Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

The culture of fear

I put a residential rental unit on the market earlier this year, and in closing was told that I had to install $1,600 in radon mitigation equipment in the crawl space. I objected, as radon is not a problem for anyone other than coal miners who also smoke cigarettes. But I was told that one of the tenants in the building was afraid her child would get cancer if I did not act.

Shit, I thought. Fear works. It forces me to buy nonsense equipment that serves no purpose other than to line the pockets of greedy businessmen who got into EPA via the revolving door and created our bullshit radon regulations.

So too with all this gun nonsense. Bad things happen, but statistically speaking, we’re as safe as a swaddled baby in a crib. To go out and buy a gun is a personal choice, but for me not an option. I refuse to be part of the problem. And I refuse to let fear rule my life.

I know there was an incident in Roseburg, Oregon. I have not read about it, and won’t. I suggest to readers that if they are curious about that incident, to proceed as follows:

  • Verify by independent means that the victims were real people who really died that day.
  • Verify by independent means that the alleged shooter was a real person.
  • If it is determined that alleged shooter was real, do a deep background check on him, find out his acquaintances and friends, and associations. The object would be to see if he was manipulated by others to be where he was that day, and if he has been used by others, possibly sheepdipped and set up as a patsy.
  • Find out the number of shots fired, their source and direction, and caliber bullet to see if they came from one gun only.
  • Find out if there were any civilian, police or military training drills going on in that area at that time. (Such drills are the lever by which government resources are used – the drills can be “flipped live” to make fake events real.*)

A lot of work, right? However, if you don’t have time, just wait. Others will do the legwork, and you can learn more from them. Then go and get the information. Don’t wait for it to fall into your lap via news sources, as that will not happen.

In the meantime, stop being afraid.

*This is the method by which regular innocent people are recruited to participate in these incidents, unknowingly part of a larger script.

A clusterf*** of creeps, criminals, and corrupt politicians …

From the book Bloody Treason by Noel Twyman (1997), pp 633-634

… let us examine this incredible ménage of millionaires, industrialists, extremists, and corrupt politicians – bringing into the scene their various secret transgressions and liaisons. It is not a pretty picture. For example, Clare Boothe* Luce was at one time the mistress of Allen Dulles and another time bedded with the anti-Communist fanatic General Charles Willoughby. Meanwhile, Allen Dulles’s ex-mistress, Mary Bancroft, had an affair with Henry Luce, husband of Clare Boothe* Luce and owner of Life magazine. Then we have the rabid, racist billionaire H.L. Hunt with his three wives simultaneously; now adding in the crackpot General Edwin Walker, who turned out to be a closet homosexual, and J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson and lackey Roy Cohn all in the same category. Mix this with John F. Kennedy and his multiple adulterous affairs, including one with Marilyn Monroe, and Robert Kennedy and his affair with Marilyn Monroe; plus the mendacious, criminally minded Lyndon Johnson and his mistresses, and Johnson buying every election he ever won, and the Kennedy’s involvement with the Mafia in buying the 1960 presidential election. Added to this we have the partnership of the CIA with the Mafia to assassinate foreign leaders, the CIA’s involvement in Allen Dulles’s grotesque, ultra-secret mind-control programs to develop robot assassins, and the CIA and organized crime’s participation in illegal arms shipments and drug running, and we have a picture that is so outlandish and complex as to defy the imagination; and we are not even getting started with a long list of other dangerous secrets that can be enumerated. These people did not play by the prescribed rules. They made up their own rules as they went along. They all lived lives of deceit and betrayal. Out of is mise en scène exotique** emerged the decision to assassinate John J. Kennedy.

[My personal footnotes]

* Not to mention that the “Boothe” in her name is a changed spelling of the original name, Booth – she was a relative of John Wilkes Booth, as is Theresa Cara Booth, aka Cherie Blair, wife of the former British Prime Minister.
**translation from French: exotic staging

The illusion of choice

The spectacle of nearly twenty Republican presidential candidates is a recent phenomenon, and a curiosity. They are nearly uniform in their views, so much so that they would be at home in the Politburo or Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power. There is no diversion from the doctrinaire code of Americanism – we love our wars and want lower taxes, hate immigrants and want to end abortion (for others).

How does it come about? These men and woman are, by and large, low quality. Having schooled themselves in American Economics 101 (lower taxes, cut government non-military spending), they imagine themselves clever. Their views are never tested in the heat of real debate, and so they never move forward in their thinking.

What’s up? All I can figure is that the bar of entry to politics, on the Republican side at least, is set so low that any damned fool can cross it. As long as they mouth proper groupthink platitudes, the media has no basis for derision or dismissal. All are credible in our low-thought environment.

Among all those candidates, one has already been selected as our next president. I do not know who it is.

On the Democratic side, the field is much narrower. In debates on that side, while support of military and its many wars is a given, the breadth of issues is wider, and candidates, all on a leash, are given latitude to talk and sound somewhat progressive**. Debates will be an immersion into wedge politics.

Among those candidates, one has already been selected as the second place finisher in November of 2016.

Between the loonies of the right and the fake liberals of the left, we have the illusion of choice. That is the only reason we have politics – if voters realized they have no voice in the management of our country, they might get uppity. They might even form a real political movement for change.
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*Al Gore has hinted at entering the race. Would it not be hilarious if he did, won the nomination, and had the election stolen from him by Jeb Bush?
** Where is my head at! This is known as “platitude latitude.”

On second thought

In the post below I suggested to readers that they read Chomsky’s 1967 essay The Responsibility if Intellectuals. I realized, of course, that no one would read a 13,000 word essay, as it smacks of a homework assignment. We are not a reading culture. So I will capsulize the essay:

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.”

If you know of any American intellectuals who are actually doing this here in our Empire of Lies, please alert your local authorities. The consequences of speaking truth in this land are severe, usually loss of job, sometimes jail, often enough death.

Wild wings

I was looking for the origins of the phrase “wild men in the wings.”

I was pondering the significance of an event ranked way down low on the list of atrocities committed by the United States in the postwar era, the deliberate bombing of a trauma hospital in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan.

The phrase sounds Shakespearean, but the Google can only point me at sports teams and chicken recipes and bars …  oh, one other item, a 1967 essay by Noam Chomsky called “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.”  It was published in the New York Review of Books prior to his being banned from that haven for liberal intellectuals … this taxes my sense of irony. I must stop!

Deep in the essay Chomsky quotes McGeorge Bundy, a liberal intellectual and Camelot guy who was an important mover behind the US invasion of Vietnam. That is where the words “wild men in the wings” appears. (If the phrase has another origin, please let me know in the comment section.)

The Responsibility of Intellectuals is one of the most important essays ever written by Chomsky. I strongly urge that readers capable of prolonged concentration give a look. Chomsky addresses the question asked throughout human history – why do intellectuals align themselves with power and against ideals like simple justice and humanity? His prose is accessible and easily understood, though the essay is long.

The Eastern seaboard and California coast and every major city in the United States are bursting with liberal and right-wing intellectuals justifying the fascist course this country has taken since 1945. No atrocity is so significant that it cannot be trivialized. Motives are never questioned. Barbarity, slaughters, genocides are pedestrian affairs ascribed to high ideals.

“Wild men in the wings” refers to military men who run with a policy and turn it into slaughter and mayhem. But they could not succeed without backing from the intellectual class. Who, then, are more dangerous?
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PS: For the benefit of those who do not read the essay, which is deed a homework assignment, I will slip you the answer: “IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.” If you know of any American intellectuals who are actually doing that, please alert your local authorities.

A word about Bernie

Just to set the record straight, a word or two about Bernie Sanders:

He was a weekly guest on the Thom Hartmann show on radio for years, and I listened to him every time I got a chance. I believed then that he was the real deal, a genuine progressive. I ascribed his ascent to Senate as a peculiarity of his home state, Vermont, thinking it could only happen there.

Later I learned he was Jewish and never criticized Israel. But then, no one elected to high office in our country ever voices criticism of Israel, as the punishment is immediate and severe. So that is forgivable.

Later I would learn that Jews tend to be Democrats, and for good reason – during the early postwar period, they were not allowed in the country clubs and skyscraper dining rooms of the Northeast, nor the Republican Party. They were not welcomed as screen writers, authors or any other position of prominence either, and only slowly gained a foothold. (William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman, who founded Mad Magazine, were Jews who could not make their way into the ad agencies, magazines or TV networks. So they made their own magazine, one that I loved as a kid.)

So don’t ever say that I have any disrespect for Sanders as a Jew. His cultural tradition is rich and glorious, full of humor and suffering. The Jewish culture is a great addition to the American scene. I will never forget that it was young Jews from the Northeast who headed south in the fifties and sixties to help out the fledgling civil rights movement. They were the first whites to take a stand. Silly me – plenty of whites have been involved in civil rights – it was fundamentalist Christians who spurred on abolition in the last century.

When Bernie set out to run for president, I scoffed. When he began to gain traction, I looked for a reason, as the establishment, while having no problem with Jews, hates progressives.

He might knowingly be diddling progressives as a stalking horse. But I find it so difficult to believe that the man who mouthed all those platitudes and was so well versed on the Hartmann show all those years is a phony.

He could be, however. Leadership of the opposition is critical in American politics, with some of our most prominent liberals and progressives actually masked Republicans. Think … Jerry Brown, Jon Tester, John Hickenlooper, Steve Bullock, John Kerry, Barack Obama…

Bernie Sanders? I do not know. I don’t know the man’s heart. I refuse, however, to go all in.

General Reinhard Gehlen

Henry Ford, a Nazi supporter, said that history is bunk, and indeed it is. But a trip down the aisles of Barnes and Noble shows that most works of history are written to reinforce the official stories of our wars and other mechanizations.

Allen Dulles
Allen Dulles

Two well-known names are Allen and John Foster Dulles. They worked for Sullivan Cromwell, highly influential Wall Street law firm, and were drafted into public service by Dwight Eisenhower in his first term. John Foster headed State, and Allen CIA.

They are not the names I am highlighting, but Allen Dulles was instrumental in the rescue of one highly placed Nazi, enlisting him as an American intelligence asset. It was part of a much larger operations called “Paperclip” wherein thousands of ex-Nazis were brought in to help with rocket science, mind control experiments, and intelligence. His name ought to be a household word, but is not. He is General Reinhard Gehlen.

Don-Knotts-1024x892Reinhard GehlenA picture of Gehlan reminds me of Deputy Barney Fife without the humanity. He was a scrawny man, 130 pounds, who possessed a large amount of arrogance and a nasty temper. Gehlen was given control of $200 million to spy on the Soviets. He ran about 4,000 agents in Europe on behalf of the US, as our own intelligence operations were fledgling. When he retired in 1968, Allen Dulles gave him a Swiss chalet, reinforcing my belief that old Nazis never die, but rather retire in luxury. The US shepherded many of them to exile in South American, Argentina a prime destination.

Carl Oglesby wrote about Gehlen in his book The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate. He claimed that Gehlen’s role was primarily to protect Odessa, and relocate tens of thousands of ex Nazis throughout Europe, and South and North America. He did this at the expense of US taxpayers.

Gehlen died in 1979. His legacy lives on in CIA, State, throughout Latin American and Europe, but he is never mentioned. How many people of curious mind, once they learned of this man, would go on to read and wonder about the origins of the CIA, the JFK execution, and all that has followed.

Ergo, there’s no mention of Gehlen in our history books.

There is great comfort in lies

I’ve been listening to a podcast off and on from the School Sucks Project about conspiracy theories. Parts of it do not set well with me. For instance, one speaker claims that those of us who have an alternative (and more realistic) view of the world, but are unable to communicate it with others, ought to give it up and merely join the “real” world.

After all, what is the point of knowing things but being unable to communicate them? Cassandra had the ability to foresee the future, but was cursed by Apollo so that no one would ever believe her. My group has the ability to see the past clearly, but we are unable to communicate it to the general public.

I find joining the “real” world untenable because the fault does not lie with me. We live in a highly effective totalitarian society under strict thought control. The ability to break free of thought control  is a rare trait, and a remarkable achievement. To simply set that achievement aside and succumb is as desolate and depressing as the end of Orwell’s 1984. Truth is worthy in its own right. I cannot help those who cannot or will not look for it.

Another part of the podcast is a thought experiment. Assume you were handed a suitcase, and with it an ironclad guarantee that inside were documents that spelled out the truth of JFK, moon landings, 9/11, Boston and untold other events that were contrived.

What would you do?

I would open it up and dive in. I love that sort of thing. But the speakers in the podcast assert that most people would not only not open the suitcase, but would destroy it. There is great comfort in lies.

School Sucks Project, Conspira-thon (The Prequel) Conclusion – No Planes?

Fall book review

We are in Portland for a wedding, my son and his girlfriend of several years. It’s a happy event, they are both so worthy of each other. We have time on our hands, and not wanting to drown in the events around a wedding, have had time to just hang out. Yesterday we were in a coffee shop with book shelves, and so reviewed books for the grandchildren. Thus do I present my first annual review of that genre. These are the best we found in the age 1-2 category.

imageBoo! has a surprise ending, and I will not spoil it for the reader. Children love to be frightened, safely. They need to know it is all pretend, but that still OK to be scared. Author Jonathon Litton knows the mind of a child well, and so as we pass from one suspect to another to learn who it was not, we finally learn in the end who it is. Imagine squeals of delight as the child finds out that facing one’s fears need not be a frightening experience!

imageDaDa, purportedly by Jimmy Fallon, but most likely ghost written, has publicity agency written all over it. The book has been heavily promoted in the Tonight Show, and Fallon tells us that he came up with the concept. More likely he was approached by an ambitious publisher to promote a project, and seeing image enhancement potential, jumped on board. As a dad, I know that even as moms do most of the heavy lifting, a child’s first words are usually “dada,” as the d-sound is easier to make than the m-sound. It’s part of the injustice visited on moms by life. Fallon, a new dad, will soon enough see his nannied child go through the same ritual. In the meantime, avoid this book. It is highly stylized but devoid of real meaning or purpose.

imageChug Chug Tractor claims to be the best tractor book ever. Indeed it might be. Author Dawn Sirett delights the reader with both visual and auditory stimulation. Open the book, flip open a cover on the first page, and a tractor starts up! We hear the engine. On other pages we hear a horse winnie, a teddy bear honk a horn to scare rabbits, and a duck quack. A word of warning: The last page, a hooting owl indicating that it is night time now and time for bed, does not work! The child, stimulated by this fascinating read, does not want bed. More likely you will hear “Let’s read it again!” Also, the batteries tend to wear out right away and are not easy to replace. Still, this book is a top shelf purchase for any parent or grandparent wanting to spend some qt with a youngster. It does grab them.

imageKilling Lincoln – this latest book in the new series by children’s author Bill O’Reilly does not disappoint. Bill and “co” author Martin Degard  know the mind of a child as well as Sirett or any other in the genre, and so delight us with fanciful tales. Follow them in this episode as they solve a murder that has perplexed serious researchers for over a century. Read aloud to a child, this book has the cadence of a children’s mystery.  Bill and company take us to burned out barns, old buildings full of carefully preserved documents. From there they spin a mighty tale of intrigue designed for the American child. Unlike Chug Chug Tractor, the book is indeed an effective sedative, and children are fast asleep within minutes. Few will ever finish this wonderful work of childhood fantasy fiction, but a movie will soon follow.

imageLadybug Girl Says Good Night, by Jackie Davis is highly attuned to the fantasies of a young girl. She’s wearing a fly away costume as she prepares for bed, and so has to take a bubble bath, brush her teeth, but then when those rituals are performed, she re-enters her real life. Back in her Lady Bug clothing, she lays down with all her other animal friends, hoping that as she sleeps she will really, really fly. The book is a delight, guaranteed slumber fare for a young child, making her want to sleep to be able to travel in her dreams.

Most children’s book are written to delight, intrigue, and capture the imagination of youth. This one has but one purpose, to help a child drift into slumber.

The Harper Bone Fragment

The piece is about 2.5: by 2″

The Harper Bone Fragment (Source: HSCA). This bone fragment, measuring 2-1/2” by 2” was found at the rear and to the left of the location of the [JFK] presidential limousine when the fatal head shot occurred. It was found by medical student Billy Harper the day after the assassination. He took it to his uncle, Dr. A.B. Cairns, who was the chief pathologist at Methodist Hospital in Dallas. Dr. Cairns examined it, along with another pathologist, and they both stated that it came from the occipital* region of the skull. The fragment was photographed in the Methodist Hospital photographic lab. The bone fragment was then sent to Dr. George Burkley, the White House physician. From that time on, no one knows what happened to the Harper fragment. It has vanished completely and has not been seen since. The Harper fragment is strong evidence of a shot from the front, perhaps explaining its strange disappearance. If it were available today, it could be analyzed and scientifically identified as to its location in the skull. (Noel Twyman, Bloody Treason, page 222)

What are the implications here? One, the Harper evidence is the strongest evidence available that President Kennedy was shot from the front.

Two, it is very strong evidence that the x-rays of the president’s skull on file in the National Archives are forgeries. The region of his skull from which the fragment came is intact in those.

Implications, anyone?
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*Take your hand and place it across the back of your head, above your neck but below the top, where you would rest it if you were learning back on a pillow. That is the “occipital” region.