Been thinking of starting a blog, but I don’t have a lot of original material. All I woudl really do is post articles from Mises, LRC, C4L and say “read this”. Or maybe post a refutation to material found in the mainstream media. Basically, I feel like I have nothing to bring to the table and no audience to speak to, I just want to air a lot of laundry. Right now I post stuff a couple articles a day on Facebook and it generally spawns some conversation, so maybe I should just keep doing that?
Continuing what you’re doing sounds like a solid idea. Unlike you, I don’t even have a Facebook!
Yes. Keep doing what you are comfortable with. Don’t feel compelled to scale it to something that requires more work, more investment and more discipline if you enjoy doing it casually.
Yep, I have a blog here. I’ve been jotting down my thoughts over the past few years since coming to libertarianism/anti-statism. My ideas have evolved since I started the blog but the basics are there from the beginning. I’ve recently taken some interest in conspiracy theories which a lot of people who frequent this board will find distasteful. However, I hope I analyze them in a reasonable manner, that is, that I have a sufficient level of self-doubt and suspension of judgment where appropriate (and conclusion of judgment where appropriate). I have no regular readers that I’m aware of so feel free to read as much as you like and recommend to others. 
Clayton -
Not to hijack the thread, but the first post on your blog suggests that 7/7 was a false flag attack. Why do you think this is? I read the wikipedia article on it just now, so beyond that I know nothing about the events.
I’m currently working on a blog project that I hope to turn into an Austrian investment advice website later on. I feel with you.
Sometimes I’m intimidated by the knowledge and analytical abilities other financial and economic bloggers are displaying in their articles, but you need to look at it as a work in progress. You’ll learn more as you write and do research. If you stick to it, then eventually, maybe just one or two years from now, you’ll be the one who’s being asked for advice and explanations and people will post your articles on Facebook. It happens faster than you think, actually.
@Sieben: Well, this is my chain of reasoning. Others have different reasons. Basically, you have to start with 9/11. I think the collapse of WTC7 is pretty much a smoking gun. Watch this brief video to get a rhetorical synopsis of my view of the building’s collapse. You can waste several weekends digging into all the details but, in my view, the conclusion is unavoidable. You basically have to throw out probability theory, physics and start believing in miracles in order to accept the official account of WTC7’s collapse. The methodology used by the officials was (predictably) to fine-tune a computer model* until they got something that looked close enough to the actual collapse.
So, that’s my “foot in the door” to the “9/11 was an inside job” hypothesis.
This leads immediately to the over-arching hypothesis of some sort of hardcore trouble-making element within the US government - and likely other governments. This element would probably have its locus in the intelligence/defense establishments though it may extend elsewhere, as well.
Given this hypothesis, the events of 7/7 should be looked at in a new light. Are there similarities between the events of 9/11 and 7/7? It turns out there are some notable similarities. The most notable, in my mind, is the coincidence of a counter-terrorism exercise going on at the very same time at the very train station 7/7 train bombing occurred. This greatly hampered the emergency response and caused tremendous confusion. David Ray Griffin takes the spectacularly inexplicable DoD stand-down of 9/11 as the primary “smoking gun” in his approach to hypothesizing that 9/11 was indeed an inside job. The primary explanation given by the establishment for their colossal ineptitude was two-fold. First, they said, “we never imagined somebody could do such a terrible thing”, a simple (and provable) lie. Second, there were ongoing aircraft hijacking exercises that were so superficially similar to the 9/11 hijackings that a large part of the delay in the response can be accounted for simply by confusion on the part of dispatchers being unsure whether they were dealing with the real thing or an ongoing training exercise.
There are other similarities, as well. Both official explanations involve a rather improbable story of crazed, suicidal jihadists blowing themselves up for no apparent reason, not even bothering to claim responsibility or make demands. Both require rather significant lapses in the security apparatuses of the respective governments (this is fairly believable on its own account but if we hypothesize an international criminal element behind both of these events, then we can take the similarity of the official excuses as a kind of modus operandi).
Also, check out my blog post on this subject. My views have evolved a bit since then but it presents my overall case for suspecting that there’s something fishy about almost every headline terrorist attack in the last two decades.
Clayton -
*I don’t have evidence to back up the claim that they did, in fact, fine-tune the computer model beyond the fact that they won’t release the source code used to model the collapse or provide a sufficiently detailed account of their model and its parameters to permit independent researchers to recreate their results. Concealment of basic data is what liars do, not truth-tellers.
Im usually skeptical about the “physics” employed by 9-11 truthers. I think WTC7 is the only physical argument they need to use. I don’t know how a building can collapse from falling debris, or fire… even though the fire was extinguished before the tower fell.
And then the conflict of interests are overwhelming…
ho ho. Juicy.
Do you have anything to rule out that these “false flag” events were orchestrated intentionally by the powers that be? Or did the governments simply let them happen for political advantage.
@Sieben: Not sure I understand your question. The subtext below all discussions of false-flag theories of the inaugural events of the War on Terror is the “New World Order” or other Establishment shenanigans to usher in a one-world empire.
Clayton -
So maybe there aren’t a bunch of generically pissed off terrorists and the NWO staged the whole thing.
Maybe there are a bunch of generically pissed off terrorists and the NWO let them do their thing.
@Sieben: That’s the problem, we’re in an information vacuum. Either way, it doesn’t really matter… the point is that the government is acting according to its true nature (criminal protection racket) not according to its pretentious, self-sacrificial propaganda. The whole idea of government is transcendental. It is the idea that we need transcendental heroes (armed services, intelligence services, financial regulators, etc.) to protect us from transcendental villains (terrorists, capitalists, etc.) Of course, this is all childish, comic-book nonsense. In this world, villains are but human beings with two legs and two arms who have no more than 24 hours a day like the rest of us. We do not need protection imposed upon us by our betters who “truly understand the threat.” Left to themselves, people will demand the level of protection they actually require for their assets and their families.
The government lied about Waco (watch “The Rules of Engagement” on YouTube), they lied about Timothy McVeigh (read Gore Vidal’s piece in Vanity Fair on this), they lied about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (the FBI actually was the source of the explosives!), they provably lied about many aspects of 9/11. This pattern of lying obviously throws into doubt the few other incidents (7/7 bombing, Madrid bombing, attack on the USS Cole, heck, even the Lockerbie bombing). Going further back, we find the government weaved a yarn out of thin air to get us into Vietnam (Gulf of Tonkin incident, read about it on Wikipedia), provably had foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attacks and may have been secretly complicit in them (why was nearly the entire Navy anchored in Pearl Harbor in the first place???), and likely lied about the circumstances of the sinking of the Lusitania. Of course, this is all very Anglo-American centric but I think you’ll find the same pattern anywhere you look… governments commit crimes, then lie about them and pretend they are the heroes sweeping in to protect everyone from some imaginary boogie-man.
Clayton -
Guys, a threadjack prefaced by “not to threadjack” is still a threadjack.
Yes, I have a very modest blog called Prateek Sanjay Dot Com.
It’s less for writing for the interest of any particular viewer.
It’s more for being a digital journal - if I have a particular random set of thoughts, I try to connect the dots between them on print, to settle my mind down.
I have a blog. It’s a bunch of cerebral bigotry; pretty good if I do say so myself
Short and to the point posts. I like it.
It is pretty good. You’re more effective on a small stage than in the group.
I do run a blog for your reading pleasure. It’s here. Mr Civil Libertarian
But, don’t expect amazing insights or new ideas. It’s more about being a virtual stress ball than anything.
Posting here is preaching to the choir.
Posting on facebook introduces masses to logic and common sense of Austrian Economics.
I have a facebook account and publish my readings about Locke vs Hobbes.
Recently I’ve been quoting Hayek’s Road to Serfdom.
Rothbard is a bit over the top for most simple people, so I’ve never quoted him.
I’m happy to expound the ideas of individual liberty and act as an iconoclast to the popular distortions, facebook is the best way to that.
Facebook is the democratization of information publishing. It circumvents the traditional media and we get access to 30-50% of people that spend more than 2 hours per day checking their facebook accounts. The traffic counts are incredible and market user penetration is nearly unbelievable.
Read or learn a cool concept and share it with your family and friends on facebook - this is the most effect method of information dissemination that we have.
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I have a blog. It’s a bunch of cerebral bigotry; pretty good if I do say so myself
That is a pretty good blog actually. The entry comparing China to the U.S. is pretty interesting to think about.
For what little it is worth I have three blogs, one dedicated to financial safety issues, one concerned with personal freedom, and one dedicated to my musical attempts .
regards, onebornfree.