How Einstein Discovered Time Travel

Back at the beginning of the 20th Century, there was a problem. A mundane problem perhaps, but as you will see, it led to the most revolutionary discovery in the history of science - changing the way we view space and time forever.

Scientist had kept trying to measure the speed of light, and they kept being dumbfounded.

You see, when we measure the speed of something, we have to measure that speed relative to something else. The speed of your car is measured relative to the surface of the earth. If you are riding on a train traveling 100mph, and you shoot a bullet forward 500mph, than relative to the train, the bullet will travel 500mph. But relative to the earth, it will travel 600mph - the speed of the train + the speed of the bullet.

The speed of light, however, is different. If the train traveling 100mph turns on its headlights, one might expect the light to be traveling the speed of light + 100mph. Like the bullet. But alas, this is not the case.

No matter what the frame of reference the scientists of young Einstein's day measured the speed of light against, it always traveled the same speed - approximately 186,000 miles per second.

So, if light were a bullet, and we fired it in the same direction as the train is moving, it would not move, relative to the earth, the speed of the train (100mph) + (the speed of light (186,000mps). It would just be traveling at 186,000mps. Light is always measured traveling at the same constant speed, no matter what you measure it against.

This, of course, was baffling. Light appeared to defy the laws of motion. And no matter what they came up with, scientists could not solve the problem. Until Einstein came along.

Einstein was the only one who had enough of an open mind to accept the unorthodox solution to the problem. If the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames, then space and time itself, must be relative. Indeed, even mass is relative.

This led to an astounding discovery. If one travels faster through space, for the speed of light to remain constant, the passage of time must slow down for that object. In a sense, time must be flexible to accommodate the constancy of the speed of light.

If us earthlings sent a space ship to a far away star, the faster that ship went, relative to the Earth, the slower time would appear to pass on the ship, relative to Earth. As a result, we would not only be sending that ship further into space, but further and faster into the future.

A decent way to understand this is that we are all traveling through time. We are traveling into the future. But with Einstein's discovery, we now know that the rate at which we travel into the future is elastic. And the faster we travel through space, the faster we travel into the future.

This means that we could build a spaceship that would travel at extremely high speeds, and what would be only 3 years of travel for the occupants of the ship, could be 20,000 years for those of us left on Earth.

So while nothing in Einstein's principle of relativity allows traveling backwards in time, it very conclusively allows traveling into the future at very high rates relative to Earthlings.

This would allow us to, say, build an ark of sorts, with seeds of millions of species, and send it on a high speed trip around the galaxy, only to return when Earth has recovered from some mass extinction event.

I'm sharing this because it is an important tale about the power of orthodox thinking in preventing the solving of problems.

Einstein literally had to pull the rug on our notions of time and space to account for a practical physics problem. I believe our economic problems are quite similar.

And just as with the speed of light problem in Einstein's day, the orthodox solution to our economic problems will fail. We live in the richest nation on Earth in terms of real wealth. We have an abundance of natural resources, human capital, and intellectual capital. We could, starting tomorrow, begin building the greatest, most sustainable, most compassionate and just civilization the world has ever known.

But we can't afford it?

As I've said before, money is only a symbol, a tool used to represent real wealth. And under our constitution, it is the sole authority of Congress to create money for the purpose of trade of those goods and services. Yet Congress, with the signature of Woodrow Wilson, gave that authority, in no small part, to a cartel of private bankers.

As a result, since 1913, whenever the economy has grown, and new money was needed to keep up, instead of just printing that money to accommodate, our government has in fact had to borrow it with interest. And we wonder why we are the biggest debtor nation on Earth.

It is Congress's job to make sure there is enough currency in the system to facilitate trade and keep our people at work.

How can we not afford to build the greatest infrastructure, the greatest schools, the greatest health care system, and the greenest civilization, when we have such an abundance of everything we need to do these tasks?

Our economic system is retarded. I mean that in the literal sense of the word. It can't keep up. And monetary policy is central to that retardation. Our government has the full authority to create money out of thin air, interest free, to finance the rebuilding of our civilization. Instead, we have allowed ourselves to become slaves to the banker's debt.

The orthodox "solution" is to continue to allow private individuals and foreign governments to finance our endeavors, with interest we can't afford, and keep the parasite class in charge of our economy.

The real solution is to use the instruments of our democracy to reclaim our economic future, and begin the business of rebuilding our country.

We need a new, debt free, legal tender currency, much like Abraham Lincoln's Greenbacks, to finance reconstruction and greening. This currency would only be backed by the US federal government. Since the issuance of this currency would be proportional only to the amount of good, services, and real wealth it creates, it would not be inflationary.

While this may sound unorthodox, radical even to the generations of Americans who have known no other system, it is really just the restoration of the general system we had for almost the first 150 years of our nation's history - minus the gold standard.

The overwhelming majority of Americans have no idea how money is created as debt to private bankers. Or how the Federal reserve is neither federal or a reserve. It is a privately owned, central bank.

Many of our greatest presidents, and most of the Founders, were adamantly opposed to a central bank. Wise men? Or commie radicals

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks...will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.... The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating. -Thomas Jefferson

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance. -James Madison

If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. -Andrew Jackson

The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. -Abraham Lincoln

Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to...provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands. - Theodore Roosevelt

The real truth of the matter is,as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson... -Franklin D. Roosevelt (in a letter to Colonel House, dated November 21, 1933)

Of course, despite all this wisdom, the bankers eventually won. And we may have a better chance of building a spaceship to travel to a time when we have figured out how to run an economy before we purge them once and for all.

Nixon's Wet Dream

One of the most important aspects of this whole FISA mess has been largely overlooked. That is that it is not just about privacy. Or principle.

It is about political power.

The power of the Executive to spy on Americans is an incredible political weapon. Our Founders understood this even back in the 18th Century - information is power.

And if one has any doubt about the dangers of such power, one has to look no further than the presidency of Richard Nixon. There's a great scene in the movie All the President's Men where Woodward finally gets Deepthroat to talk. It is not, as far as I know, taken from an exact quote. But it is an accurate depiction of what Woodward learned:

Woodward: I'm tired of your chickenshit games. I need to know what you know.

Deepthroat: ... Mitchell [Nixon's attorney general] started doing covert stuff before anyone else. The list is longer than anyone can imagine. It involves the entire US intelligence community. FBI, CIA, Justice. It's incredible.

The cover up had little to do with Watergate. It was mainly to protect the covert operations. It leads everywhere. Get out your notebook. There's more.

What Woodward and Bernstein discovered not that long ago was that the entire intelligence establishment was being used as a political weapon against Democrats, the Democratic party, whistleblowers like Danial Ellsberg, and anti-war activists. just the way we now know the Bush administration has used the Justice Department. (A study found that Bush's Justice Dept. investigated seven (7) times as many Democratic officials as Republican officials.)

For those who may not recall, the Watergate investigation began when some CIA men, working for the Nixon reelection campaign, were caught trying to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Do Democrats in Congress really have such short memories?

The system, for example, put in place in AT&T's secret Room 641A, where AT&T's internet traffic is vacuumed in for mass surveillance is a delightful playground for malicious, politically motivated spies.

And by giving the authority to the president's men, without serious oversight or accountability, we are guaranteeing a repeat of the Nixon years or, probably, much worse.

What can you do with your political enemies phone calls, private information, or emails? What did Nixon's men do? They used them for opposition research. And there are already strong indications that Bush's henchmen have done the same.

As reported at by Jeff Stein at CQ:

U.S. intelligence tapped the telephone calls of Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, starting in 2002.

This may well be news to many people, even though Wright revealed the taps himself in a sprawling, 15,000-word article on electronic surveillance in the Jan. 21 edition of The New Yorker magazine.

Perhaps because the article was not available online it lacked the link-juice to propel it into a frenzy over the "domestic spying" on the Web, the cable news shows and leading American newspapers.

As far as I can tell, only Pam Hess of the Associated Press picked up on Wright’s confrontation with spy chief Michael McConnell over the phone taps, and no major paper ran it.

You may not care much at the thought of your phone being tapped. Innocent people usually don't. But I can't imagine anyone passionate about politics who is okay with president Bush, or a president McCain, having the freedom to tap the phones of journalists, progressive activists, or even Democratic politicians, without detection or oversight.

This is what is at stake with this FISA bill. As has been pointed out repeatedly, even without the telecom immunity, this bill actually diminishes the judicial oversight that was put in place because of the abuses of the Nixon administration.

From the ACLU:

H.R. 6304, THE FISA AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2008 (6/19/2008)

The ACLU recommends a no vote on H.R. 6304, which grants sweeping wiretapping authority to the government with little court oversight and ensures the dismissal of all pending cases against the telecommunication companies. Most importantly:

• H.R. 6304 permits the government to conduct mass, untargeted surveillance of all communications coming into and out of the United States, without any individualized review, and without any finding of wrongdoing.

• H.R. 6304 permits only minimal court oversight. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) only reviews general procedures for targeting and minimizing the use of information that is collected. The court may not know who, what or where will actually be tapped.

• H.R. 6304 contains a general ban on reverse targeting. However, it lacks stronger language that was contained in prior House bills that included clear statutory directives about when the government should return to the FISA court and obtain an individualized order if it wants to continue listening to a US person’s communications.

• H.R.6304 contains an "exigent" circumstance loophole that thwarts the prior judicial review requirement. The bill permits the government to start a spying program and wait to go to court for up to 7 days every time "intelligence important to the national security of the US may be lost or not timely acquired." By definition, court applications take time and will delay the collection of information. It is highly unlikely there is a situation where this exception doesn’t swallow the rule.

• H.R. 6304 further trivializes court review by explicitly permitting the government to continue surveillance programs even if the application is denied by the court. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever it gathered in the meantime.

• H.R. 6304 ensures the dismissal of all cases pending against the telecommunication companies that facilitated the warrantless wiretapping programs over the last 7 years. The test in the bill is not whether the government certifications were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that they were, all the cases seeking to find out what these companies and the government did with our communications will be killed.

• Members of Congress not on Judiciary or Intelligence Committees are NOT guaranteed access to reports from the Attorney General, Director of National Intelligence, and Inspector General.

House Negro

The vultures are circling in on Obama now. And the levers of power are all busy positioning themselves for the big seat at the new table. And more importantly, they are exerting their considerable influence to shape Obama's cabinet and his presidency.

I had always suspected that Obama received so much establishment support because they believed he would be their house negro - weak, pliable, and under control. I've never been more convinced of it than now. I think they might be surprised.

To understand what is happening with these appointments and the power plays going on, you have to understand the pluralist nature of American politics. Aside from the usual Washington cronies - Clinton people, Beltway Democrats etc.- who are all lining up for jobs, there are several pluralist blocks who are all moving fast to make sure they pull the levers of the new president-elect.

These include the gray eminences of Wall Street - investment bankers, financial titans etc. Then there are the pro Zionist Jews - the AIPAC crowd etc. Then there are the energy barons and oil tycoons. And there are the national security and foreign policy gurus."

Many of these groups intersect and to try to see them as simple teams of players is a mistake. They often play on multiple teams, switch sides on occasion, and will devour each other if they get the chance.

One thing they all have in common though is they are extremely invested in their opposition to any real change, and the one team they rarely, if ever, play on is our, the American people's team.

Obama has his work cut out for him. Navigating the labyrinth of interests, and chess like maneuvers that they will and are pulling will be harder than anything he's ever tried before. And all this talk about a new bipartisan spirit is for public posturing and consumption. The vultures are circling. That's what they know how to do. And there are literally trillions of dollars at stake.

People should try to keep all this in mind when judging Obama's moves - his cabinet appointments etc. We've heard in the idiot press a lot about Lincoln's bipartisan cabinet appointments. What they don't talk about is why he did this - not for some kumbaya spirit of cooperation. He did it to, as the old saying goes - keep his enemies closer.

FDR did the same thing. He scared the shit out of the progressives of his day palling around with the Astors and such. He was smarter then all of them.

So, while these appeals to "trust" Obama and wait before criticizing reflect a conception of American democracy that our Founders would have found appaling and frightening, there is a defense of Obama's moves that don't invite, through blind devotion and loyalty, a totalitarian state.

And that is, stop thinking of checkers. We're in chess world now. And if you want to be a part of the political process that helps the situation and extends beyond tattooing an "O" on your forehead, at least try to figure out what the game is.

For example, Rahm Emanuel. This is a man I don't like. He represents the unprincipled demise of the Democratic party and everything it stands for. But he is a smart SOB and knows the ropes on the Hill. And, by choosing him, Obama went a long way towards neutralizing a potentially deadly opponent - the AIPAC crowd. Kind of like capturing the bishop.

Obama will almost certainly choose a free market ideologue, Wall Street insider, who's bloody, neoliberal fingerprints are all over, not only the current financial crisis, but the decline of the American middle class for the last decades, as treasury secretary.

This could be the perfect instrument to execute dramatic changes in economic policy - unless he changes Obama. This is the danger with surrounding your self with enemies. It's like playing with your queen out front. Effective, but dangerous.

But if you only take one thing from this diary, let it be this: Obama cannot pull the country to the left by tugging at the edges. As so many progressive activists have discovered, this usually leads to those edges just tearing off and becoming useless in our hands.

If you think of the political spectrum as the astroturf on a football field, the 50 yard line is now about where our 20 yard line used to be under Nixon. The way to pull that back our way is to yank the whole thing from the center.

This is how we change this country. But pulling it from the center takes far more strength than tugging at the edges. This is why Obama needs everyone, even some powerful Republicans.

So there will be a lot of people who don't understand what Obama's game is. He will be accused of being the house negro, as I witnessed only yesterday, or an Uncle Tom. Or, like after FISA, he will be accused of being a sellout.

So thicken up your skins people. Politics is war. It's going to get bloody. Criticize, debate, hold him accountable, that's our job. But try to do it with some understanding of what's going on. Because if you really knew, you might spend more time praying then you've ever done in your life.

Caving To Senator Israel

Behold the power of The Lobby. They get to keep their Neocon Senator in place, firmly rooted in the US national security complex. Congratulations AIPAC.

To my timid friends who think this has nothing to do with Israel, or the fact that Lieberman is a Jew, you need to be deprogrammed.

There is a block of Jewish Americans, hard liners, right wing, and radically loyal to Israel, who have an incredible amount of power in this country. If it weren't for them, Lieberman would be out the door.

It is not anti-Semitic to acknowledge this. It has nothing to do with Jews as a race. In fact, the vast majority of Jewish Americans DO NOT support the militant, radical agenda of The Lobby.

That doesn't stop them from trying to play the race card every time someone criticizes their radical, militant agenda. According to them, Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is an anti-Semite.

But here in the real world we obviously have a problem. The right wing Jewish Lobby has way too much power over the American political system and specifically, the Democratic party.

If Joe Lieberman and the other Friends of Israel had their way, we would be at war with Iran right now, and possibly Syria too. In fact, the Middle East would probably be a burning cinder right now. And they will do everything in their power to ensure that Barack Obama's plans for withdrawal from Iraq are a complete failure. Fortunately, the power of The Lobby is not without limits and their grand plans for Iran have been put on hold. But not for long.

Remember, it is they who ushered the rise of the Neocons, many of which are dual American/Israeli citizens. I'm talking about the Richard Perles, Paul Wolfowitzes, and other Bush Neocons who are defacto agents of the Israeli foreign policy agenda. The power behind the Neocons has always been AIPAC and company. It is striking that so few on the left have actually acknowledged this fact. And it is The Lobby that is behind many of the caves on foreign policy by the Democrats.

Yet people on the Left always say the Dems are caving to Bush. No, they are caving to the Jewish Lobby.

The problem for the Left in discussing this is we really have two kinds of Jews here. We have the Jewish race, who are our brothers and sisters and, far more often than not, our political allies. And then we have the right wing, radically pro Israel Jewish political block. The latter is a completely different thing. And only when we separate the two, will we be able to even discuss it, much less defeat this political foe.

The Jewish political block hides behind their race for protection from criticism. They claim that criticism of their radical agenda is really an extension of the racial persecution they have endured for generations. And since this persecution is quite real, it is an extremely effective cover.

One of my best friends is a Jew. And he finds it incredibly offensive when the hardliners cry anti-Semitism every time someone challenges their agenda. He believes it is a dishonor to the real Jews who were persecuted for their race. I agree.

If anyone claims that Lieberman's retaining of his chairmanship is anything but a cave to the Israel lobby, you are either pathetically uninformed, or a liar. I have no doubt that some will pop up in the comments.

And for those who will inevitably cry anti-Semite at me, let me say in advance, I am the most anti-racist person you could meet. I love all peoples and I love the Jewish people. Most of my heros, Dylan, Einstein, the Gershwin brothers, many others, are Jews.

This is not about Jews the race. It is about the right wing Jewish political block. They are a threat to the political process, our national security, and world peace. They must be defeated. And allowing Joe Lieberman to stay is not the way to do it.