AUGUST 26, 2010.  A hundred years ago, in America, an old idea was given new legs:

Help everybody.

It seemed like a simple premise, even if its implications would eventually shred every sentence in the Constitution, like a worm eating paper.

Most of the proponents of this idea have experienced a jolt of personal adrenaline from it—as in, “Why didn’t I think of this before, why was I so focused on Me, why did I imagine my small mind was more important than the collective mind, of course this why we’re all here on planet Earth.”

Good for them.

And of course, who would carry the freight of this grand “help everybody”premise?  Government.  No other body or institution would be up to the task.

Much of the growth of government over the last century has involved burgeoning bureaucracies whose purpose is to do good.  Help everybody.

Now, that gigantic expansion is running into a brick wall.

The federal government and state governments can’t pay for the cost of saving every soul.

If you look at California and Illinois, you’ll see the state governments were in big financial trouble long before the financial meltdown of 2008.  So were other states.  And the budget woes of the feds have been the stuff of legends since the 1950s.

The point is simple.  If you expect to give everything to everybody, it’s wise to add up the price tag, project future outlays, and check your bank account.

And if tax increases form the basis of your strategy, you’d also better nail down the percentage of wages you’ll eventually have to extract from working people.  50%?  60%?  70%? 

It’s just common sense.

But almost nobody in government wanted to face that.

And now we’re here.

We’re at the crossroads where doing good for everybody and bankruptcy meet at the OK Corral.

But of course, when the army of “help everybody” plus those who are given the free stuff discover their system is irretrievably broken, they don’t like it.

They don’t care that there is no money to pay for “services.”

And what about the architects of this dream of endless financial altruism?  What do they think?

The architects think the grand solution, up the road from here, is going to be a complete revamping of the present money system.  That’s what they envision as the Final Bailout.

And not just in America.  Everywhere.

They imagine, in other words, a permanent globalist intervention that will have repercussions far beyond a new form of money. 

The means of production and distribution of goods and services will come under an umbrella of Central Planning.  For the planet.

Whatever new incarnation money takes will flow from that superstructure of Central Planning.  It will envelop the Earth and usher in a new age of Justice for All.

Therefore, in the meantime, borrow, borrow to pay the interest on the first loan, borrow wherever you can.  Fall deeper into debt, it doesn’t matter.  The cavalry is over the hill and they’re coming.

It has to come, because the noblest motive is Help Everybody, and nothing else really matters.

These architects are waiting until they think the present crisis is cutting deep enough—so that few people will object to a massive reorganization of society.

In such a society, individual freedom will be a word that is severely tempered by “what is best for everybody.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing signs of this shift for a long time.  And I’ve noticed that in back of every sign is the same rationalization: “the common good.”

When I search the Constitution for evidence that this is what the Founders wanted, I don’t find any.

When I look around at society, I see more and more people who look to the government to save their souls.  So why don’t senators and Congressmen and presidents just don the robes of priests and get it over with?  Why don’t they burn incense and candles on Capitol Hill and in the White House and chant mantras for The Special and Sacred Cosmology of Everybody?

Let’s stop pretending.

As the Help Everybody mantra spread through the ever-growing bureaucracy of government, certain individuals inside the bureaucracy saw the mantra as a way to advance their careers.  Individuals like Reid, Pelosi, Obama, for example.  They could merge doing good with personal power.  They didn’t even have to think about the difference between “my power” and “the good.”  The two became One.  When the occasion demanded, they could turn on either spigot. 

They could sense the mantra growing and expanding, until it became “the idea whose time has come.”  Then they could feel the thrill of riding that wave to victory.

“Help everybody get everything all the time” is now a bona fide religion, and it is omnipresent in government.  The Founders may have been able to curtail the formation of a state religion when they wrote the Constitution, but they couldn’t stop the growth of this disguised religion.

Let’s use an acronym for the “help everybody get everything all the time” religion.  HEGEAT.  Bow down to the Faith.

There are certain principles or instructions or corollaries that flow from the basic premise of HEGEAT:

Give special privileges to those who may have been denied help in the past.

Allot special status to those who need the most help.

Take from those who don’t need help and give to those who do need help.  Take as much as possible.

Exhibit tolerance without limit to those who are labeled as victims—even if they aren’t really victims.  Extend this tolerance to those victims who want to destroy nations, because that impulse toward destruction arose only because they were denied, at some point, getting everything for nothing. 

Offer as much free stuff as possible to those who emigrate to any given nation.  There aren’t really any nations anymore.  There are only places that are able to give more free stuff or less free stuff.

The priesthood of HEGEAT may offer everything and anything to populations, while at the same time leveraging this charity into a form of control.

If the ability of HEGEAT to keep giving free stuff diminishes because there is no money left to pay for it, change the game.  Invent a new form of money that will allow the giveaway to continue.

Insist, despite advancing technology that can produce more with less energy, that there is only a finite amount of resources on the planet—and therefore the allocation of these finite resources must emanate from HEGEAT Central Planning, the spiritual headquarters of Earth.

Consider all business self-centered and self-absorbed and greedy and the enemy of HEGEAT.  Find new and better ways to limit the ability of businesses to make and sell their products and services.  Of course, in the long run, this strategy will severely curtail the capacity to give everybody everything all the time, but that situation is solved by redefining what is possible and lowering expectations.

On and on and on, keep saying, “Children are our best hope.”  And use any and all means to keep giving children Everything, because that will surely make them feel good about themselves, even if they haven’t earned or achieved anything.  Just by being, by existing, the kids deserve everything that can be doled out to them.  To make sure the children grow up to be all they can be, interfere at every turn with what their parents believe is the best way to raise them.  Socially engineer, medicate, diagnose, protect, award, graduate, coach, monitor, celebrate, and elevate children.

In every way possible, induce amnesia on the subject of the FREE AND POWERFUL INDIVIDUAL.

HEGEAT!

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for home schoolers.  For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

ANOTHER LOGIC TESTIMONIAL

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for home schoolers and adults.

He can be contacted at qjrconsulting@gmail.com   

JULY 21, 2010.  A mother of two children in California is home-schooling her oldest son.  She ordered my course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, and is using it with success.  Here is what she recently had to say.  I think you’ll find it interesting.

“I didn’t really understand what logic was, when I started reading your articles about it.  Prior to that, I assumed I knew how to analyze material and information.  My method was simple: Consider the source.  This was my whole approach.

“If I trusted an author and believed in him, I accepted his information.  If I didn’t trust him because he was writing for the ‘wrong’ newspaper or website, I rejected his conclusions. 

“With a source I trusted, I would even fill in holes in his work, to make it come out right.  I’d assume he was leaving out facts to make his argument simpler and easier to understand.

“Once I ordered your course and started studying the teacher’s manual, I realized there were better ways to judge information.  The most important thing was, I realized I could be my own independent judge, because I now had standards I could apply.

“Before then, I really had no standards.  I wasn’t sure any existed.  The teacher’s manual opened my eyes.  By the time I was half way through it, I saw that I could analyze a passage and follow the line of reasoning in it.  I could see where the author was heading, and I could figure out whether he was getting there or forcing a conclusion where none really existed.

“Now I have gone through the manual twice.  Something new has happened.  I see circumstantial arguments are everywhere.  Authors are collecting ideas and facts and shaping a persuasive case…but they are more like lawyers in a courtroom.  They are using these facts and ideas to build the best defense they can, but they are cutting corners.  They have a conclusion they want to arrive at, and they’ll manipulate whatever they need to, to get there.

“I can now pinpoint the flaws in their arguments very precisely.  As I teach the course to my son, he’s doing the same thing.  He sees how persuasion is shaped, and he can explain an argument contained in an article very clearly.  He can show me where the author is fudging results and departing from logic.  It’s very gratifying to see him developing this ability.

“It hit me one day that, in an open society, we will always have people trying to persuade each other that they are right.  There will always be argument and counter-argument.  This can be a good thing, if we know enough logic to be able to decide for ourselves who is making the most valid argument. 

“If we lack training and education in logic, we’ll be swayed in the wind from one side to another, and we’ll end up making very questionable choices…”

Margo Y.

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 30 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 is the author of Logic and Analysis, a new course for home schools.  His work can be found at www.nomorefakenews.com.  He can be contacted at qjrconsulting@gmail.com 

OBAMA CALLS AL QAEDA RACIST

JULY 14, 2010.  Some very strange statements have been coming out of the White House lately.     

Speaking like the president of an African nation, Obama called Al Qaeda a racist organization, because:

It bombed a venue in Uganda;

It uses black men only in low-level positions, as suicide bombers.

In other words, if Al Qaeda had a few black executives in a corner office with a nice view, it would be improving its profile?

Why does Obama ignore what Al Qaeda has done in America?

Is the destruction of American lives a passé issue?

If a terrorist group kills people all over the world, is the fact that it now kills Africans any more important than the lives it destroys elsewhere?

Terrorists kill people.  That’s what they do.  They don’t care about the color of their skin.  In this respect, they’re an equal-opportunity murderer.

And terrorists will use, as suicide bombers, any people who will go along for the ride.  Again, skin color doesn’t matter. 

Perhaps Obama is talking about a “hate crime.”  So if these Al Qaeda killers in Uganda are caught, they can be executed twice, once for murder, and once for hating.

Al Qaeda kills Americans because they are Americans, citizens of the “evil empire.”  Is that not, by current definition, also a hate crime?  Isn’t that singling out a particular group for destruction?

Calling Al Qaeda racist is on a par with calling Jim Jones a purveyor of unhealthy foods, because the cyanide he used to kill 909 of his followers in Guyana was inserted into sugar-laden, artificially colored Kool-Aid.

Calling Al Qaeda racist is on a par with calling Adolf Eichmann guilty of fraud because, after organizing the murder of huge numbers of Jews in Eastern Europe, he worked under a false name for Mercedes Benz in Argentina. 

Calling Al Qaeda racist is on a par with calling the Son of Sam, who killed six people, wounded seven, and terrorized the city of New York for a whole summer, an unregistered gun owner because he had no license to carry the .44 he used in the killing spree.

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 30 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 is the author of Logic and Analysis, a new course for home schools.  His work can be found at www.nomorefakenews.com.  He can be contacted at qjrconsulting@gmail.com 

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND LOGIC

By Jon Rappoport

Author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS,

a course for home schools

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

For several months now, I’ve been writing articles about logic, and I’ve made connections between that subject and the founding of the American Republic.

As a corollary, I’ve mentioned that the disappearance of logic as a primary subject in US schools has accompanied a long, gradual erosion of individual freedom and independence.

Now I’ve discovered an even closer link: It leads to Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence.

THIS IS OF ENORMOUS IMPORTANCE.

I just came across a letter to the editor of Commentary Magazine.  The letter was published in the January 1979 issue.  It came from a Jefferson scholar, Wilbur Samuel Howell.

Howell makes several key points.  As a college student, Jefferson studied philosophy and logic under Professor William Small, at William and Mary.  Small had come to the college from Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had studied under William Duncan, a renowned logician and author of Elements of Logick.  Indeed, Jefferson later remarked Professor Small went a long way toward shaping his life.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that the Declaration of Independence would adhere to a logical structure.  Indeed, the Declaration is a kind of argument from first premises, through to a conclusion.

I went back and read the Declaration, and I’ll open up its logical structure.

It begins with this:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Jefferson, in this prologue, indicates that the people should state their reasons for separating from a ruling power.  Before he goes on to do that, he enunciates his first premises. 

All men have rights, and to secure them, they create governments. 

Second, the people have the authority to abolish any ruler that tries to destroy those rights, and, in its place, the people should institute a new government. 

Third, when a long history of tyrannical abuse proves that the old government cannot be corrected, the people have a duty to overthrow it.

Here is the text:   

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

What remains is for Jefferson to list the abuses of the British Crown; to prove, in other words, that the king has, in fact, brought on such a stream of tyrannical actions.

Well, here they are:   

“He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

“He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

“He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

“He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

“He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

“He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

“He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

“For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

“For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

“For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

“For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

“For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

“For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

“For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

“For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

“For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

“He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

“He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

“He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

“He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

At this point, Jefferson makes it clear that the colonists have tried, without success, to correct these tyrannical abuses through peaceful means.  They are not acting in haste:

“In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

“Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

Jefferson then announces his conclusion, based on the original premises of his argument and the examples he has cited to confirm that the heart of these premises is true:

“We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

“We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Fire, passion, even poetry, held within the flow of a logical progression.

I point this out to show that the Founders were not only acquainted with the use of logic, they wanted to make their great case for freedom and independence by using its power.

In their minds, freedom and logic were connected. 

If in our schools, in 2010, logic as a distinct subject has been reduced to paltry terms, how are students able to grasp the majestic nature of freedom, as expressed in the Declaration?  How are they able to understand that living in freedom is more than vaguely drifting from one slogan to another, one addled piece of political rhetoric to another?

Note:  James Madison, thought of by many as the father of the Constitution, studied logic intensely at the College of New Jersey.  In fact, we have 122 pages of Madison’s own handwritten notes from the course.  The course followed the pattern laid down in a famous 17^th-century book, Logic or the Art of Thinking.

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.  He is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for home schools.  He can be contacted at qjrconsulting@gmail.com

RAPPOPORT INTERVIEWS TIM O’ SHEA

JULY 12, 2010.  This Wednesday, on my radio show, I’ll be interviewing Dr. Tim O’ Shea on the subject of vaccines.  Tim has been researching and writing about vaccines for many years. 

His latest book is VACCINATION IS NOT IMMUNIZATION.

To catch the show live, go to www.ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com and click on the “listen live” button.  

The show airs every week on Wednesdays at 4PM Pacific Time.

To pick up the show later in the archive, go to:

http://garynull.squarespace.com/the-jon-rappoport-show/

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

JON RAPPOPORT LIVE IN SANTA MONICA

If you are anywhere near Los Angeles, this is an invitation to a free event I’ll be doing on Saturday, July 17.  Details are below.

Gerry Fialka is an old friend from the 1990s.  He is a brilliant artist, as well as a creator and organizer of events.  He’ll be interviewing me about my work in a relaxed setting.  Gerry does great in-depth interviews.  We’ll cover a variety of subjects.  With Gerry, you can never predict the course of a conversation, but you can be sure he’ll make it interesting.

Here’s the press release on the event:    

Sat, July 17 at 3pm: A former writer for LA Weekly, JON RAPPOPORT has worked as an investigative reporter exposing medical fraud for 20 years. He is also a painter and a musician. The author of The Secret Behind Secret Societies, he is working on a new book, The Magician Awakes.  Gerry Fialka will interview Jon about this forthcoming book.    

THE UNURBAN is proud to host MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) at 3301 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90404, 310-315-0056, free admission, Info: 310-306-7330 – The public is invited to these engaging interviews by Gerry Fialka with modern thinkers who’ll address the metaphysics of their callings and the nitty-gritty of their crafts. http://www.laughtears.com/mess.html

contact: gerry fialka pfsuzy@aol.com, 310-306-7330 http://www.laughtears.com/

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

LOGIC COURSE TESTIMONIAL

JUNE 24, 2010.  Recently, I received a note from Karen J, who lives in the Miami area and home schools her children.

Karen ordered my course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, mastered the materials, and then taught the 18-lesson curriculum to her kids.

I think you’ll be interested in what she has to say.

“First of all, Jon, you should know I took the home school route because I didn’t want my children to be subjected to ‘social training’ in public schools.  I had no confidence that the values of teachers in that system would reflect the values that are important in our family.

“But when I started home schooling the kids, I realized pretty quickly that I was basically teaching them the same academic materials they would have been getting in public school.

“I didn’t have a big problem with this, but I felt there was something missing.  I wanted my children to have strength of mind.  I wished I had course materials that would help them achieve that.

“When I say ‘strength of mind,’ I mean values, and also something else.  I didn’t know exactly what that was, until I began reading your articles about logic.  You mentioned having tools to separate rational from irrational arguments.  That appealed to me very much.

“I want my kids to be able to do more than parrot information they read or hear.  You’ve given me a way to help them analyze information and see the flaws in it.

“When your course arrived, I studied the teacher’s manual from beginning to end.  I was very pleased to see that you offered detailed explanations about the passages of text that contained logical errors.

I was even happier that the passages you wrote really did resemble news articles and other information people would actually encounter in life.

“When I felt I was ready, I began teaching the course to my children.  It only took a short while to notice that their eyes were opening to a whole new way to think about information.  It wasn’t a grind.  The kids were enthusiastic about learning.

“In one of your articles, you mentioned that logic could be a great adventure.  Well, that’s what it’s turning out to be.  The kids are doing outside work on their own.  They’re taking articles from newspapers and breaking them down and finding the logical flaws.

“My children are going on to college, and I feel very confident that they’ll be able to stay ahead of the game in every course they take.  They’ve learned how to be pro-active.  They like their other courses now because they can apply logic to them.  This is a big change.  Before, they were competent, but not excited.

“I also can report that my own mental acuity has improved.  I used to feel that information was like a high tide coming at me.  Now, I’m more balanced.  I can focus better.  I read an article and I take an active interest in evaluating the material.  I have the tools to do it.

“When I studied the teacher’s manual for your course, I found out many interesting and important things, but the one factor that really got me going was your CD.  To listen to you take apart the six core passages in the course and reveal the logical flaws in them was a real confidence-builder.  I saw how it could be done.  It affirmed my own sense that a great deal of information is shoddy, even though it appears convincing.  Before, this was just an intuition on my part.  Now, I know whys and wherefores.  That old saying, “The devil is in the details,” is true.  I’m very confident I can deal with information with this new logical approach.  It works and it pays off.  That’s the best thing I can say about it.”

Feel free to make inquiries about my LOGIC AND ANALYSIS  course: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

BP, THE GREEN COMPANY

TAKING A BULLET FOR A GREEN WORLD

JUNE 22, 2010.  This piece is my follow-up on Timothy Carney’s article at www.washingtonexaminer.com

“Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool.” 

Carney lays out a case that BP wants a cap and trade bill from the US federal government for good reasons.  All the reasons are called Profit.  $$.

(In other words, the oil-spewing giant is an environmentalist in the same way that Al Gore makes a living off of global warming.)

Carney points out that BP is pushing for an energy bill that would include:

government subsidies for converting coal plants to natural gas—and BP is a major producer of natural gas;

a higher fed tax on gasoline at the pump—the tax revenues would be funneled into building highways, and highways equal more drivers buying more gasoline;

government subsidies for solar energy production—BP is invested in solar and has a project going in Argentina.

Not in the energy bill, but part of the picture, is a US- bank subsidized pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey.

My point is this.  When corporate giants decide to back a major piece of legislation like this, they PUT TOGETHER A PACKAGE.  They figure out their future profits as carefully as they can.  Along all fronts.  In other words, they operate like insurance actuaries, who balance the total of incoming premium payments against what they estimate the company will have to pay out in claims.

So these profit-making items BP is lobbying for, as part of the “green revolution,” are all tied together in their profit forecasts.  They see where they will absorb some losses and make some gains, and they calculate the overall outcome.  They are optimistic.

If Obama’s cap and trade bill passes, the total amount of oil used in the US will decline over time, but the price of oil and gasoline will rise.  Again, how does that shake out for BP?  How high will the price of oil and gasoline have to escalate, in order for BP to make, on balance, the kind of profit they are looking for?

You can bet BP has come up with a number, and BP also knows what Obama’s number is—and the two parties aren’t separated by much. 

BP also understands that this number—and cap and trade, in general—are part of an overall strategy moving toward a globalist planet.  In order to impose all sorts of controls on carbon-based industry, the US government will be running the country to a much greater degree than it now is.  And this power will be linked to the planet-wide agenda to down-regulate industry and “go green” and break the back of the free market everywhere and drive people further below the level of what was formerly known as the middle class.  That’s the globalist picture.

BP aren’t idiots.  They see the handwriting on the wall.  They are doing some of the writing.

Globalism for BP is a balancing act.  How far down the economic scale can people all over the world be driven—and still BP turns a handsome profit selling gas and oil and solar?

The recent Gulf spill disaster comes at an opportune time.  Obama and others are playing it like a drum, to push the need for the cap and trade bill and “the green clean economy.”

You can find additional evidence about possible manipulation and coordination of events leading up to the BP well explosion at www.infowars.com.

Remaining in the wings are a few questions.  Does BP believe the world supply of oil is running out?  If so (rightly or wrongly), they would certainly be looking for a way to reduce total production while still making huge profits.  Under the aegis of “the great shift to green energy,” forcefully controlled by cooperating governments, BP would be able to do just that: reduce production, still make huge profits. 

On the other hand, if BP perceives a different picture—oil is more abundant than anyone realizes—they have significant motivation to cover up that fact, in order to head off cheap oil—and again, a forced shift to green energies would fit that scenario quite well for them.

How much money is BP going to have to fork over to fulfill their perceived obligations vis-à-vis the Gulf oil spill?  Another as yet unanswered question.  Some people are speculating that the company might have to declare bankruptcy.  At the moment, my prediction is that BP will survive to live another day.  If bankruptcy becomes obligatory—“we fall on our sword for the common good”—the company will be rebuilt under a different name and continue to operate.  The services they provide are not going to go away. 

In the most extreme view of this whole situation, BP can sacrifice themselves for the cause of Green Globalism (i.e., global de facto control), they can permit an op whereby their gigantic oil well blows up, they can then “suffer a shameful defeat,” but still actually WIN. 

“Yes, boys, we had to bite the bullet on this one, we had to let the well explode and suffer all the consequences, because we needed a crisis that would provoke a major step forward toward green fascism and the New Age.  This was the part we had to play.  Think of it as a kind of ritual.  But we’ve calculated all the numbers, we know the future, and the future is going to be good.  We will rise again, under the banner of Central Planning for the World, and I gotta tell you, it’s going to be roses all the way.  Wait and see.  You’re gonna love it.”

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

OBAMA FAILS IN THE GULF

AND A BLUEPRINT FOR EXECUTIVE ACTION

By Jon Rappoport

Author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS COURSE

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

JUNE 21, 2010.  There are certain things an executive should know.  One of the first is: PEOPLE WORKING UNDER YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE MISTAKES.  AND IN A SEVERE CRISIS THAT DEMANDS FAST ACTION, THOSE MISTAKES ARE GOING TO BE MAGNIFIED.

This is especially true in a mega-corporation or massive government, because the executive sits on top of numerous departments and agencies and thousands of people.  

A corollary to the first principle is: PEOPLE WORKING UNDER YOU ARE GOING TO FIGHT AND HAGGLE WITH EACH OTHER.

This is particularly true when the regulations that determine which agencies or departments are responsible for which situations are muddled. 

We are seeing this in the Gulf.  As in—who is in charge? 

The goals are clear.  Stop the spill.  Clean up the sea.  Bring financial relief to the affected.  But who is actually running the show?

An experienced executive with real eyes moves fast.  At the first sign of major trouble—which in the case of the oil spill was perhaps two days—the executive swings into action.

He lets everyone know that NOTHING is going to get in the way of effective action.  No silly rules or petty jealousies or chain-of-command nonsense.

Within hours, he learns what regulations or outside special interests might derail the operation, and he cancels those regulations for the moment and he knocks special interests down. 

For example, if the unions are complaining that foreign ships shouldn’t be coming into help clean up the sea, he squashes that like a hammer on a raw egg.

He demands, on day one, a briefing about which agencies are involved in the Gulf operation, and he sorts them out—he heads off and cuts any red tape and decides who is running the show and who is following in the rear.  RIGHT NOW.

Because he ALREADY knows that endless haggling and delay is the culture of any huge group.  He knows that.  He doesn’t figure it out a month after the fact.  He doesn’t act like a rank amateur.

The executive accepts help from any direction.  Local barges that want to suck up oil from the water, and huge Dutch vessels outfitted to suck up much larger amounts of oil—bring them in.  IMMEDIATELY. 

Those Dutch vessels scoop up tons of seawater and oil, filter out most of the oil and store it, and spew the water back into the sea.  Yes, some oil will go back into the sea.  There is an EPA regulation that forbids putting ANY oil from a ship into the sea?  Suspend that regulation now.  [Thanks to Larry Walker, Jr. for this information.] 

Every action I’ve mentioned so far in this piece takes place within two days of learning that the oil spill is gigantic.

Substantive meetings with the CEO of BP and governors of affected states?  Right away.  And no stupid photo ops and milk shakes.

This isn’t Obama’s style?  CHANGE YOUR STYLE, PAL.

Of course, Obama isn’t the only executive in the world who acts like a diffident dolt.  There are many.  They feel much better at a distance from actual work.  They like to appoint study groups and task forces.  They spend their time thinking about how they should construct their little speeches. 

Forget executives for the moment.  I believe any normal human being, appointed or elected to a job where thousands and thousands of people in various departments are operating under him, would feel nervous right off the bat.  On day one.  What are all these people doing?  What could they do to screw things up?  What are they already doing to screw things up?

And when a crisis hits, how will they screw things up even worse?  Because you know they will.  That’s the nature of big organizations in a crisis.  Left to their own devices, they’ll play “cover my ass” and play kiddie games with red tape.

But people like Obama don’t get that, or if they do, they avoid thinking about it.  They stay in the shadows and let things go.

What about all the people whose jobs and lives have already been hurt in this oil-spill crisis?  A real executive can have a system up and running in 48 hours to start reimbursing those people—with BP footing the bill.  The system may not be perfect right away, but it can offer some relief.

Contrary to what some people want to believe, all this isn’t brain surgery.  Actually, it’s just common sense.

When it comes to capping the flow of oil at the source, a real executive will assert every ounce of his power to find and bring in the best pros in the world NOW to offer solutions.  And the real executive will be in the room for the discussions.  He won’t be waiting for a report.  He’ll be the DRIVING FORCE.   

The president wants very good people to tell him what the long-range damage will look like.  How much oil will be eaten by bacteria in the sea?  How soon?  Sure, he can’t get a complete handle on this right away, but he can come across and let the American people know what he knows.

He can get on television in the first 24 hours and shoot straight from the shoulder.  He can tell the public everything he’s doing.  He can provide ongoing updates and act strong because he is strong.

You’ll think I’m crazy for what I’m about to say.  When I used to work in a college library, I was in charge of several teenagers and twentysomethings who were handling materials and student needs.  Within a week of their hiring, I realized these kids were absolute aces.  It took them three days to know more about the library than I did.  They worked faster and better than I did.  In terms of sheer ability and fearlessness and common sense and results, I would put up any one of those kids against what Obama has done.  I KNOW they could be handling the BP spill better than Obama has.

Every US president seems to be shocked and dismayed and befuddled when a crisis happens that requires many agencies of the government to step in and perform.

WE know the result is going to be sick joke.  But the president doesn’t. 

In terms of sheer executive ability, I really believe we’ve been electing morons.  Disabled, slow-motion morons.

In another operation—Afghanistan—it is becoming increasingly apparent that US troops are fighting with stones around their necks.  Engagements with the enemy on the ground are subject to severe restrictions.  Is there the slightest possibility of harming nearby civilians?  If so, US soldiers must resort to light weapons.

The bigger issue here—and this also comes under the heading of executive leadership (Obama)—concerns the reasons we are there in the first place. 

AN EXECUTIVE MUST REMAIN CLEAR ABOUT THE OVERALL GOAL.

Supposedly, after 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan to wipe out terrorist enclaves.  To what degree this meant the Taliban was always vague.  In the process, we have taken on the role of nation building, and this role has become the centerpiece of Obama’s strategy.

After six months of meetings and conferences with his best advisors, the new circumspect president signed off on a plan to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people—in a nation that isn’t a nation but instead is a collection of separate tribes and clans and warlords, most of whom are remote from, and opposed to, the American-supported Afghan central government.

But no problem.  We’re going to solve the age-old situation in 18 months.

And again, why?  To root out and destroy terrorist enclaves?  We’re going to re-structure an entire nation that isn’t a nation so we can search out and wipe out terrorists?

This is called a non-sequitur.  And the consequence for US soldiers is an escalation of deaths and casualties.

I’m sorry.  The executive in charge (Obama) is living in a different universe.

He took six months to come up with a plan that had no chance of success.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.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.  He can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com for inquiries about his course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS.      

FOURTH OPEN LETTER TO HOME SCHOOLERS

By Jon Rappoport

Author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS COURSE

qjrconsulting@gmail.com for inquiries about the course.

JUNE 21, 2010.  These days, I’m coming across a phenomenon I call The Disconnected Mind more frequently.

In its most extreme form, it goes this way.  I write a piece on the American Republic, and someone sends me an email that begins: “Yes, limited government is the foundation of the Republic.  The oil spill is on the news all the time.  I live in Michigan.  I wish I had a dog.  The government can’t afford to fix the potholes…”

What?  Excuse me?  Time out!      

There are other forms of The Disconnected Mind.  The most pervasive type stems from high school and college education.  The student steps out into the world and quickly realizes he doesn’t have a clue about the way things work.  All that education, and it seems to vanish behind him like vapor.

In this shaky situation, a young person gropes around for something to cling to.  He encounters all sorts of quasi-philosophy and political propaganda—delivered by people who appear quite sure of themselves. 

How does a newly minted adult assemble his attitude toward his own future?  How does he fend off propaganda? 

He’s missing one great asset.  He can’t analyze information and separate the wheat from the chaff. 

He thought he could back in school, but that turned out to be an illusion. 

He’s paralyzed. 

Part of the fault can be laid at the door of political correctness.  The material he dealt with in school was sanitized and scrubbed.  Any sentence that might have remotely offended some group was eliminated from text books.

He was operating in a pleasant abstract vacuum and he didn’t really know it.  Now he pays the price.

It turns out that information comes in all shapes and sizes.  Some of it drifts in on the breeze and some of it is launched from propaganda guns at high velocity. 

A lot of it is disjointed.  It contains holes that reflect the state of mind of the author.  No one can really make sense out of it, because it wasn’t written to make sense.  It was written to persuade. 

In the end, most people surrender.  They stagger under a particular umbrella of information, and they stop thinking.  They consider themselves lucky because they’ve gotten out of the rain.

In retrospect, their prized education was almost worthless.  It was, at best, a huge waste of time.

All in all, I would say the most egregious problem people have with information is this: they can’t follow a train of thought.  They can’t see there is “connective tissue” between several sequential ideas.  They believe it’s all right to plug into an article at any point and see if they agree with what’s being said.

To grasp this state of affairs, imagine a person who gets on a train while it’s moving.  He isn’t aware that the train started somewhere, will make certain stops, and end up at a terminal destination.  He just jumps on.

The consequence?  He winds up at a place he didn’t intend to.  He comes to believe this is the journey of life.  You arrive at a place and you get used to it.  Other people say it’s a good place, so you buy into that.

There is another way.

It starts with a thorough course in logic.  The student learns he can analyze information and see the flaws.  He can dig into the logic and illogic of an argument its author is trying to make.  He can follow a train of thought—or if there isn’t one, he can recognize its absence.

He’s strong.  He doesn’t wilt in front of propaganda and PR.

A long time ago, our society lost its moorings.  It’s now floating on open water, and it’s being invaded by polemic.  Polemic is argument whose total intent is to convince the audience to agree to something.  It doesn’t matter how.  Quite often, the strategy involves stimulating fear.  Fear sells.  It stirs people up.  It makes them buy an idea they’d never entertain under normal circumstances. 

Logic is polemic protection.  It’s a type of insurance policy that yields long-term benefits.  Logic confers immunity from intimidation tactics and intentionally garbled reasoning.

It also delivers immunity from the cult of personality, where the charisma of the speaker puts people in a trance.  (When I was a child, Senator Hubert Humphrey spoke in our town.  My parents took me to see him.  Those were the days when Hubert was at the top of his game.  He lectured for close to two hours, and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.  The man was a spellbinder.  I walked out of there agreeing with everything he said, and, curiously, I remembered very little of what he said.)

Education can produce strong, independent, and courageous minds.  A thorough grounding in logic is essential to arriving at that place.

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.  He can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com for inquiries about his course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS.