Author: Mark Tokarski

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

A good day to die

We had some damage to our roof last year due to a hail storm, and are looking for a contractor for repairs. It reminded me how useless the search engines have become for … searching for stuff. The shills, hucksters, carnival barkers have taken over. The same companies turn up again and again in various forms because they paid for that result.

Gone are the days when a search for a business yields an honest search result.

Back a few years when I was still advertising for business, I was offered a deal where my name would appear at or near the top of page one for anyone looking for a CPA in our area. I asked how that could work when there were hundreds of others being offered the same deal. I did not get a straight answer – these are, after all, hucksters. The real answer was the search engine results are tailored to individuals, so that if I used my computer to test search their promise, my computer would yield … me. It was a scam. What’s new?

Thank you, wonderful free market, for taking the best thing to come along in our lifetime, the search engine, and turning it into crap. We finally found a list of reputable roofing contractors, and here is how we did it: We asked our insurance company to provide us with names. That was the only way to break through the clutter – we had to bypass the Internet.

Search engines stopped working once the marketing people got their busy little fingers into them.

Years ago we were all being plagued by pop-up ads, so much so that the television news people even reported on it. A TV story I saw ran down some of the ads to an agency in New York. They asked a gal working there about the annoyance factor. She said, and I quote: “Well duh! It’s our job to get your attention.”

The reporter then turned to the camera, smiled and winked at us, took out a gun and put a bullet in her brain. He was never prosecuted. Everyone realized it was the right thing to do.

(By the way, I am aware of the irony of little pop-up ads appearing in the Bill Hicks piece above. They know we hate them. They are just taunting us.)

Incuriosity versus stupidity: A distinction without a difference

brusselOn these early spring days I’ve been working in our garage while listening to Mae Brussel radio shows from the early 1970’s. She was on the air for one hour weekly for years in northern California in a time when radio stations had “public affairs” departments. That’s an oxymoron, I realize.

Brussel was an unusual woman, inquisitive and thorough. She harvested information from newspapers, magazines and news reports, maintaining cross-referenced files on people and subjects in the manner of J. Edgar Hoover, but for a better purpose. She read every book that time allowed her. In so doing, a different world unfolded before her. She was not mystical, just observant.

Today we would label such behavior an aberration, and she would be called a “conspiracy theorist.” That is part of our thought control regime, designed to keep normally curious people from straying out of bounds. These are oppressive times – we have so much information at our fingertips, and are so afraid to access it. Worse than that, people are mostly boring, smug and credulous at once, self-infused with the idea that they are somehow clever and wise for all of the things they do not know and refuse to investigate. Eeesh!

Incuriosity and indifference, even if studied, are indistinguishable from stupidity. But I digress.

I am not nostalgic. I do not believe in the ‘good old days. I listen to Brussel with an ear attuned to similarities between those times and now. There are many. Then as now, public officials were usually in some manner compromised if not overtly corrupt, and TV was a drug.

But there was a difference. Brussel’s audience was people attuned and aware of incongruities between news and reality. She was constantly fielding letters and calls from sharp listeners. It was a minority of people of course, but enough that her radio show had a large following.

Mae was speaking to college students too. She was warning them that the government was tired of the activism of the sixties, the protests, teach-ins – a climate of vigilance that made the ordinary criminal activity of public officials more difficult. They wanted to dumb it all down again. She saw on the horizon a problem with drugs, and told college kids that they would be easy to come by and to avoid them. She urged her listeners to keep their minds clean and sharp.

That was prescient, I would say. Drug use has always been with us. We all know the image of the stoner and the attitude that accompanies habitual marijuana use – a mildly delirious indifference.

Pot is legal where I live, and the movement is spreading. This is not a sea change – as my son reminded me, pot has always been legal for white folks. Legalization will allow it to penetrate deeper into society. It was a huge tool in the law enforcement arsenal for harassing and imprisoning minorities, and police will have to reload their quivers with other tools. They’ll figure that out.

Legalization of marijuana is a step forward for civil liberties, for minorities anyway. But habitual use ought to be discouraged as well. A government that can stigmatize intelligence and curiosity ought to be able to attach a touch of shame to pot use. But they won’t.

Pot and stupidity go hand-in-hand. But a dumbed down public is a good doggy. Here’s a bone. Or a bong.

Anomalies, moles, patsies, sheepdipping (Part 2)

This is a continuation of this post.

Squawks: All passenger airliners have “squawk” buttons in the cockpits, one of many anti-hijacking protections. Cockpits are also sealed so that strangers cannot randomly enter, even by force. If a hijacking is attempted, the pilot merely hits the squawk button, and within six minutes a fighter jet will appear and escort the plane to a landing. On 9/11/2001 there were eight pilots, all swinging dicks with military backgrounds, but not one of them managed to hit a squawk button. In addition, it remains unexplained how purported hijackers made their way to the cockpits, which do not have swinging doors.
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The FBI catches a lot of grief among skeptics, but it is a large organization and most of its people are trying to do their job, which is investigating crime. The organization is very good at its job. Here’s an example:

In August of 2001 FBI Agent FBI Agent Kenneth Williams in Phoenix notified superiors that eight bin Laden agents were training in an Arizona flight school. The report was ignored, and later Minneapolis Agent Coleen Rowley claimed in a thirteen page letter that senior FBI officials created a “roadblock” to derail the probe. Rowley claimed that FBI agents were so frustrated by the lack of response that they directly notified the CIA. They were, of course, reprimanded for this breach of protocol, that is, for notifying the CIA.

Most would quickly write it off to bureaucratic bungling, but anyone who is remotely familiar with spooks will instantly recognize a few things:

  • Honest agents were doing their job.
  • They were intercepted and thwarted by moles, or inside agents covertly working for those who were planning 9/11.
  • The “hijackers” were being babysat, or monitored to be sure that when they were needed to take the fall for the crime, they were free and available. (It would not do, for instance, if Osama bin Laden was in jail on that day. He had to be kept free and his whereabouts known.)
  • Finally, the “hijackers,” who were in reality patsies, were being sheepdipped*.

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An anomaly here and there is to be expected, and not every oddball occurrence is significant. When they stack up, eyebrows should be raised. Of course, part of the American education process involves the shaving of eyebrows, or putting a damper on natural curiosity, but 9/11/2001 was a circus of anomalies. Thousands of people know much more than they dare say for a simple reason: They like being alive.
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*In ranching, “sheepdipping” is a process by which the animals are cleansed of lice and parasites by physically dipping them in cleansing solutions. In the spy game, sheepdipping is the word used when an innocent person is framed in advance to take the fall for a later crime. Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy, and was sheepdipped and put in place to take the fall for the JFK murder, allowing the real criminals to escape. The 9/11 “hijackers” were not actually training to fly passenger airliners, but rather were being manipulated to look guilty to distract people from the real criminals, still at large.

Intermission: A reminder … basic rules of probability

Please review the following posts on critical thinking and probability before proceeding.

Critical thinking skills and conspiracies
Critical thinking skills and conspiracies (Part 2)
Critical thinking skills and conspiracies (Part 3)
The high improbability of certain events
The extreme unlikelihood of certain events happening by chance

Swede reminded me in the comments below yesterday’s post that coincidences just happen, and I should just accept that or something is wrong with my mind. Sigh.

Indeed they do. I’ve had some crazy ones. For instance, when we lived in Bozeman our neighbors up the road, Mark and Cathy, asked if I was related to Tom Tokarski. Indeed I was, as my brother at that time lived just down the road in Livingston. But they were talking about another Tom Tokarski, one who was their neighbor in Indiana and who was a citizen activist fighting to stop the building of a road though a local undeveloped area.

What are the odds, with maybe five Tom Tokarski’s in the country, that Mark and Cathy would be neighbors with one in Indiana, and then move a thousand miles away to be neighbors with the brother of another one in Montana? Very long indeed, but just one of those things. We have all had coincidences like that in our lives.

In the posts linked above, I am not talking about that, but rather the statistical likelihood of related coincidences. When coincidences have an event or person or place in common, we can apply some basic math to determine probability. It’s the logic of the coin toss, that’s all.

Please do go read those posts if you are having trouble understanding why, for instance,

  • Charles Peirce was able to detect that a will was a forgery, or
  • Why it is extremely unlikely that FOUR hijackings would be successful on a given day, or
  • It is so unlikely that a hijacker’s passport would survive and be found in the rubble even as no parts of the plane survived, or
  • That the surveillance system at the Pentagon, along with the national air defense system, would go haywire on the very day that Vigilant Guardian, the biggest national air defense military drill of the year was running.

(I have not yet mentioned the seventeen military and civil defense drills that were running on 9/11/2001, and how they were intricately connected to the events of that day.)

In other words, if you don’t have a basic understanding of probability, this won’t register with you. If you do have that understanding, it will trouble you.

Anomalies, moles, patsies, sheepdipping

Anomaly (NOUN): something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected.

Anomalies often serve as doorways for investigators, as they can lead to important information. 9/11/2001 was an anomaly circus. I will highlight a few today and tomorrow.
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Anyone who has flown on an American passenger airline knows that the flights are almost always full, or nearly so. The airlines vary the size of the aircraft and shift passengers so that they maximize occupancy on any flight. They are pretty good at it. It’s rare even to have an empty seat next to us on most flights.

However, on September 11, 2001, the four flights that were supposedly hijacked carried very few passengers. In fact, on Flight 93, the source of the famous “Let’s Roll!” fable, each passenger enjoyed a full row of seats. Here’s the occupancy for that day:

  • Flight 11: 180 seats, 76 passengers;
  • Flight 175: 180/46
  • Flight 77: 200/50
  • Flight 93: 200/26

Such a shortage of passengers on these flights is suspicious. The 9/11 Commission did not investigate the matter.
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“Short sales,” for those who are not familiar with stock market terminology, are a trading device used by investors to take advantage of a falling stock price. He “borrows” stock from a broker, sells it, and when the price falls buys it back and returns it to the broker, pocketing the difference. A “put” option is a form of shorting the market, betting that a stock will fall without actually buying and selling the stock.

Inside information is a huge part of stock market success, so the SEC monitors the Chicago Board Options Exchange for anomalies in puts and shorts.

Three stocks were heavily shorted immediately prior to 9/11/2001, United and American Airlines (whose planes were hijacked) and Morgan Stanly Dean Witter (offices in World Trade Center). There were spikes in activity on these stocks that caught the eye of investigators after 9/11. The Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, and 4,516 on American Airlines, and 12,215 on Morgan. Previous activity might have seen at most a few hundred puts on these stocks, and there was nothing in the news just indicate that their price might fall. Someone was operating on inside information.

I regard this as humorous – someone, knowing 9/11 was coming down, simply could not resist. Mendacity, treachery, and greed operated hand-in-hand. Who did these puts? We don’t know. $2.5 million in profits lay unclaimed to this day. The 9/11 Commission investigated, of course, but found that there was no connection to Osama bin Laden, its predetermined villain, and so did not do further inquires.

More to follow. Stay tuned.
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PS: This is in response to comments below: At some point in the near future I will write about the so-called “truth” movements and “truthers.” At this point the organizations with the words “…for 9/11 Truth” are Architects and Engineers, Scholars, Pilots, possibly one or two others. I avoid them, regarding them as merely part of the ongoing coverup.

Reverse Naudet

In the previous post I discussed the extreme unlikelihood that the “Naudet Brothers” would to happen to be in position to catch high quality video of the first “plane” hitting the Pentagon. This happened even as no other citizen of that great city managed to put their cell phone in the air and take even one bad photo of that event that day.

Now we need to take a look at the other side of that coin, the extreme set of circumstances where a building with a highly trained and professional security force and scores of cameras always operating … failed. This is as unlikely as the other event, so that I choose to call it the “Reverse Naudet Effect.” The Pentagon is protected by rings of redundant security, sophisticated anti-missile equipment, and cameras everywhere. The cameras operate 24/365, and are routinely inspected and tested to be sure they are working properly. The images they take are reviewed, catalogued and stored.

On 9/11 everything failed at once, except this:

I don’t mean to be rude, but I want to administer atrial fibrillation to the cranial area of the American public. I have to ask the question: People, what the hell is wrong with you?

The extreme unlikelihood of certain events happening by chance

The coincidence which has occurred here must have had its origin in an intention to produce it. It is utterly repugnant to sound reason to attribute this coincidence to any cause but design. (Benjamin Peirce)

Please review here for a simple example of probability as demonstrated by coin toss, and here for a more complex demonstration of the use of probability logic to show how certain events cannot possibly be coincidental.

This brief video clip, now called the “Naudet Film,” appeared first on September 11, 2001. It claimed to be evidence of a plane hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center, even though no plane is seen. Like everyone that day, I was doe-eyed and ate it up. It did not occur to me to question its authenticity.

It does not take much critical examination to show that the Naudet film had to have been staged. It is high quality, focused, and the object of our attention is neatly framed by buildings on either side. Many things had to come together to produce such a film highlighting seventeen seconds of a major crime, to wit:

  • Jules Naudet had to be outdoors, and not indoors at the moment the event happened. (Almost all New Yorkers at any given time are indoors or in their cars or on public transportation.)
  • He had to be in a place that had a clear and unobstructed view of the Twin Towers. (Such views in the canyons of Manhattan are unusual.)
  • He had to be using high quality video equipment at that time.
  • His view had to be of the north side of the building that was hit, and not any of the other three sides.
  • Naudet had to be free of moving vehicles and pedestrians to be able to work without interference.
  • He had to be with people who had the legal power to block off the intersection.
  • His unobstructed view had to be of the north tower, and not the south, which presented three more viewshed possibilities for an errant aircraft that day.
  • A gas leak (officially listed now as a false report) had to be phoned into the New York Fire Department at the intersection that provided the view.
  • There had to be a compelling reason for Naudet to film an uninteresting event such as FDNY response to a gas leak.
  • His camera had to be positioned at a place in the large intersection where he could easily shift the camera view to pick up the event.
  • The video of the event is precise and the view centered and the object in focus. He had to be very lucky to make a quick maneuver and get such a result.
  • After hearing the noise of an aircraft or missile he quickly moved the camera to focus on the north tower, which does not seem the normal reaction to a loud noise. (Three firemen react to noise and look up, but we do not know if is to the noise we hear on the sound track, which can be easily manipulated.)

In sum total, there were too many coincidences. The event was staged, and Naudet was positioned with foreknowledge that there was going to be an explosion in the north tower.

Leslie Raphael has done far more work on this event, and I credit him with the content of the bullet points above. But he is far more thorough, and has in fact come up with a list of 69 happenstance circumstances that had to have been in place for Jules Naudet to enjoy his brief moment of fame. In going over the list, I don’t always comprehend his reasoning, and thought maybe one or two of the 69 coincidences were duplications, but if the list were only the twelve listed above, it is enough to conclude that the Naudet film was a staged event.

Again, if indeed this event was staged and done with foreknowledge, and it is utterly repugnant to sound reason to conclude otherwise, then what are the implications?

The high improbability of certain events

MetaphysicalThe Howland Will Forgery Trial is a very interesting case involving Charles Peirce (pronounced purz). Louis Menand wrote about him and others in a wonderful 2001 book, The Metaphysical Club.

Peirce was involved in the 1868 Howard Will Forgery Trial, and that case is useful here as I try to demonstrate how illogical are the official stories of major crimes of our times. Please refer to this post for a simple exposition of the logic of the coin toss in analyzing observed phenomena.

Anyone interested in Howland (Robinson v. Mandell) can read about it in depth, and I will treat it briefly here. Sylvia Ann Howland died and left a large amount of money to various heirs and legatees. Any residual was to go to her niece, Hetty Robinson, who stepped in with an earlier will. Attached to that will was a letter dated later than the existing will that canceled all the other bequests. It was purportedly signed by Howland, and that was where Peirce entered.

Each of us sign documents regularly, and the quality of our signature varies with our mood, attentiveness, time of day and by pure chance. So it is rare that our signatures will always match in all detail. Peirce noticed with Robinson’s document that part of Howland’s signature, the “downstroke,” when overlaid, matched in all thirty instances with another of her signatures. Using other signatures from other documents, he noted that Howland’s downstroke rarely matched in more than a few instances, and so found this occurrence to be highly unlikely.

He calculated the odds of such a set of identical matches as follows: Signature

That’s one chance in 2,666,000,000,000,000,000,000.

In other words, the Howland signature on the codicil was traced, and the document was a forgery. The conclusion was inescapable. As Charles’ father, Benjamin Peirce, testified on the stand,

The coincidence which has occurred here must have had its origin in an intention to produce it. It is utterly repugnant to sound reason to attribute this coincidence to any cause but design.

The reasoning was relatively new at that time, and the court ruled it inadmissible. Robinson otherwise lost the case.

I will use similar reasoning in the next post as we take a close look at the Naudet film, seen below.

The silence of the readers

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” (Voltaire)

I am enjoying the news media as they wrestle with Hillary Clinton’s handling of official U.S. business on a private email server. It’s not complicated. She is hiding things we should know about. There is no other plausible reason.

She will be forgiven and the matter will pass, as the U.S. media does not investigate powerful people. We’ll get coverage, but no insight. [Along those lines, Daily Beast does its doody here]

passportIn a recent post I pointed to (painfully obvious) planted evidence, a “hijacker’s” passport found several blocks from the World Trade Center after 9/11. No bodies survived, none of the millions of parts used to make a jet aircraft were found in the rubble. But the passport turned up.

I asked readers, including two commenters directly, to consider the implications.

The predictable response was no response. Such a glaring anomaly pushes subconscious fear closer to the surface. I fully understand the silence of the readers.

Such oppressive silence is a manifestation of hidden power, and is common in every age. Andersen published The Emperor’s New Clothes in 1837, but the story can be traced back centuries before that. Galileo was not arrested for spreading lies, but exposing hidden truth. Julian Assange lives the Ecuadorian Embassy in London now, Bradley Manning is in prison, Edward Snowden in Russia … for saying things that happen to be true.

Even recently with the Charlie Hebdo affair in France there has to be discomfort among thoughtful people that the supposed murderers were hooded men – they could be anyone. Shades of 9/11, the supposed perpetrators left behind an easily discovered driver’s license.

I know the sense of betrayal that one feels when a cherished illusion is destroyed. But we all have to grow up some time, and now would be an excellent time to start.