Bassman66 wrote:



If the scale were orders of magnitude bigger than alleged, this would have a substantial effect on the money supply, which would be noticed by economists. So it's an exaggeration to say that nobody has any idea of the scale.

Still, I agree with you that the FOMC and the Fed's dealings with foreign central banks should be audited, if indeed they aren't already. This may indeed be a reform worth calling for.

However, I think it would be best just to call for that specific reform (and maybe a few other specific reforms) rather to denounce the Federal Reserve System as a whole. Historically, whatever the Fed's flaws may be, it has had the net effect of stabilizing the economy (at least from the 1940's onward), which, on the whole, is a good thing, not a bad thing, at least for the vast majority of people.

My claim is not that Jewish people have completely "covered the market," These days, here in the U.S.A., Jews are not the only ethnic group to be disproportionately represented in various learned professions. So too are various Asian ethnic groups.

That's why I said, here, that if ethnic discrimination is involved in the selection of FRB members, it is more likely to be discrimination against Asians (i.e., against the other group of people likely to highly represented in the pool of learned potential candidates) than discrimination against all non-Jews. The major bankers who influence the selection of FRB members are unlikely to show exclusive favoritism toward Jews, because the banking industry as a whole is not dominated by Jews. (I would be inclined to guess that the Rockefellers, for example, have at least a little bit of behind-the-scenes influence over the selection of the FRB. The Rockefellers are WASPs.)

Observations about the disproportionate number of Jews in various professions are "the A word" if you falsely allege or insinuate that the situation is caused by Jews conspiring to keep non-Jews out of those professions, or if you otherwise regard Jews as an enemy because of their disproportionate representation in certain professions.

Bassman66 wrote:



Possibly very high, especially if a large percentage of economics professors at elite colleges are also Jewish.



I've already pointed out, myself, that there are plenty of non-Jewish people in banking. However, the people in charge at the Fed aren't supposed to be just any old bankers. They are supposed to be highly educated experts on monetary policy. That's where the educational factor comes into play.

Also on the History Commons site, while exploring the page about U.S. Intelligence Links to Islamic Militancy, I came across a very interesting page about Luai Sakra, a leading Al Qaeda member who was also an informant for CIA and for intelligence agencies of at least two other countries (Syria and Turkey) as well.

Apparently, Luai Sakra gave very detailed and specific information about the 9/11 plot to Syrian intelligence on 9/10/2001. It is unknown how much information he also gave to the CIA.

Sakra has also claimed that Nawaf Alhazmi, not Hani Hanjour, piloted Flight 77.

Another relevant page on the History Commons site, besides the ones already listed in post above, is Militant-Government Collusion in the Philippines, part of the Complete 9/11 Timeline.

I'm looking now at the article How our governments use terrorism to control us by Tim Howells, November 28, 2005.

This article begins:



I would be interested to hear any substantive criticism of the two above-mentioned books, by anyone here who has read them.

Tim Howells then goes on to talk about the following topics:

- Operation Gladio

- U.S. aid to the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan during and before the Soviet invasion

- Ali Mohamed

- Al Qaeda in the Balkans, with help from the Pentagon

- Al Qaeda in the Philippines, with help from the CIA

- Ahmed's views on pre-9/11 warnings and what they imply

I would be interested in any specific, substantive comments that anyone here may have on Tim Howells's presentation of these topics.

At least some of these topics are also addressed in the following places on the History Commons site:

• Afghanistan


• section of Complete 9/11 Timeline on US Intelligence Links to Islamic Militancy,


• sections of Complete 9/11 Timeline on The Soviet-Afghan War, Ali Mohamed, Al-Qaeda in the Balkans, Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia, and key warnings


• Alleged Use of False Flag Attacks by Intelligence Agencies

Later, I'll go through the above pages on the History Commons site and post further comments calling attention to specific events mentioned there.

Whatever it does or does not imply about 9/11, I think that the past history of U.S. covert operations involving Islamist terrorist groups is important for us to examine.

Not all evangelicals support the religious right wing. Some evangelicals do have more reasonable attitudes.

On the other hand, the religious right wing is supported by more than just its evangelical supporters. It's also supported by many conservative Catholics and ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Anyhow, the religious right wing has succeeded in blocking lots of gay rights legislation in many places around the country, especially same-sex marriage.

It has also influenced the selection of U.S. Supreme Court judges.

And every now and then it succeeds, at least temporarily, in promoting the teaching of creationism or "intelligent design" in Bible Belt public schools. And, if I recall correctly, it has succeeded in intimidating some school districts into avoiding the topic of evolution.

Be that as it may, the religious right wing has played a substantial role in many Republican victories over the past thirty years or so. And this, in itself, should be of concern to progressives, even when the resulting elected officials have paid little more than lip service to the religious right wing's agenda.

A kid whose family places a very high value on education is, other factors being equal, obviously likely to have educational advantages over a kid whose family does not place as high a value on education.

Jews traditionally place a very high value on education. So too do people from many Asian countries, especially Chinese. Hence both Jews and Asians tend to be disproportionately represented in highly technical fields, especially those levels thereof requiring a great deal of higher education.

So, if there's any ethnic discrimination involved in the selection of members of the Federal Reserve Board, it would more likely be discrimination against Asians (and perhaps non-whites in general) than discrimination against all non-Jews, because the American banking industry as a whole is dominated by WASPs (e.g. the Rockefellers and the Morgans), not Jews.

Bassman66 wrote:



The "nonsense" mentioned in my previous post had to do with the Federal Reserve system as a whole, not the FOMC in particular. Most parts of the Federal Reserve System are audited.



Could you please post those links again? It's a long thread.



Are you talking about the Federal Reserve System as a whole here, or just the FOMC?

The above is certainly not true of the Federal Reserve System as a whole. Here is the Fed's 2006 financial report, including income and expenses of the Federal Reserve banks, which are indeed audited.

AZCat wrote that Petgoat "has made claims about its contents that were easily checked (and refuted, once someone did so)."

That, right there, is a far more substantive criticism of Petgoat's approach than anything Boloboffin said in the entire preceding sub-thread. It is precisely the sort of additional point that I said Boloboffin needed to complete his argument. The only thing still lacking, in what you said above, is a mention of the specific issues on which you claim that Petgoat has misrepresented the NIST report.

But it would seem that Boloboffin is "too fucking lazy" (borrowing a phrase from AZCat's post) to make substantive criticisms, preferring instead just to hurl, and repeat, logically incomplete insults.

Perhaps I should have posted my gripes about William Cooper in a different thread. I cannot watch streaming video, so I was not able to watch the video in the O.P.

So, could you please sum up exactly what William Cooper predicted?

For example, did he predict the exact date, targets, and method of the attack? If so, that would be impressive.

On the other hand, if Cooper merely predicted, in general terms, some kind of major attack by bin Laden (or using bin Laden as a patsy), that would not be so impressive. There had already been quite a few terrorist attacks attributed to bin Laden during the Clinton administration. So another, bigger bin Laden-connected attack should hardly have been a surprise to anyone.

Yep it would have been nice if SDuderstadt had made substantive objections to the term "New World Order" rather than just saying it looks "goofy."

Anyhow, here's my take ....

"New World Order" is a term used by religious right wingers and other extreme right wingers as a catch-all for their various bugaboos.

The best-known early popularizer of "New World Order" as a term of opprobrium was televangelist Pat Robertson, who used the concept to advocate religion-based bigotry of various kinds. (See the thread The "conspiracy theory debunker" community's surprising non-attention to bigotry against atheists. See especially this post about Pat Robertson and this post about the John Birch Society.)

Another popularizer, of course, was William Cooper, about whom see this post of mine, here in this thread.

There are plenty of legitimate criticisms one could make of George H.W. Bush's "New World Order" concept as a justification for the first invasion of Iraq. However, Bush I's "New World Order" concept had to do with foreign policy. It was not an all-encompassing dystopia.

There are also plenty of legitimate concerns about trends toward tyranny on the part of the Bush II administration. But we don't need the "New World Order" label to describe these.

William Cooper also promoted grand-conspiracy claims involving UFO's and alien abductions, claims which he himself later concluded were "disinformation."

Cooper also promoted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an allegedly genuine document, albeit claiming that the "Elders of Zion" weren't really Jewish but were really "the Illuminati" pretending to be Jews.

However, the idea that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion contains the genuine plans of any real group of plotters is simply ridiculous. The Protocols were clearly intended as anti-democratic Czarist propaganda. See ‘The Protocols of Zion,’ Part One: Weapon Against Democracy by Jared Israel.

The Protocols are plagiarized from a bunch of earlier sources, both fiction and alleged non-fiction. For a brief history of literary precursors to the Protocols, see The “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and Antisemitism by Shaul Wallach. For more about The Protocols, see David Dickerson’s collection of links.

I haven't yet studied enough about the FOMC, in particular, to know whether you're correct about it not being audited. For all I know, you might be correct about this. If so, I would agree with you that it SHOULD be audited.

However, this issue, by itself, is a far cry from a lot of the nonsense that has been spread about the Fed, e.g. the claim that the Fed in general is essentially just a profit-making private enterprise, "as Federal as Federal Express."

petgoat wrote:



You seem to be assuming that the allaged failure mechanism for column 79 was massive direct heating of the column itself.

However, in a paper on The Collapse of Building 7 (PDF), available on the NIST site, Arthur Scheuerman hypothesized that a massive fire on the 12th floor heated the very long horizontal beams supporting floor 13, causing those beams to expand and sag. Then, after the fire on floor 12 went out, Scheuerman says that those already-bent beams cooled and contracted, yanking at the easternmost core columns, such as column 79.

According to Scheuerman, the design flaw was that those horizontal beams were too long, allowing them to contract enough to do damage to the columns once the fire went out.