Reality Films

Are we being ruled by a secret society of powerful mystics? Do the Freemasons represent more than just a charitably-inclined organization?

Producer Philip Gardiner’s new DVD, Angels, Demons and Freemasons explores these other intriguing issues, leaving us with just as many questions as answers.

At the heart of Gardiner’s argument is the idea that Freemasonry, along with its hidden rituals and archaic symbolism, embodies centuries of esoteric knowledge once shared among priests, scribes, military elites and royalty.

Gardiner’s analysis probes deep into the gnostic world of the Egyptian pharaohs, Kabbalistic Judaism, Islamic Sufism and different types of ancient and medieval alchemy.

Apparently all these mystery cults and Freemasonry share one key element–the transmission of an underground stream of covert, illuminated knowledge. And since knowledge is power, those in possession of that knowledge are best positioned to shape the course of history, peacefully or through violence.

History demonstrates that individuals have always formed relatively small, hierarchically arranged groups to maximize their power over the apparently unenlightened masses.

This has been the social dynamic for centuries within Churches and other governing bodies enjoying both knowledge and power. And so it is today, Gardiner believes, with Freemasonry and some of its allegedly related offshoots.

The contemporary power brokers differ, however, in that neither religion nor nationality play a part in their domination. According to Gardiner, the real kingpins in the so-called New World Order are mostly hidden from view and, perhaps equally important, international and interdenominational.

One unanswered question runs throughout this video, and this is whether the many social symbols found in 21st century society, while clearly similar to their ancient roots, are consciously or unconsciously embraced by mankind.

Angels, Demons and Freemasons seems to suggest that the mere presence of these symbols in contemporary artifacts is evidence of secret societies flourishing in the 21st century, replete with esoteric knowledge and power.

But a postmodern semiotic analysis could interpret things another way.

Jean Baudrillard, for instance, argued that the meaning of signs becomes imploded over time. Although ancient symbols carry on, they take on entirely new meanings (or lack of) in contemporary culture.

For Baudrillard we live in the hyperreal consisting of so many distorted or entirely reinvented simulacra–i.e. signs once having clear meaning, meaning that has all but vanished in the 21st century.

Not to say that Baudrillard is necessarily correct. One could argue that reinvented signs continue to carry some kind of numinous allure and deeply entrenched significance.

For instance, the U.S. dollar bill contains the image of a pyramid with an eye in its capstone. And this might make the US bill more appealing on some unconscious level.

But is this clear-cut evidence for a secret society operating deep within the US government?

Some have argued that if these societies are so secret, why would they proliferate such a blatantly esoteric symbol?¹

Now, to switch gears a little, another point to consider is the New Testament portrayal of Jesus Christ as the King of Heaven, while Satan is deemed the Ruler of This World.

Here Gardiner makes the astute observation that practical leaders (and we do need them) ideally possess a healthy balance between mankind’s dual nature of vice and virtue, greed and goodwill.

Organizational leaders are often called upon to make personal sacrifices and difficult compromises in order to render legal decisions among competing interest groups.

For Gardiner, this shouldn’t be a free-for-all or raw and brutish survival of the fittest scenario. The wise leader, he says, ideally leans toward the compassionate rather than Machiavellian end of the spectrum.

Meanwhile, theologians might not agree with Gardiner’s view that individual choice is merely the outcome of all preceding influences, a view which seems to omit the possibility of grace and divine intervention at the moment of decision making.

But these apparent theological differences may be more a matter of semantics than actual difference. For the film closes with an undeniable ray of hope.

Angels, Demons and Freemasons is a thought-provoking piece that poses seminal questions about the complexities of power in contemporary society.

It should appeal to specialists and intelligent laypersons and serve as a consciousness-raiser for those who perhaps put a bit too much stock in what the evening news says.

–MC

¹ See: Is the dollar bill’s eye-on-a-pyramid the symbol of a secret society? http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1064/is-the-dollar-bills-eye-on-a-pyramid-the-symbol-of-a-secret-society

"Sittin here grillin people like George Foreman" -Kanye. Also TBE is considering making a film called "Must Love George Grosz," a "Must Love Dogs" for the LRB/NYRB personals set.

TBE has once again alighted (alit) in our ancestral homeland, just in time for a slew of prophet’s birthdays and new yearseses and things.  Which meant passing through JFK, which meant our first chance to see if entering the country on a fresh passport would allow us to bypass the security scrutiny that we so graciously countenanced last time we entered the homeland. (Is it just us or does that word sound better in German?)

We would like to be less put off by the whole idea of being profiled as a possible al-Qaida recruit, but our pride doesn’t allow us. The first thing we want to say when we get to the passport stamp counter and see the yellow highlighter come out to mark up our customs declaration card is, “Do we really look like the kind of idiotic white person who would consider joining al-Qaida?” For we have a possibly misbegotten idea that the only crackers who would join al-Qaida must be Cletus types . Whereas we try to give off more of a Baader-Meinhof vibe, and we wish the DHS would respect that, and when they don’t it throws us into paroxysms of self-doubt about the kind of signifiers we are signifying. (Mr. Richter would you please make our picture.) (TBE disclaimer: In case you don’t have a sense of humor, TBE abhors the killing of innocents by state and non-state actors alike and have never seriously contemplated joining a terrorist group.)

Terminal 4

Last time TBE flew in we arrived at whichever terminal to which BA flies, and the room where “investigations” were conducted was relatively well-appointed, meaning that it contained a water fountain and was an actual room. This time TBE flew Egyptair, which we quickly realized upon arrival flies into Terminal 4, which we slightly more slowly realized is the official terminal for national airlines of countries the US deems likely to harbor terrorists and other possibly undesirable brown people. So there is no interrogation room at all, it’s just a bunch of roped off “Areas” (like Area 51), which are located in a corner of the vast baggage retrieval room. This deserves comment in and of itself, because one feels slightly stigmatized when one sees one’s fellow plane passengers seeing one in the special security zone. In short, you get the “omigod did I just fly right next to a terrorist look” as they breeze by on their way to customs. Due process might be law of the land, but public opinion is rather less sanguine about prejudging.

We were sent to “Area 3,” which had a strong AfPak flavour to it, based on our unscientific headware’n’passports survey. Our area was way more full than either Area 4 (The Indians) or Area 2 (The Latinos), though that may’ve been due to the vagaries of airline scheduling. With the help of powerful nicotine and Cheesecake Factory cravings we overcame our native reserve and held a stand-in at the counter until the gentleman seated behind it acknowledged our presence and agreed to take our testimony and ultimately allowed us to go retrieve our luggage and step into the freezing New York afternoon.

The only really sad part of the experience was that when we asked our inquisitor whether this meant that we would be stopped always and forever, he told us, “Hopefully not but pretty much yeah.”

Since TBE strives to turn lemons into lemonade at every turn, we thought of some ideas:

1. Some pretentious director can make a movie about four semi-unrelated plots of people coming to America (maybe even a four-movie filmic cycle titled “Terminal 4,” with the individual films titled “Area 1,” “Area 2,” etc.) in which all the main characters are ultimately connected by the fact that they all passed through the questioning areas of Terminal 4. If it is a pretentious European director the point will be that America is vicious and racist and ultimately empty. If it’s an American it will still be pretentious but end with a feel-good message about America’s inherent goodness. And maybe win an Oscar.
2. TBE is usually rather formal during plane travel, but we thought it might be a laugh if we adopted the attire our younger girl cousins don when they fly (pajama bottoms, college sweatshirts, other miscellaneous sleepover attire) on our next trip back from Egypt. Maybe even some of those slippers that feature oversized plush Disney characters on them. We think that might blow some DHS minds.
3. Alternately someone could make a semi-sequel to that Adel Imam terrorist kebab movie in which an Egyptian arrives in above attire minus the slippers and holds all of Terminal 4 hostage when he is brought in for questioning. But then it turns out all he wants is some Goofy slippers, and he thought his detention meant he wasn’t going to be able to enter America to go to Disnep World and purchase them.

This song encapsulates TBE’s feelings about America (or is it the way America feels about us?) when we’re stuck outside Manhattan with the DHS blues again:

This is how we feel about Homeland Security in those moments:

A REAL Legend

Does Oprah belong to the Tri-Lateral Commission? If I really wanted to know, I could look her up on their website. They don’t hide their membership list. (1) 

We all know she helped the “meteoric rise” of Barak Obama. Now she apparently wants to legitimize Sarah Palin. Watch her show today (I wouldn’t watch it on a bet). I wonder with whom Oprah has decided to conspire to insure Palin’s election in 2012. 

My writing today has nothing to do with the Tri-Lateral Commission or conspiracy theories although what I’ve written so far seems to. On December third I wrote here:

Conspiracy theorists are humans acting as humans do—attempting to find patterns where none exist. Since the Third Person Effect is fully operative (“…people generally feel that others are more gullible than themselves…”), those who are convinced they are not gullible, that they have either figured out the truth or are among those who are intelligent enough to figure out the truth, set out to protect the “gullible” by announcing the “truth.” (2) 

Some conspiracy theories have the appearance of truth. King George V of Great Britain, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, all grandsons of Queen Victoria, reigned at the outbreak of World War I. Did they decide together to go to war, or did the Great War break out because of their dysfunctional family spread through the ruling houses of Europe? Or did the Great War happen in spite of family connections? I can’t say. But I smell conspiracy.

Sarah and Oprah popped into my head this morning because I saw a trailer of Oprah hawking her interview today with Sarah duirng my few minutes of TV watching last night. I watched some dumb thing for about fifteen minutes, and then I played the organ until bedtime. In that fifteen minutes I saw Oprah bragging about her interview with Sarah “tomorrow” (today).

The interview will show how far Sarah’s grooming has already progressed. If Oprah belongs to the Tri-Lateral Commission, this may represent the first round of their preparation of Sarah for the Presidency. They obviously approved her last year or John McCain would not have chosen her. Surely her public persona so far does not appeal to the Tri-Lateral Commission unless they have pronounced final victory for themselves in the complete dumbing-down of the American people. That would not surprise me.

This bit of writing comprises my thinking about desperation, not about conspiracies, and certainly not about the Tri-Lateral Commission. (I will, however, ask the obvious questions to stir up worry about them: how did Zbigniew Brzezinski become Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, what on earth did they care about the Mujahideen, and why has Barak Obama committed to ending the job they started in Afghanistan? My contribution to conspiracy theory.)

My writing today concerns legends. Legends do not necessarily comprise the quaint stories we learn as children. They do not necessarily come from the pens of great writers (Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”). They often begin with chance conversation among people who report what they believe they know as the “truth” because they “witnessed” whatever event they report. These days, legends sometimes begin with reporting by famous personages, often politicians, more often TV talking heads.

It’s remarkable that this –whatever confusion, or confoundment over 7,000 cases, they actually keep a registry of cases of leprosy. And the fact that it rose was because –one assumes –because  we don’t know for sure –but  two basic influences –unscreened  illegal immigrants coming into this country primarily from South Asia, and secondly, far better reporting. (3) 

Lou Dobbs singled-handedly invented the legend that illegal immigrants bring leprosy into the country. The legend quickly spread over the airwaves and the internet. Never mind that he had the resources of CNN to check his facts. Never mind that his charge sounded nuts. Never mind that he has worked tirelessly to bury deep in the psyche of white, middle-class America the idea that illegal immigrants constitute one of the greatest threat(s) to the peace and happiness of Middle America.

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. (4)

Legendary?

Sarah Palin single-handedly made the legend of “death panels” part of the accepted discourse on health care reform in the United States. The idea had floated around the blogosphere and other places before her comment raised it to the plane of legend—and baptized it with respectability.

“[It] just shows the kind of people we’re dealing with. These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it’s motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it’s time we recognize what we’re dealing with. . . .the goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, is world domination.” (5) 

When Pat Robertson speaks, an enormous (though decreasing) number of Americans listen. And his vitriol becomes legend—not the vitriol itself (which is legendary), but the ideas about which he spouts his vitriol.

Legends depend on believability for currency. In order for a tall tale to become a legend, it has to strike a chord in people who hear it. It must “[conform] to the cognitive, emotional, and moral expectations of its audience.” (6) A tall tale will remain just that (who with any knowledge of disease or disease communication could possibly believe that illegal aliens bring leprosy into the United States?) until people hear it who, for whatever reason, want to believe it.

These expectations are interrelated, although they are conceptually distinguishable. What does it mean to say that a legend is more persuasive if it meets cognitive expectations? It means that it is more persuasive if it conforms to the ideology and belief language of the listeners. (6)

Lou Dobbs says illegal aliens spread leprosy. Sarah Palin says health-care reform will bring Death Panels. Pat Robertson says “satanic” Islam wants to dominate the world. And legends spring up among people who share the “ideology and belief language” of the speakers. The fact is, the less explanation the legend-maker gives, the more likely belief will blossom in those with a predisposition accept what the speaker says at face value.

A theory need not be framed in scientific or quasi-scientific terms. A theory appeals to a general principle by which the world is presumed to work—even a religious one. (6)

I would say “especially” a religious one rather than “even” a religious one (with no evidence and probably attempting to start a legend). I don’t know anything about Lou Dobbs’ religious inclinations. But I (we all) know about Sarah’s and Pat’s.

I said above that “this bit of writing comprises my thinking about desperation, not about conspiracies.” Desperate people, it seems to me easily fall victim to (at least) three behaviors. First, they invent patterns in events that do not necessarily exist. Second, they accept any explanation of an event that fits the “general principle by which [they presume] the world” works. And third, once they have that explanation in mind, they will into being a legend around it that satisfies their desire for patterns in events that they cannot control.

American truth.

Tri-Lateral Commission. Leprosy. Death panels. Crazed fanatics. Sarah. Oprah.

Take your pick.

.
_______________   

(1) http://www.trilateral.org/

(2) As I noted before, the “Third Person Effect” comes from the article by Karen M. Douglas and  Robbie M. Sutton, “The hidden impact of conspiracy theories: perceived and actual influence of theories surrounding the death of Princess Diana.” The Journal of Social Psychology 148.2 (2008): 210

(4) Palin, Sarah. “Statement on the Current Health Care Debate.” Facebook, August 7, 2009. Web. 20 Dec 2009. <http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=113851103434>.

(5)  Robertson, Pat. The 700 Club, March 13, 2006. Pat Robertson Said What? The Humanist Society of Gainesville. Web. 5 Dec. 2009. <http://www.gainesvillehumanists.org/index.html>.

(6) Oring, Elliott. “Legendry and the rhetoric of truth.” Journal of American Folklore 121.480 (2008): 127+.

Introduction

Following my week-long break from a 6-week series (so far) on logical fallacies, I’m going to again take a slight detour from the more formal logical fallacies and address a fallacious way of arguing a point, and that is the complete misrepresentation of a position.

What Do I Mean by the Misrepresentation?

I suppose at its core, this can be the same as quote-mining or the Straw Man or even misusing an Argument from Authority, and it can be used either to bolster or to denigrate a claim.

In effect, what I’m talking about here is when someone is trying to stake out a position (for or against something), they bring in an apparent authoritative argument or a piece of evidence, they may actually quote it properly with or without context, but then they simply misunderstand what it actually is saying.

How did I come up with this? From an episode of Coast to Coast AM that I was listening to …

Example from a Conspiratorial Standpoint, Thinking Scientists Are Holding Back Earth-Shattering Information

The context of this example is a person, Mitch Battros, an “Earth changes expert,” trying to link together the Yellowstone supervolcano, apparent Mayan prophecy, the current solar cycle (#24), and multiple universes leaking into ours.

The following is a direct quote from Mitch Battros during the fourth hour of the December 17, 2009, Coast to Coast AM radio show, starting at approximately 11 minutes into the hour:

In this article, [the scientists with the European Space Agency's "Planck" satellite mission] say that they’re concerned about exposing too much information, that it would be overwhelming. I’ll quote: “To one’s surprise, there are astrophysicists and cosmologists who are concerned the Plank mission as well as other spacecraft will provide an overwhelming amount of data, setting new paradigms, and unsettling current models.” That goes back to Mayan prophecy. The galactic alignment.

Now, within the context of the show and everything that Battros spoke about, it’s fairly obvious that he at least is presenting this in the following way: Scientists think these missions will (a) Provide lots of new data that will make their “theories” certain to (b) set new paradigms that will (c) revolutionize the way we look at the universe. Within the context of the show and his very next sentence fragments, he seems to think that means that legitimate scientists will verify his ideas.

However, as an actual scientist who is likely more familiar with (1) the way that scientists write and think, (2) the way science operates, and even (3) some of the problems facing astronomy today, I have a different take on his quote.

My take is that, first, there is a real data problem in astronomy. For example, a single instrument on a single space craft (specifically, the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft) is returning images from Mars at up to a few 10s of centimeters per pixel. Each image is generally around a gigabyte in size. The instrument has been in orbit for a few years and has taken thousands of images, comprising terabytes (TB) of data. If any of you are computer folks, you’ll know that at the consumer level, we’re just now (Dec. 2009) getting hard drives out that store up to 2 TB. Now, multiply that by about 6 for the number of instruments on that craft. Multiply that by a dozen or two for the number of spacecraft out there. Multiply that out many times to include gigapixel camera arrays on world-class ground-based telescopes.

With that in mind, the phrase that scientists “are concerned the Plank mission as well as other spacecraft will provide an overwhelming amount of data” takes on a much less sinister and conspiratorial mentality. Figuring out how to store the data and then how to retrieve (from searching) that data is a real problem these days.

Now let’s look at the next two parts – new data creating new paradigms and unsettling current models. Again – and I say “again” because I’ve said this many times in this blog – this is the whole point of science. With new, high-quality data when testing models of very cutting-edge physics, you are almost always going to cause a paradigm shift, be it simply being able to rule out one model from another (a paradigm shift) or having good, reproducible, high-quality data that does not fit with any of the current models, forcing them to be “unsettled” and for a new model to take its place.

Hence, by misrepresenting what someone likely meant, they have used a fallacious form of arguing — their premise or apparent evidence from that quote is useless as it does not actually mean what they think.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, this is a fairly common method of arguing AND it is difficult to identify if you do not actually know the field well. It is VERY often used by young-Earth creationists and Intelligent Design proponents (see my post on Casey Luskin’s ignorance about library books), but everyone can fall into the trap, whether knowingly (in which case it’s no longer a fallacy other than plain ol’ lying) or unknowingly.

This is the continuation of the thread called “Global Warming has Stopped Says Tony Abbott“

The story so far….

452 comments later, the jury is still out on whether the planet is heating, cooling, or both!

Tony Abbott declares a massive victory over the massive failure that was Copenhagen.

Neil insists that he is “just stating the truth”.

Meanwhile Tom maintains that Kevin Rudd “is a self seeking show pony”

Not to be outdone, James calls me “full of shit. And Gutless!”

James paraphrases Tony Abbott saying “I think this paper says that the idea that the MWP was a localised event is bullshit.”

As events hit ‘fever pitch’ Adrian asks Neil whether he enjoys sex and travel.

Latecomer Von Curtis explodes on the scene with the startling revelation that Catholics and Anglicans are all prawns.

Which leads the Boss to conclude that AGW is a Catholic/Anglican conspiracy with direct links to the Vatican itself!!

And so, on with the show….

(It’s Kinda like the Da Vinci code, but worse…)

I just read a GreenInc blog in the NY Times about the Ban the Phone Book campaign, which is attempting to stop phone book production and delivery. Ban the Phone Book claims that printing phone books is a waste of resources when people can go online and find the same information for free. NYT is careful to point out that a leading advocate of Ban the Phone Book is an online white pages website called White Pages Inc. The website and the advocates of the campaign want a mandatory opt-in program for paper phone books, meaning you’d have to go online and sign up to receive one.

Here’s a thought: what if we stopped using phone books and started using White Pages Inc, and then, at some point in the future, the website started charging subscriptions? Suddenly, your free, if unnecessary, phone book, costs a monthly payment. In fact, anything that is currently free on the internet could become subscription based. Hulu, YouTube, Google, allrecipes, email. Anything.

My conspiracy is as follows. By offering free services, the internet outperforms traditional business and puts them out of business or relegates them to the margins (Landline phone companies would be one example). People are all for it because it saves paper, it’s free, etc. Then, everybody starts charging subscriptions to everything, or at least everything good. Google costs $5 or $10 a month to use, so us poor people have to use weird random free search engine and crappy small-scale email provider instead.

What do y’all think? Conspiracy? Or craziness?

My friend Emily delivered phone books one year. How it works is that a certain amount of phone books are given to the delivery person, who then goes out and delivers them to every house. Any leftovers are used to build a fort behind the barn in the backyard.

I describe this delivery process because it’s very simple and low-cost. It’s also not house specific. Every house gets a phone book. They don’t differentiate. So, it’s going to be very costly for landline companies, legally required to distribute phone books, to organize and deliver books only to addresses who’ve signed up. The same could be said for opt-out lists. It’d be very difficult to remove your address from my friend Emily’s subaru.

I think what we’re seeing is the phasing out of landlines all together. Phone companies, and their practices, are under scrutiny and attack. Their business is becoming obsolete, their costs are going up, and their costs will continue to go up as cellphones, internet, and wireless move in to their territory and take over their customer base.

Bit of a rush job, this. Paying work calls me abroad, presuming I can actually get to Dover first… Pics – and a proper proofing – to come later.

1989 is a landmark year in modern history. Some say the media ‘milked’ the Berlin Wall anniversary, others that there was too much triumphalism; elsewhere professors ponder whether the impact of these practical and ideological shifts on political philosophy should have been much stronger given the scale of the unprecedented events.

Gil Scott-Heron said: “The revolution will not be televised”. In Germany, it was not only televised, it was commoditised as well. You can buy the book, the t-shirt and the DVD. There are audioguide walks and prison tours – and very worthwhile they are too. Political slogans have become product straplines as a country unified in capitalism celebrates the events that brought them together – all the time cementing the official story and the official timeline.

This consensus is only possible in Germany because of the detailed records, and a willingness to show them. The GDR’s Stasi were not the first regime to retrospectively damn themselves because of their thoroughness and their love of bureaucracy.

A visit to any museum of the Sword and the Shield of the Party, as they proudly called themselves, includes examples of countless documents where their grim work is laid out at depressing length. Scandals and shamings are assured for decades to come as the mountain of information continues to be periodically processed by archivists and curators; digging up political hang grenades for some, wrecking friendships for others.

In sharp contrast to these painful public exhumations, what Germans call Durcharbeiten or ‘working through’ the past, the much more violent events of December 1989 in Romania are still shrouded in mystery. Today is the anniversary of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s last speech in Bucharest; an ill-judged gathering of `the people´ in the capital that – instead of counterbalancing nascent rebellion in westerly Timisoara – added its own weight to the rising tide of dissent till it very suddenly became an unstoppable tsunami.

Mirroring the farcical press conference in East Germany that had precipitated the unexpected mobbing of the border that very 9th November, Ceauşescu and his feared Securitate staff panicked when crowd noise was mistaken for booing. The media was again a crucial factor; the rally was being broadcast live and the nation thought the Communist Central Party Committee building was being stormed. Events took on a life of their own, and four days later, on 25^th December, Ceauşescu and his wife were executed – again live on TV – after a rushed show trial.

But while Germans make a point of celebrating what they call the Peaceful Revolution, Romania’s was anything but. In the small museum in Timisoara, the city near the Hungarian and Serbian borders that is known as the seat of the revolution, the curator walks with a pronounced limp. “I was shot by the Securitate,” he will tell you. He was one of many.

One of my strongest memories of 1989 is not of oddly-dressed ‘Ossis’ cheering at the Brandeburg Gate – but of frightened Romanian civilians hiding behind tense soldiers with Kalashnikovs, as they returned fire from the cover of armoured cars or doorways. No velvet smoothed the transition here, like in Czechoslovakia.

For days there were running battles, between the authorities who had apparently deposed Ceauşescu and ‘terrorists’ who were still loyal to him and were attempting to destabilise the country. Confused battles were fought in busy streets or on dark airport aprons (featured in docudrama “The Paper Will be Blue” – Hîrtia va fi albastrã). But who were the revolutionaries really, and who were these terrorists in this fog of Christmas war?

Articles like this eyewitness account, while gripping, raise as many questions as they answer. This one in particular paints a clear picture of the pre-revolution austerity that people were so tired of, and the confusion that surrounded the Timisoara uprising and its consequences. But at the core of these pieces is still a huge unanswered question: who was running the show?

“There are people that know, but they are too scared to say,” I was told in Timisoara this year. At the time, it seemed clear cut: loyalists versus ‘the people’ and an army that mostly went over to them. But now there are a number of theories. The first is that it was indeed what it looked like: a people’s revolution, albeit a messy one, and one that was eventually co-opted by the state.

Second, and highly plausible, is the idea that is was an internal coup; the Securitate saw what was happening across Eastern Europe and made the Nomenklatura’s figurehead a sacrificial lamb.

Other theories credit external forces with the demise of the hardline communist dictator. Some name the CIA, others say it was none other than Gorbachev’s KGB that dethroned the man in the big black hat. Earlier this year I found myself standing in the Timisoara pharmacy where, in 1989, bandages were handed out to the injured as the authorities clamped down on supporters of the ethnic Hungarian priest Lazlo Tokes.

This was the event, with its historical overtones, that precipitated the uprising. The pharmacy owner told me an interesting story. He had a holiday home outside Timisoara which he visited in the months before the revolution. On these trips, he he had seen many Russians crossing the border by car.

Each vehicle would contain a few men and a woman – all relatively young. He had not seen such a thing, he told me, since WW2 – when an influx of German ‘tourists’ had signified subtle but powerful external political forces at work in that small country.

Outside the public buildings of Timisoara, just like the building where Ceauşescu gave his last speech in Bucharest, the EU flag now flies. Romania is a member of NATO; it has moved on. But this is still a country where people tell you that in hospital you have to bribe the nurse every the sheets are changed; an operation might involve hundreds of Euros paid to each link in the chain.

The political elite is dismissed as a bunch of money-hungry weathercocks who changed their allegiance overnight from communism to capitalism to keep their noses in the same rebranded trough. You will be told that ‘they‘ are still in power. Abroad, allegations of complicity in extraordinary rendition and shady CIA prisons surface in credible publications like the NY Times.

In this August article it’s alleged that several identical prisons were built, including one in Bucharest. The uniformity would serve to confuse and disorientate prisoners. This was a classic Stasi tactic. Germany – to public knowledge – said goodbye to this kind of ‘operational psychology’ in 1989, closing prisons like Berlin’s Hohenschonhausen as it slammed the door on Communism.

It is telling that, as some lament the ‘hijacking’ of Romania’s revolution, we are still not sure what went on 20 years ago this Christmas. As records decay, memories fade and it becomes ever less politic to dig up this dirt – we may never find out.

See also this excellent FT article on Who won the Romanian revolution?

Christmas! Bah humbug! Who needs to celebrate Christmas as the reprobated pagan heathens and Catholics do. Afterall, Christmas should should not be about celebrating the Incarnation of the world’s Savior but should not be about ridiculing and condemning Catholics and  other non-Calvinists and supporting Republican foreign policy, war, torture and capitalist materialist consummerism. Saint Spurgeon warns  us of the evils of celebrating Christmas in a religious way:

We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas: first, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be said or sung in Latin or in English; and, secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and, consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority. (Charles Spurgeon, Sermon on Dec. 24, 1871).

When it can be proved that the observance of Christmas, Whitsuntide, and other Popish festivals was ever instituted by a divine statute, we also will attend to them, but not till then. It is as much our duty to reject the traditions of men, as to observe the ordinances of the Lord. We ask concerning every rite and rubric, “Is this a law of the God of Jacob?” and if it be not clearly so, it is of no authority with us, who walk in Christian liberty. (from Charles Spurgeon’s Treasury of David on Psalm 81:4.)

(“Get Fuzzy”, 14 December 2009.)

I’m watching Zeitgeist: Addendum (link opens a video), and it is mildly frightening. Not because I believe it, but because it’s frightening that there are people who think like this. So far, the Zeitgeist people have said:

- All money is debt (and this has various implications, discussed in detail).

- The monetary system is inherently corrupt.

- Religions and other institutions are dangerous and based on lies.

- Some people are (inexplicably) evil and control the world, and everyone else is a sheep blindly following the evil ones. Somehow, the stated goal of corporations to make profit manages to alter corporate people’s psychological make-up in such fundamental ways that they become strange alien creatures with no emotions. Never mind the fact that we have no evidence whatsoever of this (i.e. we have no evidence that all people working as owners of or managers in corporations are suffering from psychopathy, which can be proven by psychological testing, for example), what matters is that we need a powerful Evil Entity, and they seem to serve that purpose.

- Technology will save us! Technology is the Messiah. Once we have the new awesome technology awaiting us, we will no longer have: crime, neurosis, sickness, imprisonment, war, hunger, the need for jobs or environmental damage. I’m guessing they probably think that death and unhappiness will be erased too.

- If we merely realize that we are interdependent, then everyone will be filled with unconditional love. We depend on oxygen and other such things, and everything in the Universe is interconnected — in the boring, physical sense of the word. Somehow the abstract recognition of this obvious ecological fact will lead to a fundamental psychological and spiritual transformation that will amount to nothing more than the complete erasure of all limitations in human love and generosity. Who needs spiritual transformation when you can have thinking-about-ecology!

The major, overarching problem with the whole Zeitgeist approach is that it is materialistic and vital. By denying a transcendental reality beyond nature, they are rendering themselves incapable of the spiritual experience and knowledge necessary to accomplish that which they claim to want, which matter alone can never fulfill. The fundamental flaw in materialism is that it is idolatrous: it grants power and ultimate-ness to temporal, conditioned and Inconscient matter. The materialist view is purely horizontal rather than a mix of horizontal and vertical, which is the ideal spiritual view. Furthermore, the psychic being/soul leads to a different kind of love and compassion than the cold, forced ‘community’ of the social engineer/instructed philanthropist. It is spontaneous (thus not related to self-instruction or resolution, as with the default underdog-sympathy of the Leftist), not dependent on external conditions, non-mental, warm, individualistic, Heavenly, devoted, child-like, acutely theistic and non-moralistic. Or at least, this is what I’ve experienced, though I’m sure many others will concur.

They have also committed the pre/trans fallacy, in their conception of ‘unity’. There are two kinds of unity: one is the pre-rational unity that exists when there is no individual conscious awareness. This is a unity in darkness or Inconscience. The urge for such ‘oneness with nature’ or ‘unity’ is actually the urge to be negated, i.e. it is driven by existential regret. Lacking in such a Universe of ‘unity’ is an effective, goal-accomplishing individual, and an individual point of consciousness or soul.

Then there is trans-rational unity. In such states there is an individual consciousness or soul, but all the more freedom, efficacy, awareness and love. A person’s dependence on the ecosystem actually reduces as their level of consciousness rises. I find that in order to bring out the truly loving being within us — i.e. the soul — we have to at least attempt to overcome existential angst, cowardice and regret. We need to stop feeling so abandoned as to feel the need to decompose into the matter around us. And yes, we do need to believe in God.

Seriously. The next time a hippie pagan talks to me about how we need to have oneness with nature, I’m going to shoot them with my Jesus gun. Just kidding, I would never name my gun that. Plus I wouldn’t shoot the hippies: I’d just boycott their organic, vegan, hemp co-op and go to Walmart instead .

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 19, 2009
Filed at 1:13 p.m. ET

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican is cracking down on the unauthorized use of the pope’s image.

The Vatican issued a declaration Saturday saying that anyone who wants to use the pope’s name, photo or coat of arms, or the title ”pontifical,” must first obtain authorization from the Holy See.

Lollipope, stand firm!

I was kinda hoping that by having this blog, that I’d be able to keep from driving The Mister crazy with all of my wedding talk.  You see, right after he first asked me, I got super busy with work.  So I wasn’t able to properly obsess over wedding deets and whatnot and I’d promised myself that I’d obsess when I had more time.

But then when I had more time, I really didn’t need to obsess.

I mean, let’s keep it real…there’s no way to have a cheap wedding (believe me, I tried to figure it out!), but I don’t really need to be in full crazy, obsessive mode until May.  My heart can’t take it and I’m sure The Mister can’t.  We’ve got the ceremony place, we’ve got the reception place, I’ve got a dress…

Okay, he doesn’t have a suit, nor has he given me his addresses for the save the dates…but a few deep breaths keep me from worrying about that too much.

Anyhoo, the conspiracy theorist in me wonders of the wedding industry needs brides to obsess about details that aren’t vital.  Nice, perhaps…but vital, no way.  What if, and I’m just wondering out loud here, but what if those folks that are making whoseits and whatsits for wedding favors are in cahoots with the wedding magazine people?  I mean, the magazine people need ads right?  And the whoseit and whatsit people need a place to sell their stuff right?  Could it be that they’ve thought up this whole “need” to have certain things at your wedding.

I’m not saying…I’m just saying.

I’ve got nothing against favors, we’re gonna use our centerpieces as favors, that was just an example…insert “vital, necessary wedding whoseit” in there if you’re fired up about favors.  The idea is that when you read those magazines, they make you feel like your wedding will s-u-c-k if you don’t have their stuff.  That’s just not true.  What would s-u-c-k?: your fiance not showing up, the officiant not showing up, forgetting to put on your dress and walking down the aisle naked (but if I had a body like Beyonce, I’d seriously think about it!)…I’m sure I can think of more things, but you get the idea.

I will continue to buy the wedding mags, because I can playa!  I’m gonna be a bride!  But I’m on to you crazy wedding folks and while I love your super pretty pics of super pretty people having super pretty weddings, I’m not drinking the kool aid.

OBAMACARE TO ABORT BABY JESUS. HAHAHAH

A STUPID QUEER WITH A STUPID QUEER TOUPEE.

I’m somewhat hesitant to follow in the chorus of those who say that the proponents of a global agreement for dealing with climate change is based on a conspiratorial New World Order. The thin line between healthy skepticism and paranoia seems to be identifiable by the kind of rhetoric coming from Alex Jones, a self-proclaimed “paleoconservative”, who has taken an allied stand with skeptics against climate change.

In his view, the talks in Copenhagen are nothing more than a socialist redistribution of wealth orchestrated by the most powerful people on the planet, the illuminati and the Bilderberg group, of whom George W. Bush is alleged to be a member. According to Mr.Jones, George W.Bush and the New World Order were behind the 9/11 false flag event in order to strip our liberties away and bring in a “one world government” in which we’re all enslaved.

Needless to say, as far gone as some of the eco-warriors on the left seem to be, we need to step with trepidation among those who identify themselves as being on the right. Talk about global enslavement, police states, and conspiracy theories need to be taken with a fairly large grain of salt. Skepticism of anything can be a healthy thing for the mind, but it is possible to overdo it.

According to Kevin Gaudet, the federal Director for the Canadian Taxpayer Federation, Lord Christopher Monckton has obtained a leaked draft of the agreement on the table at the Copenhagen climate conference. If we’re to believe Lord Monckton, it constitutes a massive wealth transfer out of first world nations at a per capita cost of at least $3,000 in new taxes. Perhaps more disturbing still is that it talks about the establishment of a “world government body” which would redistribute the wealth in order to compensate developing nations “afflicted by climate change.”

Talk about massive taxes and a new world government really needs some kind of proof before going about publishing such claims in newspapers. And while it’s entirely plausible that Copenhagen is endeavouring to bring about carbon taxes that would provide a wealth redistribution, it seems odd to me that Lord Monckton didn’t simply pass along the “leaked” draft to the world so that they could judge for themselves.

After all, some of the healthy skepticism about climate change has been provided by having many people around the world analyze climatic data and challenge the “scientific consensus”. Information continues to come in from the fallout of the Climatic Research Unit email leaks that the Moscow-based Institute for Economic Analysis has found evidence of fraud in the CRU’s treatment of Russian climate data.

There is no question that aligned with the climate change movement is a very socialist movement that understands that wealth redistribution goals of any climate agreement is commensurate with their own ideological aims. For evidence of this, you only have to turn to the blog archives of our own Green Party. David Parker provides some insight into the kind of mindset of the eco-warriors, his most recent entry praising Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales as being more insightful than “all the western leaders combined.” He also provides some rather unintentional humour in another entry in which he describes green activists in Copenhagen struggling against the “nasty cold” weather.

Amid ridiculous declarations of Canada as being a “Colossal Fossil” and the constant criticisms of Stephen Harper, no matter what he does, it isn’t surprising to see Canadians feeling repelled by the aggressive hostility of the eco-warriors. In a recent article by Jamie Biggar in the Tyee, there is a new type of young environmental activist in Copenhagen, called the “New Radicals.”

The aims of this movement are based on a change of not just environmental policy, but our “political economy”. Civil society, writes Mr.Biggar, is about transforming the ends-and-means relationship in corporations from one which seeks profit and growth, to one which provides a service to society. At the heart of climate change activism, then, is a desire for social change with socialist ideals. And when you have Hillary Clinton talking about a $100 billion fund to transfer wealth from first world nations to the developing world, it’s difficult to argue that the aims in Copenhagen are strictly about curtailing man-made climate change.

In The Box, writer/director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) conjures another period sci-fi philosophical mystery (a genre he has invented and laid claim to).  Set in the 70’s and populated by aliens and a Satre-quoting Cameron Diaz, the Box fails as a movie but succeeds as a mind-fuck.

Speaking of Ms. Diaz, her acting in the film, at first horrifying, slowly reveals itself as spot-on.  Stilted and sporting a laughable accent, Diaz’s performance accentuates the outlandish plot and boosts the camp appeal.

To the plot description: a seemingly content family receives a mysterious box, along with instructions that if they press a super-mysterious button within said mysterious box, they will receive 1 million dollars and someone will die.  Frank Langella plays the bearer of the box (and an impressive facial disfigurement).  From there, the story twists and turns, snowballing into a vast conspiracy involving rampant nosebleeds.  Langella’s sinister presence and rich baritone voice saves the movie, grounding the film when Kelley’s script starts floating into outer space.

Kelly is a talented writer (he adapted the screenplay from a story by Richard Matheson), but  a tentative director.  The camera seldom moves, and the characters rarely move within the frame.  I wonder whether his next project would be better realized by another young mainstream risk-taker (Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Wes Anderson, etc).

http://www.frcaction.org/prayercastregistration

you can check out these stupid queers at the above link.

Over the years, the American Central Intelligence Agency has gained a reputation for being the most far-reaching, sophisticated, and effective government intelligence agency on the planet. At the same time, the CIA has also become known for its incredible paranoia and propensity to undertake costly, sometimes illegal, and often downright absurd projects in the name of gaining an edge on the competition. From spy cats to psychic hippies, the following are ten of the weirdest spy programs the government has proposed and funded over the years.

10. Acoustic Kitty

Most people wouldn’t think of the common house cat as being a potential master of espionage, but the CIA sure did. In the 1960s, American intelligence is said to have spent over $20 million on “Acoustic Kitty,” a top-secret project that used cats as recording devices. The project took a group of specially trained cats and surgically implanted microphones, antennae and batteries into their tails, and then set them loose near the Russian embassy. The idea was that an unassuming cat would be able to stride right up to groups of communist officials and listen in on their conversation, which it could then beam back to agents with its sophisticated radio equipment. The plan was eventually put into action, but the first cat sent into the field was supposedly run over by a taxi before it could make a recording, and operation ‘Acoustic Kitty” was abandoned shortly thereafter.

9. Operation Mockingbird

One of the most ambitious and downright insidious programs ever launched by the CIA was Operation Mockingbird, a propaganda project that was implemented in the early 1950s. It was a massive undertaking that saw as many as 3,000 CIA agents and collaborators attempt to gain some control of the free press by feeding select groups of reporters information and using newspapers at home and abroad to filter the kinds of stories that got to the public. At its height, the program included writers for the New York Times, Newsweek, and Time Magazine among its ranks, and was said to have a significant influence on as many as 25 major newspapers. The program had a major impact abroad, as well, as it served a major function in helping to sway public opinion in the run-up to the eventual overthrowing of Guatemala’s leftist president. Operation Mockingbird continued to have a major effect on worldwide media throughout the 50s, and it was not until the 60s that a series of reports by investigative journalists brought the program to light.

8. Operation Gold

The tapped telephone wires are presented to the press.

One of the most audacious intelligence operations of the Cold War was 1953’s Operation Gold, which was a joint effort between the CIA and the British MI6 to hack into the phone lines of the Soviet headquarters in East Berlin. This required the construction of a massive 450-meter long tunnel that would intersect with an underground telephone junction. Just preparing the tunnel took six months, and involved a substantial amount of risk and subterfuge. But when it was done, the CIA proceeded to carefully record as many as 50,000 telephone conversations over the course of nearly a year. The problem? A mole in British intelligence had tipped off the KGB about Operation Gold before the tunnel was even completed, and the Soviets had been feeding fake them information the entire time. In 1956, the Soviets raided the tunnel and shut it down, and the operation eventually caused a great deal of controversy for the American and British intelligence communities.

7. Operation Northwoods

In the early 1960s, when the Cold War was in full swing and fear of communism was rampant, a plan dubbed Operation Northwoods was proposed within the American CIA. In short, it called for the government to perform a series of violent terrorist actions in U.S. cities including bombings, hijackings, phony riots, and sabotage, all of which could then be blamed on Cuba. This would drum up support for a war against the communists and lead to an eventual military operation to remove Fidel Castro from power. The plan was drafted and signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presented to President John F. Kennedy, who personally rejected it, and it was subsequently abandoned. For years after, Operation Northwoods existed as a rumor, but it was finally revealed to be true when top-secret documents describing the plan were made public in 1997 as part of a release of government papers relating to the Kennedy assassination.

6. Project Pigeon

One of the most seemingly preposterous military programs of all time occurred during WWII, when famed behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner was enlisted by the government to try and train pigeons for use in a missile guidance system. At the time, Skinner was known as one of the major practitioners of operant conditioning, a system that used reward and punishment as a means of controlling behavior. With these ideas in mind, Skinner placed a series of specially trained pigeons inside missiles. A camera on the front of the missile recorded its flight path, which was then projected on a screen for the pigeon to see. The birds were trained to recognize the missile’s intended target, and they would peck at the screen if it was drifting off course. This information was fed to the weapon’s flight controls, which would then be changed to reflect the new coordinates. Skinner was originally given $25,000 to get the project up and running, and he actually managed to make some minor progress with it. But government officials were never quite able to get past the obvious absurdity of the program, and it was eventually shut down. Image credit: http://www.psywarrior.com/

5. Operation Midnight Climax

In the early 1960s, the youth culture of America was first beginning to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs like LSD, and so was the Central Intelligence Agency. Operation Midnight Climax was one of the government’s most ridiculous and illegal attempts to test the possible uses of drugs like acid by administering them to unsuspecting citizens. The program was run out of a collection of safehouses in New York and California. Prostitutes were used to lure young men to the houses, at which point they were given food or drink spiked with LSD and other drugs and placed in a room with a two-way mirror where their behavior could be observed. Midnight Climax was essentially an experimental program designed to monitor the possible tactical uses of psychotropic drugs and sexual blackmail in the field, but even within the Agency it was controversial, and it was shut down after only a few years. Most of the files connected to the operation were destroyed, but a few survived, and in the early 70s the files regarding Midnight Climax and many other illegal CIA programs were brought to light in a famous story by the New York Times.

4. The Stargate Project

The $20 million Stargate Project was a blanket term used to describe a large number of psychic experiments and investigations undertaken by the U.S. government between the 70s and 90s. The biggest goal of the Stargate Project was to investigate the scientific probability of “remote viewing,” which is the psychic ability to witness events over great distances. The program, which also investigated psychic abilities like out of body experiences and clairvoyance, tested subjects on their ability to predict future events and read hidden documents. The Stargate Project usually enlisted the services of anywhere from 3 to 22 subjects at a time, many of whom managed to test with an accuracy rating as much as 15% higher than the norm. Still, although some participants claimed to have correctly predicted major world events like military attacks and hostage situations, the program found that remote viewers and so-called telepaths were still wrong nearly 80 percent of the time, and in 1995 the CIA cancelled the Stargate Project for good.

3. Operation Mongoose

In the early 60s, communist Cuba became one of the major battlegrounds of the Cold War, and its president Fidel Castro came to be considered one of the most dangerous political figures in the world. After early attempts to overthrow Castro by force failed, the CIA instituted Operation Mongoose, which was a secret war of propaganda and sabotage designed to remove the Cuban leader from power. Operation Mongoose had a remarkably wide scope, and included plans to fake attacks on Cuban exiles, provide arms to opposition groups, and destroy Cuba’s crop of sugarcane. It also included several attempts to either assassinate or discredit Castro in the press, each of which was more elaborate and ridiculous than the next. The Agency considered, among other things, poisoning Castro’s personal supply of cigars, planting explosives disguised as seashells in his favorite swimming spots, and injecting him with a deadly chemical from a hypodermic needle disguised as a pen. Even more bizarre were the plans to discredit Castro in the public eye, which included a proposal to spray a TV studio with hallucinogens prior to one of the leader’s televised speeches, and even planting chemicals in his clothes that would cause his famous beard to fall out. The near-disaster of the Cuban Missile Crisis put Operation Mongoose on hold, and following an agreement between Kennedy and the Soviets, it was more or less abandoned.

2. Project MKULTRA

One of the most downright creepy government programs and the fodder for countless conspiracy theories, Project MKULTRA was a sweeping and top-secret CIA program started in the early 1950s that included experiments in “chemical interrogation” and mind control. In short, MKULTRA was a plan that sought to use drugs, psychological stress, and bizarre interrogation methods to get information, control behavior, and even alter brain function. To this day, much of the information on the project remains classified, but what we do know is that the program involved the testing and interrogation of private citizens—often without their knowledge or consent—in the service of discovering whether or not certain drugs could be used as truth serums. This included giving subjects large doses of LSD, amphetamine, and mescaline, as well as shock therapy. In one case, subjects were supposedly dosed with acid for 77 days straight in an attempt to test the effects of long-term exposure to the drug. Conspiracy theories abide about the real goals of the project, with some saying it was a program to engineer zombie assassins through mind control and brainwashing. Some information about MKULTRA was finally brought to light in the early seventies, when news reports about CIA abuses of power led to a Congressional commission. The project was subsequently shut down, but many people claim that similar CIA programs still exist to this day.

1. The Bay of Pigs Invasion

For sheer absurdity, wastefulness, and infamy, few CIA projects compare to 1961’s failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. The program was one of the first and boldest attempts to overthrow communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro, but it was also the most disastrously unsuccessful. It started in 1960, when the CIA, under the authorization of the President, began planning an attempted overthrow of the Cuban government. In order to eliminate any link to the U.S., the attack was to be perpetrated by an army of Cuban exiles specially trained by the CIA. After a series of diversionary air strikes, on April 17, 1961, a group of amphibious troop transports landed on a beach in the Bay of Pigs and began unloading their cargo of 1,300 exile guerillas. The plan was for them to rendezvous with a smaller band of paratroops to be dropped soon after their arrival, but from the beginning their plan was tragically mistimed. For starters, Cuban intelligence was already aware of the planned invasion, and this meant that when the exile troops landed they were almost immediately under attack. To add to the force’s problems, bad weather, coral reefs, and the Cuban swamps quickly claimed most of their equipment. All told, an estimated 2,000 Cubans died during the invasion, while over 100 members of the exile army were killed in action. The remaining 1,200 were captured and imprisoned, and some were later executed on the orders of Castro. Over a year later, the rest were freed in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine for Cuban people. The effects of the Bay of Pigs were far reaching. Several American officials resigned over their involvement in it, and many have credited it with increasing the resolve of the Cuban government and encouraging a severe distrust of American foreign policy in the years that followed.

In the short time since the article Obama’s Health Insurance Bailout Bill of 2009 was posted, several people have commented on it, both here, in private messages, and in various other places around the web. This article is in response to some of those comments.

The question often posed is this: Exactly why was single payer taken “off the table”?

When the Obama administration came into office, the talk was that Single Payer was "not on the table" because some of the important "stakeholders" in health care reform opposed it and that passing single payer was unfortunately not in the cards. After all, we have to be “pragmatic” and do what’s politically possible.

Now just who were those "stakeholders"?

Why, they were those very selfsame health insurance companies, those pharmaceutical companies, and the big HMO/hospital chains who had profited by creating the malady in the first place and who now stand to gain beaucoup bucks when the proposed cure is administered! They want to benefit from both causing and curing the disease!

Well Duh! What a bleeding coincidence! We might just as well let the bank robbers design the bank’s security system!

Remarkably enough, the ordinary American patient certainly does not seem to have counted much as one of the stakeholders. If the ordinary American patient had been among the stakeholders, single-payer would have been more seriously considered and probably adopted.

After all, in one stroke, single payer would both eliminate the problem of uninsured/underinsured, lower costs substantially, and drastically simplify the administration of health care.

So then why has this option not been seriously considered?

As I have written in various venues since before the presidential campaign of 2008 got underway, the Democratic and Republican parties both represent different factions of America’s corporate rulers.

In reality, the United States government is actually a plutarchy, a system where a privileged wealthy class has political power. As a matter of fact, the United States was designed to be a plutarchy from its very beginning when owning property (as well as being a white man, not being a woman, and being a landowner) were requirements for even being able to vote.

But because of the historical peculiarities by which the United States came into existence, its birth in revolutionary upheaval, its political traditions of struggle, and the civil war of 1861-1865, the USA also has certain democratic features in its political system.

Thus, we Americans have elections, where we get to choose which representative of which big business faction rules us.

We also currently have a certain and not insubstantial right to freedom of speech, although at certain historical junctions, the government has circumscribed this right considerably, sometimes by legal enactments, and other times through extralegal means.

Nevertheless, since its very beginning, the American system of government has always restricted power to the representatives of capital and wealth. And that’s why the "stakeholders" at the bargaining table did not include the ordinary patient.

Liberal Politicians, Conservative Politicians, Their Allies and Stalking Horses

Liberal politicians like Obama tend to say they’re for the common person, by which they mean those of us who are not among the owners and controllers of the American economy, the owner class being, after all, a very tiny minority of the population. These liberal politicians often agonize over the unfortunate, the poor, the laid-off worker, the uninsured cancer victim, the homeless, the victims of our present system. These liberal politicians are sometimes a bit uncomfortable with the less appetizing effects and suffering that modern American capitalism inflicts on a substantial number of us ordinary Americans.

Conservative politicians, on the other hand, tend to be blind to such negative fallout. Conservative spokespeople may sometimes engage in a bit of denial (“nobody goes hungry in America,” “global warming is a hoax,” “second-hand cigarette smoke is harmless”), or they tell such hapless people to just to suck it up and get over it, show initiative, pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

If an individual suffers financial misfortune, it’s likely their own fault. If they can’t afford health insurance because their preexisting condition make them ineligible or make the premiums too high, conservative  politicians scold them for the unhealthy lifestyle that brought on this state of affairs.

These conservatives preach "discipline," preach “self-reliance” to those unfortunates who lose their jobs and homes, and they don’t like political solutions that rock the boat too much, especially if those solutions threaten some corporation’s profit margin.

As it happens, these Republican and conservative politicians have allies, not always reliable, but their zeal can be manipulated with clever public relations.

The Small “L” Libertarian-Leaning Crowd

One such ally is the libertarian-leaning crowd.

These libertarian allies tell us that the problem is actually a lack of "pure capitalism," (by which they mean an extreme Utopian form of laissez faire capitalism that historically has never existed, never can exist, and never will exist).

All would be well, these libertarian dogmatists tell us, if only we just allowed capitalism to function in an unfettered manner. This unfettered manner includes no regulatory interference by pointy-headed social engineers, government agents, "liberals," antitrust enforcement officers, environmental safety enforcement officers, health and safety regulators, labor relations boards, or other such "statists." And to them, all such “statists” are no more than socialists, i.e. “the left.”

Big corporations who don’t much like regulations tend to fund libertarian think tanks while keeping a diplomatic distance from the shriller and more ridiculous-sounding libertarian spokespeople.

The "Cons"

But the Republicans and conservative politicians have yet another stalking horse, one that is much more dangerous, both to them and their opponents, a force much more unruly and potentially uncontrollable. Those are the extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists, whom I shall call the “cons” for short.

These cons tend to be hugely paranoid about some usually secret cabal of bogeymen. The cons are sure to a moral certainty that these dastardly bogeyman pursue a nefarious plot, a foreign ideology.

These bogeymen are supposedly infiltrating our society, our schools, our churches, the mass media, our other institutions, corrupting the moral purity of our youth, of our nation—and all this under our very noses, unnoticed by all except these very perceptive and aware cons themselves, who are only too happy enlighten us if only we have the wit to pay them any heed at all!!

And those who would pay them no heed are either elitists, stupid, naive, arrogant, or complicit in the plot!

Depending on which hobbyhorse a particular group of cons rides, these bogeymen may consist of underground cells of terrorists, Muslims, socialists, militant homosexuals, atheists, Jews, communists, labor unionists, the antichrist, outside agitators, carpetbaggers, or some other bevy of wicked rogues.

As the cons tell us, it is these evil plotters, these swine, these semi-humans, not the corporations, not the traditional social system, and certainly not capitalism itself, that is at the root of society’s problems.

The study of the last 250 years of American history provides the student a rich vein of material about conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, and those denizens of their terrifying nightmares, the bogeymen.

To many of today’s cons, Obama is the quintessential super-bogeyman, a secret Muslim/fascist/communist/Nazi, and a foreign-born pretender to the American throne to boot!

Yet for all their yammering about how Obama is bringing socialism to America, what he’s really doing is attempting to save capitalism from its own folly by enabling the big corporations to survive.

After all, this health insurance reform is actually a bailout of the health insurance industry. It forces 40 million uninsured Americans to become their customers, willing or not.

Additionally, the Obama administration gave millions more to  the banking industry in another bailout, millions more to the the auto industry in yet another bailout. And now they’re talking about billions more in yet more bailouts. And the bailout money comes from the pockets of American workers, who are the real creators of America’s wealth.

If socialism is such a danger to the existence of capitalism, isn’t it an odd and counterintuitive spectacle to see these “socialists” draining the wealth of American working class to bail the capitalists out of a capitalist crisis brought on by the stupidity and greed of that capitalist class itself!

Regards,

Alan OldStudent

References & Credits:

1. Link to article entitled “Obama’s Health Insurance Bailout Bill of 2009”. http://wp.me/pGUvK-2d
2. Wikipedia article on Plutarchy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutarchy
3. Anonymous painting: George Washington Rallying His Troops in the Battle of Princeton: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6c/GeorgeWashington_BattleofPrinceton.jpg
4. Wikipedia article explaining American English concept of "Bogeyman." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogeyman
5. Drawing of the "Chupacabras," a Mexican entity similar to the Bogeyman, drawn by a Mexican artist and contributor to the Spanish Language Wikipedia whose pen name is LeCire: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Chupacabras.JPG

Most of the statements in the article are true.Antichrist concept,Illuminati are true, they exist;as to their plotting and directing world affairs are fodders for Robert Ludlums and Don Browns.If you carefully see their plot development you can see their ability to make you believe what they project may be true;therein lies their creativity,But nothing more.
At the same time you can not dismiss Ouija board,Talking with the dead,UFO,UMO,Etheric travel and the like for these phenomena are documented and needs research.
As for as free masons are concerned they are a group of people with certain beliefs and have certain rituals, so does every Religion.That’s all to it.
If even for arguments sake, if they want to change society by manipulation, let them try.After all Christianity and Islam has been doing so for years.
The paranormal pops up everywhere these days. In the last week, two different people have warned me against Ouija boards. In a video posted on YouTube, Richard Heene—who pretended a few weeks ago that his son was trapped in a runaway weather balloon—ponders the question of whether Hillary Clinton is one of those bloodthirsty, shape-shifting, humanoid alien “reptilians” that conspiracy theorists believe are planning a global takeover. At least three different ghost-hunting reality shows are currently airing on cable, all of them featuring muscular dudes storming down hallways in deserted schools and jails clasping electronic recording devices and howling, “Did you hear that?!”

This is hardly the first time in history that people have suddenly started spouting prophecies and speaking with the dead. These fads come in waves, usually fostered in the wake of unbearable tragedy. What else to do about earthquakes, floods, epidemics, dictators and wars than wonder which demon or deity devised this living hell and why, and what sacrifice or sorcery might make it stop? It is always fear and despair that sets us on this train of thought. During a gold rush or when we’ve just been given a clean bill of health, we need not believe in magic.

In the Black Death-ridden Middle Ages, chilled and starved by a climate shift now known as the Little Ice Age, Europe became obsessed with the body parts of saints. Crystal-encased, gem-bedecked bones and hanks of hair and half-mummified fingers, heads and hearts were credited with curative powers. Pilgrims packed cathedrals housing so-called holy relics, sometimes trampling the sick and weak during stampedes. Centuries later, the occult became the next big thing again as World War I and the 1918 flu epidemic found seances filling entire auditoriums around the world. Yet another paranormal paroxysm crested in the early 1970s: Think Watergate, Vietnam and the post-’60s awareness—a tragedy for some—that nothing would ever be the same again.

And now: Twin Towers. Financial collapse. War. Flood. The H1N1 virus is our plague.

Or is it? “In recognition of the continuing progression of the pandemic, and in further preparation as a nation,” as he put it, Barack Obama declared a national state of emergency on October 23. This declaration allows the federal government to waive certain requirements regarding prevention and treatment procedures because “the potential exists for the pandemic to overburden health care resources in some localities,” Obama said.

But the folks at AntichristIdentity.com would probably say this is just his latest step in “progressing the Antichrist system that is gathering pace after the recent world economic upheaval”—a system that “implicates not only Barack Obama but also Javier Solana of the European Union, Prince Charles of Wales, Queen Beatrix of Netherlands and Prince Hassan of Jordan,” a “power bloc” that “will drive the Antichrist world government.” The folks at BeastObama.com call it “amazing stuff going on here, right before our eyes … and it fits the pattern set out in Revelation 13.”

Every paranormal paroxysm involves politics. That’s only natural. We cannot help but brood about whomever rules the world. Is their might the result of keen diplomacy—or sigils chiseled into halls-of-power floors? Who’s really in that entourage? We cannot help but wonder as, joking-but-not-quite-joking, we doodle cartoons of George W. Bush with devil horns.

It’s all about control, as that’s what wizards, angels, demons, gods and elected officials wield. Is it such a long leap from superpower to supernatural?

Rumors of a secret cabal plotting to create a New World Order have been swirling almost ever since the Old World Order began. The nature of these shady puppeteers depends on who’s doing the worrying. Jews have been evergreen suspects, whether it’s the Elders of Zion or my penniless ancestors slogging through the Polish mud. Secret societies such as the Knights Templar and Freemasons stoke automatic fear: What are they doing in there?

As initiated members of a nondenominational, multiracial, all-male society whose origins are veiled in mystery but was probably founded in the late 16th century, Freemasons base their symbology on the tools of traditional stonemasons and allude, in their top-secret, tell-no-tales rituals, to the building of the Temple of Solomon. They wear lambskin aprons and do things with compasses, and they’ve been blamed for darn near everything. The Vatican officially condemned the brotherhood in 1738 for being “as political as they were religious,” writes Jay Kinney in The Masonic Myth: Unlocking the Truth About the Symbols, the Secret Rites, and the History of Freemasonry (HarperOne, 2009). And even though George Washington, Paul Revere and Benjamin Franklin were all Masons (lending support to rumors that the Boston Tea Party was a Masonic plot), America’s first third party was the Anti-Masonic Party. It was founded in 1826 and four years later, Kinney tells us, 124 different anti-Masonic newspapers were thriving.

Like others before and after him, Adolf Hitler believed that Freemasonry was a Zionist front. Railing against “the international world Jew” in Mein Kampf, he conjectured that “to strengthen his political position … the governing circles and the higher strata of the political and economic bourgeoisie are brought into his nets by the strings of Freemasonry. … The prohibition of Masonic secret societies,” Hitler predicted, would silence “the hissing of the Jewish world hydra.”

Article 22 of the Hamas Covenant repeats the Jewish/Mason claim, and then some: “With their money, they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies.” Other conspiracy theorists charge the Masons with faking the moon landing, worshiping Satan and assassinating JFK.

“Within the thriving subculture of present-day born-again Christianity,” writes Kinney, a longtime Gnosis magazine editor and 32nd-degree Knight Commander Court of Honor in Freemasonry’s Scottish Rite, “anti-Masonic books are a mainstay,” thanks to evangelists such as Pat Robertson, who has called the brotherhood “a mystery religion designed to replace the old Christian world order of Europe and America.” Kinney mocks those “legions of anti-Masons, most of them superstitious believers in the occult as a demon-infested quagmire,” who “shiver dramatically as they hawk their books and videos.” He also notes that British conspiracy theorist David Icke, the most famous proponent of the reptilian concept, posts material at his Web site alleging that “there are secret tunnels beneath every Masonic lodge to facilitate reptilian rendezvous.” Yet Kinney insists that Freemasonry’s origins were neither alien nor occult: “Rather, it seems to have been an attempt to create a nucleus of men of goodwill, over and above fractious religious conflicts, using the motifs and symbols of temple building as working tools both for the deepening of the individual soul and for building an archetypal temple to the Most High in the collective imagination of humanity.”

Okay, but what are they doing in there? And are they or are they not intertwined with the Illuminati, a soooopersecret club founded in Germany in 1776 and modeled on the Masons but which Kinney claims disbanded in the 1780s but which conspiracy theorists insist still thrives, boasting such members as Barack Obama and both Bushes. “All this chaos, genocide, ethnic cleansing and the overall disasters have a genuine purpose,” we read at Illuminati-News.com:

“It is all very carefully planned by a few people, mostly men, behind the scenes, high up in the society. … These people on top, who basically are of Royal Bloodlines, is currently working on reducing the world population in order to easier maintain their control. … So who are those people I am talking about? They are basically 13 super wealthy families and their off-shoots, with the European Nobility on top, and their fellow travelers are the International Bankers. Their bloodlines go back in time—way back to old Babylon and further.”
http://www.alternet.org/media/144571/why_we’re_fascinated_by_the_paranormal,_masonic_myths_and_secret_societies_/?page=entire