A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR 18 страница

Eliot Spitzer lives in his father’s building: Douglas Feiden, “Empire of the Son. How Dad’s Real Estate Fortune Pays Spitzer Benefits,” NY Daily News, October 29, 2006, http://www.ny dailynews.com/archives/news/2006/10/29/2006-10-29_empire_of_the_son_how_dad_s.html

In Chapter 17: Tom Clancy’s book Debt of Honor included a sequence where a plane loaded with fuel is hijacked and flown into the U.S. Capitol. Some conspiracy theorists might say that this means Clancy was involved in planning 9/11, but the rest of us realize that this shows just how outside-of-the-box thriller writers think. Clancy himself has talked about meeting with an Air Force officer during the writing of that book and asking the officer about the planes-as-weapons scenario he was spinning. The officer replied, “Mr. Clancy, if we had a plan to deal with this, it would be secret, I wouldn’t be able to talk to you about it. But to the best of my knowledge we’ve never looked at this possibility before.”

Clancy writes about crashing planes into buildings: Steve Bradshaw, “A Warning from Hollywood,” BBC, March 24, 2002, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/audio_video/programmes/panorama/transcripts/transcript_24_03_02.txt

In Chapter 18: Rudyard Kipling was fifty-three when he wrote the poem I excerpted in the book. As Noah explains, Kipling had lost his son in World War I and his daughter prior to that, and he was in a dark place in his life. The “Copybook Headings” he refers to are the headings from the handwriting-practice notebooks that used to be distributed. In these, a famous quotation or commonsense adage would be printed at the top and the student would practice their penmanship by rewriting that sentence over and over, all the way down the page. This would accomplish two things: handwriting practice (obviously), and a subtler reinforcement of practical knowledge and life lessons from history. As Noah says, the entire poem is well worth a read.

Rudyard Kipling’s poem: Rudyard Kipling, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” See the full text here: http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm

Kipling’s biography: Harry Ricketts, Rudyard Kipling: A Life (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001), http://books.google.com/books?id=x4sTAiRqhKMC

In Chapter 19, we see the term “COINTELPRO” included in the agenda that Noah and Molly discover. This term seems to have now been adopted by conspiracy theorists, but before you write it off it’s worth looking at what this real government program was originally intended to accomplish.

COINTELPRO: Ed Gordon, “COINTELPRO and the History of Domestic Spying,” National Public Radio, January 18, 2006, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5161811

See also: Michelle Goldberg, “Outlawing Dissent: Spying on Peace Meetings, Cracking Down on Protesters, Keeping Secret Files on Innocent People-How Bush’s War on Terror Has Become a War on Freedom,” Salon.com, February 11, 2004, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/02/11/cointelpro/print.html

See also: David Horowitz, “COINTELPRO’s Overdue Return: The New FBI Will Be Able to Investigate Americans Who Pose a Threat to National Security-and That’s a Good Thing,” Salon.com, June 4, 2002, http://dir.salon.com/story/news/col/horo/2002/06/04/cointelpro/index.html

More from Chapter 19:

Casus Belli: Daniel Schorr, “In Search of a Casus Belli,” Christian Science Monitor, August 9, 2002, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0809/p11s02-cods.html

The Overton Window: Nathan J. Russell, “An Introduction to the Overton Window of Different Possibilities,” The Mackinac Center, January 4, 2006, http://www.mackinac.org/7504

Airline security reacting to failed threats: Alan Gathright, “No Small Feat, Tightening Up Shoe Inspections,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 12, 2003, http://www.seattlepi.com/national/130541_shoes12.html

If you want to understand what programs like “cap and trade” are really all about (money) then start doing some homework on the intersection of corporations, politicians, and special interests. The links below on Enron, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) and Fannie Mae are a great place to start:

Carbon trading and Enron: Lawrence Solomon, “Enron’s Other Secret,” Financial Post, May 30, 2009, http://network.national post.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/05/29/lawrence-solomon-enron-s-other-secret.aspx

See also a video of Rep. Scalise (R-LA) questioning Al Gore along these lines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpEcPFSEIwQ

U.N. Agenda 21: See the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs publication: http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/index.shtml

The Chicago Climate Exchange: “The $10 Trillion Climate Fraud,” Investor’s Business Daily, April 28, 2010, http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=531731

See also: Ed Barnes, “Obama Years Ago Helped Fund Carbon Program He Is Now Pushing Through Congress,” FoxNews.com, March 25, 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/25/ obama-years-ago-helped-fund-carbon-program-pushing -congress/

See also: Barbara Hollingsworth, “Barbara Hollingsworth: Fannie Mae Owns Patent on Residential ‘Cap and Trade’ Exchange,” The Washington Examiner, April 20, 2010, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Fannie-Mae-owns -patent-on-residential-_cap-and-trade_-exchange-91532109.html

In Chapter 20 we get a chance to hear Molly begin to state her case, and she focuses on the economy. If you were still doubting that both political parties are driving us toward the same place at different speeds, the first statistic she cites is pretty eye-opening:

National debt has doubled since 2000: Mark Knoller, “National Debt Up $2 Trillion on Obama’s Watch,” CBSNews.com, March 16, 2010, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000576503544.html

Bailout money going overseas: Eamon Javers, “AIG Ships Billions in Bailout Abroad,” Politico, March 15, 2009, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20039.html

See also: Sharyl Attkisson, “Following Bailout Money to Tax Havens,” CBSNews.com, February 23, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/23/eveningnews/main4822689.shtml

In Chapter 21: Ragnar Benson, whose books we hear about here, is the pen name of a survivalist author who has written some pretty edgy books over the years. (The story goes that the pseudonym Ragnar Benson was originally borrowed from the name of a construction company outside Chicago.) Benson’s book Mantrapping (which is actually available on Amazon.com) opens with the line: “Without question, man can be the most difficult animal on earth to trap…” But, as Molly tells Noah, “he’s mellowed out since then” and his more recent books deal with survival and self-sufficiency techniques.

Ragnar Benson: Mary Roach, “The Survivalist’s Guide to Do-it-Yourself Medicine,” December 17, 1999, http://www.salon.com/health/col/roac/1999/12/17/survivalists

See also: Paladin Press’s list of books by Benson: http://www.paladin-press.com/category/Ragnar_Benson

More from Chapter 21:

“Cherish, therefore, the spirit…”: Thomas Jefferson, Merrill D. Peterson, The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson Foundation, 1996), http://books.google.com/books?id=MlhB2iCTq60C

Washington, wooden dentures and the cherry tree: “Facts and Falsehoods about George Washington,” http://www.mountvernon.org/visit/plan/index.cfm/pid/808/

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, http://books.google.com/books?id=vDq6AAAAIAAJ

Many in Washington want us to start looking at regulation as a good thing, but here’s an example of what can happen when government gets to regulate existing law. Sure, the Second Amendment says that you are allowed to own a gun, but it doesn’t say that it has to be easy! In New York City they’ve taken that to the extreme by crafting an application process that can take well over six months and cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Obtaining a gun permit in New York City: NYPD Handgun Licensing Information, http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/permits/handgun_licensing_information.shtml

See also: NYPD Licensing FAQ, http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/permits/gun_licensing_faq.shtml

See also: A first-person account of the licensing process: Glenn Beck, Arguing with Idiots (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2009): 49.

See also: An internet account of the licensing process: http://angrynyer.com/?p=422

The militia was every citizen: Jonathan Elliott, The Debates in the Several State Conventions of the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 425 (2nd ed., J. B. Lippincott 1836).

See also: James Madison, “The Federalist Number 46,” in The Federalist Papers, eds. George W. Carey and James McClellan (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2001): 244.

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again”: Thomas Paine, Common Sense, http://books.google.com/books?id=e0oqAAAAYAAJ

Jonathan Mayhew “No taxation without representation”: Raja Mishra and LeMont Calloway, “Vandals Tear a Bible in Half, Ransack Old West Church,” Boston Globe, August 12, 2006, http:// www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/08/12/vandals_tear_a_bible_in_half_ransack_old_west_church/

In Chapter 22:

Nuclear materials flown from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base: Michael Hoffman, “Commander Disciplined for Nuclear Mistake,” Military Times, September 5, 2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2007-09-05-b-52_N.htm

In Chapter 23:

For entertainment purposes only we present the Orange-box hacker tool: http://www.artofhacking.com/files/ob-faq.htm

In Chapter 27 we reference John O’Neill, the former FBI antiterrorism expert who had been sounding alarm bells on al Qaeda. O’Neill began his new job at the World Trade Center in New York City on August 23, 2001.

John O’Neill and al Qaeda: “The Man Who Knew,” Frontline, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/

In Chapter 31:

“A Republic, if you can keep it”: Michael Richards, A Republic If You Can Keep It: The Foundation of the American Presidency (Westport, CT: Greenport Press, 1987), http://books.google.com/ books?id=ItOARcaN54sC

“Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys”: Robert Tait, “Turkish Girl, 16, Buried Alive for ‘Talking to Boys,’” The Guardian, February 4, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/04/girl-buried-alive-turkey

“… the useless eaters on the savage side of the bell curve”: This quote is modeled after many of the real life arguments in favor of eugenics, in all of its many faces and forms.

George Bernard Shaw: “I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board just as he might come before the income tax commissioner… Just put them there and say ‘sir,’ or madam, ‘now will you be kind enough to justify your existence. If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight in the social group, if you’re not producing what you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.’”

– From Shaw’s speech as shown in Glenn Beck’s

“The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free or Die,”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583732,00.html

Theodore Roosevelt: “Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind… Some day we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty, of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.”

– From a letter to Charles Benedict Davenport on January 3, 1913

Margaret Sanger: “The mating of the moron with a person of sound stock may… gradually disseminate this trait far and wide until it undermines the vigor and efficiency of an entire nation and an entire race. This is no idle fancy. We must take it into account if we wish to escape the fate that has befallen so many civilizations in the past.”

– From Sanger’s book “The Pivot of Civilization,” page 176

In Chapter 34:

Paraquat: “Facts about Paraquat,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control, http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/paraquat/basics/facts.asp

In Chapter 36 we use some dramatic license to show how the other half flies when they’re forced to travel commercially. And who knows, Natalie Portman might even be able to actually fly without an ID if she found the right TSA agent:

Airline VIP liaisons: Gabe Weisert, “How the celebrities fly,” Forbes Traveler, October 11, 2006, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15133601

In Chapter 37:

“I have sworn upon the altar of God…”: Thomas Jefferson, John P. Foley, The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: A Comprehensive Collection of the Views Of (Funk & Wagnalls, 1900), http://books.google.com/books?id=ZTIoAAAAYAAJ

“I shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow-citizens…”: Thomas Jefferson, John P. Foley, The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: a comprehensive collection of the views of (Funk & Wagnalls, 1900), http://books.google.com/books?id=ZTIoAAAAYAAJ

In Chapter 38, we again see Danny Bailey’s conspiratorial side come out. He mentions, for example, that there was a training exercise going on in London on the morning of the 7/7 bombings. That is completely true, but this is a good example of the difference between something being a fact and an assumption that is based on fact.

The facts of this incident in London on 7/7 are hardly in doubt: A crisis management company, run by a man with Scotland Yard ties, held a terror-drill exercise on the morning of July 7 involving multiple subway bombings. Later that day, the drill played out in real life in almost exactly the same way and in almost exactly the same locations.

No one disagrees on those events, yet those facts are interpreted in widely varying ways. For example, Danny Bailey recounts those events to FBI Agent Kearns as though the corporate drill might’ve been some kind of “cover story” for the British government’s own role in the real bombings. But slightly more research into the exercises held that morning reveals why the mainstream media didn’t find that to be such a plausible scenario.

In a Channel 4 News article titled “Coincidence of bomb exercises?” (see: http://www.channel4.com/news/article.jsp?id=109010), Nicholas Glass points out that the bombing scenario that morning was one of three that the company was working on. More important, there were no physical resources deployed anywhere in the city, and the drill involved a few people sitting around a conference table talking about how they would respond. In other words, if this drill was supposed to be the government’s alibi, the perpetrators would probably be serving life in prison right now.

In response to the 7/7 conspiracies, Peter Power, the crisis management executive who ran the drills, issued a fairly clear-cut statement in which he responded to what he called the “inaccurate/naïve/ignorant/ hostile” accusations being made. Of course, no matter how persuasive his statement was, conspiracy theories always have the same convenient response to fall back on: Of course he said that, he’s probably a government agent.

My point is that there is great danger in the way facts can be spun or strung together to give credibility to what is otherwise a wild-eyed conspiracy theory. It is our responsibility to look at everything with a skeptical eye, and also to be aware that many will try to twist reality to serve their own agenda or reinforce their worldview.

Terrorism drills run in London on morning of 7/7 bombings: Judi McLeod, “Business Exec Confirms Same-Time-as-Attack Underground Bombing Exercise,” Canada Free Press, July 14, 2005, http://www.canadafreepress.com/2005/cover071405.htm

See also: Peter Power interview on ITV News July 7, 2005: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKvkhe3rqtc

Haroon Rashid Aswat tried to set up terrorist training camp in Oregon: Alan Cowell, “Briton Sought on U.S. Terror Charges Appears in London Court,” New York Times, August 9, 2005, http:// www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/international/europe/09london.html

Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta: Terry McDermott, “Seeing What We Want to See; How Could It Be That, Despite the Facts, People-and Computers-Place One of the Sept. 11 Hijackers in Places He Probably Wasn’t?” Los Angeles Times, August 26, 2005.

In Chapter 39:

“We have no choice” on the financial bailouts: There are many great examples of panicked reaction from our leaders as the financial crisis unfolded and wore on. For example, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said: “If we don’t do this, we may not have an economy on Monday.”

See also: Joe Nocera, “36 Hours of Alarm and Action as Crisis Spiraled,” New York Times, October 2, 2008, http://www.newsweek.com/id/197810/page/1

Bailout recipients: “Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout,” The New York Times, http://projects.nytimes.com/creditcrisis/recipients/table

“Let justice be done, though the heavens fall”: “The States: Though the Heavens Fall,” October 12, 1962, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829233,00.html

“In America, the law is king”: Thomas Paine, Common Sense, http://books.google.com/books?id=e0oqAAAAYAAJ

“The desire of dominion…” Thomas Jefferson, “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law,” Boston Gazette, 1765.

“If you love wealth greater than liberty…”: William Vincent Wells, The life and public services of Samuel Adams, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1865).

In Chapter 46:

Freedom is the exception: Thomas Sowell, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One, (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2004): 31, http://books.google.com/books?id=0AShGTKZzWgC

As I said before, this list is far from complete, so I hope you’ll continue exploring on your own. We’ve also started a website, the address of which is listed somewhere in this book, that will link to many of the sources we used and will also serve as a repository for new information as it develops. Happy hunting!

Glenn Beck

***

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29