9/11 and The New Pearl Harbor - A Response to Bill Weinberg

(Jon Gold posted this yesterday in his blog, but I wanted to make sure it got a top slot here. Pretty good rebuttal piece to Weinberg. -r.)

9/11 and The New Pearl Harbor - A Response to Bill Weinberg

by Michael Kane
FTW Energy Affairs Editor

October 9th 2006, 3:56PM [PST] – New York – Recently Bill Weinberg has trashed everyone who believes 9/11 was perpetrated by the U.S. Government in a report published at GNN.tv.

He makes some valid points regarding bad analysis and sloppy documentation put forth by some who claim to be 9/11 “skeptics” searching for “truth.” But where Weinberg falls flat on his face is in his evasive analysis of the most important area of research surrounding 9/11: The multiple 9/11 war games.

In his analysis of the war games, Weinberger never once mentions FromTheWilderness.com, Mike Ruppert or Crossing the Rubicon.

FTW is used to getting attacked, in many ways. David Corn and Alexander Cockburn spent a good amount of time attacking Ruppert from 2002 to 2004.

Cockburn denies that global warming exists or is a serious threat to humanity.

Unlike Cockburn, I respect Weinberg, and find him to be an intelligent and valid analyst of current events and history. There are even two tactics Weinberg uses in his report against official complicity in the 9/11 attacks that I respect.

First, he begins his argument in a way I have not seen used by our detractors in the past. He admits that official governmental conspiracies exist, and it would be “irresponsible not to consider the possibility that elements of the CIA and/or Bush administration had a hand in the events of September 11, 2001.”

Secondly, he does something no one else will do any longer when attacking those who say 9/11 was an inside job: He mentions Mike Ruppert.

Since Crossing the Rubicon was published, all of FTW’s favorite detractors (Corn, Cockburn et al.) have shut their mouths, no longer mentioning our work especially as it pertains to the crimes of 9/11. They can’t dispute our case so they have no other choice.

Weinberg was brave enough to invoke the name that others now steer clear of, but he did not seriously challenge our case at all. Instead he focuses on minor disputes that he had with FTW’s Oh Lucy! timeline four years ago. These points are not in anyway central to the case against Dick Cheney as laid out in Crossing the Rubicon. The main point Weinberg drives home is over the interpretation of a French report published in Le Figaro. The report claims bin Laden met with CIA officials during his stay in a Dubai hospital shortly before 9/11. Le Figaro has never retracted the story. Weinberg says Ruppert translated a French word in the report incorrectly. Ruppert responded at length to Weinberg regarding this issue at the time, and his response was partially in French. Weinberg did not reprint Mike Ruppert’s response in full in his recent report; he selectively quoted from it.

Regardless of who is right in terms of such minutiae (I cannot truly say since I don’t speak French), this debate is meaningless and has no impact on FTW’s central case naming Dick Cheney as the prime suspect in the crimes of 9/11. To prove such a case in a court of law you must show MEANS, MOTIVE and OPPORTUNITY. When Weinberg finally does try to take a swing at our case in his report, he doesn’t even mention us!

Continued...

wow. i didnt know Cockburn

wow. i didnt know Cockburn was a global warming denier. so he believes in the great scientist hoax of global warming(as if all the most prominent scientists on the planet are perpetuating some grand hoax together in pushing global warming) but he cant bring himself to believe 9/11 was an inside job despite mountains of evidence? learn something new every day i guess. Cockburn is dumber than i previously thought.

You know about Cockburn/Scientology?

Google that for some laughs. Can't remember if you were the person that brought it up before...

Thanks for that... I needed a laugh.

I knew Cockburn was stupid after listening to him the radio. I didn't realize he was that stupid....

"There are none so hoplessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free" (Goethe)..... a paraphrase from V: Cast aside the illusions. Only when you are finally hopeless can you truly be free.

i actually just found out

i actually just found out about that last week. suddenly it makes sense that he would be against critical thought when it comes to 9/11. first the scientology stuff, then this global warming stuff. to think i used to enjoy some of his articles. i dont know what to make of him anymore.

He's not a scientologist.

He's not a scientologist. He just defended them:

"One of these subjects is his nuanced position with respect to the activities of the Church of Scientology. In an Los Angeles Times column published in the late 1990s, Cockburn criticized the attempt by the German government to inhibit the growth of Scientology through restrictive laws, and invoked several comparisons to Nazi Germany in order to illustrate what he views as a threat to the rights enjoyed by Scientologists to worship in a manner they see fit. Although he conceded that the aggressive posture of the CoS deserved scrutiny, he also maintained that the demonization of any particular unpopular group—even one that might be cultish in nature—presented a far more imminent danger than the activities of Scientologists, or the organization they belong to.[4]

However, the article also states that:

"This stance has led some critics to accuse him of being a shill for the Church of Scientology.[5]"

I don't see that as a fair criticism, personally, seems more like ad hom.

Also of interest is that if you look on the Wikipedia page there is a bit about Cockburn "blaming Jews for toppling the towers". Indeed, I seem to remember him writing a blurb about the dancing Israelis after 911. does that mean Cockburn himself is a conspiracy nut?

"Global Warming" is Globalist Elite Scam

Chris, so-called "Global Warming" (or is it Global Cooling?) is a hoax perpetrated by governments in order to obtain more power and control over their respective populations, as it provides them a pretext in which to massively regulate society and for their population-reduction agendas. So-called "scientists" go along with it because most so-called "scientists" are weak-minded, indoctrinated sheeple just like most people, and because the government massively funds research supporting the Global Warming agenda, whereas bonafide *scientists* (in the genuine sense of that word) who point out the complete lack of scientific basis and fallacious reasoning of the promoters of the Global Warming agenda are outright censored and left out in the cold.

In other words, supporting the Global Warming agenda is good for careers and brings in the big, government dollars; whereas attempting to publish research that refutes the Global Warming agenda is the perfect way to be cut off from funding and barred from publication, and hence is exceedingly bad for careers, to say the least. (As it's known in academia, "publish or parish," which requires research funding and access to journals in which to publish.)

It wasn't so long ago that eugenics was all the rage within academia and the political establishment (it still is, it's just that they're not as public about it now). It was promoted as being ultra-scientific, and its policies of forced sterilization were implemented both in the U.S. and in other countries around the world, such as in Nazi Germany--and to this day is still practiced in such countries as Communist China.

It amazes me that a number of people who can realize that governments manufacture huge conspiratorial hoaxes in which to obtain more power and control, such as the U.S. government-staged 9/11 attacks, can't wrap their minds around the fact that the masses have been intentionally indoctrinated with the Global Warming agenda (which previously was Global Cooling) because governments are using it as a tool in which to scare the living daylights out of their populations that we're all going to die unless the government "saves" us. For Heaven's sake, we've grown up on government-school miseducation, children's cartoons, after-school specials, and regular TV programming force-feeding us the whole Gaia spiel about how mankind is a cancer that is destroying the Earth and that life as we know it is going to end soon unless the governments of the world do something drastic to "save" us all.

Another thing that gets socialists who go by the misnomer of "liberals" is George Bush, Jr.'s supposed stand against the Global Warming agenda. Yet, far from being against the notion of Global Warming, Bush, Jr. has supported the fallacious theories of Global Warming and the enactment of the tyrannical Kyoto Protocol. The reason Bush, Jr. gave for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol (of which Bill Clinton also didn't ratify) is because countries such as China and India are exempt from its requirements! In other words, Bush, Jr. wants the entire world to be under the global tyranny of the Kyoto Protocol, not just some of the world.

The government has not the slightest desire to suppress ideas that the world is headed for apocalyptic global warming, or apocalyptic global cooling, or apocalyptic polution of the environment, or apocalyptic shortage of oil, or apocalyptic viruses, or apocalyptic terrorists trying to kill us all, or an apocalyptic U.S.S.R. (or Iraq, or now Iran) waiting to nuke us, or an apocalyptic invasion from outer space, or any other similar apocalyptic ideas. It's the government that invents, promotes and funds such ideas in the first place. What better way to massively socially re-engineer world society than to convince the masses that the sky is going to fall at any near moment unless the government steps in to run all our lives, requiring massive increases in funding and power for the government in the process?

For more on the globalist elite's Global Warming scam, see the below:

"Why Politicized Science is Dangerous," Michael Crichton, excerpted from State of Fear (New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, December 2004):

http://www.crichton-official.com/fear/index.html

"The global warming scam," Derek Kelly, Ph.D., Asia Times, February 25, 2005:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GB25Aa02.html

Below is the petition statement which over 7,800 scientists have been independently verified as having signed:

""
Global Warming Petition

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
""

Global Warming Petition Project:

http://www.oism.org/oism/s32p31.htm

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm

"Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide," Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, January 1998:

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

http://www.oism.org/pproject/review.pdf

"The M&M Project: Replication Analysis of the Mann et al. Hockey Stick," Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html

"Aliens Cause Global Warmin," a lecture by Michael Crichton at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, January 17, 2003:

http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html

"There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998," Bob Carter, Telegraph (U.K.), April 9, 2006:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do...

---

For more on the globalist elite's misanthropic, Malthusian New World Order population reduction agenda (using the globalist elite's "Peak Oil" and "Global Warming" [or is it "Global Cooling"?] scams as pretexts), see the below articles:

"Forrest Mims did not Misrepresent Prof. Eric Pianka's Statements," James Redford, expanded edition, April 13, 2006:

http://www.geocities.com/tetrahedronomega/pianka-mims.html

"Top Scientist Advocates Mass Culling 90% Of Human Population--Fellow professors and scientists applause and roar approval at elite's twisted and genocidal population control agenda," Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones, PrisonPlanet.com, April 3, 2006:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2006/030406massculling.htm

"Burnet's solution: The plan to poison S-E Asia," Brendan Nicholson, The Age, March 10, 2002:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/03/09/1015365752044.html

"Kissinger's 1974 Plan for Food Control Genocide," Joseph Brewda, December 8, 1995:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050306082354/http://www.schillerinstitute.o...

"National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests," National Security Council, Washington, D.C., April 24, 1974:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050306091656/www.africa2000.com/SNDX/nssm20...
____________
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."--H. L. Mencken

James, you post a LOT of

James, you post a LOT of interesting things and i value your comments usually, but not everything is a globalist scam like you think. you can throw all the links in the world at me.

At least try to use some logic here

James,

I recommend that you enroll in a course on logic and critical thinking. Your contention that "Global Warming is a Globalist Elite Scam" breaks down so thoroughly and completely when applied to the test of logic, that I really have to wonder how you can be so blind.

Look, I share a lot of your suspicion and jadedness about the global elite, and agree that we should always be ready to consider that any consensus truth or conventional wisdom we hold may have been manipulated by the global elite. But that doesn't mean that we should just throw the rules of basic logic and evidence out the window. Just because some consensus truths are scams doesn't mean that all the rest are. You have to use your head and look at each issue on a case by case basis. You don't go sticking your head in a microwave oven because the convential wisdom says you shouldn't and therefore you are convinced that the global elite are trying to keep us from enjoying the secret health benefits of microwaving our brains. If you are going to assume that the global warming consensus is really a scam by the global elite, you at least need to show that A) the source of the information is from the global elite, and B) it is in the interests of the global elite to perpetuate this "scam". But in this case your theory of a global warming conspiracy fails both criteria.

The most powerfull among the global elite are the banking/financial controllers, the oil companies, the drug industry, and the military industries. In other words, the corporate fascists who value nothing but power and profit, and have no conscience or empathy toward life. More than enything else, they want more profits, which come mainly from controlling more resources and selling them for al long as possible at the highest prices possible over time.

Based on real observed evidence around the world over the last few decades of average temperatures of air and water, glacial melting rates, snow packs, etc., there is no question that the climate has been warming at an accelerating rate. The effects are becoming so increasingly obvious that you no longer need to utililze sensitive instruments that only scientific experts know how to understand. You can fudge and manipulate the numbers all you want, but the only way to possibly show a global cooling, rather than warming, is to use Enron-style accounting.

There is just way to much overwhelming data that disproves your hypothesis that normal every day people have been observing all over the world. Glaciers that have shrunk to smaller than they've been in thousands of years, even totally disappearing in many cases. Meltiing permafrost and othe dramatic effects (8-10 degree warming) in northern latitudes in Alaska and Canada that has completelly upset insect cycles and devestated the means of subsistence of traditional societies in those locales. The retreat of polar ice. Rising oceans. The list goes on and on.

As far as the global elite perpetuatiing the "global warming scare", the reality is quite the opposite. ExxonMobile and other oil companies have engaged in massive propaganda to convince the public that global warming is really not a problem. Quite the opposite of your hypothesis. Just look at the funding that these industries have given to front groups to put out misinformation in the media. Just look at how many times the Bush Administration has re-written the EPA's reports on global warming, over the objections of scientists, to make it look less problematic. Many prominent and will respecected scientists have quit the Bush Administration in protest over this unscientific politically motivated interference with their work. Obviously, the Bush Administration is in the hands of and doing the bidding of these global elite more blatently than any previous administration that I can think of. So, if your hypothesis was even remotely correct, the Bush Administration would have been screaming about global warming from the rooftops, rather than supressing it.

I really take offence to your accusation that anybody who warns about environmental crisis and resource scarcity is really secretely involved in the eugenics movement and has a secret agenda to kill off most of the human race. That is just so ludicrous and assinine to make such an association. That's like saying that anybody who warns about the use of Depleted Uranium by the military has a secret agenda to poisen millions of people.

If you really think that the environmental movement is nothing but a global elite front, then you have to dismess all the millions of people who became active in environmental protection in various places around the world after being poisened or negatively effected by the activities of the global elilte who don't give a damn about life, and all the billions of people who simply want a liveable planet for their future and their children't future, and all the people with, like, 2 neurons connected, who understand basic reality that we cannot contiinue to grow exponentially within a fiinite sphere (earth), and that once we destroy the biosphere's habitibility, there is nowhere else to go. This is just commen sense, not a global elite scam.

There are those, however, who are so addicted to the American Way of Life, which has become a nightmare for most of the world's population, that they continue to wrap themselves in layer upon layer of denial, unable to see any other possibilities of a different way of life that may involve giving up their SUV's, etc.

You Wear Your Indoctrination on Your Sleeve

The government has certainly done quite a job on your mind, Keenan. But I can't say that I'm sorry to have to inform you that your secular apocalypse is a complete and total government-created scam with not so much as the slightest shred of evidence or science to back it up.

Eugenics had scores of top-level scientists and evidence to back it up. It was a proven fact. Only an unsophisticated dolt could believe otherwise. Although it, too, was a complete scam on the part of government in order to get more power and control. Governments have never had much trouble finding armies of "scientists" and reams "scientific evidence" in which to support their power-grabbing policies.

But in fact, there has not been any "Global Warming" worth to speak of. Perhaps a slight fraction of degree since large-scale temperature measurements have started to be taken. And then one has to factor in that more weather stations are now in metropolis areas, which concentrate heat.

Though even if there were actually some temperature changes worth speaking of, the nature of *nature* is constant change. The Earth goes through natural heating and cooling periods, and it has nothing to do with mankind. Average temperature has never been static in Earth's existence, nor will it ever be.

As to your comments on "global cooling," the original temperature scare that the "environmentalist" movement (i.e., socialists via the back door) and the government were promoting was that we're all going to die pretty soon due to Global Cooling. Apparently you weren't around then and don't know the history of your own movement.

On the matter of oil companies promoting that Global Warming is not a problem, this is a case of a two-faced presentation. The big corporations and the large corporate foundations are the biggest funders of the "environmentalist" movement. If they were against this agenda then they wouldn't fund it. It was also Royal Dutch Shell (owned in large part by Bilderberger Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands) that originally created the "Peak Oil" scam.

So far as your assertion concerning making money, it's not money itself the ruling elites are interested in. Money is just a means which can help facilitate that. But governments are the ones that print up the fiat money--if they want money, they just print more up.

It's control over their populations that they seek. Hence the reason why the free-market economy has always been an anathema to governments, because then their common masses obtain wealth beyond all previous imagining--to the degree that people are allowed to produce and trade freely. And especially because then the government's sphere of control is limited. The ruling elite don't desire a rich society--what they desire is a society where the ruling elite has the power to do whatever they want to the common masses, whenever they want, for whatever reason.

The government doesn't obtain power by telling people the truth, i.e., that everything would be more or less just great without it, and certainly far, far better off than with it. Instead, government obtains power by convincing people that they are in great mortal danger, and that the only thing that can save them is government.

Governments have done quite a job in convincing the masses that they are a cancer upon the Earth. This "environmentalist" anti-human mentality is great if one is a ruling elite who desires to visit slaughter upon the masses.

But see my above links for more evidence of what I have said here. The ruling elite literally want most of the world's population dead. They are eugenicist misanthropes to the core--it's the nature of power.

____________
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."--H. L. Mencken

Blind to your own indoctrination

James,

Your mind is a jumbled mess. This is often the case with fundamentalists of any stripe, including free market fundamentalists of which you are apparently a member.

You don't need to just trust scientists to tell you that every major ecosystem is in serious decline and that this is not sustainable, regardless of whether or not you believe that scientists are all secretly part of plan to kill off the human race, which you have not provided any evidence for and which is a ridiculous. All you need to do is take your head out of your ass and look around. Why don't you ask all the indegenous cultures around the world what is happening to the environment? Are they all secretly part of the plan as well to deceive the public?

"So far as your assertion concerning making money, it's not money itself the ruling elites are interested in."
Oh really? I guess that's why they don't try very hard to maximize profits, huh? Well, it IS money they are interested in, but they are also interested in controlling the system of money and property ownership, so that they can continuously increase their control and ownership of everything, at the expense of the common masses.

"But governments are the ones that print up the fiat money--if they want money, they just print more up."
For someone who seems to spout libertarian free market rhetoric so predictably, I would have thought you've be more educated on this. No, James. Government's, at least in the "free market" world, do not print the money. It is the privately owned central banks, owned by the more powerful and wealthy families and private banks, that have the monopoly on printing money. And, it is they who own the government. Not the other way around. You need to at least understand this concept.

"It's control over their populations that they seek. Hence the reason why the free-market economy has always been an anathema to governments, because then their common masses obtain wealth beyond all previous imagining--to the degree that people are allowed to produce and trade freely."
You've got be be kidding me on this. You really believe that the common masses obtain wealth beyond all previous imagining in a free market economy?. What fantasy world do you live in? Have you been living in a cave your whole life? Perhaps you have your terms mixed up, or you are bad at math? Let's see, I think you meant, "the power eilte obtain wealth beyond all previous imagining in a free market economy on the backs of the common masses, who are essentially enslaved in the process". If you want to speak of the real world, rather than your fantasy one, then this would be a much more accurate statement.

"And especially because then the government's sphere of control is limited."
Oh, I see. So, you only want to limit the sphere of control of the government, but not the capitalists, the bankers, the rich power elite who control the government. So, I guess if your slave master was a private billionaire, that's ok.

"The ruling elite don't desire a rich society--what they desire is a society where the ruling elite has the power to do whatever they want to the common masses, whenever they want, for whatever reason."
I agree. That's why I don't understand how you could possibly support such a horrid system - Capitalism - which allows the power elite to do just that.

The problem with you libertarian types is that you don't know your history. The "free market" could not have come into existence without the creation of nation-states. The last 500 years of the existence of capitalism is a history of capitalist imperialism, plunder, pillage, impoverishment and enslavement of most of the world's populations, and increasingly the decimation and destruction of the environment which all live depends on. Let's see...does any of this ring a bell: British East India Company, Dutch East India Company, Hudson Bay Company, The slave trade, woman and child sex slave trafficking, the opium wars, sweat shops, the World Trade Organization, pharmaceuitical companies creating/manipulating diseases and illness in order to sell more medicines, cigarrette companies profiting off of cancer-causing products and lying about it, and on and on...

You oppose the oppressive apparatus of the authoritian nation-state system, but you have no problem with private corporations/empires, with their own coercive security forces, private paramilitaries, ships of conquest, endlessly expropriating property which was not theirs through any means necessary, including funding wars, using trickery, or other means of coercion, and then getting the nanny state to enforce those "property rights"?

And, you forget that the free market is not anathema to nation-state governments, it is married to it. Without a modern economy with modern infrastructure, energy grids, transportation, etc. you could not have private companies of any kind prospering. You need a modern national economy as a "precondition" to "invention" in the private sector. Without Government creating the basic economic infrastructure you would not and could not have private enterprise system. So all corporations are "subsidised" by Government!

No private entrepeneur exists as an island. They need the use of "public utilities, schools, public hospitals, etc.Without this modern economy private companies could not function.

Therefore you need to rethink your idea of "free market" existing independent of government, as every private company is dependent on "infrastructure" built with Government credit. Without the infrastructure built up by Government these companies could NOT FUNCTION, period.

Now tell me exactly what "market forces" are and how they decide what is good for our economy? I never saw a "market force" build a dam or bridge or levee. I never saw a "market force" feed the starving masses of any country from which they pillaged and expropriated indigenous land and resources. Unregulated free markets = rigged markets. Free markets are corrupt and are based upon the expropriation of land and resources that were once socially or communally owned. Capitalism is simply the most elaborate tool of enslavement that the power elite have ever devised.

"On the matter of oil companies promoting that Global Warming is not a problem, this is a case of a two-faced presentation. The big corporations and the large corporate foundations are the biggest funders of the "environmentalist" movement. If they were against this agenda then they wouldn't fund it. It was also Royal Dutch Shell (owned in large part by Bilderberger Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands) that originally created the "Peak Oil" scam."

A two-faced presentation? Could you please provide one example of an oil company promoting such a two-faced presentation? Just one example will do. And I didn't say anything about Peak Oil. The fact is that the oil industry funds anti-global warming disinformation and spends great effort to convince the public that global warming is a scam, which is your position. So, the power elite are doing the opposite of what you are contending. Again, if your hypothesis was even remotely correct, the Bush Administration would have been screaming about global warming from the rooftops, rather than supressing it. You still haven't addressed this flaw in your reasoning. Why is the Bush Administration, who are most obviously in the pockets of the global elite, supressing information about global warming and altering scientific reports? I'm not going to let you off the hook on this one. You really need to address this.

Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. You can't on the one hand claim to be mistrustful and opposed to the global power eilte, and on the other stand with some of the most evil of the global power elite - the oil mafia and the Bush Administration - on the issue of global warming. This troublesome flaw simply blows a hole right through the middle of your argument, and you really need to think more deeply about this.

I find it mightly hilarius that those who have been the most indoctrinated by the ruling elite's free market fundamentalist rhetoric are so dellusional that they actually think they are the free thinkers and it is everyone else who doesn't buy into their free market bullshit who are indoctrinated. Richard, I'll let you in on a secret: The world has already been taken over by a One World Capitalist Conspiracy. Your socialist conspiracy only exists in your fantasy world.

At this point Richard, I realize that there is no quantity or quality of evidence that would convince you of the sillyness of your stance on the global warming issue, because it would require deeper thinking which of course would lead you to realize that your world is one of fantasy and you dont want to give up that fantasy.

The Nature of Liberty

Concerning the matter of the Federal Reserve System supposedly being privately owned, Prof. Murrary N. Rothbard noted:

""
Some writers make a great to-do over the legal fiction that the Federal Reserve System is “owned” by its member banks. In practice, this simply means that these banks are taxed to help pay for the support of the Federal Reserve. If the private banks really “own” the Fed, then how can its officials be appointed by the government, and the “owners” compelled to “own” the Federal Reserve Board by force of government statute? The Federal Reserve Banks should simply be regarded as governmental agencies.
""

(From pg. 29 of America's Great Depression, Prof. Murray N. Rothbard [Auburn, Alabama: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, fifth edition, 2000; originally published 1963]: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf .)

I see this claim of the supposedly "privately owned" Federal Reserve System made quite often by those in the Patriot movement (of which movement, I count myself as a member). But this claim is what might be termed purely a "scare tactic," as it doesn't make any sense on logical grounds, but is intended to simply play on people's indoctrinated fears of big business (of which, the actual thing to fear in this regard is when big business is in bed with government).

The Federal Reserve is "private" much akin to how the Post Office is "private," or how Pravda under the U.S.S.R. was "private." Which is to say, it is not private at all, but is very much a government institution.

It may be "private" in the de jure sense, but that is merely words on paper. In the de facto sense, it is totally a branch and arm of the government.

As well, putting the Federal Reserve under the control of Congress wouldn't make our situation any better, as we would still suffer just as much from the fiat money, credit expansion, inflation, and the boom-bust so-called "business cycle" which that causes.

Keenan, you wrote:

""
You've got be be kidding me on this. You really believe that the common masses obtain wealth beyond all previous imagining in a free market economy?. What fantasy world do you live in? Have you been living in a cave your whole life? Perhaps you have your terms mixed up, or you are bad at math? ...
""

That's right, Keenan. Capitalism--the free market--is simply individuals voluntarily exchanging goods they have for goods they value more highly. It is a mutually beneficial system, because both parties necessarily must believe that they gain from the exchange at the time it occurs in order for it to take place.

It is the Industrial Revolution which raised the Western masses out of the mud, greatly expanded their average lifetimes, and gave the average person wealth beyond all previous imagining for such a commoner. All this was made possible via the nexus of private initiative and voluntary exhange.

For more on this, see Chapter 6 "Antimarket Ethics: A Praxeological Critique" from Man, Economy, and State, Prof. Murray N. Rothbard (Auburn, Alabama: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, second edition, 2004; originally published 1962):

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap18a.asp

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap18b.asp

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mespm.PDF

Concerning ecosystems, virtually all of the species that have gone extinct have died off long before mankind ever came on the scene. Again, the nature of *nature* is constant change. The only thing that matters in this regard is the survival of a sapient species (in this case, mankind), because it is only a sapient species which has the ability to get off this planet and populate the universe. All species on this planet are doomed to extinction when the Sun becomes a red giant. The only hope for survival of any life on this planet is mankind--unless one wants to posit divine or alien intervention.

Keenan, you wrote:

""
A two-faced presentation? Could you please provide one example of an oil company promoting such a two-faced presentation? Just one example will do. And I didn't say anything about Peak Oil. The fact is that the oil industry funds anti-global warming disinformation and spends great effort to convince the public that global warming is a scam, which is your position. So, the power elite are doing the opposite of what you are contending. Again, if your hypothesis was even remotely correct, the Bush Administration would have been screaming about global warming from the rooftops, rather than supressing it. You still haven't addressed this flaw in your reasoning. Why is the Bush Administration, who are most obviously in the pockets of the global elite, supressing information about global warming and altering scientific reports? I'm not going to let you off the hook on this one. You really need to address this.
""

Yes, the socialist agenda (going under the misnomer of the "left" and "liberal") is funded by the big corporations. See:

"Left Gatekeepers: Foundation funding and the left media gatekeepers":

http://www.leftgatekeepers.com

Keenan, you wrote:

""
Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. You can't on the one hand claim to be mistrustful and opposed to the global power eilte, and on the other stand with some of the most evil of the global power elite - the oil mafia and the Bush Administration - on the issue of global warming. This troublesome flaw simply blows a hole right through the middle of your argument, and you really need to think more deeply about this.
""

Yet George Bush, Jr. says that "Global Warming" is real and is caused by mankind. So you are the one who is standing with him on this matter, not me.

Keenan, you wrote:

""
I find it mightly hilarius that those who have been the most indoctrinated by the ruling elite's free market fundamentalist rhetoric are so dellusional that they actually think they are the free thinkers and it is everyone else who doesn't buy into their free market bullshit who are indoctrinated. Richard, I'll let you in on a secret: The world has already been taken over by a One World Capitalist Conspiracy. Your socialist conspiracy only exists in your fantasy world.
""

Who is this Richard that you address, Keenan? My name is not Richard.

But even though you were addressing some Richard, I'll respond to your above comment. A so-called "Capitalist Conspiracy" on the part of government wouldn't make any sense, becuase the government would then be minimized. No government in history has ever voluntarily committed suicide, as it were.

As well, a capitalist order would be one whereby everyone may do what they will with their own, so long as they respect everyone else's same-self right. That is to say, capitalism, taken to its logical conclusion, is irrevocably anarchist in nature.

This is capitalism: you have a product and I have a product. We each value each others' products more than our own. So we each gain in utility by making a voluntary trade with each other. That is sum total of capitalism--only this and nothing more--expanded many times over for the entirety of the societal nexus of exchange.

Whereas with socialism, all power is in the hands of the government, and all industry is under its control. No production or transaction (other than the illegal black market) is beyond its dictates.

For much more on this matter, please read the below articles:

Below are some excellent articles concerning the nature of government, of liberty, and the free-market production of defense:

"The Anatomy of the State," Prof. Murray N. Rothbard, Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer 1965), pp. 1-24. Reprinted in a collection of some of Rothbard's articles, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays (Washington, D.C.: Libertarian Review Press, 1974):

http://www.mises.org/easaran/chap3.asp

"Defense Services on the Free Market," Prof. Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 1 from Power and Market: Government and the Economy (Kansas City, Kansas: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1977; originally published 1970):

http://www.geocities.com/vonchloride/marketdefense.html

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/power&market.pdf

"The Private Production of Defense," Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter 1998-1999), pp. 27-52:

http://www.mises.net/journals/jls/14_1/14_1_2.pdf

http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Hoppe.pdf

"Fallacies of the Public Goods Theory and the Production of Security," Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Winter 1989), pp. 27-46:

http://www.mises.net/journals/jls/9_1/9_1_2.pdf

"Police, Courts, and Laws--On the Market," Chapter 29 from The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, Prof. David D. Friedman (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Co., 1989; originally published 1971):

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chap...

Concerning the ethics of human rights, the below book is the best book on the subject:

The Ethics of Liberty, Prof. Murray N. Rothbard (New York, New York: New York University Press, 1998; originally published 1982):

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

If one desires a solid grounding in economics then one can do no better than with the below texts:

Economic Science and the Austrian Method, Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Auburn, Alabama: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995):

http://www.mises.org/esandtam.asp

"Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics," Prof. Murray N. Rothbard, On Freedom and Free Enterprise: The Economics of Free Enterprise, Mary Sennholz, editor (Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand, 1956), pp. 224-262. Reprinted in The Logic of Action One: Method, Money, and the Austrian School, Murray N. Rothbard (London, England: Edward Elgar, 1997), pp. 211-255:

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/toward.pdf

Man, Economy, and State, Prof. Murray N. Rothbard (Auburn, Alabama: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, second edition, 2004; originally published 1962):

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes.asp

Power and Market: Government and the Economy, Prof. Murray N. Rothbard (Kansas City, Kansas: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1977; originally published 1970):

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/power&market.pdf

These texts ought to be read in the order listed above. I would also add to the above list the below book:

America's Great Depression, Prof. Murray N. Rothbard (Auburn, Alabama: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, fifth edition, 2000; originally published 1963):

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf

The above book concerns how the governments create depressions (i.e., nowadays called recessions) through credit expansion.

The small book Economic Science and the Austrian Method by Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe doesn't get into political theory, but only concerns the methodological basis of economics (i.e., the epistemology of economics). I would recommend that everyone read this short book *first* if they're at all interested in economics. There exists much confusion as to what economics is and what it is not. This book is truly great in elucidating the nature of what economics is and what it is not. If one were to read no other texts on economics, then this ought to be the one economic text that one reads. Plus it doesn't take all that long to read it.

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"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."--H. L. Mencken