Friday, December 3, 2010

World Records that Guinness Never Mentioned

     Everyone is interested in hearing about world records, but we all know that most world records will someday be excelled. Someone will run faster or jump higher than the previous record holder.
     One category of record, though, will always stand. The event that’s the first of its kind will always be the first. We know, for example, that Charles Lindberg will always be the first person to fly a heavier-than-air craft non-stop from one continental mainland to another.
September 11, 2001, is a treasure trove of firsts. Given the immortality of “firsts,” it puzzles me that the Guinness Book of World Records has ignored all but a few of them. Please allow me to supply the deficit.
     Hani Hanjour was the first uncertified pilot in history to teach himself how to fly a large commercial passenger jet. Theretofore, it was believed that only a skilled pilot could be trained on a flight simulator, and then only under skilled supervision. Hanjour and the other three 9/11 hijackers were the only rank amateurs in aviation history to accomplish this feat with or without assistance.
     The South Tower of the World Trade Center was the first skyscraper in the 100-year history of steel-reinforced skyscrapers to collapse as a result of fire damage. A few minutes later, the North Tower of the World Trade Center became the second. It hadn’t happened before that day, nor has it happened since then.
     World Trade Center Building No. 7 was the first skyscraper in history to collapse for no apparent reason. Officially, it collapsed straight down because some concrete and glass had fallen on it seven hours earlier. Still unexplained is how a building with 40 tons of steel reinforcement wasn’t strong enough to withstand a few tons of pulverized concrete and glass.
     Hani Hanjour was the only pilot in the history of aviation to fly a broad-winged aircraft at near ground level (no more than 20 feet above the ground) for more than a mile at more than 500 miles per hour. Every other airplane in history flying at that speed and altitude has lost stability, rolled, and crashed after only a few hundred yards.
     September 11, 2001, was the first time in commercial aviation history that as many as nineteen hijackers boarded a commercial airliner without any of their names being recorded on flight manifests. We are told that the reason for the absence of Arabic names on all four flight manifests was due to the hijackers using fake ID’s with European-sounding names.
     Especially puzzling is that, at all three airports from which the four flights originated, security was in the hands of Israeli-owned security companies. The Israelis are said to be the world’s most experienced anti-terrorists. So why weren’t their trained personnel suspicious of nineteen Arabs who claimed to be white? That’s probably another world record that Guinness failed to mention.
     Three of the four airliners that were hijacked that day were the only commercial airliners in history to crash without leaving significant debris. CNN reporter Jaime Mcintyre said on camera that it didn’t look as though a plane had crashed “anywhere near” the Pentagon. (Click here.
     A Fox news reporter said that he’d seen no indication that a plane had crashed at the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, crash site. There’s a simple explanation for that one: United Airlines Flight 93 was the only airplane in history to crash at one site and leave its debris somewhere else. The debris from Flight 93 was scattered all over a four-mile radius in the woods several hundred yards beyond the crash site. (Click here.) 
     The three planes (other than Flight 93) in question were the only commercial airliners in history to almost completely vaporize as a result of the combustion of fuel (kerosene) in their tanks.
     The nearly complete vaporization of the plane that hit the North Tower is another puzzle. Anyone who has seen the videos of the crash saw the plane crash into the building and come out the other side. Officially, the building collapsed because of the burning kerosene that the plane had left in the building. If that’s true, then the plane was the first and only commercial airliner to vaporize for no apparent reason. (Click here.) 
     A few bits and pieces were recovered from the crash sites—all of them small enough for one person to carry in his hand. For over a half century, every time a plane crashed in America, the pieces were collected so that aviation officials could learn what they could from it, even if they already thought they knew what had caused the crash. In the entire history of this policy, all four hijacked planes were the only exceptions to this longstanding requirement.
     World Trade Center Building No. 7 was the only case in history in which the accidental collapse of a skyscraper was announced on live television even before it had collapsed. More than twenty minutes before WTC7 collapsed, a BBC reporter announced that it had collapsed. The entire time that she spoke, viewers could clearly see WTC7 still standing behind her. Five minutes before WTC7 collapsed, BBC conveniently lost live-feed transmission. (Click here.)
     Gene Corley and Mark Loizeaux deserve special mention in this article. Corley was the FEMA investigator in both the Alfred P. Murrah Building (in Oklahoma City, 1995) and the WTC cases. In 1995, he became the only investigator in the history of forensic crime investigation to allow the scene of a major homicide to be destroyed before forensic evidence could be gathered. In 2001, he did it again with the ruins of the World Trade Center. Loizeaux was responsible for “recycling materials” (a.k.a. “destroying evidence”) from both crime scenes. (Click here.)
     Thus, the crime scenes of the largest and second largest mass murders in the history of the United States were not investigated.
     There are probably many more world records related to 9/11, but I’ll mention one more: the 9/11 Commission investigation. The amount of money allotted for the investigation of 9/11 was the smallest amount spent on a major congressional investigation since the period before the Pearl Harbor inquiry.
     A single comparison is particularly telling. Congress spent $100 million investigating the Monica Lewinski scandal in 1998. The 9/11 Commission was allotted $14 million. The original amount had been $4 million, but it was increased due to public outcry. Before that, the Bush Administration had spent more than a year resisting any investigation at all. Then Vice President Dick Cheney said that and investigation of 9/11 would undermine the administration’s efforts to prevent another 9/11.
     Public outcry was the only reason that Washington made even the pretense of investigating 9/11. What could the public accomplish if we really got serious about the mess in New York, Tel Aviv, and Washington?
Other September 11, 2001, articles in this blog

Monday, November 15, 2010

How Easily Fooled Are You? Which will You Believe: Your Eyes or the Official Story?


     Common sense is built upon aphorisms that we regard as true. We have so much faith in common sense that our common sense may be used to mislead us.
     How’s that again? You see, many of our commonsense aphorisms contradict other aphorisms, and they’re often wrong. Let’s look at a couple of examples.
     We’re told, “Many hands make light work,” and we believe it. We’re also told, “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” and we believe that as well.
     We’re told, “Seeing is believing,” and we believe it. We’re also told, “Appearances are deceptive,” and we also believe that one.
     In this article, I’ll focus on the aphorism about seeing and believing. “Seeing is believing,” tends to be our default belief unless we’re given sufficient reason to doubt our eyes and accept the aphorism, “Appearances are deceptive.”
     The earlier in the process our viewpoint is changed, the less we notice the change. If the attempt to shift our viewpoint comes later, it probably won’t be accepted. Thus, if an opinion molder wants us to doubt the evidence of our eyes, he must make the attempt as soon as possible, before first impressions become final impressions.
     You may remember the Star Wars scene in which Obi Wan Kenobi says to a guard, “These are not the droids you want,” and the guard says to his partner, “These are not the droids we want.” From a psychological standpoint, Obi Wan Kenobi was what is called an authority figure.
     Authority figures often have the power to change our perceptions. An authority figure doesn’t have to be a dignified person, and he doesn’t have to be wearing a medical coat, a uniform, or a suit. If an “unbiased witness” is needed, an average-looking person in a baseball cap and a Harley shirt may be that authority figure.
     We’ll revisit the “Harley Guy” later in this article.
     I won’t tell you what to believe about the Kennedy Assassination, 9/11, or other events. I’ll simply ask you what your eyes tell you. You’re free to decide in each case whether seeing is believing or appearances are deceptive.  I promise not to bring up any conspiracy theories.
     You’ve seen dozens of replays of the Zapruder film. Please watch it once more and answer one question for yourself: “If I had never seen this clip before, and I had never heard the ‘official story,’ what would I believe, judging solely from what I see?” From which direction would you think the fatal shot came? (Click here for video.) Place your forefinger on your head to show where you think the bullet struck the President.
     In the next clip, you’ll see an official describing the assassination. This clip was filmed before the “official story” was established. Where does the spokesman place his forefinger? (Click here for video.)
     Then there are the autopsy photos.  No, not the drawings and other illustrations. You can easily find color photos on the Internet; but, in the interest of taste, I'm showing you a black-and-white photo.  (For an enlargement, click on the photo.)
      Judging from this photo, where does it look as though the exit wound would be located?  Is your answer consistent with  what you seem to see in the Zapruder film? 
       Now let’s move to September 11, 2001. Think about your impressions before you heard the “official story.”
     My wife told me that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center and “destroyed” it. Since English is her second language, I thought she had used the wrong word. Common sense told me that even a large airplane could not have “destroyed” the World Trade Center. I patiently said, “You mean that an airplane damaged it.”
     Only when she described the collapse of the buildings did I believe it had happened. She was the authority figure who overruled a commonsense belief; and, without further question, I accepted it as fact.
     You’ve all seen photos and videos of buildings destroyed by earthquakes, floods, or other non-controlled causes of demolition, including photos of tall buildings that were destroyed in such a manner as these. You’ve seen so many, in fact, that you have a fixed image of how these buildings are “supposed to look” after their destruction.
     Which word would better describe them: toppled or collapsed?
     You may also have seen videos of controlled demolitions of tall buildings. From these videos, you have a fixed image of how controlled demolitions are “supposed to look.” (Click here.)  Now let's look at some footage of buildings that were destroyed by other means.Which word would better describe most of these structures: toppled or collapsed?
In India (unknown cause) 
In Turkey (unknown cause)
     Now let’s take a look at the destruction of three World Trade Center buildings. (South Tower) (North Tower) (Building 7) What happened to those three buildings? Did they topple or collapse?
     Of course, the videos use the word collapse is used for both forms of destruction, but the word topple is used only in a very few 9/11 videos: the ones intended to debunk all theories other than the official conspiracy theory. Again, judge for yourself. What do your eyes tell you? Is seeing believing, or are appearances deceptive?
     We’ve also seen how people react to sudden disasters. We have a fixed concept of how they tend to look, how they choose their words, and what happens to their enunciation under conditions of excitement. We also have a sense of the difference between the way people speak and the way people write.
     Watch the following clips and see the differences in the way the “witnesses” look, act, and sound.
     New York City firemen, the same day the World Trade Center collapsed.
     The Harley Guy, only minutes after the World Trade Center collapsed:, killing almost 3,000 people.
     Now let’s turn to the attack on the Pentagon. Look at the photo of an American Airlines Boeing 757—the type of plane said to have crashed into the first floor of the Pentagon. Does it look as though the nose cone of this plane could crash into the first floor without messing up the lawn?
     Take a look at the flight path of the vehicle that crashed into the Pentagon. Does that look like the flight path of a hijacker who indiscriminately crashed into any old section of the Pentagon? In case you’re wondering, if the vehicle had flown straight into the Pentagon, it would have struck Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s office. By making a 380-degree turn around it, he struck the comptroller’s office—the guy who was busily trying to find out what happened to $2.3 trillion that was missing from the Pentagon.
     Throughout this article, I’ve avoided bringing up conspiracy theories. All I did was show you videos and photos and asked you how they looked.
     Now that you’ve seen them, ask yourself: Is seeing believing, or are appearances deceptive?
Other September 11, 2001, articles in this blog

Friday, November 12, 2010

Leo Tolstoy and the Three Little Wars

     Those who learn the lessons of history are condemned to repetitions of what Santayana said about not learning them. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s difficult to learn from history without having some conceptual framework as to what causes historical events to happen in the first place.
     When I try to make sense of Man’s quest for peace, I think of Tolstoy's view of history. I also think of America’s Three Little Wars (1898-1903) that foreshadowed the history of the world since they were fought. If we are to learn the lessons of history—to avoid fulfilling them—I believe that a review of Tolstoy and the Three Little Wars can be a useful guide.
     In his novel War and Peace, Tolstoy attempted to reconcile fatalism with free will. I won’t force myself to separate his words from my thoughts about his words, but they go something like this:
1. The world is filled with choices.
2. Each choice we make (or avoid making) determines what our future choices will be.
3. Regarding specific future events, these choices tend to narrow our range of choices as to whether and how future events will unfold.
4. By the time a specific event takes place, there are no remaining choices; the event has become inevitable.
     I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. I have found that wise choices (from this point, let’s call them decisions) broaden our possibilities. To take a simple, familiar example, look at how we handle money. We all want to have possessions, experiences, time, and security; but we can’t spend the same dollar twice. If we make the wisest decisions, we may eventually have all four of the things we want. If we, like the Prodigal Son, make the most foolish decisions, we’ll end up with none. Most of our decisions are a mix of wisdom and folly, and we get mixed results and at least some leeway in our future decisions.
     I’m intrigued by the second of America’s Three Little Wars: the China Relief Expedition of 1900. The other two were the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Philippine Insurrection (1899-1903).
     Of the nine nations that provided troops, not one of them wanted war. As of June 16, 1900, options remained and war was still avoidable. At 1:20 on the morning of June 17, 1900, however, no one had any option but to go to war.
     How did that happen? Let’s back up another hundred years.
     The sixty-year reign (1735-1796) of Emperor Chien Lung  was truly China’s golden age. China was admired throughout the world. European philosophers spoke of China as an example for the world to emulate; to them, China was a great nation ruled by philosophers and sages. Ships hauled gold and silver to China and returned with silks, porcelains, and many other high-quality Chinese products. China had little use for the products of other lands.
     The hairstyle we call the ponytail was a Western adaptation of the Ch’ing Dynasty queue. In England, Josiah Wedgwood began producing chinaware for domestic consumption. Thomas Minton's Blue Willow chinaware pattern—still popular today—was an attempt to emulate the porcelain style of the late Ming and early Ch’ing Dynasties.
     China’s greatness seemed assured; but, as Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “Evil things in robes of sorrow assailed the monarch’s high estate. (Ah, let us mourn!--for never morrow shall dawn upon him desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory that blushed and bloomed is but a dim-remembered story of the old time entombed.”
     After 60 years on the throne, Chien Lung abdicated so as not to outshine his grandfather, who had been emperor for 61 years. Corrupt rulers followed in succession, and the royal courts became scenes of conspiracy, graft, and wholesale embezzlement. Chinese sages had always cautioned that the goodness of society—or lack of it—is influenced by the degree of good and evil in a nation’s rulers. China decayed from within.
     This tragedy holds a lesson for America, whose supposed representatives routinely embezzle trillions of dollars on behalf of the international bankers, the military-industrial complex, Big Pharma, disaster capitalists, and other interlocking coteries of robber barons.
     This tragedy also holds a lesson for the government of today’s China. Chinese rulers are trying to clean up corruption and the problems of dangerous merchandise, but they’re making two major mistakes: They’re trying to do it from the top down, and they’re trying to do it while preserving their own privilege to embezzle and enslave. It didn’t work for the Ch’ings, and it’s not working for the Chicoms.
     Throughout the nineteenth century, the Chinese countryside was a stage for revolts, rebellions, and attempts at outright revolution, pretty much as we see in China today. Each year in China, there are around 70,000 riots involving more than 100 people, and most of them are protests against the government. Several European countries and the United States are headed in that direction, however distant this state of affairs may seem.
     Just as China’s current rulers took advantage of weaknesses in Chiang Kai-shek’s corrupt rule, and later weaknesses in Mongolia, Tibet, and East Turkestan—and now in Nepal—Western nations and Japan, from the 1830’s onward, took advantage of weaknesses in China, carving up “spheres of influence.” Today’s Chinese rulers complain about the “unequal treaties” forced on China during the nineteenth century. Those treaties were no more bullying or imperialist than the treaties that the current rulers of China inflicted upon Tibet and East Turkestan.


     In his classic work, The Prince, Machiavelli wrote that men are more apt to forgive the killing of their parents than the theft of their patrimony. At the end of the Opium War (1859-1860) British soldiers looted the Summer Palace and stole tens of thousands of valuable Chinese artifacts that eventually found their way into Western museums. These acts of theft and wanton destruction thoroughly embittered the sixteen-year-old girl who would later become the Empress Dowager.  It also clouded her judgment in ways that worked against the British and other foreigners.  To this day, the museums refuse to return the Summer Palace artifacts to China, claiming that they had bought the stolen items from Chinese antique dealers.
     Around the middle of the nineteenth century, Chinese rulers decided to make a giant leap forward in economic reforms. Agrarianism would make way for industrialization. Just as it is today in China, the needs of the people were ignored.
     Since the thirteenth century, boatmen along the waterways were a mainstay of China’s economy. The Grand Canal, in particular, bustled with transport from the Yellow River in the south to the Bai He (White River, a.k.a. Bei Ho, a spelling of North River) at Tientsen (renamed Tianjian) just south of Peking (renamed Beijing).
     With the coming of the railroads, the livelihoods of thousands of boatmen—as well as tens of thousands of related jobs—were in ruins. Discontent against the government multiplied accordingly. This time, though, much Chinese anger was directed at the foreign industrialists who had brought the railroads and other industries to China. It would later spill over to Christian missionaries, who were the most visible symbols of Western imperialism.
     Westerners brought much of this anger on themselves, just as they often do today. They enjoyed privileged positions and, in many cases, exemption from Chinese laws. At the hands of Westerners, many Chinese were subjected to discrimination  and other abuses in their own land—just as people in a number of other countries today suffer abuses at the hands of Western governments and major corporations.
     The de facto ruler of China, Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi, advised by the scheming Prince Tuan, took the approach that is favored by today’s Chinese rulers. They diverted anger away from themselves and toward foreign nations (particularly the Russians, Japanese, nationals of eight European nations, and the United States) and foreign nationals (particularly missionaries and businessmen.)
     As you’ll see in part two of this article, that strategy blew up in their faces and led to the downfall of the Ch’ing Dynasty. The present-day governments of the United States, China, Israel, and certain other nations may profit from this lesson.
     The road to war was not all greed, folly, and conflict. In part two of this article, I’ll mention inspiring acts of wisdom, nobility, and sacrifice by several notable people in the quest for mutual understanding and justice. These peacemakers included Prince Fu, of the royal household; and Hudson Taylor, the founder and head of China Inland Mission.
     [When I first posted this article, there seemed to be so little interest in it that, for some months, I didn't bother to write part 2.  I eventually included information about Prince Fu and Hudson Taylor in a later article.  Since then, I've learned that this article, "Leo Tolstoy and the Three Little Wars," has become the third most popular article I've ever written, and that readers have recently shown unexpected interest in the later article.  Please read article "When Americans were Foreigners, and Christians were Marked for Extermination."]

Friday, November 5, 2010

Israel's 9/11 Opportunities

     This is part 4 of a 4-part series on motive, means, and opportunity in the false-flag attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. To assign guilt in a criminal investigation, one must find out who had the motive for the crime, the means of committing the crime, and the opportunity to commit the crime.
     In part 1—“September 11’s Lucky Winners”—I described many ways that Israel benefited from the attack. Benjamin Netanyahu even went as far to say that 9/11 was "good for Israel."  I also showed that Israel not only benefited from the attack; I laid out proofs of Israeli foreknowledge of the attacks.
In part 2—“The ‘Official Story’ of 9/11: A Fairy Tale”—I proved that the nineteen Middle Easterners accused of the 9/11 attack could not possibly have done what they were accused of doing.  The words Official Story, in the title, are placed in quotation marks because of my discovery that there's often a stunning difference between what the corporate media tell us that the 9/11 Commission Report  says and what the 9/11 Commission Report actually says.
     In part 3—“Suspicious Timing: More Evidence of Israeli Prior Knowledge and Planning of 9/11”—I showed that an Israeli front group, supposedly formed in response to the needs of the post-9/11 world, had been formed several months before 9/11. I also proved that the group's leadership considerably overlapped with the leadership of the Project for the New American Century—the neoconservative group whose position papers cited the need for “a new Pearl Harbor” in order to bring about the changes they desired.
     Now we come to part 4: “Israel’s 9/11 Opportunities,” in which I show that most of the opportunities for bringing about the events of 9/11 were in the hands of Israelis and Americans who fronted for Israelis. High-level American officials had the power to help cover up the crime (here), but only Israel and their henchmen had the opportunities to carry out the crime every step of the way.
     What excuses did President Bush, de facto President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice—the unholy trio who lied to the American public over 90 times to get us into an illegal war in Iraq—and their allies make? They made two excuses:
     1. It was a failure of imagination; that is, (as Rice put it) no one could have foreseen that someone would use a commercial airliner as a bomb.
      2. The Bush Administration had relied too heavily on technology.
     The first excuse was disproven almost as soon as it was uttered. Terrorist Ramsey Yosef proposed it in 1993, and Philippine intelligence conveyed the message to the CIA. The CIA studied the possibility that same year. In 1994, author Tom Clancy described such an event as this in his book Debt of Honor
     In 1996, the movie The Long Kiss Goodnight was about a false-flag terrorist act killing a projected 4,000 people and blaming it on the Muslims.  (Click here for video clip.) 
     On March 4, 2001, television director Chris Carter chillingly portrayed the events of 9/11 several months before they took place.  In the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen, an X-Files spin-off, high-level government officials in the intelligence community used remote-control technology to electronically hijack an airliner, intending to crash it into the World Trade Center and blame it on the Arabs.
     In 2003, the Bush Administration admitted that, on the morning of September 11, 2001, a war games scenario was taking place which posited the use of hijacked commercial airliners as flying bombs.  (Click here.)
     So much for a “failure of imagination.” What about the over-reliance on technology? Who controlled the technology?
     Whoever pulled off 9/11 had to have had the means to get nineteen misfits through security screening. Who was in charge of security at those airports?
     Whoever pulled off 9/11 had to have had the means to prevent America’s military pilots form following normal procedure by scrambling as soon as the airliners veered off course. Who designed the technology on which the military relied for that purpose?
     Ground controllers were confused by computer-simulated planes as a result of the war games that were taking place at the same time as the hijackings. Several orders were given to delete those signals, but the problem continued until after the real terrorist attacks were over.    Who designed the program they were using—the program that made it impossible for air traffic controllers to tell where the real airliners were?
     Who was in charge of security at the World Trade Center up to the day it was destroyed? Who was in charge of port security at New York Harbor? Who designed other security systems that facilitated the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?
     Demonstrating who had the technological opportunities to bring about 9/11 leaves me with two unpleasant options. Either I can refer you to the research others have done, or I can, so to speak, try to re-invent the wheel by copying their research. To save both you and me the trouble, I’ll refer you to what others have found.
     The answer to all these questions and more can be found in the Vatic Project article “Israel Did 9/11: All the Proof in the World.” In support of Vatic’s findings, here is an article from the web site What Really Happened, showing that Israelis were in control of security at all three of the airports involved in 9/11.   
     More recently, Vatic has uncovered evidence that the 9/11 mastermind was Dov Zakheim, a reputed dual-citizen Israeli who was well positioned for several opportunities to effect 9/11. I mention this particular video because it addresses one question that “All the Proof in the World” didn’t address: Who designed and marketed the technology that made it possible for airliners to be electronically hijacked (a standard safety feature on all commercial airliners for several decades)? Until Zakheim began working for the Pentagon, he was the CEO of the company that designed and marketed the software that made it possible to precision guide commercial airliners into the World Trade Center. (Click here.)
     There you have it. The Israelis, with their long history of false flag attacks, benefited most from 9/11. Muslims gained nothing but suffering, death, rejection, and ruin from it.
     By the Bush Administration’s admission, 9/11 happened because America’s over-reliance on certain technology. At every turn, that technology was either designed by, or controlled by, Israelis. They, and only they, had the means and the opportunity to use the technology necessary for bringing about the events of 9/11.
     People who are prone to cry, “Conspiracy theorist,” will undoubtedly say that what I’ve written in this series of articles contradicts the 9/11 Commission Report. It doesn’t. Of the 585 pages in the 9/11 Commission Report, only 13 pages describe the Commission’s version of the hijacking. Only 86 pages describe events that occurred that day. Mostly, the 9/11 Commission Report is about terrorism in other parts of the world.  Pages 325 through 585 are devoted entirely on anti-terrorist strategies for the future.
      Bear in mind that the Bush Administration had resisted calls for any investigation of 9/11 at all.  Only public outrage and demand led to the 9/11 Commission convening 441 days after the attacks had occurred.  By contrast, the Monica Lewinsky investigation began less than two weeks after the news broke.  Some $100 million was spent on the Lewinsky investigation, as compared to $14 million for the 9/11 Commission. 
     Even a glance at the table of contents is enough to convince you that the real purpose of the Report was to justify the Bush Administration's war on American liberties and the U.S. government's illegal intervention in other countries.
     Read it. (For a free PDF download, click here.) You’ll be amazed at how little the 9/11 Commission Report says about 9/11. After reading it, you’ll probably ask, “Why?”
Other September 11, 2001, articles in this blog

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Beijing's Humpty Dumpty Definitions of "Chinese"

     From Alice in Wonderland, you may recall the conversation between Alice and Humpty Dumpty:
     "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."
     "The question is," said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things."
     "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
     That seems to be Beijing's way of telling who is Chinese and who isn't, or what is a language and what is a dialect.
     At the core of all of this Humpty Dumpty stuff is the myth of China's "peaceful rise."  We hear that, in all of China's 4,000-year history, China has never invaded another country. If we believe that, we're supposed to conclude that China isn't going to start invading other countries now.
     Let's take a quick look at China's 4,000-year history to see what, exactly, is meant by "not invading another country."  China's first known dynasty was the Xia Dynasty, which ruled a small area along the Yellow River. They expanded over one of the world's largest land masses, not by consent but by conquest.
     They conquered people of other cultures and who spoke other languages. Of course, that doesn't mean that the Chinese conquered non-Chinese peoples. By the Humpty Dumpty definition of Chinese, these conquered peoples, once conquered, retroactively became Chinese, and so did their ancestors.
     These conquered peoples continued to speak their native languages, but their languages became known as Chinese dialects—not languages.
     You may have wondered what the difference between a language and a dialect is. In the linguistics course I took while studying for a Master of Education degree, I learned that the difference is political rather than linguistic. Quite flatly, a language has an army.
     To many people, Portuguese and Spanish are mutually intelligible. Hoklo (Taiwanese) and Mandarin (Chinese) are not.
     Centuries ago, the people of present-day Portugal and Spain used the word fermosa to mean "beauteous." Today, they use the words formosa and hermosa. They're very similar, aren't they? Likewise, the languages spoken by aborigines such as Taiwan's Rukai, Japan's Ryukyu, and New Zealand's Maori speak mutually intelligible languages. The governments of their respective countries have determined that they are separate languages.
     By contrast, Hoklo (Taiwanese) and Mandarin (Chinese) are said to be dialects of the same language.  I speak only a few words of Taiwanese, but let's compare a few.
     In Hoklo and Mandarin, respectively, "Have you eaten?” is translated, "Jia peng?" and "Ni chr guo le ma?" The words for "Bottoms up," for drinking are, "Ho da la," and "Gan bei." There is, however, some similarity in the words for, "Thank you;” they are, "Gam Sha,” and "Gan Hsieh." Taiwanese and Chinese are as different as English and German. That they're called the same language is a political decision backed by armies.
     Now that we've covered that point, let's get on to the question of who is Chinese and why.
     That, too, is a political decision. Chinese history (defined as a set of lies, agreed upon) tells us that the Great Wall of China was built to keep the hated foreigners—specifically, the Mongolians—out. Have you ever noticed that the Great Wall of China was built hundreds of miles south of the Chinese-Mongolian border?  Why is that?
     From 1644 until 1912, China was ruled by Mongolians known as the Ch'ing Dynasty or, alternately, the Manchu Dynasty.
     When Sun Yat-sen was raising funds to overthrow the Ch'ing Dynasty, one of his biggest selling points was the need to overthrow China's "foreign" rulers. Once the Ch'ing Dynasty was overthrown, the Mongolians retroactively became Chinese. In fact, the first flag of the Republic of China was a barred, five-color banner: one color for each of the ethnic groups ("five races," as Dr. Sun called them) of China.
     I hear ad nauseum that Taiwanese are Chinese because they're descended from the Han people of China. That rationale has several major problems.
     For one, Koreans and Japanese are of the same racial stock as the Han Chinese, and they are three separate nations. China, Japan, and—until fairly recently—Korea used the same writing system, though with some differences.
     The Chinese word for Korea is Han Guo (韓國), which is the same name as one of the Chinese kingdoms during the Warring States Period. The Korean surname Han and the word for Han (Chinese) are the same: 漢, though the surname may also be written as 韓. The Japanese written character for an administrative division is the same: 漢. From these examples, you can easily see the close ethnic connections, and formerly close political connections, among China, Japan, and Korea.
     A study of how these three Han peoples became three separate nations should give us a warning as to Beijing's intentions for them.
     Korea was once controlled by China. One of the conditions of China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) was the independence of Korea. In 1910 Japan annexed Korea and didn't let go until after World War II. Traditionally, Chinese regimes have looked upon the Japanese as "Pygmies." That is to say, they've seen them as undeserving upstarts who must be kept in their place.
     The people of Tibet and East Turkestan (the Uyghurs of so-called Xingjian Province) are not of Sino-Japanese ancestry; so how can Beijing claim them as Chinese?  Of course, the definition of Chinese must change to accommodate that state of affairs.
     Tibet and East Turkestan are said to be Chinese because, at one time in the distant past, both countries had been occupied by China. Any parcel of land that has ever fallen under Chinese control for even a minute is considered "an inseparable part of China."  On that ground, Beijing is now making noises about taking over parts of India.
     One may be forgiven for wondering what Beijing would say about the conquests of Genghis Khan, which extended all the way up to the eastern border of present-day Hungary. Genghis Khan was a Mongolian who had also conquered China. Was he retroactively Chinese, and does that make all his conquered territories "inseparable part[s] of China"?
     Hmmm, here's a thought: Southern Mongolia is considered Chinese, but northern Mongolia (on Russia's post-World War II insistence) is not.  No explanation is given for this contradiction.
     You knew I'd get around to Taiwan, didn't you? For most of Chinese history, China took no interest in Taiwan. For the first half of the 17th century, Taiwan was ruled by the Dutch.  China finally took an interest in Taiwan after Koxinga (国姓爷), a half-Chinese, half-Japanese pirate, kicked the Dutch out of Taiwan. He then used Taiwan as a base in an attempt to overthrow the other hated foreigners, the Manchu Dynasty.
     During the Ch'ing Dynasty (those hated foreigners, remember?), much of Taiwan came under Chinese rule. In 1886, Taiwan officially became part of China. In 1895, Taiwan was transferred to Japanese sovereignty. Thus, from the mists of antiquity until 1945, Taiwan was never under Han Chinese rule—ever—and it was never under Han Chinese sovereignty—ever.
     How can the word Chinese be stretched to include Taiwanese? Well, according to the Humpty Dumpty definition of Chinese, anyone of Han ancestry is Chinese and therefore subject to Beijing's rule. That is, except citizens of Singapore, San Francisco's Chinatown, Japan, Korea, and other places where it would be ludicrous to bring up that argument. (Of course, it would also be ludicrous to bring up that argument in Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and East Turkestan.)
     If this is true—apart from the two hundred million exceptions I've just mentioned—what about the English in Hong Kong and the 499,500 aborigines in Taiwan? Well, the English in Hong Kong, having been conquered, are now retroactively Chinese. Besides, they've conveniently been swept down a memory hole.
     Taiwan's aborigines are a bit more problematical. They're still relatively free—except when politically connected investors want to take their land and dump toxic wastes on it. Even if they're not treated as human, they're free to elect pampered, elitist politicians who claim to "see them as human.”
     After Chen Sui-bian, a native Taiwanese, was elected president of Taiwan in 2000, the butchers of Beijing had to face that very issue. Chiang Hui-mei (張惠妹), affectionately known as A-mei (阿妹), was invited to sing at Chen's inauguration. A-mei, the second most popular Chinese-language singer of the past 30 years or so (Teresa Teng (鄧麗君) was the most popular), is an ethnic Puyuma—one of Taiwan's fourteen recognized aboriginal groups.
     Her presence at the inauguration of a Taiwanese president who refused to toe Beijing's line came as a shock to the butchers of Beijing. It was a living reminder that Beijing's ethnic argument for Taiwan had 499,500 holes in it. For two years after A-mei sang at President Chen's inauguration, Beijing banned her from entering China.
     "Reclaiming" Taiwan, as if Taiwan were ever ruled by the so-called People's Republic of China (the butchers of Beijing) is often called "a sacred mission." How can professed atheists speak of a sacred mission?
     In all of these shaky and shifting rationales for defining unwilling people as Chinese, one thing is missing: the consent of the governed. For the butchers of Beijing, the Humpty Dumpty "authority" to define Chinese doesn't come from any dictionary; it comes from the barrel of a gun.

Monday, October 25, 2010

The Problem with End-of-the-world Scenarios

     By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that the world will end on December 20, 2012. Being the calm, rational person that you are, I’m sure you don’t believe it. Ask yourself, though, “Do I fully disbelieve it?” Do the people around you fully disbelieve it?
     Many years ago, a friend told me that you can get almost anyone to believe almost anything as long as you tell him, “Science has found a way.” Let’s test that theory for a moment, shall we?
     The gestation period for an elephant is two years. Let’s assume that two years was the gestation period for the now-extinct woolly mammoth. Now, we know that frozen mammoths have been found containing fully intact DNA.
     Now, let’s suppose that scientists (there’s that word science again) attempted to clone a woolly mammoth from tissue they had in hand; and let’s further suppose that everything went smoothly and according to plan. Could they clone a woolly mammoth in less than three years?
     That’s good. You hedged a little with your answer. You said, “Probably,” or “Possibly.”
     Actually, the correct answer is, “No.” The DNA would have to be inserted into living cells. Since there are no living woolly mammoth cells, the mammoth DNA would have to be inserted into elephant cells, and the result would be a hybrid species. They would need around five generations of cloning before the product could no longer be called a hybrid.
     You may have already known that, but the highly convincing pseudo-science of Jurassic Park has conditioned you to accept it as fact anyway.
     When you first heard of the movie 2012, you probably rejected its doomsday scenario out of hand. Since then, however, scientists (there goes that word again) have been telling us of several extinction-level possibilities.
     There’s a giant asteroid headed this way. If it even comes close to hitting us, the movie scenario can play out. If it hits us straight on, we won’t even have time to say, “Good night, Gracie.”
     There’s also the prospect of a solar storm that can seriously affect us here on Earth, especially those of us who depend on computers. You probably own dozens of computers on which you depend in your daily lives. In addition to your laptop, computers run your wrist watch, your television set, your microwave oven, the carburetor and other devices in your car, and many other devices.
     If that happens, major national economies will collapse. The semi-nomadic Himbas in Africa will get along as they’ve gotten along for thousands of years. Members of neighboring tribes, who now laugh at the Himbas for their “backward ways,” will be freaking out.
     Events of that sort will certainly happen someday, but almost certainly not in our lifetimes. What about an invasion from outer space—you know: like the one in the movie Independence Day? In that movie, one rumpled-looking nerd with a laptop took on one of the most technologically advanced species in the universe. The nerd’s former rival then united all the world’s peoples under a one-world government, whipped the snot out of those galoots and sent them scurrying back to hyperspace.
     The concept is so ridiculous that MacIntosh used it in a commercial.  (Here)  (At the 31-second mark, see how much time he has left before the attack from aliens: 9 minutes and 11 seconds.)
     Can you believe it? Oh, well, maybe not now, but can you be sure that you can never be conditioned to believe it—the way you were conditioned to believe unlikely things about cloning?
     A few months ago, during the Halliburton/BP oil spill, the companies that caused the spill locked down the entire Gulf area and took control of all spill-related information coming from the Gulf. We were constantly bombarded with information (or disinformation) that hinted at an extinction-level event; and that all our lives were saved by Halliburton and BP—the people who were managing the “news.” How many Americans actually questioned this highly filtered news?  Not very many. Most people considered it news, as credible as news from any other source.
     This event proved how easy it would be to override the First Amendment and fool tens of millions of people into thinking that the U.S. Congress needed to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Who is heavily invested in companies that would benefit from cap-and-trade legislation? BP, that’s who.
     Now, can you be sure that you, or others around you, can’t be tricked into believing that we’re being invaded from outer space? Being so tricked, can you be sure that neither you, nor those around you, will demand that our Constitution be abolished in favor of a world government that may turn out to be totalitarian?
     It sounds pretty far fetched, I know. It’s as far fetched as believing that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11, or that Gulf War Syndrome doesn’t exist, or that Halliburton and BP were the heroes of the oil spill and not the villains, or a host of other things that people have been conditioned to believe.
     Please take a look at what a fellow named Bill Cooper has to say about a bogus invasion from outer space. (I ask you to consider that government was not Mr. Cooper’s forte. He speaks of a “one-world, totalitarian socialist government.” Under a totalitarian regime, libertarians and socialists are equally under threat. Mr. Cooper was unwittingly subscribing to a false paradigm—left versus right—that is used to keep us divided against one another.)
     I’m not saying that anyone would try to trick us into believing that such a doomsday scenario is for real. I am saying, though, that if we do hear of a space invasion, we should look behind the curtain and see who is pulling the strings.
     For further information, and to watch the You Tube video “Hoax Alien Invasion Planned—Bill Cooper,” click here.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Suspicious Timing: More evidence of Israeli prior knowledge and planning of 9/11

     The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) is an international organization that was organized to “support the war on terror.”  Its founders are some of the great movers and shakers in American and Israeli political circles.
     As an amateur historian, I’m obsessed with time lines. The war on terror was declared after September 11, 2001. The FDD was officially launched on September 13, 2001. How were they able to organize eleven heavy hitters and be ready to fulfill its grandiose purpose in less than two days?
     To answer that question, it’s necessary to go back four years to the formation of a nominally American organization—a much better-known organization which would later contribute leadership to the FDD.  It was founded in 1997, and it was called the Project for the New American Century.
     You probably remember them. Many of their founders, such as William Kristol, hold dual citizenship in the United States and Israel. They’re the guys who drew up a wish list in which they confessed that their wishes wouldn’t be granted unless the United States were struck by a “new Pearl Harbor” that would frighten the American people into acceding to the wishes of Kristol and his pals.
     I call it a wish list because any alternative label would be unacceptable to readers who are addicted to comfort. The alternative would be to call it a plan.
    Maybe you’ve heard the term opportunity cost. That’s the difference between what you gained from a given course of action and the greater gain you could have derived from doing something else.
     The highly influential people involved in the PNAC invested hundreds of thousands of man hours, tens of millions of dollars, and all that effort on an endeavor that they never expected to gain them anything—unless the United States experienced a new Pearl Harbor with characteristics that perfectly dovetailed with PNAC’s blueprint for the New World Order. Unless there was a close fit between PNAC’s blueprint and a made-to-order, new Pearl Harbor, the opportunity costs for each one of the participants would have been astronomical.
     Let’s move up to the spring of 2001.
     Sourcewatch cites The American Conservative as saying that the FDD was an outgrowth of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). EMET is an anti-Palestinian hate group founded  in the spring of 2001, and which foundered shortly thereafter. (Here)  Israel needed a more palatable means of presenting its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza. (Here)
     Over the next few months, Israeli spinmeisters and Israeli/American dual-citizenship neoconservatives threw this and that into their witches brew. By late August, their organizational work on the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies was completed.
     Of the eleven men and women who were FDD’s founding leadership, five of them had been signers of the Project for the New American Century. They were Clifford D. May, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Bill Kristol, and James Woolsey. Although Newt Gingrich had not been present for the signing of PNAC, he was yet another founding leader of the FDD. Other leadership positions in both PNAC and the FDD were held by Gary Bauer, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Perle, William Bennet, Rich Lowry, and Jeanne Kirkpatrick.
     It had been more than four years since these neocons had filled out their wish list, predicated entirely on a new Pearl Harbor that perfectly dovetailed with their blueprint. Now all they could do is sit back and wait for it to happen.
     At 11:30 P.M. on the night of September 11, 2001, President Bush wrote in his diary that the United States had been hit by “a twenty-first century Pearl Harbor.” Yes, that’s right: He used the same reference that PNAC had placed on its wish list four years earlier.
     Less than two days later, at least five signers of PNAC, now representing an Israeli propaganda organ, announced their intention to help the United States fight its “war on terror.”
     On September 20, 2001, President Bush would address the United States Congress in what would become known as his “War on Terror Speech.” You read it correctly. Bush’s “War on Terror Speech” was seven days after the FDD was launched to “support the war on terror.” The same people had used the term “Pearl Harbor” in the context of 9/11 more than four years earlier than Bush did. (Here)
     Granted, the war-on-terror rationale for launching FDD may have been a later add-on, but that would suggest that Israel and their dual-citizenship stooges had other reasons for launching the FDD. Thus, the rejection of one conspiracy theory would, itself, be a conspiracy theory. Either way, it leaves open some tricky questions such as, “If helping the United States fight the War on Terror wasn’t the real reason for starting the FDD, what was the real reason?”
     You could keep going around in circles with questions like that. It’s like the classic time-travel paradox.
     There is, however, one simple explanation for all of these mysteries—one that isn’t riddled with paradoxes. Both PNAC and the FDD were founded by people who knew that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 would happen. Both groups, as well as fractional lenders, the military-industrial complex, the disaster capitalists, and other Insiders, greatly benefited from 9/11.
     In the first article in this series of “motive, means, and opportunity,” I pointed out several ways that Israeli leaders benefited from 9/11 and even said that it was “a good thing for Israel.” (Here) In the second article of the series, I proved that Muslim “terrorists” did not have the means to have carried it out, although Israel, with the help of American Insiders, did.  (Here) In both articles, I offered abundant proof that the Israeli regime had prior knowledge of 9/11.
     In this article, I proved that the events of 9/11 perfectly dovetailed with plans that Israelis and Israeli dual-citizens had made years in advance of 9/11.  The odds against coincidence are astronomical.
     In the final article in this series, I’ll show how Israeli software and security companies—and no companies other than Israeli companies—had the opportunity to carry out 9/11.
Other September 11, 2001, articles in this blog