COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, May 03, 2008

People Get Ready, there's a train a coming....


The Brookings Institution under the leadership of Strobe Talbott, seems to be increasingly focussed on the new world order which essentially sees the decline of the nation state and the rise of global governance.

In the 1980's the fascination was with the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. The "wingnuts" said that these three organizations were secretly on a mission to divide the world into three spheres controlled by the United States, the European Union and Japan.

Substitute China for Japan and you have the premise for the new new world order. According to a young academic at the Brookings institute, Parag Khanna, globalization is inexorably driving to a world controlled by "three Empires" who vie with each other for influence in the "second world" countries. Khanna's book - The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order-

Here's an interesting BBC interview with Mr. Khanna

Maybe the wingnuts weren't so nutty.

67 comments:

  1. Whit: Substitute China for Japan and you have the premise for the new new world order. According to a young academic at the Brookings institute, Parag Khanna, globalization is inexorably driving to a world controlled by "three Empires" who vie with each other for influence in the "second world" countries.

    This made sense in the world of real empires, when the only industrial power was Britain, and even the United States was a third-world source of raw materials for production, and a consumer of Britain's finished goods. Nowadays it is China that is making finished goods out of the scrap steel that we ship to them, including our own manhole covers. But fear not, it is our own Hewlett Packard in good old Palo Alto, California that announced the memristor breakthrough on 4/30/08.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Parag Khanna's definition of Empire is incorrect. The main of most important vectors of Empire is that of culture and language. Economic and military relations are important, but are not the end all and be all. Parag Khanna's world map is all wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Los Angeles is no longer a "first World" member, and soon most urban areas across the land will not be if the 20 - 30 million illegals are allowed to continue to metastasize.

    This is a Fox piece on a story that has gone on for years in Los Angeles, paying active gang members as part of a "gang prevention" program, currently spending ~ $500,000 PER DAY!
    Councilmember Janis Hahn is featured, but Mayor Tony Villar is involved.
    Members "Bow Wow" and "PJ" didn't turn out well at all, both currently back in Jail, at least one for life

    ALL "Gang Prevention Programs" have recently been transferred to the Mayor's Office, presumably due to his expertise, being an ex-gang member.

    Watch Chris Blatchford's FOX 11 News Investigation: Is Los Angeles Gang Intervention Money Going to Gang Members?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I would imagine the Anbar model was modeled after a similar program in Detroit, as an expert I heard said he was teaching lessons he learned there as a cop.

    I haven't confirmed that Detroit was paying active gang members yet.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hahn and a dead gang member's mother, now a Kingpin, were involved in getting two of the most effective gang cops off the street.

    LAPD Gang Officers Question Who Got Them Off Their Beat

    LAPD Investigation:


    Councilwoman Janice Hahn's Response

    One of Los Angeles' Most Wanted Gang Members Arrested in Oklahoma City

    124 SoCal Gang Members Illegally in U.S. Arrested

    Authorities Target Alleged Vineland Boyz Gang Members

    ReplyDelete
  6. Blackwell, a member of the Hustlers Gang in the Wilshire area,

    Wonder if that's in the Wilshire Blvd. area that was so fancy, years ago.

    It takes a village.

    ReplyDelete
  7. We had a wonderful column in our paper here today, by a researcher at WSU who writes a weekly, about how Seattle(the Seatllistas) ought to just secede, join with San Francisco. OK by me.:) Always bitching they are, he says, about how the woodsers across the mountains have too much say in how the money is spent.

    I quess they have really f@@ked up the transportation system over there. Billions spent on nonsense. Nothing to show for it, really.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Clinton picks Eight Belles. Horse comes in second, drops dead. May we be so lucky?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Now, as the results of years of preperation are coming to fruition, most are still in denial of the reality.

    Yes, the monied elites work together, in business and government, to personally profit and acquire power.

    The same families involved, in the US, for the last 150 years, or so.

    They work through fraternities and agencies, friendships and brotherhoods.

    But while they have been working diligently, and successfully, it is not news. In fact it is anti-news to the MSM. Outside the lines of reasonable discussion, the ties that bind Russell & Company, the Rockefellers, and the Tri-laterals to the US Government and the major players in the US power elite.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Wingnuts, what a special term, really.

    Could some non-wingnut explain how and why Building 7 in the World Trade Center complex collapsed on 11SEP01?

    I'd love to hear a rational explanation, other than it was a controlled demolition.

    Which when viewed on video, it certainly mimics with great plausibikity.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Or as Gannett Newspapers tells us, here in AZ

    We deserve the full truth about 9/11
    Tale of Building 7's collapse suggests official complicity, persistent obstruction

    May. 3, 2008 12:00 AM

    Regarding "Drinking the 9/11 Kool-Aid"

    ReplyDelete
  12. I thot we had this discussion, but I only remember my side of it:
    Rudy's 9,000 gal emergency diesel tank that kept smoldering away until structural integrtity was lost as in the towers.

    What was your retort?
    (sorry, either a Sr moment, or I didn't read it)

    ReplyDelete
  13. That article is so full of Shiite, it deserves a dose of ex-lax.

    (concrete doesn't pulverize, for instance.)
    sure

    ReplyDelete
  14. "We watched them explode into dust, not knowing exactly what we were seeing. Very little intact concrete was found in the rubble. The sheer energy required to pulverize that much concrete into dust can only come from an explosive process."
    ---
    Yeah, like 100 stories worth of building dropping has very little energy.

    All it took was the floors above the fire to shift down a fraction of an inch, and the amount of kinetic energy that would have to be resisted was irresistable to (preheated) structural columns.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I'm with Doug on this One A good portion of your rib cage is damaged, you burn for hours, you collapse. I would.

    ReplyDelete
  16. AT THE TIME, I didn't know exactly what I was seeing EITHER, but as soon as I read a description of those multimillion (billion?) pound columns shifting down, it was VERY easy to understand.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Excellent, al-Bob!

    "Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line.

    Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."
    "

    ReplyDelete
  18. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom — approximately 10 stories — about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

    ReplyDelete
  19. "No Plane hit the Pentagon"

    First Structural Engineer on Scene:

    Kilsheimer's eyewitness account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside the building.

    Kilsheimer adds:
    "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"

    ReplyDelete
  20. GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOU SMILE..... ESPECIALLY SINCE IT'S A TRUESTORY.
    >
    >
    > ON JULY 20, 1969, AS COMMANDER OF THE APOLLO 11 LUNAR MODULE,NEIL
    > ARMSTRONG WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO SET FOOT ON THE MOON.
    >
    > HIS FIRST WORDS AFTER STEPPING ON THE MOON, 'THAT'S ONE SMALLSTEP
    > FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND,' WERE TELEVISED TO EARTHAND
    > HEARD BY
    > MILLIONS.
    >
    > BUT JUST BEFORE HE REENTERED THE LANDER, HE MADE THE ENIGMATICREMARK
    > 'GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY.'
    >
    > MANY PEOPLE AT NASA THOUGH IT WAS A CASUAL REMARK CONCERNINGSOME
    > RIVAL SOVIET COSMONAUT.
    >
    > HOWEVER, UPON CHECKING, THERE WAS NO GORSKY IN EITHER THERUSSIAN
    > OR AMERICAN SPACE PROGRAMS. OVER THE YEARS MANY PEOPLEQUESTIONED
    >
    > ARMSTRONG AS TO WHAT THE 'GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY'STATEMENTMEANT,
    >
    > BUT ARMSTRONG ALWAYS JUST SMILED.
    >
    > ON JULY 5, 1995, IN TAMPA BAY, FLORIDA , WHILE ANSWERINGQUESTIONS
    > FOLLOWING A SPEECH, A REPORTER BROUGHT UP THE 26-YEAR-OLD QUESTIONTO
    > ARMSTRONG. THIS TIME HE FINALLY RESPONDED.
    >
    > MR. GORSKY HAD DIED, SO NEIL ARMSTRONG FELT HE COULD ANSWER THE
    > QUESTION.
    >
    > IN 1938 WHEN HE WAS A KID IN A SMALL MIDWEST TOWN , HE WASPLAYING
    >
    > BASEBALL WITH A FRIEND IN THE BACKYARD. HIS FRIEND HIT THE BALL,
    > WHICH
    >
    > LANDED IN HIS NEIGHBOR'S YARD BY THE BEDROOM WINDOWS.
    >
    > HIS NEIGHBORS WERE MR. AND MRS. GORSKY. AS HE LEANED DOWN TO PICKUP
    > THE BALL, YOUNG ARMSTRONG HEARD MRS. GORSKY SHOUTING AT MR.GORSKY.
    >
    > 'SEX! YOU WANT SEX?! YOU'LL GET SEX WHEN THE KID NEXT DOORWALKS ON
    > THE MOON!'
    >
    > TRUE STORY
    >

    I can't vouch for this. But my wife's friend sent it to her.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Standing besides the remains of an engine, wings, and tail section, the investigators reported, "There is no evidence of a plane crash here."

    ReplyDelete
  22. I guessed Rense.com was BS the first time I glanced at it.
    ---
    Roving Engine
    Claim: One of Flight 93's engines was found "at a considerable distance from the crash site," according to Lyle Szupinka, a state police officer on the scene who was quoted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Offering no evidence, a posting on Rense.com claimed: "The main body of the engine ... was found miles away from the main wreckage site with damage comparable to that which a heat-seeking missile would do to an airliner."

    ReplyDelete
  23. FACT:
    Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor.

    Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction.

    Engineers call the process "pancaking," and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.

    Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air.
    As they pancaked, all that air — along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse — was ejected with enormous energy.

    "When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window," NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, "but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception."

    ReplyDelete
  24. Doug: Los Angeles is no longer a "first World" member, and soon most urban areas across the land will not be if the 20 - 30 million illegals are allowed to continue to metastasize.

    Your buddy John McCain drafted a bill to turn them all into "legals" and then he said later he would have voted against his own bill. How about not drafting bills like that in the first place? Oh, that's right, he's in the pocket of the corporate cheap labor lobby.

    ReplyDelete
  25. ah, it sounded too good to be true. Well, I'll let my wife and her friend think what they may think.

    ReplyDelete
  26. I suppose all this 911 hoax discussion is to refute Barack Obama, who obviously believes in it since he attended a church for 20 years whose pastor believes in it.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Your lack of depth of knowledge is killer, doug.

    Building 7 was not one of the towers, amigo. It was a building in the complex, but unstruck by an aircraft.

    Dig a little deeper to explain the structural failure. There was not fire suffecient to do so, in Building 7.

    Here is the video, of Building Seven collapsing.

    Looks like a controlled demo job, to me.
    There'd have to be substantial evidence of non-typical structural failure, amigo, and there was not.

    Building Seven, not the Towers.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

    NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

    According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

    There are two other possible contributing factors still under investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would likely have been communicated to columns on the building's other faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.

    Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."

    WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors--along with the building's unusual construction--were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse."

    ReplyDelete
  29. You missread al-Bob and I, Amigo 'Rat!
    We Both understand what Bldg 7 is, and cite facts about it.

    That stupid AZ article referenced the TOWERS also.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories has photos showing an entire corner of building seven ripped out.
    "A little north of Vesey I said, we’ll go down, let’s see what’s going on. A couple of the other officers and I were going to see what was going on. We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good.

    ReplyDelete
  31. From the DISreputable AZ article:

    "Reputable scientists, engineers, architects and firemen with no political angle dispute the 9/11 Commission report and say that the evidence indicates the Twin Towers and Building 7 came down due to controlled-demolition explosions.

    Tests corroborate the presence of thermite, an explosive used in building demolitions, at the site of the Twin Towers and Building 7.
    "

    ReplyDelete
  32. Sat May 03, 08:07:00 PM EDT

    Sat May 03, 08:19:00 PM EDT

    Sat May 03, 08:25:00 PM EDT

    Sat May 03, 08:32:00 PM EDT

    ReplyDelete
  33. (Rudy had his emergency response center in Bldg 7.
    ...and then he didn't)

    ...I assume that's what the pressurized diesel line went to, earlier I heard he had a 9,000 gal reserve.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Unfortunately, the author of Rat's linked article is:

    ...a Republican from Mesa, represents District 18 in the Arizona Senate.

    A wingnut is a wingnut is a wingnut. No matter which party.

    The comments following the article indicate that the wingnut in question is a "Ms Johnson."

    ReplyDelete
  35. The Building had, as you cite, two central columns. Multiple open air diesel fires would not damage those. With the southern face demolished, the northern most column would have been secure.

    A structural collapse from debris strikes or diesel fueled fires would not have collapsed it the way it did.

    For both to collapse in sequence, from fatigue, is unbelievable. That those two columns could have been cut, causing the puddles of molten metal found on the site, an adequate cause of all the effects in evidence.

    No, Ms T, it has nothing to do with Obama, but of subterfuge in plain sight.

    What was dismissed as nutty, just a few years ago, and still not suitable for polite discussion, the New World Order is proceeding apace. The borders remain open, the fence unbuilt with the money transfers and drug trafficing continuing.

    That the Terrorists were able to drop Building Seven, and for the US to cover it up, not at all beyond belief.

    For anyone with experience in not really being where they are.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Damn, look how that old pickup does sag under the weight of the nag.

    1/2ton
    3/4 ton

    not sure, but barely adequate under the circumstances.

    What I can't figure is, why any government or black ops government would try to pull off a controlled demolition in broad daylight with dozens cameras whirring away.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Who is being accused of being the entity to demolish Building 7 by contolled demoliton, us or the terrorists? Or both in cahoots? I am unclear on this.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Hey, they're still trying to get us to believe a half-ton can do it, IN PLAIN SIGHT, and with Cameras Clicking.

    They just think they're a whole lot trickier than we are, but we farm boys didn't fall off the Turnip Truck yesterday.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Maybe 'Rat is that Lennon Murder .com guy.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Maybe al-Bob is Carpet Kitten in Drag!

    ReplyDelete
  41. What year is that Chevy? 64 1/2 is my guess. The 64 model did not have the full width rear window.

    ReplyDelete
  42. The borders remain open, the fence unbuilt with the money transfers and drug trafficing continuing.

    These facts do give one pause concerning the influences in our government other than representatives of the will of the people of the USA.

    ReplyDelete
  43. I don't think he read your cite and Whit's about 1/4 of the bldg being hollowed out, Kitten. ...I mean, al-Bob!

    ReplyDelete
  44. It's a Chevy alright, but the year? Good observation on the window.

    They didn't want to risk a new truck under the Big Turnip. Some things have value.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Dunno Whit, but I think those rear hubs ARE 3/4 ton, so it'll probly make it, if they don't move the cargo.

    ReplyDelete
  46. I wish they'd pop the clutch, right now.

    ReplyDelete
  47. You're right about the hubs looking like 3/4 ton. That would explain why there's no sag under the weight which we know is approaching a 1/4 ton.

    BTW - Ms T. Aren't you a Hil girl?

    ReplyDelete
  48. bob:
    That's cruel and it made me laugh.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Then you've shown yourself to have a cruel streak too, by laughing:)

    On the other hand it's just a Big Turnip.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Good night, folks.

    ReplyDelete
  51. '63, I do think.

    Why lower a 3/4 like that?

    Low rider in farm country?

    ReplyDelete
  52. Nite, Whit.

    Impress the girls, is all I can figure. Damn poor thing for country roads and farming. Maybe make it easier for the Big Turnip to crawl up in back?

    ReplyDelete
  53. Whit: BTW - Ms T. Aren't you a Hil girl?

    I was until it became clear to me what kind of campaign she was running, probably around the time of the South Carolina vote. Before that I was resigned to four or eight years of her condescending voice telling me to take my medicine. When she essentially endorsed McCain over Obama before the Ohio vote, I realized she knew she wasn't going to get the nod, so she was really sabotaging Obama so he would lose, which would give her a chance to knock off McCain in 2012.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Obama wins Guam by 7--

    7 votes

    ReplyDelete
  55. As I read that Mr Bush asked for another $90 BillionUSD to fund the War on Terror through the end of his tenure, the arguement of the unknowable future looks awfully thin. Despite what Docl Morris wrote

    The "what ifs" we were to leave Iraq to the Iraqi.
    They cannot be answered, so the US must remain, because no one knows what may happen were we to leave.

    Past piss poor performance demands we continue a pace.

    Sorry, but I'll vote no on that.

    - Rat

    Let me offer this: If we were to leave under, say, the Obama plan (removal of all combat troops - and their support - within 18 mos - beginning in January - the result would be an institutionally weak government, lacking reach beyond pockets here and there, unable to act effectively as an ally in the war on terror, and carrying on its own counterinsurgency for however many decades. Much like Colombia previously.

    It certainly is doable, Obama's plan. At a price of changing the strategic goals. As long as this is understood, it certainly is worthy of debate, and I trust we'll get to that.

    Does it have merit? To the extent that we cannot get the Iraqi government to step up, yes it does.

    ReplyDelete
  56. I think the D.C. Madame was murdered but we'll never know.

    ReplyDelete
  57. trish, your Sun May 04, 12:40:00 AM EDT sure looks like a lead Post to me.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Care to develop that a tad more?

    ReplyDelete
  59. Very kind of you. I shall do so in the morning.

    ReplyDelete
  60. "the result would be an institutionally weak government, lacking reach beyond pockets here and there, unable to act effectively as an ally in the war on terror, and carrying on its own counterinsurgency for however many decades. Much like Colombia previously."

    That being the internal situation, of course. As I'm sure you're aware, merely having a messed up Iraq is in some ways an optimistic scenario that I'd accept on the overall merits if it were guarenteed to me.

    ReplyDelete