Is the Saudi 9/11 Story Part Of The Deception? — Paul Craig Roberts

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Is the Saudi 9/11 Story Part Of The Deception?

Paul Craig Roberts

James Jesus Angleton, head of CIA counterintelligence for three decades, long ago explained to me that intelligence services create stories inside stories, each with its carefully constructed trail of evidence, in order to create false trails as diversions. Such painstaking work can serve a variety of purposes. It can be used to embarrass or discredit an innocent person or organization that has an unhelpful position on an important issue and is in the way of an agenda. It can be used as a red herring to draw attention away from a failing explanation of an event by producing an alternative false explanation. I forget what Angleton called them, but the strategy is to have within a false story other stories that are there but withheld because of “national security” or “politically sensitive issues” or some such. Then if the official story gets into trouble, the backup story can be released in order to deflect attention into a new false story or to support the original story. Angleton said that intelligence services protect their necessary misdeeds by burying the misdeed in competing explanations.

Watching the expert craftsmanship of the “Saudis did 9/11” story, I have been wondering if the Saudi story is what Angleton described as a story within a story.

The official 9/11 story has taken too many hits to remain standing. The collapse of Building 7, which, if memory serves, was not mentioned at all in the 9/11 Commission Report, has been proven to have been a controlled demolition. Building 7 collapsed at free fall acceleration, which can only be achieved with controlled demolition.

Over 100 firemen, policemen, and building maintenance personnel who were inside the two towers prior to their collapse report hearing and experiencing multiple explosions. According to William Rodriguez, a maintenance employee in the north tower, there were explosions in the sub-basements of the tower prior to the time airplanes are said to have hit the towers.

An international team of scientists found in the dust of the towers both reacted and unreacted residues of explosives and substances capable of instantly producing the extreme temperatures that cut steel.

A large number of pilots, both commercial and military, have questioned the ability of alleged hijackers with substandard flight skills to conduct the maneuvers required by the flight paths.

2,500 architects and engineers have called for an independent investigation of the failure of the towers that were certified to be capable of withstanding a hit by airplanes.

The revelation that the 9/11 attack was financed by the Saudi government has the effect of bolstering the sagging official story while simultaneously satisfying the growing recognition that something is wrong with the official story.

Commentators and media are treating the story of Saudi financing of 9/11 as a major revelation that damns the Bush regime, but the revelation not only leaves in place but also strengthens the official story that Osama bin Laden carried out the attack with precisely the hijackers identified in the original story. The Bush regime is damned merely for protecting its Saudi friends and withholding evidence of Saudi financing.

The evidence of Saudi financing is what restores the credibility of the original story. Nothing changes in the story of the collapse of the three WTC buildings, the attack on the Pentagon, and the crashed airliner in Pennsylvania. American anger is now directed at the Saudis for financing the successful attacks.

To hype the Saudi story is to support the official story. A number of commentators who are usually suspicious of government are practically jumping up and down for joy that now they have something to pin on Bush. They haven’t noticed that what they are pinning on him supports the official 9/11 story.

Moreover, they have not explained why the Saudi government would finance an attack on the country that protects it. Saudi Arabia is a long-time partner. They accept pieces of paper for their oil and then use the paper to finance the US Treasury’s debt and to purchase US weapons systems, purchases that lead to larger weapons sales, thus spreading R&D costs over larger volume.

What do the Saudis have to gain from embarrassing the US by demonstrating the total failure of US national security? Really, if a few hijackers can outfox the NSA, the CIA, and the national security state, we clearly aren’t getting out money’s worth and are giving up our civil liberties for nothing.

Saudi financing does not explain who had access to wire the buildings for demolition, or to schedule on 9/11 a simulated attack that the actual attack modeled, thus causing confusion among some authorities about what was real and what was not.

Saudi financing does not explain the dancing Israelis who were apprehended filming the attacks on the towers and who later said on Israeli TV that they were sent to New York to film the attack. How did the Israelis know? Did Prince Bandar tell them? Bush didn’t tell us about the Saudis, and the Israelis didn’t tell us about the attack. Which is worse?

This Saudi revelation is too convenient for the official story. How do we know that it was not devised as a story inside the story to be used when the story got into trouble? The Saudis would be a logical choice to be put in such a position as the original neoconservative plan for overthrowing Middle Eastern governments included overthrowing Saudi Arabia. Now we have an excuse.

I have doubts that the alleged hijackers played any role other than cover for bringing down buildings by controlled demolition. Possibly the hijackers and the Saudis who financed them, if the evidence is real and not concocted, were not aware of their role and thought they were participating in a different deception.

Are we being deceived again with a story inside a story? Will it succeed along the lines that Angleton explained? Or will it possibly backfire? If the US government will hide some of the truth from us for 13 years, why not all of the truth? What else in the official story is false?

The post Is the Saudi 9/11 Story Part Of The Deception? — Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.

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In Surprising Move, Twitter Permanently Bans Conservative Commentator Milo Yiannopoulos

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On Tuesday night, in a surprising move, Twitter permanently banned conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos from using its service. Yiannopoulos, an editor for prominent conservative website Breitbart.com, has been known for making provocative statements on Twitter and elsewhere.

Twitter said the suspension was part of a wider move to block a number of user accounts for abuse and harassment after Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones on Monday drew renewed attention to the issue and announced she would quit the social media site.

Jones retweeted and shared several abusive tweets she received Monday before telling her 250,000 followers: "I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart. All this cause I did a movie. You can hate the movie but the shit I got today... wrong." Jones shared some of the racist tweets targeted toward her, many of which compared her to an ape. User YellowArmedImposter wrote, "Your Ghostbusters isn't the first to have an ape in it," which Jones shared with the comment: "I just don't understand." Jones, who is also a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live, publicly pondered over several tweets what would prompt people to "spew hate."

"I used to wonder why some celebs don't have Twitter accts now I know," she wrote in one tweet. In a separate post, she added: "Twitter I understand you got free speech I get it. But there has to be some guidelines when you let spread like that."

Among those banned Tuesday was Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who has been a controversial figure on the site and helped lead the abuse against Jones. Yiannopoulos did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Twitter said in a statement Tuesday that it had seen an "uptick" in the number of accounts violating its abuse and harassment policies over the past 48 hours, noting it had enforced its policies either by issuing warnings or permanently suspending users. "We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter. We agree," Twitter said in the statement. "We are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to better allow us to identify and take faster action on abuse as it's happening and prevent repeat offenders."

“People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter,” said a Twitter official in a statement. “But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others.”

“We have been in the process of reviewing our hateful conduct policy to prohibit additional types of abusive behavior and allow more types of reporting, with the goal of reducing the burden on the person being targeted,” the official said. “We’ll provide more details on those changes in the coming weeks.”

According to the Hill, a Twitter spokesperson did not respond to a question about what policy violation specifically led to Yiannopoulos’s suspension.

While Yiannopoulos did not immediately respond to a Hill request for comment, told Breitbart that "this is the end for Twitter." "Anyone who cares about free speech has been sent a clear message: you’re not welcome on Twitter," he said.

In a comment, Milo said “With the cowardly suspension of my account, Twitter has confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and Black Lives Matter extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives.”

“Twitter is holding me responsible for the actions of fans and trolls using the special pretzel logic of the left. Where are the Twitter police when Justin Bieber’s fans cut themselves on his behalf? Like all acts of the totalitarian regressive left, this will blow up in their faces, netting me more adoring fans. We’re winning the culture war, and Twitter just shot themselves in the foot.”

He is scheduled to appear at an event linked to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Tuesday night.

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Wikileaks Is About to Expose the Turkish Coup, but Someone Is Trying to Silence Them

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(ANTIMEDIA) Wikileaks claimed Monday it was under attack after it announced it would release hundreds of thousands of documents related to Turkey and the failed military coup attempted Friday, CNET reported.

The organization, which has released information on everything from war crimes to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, announced Sunday it would be releasing 100,000 documents related to Turkey’s “political power structure,” some of which detail the “leadup” to the coup.

ANNOUNCE: Get ready for a fight as we release 100k+ docs on #Turkey‘s political power structure. #TurkeyCoup #Soon pic.twitter.com/dhJuWza4Es

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 18, 2016

Wikileaks anticipated the release would be censored in Turkey, cautioning in a three-part tweet posted Monday:

“Turks will likely be censored to prevent them reading our pending release of 100k+ docs on politics leading up to the coup. We ask that Turks are ready with censorship bypassing systems such as TorBrowser and uTorrent and that everyone else is ready to help them bypass censorship and push our links through the censorship to come.”

Turks will likely be censored to prevent them reading our pending release of 100k+ docs on politics leading up to the coup. (1/3)

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 18, 2016

We ask that Turks are ready with censorship bypassing systems such as TorBrowser and uTorrent (2/3)

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 18, 2016

And that everyone else is ready to help them bypass censorship and push our links through the censorship to come. (3/3)

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 18, 2016

The Turkish government, headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has increasingly ramped up censorship efforts against journalists, lending credibility to Wikileaks suspicions their release may not fully reach Turkish citizens—especially considering the latest leak concerns his ruling party, AKP.

As CNET noted:

“Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were reportedly blocked in Turkey during the attempted coup Friday, but many residents appear to have gotten around the blocks, posting messages and videos, likely using VPNs or other anonymizing services.”

Throughout Monday, Wikileaks continued to promote the release.

Turks ask whether WikiLeaks is pro or anti-AKP. Neither. Our only position is that truth is the way forward. 100k+ docs serves all sides.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 18, 2016

They then tweeted that instead of 100,000 documents, they would actually be releasing far more. “Our pending release of 100k docs on Turkish political power? Just kidding. The first batch is 300k emails, 500k docs,” they announced.

But just hours later, they alerted followers their website was being attacked. “Our infrastructure is under sustained attack,” they tweeted, alongside the hashtag, #TurkeyPurge.

Our infrastructure is under sustained attack. #TurkeyPurge #Turkey

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 18, 2016

“We are unsure of the true origin of the attack. The timing suggests a Turkish state power faction or its allies. We will prevail & publish,” Wikileaks tweeted shortly after.

We are unsure of the true origin of the attack. The timing suggests a Turkish state power faction or its allies. We will prevail & publish.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 18, 2016

An hour later, the organization remained resolute in its determination to publish the hundreds of thousands of documents. “Coming Tuesday: The#ErdoganEmails: 300 thousand internal emails from Erdoğan’s AKP – through to July 7, 2016,” they tweeted.

Coming Tuesday: The #ErdoganEmails: 300 thousand internal emails from Erdoğan’s AKP – through to July 7, 2016. pic.twitter.com/QGHEc7eCPB

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 18, 2016

After tweeting further about the ongoing cyber attacks, Wikileaks eventually announced Tuesday they had released the first installment of emails, which can be viewed here. The emails are from the server of the AKP.

The failed military coup in Turkey over the weekend heightened tensions within the country, where President Erdoğan has grown increasingly autocratic. The Turkish government has also been implicated in the rise of ISIS and has been accused of allowing fighters to cross through their borders and providing them with medical assistance.

The coup, which continues to be mired in uncertainties, accusations, and conflicting reports, left Turkish citizens between a rock and a hard place—a military coup or an increasingly oppressive democratically-elected leader who has now overseen 50,000 suspensions or detainments of government employees regarding the military’s failed attempt to seize power.

It seems Wikileak’s release of information on Turkish power structures could not come at a more vital time—that is, so long as it reaches the Turkish people.

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This article (Wikileaks Is About to Expose the Turkish Coup, but Someone Is Trying to Silence Them) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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It Is A Smoking Gun - Prince Bandar And Other Saudis Financed The 9/11 Terrorists

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Submitted by Justin Raimondo via Anti-War.com,

News reports about the recently released 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks are typically dismissive: this is nothing new, it’s just circumstantial evidence, and there’s no “smoking gun.” Yet given what the report actually says – and these news accounts are remarkably sparse when it comes to verbatim quotes – it’s hard to fathom what would constitute a smoking gun.

To begin with, let’s start with what’s not in these pages: there are numerous redactions. And they are rather odd. When one expects to read the words “CIA” or “FBI,” instead we get a blacked-out word. Entire paragraphs are redacted – often at crucial points. So it’s reasonable to assume that, if there is a smoking gun, it’s contained in the portions we’re not allowed to see. Presumably the members of Congress with access to the document prior to its release who have been telling us that it changes their entire conception of the 9/11 attacks – and our relationship with the Saudis – read the unredacted version. Which points to the conclusion that the omissions left out crucial information – perhaps including the vaunted smoking gun.

In any case, what we have access to makes more than just a substantial case: it shows that the Saudi government – including top officials, such as then Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and other members of the royal family – financed and actively aided the hijackers prior to September 11, 2001.

Support for at least two of the hijackers when they arrived in the US was extended by three key individuals:

• Omar al-Bayoumi – Bayoumi was clearly a Saudi intelligence agent: the FBI all but identifies him as such. His salary was paid for by companies directly owned and operated by the Saudi government, although he apparently rarely showed up for “work.” He was directly subsidized by the wife of then Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, and these subsidies were substantially increased when the hijackers arrived in the US. It was Bayoumi who hovered over two of the hijackers – Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Midhar – as soon as they arrived in the United States. He got them an apartment, co-signed the rental agreement, chauffeured them around – and helped them obtain information on flight schools.

• Osama Bassnan – This individual, who, according to the report, has “many ties to the Saudi government,” boasted to an informant that he did more for the two hijackers than Bayoumi. He was certainly in a position to do so, since he lived directly across the street from them in San Diego. The FBI characterized him as “an extremist and supporter of Osama bin Laden”: like Bayoumi, his longtime associate – with whom he was in constant communication at the time of the hijackers’ American sojourn – Bassnan was subsidized by the Saudi royal family, and specifically Prince Bandar and his wife. A search of Basnan’s apartment turned up indications that he had cashiers checks amounting to $74,000. Bandar’s wife’s account had a standing arrangement to send monthly checks to Basan’s wife for “nursing services.” There is no evidence that such services were ever performed. The suppressed 28 pages cite direct payments from Prince Bandar to Basnan:

  “On at least one occasion, Bassnan received a check directly from Prince Bandar’s account. Accordion to the FBI, on May 14, 1998, Bassnan cashed a check from Bandar in the amount of $15,000. Bassnan’s wife also received at least one check directly from Bandar She also received one additional check froth Bandar’s wife, which she cashed on January 8, 1998 for 10,000.”

• Shayk Fahah al-Thumairy – He was a diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles and imam of the King Fahad mosque, which is a focal point of Muslim-Saudi activity in the area. US intelligence avers that “initial indications are that al-Thumairy may have had a physical or financial connection to al-Hamzi and al-Midhar.” Both attended the King Fahad mosque. Thumairy was interviewed by US law enforcement after fleeing to Saudi Arabia, and denied having any contact with the two hijackers – in spite of evidence that he was in telephonic contact with them. This, he asserted, was an attempt to “smear” him.

The two hijackers had extensive contacts with Saudi naval officers in the United States, according to telephone records. And when Abu Zubaydah, one of the accused 9/11 conspirators, was captured in Pakistan, they found the phone number of a Colorado company that managed “the affairs of the Colorado residence of the Saudi Ambassador.” Prince Bandar is practically the star of the suppressed 28 pages – no wonder the Bush administration, which had close ties to him, fought so hard to keep this secret.

The 28 pages also reveal that an individual – name redacted – associated with al-Qaeda and the hijackers sneaked into the US, avoiding Customs agents and the INS due to the fact that he was traveling with a member of the Saudi royal family. We are also told that “Another Saudi national with close ties to the Saudi Royal Family, [redacted], is the subject of FBI counterterrorism investigations and reportedly was checking security at the United States’ southwest border in 1999 and discussing the possibility of infiltrating individuals into the United States.”

The Saudi government’s financial and operational ties to at least two of the 9/11 hijackers are myriad, and largely substantiated. Furthermore, although some of these links as detailed in the 28 pages are tentative, it’s important to remember that this report was written in 2002, and that the intelligence community was strongly admonished to follow up because lawmakers deemed the lack of investigation into the Saudi connection “unacceptable.” So what did they find out in the fourteen years after that admonition was delivered? Inquiring minds want to know….

Prince Bandar went on to become head of Saudi intelligence: his personal relationship with the Bush family is well-known, and his access to US government officials – and his powerful influence in Washington – makes his starring role in the nurturing of the two hijackers into a gun that, while not quite smoking, is exuding vapors of a highly suggestive nature.

“Circumstantial evidence”? Perhaps – but people have been convicted of murder on the basis of such evidence, and, in this case, there is such a preponderance of evidence that a guilty verdict is unavoidable.

It would not be stretching the evidence to bluntly state that the suppressed 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry report on the 9/11 terrorist attacks places agents of the Saudi government at the epicenter of the plot. In short, there’s no two ways about it: the Saudis did 9/11.

Why did our government cover up this shocking evidence for so long?

The reason is because they had no desire to retaliate against the real perpetrators of 9/11. Instead, as we now know, they were determined to pin the blame on Saddam Hussein: indeed, the Bush administration pressed this talking point relentlessly, until it was forced to backtrack. We attacked Iraq, in the words of neocon grise eminence and top Bush administration official Paul Wolfowitz, because it was “doable.” A years long neoconservative campaign to target Iraq gained new impetus in the wake of 9/11, and the administration and its journalistic camarilla pushed the lie that Iraq was behind the attack. The evidence that the Saudis were involved had to be suppressed – because the Bush administration’s war plans depended on it.

Now that we know the truth, what do we do about it?

To begin with, if any other government had connections to a terrorist attack on the US of this nature, their capital would’ve been a smoking ruin. I’m not suggesting we do that, but at the very least the Saudis must be made to pay a high price for their complicity, starting with a moratorium on all US aid and arms sales to the Kingdom. We imposed trade sanctions on Russia for far less. Cutting off the Saudis from the US banking system should put a crimp in their extensive international network of terror-financing and money-laundering. And I know it’s too much to expect a public statement from our President pointing out that a US “ally” aided and abetted those who murdered over 3,000 people on 9/11, but I can dream, can’t I?

The Saudis aren’t our allies: as the 28 pages make all too clear, they are our deadly enemies. And they ought to be treated as such.

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Over 1 Million? Why We May Never Know How Many Civilians Have Died in Iraq War

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(ANTIMEDIA) In some ways, the Chilcot Inquiry was a success for the anti-war crowd, as it confirmed everything we already knew about the war in Iraq. In other ways, it was a complete disappointment because it failed to dig into the fundamental problems underlying the U.S. and U.K.’s pursuit of this horrific, illegal  war.

As the U.S. presence in Iraq continues to increase thirteen years after the initial U.S.-U.K. led invasion, it is time to ask at least one hard question the Chilcot Inquiry failed to ask.

How many civilians in Iraq have lost their lives because of the 2003 invasion?

Unfortunately, this is something the Chilcot Inquiry refused to investigate. Section 17 of the Chilcot Inquiry Report stated:

“It is beyond the scope and abilities of this Inquiry to establish independently the number of fatalities caused by conflict in Iraq, or the broader human cost of the conflict to the Iraqi people.”

How the number of fatalities in Iraq is outside the scope of a report that contains a roughly 40-page section entitled “Civilian Casualties” is unclear, especially given that John Chilcot previously identified the scope of the Inquiry as “broad.”

Unfortunately, the United Kingdom has shown no real interest in recording Iraqi casualties. The U.S. establishment also has a long history of refusing to perform body counts. As Gen. Tommy R. Franks stated in response to reports that U.S. bombs had killed 1,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the Afghanistan campaign of 2001-2002, “You know, we don’t do body counts.”

This is not an accident.

In May 2013, university researchers from the U.S., Canada, and Iraq put together a study using randomized surveys of 2,000 households. They found approximately 461,000 people had died in Iraq in the years of 2003-2011. Sixty percent of these deaths were directly attributable to violence, both by coalition forces and as a result of the sectarian violence the war produced.

“We think it is roughly around half a million people dead. And that is likely a low estimate,” said public health expert Amy Hagopian, leader of the survey.

The chaos created by the 2003 invasion has displaced over a million people, meaning acquiring the full statistics would be almost impossible. This is one of the reasons why experts deem the estimate of the survey to be conservative.

Leslie Roberts of Columbia University, who has previously led wartime mortality surveys in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, and Iraq, said the study was “serious” and “credible.”

However, a John Hopkins’ University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health report estimated that by 2006, the number of Iraqis who had lost their lives had already risen to 650,000. The introduction of the report stated:

“When Johns Hopkins epidemiologists set out to study the war in Iraq, they did not anticipate that their findings would be so disturbing, or so controversial.”

In 2015, a report by Physicians for Social Responsibility estimated the death toll had already passed one million. This is a number regularly thrown around, as argued by former despot Muammar Gaddafi when he questioned the reasoning behind the invasion of Iraq and the death of one million Iraqis.

So how many Iraqis have lost their lives because of the U.S.-U.K. invasion? We still don’t know.

Either way one looks at it, the conservative estimates alone suggest the death toll is immense. America’s most openly bloody and aggressive war prior to the Iraq war was, of course, the Vietnam invasion; some estimates put the death toll as high as three million. However, the fact remains that with Iraq, like Vietnam, we still don’t know the exact number of people who lost their lives following the forcible invasion of a sovereign nation, paid for by our tax dollars.

Combined with the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children that resulted from U.S. sanctions on the Iraqi regime following the first Gulf invasion of 1991, it should be clear to even the most racist, xenophobic war hawk that U.S.-U.K. policies towards Iraq have been brutally unjust.

This is likely why the U.S.-U.K. establishment never wants this number to come to light and refuses to keep records. With perpetual urgings that former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair should face prosecution for his role in the war, the less truth that comes out, the more convenient it will be for his current lifestyle.

The sadly hypocritical element of the debacle is that U.S. officials still refuse to acknowledge civilian casualties and deaths in Iraq caused by their own actions—yet they seem confident enough to accuse Bashar al-Assad of killing scores of civilians in Syria based on the information provided by one man who owns a clothes shop in England.

Apparently, strategic resources such as oil, are worth inflicting such horror. In order to understand the true terror of the Iraq war, look no further than this account from an Iraqi civilian:

“If one bullet was shot towards them [US coalition forces] they would open fire at everyone, Iraqis were dying every day…One day after the fall of Baghdad we discovered the truth – that they did not come to save Iraq, they were destroying it…We knew they had an agenda, and that agenda was oil.”

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Millennials Face An Existential Crisis: "It Won't Be A Short Period Of Difficulty"

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Authored by John  Mauldin, originally posted at MauldinEconomics.com,

Psychologists from Sigmund Freud forward have generally agreed: our core attitudes about life are largely locked in by age five or so. Changing those attitudes requires intense effort.

Neil Howe and William Strauss took this obvious truth and drew an obvious conclusion: if our attitudes form in early childhood, then the point in history at which we live our childhood must play a large part in shaping our attitudes.

It’s not only early childhood, however, that forms us. Howe and Strauss think we go through a second formative period in early adulthood. The challenges we face as we become independent adults determine our approach to life.

These insights mean we can divide the population into generational cohorts, each spanning roughly 20 years. Each generation consists of people who were born and came of age at the same point in history.

These generations had similar experiences and thus gravitated toward similar attitudes.

At this year’s Strategic Investment Conference, Howe illustrated the point with this cartoon. (I think we should now add an illustration of a couple texting on their phones, saying “Let’s tell our friends online first.”)

Amusing, yes, but true. Young love, a universal experience, took different forms for Americans who grew up in the 1950s vs. the 1970s vs. the 1990s. Ditto for many other aspects of life.

Four generational archetypes: Heroes, Artists, Prophets, & Nomads

In their book The Fourth Turning, Howe and Strauss identified four generational archetypes: Hero, Artist, Prophet, and Nomad. Each consists of people born in a roughly 20-year period. As each archetypal generation reaches the end of its 80-year lifespan, the cycle repeats.

Each archetypal generation goes through the normal phases of life: childhood, young adulthood, mature adulthood, and old age. Each tends to dominate society during middle age (40–60 years old) then begins dying off as the next generation takes the helm.

This change of control from one generation to the next is called a “turning” in the Strauss/Howe scheme. The cycle repeats on a “fourth turning” as a new hero generation comes of age and replaces the nomads. Each fourth turning, however, is a great crisis.

(The turnings have their own characteristics, which I describe in detail in this article. Today’s economic and political landscape, unfortunately, makes it clear we are about halfway through the fourth turning.)

Now, let’s get back to the archetypes and see how they match the generations alive today.

The characteristics of each archetype aren’t neatly divided by the calendar; they are better seen as evolving along a continuum. (This is a very important point. It’s why we get trends and changes, not abrupt turnarounds. Thankfully.) People born toward the beginning or end of a generation share some aspects of the previous or following one.

Hero generations are usually raised by protective parents. Heroes come of age during a time of great crisis. Howe calls them heroes because they resolve that crisis, an accomplishment that then defines the rest of their lives.

 

Following the crisis, heroes become institutionally powerful in midlife and remain focused on meeting great challenges. In old age, they tend to have a spiritual awakening as they watch younger generations work through cultural upheaval.

 

The G.I. Generation that fought World War II is the most recent example of the hero archetype. They built the US into an economic powerhouse in the postwar years and then confronted youthful rebellion in the 1960s.

 

Further back, the generation of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, heroes of the American Revolution, experienced the religious “Great Awakening” in their twilight years.

 

Artists are the children of heroes, born before and during the crisis. They are, however, not old enough to be an active part of the solution. Highly protected during childhood, Artists are risk-averse young adults in the post-crisis years.

 

They see conformity as the best path to success. They develop and refine the innovations forged in the crisis. Artists experience the same cultural awakening as heroes but from the perspective of mid-adulthood.

 

Today’s older retirees are mostly artists, part of the “Silent Generation” that may remember World War II but were too young to participate. They married early and moved into gleaming new 1950s suburbs.

 

The Silent Generation went through its own midlife crisis in the 1970s and 1980s before entering a historically affluent, active, gated-community retirement.

 

Prophet generations experience childhood in a period of post-crisis affluence. Having not seen a real crisis, they often create cultural upheaval during their young adult years. In midlife, they become moralistic, values-obsessed leaders and parents. As they enter old age, prophets lay the groundwork for the next crisis.

 

The postwar Baby Boomers are the latest prophet generation. They grew up in generally comfortable times with the US at the height of its global power. They expanded their consciousness when they came of age in the “Awakening” period of the 1960s. They defined the 1970s/1980s “yuppie” lifestyle and are now entering old age, having shaped the culture by virtue of sheer numbers.

 

Nomads are the fourth and final archetype. They are children during the “Awakening” periods of cultural chaos. Unlike the overly indulged and protected prophets, nomads go through childhood with minimal supervision and guidance. They learn early in life not to trust society’s basic institutions. They come of age as individualistic pragmatists.

 

The most recent nomads are Generation X, born in the 1960s and 1970s. Their earliest memories are of faraway war, urban protests, no-fault divorce, and broken homes.

 

Now entering midlife, Generation X is trying to give its own children a better experience. They find success elusive because they distrust large institutions and have no strong connections to public life. They prefer to stay out of the spotlight and trust only themselves. Their story is still unfolding today.

Millennials are a new hero generation

After the nomad archetype, the cycle repeats with another hero generation: the Millennials (born from 1982 through about 2004) are beginning to take root in American culture.

They are a large generation numerically, filling schools and colleges and propelling new technology into the mainstream. If the pattern holds, they will face a great crisis. It will influence the rest of their lives… just as World War II shaped the G.I. Generation heroes.

It’s not going to be a short period of difficulty. It will be an existential crisis, one in which society’s strongest institutions collapse (or are severely challenged and stressed) and national survival is in serious doubt. The Crisis can be economic, cultural, religious, military, or all the above.

Using Neil Howe’s timeline, we are currently about halfway through the fourth turning. We may have another decade to go. Maybe not. We’ll figure this out soon.

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There Will Be No Second American Revolution: The Futility of an Armed Revolt

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/there_will_be_no_second_american_revolution_the_futility_of_an_armed_r

Kierkegaard on Christian scholarship.

ORIGINAL LINK

Escoffier posted this quote from Kierkegaard yesterday in the discussion of Vox’s riff on my CBMW post:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in this world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

 

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C.I.A. - Controlling It All

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Via The Daily Bell,

How the CIA Hoodwinked Hollywood... Since its inception, the agency has wooed filmmakers, producers, and actors in order to present a rosy portrait of its operations to the American public.

 

–Atlantic

This is a good article by the Atlantic, a neo-con publication that aspires to be a “thought publication.”

This article rehashes the history of the CIA in Hollywood and, in fact, is fairly comprehensive and touches on a number of compelling points.

More;

The CIA has a long history of “spooking the news,” dating back to its earliest days when the legendary spymaster Allen Dulles and his top staff drank and dined regularly with the press elite of New York and Washington, and the agency boasted hundreds of U.S. and foreign journalists as paid and unpaid assets.

 

In 1977, after this systematic media manipulation was publicly exposed by congressional investigations, the CIA created an Office of Public Affairs that was tasked with guiding press coverage of intelligence matters in a more transparent fashion.

 

The agency insists that it no longer maintains a stable of friendly American journalists, and that its efforts to influence the press are much more above board. But, in truth, the intelligence empire’s efforts to manufacture the truth and mold public opinion are more vast and varied than ever before. One of its foremost assets? Hollywood.

This is an honest appraisal so far as it goes. As is the article’s conclusion:

With few exceptions, Hollywood has long functioned as a propaganda factory, churning out jingoistic revenge-fantasy films in which American audiences are allowed to exorcise their post-9/11 demons by watching the satisfying slaughter of countless onscreen jihadis.

 

This never-ending parade of square-jawed secret agents and bearded, pumped-up commandos pitted against swarthy Muslim madmen straight out of central casting has been aided and abetted by a newly emboldened CIA all too happy to offer its “services” to Hollywood.

The article, thousands of words long, still managed to miss some important points, however.

It doesn’t provide us with much in the way of a frame of reference. The control that the CIA exercises over Hollywood is multiplied many times by the control the CIA exercises over the communications industry generally.

At the top of the CIA, executives are responsive to the City of London. Intelligences agencies were manufactured by banking families initially.

Only later on, were their functions laid off onto governments. Now the cash flow comes from tax dollars, but the agencies themselves are still controlled out of the City.

This goes for other countries as well, including Israel, which was created by the City, which still runs it.

It is probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that its spooks run both Facebook and Google – especially given that the CIA invested in both companies when they were just beginning.

Basically, the Atlantic article makes it sound as if the CIA’s control over Hollywood is evolutionary and even voluntary. This is to misstate the way the CIA works.

Surreptitious intel operations have doubtless been in charge of Hollywood since its inception. If anyone doubts that, simply take a look at the movies Hollywood produced in the 1930s and especially in the 1940s.

These days, Hollywood movies have staked their main franchise on superhero movies.

These superheroes fly high in the sky fighting “bad guys” and determining whether or not the world will be safe and function properly.

They are above the law and gratitude is always due to them for their exploits.

The resemblance to the coming implementation of technocracy is undeniable.

In the world, as it is to be, technocrats running vast corporations will make decisions affecting millions. In fact, they already do.

Conclusion: This sort of organization and its privileges will not seem unusual to those regarding them. The parallels to today’s movies will already have desensitized people to what is occurring. This is the fundamental paradigm of modern Hollywood, the basic assertion of control.

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War Is Coming And The Global Financial Situation Is A Lot Worse Than You May Think

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Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

On the surface, things seem pretty quiet in mid-July 2016.  The biggest news stories were about the speculation surrounding Donald Trump’s choice of running mate (no we know), the stock market in the U.S. keeps setting new all-time record highs, and the media seems completely obsessed with Taylor Swift’s love life.  But underneath the surface, it is a very different story.  As you will see below, the conditions for a “perfect storm” are coming together very rapidly, and the rest of 2016 promises to be much more chaotic than what we have seen so far.

Let’s start with China.  On Tuesday, an international tribunal in the Hague ruled against China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.  The Chinese government announced ahead of time that they do not recognize the jurisdiction of the tribunal, and they have absolutely no intention of abiding by the ruling.  In fact, China is becoming even more defiant in the aftermath of this ruling.  We aren’t hearing much about it in the U.S. media, but according to international news reports Chinese president Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army “to prepare for combat” with the United States if the Obama administration presses China to abandon the islands that they are currently occupying in the South China Sea…

“Chinese president Xi Jinping has reportedly ordered the People’s Liberation Army to prepare for combat,” reports Arirang.com. “U.S.-based Boxun News said Tuesday that the instruction was given in case the United States takes provocative action in the waters once the ruling is made.”

 

A U.S. aircraft carrier and fighter jets were already sent to the region in anticipation of the ruling, with the Chinese Navy also carrying out exercises near the disputed Paracel islands.

Last October, China said it was “not frightened” to fight a war with the U.S. following an incident where the guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen violated the 12-nautical mile zone China claims around Subi and Mischief reefs in the Spratly archipelago.

Meanwhile, the relationship between the United States and Russia continues to go from bad to worse.  The installation of a missile defense system in Romania is just the latest incident that has the Russians absolutely steaming, and during a public appearance on June 17th Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to get western reporters to understand that the world is being pulled toward war…

“We know year by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know. It’s only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger – this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.”

And of course the Russians have been feverishly updating and modernizing their military in preparation for a potential future conflict with the United States.  Just today we learned that the Russians are working to develop a hypersonic strategic bomber that is going to have the capability of striking targets with nuclear warheads from outer space.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration does not feel a similar sense of urgency.  The size of our strategic nuclear arsenal has declined by about 95 percent since the peak of the Cold War, and many of our installations are still actually using rotary phones and the kind of 8 inch floppy disks for computers that were widely used back in the 1970s.

But I don’t expect war with China or Russia to erupt by the end of 2016.  Of much more immediate concern is what is going on in the Middle East.  The situation in Syria continues to deteriorate, but it is Israel that could soon be the center of attention.

Back in March, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration wanted to revive the peace process in the Middle East before Obama left office, and that a UN Security Council resolution that would divide the land of Israel and set the parameters for a Palestinian state was still definitely on the table…

The White House is working on plans for reviving long-stalled Middle East negotiations before President Barack Obama leaves office, including a possible United Nations Security Council resolution that would outline steps toward a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, according to senior U.S. officials.

And just this week, the Washington Post reported that there were renewed “rumblings” about just such a resolution…

Israel is facing a restive European Union, which is backing a French initiative that seeks to outline a future peace deal by year’s end that would probably include a call for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the creation of a Palestinian state. There are also rumblings that the U.N. Security Council might again hear resolutions about the conflict.

For years, Barack Obama has stressed the need for a Palestinian state, and now that his second term is drawing to a close he certainly realizes that this is his last chance to take action at the United Nations.  If he is going to pull the trigger and support a UN resolution formally establishing a Palestinian state, it will almost certainly happen before the election in November.  So over the coming months we will be watching these developments very carefully.

And it is interesting to note that there is an organization called “Americans For Peace Now” that is collecting signatures and strongly urging Obama to support a UN resolution of this nature.  The following comes from their official website…

Now is the time for real leadership that can revive and re-accredit the two-state solution as President Obama enters his final months in office. And he can do this – he can lay the groundwork for a two-state agreement in the future by supporting an Israeli-Palestinian two-state resolution in the United Nations Security Council.

 

Such a resolution would restore U.S. leadership in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. It would preserve the now-foundering two-state outcome. And it would be a gift to the next president, leaving her or him constructive options for consequential actions in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, in place of the ever-worsening, politically stalemated status quo there is today.

Sadly, a UN resolution that divides the land of Israel and that formally establishes a Palestinian state would not bring lasting peace.  Instead, it would be the biggest mistake of the Obama era, and it would set the stage for a major war between Israel and her neighbors.  This is something that I discussed during a recent televised appearance down at Morningside that you can watch right here…

At the same time all of this is going on, the global economic crisis continues to escalate.  Even though U.S. financial markets are in great shape at the moment, the same cannot be said for much of the rest of the world.

Just look at the country that is hosting the Olympics this summer.  Brazil is mired in the worst economic downturn that it has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and Rio de Janeiro’s governor has declared “a state of financial emergency“.

Next door, the Venezuelan economy has completely collapsed, and some people have become so desperate that they are actually hunting cats, dogs and pigeons for food.

Elsewhere, China is experiencing the worst economic downturn that they have seen in decades, the Japanese are still trying to find the end of their “lost decade”, and the banking crisis in Europe is getting worse with each passing month.

In quite a few articles recently, I have discussed the ongoing implosion of the biggest and most important bank in Germany.  But I am certainly not the only one warning about this.  In one of his recent articles, Simon Black also commented on the turmoil at “the most dangerous bank in Europe”…

Well-capitalized banks are supposed to have double-digit capital levels while making low risk investments.

 

Deutsche Bank, on the other hand, has a capital level of less that 3% (just like Lehman), and an incredibly risky asset base that boasts notional derivatives exposure of more than $70 trillion, roughly the size of world GDP.

But of course Deutsche Bank isn’t getting a lot of attention from the mainstream media right now because of the stunning meltdown of banks in Italy, Spain and Greece.  Here is more from Simon Black…

Italian banks are sitting on over 360 billion euros in bad loans right now and are in desperate need of a massive bailout.

 

IMF calculations show that Italian banks’ capital levels are among the lowest in the world, just ahead of Bangladesh.

 

And this doesn’t even scratch the surface of problems in other banking jurisdictions.

 

Spanish banks have been scrambling to raise billions in capital to cover persistent losses that still haven’t healed from the last crisis.

 

In Greece, over 35% of all loans in the banking system are classified as “non-performing”.

Even though U.S. stocks are doing well for the moment, the truth is that trillions of dollars of stock market wealth has been lost globally since this time last year.  If you are not familiar with what has been going on around the rest of the planet, this may come as a surprise to you.  During my recent appearance at Morningside, I shared some very startling charts which show how dramatically global markets have shifted over the past 12 months.  You can view the segment in which I shared these charts right here…

I would really like it if the rest of 2016 was as quiet and peaceful as the past couple of days have been.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe that is going to be the case at all.

The storm clouds are rising and the conditions for a “perfect storm” are brewing.  Sadly, most people are not going to understand what is happening until it is far too late.

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