Redeeming the American Way

[LukeMC]

Bilderberg group: The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an unofficial, annual, invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are persons of influence in the fields of politics, business, and banking.

"Because of its secrecy and refusal to issue news releases, the group is frequently accused of secretive and nefarious world plots."

Bilderberg founding member and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, Denis Healey has said:
"To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing."

And also "Bilderberg is a way of bringing together politicians, industrialists, financiers and journalists. Politics should involve people who aren't politicians. We make a point of getting along younger politicians who are obviously rising, to bring them together with financiers and industrialists who offer them wise words. It increases the chance of having a sensible global policy."

One more from the article:

"But I will tell you this. If extremists and leaders of militant groups believe that Bilderberg is out to do them down, then they're right. We are. We are against Islamic fundamentalism, for instance, because it's against democracy."

"Isn't Bilderberg's secrecy against democracy, too?" I asked.

"We aren't secret," he snapped. "We're private. Nobody is going to speak freely if they're going to be quoted by ambitious and prurient journalists like you who think it'll help your career to attack something that you have no knowledge of.

The Bilderberg's mission seems innocent enough.

The 56th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Chantilly, Virginia, USA 5 – 8 June 2008. The Conference will deal mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran.

(link)

Okay, that's the Bilderberg group sorted out. Just a bunch of influential people having private meetings where they discuss world affairs.

Next, the council on foreign relations.

From the website, http://www.cfr.org/about/
Council On Foreign Relations (CFR):The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.

Welcome to http://www.cfr.org, the website of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). It is designed to be an online resource for everyone in these turbulent times who wants to learn more about the complex international issues challenging policymakers and citizens alike.
[...]
CFR members debate major foreign-policy issues; by operating a think tank that is home to the world’s most prominent scholars of international affairs

The CFR is a group of intelligent individuals studying and reporting on foreign affairs and global issues. They are as conspiratal as barny the dinosaur.

Finally, the Trilateral Commission.

Trilateral Commision: A non-governmental, policy-oriented discussion group of about 350 distinguished citizens from Western Europe, North America and Pacific Asia formed to encourage mutual understanding and closer cooperation among these three regions on common problems.

Now for some fun quotations from the website's FAQ page

• What is the main activity of the Trilateral Commission?
  
  There are two main aspects of Commission activity. First are plenary meetings of the Commission. These are three-day conferences which now take place once a year, rotating from region to region. A published report on each plenary is available, covering key aspects of the meeting.
  
  
  
• Is the Trilateral Commission trying to establish a world government?
  
  No. The Trilateral Commission encourages international cooperation on many issues, but does not promote a world government. No Commission report proposes that national governments be dissolved and a world government be created. Individuals or organizations who believe the Trilateral Commission supports or intends to form a world government are misinformed.
  

The Trilateral Commission are an open organisation (in the sense of being non-secretive) with peaceful aims.


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Now, I've done a google search on Obama's cabinet ("Obama's cabinet bilderberg" in google) :

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• Conspiracy website 1
  
• Conspiracy website 2
  
• Conspiracy website 3
  

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It's difficult to find anything objective on the subject. So instead, I searched "Bilderberg Members" in wikipedia and in a separate tab I searched "Obama's Cabinet". Cross-referencing, here's what I've found:

Timothy Geithner (treasury secretary) and Kathleen Sebelius (secretary of health and human services) are the only members of the Bilberberg group from Obama's cabinet. 2 out of 15 altogether.

Next, I did the same cross-referencing with the CFR . Here's what I found:
*tumbleweed*

And finally, for the Trilateral Commision:
*tumbleweed* Though, there is a former member who is "chairman of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board", and Susan Rice, "U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations".



In summary, these three groups are a peace-oriented set of highly educated and well informed members, each of which work either in positions of power or jobs which put them in good stead for making judgements on foreign relations. Only 2 members of Obama's cabinet have affiliations with these groups, and yet this does nothing to imply a conspiracy and to be honest one would hope for them to be involved with such highly knowledgable organisations, as it would provide them with reliable knowledge upon which they base their economic and social decisions.

Now, either my research is wrong or this coffin has a huge nail plastered into it.
thanks.

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We already had a 9/11 thread where a lot of references were provided that debunked the 9/11 conspiracy theories. What the hell are you on about?

I told you I haven't followed it all. But Pippy isn't talking about 9/11 here or in the Ridge thread. S/he is talking about Obama's cabinet being members of secret societies and suchlike. And as for burden of proof, I am well aware of the situation, but this is a situation in which we can at least imply the negative by showing the unbiased facts and letting Pippy decide for him/herself whether or not to accept the cold, hard truth.

[Eilonnwy]

Thank you Frodo.

No we did not discuss this to death. There was a death of sorts, but no discussion. You rudely demanded I post other peoples articles to save you from having to google anything yourself, so I did with a little bit of chagrin because that is not how I like to debate. Then you snapped back at me, somehow belittling me for not linking the sites, even though you didn't want to google it yourself. I made a claim. You dismissed it. I said "look it up, it's easy to do". You said "I don't have to look it up,". I said "OK, I hate to do it, but here are some articles, all copied and pasted so you don't have to waste your time on the rest of the net. Then you said I had no point because I did not provide links so you could go read the article yourself. But if you wanted to read the articles yourself, you could have typed the topic into your google sidebar... It's a strange argument. I did not see the part where you proved me wrong either. Please do, I enjoy that more than name calling.

Two of the three quotes has the paper in them. The first was Associated Press. The third was NY Times I think, and dated too. Look them up if you think I made them up. Oh, you don't like to look stuff up.

Then you had the petty last word, and closed the discussion. A slight personal overuse of the moderation powers, if you ask me. But then again, no one asked me.

I am only trying to show how you look from over here. Please don't act like you "won" that argument. Arguments are not about winning, they are about learning (first person to try to win loses?). I don't think of this as a competition.

I still stand by the things I said about Obama. I think I have been more than patient with how you decide to treat me. The burden of proof trap certainly doesn't stand here, as we are talking about objective, black and white fact. Either his administration is from 3 think tanks, or it is not. I tried to show it was, because you thought I was just making it up. Hopefully we can figure out where we stand, because I hate to fight, it pains me. But I am a fickle human sometimes, and you offended me.

There. I said it. Can I start apologizing yet?
Thanks,
-Pip

Sigh (I wish I wasn't so mean sometimes...)
-Pip

Why the hell are we discussing the other thread when this has nothing to do with what we were talking about here? I did not rudely demand anything that was unreasonable. I said you need to back up you claims with evidence, and show you work. You refuse to do it, so I don't take you seriously.

You say linking to other articles as if it's a bad thing, in fact it's the opposite. By examining the article and it's sources we can suss out what's true. I can't just take your word for it.

What Luke did, was what I wanted. You were making bold claims, so I wanted sources and references. If you don't want to try to prove what your saying, that's fine, but don't expect people to take you seriously if you make such outrageous claims and don't back anything up.

As far as the thread being locked, I initially over-reacted and locked it because of this:

I don't really want to drag this out, any more that is... But I did what you asked, and posted silly news quotes. If I were you I would go for the jugular and discredit those stories. I would tell me that I am an idiot for believing such tripe. Seriously.

And I felt like I was obliging you, but I talked to Adrian about it and he said he would unlock it, but I guess he didn't. I don't know what happened. It was supposed to be reopened, but shit happens. I was under the impression it was. But now it doesn't matter, we're talking about it here. And I don't think I won the argument, I had nothing to win since you refused to even enter the arena of a real argument.

As I said, I admit I over-reacted, but you're just so annoying when you enter a debate, make bold claims and refuse to back it up, and then grudgingly do so and insult people in the process. ("Only 30 seconds on google", "why don't you dismiss me and call me an idiot?") You have this attitude of wanting to be able to make claims without being criticized. Anytime someone contradicts you, you fucking whine about it like a child, and a lot of us are frankly sick of it.

When you say things like:

I am not gonna read that.

I can only be assured the we can not be 100% certain about the origins of the universe, as we can't about god. I don't want to argue about it, especially if you're version of arguing is posting wiki links. I am tempted to modify a wiki page, and then talk about that subject, knowing you're guys only form of discussion would be to post the link to what I had already written...

You come off as a disingenuous jerk. Adrian takes his time to explain things and provides assisting references and you dismiss it because you just feel like it. I've only dismissed you when you DON'T make posts like this.

I am happy to go point for point with you on various issues, but please provide the basis for where you are coming to your conclusion so I can assess them fro myself and I will do the same. As I've said before, if you make the claim, you have the burden of proof.

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I told you I haven't followed it all. But Pippy isn't talking about 9/11 here or in the Ridge thread. S/he is talking about Obama's cabinet being members of secret societies and suchlike. And as for burden of proof, I am well aware of the situation, but this is a situation in which we can at least imply the negative by showing the unbiased facts and letting Pippy decide for him/herself whether or not to accept the cold, hard truth.

It's cool, I was just really confused at where the thread had turned all of a sudden because it went from 9/11 to conspiracy to about me demanding evidence and I eventually figured out Pippy was still sore about the other thread, because it was locked and I had thought it wasn't.

[Meatball]

Meatball is drawing a ridiculous strawman conclusion (Pippy never said that)

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V

Someone crashed three planes into two sky scrapers and the most heavily defended building in the west, killing over 3,000. Than they worked up the American people to bomb Afghanistan, a country they admitted had "no military targets". Then they went to Iraq, for reasons that have clearly become false.

If you're seriously suggesting the government flew those planes into those buildings, you're a fucking idiot.

A) Note the obvious implication in Pippy's post.
B) Note the conditional in my post.
C) Note the tinfoil hat on your head and go fuck youself, you fucking loon.

[Violet]

I'm impressed by the evidence you linked (and summarized), LukeMC. That is well structured and readable. I +1 you for that.

@Pippy: if you propose something that sounds preposterous, we will think it preposterous, unless you show us evidence which would suggest otherwise. Some of us (me for instance) have better things to do than to look around all day for something on the internet (not usually a reliable source) which may not exist.

30 Seconds for you to check for possibly relevant subject matter and link it is about 10 minutes for us to read through and think about. And sometimes it can be just completely stupid... meaning we wasted 10 minutes of our preciously short lives shifting through horse manure. And that doesn't seem to me to be a very economical, wise, or enjoyable use of ten minutes.

I've had more productive ten minutes sleeping.

[fr0d0]

Meatball is drawing a ridiculous strawman conclusion (Pippy never said that)

|
V

Someone crashed three planes into two sky scrapers and the most heavily defended building in the west, killing over 3,000. Than they worked up the American people to bomb Afghanistan, a country they admitted had "no military targets". Then they went to Iraq, for reasons that have clearly become false.

If you're seriously suggesting the government flew those planes into those buildings, you're a fucking idiot.

A) Note the obvious implication in Pippy's post.
B) Note the conditional in my post.
C) Note the tinfoil hat on your head and go fuck youself, you fucking loon.

Your points are idiotic because...

A) The implications are about using spurious reasoning for a retaliatory attack
B) Your post exactly states that Pippy is suggesting something he is not

And EV gives you a rep for this ??? WTF!?!

[Rhizomorph13]

Fr0d0,

That rep was from last year. Come on, we all know what Pippy was implying! I don't support Meatball's attack though.

Pippy needs a kind nurturing hand out of the fog he is in.

Rhizo

[fr0d0]

Sorry - I meant recommendation ...EV recommended the post today.

What we all know is that Pippy wasn't at all implying that the US Govt flew the planes!

[Edwardo Piet]

So Meatball's point on it being conditional (he said 'if you are suggesting') was incorrect? How is this possible? It was conditional.

EvF

[fr0d0]

Because it was an outrageous conclusion. A leap of logic. Plus his abusive add on was unnecessary.

[Edwardo Piet]

A conditional is a conclusion? How'd you mean?

EvF