Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

Same here. With conspiracy theories, there's a chance that they're true and a chance that they are not. But debt... I know for sure what that is like! I remember seeing that "Money as Debt" documentary on youtube some time ago. It was pretty interesting. I honestly think that banks shouldn't have gotten bail outs from the government...

While we're still on the subject of politics here, what ever happened to Bill Clinton's privacy statement? It was supposed to prevent companies and the government to spy on people on the web. However, almost every week, I see people being arrested and fined for putting music and movies on line (mostly American media, not so much international stuff). I'm just curious.

I thought I should explain why I had an interest in this issue and I hope I didn't come across too strong. My girlfriend lost a relative she was very close to on 9/11, he was sort of like a second father to her. Every time this date comes around I see it still affect her. About 2 years ago we were walking to get lunch on campus and there was a group there on the quad talking about massive conspiracies involving the New World Order and included some talks about how 911 was a massive conspiracy promulgated by Israel and the United States. They claimed some bizarre things like Michael Bloomberg would become the next president and begin the inauguration of the New World Order. I argued with them for a little bit and then left to get lunch.

I saw how the 911 stuff bothered my girlfriend and honestly it bothered me too so both of us started researching the issue. My best friend is a mechanical engineering student and my major taught me how to evaluate and critique sources so I immediately went to research structural engineering journals because I was familiar with the peer review process and it was outside of any government role. Next time I saw the group I spent a little more time debating the issue with them. Even had one of them in one of my classes. So anyways, that's why I look at that issue a little more personally than most.

And for those talking about the problems in the banking sector, I just read that Bernie Madoff might have had his ribs and nose broken in prison. That might make a few of you feel better

I can't say I understand how she feels or you for that matter. I work with an ex firefighter who was working 9/11 and he lost a lot of friends. Now, you want to here about crap, he told me some thing about the living firefighters being screwed by the gov'ment. I need to ask him again about what he said it was they were NOT getting or some thing to that nature.

These campus socialist-types and misfits who hate their own country and cling to foreign dogma and propaganda have been around about a century. This whole mindset by a few actually began in the mid 1800s with the theories of Marx and Engels and the so-called inversion of Hegel in the dialectic. I argued with these boobs in my own poly-sci classes. All they did was spout ideological pap. They lacked hands-on experience living under the thumbs of Mao Tse-Tung (or Mao Zedong), Joseph Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Nikolae Ceauşescu, Kim Il-sung, on-and-on. Vladimir Lenin would have called these people useful idiots, because with their mouths, they wouldn't have lasted very long in those personality-cult societies.

It always struck me as odd that no one wept a tear in the press when the Viet Cong murdered all of the educated people in a village - doctors, teachers, leaders.... The press hardly mentioned it, and own-county haters on the campus didn't even wanted to hear about it. In fact, they'd try to shout people down who spoke of it. But have one Captain Calley kill a few possible non-communist sympathizers in My Lai (for which he was found by a court-martial to be breaking the rules of engagement), and such deeds are screamed from Marxist bastions forever and echoed by their useful idiots and our own-country haters. You see, under the double standards of dictatorships, the only lives valued by their mouthpieces are those killed by freedom fighters who become tools of their propaganda organs.

By the way, I have read the classified official debriefs of every single POW that was repatriated from North Vietnam in 1973. This exercise took me more than a month. I can't mention one single item I read, but enough stories have been told now. Anyone interested can research a valid picture. Compare these reports to Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

9-11 represents an attack on U. S. soil by foreign aggressors that matches the British burning of Washington in 1814 and the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. The efforts of first lady Dolley Madison probably kept the capital from being relocated back to Philadelphia permanently.

(I'm jumping around here this morning.) A relative of our family stood on the pavement and watched a man leap from one of the blazing twin towers. He said the man's tie twirled around all the way down, and the image became stuck in his mind. I understand our relative was somewhat traumatized by this event, but he never served in the military, let alone war zones where such events would be considered mild by comparison. I mean, if you're going to confront an enemy, you certainly need to be tough enough to handle the consequences of war - or at least be grateful that some of your countrymen are brave enough to put their lives on the line to protect the weak and the meek.

Ultpaladin, my heart goes out to your girlfriend. It is up to those of you who seek the truth through intellectual inquiry to light the paths of many who are flailing in the darkness, but you will learn in your lifetime that powerful forces are arrayed against seekers of true justice. These adversaries, you will learn, loath the truth because it punches holes in their cockamamie political ideologies. They work in gangs and packs and will try to shout you down, but blast an undeniable beam of truth on them, and watch them scurry like cockroaches! If you are also a patriot, then seek out public service so our future will reside in the hands of county-lovers who possess, intellect, reason, and a keen sense of history.

Haha, how amusing! Well, I don't mean to offend anyone, but you all do realize that the only "true Americans" are the native Indians, right? You know, the ones that were shot and killed and bruatally forced off their land by the American settlers? I'm sorry, but the Americans have committed too many crimes in the past against many people and always have tried to rewrite history afterwards. Remember, most "Americans" came from other countries such as England and France so that doesn't really make them Americans.

I remember seeing a funny video on youtube of a guy on the streets who was saying that Bush said some country in the Middle East are terrorists and should be attacked. On a map, he had Australia labeled as that country and everyone pointed to it and said that America should attack it if Bush said so! The funny part is that the country was not even mentioned on TV or anywhere else as terrorists!

Seriously, this over patriotic American nonsense that seeks to flip off the rest of the world is annoying me. If the government in my country created a setup such as 9/11, then I would seek to bring them to justice. Even if they're my own people! Justice demands no less! Honestly, thinking that a country has no faults is just foolish. Let's do some research on our own and not be blind to the truth. Furthermore, if a person can't criticize their own country, then what gives them the right to judge another's country? That's all I'll say...

This raises an interesting point of discussion. Sometime after the Pangaea super-continent broke apart, the earliest humanoid migrants to reach the developing North and South American continents were very likely Eurasians who entered via the Bearing Sea landmass sometime prior to the last ice age.

The fossil record is unclear as to how many pre-Colombian peoples could have migrated from the opposite direction in Viking-style ships. Perhaps someday genetic profiling will become so sophisticated that we will be able to determine the melding process that made up what came to be called "American Indians". I would be curious to see someone accurately trace anthropological processes both before and since the height of the Clovis People, circa 12,000 B.C.

In the meantime, suggesting that one group of migrants from Eurasia has precedence over another, simply on the basis of the timing of their ancestors' arrival, would be like saying that the policy of the present county should judge the rights of its citizens differently, based upon how many generations a family line has resided on the actual real estate, or grant unequal rights depending upon whether a citizen is naturalized or native born.

In other words, Americans are so mixed together in the present nation, it's no longer important who our ancestors were, what race they claimed to be, or when and how they believed their people arrived here. What matters is our cohesiveness as a nation in the year 2010 and beyond. For eons, tribes, cultures, nations, and empires have shoved each other across all of the grubby little shattered chunks of Pangaea, redrawing maps with untold horrors, then forgetting most of these, conveniently or otherwise except in the case of that good old double standard.

Recca, if you can name one real country of clearly sovereign land with surveyed boundaries and an established government that America has defended from outside aggression or entered to overthrow a tyranny that threatened either its own population or contiguous nations, then remained to displace a significant stable (non-nomadic) population with hordes of American citizens, tell me where this place is, and I'll nominate to be the Great 51st State.

BTW, America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator, later absorbed by those imperialistic Italians. Oh, wait. We can't say that. Eurasians are immune to such criticism. Maybe we should really belong to Italy. Florence re-invented money after all - the Florin - to help punch Europe out off the dark ages, so maybe all of our banking woes should be placed on their doorstep as well. Without the Florin, we wouldn't need mortgages. We could just go smash an Atlantian over the noggin and seize his nice beachfront villa. If only Atlantis hadn't sunk beneath the sea... Did it really plunge? Maybe the Indians did it. Or was it Columbus who sailed for Spain? No, he was really an Italian. Ain't allowed to criticize any of them guys. Hmmm... Guilt by association? Yeee, another conspiracy theory is born!

Can't tell if you did mean it as a joke or not, but I laughed my ass off when reading this.

Oh, hush up, Lalakoboldslayer...! Go download Slayers or something before I send Naga down yonder to deal with ya!!

http://www.dynamic-designs.us/downloads/Slayers_V1.00.zip

No matter how much we scrutinize the past, its doubtful it will have the answers for everything.
Even if we manage to understand the origin of something, that knowledge can only go so far
in helping resolve the conflicts and differences we face now.
What we face at present demands present action, if we have any hope of creating
a future were issues that breed conflict will no longer arise or will at least be diminished.

Since we are speaking of history, I could spend my days blaming Portugal for having a predatory
colonization posture towards Brazil and robbing us of our riches, creating a political inheritance of lazy,
corrupt and self serving people in power, but even if I did that, it wouldn't change the problems
that exist here now, as a result of that, so looking back shouldn't do much more
than giving us awareness of a ground zero of something.

I am not pro anything, I don't take sides and my political and historical stance uses the
simplest of paradigms - right and wrong - no matter what kind of sophstry or such
other convoluted theories, it all boils down to what is right and not, and that's true
for everything in life. I'm not a religious zealot, I let people follow their own ways
but if anyone would care to look into themselves deeply and earnestly enough
their inner compass would tell them the path to follow.

Life is a lot simpler than most make it out to be, and that is why so many
abbreviate their lives, because as much as death is, life, in its righteous way
of living it is also inexorable.
Sorry about the long post, just my two cents about all this.

Hey, I know I'm kind of necromancing this thread. Don't let me stir up a debate again if you'd just as soon it was put to rest. However, my curiosity is piqued enough that I'll be watching both the Zetgiests and Esoteric Agenda. I'll admit that I really enjoy the spirit of Michael Moore's documentaries, and I'm mistrustful of the greed and corruption that seems obvious in our government and corporate systems. To state a perspective that I've begun to adopt recently, I've unknowingly labored under an assumption that there is someone out there who is looking out for me. However, I'm feeling more and more that while there are plenty of good opportunities and positive things in the world, I don't think that the people that should be looking out for us really are. I think the vast majority of them are only looking out for themselves. I'm not saying it's a dog eat dog world and everything sucks, but take any situation where your first assumption is "Someone must be planning/preparing for/taking care of that so I don't need to worry about it", probably the person that's supposed to be doing that is not, and furthermore may be actively making whatever it is far worse for their own personal gain. That is an idea that I'm allowing to stay in the back of my mind these days. At any rate, I plan to approach these films with curiosity rather than bias. I have no desire to buy into a conspiracy theory but I do want to hear what these have to say regardless. I'm blaming you for any negative effects Bongo'.