Well, what about the other side of the 9/11 conspiracy theories? What about the evidence that it was indeed just a bunch of “terrorists” and not a government-sponsored atrocity?

In this video Andrew Maxwell, a comedian, who believes in the findings of the official investigation, which claims the responsibility for the attack lies with Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, takes five young Brits, who believe some of these conspiracy theories, on a road-trip from New York to Washington.

They visit Ground Zero where two planes hit the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, home of vast American defence HQ and Shanksville in Pennsylvania where United 93 crashed.

Conspiracy or not? What do you think?

9/11 Conspiracy Road Trip [57m]

Some questions weren’t answered by this video, I have to say. If nano-thermite was not responsible for the collapse of the twin towers, why was it found in the debris? Surely, it shouldn’t have been there at all? What were the explosions in the basement of the buildings apparently reported initially?

It is hard to know if what is in this video is actually true, but, like with most conspiracy theories, it looks good. Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt was, according to Wikipedia, Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, so she ought to know what she is talking about… but then again, she could be a rogue crank. How to know?

Well, maybe watch the video at least (5 parts of 15 minutes each so far), and see what you think. She claims that the plan is to remove value-based education from the West and use rewards-based education (operant conditioning) so people can be educated to be compliant workers only, with no real ability to think for themselves; then the world, specifically the USA but also more generally, can be merged into a New World Order on an essentially Socialist basis (central planning by what amounts to elite, wealthy, dictators). Maybe they’ll keep a pretence of democracy as they do now.

Certainly, I have wondered in the past why books about thinking skills are so hard to come by these days. I mean really good books, not the gimmicky ones you tend to find. For example, Straight and Crooked Thinking has been missing for decades now, along with several others (although it has recently reappeared in a Teach Yourself Kindle Edition). Once upon a time it was considered important to teach people to think. Now? Not so, despite the empty rhetoric of the education authorities.

[5 parts, 15 minutes each]

Is it OK to go around assassinating unarmed “terrorists” and enemy leaders? I mean, not for you and me, we’d be done in an instant if we tried to take the law into our own hands, but is it OK for governments? Certain ones at the moment seem to think its a jolly idea. They shot Osama, and also claim not to be targeting Gadaffy Duck directly, whilst dropping three massive bombs into a bunker they, presumably, knew was occupied by the Colonel (NATO/US claim to be targeting command and control systems, which will include various individuals of course, rendering the concept of not targeting specific people meaningless). I’m not saying these folk don’t deserve it, but is it morally sound?

Well, we all know killing people is supposed to be bad, but in the real world, bad people usually have to be stopped by force one way or another. Despite what the churches and whatnot say, most people accept that self defence is right. Most people in the West are not unduly upset by the death of Osama (assuming its real and recent as claimed).

We must bear in mind that the targets of these assassination attempts (in the case of Mr Duck) need not be one-sided: he can send his own assassins across the water, and probably will, if he lives long enough. Our own great leaders may be writing their own death warrants: a reason, I suggest, that such behaviour is generally avoided by them: it makes them more vulnerable to assassination themselves. A war and the killing of tens of thousands of nobodies is one thing, but our glorious leaders can’t be put in the line of fire…

Personally I think they should all be locked in a room with one loaded gun and let them sort it out between themselves. So, yes, I think assassination is more moral than the killing of large numbers of people in a wider conflict. Why kill thousands when one will do?

Hmm… and while I’m on the subject… I just note that Iraq has loads of oil; Afghanistan has the route for a long-planned oil pipeline from Iraq to the sea (and a load of heroin production); Libya has oil. Yemen doesn’t have much: it is expected to run out by 2017; Syrian oil production peaked in 1996 and it may become a net importer within a decade. Libya on the other hand has an estimated 60 years of reserves. So which countries would you be most interested in taking the opportunity of intervening in, if you were the West, and stupidly dependent on oil?

So science is finally beginning to catch up with what I found years ago in my Diet & Exercise page: avoiding fat is a waste of time. Exercise doesn’t help much (I found it helped, but I had to do a lot). Avoiding sugar and fructose (and high-fructose corn syrup) is the key.

Coulda told ‘em that… well, technically, I suppose I did, but no-one was listening, of course. Got 26 minutes to listen?

He says it again here, with one or two extra interesting tidbits thrown in.

In the video clips on this page, Hillary Clinton admits that people are getting better news from Russia Today and Al Jazeera.

Infowars - Hillary Clinton

My new e-book, How to Eliminate Massive Debts with Tiny Payments is online! I know a lot about this subject, as it happens, so I thought I would distil my experience into a quick guide to getting out of debt as fast as possible, even when you can’t afford it. Indeed, especially when you can’t afford it. So many people are, in effect, conned into taking on debts they can’t afford that now the whole world’s economy is busy choosing between a new Great Depression or massive inflation as the best way to eliminate the systemic financial toxicity.

If it sometimes seems to you that the whole world is conspiring to keep you poor, this video might help to explain it. It shows, using interviews with top fund managers and similar types, how the wealthy elite are exploiting the financial system to impoverish entire nations, just so they can make more and more money themselves in the short term. It shows how they are, effectively, destroying the world and warns it could end in world war once again.

It talks about globalisation, which of course from a capitalist point of view maximises efficiency since it keeps unnecessary costs low: resources are obtained where they are cheapest and goods are produced where they are cheapest. In purely financial terms, this is of course sensible. But it also impoverishes most people, over time.

One interviewee also comments that the Credit Crunch was the inevitable result of deregulation that the wealthy promoted in the 1980's (the 'Big Bang' in London), which was introduced in Britain because of the industrial crisis here. That in turn (he doesn't say) was probably caused by decades of over-taxation and bureauracracy... first things swing one way, then the other, and there's no escape for anybody, it seems, while political decisions are being made by dummies (as another interviewee commented).

You may need to set captions on this using the CC button or up-pointing triangle button on the lower right. It has French subtitles anyway, but you can choose other languages for subtitles with this button and the right-pointing triangle that comes up on it when you pop up the menu, or the middle icon on the popup menu (depending on the particular interface that comes up on your system).

The federal government in Washington has been abusing its powers for some time, and I think most people who follow these things will be aware of it. The question is, how to fix it? But wait a minute… I’m a Brit, so what do I care about the US constitution? Well, the fact is, the US has been the cornerstone of liberty throughout the world for the last couple of centuries, and if it disappears there, it won’t be popping up anywhere else in a hurry. The centre of world power appears to be shifing to the East: China - little hope there. India - well, maybe. But it would be best if the country with the best constitution kept going.

So, how to save it? This video, about what is becoming something of a popular uprising among the US citizenry, discusses peaceful methods of drawing a line in the sand for the US government: by using the powers of the individual states, and the powers of the individual citizens. For once, this is a video that isn’t just doom-mongering. It has constructive ideas. As a movie, it could do with some more editing, but in terms of its ideas, it seems very interesting: I’m even tempted to move out there some time to help!

Don’t Tread on Me: Rise of the Republic [1h 35m]

David Icke believes a lot of strange stuff, completely unverifiable for the most part, but his description of the way the current banking crisis came about is clear and worth listening to if you don’t quite get how it all happened. He also makes a prediction about the third phase of the process, i.e., that the international financial system will be (deliberately, he says) crashed so that a global banking system can be implemented…

In reality, I’m not convinced that it needs a conspiracy theory to see that things are going that way. It is the natural order of capitalist economics and power-brokers in general to tend towards monopoly in all areas anyway. Banking is no different, I am sure - and politics certainly isn’t. And, such people being stupid, we can be sure that the proposed system won’t work either, and will probably lead, as David Icke claims, to some sort of financial dictatorship or at least fiasco, in the not too distant future.

Here’s the interview [about 40 minutes long - the first couple of minutes are not in English].

John Pilger’s new film, ‘The War You Don’t See’ is out in cinemas in the UK from 12th December 2010, and will be on ITV at 10.35pm on the 14th. It is about how the mainstream media distort our view of what is going on in the world by wilfully misreporting events, especially major events like the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war (the “War in Afghanistan” as it is known for some reason).

Perhaps you can see some of it yourself, just by watching the news on TV with a skeptical eye for a while. Take for example, the BBC news.  Almost the entire output yesterday, all day, consisted of two items. A bit of snow in Britain ("Frozen Britain") and the FIFA football fiasco. Is that really all that was going on in the world? What’s happening about the gun battles in Rio between the army and the drug dealers? Had you even heard about it? It was reported indeed, after a few days of fighting. But who cares about a few foreigners? Not the BBC, apparently. How many “terrorist” attacks has Pakistan suffered so far this year? Do you know? Has it been reported on the news? What is happening about the US’s Reliable Replacement Weapons programme to replace perfectly reliable nuclear weapons with new, more flexible ones (that perhaps can be used in situations where they might just get away with it…)? Obama’s department of energy has called for the programme to be stopped… but has it been? Do you know? Well, never mind; snow in Britain and a football game or two are much more important. Aren’t they?

The Reverend Billy is a self-styled evangelistic priest who is a bit of a comedian, but with a serious message. As Christmas approaches, he asks us to avoid the “Shopocalypse": we are shopping too much, and too irresponsibly.

Remember, the environment is being destroyed by destructive capitalism - by built-in obsolescence - by we, the consumers, buying junk we don’t really need. And people’s lives are being destroyed in what amounts to slave labour camps in countries like China, Sri Lanka, The Philipines and more, as children and teenagers work 19 hour days making this junk for pennies that are barely enough to live on even in their own countries.

Reverend Billy presents his message with songs and jokes, but he is so right.

‘Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring,
Not even a mouse!

The children were nestled,
All snug in their beds,
While ads for new doodads
Played out in their heads…

Let’s hear it for the Reverend Billy!

So: how does one shop sustainably? Well, the video explains it briefly, but it is worth repeating. Shop at small local shops getting locally produced items wherever possible, and avoid shopping at the big multi-nationals as much as is feasible, in part because they use sweatshop labour often, and in part because the money you spend there is not recycled through the local economy as much, and in part because they are driving local businesses out of the market altogether. You might think that driving uncompetitive business into bankruptcy is a good thing, but in reality it is not so simple. Firstly, it is being done by illegitimate means: a) the use of ultra-cheap sweatshop labour; b) with artificially low prices which will be raised once the competition is gone (the usual monopolist’s practice); and c) with mind-numbing brainwashing “lifestyle” advertising which is being insidiously infiltrated into our very culture so deeply that we pretty much fail to even recognize that we are being advertised to any more - but we are. Secondly, a diverse economy is a healthy economy. If the marketplace is dominated by just a few monolithic corporations, it is inherently less stable and more prone to crashes, and the government is more easily blackmailed by these vast, wealthy and amoral organizations.

Well, I don’t have the money to shop anyway, as it happens. And I have to buy cheaply. I’ve noticed that the local shops are in some cases much cheaper than the Tesco superstore, for example with eggs and milk. I’m not one for price-checking but I will start looking at one item every now and then (hence eggs first, then milk… I’ll go on like that). There is more diversity in the superstores, so I will certainly use them for the main grocery shopping, but not so much, it seems, for the everyday items.

As for luxury items; I can’t afford them anyway. And I’m not unhappy. Sure I want to be rich and so on… but shopping doesn’t make people happy, I believe. People think it will make them happy, but if it worked, they wouldn’t need to keep going back so often, I think. My suspicion is that it gives a quick thrill, which fades, and the shopper ends up just a little bit less happy than when they started once the thrill has worn off. They are less happy because they know a) they’ve wasted some money; b) they’ve bought some junk which didn’t live up to their expectations; c) they’re burdened with extra junk to dispose of or keep dragging around with them as they go through their lives; d) they don’t know what else to do to make themselves happy (live in the moment, try enlightenment, try spending less, try spending time with people and not things, try doing things that can make them feel proud of themselves or pleased with themselves, develop their self-esteem ).

In the meantime… there’s Reverend Billy’s website, or you could read about how a sustainable economy might work, or this 21-minute video about how our production system works - or doesn’t: The Story of Stuff.

In the video below, part two of three as it happens, Glen Beck talks about how the US Federal Reserve is ‘monetizing the debt’ - that is, trying to get the USA out of financial trouble by “quantitative easing,” or in old language, printing money. What’s wrong with this? If it goes wrong, it either doesn’t work much, or inflation goes out of control. The problem with inflation is that, while on the one hand it allows debts to be paid off, on the other, it destroys your savings and even wages, over time. And not much time, if the inflation rate is high enough. And it can get very high. In the video he mentions the Weimar Republic (democratic Germany between the wars), and fascist Argentina in the 1980’s. They printed money and the result was utter meltdown of their economies due to hyperinflation - the most destructive form of inflation, where prices rise at stupendous rates. Many countries have destroyed themselves with this method. Zimbabwe has done it recently under its (communist) dictator Robert Mugabe. There, the annual rate of inflation by December 2008 was estimated at 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent (6.5 x 10¹⁰⁸%, the equivalent of 6 quinquatrigintillion 500 quattuortrigintillion percent, or 65 followed by 107 zeros – one googol 65 million percent). Not surprisingly, unemployment in Zimbabwe is currently running at around 95%. That is, for every person with a job, another 19 are out of work. How do they survive with no welfare state? Those with work where they can earn foreign currency (dollars and the South African rand) have to support them. It’s the only way.

Anyway, my point? The US Federal Reserve is taking a big risk. Any type of government can make this mistake. Glen thinks the US is being brought down deliberately. The part 2 video below introduces his ideas (I left out part 1 as it’s a bit dull - you can see it here and part 3 which is quite interesting, here. There’s more to follow, however, as these are just the introduction. In the three videos following part two, he reveals who he believes to be behind the conspiracy: George Soros. Is he right? Decide for yourself. I’ve read one of George Soros’ books, and he sounded like a reasonable guy to me… but…

Glen Beck Introduces the Puppet Master Part 2

The Puppet Master Part 1

The Puppet Master Part 2

The Puppet Master Part 3

So there you have it. The (or one) conspiracy revealed. Perhaps. Even if Glen Beck is right and George Soros is conspiring to bring down the USA, one then has to decide whether that’s a good thing or not, of course. It doesn’t look so good to me to be going against the democratic wishes of the US people, such as they are, and replacing them with, frankly, a global, undemocratic, corporate state, which is probably what would happen (given that George Soros is a) very rich and b) alleged to be a fan of Edward Bernays). In a previous post I have linked to the astounding videos of “The Century of the Self” which are all about how Edward Bernays’ legacy has changed society into an advertising-driven amoral sheepopolis.

Even if that doesn’t happen, and even if George Soros’s intentions are good (hypothetically assuming Glen Beck is right), it still doesn’t mean it is a good thing. Why? Because many human beings are psychopaths and see the rest of humanity as cattle to be used or abused for their own purposes. Any monolithic power structure, especially an undemocratic one, will sooner or later be taken over by such people as we do not yet have the technology or social barriers to stop them from doing so. A one-world government, until such time as we do, will be a disaster for humanity.

Furthermore, even without the psychopaths, humans are bad at government. While many governments are truly terrible, even the good ones are wasteful and incompetent much of the time - but at least we can to some extent vote with our feet and leave the bad ones behind by emigrating to what we hope may be a better-run country. But what do we do if they’re all more-or-less the same? How likely is a global revolt? Even in small, very badly run countries, revolts are rare events.

I have no idea whether the conspiracy theorists are right, or are just taking advantage of the complete mish-mash and mixed-up, under-reported information out there in the world. But… there’s no doubt that the economies of the world, and me and you, the trusty taxpayer, ARE being robbed by the banksters. These two videos give Alex Jones’s perspective on it: he believes we are being set up to be impoverished and to live in police states, and his circumstantial evidence is pretty convincing, I must say. The first video, Fall of the Republic, is a little slow, and concentrates mainly on deconstructing the lies of Barack Obama, the second, Endgame, on the conspiracy itself.

Fall of the Republic (2h 25m)

Endgame (2h 25m)

Authorities in the US have admitted that vaccination can be harmful. A court has awarded massive compensation to the family of a child who became autistic after being given multiple vaccines. CBS has the story:

Family to Receive $1.5Min First Ever Vaccine-Autism Court Award

When the USA gets a cold, the rest of the world gets the ‘flu… so the saying goes. Well, it seems the USA is about to get the (economic) ‘flu… do we get a cold? I doubt it somehow. This documentary from 2008 shows firstly the terrifying state of the US government debts, and secondly, why it is important (they state it mildly - the US will be under the thumb of its bankers, mainly China. This effectively means that their ‘empire’ will end and by extension the Western empire will end; US citizens will be in hock for a generation or more; poverty will be commonplace).

Putting it more strongly, it means US citizens (and others) will end up effectively as slaves, working to pay off irredeemable debts all their lives. In short, freedom is good, but you cannot sustain freedom without financial responsibility. To me, that is just the way the Universe is constructed. Money represents freedom of action. Without the one, you can’t have the other. Debt equals slavery.

The West has a demographic time bomb as well: the average age of the population is increasing so much that not enough workers are available to pay for pensions, healthcare and so on. Clearly, governments in Britain and the US are dealing with it, secretly, by allowing huge numbers of young immigrants from Eastern Europe and Mexico respectively to enter the countries (while pretending to be tough on immigration). Well, fine, but it will alter the cultures of these nations. And anyway, the debts in the USA look too big for this to work too well. But… maybe they’ve done their sums. I’d like to see them. The video doesn’t address this possible solution, mind you.

We are semi-blissfully going about our daily business thinking that maybe the ‘Credit Crunch’ wasn’t so bad after all… a little hiccup maybe, but not so bad. But, actually, there are a lot of problems lurking, not least of which is the massive debt both governments and individuals around the world are contending with.

The problem with debt, basically, is that it needs to be paid back, or, it is necessary to default on it. Either solution messes up the economy. Either solution messes up your and my finances. If we divert funds to paying it back, that money isn’t being spent on productive capital, or even on goods. It is money down the drain. If we default, well, our creditors have money shortages instead. Either way, we all lose.

Economies historically deal with huge national debts in one of two main ways: economic recession (or its extreme version, depression/panic), or inflation (or its extreme version, hyperinflation). Recession sees prices falling, jobs getting lost as businesses can’t make a profit or jobless consumers can’t consume, and so on. Inflation sees prices rising rapidly and consumers not being able to keep up, and, after a time, jobs getting lost as businesses can’t make a profit because they can’t afford the raw materials or customers can’t afford the high prices… Depression and hyperinflation are extreme versions of these and can be quite terrible.

After the Credit Crunch (caused entirely by slack regulation of the financial markets by governments around the world, encouraged by free-market economic theories (not that the alternatives work so well either)), governments had basically two choices: stand back and watch the economies of the world slump into depression, or print money (sorry, euphemism of the day: “quantitative easing") to try and cancel out the collapsing money supply as shares and banks tumbled. Well, they chose the latter and printed money (or, really, sold treasury bills and reduced interest rates - effectively the same). In the UK they only did this enough to cancel out about half of the slump, however. That is one reason why our economy isn’t recovering much yet the recession hasn’t been so intense either (on the surface). Nevertheless, this amounts to a huge debt which is going to have to be paid or defaulted on. In the US they’ve gone further and the outcome is much the same so far. This video suggests the outcome is going to be hyperinflation. The video makers have their own political free-market axe to grind (and as I mentioned free-market theories led us into this mess in part), but the evidence that the economic ramifications of this mess are still working out seems pretty good. Oh, and if, unlike me unfortunately, you happen to have some spare cash, it might be worth investing in silver, apparently…

Credit cards. We all know how expensive they can be, but many people find them very convenient. What people don’t know is how the card companies trick people into permanent debt. It isn’t simply a matter of people being irresponsible (although it has its part to play): credit card companies vary their terms, at will, to trick the poorest people into the most debt. Why? Because people in financial difficulty are the best source of money. If you pay off your card every month you are no use to the credit card company because they can’t charge you any interest or any delinquency fees. They make no money out of such customers. The best customers are people who pay the minimum payment every month, or, better, miss it sometimes and pay late fees, over limit fees, and more. This video, ‘The Secret History of the Credit Card’ (just under an hour long) from the US Public Broadcasting Service, explains how it works.

How long does it take to pay off a card? This calculator lets you work it out, but a couple of sample calculations are given below. They assume the minimum payment is 2% of your balance.

1) First, a basic example. You have £100 on your card and the interest rate is 14% APR. It’ll take you 23 months to pay back £100 if you only pay the required minimum of 2.00%. Over that period of time, you’ll pay an additional £13.05 in interest.If you could afford to pay an extra £10 a month towards your credit card debt, it would mean you’d repay it in 7 months and you’d save yourself £9.58 in interest. In fact, if you could afford an extra £25 a month, you’d repay it in 4 months and save £11.82. Not too scary perhaps.

2) Now, take the same figures as above, but you owe £1,000 instead. It’ll take you 236 months (that’s over 19 years) to pay back £1,000 if you only pay the required minimum of 2.00%. (maybe you think you won’t pay just the minimum for 19 years - but things can change. You lose your job, or get ill, have an accident… and suddenly minimum payments could be all that are possible, for a long time). Over the 19 years or so, you’ll pay an additional £1,123.41 in interest (in other words, you’re paying twice over for it). If you could afford to pay an extra £10 a month towards your credit card debt, it would mean you’d repay it in 68 months (just over 5 years) and you’d save yourself £763.10 in interest. In fact, if you could afford an extra £25 a month, you’d repay it in 34 months (just over 2 years), and save £943.84.

3) Suppose now the credit card company has given you a more typical APR of, say, 20% on your £1,000 outstanding credit. It’ll take you 483 months (that’s over 40 years) to pay back a mere £1,000 if you only pay the required minimum of 2.00%. Over that period of time, you’ll pay an additional £3,622.71 in interest (you’re paying over 3.5 times for whatever you spent the money on). If you could afford to pay an extra £10 a month towards your credit card debt, it would mean you’d repay it in 80 months (just over 6 years) and you’d save yourself £2,983.72 in interest. In fact, if you could afford an extra £25 a month, you’d repay it in 36 months (just over 3 years), and save £3,337.53.

4) APR 24%? It’ll take you 3780 months (that’s over 315 years) to pay back a measly £1,000 if you only pay the required minimum of 2.00%. Over that period of time, you’ll pay an additional £38,752.57 in interest!! If you could afford to pay an extra £10 a month towards your credit card debt, it would mean you’d repay it in 92 months (just over 7 years) and you’d save yourself £37,831.47 in interest. In fact, if you could afford an extra £25 a month, you’d repay it in 39 months (just over 3 years), and save £38,383.04.

5) If the APR is 25% or above, the debt is unpayable with the minimum payment as the interest adds more than the minimum payment to your debt each month!

The motto? Either don’t use credit cards at all, or if you must, then pay at least £10 more than the minimum payment, ALWAYS. Indeed, the recommended system for paying them off is to pay AT LEAST the minimum payment PLUS the interest charged each month. Count THAT as your ‘minimum payment’. If you can’t afford to pay all your cards like this, then pay off the one with the highest APR first. Then destroy it. Then pay off the one with the next highest APR, etc. It can be handy to set up a standing order for this ‘minimum payment’ (the one that includes the interest) and always pay this same amount - even though the interest will go down each month (other things being equal), if you can afford it, keep paying as much as that anyway until the card is history. But… what do you do if you can’t even afford to do this much? If you can’t even make the standard minimum payments? Well,  there are various official methods, of varying efficacy (voluntary arrangements, bankruptcy) but which are not really much use to many people, as is the way with official methods generally. I’m looking on the web for a better solution; I’ll put a link here if I find something.

As mentioned previously, I don't know whether there is any global warming going on, or whether we humans are responsible for it. The evidence as I see it is too mixed: any search on the Internet comes up with wildly differing views, out of date evidence, hearsay, scaremongering and more. Real, hard information is not really available to Joe Public.

Read more »

So, OK, following Stu’s comment to the below global warming article, let’s see a bit of the other side of the argument. This video debunks the global warming debunkers… so what the heck is the truth???

Ever since I noticed in Al Gore's famous global warming video 'An Inconvenient Truth' that his graphs showed carbon di-oxide throughout pre-history increasing and decreasing 400 years *after* changes in the climate that it was supposed to be causing, I thought that something was up. This video explains pretty well that the world is probably not in fact overheating, with some real science and some real investigative journalism (for a change).