Define Necessity
911
A lot of people say that they don’t believe 9/11 was an inside job without really saying why or else saying that a conspiracy on that scale could never be covered up. They don’t examine or even listen to the evidence because they think there is no need. Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth clearly has a lot of very reputable people raising very good questions about the official story; dismissing their concerns without considering them makes no sense.
Dr Graeme MacQueen makes the point that the official narrative that became established very early after the 911 event but we have been given no real evidence for that narrative.
Digitising Democracy
‎”Imagine being able to go to one website to see the best arguments for and against every issue, with links to support or refute every factual claim. And imagine that professional arbitrators would score each argument. A good judge can believe a defendant is guilty and still rule that the prosecutor didn’t make his case. Arguments can be graded for context, accuracy and logic. Citizens need that sort of help because we’re not good at sorting the good arguments from the bad.”
Interesting idea from Scott Adams in the Wall Street Journal. Might be a good project there.
Inside Job
Untitled from harisgr on Vimeo.
‘Inside Job’ provides insight into how irresponsible, unethical and illegal practices in the financial sector led to the global economic crisis of 2008. The documentary focuses on Wall Street but I’m pretty sure a lot of this applies to London.
Robert Fisk draws a parallel between the protests against Arab dictators and the Occupy protests against the financial dictators in the west:
The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against “governments”. What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people’s power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of “experts” from America’s top universities and “think tanks”, who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalisation rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.
The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop decade after decade to anoint their own national property owners.
Source: The Independent.
The film, and Fisk’s article, made me wonder why David Cameron is so keen on defending the financial sector and why the media seems to believe that he is wiser than all the other EU leaders .. actually they seem to like that he is ‘being tough’ but don’t know why (I listen to LBC a lot). Anyway I found some interesting thoughts on this blog: gregpytel.blogspot.com
US Spy Drone
Source: The Telegraph
Reporting from Washington— The Obama administration has sent a formal diplomatic request asking Iran to return the radar-evading drone aircraft that crashed on a CIA spying mission this month, but U.S. officials say they don’t expect Iran will comply.
“We have asked for it back,” Obama said Monday at a news conference in Washington with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. “We’ll see how the Iranians respond.”
Source: LA Times.
The US cannot seriously expect Iran to return their spy plane but they are too arrogant to be embarrassed by having been caught spying; they present it as their right and themselves as being above international and moral law.
Era
This is a nice video and a nice song from Era a New Age ‘musical project’. Their Wikipedia entry says:
They use lyrics (by Guy Protheroe) which although similar to Greek or Latin are in fact deliberately devoid of any exact meaning.
Maybe their videos and songs, similarly, sound meaningful but are also deliberately devoid of exact meaning. This sounds like a criticism but it is not.
Carlos Castaneda
A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.
The quote is from Carlos Castaneda; I found it on The Toltec Path website. I read two or three of Castaneda’s books when I was much younger, his second book ‘The Journey to Ixtlan’ is the one that turned me on to him. Castaneda presents himself as a student of anthropology who becomes the apprentice to a Yaquai sorcerer called Don Juan who teaches him ‘the way of the warrior’ using hallucinogenic plants to shift his perception of reality and teachings about the way of the warrior to help him deal with any reality.
Castaneda has been accused of making up the story of his adventures with Don Juan. But for me that’s not important. I was never very interested in the story. What interests me is the aphorisms that appear in the story and that constitute Castaneda’s teaching. I do not know where these aphorisms come from, but they are profound. They light the path to enlightenment and are worth meditating on.
Why Libya Matters
This testimony is exceptional. It suggests that the NATO assault on Libya was a tragedy not only for the Libyan people but for Africans and for the world.
Links:
Random Nonsense
‎”Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent “rights” of gang rulers.”
[Ayn Rand ~ The Virtue of Selfishness]
I don’t agree of course. Just thinking that maybe there’s a principle like this behind the NATO wars.
Rand also defines what she means by ‘dictatorship’:
“There are four characteristics which brand a country unmistakably as a dictatorship: one-party rule–executions without trial or with a mock trial, for political offenses–the nationalization or expropriation of private property–and censorship. A country guilty of these outrages forfeits any moral prerogatives, any claim to national rights or sovereignty, and becomes an outlaw.”
[Ayn Rand ~ The Virtue of Selfishness]
Execution without trial? Glenn Greenwald of Salon writes about the September assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki:
It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki. No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering†indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even had any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets†and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts. He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner. When Awlaki’s inclusion on President Obama’s hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.â€
One Party Rule? It is a prejudice to suppose that two parties dominated by the same ruling class is more responsive to the will of the people than a one party system. We have to look at levels of participation in the political process.
David Icke on Occupy
People are sometimes scared of David Icke because he is regarded as crazy but I think this video shows that he is an engaging speaker who is informed and informative even if we don’t go along with all of his assertions. Here he shows how the power to create money has created the power dynamic a minuscule number of people or families control the world. The Occupy movement calls them the 1%. Icke argues that they are manufacturing the financial crisis in order to consolidate power, that their agenda includes having a world bank, a world government and a world army.