SCHOOL EDUCATIONS SUCKS

The US intelligence community’s enthusiasm for hi-tech innovation after 9/11 and the creation of In-Q-Tel, its venture capital fund, in 1999 were anachronistically linked in the article below. Since 9/11 happened in 2001 it could not have led to the setting up of In-Q-Tel two years earlier.

The Independent Guide to Facebook I despise Facebook. This enormously successful American business describes itself as “a social utility that connects you with the people around you”. But hang on. Why on God’s earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? What was wrong with the pub?

And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn’t it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.

Facebook appeals to a kind of vanity and self-importance in us, too. If I put up a flattering picture of myself with a list of my favourite things, I can construct an artificial representation of who I am in order to get sex or approval. (“I like Facebook,” said another friend. “I got a shag out of it.”) It also encourages a disturbing competitivness around friendship: it seems that with friends today, quality counts for nothing and quantity is king. The more friends you have, the better you are. You are “popular”, in the sense much loved in American high schools. Witness the cover line on Dennis Publishing’s new Facebook magazine: “How To Double Your Friends List.”

It seems, though, that I am very much alone in my hostility. At the time of writing Facebook claims 59 million active users, including 7 million in the UK, Facebook’s third-biggest customer after the US and Canada. That’s 59 million suckers, all of whom have volunteered their ID card information and consumer preferences to an American business they know nothing about. Right now, 2 million new people join each week. At the present rate of growth, Facebook will have more than 200 million active users by this time next year. And I would predict that, if anything, its rate of growth will accelerate over the coming months. As its spokesman Chris Hughes says: “It’s embedded itself to an extent where it’s hard to get rid of.”

All of the above would have been enough to make me reject Facebook for ever. But there are more reasons to hate it. Many more.

Facebook screen grab Facebook is a well-funded project, and the people behind the funding, a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, have a clearly thought out ideology that they are hoping to spread around the world. Facebook is one manifestation of this ideology. Like PayPal before it, it is a social experiment, an expression of a particular kind of neoconservative libertarianism. On Facebook, you can be free to be who you want to be, as long as you don’t mind being bombarded by adverts for the world’s biggest brands. As with PayPal, national boundaries are a thing of the past.

Although the project was initially conceived by media cover star Mark Zuckerberg, the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel. There are only three board members on Facebook, and they are Thiel, Zuckerberg and a third investor called Jim Breyer from a venture capital firm called Accel Partners (more on him later). Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook when Harvard students Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskowitz went to meet him in San Francisco in June 2004, soon after they had launched the site. Thiel now reportedly owns 7% of Facebook, which, at Facebook’s current valuation of $15bn, would be worth more than $1bn. There is much debate on who exactly were the original co-founders of Facebook, but whoever they were, Zuckerberg is the only one left on the board, although Hughes and Moskowitz still work for the company.

Thiel is widely regarded in Silicon Valley and in the US venture capital scene as a libertarian genius. He is the co-founder and CEO of the virtual banking system PayPal, which he sold to Ebay for $1.5bn, taking $55m for himself. He also runs a £3bn hedge fund called Clarium Capital Management and a venture capital fund called Founders Fund. Bloomberg Markets magazine recently called him “one of the most successful hedge fund managers in the country”. He has made money by betting on rising oil prices and by correctly predicting that the dollar would weaken. He and his absurdly wealthy Silicon Valley mates have recently been labelled “The PayPal Mafia” by Fortune magazine, whose reporter also observed that Thiel has a uniformed butler and a $500,000 McLaren supercar. Thiel is also a chess master and intensely competitive. He has been known to sweep the chessmen off the table in a fury when losing. And he does not apologise for this hyper-competitveness, saying: “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.”

Facebook But Thiel is more than just a clever and avaricious capitalist. He is a futurist philosopher and neocon activist. A philosophy graduate from Stanford, in 1998 he co-wrote a book called The Diversity Myth, which is a detailed attack on liberalism and the multiculturalist ideology that dominated Stanford. He claimed that the “multiculture” led to a lessening of individual freedoms. While a student at Stanford, Thiel founded a rightwing journal, still up and running, called The Stanford Review – motto: Fiat Lux (“Let there be light”). Thiel is a member of TheVanguard.Org, an internet-based neoconservative pressure group that was set up to attack MoveOn.org, a liberal pressure group that works on the web. Thiel calls himself “way libertarian”.

TheVanguard is run by one Rod D Martin, a philosopher-capitalist whom Thiel greatly admires. On the site, Thiel says: “Rod is one of our nation’s leading minds in the creation of new and needed ideas for public policy. He possesses a more complete understanding of America than most executives have of their own businesses.”

This little taster from their website will give you an idea of their vision for the world: “TheVanguard.Org is an online community of Americans who believe in conservative values, the free market and limited government as the best means to bring hope and ever-increasing opportunity to everyone, especially the poorest among us.” Their aim is to promote policies that will “reshape America and the globe”. TheVanguard describes its politics as “Reaganite/Thatcherite”. The chairman’s message says: “Today we’ll teach MoveOn [the liberal website], Hillary and the leftwing media some lessons they never imagined.”

So, Thiel’s politics are not in doubt. What about his philosophy? I listened to a podcast of an address Thiel gave about his ideas for the future. His philosophy, briefly, is this: since the 17th century, certain enlightened thinkers have been taking the world away from the old-fashioned nature-bound life, and here he quotes Thomas Hobbes’ famous characterisation of life as “nasty, brutish and short”, and towards a new virtual world where we have conquered nature. Value now exists in imaginary things. Thiel says that PayPal was motivated by this belief: that you can find value not in real manufactured objects, but in the relations between human beings. PayPal was a way of moving money around the world with no restriction. Bloomberg Markets puts it like this: “For Thiel, PayPal was all about freedom: it would enable people to skirt currency controls and move money around the globe.”

Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist experiment: can you make money out of friendship? Can you create communities free of national boundaries – and then sell Coca-Cola to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway.

Coca-Cola Photo: Tim Boyle/Getty Thiel’s philosophical mentor is one René Girard of Stanford University, proponent of a theory of human behaviour called mimetic desire. Girard reckons that people are essentially sheep-like and will copy one another without much reflection. The theory would also seem to be proved correct in the case of Thiel’s virtual worlds: the desired object is irrelevant; all you need to know is that human beings will tend to move in flocks. Hence financial bubbles. Hence the enormous popularity of Facebook. Girard is a regular at Thiel’s intellectual soirees. What you don’t hear about in Thiel’s philosophy, by the way, are old-fashioned real-world concepts such as art, beauty, love, pleasure and truth.

The internet is immensely appealing to neocons such as Thiel because it promises a certain sort of freedom in human relations and in business, freedom from pesky national laws, national boundaries and suchlike. The internet opens up a world of free trade and laissez-faire expansion. Thiel also seems to approve of offshore tax havens, and claims that 40% of the world’s wealth resides in places such as Vanuatu, the Cayman Islands, Monaco and Barbados. I think it’s fair to say that Thiel, like Rupert Murdoch, is against tax. He also likes the globalisation of digital culture because it makes the banking overlords hard to attack: “You can’t have a workers’ revolution to take over a bank if the bank is in Vanuatu,” he says.

If life in the past was nasty, brutish and short, then in the future Thiel wants to make it much longer, and to this end he has also invested in a firm that is exploring life-extension technologies. He has pledged £3.5m to a Cambridge-based gerontologist called Aubrey de Grey, who is searching for the key to immortality. Thiel is also on the board of advisers of something called the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. From its fantastical website, the following: “The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. There are several technologies … heading in this direction … Artificial Intelligence … direct brain-computer interfaces … genetic engineering … different technologies which, if they reached a threshold level of sophistication, would enable the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence.”

So by his own admission, Thiel is trying to destroy the real world, which he also calls “nature”, and install a virtual world in its place, and it is in this context that we must view the rise of Facebook. Facebook is a deliberate experiment in global manipulation, and Thiel is a bright young thing in the neoconservative pantheon, with a penchant for far-out techno-utopian fantasies. Not someone I want to help get any richer.

The third board member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook’s most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock’s senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What’s In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which “identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions”.

The US defence department and the CIA love technology because it makes spying easier. “We need to find new ways to deter new adversaries,” defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in 2003. “We need to make the leap into the information age, which is the critical foundation of our transformation efforts.” In-Q-Tel’s first chairman was Gilman Louie, who served on the board of the NVCA with Breyer. Another key figure in the In-Q-Tel team is Anita K Jones, former director of defence research and engineering for the US department of defence, and – with Breyer – board member of BBN Technologies. When she left the US department of defence, Senator Chuck Robb paid her the following tribute: “She brought the technology and operational military communities together to design detailed plans to sustain US dominance on the battlefield into the next century.”

Stars and stripes Now even if you don’t buy the idea that Facebook is some kind of extension of the American imperialist programme crossed with a massive information-gathering tool, there is no way of denying that as a business, it is pure mega-genius. Some net nerds have suggsted that its $15bn valuation is excessive, but I would argue that if anything that is too modest. Its scale really is dizzying, and the potential for growth is virtually limitless. “We want everyone to be able to use Facebook,” says the impersonal voice of Big Brother on the website. I’ll bet they do. It is Facebook’s enormous potential that led Microsoft to buy 1.6% for $240m. A recent rumour says that Asian investor Lee Ka-Shing, said to be the ninth richest man in the world, has bought 0.4% of Facebook for $60m.

The creators of the site need do very little bar fiddle with the programme. In the main, they simply sit back and watch as millions of Facebook addicts voluntarily upload their ID details, photographs and lists of their favourite consumer objects. Once in receipt of this vast database of human beings, Facebook then simply has to sell the information back to advertisers, or, as Zuckerberg puts it in a recent blog post, “to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web”. And indeed, this is precisely what’s happening. On November 6 last year, Facebook announced that 12 global brands had climbed on board. They included Coca-Cola, Blockbuster, Verizon, Sony Pictures and Condé Nast. All trained in marketing bullshit of the highest order, their representatives made excited comments along the following lines:

“With Facebook Ads, our brands can become a part of the way users communicate and interact on Facebook,” said Carol Kruse, vice president, global interactive marketing, the Coca-Cola Company.

“We view this as an innovative way to cultivate relationships with millions of Facebook users by enabling them to interact with Blockbuster in convenient, relevant and entertaining ways,” said Jim Keyes, Blockbuster chairman and CEO. “This is beyond creating advertising impressions. This is about Blockbuster participating in the community of the consumer so that, in return, consumers feel motivated to share the benefits of our brand with their friends.”

“Share” is Facebookspeak for “advertise”. Sign up to Facebook and you become a free walking, talking advert for Blockbuster or Coke, extolling the virtues of these brands to your friends. We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships.

Now, by comparision with Facebook, newspapers, for example, begin to look hopelessly outdated as a business model. A newspaper sells advertising space to businesses looking to sell stuff to their readers. But the system is far less sophisticated than Facebook for two reasons. One is that newspapers have to put up with the irksome expense of paying journalists to provide the content. Facebook gets its content for free. The other is that Facebook can target advertising with far greater precision than a newspaper. Admit on Facebook that your favourite film is This Is Spinal Tap, and when a Spinal Tap-esque movie comes out, you can be sure that they’ll be sending ads your way.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Photo: Paul Sakuma/AP) It’s true that Facebook recently got into hot water with its Beacon advertising programme. Users were notified that one of their friends had made a purchase at certain online shops; 46,000 users felt that this level of advertising was intrusive, and signed a petition called “Facebook! Stop invading my privacy!” to say so. Zuckerberg apologised on his company blog. He has written that they have now changed the system from “opt-out” to “opt-in”. But I suspect that this little rebellion about being so ruthlessly commodified will soon be forgotten: after all, there was a national outcry by the civil liberties movement when the idea of a police force was mooted in the UK in the mid 19th century.

Futhermore, have you Facebook users ever actually read the privacy policy? It tells you that you don’t have much privacy. Facebook pretends to be about freedom, but isn’t it really more like an ideologically motivated virtual totalitarian regime with a population that will very soon exceed the UK’s? Thiel and the rest have created their own country, a country of consumers.

Now, you may, like Thiel and the other new masters of the cyberverse, find this social experiment tremendously exciting. Here at last is the Enlightenment state longed for since the Puritans of the 17th century sailed away to North America, a world where everyone is free to express themselves as they please, according to who is watching. National boundaries are a thing of the past and everyone cavorts together in freewheeling virtual space. Nature has been conquered through man’s boundless ingenuity. Yes, and you may decide to send genius investor Thiel all your money, and certainly you’ll be waiting impatiently for the public flotation of the unstoppable Facebook.

Or you might reflect that you don’t really want to be part of this heavily-funded programme to create an arid global virtual republic, where your own self and your relationships with your friends are converted into commodites on sale to giant global brands. You may decide that you don’t want to be part of this takeover bid for the world.

For my own part, I am going to retreat from the whole thing, remain as unplugged as possible, and spend the time I save by not going on Facebook doing something useful, such as reading books. Why would I want to waste my time on Facebook when I still haven’t read Keats’ Endymion? And when there are seeds to be sown in my own back yard? I don’t want to retreat from nature, I want to reconnect with it. Damn air-conditioning! And if I want to connect with the people around me, I will revert to an old piece of technology. It’s free, it’s easy and it delivers a uniquely individual experience in sharing information: it’s called talking.

Facebook’s privacy policy

Just for fun, try substituting the words ‘Big Brother’ whenever you read the word ‘Facebook’

1 We will advertise at you

“When you use Facebook, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalised features.”

2 You can’t delete anything

“When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information.”

3 Anyone can glance at your intimate confessions

“… we cannot and do not guarantee that user content you post on the site will not be viewed by unauthorised persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of user content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other users have copied or stored your user content.”

4 Our marketing profile of you will be unbeatable

“Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (eg, photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalised experience.”

5 Opting out doesn’t mean opting out

“Facebook reserves the right to send you notices about your account even if you opt out of all voluntary email notifications.”

6 The CIA may look at the stuff when they feel like it

“By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States … We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Facebook service or using the Facebook name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.”

Operation False Flag

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Veritas Today

I think he [Obama] philosophically believes in one world government and wants to keep nudging us in that direction.” – Ron Paul

Articles:

Operation False Flag: A Modern Primer

Number Six | 28 August 2011 (Updated, 10 September 2011)

Definition: When governments or organizations (usually connected to the former) stage highly sophisticated attacks on their own or foreign soil with the purpose of placing the blame on a desirable enemy foreign or domestic, one who has otherwise done no wrong. Essentially a setup, it provides the government entity with an excuse via fabricated evidence in complicity with media to fulfill its various agendas (i.e. war or law making).

As false flag operations gain further ground and frequency, the better you know their history, the sooner you can recognize when they are about to happen or as they occur.

It is a fact that essentially every single war since the Spanish-American War of 1898 has included the use of a false flag operation as an excuse to enter into conflict. The lies have become uncovered after the fact, too late to prevent mass death and destruction.

As practically the only anti-war candidate, Ron Paul recently pointed out such a fact to the other puppet candidates during a debate. The other candidates are heartily calling for World War III which could possibly destroy the planet by dressing up an Iranian invasion, whereas Paul points out that the Iraq war (which has massacred over one million Iraqis) was based on an utter and complete fabricated lie.

Obviously, upon discovery of such a lie, the only logical conclusion would be to end the war and persecute the liars. However, the true controllers of this media-complicit false flag operation merely replaced the lie with another more pliable excuse to fool the fluoride-head public, such as the Truman-Johnson-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama-(Clinton) Doctrine of “spreading freedom and democracy” to countries fighting against communism, I mean, terrorism.

15 February 1898, Cuba, USS Maine (260 dead Americans; 15,000+ war casualties)

Event: The explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor.

Fact: The US sensationalist media and government lied, blamed it on Spain and began a “splendid little war” on a false pretext. Spain was later exonerated and “faulty” explosives or ammunition were officially blamed.

The 1962 Pentagon Operation Northwoods document, rejected by Kennedy, planned to commit similar acts, deliberately blowing up ships, and expending the lives of their own soldiers and civilians in order to provide an excuse for Cuban invasion. The report went on to detail how the terror attacks and false flag operation would be dubbed in the media as a “Remember the Maine” event. This would lead one to allude that the strategists are suggesting the USS Maine incident itself was a false flag operation.

Sources:

“Better Late Than Never?: Rickover Clears Spain of the Maine Explosion.” History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web. <http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5470>.
Cummings, Denis. “On This Day: Spanish-American War Ends.” Finding Dulcinea. 12 Aug. 2011. <http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/Aug/Spanish-American-War-Ends.html>.
“Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962.” The National Security Archive. 30 Apr. 2001. <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430>.

7 May 1915, Irish coast, Lusitania (1,198 dead)

Event: The deliberate sending of a passenger ship by British and American authorities to certain death in German patrolled water, leading to the eventual sinking of the ship by German submarines.

Fact: Despite the Germans having put out newspaper advertisements as warning and it being known that any trespassing ship would be destroyed, instead of saving lives, the Anglo-American governments deliberately assisted in the massacre of hundreds of innocent lives in order to provide a pretext for entrance into the Great War for Civilization, more commonly known as World War I.

Sources:

House, Edward Mandell, and Charles Seymour. The Intimate Papers of Colonel House. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1926.
Griffin, G. Edward. The Creature from Jekyll Island: A 2nd Look at the Federal Reserve. 5th ed. American Media, 2010.

27 February 1933, Germany, Reichstag Burning

Event: Complete burning down of the German state Reichstag building.

Fact: A month after Hitler took power, the government building burned down and served as an excuse to pass an Enabling Act which annulled the constitution and made him dictator. Furthermore, Germany created an enemy out of the communists to use as fear for population control and eventual foreign aggression.

Sources:

Tobias, Fritz. The Reichstag Fire. New York: Putnam, 1963.
“Rise of Hitler: The Reichstag Burns.” The History Place. <http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm>.
“The Reichstag Fire.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007657>.

31 August 1939, Upper Silesia, Germany, Gleiwitz Incident

Event: German soldiers, dressed as Polish, attack a German radio station. They kill a dozen Polish prisoners and claim them as the culprits.

Fact: Provided pretext for the invasion of Poland and beyond.

Sources:

Auden, W. H. “Blitzkrieg September 1, 1939: a New Kind of Warfare Engulfs Poland.” Time. 1 Sept. 1939. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,958453,00.html>.

7 December 1941, Hawaii, Pearl Harbor

Event: Attack of US Naval base by Japanese forces.

Fact: The attacks were brought on by the U.S. itself via careful execution of set goals. These included the armament of Japans enemies, cut-off of energy supplies and port access closure. At the very least, the Federal Government knew of the coming attack having decoded messages and instead of warning the Hawaiian naval base, deliberately kept them as sitting ducks to be massacred. This was used as an official excuse for the U.S. to enter into World War II.

Sources:

Stinnett, Robert B. Day of Deceit: the Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor. New York, NY: Touchstone, 2001.
Engdahl, William. Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century. Wiesbaden, Germany: Edition.engdahl, 2009.
Prange, Gordon W., Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon. At Dawn We Slept: the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. New York, NY: Penguin, 2001.

1946, Cold War

Event: The concoction of a grand mythological metanarrative dialectic on a global scale between the two countries of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. by George Kennan and Paul Nitze, among others.

Motive: Establish national security state, provide excuse for development of military-industrial-complex and allow for lebensraum, the expansion of Anglo-American economic “breathing” or “vital space”.

“Following proclamation of the Truman Doctrine, a creation of Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the Administration’s propaganda apparatus tried to drum up popular support for their Cold War against the ‘evil, Godless’ communists in the Soviet Union. They believed that they could win popular voter support for huge increases in Federal defense spending by ‘scaring the hell out of America,’ as one of Truman’s advisors put it –perhaps by engendering a ‘war scare to deceive the nation.’” (Engdahl)

Sources:

Engdahl, William. Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century. Wiesbaden, Germany: Edition.engdahl, 2009. 233.
“NSC-68 United States Objectives and Programs for National Security.” Federation of American Scientists. 31 Jan. 1950. <http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-68.htm>.

8 April 1948, Columbia, The Bogotazo

Event: The assassination of populist Columbian presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán followed by the deaths of over 3,000 citizens.

Motive: Initiate the Cold War PSYOP (in the Western Hemisphere) via CIA agent provocateurs and place blame on World Communism for the assassination and revolt. To perfect the CIA method of Hegelian-type thesis-antithesis-synthesis PSYOP.

Sources:

Gonzalez, Servando. Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People. Oakland: Spooks Books, 2011.

25 June 1950, Korean War

Event: The air raid attack and initial provocation of North Korea by the South followed by an all out war. The first use of a global police force (UN) with the US supporting the South and the Sino-Soviets supporting the North.

Fact: “A war to ‘defend’ South Korea had many attractions. First it would indirectly implicate the Soviet Union as the main supporter of the North Korean regime of communist Kim il Sung. Second, the Rockefellers and the Dulles brothers and their business associates had poured huge investments into South Korea.”

“June 25, 1950, the world received the shocking report from South Korea that the North Korean Army had launched a major invasion of the south. The reports were conflicting however. American historian John Gunther, then traveling in Japan with General MacArthur, provided this first-hand account of an aide to the US General: ‘The south Koreans have attacked the north!’” (Engdahl)

Sources:

Engdahl, William. Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century. Wiesbaden, Germany: Edition.engdahl, 2009. 233.
Gunther, John, and Carl H. Pforzheimer. The Riddle of MacArthur: Japan, Korea, and the Far East. New York: Harper, 1951.

15 August 1953, Iran, Operation Ajax

Event: CIA and British intelligence stage terror attacks to overthrow a peaceful and democratic Iran, even after Prime Minister Mossadegh successful argues the Iranian case in a world court. They steal their petroleum and replace the regime with a dictatorship, setting up the SAVAK secret police with the assistance of the Israeli Mossad, which is then used for torture and domestic repression.

Sources:

Gasiorowski, Mark. “The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup.” The National Security Archive. 29 Nov. 2000. <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28>.

17 April 1961, Cuba, Bay of Pigs

Event: The CIA run and failed invasion of Cuba.

Fact: The CIA designed the invasion in order to put President Kennedy between a rock and a hard place, potentially forced to escalate into a full scale invasion and war. Peacemaker JFK was able to maneuver out of the predicament.

Sources:

Douglass, James W. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008.
Kornbluh, Peter. “Top Secret CIA ‘Official History’ of the Bay of Pigs: Revelations.” The National Security Archive. 15 Aug. 2011. <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB355/index.htm>

13 March 1962, Pentagon, Operation Northwoods

Event: Plan approved by Joint Chiefs of Staff to kill American citizens, stage terror attacks and destroy remote controlled aircraft among other incidents, to be blamed on Cuba.

Fact: In the vein of the USS Maine and Bay of Pigs, to provide a pretext for a Cuban war. Vetoed by Kennedy, followed by his subsequent assassination.

Sources:

“Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962.” The National Security Archive. 30 Apr. 2001. <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430>.

22 November 1963: Dallas, Assassination of JFK

Event: The assassination of peacemaking President John F. Kennedy.

Fact: Lee Harvey Oswald had been dressed up as communist patsy. The subsequent President Lyndon Johnson escalated the Vietnam War, being fought against the “Communist World Revolution” and the “Domino Effect.” JFK had planned to pull out of Vietnam. After having been setup by the CIA on numerous occasions, JFK wanted to scatter the agency to the wind, breaking it into a thousand pieces. Besides having confronted powerful business interests (i.e. US Steel), he issued executive orders allowing the US Treasury to issue currency redeemable in silver, United States Notes, not Federal Reserve Notes.

Sources:

Douglass, James W. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008.
Fetzer, Jim, and Jim Marrs. “JFK Assassination. False Flag Attacks: How “Patsies” Are Framed.” Centre for Research on Globalization. 11 Dec. 2009. <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va>.
Dankbaar, Wim. Files on JFK: Interviews with Confessed Assassin James E. Files, and More New Evidence of the Conspiracy That Killed JFK. [Walterville, Or.]: [Trine Day], 2008.
Watson, Paul J. “JFK Murder Plot “Deathbed Confession” Aired On National Radio.” Prison Planet. 30 Apr. 2007. <http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2007/300407deathbedconfession.htm>.

4 August 1964: Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkin

Event: Non-existent, falsely propagated attack of North Vietnamese ship having attacked USS Maddox.

Fact: Declassified files and McNamara himself reveal that the incident was a clear false flag operation. The Vietnamese had not attacked the US, but the case was made for one. LBJ promptly issued the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which took the US to war, enriching the military-industrial-complex, opening up the economies of Third World countries for exploitation and furthering the Cold War narrative.

Sources:

“The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, 40 Years Later.” The National Security Archive. 4 Aug. 2004. <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132>.
“Gulf of Tonkin: McNamara Admits It Didn’t Happen.” YouTube. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HODxnUrFX6k>.

8 June 1967: International Waters outside of Israel, USS Liberty

Event: Under the orders of President Johnson to completely sink the ship with crew on board, Israel executes the attacks which last for hours. It was to be blamed on Egypt to serve as a pretext for entry into the Middle Eastern war theatre. Russian reconnaissance saved the day.

Sources:

Margolis, Eric. “‘The USS Liberty’: America’s Most Shameful Secret.” LewRockwell.com. 2 May 2001. <http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/margolis12.html>.
“The USS Liberty Cover-Up.” WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. <http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ussliberty.html>.
Terrorstorm (2007)

4 April 1968: Memphis, Tennessee, Assassination of MLK

Event: Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. by US Government, blamed on James Earl Ray.

Fact: MLK had been under total surveillance and deemed a threat by the government. A 1999 King family court case found Earl Ray innocent and agencies of the US Government GUILTY of killing the preacher and agent of social change.

Sources:

Douglass, Jim. “Martin Luther King Assassination Conspiracy Exposed in Memphis.” Ratical. Spring 2000. <http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MLKconExp.html>.
“Complete Transcript of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination Conspiracy Trial.” Tranquility Internet Services, Inc. <http://www.tranquility.net/~rwinkel/911/Wakeup2/MLKTrial.html>.

Cold War Era to Present, Operation Gladio

Event: The staging and execution of terror attacks: from gunning down grocery shoppers and explosions in public squares, to assassination of heads of state.

Motives: Create a “strategy of tension” as a pretext for draconian laws, continue the Cold War narrative and blame communists.

Sources:

Ganser, Daniele. NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. London: Frank Cass, 2005.
“Operation Gladio [BBC Timewatch] State-Sponsored Terrorism in Europe.” YouTube. 1992. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fB6nViwJcM>.
“NATO’s Secret Armies.” YouTube. 2009. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5soEhxA6zXs>.

1977: Stockholm, UN Conference, The Great Global Warming Swindle

Event: Maurice Strong establishes the political agenda of Green Global Governance, later to be codified at the 1992 Rio Summit as “climate change” and promoted by high priest Al Gore first as “global warming,” then as “climate change” and then suggested by some as “global climate disruption.”

Former Soviet Premier jumps on the bandwagon with his Green Cross and call for an “Earth Charter,” testifying to Patrick Wood’s (co-founder, Greenpeace) declaration that the communists have taken over the “green” movement. John Holdren in his 1970’s Ecoscience textbook calls for a “planetary regime” with the power of forced sterilization, working with co-author Paul Ehrlich, who advocates mass extermination.

Motives: To establish world government based on the false scare of man-made global warming and the false science propagated by corrupt scientists, from NASA to the CRU in East Anglia University to the UN and its IPCC. To micromanagement every aspect of human life, with a focus on depopulation and the eradication of the majority of mankind.

Fact: The polar bears are actually increasing! The polar bear propagandists are being investigated for corruption! CO2 is not a pollutant but a basic building block of life! CO2 follows temperature rise by hundreds of years! The greenhouse gas theory is fraudulent! The climate scientists in Australia and New Zealand, in legal terms, admitted their lying and guilt by destroying evidence in what became known as Kiwigate and Australiagate! Add on to that Polarbeargate, Climategate, NASAGate and any others I’ve missed, you’re in for a party!

(See here for a further list)

Sources

Ball, Tim. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Has Achieved Its Goal: It’s Time To Repair The Damage.” Dr. Tim Ball – A Different Perspective. 27 June 2011. <http://drtimball.com/2011/the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change-ipcc-has-achieved-its-goal-it%E2%80%99s-time-to-repair-the-damage>.
The Great Global Warming Swindle
Climate Depot
I Love My CO2
Science & Public Policy
Slaying the Sky Dragon
Watts Up With That?

2 August 1990: Iraq, Operation Desert Storm

Event: U.S. telling Iraq they would have no problem with an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, then using Hussein’s invasion as an excuse to invade Iraq. U.S. lying to Saudi Arabia in regards to massive Iraqi troop alignment along borders as excuse to send in military. U.S. having Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter trained by Hollywood acting company to lie about Iraqi’s killing babies. Etc, etc.

Motives: Entrance into “Gulf War” theatre, natural resources, the start of a “new world order”, Saddam’s threats to stop using US dollars for trade, Project for a New Middle East, military-industrial-complex, etc, etc.

Sources:

“The New American Century.” YouTube. 2009. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fk6qkHs0oM>.
Nazemroaya, Mahdi Darius. “Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East”.” Centre for Research on Globalization. 18 Nov. 2006. <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va>.

26 February 1993: New York, World Trade Center

Event: Rental van explosion in public parking garage of World Trade Center, blamed on Muslim patsy who was provided explosives by FBI.

Motives: Provide pretext for establishment of domestic dictatorship and demonization of Muslim “terrorists” to forward mythological “Global War on Terror” narrative.

Sources:

“CBS News – FBI Foreknowledge of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.” YouTube. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9p1AnhDzWg>.

19 April 1995: Oklahoma City

Event: Bombing of government building via explosives in van and within building itself. Blamed solely on one man (Timothy McVeigh), completely disregarding structurally placed explosives and eyewitness accounts.

Motives: Provide pretext for establishment of domestic dictatorship and demonization of domestic extremist “terrorists.”

Sources:

Berger, J.M. “The Jesse Trentadue Files.” INTELWIRE. 17 Nov. 2005. <http://intelwire.egoplex.com/trentadueindex.html>.
Watson, Paul J. “McVeigh Video Destroys OKC Bombing Official Story.” Prison Planet. 18 Dec. 2006. <http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/okc_bombing_mcveigh_video_destroys_okc_official_story.htm>.
“The Oklahoma City Bombing – Were There Additional Explosive Charges and Additional Bombers?” What Really Happened. <http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/ok.php>.

11 September, 2001: New York

Event: Staged terror attacks in vein of 1962’s Operation Northwoods, apparently planned under the Clinton Administration, executed under Bush Administration, covered up by Obama.

Motives: Establishment of domestic (and global) dictatorship, pretext for Global War and demonization of anyone and everyone.

Fact: Government military drills gone live!

Sources:

“Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962.” The National Security Archive. 30 Apr. 2001. <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430>.
“Interview with Osama Bin Laden. Denies His Involvement in 9/11.” Centre for Research on Globalization. 9 May 2011. <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va>.
Donnelly, Thomas. “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” Project for a New American Century. Sept. 2000. <http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf>.
Herridge, Catherine. “EXCLUSIVE: Al Qaeda Leader Dined at the Pentagon Just Months After 9/11.” FoxNews.com. 20 Oct. 2010. <http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/10/20/al-qaeda-terror-leader-dined-pentagon-months>.
Harrit, Niels H., Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, and Bradley R. Larsen. “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe.” The Open Chemical Physics Journal 2.1 (2009): 7-31. <http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.htm?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM>.
9/11 Truth

12 October 2002, Bali Bombings (202 dead)

Event: Nightclub and car bombings.

Motives: Continuation of “War on Terror” meme, leaving no country exempt to “terrorist” attack. Trigger of “useful wave of indignation” in Australia for US alignment.

Sources:

Chossudovsky, Michel. “Who Was Behind the 2002 Bali Bomb Attack?” Centre for Research on Globalization. 14 Oct. 2005. <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va>.

11 March 2004, Madrid Bombings (192 dead, 1800 injured)

Event: Ten bombs exploded on four trains. The ETA were first blamed and then Al-Qaeda (Al-CIA-duh), both considered unfounded by Spanish court. All terrorist collaborators were linked to police.

Motives: Continuation of “War on Terror” meme, leaving no country exempt to “terrorist” attack. Can you say Operation Gladio?

Sources:

Miquel, Mathieu. “March 11, 2004. The Madrid 3/11 Bombings: Was It Really an Attack by “Islamic Terrorists”?” Centre for Research on Globalization. 6 Dec. 2009. <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va>.
Nimmo, Kurt. “More Evidence Madrid Bombing Was a False Flag Op.” Infowars. 17 July 2008. <http://www.infowars.com/more-evidence-madrid-train-bombing-was-a-false-flag-op>.

7 July 2005, London Bombings (52 dead, 700+ injured)

Event: Train bombing by four “homegrown” Islamic extremists.

Motive: Continue the GWOT narrative, expand foreign presence, increase domestic police state measures, population control by fear.

Fact: Government military drills gone live!

Sources:

Secker, Tom. “False Flags a Fluttering: The History of Deception and the London 7/7 Bombings.” Centre for Research on Globalization. 7 Dec. 2010. <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va>.
“VIDEO: Terror Exercise Held on the Same Morning as the London 7/7 Bomb Attack.” Centre for Research on Globalization. 12 July 2005. <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va>.
7/7: The Ripple Effect (2007)
Ludicrous Diversion
Mind the Gap

2007, Cheney’s Iranian Navy Seals

Event: Plan to dress up US Navy Seals as Iranian military, attack fellow US Military.

Motives: Pretext for entering Persian war theatre.

Sources:

Shakir, Faiz. “EXCLUSIVE: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them.” Think Progress. 31 July 2008. <http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/07/31/26940/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war>.

14 November, 2008, Germany, BND False Flag Operation

Event: German intelligence caught letting off explosives.

Sources:

Watson, Paul J. “German Intelligence Agents Caught Staging False Flag Terror.” Prison Planet.com. 24 Nov. 2008. <http://www.prisonplanet.com/german-intelligence-agents-caught-staging-false-flag-terror.html>.

26 November 2008, Mumbai Attacks

Event: Coordinated city-wide attacks killed 164.

Fact: Western intelligence agent directed attacks!

Sources:

Chossudovsky, Michel. “India’s 9/11. Who Was Behind the Mumbai Attacks?” Centre for Research on Globalization. 30 Nov. 2008. <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va>.
Corbett, James. “The US Agent and the Mumbai Massacre.” Centre for Research on Globalization. 12 June 2011. <http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2011/06/us-agent-and-mumbai-massacre>.

25 December 2009, Detroit, Underwear Bomber

Event: Young passport-less Nigerian man is somehow let on to a plane by a mysterious well-dressed Indian man (per witnesses), despite being on a terror watchlist and with authorities having been warned ahead of time by his concerned father.

Motives: Continue false “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) narrative. Provide excuse for the continued expansion of TSA and DHS powers and domestic security and surveillance grid. Increase funding, etc.

Sources:

Tarpley, Webster. “State Department Admits: Detroit Christmas Bomber Was Deliberately Allowed to Keep US Entry Visa, Board His Flight.” TARPLEY.net. 10 Feb. 2010. <http://tarpley.net/2010/02/11/state-department-admits-detroit-christmas-bomber-was-deliberately-allowed-to-keep-us-entry-visa-board-his-flight>.
Nimmo, Kurt. “Bombshell Eyewitness Revelations: Confirmed FBI Cover-Up Of Flight 253 Attack.” Infowars. 29 Dec. 2009. <http://www.infowars.com/bombshell-eyewitness-revelations-confirmed-fbi-cover-up-of-flight-253-attack>.
“Underwear Bomber False Flag to Be Exploited to Renew Draconian Patriot Act.” Infowars. 3 Jan. 2009. <http://www.infowars.com/underwear-bomber-false-flag-to-be-exploited-to-renew-draconian-patriot-act>.

2 May 2011: The Nine Lives of Osama bin Laden

Event: CIA asset Osama bin Laden announced dead ten years after the fact.

Sources:

Sampson, Anthony. “CIA Agent Alleged to Have Met Bin Laden in July.” Guardian. 1 Nov. 2001. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism>.
Cohen, Mark Francis. “Is Osama Suffering from a Rare Disease That Can Cause Sudden Death?” Salon.com. 9 Nov. 2001. <http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2001/11/09/marfan/print.html>.
“Pakistan’s Musharraf: Bin Laden Probably Dead.” CNN.com International. 18 Jan. 2002. <http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/01/18/gen.musharraf.binladen>.
“Karzai: Bin Laden ‘probably’ Dead.” CNN.com International. 06 Oct. 2002. <http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/central/10/06/karzai.binladen>.
“FBI Watson: Bin Laden ‘probably’ Dead.” BBC News. 18 July 2002. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2135473.stm>.
“Israeli Intelligence: Bin Laden Is Dead, Heir Has Been Chosen.” World Tribune. 16 Oct. 2002. <http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2002/me_terrorism_10_16.html>.
“Madeleine Albright: Bush Planning Bin Laden October Surprise.” NewsMax.com. 17 Dec. 2002. <http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2003/12/17/15126.shtml>.
“U.S., French Intelligence Officials Say Bin Laden Death Report Unconfirmed.” FoxNews.com. <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215301,00.html>.
Burger, Timothy. “Is Bin Laden Dead?” TIME.com. 23 Sept. 2006. <http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1538569,00.html>.
Baer, Bob. “When Will Obama Give Up the Bin Laden Ghost Hunt?” TIME.com. 18 Nov. 2008. <http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1859354,00.html>.
“Late Benazir Bhutto Claimed Osama Was Killed “years Ago” (VIDEO).” IBTimes.com. 2 May 2011. <http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/140408/20110502/benazir-bhutto-osama-bin-laden-pakistan.htm>.
“War of Terror Is a Reichstag Fire False Flag Operation.” Breaking All the Rules. 8 May 2011. <http://www.batr.org/wrack/050811.html>.

2010-11: Operation Fast & Furious

Event: Direct selling of weapons by US Government to Mexican drug cartels. US Government oversight of drug traffic into U.S.

Motives: Annul 2nd Amendment, incite violence as pretext for US intervention and provide pretext for “common security” integration for future North American Union (i.e. Plan Merida, US-CAN Common Security Perimeter, etc.).

Sources:

Farago, Robert. “FARAGO: Was CIA behind Operation Fast and Furious?” Washington Times. 11 Aug. 2011. <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/11/was-cia-behind-operation-fast-and-furious>.
Watson, Paul J. “Obama Administration Caught Running False Flag Against Second Amendment.” Infowars. 24 June 2011. <http://www.infowars.com/obama-administration-caught-running-false-flag-against-second-amendment>.
Valdez, Diana Washington. “Documents: Feds Allegedly Allowed Sinaloa Cartel to Move Cocaine into U.S. for Information.” El Paso Times. 4 Aug. 2011. <http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_18608410?source=most_viewed>.
Newman, Alex. “Reports: CIA Working with Mexican Drug Cartels.” The New American. 15 Aug. 2011. <http://thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/north-america-mainmenu-36/8599-reports-cia-working-with-mexican-drug-cartels>.
Codrea, David. “Source Claims ATF’s Tampa SAC Walked Guns to Honduras.” Examiner. 6 July 2011. <http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-national/breaking-news-source-claims-atf-s-tampa-sac-walked-guns-to-honduras>.

22 July, 2011: Oslo, Norway: Anders Breivik

Event: The massacre of civilians via bombing and shooting by a right-wing domestic extremist blue-eyed caucasian Norwegian. Another instance of where a police and military drill went live, this time only twenty-six minutes after the drill had ended.

Motives: Continue a “strategy of tension” in the vein of Gladio. Shift narrative from left-wing and Muslim extremist to right-wing domestic populace, essentially broadening the suspect spectrum to now include anyone and everyone. The perfect pretext for the rendition and unwarranted arrest of any individual regardless of evidence or racial profile.

Fact: Government military drills gone live.

Sources:

Scott, Peter Dale. “Norway’s Terror as Systemic Destabilization: Breivik, the Arms-for-Drugs Milieu, and Global Shadow Elites.” Centre for Research on Globalization. 23 Aug. 2011. <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va>.
Foss, Andreas Bakke. “Trente På Utøya-scenario 22. Juli – Nyheter – Innenriks – Aftenposten.no.” Aftenposten.no. 26 Aug. 2011. <http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article4208952.ece>.
Nimmo, Kurt. “Norwegian Police Confirm Drill Identical to Breivik’s Attack.” Infowars. 26 Aug. 2011. <http://www.infowars.com/norwegian-police-confirm-drill-identical-to-breiviks-attack>.

Conclusion

This is rather a brief list and much more could be added. Certainly they are not limited to the US-centered network but apply also to that of the Russians, Israelis and other entities.

Studying the conspiratorial and realistic view of history may tend to make one view nearly every event as a larger “conspiracy.” Given the nature of the degenerates in power, that is unfortunately pretty much the case.

However, facts should objectively be checked and events weighed before mindlessly declaring them part of a systemic conspiracy. By their very nature these events fit the dictionary description of a conspiracy regardless, whether part of a small group of discontents or the systemic dark forces behind deep events, well detailed by Professor Peter Dale Scott. Let us pray these dark forces spare countless lives by foregoing any vile plans they may have for the tenth anniversary of their New York false flag operation.

Essential Documentaries:

Terrorstorm, 9/11: In Plane Sight, Loose Change, Core of Corruption, Fabled Enemies, 7/7: The Ripple Effect, The New American Century, Operation Gladio (BBC), Kill the Messenger: Sibel Edmonds

Assembling Your Home Armory

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Veritas Today

Assembling Your Home Armory

by Dick Clark

Previously by Dick Clark: Too Big To Fail?

Some folks collect guns and never shoot them. Some people acquire guns for the sake of owning them, showing them off to others, and generally babying them. It was due to these people that the term “safe queen” was coined. There is nothing wrong with collecting things. And with guns in particular, all you have to do is buy one to find out that it is hard to be satisfied with just one gun. But some of us don’t have the money, time, or interest to indiscriminately accumulate a collection of firearms as an end unto itself. We want to assemble an array of firearms qua tools, suitable for the variety of applications for which we anticipate needing that sort of tool. Each person’s lot in life is different, so no single list of “must have” guns can be truly authoritative.

Possible uses for firearms

Guns are useful for lots of different things: hunting, home defense, personal protection outside the home, paramilitary operations, and target shooting. These different applications present their own unique demands, and the firearm that is best suited for one is often ill-suited for the others.

A hunter in the swamps of lower Alabama will never have the opportunity to take a thousand yard shot in that area because the ground cover is too dense and elevations don’t provide a vantage point from which to make such a long shot on game in that region. A rifle that is capable of accurately throwing a bullet that far can be a fun hobby gun for such an individual, provided he has access to a long-distance shooting range, but the extra weight of a bull barrel, adjustable stock, large optics, and other accouterments reduce mobility. Likewise, a varminter in “big sky country” might find a .22 pistol utterly useless for shooting critters to which he never gets closer than seventy-five yards. We can look at the different classes of firearms and determine which of these fits into our lives and what qualities we should look for in a specimen from each relevant class.

Some guns are designed to perform very well in a limited, specific role. For example, the rifle carried by a modern biathelete is a creature of the competition context and the sport’s rules: .22 caliber, at least 7.5 pounds in weight, highly adjustable stock, short lock time, and capability to operate reliably in cold, snowy conditions. While these specifications may make such a rifle a good rabbit gun and an excellent target gun, a shorter, lighter gun with fewer frills can be had for far less money and still serve well in those roles.

Weapon engagement zones

A weapon engagement zone (WEZ) is a space of defined dimensions within which a particular weapon is to bear primarily responsibility for engaging targets. The best way to think about this is the “sweet spot” for each weapon – the range for which the weapon is optimized. Working our way out from CQB distances to long-range, a variety of different firearms present themselves as most suited for each zone: concealable handgun, full-frame handgun, shotgun, assault rifle, battle rifle, precision rifle, and heavy precision rifle.

The outer zones beyond 800 yards are likely not of concern to individuals primarily occupied with home defense preparations. My suggestion is to prepare for the innermost zones – mousegun, full-size handgun, and shotgun – first and then work through to the outer zones as needed given your particular geographical and socio-political contexts and whatever shooting or hunting sports you enjoy.

(NB: Firearms of each class are capable of sending rounds well past their optimal WEZ – sometimes several miles farther – so always be sure of your target and what is beyond it.)

Handguns

Handguns are lightest and smallest, and they are the firearms best suited for close-in confrontations and personal protection while outside of one’s home. Handguns are also near the top of the list for home defense, since they can typically be fired with one hand, meaning that your other hand is free to manipulate doorknobs and light switches or to fend off an attacker as you bring the muzzle to bear. And of course, they are easier to carry on your person or in your car than would be even the smallest shotguns or rifles.

The most easily concealable handguns are small and light for convenient everyday carry, an important consideration, but their diminutive size limits their firepower in terms of ammunition type and ammunition capacity. Compared to full-size pistols, affordable mouseguns like the Kel-Tec P3AT and Ruger LCP are tougher to shoot, with sights that are harder to see, heavier trigger pulls, and less gun to hold onto. Casual shooters will find it very difficult to reliably connect using these pocket pistols at ranges greater than ten yards. Full-size handguns, like the SIG Sauer P226 or Glock 17, are much easier to shoot well, with the novice shooter likely maxing out at around thirty or forty yards. Many handguns, especially larger models chambered in major calibers, are also useful for hunting a variety of game.

I offered more substantial advice for first-time handgun buyers in a previous article.

Shotguns

Shotguns are versatile weapons that may be used for hunting, sport shooting, or defensive purposes within forty or fifty yards. They are very different from rifles and handguns in that their barrels aren’t usually “rifled” – grooved so as to impart a stabilizing spin to a projectile – they are capable of projecting a pattern of pellets rather than a single projectile, and they operate at much lower chamber pressures. A shotgun may be loaded with many different types of ammunition: smaller, more numerous shot pellets for smaller game, larger “buckshot” pellets or slugs for larger quarry, and a variety of specialty rounds including less lethal options, breaching loads, and others. Shotgun rounds that fire multiple projectiles in a pattern make it much, much easier to shoot moving targets like birds and squirrels.

Shotgun projectiles are propelled at a relatively slow velocity. Although they are capable of imparting more energy into a target at close range than are pistol rounds, this energy dissipates with smaller shot sizes that make for a vastly greater surface area for the same total mass. As a result, a shotgun may be a good choice where over-penetration is a concern, such as in a home defense scenario. Be advised thought that, like pistol and rifle bullets, shotgun slugs and buckshot are capable of penetrating multiple interior walls and still retaining enough energy to injure or kill. According to one writer’s tests we can expect the following penetration characteristics:

Type	Equivalent interior walls penetrated
12 gauge shotgun, 2 ¾” birdshot	1
12 gauge shotgun, 2 ¾” #4 buck	3
12 gauge shotgun, 2 ¾” #1 buck	3
12 gauge shotgun, 2 ¾” 00 buck	4
12 gauge shotgun, 2 ¾” 1 oz rifled slug	6+
.22 LR pistol	3
9mm pistol	6+
.45 ACP pistol	6+
5.56 x 45mm rifle	6+

Additionally, the pattern of shot thrown by a shotgun gives the shooter a greater chance of scoring a hit within the weapon’s effective range, with the pattern spreading out to three to six feet in diameter at forty yards, depending on the choke used and other variables. Rifled slugs greatly improve a shotgun’s potential for accuracy at longer ranges and make the gun more useful for taking large game. An advantage of the common pump shotgun models – the Remington 870 and Mossberg 500 – besides the multitude of readily available accessories, is that the barrels are easily swapped out, and additional barrels are readily available in local gun stores or for purchase from internet vendors. This means that budget-minded individuals can buy a sporting shotgun with a longer barrel more useful for hunting and later, for a modest sum, purchase a shorter barrel more suited to defensive applications.

Assault rifles

From fifty yards to two hundred fifty yards, no weapon is better suited for quick, accurate defensive shooting than the assault rifle or its semi-automatic civilian equivalent, the modern sporting rifle. Firing intermediate power rifle cartridges like the 5.56 x 45mm and 7.62 x 39mm, rifles of this type – first developed in the early twentieth century – don’t quite have the power of a traditional hunting rifle. However, these cartridges are much shorter and lighter than their full powered counterparts, meaning that it is easier to carry more of them, a very good thing if you are expecting a gun fight. The lower recoil from these intermediate power cartridges also means that the user can send follow up shots downrange more rapidly than a full power rifle’s recoil impulse would allow.

Full power rifle rounds are accurate out to distances of 800 yards or more, but the trajectories of bullets fired from AR and AK-type rifles drop quickly after a couple of hundred yards. Even so, assault rifles are far more accurate than pistols. They are much more powerful, too, with the 5.56 x 45mm round from an AR capable of transferring three to four times as much energy into a target as the 9 x 19mm round. These rifles are also capable of bringing down game as large as a deer, though the conventional wisdom is that the 5.56 x 45mm round is undersized for humanely harvesting deer.

There are many options available to American buyers, with the AR and AK designs being the most popular – and most controversial – exemplars of this class. Because of their popularity, magazines and accessories for these models are readily available. Other options include Ruger’s venerable Mini-14 and Mini Thirty rifles, the featherweight Kel-Tec SU-16, and the ultra-affordable SKS, the standard version of which has a fixed magazine which must be reloaded one round at a time or with stripper clips.

Battle rifles

Battle rifles are easily differentiated from assault rifles by comparing the potency of the rounds they fire, ammunition capacity, and weight. Rather than firing an intermediate cartridge like the assault rifles, battle rifles fire full-powered cartridges like the .30-06 Springfield, 7.62 x 51mm, or the Russian 7.62 x 54mmR. Although these cartridges are heavier than the intermediate cartridges, they are far more powerful and capable of reliably bringing down targets at greater ranges. The 7.62 x 51mm cartridge, for example, is capable of communicating twice as much energy into a target as the 5.56 x 45mm. Penetration through cover is far superior as well, and the effective range of the 7.62 x 51mm is 800 yards or greater. Battle rifles are capable of reaching and neutralizing tougher and more distant targets than assault rifles, but this comes at the cost of higher recoil, smaller magazine capacities, and heavier, more expensive ammunition.

These rifles are not as abundant on the American market as AK and AR rifles, but many options are available. Some shooters, particularly those who enjoy an AR-15, swear by rifles patterned off of Eugene Stoner’s AR-10 design. Others are convinced that the Springfield M1A is the best battle rifle to be had. The Heckler & Koch G3 and Fabrique Nationale FAL have their own factions of devotees as well. The Spanish CETME rifle is an affordable option that shouldn’t be overlooked, especially since many of the parts are interchangeable with G3 components, both guns having been developed in a collaboration between H&K designer Ludwig Vorgrimler and the Spanish government small arms establishment. The new, hard-to-find Kel-Tec RFB from George Kellgren employs an ambidextrous bullpup design and molded polymer components for a shorter, lighter battle rifle suitable for urban environments. It is worth noting, however, that some folks argue that all bullpup designs are fundamentally flawed.

An excellent bargain still readily available on the surplus market due to miscalculation by twentieth century communist central-planners is the Soviet Mosin-Nagant rifle. This bolt-action rifle been in continuous service in one part of the world or another since 1891. It has a much lower rate of fire than the semi-automatic battle rifles listed above, but it can be had at a price that is nearly an order of magnitude cheaper: about $100. Surplus 7.62 x 54mmR ammunition is relatively inexpensive and widely available, just be warned that you will experience variations in quality and performance.

Precision rifles

Precision rifles are rifles mechanically capable of shooting groups that are one minute of angle or better within the rifle’s intended engagement zone. Such a rifle will, in the hands of a proficient marksman, post shot groups smaller than one inch at a hundred yards. If chambered for a full power cartridge, like 7.62 x 51mm, and fitted with adequate optics, these sorts of rifles can reliably hit man-sized targets out to 800 yards and beyond. Since the 7.62 x 51mm cartridge (called “.308 Winchester” on the adoring commercial market) is a NATO standard round, it is widely available, as are ballistics tables and other information on the many different .308 loads. Modern battle rifles are typically chambered for this ammunition type, so the same ammunition will fire in both sorts of rifles. Be advised, though, that ammunition specifically intended for use in a precision rifle will be manufactured to tighter tolerances and is much more expensive than military surplus rounds that are just fine for a battle rifle.

Many modern bolt-action deer rifles would serve well in this role, as has been proven by the military track records of the Remington Model 700 and the Winchester Model 70, the former of which was the basis for the United States Army’s M24 and the United States Marine Corps’ M40, and the latter of which was used for a number of years by U.S. Army and Marine snipers, including the legendary Carlos Hathcock. An excellent choice in class is the Savage Model 10FP, which boasts an extremely strong action and features an adjustable trigger assembly, free-floated barrel, and other accuracy enhancing features.

Hathcock’s 1967 record-setting 2500-yard single-shot kill with his Browning M2 machine gun and Unertl scope inspired gun-makers to create a new class of heavy precision rifle based around the .50 BMG cartridge. The cartridge was originally designed by John Browning for anti-aircraft use at the end of the first world war, but as a scaled-up version of the successful .30-06 Springfield cartridge it had the potential for excellent accuracy at previously inconceivable ranges. Barrett Firearms Manufacturing is far and away the best known maker of fifty caliber rifles. These extreme long-range capabilities come at a price, both in terms of weight – 25–30 pounds to lug around – and price – $3500–$8000 before you’ve even bought the requisite optics or the $3/round ammunition. The size of the .50 BMG round also means that there is a tremendous recoil impulse to deal with, something that Barrett and other designers tackle with gargantuan muzzle brakes. While the Barrett brake is very effective in taming the recoil generated by the .50 BMG, it does so by directing a substantial amount of pressure and noise back towards the shooter, kicking up a sizable dust cloud, and making serious (perhaps even redundant) ear and eye protection absolutely mandatory for safe shooting.

A more portable and more cost-effective substitute for the .50 BMG rifles can be had in rifles chambered for the .338 Lapua Magnum cartridge. The .338 was conceived of in 1989 specifically for use in long-range sniper rifles, and since its inception it has proven effective in that role, with the longest .338 Lapua Magnum kill logged at 2707 yards by a British sniper in 2009. The Savage 110 BA is a nicely equipped .338. With a sticker price of nearly $2000 it represents the lower end of what one might expect to spend on a precision rifle built around this special purpose round.

All precision rifles, no matter how finely tuned, depend on the skill of the shooters employing them. Mastering the fundamentals of rifle marksmanship can guarantee that a shooter connects with his targets within a few hundred yards, but at longer ranges an assortment of factors affect the trajectory of a bullet, including wind, temperature, and humidity. At extreme ranges, gyroscopic drift and even the rotation of the Earth may have to be accounted for in plotting a point of aim. While the ticket price for these rifles is substantial, accumulating the knowledge and experience necessary to take full advantage of their capabilities is even more daunting.

Practice

Before tying up a substantial sum in a precision rifle with all the bells and whistles, it is worthwhile to establish good shooting habits through lots of practice. A .22 LR rifle can be had for a very modest sum and fires a low-recoil, inexpensive, and ubiquitous ammunition type that is perfect for getting lots of practice. Although the extremely successful Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic rifle is more versatile for applications like small game hunting, as an old Boy Scout I prefer the bolt-action rifles with which I learned basic marksmanship. The process of opening the breach, manually loading each round, sliding the bolt forward, and locking the bolt down before firing incentivizes the shooter to make each shot count. This works to counteract the urge that a frustrated or excited shooter might have to just start banging away without really concentrating on trigger control, breath control, and sight picture.

Is Google+ Killing Anonymity?

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Veritas Today

Pentagon approves Hollywood scripts

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Veritas Today

War Inc. — Pentagon sucks in American youth

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Veritas Today

Maryland Staged Terror? FBI Caught Provocateuring Patsies

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Veritas Today

Maryland Staged Terror? FBI Caught Provocateuring Patsies

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
January 6, 2011

Reports of two explosions at the Maryland Department of Transportation’s headquarters in Hanover and a state government building in Annapolis should be treated with a huge amount of suspicion given the fact that the FBI has been caught habitually provocateuring patsies to commit bombings, most recently in Baltimore itself.

“A source has told 11 News that two packages exploded, one at the MDOT building and another at the Jeffrey Building on Francis Street in Annapolis. The source said when the packages were opened in the mail rooms of the buildings, a small explosion happened,” reports WBAL TV.

“Both were apparently sent through the mail, an official says. In both cases, the packages emitted a small bang or flame, but NBC’s Pete Williams said there were no explosives in the packages,” adds MSNBC. When the packages were opened, smoke was emitted and there was a chemical smell, say eyewitnesses

Although this may be the amateur work of someone with a genuine grudge, as we have documented for years and in dozens of cases, such terror plots are routinely set up by the FBI who provide the patsy with explosives and radicalize them into carrying out such plots through their vast informant network.

One of the more recent examples also occurred in Baltimore, where 21-year-old Antonio Martinez became suspicious that he was being set up by the FBI in a plot to bomb a military recruitment center.

“There was nothing provided which showed that Mr. Hussain (Martinez) had any ability whatsoever to carry out any kind of plan,” Martinez’ lawyer Joseph Balter said, labeling the entire series of events a “creation of the government”.

Martinez became suspect that he was being set up by the feds after he learned about the case of another patsy in Oregon who had been groomed by the FBI to bomb a Christmas lighting ceremony.

As Geraldo Rivera explains in the clip below, every recent domestic terror plot has been contrived by the FBI as part of an entrapment ploy. Geraldo called the case against 21 year old Antonio Martinez a.k.a. Muhammad Hussain “bogus, absolutely bogus.”

Expect this latest incident to be exploited by Homeland Security as a justifcation for more invasions of privacy via the opening and confiscation of mail and parcels.

Never Talk to the cops

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Veritas Today

You Have The Right To Remain Silent: Fifth Amendment Explained

by Bill Rounds
How to Vanish

Recently by Bill Rounds: Avoid Private Investigators

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

~ Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution

Download This Free Guide

The right to remain silent is a fundamental principle of liberty. It gives American citizens better privacy. The burden falls on the accuser to build a case against a person. If the accuser does not meet that burden, the accused is free to go. The accused never, ever, is required to furnish any evidence or testimony against himself. In other words, liberty requires that you have the right to remain silent.

If the accused were forced to produce evidence that they did not commit an act, innocent people would be forced to prove a negative. Proving a negative is usually far more difficult, if not impossible to do. Anyone without an alibi would be convicted. No one could afford to spend even one minute alone in that kind of world. The right to remain silent preserves a functioning system of justice and a functioning society.

Fifth Amendment Explained

The fifth amendment to the United States Constitution does not say explicitly that you have the right to remain silent. It does say that you do not have to be a witness against yourself. This means that you cannot be compelled to reveal information that might implicate you in a crime.

You Have The Right To Remain Silent Applies To Innocent People Too

Law-abiding citizens are particularly at risk because they think that the truth will set them free. They feel compelled that if they just tell their story they will be exonerated. This is not true. Numerous opportunities abound for an innocent individual to become entrapped by speaking with police.

Fifth Amendment Explained: Exaggeration, Misspeaking, Broad Statements

Innocent people often overstate or understate some fact while vigorously defending their innocence. This makes their testimony technically untrue, or at least a prosecutor can make it look like it’s untrue. Once attention is called to the misstatement, the rest of the testimony is suspect because of the one untruth. This suspicion may be sufficient to land the innocent person in jail.

You Have The Right To Remain Silent: Honest Mistakes

Police officers may make an innocent mistake and not remember correctly what you said. If you claim you told the cop one thing, and he claims you said another, the police officer will be believed over an accused any day. If you had said nothing, the cop would have to flat out lie that you said something. That is not likely to happen.

There may be a witness that will mistakenly identify you as the suspect in a crime. If you claim one thing that is absolutely true, there may be a solid witness that is honestly mistaken about seeing you. If your testimony contradicts theirs, the witness will be believed instead of the accused. If you don’t say anything, there will be nothing to contradict and the honesty of the accused will not be in play.

Fifth Amendment Explained: Overcriminalization

The federal criminal code contains over 10,000 crimes. State laws add even more crimes to the list. Not even the government knows them all. Many of these crimes are for seemingly innocent behavior, such as buying 2 packages of cold medicine, or possessing a flower that any other country in the world has outlawed. Thus, telling your true story about your seemingly completely innocent behavior could, in and of itself, implicate you in a crime, you should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever speak to government agents, ever.

Criminals know that talking may incriminate them and so are much more aware of their right to silence and are much more inclined to use it. Innocent people like you aren’t aware of these dangers. And, if someone is truly innocent, they need to know this right and know how to use it far more than criminals do.

You Have The Right To Remain Silent For A Reason. Use It For Better Privacy.

Under no circumstances should you ever talk to a police officer, fire fighter, ticket enforcer or street sweeper. All of them are government agents and can be a witness to use anything you say to them against you in a court of law.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that to invoke your right to silence, you have to break your silence and speak. They might need the fifth amendment explained to them again, but that is what they said. A simple phrase such as “I am invoking my right to remain silent” should suffice.

Free Aid For Better Privacy

There is a free and handy insert for your passport that will show you exactly what you need to do to invoke your right to remain silent. It is designed to help you right when you need it. You will have it with you as you go through Customs upon re-entering the US. Customs officers may need to have the fifth amendment explained to them too, so there are several cases which clearly show your right to remain silent in that situation. Remaining silent can give you better privacy when re-entering the country.

Customs will still have the right to do a thorough search of you and your belongings whether you invoke your right to remain silent or not. Threatening a search, or actually subjecting you to search for invoking your rights is within their power.

Avoid Hassle

To avoid being targeted for a search, it helps if you are not the only one invoking your rights. If lots of others are invoking their right to remain silent on a regular basis, no single individual will stand out any more than normal.

To decrease the likelihood of a search and promote even better privacy, share the free guide with everyone that you know. You have permission to post it anywhere, share it with anyone, make copies, print, and distribute it for free in any legal way as long as nothing is changed. The more people that exercise their rights, the better privacy for everybody.

Download This Free Guide

So go ahead and download and distribute this free guide and enjoy.

Bankers or Us

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Veritas Today

‘Bankers or us’ tops Google trends

Infowars.com
December 2, 2010




	Bankers or Us’ tops Google Trends for December 2, 2010.

The search term ‘bankers or us‘ has reached number 1 on Google’s trends this December 2, 2010. It signifies a grassroots revolt in the Infowar against the economic war being waged against ordinary Americans under the guise of solving the economic crisis. Thanks to supporters who made this happen.

IN A SPECIAL VIDEO ADDRESS, Alex Jones makes clear that we face a war for freedom against the bankers: it’s the bankers or us. Their private control of the Federal Reserve central bank and other interlocked global institutions amounts to a power dynamic we cannot ignore except at our peril. Inflationary printing and debt obligations have been implemented as false “solutions” to an engineered global crisis based on fraudulent lending practices and a derivatives bubble that can never be paid off. These measures only obligate Americans and peoples across the world to undertake a debt hit that crushes independence and expands debt slavery. We must resist that system.