"I never really thought that I'd spend as much time in airports as I do. I don't know why. I always wanted to be famous and that would mean lots of travel. But I'm not famous, yet I do see more than my share of airports. I love them and I hate them. I love them because of the people I get to watch. But they are also the same reason why I hate airports. It all comes down to "hello" and "goodbye." I must have mentioned this a few times while writing my stories for you.
I have great difficulties with saying goodbye. Even as I write this I am experiencing that pounding sensation in my heart. If I am watching such a scene in a movie I am affected so much that I need to sit up and take a few deep breaths. So when faced with a challenge in my life I have been known to go to our local airport and watch people say goodbye. I figure nothing that is happening to me at the time could be as bad as having to say goodbye. Watching people cling to each other, crying, and holding each other in that last embrace makes me appreciate what I have even more. Seeing them finally pull apart, extending their arms until the tips of their fingers are the last to let go, is an image that stays forefront in my mind throughout the day.
On one of my recent business trips, when I arrived at the counter to check in, the woman said, "How are you today?" I replied, "I am missing my wife already and I haven't even said goodbye." She then looked at my ticket and began to ask, "How long will you... Oh, my God. You will only be gone three days!" We all laughed. My problem was I still had to say goodbye. But I learn from goodbye moments, too.
Recently I overheard a father and daughter in their last moments together. They had announced her departure and standing near the security gate, they hugged and he said, "I love you. I wish you enough." She in turn said, "Daddy, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Daddy." They kissed and she left. He walked over toward the window where I was seated. Standing there I could see he wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but he welcomed me in by asking, "Did you ever say goodbye to someone knowing it would be forever?" "Yes, I have," I replied. Saying that brought back memories I had of expressing my love and appreciation for all my Dad had done for me. Recognizing that his days were limited, I took the time to tell him face to face how much he meant to me. So I knew what this man was experiencing.
"Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever goodbye?" I asked. "I am old and she lives much too far away. I have challenges ahead and the reality is, the next trip back would be for my funeral," he said. "When you were saying goodbye I heard you say, 'I wish you enough.' May I ask what that means?" He began to smile. "That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone." He paused for a moment and looking up as if trying to remember it in detail, he smiled even more. "When we said 'I wish you enough,' we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them," he continued and then turning toward me he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory...
"I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish enough "Hello's" to get you through the final "Goodbye."
He then began to sob and walked away. My friends, I wish you enough!"
"On Friday, October 21, 1966, a mountain of coal waste, perched above the Welsh mining village of Aberfan, broke loose and came flowing down uncontrollably. Destabilized by recent rains, a river of black coal sludge, water and boulders bore down on Aberfan. It steamrollered over a tiny cottage halfway down the slope, thundered through Pantglas Junior School, obliterated a further 20 houses - then finally came to rest. A total of 144 people, including many children, were crushed or suffocated to death in one of Britain's most horrific peacetime tragedies. Every life lost was precious. But the death of 116 innocent children, killed in the school, tore at the very heart of the nation. In a cruel irony, the youngsters had been making their way back to their classrooms after singing "All Things Bright And Beautiful" at morning assembly when the disaster struck. No one in the close-knit community was unaffected by the tragedy and the bereaved parents would never recover from their loss.
But for one family, the overriding grief was even more acute. For one of those killed - ten-year-old Eryl Mai Jones - had not only predicted the catastrophe, but had warned her mother of it, too. In the days leading up to the atrocity, Eryl had told her mother she was 'not afraid to die'. 'I shall be with Peter and June,' she added. Eryl's busy mother offered her imaginative daughter a lollipop and thought no more about it. Then, on October 20, the day before the disaster, Eryl said to her mother: 'Let me tell you about my dream last night. I dreamt I went to school and there was no school there. Something black had come down all over it!' The next day, Eryl's horrific premonition came to pass and she was killed alongside schoolfriends Peter and June. They were buried side-by-side in a mass grave, just as the youngster had predicted. You can only guess at the torment Eryl's mother must have suffered - perhaps berating herself for not keeping her child off school or warning everyone in the village.
Tales like this, of horrific events 'seen' in dreams, litter history. And now a comprehensive new book by medical doctor Larry Dossey - who has himself experienced premonitory dreams - collates some of the most extraordinary examples.
September 11th : The terrorist atrocities of September 11, 2001 were preceded by a slew of premonitions. A week before the attack, one North Carolina mother dreamt about spinning into blackness and heard a man's voice repeating '2,830, 2,830' and a name she couldn't make out. 'It sounded like Rooks or Horooks,' she said. Disturbed by the dream, the woman cancelled tickets the family had to fly to Disneyland on September 11, despite protestations from her husband that she was over-reacting. When news emerged on September 11 of the planes flying into New York's Twin Towers - with another hitting the Pentagon and a fourth crashing into a field in Pennsylvania - the woman's caution was vindicated. Most bizarrely, 2,830 - the number repeated over and over in her dream - was the confirmed tally of deaths at that time. And the name - 'Rooks or Horooks?' - was that of Michael Horrocks, first officer of United Airlines flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower.
Of course, her vision was not specific enough for her to have done anything to avert the tragedy, but it was nonetheless disturbing - as was the experience of another woman holidaying in Washington DC two weeks before the atrocity. She was dozing in a car as her husband drove. But when she opened her eyes, she had a vision of the Pentagon with huge billows of thick black smoke pouring from it. She screamed, slammed her hands on the dashboard and became so hysterical that she hyperventilated. The woman had had visions all her life, but was traumatised by this one. Two weeks later, American Airlines flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, killing 184 people, and causing clouds of thick black smoke, exactly as she had dreamt it. [No, it did not, do a Search for 9/11 on this blog, you'll see. - CP]
In an even more chilling example, World Trade Centre employee Lawrence Boisseau had a dream in September that the towers were crashing down around him. A few days later, his wife dreamt the streets of Manhattan were littered with debris. The images were not specific enough to prevent Boisseau from going to work on September 11 - and he perished there. But not before helping to rescue several children stuck in a care centre on the ground floor.
Sometimes, premonitions allow the person to pinpoint a specific time and place, leaving the dreamer enough time to alter the course of the disaster. In one such instance, Dossey recounts the tale of a mother living in Washington State who awoke at 2.30am from a nightmare. She had dreamt that a large chandelier that hung above her baby's crib had fallen and crushed him. In the dream, a violent storm was raging and the time on the clock read 4.35 am. Alarmed, the woman woke up, went into the next room and took the baby back to her bed. Two hours later, the couple were woken by a loud crash. They dashed into their child's room to find the crib demolished by the chandelier, which had fallen directly onto it. In a further twist, a storm was raging - and the time on the clock read 4.35 am.
Not all of those who dream of future events manage to interpret them correctly. Indeed, one of the common features of premonitions is that they are often fragmentary and vague. But Dossey believes we all have the ability to predict the future and points to studies by Dean Radin, a Californian researcher. Radin sat subjects in front of a blank computer screen and told them an image would appear in five seconds. Remarkably, before the image appeared, the subjects would become more agitated if the image was of something grisly or upsetting than if it was of something pleasant. It seems the subjects could sense what they were about to be confronted with. This is supported by data from train and plane accidents. One famous study from the Fifties found that trains involved in accidents often had fewer passengers than the same service the week before.
The theory is that commuters have some sense of an approaching accident and alter their travel plans. When the Titanic made her first - and last - voyage in 1912, many passengers had a sense of foreboding. J. P. Morgan, one of the richest men in the world, cancelled his passage at the last minute because of a hunch. Interestingly, the vacancy rate on all four flights that crashed on September 11, 2001, was high. On the Boeing 757 that crashed into the Pentagon, only 64 of 289 seats were taken. Meanwhile, the planes that crashed into the World Trade Centre's North and South Towers were 74 and 81 per cent empty. Indeed, the occupancy rate of all four doomed planes that day was a mere 21 per cent - despite being commuter services.
Dossey's explanation for humans' ability to predict the future is rooted in evolution. He says it makes sense that we would develop our ability to see impending dangers and take appropriate measures. 'From the standpoint of evolutionary biology, the ability to bypass the physical senses is the sort of ability that an intelligent, survival-oriented organism might sooner or later develop.' Furthermore, he believes we are more likely to have premonitions about those to whom we are emotionally attached. Through history, neurologists have proved a telepathic connection between some particularly close individuals, such as twins. One of the most common forms of premonition is forewarning of illness in a loved one.
But this sixth sense is not confined to humans. There are countless examples of apparent premonitions among animals. Just before the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, flamingoes on India's southern coast fled, monkeys at Sri Lanka's Yala National Park stopped accepting bananas from tourists and a elephants began to trumpet. In one tale recounted by Dossey, a woman was driving her car with her cat on the back seat. The cat became increasingly agitated, before jumping into the front and biting the woman, forcing her to stop. At just that moment, a large tree crashed onto the road, just a few yards ahead of the woman. If she had continued driving, she would have been killed.
Coincidence? Or proof of something more mysterious at work? Dossey, and others like him, believe it is the latter. What's more, he thinks our only hope of utilizing the power of prediction effectively is to act immediately and not let embarrassment get in the way. He cautions: 'If premonitions are to aid survival, we cannot afford the luxury of not thinking about them.”
"We Americans have a saying: “It’s more important what you stand for than who you stand with.” I do not rely upon peer opinion to decide what is right and what is wrong. I make those decisions for myself, and even if I discover that every other human alive chose differently, that doesn’t mean I was wrong.
There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to choose sides. I have chosen my side. I am comfortable with my decision. I do not think everyone on my side is a saint, but I know that those on the other side are much, much worse.
Sometimes a man with too broad a perspective reveals himself as having no real perspective at all. A man who tries too hard to see every side may be a man who is trying to avoid choosing any side. A man who tries too hard to seek a deeper truth may be trying to hide from the truth he already knows. That is not a sign of intellectual sophistication and “great thinking”. It is a demonstration of moral degeneracy and cowardice.”
“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet ‘for sale’, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence – briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing – cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity.”
"Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), thinks evil communists are out to destroy America and your freedom. General Flynn explains, “Transitioning to all the noise that is bombarding the American psyche, it’s all intentional. Don’t think this is all a bunch of haphazard things that are happening within our country. The bigger 60,000 foot strategic view is that the country is being taken over by a very small minority of people that we call the Left, which are really a group of Marxists and communists who have decided over decades, and this is not just about Trump, have decided now is the time to do it, and they did. They outmaneuvered the Republican establishment during this last November election. Let’s talk about what’s coming out of Arizona. Everybody knows this election was stolen. No way in the world 80 million people voted for the administration occupying the White House - no way. This is no longer a conspiracy theory about election fraud. This is a conspiracy alright, but it is a conspiracy within a group of people that stole the U.S. Presidential Election and also stole parts of the down ballot votes, meaning the Senators and Congressmen.”
General Flynn says the election system must get fixed. General Flynn warns, “The Arizona Legislature holds the future of our country because if they do not decertify, then these other states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and others, if they couldn’t do it, then why should we bother? If we do not resolve that issue, we cannot move forward with future elections in 2022 or 2024. Those will be stolen just like the 2020 election.”
General Flynn says there is a giant psyop being run on the American people to take their eyes off of the 2020 election fraud. General Flynn explains, “Absolutely, Covid, Afghanistan, the border situation, and we are not even talking about the border situation anymore because its fallen down in three or four priorities in terms of what people are able to concentrate on. We are going to see President Biden come out to talk about lockdowns and vaccines, and it is all to change the narrative. They are going to try to take away the narrative of what happened in the election. What they really wanted and believed is the theft of the 2020 election was going to be dead by about March of 2021, and the country would move on. The American people are not stupid. We are not a bunch of chumps that Biden has called us. There is a bunch of intelligent Americans that are tired of the lies spewing out of the White House and spewing out of the mainstream media.”
As the former Head of the DIA, General Flynn sees the psyop on America from a relatively small group of people. General Flynn says, “They attempt to look bigger than they are, and they are able to do that through the media. They are absolutely able to do that through the mainstream media.” General Flynn also warns about a financial collapse in October triggered by a budget impasse and Nancy Pelosi. He talks about China’s infiltration of America that has been going on for decades. There is much more in the 44 minute interview."
"Prior to this pandemic, if you wanted to weed out all of the “troublemakers”, “independent thinkers” and “non-conformists” from our society, how would you have done it? I suppose that sending everyone a questionnaire asking them what they believe would be one way to do it, but of course a lot of people would give false answers and many others would simply ignore the questionnaire. Social media profiles contain a wealth of information, but many “non-conformists” are not even on social media and digging through all of that data would take an extraordinary amount of time, money and energy. Up until just recently, there just hasn’t been an easy and efficient way to identify those that are not eager servants of the system.
But now the COVID vaccines have changed everything. These injections are the perfect litmus test, because “troublemakers”, “independent thinkers” and “non-conformists” are pretty much the only ones that are refusing the shots at this point. This makes it exceptionally easy to divide American citizens into two categories, and it also gives authorities a perfect excuse to push all of those “troublemakers”, “independent thinkers” and “non-conformists” to the fringes of society.
As I discussed yesterday, I was literally sick to my stomach as I pondered the implications of Biden’s tyrannical new decrees. Originally, Biden and other Democratic leaders were against any sort of vaccine mandates, but now I think that they have realized that mandates are a tool that they can use to fundamentally reshape our society. If you don’t understand where I am going with this, just keep reading, because it will become extremely clear by the end of this article.
Biden’s new decrees cover almost every major institution in our society. Just think about it. Any “major institution” is almost certainly going to be employing more than 100 people, and all such organizations are covered by Biden’s mandates. In addition to businesses of various sizes, we are also talking about colleges, schools, churches, non-profits, political entities, sports teams and charitable organizations.
Millions of Americans that are employed by such institutions could be forced to leave their positions if they refuse to comply with what Biden is demanding. And the rules that the Biden administration is coming up with will require the institutions to be the enforcers of these draconian new measures. Your bosses will be forced to make sure that you are submitting to the new rules, because if not they could be hit with massive fines.
In my last article I used the word “sickening” to describe what Biden is trying to do to all of us, but the truth is that word is not nearly strong enough. What we are facing is a complete and total national nightmare, and it isn’t going to end any time soon.
Biden’s new mandates are even stricter for employees of the federal government. Previously, employees of the federal government were at least given the option to undergo regular testing if they didn’t want to be vaccinated, but now that option is being taken away. So now millions of federal employees will have to choose between their principles and their careers. And considering the fact that so many of these people are barely providing for their families right now, a lot of really heartbreaking choices are going to have to be made.
Earlier today, I posted a video from a woman that works for the U.S. Treasury Department. After all these years, she publicly announced on social media that she is going to leave her job because of Biden’s new mandates. And countless others will follow her out the door. Biden’s new decrees will also force nearly everyone in the entire healthcare industry to either get vaccinated or give up their careers. What a horribly cruel thing to do.
Biden is essentially putting a gun to the heads of these people. So many of them spent an enormous amount of time, energy and money to get their educations, and now Biden is telling them that they have to sacrifice everything that they have worked for if they will not comply with his demands.
As I pointed out yesterday, healthcare workers won’t just be forced out of their current jobs. Because virtually every health care provider in the entire country accepts Medicaid and Medicare, those that refuse to comply will essentially be banned from the entire industry. At a time when a shortage of qualified workers is causing chaos throughout our economy, Biden’s tyrannical orders could force millions of Americans to suddenly lose their jobs. This is an incredibly foolish thing to do, and it could have very serious ramifications in the years ahead.
Sadly, it won’t just be a few people quitting their jobs. A poll that was just conducted discovered that 72 percent of unvaccinated Americans said that they would quit their current jobs rather than be vaccinated… "Many making this argument have cited a Washington Post-ABC News poll released over the weekend. It showed that just 18 percent unvaccinated people whose employers don’t currently have mandates said they would likely get vaccinated if their employer required it. About 7 in 10 (72 percent) said that, if they couldn’t get a medical or religious exemption, they would probably quit rather than submit to the requirement."
I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes, but it is my opinion that Kamala Harris has had a lot of influence in the recent decisions that Biden has been making. She has always had authoritarian tendencies, and if she ever becomes president that will truly be a catastrophic scenario.
Needless to say, Biden’s new mandates are going to cause great anxiety for millions upon millions of people, and a recent CNN poll found that the mood of the country was already heading in a very negative direction… "The new poll finds 69% of Americans say things in the country today are going badly, below the pandemic-era high of 77% reached in January just before President Joe Biden took office but well above the 60% who felt that way in a March CNN poll. And 62% say that economic conditions in the US are poor, up from 45% in April and nearly as high as the pandemic-era peak of 65% reached in May 2020."
My hope is that Republican governors will fight Biden’s new decrees with everything that they have got. Because the truth is that this is one of the most critical moments in U.S. history. Our most basic liberties and freedoms are under full assault, and we really are descending into full-blown tyranny. If Biden’s new mandates are not overturned by the courts, millions of Americans that love liberty and freedom could be forced from their jobs. It would truly be a witch hunt of unprecedented size and scope, and it would represent the greatest purge of “troublemakers”, “independent thinkers” and “non-conformists” that any of us have ever witnessed."
"A few weeks ago, three friends on Facebook told me that they wished for my death. One of them I didn’t really know. He freaked out when I calmly suggested there were viable treatment options for those with Covid. He responded: “Stay out of my life!! I hope you get Covid and die!” The other two friends were people I knew in college 45 years ago, one was my freshman year roommate, and the other guy introduced me to my first wife. He suggested that I prove Darwin’s theory and perish from the virus, the other just basically said I deserved what was coming as a selfish unvaccinated science-denier.
Covid’s willing executioners. I know Facebook is certainly not the ideal place for reasonable discourse. As a psychologist, however, I do find it an interesting sample of a certain extreme way of thinking and behaving. I also believe my experience with “friends” wishing for my demise is not unusual amongst those on that side of the fence in this debate. At least not unusual in thought.
As we all know, Facebook is the place of no inhibition. However, that said, I do believe it is a grave concern that human beings can be manipulated into this dark manner of thinking and feeling. The operative word here is “manipulate.”
I do have faith, that for the most part, human beings have evolved from a cave mentality when confronting “other” in the culture. In cave days our psychology was programmed for survival, and it didn’t take much coercion to view members from another tribe that wandered into territory that was not their own to be immediately met with suspicion and fear. Today, many thousands of years later, I think it takes a bit of manipulation to view “other” as fatally dangerous - but not much coercion, so it seems.
In this regard it appears we have lost any scintilla of common sense. How can a government (or more likely an even higher organization of authority) convince the masses so easily that the unvaccinated are the mortal enemy with not a whiff of science in the argument? This clearly is a case of the emperor’s new clothes, but it isn’t going to take only a small innocent child’s exaltation that the emperor is naked to make everyone see what is true.
Why is this? I’m afraid it is human nature - at least a small part of human nature - that these days needs a little coercion to come out in full bloom. For me, as a psychologist, it is more proof that there is an organized agenda, a “psyop” if you will, driving this whole debacle. When humans are put into this sort of psychological environment, their reaction is very predictable.
A friend of mine, Dr. Mark McDonald, who is a prominent psychiatrist and has a very prestigious practice in California, told me this in a recent conversation: “Pandemic of the unvaccinated” has emerged as an expression of propaganda meant to provoke anger toward those who exercise medical choice in deferring or refusing the experimental vaccine. It is meant to isolate, shame, and humiliate anyone who will not agree to surrender medical autonomy to the state. It intentionally divides Americans against one another while simultaneously distracting attention from the medical reality of poor vaccine efficacy and vaccine harm. The expression is devoid of scientific meaning but full of coercive psychological power. It must be challenged."
Again, we see this idea of “coercive psychological power” come up in Dr. McDonald’s comment. Propaganda and the manipulation of the masses has been a key tenet in totalitarian regimes. Pitting person against person is of utmost importance to having control over the masses. Even in Orwell’s dystopian novel, "1984," the opposition to the state was created by the state to keep the masses distracted, or so it is implied.
I am reminded of the Stanford Prison Experiment as well as Milgram’s obedience studies at Yale. Milgram set up an experiment where a subject, someone who did not know the parameters of the experiment, was in control of administering an electric shock to the “learner” if he/she failed to answer certain questions correctly. The “learner” was also “in” on the experiment and in fact received no shocks. The authority figure egging on the subject was also, of course, “in” on the experiment and played the role of authority that the subject had to succumb to. “Just following orders” is the phrase that immediately comes to mind.
The current phenomenon regarding the persecution of the unvaccinated has some correlation with this experiment in that people, when pressured by the “mainstream authority or narrative,” tend to have little or no connection with a natural empathy toward the group identified as “other” (the unvaccinated). The subjects in Milgram’s experiment consistently detached from the learner’s pain and tended to dissociate from them as fellow humans. They ceased to see them as in the same tribe as themselves; they were quickly reclassified as “other.”
The difference in the results of this experiment and the current situation is that “other” (the “learner”) posed no threat to the subject in Milgram’s experiment. He or she was just disobedient to authority, i.e., was not doing correctly what authority demanded him/her to do.
Now, in our present situation, the vaccinated are convinced by authority that the unvaccinated are in fact a threat (as well as not being obedient to the parental agenda). Authority is doing this through any means available to them, and it makes no difference if these means have even the slightest scientific truth to them (they say of course it is all scientific, but with further scrutiny, it certainly is not).
We saw this early on with the mask compliance. Those wearing masks were identified as one particular tribe: the “good” tribe who possessed community values. Those not wearing masks, or complaining about them, were the other tribe: the bad tribe, who were selfish, stupid, and science deniers. (to paraphrase Orwell’s sheep in Animal Farm: “four legs good (mask), two legs bad (no masks)”). Now this effort of segregation and persecution has moved to the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. It is not the “right” science that will disintegrate this tribal conflict: it is a psycho-social issue, not a pragmatic objective one.
In a recent Charles Eisenstein article “Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed” he states: "My point is that those in the scientific and medical community who dissent from the demonization of the unvaxxed contend not only with opposing scientific views, but with ancient, powerful psycho-social forces. They can debate the science all they want, but they are up against something much bigger."
Daniel Goldhagen’s book, "Hitler’s Willing Executioners" (from which this article’s title is derived) presents a thesis that the persecution of the Jews in Hitler’s Germany was not only an exercise of obedience to Hitler’s ideology but was the result of a long history of German antisemitism. This very well could be true, but in my opinion this historic antisemitism was only the hook which made it easier for Hitler to hang his ideology.
Today’s willing executioners do not need a history of racial discrimination to hang their hatred of anti-vaxxers, but instead rely on a simple identification of “other” (unvaccinated) and a hatred for those who “don’t care about me, or those that I love.” The key common denominator it seems is the common concept of caring for others before caring for yourself, which, ironically, is clearly not the true psychological operator in this situation. These people seem to care far more for themselves and their own safety (and their opinion) than they do for the rights and freedoms (and safety) of others - take the jab to save me, never mind you might die or get sick in the process.
So what we are actually experiencing is “normal” - normal from the perspective that human beings have the innate capability of being all sorts of ugly things, particularly when gathered in crowds: tribes.
If coerced and manipulated in a particular way, as has happened countless times in world history, they can become unconscious, irrational, nonempathetic, monsters. I will close with a paragraph from another excellent article by author CJ Hopkins (which can be found in its entirety on Off-Guardian’s website) “The Approaching Storm”: "Thus, their plan is to make our lives as miserable as possible, to segregate us, stigmatize us, demonize us, bully, and harass us, and pressure us to conform at every turn. They are not going to put us on the trains to the camps. GloboCap is not the Nazis. They need to maintain the simulation of democracy.
So, they need to transform us into an underclass of “anti-social conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxer disinformationists,” “white-supremacist election-result deniers,” “potentially violent domestic extremists,” and whatever other epithets they come up with, so that we can be painted as dangerously unhinged freaks and cast out of society in a way that makes it appear that we have cast out ourselves."
Hunker down."
Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.
“Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy practices galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that get too close and are captured by the Milky Way's gravity. In fact, the practice is common in the universe and illustrated by this striking pair of interacting galaxies from the banks of the southern constellation Eridanus, The River.
Located over 50 million light years away, the large, distorted spiral NGC 1532 is seen locked in a gravitational struggle with dwarf galaxy NGC 1531 (right of center), a struggle the smaller galaxy will eventually lose. Seen edge-on, spiral NGC 1532 spans about 100,000 light-years. Nicely detailed in this sharp image, the NGC 1532/1531 pair is thought to be similar to the well-studied system of face-on spiral and small companion known as M51.”
“I once received a book in the mail, as I sometimes do, for potential review on this blog, James Stein's “Cosmic Numbers: The Numbers That Define Our Universe”. I often write here about books I read, but I don't review. I did glance at Stein's book, however. It has an audience, but it's not for me; been there, done that. The subtitle is provocative, however. The idea that a dozen or so numbers "define the universe." That's a mind-blowing concept.
The gravitational constant. The speed of light. Absolute zero. Planck's constant. The Hubble constant. And so on. Familiar to every introductory physics student. Built into the very structure of the Earth. And every other earth in the universe.
Look again at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field photograph. above Those myriad of galaxies. Those yawning light-years. That infinitude of worlds. And, as far as we know, the fundamental constants are the same everywhere,
The human mind has thrown a net across the cosmos. And as we have brought the galaxies into our ken, so have we come to realize that we too are part and parcel of the fabric of cosmic space and time. Exceptional clarity. Impenetrable mystery.
So what do we make of the news so breathlessly reported in the media of neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light? This is surely a bit of heroic physics, pitting what we believe to be true against the refining fire of experience, but I wouldn't make too much of it yet. Tom suggested that perhaps the researchers unwittingly measured the distance from CERN in Switzerland to Gran Sasso in Italy with greater accuracy. That's the kind of whimsy the result calls for now. The real story- for the time being- is as an illustration of the way the engine of scientific knowing grinds inexorably toward consensus.”
“Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it?”
"Spending more than a few minutes on a cable news channel or streaming website is usually an exercise in tedium. But tuning in this week quickly became intolerable. The networks are commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. We’ve had an endless parade of survivors, retrospectives and regurgitated footage of the calamity taking up almost all of the available airtime. Coverage may be even more somber in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. You may remember 9/11 was a casus belli for invading the Central Asian nation - to punish the ruling Taliban for harboring al-Qaida - blamed for the attacks.
Those lingering memories of the burning towers are the reason Americans so readily backed U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. The words “9/11” were all the justification needed to keep the military there for the next 20 years. After two decades and over $2 trillion, U.S. troops are gone and the Taliban are back in control. But we wonder if anyone will be brave enough to utter the tough questions underlying the maudlin remembrances… or if they’ll be too “political” to ponder on such a somber occasion.
We’re not beholden to such patriotic impulses, so we don’t mind considering out loud why we were attacked. We can consider whether 20 years of military action in Afghanistan made us safer. And we can wonder if anyone will ever apologize for the military debacle and shameful retreat.
“Terribly, Terribly Wrong”: It’s not unprecedented. As Bill Bonner and I relate in Empire of Debt, Robert S. McNamara, secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 - and the U.S. architect of the Vietnam War - admitted that what he had done was “terribly, terribly wrong.” Who would have thought a more terribly wrong war could drown out the misbegotten deeds of an earlier generation? How was it that a whole new generation would be duped into fighting an endless battle against an invisible global enemy?
As we’ve already heard many times recently, many of the soldiers returning home from Afghanistan were but wee toddlers or a gleam in their mother’s eye when the World Trade Towers fell. An argument could be made that the U.S. “had to do something,” lest more airliners become weapons of mass destruction. Just three months after the devastating hijacking, al-Qaida supposedly suborned a man into wearing explosive shoes onto an airplane.
McNamara’s justification for sending more and more troops into Vietnam was a lot more ethereal. The North Vietnamese never posed any real danger to the United States. Ho Chi Minh and his men were never going to seize Washington. So what is astonishing about McNamara’s mea culpa is not his admission that he made a colossal error - though that is extraordinary in itself and places him in a superior category to most public officials - but his candid record of how life-and-death decisions are made by supposedly intelligent and responsible governments.
Not Stupid, Just Absurd: In 1954 - just after the French had their croissants handed to them at Dien Bien Phu - President Dwight Eisenhower warned that the fall of French Indochina would give communists a foothold. As the ideology took root in one country, he said, it would spread to all the others… and soon all of Asia would be under red flags. This “domino theory,” as it became known, was so popular that it crossed political party lines. Today, the idea is about as fashionable as poodle skirts or brogues with spats… mostly because it doesn’t make a lick of sense.
How could anyone believe that a state — an abstract as well as physical thing — of 35 million people (in 1965) of various cultures, languages, religions, ethnic and racial groups, political preferences, modernization and sexual preferences living in a land of 127,000 square miles (about the size of New Mexico) including mountains, swamps, beaches, plains, jungle, hamlets and cities be understood as a small, 3-D object painted in two colors?
The idea was not stupid. It was just absurd. Einstein had said that things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. America’s empire builders of the 1960s had gone too far. It was as if they had simplified the Old Testament as: “Jews kick butts in the Holy Land.” They had lost the nuances and details that made it interesting.
Dominoes Can Fall in Both Directions: Whether Laos or Cambodia would be affected by events in Vietnam, no one could say. But what they could say with complete assurance was that Vietnam was not a domino. If proximity caused nations to change their political systems, why hadn’t West Germany become like East Germany? Why did Switzerland keep its federal system when it was surrounded by centralized governments? And who ever heard of dominoes that fell only in one direction? If the presence of a communist South Vietnam might cause Thailand to topple toward communism, mightn’t the presence of Thailand on its border cause South Vietnam to topple toward constitutional monarchy?
Perhaps most importantly of all, if the people of Southeast Asia wanted to “go communist,” who were we to tell them not to? It was only because America presumed itself to be an empire that the question even came up. Empires are involved in constant warfare - the struggle to control vassal states on the periphery. Typically, they do so to maintain order throughout the empire, as well as to obtain new sources of tribute. But our answer presumes a logic that isn’t there. Empires fight for dominoes - not for any particular, logical reason, but merely because they are empires.
Questions Nobody Asked: Could not Vietnam have been independent, but neutral in the Cold War? Why did it matter anyway; Vietnam was still a primitive, mostly agricultural nation? Whichever side gained her allegiance, what did they gain? Nobody ever seemed to ask - either themselves or the other side.
In retrospect, it looks as though the whole conflict - or at least the bloodiest part - could have been avoided, simply by sitting down and exploring a few issues. But the lunkheads running U.S. foreign policy at the time did not even bother to ask. It was arrogance, no doubt, that prevented anyone from seriously considering conversation as an alternative to brute force. In the end, the United States was fighting an ideology - not an actual enemy. But the harder it fought, the more misery the Vietnamese people suffered… giving them a reason to embrace the opposite of whatever was causing them to suffer.
Lessons Not Learned: The 9/11 planners, at least, provided a more visceral enemy than the boogeyman that drove the Vietnam War - communism. Again, it’s easy to see how these mistakes were repeated in Afghanistan. Terrorism is a tactic, not a physical foe. Sure, we needed to go after the guys who planned 9/11. But did we need to overthrow the Taliban to achieve that goal?
Yes, said the American empire builders... who eagerly leapt at the chance to try once again to remake a country in their own image. The experiences in Afghanistan show that U.S. policymakers learned nothing they should have from the Vietnam War. In fact, policymakers tried so hard to prevent the Afghan war from becoming “another Vietnam” that they actually magnified the mistakes of the past. "Empire of Debt" explains how the Vietnam War helped put the United States on a path to ruin. The disaster in Afghanistan could seal the deal."
"As part of our season marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 “terrorist attacks”, OffG is going to be highlighting some of the research papers and scientific studies done over the years. These studies have been key in pointing out logical flaws and impossible physics used to support the official narrative.
Our first paper is “Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction”, which was first published in 2008. Authored by five key names in the 9/11 truth movement, Steve Jones, Frank Legge, Kevin Ryan, Anthony Szamboti and James Gourley, this paper collates all the statements from both FEMA and NIST that actually agree with the so-called “conspiracy theorists”, and highlights the holes in the official story. Holes that the government experts admit exist. We’ll post the 14 points summarized, and you may downoad the complete research paper at the link above.
1. WTC 7’S COLLAPSE IS UNRESOLVED: The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue.” FEMA, World Trade Center building performance study: Preliminary observations, and recommendations, Report FEMA 403, May 2002.
2. WTC 1&2 WITHSTOOD THE JET IMPACT, AS THEY WERE DESIGNED TO: The WTC towers had been designed to withstand the accidental impact of a Boeing 707 seeking to land at a nearby airport…” FEMA, World Trade Center building performance study: Preliminary observations, and recommendations, Report FEMA 403, May 2002. Both WTC 1 and WTC 2 were stable after the aircraft impact, standing for 102 min and 56 min, respectively. The global analyses with structural impact damage showed that both towers had considerable reserve capacity” “Final report on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers”, NIST, September 2005.
3. “PANCAKE THEORY” NOT SUPPORTED BY THE EVIDENCE: NIST’s findings do not support the “pancake theory” of collapse, which is premised on a progressive failure of the floor systems in the WTC towers… Thus, the floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon.” NIST federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center disaster, FAQ, August 30, 2006. [Online]
4. LOAD-BEARING STRUCTURES WERE NOWHERE NEAR THEIR LIMITS: The core of the building, which carried primarily gravity loads, was made up of a mixture of massive box columns made from three-story long plates, and heavy rolled wide-flange shapes […] The core columns were designed to carry the building gravity loads and were loaded to approximately 50% of their capacity before the aircraft impact….the exterior columns were loaded to only approximately 20% of their capacity before the aircraft impact” “The role of metallurgy in the NIST investigation of the World Trade Center towers collapse”, JOM vol. 59, no. 11, pp. 22-29, November 2007
5. BUILDINGS COLLAPSED “ESSENTIALLY IN FREE-FALL”:
Full screen recommended.
Q: “How could the WTC towers collapse in only 11 seconds (WTC 1) and 9 seconds (WTC 2) — speeds that approximate that of a ball dropped from similar height in a vacuum (with no air resistance)?”
A: …As documented in Section 6.14.4 of NIST NCSTAR 1, these collapse times show that: “… the structure below the level of collapse initiation offered minimal resistance to the falling building mass at and above the impact zone. The potential energy released by the downward movement of the large building mass far exceeded the capacity of the intact structure below to absorb that energy through energy of deformation. Since the stories below the level of collapse initiation provided little resistance to the tremendous energy released by the falling building mass, the building section above came down essentially in free fall, as seen in videos”
NIST federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center disaster, FAQ, August 30, 2006. [Online]
6. TRUSSES PASSED FIRE ENDURANCE TESTS: “NIST contracted with Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. to conduct tests to obtain information on the fire endurance of trusses like those in the WTC towers…. All four test specimens sustained the maximum design load for approximately 2 hours without collapsing…The Investigation Team was cautious about using these results directly in the formulation of collapse hypotheses. In addition to the scaling issues raised by the test results, the fires in the towers on September 11, and the resulting exposure of the floor systems, were substantially different from the conditions in the test furnaces. Nonetheless, the [empirical test] results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11”
“Final report on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers”, NIST, September 2005.
7. FIRES BURNT FOR A “SHORT DURATION”: The initial jet fuel fires themselves lasted at most a few minutes” […] “At any given location, the duration of [air, not steel] temperatures near 1,000 °C was about 15 min to 20 min. The rest of the time, the calculated temperatures were near 500 °C or below”.
“Final report on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers”, NIST, September 2005.
8. FIRES WERE NOT HOT ENOUGH TO MELT STEEL: In no instance did NIST report that steel in the WTC towers melted due to the fires. The melting point of steel is about 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit). Normal building fires and hydrocarbon (e.g., jet fuel) fires generate temperatures up to about 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,000 degrees Fahrenheit). NIST reported maximum upper layer air temperatures of about 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) in the WTC towers (for example, see NCSTAR 1, figure 6-36)”
NIST federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center disaster, FAQ, August 30, 2006. [Online]
9. MOST OF THE WTC STEEL EVIDENCE WAS DESTROYED: “NIST possesses 236 structural steel elements from the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings. These pieces represent a small fraction of the enormous amount of steel examined at the various recovery yards where the debris was sent as the WTC site was cleared. It is estimated that roughly 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent of the 200,000 tons of steel used in the construction of the two towers was recovered. […] The lack of WTC 7 steel precludes tests on actual material from the structure…”
Federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center disaster: Steel inventory and identification, NIST, September 2005.
10. UNEXPLAINED UNUSUALLY BRIGHT FLAMES AND GLOWING LIQUID PRESENT: An unusual flame is visible within this fire. In the upper photograph {Fig 9-44} a very bright flame, as opposed to the typical yellow or orange surrounding flames, which is generating a plume of white smoke, stands out”
“Final report on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers”, NIST, September 2005.
“NIST reported (NCSTAR 1-5A) that just before 9:52 am, a bright spot appeared at the top of a window on the 80th floor of WTC 2, four windows removed from the east edge on the north face, followed by the flow of a glowing liquid. This flow lasted approximately four seconds before subsiding. Many such liquid flows were observed from near this location in the seven minutes leading up to the collapse of this tower”.
NIST federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center disaster, FAQ, August 30, 2006. [Online]
11. STEEL SHOWS EVIDENCE OF VERY HIGH TEMPERATURES AND SULFIDATION: Sample 1 (From WTC 7)… Evidence of a severe high temperature corrosion attack on the steel, including oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent intergranular melting, was readily visible in the near-surface microstructure […] Sample 2 (From WTC 1 or WTC 2)…The thinning of the steel occurred by high temperature corrosion due to a combination of oxidation and sulfidation […] The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified…A detailed study into the mechanisms of this phenomenon is needed…”
FEMA, World Trade Center building performance study: Preliminary observations, and recommendations, Report FEMA 403, May 2002.
12. NIST TWEAKED THEIR COMPUTER MODELS UNTIL THEY OBTAINED THE RESULTS THEY WANTED: The more severe case (which became Case B for WTC 1 and Case D for WTC 2) was used for the global analysis of each tower. Complete sets of simulations were then performed for Cases B and D. To the extent that the simulations deviated from the photographic evidence or eyewitness reports [e.g., complete collapse occurred], the investigators adjusted the input, but only within the range of physical reality. Thus, for instance…the pulling forces on the perimeter columns by the sagging floors were adjusted…”
“Final report on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers”, NIST, September 2005.
13. NO EXPLANATION FOR THE TOTAL COLLAPSE OF THE BUILDINGS: This letter is in response to your April 12, 2007 request for correction…we are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse”
CS Fletcher (NIST), “Response to request for correction”, Journal of 9/11 Studies, vol. 17, pp. 17-23, November 2007
14. NIST NEVER LOOKED FOR EXPLOSIVE RESIDUE: Q: Did the NIST investigation look for evidence of the WTC towers being brought down by controlled demolition? Was the steel tested for explosives or thermite residues?
A: NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.
NIST federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center disaster, FAQ, August 30, 2006. [Online]
There you have it, the “official narrative” condemned with words from the authors’ own hands. Government experts admit that the twin towers were designed to withstand impacts from jets, and did so, and that the weight-bearing structures of WTC 1&2 were loaded to, at most 50% of their capacity before the impacts of the planes.
They admit that the fires burnt for only 15 minutes and that the trusses passed fire endurance tests eight times longer than that. They admit these fires were never hot enough to melt steel, and yet they admit there were unusually bright flames, molten metal and evidence of incredibly high temperatures and sulfidation of the steel.
They admit the evidence does not support the initial “pancake theory” of collapse and that they have no full explanation of the complete collapse of the twin towers, which they admit happened at near-freefall speed. They even admit that their explanation of WTC7’s collapse “has only a low probability of occurrence”.
They admit that despite this lack of explanation, and witness testimony of molten steel and explosions, they never tested the WTC steel for explosive residue.
And they admit the government removed and destroyed the vast majority of the steel evidence.
"This week marks 20 years since the September 11th terrorist attacks. The American People have never been told the truth of what happened that day and one need to look no further than Joe issuing an executive order directing the Department of Justice to conduct a “declassification review” of documents concerning the FBI investigation of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Joe said he told the Justice Department to err on the side of disclosure. Why not disclose all of it? Is an America that keeps secrets from its People an honorable nation or a despicable one?
These are some of questions I asked in the hours, days and weeks after, as well as the months and years since September 11. All remain unanswered.
• United States Air Traffic Control’s Standard Operating Procedure calls for fighter jets to be sent to intercept commercial aircraft that have lost communication for more than five minutes. After five minutes fighter jets are scrambled and they are able to intercept an airliner anywhere in the airspace of the lower 48 states within 14 minutes. What happened to Standard Operating Procedure on September 11 when not one - but four - jets disappeared for times all in excess of one hour? Four orders to stand down would have had to have been issued that morning. Who gave those orders?
• The Commander in Chief continued to read from a children’s book in an elementary school classroom in Florida for seven minutes after being informed of the second World Trade Tower strike. Leaders do not wait for their handlers to tell them what to do. Who was in charge of America that day?
• Why were members of the Bin Laden family allowed to fly out of the United States in the days after the attacks while all other aircraft was grounded?
• Trading of put options (betting a stock will decline) on American and United Airlines soared in the days before the attacks. Much of the trading was done through Deutsche Bundesbank investment subsidiary Alex Brown & Sons. The Executive Director (third ranking position) of the CIA on September 11 was Alvin Bernard “Buzzy” Krongard. Prior to joining the CIA Krongard was the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Alex Brown & Sons. Why has this case of securities fraud not been investigated with the same resources and fervor used to go after B. Madoff?
• The country’s spy agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, met with Osama Bin Laden when he was being treated for a kidney disorder in a Dubai hospital in months before the attacks. Why?
• Planes hit two World Trade Center towers on September 11 yet three towers fell. What caused WTC Tower 7 to collapse later that day? The story of Tower 7 is an asterisk and it ought not be.
• Why did we invade Iraq when 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers were Saudi nationals? Why did the war on terror become the war in Iraq which then became the war in Afghanistan? How is it possible for so many of my fellow Americans to not see through the military-industrial complex’s erroneous and detrimental narratives?
• When George and Dick testified to the 9/11 Commission they did so on the condition that they would only testify together, that they would not be placed under oath, and that there were to be no recordings made of the session. Why did the members of the 9/11 Commission agree to this? Why do our two top leaders not have to be accountable to those they are supposed to represent? Why were the two of them granted a privilege that would never be afforded to me or you? What did George and Dick say that day and why are the American People not privy to that information?
• In the photo above where is the plane wreckage? The official story says that the plane was so hot that it was eviscerated… yet the grass in front of the Pentagon is both green and unharmed… many of the Pentagon widows alongside the hole are intact… and unscathed books can even be seen in the offices of the Pentagon. I have had numerous moments that I refer to as right-before-my-very-eyes-moments when it comes to current events in the United States - when we are told that what seems to have happened did not happen. This one takes the cake.
Official stories from our government - JFK, Vietnam, NAFTA, 9/11, Covid vaxxies, Afghanistan, et al. - are blasphemous and insulting. Twenty years later I remember those who sadly lost their lives on yet another day when I lost more faith in my country’s government."
