Author Archives: Jon Rappoport

LOGIC AND DECEPTIVE WORDS

LOGIC AND DECEPTIVE WORDS

By Jon Rappoport,

Author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS COURSE

MAY 21, 2010.  When a report is issued that contains vague words, it turns out to be a mess.  However, much of the time, people don’t ask for clarification of these terms.  They allow words and phrases to float by like wispy clouds.

Even bigger trouble ensues when words seem to be straightforward but really aren’t.

As a medical reporter, I spent years rooting out such deceptive terms.

A few examples:

“Hundreds of people have TESTED POSITIVE for the disease.”

“Healthy people should avoid INFECTED patients if possible.”

“The patient who died was PREVIOUSLY HEALTHY, underlining the virulence of the virus in his body.”

On the surface, these words seem clear.  But they usually aren’t. 

What test was being used, after which hundreds of people were said to be positive for a disease?  Was the test useful?  Was it relevant?

I frequently discovered the test measured a certain response of the immune system—and this positive response traditionally meant the patient was healthy.  But all of a sudden, the core meaning of the test had been turned on its head.  It was now taken to mean the patient was ill, or would soon become ill.

It was such a boggling reversal I had trouble believing my eyes.  And yet, there it was.  It was as if medical researchers were saying, with no reasonable justification, “Healthy equals sick.”

Many people assume the word “infected” means sick.  However, it often means “tested positive”—and then when “tested positive” was tracked down, it fell into the same bizarre trap I just described.

In a number of cases, where patients were reported to have died from a fast-acting viral infection, and were said to have been “previously healthy,” this turned out to be a complete fiction.  The patients had long medical records listing other diseases, and the drugs that had been used to treat those diseases were demonstrably toxic and injurious.  On top of that, some of the patients had a considerable street-drug history.  Therefore, the notion that they were just fine until the marauder virus attacked them was totally false.  Their immune systems, in fact, had been hanging on the ropes for a long time.

The deception in the terms “tested positive for the disease,” “infected,” and “previously healthy” required some investigation before they could be rightly understood.

I’ve seen many journalists who, when a “new epidemic” is announced, buy right into the official statistics on “infected” and “positive” people—without ever questioning what those terms actually mean to the medical bureaucrats who throw them around.

This is really a matter of logic, because deceptive terms torpedo the reasoning process.  It’s like driving with faulty brakes and a hole in the gas tank.  At some point, bad things are going to happen.

Many people can spot obviously vague words—but words that seem specific and official often escape notice.  It takes work to dig below the surface and discover the words are being used deceptively.

Needless to say, schoolchildren aren’t shown these things.  And most adults don’t learn about them, either. 

I’d take this a step further.  Very large numbers of people don’t even realize there is a reasoning process taking place.  They don’t see that some press reports, for example, are trying to use information to come to a logical conclusion.  Therefore, the whole question of whether certain key terms are being used in a deceptive fashion doesn’t concern them. 

I call this ignorance “apple-pie state of mind.”  You know, people say you can use apples unfit for eating and still make a good pie.  Well, maybe.  But in the realm of rational reasoning, if you have bad apples, you’re going to come to a bizarre and misleading conclusion.

This is one reason I created the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS course.  I had to start somewhere.  Education is the right place.  Minds need to be sharpened.  People need to understand what the reasoning process is all about, and how it can go right and how it can go wrong.

There are many ways it can go wrong.  For both schoolchildren and adults, discovering these factors comes as a revelation.  The clouds part and the sun illuminates the landscape, at last. 

Just as many lawyers—who are taught a little logic—use their skills to argue any side in any case without a shred a conscience, many journalists use whatever reasoning skills they have to tell a good story, regardless of the truth.  Governments and corporations sell their cases to the people, while obscuring the illogic of their presentations.  We’re inundated with twisted logic, and it should be a central part of educational system to reveal this and root it out—with great specificity.

Recently, a Supreme Court decision was handed down concerning the extent to which children could be punished for very violent crimes.  In its declaration, the Court majority opinion cited “international standards” on what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.  This seemingly obvious phrase has broad appeal to people who want to “harmonize” the laws of nations.  But it was a bizarre moment, to say the least.  On what basis could the US Court refer to the laws and customs of other countries in deciding an American case?

Where is the detailed justification for such a move?  Where is the detailed judicial debate that unearths and examines the acceptable method for making Supreme Court decisions?  In other words, where is the logical argument that would lay out how the Court is supposed to deliberate and not supposed to deliberate? 

The press covered the case in its usual fashion—these experts say this, and those experts say that.  End of story.  Move on.

It’s precisely this attitude that undermines a society. 

Creating a demand for explicit and complete logic has to start in rooms of education.

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for high school students and adults.  He has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.  Mr. Rappoport can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com  His work can be found at www.nomorefakenews.com and www.insolutions.info      

THE FUTURE OF MONEY

By Jon Rappoport,

Author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS COURSE

MAY 19, 2010.  In this piece, I’d like to focus on one factor.  When governments spend more than they have, they become debt-based governments. 

This is like saying, if the river rises over its banks there will be a flood.  It’s so obvious, why bother to mention it all? 

Well, because many people don’t really understand what debt means.  It means, among other things, that you can’t keep borrowing indefinitely to pay off what you owe. 

In other words, at some point, the lenders are going to dry up.  They’re going to run screaming into the night and they won’t leave a forwarding address for you.  You owe too much.  They don’t want to have anything to do with you.  If they were bookies, you would have already had your knees cracked with a baseball bat.

Governments, however, have some kind of misplaced faith that, if they keep funding programs “the people want,” the day of reckoning will never come.  They can allot money for this and that and this and that, and because this and that are deemed to be worthwhile, it doesn’t matter.

If you try to figure out where this attitude came from, you won’t find it in the Constitution.  You’ll find clues in the notion that politicians get elected by promising goodies, though. 

A close analysis indicates that “freedom,” which is delineated in the Constitution, is not the same as “free stuff.”

We now see that governments all over the world are realizing they can’t live forever as debt-based entities. 

So what’s next? 

I believe we will observe a growing Voice that asks for a global currency.  One currency for all nations.  This is no revelation.  It’s been coming for a long time.  However, it helps to have a debt crisis that seems to require the one-currency-fits-all answer. 

And in the process of shifting to a single planetary currency, there will be “debt eradication.”  This will be folded into the plan—because somehow the insupportable financial obligations of governments have to be dealt with. 

Such a plan will have to involve corporations.  Why?  Because companies like Goldman Sachs presently underwrite government debt.  Meaning?  These companies guarantee that the bonds which governments float, in order to keep borrowing, are, well, OK.  The bonds are “good.”  The bonds are safe.  The bonds can be bought without an unacceptable risk.

And what on earth gives Goldman Sachs the idea that such bonds deserve to be guaranteed?  I asked several “experts” that very question.  The answer I got was this: Governments tax the people; the taxes keep rolling in; governments have a reliable income stream.

That’s it?  That’s the answer?  It didn’t add up to me, because, despite raking in money by taxing citizens, governments are spending far more than they should.  In fact, that’s why they have to keep issuing those bonds. 

It seems to me this is yet another one of those crazy schemes, like selling mortgage-backed derivatives, that lasts as long as people don’t ask too many questions.  It’s a rain-soaked cliff waiting to collapse, and people are still spreading out blankets and having picnics on the cliff, and developers are building condos and roads there.

The shift to a single world currency would be a complex affair, and banks, investment houses, national treasuries, governments, and tons of lawyers would have to work it all out.

Something would have to be done to accommodate the global currency-trading markets, too, where presently gargantuan sums are flowing every day, as gamblers speculate on the value of the dollar versus the pound, the yen versus the dollar, and so on.  That whole market would be destroyed if these national currencies disappeared. 

No doubt the one-global-currency scheme has been on the drawing board for some time. Major players have been working on how it would be accomplished, and who would get what payoffs.

Insupportable government debt and the inability to provide the panoply of government services would be one reason given for The Great Money Revolution.

It’s a little like this.  You’re out on a field where you play baseball on a regular basis.  Your team is losing every game, on and on.  So one day, in the fifth inning of a game, you take your bat and your ball, and you say, “This is a bad thing.  Baseball is bad.  We have to make a change.  We’re not going to keep score the same way anymore.  We’re going to have a new game…”

A few people call you a bad loser.  And you say, “You’re wrong.  I just want to make things more fair, more equal.” 

We already have a model for debt eradication.  The IMF, the International Monetary Fund.  It tends to go into Third World countries and relieve a bit of pressure on their monstrous government debts—with  conditions attached.  These governments will basically have to sell off many of their functions, like water and electric utilities, to outside corporate interests.  Privatization.  In the process, rates are hiked.  Government budgets are downsized.

It’s possible that a new world currency would entail some of the same “austerity measures,” from Nome to Tierra del Fuego.  A general lowering of the standard of living.  An ever-widening gulf between the rich and the poor.

And of course, with the institution of one global currency, money would become much easier to track and tax.  Money would become much more “public.”  Or to put it another way, only favored individuals and groups would be able to fly under the radar and transfer and launder billions and trillions. 

I make all these points to illustrate how far such a plan would bring us from the notion of Constitutional government laid out at the beginning of the American Republic. 

That long road has been paved and constructed with debt.  Debt becomes the reason why the road to a Brave New World has to end up with an overall global management system that is both economic and political.

Therefore, as many have pointed out, those men who long for exactly such a global management system would conclude: Any strategy to pile insupportable debt on governments is a good strategy. 

Under the rubric of “more free services for more people,” debt is easy to create.  Along with war, it’s a slam dunk.

You may have noticed that, in America, more and more people are talking about limited government these days.  People are realizing that the Framers of the Constitution weren’t just whistling in the dark. 

The people who are now defending limited government are, in fact, willing to discuss these First Principles.  But the other side is doing everything it can to avoid that discussion.

Why?  Because a fundamental debate would open up the, yes, underlying philosophy by which these Big Government advocates operate.  The debate would expose the various levels of transference—in which freedom becomes free stuff.  And free stuff becomes un-payable debt.  And un-payable debt becomes the familiar face of friendly fascism.

Finally, it’s always a good idea to audit governments, to actually see the books, all the books, so you can find out their true financial status.  I mention this because governments invest money they drag in from taxing the citizenry.  Through pension funds, for example, they are major investors in the stock market.  Do we know how well such investments have been performing?  Is it possible that some state governments are swimming in cash and are falsely crying poor?  If that turned out to be the case, then the notion of “insupportable government debt” becoming the lever for a new currency would take on additional meaning.  It’s an issue that shouldn’t be ignored, and I don’t see governments releasing comprehensive financial reports that any citizen can read and understand.       

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for high school students and adults.  He has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.  Mr. Rappoport can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com  His websites are www.nomorefakenews.com and www.insolutions.info       

Limited Government

by Jon Rappoport

May 18, 2010

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There is no doubt that the framers of the Constitution were putting a stranglehold on the power of government.  They had their reasons. 

Burdensome taxes would stifle individual ambition. 

Incursions on individual liberty would force America into the mold of the oppressive monarchies of Europe.

A state religion would give birth to a vicious theocracy.

Government control of the economy and the specter of central planning would institute slavery and a caste system.

Imposing draconian rules on free speech would initiate a government thought police and curb debate.

However, aside from these obvious abhorrent factors—which were to be avoided at all costs—there was another side to the freedom-equation.  Some method had to be concocted whereby FRAUD PERPETRATED ON THE CITIZENRY could be quickly and summarily squashed.

In other words, a free market was essential, but its potential abuses had to be curbed.  This was, if you will, the principle of limited government applied to corporations and companies. 

The American colonists had direct experience with corporate abuse, because, among other instances, the colonies themselves were businesses created by the British Crown for its own benefit.

Here is a partial list of possible crimes that could be committed by businesses in a free-market structure: failure to deliver goods and services upon payment; gross misrepresentation of a product; collusion among companies to institute a monopoly; collaborative price-fixing among supposed competitors; obtaining secret favors from government—subsidies, tax-breaks, elimination of competitors; directly harming citizens (e.g., poisoning the environment, intentionally creating grossly unsafe conditions for workers).

What to do about all this, without, in the process, stifling the impulse for success and profit, and without favoring one competitor over another?

Well, early in the history of the individual states, legislatures enacted laws about corporations.  First, all corporations were chartered by the state.  The right of these companies to do business was then made conditional in the following way: If a company was found, by the legislature, to be harming the citizenry, its charter could be revoked—and it would have to pack up and leave the state.

Yes, it was that harsh.

Ultimately, the notion and the laws failed.  They failed because legislators were corrupt.

Gradually, step by step, decade by decade, the tonnage of crimes committed by companies grew, and spiraled out of control.  The original check and balance had been destroyed.

In its place, the federal government moved in with multiple agencies and laws and regulations based on those laws—to try to handle the massive amount of fraud.  This created bigger and more invasive central government, all in a supposed attempt to keep the free market honest.

How has that worked? 

One example: Through deep collusion between the federal government and medical societies, the practice of conventional and government-approved medicine has gained a monopoly on the word CURE.  That word is now the property of one brand of medical practice—and if a “non-certified” practitioner claims he can cure a disease with non-drug means, he can be prosecuted.

This is not a matter of comparing a drug treatment for disease X with a vitamin treatment for disease X.  It’s a matter of a lone practitioner violating a “copyright” on the word CURE.

At the same time, the very federal agencies that are supposed to be protecting the citizenry from harm, poisoning, and fraud are actually protecting pharmaceutical companies that do, in fact, manufacture and sell highly toxic and injurious drugs.

This is what happens when a sane and workable solution is scrapped in favor of an invasive centralized force.

Imagine this as a deterrent: A drug company produces a medicine that kills people in significant numbers.  The company is chartered in the state of Delaware.  The Delaware legislature calls a hearing, where company representatives and Delaware prosecutors testify.  The prosecutors show that the company knew and hid the fact that their drug was highly toxic.  By a vote, the legislature finds the company guilty of harming the citizenry.

In addition to any criminal charges that might be brought, the drug company is banned from the state.  They must pack up and leave.  They can no longer do business of any kind there. 

Seeking headquarters in another state, the company must appear before that state legislature and argue for acceptance—with its recent track record in full view.

My point is this: If you institute harsh measures at the state level to begin with, and if you do the job well, you create a true deterrent, and you make corporations toe the line, and you maintain a free market that is honest and open and competitive. 

Looking at the current scene, we can see we have lost both limited government and limitations on corporate criminality.

I believe those were two key aims of the Founders.  Keep government in check, and keep companies honest while preserving a robust and free market. 

When politicians say, “I’m looking out for you, the little guy,” or when corporate spokesmen say, “I’m going to sell you a great, great product,” the majority of people cringe. 

They have good reason to.  And it all started when individual freedom and power and recourse were sacrificed to the ambitions of “monarchists” in government and business, posing as honorable men.

The dishonor becomes so distorted and twisted into incomprehensible shapes, over time, we end up with murderers landing six-year sentences and corporate poisoners paying modest fines.  We end up with people deciding we need more top-down control.  We end up with a string of lying presidents whose hidden portfolio involves creating a system of global management that will “solve all problems at once and forever.” 

The original goal was INDIVIDUAL freedom.

It still is.

It has to be.

Anyone can see, though, that inventing government of gargantuan size as the vehicle for protecting this freedom is a sham.

It is using the core desire for liberty as the con, the façade, and the pretext for eliminating liberty.

When are politicians going to engage in open and extensive and profound debate on these issues?  When are first principles going to become, once again, the subject of political discourse—as they were during the founding of the Republic?

If you read the debates that took place in the latter half of the 18th century in America, you find no reluctance to discuss the proper role of government.  It is folly to imagine that, as time marched on from that point, we could ignore these matters and simply bask in the glow of what had been accomplished on our behalf.  These days, we can see the decaying fruits on that tree of ignorance.

If you need to, refresh yourselves on the themes, slogans, and tenor of the arguments that flourished during the 2008 presidential campaign.  On one side, you had a pseudo-prophet, spinning vague collectivist daydreams for the kiddies; on the other, a halting figure was trying to endear himself to audiences on Saturday Night Live. 

Not only was the emotional pandering preposterous, the connective tissue of logic was almost entirely absent.  It was a national embarrassment.

And now, when more and more people realize we do, in fact, need an extended debate about first principles, there appears to be no platform for it, aside from spotty press conferences and on-the-fly statements to college audiences.

Nevertheless, somehow, somewhere, it must happen.  Citizens need to hear the click of a reset button, and we need to start over, at the beginning, just as it happened when a Constitution was written for crucial reasons, at a crucial stage in our development.

Why was the Constitution created?  What were its goals?  What does freedom mean?  How was honesty supposed to be preserved in the free market?

And what happens when generations of citizens have lost the thread of the nature of our society—when even that inquiry means next to nothing to them.

We tend to believe our political leaders are either on the right, left, or in the center.  Those are the received categories, and they conveniently allow these politicians to avoid stating their basic positions on the role of government itself.  And we somehow suppose this gaping hole in our political life has no consequences.

If so, we are merely playing out the string.  We are marking time until whatever the Constitution once meant becomes a few pages of indecipherable scribbling, an artifact of a bygone era lying in the dust, about which perhaps a few historians and scholars can dredge up memories.

I have one final point.  As the author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS course for home-schoolers and adults, I’m quite aware that serious public discourse needs two factors.  You have to have first principles, and then you argue from those principles in a logical fashion.  If either of these factors is missing, you get garble and nonsense—which is basically what we have in the political arena, with few exceptions.  So far, in my articles about logic, I’ve emphasized the reasoning aspect.  In this piece, I’m trying to restore the sense that our society was founded on first principles, and if we want to have a society, we need to exhume them and understand what they are.    

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

RAPPOPORT CONSULTING SERVICES

MAY 18, 2010.  Over the years, I’ve written several articles about my consulting practice.  I’m now in a position to make clearer distinctions about this work.

In telephone sessions (usually once a week), I consult clients in four basic categories:

business;

 

discovering buried goals/desires;

 

imagination and creative action;

 

energy for greater health and power.

Before embarking on a series of consultations with a client, we determine which one (or more) of these paths we are going to take.

BUSINESS

 

The whole effort here is to construct a roadmap that takes the client from where he is to where he wants to go.  Normally, this process is done with entrepreneurs, but I’ve had a number of clients who were working for other people and wanted to advance their careers.

I have accumulated a whole series of check-points and questions that will make the designing of the map complete.     

The roadmap is as specific as possible.  Once it’s built, I help ensure the client executes all the indicated steps (actions) along the map.  So this isn’t just a theoretical exercise.

Real-world success is the objective—and traveling the full distance, as indicated in the road map, is the way to get there.  In sports, this is called executing the game plan.  The plan needs to be a series of specific steps, and the person has to take those steps.  And of course, the game plan has to be correct—following it has to bring the person to the success he’s seeking.      

DISCOVERING BURIED GOALS/DESIRES

 

Some clients are confused about what they truly want in life.  Therefore, we focus on that area.  Through dialogue and key exercises I’ve developed during many years of experience, the client comes to discover the “buried treasure.”

This in itself is a major accomplishment.  At that point, the client can choose to continue working with me to build a road map that will enable him to achieve his goal/desire in the real world.

IMAGINATION AND CREATIVE ACTION

 

For those people who feel a pull toward “new frontiers and undiscovered territory,” who believe they truly want to live a creative life, I focus on helping them gain greater and greater access to their own imagination.

This is very challenging and rewarding work.  It involves philosophy, education, and techniques by which clients come to use their innate capacity to invent, innovate, improvise, and build their dreams into reality, as fact, in the world. 

ENERGY FOR GREATER HEALTH AND POWER

 

Behind many breakthroughs in alternative health research sits the single factor of energy.  With enough available live energy, a person will find his health naturally improves and expands. 

There is no ceiling on the amount of energy a person can produce and access.  The objective in this area of consulting is…more.  More energy.

To accomplish this, I employ a variety of techniques, some of which I’ve adapted from Tibetan practices that go back more than a thousand years.  When indicated, I also utilize what I call guided-imagery excursions, to reduce stress.  Stress tends to put a damper on energy; it blocks energy.

ABOUT TECHNIQUES AND EXERCISES           

 

Some of the techniques I employ in my consulting work are done with the client during our sessions.  All the techniques can be done by the clients between sessions, and after our consulting work is done.

These techniques are always tailored to the specific needs of the client. 

I’ve been teaching and practicing these exercises myself for at least 15 years—in some cases, longer.

HEALING AND BEYOND

 

In working with clients, I’ve noticed that achieving success in any of the four areas I focus on brings about a kind of healing—by that I mean a sense of wholeness and confidence.  However, this is just a prelude to something greater: wider-ranging action that breaks new ground in life and literally invents the present and the future.  The person truly goes where he has not gone before.  The excitement and adventure that ensue can’t be overstated.

I welcome inquiries.

JON RAPPOPORT

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

www.nomorefakenews.com          

HOW LOGIC REFORMED SCIENCE

By Jon Rappoport

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

Jon Rappoport is the author of the innovative 18-lesson course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS

MAY 17, 2010.  What we call science has always had a pragmatic approach to reality.  Science wants to translate, sooner or later, into results.

However, logic pressed science into a framework that clarified it and squeezed out less useful findings.

Here is how.

Let’s take a very simple formulation.  A) If it snows, there are clouds.  B) There are clouds.  C) Therefore, it is snowing?  No.  Therefore, nothing. 

Explanation: Although every time it snows there are clouds, the presence of clouds doesn’t guarantee there is snow.  You can have cloudy days without snow.

Using that simple logical format, we can present a pattern for scientific hypotheses. 

For example: If matter and anti-matter collide, there will be a huge explosion.  Let’s start with that.

The first part of the statement assumes there is such a thing as anti-matter.  It also assumes anti-matter has certain properties.  That’s quite a mouthful.  That’s saying a lot. 

And then we go on: When anti-matter particles encounter particles of matter, an explosion occurs.

So suppose we now say: In such and such place, at such and such time, there is an explosion.  Therefore, anti-matter and matter must have collided.  Is that valid reasoning?

Of course not.

Explosions can occur for many reasons that have nothing to do with the supposed collision of matter and anti-matter.

Just as with the snow and the clouds, the reasoning is invalid.

Okay, let’s try to get a little more specific.  For example: We believe that in Galaxy ABC, four million years ago, anti-matter and matter collided in the vicinity of a black hole.  We believe there was anti-matter in that location, because of factors Q, R, and S.  We of course know there was matter in the vicinity of that black hole.  So it’s quite possible that four million years ago, some particles of matter and anti-matter ran into each other there.  If they had, what would have happened?  An explosion.  Was there, in fact, an explosion there four million years ago?  Yes.  We know there was.  We know it because we can see the evidence through telescopes, which show us what was happening at distant times in the past.  It’s in the past, because the light from faraway places takes a long time to arrive here and register on these telescopes.  Therefore, four million years ago, in that location near the black hole, matter and anti-matter collided. 

Now, that seems somewhat convincing, doesn’t it?

But it isn’t.  It’s the same invalid and illogical pattern of reasoning.  The explosion near the black hole four million years ago could have been caused by other factors.  Igniting gases, for example.  Factors that had nothing to do with the collision of matter and anti-matter.

Now here is the really interesting thing.  ALL OF SCIENCE IS BASED ON THE SAME ILLOGICAL FRAMEWORK.

That’s right.

And here is that general framework: If hypothesis X is true, result Y would follow.  We do have Y.  Therefore, hypothesis X is true.

WRONG.

When logic made this point, scientists (those who understood logic) had to go back to the drawing board.  They had to refine their understanding of science.  And they did.

Here is what they came up with.  The framework of the scientific method really has to do with usefulness, not logic, and to make science useful, it has to PREDICT THE FUTURE.  That’s what we want out of science.

We want experiments based on hypotheses, and we want to be able to predict the outcomes of those experiments correctly before they happen.  We want technology based on hypotheses, and we want that technology to work exactly as we think it will, every time.

So then we have to ask: Will a given hypothesis allow us to predict something useful and important before it happens?  If so, it’s science.  If not, it’s not.

We can refine this even further.  Will your hypothesis allow us to predict something useful and important PRECISELY?

Okay. 

Maybe it seems like I’m splitting hairs and engaging in empty semantics here, so to prove I’m not, let’s take a real-world example.

If the hypothesis about manmade global warming is true, we should be able to make precise predictions about global temperatures on Earth a year up the line, five years up the line, ten years, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years.

You see?  Science is about useful and precise predictions.  It’s not about explaining the past.

So let’s apply the test.  So far, has the hypothesis about manmade global warming yielded accurate climate predictions?  The hypothesis has been around for at least, what, 15 years?  During that time, have scientists been able to make precise predictions about Earth’s climate changes? 

I’m not even going to answer that question.  I’m going to let you answer it.  And with your answer, you’ll be able to see whether the manmade warming hypothesis ranks, so far, as science.  Is it science, or is it possible-maybe-could-be science? 

You’ll be able to see the answer clearly, because once upon a time logic forced science to define itself and its core and its objectives more specifically.

And that’s a good thing.

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for high school students and adults.  He has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles, and has tutored extensively in remedial English at Santa Monica College.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.  Mr. Rappoport can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com  His work can be found at www.nomorefakenews.com and www.insolutions.info      

RAPPOPORT FACEBOOK LINK CORRECTION

MAY 17, 2010.  For some strange reason, the link to my new Facebook page was crunched, truncated, and published incorrectly by the WordPress machine.  I don’t know why, and I doubt I will ever find out.  Anyway, I’m going to give it another try.      

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1575072240&ref=profile#!/pages/Jon-Rappoport/108820229160887?ref=search&sid=1575072240.1879589821..1

You can find some of my articles and videos there.  Over time, we’ll add more to the page.  Feel free to spread the word.

Jon

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

ANCIENT EGYPT

MAY 13, 2010.  First, a bit of business.  I now have a Facebook page.  Here is the link:

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jon-Rappoport/100001082109384

You can find some of my articles and videos there.  Over time, we’ll add more to the page.  Feel free to spread the word.

*                                     *                              *

Several thousand years ago, the pharaohs began building monuments to themselves. 

Well, they didn’t build them.  They didn’t design them, either.  The design work was left to brilliant court architects.  Unlike the myths of the state religion, the architecture actually had to work.  The pyramids and temples had to stay standing once finished.  And after a period of experimentation, they did.

So the architects were capable of rational thought, scientific thought. 

However, the METHOD of that thought was never codified or described in written manuscripts.  There were two reasons for the omission.  One, no one actually considered it might be useful to explain the process of rational thinking.  And two, the pharaohs and priests would have laid severe punishment on anyone who tried.

After all, the masses were supposed to obey orders.  The masses were under the thumb of the elite class.  It would be dangerous to arm the population with the tools of logic.  Thinking for oneself wasn’t part of the political equation.  Independent thought might lead people to question the cosmology that propped up the priests and the pharaohs.  And from there, it would only be a short step to questioning the whole religious and political leadership. 

It would fall to ancient Athens to articulate the method of logical thought.  Plato was the father in this regard.  In his fictional Dialogues, he used Socrates to interrogate citizens of the day about major concepts like Justice and The Good.  Socrates would, for example, show his opponents that their opinions inevitably led to absurdities or contradictions. 

In the process, it became obvious that lucid thinking was of great value, and its abandonment was intolerable. 

Socrates’ sub-text went something like this: “You are thinking about the highest values of life.  That’s a good thing.  Now let us examine exactly how you are thinking about these values.  Let us find those premises about which you have no doubt.  Let us reason from those premises, and then we’ll see where we arrive.  Do we come to acceptable conclusions, or do you end up on the rocks of contradiction and confusion?  Is this not a worthwhile endeavor?”

No one had ever written like this before.  No one had thought to do it, and no one had dared to.

Aristotle, one of Plato’s students, went even further.  He codified patterns of reasoning.  He showed which patterns were valid and which were invalid.

For all time, these two men established logic as an independent field of study.  To put this enormous revolution in more modern terms, they pioneered the critical/analytic approach to information.  Today, we take this approach for granted—even though most people aren’t aware of the way such tools are supposed to be used.

In secondary schools and many colleges, the disciplined study of logic has been discarded, in favor of accepting and memorizing factoids.  What has happened?

We are reverting, in a sense, to the temperament of ancient Egypt.  We, too, have our vast monuments, and the citizenry stands in awe of them.  Relatively few people are the designers.  Other workers carry out the plans. 

And just as later generations of Egyptians sacked the tombs of their kings, today’s citizens plot ways to escape and evade and, yes, even sack our primary institutions. 

There are many reasons for the decline of our society, but a major flaw resides in the widespread rejection of logic and rationality. 

Life is not all about logic, but a part of it is.  And when that part is missing, people drift.  They have no rudder.  They can’t come to grips with one of the major “commodities” of our age: information.  For them, information equals confusion and doubt. 

If you lived in a marvelous workshop, where dozens of carpenter’s tools were displayed, and slats of wood were stacked—and if you had absolutely no idea how to use any of the tools—what would you do?  If you saw no way to learn how to use those tools, you’d become frustrated, and you’d seek myths and fairy tales to bolster your confidence.  You’d be open to all sorts of sales jobs from peddlers of deceit.  You’d drift away from action and try on the clothes of passivity.

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for high school students.  He has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles, and has tutored extensively in remedial English at Santa Monica College.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.  Mr. Rappoport can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com  His websites are www.nomorefakenews.com and www.insolutions.info       

LOGIC AND FREEDOM

LOGIC AND FREEDOM

By Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

To listen to a free one-hour seminar describing Jon’s course, call 1-219-509-8113.  Passcode is 624093.  The recording will be available until June 3.

MAY 11, 2010.  The hallmark of oppressive systems is whim.  In other words, a leader can change his mind at any moment, and the people have to follow. 

On Monday, the leader said X will always be true.  On Tuesday, the leader announced Y is the eternal truth.  But X and Y don’t go together.  In fact, they oppose each other.  It’s up to the people, the sheep, to somehow reconcile X and Y.  And they better do it quietly.  If a person states the obvious, that X and Y are incompatible, he might have his head chopped off.

Roughly 2400 years ago, Aristotle set down a simple and devastating fact of logic.  X and not-X is a contradiction.  You can’t have X and not-X.  That’s illogical.  It’s called the law of non-contradiction, and it’s the basis of logic.

In political terms, Aristotle’s law exploded the whole notion that leaders could hold contradictory ideas and force them on the population.

And ever since then, Aristotle has been a beacon of sanity for people who live under oppressive leaders. 

George Orwell, in his novel, 1984, illustrated these political implications by showing the lunacy of contradiction.  FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.  WAR IS PEACE.  These were two common slogans of the controlling government in the novel.  Furthermore, the reluctant hero, Winston Smith, has a job in which his duty is to revise all official history so that it always appears to be “true.”

Orwell was, in a sense, referring back to the foundation of rational thought laid down by Aristotle.  He was illustrating what a world would look like in which Aristotle had been destroyed.

Logic implies liberty, because it empowers every individual with the capacity to think beyond the machinations of any controlling elite.

To the degree that logic is buried and ignored by the educational system, the door is opened to arbitrary authoritarian power.

But what happens when no one in the educational system even recognizes that the absence of logic courses is a problem?  Teachers and administrators have themselves grown up without ever studying logic.  Therefore, they don’t see the gaping hole in the curriculum. 

How many people know who Aristotle was or that he set down principles which allowed civilization and science to advance beyond slave status?  How many people understand what the tradition of logic adds up to?

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for high school students.  He has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles, and has tutored extensively in remedial English at Santa Monica College.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.  Mr. Rappoport can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com     

TEA FOR TWO

APRIL 27, 2010.  First of all, I want you to know I’m doing a FREE conference call on May 4, at 6:30PM Pacific Time—and everyone interested in home-schooling is invited.  There is no sign-up required.

The subject of the conference call is my new home-school course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS.  I’ll lay out the details and take your questions.  PLEASE get the word out to anyone you know who is a home schooler or is connected to a home-school association.

To get into the call, you use this phone number: 1-219-509-8111.  Then you enter the passcode: 5730661.  That’s all you have to do.

Help me get the word out.

There is a limit of 150 people for the call.  First come, first served.

Okay.  So now I want to discuss a few issues in which logic has taken an extreme back seat.  This is crazy stuff.  The American people are dealing with it right now.  Immigration reform, the new Arizona law, the equating of Tea Parties and militias and violent bomb throwers.  The recent statements of Bill Clinton.  It’s quite a mish mash. 

What I offer isn’t a strict logical analysis, but rather an editorial that expresses my frustration with the lack of logic in these swirling issues.  However, I will point out a few instances of wild non-logic—here we go.   

Bill Clinton is one of those men who thinks he knows a great deal more than he does—and then, on top of that, to show you he isn’t too, too proud about owning deep, deep wisdom, he affects the air of a studious professor who’s just relaying truth in small chunks, because, well, it’s his solemn duty to fill in the blanks for you, especially now since he’s discovered that the Tea Party is very much like a slow-motion version of the Oklahoma bombing—and who wouldn’t want to know that…after all, if we’re possibly going down in a welter of bombs thrown by these Tea Partiers, we at least need time to try to call the FBI and alert them, we need time to get out the vote for the Democrats next November, we need time to insist police protect us in our homes against the mindless assaults of these Tea People, and it will have to be the police, because we don’t own guns, we know the Second Amendment has nothing to do with personal defense, so thanks, Bill, for the warning. Thanks for the wisdom.  Where would we be, Bill, without your towering knowledge?

Bill is the guy, you might remember, who parlayed the OKC bombing of 1995 into a victory in the 1996 election.  He exhorted all Americans, after the Murrah Building disaster, to “come home to the government.”  He was Big Daddy, and a sufficient number of Americans slurped up his syrup to swing the presidential race. 

Bill’s “come home” jive played well because, at the time, there was an invoked fear that six or seven militias were going to make war against the US military and win.

Switching gears…Yesterday, on C-Span, I watched several authors at a book fair explain to their audience that immigration reform—disallowing millions of illegal immigrants to enter or stay in the country—is a horrendous program of veiled racism and nothing more.  It couldn’t be anything more, because (by indisputable logic) the KKK was once strong, and eugenics in America was once alive and well, and, by implication, now, ANY attempt to bar ANYONE from ANYWHERE from coming to the US and living here and enjoying full government benefits is white redneck racism—and also a form of terrorism—and all these Tea People should be jailed or stripped of citizenship.  Something like that. 

Obama warns Arizona that they can’t just decide what’s good for their state.  No, this is a federal problem, and the feds will solve it.  How?  No word yet.  Possibly by declaring a universal amnesty forever.  Yes, that would do it.

So…the Democrats have begun their 2010 election campaign in earnest. 

One small point: Actual conservatives make an argument for limited government, in line with the Constitution.  Let me know when any Democrat appears who is willing to engage in a true debate about that issue, who is willing to defend, overtly, big, big government as legitimate and legal and just and Constututional.  I’ve never seen it. 

The Tea People state they want limited government.  As usual, the best way to rebuke that position is by attacking the people who are standing on it.  Who cares about logic or truth or reason?

No, let’s just listen to Bill Clinton tie all this up in a nice bow.  Forget fundamentals.  Forget philosophy of government.  Tea Party=racism=bombs=militias=Murrah Building.  Easy.  Nothing to see here, just move along.

And as far as the thinking on immigration goes, it emerges this way: It’s illegal to make illegal immigration illegal, even thought it’s already illegal.  Only bomb-throwing racist Tea Party people posing as concerned citizens would want to declare illegal immigration illegal.  The 70% of Arizona citizens who favor their new law are all relatives of Tim McVeigh.

And if this isn’t comprehensive enough, here’s a further analysis that might excite you: The United States isn’t a real country, because everything we now have came from conquest and destruction, and therefore the Constitution is a worthless piece of scribbling—whereas, I guess, there are nations somewhere that grew from nothing without any conflict or war and nobody was killed, and peace and love naturally evolved into a benign government.  If not, no true nations exist anywhere, and therefore we may as well take and grab and rob and steal and plunder whatever we can get our hands on, because it doesn’t matter.  May as well have a billion people living in the US or Canada or England or France.  Whoever can get here can live here.  Let’s all go down with the ship.  We don’t deserve better.

I’m just trying to find the logic behind some of these arguments about law, immigration, Tea Party, racism, and the like.  I’m trying.          

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Logic and Faith

APRIL 14, 2010. I’m approaching home-schooling parents with this course, because I believe a revolution in the education system should begin at home, with the family.

There are several confusions about how logic relates to faith, and I’d like to clear those up.

Consider the amazing amount of information floating around in our culture. Books, articles, internet postings, television news, videos, lectures, seminars, political talk, sales pitches, public relations chatter, scientific claims, educational material, and so on. In this arena, there are HUGE numbers of logical errors. As a reporter and educator, I’ve been cataloguing the errors for 25 years.

If children approach this mountain range of information with no understanding of logic, they will accept some ideas and reject other ideas in unpredictable ways—almost on a random basis. They will walk unarmed into the future and have no basis for judgment.

Who in his right mind wants to encourage or condone a situation like this?

That’s why I created the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS course. It provides a very thorough grounding in a tradition that is all about rational thought. The student gains the ability to analyze information from many different fields and find the flaws. The student becomes very skilled at using the superb tools of logic.

On the other hand, there is faith. This is very personal and very profound. Logic doesn’t touch faith. It is a separate subject.

I have found, in fact, that people armed with logic become much clearer about their own faith. Why? Because they aren’t trying to put that faith under the magnifying glass of analysis. They understand that faith and logic are two different worlds.

However, when people try to attack faith with their own version of logic, those who really know logic can respond immediately and lucidly—and fend off those arguments with great ease.

When, many years ago, I studied the great Western philosophers—especially Plato, the father of rational thought—I was struck by how clearly he admitted his own faith.

These days, some scientists are finally coming to grips with these issues. They are climbing down off their high horses and saying there are matters beyond the scope of the physical sciences.

There is no contradiction here.

If I said the existence of a hammer somehow eliminated the need for a screwdriver, everyone would know I was off my rocker. If I said travel documentaries completely negated the idea of actually going somewhere and seeing life firsthand, people would know I needed a good brain-nutrition supplement. If I said music clearly eliminated the need for science, I’d be laughed out of court.

So it is with logic and faith. The existence of one doesn’t challenge the existence of the other.

They actually support each other.

Some people of faith are a bit nervous about logic. Here is the reason: They haven’t studied enough logic. If they had, they would know that logic eventually brings you to a place where you have to confess you are now navigating by other means. You are crossing over into a territory where different rules apply. Your deepest convictions are now your compass, and those convictions don’t require a foundation of proof. They only require the reward that comes from believing what you believe.

Feel free to inquire about my logic course. qjrpress@gmail.com

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles, and has tutored extensively in remedial English at Santa Monica College. At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.