The Irrefutable Case for 9/11 Truth

June 28, 2009

Understanding the context

The goal of the 9/11 Truth Movement (hererafter “TM”) is for there to be a criminal investigation into potential complicity by the US government in the attacks of that day. Consequently, the baseline proposition of the TM is, logically, that there is sufficient evidence of government complicity in 9/11 to such an investigation.

This distinction, one that is rarely made, is crucial, since it changes drastically the dynamic of many of the debates that have been happening in the public domain about the subject. Given that the goal of the TM is one of illustrating evidence of a sufficiently significant gravity to warrant a criminal investigation, there are many “debunking” tactics that have absolutely no relevance any more. The idea that it is the role of the TM to prove the government’s guilt, for instance, is a common assertion that, with a moment’s reflection, is illustrated to be neither here nor there. It is not the duty of the TM to prove something so that it can then be proved. To state that there is an onus on the TM to prove the guilt of an accused party, regardless of whether it can or cannot, is as ridiculous as if one were to ask someone who is accusing someone else of murder to prove it, and only then can any criminal investigation into the murder take place. Since it is not the TM’s job to be judge jury and executioner, such arguments have no place.

A similar dynamic is true for another accusation, which is that the TM needs to construct an alternative scenario under which the attacks could have proceeded, one that is watertight, and covers all eventualities. This again, just shows a drastic misunderstanding the TM, and the entire dynamic of the debate. It is not the TM that is constructing an scenario to be defended- this is the job of the other side. They have drawn up a very intricate and improbable scenario that needs to be defended at every corner; a scenario that if there is one flaw, the whole tapestry comes crashing down. Though it is tempting to make hypotheses about who did what and when, this is something that I feel the TM should not get into too publicly, since it is not something that has any relevance. I don’t care who did what and when to WTC7, and the details are utterly irrelevant- all that matters is that I can show that there is sufficient evidence to illustrate that the government could have been involved, in a criminal way, in its demise. That’s all I need to show, given the goal and baseline proposition of the TM as outlined at the top.

Furthermore, one of the most common retorts, “Yes, but maybe it was just a coincidence/built that way/an off day for NORAD…” again, no longer has any validity whatsoever. Yes, I agree it may well be that nano thermite got into the WTC dust by accident, but the point is that this is a significant piece of evidence pointing to government complicity that needs to be part of a criminal investigation. Who knows, even a man carrying a smoking gun may have a genuine alibi, but does this mean that you do not perform a criminal investigation against him? Of course not. So the standards that are being demanded of the TM do not really represent a serious analysis of the situation on the part of any of its detractors.

A priori reasoning is also something that doesn’t hold. It is useless, logically speaking, to state, “It’s impossible, since there would have had to have been x thousand people involved”. Or, “Its impossible, since there’s no way a US government would do that to its own people”. It is not a problem to employ such axioms if you can prove them to be axiomatic. But how can you do such a thing with the above 2 comments- 2 of the most common a priori rejoinders to any TM argument? It is impossible, since neither of them hold axiomatically. Thus any serious analysis of the situation would have to avoid such prima facie arguments.

Deductive vs. Cumulative reasoning

Structurally therefore, the position of the TM is one that is essentially impossible to refute. Given that there are probably around 100 different pieces of serious evidence that point to government complicity, the job of an opponent is not just to prove that they each might be wrong, as has been the stance up til now, but that each of them stand so little chance of being right, that the sum total of all of the 100 or so accusations probabilities of having actually occurred is lower than the probability necessary for an accusation to warrant criminal investigation. This becomes mathematically impossible. To take an example, if the chances that NORADs inactivity was not indicative of criminal complicity on the behalf of the government was, for the sake of argument, ¾ and then you apply the same reasoning to just 20 arguments that the TM has proffered- very easy to list- then your combined probability of the weight of the evidence not being indicative of criminal complicity on the part of the government is 1/300. So in essence, the debunkers, once they have understood what the debate actually is, cannot but lose. This is because the arguments are structurally different. The TM argument relies on cumulative reasoning, which is to say that only one argument has to be true for the argument to carry. At the same time, the weight of the case is reflected by the combined probabilities of the total accusations. On the other hand, the government case is based on deductive reasoning, which means that only one element in the chain has to be wrong for the entire story to fold. If it was indeed the case that Dick Cheney told the young man in the Presidential Emergency Operating Center not to shoot the plane down, as Transport Secretary Norm Mineta intimated, then the entire rest of the government story (that is not contingent on that piece of the jigsaw of course) could be true, it would not make a difference- the government story would be wrong, and criminal complicity would be proven. If one can illustrate that that piece of testimony is sufficiently serious that it deserves a criminal investigation, then the argument of the TM has been sustained. And if you are not sure about that one piece, for whatever reason, then it is simply a matter of numbers, since there are so many serious accusations of holes in the government story, that the combined probability of these accusations makes any acceptance of the need for criminal enquiry essentially impossible to hold off.

The need to rebuild America’s Defences

To look at how this works in detail, let us take my favourite example, and that begins with the Project for a New American Century document. Now one thing that startles me about 9/11, is that if it is so simple for an amateur pilot to hijack a plane and fly it into the Pentagon, one of the most secure buildings in the world, well then why don’t terrorists fly planes into less secure buildings- surely this should be easier? Why don’t Algerian terrorists fly into the Algerian Parliament building, or some other such building? Why don’t Sri Lankan terrorists fly into an important building in Sri Lanka? These buildings do not have one iota of the protection of the Pentagon- why has it so far proved impossible to pull off? Why has this never happened in the history of mankind, given that on one day it occurred with relative ease, on not one, but 3 such buildings? The simple answer is that even in a tinpot security infrastructure, pulling off such an attack is very hard to do. So how did it happen in the US? In our quest for an answer to that question, it is useful to start with the neo-conservative policy white paper that was published in September 2000, exactly 1 year prior to the attacks. The document is called “Rebuilding America’s Defences”, and I comment on it below:

Basically speaking, this document, signed by a significant number of the men and women who would be charged with defending the US from a catastrophic terror attack on and up to 9/11, detailed that such an attack would in fact be propitious to US policy. This is because the document cites the need to create a new paradigm that will allow for a decades long shift in military and strategic radicalisation. With the threat of the Cold War gone, the US can no longer rest on its laurels as it did under Clinton- it needed to invade Iraq, overthrow Saddam, develop the capacity to fight 2 major wars at the same time, utilise space as a defence mechanism, utilise cyberspace as a defence mechanism, secure radical upheavals in defence spending etc. This, it stated, would be very hard to achieve “absent a catastrophic and catalysing event like a new Pearl Harbor”. Now given that such an event is close to impossible to occurring in a country with a tinpot security infrastructure like Sri Lanka or Algeria, the chances that it should happen within a trillion dollar security infrastructure, like the US, without government involvement, when the same government- in fact the people charged with preventing such an attack within said government- had effectively advocated such an occurrence only 12 months prior, are very slim indeed. Already. So the case against the Truth Movement, bearing in mind our precisions about burdens of proof necessary as stated at the top, is already looking close to insurmountable. And we have only just begun. What the administration did when it came to power- the lengths the administration went to to secure its election victory of Gore in 2000 now making more sense- was, within 6 days, to demote the main guy who was charged with preventing a terror attack who was not one of them- head of counter terrorism, Richard Clarke. He was fired, incidentally, one day after handing Condaleeza Rice a document entitled “Strategies for eliminating the threat of Al Qaeda”. And this 3 months after the bombing of the USS Cole, by Al Qaeda. As has been outlined in overwhelming detail by Paul Thompson, this was very much par for the course every single day leading up to the attacks. Even the 9/11 Commission Report states that Bush was given 40 Presidential Daily Briefs that warned him that Al Qaeda was plotting to attack the US. 40 times he did nothing. We are told that George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, stated that the threat level was “unprecedented”, and that he was running around “with his hair on fire”. And yet nothing was done in response. There is only so far that apathy can go before it ceases to become something passive and transforms into something active, and there is only one way to explain the active apathy of the Bush administration prior to 9/11 faced with daily warnings of a catastrophic terror attack against them- and that is, as we know, that the occurrence of such an attack was effectively openly stated policy. Once viewed in this light, the insouciance becomes perfectly normal, and things make sense again. Otherwise there is no explanation why an administration made up of some of the most hawkish figures in recent American political history, would not violently react to the idea that there was anything threatening national security- a rare legitimate use of the term.

If we just pull back for a second and analyse this data in the light of our earlier expounded framework of reasoning- it could well be the case that the pieces of evidence I have cited do indeed lead nowhere. It could well be that it was just a coincidence that a once in a lifetime event should occur 12 months after it was more or less wished for by the people- undeniably ruthless and unscrupulous people at that- who were in a position to make it happen. This I don’t deny. But I don’t care. The point is that one cannot look at that evidence and state that this is not sufficiently indicative of criminal complicity to warrant an investigation into such. That cannot be said, in any serious way. And we are just scratching the surface.

World Trade Center 7

It is a remarkable truth, that still so few people are aware of how many buildings fell on 9/11. It is the most rudimentary fact concerning the most reported on event of all time, and so few people know this. The fact is that not 2, but 3 skyscrapers collapsed on that day, the Twin Towers (World Trade Centers 1 and 2) and World Trade Center 7, a 47 story building 100 metres away from the twin towers that collapsed at around 17.20 on the same day. It contained the offices of Salomon Brothers Bank, as well as those of the CIA, the Secret Service, the IRS, the SEC, as well as the Mayor’s Emergency Command Center.

The story of this building is shocking. Shortly after the planes hit the towers, the entire building was evacuated. Barry Jennings and Michael Hess, 2 high level city bureaucrats, happened to enter the Mayor’s Emergency Command Center on the 23rd floor, found it deserted, and were told by emergency staff to leave the building. On their way down, there was an explosion within the building that blew up part of the 6th floor. This was, according to Jennings, a significant time before either Twin Tower had collapsed. They made their way down to the ground floor, where Jennings describes how it was “in total ruins”, as if from explosions, and saying that in the lobby, he was told “not to look down” by a firefighter, and that, walking through the lobby, he was “stepping over people”- the suggestion being, of course, dead people.

Jennings was interviewed for the excellent Loose Change Final Cut, but then asked for his testimony to be removed, due to threats he was receiving, and the shortly after, being interviewed for the BBC Conspiracy files debunking attempt, he reneged on his testimony. Shortly after that he was dead, in his early-mid 50’s.

The events he relayed all happened in the morning of 9/11. The building collapsed later in the day. There is, in fact, little need to go into the specifics of something so simple- watch the collapse for yourself, and you can witness that it is as much of a controlled demolition as you are likely to see.

The official explanation of the building’s demise, initially evaluated by FEMA as having “a low probability of occurrence” is that due to the fires that were set off by falling debris from the twin towers, and the water supply being cut off for the firefighters, the metal beams in the building underwent “thermal expansion”, making the building unsteady, and causing its collapse. Were this explanation one taken seriously by even its formulators, there is something very evident that we would see, namely a revision of fire and building codes for skyscrapers all over the world, since if a fire can cause a building to collapse at the speed of gravity, we had better all go and work in bungalows. Since this is not a serious explanation, there have been no such revisions that I am aware of anywhere in the world- the notion that a fire can cause a building to collapse on itself in the manner of WTC7 is just not one that makes any sense.

More sense is provided by witnesses to the collapse. Along with Craig Bartmer, Kevin Mcpadden who was one of the first responders that day, gives testimony that is devastating to the official story, stating that there was a countdown leading up to the collapse of the building. First responder Indira Singh also states that they were told to evacuate the area, since with regards to WTC7, “(they) were going to have to bring it down”. In an interview with an emergency worker broadcast on local radio on 9/11 just after 7 collapsed, we hear that “We heard this sound that sounded like a clap of thunder, we turns around and were shocked to see that the building was… ah well….it looked like there was a shockwave ripping through he building and the windows were all busted out… About a second later the bottom floor collapsed and the building followed after that.” Doesn’t sound like “thermal expansion” to me, but such testimonies were never made the subject of any serious media coverage, to say nothing of any official enquiry. Nonetheless, they are devastating to any support for the official version of events.

To add further fuel to the fire, the leaseholder of the World Trade Center complex, Larry Silverstein, who had purchased the lease weeks prior to the attacks, interviewed for a PBS special on the attacks, stated the following:

“I remember getting a call from the Fire Department Commander, telling me that they were not sure they were going to be able to contain the fire, I said, you know, we’ve had such a terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is, is, pull it. They made that decision to pull, and we watched the building collapse”

Now, there has been a great deal of misunderstanding by both sides of the debate surrounding this comment. Some members of the TM initially stated that “to pull” is industry jargon for “to implode”, which is not correct. Opponents of the TM sided with Silverstein’s later clarification attempt, when he put out a statement saying that by “pull”, he meant in fact “pull the firemen out of the building”. The debate has centred around the first interpretation, which is, in my eyes, totally misguided- given that Silverstein is not a demolition professional, the idea that he would be using demolition jargon, especially in a reported conversation with a fireman, for a public television show, is not very well thought through. The position from which one should be interpreting this comment, is that of a layperson- i.e. a non industry insider. If such a person were to hear that comment, it is fairly clear what their interpretation of it would be- that the building was brought down intentionally, by one means or another. Hence the consecutive nature of “making the decision to pull- watching the building collapse”. There is only one thing that pull could be referring to, realistically, and it certainly is not firemen. So Silverstein’s comment, when analysed intelligently, is another piece of evidence indicating insider complicity in the attacks.

This is not to state, as I have emphasised above, that the evidence given rules out all possibility of an alternative explanation. It may well have been the first time in history that a building collapsed by fire, while coincidentally exploding on the inside and its owner subsequently making suspect comments as to its demise; but it is this very fact that renders the probability of its veracity so unlikely, and screams for the need for an investigation into the attacks.

Very often, people point to official reports as support for their argument that the government was not involved. This is clearly erroneous, as since the government is the entity that is suspected of misdemeanour, pointing to a report issued by one of its agencies that defends its point of view is not an impartial way of viewing things. A useful thought experiment to do if one wants to analyse the situation impartially, is to consider if this event had happened in the country of a “designated enemy”, say Iran, and a building containing its secret service and other secretive agencies had collapsed in the same manner as WTC7, with the same background and motives for the attacks as the US had for 9/11, and what our reaction would be when Iranian government scientists came out and said that no, there is no conspiracy, nothing to see here. People just wouldn’t take it seriously. Yet when the shoe is on the other foot, and it is us who are the potential suspects, a government agencies defence of the government is seen as being something representing serious academic rigour. This is a level of double standards that needs to be obviated if any progress is to be made in our analysis of such situations. One prima facie refutation that is often given cited above is that the US Government would never kill its own people. But it is not a stretch to believe that the US government would kill 3,000 of its own for imperial grand strategy. After Hurricane Katrina, it is widely accepted that government apathy in the face of spending money to save poor black people led to the death of close to 2,000 there. So if that is accepted to be the case, is it really inconceivable that they would engineer the deaths of a similar number to ensure lasting power and hegemony for the foreseeable future? Not at all. We are aware that the US will willingly sacrifice lives of millions of foreign civilians, and thousands of its own military, to ensure its own global power, so when viewed in this light, and in the stark light of events in New Orleans, it becomes hard to accept the idea that 9/11 is indeed a step that the US Government would not go beyond.

Some of the other issues

How many more issues are there to go into? In every corner of the events of that day, there is something. This is the crash sight of United 93 in Shanksville. Does this look like a plane has crashed here?

Or flight 93, that hit the Pentagon. The flight was 30% full, and the passengers that were on board included members of Raytheon, Boeing, the Army, the Navy, the Department of Defense, Lockheed Martin, American Airlines, and other government agencies. Is this normal?

Is it normal that a plane, flown by an inexperienced pilot, should be able to crash into the walls of a 6 storey building, at 500mph, leaving no mark on the lawn, and leaving a 20 foot sized hole in the wall? Or that for a building which had dozens of security cameras around it, not one piece of serious footage has been released of the impact- footage that would put any qualms regarding this instance to rest?

http://www.mediacen.navy.mil/pubs/allhands/nov01/war18.jpg

Is it normal that, as is now peer reviewed science, that traces of a military incendiary that can be used to slice through steel girders, have been found in the dust from the World Trade Center Collapse?

Is it normal that there should be molten metal for weeks after the event on the site of the collapse of the building, “running like lava”, when there was, according to the official story, no elements that could have caused such a phenomenon?

Conclusion

If we return to our original proposition, which is that there is sufficient evidence of government complicity in the attack, I think it is hard to conceive that even given the limited number of instances I have been able to look at into depth here (given time and space considerations), that this is not the case. This is not at all to say that there is not a conceivable scenario under which the government’s story could hold. As I have been at pains to underscore, the validity of the TM’s case is not contingent on it offering judge, jury and executioner proof of the guilt of the US Government in the attacks. This is the job of an official investigative body, whose pursuits will be catalysed by the evidence that the TM is able, and has been able to bring to light. The job of the TM, and one that has been rendered very easy, given the evident facts of the day, is simply to illustrate the instances that point to likely criminal conduct on the part of the US Government. This serves as the basis for an investigation to be conducted.

Engaging in belief and understanding

The reaction of many people I meet to whom I explain some of these basic facts, is one of what I would call disengaged belief. That’s to say that they understand the facts, they are convinced by them, but the engagement in the belief is not there. This fact also explains the discrepancy between poll numbers- which show that around 40% of Americans are convinced by the TM’s overall case- but then the fact that the populace has not been out on the street in open revolt against what it has understood to be its criminal government. To actually engage in the belief means to fully comprehend its implications. It means to fully comprehend the nature of government industry and other power centres, and the lengths to which these entities will go to to preserve their own power. It would mean the drastic reevaluation of the images that we see on television and the internet of the leaders that we elect, and an utterly unpalatable realisation of our own implication and responsibility in the crimes our government commits. Such a radical reevaluation of world affairs is difficult for many people to swallow. As J Edgar Hoover said, “The individual is handicapped confronted with a conspiracy so monstrous, he cannot believe it exists”. This was precisely the phenomenon he was referring to. What handicaps the individual is the dichotomy between his current world view where leaders and power centres are essentially benign, if occasionally misbehaving individuals, and a reality where such “monstrous” conspiracies, implemented to further the true interests of power centres, are possible, logical, and do happen. They are indeed all the more likely to happen given the handicap of general members of the public, and their inability to engage in their belief in a monstrous conspiracy. It is just simple fact that if 40% of the US, 120 million people, engaged in their belief that the government needs to be investigated for possible criminal connections to 9/11, life in that country would become unrecognisable- precisely what it must become if justice is to be served. It is essential that when reading this article, the belief that gets engendered must by engaged upon- it is no use just believing it and setting it aside, and becoming another one of the 120 million who believes, but does not act. If you do this, you become part of Hoover’s handicapped public, that allows for future conspiracies to unfurl. This in turn allows for future murders, wars, and repressions. The issue of government connivance in the murder of 3,000 of its own citizens to launch a fraudulent war, the War on Terror, is not one that needs to be explained. Engage in the belief, actively demand a new investigation, and that way, not only will you be on the side of justice for the over 1 million who have died as a result of that day, but you will be involved in the effort to make such an catastrophic event less likely in the future.

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Posted by mjd1982

Home, by Yann Arthus Bertrand

June 26, 2009

“After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it has generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, I believe, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.”- Bertrand Russell

Yann Arthus Bertrand

Yann Arthus Bertrand

Click to watch “Home”

Yann Arthus Bertrand, pictured above, is a French photographer, renowned for his unique style of work. What he does he very simple, in essence. He rides in a light aircraft, far above the earth’s surface, and takes pictures of dramatic looking landscapes.

arthus-bertrand-yann-drying-dates-nile-valley-egypt-8200394

The power of this is twofold. Firstly, it grants the viewer a unique, and previously unseen view of the world in which he lives. The images are all the more striking, bereft as they are of signs of human activity, that with which we are surrounded and inundated day after day. From this unique vantage point, the Earth is depicted as an independent entity, something with its own character and traits, its own life force, and as an entity that exists independently from, and indifferent to the race of humans that happen to be living on it. The force behind the Russell quote that I put above is precisely that- it is the awakening to the notion that the planet is not contingent on human existence, but rather that the reverse is true, and we are but a violent blink of an eyelid in the lifespan of the planet.

arthus_bertrand_002

This brings us to the second key to the power of his work, which is that once the viewer has come to the realisation of the autonomy of the planet from Man’s inhabitation of it, he then, through Bertrand’s photographs, understands the damage that is being wrought upon the planet by Man. This damage is exacerbated in the viewers eyes, as he has understood the Earth as an independant and peaceful entity, and so the effects of Man upon it are essentially an assault; an assault by one entity that is dependant upon the survival of another, on that other. Furthermore, Bertrand is able to underscore this notion by depicting the harmony with which other organisms live on Earth, and contrasthing this with Man’s drastic inabilty to do the same.

arthus-bertrand-yann-gorges-of-the-bras-de-caverne-8200388

Although his pictures convey his message very well, he goes a step further with his recent film, “Home”. This is essentially a videography of his work, narrated in order to give a greater structure and clarity to his message. The genius of it is his ability to track the development of the planet using current images and locations, for instance images of volcanoes and certain types of landscapes effectively communicate the idea of the birth of the planet; his depiction of the explosive nature of Man’s last 50 years on the planet is very well illustrated through the violent rupture of the natural by the urban that Bertrand constantly employs.

yannarthus

The film is a must see.

http://www.youtube.com/user/homeproject?blend=1&ob=4

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Posted by mjd1982

How imposed ideology constrains human achievement

May 24, 2009

Whilst observing the young children of a family belonging to an orthodox religious sect not too long ago, it was hard not to be struck by a pretty sad thought. The life of those children is, in all probability, mapped out in front of them already. It was as soon as they came out of the womb. What schooling they are going to have, what ideologies they are going to subscribe to, what beliefs they are going to propagate, the sorts of people they are going to associate with for the rest of their lives- it’s been decided for them. No matter what the rationality or reason behind any of these factors, the critical faculties that would have allowed such infants to one day put these elements in the light and analyse them calmly for what they are will inevitably be disabled, and thus their life will trundle on, following the same prescribed lines that their parents did, and their fellow infant-soon-to-be-religious-co-ideologues will do.

Was it ever going to have been any other way?

A Mormon elder. Was it ever going to have been any other way?

Prescribed thought and values is the limiting factor here. If one considers the spectrum of human potential, the ability for a person to reach such potential will correlate positively not only with the physical and logistical freedoms he may have- i.e. the ability to have a good education, good healthcare, a safe environment in which to grow up etc. It will also correlate positively with the freedom of his ideological spectrum- if this is limited, then by necessity his chances of achievement are going to be limited too. The belief that the world was created 6,000 years ago is one that has placed ideological constraints on researchers for centuries; the notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun is another such example. So when one is bound by ideological constraints, then ones ideological spectrum is limited, and thus one’s potential achievements are limited too.

Copernicus, who formulate the heliocentric theory of the universe that underpinned much scientific progress that followed. Absent ideological constraints, such breakthroughs would have occurred much earlier in human history, and the progress we would have witnessed subsequently would be amplified accordingly

Copernicus, who formulate the heliocentric theory of the universe that underpinned much scientific progress that followed. Absent ideological constraints, such breakthroughs would have occurred much earlier in human history, and the progress we would have witnessed subsequently would be amplified accordingly

Such constraints can be either explicit or implicit- the final result is essentially the same. An explicit constraint is one that is explicitly imposed by some outside force. The interdiction on research that may be anti-theistic, for instance, is one constraint that has been imposed by the Church in centuries gone by. Or in Communist Russia, the labelling of people who opposed certain state policies as insane, along with sending them to a suitable mental institution, is another example of such. In 1983, a Russian broadcaster named Vladimir Danchev was taken off the air, and sent to a psychiatric hospital, for having called on the Afghans to resist the Russian invasion. Since according to Soviet doublethink there was no invasion, he was evidently insane. He was returned to his position several months later, with a state official stating: ““he was not punished, because a sick man cannot be punished.” In a similar vein, when Rosie O’Donnell, at the time one of the most popular TV personalities in the US, alleged that the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11 appeared to be like a controlled demolition, she was unceremoniously booted off the air, following an uproar on other networks, including the call for her to be hanged. These are examples of explicit ideological constraints on what can and cannot be said or thought.

The Russian invasion of Afghanistan- not an invasion, according to Soviet newsspeak

The Russian invasion of Afghanistan- not an invasion, according to Soviet newsspeak

Implicit constraints are possibly even more pernicious. In such circumstances, the proponents of such beliefs will be such because they have been brought up in an environment in which something- even the most ridiculous idea imaginable, such as a scientific basis for the Bible- is such commonly accepted currency that to think otherwise is tantamount to lunacy. Thus the mind will automatically shut out any other thoughts that do not correspond or agree with such pre-conceived concepts. This can be true of individuals, but more importantly it will be the case with entire scientific, academic, political etc communities. This, equally, restricts the progress that humanity can make since ideological constraints are self imposed upon the subject. The children of the extremist religious family mentioned at the start will be unlikely to grow up to be pioneering stem cell researchers, allowing diseases to be cured, or evolutionary psychologists, allowing us to better understand ourselves, or even artists with the ability to speak to the world, since their spectrum of potential output has been reduced so drastically that their lives can to a great extent be already mapped out from the womb.

What is the upshot of all this? Simple- whenever there is an imposed ideology, either one that is explicitly externally imposed, or elicited internally by more subtle outside pressures, then the potential for humans to reach their full potential either as individuals, or collectively as a society, gets restricted massively. And the consequences of this are unimaginable. If organised religion had not been imposed upon societies from since way back when, can you imagine where we would be now as a human race? If women had been allowed to work, if there had been greater equality and mobility between rich and poor, if all humans had had equal rights from the get go- by what factor would the human talent pool have been increased? How unfettered would the potential of humanity have been for how many centuries? The fact is that up until very recently, and still to a great extent now, it is more or less as if humanity has been progressing in first gear, so handicapped has it been by these ideological constraints. If these constraints had been removed, and people had been free to explore and propound theories and ideas without unconscious self censorship, or without external censure, then in many respects, humanity would have reached the stage of scientific progress that it is at today a very long time ago. Further, in terms of ideological and intellectual progress, if the frame of debate had not been so hampered by deference to inherited ideologies with no substantive basis, would humanity not be on a more ideologically sound footing? Were there not the need to pay lip service to established power centres, would human thought not be able to gravitate more towards what is good for people, and thus ideological progress would follow in that vein? I think this would surely be the case.

This is not to say that the ideologies that get imposed do not have a place in society. If someone wants to follow Scientology texts, or believe that capitalism is the answer, then that is their business. This is not so much of a problem. The only issue is when these ideologies get imposed- either on a collection of individuals, or an individual, even if that individual is the child of the proponent- that one starts to run into problems. No human being has the right to limit the potential output or the spectrum of achievement of any other person, even one’s own child- surely this is the greatest disservice one can do to one’s child? Surely they should be left free to flourish and find their own ideological path, rather than having one foisted upon them- is that not what a child’s potential is all about?

Scientology- believe it if you want, but don't expect others to have to

Scientology- believe it if you want, but don't expect others to have to

And is this concept, writ large, not what all of humanity’s potential is all about? Drastically denied the freedom to pursue what he might deem to be best, he is deprived of attaining his full potential. Thus the progress in scientific and other academic areas, as well as in ideological enlightenment has been so radically constrained in the course of human history, that what we have today as the manifestation of human accomplishment in any domain is but a pale imitation of what it could and should be, were it to be availed of the ideological constraints that put such a hamper on its progress.

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Posted by mjd1982

The unity that binds us

May 24, 2009

“We have got to understand that people in 3rd world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us
We have got to understand that they are us; we are them”

- Rachel Corrie, aged 10

“Why should we care about starving people in Africa? Because it is just by good luck that we happen to be living in the environment we do- we could just as easily have been born into the environment that they were”

- English school child, aged 11

When one talks of the unity of all existence, what is being referred to? The type of comments made above are taken as being fluffy, well meaning, but ultimately meaningless clichés by people whose sense of idealism overrides their sense of pragmatism. But I think that with deeper thought, one can understand a deep and substantive truth to the idea of a vibrant and important common thread that unites all people, and potentially all living things that should have some profound consequences for how we view the world, and how we behave towards one another.

If we take the quotes above, the idea is pretty clear. I am the person who I am due to the fact that I have been born into the circumstances I have- they have bestowed upon me both the genes that form the basis for my character, and the environment which is going mould my personality based on these genetic inputs. This is true for any person alive. In this sense, it follows that all people are merely reflections of each other- the best and worst people in the world are simply each other in different circumstances. If I had been born into Nazi Germany, I may well have been a reactionary anti Semite. Had I been born into the American Deep South in the 18th century, I would probably have been a racist slave owner. Had I been born into a poor family with an absent father and a destitute mother, maybe I would be living homeless on the streets of Paris. In any case, once this understanding is firmly embedded in one’s psyche, it becomes impossible to reproach anyone on any sort of a fundamental level for their outlooks or actions, because their outlooks and actions are merely a reflection of my potential behaviours had I been born into a different womb.

This man could have been me or your; you or me could have been him

This man could have been me or you; you or me could have been him

If this is true, then it follows that there is more to us than just nurture and nature, since there is another intangible element that allows for this notion of unity- this notion that we are all reflections of each other, that everyone is us in a different circumstance and we are everyone in our particular circumstance. This notion can be called what you like- humanity, possibly, but this is the unifying notion that binds us all together. It is the true understanding of this that will allow for empathy and love to take the place of separateness and hatred in human relations, since given that we are all reflections of one another, hating someone else is hating a part of yourself. The suffering and joy of other people are brought into relief, and this allows for a greater connection to and understanding of the human experience, along with all the fruitful and productive insights that this will bring. The accurate contemplation of our common humanity creates within us a greater understanding of human nature, a greater acceptance of people, the ability to rejoice in their joys and empathise in their plights, and will break down the illusory barriers that cause any kind of conflict or tension between people.

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Posted by mjd1982

Me discussing 9/11 at Speaker’s Corner, London

May 23, 2009

Although I haven’t spoken very much about 9/11 here, I do think it is one of the most important issues plaguing the world right now. If the public could be apprised of the facts regarding the attacks, I think people would see government and media in a new, more accurate light. I think they would understand the reality that governments are not interested in the people they are meant to represent, any more than is necessary to stay in power; I think also they would understand the symbiotic nature of media and government a lot better than they do.

Here is a clip of me discussing and debating the issues regarding 9/11, and its implications for our understanding of media, war, democracy and dissent, at Speaker’s Corner in London.

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/24640

The clip is long- 1 1/2hours- but is pretty fruitful in terms of facts evinced, as well as rebuttals and clarifications of various counter arguments. Listen to what of it you can,

Me speaking at Speakers Corner (photo taken from when the clip was recorded)

Me at Speakers Corner

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Posted by mjd1982

The Mysterious death of Barry Jennings

April 26, 2009

Alex Jones discusses the death of Barry Jennings, witness to explosions occuring in WTC7 on the morning of 9/11, before either Twin Tower had collapsed. An interview with him was shot for Loose Change Final Cut of him describing this, which he then asked to be removed since he was getting threats

Then he was interviewed by the BBC for their Conspiracy Files debunking effort where he reneges on his testimony

Months later he is dead. Work it out for yourself.

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Posted by mjd1982

Abolish gun rights- now!

April 14, 2009

The 2nd amendment to the US Constitution was made in 1791, included in the Bill of Rights and it states the following:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

This amendment is the most controversial and notorious of the 27 amendments, and arouses much debate as to its relevance in today’s world. Critics often point to the US’s position as one of the sole developed countries to grant gun rights to its citizens as evidence of this incongruence with commonly accepted basic principles of the rest of the world, including the US’s cultural analogues, and economic partners.

James Madison, the author of the US Bill of Rights, which includes the 2nd Amendment

James Madison, the author of the US Bill of Rights, which includes the 2nd Amendment


Nonetheless, the fervour with which the American right wing defends its “right to bear arms” shows no signs of subsiding, with the clarion call of “From my cold dead hands” being heard more and more nowadays, given the growing intrusion of the state into the affairs of civilians, and the consequent growing paranoia and insecurity, much of it understandable, regarding the individual’s position with regard to, and protection against, the state. This has been reignited most recently by whispers that the Obama administration is considering repealing or significantly restricting gun rights.


The late Charlton Heston, poster boy of gun rights advocates

The late Charlton Heston, poster boy of gun rights advocates


However, to much of the rest of the world, the notion that individuals should have the ability to purchase an instrument whose main purpose is to kill other people, is quite a shocking one. The US has the 24th highest murder rate in the world, and the highest of any industrialised country. It is of little surprise to people that this should be the case, given that gun laws in the US make it the country with the highest number of guns per capita in the world (90 guns per 100 people). So the two questions we are going to have to pose ourselves are the following;

  1. Does the 2nd Amendment have any basis for persisting today?
  2. Do gun rights in general have any place in a civilised society

The 2nd Amendment

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

That the 2nd Amendment is an utter anachronism is something that is quite easy to demonstrate. The key issue, is that the Amendment does not deal with the right to bear handguns, but the right to bear arms. Back when the law was framed, guns did mean simple arms. However now, arms includes anything up to weapons of mass destruction. Clearly, no sane person is going to advocate that anyone who can afford it should have the right to keep and bear WMDs. So instantly, we can admit the fact that the amendment is anachronistic. What is the logic behind this? Well, simply that the amendment was introduced for 2 reasons: firstly to protect individuals from each other, and secondly to protect them from the state. If we take the first of these principles, there is a very clear limit in terms of the military might that one needs to wield in order to protect oneself. A handgun will suffice to protect one’s house, family, ranch etc from burglars and the like. Thus when military capabilities extend that far, then we can strike an equivalence between state and individual rights to arms. However, no American will need to rocket propelled grenade to protect himself or his family. Thus we instantly have a disconnect in terms of an individual’s needs for self defence, and military capacity. The latter far outstrips the former. Thus no equivalency can be struck, thus the 2nd Amendment applies to a bygone age where military capacities were at the same level as human needs for self defence.

The second principle, namely the need for militias to have a means of protection against the state, is again, victim to anachronistic tendencies. Once again, while it is not desirable that the state should have the capacity to blow up the world, speaking pragmatically, increasing the number of entities who have this capacity is not a desirable thing, hence legislation like the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Given that Mutually Assured Destruction is not a principle that will or has brought any good to the planet, we would want to stay away from situations where lots of people have the capacity to wreak lots of destruction upon the planet. Once again, the principles for which the 2nd Amendment were framed, have fallen prey to technological advances which no longer make them relevant.

Thus we can conclude that under no situation should the 2nd Amendment, interpreted strictly, be applicable under any serious circumstances in civilised society.

Gun rights

But let’s be kind. Let’s forgive the issue of “arms”, and substitute this for “hand guns”. Does this make any more sense. To return to the basic principle cited by gun right advocates, why should one not have the right to defend one’s family with a gun, from vandals, thieves and murderers? Well, in principle, there is nothing wrong with this. Of course it would be nice if gun ownership could be restricted to just those people who are going to use it for deterrent or protective purposes. However, there are 2 key issues. The first, and less important, is that even amongst peace loving gun owners, there is a huge number of people who die by accidental gun homicide- leaving the safety off, hunting accidents etc. In 2001 this was 1,080 people in the US, which is 3 per day, and accounts for 4% of total gun deaths (homicides accounting for 39% and suicides 58%). That’s 3 per day, and is already equal to the total UK gun death rate (homicide, suicide and accident) for 2007, taking the population discrepancy into account. And the UK is hardly a model society for the avoidance of gun violence. So even in a peaceful society, gun ownership will lead to a large number of deaths, just by accidents. But the key issue, is that the corollary to peace loving people owning guns, is that there needs to be a law allowing people to own guns. The peace lovers will be at one end of the spectrum. However, at the other end, you will have disillusioned school kids who want to murder their classmates, and misguided gang members who want to shoot up the Kwik-e-Mart. You cannot have one without the other. Clearly you cannot sell guns to people with the admonition that this should only be used for self protection. So allowing guns to be bought and sold, means that they are going to fall into the hands of people who have bad intentions for such weapons. So the final question is where is the balance? In a society with guns, do they tend to fall into the hands of the peace loving types, or the shoot-up-the-Kwik-eMart types? Well, we have pretty simple and conclusive evidence relating to that. In a society where it is the former type for whom the impact of gun ownership is the most prevalent, the dynamic would be clear- it would be one of deterrence, since this is the point of those types owning guns. They have guns, and so no one is going to dare fuck with them. In a society where you have a deterrent dynamic that is prevalent, you should expect to see less of what is being attempted to be deterred- namely, less violence. In one where the violent dynamic in terms of gun use is more prevalent, you would expect to see lots of violence However, with 33 homicides per day in the US, the prevailing dynamic is clearly that of violence, and so we can conclude that the prevailing use of guns in the US is to inflict violence, not to deter it. Thus any claims that gun ownership will lead to a society with a greater degree of social justice can be safely confined to the dustbin.

A society which permits handguns will see them fall overwhelmingly into the use of gangs and other violent means, rather than peace loving types

A society which permits handguns will see them fall overwhelmingly into the use of gangs and other violent means, rather than peace loving types

One step further

But let’s take it one step further. How about the argument that if a policeman can carry a gun, then why should I not be able to? There are different levels of abstraction regarding this position, but on a broad level, it is not a point I think has much credibility, though it raises some interesting points. The fact is that the police are a service that exist; a service that we can probably conclude should exist in any normal and just society; and that their function is very simple- enforce the law. Now in order to enforce the law, it follows that they need to have certain means to do this- instruments, mandates, methods etc. Owning guns is just one method. Now, we can argue about whether the police have the right to own weapons, but that is a separate point. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But one cannot say, that since they have guns, laypeople should also have this right, since owning guns is simple a mean they possess in order to do their publicly mandated function. The appropriation of one such function by the public clearly has no basis in any clear reasoning- either the police have the right or they don’t, but they are the ones in whom the public has invested law enforcing authority, and thus law enforcing means- that is the agreement, and if one such means oversteps the line, the recourse is for the public to withdraw such means, not to appropriate them for themselves.

“The level of gun ownership world-wide is directly related to murder and suicide rates and specifically to the level of death by gunfire.”- Professor Martin Kilias

The 2003 study by is proof positive, if any was needed, that guns should not be allowed in civilised societies

The 2003 study by the Interregional Crime and Justice Institute is proof positive, if any was needed, that guns should not be allowed in civilised societies


The graph provided above illustrates all there is needed to illustrate, and it follows from common sense- the more guns you have in a society, the more people are going to die from gun violence. It is hard to see how this could be more simple. Insofar as gun violence is a bad thing, it then follows that gun ownership is a bad thing, and it should be curtailed. The philosophical, theoretical, and pragmatic reasoning for gun rights are in my eyes non existent, and although ridding US society of guns is another issue, if an effective and measured method of doing this can be found, then the sooner it can be implemented the better.

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Posted by mjd1982

Feminism- distinguishing between equality and identicality

March 30, 2009

As with any ideology, feminism covers a broad spectrum of different beliefs and convictions. Underlying it all is the baseline and indisputable principle that women and men are of equal worth, and thus should have equal rights. You will not find any sensible person disagreeing with that, though you will doubtless find many people disagreeing with that. However, as with many movements, I think that there are certain swathes of the feminist movement that have missed the wood for the trees- that is to say that they have forgotten what this baseline principle is that they are, and have been campaigning for. All too often, I think that feminists, and, more generally, women who strive for equal rights (not all of whom would necessarily call themselves “feminists”), rather than having their eyes on having equal rights to men, are instead focussed on doing the same things as men. These are two entirely different notions, and I think that the repercussions of mistaking the former for the latter have, and have had, some pretty pernicious repercussions on society.

Let’s start of with a truism. Men and women are inherently different. Due to biological differences, each sex has evolved psychologically in different manners to the other. Men, for instance, having historically been hunter-gatherers, have evolved in a way that reflects that- Bill the caveman is best able to ensure his finding of a mate, and the passing on of his genes, by exhibiting strong hunter-gatherer capabilities- strength, physical capabilities, endurance etc. Jane the cavewoman would have evolved a taste for men with good manifested physical characteristics, since such a taste would have ensured the survival of her offspring- she finds muscular Bill attractive, Bill being muscular puts wild boar on the table every night, and so their cute Neanderthal offspring survive without worry. Thus the genes that provoke this taste would be more likely to get passed on, and so a taste for well-muscled men develops in women. On the other hand, Bill the caveman has no need for a hunter-gatherer wife, and so there is no genetic advantage to his finding muscular women attractive. Where there is a genetic advantage for Bill, is his finding women with wide hips attractive, since such women are more likely to be able to give birth successfully. Thus Bill’s genes for finding wide-hipped women attractive will be more likely to get passed on than Bob’s (his caveman neighbour) for finding slim hipped women attractive, since when Bob copulates with a slim hipped woman, she will be less likely to produce offspring successfully. Thus Bill’s genes that find wide hipped girls attractive get passed on; Bob’s don’t. Further, we have what is called a “positive feedback” situation, where since not only does Bill’s genes for males finding wide hipped women attractive get passed on, but the genes of Bill’s sire, Jane, for females having wide hips get passed on too. And furthermore, Jane’s genes for females liking muscular blokes get passed on, as do Bill’s for being muscular. So their offspring will then consist of girls with wide hips who like muscular boys, and muscular boys who like girls with wide hips! They would have some pretty crazy parties those guys… In any case, this is the situation as we see it today- though there has been an evolution in terms of the overall size of “the ideal woman” throughout history, her waist to hip ratio has stayed pretty much the same (and don’t forget to distinguish between fashion models like Twiggy- not the “ideal woman”- and pin ups, like Beyoncé or whoever, who are more the analogues of past objects for male desire). Well-muscled guys have generally been the ideal for women. So this is just one example of a difference in behavioural dynamic between men and woman that is explained by biology and evolution (for more on this, you may like to read my earlier article “Evolutionary psychology and attraction”. It’s just one example, but you could go down the line using the same principle.

Richard Dawkins, whose 1977 work "The Selfish Gene" did much to catalyse the field of evolutionary psychology

Richard Dawkins, whose 1977 work "The Selfish Gene" did much to catalyse the field of evolutionary psychology

Now, since it has been established that there are inherent differences between men and women, the question is, what does equality between them look like? There is one answer that is pretty elementarily correct, and another that is equally elementarily incorrect. The former is that each sex should have the right to do and pursue whatever the other one does. The latter (incorrect), is that that each sex should do and pursue whatever the other one does. Note the difference. Given that men and women are inherently different from each other, there is no basis that their doing the same thing as the other is the optimum realisation of their individual potentials. Men have evolved certain capabilities that make them inherently better performers than women in some domains. In physical domains- boxing, football etc- there is no controversy about this. And now that we have illustrated the link between inherent physical differences and inherent psychological differences, then it also follows that in non-physical domains, the same will be true too. Let’s take an example: there is a reason why there is only 1 woman CEO of a Fortune 50 company. There is no doubt that institutionalised sexism has a role to play here. There is also no doubt that maternity pushes the numbers down too. But 1 in 50, and 20 in the top 500 (2006) is too great a gap, in my eyes, to be explained by those two reasons (though the second is certainly not unsubstantial). You can repeat this analysis on other domains- politics, academia, for instance. The problem is that too often equality between the sexes is seen as being the day when we have 50-50 representation in the domains of business, politics and academia, which is a notion that just completely fails to take into account biological differences, and the profound repercussions that they have on men, women and their capabilities.

Angela Braly, CEO of Wellpoint, the only female CEO in the Fortune 50. That she is the only one is not necessarily an indication of male-female inequality

Angela Braly, CEO of Wellpoint, the only female CEO in the Fortune 50. That she is the only one is not necessarily an indication of male-female inequality

But here is the rub. In the same way that men are more suited to certain domains than women due to their genetic development and makeup, logically, exactly the same is true for women. In areas such as human rights, activism, parenting etc, women are as far ahead of men as men are women in the domains highlighted above. Women have evolved the traits that give them an inherent advantage over men in many domains. The domains that I have listed where women have the advantage- caring, loving and looking after people- all are far more important to the advancement of the human race than those where men hold the upper hand- gaining market share, making profits, geo-political manoeuvring etc. But women’s prevalence in such domains is not cherished so much as would be their prevalence in the Fortune 500; indeed, it is virtually ignored. The pursuit of equal representation in the Fortune 500 is, in my eyes, seen as being a greater goal to strive for, than the natural prevalence in the other domains is one to be cherished.

Aung San Suu Kyi, an inspiration for human rights activists everywhere

Aung San Suu Kyi, an inspiration for human rights activists everywhere

Why is this? I think the answer is pretty simple. Given that the right to enter into male domains such as those that have been listed above has been denied to women for so long, now that they have the right, there seems to be a notion that this means that equality will only come when there is equal representation in these domains, regardless of merit. What is this notion based on? Nothing substantive as far as I can see, other than the natural recoil that comes from being repressed for so long in a particular domain, that could then cause a lack of perspective. Equality in my eyes in, say, an office environment, would mean equal access to jobs for men and women, and no discrimination within the company against women (nor men). But nothing more. I don’t see that representation should be based upon anything but merit; and I don’t see that the lack of equal representation means that there is discrimination taking place, given the profound differences that exist between men and women as outlined before.

As I said at the start, I think this has had some pernicious effects on society. I think that in pursuit of equality, women have in general shifted from spending time bringing up children to spending time working in offices, often in the name of financial expediency, but often also with the notion of the pursuit of equality being somewhat present. I feel that very frequently, the absence of the mother from the home will lead to a less stable upbringing for the child. This can be illustrated very simply. Given that there is a decrease in the amount of parental influence on the child, there is a proportional increase in other influencing factors on the child. What are such factors? Simple- TV, internet, peer groups etc. These sources, though occasionally beneficial, are usually not, especially when uncontrolled. So consequently, given the absence of the mother, the child is more exposed to influences that do not have his best interests at heart, and this affects his emotional development growing up. The result of this is everything that we see in terms of the explosion in juvenile crime and delinquency in recent decades, which I feel is explained by the increasing absence of mothers in the lives of children.

What is the upshot of this? Prevent women from working? Of course not. Circumstances differ- my argument has been to show what I feel to be the broad social tendencies. There are, as made clear in the article, instances where women do outperform men in traditionally male-dominated domain (hence the 20 women CEOs in the Fortune 500). Further, there are doubtless plenty of circumstances where the mother’s absence from the household does not result in out of control children. I myself would be happy for the mother of my children (whomever she would be) to work, since I am confident in my parenting abilities, and those of whoever would mother my children. I do not think that my kids would be negatively affected by having a working mother; there are innumerable people in similar situations. So circumstances differ, and thus offer an intractable argument against any mass prescriptions. The point is simply that equality is not simply a question of “doing the same as…”, and the inability to discern this can and has had highly negative effects on families, children, and society as a whole.

Women and men are different, this will never be changed, and such differences need to be embraced, rather than ignored, if either sex is to optimise its own potential.

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Posted by mjd1982

Governments don’t work in the interests of the people

March 30, 2009

Between now and 2011, the UK government will spend over £130bn on its military. Of course, the MOD likes to define this as “defence” spending, yet anyone with common sense, albeit uncommon, is able to see that this not defence spending, since the UK has not had to defend itself since 1945; rather it has attacked defenceless third world countries from Kosovo to Afghanistan, so the more accurate term would be “attack” spending. The only premise under which “defence” spending is viable is when it is applied as being spending in defence of elite interests- foreign oil fields, access to gas pipelines, and preservations of an imperial order in which the UK serves as the US’s loyal spear thrower. In this context, the epithet is entirely accurate, and it serves to illustrate the point of the title: in the same way that government defence spending is spending in defence not of the country, but of powerful interests, governments do not act in the interests of their country, but in those of powerful elites.

uk-budget1

We spend more on defence than any other country in the world other than the US (which spends more than all the other countries in the world combined), but why do we do this?


If the government worked in the interests of the people, we would see some pretty fundamental, but basic and comprehensive measures being applied. We would have an excellent public healthcare system. We would have a function public school system. We would live in a state where all people from all backgrounds could grow up in environments which would allow them to pursue and seize opportunity. The reason why this is not the case is not because the UK is “broke”, or in decline. The problem is that for every £3 spent on our decrepit healthcare system, £1 has to be spent on our military. Likewise, for every £2 spent on our failing school system, £1 has to be spent on our military. The gap between rich and poor is at its highest since 1968, as Blair’s Britain has instituted a swathe of ideological “free market” reforms aimed at helping corporations boost their already swelling coffers. So social mobility is at an all time low as, though the rich get richer, the poor, deprived of any real opportunity to extract themselves from their situation, get poorer. As Noam Chomsky alluded, the analogy is not just one of 2 runners, one standing at the start, the 5 feet from the finish line; but further, the runner who wins gets everything he wants, and the loser starves to death.

The job of government is to ensure that a country does not end up in such a situation where the majority are disadvantaged at the expense of the minority. If this is the case, then the argument that a government is not working for the interests of the people who elected them is self evident. We are not in a state where we cannot afford to extricate ourselves from the democratic deficit – the means are there. What is stopping us from doing so is being ruled by a political cabal that is systematically servile to the powerful interests that fund them, and thus systematically averse to providing for the interests of the people who elected them.

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Posted by mjd1982

The War on Terror is not about fighting terrorism

March 30, 2009

Last year, up to 125 people in the US died from food allergies. Over 10,000 people died from gun homicides. Zero people died from terrorism (or “terror” for that matter). Yet the US engaged in the seventh year of its war on terrorism, a war one element of which, the war in Iraq, has been estimated by Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, to have cost $3 trillion up to this now. $3 trillion! That’s a lot to spend on a war against a “foe” who has killed a grand total of zero people in the last 6 years, no? Of course the obvious fact of the matter is that the war on terror is not about fighting terrorism at all. The US has little motivation to fight terrorism, since, relatively speaking, its population is so unthreatened by it, and it costs an extortionate amount to do, especially when compared to the costs of fighting more significant causes of preventable death, such as violent crime. For $3 trillion over 5 years, the US could have paid for 20 million extra policemen salaries (over 5 years). It could have taken major steps to reducing poverty, the prime motivating factor in crime, and thus caused the violent crime rate to plummet. But the problem with these options is that they do not serve geo-political interests, they do not grow the empire, and they do not fatten large US corporations. An excuse for militarism and expansionism takes care of this perfectly, and in the absence of the “Commie threat” as an excuse allowing for military adventurism, the “Muslim threat” fits the bill very nicely in its place.

Norman Podhoretz, one of the earliest proponents of neo conservativism. He is now an almost fanatical proponent of bombing Iran, and calls the war against radical Islam "World War 4", WW3 being the Cold War. The reasons for his hysterical war mongering are rooted rigidly in neo-conservative dogma

Norman Podhoretz, one of the earliest proponents of neo conservativism. He is now an almost fanatical proponent of bombing Iran, and calls the war against radical Islam "World War 4", with WW3 having been the Cold War. The reasons for his fanatical war mongering and invocations are deeply rooted in neo-conservative ideology

One of the cornerstones of neo-conservative theory, formulated by Leo Strauss and propounded initially by Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz – disenchanted liberals- post-Vietnam, was that liberalism has its dangers. In allowing people complete liberty of thought and action, the interests of the nation’s rulers could be compromised. So the solution is simply to still allow this liberty of thought and action, but within strictly defined parameters that would not allow for overarching geo-political goals to be interfered with. This would avoid what the neo conservatives felt to be the catastrophe of Vietnam, and the civil unrest that was so prevalent in the 1960’s. The best way of doing this, would be to unite the nation under one common goal. The most uniting form of a common goal was a common threat; and if the nation as a whole could be brought upon to agree that it was faced by a massive external threat, then individuals could have the liberty they wanted, because they would never exceed their bounds and jeopardise the nation’s perceived security by interfering with this threat. And thus elites would be free to pursue whatever geo-political goals they wanted, immune from the threat of interference from a placated public. The first concocted threat came from Communism, in the 70’s a non existent threat that was hyped up by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary under Gerald Ford (1974-76) and Dick Cheney, Ford’s Chief of Staff. These same figures were to resurface under George W. Bush, and, with the knowledge of their previous experiences firmly in hand, they set about to do exactly the same thing. This time, there was no Communist threat, so the Islamic threat sufficed. This was outlined very clearly in one of the main neo-conservative policy documents, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (2000), where the primacy of a long term strategy giving the US carte blanche to project itself militarily in order to secure strategic resources was stressed by Cheney and Rumsfeld as well as Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Armitage, Scooter Libby, and other now notorious neo-cons.

Some of the now notorious band of neo cons, who all signed the infamous "Rebuilding Americas Defenses" document in 2000, a pre-script for the War on Terror, including the prescription for "a catastrophic and catalysing event, like a new Pearl Harbor" to set it off

Some of the now notorious band of neo cons, who all signed the infamous 2000 document presaging the War on Terror, "Rebuilding America's Defenses", in which a "new Pearl Harbor" as the catalyst for military expansionisl is deemed propitious

The US indeed grants asylum to some of the world’s most wanted terrorists. Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, currently residing under diplomatic protection in Florida, engaged in countless acts of terror against the people of Latin America during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, much of which was as part of the US’s Operation Condor plan which supported right wing military dictatorships throughout the hemisphere. One such act was indeed the bombing, in 1976 of a Cuban Airlines plane, killing all 73 civilians on board. Both were schooled at the notorious “School of the Americas”, a terrorist hothouse in Georgia, where Latin Americans receive training by the US in revolutionary and counter-revolutionary tactics, including terrorism, in order that they may, upon graduation, do the US’s bidding in the hemisphere. So the US has a pretty ugly record of housing, protecting and training terrorists, such that the notion that it could be fighting a war on terror is not one that can be taken seriously.

Orlando Bosch, one of the world's most notorious terrorists, living in peaceful asylum in the US, the country supposedly waging a war on terrorists

Orlando Bosch, one of the world's most notorious terrorists, living in peaceful asylum in the US, the country supposedly waging a war on terrorists

Finally, it is essential, and another piece of uncommon common sense, that war is terror. In invading Iraq, the US has catalysed 9/11 hundreds of times over on the Iraqi people. It has caused similar catastrophe in Afghanistan. The defence may be that they are going after the “bad guys”- a term which can be easily debated- but the inevitable truth is that for every bad guy you kill, you will kill 20 innocents- these are the irrefutable facts of modern warfare. Thus in going into war you are going to kill many, many innocent people indiscriminately to attain your political/ideological goals- the textbook definition of terrorism. War is terror, and when a military machine with the might of the US army engages in a war, then terrorism gets inflicted upon people on a scale which no terrorists could ever hope to achieve.

War is terror

War is terror

This is common sense, and the sooner it is accepted into public consciousness in this country, the better it will be for people, no less innocent, or with no less right to peaceful lives than us, in strategically important countries for our government, who will be murdered by US/UK government terrorism in the name of a “war on terror”.

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Posted by mjd1982

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