Picking a Fight with Iran – Obama considers all options.

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

English: Iran فارسی: ایران

Image via Wikipedia

This provocation together with the British aggression (IRAN: THE NEXT WAR?) is reason to be concerned. Firstly about another war, probably a world-wide one, in itself an example of human insanity. Israel has denied their intention of an attack, perhaps reason to be cautious, but why would they admit their desire to fight Iran when they have the UK and US to do it for them?

Secondly, about the reason why?

This ‘anti-war’ post, by John Glaser, provides some insight into the madness.

Iran’s recovery of a downed U.S. surveillance drone publicized America’s ongoing covert war on Iran, a part of the Obama administration’s strategy even more bellicose than his predecessor’s.

U.S. actions towards Iran are being couched as an attempt to prevent their attainment of nuclear weapons, despite a failure to put forth a shred of evidencethat a weapons program is underway.

In a statement on Thursday, President Obama reiterated this confrontational approach with a popular euphemism for international aggression: “No options off the table means I’m considering all options.”

And many options are indeed being carried out. Antiwar.com columnist and former CIA agent Philip Giraldi wrote this week that sources have revealed to him secret presidential findings “authorizing stepped-up covert action” against Iran.

“A ‘finding,’” he explained, “is top-level approval for secret operations considered to be particularly politically sensitive.” President Bush had issued a number of findings authorizing “the use of intelligence assets to disrupt Iranian Revolutionary Guard” as well as one in 2007 that authorized “attacks against Iranian nuclear scientists” and the use of “computer viruses to disrupt the Iranian computer network.”

But President Obama has gone a step further. He recently issued a finding which “extends existing initiatives and is intended to strangle Iran by creating insurgencies along all of the country’s borders,” primarily by supporting Iranian dissident groups to conduct domestic terrorism and undermine the Iranian regime.

In addition to those efforts, according to the Washington Post, the “White House also has boosted sales of bunker-busting munitions, fighter jets and other military hardware to Persian Gulf states as well as to Israel, building on long-running efforts to boost the military capabilities of key U.S. allies in the region” in a broad effort to garrison Iran’s surroundings with provocative militarism.

The Iranian government issued a formal complaint and summoned Swiss ambassador Livia Leu Agosti, who handles diplomacy for the U.S. in Iran. Iranian officials said the U.S. drone they are now in possession of is evidence of espionage efforts inside Iran and that Iran ”strongly protests the violation of an RQ-170 spy aircraft deep into its airspace,” and asked for “an urgent response and compensation from the US government.”

Rhetoric from the White House and Congress remains aggressive and threatening towards Iran, despite being exposed as the aggressors themselves. Surely, if the U.S. had uncovered a number of Iranian spy operations and terrorism-funding programs inside America, Washington would be doing much more than issuing formal complaints.

So, there you go!

Read the article here.

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Bilderberg’s Roman Circus: Italian junta effectively outlaws cash

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

As Richard Cottrell says in the following ‘End the Lie’ post –

I have made the point already that the Monti administration looks very much  like a trial run in itself for future outings in like style elsewhere in Europe,  and possibly even the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

For the moment we have an experiment in demonetization which as far as I can  see has no modern precedents in the capitalist world.”

So do we have here an explanation for the current handling mishandling of the global financial crisis that otherwise makes no sense?  The start of something BIG! Private individual takes over leadership of a country! Drives the country into destruct mode! Does this send a shiver down your spine? New World Order??

When Bilderberg Man Mario Monti promoted himself to  regent of Italy almost three weeks ago, the air was thick with Valkyries warning  that should the great witch doctor fail to square the books pretty damn quick,  then not only would Italy go down the chute but she would take with her the euro  and the entire apparatus of the European Union.

It was nonsense then and remains so today. There is no Euro crisis, the end  of the world as we know it is not imminent – unless Angela Merkel and Nicholas  Sarkozy pull off their sinister scheme for full European fiscal union  on the back of what is nothing more than an entirely  contrived and artificial crisis.

If Monti expected to walk on to the world stage and win the Oscar for fiscal  probity, then he has been rudely disappointed. The great austerity package to save Rome  from the fate she inflicted on Carthage two thousand years ago received a very  loud raspberry.

In the words of one respected commentator, the  Italian cuts look like a token effort by the technocratic cabinet in the  hope that the ECB will ride to the rescue to lower bond yields, at least.

Perhaps, but I have strong doubts if that is the real story.

Something really big is cooking which may lead to a total revolution in the  use of money — first in Italy, then across Europe — buried away in the small  print of the fabulous austerity project, which we examine in a moment.

Yes, there are token cuts all right, although they are straight from the  typical Bilderberg austerity playbook.

Italians will certainly work longer for less. Real incomes will drop even further, squeezed by  refrigerated wage packets and biting inflation.

Crimping the public budgets,  especially in the provinces, will shaft many small business firms (the backbone  of Italy) who count local and regional authorities among their most important  customers.

The proposal that millionaires should pay more tax to dock their yachts in  Italy will have no more effect on the cruising classes than the first gin and  tonic as the sun sinks over the yardarm.

The reintroduction of the property tax – whipped away by Silvio  Berlusconi as a blatant exercise in electioneering — is I grant you, reasonable  and prudent.

But Sgr. Monti, was it really necessary to shove democracy out of the window  to achieve something so modest? For any incoming elected government  would have had no option but to bring back the tax.

Being Italy, there were theatrical dramas to accompany the plan to raise  retirement ages, in the form of a weeping lady minister appearing on prime time  television.

Welcome to the ongoing Roman Circus.

But all this is but smoke and mirrors to disguise the real thrust of the  unelected government’s program, and in all likelihood the real explanation for  the precipitate overthrow of the Berlusconi administration.

My impression is that the Monti cabinet is charged with nothing less than a  massive laboratory experiment performed on real live people to see if it is  actually possible to effectively demonetize an entire nation.

Let me explain what I mean.

A few days back I put up a post at End the Lie warning that fiscal  fascism might well take as its first priority the elimination of ready cash for  the vast majority of Italians.

Behold, it has come to pass: The Monti administration proposes to outlaw any  transactions in excess of €1,000 that are performed in cash.

Well, it’s not so much of a proposal as a diktat which comes into immediate  effect. The atrophied parliament  could vote it down in sixty days. But rest assured, they won’t.

Sgr. Monti says he wants to collect the taxes which Italians are  dodging.  This is a statement of such Himalayan remoteness from the  everyday lives of ordinary Italians, moreover uttered in the land of the Mafia,  one is inclined to at first conclude that a lofty remote career in the ivory  tower of a private university has divorced the good professor from any sense of  reality.

Particularly as Milan, his own home city and host to his prestigious  independent seat of learning, is in the throes of a massive gang war  between rivals formed by immigrant Albanian and Serbian drug traffickers and  their rivals from the Italian south. There are big pickings to be reaped from  the estimated 140,000 heroin addicts in what is now one of the major narcotics  capitals of Europe.

Accurate figures are of course impossible, but most educated guesses put the  turnover attributable to organized crime at approximately €125 -€150 billion, of  which narcotics account for the lion’s share. This is the equivalent of around  8%-10% of Italy’s GDP.

One is waiting with baited breath to learn how the professor-prime minister  is going to get a slice of the action, that is if he intends to bother.

No previous Italian government has managed to tax the Mob, which so far  preserves its evasive powers thanks to a massive network of corruption of public  officials.

The prime minister is a former advisor to Goldman Sachs, which as we all know  is to Bilderberg what the sun is to our solar system.

A constant goal of Goldman Sachs (aka Wall Street, the ECB and the City of  London) is to control as much as possible of all money in free circulation.  Since banks circulate electronic money, this leaves only one alternative  possibility for reflation.

And that of course is the money in the form of notes and coins which passes  between ordinary individuals and their daily activities.

Capture that and there is no need for the bankers to bother with reflating  their balance sheets by using money borrowed from the markets, or each other, at  inordinate interest rates.

The directive will mean that ordinary honest Italians will have no choice but  to move many of their transactions through the  banks, of which two — namely Unicredit  and Intesa Sanpaolo — have recently undergone strains connected to cash-flow  problems.

What a fantastic booster the automatic capture of all ticket items over a  thousand euros will prove!

And remember, if the banks have all your money, they can then decide whether  to let you have it, or not as the case may be.

The machinery to effectively ration money is already in  place, namely the hundred thousand ATM’s scattered across the country.   There is more interesting technology waiting in the wings, as we see below.

It is a very short step from there to Italians being cross-examined as to why  they want to withdraw their own money.

In fact, it has already been taken.

I recently heard news from Italy of a man who was rung up by his bank manager  to inquire why this customer was milking the ATM every morning.  The rest  of this story contains explicit language unsuitable for reproduction here.

Who has thought this through? How will Italy’s famous financial police, the  Guardia di Finanza, cope with the massive new load of work?

Even the present 68,000 officers, with all the advantages of their own  independent navy and air force, will be hard put to police sixty million  Italians and virtually everything they spend, down to the small change.

The additional costs will run into, well, billions. This is before we get  around to the work of the courts dealing with miscreants.

With all the skills and facilities at their disposal, the Guardia have failed  to dent the financial armor plating erected around organized crime.

It is a fair guess anyway that the gain in revenues will far outweigh the  additional policing and administration costs. Frankly I think the movers behind this  ambitious project care very little about that.

You see if you reflect for a moment, it makes a pack of sense from certain perspectives to pick on  a country like Italy, known for its traditional fiscal laxities, and then have a  trial run at demonetization on a huge scale.

It is also an enormous asset that Italy, practically uniquely, has a large  militarized fiscal police force, whose powers (including random stop and search)  are already highly developed.

I have made the point already that the Monti administration looks very much  like a trial run in itself for future outings in like style elsewhere in Europe,  and possibly even the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

For the moment we have an experiment in demonetization which as far as I can  see has no modern precedents in the capitalist world.

The tax gathering cloak is actually no more than that. The over-dramatized  Euro crisis brought the Monti government into power with almost unseemly haste.  Now the serious experimental work can begin.

Demonetization, assuming that it survives the initial hurdles, has  significant social consequences.

It effectively licenses access to ready cash. It acts as a form of social  manipulation because of the intimacy between banks, the international financial  oligarchy and large powerful bodies such as the European Union. It is part of  the unfolding destruction of civil liberties and private freedoms that flowed  from 9/11.

It means that the banks can, effectively, own and even confiscate private  earnings and deposits. This is a dramatic and significant departure from our  usual understanding of banks, poor as that may now be in the light of  events.

Of course seizing control of cash transactions will also avoid the drastic  run on the banks which is now occurring in the Bilderberg/Goldman Sachs province  called Greece.

In September and October, savings and deposits shrank by more than €13  billion as Greeks resorted to the security of the Home Sock and Mattress Bank.  In November the run continued unchecked, causing a prominent central banker to  inform a tame parliamentary committee, “Our banking system lacks the scope to  finance growth.”

He meant of course the tsunami of money fleeing Greek banks. I do not think  the foreigners who are now yet again in charge of Greece will allow this to  continue for much longer.

The navel gazers of the global financial commentariat unity are so utterly  mesmerized by the unfolding “Euro crisis” they are completely unable to think  outside the box. What is happening in Italy, and will shortly be copied in  Greece, is part and parcel of the Sarkozy-Merkel project of manufacturing an  artificial crisis in order to enforce full fiscal unity on the European  continent.

In the end, that is all about the digitalization of money, the second kick-in  from the demonetization process.

Real money will cease to exist as a tangible presence in your pocket or  purse. Instead you will have something like a pocket phone to make every  transaction, no matter how small, like a beer or a coffee in a bar. You can  recharge – as you are permitted – by the centralized computer.

Isaac Asimov must be looking down on all this with  abject fascination.

Money that works in cyberspace is easily within the reach of current  technologies. It is actually a bastardization of Friedrich Hayek’s  arguments for private enterprise money that he made in his famous book on the  subject back in 1977. The great master Hayek, perhaps the most brilliant  economist of all time, rightly feared the over-arching power of the central  issuers of currencies, which he suspected would end up with serfdom on a grand  scale.

So should we. Not for the first time, what Italy does today, the rest of the  world may be compelled to follow tomorrow.

Did I forget to mention that digitalization of money leading to a single  global financial order is a pet project of Bilderberg and Wall Street, which  undoubtedly topped the agenda at the St. Moritz Bilderberg summit this year, by  the look of  subsequent developments?

And of course, it would stuff the Mafia too. Perhaps Professor Monti has  already thought of that.

Read the original post here, together with references etc.

Thanks to TIP for pointer.

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Balancing the HISTORY books – Palestine

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

The “INJUSTICE” theme that drives this blog is indiscriminating.

If the blog becomes judgmental it is because it seems clear that an injustice exists and the perpetrator is likely known.

In this case, injustices undoubtedly are revealed, not ‘revealed’ in the sense that they are not already known, not perhaps even as injustices but certainly as historical events/human dramas .

The author Christof Lehmann has his ideas of the perpetrators, readers are free to be influenced without my further comment. Sufficient to say that on the whole, I see his article as being at least a good a coverage as any, and deserving promotion.

Palestine Israel History and Theirstory.

HisStory and TheirStory.

I hope that the reader will bear over with me for inventing the word theirstory, but if history is written by those who are victorious and powerful enough to position them selves and their narratives about historical events into acceptance by mainstream historians and media, then, what else should one call the narratives of those who have suffered defeat. Palestinians have suffered from being in the position of the defeated for decades. Their history is theirstory, the one that does not make it into the textbooks of history. When dealing with human beings and their emotional as well as intellectual frailties however, the fact that those who write history are the one that are victorious, and those who write theirstory are those who have suffered defeat does neither validate history nor theirstory. Both usually are “a” story, a narrative about a discourse, as seen form a particular perspective.

The language of political discourse is generally speaking, and by virtue of the nature of politics, dominated by attempts to position one self and others. From perceived positions derive perceived rights and privileges as well as perceived duties and obligations. Scapegoating is but one of the many tactics that are applied in the political game of positioning one self and ones interests in the most favorable manner, while positioning ones adversary much less favorably. Spin Doctors or Propaganda Experts are playing a crucial role; so do lobbies, economy, geopolitical considerations and a cohort of other factors one can easily identify. Sadly, the abuse of the language of the political discourse has contributed considerably to prolonging the dispute between Palestine and Israel. Decades of conflict, and unimaginable human suffering of both Palestinian and Israeli individuals, families, communities would not have been possible without eliciting a world wide demand to bring an end to the suffering; That is, if only it would have been presented in a factual manner; That is, if media and entertainment industry would not have been playing a crucial role in dehumanizing one side of the conflict, while eliciting the suffering of the other. A very well researched and documented movie produced by The Media Education Foundation, REAL BAD ARABS, demonstrates how badly Hollywood has contributed to positioning the Arab people as uncivilized, brutal villains, terrorists, and right out inhumane, or sub human (1).

In the movie, featuring Dr. Jack Shaheen, Dr. Shaheen documents that Arabs are being positioned as the most malign group in the history of Hollywood. Rightfully Dr. Shaheen is drawing the comparison between the way Hollywood has been and is positioning Arabs as sub-human, with that of the German National Socialists positioning of Jews as Untermenschen.(ibid.) In both cases, in that of the positioning of Jews and the inhuman suffering that has been inflicted on European Jews during the National Socialist Era in Germany, and the ongoing positioning of Arabs as sub-human, and the suffering of Palestinians, the effect of the positioning is a significant increase in general populations accept of politically motivated violence as legitimate means to solve political conflicts. This includes politicians who grew up with the stereotyping media and entertainment.

Dr. Edward Said

In his book “REAL BAD ARABS, How Hollywood Vilifies a People ” (2), Dr. Jack G. Shaheen looked at more than one thousand movies, from the oldest archives of Hollywood movies to the greatest “Blockbuster” movies up to 2001. Shaheen elicits the stereotypes that rob a whole people of their humanity. One could say that Dr. Shaheen is demonstrating on Hollywood productions, that what the renown Palestinian scholar Edward W. Said has described as “Orientalism” (3). While Said analyzed the stereotyping of all people of Asia Minor to East and South East Asia, Shaheen particularly analyzes the position Hollywood determines for Arabs. In the movie “REAL BAD ARABS“, Dr. Jack Shaheen elicits that the Disney Classic “Aladdin” that has been and is being seen by millions of people world wide, is recycling all the old stereotypes. The song at the beginning of the movie is setting the scene. “Where they cut off your ear if they don´t like your face, it´s barbaric, but hey…, it´s home.” People world wide, and particularly children, are coached into believing that Arabland is a place where innocent women have their hands amputated for forgetting to pay at the bazaar. In other movies Arab men are described as imbecilic super-rich, as sex addicted tyrants who mistreat their woman, and most importantly, American women. Women are kidnapped and sold of to sleazy Arabs in auctions. Dr. Shaheen elicits that over three hundred movies, nearly 25 % of all Hollywood movies in one way or the other demean Arabs. (ibid.)

Dresden after the Firebombing

With respect to demeaning an entire people, the same could be said about the countless movies produced during and subsequent to World War Two, who depict the German people as beasts, inhumane monsters, and genocidal maniacs. Countless Hollywood productions elicit the legitimate suffering of the Jewish people during world war two. As far as I am aware there has not ever been a Hollywood production that elicits the suffering of the at least 25.000 Germans that were burned to death during the bombing and total destruction of Dresden (4), or the at least 17.600 Germans that were burned to death after a 20 minutes bombing raid over Pforzheim (5). The author of this article has lost almost all of his family during the bombing of Dresden and grew up without ever having a grandfather or grandmother,  a great grandfather or great grandmother, uncles, or aunts from his fathers side of the family. Is that suffering not legitimate? Is the suffering of those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that of those left behind not legitimate human suffering. The fact is, that human beings are kind hearted by nature, and we do not wish to inflict pain and suffering on fellow human beings, as long as those fellow human beings are granted their dignity as human beings, and not being systematically dehumanized and stripped for all human value.

Dr. Jack G. Shaheen elicits in both the movie and the book “REAL BAD ARABS“, that Hollywood and politics go hand in hand in dehumanizing Arabs. Further, he documents that the dehumanization of Arabs began subsequent to World War Two. The Palestinian Israeli conflict, in which the USA unequivocally supported Israel, the Arab Oil Embargo in the seventies, and the revolution in Iran have been the main driving and motivating factors behind the dehumanization in Hollywood productions. (ibid) Ever since the founding of the state of Israel, every single US-Administration has unequivocally declared that it is committed to what is often called “The American Israeli Friendship”, or by other euphemisms for the unwavering support of Israel, no matter what, and no matter what violations of international law it commits. On the other hand, the USSR was known for it´s unequivocal support of the Palestinian course, more or less regardless what violations of international law there were committed by the militant member organizations of the PLO. In todays Russia, this support is more critical, but it is mainly driven by geopolitical rather than human rights considerations. The people of Israel and Palestine, Arabs, Christians and Jews alike have been, and are still the pawns in superpowers geopolitical stratagems.

Policies impact consensus reality by means of media and the entertainment industry. Consensus reality determines if a people is perceived as human beings, with all the legal, ethical, and moral consequences it implies, or if a people is perceived as sub-human, whose suffering can be tolerated or condoned; if a people can be murdered with impunity. In REAL BAD ARABS (ibid.) Dr. Shaheen is drawing attention to the many Hollywood movies that are produced with the help of the US-Department of Defense, referring to numerous movies where the murder of Arabs is glorified. But it does not stop there. The Pentagon, as well as other defense departments world wide, invest in Media Corporations, infiltrate media with so called “experts and analysts” with ties to civilian and military intelligence services and armed forces. Even the book market is to a large degree controlled by government and military censorship, as demonstrated by the case of Lt. Col. Anthony Schaeffer, whose book “Operation Dark Heart“(6) the Pentagon tried to prevent from entering the market. (7)

After growing up and being indoctrinated to the degree that Arabs utterly have lost their humanity, after growing up and daily being influenced by media reports that are designed to deprive Arabs of their value and dignity as human beings, and after growing up with a constant stream of so called entertainment that vilifies Arabs while it glorifies the murdering of them without the slightest concern about their humanity, is it surprising, that the populations of the West silently and complicity accept the daily violence that is committed against the people of Palestine, or the recent massacres of tens of thousands of Libyans. After all, Libya has supported the PLO and Palestinians for decades, so Libyans must be heartless terrorists, whom Western military forces and hired mercenaries can massacre with impunity in the tens of thousands. After all, what those people in the West have learned from early childhood via Disney cartoons such as Aladdin, and countless other dehumanizing productions is, that the Arabs, and for most Westerners Libyans are perceived as an Arab country, can be murdered and massacred with impunity. They are, after all barbaric and sub-human, we have learned it from the get go.

The Massacre in Sabra and Shatila

The reason why the suffering of the People of Palestine is not perceived as legitimate suffering, on an equal scale with the suffering of the Jewish people in Europe during World War Two, and the suffering of Israelis who are murdered by Palestinians is, that the governments of Western countries systematically have deprived the people of Palestine from their humanity.

It is a fact that human being has an innate resistance against taking another human beings life. As long as we are not speaking in terms of psycho-pathology, it takes months of rigorous military training, before a person can overcome this innate human trait. It does not matter if one analyzes this aversion against taking another human beings life from a purely moral or ethical perspective, or if one analyzes it from an evolutionary perspective. Our innate unwillingness against taking another human beings life is meaningful, and has the function to preserve ourselves as a species and human civilization.

We can establish as fact, that there is history and theirstory. Both are equally invalid.

Read further:

I see his conclusion as an ideal, but absolutely not going to happen. Under the current world power structure and certainly under the intended one, there is no foreseeable, just, solution. Only Divine Justice is likely to work there!

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AGW – One man’s science is another man’s pseudo-science! Part 3.

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

Atmospheric windows in the infrared

Image via Wikipedia

I have searched extensively, but perhaps not adequately, for the scientific proof that atmospheric CO2 is capable of either causing or triggering a significant global temperature increasing trend as claimed by the IPCC supporters. Even though many AGW non-believers will accede a moderate influence (up to 2 degC for a doubling of CO2 level), the scientific paper that proposes and supports this seems to be absent from the internet debate.

Given the seemingly clear argument that is offered in a few instances, that much less effect than that, is adequately supported by science, I am looking for meaningful detailed science to back the IPCC claim.

In return, I offer this portion of James A. Peden’s, “Anthropogenic Global Warming“, which claims that atmospheric CO2 is incapable of providing the “green house” warming claimed by the IPCC. It can only be a minor contributor, masked significantly by H2O and other factors.

“Next, let’s take a look CO2 from an Atmospheric Physicist‘s view – straightforward physics that we hope most of you will be able to follow:

What we commonly call “light” is actually electromagnetic radiation, physically no different from radio waves, except of different frequencies and wavelengths.  The part we can see is called the visible spectrum.  Beyond what we can see in the higher frequencies ( and shorter wavelengths, since they are reciprocal functions ) lies the ultraviolet spectrum.  UV light is very penetrating, which is why one could get sunburned on an overcast day.  Beyond even that are X-rays, which can penetrate much deeper.  On the opposite end of the visible spectrum lies infra-red… which you can’t see, but you can easily feel, as anyone who has warmed his hands near a hot stove can testify.  It is the infrared portion we commonly refer to as “heat” radiation.  And beyond that are the radio and television wavelengths we all know and love.

The sun is very “bright”, and its frequency spectrum is generally too short to produce much infrared coming down through the atmosphere.  Radiation from the sun penetrates the atmosphere, strikes the earth, and some of it is absorbed and some is reflected.  The different bandwidths (colors) of reflected light depend on the material struck, so something green-colored is reflecting the green portion of the visible spectrum and absorbing the rest.  This heats up the earth, and that’s the first part of the story.

All heated bodies emit radiation in the infrared range.  This is called “black body” radiation, because a perfectly black body reflects no visible light but still emits radiation in a specified band of wavelengths.  Infrared radiation is of a much longer wavelength, and can be much easier absorbed by certain components in the atmosphere, causing them to also “heat up”.  The warm air around us is being kept warm partially from black body radiation coming from the earth itself.  Another method of warming is by conduction – air coming in contact with the heated soil, rocks, trees, buildings, etc. and being directly warmed by that contact.  This may be a bigger factor than we think, but we’re not going to attempt to try to determine just how much that might be.  We’d have to know the total surface area of every object – down to the smallest blade of grass – there is on our planet.  We also need to remind ourselves that there is actually no physical quantity known as “cold”.  There is only “heat” and “lack of heat”.

Next, lets talk about a scientific process called Atomic Absorption Spectrometry.  It is a method by which we can measure precisely which wavelengths of radiation a particular gas is capable of absorbing.

In our highly simplified drawing above, a radiation source is beamed through a glass container containing a gas sample.  As the radiation passes through, a portion of it is absorbed at particular narrow bandwidths (often more than one ) so the end result are some “missing” sections of the whole spectrum coming from the source, which show up as dark lines.  They’re missing because they were absorbed by the sample in the chamber.  They are called absorption lines, or absorption spectra, and when analyzed by a knowledgeable person, can tell one what the gas or gas mixture is in the sample chamber based on a catalog of known spectra.  It’s a wonderful tool for analyzing unknown gas samples.

Let’s look at a real result, below – the absorption spectrum for pure carbon dioxide plus an amount of water vapor equal to that in our current atmosphere as the sample and infrared radiation from a black body spectrum as the source.  This is part of the so-called “greenhouse effect”

As we can see above, carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation (IR) in only three narrow bands of frequencies, which correspond to wavelengths of 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µm), respectively.  The percentage absorption of all three lines combined can be very generously estimated at about 8% of the whole IR spectrum, which means that 92% of the “heat” passes right through without being absorbed by CO2.  In reality, the two smaller peaks don’t account for much, since they lie in an energy range that is much smaller than the where the 15 micron peak sits – so 4% or 5% might be closer to reality.  If the entire atmosphere were composed of nothing but CO2, i.e., was pure CO2 and nothing else, it would still only be able to absorb no more than 8% of the heat radiating from the earth.

Note:  In our original draft, we talked a bit about relative spacing geometry, to give the reader a feel for the distance between molecules in the atmosphere.  We talked in (very crude) terms about tacking bottle caps up on a barn wall, and gave some spacing examples in 2 dimensions for a rough feel of the subject.  One of our readers, Peter J. Morgan – a consulting engineer from New Zealand – undertook to re-write our simple ( and not technically accurate ) description for his 15 year old son.  He was kind enough to send it to us, and we liked it so much we threw out our South Park estimate and substituted his work instead.  Thanks, Peter!

To give you a feeling for how little CO2 there actually is in the atmosphere, let’s note that atoms and molecules are very tiny things, and the distances between them are therefore also very small. Physicists like to use a unit of measure called an Angstrom, which is 0.1 of a nano-meter, or a 0.1 billionth of a meter, (i.e. 10-10 of a meter or 10-7 of a mm). A molecule like CO2 has a size of around two Angstroms (2 x 10-7 mm). The density of the gas is 10 to the 24th power number of molecules occupying a space of about 22 liters (i.e. 4.55 x 1022 molecules per liter) at a pressure of 760mm of mercury and 273 degrees Kelvin (i.e. 32 degrees Fahrenheit or zero degrees Celsius) – called the “standard temperature and pressure”. You can almost think of all this as just the normal temperature and pressure around you right now. A simple calculation shows that in a 3-dimensional tetrahedron array, as shown in the diagram below (for the closest possible packing with an equal distance between molecules), the spacing between molecules is approximately 28 Angstroms.

For equidistant packing, a tetrahedron arrangement is required

To fit 4.55 x 1022 molecules equispaced in a 100-mm cube (i.e. one liter) they have to be 28 Angstroms apart.

Since at 2 x 10-7 mm diameter, CO2 is a very tiny molecule, let’s magnify the picture by a factor of 10 million, so that we can imagine a CO2 molecule as a 20 mm diameter marble floating in the air. However, CO2 makes up only 380 of each million molecules of air – the rest are a mixture of all the other atmospheric gases and water vapor – i.e. only one in every 2632 molecules is a CO2 molecule. Let’s imagine that all the other molecules are colored blue, and CO2 molecules are colored red. All the marbles making up our model atmosphere are equispaced at 280 mm apart. When mixed evenly into our model atmosphere (which is what the wind does) a bit more simple math shows that our red marbles are equispaced at 3900 mm (i.e. 3.9 meters) apart. In the real atmosphere, at a height of approx. 5500 meters, pressure is halved from what it is at sea level. A bit more simple math shows that at a height of 5500 meters (55 million kilometers in our model – that’s 143 times the distance from earth to the moon!), our 20 mm diameter CO2 marbles are equispaced at 4.9 meters apart. Now you know why CO2 is called a “trace” gas.

This whole picture we have drawn ( with Peter Morgan’s help ) illustrates both how little CO2 there is in the atmosphere, and how relatively little of the radiation it is capable of absorbing and “heating” the atmosphere.  We know that most of the other IR radiation bands slips through and doesn’t get to do any heating at all. (We’ve all seen the nice IR photographs taken from the space station.)  But some scientists such as Dr. Heinz Hug who specialize in study of this stuff claims that all of the heat in these particular spectra are indeed absorbed in a relatively short distance, so adding more CO2 to the atmosphere can’t affect anything at any rate.  Other scientists, such as Dr. Roy W. Spencer at NASA – and one of the leading experts in the field of climate science – doesn’t completely agree

We’ve decided to be exceptionally generous to all concerned in the debate and look at the worst-case scenario, where we’ll say that all of the available heat in the CO2 absorption spectrum is actually captured.  We know that man is responsible for about 3 % of it, so with the simplest of math, we have .03 x .08 = .0024.  And remember that 8% figure was actually larger than reality, since the two side peaks don’t have much energy to capture.

Man-made CO2 doesn’t appear physically capable of absorbing much more than two-thousandths of the radiated heat (IR) passing upward through the atmosphere.

And, if all of the available heat in that spectrum is indeed being captured by the current CO2 levels before leaving the atmosphere, then adding more CO2 to the atmosphere won’t matter a bit.

In short, the laws of physics don’t seem to allow CO2 it’s currently assumed place as a significant “greenhouse gas” based on present concentrations.  The other “greenhouse gases” such as methane, nitrous oxide, tetrafluoromethane, hexafluoroethane, sulfur hexafluoride, trifluoromethane, 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane, and 1,1-difluoroethane exist only in extraordinarily smaller amounts and aren’t even up for serious discussion by any segment of the scientific community.  And, since the other components of the atmosphere (oxygen, nitrogen, and water vapor) aren’t materially affected by human activity, the “greenhouse effect” is essentially a totally natural phenomenon, unaffected by human activity.  We could repeat the spectral analysis and calculations for Oxygen, or O2 ( The percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere remains exactly the same at all heights up to about 85 km, and is about 20.9% by volume ) and Nitrogen (N2) which is the whopper at 78.1% – but we won’t.  We’ll leave that as your homework problem now that you know how to do it.  Just look up the atomic absorption spectra for both, and do the math.  You’ll discover that Oxygen and Nitrogen aren’t even “greenhouse gases”, so that leaves the principal greenhouse gas… you guessed it…. Water Vapor.  Curiously enough, the UN IPCC reports don’t even mention water vapor, since it is technically not a “gas” in the atmosphere.  Dr. Roy W. Spencer has one of the best comments we’ve read on this subject:

“Al Gore likes to say that mankind puts 70 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day. What he probably doesn’t know is that mother nature puts 24,000 times that amount of our main greenhouse gas — water vapor — into the atmosphere every day, and removes about the same amount every day.  While this does not ‘prove’ that global warming is not manmade, it shows that weather systems have by far the greatest control over the Earth’s greenhouse effect, which is dominated by water vapor and clouds.”

We can safely ballpark water vapor as being responsible for more than 95% of all the greenhouse effect, with oxygen and nitrogen playing no role and carbon dioxide being relatively insignificant… particularly the even smaller human-produced part.

Side note:  Both Oxygen and Nitrogen don’t like to live alone.  They prefer to find another and stick together into a diatomic ( 2 atom ) molecule.  Thus the molecular weight of atmospheric oxygen or nitrogen is approximately twice that of one of them alone.  We say “approximately”, because it takes energy to bind them together, and mass and energy are equivalent stuff, as our good friend Dr. Einstein explained with his famous equation E=MC2.

Now, you can sit back and give yourself a pat on the back, because you now know more pure physics of the atmosphere than a lot of so-called “climate scientists”, and likely know more than almost all of the non-scientist Popular Journalists and other writers churning out panic-stricken books and newspaper articles on the subject.

And for sure, you now know a lot more than Al Gore.

One would think this would be the end of the discussion, that the laws of physics show us that CO2 isn’t even a significant “greenhouse gas” and certainly the human contribution is insignificant.  We both now know that CO2 can’t possibly be the evil byproduct all the ballyhoo has been claiming, and in fact, our biologist friends tell us if we could increase the CO2 content a little more, the planet would be much the richer… because plants love it, grow much larger with more of it, and we all like to eat.  CO2 is a non-toxic, non-polluting, earth-friendly component that really is critical to our survival.  Maybe that’s why we laughed so hard when the Popular Journalist in the Addison Independent insisted that 340, rather than 380 parts per million CO2 was a “target” we should all shoot for.  While you’re pulling rabbits out of a hat, could you please bring me a Pepsi?

OK, if you still are compelled to worry about something, think about this:  The amount of oxygen in our atmosphere is slowly diminishing.  A very long time ago, it was as much as 35% of the atmosphere, and has been shrinking ever since.  We always wondered why those plant-eating eating dinosaurs had such long necks, and now we know – they had to reach up for dinner into the really tall trees that once dotted our oxygen-rich planet.

But let’s not worry about that just now, for this current story is far from over.  If you’ve read this far, you’re likely more curious than most, and probably more intelligent than average.  And you probably want to know exactly what is causing the warming and cooling periods on the planet which have been going on for millennia.  Inquiring minds want to know this stuff.”

Continued at ‘Primer 4: ‘Bit of Background Aside’

Related articles
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Fukushima Radiation – Stories continue to spell out DANGER

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

Actual Fukushima worker talks, water purifying system has never worked

Posted by Mochizuki on  December 6th, 2011

Following up this article http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/12/220t-of-highly-radioactive-water-leaked-and-a-part-of-it-leaked-to-the-sea/

The water purifying system has never worked properly. It was urgently constructed , the whole system can’t stand anymore.

These are the tweets of actual Fukushima worker, Happy20790. He explains how it is on the sight. [sic]

<Translation>  [Some grammatical errors corrected].

The contaminated water leaks a lot recently. This time, it went out of the “building” so it was reported but actually it happens frequently.

I called it “a building”, but it’s actually a temporary tent on a temporary concrete basement. It leaked from the first operation, so they made a tiny dam in it. Maybe it’s only 20cm high.

I don’t get into the tent recently because it’s too radioactive, but I used to pump up leaked contaminated water. The contaminated water emits a lot of beta ray, so you need to be careful. This time, Tepco’s spokesman said it was 110mSv/h, but it is higher at some points.

The concrete basement was constructed really urgently. They built the tent even before the concrete dried, so it got cracked already. Other tent may have the same problems too.

Unlike our ordinary contract, makers only set the facility, they don’t take responsibility of handling or maintenance.

As I tweeted before, this water purifying system is not a long-lasting system. It is a temporary system without proper planning process. In order to release cooling water to the sea, we must install more proper facility.

Now the gutter is straightly connected to the sea. They must be shut down or a dam must be made. Currently every time it rains, radiation on the ground and radiation stuck to the plants flow into the sea straightly.

Makers and workers are already withdrawing from Fukushima plants, but Tepco has no long term plan. They need to predict the future risk and prevent it from happening in advance.

As usual we will have people calling ‘foul, scaremongering’ and others saying “the tip of the iceberg”.

As usual, I say, this is published in good faith. IMHO more likely true than not, for reasons I have often reiterated.

Check ‘Post Archives’, “Nuclear”, or “Radiation”, or the pages in ‘Radiation’, “own posts”.

Posted in Cover-ups, ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH, nuclear, radiation | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Financial ‘perfect storm’ slams Aussie banks

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

Out on the limb again, wondering which side of the branch is being sawn through.

Generally, I have confidence in publishing any post that it is sound. Sometimes the question is asked, “is this really happening?” In this particular case I copy this CEC Media Release because it is absolutely frightening, but it is also feasible. The more our government tells us that our banks are sound, the more I wonder, given that their propensity to lie and do the wrong thing exceeds their commonsense and attention to duty of care of our country and citizens.  (Nasty, but if the cap fits!).

With this warning – I cannot know if it is correct – I copy the Media Release :

A perfect storm of financial disasters has slammed into Australia’s banking system this week, pushing it to the precipice of total collapse, and forcing a panicked Reserve Bank to cut interest rates.

Responding to the emergency, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood today demanded the immediate enactment of the CEC’s policies of Glass-Steagall bankruptcy reorganisation and the establishment of a new, government-owned national bank.

The perfect storm that has struck the Australian banks includes:

  • A European-centred “credit crunch”, which cuts off the foreign “carry trade” that lends into Australia chasing higher interest rates. Australia’s big banks and miners rely heavily on this carry trade for foreign capital. The last time this happened, in October 2008, all of Australia’s major banks, including Macquarie Bank, were flattened, and only the Rudd-Gillard guarantee on their foreign borrowing kept them trading.
  • The China “sneeze” that gives Australia pneumonia: China is suffering its most severe manufacturing collapse since the depths of the GFC in January 2009, a flow-on from the crisis wracking its major consumers in Europe and the U.S. Back in 2009, China’s crisis brought world shipping to a standstill; its factories stopped importing resources from Australia; and coal export-dependent Queensland’s budget revenues collapsed. Australia was then saved from total collapse only when the Chinese accelerated their massive internal infrastructure development program, which kick-started Australian resource imports again.
  • A sharp increase in mortgage stress, coinciding with falling auction clearance rates and house prices across the country. Australia’s banks are heavily exposed to the property market, but at inflated, bubble values; a collapse of the bubble will wipe them out. Until now, heavy foreign investment via the carry trade has propped up the mortgage market, combined with the habit of longsuffering Australians to prioritise their mortgage payments over other living expenses. However, rising mortgage stress is driving a sharp increase in foreclosures, which, combined with falling sales, will drive down the property market even more, spelling doom for the banks. This likely forced the RBA’s hand on interest rates; however, lower interest rates undermine the carry trade even more, on which the banks are also reliant.
  • Australia’s supposedly great, strong, sound banks all suffered credit rating downgrades this week, as financial observers could no longer ignore the trouble they were facing.

Isherwood questioned whether the government was already acting behind the scenes to prop up the banks.

“Why are the major banks risking more public hatred by foot-dragging on passing on the rate cut?” he asked. “What is being discussed right now between the government and the banks, so the banks can stay afloat? We found out later that in these circumstances three years ago, Macquarie Bank was begging hysterically in a flurry of emails to its friends in the government for the bank guarantee, and the major banks all met with Rudd, Gillard, Swan and Tanner and said if the government didn’t step in, they would collapse ‘sooner rather than later’. All the while the government kept babbling that the banks are ‘sound’.

“It would be criminal if Gillard and Swan attempted to pull the same bailout they did in 2008, instead of solving the problem.”

Isherwood emphasised that today is the 100th anniversary of the passage of the Commonwealth Bank Actthrough the federal parliament:

“The anniversary of King O’Malley’s victory in achieving a national bank for Australia is a timely reminder of the only solution to this mess”, he said.

“The banking system must be reorganised, and put back under the control of a government-owned national bank that can direct Australia’s credit into investments in infrastructure, manufacturing and agriculture, to revive Australia’s actual physical economy.”

I don’t expect anyone to take too much notice of this, but it would be interesting to have been involved in adding to the public exposure if it is true. As usual, I would hope that if this issue is being misconstrued here, some kind reader will comment and set me straight.

What I do strongly agree with is the need for there to be a National, government controlled bank to provide citizens with their banking needs, and to separate them from the dire behaviour and performances of the private and industrial banking systems. This includes protection of the general public from any responsibility for bail-out financing not caused by them.

Source:  http://www.cecaust.com.au

Posted in Financial Crisis, Human Folly, Justice, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

AGW – Ocean Heat/Temperature, tells us what, exactly?

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

Reference a post on JoNova’s site “The Travesty of the Missing Heat”.

In reading this, basically a discussion about heat content of the ocean and its relativity to planet warming, perhaps a more important question is the ocean temperature itself.

Besides being an effective heat sink, the ocean’s massive volume together with its heat properties, provides an accurate measure of average, relatively stabilised temperature and temperature trends, of the planet!

Ocean currents vary considerably but the large number of the Argo buoys are able to provide a more reliable global temperature average trend than can atmospheric measurements. As long as the water mixing or the number and placement of the sensors, or both, provide a realistic mean temperature of the ocean, the global average is far better represented here than in the volatile atmosphere or near surface of the planet.

SO what does this ocean “average” tell us? Far more than a lot of other fundamental data.

Read the reference post here.

Buoy placement:

Temperature:

Ocean Heat Content conpared to models

Posted in climate change, Corruption, ENVIRONMENT, Human Behaviour, World Issues | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Comedy and/or Tragedy – World Financial Crisis

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

This deserves some commentary which I may add after I stop laughing and crying, unfortunately, both at the same time.

 

Seriously, I would like to know the answers to the unanswered questions.

Or are there no answers.

 

Posted in Corruption, Financial Crisis, Human Behaviour, Human Folly, Humour, World Issues | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Food health – 4 common unsafe fast food additives

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

According to’ Natural News’, some interesting nutrition information.

Fast food nutrition facts – mystery ingredients are industrial chemicals

NaturalNews) Many people think occasional junk food indulgence can be balanced out by skipping meals later in the week or by putting in some extra time on the treadmill. The truth is that the consequences of this type of eating can turn up in unexpected ways, often years later as toxins accumulate in your body and cause serious illnesses like cancer or diabetes.
It is only in the past several decades that the abundance of toxic chemical ingredients in food, have made the consequences of dietary indulgences so lethal. In order to boost profits, food purveyors use chemicals which have a similar effect to the tobacco industry’s addition of nicotine to tobacco, making a substance at once more addictive and more deadly.

Mystery Ingredient #1

Take this quiz to help you to see how much you know about the real results of fast food snacking: What was concocted in a laboratory in 1908 and is present in nearly every non-dessert item on KFC’s menu?
What “seasoning” did the US begin manufacturing subsequent to WWII after learning that rations for soldiers on the opposing side included this substance?
When the FDA “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS) standard for food additives was established in 1958, what substance was grandfathered in without any testing to verify its safety?
What food additive, so omnipresent in fast food restaurants that even salads often contain it, has been linked to obesity as well as depression, migraines, mental confusion, dizziness, anxiety or panic attacks, stiffness, joint pain, loss of balance, slurred speech, diarrhea, blurred vision and ADHD?
What chemical substance do food manufacturers love to use so much that they have developed a long list of aliases to hide its presence from consumers?
If you answered MSG to all of the above questions, give yourself a gold star for knowledge of food chemicals.

Mystery Ingredient #2

What popular sweetener, present in most soft drinks and “sports drinks,” is manufactured via a process which makes use of glutaraldehyde, an embalming chemical?
What sweet-tasting ingredient, found in such diverse products as McDonald’s Baked Hot Apple Pies, children’s vitamins and commercially prepared salad dressings is frequently contaminated with mercury because of the method by which is it prepared in factories?
What food additive delivers calories yet chemically fails to satisfy hunger, causing people to eat more than necessary? Because this substance does not stimulate insulin secretion or reduce the hunger hormone ghrelin, people continue to eat while the body converts what they consume into fat.
If you know the answer to the above 3 questions is high fructose corn syrup (HCFS), you are well-informed. This is a challenging accomplishment considering how much disinformation the food manufacturers, the government and the mainstream health establishment put out about HCFS being harmless. Beware, however, because the food industry has been mulling a name change for this ingredient, possibly calling it “corn sugar” or some new brand name so they can continue to take advantage of subsidized US corn.

Mystery Ingredient #3

Which of the following fast foods does NOT contain dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent also used in caulks and sealants and Silly Putty:
a) McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets
b) McDonald’s Fish Filet Patty
c) Wendy’s Natural Cut Fries
d) KFC BBQ Baked Beans
e) KFC Biscuit
f) None of the above
The correct answer is “f” none of the above. (Chances are if your child swallowed some caulk, you would rush to the emergency room. Perhaps people should start doing the same if their children consume fast food.)

The fourth?  and more should be found at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/034314_fast_food_nutrition_facts_ingredients.html#ixzz1fXvVciIQ

Posted in additives, FOODS, HEALTH | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A ‘New World Order’ Scenario – A look at the Bilderberg Group

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

Richard Cottrell, ‘End the Lie ‘, a SOTT post titled: “Bilderberg leaves rehab, cleared to rule the world “, reproduced here as a contribution to the topic of ‘New World Order’ or ‘World Domination’. A likely  scenario if my observations are correct.

One of the world’s most secretive societies is emerging from the closet, blinking and shrinking at the harsh light of day, like Dracula suddenly deciding it might be safe after all to emerge from his cool dank vault at sunrise.
Sunrise is the right word. Never have the prospects for one world order seemed rosier or closer at hand. So it can be no coincidence at all that the Bilderberg Group, and its sister cabal, the Trilateral Commission, are suddenly basking in deckchairs on the lawns of public respectability.
It is my sincere conviction that we are watching the warm-up acts to prepare us all for a single world order as the orchestrated take down of the entire global economy begins to bite.
Shortly after the Bilderberg/Goldman Sachs/EU promoted coup d’états in Italy and Greece in November, Reuters wired a report that Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission had taken over Europe. The agency made it seem the terrible twins should be applauded for picking up the poisoned chalice of the great debt crisis purportedly eating away at the Euro.
Before we go any further, it stands on the public record that Reuters CEO Peter Job is no stranger to breaking bread among the rulers of the universe.
[Editor’s note: in fact, it is so public that a PDF hosted on the Department of Defense’s official website reveals exactly that on page 7 under the heading “UNITED KINGDOM” where he is the first listing.]
Well, you could say, he’s entitled to spend his spare time as he pleases. True. The problem is that editorial independence must be subject to question and compromise if a paramount source of news and information is sworn to secrecy concerning events where it is represented.
This is not the same as off the record, unattributable briefings, curse though they are to straightforward honest journalism.
The content of Bilderberg meetings is confidential, although it is pointless for any of the participants to deny that the purpose of the annual gatherings is, at the very least, to influence governments and public authorities around the world to act in a certain manner.
I may seem old-fashioned, but the foremost task of the media is to protect and nurture democracy by placing the facts before the people. So, the elephant in the pond question is this; should the media be directly involved in the making of policy when their task in life is to report and comment on public affairs?
Of course great media barons have always pulled wires behind the scenes. Randolph Hearst, Lord Beaverbrook, and now the Murdoch clan, have always ruthlessly tugged at the chords of power, quite often with startling consequences.
The fact that journalists in their employ became associates and practitioners of deceit (the current Murdoch phone hacking scandal for example) is in the end a human foible, but that does not make it right.
What is different with the media clustering around Bilderberg, and substantially so at that, is the steps which are being taken to sanitize an organization which demonstrably is not seeking democratic solutions.
Wikipedia trills gaily that Italy’s nuovo Duce, Mario Monti, is a Bilderberg attendee, European chairman of the Trilateral Commission and a former adviser to Goldman Sachs.
They do so in an absolutely dead pan style which suggests these are but well-earned credentials that suit him to the role of Europe’s first non-elected ruler since the neofascist Greek colonels 35 years ago (Allowing of course for Loukas Papademos, who is now the Gauleiter of Greece).
But at least he has civilian ministers as a fig leaf to disguise what is still plainly a junta, once you lift the skirt. Consult Wikipedia and you will discover that he is a fully paid up member of the great central bank carousel – the Boston Federal Reserve, the Greek financial Parthenon and VP of the European Central Bank, where he served for eight years under two presidents.
Sound man for the job, eh?
Delve a little further into the identical entry and you find it buried innocuously away that the vintage Trilateralist (since 1998) actually caused the Greek debt crisis.
It was none other than Papademos who was on duty at the central bank as the lead negotiator bundling Greece into the euro back in 2000. This was the legendary Goldman Sachs/J P Morgan scam in fudging the books which rebounded as the heart of the Greek crisis that we are watching now.
Like a mad uncle raving in the attic, it never proved possible to hide suspicions about Bilderberg’s real intentions.
There’s invariably some untoward rumpus as the old boy starts bellowing at an upstairs window, just when you have visitors around for a relaxing Sunday afternoon barbecue.
So, all the soothing ointments poured on the accusations of conspiracies generally inflamed the speculation, especially when the worldwide internet came into being, along with the new profession of untrammeled, uncensored journalism.
The response over the years ranged from blanket denials that Bilderberg existed in any organized form, to denouncing those few critics and awkward nosey parkers who raised their heads as UFO freaks, Satanists and other assorted insane fruitcakes who should be detained in an asylum for their own sakes.
In a sense this was inevitable when the Bilderberg story line, a secretive plot by an incestuous power elite plotting to take over the world, did indeed seem utterly fantastical.
The beginning of the wind-down in the world economy in 2008 wrought a rather sudden change in portrayals of the Bilderberg clique.
For years a small posse of passionate and dedicated groupies, the so-called Bilderwatchers, made themselves minor nuisances by turning up at the annual jamborees trying to identify the illustrious arrivals.
They were ignored, just as the mainstream media either ignored the annual Bilderberg caravan or portrayed the annual assembly as a harmless tea party of statesman and corporate leaders with nothing better to do.
The few who did try to gatecrash or eavesdrop on the proceedings were roughed up by the police and security guards, who increasingly adopted the threatening tactics and intimidation honed at G20 summits. Prosecutions of any sort are always ruled out of order on higher authority.
Then came the famous Obama Moment in June of 2008.
Up until that year, Bilderberg organizers and attendees could rely on the safety screens of loopy conspiracy theories.
For a few hours on June 6th Obama, the convention applause still ringing in his ears, secretly broke off from the campaign trail to attend a closet meeting with key Bilderbergers on the fringes of the main meeting then being held between June 5th and 8th at Chantilly, on the outskirts of Washington.
He had the rather glum Hillary Clinton, herself a Bilderberger, in tow. What happened next exploded on the internet, but not in the mainstream media; and even among the internet community, there was a strained sense of disbelief in the world dominion plots that were now swirling around the probable next American president.
There is some interesting timing here. It tests coincidence to suggest that the Bilderberg magnates just happened to be meeting in the US, and so conveniently close to Washington at that, just as the Democratic convention wound up its business and chose Obama – the long-groomed Bilderberg favorite.
One rather dumb line emerged from a Bilderberg insider who attempted to play down the excitement suggesting that Obama the puppet was handed a shopping list of Bilderbergers to stuff his government.
He rather shot himself in the foot by admitting that it would be difficult to name any US administration that was not swarming with Bilderbergers, and others in the same milieu such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
From now on it was increasingly difficult to slam the lid on Obama the Bilderberg Poodle President, especially as the key appointees to the new administration indeed turned out to be prominent Bilderbergers. But there was something else.
After Chantilly, Clinton looked as though the stuffing had been knocked out of her. It had.
She left the secret gathering held at the home of a leading Bilderberg member in the knowledge that the dreary old mule Joe Biden was going be the VP nominee and not herself, as Obama had been hinting.
She was promised as compensation that thorny bed of nails called the State Department.
Smarting at this terrible humiliation administered by her own clan, she never recovered her poise and patently has been ill at ease ever since.
As number two on the ticket, and then subsequently in office, the Bilderbergers feared Clinton would easily outshine Obama, a noticeably reticent figure who may have some problems with absorbing documents and information, which may in turn indicate latent autism.
In any event the affair demonstrated the Bilderberg clout in getting their way.
In 2009, something strange happened. Bilderberg started to go pop in the news stakes.
Packs of journalists suddenly fell upon the secret society like flies on a cow patty. Newspapers began to top up their up their columns with snatched shots of the princes of the universe arriving in their smart sedans at the latest swish highly-guarded hotel selected for the annual pow-wow.
Column inches grew and broadcasting minutes soared.
Bilderberg had entered the pop domain and it stayed there. The question is, why?
Of course the controlled demolition of Clinton, the rocket-like ascent of a black candidate with an Islamic past running for the White House, moreover complete unknown only months before, had much to do with it
The gloves were off. Bilderberg could make and break presidents of the United States. In terms of “break,” an earlier Bilderberg pick, Jimmy Carter, was unceremoniously busted by Ronald Reagan, having failed to pass muster after his first four years in office.
Margaret Thatcher was another total unknown until she showed up at the Bilderberg meeting held in Turkey in 1975. From then on her rise to power was meteoric.
Tony Blair was set to grin all the way to Downing Street, fame, and fortune after demonstrating his forensic skills with the cutlery and a prawn cocktail at the 1993 conclave held in Athens.
Then in following year, during May of 1994, the non-Bilderberg Labor leader John Smith unexpectedly but conveniently dropped dead (from a heart attack) on a Scottish mountainside.
Blair, former anti-EU lefty firebrand and rock band player, was elected to take his place just eight weeks later. The British media duly transformed a gauche lawyer with weird staring eyes into a political rock star.
The Obama Moment allowed perspectives about Bilderberg to filter into the mainstream.
Who were these bewilderingly rich and powerful people who could snap their fingers to make the world jump?
Apparently, just kindly patricians who felt the urge to meet and discuss the solemn affairs of the moment, no harm intended.
This is exactly the line peddled by John Micklethwaite, Bilderberg attendee and editor-in-chief of the globalist parish magazine, The Economist, in a soothing editorial that he wrote in January this year.
In a stagey interview with the reassuring, pipe-puffing Count Etienne Davignon, a stupendously wealthy Belgian plutocrat, EU godfather and Crown Prince of Bilderberg, it was the familiar story of a touchy-feely gang bang where the world’s bigwigs can speak openly “without worrying how their words might play in tomorrow’s headlines.”
Such as those appearing on Reuters wires by any chance? No worries, as they are fond of saying in Australia when you request even a modest service.
As we noted, Peter Job, the CEO of Reuters, is a much respected “guest,” and he is by no means alone among the glitterati of scribblers and scribbler bosses.
After all, isn’t it just plain commonsense proclaimed by the PR profession that if you want to control the message, then the best technique is always to invite the enemy to sup inside the tent?
The list of proprietors, senior editors and commentators who have attended the global summit over the years includes, aside from The Economist, the following: the Washington Post, US News and World Report, The Observer (London-based sister paper of The Guardian), Conrad Black the Canadian press baron (before he retired to the penitentiary), New York Times, CBS, ABC, the BBC, Rupert Murdoch, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Die Zeit, the London Times, Le Figaro, and so it goes on.
This year’s bash in St Moritz featured invitees from media groups in Austria, the Netherlands and Finland.
Interestingly, The Economist often sends along two senior editors to act as rapporteurs, meaning policy group managers and coordinators.
Thus we discover the mainstream corporate media are one vast echo chamber resounding to the conclusions and decisions of an incestuous and self-choosing elitist caucus.
In Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase, here is the plain evidence that “the medium is the message.”
Charlie Skelton, a columnist for the London Guardian, is one of the excommunicated who doesn’t rate a formal invite.
He’s the off-message punk confined to the fringes. He’s definitely the type that likes to shove a half brick through the headmaster’s window. Here’s a sample.

“I am so unbelievably back-teeth sick of power being flexed by the few. I’ve had it flexed in my face for three days, and it’s up my nose like a wasp. I don’t care whether the Bilderberg Group is planning to save the world or shove it in a blender and drink the juice, I don’t think politics should be done like this.”

Good to know, except that Bilderberg isn’t about the mundane and largely pointless activity called politics and never was. Mario Monti, a great Bilderberg gladiator who is now the unelected ruler of Italy, is on record that he is firmly set against party politics.
Equally, Charlie Skelton skirts past the inconvenient truth that the newspaper group that buys his work has been represented at Bilderberg in the past.
Moreover, everyone in the know in what used to be called Fleet Street, is aware of the comfortable and virtually seamless relations that exist between the Guardian and British intelligence services (and indeed other vital organs of the British media, including the Murdoch group and the BBC).
So why is our Charlie given a plump expense account to hurl blunt objects at passing Bilderbergers? It is really quite simple.
His main day job is writing comedy scripts. As he treks from one sumptuous location to another following in pursuit of the Bilderberg caravan, wittingly or otherwise, he is the court jester who turns the deadly serious into a good belly laugh.
However, after the gathering at the delightful Catalonian watering hole called Sitges in 2009, his column included this more than interesting phrase:

“It would be nicer if the interface between Bilderberg and the world could be softer – if it could turn an open face towards us, rather than the barrel of a machine gun.”

To me this has the unmistakable smack of editorializing. I say that because I am sure that behind the tenor of more measured reporting and comment on Bilderberg lurks a huge shift of marketing policy.
Namely, have done with the arrogance – even insolence – of lofty remote elites and welcome on stage responsible, dedicated managers and thinkers rather than self-obsessed payola politicians.
That is exactly what the smart Mario Monti is preaching to Italians right now. Whether you want a world government or not, we are one and you will submit to us. But we want you to love us, even as we forge the chains that will bind those old redundant freedoms forever.
Brave New World? Yes, Aldous Huxley used almost exactly those words:

“‘And that,’ put in the Director sententiously ‘that is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.'”

Mount Bilderberg now extends its dark shadow over the structures of the entire EU and three member states: Greece, Spain and Italy. These three can now be rightly described as Bilderberg colonies. Bilderbergers are in control of Germany, the UK, France, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, the Netherlands and among the non-member states, Switzerland.
The mighty mountain has controlled Washington for years, in alliance with the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations (plus it must be said, an important out-rider, the American Enterprise Institute).
Between them, they are Wall Street, they are the City of London, and the European Central Bank. They are the IMF, the World Bank, the Bank of International Settlements, UNESCO, the UN, and NATO.
Taken together, its way down the road to total globalist paternity.
The Reuters article in November was timely and significant because it revealed the extent of knowledge that the corporate media owns concerning the Bilderberg project and obligingly sat on for the past half century.
But nothing succeeds better than a success. Turbulent, ungovernable, and exciting Italy is now under the control of the Bilderberg regent, Mario Monti.
If I seem to be mentioning this gentleman with each breath, then I make no apologies, because I warn you, he is an important role model for the future.
Monti now appears like a beacon of calm and serenity in the invariably boisterous rough and tumble of the Italian political climate.
He doesn’t look like a caretaker. He looks like someone who is digging himself in.
Behold, Bilderberg with a human face, the techno-dictator with similar appearances promised elsewhere in other European countries.
The breathtaking daring with which the globalists toppled the elected Italian government on the back of an utterly dud scare about Italian public debt is a stunning demonstration of the power they have now amassed.
He even allowed himself to utter the astonishing remark that his was “a strong government without conflicts of interest.”
Not Bilderberg, not the Trilateral Commission, not Goldman Sachs then?
Not having a director of a very sick Italian bank in daily expectation of a Frankfurt bail-out on board as a minister?
Not even an admiral in charge of defense, the military in charge of the military for the first time since Mussolini?
Or maybe the new government’s confirmation to buy 131 Lockheed Martin joint strike fighters (JSF) at a cost of thirteen billion euro when the country is supposed to be bankrupt?
So far Italians like what they see, although time will tell on that score.
For now, they are in a state of shock that it actually proved possible to get rid of the prince of mischief Silvio Berlusconi.
As our guide to the probable future, it may be enlightening to return some words concerning oligarchies by Friedrich August Hayek, the economist and social philosopher and author of The Road to Serfdom;

“The probability of people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get a job as a whipping master on a slave plantation.”

Richard Cottrell is a writer, journalist and former European MP (Conservative). His new book Gladio: NATO’s Dagger At The Heart Of Europe is coming in January of 2012 from Progressive Press.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Conspiracies, Human Behaviour, New World Order, World Issues | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments