I highly recommend David Brooks Column today, The Testing Time. He writes that the international financial system is at a crossroads and the reorganizing of this system will be the test of the next president.

It will take, he suggests, a global leadership class that can answer essential questions: How much leverage should be allowed? Can we preserve the development model in which certain nations pile up giant reserves and park them in the U.S.?

Until these and other issues are addressed, the global markets will lack confidence in asset values. Bankers will cower, afraid to lend. America’s role as the global hub will be threatened. Europeans will drift toward nationalization. Neomercantilists will fill the vacuum.

This is the test. This is the problem that will consume the next president. Meanwhile, the two candidates for that office are talking about Bill Ayers and Charles Keating.[bold mine]

Being the fly buzzing around pleading for all to merely entertain the thought that Bill Ayers and Charles Keating are subterfuge for what the elite are really planning (as the DOW free falls yet again)...

OK, I'll bite, Nathaniel. If there is this conspiracy of the elite to enact Directive 51 or some other such takeover, what do you think you and I can do about it right here, right now? My concern is if history is being pushed in the direction you see, we of the average, non-elite citizenry have little capability to stop the momentum. What can we do to prevent it? Is it preventable, or should we start considering defection right now?

Tyler, I hope first that anyone who will discuss these things will know that I bring this up from a concern for all of us. This isn't partisan bickering to blame things exclusively on Bush, the Republican party, or what have you. I believe we can see signs for a take-over that go back to the 1960s. I believe Clinton and NAFTA were crucial. I believe Eisenhower's 1960 farewell address was a warning unheeded. I believe Kennedy's speeches about secret societies were warnings unheeded. I am calling people to a prayerful request for discernment.

Moreover, my desire is not to debate this, but to see that people are accessing the warning signs available to us. Ultimately, it truly is out of concern that I keep pestering, and your gesture that "you will bite" on my above post I think assumes that I am stating such things merely to irritate, or that I have a lot of stock in tin foil (I'm sure the stock is worthless by now anyhow). Your final questions as to how to proceed if indeed there has been a planned take-over are questions that need to be answered. I can only offer what I am doing.

I think, based on the 1st infantry brigade being deployed in the U.S. on October 1st, along with the presence of Blackwater, there is little civilians can do in any attempt at an aggressive revolution against the government (chatter on the blogs indicates that the government is prepared to squish such a revolt, and further that a fraction of what they discussed when congress closed its doors on March 13th for only the 6th time in US history was the very issue of civil war). I would not advocate armed aggression anyway, as it goes against what I believe to be the right ethical method for conflict, but any such revolt is doomed to be a disaster, and probably is precisely - if this is indeed a planned take-over - what the cabal in power wants. With modern war tactics at the disposal of the president (H.R. 5122) under the nullification of Posse Comitatus when the president invokes the Insurrection Act, what are the civilians going to do with a bunch of pitch forks and shotguns?

The Patriot Act, the reauthorized FISA, the Military Commissions Act which can allow Bush or the next in power to call me a terrorist if he so chooses merely because I made this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOhXH9UM50E), H.R. 5122, etc., are all items that are cause for deafening alarm. If we are not concerned with how these documents have reduced personal freedoms and civil liberties, I think we are being not only negligent to hold the president to his oath to defend the constitution but also forgetful of what this country upheld as enalienable rights bestowed by the Creator. Rather than build my own case any further, as this post is already becoming verbose, I will link you to outspoken people who get face time in the mainstream media and who are also concerned. For my part, I have purposely moved within 5 minutes of my place of employ to immensely reduce my use of gas which is a major catalyst for maintaining the power of those who I believe are behind the coup, have stayed far away from all corporate entities, and am storing food and water. I would suggest having on hand a few months' worth. I will not disclose my planned whereabouts, but it won't be in a major US city or near one. I would encourage people to do further research on each of the 8 items below. This list is a drop in the bucket:

1. Wolf call to action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI

2. Wolf October 2007 discussion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0LvtQAQ6sc

3. Gergen infuriated that Bohemian Grove exposed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOhGfWwGaCM

4. The New York Times on Halliburton building detention centers within the US: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/national/04halliburton.html
(Why would these centers be constructed exclusively for 'immigrants' if #7 below is true? Just a question.)

5. About the 1st infantry brigade deployed in the U.S. initiated on October 1st: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

6. " " " " - http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10341

7a. The Amero, new currency of the North American Union (the USA + Canada + Mexico as a borderless society): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hiPrsc9g98
7b. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBo4E77ZXo

8. The greed and ethical depravity of the Bush family: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D6fxyOtVeI

Nathaniel, I meant no harm or insult in my "I'll bite" comment. If offense was felt, I apologize. My statement was more in the vein of seeing several comments on this blog and my blog of you expressing your concern of where we are heading that have, if I have read them correctly, wanted a response from others. I basically meant that I would respond to your call.

I know you take this seriously and thoughtfully. I don't think you need a tinfoil hat -- I simply do not think the scenarios you suggest are plausible, nor do I think that the conspiracy that it would take to implement such scenarios truly exists. And I mean conspiracy in the most basic definition, i.e., numerous agents working in concert with each other in order to execute an illegal plan.

Tyler, After several interactions on similar subjects (and assuming you have gone thoroughly through the material I presented above), I take it that it is not possible for you to be convinced of such things, even to the extent that you would render it a remote possibility (any of the items 1-8 above).

I mean to tease this out only in so far as I want to see how it looks from the other side. If you would humor me, skip through all the symbology of the 3rd link I pasted above, and give me your honest interpretation of why David Gergen reacted in the harsh way that he did. If there is nothing to be ashamed of as Jones suggested (if their rituals were genuinely "gentlemanly"), why did Gergen get very bent out of shape? Why is secrecy so important to those in power who attend this terrain? If you have not given this subject much thought in the past, I am interested in why you feel there is not much room for concern and why you feel - contra Kennedy - that secret societies are not repugnant to the US?

After your answer, I'll bother no further.

I don't make it a policy to explain others' reactions. I'm certainly not going to make a conclusion on Gergen's reaction based on that video.

One of my main issue with conspiracy theories is that they're built on innuendo and seeing vague links between generally unrelated phenomena. They're also notoriously difficult to disprove. Evidence against a conspiracy is often only more proof that there are attempts to cover up that conspiracy. Frankly, the burden of proof remains on the people making the accusations of conspiracy to prove their hypotheses, to show that these phenomena are not only related, but are working towards a similar end.

Also, I don't see what I have said that would make you draw a conclusion about my opinions on secret societies. I've heard all sorts of concerns about secret societies throughout my life, from Christians who find a Masonic conspiracy under nearly every rock to Dan Brown's Catholic conspiracies in The Da Vinci Code. I'm not a fan of them by any means, but I also think that they're influence is often overestimated.

I'm not requesting that you have a policy to explain people's reactions in general. I'm asking, based on what the 'Cremation of Care' involves (making mock human sacrifices to Moloch), why would Gergen get so angry when questioned about this fact that takes place at Bohemian Grove, to the extent that he would tell Jones it was "none of (Jones') damn business" and then call the revealing of that ritual "ambush journalism"? I think it is a fair question. If someone discovered the pastor of a church went to a camp that did this sort of stuff, I think the church of this given pastor would want to know about it. If Bush, a professed Christian goes to camps like this, which he does, and so did Reagan, and Nixon, and Clinton, etc etc, I think the Christian Right should know about it. I think Gergen's anger is something that needs to be pondered. Anger in response to some revealed fact is often a telling index, just as smoke is indexically a sign of fire.

Further, I wasn't drawing conclusions about your opinions about secret societies. I was asking questions about how you approach these things as I stated from the onset, and I did not pose the questions in a rhetorical way. I simply stated that Kennedy said we need to be extremely concerned about secret societies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WSGwnz7XpY), and if one is not, I want to know why. I want to know why if Kennedy, our then president, could openly tell the public that there is a conspiracy under our noses operating with great force, I wonder why we can be so relaxed. I also do not think it is a "conspiracy" in the smeared sense of the term, if the leader of the free world is openly attesting to them and their scope, influence, and agenda.

I do not disagree that many conspiracy theories are based on vagaries and innuendo, but what I do dispute is that the 'Cremation of Care' ritual at Bohemian Grove is - as Jones revealed - something that no Christian can support: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZD3WT3Vqa8.

Edit: something that A Christian can support

I think we are talking past each other here. This conversation has become far more specific than I intended. I do not care to defend or debate the Bohemian Grove -- I had never heard of them until these comments. I'll reiterate my point that I do not see the calculus the same as you do, or at the least have not been convinced of it. So far, you have shown me X exists and Y exists, but have not shown me how or why X + Y must equal Z. The Bohemian Grove exists. OK. The 1st Infantry was deployed, "as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters." Fine. Some people are calling for the Amero as a currency for a new North American Union economy. OK. I fail to see evidence that these things add up to one big conspiracy.

"The Bohemian Grove exists. OK. The 1st Infantry was deployed, 'as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters.' Fine. Some people are calling for the Amero as a currency for a new North American Union economy. OK. I fail to see evidence that these things add up to one big conspiracy." --->

Tyler, your closing line has had me thinking all day. Below I've written much, don't expect a response, and can only hope you'll read through that which I have taken the time to jot down. Your closing gets into so many great things, from deep investigations into the workings of logic, to whether investigative journalism is the only legitimate source of public discourse and research, to epistemology in general, to cause and effect. What can we really know? Is there any potential for legitimizing a strategy that 'reads between lines' (or plays with innuendo, a term you used the other day) in the same way that we would immediately grant legitimacy to a perfectly rigorous deductive process that connects X, Y, and Z? For an example of the former type, Cafferty makes a jump here that implies a link between (X) The Military Commissions Act provision that preemptively pardons the Bush Administration of war crimes for torture, (Y) the motivation for a retroactive pardon of war crimes being inscribed within the bill, and (Z) the fact that violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996 actually took place by the Bush Administration due to (X): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ckz6pMjKFw. Can we use the provision within the bill as proof that the war crimes took place? Certainly not in a philosophically logical sense (this provision is not 'evidence' in the sense I believe you use the term), but then one wonders why the need for a preemptive pardon if one indeed is comprehensively guilt free?

Ultimately there is no way to logically connect all these items we've been discussing into one grand narrative with just a few short paragraphs, and my endeavor is not to connect them all into one grand narrative, but to bring to our attention the fact that various deplorable things are indeed taking place at once, regardless of any alleged interconnectivity. I don't believe to be possible a perfect University of California-approved researched connection between all these things, particularly with all the masking and obfuscation that takes place in the press and by those in power. Masking and obfuscation? Remember those great words: "I did not... have... sexual... relations with that woman..." If you heard those words live, and I told you immediately thereafter that Clinton did have sexual relations with Lewinsky, I would be in the camp of conspiracy theorists. Those words were an attempt to conceal the truth, to offer false statements that attempted to simulate truth. The point is that truth can get uncovered, and sometimes it does as in the case of Lewinsky or Nixon, but sometimes it doesn't. There is no proof on the books - like a DNA stained blue dress - that Kennedy had an affair with Monroe, but I saw them in a photograph reclining together - his arm around her - in a 1950s convertible Cadillac at Indian Rocks Beach (wink). Often discernment must go past the tools the media allows into one's hands. I'm not asking all of us to be a Yoda of sorts that smells behind him the threat of storm troopers at his back that he cannot even see, only to then use that smell to whip up high into the air and decapitate each of them with his light saber in one sweeping stroke. But I am asking for the type of slight distrust in the hegemony of reason that takes place when you do not believe - in real time and without 'evidence' to back up your belief - the words that escape Clinton's mouth.

I admittedly cannot prove a connection between all these things as an orchestrated series of actions by those in secret for a specific end (for example, closing down our democracy to initiate a step toward a One World Government or New World Order). It is somewhat comforting - as a perspective - that if there cannot be or as of yet has not been a rigorous demonstration connecting these things, perhaps the agenda does not exist, and I should not be persuaded of it nor frightened by the potential signifiers in place for it. But I find that standpoint also to be fallacious: Merely because something is not rigorously proven with evidence (God being a primary example), does not mean we discard it as nonexistent. I can only assert that these separate things we've been discussing - regardless of whether they are authored by a singular elite - if pushed further to in fact coalesce could catalyze into the nightmare I envision. My hope is that the ensuing months on our homeland go peacefully, there is a new president placed into power, and that all of this is behind us. As this Boston.com article attests (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2007/11/25/the_amero_conspiracy/), the lies, secrecy, and paranoid politics of this administration are exhausting, and I am tired of it!

When engaging this 'conspiratorial' material, my hope is that a person would have the ability and proclivity to suspend bias. To borrow from film culture here, the whole idea of modernism backward is that we must attempt at an objectivity that we can indeed embrace, and therefore we must feel morally obligated to "take the red pill and see how far the rabbit hole goes." The truth quite often might not lead to aesthetically pleasing revelations, and the content of Kennedy's remarks on this link expose a great deal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1smgz-px1Q. Ultimately, I think it is in our highest interest to listen up when a Kennedy or any president goes on the historical record with such shocking statements. In those assertions, I believe it is far from a stretch to conclude that, in order for him to be so intimately acquainted with the detail and mechanisms of the secret society groups he implicates, he must at one time have had close interaction with such individuals or deep knowledge of their workings. The speech to me - in that light - shows a desire on his part to disrupt the course of events they had planned and to disengage with any promises he or his family had made to further them. Also quite telling is that he was assassinated relatively soon after this speech took place, before he was able to take on another term as president and exact any sort of steps toward eliminating groups or changing how those involved in such things do their work.

Rather than engaging Kennedy conspiracy theories, however, I want to finish this post off by returning to some interesting implications of Bohemian Grove:

--Nixon on Bohemian Grove: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPb-PN9F2Pc

--A 1981 News Report about Bohemian Grove: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCDs9Vs2iYM

From the above we have the following: 1) We know from the 1981 news report that Gerald Ford, Henry Kissenger, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, etc., have all attended the camp. 2) We know from the news report that a 'Cremation of Care' ritual takes place at the camp that involves fire and a large owl sculpture in which the 'pressures of life' are sacrificed to this owl. 3) We know from A) David Gergen's Washington Times quote that part of the reason he told the press he was leaving the Grove (which he later contradicts when talking with Jones) was that "he didn't want to run around naked in the woods", and B) Richard Nixon's statements deplored the rampant homosexual activity that takes place at Bohemian Grove.

So let's attempt to connect a few X, Y, and Zs. Ponder just for a few moments that our current leaders declare that they are devout Christian men. Let us further reflect on the footage Jones presents wherein the following ritualistic events take place as a tradition at Bohemian Grove (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnpFfBMgfKU). I am confused by how a devout Christian man in any era can perform an occult ritual (read: Baal) that involves mock human sacrifice to an enormous owl statue, wearing red capes and other such garb, and beseeching the large scale owl for wisdom. My concern is, as a Christian, would you ever do such a ritual that is intended to remain a secret from the public? I know I would not, as the gesture goes against what I believe to be demanded in the 1st and 2nd commandments amongst a host of other things Christ discussed. One cannot both pray to to Yahweh and pray to an owl and not as a consequence intentionally violate the conditions of Christian worship. Would a person want his pastor practicing such things in private? If one found out that he did practice such things, would one consider this man to be dealing in deception and a person not to be trusted?

The Nixon tape and the "naked" comment by Gergen appear to be things that I personally would never feel morally solid in doing as it evokes images of dionysian hedonism, and my hunch is that in such nakedness they are not trying to get close to nature but rather to each other! Thus, when I bring up Bohemian Grove, my first assertion is a criticism of the behavior and character of those who profess Christianity, yet return year after year to do traditional rituals that would anger God, invoke His jealousy, and go against his sexual conduct. These tapes that Jones recorded by "crashing" the Bohemian Grove and engaging in "ambush Journalism" are on equal par - in a spiritual sense - with a Clintonian Blue Dress. When I make this sort of statement, I am asking for us to set aside our love for the UC and the rigor in research that goes on there, and to remember our allegiance to the spiritual side of discernment. These concerns I state here do not connect with implications that could involve policy-making hidden from the public that takes place at the Grove, or the allegation that many of our leaders may in fact be worshipers not of Christ, but Satan. My initial concern is that the contents of what they do at the Grove has been hidden for decades (Jones alleges the make policy and set world agenda there), appear quite anti-Christian and immoral, and such is something that every voting Christian should investigate further. Additional conspiratorial claim concerns are for another time...