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Cowardice Is Destroying America
America was founded on courage.
For example, I've read a number of biographies of George Washington, who was actually a horrible general. Washington's early campaigns were disastrous, and the entire Revolutionary War was almost lost due to Washington's early miscalculations (for example, his first major battle was fought from a low, exposed position, so that the British forced a surrender by seizing the high ground).
But Washington was brave. He always rode with his soldiers into battle at the front of the line, even when there were waves of incoming cannon balls being hurled in his direction. (Because Washington was unusually tall for his day, that made him an easy target). Washington's courage - and his willingness to consistently fight on the front lines with his men - was one of the main factors in the success of the American Revolution.
The courage of the men at Valley Forge was also a turning point in the war. Slogging on through the dead of winter without shoes inspired a nation.
On the other hand, cowardice makes people stupid and docile.
Fear of Hurting the Big Banks Has Destroyed the Economy
The New York Times wrote in 2008:
“The rescue is being sold as a must-have emergency measure by an administration with a controversial record when it comes to asking Congress for special authority in time of duress.”***
Mr. Paulson has argued that the powers he seeks are necessary to chase away the wolf howling at the door: a potentially swift shredding of the American financial system. That would be catastrophic for everyone, he argues, not only banks, but also ordinary Americans who depend on their finances to buy homes and cars, and to pay for college.
Some are suspicious of Mr. Paulson’s characterizations, finding in his warnings and demands for extraordinary powers a parallel with the way the Bush administration gained authority for the war in Iraq. Then, the White House suggested that mushroom clouds could accompany Congress’s failure to act. This time, it is financial Armageddon supposedly on the doorstep.
“This is scare tactics to try to do something that’s in the private but not the public interest,” said Allan Meltzer, a former economic adviser to President Reagan, and an expert on monetary policy at the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business. “It’s terrible.”
Indeed, Congressmen Brad Sherman, Congressman Paul Kanjorski and Senator James Inhofe all say that the government used scare tactics by warning of martial law if Tarp wasn't passed:
In addition, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and others in government made it official policy not to prosecute (and see this) - or even to disclose Wall Street Fraud.
Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind quotes Geithner as saying:
The confidence in the system is so fragile still… a disclosure of a fraud… could result in a run, just like Lehman.
Former IMF economist Simon Johnson notes:
The main motivation behind the administration’s indulgence of serious criminality evidently is fear of the consequences of taking tough action on individual bankers.
The Obama administration is prosecuting fewer financial crimes than under Reagan or either Bush, and the government’s entire strategy now – as during the S&L crisis – is to cover up how bad things are.
Wall Street fraud caused the Great Depression and the current financial crisis. Top economists and financial experts agree that the economy will never recover unless Wall Street fraud is prosecuted.
Because of the cowardice of the government and the people to get tough and throw Wall Street fraud-mongers in jail (or even to shut off the spigot of never-ending bailouts), our economy has been destroyed.
Fear of Terror Has Destroyed Our Liberties
Sociologists say that fear of terrorism makes people blindly accept false justifications for war.
That is why false flag terrorism - which governments around the world admit that they carry out - has been so effective for 2,000 plus years in allowing government leaders to convince the people that we should go to war.
Government officials say that 9/11 was a state-sponsored attack. Some say that it was Iran, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Israel or other countries which backed the attack.
9/11 was - at the least - criminal incompetence and then obstruction of justice, and blowback for U.S. support of Al Qaeda over many decades. At worst, it was false flag terror by the U.S.
Whatever it was, our failure to be brave enough to look without blinking has ruined our country.
Specifically, top economists say that endless war bankrupts a nation.
For example, Nobel prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz says that the $3-5 trillion spent on the Iraq war alone has been very bad for the American economy. See this, this and this.
The endless wars have also been a main component of America’s soaring debt:

And huge debts exert a very real drag on the economy.
We wouldn’t have launched the war against Iraq – or the endless panoply of wars throughout the Middle East and North America – if 9/11 had actually been in investigated.
The police state also started in 2001. Specifically, on 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney initiated Continuity of Government Plans that ended America’s constitutional form of government (at least for some undetermined period of time.) On that same day, a national state of emergency was declared … and that state of emergency has continuously been in effect up until today.
It is beyond dispute that 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, but – due to the extreme negligence and incompetence or lack of caring of the Bush administration (remember, I’m not getting into any other theories in this post) it wasn’t stopped. Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable.
If there had been a real 9/11 investigation, the government's criminal incompetence (or worse) and idiotic policies of backing Al Qaeda would have come to light. And Americans would have learned that terrorism can largely be prevented if the military and intelligence officers are simply allowed to do their job.
Americans would have learned through any real 9/11 investigation that Cheney’s negligence and mucking around in what should have been the generals’ jobs was partly responsible for allowing 9/11 to happen (Cheney was in charge of all of America’s counter-terrorism exercises, activities and responses on 9/11. See this Department of State announcement and this CNN article. He messed up.).
In other words, a real 9/11 investigation would have shown Americans that 9/11 should of, could of, and would have been stopped – and that America can protect itself against future terrorist attacks – simply by playing goalie well in our country.
And Americans – instead of being scared into immobility – would have been mad at our government for dropping the ball. And we would have demanded accountability and effective service from our elected officials. (Indeed, experts have repeatedly demonstrated that fear of terror makes people stupid … and makes them willing to accept a loss of liberty and other abuses they would never otherwise accept.)
Instead - as the 9/11 Commission itself states - there was criminal obstruction of justice and a whitewash of the investigation. See this, this, this, this, and this.
The Road Not Taken
Americans were led to believe that Al Qaeda was going to get us unless we took the fight to the Middle East and North Africa. The administration pretended that Saddam Hussein had a hand in 9/11 – one of the main justifications for that war.
Had a real 9/11 investigation been conducted before we launched the Iraq war, it would have taken away one of the two main rationales for that war. (The FBI was also instructed to blame the anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda, and high-level government officials pointed towards Iraq as the source of the anthrax, even though there was absolutely no basis for those claims. But that’s another story.)
Dan Rather was right when he wrote:
We have been so afraid; so hell bent on destroying enemies … both foreign and domestic … we have hurt ourselves and our democracy.
Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser also told the Senate in 2007 that the war on terror is so overblown that it is “a mythical historical narrative”.
And as I noted in 2008:
Former deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats, a 23-year senior CIA analyst, who “drafted or was involved in many of the government’s most senior assessments of the threats facing our country [and who] devoted years to understanding and combating the jihadist threat”, writes today in the Washington Post that the neocons have whipped us into an irrational fear of the terrorism. In reality, “Osama bin Laden and his disciples are small men and secondary threats whose shadows are made large by our fears” and our leaders.
This is no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. The BBC produced a documentary called The Power of Nightmares in 2005 that showed that politicians were greatly exaggerating the terrorist threat for political ends.
And unfortunately, many in government have intentionally whipped up fear in the American public for their own political purposes. For example, FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”.
And former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge admits that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection. Fear sells.
And because 9/11 was never really investigated, the government – instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer – are doing things which increase the risk of terrorism.
As such, the threats from terrorism form even more of a “justification” for a suspension of our Constitutional rights.
The failure to investigate 9/11 has bankrupted America financially and morally, and has allowed us to stand idly by while our liberty has been destroyed.
What Do Psychiatrists, Psychologists and Spiritual Leaders Say About Fear?
Fear is not a Christian value. Indeed, real men (and women) - and all real Christians - stand up to tyrants.
Courage is being scared ... but facing things anyway.
Let's take 9/11 as an example. Numerous mental health experts - including the following list - say that fear of questioning the government's cartoonish "we couldn't have foreseen this or done anything to protect the homeland" version of 9/11 is an unhealthy, fear-based delusion which has led to an authoritarian regime in the U.S.:
- Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Lester Grinspoon, MD
- Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, as well as Radiology, at Duke University Medical Center D. Lawrence Burk, Jr., MD
- Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Rutgers University Barry R. Komisaruk
- Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy, Professor of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Global Health in the College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Michael D. Knox
- Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Laura Schafer
- Professor of Psychology, Rutgers University Alan Gilchrist
- Professor Emeritus, Psychology and Neuroscience, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Michael Gabriel
- Former Chief Mental Health Coordinator and Director of Manpower Development and Training, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, and Lecturer in Psychology, Boston University Herbert Hoffman
- Professor of Psychology, University of Chicago and Northwestern University Jack Sawyer
- Professor of Psychology at University of New Hampshire William Woodward
- Professor of Psychology at University of Essex Philip Cozzolino
- Professor of Psychology at Goddard College Catherine Lowther
- Professor Emeritus of Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies Ralph Metzner
- Professor of Psychology at Rhodes University Mike Earl-Taylor
- Professor of Psychology at Oxford University Graham Harris
- Professor Emeritus, Psychology, University of Marburg Gert Sommer
- Professor of Psychology, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Ralph Hood
- Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College. Former Major, U.S. Army Medical Corps, Vietnam Veteran 7 years service, Jon Bjornson, MD
- Ph.D. Clinical Neuropsychologist Richard Welser
- Trauma specialist Danielle Duperret, Ph.D.
- Psychiatrist Carol S. Wolman, MD
- Psychiatrist E. Martin Schotz
- Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska and licensed Psychologist Ronald Feintech
- PhD in clinical psychology from Texas Tech Michael Green
- PhD in educational psychology Brent Igo
- PhD psychologist Paul Johansson
- PhD psychologist Gail Maudal
- PhD psychologist Robert Hopper
- Ph.D Psychologist Dorothy Lorig
- Psychologist Robert Griffin
In other words, ministers, priests, psychiatrists, psychologists, trauma experts, sociologists and other mental health experts say that failure to stand up and face our deepest fears is destroying us as individuals ... and as a nation.
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Yeah, Ben's act was "courageous" in the same sense that throwing your infant into a lagoon full of hungry Great Whites is "courageous." Or like riding your bike off a cliff in hopes that Red Bull will really give you wings.
Reminds me...did JACKASS go off the air?
Falak pema
Nice try at diversion; where's the rest of your buddies today? If this was a weekday you would be just one of about the first 10 operatives commenting on this piece by GW, all tacking a different tack on attempting to discredit it, correct? You must have this weekend "on duty".
So difference of opinion is prima facie evidence of being a paid shill?
Such open-mindedness!
Falak pema is an original and completely uncaptured voice.
nice to see we agree on something, old friend.
BINGO.
Falak isn't on duty. He's just very...eastern. His brain works differently than ours. The left brain hemisphere is underdeveloped due to the lack of an R-Complex. Very artistic. Heh.
lol, I've posted often enuff here to support the positions of GW up to the hilt.
I knew by throwing the dogs of dogmatic thinking a bone of contention, in "tongue in cheek" contrarian thinking, I would start a knee jerk.
So, to come back to my "out of box " reasoning I only presented this banana skin to create some amusing Hollywoodian "straight and simple" shooting from the hip.
You guys don't like Randolph Scott and Glen FOrd; basically.
Lol, thanks for the laffs!
I don't know what R-Complex means, and my brain is 99% greek and western thinking, with a tinge of Chakra mysticism. As we are all blind to cosmic order; if it exists.
"As we are all blind to cosmic order; if it exists."
You can't see it with the Third Eye? lol
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/nyregion/the-lonely-redemption-of-sand...
thanks for sharin....the hedge should give Mr. Lewis a guest column.
I'd want to read it.
I love the smell of truth in the morning.
It's going to be a good day to surf.
Just curious if you mean paddle surf or internet surf. I'm on the central coast of Californica and wondered where you might be?
This post is ironic, since GW is the first to flee in cowardice from the truth:
http://thespiritoftruth.blogspot.com/2010/09/russia-was-behind-911.html
Washington's blog has become a disinformation site. 911 was an inside job carried out by people like the Project for a new American Century, Israel on behalf of the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, members of the CFR, members of the British intelligence service on behalf of the 'royals', and the hired help. Dick Cheney was not mucking around. He was coordinating a lot of the activities while Bush could deny he had any part in it while reading about a pet goat. Meanwhile his father, brothers, and cousins were in 911 up to their ears. Anybody who believes this horseshit from GWB is a moron.
I said the same thing a few posts back, Hive. I feel ya.
But he clearly mentions US and Israel as possible culprits, has repeatedly said Cheney was in charge of everything that day, and he links to a lot of great 911 truth sites here. Have you clicked, for example, on any of the links for the psychologists' names?
Have you watched the great, last video, which is directly from AE 911 Truth?
He has come along quite nicely. I'm hoping to see him continue to progress. Disinfo? Hardly. What in the piece is untrue? What leads us away from truth? What in the piece demonstrates disagreement with anything you say here?
Things is though, hivekiller, I've don't remember seeing GW specifically deny any of that. He may have, and I wouldn't be surprised if he did. But he simply may not be convinced or satisfied in awarding credence to those propositions.
If I were to generalise about GW; he doesn't leap into the void and peal off a list of stuff you must subscribe to without developing a theme of logical argument with lots of corroborating evidence in links and in videos, etc., that attempts to takes the reader in a step-wise process, from here to over there. And if there are missing steps in between he tends to avoid going ahead and claiming what he can't establish in the same way. Sometimes he goes off on a tangent that makes little sense to me. I have no problem with that, I just point it out. People tend to beat the shit out of him if he diverges from this.
I have no problem with that either! :D
So I don't put a lot of store in people who claim he's a dysinfo bot, just because he doesn't have any intension of making the graphic verbal leaps-of-faith, that others are more than happy to make, and then not make a similar effort to backup, with evidence and reasoned exchanges.
Fortunately, I can decide for myself about any topic that I read and I never get snagged on accepting axioms or views as inviolate. So if someone feeds me a bunch of lies, omissions, bad-analysis, illusions, myths and assorted BS it won't make much difference, as I don't buy-into what people tell me, as my default response.
So it's not a problem to hear what GW or anyone else has to say as I'll work it out pretty quick, as I'm never clinging on every word they say like some hypnotised limpet.
So I'm always amused by people who run around loudly and persistently accusing others of being this or that sort of shill, troll, or political system fan-boy, or whatever. It's curious because, if you're doing what I said above, evaluating and checking in an open-ended way, then what another says or writes is not a threat to your own perception and understanding at any point. It's called being an independent thinker (i.e. like Tylers and numerous other zh posters, pretty sure GW is one too).
Which means if you're still running around accusing people of being a this or a that, it's because you're not interested in just informing people, you're instead wanting to control and direct what others think, to drive them in directions you want them to go, or else to merely believe-in something.
But what if you're wrong in what you wanted them to think? And let's face it, there's a very good chance you more or less are wrong, to some unknown extent. Which is why it's a good idea to admit to yourself that not only don't you know most things clearly, but there's a very real situation that there are things you never will be able to know, or check, or determine, as well.
So how can you then be so sure that you're right enough to insist on vocally herding people towards what you think or accept to be real?
You see, if you knew there was this problem of your incomplete knowledge and understanding, but you were still doing trying to direct people to your views and beliefs, that means and indicates you're doing it for a more considered, perverse and deliberative purpose. As then you're not just informing and discussing and learning, but you're then pushing an agenda -- yourself!
Missionaries do that every day, erecting barriers and bounds to what you can and can not think. As do political ideologies and true-believers in various alternative realities. It all amounts to manipulation and an attempt at censorship of independent thought -- at best. Whatever, they can say anything they like though, because I'm not going to accept any of it, by default.
So Please, I don't need an awareness campaign about GW's writing or his website, nor do I need to be steered away from his egregious thought-crime-wave in progress. :D
I often disagree with aspects of what he says but it doesn't mean he's not a good and careful writer and contributor. zh specifically warns readers to never accept any thing that is said in here, to think for yourself and do your own checking. If you're doing that, what does it matter what GW says, to you personally? Everyone is responsible for their own mind, and it is not your place to go around telling people what they can and can not read or think.
They will be more aware and be able to learn faster if you don't intercede on their behalf.
Because that's exactly what Big Brother's 'thought-police' did in the book 1984, they tortured and killed people who read unapproved independent thought. If you're such a 'hive-killer', you should have realised this, no?
Spirit of Truth said:
This post is ironic, since the "truth" that SoT sees everyone fleeing from is based on an auditory hallucination he had.
Yeah,...you guys got it all figured out right. America is the evil empire and Russia is your friend. Go ahead and run with that and see where it takes you. Idiots are you all...
http://thespiritoftruth.blogspot.com/2012/05/great-transformation-of-wor...
Russia is just another country looking to its interests and needs.
All our real interests and needs are ultimately shared and the same, regardless of nation-state behaviours.
No State has a monopoly on what is good for humanity, nor has an innate right to impair humanity via a mere State's existence, behaviour, cultural practices, expectations, or unreasonable demands and intrusive aggression.
You clearly do not have a monopoly on truth, very far from it.
The fact that you 'think' and frame your propositions and theoretical assertions in the terms of crass polarised PRO-USA 'goodies' as opposed to CON-Russia 'baddies' dialectic, is clear indication of your raging inability to face the most basic truths and realities about either.
You're thus discounted and dismissed.
Personally I tend to require:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence
--
ev·i·dence [ev-i-duhns] noun, verb, ev·i·denced, ev·i·denc·ing.
noun
1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
2. something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign: His flushed look was visible evidence of his fever.
3. Law. data presented to a court or jury in proof of the facts in issue and which may include the testimony of witnesses, records, documents, or objects.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/evidence
--
Heard of the US's "Operation Cyclone"? It was far larger than anything the Soviets were doing. As always during the Cold War, each side was infiltrating and spying on the other, and developing counters for the capabilities that each was developing. Jack's total lack of surprise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
You shouldn't be too surprised or flummoxed if no one is interested in unsubstantiated claims and assertions, without evidence, surrounded by a lot of warped religiousity and assorted mumbo-jumbo.
TRUTH 101