rankingamerica.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/chart-of-life-satisfaction.jpg
Health Care:
A first-ever comparison of healthcare quality could give more impetus to change the US private-public system. Americans spend twice as much on healthcare as other countries, but it turns out that they're not getting twice the quality for the price when they go to the doctor or hospital. The US is the only one of the five countries studied that doesn't have some kind of government-sponsored universal healthcare system. Instead, the US has a mix of private and public insurance programs, with private companies providing the bulk of care. The World Health Organization ranks the US 37th. For the top minority of Americans the quality of health care is one of the best in the world. Unfortunately overall we are sub-standard in our ability to provide adequate and cost effective health care.
Infant Mortality:
We are 41st. Singapore having the lowest. Site: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html
Longevity:
US is 24th amongst developed nations. See WHO: www.photius.com/rankings/healthy_life_table2.html
Mental Health:
Nutrition:
Obesity:
The U.S. weighs in at No. 9, with 74.1% of those over 15 years old considered overweight. Mississippi has the greatest degree of obesity, poverty, and poorest education of any state.
Site: http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/worlds-fattest-countries-forbeslife-cx_ls_0208worldfat.html
Penal System & Justice:
Poverty:
12% of our population is under the poverty line level. Most European countries have levels below the US.
Public Transportation:
Racism:
With the exception of Switzerland, the US is one of the most racist countries relative to other modern developed nations. Site: UN
Sanitation:
A new international ranking of environmental performance puts the United States at the bottom of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and 39th among the 149 countries on the list. European nations dominate the top places in the ranking, which evaluates sanitation, greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural policies, air pollution and 20 other measures to formulate an overall score, with 100 the best possible.
Sexual Health:
War and Peace:
We are 97th in our ability to be a peaceful nation. The US in 08’ spent 713,100,000,000 (48%) out of total 1,470,000,000,000 in total world expenditures. We have 705 military bases in 130 countries around the world. We spend approximately 5% of GDP on defense. Site:www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings.php
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