NCC = NWO?

Is the National Council of Churches a front set up to plant New World Order agenda items among Christians? That’s not a rhetorical question; I really don’t know. What makes me suspicious is the peculiar tone of the organization’s propaganda. Today I received the following 10 ostensibly “Christian Principles” for political action. This isn’t the first time I have noticed NWOish-sounding agendas coming from the NC; it’s part of a continuing pattern. Read my comments below each agenda item and decide for yourself:

1. War is contrary to the will of God. While the use of violent force may, at times, be a necessity of last resort, Christ pronounces his blessing on the peacemakers. We look for political leaders who will make peace with justice a top priority and who will actively seek nonviolent solutions to conflict.
I don’t think this document was proof-read much less sanity-checked. If “war is contrary to the will of God”, then why on earth does the very next statement claim that “…the use of violent force may, at times, be a necessity…”? In other words, it may be a necessity to disobey the will of God?! It’s as though this document were written by someone who does not share the sensibilities of his intended audience. That mistake is almost funny. The other problem with this item is not so funny: it doesn’t say anything about under what conditions violent force is a necessity. It would not have taken more than a few words. If the authors of this list are not aware of Saint Augustine’s doctrine of Just War, then they are not competent to represent themselves as leaders of the Church. As written, it is worse than carte blanche for the Empire, for it plants the idea that if war breaks out it must have been “a necessity of last resort”.
2. God calls us to live in communities shaped by peace and cooperation. We reject policies that abandon large segments of our inner city and rural populations to hopelessness. We look for political leaders who will re-build our communities and bring an end to the cycles of violence and killing.
I’m not aware that God calls anyone to live any particular kind of place, and I can’t think of any authentic religious organization, Christian or otherwise, that has some sort of doctrinal basis for the government running the lives of inner-city and rural populations. This sounds more like a NWO scheme for subsidizing the workers of politically-connected corporations like Wal*Mart.
3. God created us for each other, and thus our security depends on the well-being of our global neighbors. We look for political leaders for whom a foreign policy based on cooperation and global justice is an urgent concern.
Who writes this stuff? The Council on Foreign Relations?
4. God calls us to be advocates for those who are most vulnerable in our society. We look for political leaders who yearn for economic justice and who will seek to reduce the growing disparity between rich and poor.
How is the disparity between rich and poor to be reduced? If by having the government dictate wages, that’s a centrally-planned economy. Are the authors recommending Communism? It doesn’t work. Another possibility is a government transfer scheme. Christian practice does include giving to the poor, but not taking someone else’s money and giving it to the poor. There is a difference!
5. Each human being is created in the image of God and is of infinite worth. We look for political leaders who actively promote racial justice and equal opportunity for everyone.
What is “racial justice”? Doesn’t “justice” mean something like “setting things as right as possible for the victim or next-of-kin after a crime has been committed”? How is race involved? It’s not like we have laws stating something like “it’s against the law to kill someone unless he’s of such-and-such race”. Of course that’s not what the authors mean. But they don’t want to talk about what they really mean, so they throw around meaningless catchphrases which are designed to trigger some sort of conditioned response from people afraid of being called “racists”.
6. The earth belongs to God and is intrinsically good. We look for political leaders who recognize the earth's goodness, champion environmental justice, and uphold our responsibility to be stewards of God’s creation.
What is “environmental justice”? I have nothing against protecting precious resources, but I have a bad feeling that this kind of vague language is a smoke-screen for something else.
7. Christians have a biblical mandate to welcome strangers. We look for political leaders who will pursue fair immigration policies and speak out against xenophobia.
This is one of the few points that refers to any actual biblical principle, but it’s a distortion of what the bible actually states. The New Testament refers to the ancient practice of inviting travelers into one’s own home in the days before hotels. It says nothing about subsidizing government housing, food, medical bills, and daycare for imported unskilled labor on behalf of Wal*Mart and Krispy Kreme.
8. Those who follow Christ are called to heal the sick. We look for political leaders who will support adequate, affordable and accessible health care for all.
It is a distortion to equate apostolic tending to the sick with socialist medicine. How are political leaders to “support” health care for all? By paying for it themselves? As it is, American workers are losing health care benefits for their own children, and paying more for their own, because the hospitals and clinics are charging more to people with insurance to make up for what they lose on patients with Medicare and Medicaid.
9. Because of the transforming power of God’s grace, all humans are called to be in right relationship with each other. We look for political leaders who seek a restorative, not retributive, approach to the criminal justice system and the individuals within it.
Who is to do the restoring? Not the taxpayer I hope. Are we clear that the victim is the beneficiary? Before we talk about punishment, aren’t there more pressing issues such as ensuring that the defendant hasn’t been convicted on the basis of a confession extracted through torture? …or that the forensic scientists who provide testimony from the crime lab are actually competent and honest? …or that the defendant has actually committed a crime, and has not been sentenced in family court by judicial fiat?
10. Providing enriched learning environments for all of God’s children is a moral imperative. We look for political leaders who will advocate for equal educational opportunity and abundant funding for children’s services.

If God wanted us all to be equal, wouldn’t He have made us so? But we are not equal, and no government programs will ever make us so. What does equal educational opportunity mean? That people who fail their entrance exams get into college anyway (and the rest of us pay for it)? As for “children's services”, aren't those for their parents to provide? And if single mothers can not, do we really want to be encouraging unwanted fatherless children for the sake of collecting welfare? What these principles state is bad enough. It’s what they don’t state that’s even worse. In an environment of political corruption, broken families, materialism run amok, record levels of personal debt and bankruptcies, undisciplined craving for pleasure that leads some of us into drugs, booze, dysfunctional relationships, and a host of other troubles, wouldn’t it be better to focus on cleaning up our own houses before presuming to solve someone else’s problems (without an invitation to do so)? The whole point of religion is to bring people to the state of mind that Christians sometimes call “the peace of God” and sometimes call “the kingdom of God”. Hindus and Buddhists call that feeling “Nirvana”. It’s that feeling of inner peace that precludes egocentric temptations that lead to suffering. Now lets look at that list. People who attain the kingdom of God do not wage wars of aggression to help steal natural resources for their own or in real life for someone else’s benefit (item #1). They don’t engage in “violence and killing” (item #2). They don’t cause any of the trouble the rest of the list is proposing to resolve. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. Then all these things will be added unto you. Looking at the rest of the National Council of Churches’ website, I don’t see any religious basis for preventing the attitudes and behaviors which cause suffering. All I see is a very NWOish political agenda with a little token God-talk sprinkled here and there as a seeming afterthought to make it sound more authoritative. They claim “God wants you do to this” and “God wants you do to that”, but they’ve forgotten all about God.

Don't take the bait

1. Existence is unhappiness.
2. Unhappiness is caused by selfish craving.
3. Selfish craving can be destroyed.
4. It can be destroyed by following the eightfold path.

These Four Noble Truths (“Aryan Truths”) are the foundations of the Buddhist religion. The most important idea in Buddhism is that craving for things you can't have will make you unhappy. There are some modernistic prayer wheels not too far from my house which were designed by local high school kids. There is a small sign at the base of one of them telling the story of the Buddha—that is, the man Gautama Siddhartha. The sign claims that the Buddha devoted his life to “helping the poor”. I suppose that is true, but he wanted to help the rich as well. I'm not aware that he favored any particular socioeconomic class. For that matter, the “help” that he offered to the poor was not the kind of help that usually comes to mind since the invention of Socialism. The only help he offered was advice, and it was the kind of advice that does not usually set well with socialists: he told people to accept life the way it is. The Buddha unlike the socialists was too compassionate and too wise to promise what he could not possibly deliver. Jesus told his disciples not to worry about their lives, and asked them who could add a single day to his life by worrying about it. Sometimes these kinds of messages are interpreted as recommending something called “renunciation”, meaning giving up every earthly pleasure. Gautama Siddhartha is supposed to have tried that. He fasted until his ribs were sticking out, but he did not find peace of mind. The most popular of the Hindu scriptures among Hindus themselves is the Baghavad Gita. One of the characters of the Gita, Sri Krishna, describes different practices (yoga) leading to Nirvana. The one he recommended to Arjuna was that of action without attachment. No earthly good you could ever hope to possess will bring you fulfilment. No person, activity, or experience can ever give you lasting satisfaction. Neither will renouncing these things bring you peace of mind. Strive in life and accept your responsibilities according to the natural order of things, and adopt what the Buddhists call a "sky-like attitude", in which you accept good and bad experiences as if you were watching clouds come and go in the sky. Don't become attached to them, just accept them and, when it is time, let them go. Craving for satisfaction and security leads not only to disappointment, but also to danger. Those who would enslave you will try to lure you with promises they couldn't keep if they had even intended to. The Socialists promised economic security in exchange for loss of property rights and a military draft; they delivered squalor and war. The Marxists promised a utopian anarchy in exchange for dictatorship (ostensibly of the proletariats themselves), and delivered famines, mass executions, and GULAGs. Betty Friedan promised women personal fulfilment in exchange for putting career ahead of family; she delivered disappointment, falling standards of living, higher taxes, and broken families. The representatives of the New World Order are promising safety from terrorist attacks in exchange for loss of economic, political, and personal rights, and are in the process of delivering slavery and death. Satan promised Jesus the kingdoms of the earth in exchange for bowing down and worshipping him. Have you ever wondered why our masters need something from us before they can deliver? It's because they can't deliver. I know that I can't make it happen either, even if I had the attitudes and beliefs they want me to have. My masters must be disappointed with me. Jesus said that the poor would always be with us. He's still right. The people who made the broken promises don't worry; they have in mind someone to blame. Whether it is Socialism under seige or “they hate us because of our virtues”, our masters always have someone in mind to blame. Some day it might be you. The idea of an earthly paradise in which men should live together in a state of brotherhood, without laws and without brute labor, had haunted the human imagination for thousands of years...The earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it became realizable. --George Orwell, writing through the character Emmanuel Goldstein, 1984 George Orwell realized that the Socialism actually delivered was phoney Socialism, but he didn't figure out that real Socialism isn't possible. Even if Fabian socialist H.G. Wells had been able to deliver the kind of industrial prosperity described in the later chapters of his book Things to Come, there would still have been accidents, fear, old age, uncertainty, death...and worry. Aldous Huxley was on the Buddha's side. He worried that his Fabian socialist brother Julian would lead us into a valueless materialistic paradise. One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn't dream about was this" (he waved his hand), "us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order? —the character Mustafa Mond from Brave New World He needn't have worried. Paradise on earth isn't possible even if our masters ever intended to deliver it—which is doubtful. Your defense against hell-on-earth is not to fall for promises of prosperity and security. Keep these ideas in your heart: No possession, no person, and no experience will ever bring me personal satisfaction. I will take responsibility for my own destiny and I will accept what happens. As Gautama Siddhartha lay dying in his cousin Ananda's arms, he advised him with these words: “Decay is inherent in all compound beings. Work out your own salvation with diligence”.

Glitches in the system

The goal of artificial intelligence is to simulate the intelligence we are already familiar with (human) using computers and software. We can model intelligence using computers and software, as long as we bear in mind (no pun intended) that the analogy isn't very accurate. Brains (“wetware”) superficially correspond to computers (“hardware”). Brains however, are composed of neural networks. Each neuron is connected to thousands of other neurons through synapses. Computers use memory locations and a central processor. The central processor does all the work; memory locations don't communicate with each other directly. This creates a bottleneck in the architecture of a computer that does not exist in the massively-parallel brain. The brain also happens to be an adaptive system, comparable perhaps to a fuzzy rule-based system that adds and modifies rules based on feedback loops. The point of this exercise is to create a simple taxonomy for talking about how it has happened that so-called “Western”culture has become fundamentally dysfunctional. We need to figure out why it is that “Western” legal processes sent Gerald Amirault to prison for 18 years for imaginary crimes which are physically impossible for him to have committed, while Christopher Kimes was murdered, on camera, in front of several hundred police officers under direct orders not to intervene, and the only conviction in the case was overturned by judicial fiat. Those are only a few cases of the vast number of possible examples of dysfunctional culture we have, but they're enough to give you an rough idea of what I am talking about. If wetware compares to hardware, then the mind compares to the running of software, conditioning of the human mind compares to adding new rules into the software-systems rule database, and culture compares to the choice of software installed onto the computer. Interaction between people compares roughly to networking between computers. Now we have enough conceptual framework to talk about what can go wrong. Data in the real world has to be converted to something the machine understands. In the case of computers, there is a process for converting facts about the world into binary numbers, and another for organizing those binary numbers into data structures such as records, linked lists, trees, and especially conceptual packages called "objects". In the case of brains, there is a process for translating wavelengths of sound and light into hearing and sight, then translate what we are hearing and seeing into concepts. If you have ever done much work maintaining software systems, you have probably come across situations in which your predecessor did not convert data correctly, or modeled it incorrectly. There's nothing wrong with the data; the translation process is wrong. This corresponds to an extremely common problem in natural intelligence: when people see and hear what is true, but mistranslate the facts into concepts based on errors at the wetware or, more commonly, the conditioning level. Instead of believing what they see, they see what they believe. As a historical note, this data mapping problem was noticed by philosophers a long time ago. Unfortunately, one very influential school of philosophy was dogmatically opposed to considering the issue. They fell in love with their paradigms and pet concepts, and refused to consider the possibility of error. To this day, this school of thought is dominant in academia. In computing there is a saying "garbage in, garbage out". If you feed a system bad data, the system can't correct it. In the case of natural intelligence, there is the possibility of misinformation based on someone else's mistake, or as is more commonly the case than generally realized, deliberate deception. Misinformation is often deliberately planted in order to prevent people from detecting data mapping problems resulting from their defective mental conditioning. Patterns of defective mental conditioning probably point to cultural breakdowns. It's easiest to understand how this works by looking at a culture one hasn't been conditioned to—in other words looking at a foreign culture .In old Russia, someone who loaned money to peasants at high rates of interest was called a “Kulak”. During the soviet regime, Kulakism became a crime. The concept of a Kulak expanded massively under the Soviets. Generally, peasants who owned some land of their own became “Kulaks”. Wives and children of Kulaks became Kulaks. Baby Kulaks! Eventually the term was used against anyone suspected of not wanting to be collectivized. Kulakism isn't something you did. Ostensibly it was something you were. But there was no objective test to determine who was aKulak. “You are a Kulak” really meant “I don't like you” when spoken by a communist party member. The whole concept was defective. It allowed communist party members to blame the consequences of their own incredible incompetence on a fictional bogeyman. Many dysfunctional concepts such as this one did catastrophic damage to their subjects. Defective concepts can actually spread from person to person like a cancer. A zoologist named Richard Dawkins noticed this phenomenon and came up with a word for it. These mental virii are called “memes”. Another locus for trouble is in the network. Our minds have a natural inclination towards self-centeredness. This is an obstacle to harmonious interpersonal relationships right off the bat. Between biologically-based concern for people who share our genes, some natural tendency to seek out mutually-beneficial relationships with people like ourselves, and learned strategies for getting along with strangers, we are capable of working relationships with at least a subset of the population. Our inclination for self-centeredness lurks as a weakness, and there are always those ready to exploit it as part of a divide and conquer strategy. Two famous exploiters of this weakness were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They started by dividing people along class and gender lines. Their disciples continued the process by inciting racial tension and escalating gender differences (Betty Friedan was a marxist). They added age differences (the generation gap and the grey panthers) and inadvertently stumbled upon Stonewall. In general this process is called “difference-baiting”. Whereas people in the Western countries used to define themselves primarily in terms of nationality and religion, we are now deeply divided among ridiculously fine degrees of differences, some of them purely conceptual. Osama bin Laden must be smiling at how we tear at each other's throats! Difference-baiting is so badly-entrenched in the Western Countries it has turned into an epidemic that even the political classes wouldn’t be able to contain had the thought of doing so ever occurred to them. Another glitch in the network is the transmission of culture from one generation to the next. You might think of this as being comparable to an upgrade failure. The dominant culture in the USA has lost the understanding of how (and why) to pass down the processes that made our civilization work. It never was very good at passing along processes. It used be good at passing along information (a lot of it, admittedly, useless). Then a man named John Dewey decided that teaching attitudes was more important than teaching facts. Now his legacy is so deeply-entrenched we can't get rid of it; a renegade school would not be accredited. I've only discussed these vulnerabilities of intelligence at a very high level. Each of them deserves a more in-depth analysis. Once we understand what goes wrong, we can inoculate ourselves from some of the contagious dysfunctional ideas that are bringing our civilization to ruin.

BUSTED by the NWO!

Do you feel safer now that Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens né Stephan Georgieu has been deported from the United States? You know, the guy who sang “Peace Train”? One of the principles of Rule of Law is that there are transparent rules in place such that if you obey them, you will not be punished. Yet the news makes it clear that immigration officials offered no specific complaints against Mr. Islam. His crime appears to have been to be a Moslem, and to run a charity that sends money to Bosnian orphans! If you want to see a media mafia hit job, take a look at today's print version of USA Today. Better yet, don't; it's never worth reading. But if curiosity gets the better of you, have a look at how the editors closely juxtaposed the story of Mr. Islam's apprehension, interrogation, and deportation with another story regarding airport security screening failing in a test. The two articles were laid out so as to blend into one another. The story about Mr. Islam even asks how he could have slipped through to get into the country, which resonates with the other article. This is the same type of deceptive subtle conditioning I was referring to in the article about training women to smoke in public. What about Bobby Fischer? Is the world safer now that he is in custody? His crime? Playing chess in Yugoslavia. Since when does the USA enforce UN resolutions? What about everyone else who was involved? This is called “selective enforcement”. Why Bobby Fischer? Because he has a big mouth and has made some enemies. Nevertheless, Bobby Fischer has never done any criminal harm to anyone. I can't say the same about Madeleine Albright! Then there is Martha Stewart, who is heading for prison next month. Her crime was to have allegedly lied about the circumstances around her sale of 3,928 piddly shares of ImClone stock. She might have been afraid of being charged with insider trading because she sold the day before the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would turn down the company's application for its cancer drug Erbitux. This seems to be another case of selective prosecution. Insider trading is rampant. Stocks always move dramatically before big government announcements that impact them—somebody always knows ahead of time. For that matter somebody knew airline stocks would plummet on 9/11. Nobody has been prosecuted for that, and the case is officially closed. Perhaps because of her celebrity status, Martha Stewart is being set up as an example. Other people who have done much worse are untouchable. Crime is correlated to corruption. When the system is corrupt, political executions take priority over keeping the peace.

Pascal's wager on the chances of recession in 2005

Pascal's Wager is that it is worth the trouble to seek divine salvation, because if there is no God, you've at least had the benefit of living a good life, whereas if there is a God (and in particular, an Old Testament type of God), you might be sorry you didn't. In other words, high stakes might influence you to seek the least-worst-case scenario. Recessions are hard to predict, especially in a centrally-managed economy, so please do not be disappointed if a recession fails to show up next year! Alan Greenspan could pull a rabbit out of his hat that I couldn't have known about. Hence Pascal's Wager. The stakes are high. Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, put the odds of a recession in 2005 at 40% in a memo he sent to his clients back in August. I have not seen the memo, but I can guess that rising petroleum prices, rising Fed funds rates, the waning effect of stimulus packages, the possibility of a slowdown in the housing bubble, and stagnating employment are on his mind. Since the time he sent the memo, petroleum prices have remained strong, despite chronic optimism in the mainstream press ever since the invasion of Iraq. I strongly suggest, friend, that you cut expenses as much as you can in preparation for the possibility of a recession. If I am wrong, you can console yourself with less debt if not positive savings. If I am right, you will be even more glad to be relieved of a debt burden. What about stocks and mutual funds? I can't give you advice; this is the USA and you might sue me for it. I can say that it is possible to make good money on investments without the risk of owning common stocks with high P/E ratios or long-dated bonds. I'll try to post some ideas with the understanding anything I say must not be construed as advice to buy or sell securities. One more thing: this could be a "stagflation" type of recession. I see no reason that certain strategic commodity prices should fall relative to the $US; it's not like Americans will stop eating or stop driving during a recession. As a matter of prudence I do recommend cutting back on luxury items and discretionary travel, but I don't think that discretionary cutbacks will be enough to make a dent in certain strategic commodity prices.

Coffin nails and deceptive subtle conditioning

While I was driving my daughter to school this morning, I heard that the government’s $280 billion lawsuit against American tobacco companies is heading into court. Second-hand smoke of any kind gives me a thumping migraine headache. I also have to deal with apartments left with smoke-stained walls and stinky carpets after tenants who claimed they didn't smoke leave. I hate smoking, but the government’s lawsuit isn’t for my benefit. The concept of rule of law means that individuals and businesses are not to be punished for what was not a crime when they did it. There was no law against selling cigarettes. The government itself is complicit in their sales; it not only sells them in military commissaries, but also takes a share in the profits from sales through sales taxes, corporate income tax, and personal income tax on the salaries of people who work in the tobacco industry. There are laws that regulate the marketing of cigarettes, but each time a new law was passed, the industry complied. The government is trying to make its case on the way that the public relations (PR) for cigarette manufacturers downplayed the dangers associated with smoking cigarettes. PR isn’t illegal either. It does seem to be remarkably persuasive, though. Let’s take a closer look at how it is that PR can convince people to engage in self-destructive behaviors. Contrary to popular but fictional accounts of how women started smoking, women smoked for pleasure about as early in history as men did. Cigarettes were considered as being for women, and it was unmanly to smoke one. Men generally preferred pipes or cigars until cigarettes started showing up in soldier’s rations during World War I (yet another way that the government was complicit in the tobacco trade). What most women did not do was smoke in public. That was the behavior that advertised a prostitute to potential clients. Stories about women being arrested for smoking in public probably have to do with being arrested for soliciting, not smoking per se. Women chose to smoke privately because they did not want to be mistaken for prostitutes. George Washington Hill was an executive in the cigarette industry who wanted to boost his sales. He reasoned that women would smoke more if they smoked more often. He hired Eduard Bernays to find a way to encourage women to smoke in public. Mr. Bernays consulted with a psychoanalyst, Dr.A. A. Brill, on the psychology of women and smoking. Eduard Bernays was the nephew of Dr. Sigmund Freud. He probably knew something about the theories of his famous uncle, because it occurred to him that if you supply someone with information (whether true or not) indirectly, he is less resistant to persuasion than if you tell him directly. Freud’s work is in disrepute these days, because it was “unscientific”. That’s true, and I won’t even vouch for its accuracy, and yet there does seem to be something to it. I don’t know what Freud’s subconscious was supposed to be, other than that part of our thought processes which aren’t conscious. Whatever it is, it does seem that mental processes go on without our being conscious of them, and then our conscious behaviors mysteriously change without ever having gone through any conscious deliberation. Bernays hired some celebrity women to smoke while marching down Broadway in New York City’s Easter Parade. Smoking in public was taboo; smoking while walking was even worse. Bernays arranged for newspaper photographers to be on hand to take pictures for their newspapers. Seeing reputable women smoking in public, some of them accompanied by their husbands, without mention of scandal in the newspapers, planted the idea that it was acceptable for women to smoke in public. Some of the women were wearing sashes with the words “The torch of freedom” written on them. What kind of freedom? Smoking was still associated with sexuality; Hollywood movie producers were paid to work scenes in showing lovers smoking after a romantic evening—subtly indicating that they had taken a roll in the hay. “Freedom” to smoke in public was spun as a mark of the emancipation of women, while the idea of sexual freedom was subtly planted in their heads. Another association Bernays helped create was that between smoking and women’s desire to be slender. For the Lucky Strike label, he came up with the slogan “reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet”. The label Virginia Slims exploited both the desire to be “slim” and the idea of women’s liberation. Most of the women I have ever known in my life are appalled that any woman would fall for this line. Somebody did; it was a popular and aggressively-advertised brand. Subtle conditioning seems to work. One of Bernays’ best clients was the government itself. It hired him to produce propaganda to popularize some government programs during the First World War. The government remains a big customer for deceptive subtle conditioning. Government media coordinators working with activists of a certain stripe have successfully planted the idea in a majority of American heads that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction despite years of monitoring by the UN and an unsuccessful search after the invasion. The Newsmax article I linked to openly admits that no WMD were ever found. The hawkish editors of Newsmax don’t need to be concerned about the truth getting out; planted attitudes are more persistent than facts. The institution which published the poll results, the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, didn’t have much to say about the correctness of popular perceptions; its purpose in publishing the poll was probably to reassure its clients that not being able to back up claims made before the war isn’t politically relevant. Pseudo-scientific research organizations sprang up after Bernays and other PR consultants needed organizations with the aura of scientific authority or, in the case of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, manufactured popular consensus. Try googling “Iraq and the war on terror” to see one of many ways that hostile attitudes towards Iraq were planted in American minds (just click on the link I provided). This morning I got 10,100 hits; this evening I get 9,970. That canned phrase was used repeatedly not only on the Internet but also in pro-war news sources such as CNN and NPR. NPR is of course biased by government ownership, but its reputation as Left Wing media helps plant acceptance for the invasion and occupation among the wine-and-cheese set. Television news reinforced the message by displaying graphics of the twin towers in flames whenever the anchor discussed Iraq. Although there was plenty of egregious lying by the press, most of the deception was based on suggestions rather than outright statements of fact. What about all the people who never fell for the deception? People vary a lot and some people are probably naturally more resistant to subtle conditioning than others. In future columns I will write more about subtle conditioning and its consequences. Deceptive subtle conditioning induces people to act against their personal interests, whether it is by smoking or by dying in a war for the benefit of hostile conspirators. Understanding how it works is enough to build up resistance to it.

Disaster links

My daughter's sewing instructor recruited her for a charitable program called "Operation Christmas Child", which is run by an organization called "Samaritan's Purse". I am not affiliated with that organization, and I can not vouch for the organization's reputability, but today I got a letter asking for donations to send to Florida. According to their website they are now collecting for victims of Hurricane Ivan. Since they were the first ones to ask me, I am mentioning them now to those who might be interested. I found this on FEMA's website. Unfortunately it is a little verbose, and I have some concerns about some of the suggestions, but it is fairly thorough and it's free and available for download. You will need Adobe&trade Acrobat&trade Reader to view it; it's available free on the Adobe website Please, friend, if you have children, talk to them about emergencies and what to do. Talk to them about where to meet in an emergency (including a rendezvous point during a house fire, so you can tell who is still trapped inside). Work out an escape plan and go over it with them.

The rich Athenian

One of Aesop's fables concerns the passengers and crew of a ship that capsized in a violent storm. While the other passengers attempted to save themselves, they heard a rich Athenian imploring Athena for help, and promising lavish offerings if only she would save him. One of the passengers called out to him, "Friend, appeal to Athena, but appeal to your own arms as well!" A timely headline will spare you the long-winded history that I would otherwise have recounted today. Just in case the link doesn't work now or in the future, here is the teaser from CNN: “ATMORE, Alabama (AP) -- As President Bush viewed Hurricane Ivan wreckage on Alabama's coast Sunday, many in its rural hamlets felt they were without not just power and water, but also the government's attention.” Friend, do not rely on government help. Such hopefulness is based on two extraordinary assumptions: that the purpose of government is to go around doing good and helping people, and that the government actually could do much to help you in a crisis. Moral duplicity is why the commanding officer in charge of the attack on unarmed civilians in Baghdad that killed Mazan Al-Tumeizi on-camera even bothered to claim that it was for the "protection" of the crowds, or why Janet Reno could claim with a straight face that she was out to save the children she had incinerated in Waco. There are always egocentric fools eager to swallow this kind of swill; they want to believe that the lethal force of the government exists for their own benefit. As for whether the government could help if its officials even had the collective desire to do so, just look at how it is "protecting" us from terrorism. Every time there is an orange alert, local officials not far from my home loosely wrap the local veteran's hospital in plastic sheets. The plastic won't stop either germ or chemical, and it is extremely unlikely that old maimed veterans are likely to be considered a strategic target in the first place (if ever it did happen, my first thought would be "false flag"). The whole show is just to reassure those who choose to believe. Friend, your first line of defense is your own preparation. Take time to evaluate your home for hazards. What can catch in strong wind (think long flat surfaces that are not secured)? How about fire? Earthquakes? Floods? What can you do to remove or mitigate those hazards? If you can't secure your home (mobile homes are no match for tornados under any circumstances), what can you do to formulate an escape plan? I'll do a little Internet searching on emergency preparedness and private relief efforts, and post some links. In the mean time, convince yourself if you haven't already that your own action might save you in an emergency, but belief never will.

Civilization

When I was in grade-school, I was made to memorize that the definintion of Civilization is a society that “builds cities”, has a “division of labor”, and has a “surplus of food”. My son's history book has a looser definition involving technology, art, and trade contacts with other people. Both definitions seem to miss the most salient characteristic of civilizations: that they are based on predictable processes. Ancient civilizations have almost never had enough food to go around. They did not usually have a surplus of food; what they had was a supply of food in storage in preparation for famines. Hunters and gatherers live and die by random famines and disasters; they eat food when it is available and go hungry when it is not. Civilized people plan for what they perceive to be inevitable adversities of life. They also write things down. They have laws that advertise predictable consequences of good and bad behaviors. They record history so that their decendants will reap the benefit of their experiences long after they are dead. They describe procedures that will guide the reader through a process that predictably produces a desired outcome. The result of years of savings and built-up productive infrastructure was prosperity. It built up, century after century. Finally, around the beginning of the early 20th century, certain members of the ruling Elect came to believe in something called “Progress”—that things just naturally get better as time goes on. In their ignorance of how the bread actually appears on the table, and in their arrogance, they began re-assigning capital away from productive purposes towards monuments to their own glory. Like the Qin emperor of China, they decided that all knowledge must begin fresh with themselves, and intentionally sabotaged the transmission of culture and technology from one generation to the next. Most of the people living in “Western” nations are no longer civilized. They have no idea how to produce the wealth that they enjoy. Under these circumstances, it is only natural that the axial countries of the USA, Britain, and Israel have massive chronic trade deficits, financed by foreigners. Most of Western Europe is not much better off, as the countries there lose business to Asia from year to year. We can't live like this much longer. The shakedown of petroleum-producing nations and capital-accumulating nations won't last much longer. It's time to ignore our self-appointed “leaders” and take responsibility for our own survival. We need to re-learn survival skills for when the petroleum predictably runs short, and the fiat money system from which our net capital consumption stems predictably collapses.