Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Data Show California Is a Living Example of the Good Intentions Fallacy

ORIGINAL LINK

During a speech at Harvard several years ago, Charlie Munger related a story about a surgeon who removed “bushel baskets full of normal gallbladders” from patients. The doctor was eventually removed, but much later than he should have been.

Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, wondered what motivated the doctor, so he asked a surgeon who participated in the removal of the physician.

“He thought that the gallbladder was the source of all medical evil, and if you really love your patients, you couldn't get that organ out rapidly enough,” the physician explained.

The doctor was not motivated by profit or sadism; he very much believed he was doing right.

The Righteousness Fallacy

The anecdote is a perfect illustration of the righteousness fallacy, which Barry Brownstein noted is rampant in modern politics and a key driver of democratic socialism.

The Righteousness Fallacy (also known as the fallacy of good intentions) is described by author Dr. Bo Bennett as the idea that one is correct because their intentions are pure.

It recently occurred to me that California is a perfect example of this fallacy. Consider these three facts about the Golden State:

  1. California spends about $98.5 billion annually on welfare—the most in the US—but has the highest poverty rate in America.
  2. California has the highest income tax rate in the US, at 13.3 percent, but the fourth greatest income inequality of the 50 states.
  3. California has one of the most regulated housing markets in America, yet it has the highest homeless population in American and ranks 49th (per capita) in housing supply.

The Danger of Favoring Intent over Result

That politicians would persist with harmful policies should come as little surprise. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once observed the uncanny proclivity of politicians “to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

In his book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman described the danger of such thinking.

[The threat comes] … from men of good intentions and good will who wish to reform us. Impatient with the slowness of persuasion and example to achieve the great social changes they envision, they’re anxious to use the power of the state to achieve their ends and confident in their ability to do so. Yet… Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it. 

I don’t doubt that California lawmakers, like the physician who was removing healthy gall bladders, believe they are doing the right thing. Yet they, like the physician, need to wake up to reality and realize they aren’t making people better.

--

This article has been republished with permission from Foundation for Economic Education. 

[Image Credit:  Pixabay, public domain]



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French Prime Minister Proposes Government Registry of Demonstrators

ORIGINAL LINK
Global Research, January 09, 2019
World Socialist Web Site 8 January 2019

prime-minister-edouard-philippe

 

Following the large turnout throughout France for the eighth week of “yellow vest” (Gilets jaunes) protests this past Saturday, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced on French television Monday night the imposition of an extraordinary law to suppress the demonstrations. Taking up measures initially put forward by the neo-fascists, he proposed that demonstrators be placed on government subversive lists and subjected to financial sanctions.

Philippe admitted that the “yellow vest” protests express social anger shared by workers throughout France, and indeed across Europe.

“From the beginning, in the statements of the ‘yellow vests’, there were demands for more purchasing power, speaking for French people who felt forgotten and ignored,” he declared.

But despite this admission, Philippe stressed that his government would not change its widely hated policy, but rather would seek to suppress the movement by putting in place additional obstacles to the right to demonstrate and strengthening the vast police apparatus for use against the population.

He announced that protesters would be registered on a list in order to ban them from demonstrating, using a method similar to the “hooligan card,” which permits police to prevent certain individuals from entering football stadiums. In addition, he would impose penalties against demonstrations that have not been registered with the prefecture.

“The government is in favor of changing our law and punishing those who do not respect this reporting [registration] obligation,” he declared.

Philippe also proposed measures to allow the police to impose heavy sentences on protesters.

“For those who come in hoods (cagoulé), today it is a misdeed; tomorrow it must be a crime. It must be the thugs who pay and not the taxpayers,” he said.

He added:

“We cannot accept that some people take advantage of these demonstrations to riot, to break and burn things. These people will never have the last word in our country.”

The prime minister announced a mass mobilization of the police, comparable to that in early December 2018, which closed off the center of Paris. He stated:

“Specialized equipment used by the police, such as armored vehicles and water cannons, proved effective. We must therefore seriously consider using these again and increasing their operational capabilities.”

He pledged to mobilize 85,000 police, CRS police reserves, paramilitary gendarmes and other forces next weekend, especially in Paris.

This makes clear the antidemocratic orientation of President Macron and the European Union, which backs him. In the face of workers’ support for the “yellow vests” and the widespread rejection of European-wide austerity policies, Macron wants to impose the diktat of the banks by force. The attempts by Philippe and Macron to pose as defenders of democracy in order to justify the construction of a police state that tramples on workers’ opposition to austerity and war are nothing but hypocritical lies.

The press has poured out a torrent of slander against the “yellow vests,” labelling them as fascists. It is Macron, however, who is carrying out a far-right policy. Philippe’s proposals repeat the demands that Alliance, the police union close to the neo-fascists, called for following Saturday’s demonstration. These measures would seek to stifle social anger by threatening protesters with preventive arrest and exorbitant fines.

On Sunday, the secretary general of Alliance, Frédéric Lagache, proposed that protesters be registered “on the model of stadium bans” (the “Hooligan card”). He called for the wearing of a hood in demonstrations to be punished as a crime, and for “harsher penalties” to be imposed on demonstrators.

While proposing a significant increase in repressive measures, the alternate police union CFDT opposed some of the proposals put forward by the neo-fascist Alliance. It criticized the proposal to register demonstrators as “useless and counterproductive.” The CFDT statement declared:

“An administrative file alone will be useless, except to identify individuals who might be dangerous during demonstrations, but would lack any coercive power before an action is carried out.”

Indeed, the creation of a registry only opens the door to preventive arrests of a fundamentally illegal character of people who have displeased the police for one or another reason, prior to a demonstration in which they could not even participate.

Despite the very close links between the CFDT and the government, Philippe and Macron have taken up the proposals of the neo-fascist Alliance union.

This proves the correctness of the analysis made by the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES) when Macron was elected president in 2017. The PES stated that the decisive question was to prepare a workers’ movement against both candidates—Macron and the neo-fascist Marine Le Pen—because Macron was not a more democratic alternative.

The central question raised by the radicalization of workers in the “yellow vest” movement is the need to mobilize workers as widely as possible against attempts to establish police states throughout Europe.

Macron’s declaration last November that it is legitimate to honor the military career of Marshal Philippe Pétain, the fascist dictator who collaborated with the Nazi occupation, made clear that he is seeking to erect an authoritarian regime, in the guise of the “defense of the Republic.”

Increasingly reactionary and provocative police measures are multiplying across France since the eruption of the “yellow vest” movement.

At the beginning of this year, the Somme police department in northern France adopted a decree forbidding the use or transport of respiratory protection equipment. This measure—which immediately illegalized work by firefighters, doctors, nurses and law enforcement itself—was intended to permit police to stop and question protesters with gas masks and to confiscate their protective equipment.

Christophe Dettinger, the former boxer who struck gendarmes during a police charge against the “yellow vests” on Saturday, went to the police yesterday accompanied by his lawyer. He had been the subject of a hysterical campaign in the media and of a manhunt by police, who raided his home.

In a video posted online before his surrender, Dettinger explained his actions:

“I wanted to advance towards the CRS when I was gassed… At a certain point, my anger mounted, and yes, I reacted badly. Yes, I reacted badly, but I defended myself, and that’s all… French people, “yellow vests,” I am wholeheartedly with you. We must continue peacefully, but please continue the fight. “

Now the state is threatening him with five years in prison and a €75,000 fine, aimed at making it illegal for demonstrators to defend themselves against police brutality.

Dettinger’s former coach, Jacky Trompesauce, commented:

“Christophe is a top athlete. He is a respectful man, he is not a thug…. He could not stand to see the gendarmes go after those who are weaker than them. I think I see pictures of women being teargassed, perhaps his own wife. He has three children. He is not wearing a hood, he has only his bare hands. He is not a brawler.”

*

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The original source of this article is World Socialist Web Site

 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/french-prime-minister-proposes-government-registry-of-demonstrators/5665114



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Rubino: "We Are Going To See Chaos"

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Financial writer John Rubino says no matter what country, the global debt has exploded to record highs, and it’s going to go even higher in the coming years.

Rubino contends, “Government debt is going to soar going forward no matter what..."

"Whether we have three more years of growth or a recession next year, we are going to see massive new deficits and massive increases in government debt all over the world. This is coming at a time when we have already hit record levels of debt and blown right through previous record levels. The last crisis, that almost ended the global financial system, was debt driven. The next one is going to be that much, much more serious because we basically doubled the amount of debt that’s out there since 2005 and 2006.”

On the political front, Rubino says, “The idea that things get more extreme from here is not that out of the ordinary and not that hard to believe..."

"We are not just going to see gridlock here in the U.S., we are going to see chaos. That means of the things that should be gotten done, very few of them will be...

Political chaos is good for precious metals . . . both metals are way undervalued.”

Few would disagree, that at some point, the financial system is going to explode.

Rubino says, “Let’s look at what happens when this finally blows up..."

"The pressure is going to be on currencies when the financial system starts to spin out of control next time. In other words, people are going to see the amount of debt we are taking on, see the amount of currency we are creating to service all this debt, and will wonder what that does to the value of the currencies that are being aggressively created. They will lose faith in those currencies. What is unique about this time, countries have screwed up their currencies since the beginning of time...but this time around, they are all doing it. Every major country in the world has a printing press, which is to say an unlimited credit card. They are maxing out that credit card...and they are doing it simultaneously.”

In closing Rubino says,

“All we have left is to wipe the slate clean and say, you know what, this thing did not work. It’s a 60 year experiment that turned out to have a fatal flaw, which is you can’t hand a printing press to a government.”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with John Rubino, author of “The Money Bubble” and creator of DollarCollapse.com.

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"Complete Chaos" As Brazil's Gangs Go Ballistic Over Bolsonaro Crackdown

ORIGINAL LINK

Brazil has been swept with a rash of violence as gangs react to new President Jair Bolsonaro's crackdown on crime - which includes military takeovers of Brazilian cities and shoot-to-kill orders carried out by teams of sharpshooters. 

Five hundreds national guard troops have been deployed to the north-eastern town of Fortaleza in the state of Ceará, after authorities have been overwhelmed by more than a week of violence which saw more than 160 attacks, reports the Guardian

Security forces say three rival drug gangs have come together to carry out more than 160 attacks in retaliation for a proposal to end the practice of separating gang factions inside Brazil’s prisons.

Buses, mail trucks and cars have been torched. Police stations, city government buildings and banks have been attacked with petrol bombs and explosives. On Sunday, criminals blew up a telephone exchange, leaving 12 cities without mobile service. Other explosions have damaged a freeway overpass and a bridge. -Guardian

There have been 148 arrests linked to the attacks, while at least 20 prisoners suspected of ordering the attacks haver been transferred from state to federal prisons - where Bolsonaro's administration says it won't back down on its plan to combat gang activity.  

Via The Guardian

Gang members detonated an IED on a viaduct support column, putting the viaduct structure at risk of collapse. https://t.co/Gab6Z6zb5G pic.twitter.com/23udUoicpl

— Ross Dayton (@rdayt_) January 7, 2019

Homicide rates in Fortaleza and other north-eastern cities have soared in recent years, as a territorial wars have broken out between Brazil's most notorious gangs; the First Capital Command (known as the PCC in Portuguese) from São Paulo and the Red Command (Comando Vermelho) from Rio de Janeiro, which have locked horns with the Fortaleza-based Guardians of the State and the Northern Family from Amazonas state. 

The PCC and the Red Command are locked in a bitter fight to control Brazil’s drugs trade, and Fortaleza is seen as a strategic prize because it is the closest large port to Europe and Africa. -Guardian

"We used to only see this kind of savagery on television in Rio de Janeiro. Things used to be mellow here," said Carlos Robério, co-owner of a minibus co-op in Fortaleza who watched helplessly over a CCTV feed as a group of youths doused one of their kiosks before setting it on fire. 

Robério said that the breakdown in civility has made him want to arm himself. "It’s complete chaos here and I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean without a life raft"

To that end, Bolsonaro last week said over Twitter that he would issue a decree to ease gun laws, making it much easier for adults over 25 to obtain firearms, as long as they have no criminal record. Bolsonaro says that allowing "good" people to own guns will discourage criminals, as well as reduce Brazil's homicide rate after nearly 64,000 murders last year

Brazil's security forces killed 5,000 people in 2017, an average of 14 a day

Meanwhile, authorities in Rio de Janeiro have trained up to 120 sharpshooters which will acccompany the city's police force into nearby slums to eradicate violent gun-toting criminals. 

The marksmen will work in pairs; one shooter and one spotter who will monitor conditions and videotape the executions, according to Bloombergwith the two officers alternating roles. 

"The protocol will be to immediately neutralize, slaughter anyone who has a rifle," said Witzel - a former Brazilian marine and federal judge, on December 12. "Whoever has a rifle isn't worried about other people's lives, they're ready to eliminate anyone who crosses their path. This is a grave problem, not just in Rio de Janeiro, but in other states." 



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How The Fed Silently Bankrupted The US Pension System

ORIGINAL LINK

But while the impact of receding liquidity and the reduced reward for reckless speculation and risk-taking have finally begun to play out on Bloomberg screens everywhere, the real devastation has yet to be revealed.  In the ensuing weeks and months the full and lugubrious legacy of the Fed’s great monetary experiment of the last decade will finally come into view.

Beyond inflating and bursting a bubble in corporate debt (with leveraged loans acting as posterchild), the Fed’s decade-long financial repression has had a far larger and more sinister impact: It has silently bankrupted the US pension system.

 

 

 

 

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-07/how-federal-reserve-quietly-bankrupted-us-pension-system

 

 



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Thanks For The Financial Repression, Fed! US Pension Funding Shortfall Hits $6.18 Trillion

ORIGINAL LINK

 

 



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American Psychological Association considers 'traditional masculinity' to be 'harmful'

ORIGINAL LINK

gender_confusion.jpg

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), being a traditional man is now considered on par with a mental disorder. For the first time ever, the APA has issued a set of guidelines for how to approach men and boys, specifically, within a counseling practice. The new APA protocols for mental health professionals working with men and boys--released in August and available to read in their entirety in a document titled APA Guidelines for the Psychological Practice with Boys and Men--were recently summed up on the APA's website by the statement that "research finds that traditional masculinity is, on the whole, harmful." "The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity - marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression - is, on the whole, harmful," the January article from the APA goes on to read. "Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors." Progressive beliefs about a number of hot-button social...

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Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Debt, Dope, & Casinos: Chicago Is Circling The Drain

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

While the federal government is slowly careening toward permanent, fiscal disaster, many state governments (which don’t have the power of the printing press) are already staring into the abyss…

Take Illinois, for example. It’s the most broke state in the US with nearly $250 billion in debt. And it only brings in enough in taxes each year to cover 92% of its expenses… so the problem is getting worse.

Good thing Rahm “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” Emmanuel is the current Mayor of Chicago. You may remember, the above quote was from Rahm’s days as Obama’s Chief of Staff, as told to the Wall Street Journalduring the depths of the Great Financial Crisis…

What followed was the greatest monetary experiment known to man.

Now Rahm has another crisis on his hands – Chicago’s woefully underfunded pensions. And he’s reaching into his old bag of tricks.

Governments can only kick the can down the road for so long. Eventually, they’ve got to make some tough decisions – like who they’re going to default on. Despite the promises made by certain political representatives, it’s impossible for everyone to have everything…

And today, Rahm must choose…

Either Chicago defaults on the pension promises it’s made to city workers or it defaults on its massive debt. It’s simple arithmetic.

Rahm, it seems, has chosen the latter.

Chicago’s pension funds are only 26% funded (meaning it only has enough cash to pay out a pathetic 26% of what’s promised). And with the city’s dismal fiscal situation, that hole isn’t getting plugged on its own.

So Rahm proposed issuing $10 billion of debt to shore up the city’s pensions. The only government solution for debt problems today, it seems, is still more debt…

But even with that extra $10 billion, the city’s pensions will only be 50% funded.

Let me be clear… when you’ve got to take on debt for a chance of paying 50% of your pension obligations… you’re in default.

It gets better...

Rahm is pressuring the city to act quickly before interest rates increase more, which would make it more expensive for the city to finance its new debt.

So he’s essentially admitting the city couldn’t afford this new debt if rates increase 50 or 100 basis points. This is desperation.

OK… If interest states stay low, and Rahm can afford to issue these bonds, now we’ve only got to worry about future pension returns.

And Rahm says they can afford to issue the debt because the city’s pension funds have never seen an annualized return of lower than 8% for any 30-year period.

Most pension funds are grasping to that “magic” 8% number based on the past. But as we’ve written before, making those returns today is no easy feat. We’re at the tail end of 40 years of falling interest rates, which caused an insane bull market in stocks. It’s not likely the next 40 years will be as generous.

Already, at a market peak, pension funds are investing in riskier assets in hopes of achieving their break even returns.

If every single, little thing goes just perfect for the next 30 years, Chicago’s pensions may squeak by for awhile. What’s the likelihood of that happening? About zero.

Remember, a massive, 10-year bull market in stocks is nearing its end.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. And Rahm is out the door in May… so he won’t be around when the city has to default on its debt.

The federal government can still conjure money out of thin air. Cities and states don’t have that luxury. And like Chicago is doing today, we’ll see more of these tough decisions being made in the near future – the decision of who to default on.

There is one bright spot.

When discussing the bonds, Rahm did mention he supports legalizing marijuana and bringing casinos back to Chicago.

So if the pensions don’t work out, we’ve always got pot and gambling to restore our country to the glory days.



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A Majority of Americans Do Not Believe the Official 9/11 Story

ORIGINAL LINK

A Majority of Americans Do Not Believe the Official 9/11 Story

“Conspiracy Theorists” Now A Majority

Paul Craig Roberts

TruePublica, a British website that has avoided the 9/11 issue, has had its fill of ignorant journalists at the BBC, Huffington Post and other propagandists for the military/security complex. The constant, shrill demeaning of experts and distinguished people who have raised questions about the official story has convinced TruePublica that skeptics who need so much shouting down must have a point.

The media has NEVER EXAMINED the evidence or explained the analysis provided by scientists, architects, engineers, pilots, and the first responders who experienced the explosions of the World Trade Center twin towers. The media has never asked for the release of the multiple videos that recorded whatever struck the Pentagon. The media has never investigated whether cell phones worked in 2001 from the altitudes at which the official story claims calls were made.

Instead two-bit punk presstitutes, such as the BBC’s Chris Bell and the Huffington Post’s Jess Brammer andl Chris York, label experts with knowledge and integrity “conspiracy theorists.” These presstitutes knowingly use a cover-up term that the CIA put into use via its media assets to discredit the expert skeptics of the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President Kennedy.

The fact that the carefully presented evidence is NEVER ENGAGED EXCEPT WITH NAME-CALLING is a strong indication that the evidence is true and cannot be refuted.

TruePublica is such a mainline site that, in its own words, it does not even “publish news sourced by RT,” a far more reliable source of news than the BBC, CNN, or New York Times. However, it has dawned on TruePublica that after 18 years an ad hominum attack remains the only defense of the official story. The official account has NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER. It rests entirely on the AVOIDANCE OF EVIDENCE and on unverified assertions.

The success of the 9/11 Lawyers’ Committee in obtaining the consent of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York to “comply with the provisions of 18 U.S.C. 3332,” which requires the convening of a federal grand jury to examine the unexamined 9/11 evidence, has impressed TruePublica as no US attorney would convene a grand jury on the basis of a conspiracy theory. Clearly compelling evidence has been presented to the US Attorney.

Obviously, Washington expects the Justice (sic) Department to escape from the bind into which it has been put by the Lawyer’s Committee, an escape that the presstitute media will aid and abet. Nevertheless, the escape will likely reinforce the public’s view that the government is afraid of the evidence and is no more likely to follow it than in the case of President Kennedy’s assassination, Robert Kennedy’s assassination, the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty and a large number of other officially covered up crimes.

More and more people will come to realize that ad hominum name-calling is not an acceptable response to evidence.

Some Interesting New Information About 9/11

TruePublica.org.uk

https://truepublica.org.uk/global/some-interesting-new-information-about-9-11/

TruePublica Editor: We have published almost nothing about 9/11 on TruePublica. When independent news outlets do, they are immediately branded by the mainstream media and so-called ‘fact-checkers’ as conspiracy theorists. The BBC makes this point precisely in a 2018 article that starts like this – “On 11 September 2001, four passenger planes were hijacked by radical Islamist terrorists – almost 3,000 people were killed as the aircraft were flown into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Just hours after the collapse of New York’s Twin Towers, a conspiracy theory surfaced online which persists more than 16 years later.”

The entire article is dedicated to all the ‘conspiracy theories’ involved in 9/11 and makes a mockery of anyone or anything that questions the official government line. They even heavily mock the brother of one man killed in 9/11 and frankly, true or not, the BBC’s report itself is rather sickening to read.

And yet, here we are, all these years later and it’s hardly surprising the theories of a conspiracy continue.

A 2016 study from Chapman University in California, found more than half of the American people believe the government is concealing information about the 9/11 attacks. This is in part because, large sections of the official US government report were redacted for years – and is still missing to this day.

The big problem is that the government is withholding crucial evidence. And then there’s other evidence the state and mainstream media refuse to even consider.
 
Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist and former United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Reagan. Roberts was an associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and has received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States.

Roberts wrote this really interesting piece of information just a few days ago that the mainstream media has been completely silent about: “Although the United States is allegedly a democracy with a rule of law, it has taken 17 years for public pressure to bring about the first grand jury investigation of 9/11. Based on the work of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth led by Richard Gage, first responder and pilots organizations, books by David Ray Griffin and others, and eyewitness testimony, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry has presented enough hard facts to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York to force his compliance with the provisions of federal law that require the convening of a federal grand jury to investigate for the first time the attacks of September 11, 2001. https://www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org

This puts the US Justice (sic) Department in an extraordinary position. There will be tremendous pressures on the US Attorney’s office to have the grand jury dismiss the evidence as an unpatriotic conspiracy theory or otherwise maneuver to discredit the evidence presented by the Lawyers’ Committee, or modify the official account without totally discrediting it.

“What the 9/11 truthers and the Lawyers’ Committee have achieved is the destruction of the designation of 9/11 skeptics as “conspiracy theorists.” No US Attorney would convene a grand jury on the basis of a conspiracy theory. Clearly, the evidence is compelling that has put the US Attorney in an unenviable position.”

If the Lawyers’ Committee and the 9/11 truthers trust the US Attorney to go entirely by the facts, little will come of the grand jury. If the United States had a rule of law, something as serious as 9/11 could not have gone for 17 years without investigation.”
 
Three weeks before Roberts’ made this statement a letter was published by Off-Guardian about a Huffington Post hit piece about an academic teaching journalism. Its first paragraph explains entirely its own position.

“An academic teaching journalism students at one of the UK’s top universities has publicly supported long-discredited conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terror attack, HuffPost UK can reveal.”

This entire article, like that of the BBC’s, vigorously attacks any individual or organisation that has the temerity to question the ‘official’ narrative on any major incident as offered up by the state, such as the Skripal poisonings, Syria’s chemical weapons, Iraq and Chilcot Report.

HuffPost even uses an unnamed former head of MI6 and an unnamed former Supreme Commander of Nato to dispel such challenges to this narrative and then attacks other sources of news such as RT as nothing more than Russian propaganda irrespective of the source. As a rule, TruePublica does not publish news sourced by RT but that does not make all of its content propaganda.

David Ray Griffin, a retired American professor and political writer who founded the Center for Process Studies which seeks to promote the common good by means of the relational approach found in process thought was the co-author of the book ‘9/11 Unmasked’ – part of the attack piece was centred on by the HuffPost hit piece.

The head of the 9/11 Consensus Panel, the other co-author, responded to the HuffPost.  For information, the goal of the Consensus Panel is to “provide a ready source of evidence-based research to any investigation that may be undertaken by the public, the media, academia, or any other investigative body or institution.”

That letter is as follows:
 
Jess Brammer, UK Huffington Post
Chris York, UK Huffington Post

Dear Ms. Brammar and Mr. York:

I was the head information specialist serving the Medical Health Officers of British Columbia, Canada, for 25 years.

Your attack piece on Professor Piers Robinson and on the scholarly work of Dr. David Ray Griffin is the least accurate and the lowest quality published article I have ever seen.

I have assisted Dr. Griffin with 10 of his investigative books into the events of 9/11. In 2011 we decided to create the international 9/11 Consensus Panel to review and evaluate the official claims relating to September 11, 2001. The Panel we formed has 23 members, including people from the fields of physics, chemistry, structural engineering, aeronautical engineering, piloting, airplane crash investigation, medicine, journalism, psychology, and religion.

In seeking a consensus methodology, I was advised by the former provincial epidemiologist of British Columbia to employ a leading model that is used in medicine to establish the best diagnostic and treatment evidence to guide the world’s doctors using medical consensus statements.

The Panel methodology has produced, seven years later, 51 refutations of the official claims, which were published as 911 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation in September, 2018. https://www.amazon.com/11-Unmasked-International-Review-Investigation/dp/1623719747

Each Consensus Point, now a chapter in this book, was given three rounds of review and feedback by the Panel members. The panelists were blind to one another throughout the process, providing strictly uninfluenced individual feedback. Any Points that did not receive 85% approval by the third round were set aside.

The Honorary Members of the Panel include the late British (and longest-serving) parliamentarian Michael Meacher, the late evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, and the late Honorary President of the Italian Supreme Court, Ferdinando Imposimato.

The Huffington Post drastically lowered its standards to publish this hit piece, and what influenced it to do so is a question worth pursuing.
Yours truly,
Elizabeth Woodworth, Co-author with Dr. David Ray Griffin of 9/11 Unmasked

TruePublica continues: 
It is over 18 years now since the world-changing event of 9/11. One wonders when the information held by the American government, that continues to anger so many people affected by it will ever emerge.

However, one reason why such questions persist is precisely that of the actions of the US government itself. One should not forget those so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ that actually came true that continues to pour petrol on the flames of doubt.

For example, the American government killed thousands by poisoning alcohol to prove its point that alcohol was bad for the general public during prohibition. This was a ‘conspiracy theory’ that went on for decades – until it was proven to be true. https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/the-little-told-story-of-how-the-u-s-government-poisoned-alcohol-during-prohibition.html

Then, you can take your pick of the lies government tells when it comes to starting wars – how about the lie the Saddam Hussain and Iraq had WMD ready to fire at Western targets. Total deaths exceeded 1 million. Yet another classic American lie was the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, as a pretext for escalating the country’s involvement in the Vietnam War that killed 60,000 American soldiers. Total deaths racked up 1.35 million, all based on a lie. That incident only came about because of an unintentional declassification of an NSA file in 2005.

Edward Snowden proved with his revelations in 2013 that the government was spying on everyone when the government had denied they had ever done so. It took a whistleblower to let us all know. The UK government has been found by the highest courts in the land to have broken numerous privacy and surveillance laws as a result of mass civilian surveillance systems.

Operation Mockingbird was a US government operation where journalists were paid to publish CIA propaganda, only uncovered by the Watergate scandal. It took a thief to unknowingly capture secret documents and recordings for the public to find out.

The list goes on and on – just as 9/11 will, so it will be interesting to see how the US Attorney, presented with evidence from so many prominent professionals will bury yet more 9/11 evidence. Don’t hold your breath though, the same questions will, no doubt, still be being asked in another 18 years time.
 

The post A Majority of Americans Do Not Believe the Official 9/11 Story appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.



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Monday, January 7, 2019

Could Stocks Rally Even as Parts of the Economy Are Recessionary?

ORIGINAL LINK
It's not yet clear that the stock market swoon is predictive or merely a panic attack triggered by a loss of meds.
We contrarians can't help it: when the herd is bullish, we start looking for a reversal. When the herd turns bearish, we also start looking for a reversal.
So now that the herd is skittishly bearish, anticipating a recession, contrarians start wondering if a most hated rally is in the offing, one that would leave most punters off the bus.
The primary theme for 2019 in my view is everything accepted by the mainstream is not as it seems. Everything presented as monolithic and straightforward is fragmented, asymmetric and complex.
Take "recession." The standard definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP. But is this metric useful in such a fragmented, complex economy? What we're seeing develop is certain sectors are already in recession, others are sliding while others are doing OK.
So the question of stocks rising or falling partly depends on which parts of the economy are most heavily weighted in the stock market. If the sectors most heavily represented by listed stocks are doing OK, then other chunks of the economy can be in freefall and stocks could still rise.
There's also the psychological state of market participants. Was the 20% decline in the 4th quarter a much-delayed reaction to impending recession or was it a panic attack caused by the Federal Reserve withdrawing some of its largesse, i.e. lowering the Fed Put?
It it turns out to be more panic-attack than rational response, a relief rally might be expected.
Then there's the usual bag of tricks to consider. When stocks slide, analysts quickly drop revenue and profit estimates, setting up the potential for "positive surprises" so beloved by Bulls. It's an old game, lowering estimates enough so even weak earnings will appear to be "beat estimates."
The panic-attack topics may have been overblown. Trade war with China? Given exports' modest percentage of the US economy and the modest percentage of exports going to China, how big a deal is it if we scrape off the punditry's panic disorder? The US economy is simply not as dependent on exports as China or Germany.
The panic-disorder pundits are also expecting disaster from the US dollar. If it strengthens, everything falls apart, and if it weakens, well, everything still falls apart.
In a more measured view, if the USD weakens, that's positive for US exports and it takes pressure off USD-denominated debtors, which by the way include Chinese companies to the tune of $2 trillion, and trillions more owed by emerging market debtors. Making it easier for these debtors to service their USD-denominated debt would be a definitive plus for global stability and would not damage the dominance of the USD. (see chart below)
If the USD strengthens, then the US becomes even more attractive to non-US capital, a definite plus.
But wait, autos and housing are crashing. This is supposed to doom the entire economy to raging recession, but look at the market capitalization of auto and housing stocks. The two sectors don't even equal one tech giant. They've already been priced for a recession without end.
Then there's profits. Profits need to tank to trigger a fundamental revaluation of stock prices. Sure, many stocks were priced to perfection; now, after a 20% decline (more, in many cases), not so much.
As I've been saying for years, ours is a neofeudal system, not by accident or as a result of a few bad players, but as a result of its very design. Having stipulated that exploitation and rising inequality are built into the system, the net result is tremendous profitability for those who've rigged quasi-monopolies and cartels to protect their revenues and margins.
What is going to kill the fat profits of quasi-monopolies and cartels? Rising energy? Please note the 35% decline in oil prices. Soaring wages? The pundits are cheering a miserly 3% wage gain, without noting that's an average number, meaning the usual suspects pulled down big increases while the bottom 80% got the scraps. In any event, a 3% increase isn't going to snuff cartel profits. Since cartels and monopolies keep raising their prices and reducing the quantity and quality of their goods and services, they can handle the 3% increase in compensation costs.
How about healthcare costs? Everyone knows Sickcare is a train wreck of ever-higher costs for diminishing returns, and Corporate America has struggled to find ways to limit the predation of everyone's least favorite cartel (though national defense and higher education are close runner-ups).
But not much has changed in Sickcare; it's broken, but unlikely to trigger a recession.
The economy could use a market-clearing recession, but it's not yet clear that the stock market swoon is predictive or merely a panic attack triggered by a loss of meds (i.e. the Fed Put).
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