Category: American wilderness

Postcard from edgy Portland

It is very good to be removed from party politics, TV news, newspapers and radio and Huffington Post, but reality takes a while to sink in. We have to avoid fake reality and then realize that it is fake before we can begin to see things as they really are. Time offers perspective. Reading helps.

These days when I am driving Denver traffic and turn on my radio, I enjoy listening to Rush Limbaugh – I don’t care about his content, which is designed to manipulate a broad class of potentially thoughtful but utterly clueless men (yes, men). (Yes, clueless.) His tone is appealing – he is older, and has been publicly savaged and ridiculed by “the left,” but seems mellowed and even occasionally insightful. I recommend him to any who are disenchanted and searching for answers. He doesn’t have any, but he does serve as pleasant elevator music while you move on to your next destination.

I have been wondering about the post below about “Paul/Mike” McCartney turning up now and then as “custodian” at his childhood home. What is striking is how pedestrian he is in appearance and attitude, joking, winking, sharing a secret with us. He’s not wealthy or surrounded by adoring fans nor is he sporting an MBE medal. He’s just a Liverpool bloke. He’s been retired for decades. He cannot help himself in appearing on camera, just as John Lennon returned from death to film Let Him Be. And it is comforting to know that they are just men who were hired to play parts, and who, hopefully got a nice pension out of the deal. Judging by their appearances and circumstances, these are not wealthy men at all.

They are winking at us, and in a friendly non-sinister manner, telling us that it was all for shits and giggles. And I am deeply grateful to both of them. I would love now for Sir Paul to come down off his perch, acknowledge his twin, and maybe they could even sit down and play “The Two of Us” together, one right and the other left-handed. I just realized this morning what that song was about. I wonder who wrote it.

One gratifying aspect of blogging is to meet some nice and really insightful people, who know their own names and stop by here on occasion. Without permission I am going to reproduce two comments from “Tyrone McCloskey,” perhaps a real name, but who really cares? Content matters most.

Implications? Perhaps “Paul” said something and this is his punishment (for those who think like television writers)- Or, the Beatles drew crowds that they didn’t deserve, the hype drawing the kids in live (nobody could hear them play and so they wouldn’t know if they were any good), but the TV and film stuff was understood by the actors to be just a role for which they mimed recordings made by others- They never felt the power because the forces that we thought were swirling around them never reached this troupe- The audiences on film and video could have just as easily been paid extras- (Sinatra a decade and a half earlier went through the same paces with paid bobbysoxers screaming and crying on cue) They never expected royalties, just a pension, and the gig finally ended- This may explain their casual reaction to the mania and their ability to crack wise so easily- None of them took any of it seriously because they knew it wasn’t real- Court historians have been paid since the dawn of writing to fabricate, fabricate, fabricate… so whatever their backstory, front-story, it all came through corporate owned media so all narrative tropes are fair game- Resting…

And later in response to another man who has been all over attacking the notion Beatles were not as they were portrayed to us:

GvdH- I was born in 1958- I marinated in the Featles and the goddamned 60’s- You couldn’t escape every detail of the 4 mop top’s lives if you tried- It was rammed down our throats-Certainly no one wants their heroes outed as frauds, but why are some people chosen over others to succeed? It is never just talent- It’s talent that fits a favored agenda of the culture creators, even as that talent, if it exists at all, needs a firm guiding hand- And that agenda always serves their best interests, not ours- Great music that midwifed the mind destroying drug culture is what the Beatles handlers were after and they succeeded –

Another thing the Beatles were designed for was to create a consensus market for pop music- Thousands upon thousands of musicians followed their lead in pursuit of similar wealth and fame- The market pushed out variance and guided a relatively small number of acts to the charts and the playlists of the corporate owned radio and television networks- 50 years on, look what we have rammed down our throats today: lip synching CGI tramps like Taylor Swift and those other synthetic creations that teach pre-adolescent girls that stripper culture is the highest aspiration- For boys, it’s crossdressing and/or ghetto warriors- There won’t be any chance for stable families to grow out of that muck- The population will continue to shrink in the west- But then, population replacement (hello Syria, welcome to Germany) goes back to the Old Testament, and likely well before that-

Enjoy yourselves … I am in Portland for a few days. It is a strange place, saturated in faux-pwoggy causes, hairstyles, and Boulder, Colorado-like smug self-satisfaction. Again, so nice to be removed from it all.

The Google illusion

Just out of curiosity I “Googled” “Paul and Mike McCartney twins” to see if anyone else had tripped on this information. I went ten pages in, and found not a hint. Even as it was hidden in plain sight, meaning many thousands of people out there must know about them, the Google just doesn’t seem to know.

The Google is just another illusion, designed to make it appear that you have free access to ideas. It is perhaps one level deeper in thought control, as you think you are accessing the world, but … not. Google, a campus in Silicon Valley, is not into freedom of speech or exploration of new ideas. Quite the opposite. They merely exist to give us that impression.

They are Intel. I quit using them several years ago when they announced that they keep track of any searches I do for “advertising” purposes. I use Bing. But I am no fool. I have never thought for a second that Bing and Google are separate operations. They are merely Democrat-Republican, Microsoft-Apple,  Coke-Pepsi. Bing is tracking me too, and if ever I refuse to pay my taxes or decide to run for office, they can mine my data and find out all about me.

Fortunately, I do not matter. As with all of those thousands of others who easily figured out the McCartney twins, we remain anonymous.

Alien education practices

The young son of a friend, age 10 or so, is currently enthralled by space aliens and UFO’s. His mother mentioned this in an “it’s just so cute” frame of mind. I hope she does not ‘set him straight’, but rather allows him to continue to explore. What he is doing is really important, and anyway, maybe he’s on to something important. Perhaps she can guide him by helping him ask good questions, like “Is that photo real?”, or “Do they really know that for a fact?” Also, she can suggest as he sits staring at the wall, puzzled, “Maybe you can dig a little deeper. There’s an answer if you keep looking.”

But the worst thing she can do is worry that he does not have correct information about our world. Let him believe as he will as he explores as he can. I fear that some teacher, some thought control guru, will set him straight, make sure that he believes what he should believe, using proper authority figures as a guide. That will destroy his creative impulse, and discourage critical thinking. He is, after all, learning by doing. That is the only way, as I see it, to learn to think critically – trial and error. Studying text books on logical fallacies or syllogisms (not done anyway) is not nearly as valuable as totally screwing up and getting something totally wrong, and realizing it.

Telling kids what to think is a grievous sin. Another friend spent many tedious days during his teaching career “proctoring” ACT tests for his high school. That’s what we do – fill our kids’ heads with facts and demand that they read them back correctly to get into a “good” school. It’s how education came to be what it is today – they slowly replaced curiosity with memorization.

Is the children learning? Nope.

Allow them to explore, gently guiding them as they go their own direction, giving them the basic tools to work things out on their own … that has a name – I’ve forgotten it … what was it … we used to do this sort of thing in past centuries … hmmm .. oh yeah! I remember! It is called “education.”

 

Keeping track of the Zika hoax: More hocus pocus

Swede put up a link in the post below to a Daily Mail article on Zika claiming that as many as two billion people are at risk from the virus.

It’s hoax, a big one, and information about the nature of the hoax is in circulation everywhere. It almost appears as though those behind it doubling down.

“What? You’re not scared? Did I say a million? No … I meant billion. Yeah. That’s right. No. I meant TWO billion. Yeah. That’s right. Are you scared now? Are ya, punk?”

Please understand this is an accessible topic, and that we can get down to the specifics of making a hoax.

The hoaxers are relying on public ignorance and indifference to science and the methods of identifying a virus and any threat it might present.  They have not established in any manner the means by which the Zika virus, common and harmless, actually invades body cells and causes infirmities like microcephaly.

They have not done this because they don’t have to. They are instead relying on authoritative pronouncements by various liars and con artists, each having impressive credentials and titles and positions. It’s nothing more than appeal to authority. (Those with those titles and positions have their reasons for going along, usually financial incentives.)

What they are doing is hocus pocus: Virus present, presto! damage caused.

In order for a virus to damage a normal healthy human, it is to be present in our body in the millions, if not billions. One or two here and there mean nothing. Yet the hoaxers maintain the fiction that mere presence of a virus in a healthy human is evidence of cause and effect – that is, finding Zika and finding microcephaly (they keep adding to the list of maladies, but that is the primary one) means that Zika causes microcephaly.

If A, then B. The exact means by which Zika causes microcephaly … oops. They sort of forgot that intermediate step.

Most likely, there is no connection. But they are hiding something. Microcephaly in various areas of the world has been linked to presence of various pesticides, not to mention malnutrition. Zika serves as a diversion, misdirection, and protects the makers of these pesticides from massive lawsuits, possibly even bankruptcy. The stakes are high.

Read this, for instance:

“Brazil is far and away the most important country in Latin America, firmly under US control since 1945, when it became a ‘testing area for modern scientific methods of industrial development’ applied by US experts…It is a country with enormous resources that should be the ‘Colossus of the South,’ ranking alongside the ‘Colossus of the North,’ as predicted early in the century. It has had no foreign enemies, and benefited not only from careful US tutelage but also from substantial investment. It therefore shows with great clarity just what the US can achieve in ‘enlarging the free community of market democracies’ under conditions that are near ideal.”

“The successes are real enough. Brazil has enjoyed a very high growth rate, which conferred enormous wealth on everyone except its population – apart from the top few percent, who live at the standards of the wealthiest Westerners. It is a sharply two-tiered society. Much of the population live at a level reminiscent of Central Africa…the UN Report on Human Development ranked this rich and privileged country in 80th place, alongside of Albania and Paraguay. In the northeast, Brazilian medical researchers describe a new subspecies: ‘pygmies,’ with 40% [actually 60%] the brain capacity of humans, thanks to severe malnutrition in a region with fertile lands, owned by large plantations that produce export crops in accord with the doctrines preached by their expert advisers. Hundreds of thousands of children die of starvation every year in this success story, which also wins world prizes for child slavery and murder of street children – in some cases for export of organs for transplant, according to respected Brazilian sources.”*

Read use of the word “pygmies” to mean “microcephaly.” That was written by Noam Chomsky, in 1993.

Normal human immune systems easily isolate and destroy invaders, and have throughout our history. We live in harmony with millions of viruses, none of which present any threat to a healthy human, Zika among them. In fact, Zika is not proven to cause any human ailment, not even a head cold.

The subject is accessible, but takes some effort on our part to read about the science, the methodology for identification of a virus. I recommend that you start here, with an interview by journalist Christine Johnson with biophysicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos regarding the isolation and identification of the HIV virus. It is hard reading, and your own judgment will be needed, but if you read this blog, you’re probably used to it.

And if you do that bit of homework, you are in a good position to judge the credibility of the Zika threat all on your own without reliance on the impressive and fake authority figures they keep throwing at us to back up their hoax.
_________________
*h/t  Jon Rappoport for forwarding this link to his readers.

OK, I’ll talk about it: the ‘d’ word

I am going through now the flags that I placed in various passages of the Frances Stonor Saunders book The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters: The Cultural Cold War. I catch a lot  of grief about having a conspiratorial outlook … from people who just don’t know anything. They don’t begin to grasp how their attitudes and ideas, which they think are their unique brand, are really put before them to be found and copied by people who think much further ahead and in broader terms than they do.

I read the book late last year, and is my habit flagged various passages to revisit. The book looks like a cheerleaders pom pom, it has so many flags.  Right away, on page 4, I had highlighted the following

A vital constituent of this effort was ‘psychological warfare’, which was defined as ‘The planned use by a nation of propaganda and activities other than combat which communicate ideas and information intended to influence the opinions, attitudes, emotions and behavior of foreign groups in ways that will support the achievement of national aims.’ Further, the ‘most effective kind of propaganda’ was defined as the kind where ‘the subject moves in the direction you desire for reasons which he believes to be his own’.

That is a passage from a National Security Council Directive from July 10, 1950 regarding the decision that was made, that the U.S. was going to be in the propaganda business, and big time. At that time CIA was prohibited from doing direct propaganda on Americans (a prohibition since discarded, and never much honored anyway). Saunders discusses how CIA invaded the world of arts and letters in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, and redefined our culture. It was a huge psy-op costing as much as $200 (?) million in 1950 dollars. CIA stole the money from the Marshall Plan – not sure of the amount. Will run across it later.

jackson-pollock-21I’ll post more as I go along, but understand something very important, just one aspect of the overall CIA effort: What we call “modern art” was a product of this propaganda effort, the purpose to remove from art the ability to offer clear and crisp criticism of power. It is Orwellian in concept, to take away our ability to communicate by substituting garbage for real art. Jackson Pollock, for example, painted shit, as seen here, but received high praise and honor from those who knew to push the cultural agenda forward by acting as opinion leaders. He was backed by CIA money. Did you know that? Hollywood, also under CIA control, made a movie to honor him. The world of modern art is like the world of wine, full of pretense and phonies. None of it is meaningful, uplifting, or informative. Thank you, CIA.

Something very similar happened in music, the  tribal drum we beat. Look around you now for cultural significance or confrontation of authority in the music world, and good luck. There was a time … but most artists that succeed today have an imprimatur from the cultural police … if you think that your love of Taylor Swift came from your own imagination, think again, and read the cited passage above again. She has lots of help.

Of course, people will not look this way or even begin to fathom that we move in directions that others desire for reasons we believe to be our own.

The world that I inhabit is simply a more interesting place with more understanding of power and the means by which the few rule the many. The criticism that I get, that I am somehow delusional, is wrong. People who say that never say why, never want to talk nuts and bolts. Odd, wouldn’t you say?

If you cannot fathom that things could be just a little different than you think, that your perceptions might just possibility be managed by others, I am simply miles ahead in understanding. I did not set out to be that way, it just happened over the decades as I read and read and read, but more importantly, allowed myself to be wrong. As it happens, I have lost ability to communicate with people running around laughing and shouting about elections or obviously managed news and staged events. I cannot help that, and I will not go back to that world. It is boring and, I am afraid, quite stupid.

Evidence of what I wrote above about art and music are to be found in passages of this very important book. Your beliefs may be at odds with that evidence. I suggest you introduce your beliefs to that evidence, and see which survives. My guess, based on experience, is that your beliefs will not be affected by any evidence.

Playing with bad toys

Envision a small room full of children and toys. The toys are of the boring kind, plastic bats and wiffle balls, those spongy basketballs that don’t bounce very well, and plastic tables and chairs with tea sets where most of the pieces have long been lost. It’s a boring time for the kids, but they are young and so don’t know what they are missing. They can use their imaginations and somehow make fun of it all.

In a few years their imaginations will be gone. The room will wear them down, make them forget how to pretend and have fun. Then they’ll be ready to be regular people.

The kids have a room monitor to watch them all day long. They are never left alone unless they are asleep, and even then the room monitor listens in through a microphone and can peep in through a spy hole.

Outside the small room is a town full of people, a forest full of danger and excitement. But the kids never get to see that, at least on their own. They are kids. They get in the way. We hired people to keep them in that room so we can go on about our business. They can be a nuisance, after all, so many questions, so much energy.

And the forest – don’t even think about it! Maybe the monitor will take them there on a field trip, but they will be watched closely. Grown-ups are scared in the forest too, and usually don’t go there without a gun. But the kids are curious. There is genuine excitement and danger out there. Creative impulses are set free. The games they could play in the forest are so much more intense than swinging a plastic bat or sipping fake tea from a tiny cup. They invigorate the kids, make them hard to manage.

I know, if you’ve read this far, that you think I have constructed an allegory about our school system. It does work that way. School, as we do it, destroys youth and kills imagination. As designed.

But that is not my thrust. The allegory is about our political system.

Voters are kept in a small room and only allowed to play with bad toys, these awful candidates who are insincere and won’t have any power after the election anyway. Voters are kept far away from the real action.

Voters are discouraged from exploring on their own. Even if they want to leave the system, they are always brought back to the room and told “Vote. It’s your duty. But only for one of these two. That’s your choice.” Voters are not allowed real games and candidates, or to have a real say in how their country is run.

That is all that elections are, folks – a way of keeping us out of everyone’s hair. The more we believe, the harder we debate and fight about our candidates, the better for the real leaders.

After all, we are the children. We have to stay busy doing something, and elections are the best way yet devised to soak up our energy, kill our imaginations, and keep us out of their hair.

A ghost among us

Have you ever experienced a “Duh!” Moment where you slap your forehead upon seeing something painfully obvious? I had such a moment last evening.

Go back to the year 2000, and the presidential election. Normally, the parties just take turns. The person holding the office is a ribbon cutter, not much more. Some, like Clinton and Obama, are very good at it, having good memories and stage presence being very good at making speeches. They seem presidential, and that is the only real job requirement.

Those two were groomed for the office. The fact that each changed their names at a young age is a hint that they were being prepared for big things ahead. (Oddly, Gerald Ford changed his name at a young age too.) They were on the calendar, so to speak, scheduled to burst on the scene, as if spontaneous.

George Herbert Walker Bush is a powerful man, and apparently a talented man as well. He must be a very efficient administrator, a “gets the job done” kind of guy. He served as president unofficially for eight years, and officially for four. He was then moved aside by Ross Perot to make way for Clinton. But he never lost touch, never really left the realm of power, or so it appears.

His son, George W. Bush was a clown, a man who lacked gravitas, abhorred study and had to be puffed up by PR staff to be electable. In a real world if these men, the candidates, were more than images in a TV screen, he could not have been elected constable of Podunk county. But he was chosen, and more than chosen, was forced on us. When it became apparent that Al Gore was going to win in 2000, the Supreme Court stepped in and just outright handed the office to Bush. It mattered a whole lot to some very powerful people that Bush, and not Gore, hold that fake office.

Why? Here is my “duh!” moment. It was not about electing W, but rather returning HW to power. 9/11 was on the calendar, and they wanted a man with a proven track record to manage the Oval Office end of it. The government was only a small part of the events of that day, but it required someone with brains and administrative skill to make sure that end of the operation held together. No screw ups!

George Herbert Walker Bush may be one if the most important men ever to crawl about in the alleys of power in this country. He was there for the Bay of Pigs, for JFK’s departure, for Watergate, Iran Contra,  Reagan’s departure, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq attacks. He ran the CIA while Ford was president. He was de facto president from ’80 to 88, and then for real for four years after that. And now I realize that he was there for 9/11 too.

He’s an old man now, soon to depart, and I won’t shed a tear. But I am in awe of his accomplishments. He’s been like a ghostly presence in all of the important [public] events in this country for the last fifty years or more.

How to spot false leaders

[This is a rework of an earlier post, with a little more justification behind my contention that most of our leaders are false leaders, as real leaders are a pain in the ass.]
_______________________
Two recurring themes on this blog are the nature of power, and false leadership, or “controlled opposition.” If one wants to understand the landscape around us, a firm grasp of both are critical.

Power is the ability to cause another person to submit to your will. When a majority is governed by a minority, as we are, issues of power become critical, as the masses have to be persuaded that the minority interests are actually the “national interest.”

There are many means available, among them logical persuasion, subversion, bribery and brute force. The least effective means of bending others to our will are persuasion and brute force. For this reason, we are constantly bombarded with clever lies, manipulative advertising and staged events, all designed to influence and undermine our thinking.

Among the most effective devices in controlling our thoughts and actions is the false leader. Most often, this is a person of low character who has been bribed to behave and speak in a certain manner. False leaders are easy to spot. They usually receive large publicity, and pay no price for anti-authoritarian behavior.

I will give but a few examples, and then get on with my day:

  • Jane Fonda. This woman came to symbolize the burgeoning antiwar movement of the late sixties. Her mission was to discredit it. Cameras followed her everywhere, including a trip to North Vietnam where she was photographed in a gun turret pretend-firing at American bombers. It was iconic. Mission accomplished. Were she a true dissident she would have paid a hefty price for her activity, consorting with the enemy, but she went on to a lucrative movie career, among other activities.
  • John Kerry. This man stood before cameras and tossed his war medals over a fence in front of the U.S. Capitol. It was a staged event – remember, cameras were there, meaning they had advance notice. Later, he would be asked to testify before congress, be elected senator, marry an heiress, run for president, and become Secretary of State. That sort of good fortune does not happen to a real leaders. True dissidents are hounded, terrorized, jailed, beaten, tortured, but never asked to run for high office, and almost never marry into the oligarchy.
  • Julian Assange. Supposedly holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange generated the “leaks” that stoked the flames of color revolutions, starting in Tunisia. The revolutions, the so-called “Arab Spring,” while not staged, were fomented by agents provocateur, and done to cause regime change in targeted countries. Assange, a towhead, merely needs darken his hair to wander freely about, which he surely does, only occasionally appearing at the embassy for a photo op. All of the highly publicized stories of his troubles in Sweden have been invented to enhance his image as a dissident.

This is fun, an easy subject for writing with a wide array of candidates, including Bernie Sanders, Fidel Castro, and the most prominent of all, Barack Obama. They arise for various reasons to achieve various ends – to mislead and undermine popular movements, to ensure that popular dissent is contained, or just to distract us while real business goes on in secret. It is all part of “full spectrum dominance,” where no matter where we turn for effective leadership, we come face-to-face with the enemy.

I’ll offer some more over time, maybe in the coming days, and hope that readers can contribute as well.

Joie de vivre

By the way, I get accused of cynicism now and then, and do not buy it. I am not at all down on people, but life choices and circumstances dictate that some people behave badly. Those who must perform acts of deceit in public (business people, advertisers and politicians) do not deserve respect, and those who are paid to honor them (journalists and some bloggers) as well are not worthy of respect. And those are the people I write about mostly, along with spooks. They are our underclasses, our wretched waste, our pointless people.

But this moment I am about to share is more like the real life I live, my little life, and after I do so you’ll see that it is not something important to write about. It is like we all live our lives in close quarters with one another. Most people are nice and friendly and well-intentioned. Most people are not politicians, business people, advertisers, journalists, bloggers or spooks.

We have a long driveway at our house, and plowing is a major task, and we get a lot of snow. Along about March, especially after just returning from Costa Rica, snow was not welcome, but we got seven inches. I am plowing the driveway, not at all enthused, ready for spring. A neighbor is out walking her three dogs, and one of them, a bigger old lab mix, sees me and bolts from her towards me. I instantly recognize a friendly dog, and show no fear, and as he runs up to me I smile. He comes up behind me and I pet him and he nuzzles my leg. He is used to good attention. I smile at the lady, and she is just beaming ear to ear.

When a dog approaches a stranger in that manner, it often ends differently. But this dog is a nice dog, meaning it has a nice owner, and everyone enjoyed the moment. It was a little special.

That’s more like I live, like everyone lives. We are all mostly good and nice. But our leadership dance to a different drum. They are not nice, good, or well-intentioned.

Ergo what is called cynicism. I was called a cynic on Facebook for suggesting the Steve Bullock “moment” was faked (that’s where I saw the photo). But I have to ask, if you are so trusting of politicians, who are paid to deceive us, what is the opposite of a cynic? A damned fool?

It looks like the US wants to use the Brussels incident to invade Syria. Get ready for another bloodbath. And does that not make one suspicious that the US was behind the Brussels incident? (Cui bono?) And if so, would not a normal and intelligent person suspect the incident might be faked? Again?

A highly effective system of oppression

I was looking over available movies yesterday, thinking one might be worth a trip down the hill. Meh. It all seems like crap. Maybe it is the fact of aging and maturing, but enjoyment of a movie requires willing suspension of disbelief. It is harder to do at age 65 than even at age 60. At age 20 I bought into all nonsense. Now I can embrace hardly any. A really good movie, like No Country for Old Men, is so rare as to be worth an automatic academy award, hands down.

Continue reading “A highly effective system of oppression” →