The gentle art of lying

I had occasion this morning to visit both the Billings Gazette and Missoulian websites. Both are owned by Lee, both are busy-busy, full of links, and annoying. If you think newspapers exist to deliver news, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Newspapers are in the business of collecting audiences to sell to advertisers, their true customers. News is a secondary pursuit.

Their latest endeavor in the annals of annoyance is to block access to a story* until we answer some advertising questions.

I have said for years the best way to fight intrusive advertising is to lie. If you have qualms about that, remember that they don’t have a right to your information, and you have no obligation to give it to them. Lying in that situation is a venial sin, three Hail Mary’s at most, if even that.

The Gazette asked me if I had been to Sam’s Club (no, but said yes) and if I had a small child (ditto). I fed them useless data. If enough people do that, we will screw up their database. (They asked me what my favorite grocer is and I said Pain & Diaz. That they will probably spot.)

It astounds me to know that most people treat advertisers with respect. The job of the advertiser is to get your attention by any means possible; to market to you in a subliminal and underhanded manner; and to make you unhappy. Happy people, after all, don’t need to buy stuff.

*Some will say that we should not get a news story for free, so that answering their stupid questions is a small price of admission. After all, they have bills to pay. I’ve been in business for myself for decades, and not once has anyone ever expressed concern that I might not make it. My answer to this concern is “I don’t care.”

Is Langley messaging Russia to leave our terrorists alone?

As I read more of the Turkish shoot down of the Russian jet over Syria on Tuesday, it is easily seen as a deliberate provocation. To what end? By whom? Who are the actors in this play? As with all of warfare, public events are merely a smoke screen. Most of the action is hidden from view.

Let’s go back a couple of weeks to Paris, the false flag attack.

If you do not realize that to be the case, that Paris was false flag, then read no further. Your ability to sift through evidence is in need of work. It’s painfully obvious false flaggery. Otherwise we are asked to believe that a country already under attack by outside forces, Syria, deliberately provoked NATO into an even more deadly attack. Remember Libya, 2011 – NATO obviously has the firepower to destroy a country and bring down its government, and is itching to take down Syria. The key for NATO is to appear justified in its aggression, and the Paris attack was meant for that purpose.

It did not work. The Russians are in the way.

The Russians have been cleaning up in Syria, and it’s been fun to watch. The Americans and its NATO puppets are involved in high-level duplicity, at once arming, training and funding the terrorists who are attacking Syria while pretending to be opposed to them. The Russians are merely using that public duplicity as their card for entry into the game. Since everyone professes to be against terrorism, actually attacking  terrorists is a smart move. Behind the scenes, I gather, U.S. Intelligence, along with NATO, Brits, Israelis, Saudis, must be seething. The plan was to bring down the Assad regime by means of these terrorist forces that the Russians are now pulverizing.

I would then gather that the shoot down is then a message to the Russians. But what is that message, and who is sending it?

It is not the Turks. Grant it, Turkey has been essential in aiding the terrorists, as their supply lines runs through Turkey. But just as Syria would have been crazy to provoke NATO by staging the attacks in Paris, so too would Turkey be crazy to attack Russia. It’s not just a matter of military power, but also economic ties. Turkey will now lose tourism and joint ventures in nuclear power along with gas supplies.

So even though it was supposedly a Turkish F-16 jet that shot down the Russian Sukhoi-24 jet, I  doubt the orders came from the Turkish government. This smells more of an intelligence operation. The F16 was likely a cloaked bird supplied by the U.S., France or Israel. So it is NATO sending the message, and since NATO is but a U.S. puppet, it is the U.S. sending a warning to the Russians. Turkey, subordinate to all, has to shut up.

The message is obvious:

“Stand down! Leave our terrorists alone.”

But just as Syria would not attack innocent civilians in Paris without a better plan than merely enraging NATO, so too would the U.S. not order a Russian jet brought down without a deeper message. One plane, one dead pilot, broken relations between Turkey and Russia are small potatoes. Obviously U.S. intelligence is sending a deeper, more sinister message. It has to be something like …

“This, and more.”

In late October a Russian charter flight went down over Egypt, killing all 224 aboard. My immediate suspicion was again one of those coded messages telling the Russians to stand down in Syria. This sort of communication appears in public just to be happenstance occurrences, but is well understood behind the smoke screen. So there too I suspected American, Israeli or British intelligence (but I repeat myself) of causing that bird to go down. But it did not hinder Russian efforts to end the war in Syria and stem the flow of refugees into Europe. Russia continues to misbehave.

So we had first an attack on Russian civilians, then a false flag attack in Paris to engage NATO, and now an attack on a Russian military jet.

What next? I don’t know. This much I do know – the people behind these incidents are cold, calculating, ruthless and smart. They will not let up. More surprises are in store.

And oh, yeah, before I forget, I was reminded yesterday that the Assad government aided our CIA in its illegal rendition program, allowing itself to be used as a base for torture. There are no good guys about. But something much larger is at stake, something to have caused Langley to turn agaist Damascus. And that has to have something to do with resources, natural gas, pipelines. CIA is a tool of the oligarchy, not the government.

Russia plays this game too, and thus far, plays it better.

More in store, however,

A game of chicken?

We are swimming in fake events – the US campaign over who gets to be our next fake president is in full swing. Except for Bernie Sanders, these people are all serious about wanting the job. Bernie is fake, however, working for Hillary. This is quite obvious now.

The attacks in Paris were fake as well, false flag all the way. Anyone with a brain and paying close attention can figure that out. They had their intended effect, I suppose, as most Americans (and apparently French) are not terribly sophisticated about these things.

Meanwhile, there was an incident that is apparently real – Turkey’s military shot down a Russian fighter jet. According to Russian sources, the pilot safely ejected, but other sources say they are dead, possibly murdered on the ground.

Like the Paris attacks, this is a provocation, and a serious one. While Russia and the U.S. were once secretly allied behind the façade of the Cold War, they are now seriously at odds. (Or so it appears. We never can know for sure.)

But Turkish aggression fits – if indeed you know how to read news. The terrorist forces in Syria are a Western creation*, financed by CIA, trained in Saudi Arabia, and supplied by the Americans and French. The Turks maintain the corridor that keeps their supply lines open.

The Russians have launched a military campaign to do something that others only claimed to want to do – put the terrorist forces in the ground. They have succeeded, and in so doing are infuriating the West. Worse yet, Russians have demonstrated military sophistication and might that Langley did not know it possessed.

It only takes a short leap, and not an illogical one, to suggest that Turkey was not acting on its own, but rather on orders from terror central, either NATO headquarters or Langley (perhaps a redundancy). The ultimate objective? Possibly a game of chicken to get the Russians to back down.

There is good reporting going on here and possibly here.
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*This does not mean that the individual fighters for the various false-front groups are aware of the level of deceit. Just as American soldiers imagine they know why they are in Afghanistan, but don’t really, so too would I expect low levels of awareness among fighter for ISIS, al Nusra, al Qaeda, etc.

What will happen when a trust baby runs a baseball team?

Billings_07006_DxOweb
Cobb Field, Billings, Montana (since replaced by Dehler Park)

I enjoy baseball, though my interest was waned in recent years. I far more enjoy a spring training game, passing time with the fans. The games themselves are ho-hum, lacking adrenalin and the latter innings reserved to rookies to showcase their skills. The overall experience of a spring training game is, however, very enjoyable.

The Cincinnati Reds had (and have) a farm team in Billings, Montana, where I lived until 2001. Consequently, I “branded” with that team, and indeed they put up some powerhouse teams, winning the World Series in 75, 76 and 90, and dominating the 1970’s.

The team fell on hard times, but has been re-emergent of late. Their general manager, Walt Jocketty, brought important changes to the franchise, changing the emphasis from high-risk run-scoring slugging teams to pitching. That brought them into contention recently, though they are now in a rebuilding phase again.

They have a new GM, Dick Williams, and Jocketty is being squeezed out the top. Williams will guide the team in the future. He will not be fired, ever, as his name is “Williams,” and that oligarchical family has a major ownership share in the team.

Here are some frightening snippets from a recent interview with Williams, a former investment banker:

“I got into baseball a little later in life. I was in my mid 30s. I had close to a 15-year business career in investment banking and private equity. My background isn’t totally unique in baseball front offices, but it’s somewhat unique, and it’s shaped a lot of who I am and how I think about problems. …”

“The exercise of building a projection model has you asking questions like, ‘What are the important variables?’ Then, over time, you go back and analyze why they maybe deviated from reality. Is there a deviation that can be explained by a flaw in the model? Is there a deviation that can be explained by some experience that a player had? It’s an iterative process over time.

“Whether you’re using aging curves or historical injury experience, your projections should, at a macro level, take into account the possibilities of injuries. If you’re talking about team performance, when you aggregate those player stats for next year – when we’re looking at our projected means – there’s a component that accounts for injuries.

“For one player, it’s a binary… he may miss most of the season, which makes my projections way off for that player. But when taken into context of the team, the fact that I’ve weighted these guys based on their age, based on their positions, based on their injury history – what I think might happen – as a team, those projections should be close to accounting for what happens.”

Are you reading what I am reading here? Yep. We’re screwed for a good and long, long haul*.

But there is always spring training!
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*Born on third base, he obviously thinks he hit a triple. (h/t, Barry Switzer)

Of rabbit holes

I received some criticism down below of being too far down the “rabbit hole.” That’s fair – all criticism is fair if offered without an agenda. For instance, when I wrote about bison in another piece, I was set straight and brought up to speed by a couple of men of good will who simply know the issue better than I do. All I need do in that situation is get up to speed.

So understand, I do not mind criticism. It’s a healthy thing. But I do want to answer the rabbit hole remark, and in such a manner as to respect the integrity of my critic. He’s good and fair minded, the latter a rare quality among bloggers.

I wanted out of blogging a while back. I was tired of having the same conversation every day. Worse than that, I had seen too much of this world, this country, and had lost all respect for our institutions and leaders. I was tired of visiting the same issues and always arriving at the same conclusion – we are being lied to. I was tired of the extreme gullibility around me, how every lie is believed with utter credulity. That is still the case.

Knowing what I know, having spent 27 years of my life looking for answers, I can spot a lie fairly easily. For instance, every public word uttered by every politician is some form of a lie. They have to lie, as by definition they are serving two masters and cannot tell the truth to both. To survive in office, they have to be loyal to one and lie to the other. They always end up serving the one with the most power, and it is not the uniformed and gullible voter.

So I long ago lost interest in politics and politicians. It’s wasted energy, as election outcomes have no bearing on public policy. Representative government long ago took leave of this land. I can’t pin the date, but for my purposes, I will guess it was 4/12/45, the day FDR was murdered [or died naturally or faked his death], and his successor, Harry Truman, a corrupt and crooked man of little talent, took office. I like that date because it frames the events of my lifetime. I came along five years later. Before that time is probably just as corrupt, but I wasn’t around for it. Since our history is a lie too, there’s little point in going back too far.

We’ve not had real presidents in my life then. Just actors and aristocrats and intelligence operatives, as we have now. The news media was a joke even in the 1930’s, when General Smedley Butler was told not to worry about them in the 1933 coup attempt. It has not reformed itself, so that virtually nothing we see on TV or read in newspapers is true save perhaps the weather forecast. These days, with six companies owning just about everything, it’s a sad joke.

Some say the military runs the show behind the scenes, but I take it a step higher. The military serves at the behest of an even higher power, the oligarchy. And that force, our wealthiest families, our .1%, knows no end to its avarice and greed. The whole planet is on a platter before it, and the enormous wealth generated by this vast country is at its disposal. Our taxes are used primarily to fund wars, and when they run short of cash, they attack Social Security and Medicare, the only two government programs still functioning well.

It’s an endless quest. The American public is regarded as the domestic enemy, and so we are under constant attack, lied to, dumbed down by entertainment and sports, and kept barely literate by education (just enough to easily accept advertising and propaganda into our pretty little heads). We are now fed a steady stream of lies – easily unraveled by anyone with a functioning brain. And when there is need for a war, an attack on some still-unconquered and independent place, we are fed a false flag event to stir our silly little heads into a frenzy of support.

Thus did I know the Paris attacks to be fake. Where once they might shed real blood and do some real murdering (as with Operation Gladio), these days they don’t have to work that hard. They just set off some noisy firecrackers and call in the dogs of the media to spread lies. Soon enough we see Facebook filled with photographs covered with French flags, comedians offering solemn tributes to fake dead before they go back on script, and singers paying lofty tributes stirring our hearts to mourn for the fake dead. Your country is about to go on a another killing spree, real murders – not fake ones – and needs your support. Patriots, do not let them down!

Does that sound world weary? Probably, but I am not. I’ve never felt so alive as I do now. Truth is an energizer. It always thrills me.

I came to realize that the reality around me is fake, and that I would never get that point across to anyone, and so I decided to quit blogging and just tune it out. But that did not last long. I need to write. So I decided to stick closer to home and heart, and write about my home state, Montana. And to keep my wits about me, I decided to ban three men who bring me down into the depths of silliness and stupidity.

I may waver, but still intend to stick by my plan. As I saw Paris go down, and then saw all of the automatic Pavlonian credulity, I could not help but say “Folks, if everything before now was a lie, it is highly unlikely they decided to start telling the truth this time.” So I went off track and wrote about some obvious fakery there, an easily understood false flag event designed to lure the American and European public into support of yet another massacre. Can’t help myself.

But if you, dear reader, cannot help yourself but to fall for every fresh lie they put on your plate, who am I to stop you? Enjoy. It’s your brain. You can either use it or not.

Truth is not a “rabbit hole.” It is a source of solace, a calm port in a sea of turbulence. I will always find comfort there. I am my own man. Can you say as much?

Too stupid to survive?

We live in an gullible age, and “evidence” is not needed anymore to produce outrage and hysteria. I’ve been looking for actual evidence of deaths in the Paris bombings. I hope the readers will provide some. So far, I’ve got this from the Billings Gazette:

Paris

Hmmmm. Gotta get me some Kong Squeaker Balls too.

But “friends of a cousin” doesn’t do it for me. We saw these sort of stories, probably planted or spread by false rumor, after Boston. That’s not good evidence. It is hearsay, and very weak at that.

So I searched for photos of the bombing sites. I found this:

parisattack3

Must have been a small bomb. Most of the windows and light fixtures are not even broken. Bombs have several ways of doing damage – the immediate blast wave, which diminishes exponentially as it travels, is normally thought to be the destructive mechanism. But to kill a lot of people requires a lot of explosives, so devices targeting humans usually are loaded with shrapnel and incendiaries.  Either way, if a bomb had gone off in that building, the site should be littered with debris hundreds of feet in radius, broken windows and destroyed furniture.

This might be a civil defense drill – they are often used to bring in unsuspecting participants and to draw on government resources when false flag events are underway. The area is blocked from view, mostly, probably because there was at best a noise device, possibly some smoke at this site. It could also be a different kind of device, a POS bomb.

(POS = Power of Suggestion.)

NATO, back in the 1970’s and 80’s, did some terror bombings in Italy, intending to blame communists to keep them out of government. It must have been  different time, because the bombs were more than smoke and noise devices, innocent people were really murdered, and there was a real investigation with adversarial trials and punishments. Here’s the aftermath of a bombing of rail station in Bologna, Italy, in 1985, that killed 85 people and injured another 200:

Bologna

Imagine the quantity of explosives used to produce that much damage – it was not a shrapnel bomb, and those killed or injured suffered under falling debris or had their internal organs ruptured by the tsunamic blast wave.

It was horrible, but most Americans are unaware that NATO engaged in terrorism, was caught, and people were punished. It was called “Operation Gladio.” Americans immediately reject the idea that NATO is a terrorist organization. In our indoctrination system, NATO is good guys. Period. No further thought, and anything contrary not just rejected, but not even comprehended.

It’s pretty bad here in the United States. The bulk of the population is controlled by images and suggestion, even giving up grief and tears, anger and anguish on cue, like Pavlov’s dog. It is so bad that Peter Dale Scott said the following:

“Americans are not capable of believing truth. They have been brainwashed that truth is “conspiracy theory.” A population this stupid has no future.”

Indeed. I’ve been alive 65 years, and maybe it’s just the faulty and selective memory of an old man, but I have never seen it so stupid out there as now.

Ted Brewer flaks it up

This piece, Where chemtrails and Ochenski converge, ran yesterday in the Missoulian. It is by Montana Wilderness Association communications manager Ted Brewer. It is weird.

The object of scorn is George Ochenski, a conservation writer who occasionally has pieces published in that newspaper. MWA is sliming him, even trotting out Godwin. There’s real anger behind it, though not much substance.  It’s a hit piece.

What’s up?

It’s interesting to see all of the people working for MWA on this page –  Ted is down a ways. They have mostly had their pictures taken in natural backdrops. This seeds the impression that this is an outdoor-loving group. Indeed, Montana Wilderness Association sounds like a bunch of people who hike the mountains and ski the trails, but their true function is a little less earthy. The photos and hobbies are a nice smoke screen. (Ted … “enjoy[s] hiking with their two dogs, backpacking, Nordic skiing, and fly fishing.” He also writes their hit pieces.)

The “communications manager” doesn’t just fire off an op-ed, hoping something sticks. He has to answer to his superiors. Be assured that the content and tone of this piece was table-talked. It is out for blood. They want Ochenski taken down.

If indeed that happens, it will be the juice behind MWA that does it, as MWA, just a front group, has no real power.

The word that set them off was most likely “bribes.” Ochenski never used it. It is a scarecrow argument.

They do, however, protest too much.

The real story is behind the words. MWA is an AstroTurf organization. They claim grassroots support, but real backers are a list of foundations. They have a lush budget and a large staff with important-sounding titles. They keep busy, but they don’t get much done in terms of conservation. Most often they attack real conservation groups and cooperate with developers and extraction companies. They “facilitate” and “collaborate.”

Pew Charitable Trusts has been a prominent supporter of MWA in the past. That outfit is spawned by the Sun Oil Company fortune, and the Pew family behind it.  If you think that putting money in a foundation  separates it from the donors, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Pew money is oil money. So it naturally follows: MWA is oil money.

The word “quisling” comes to mind, as MWA merely fronts for other more powerful interests. But I’ll settle for a simpler word requiring no knowledge of history. They are “phonies.” “Shills” works too.

MWA is part of the larger corruption that is our political system, where no one is what they appear to be, everyone bought. The Brewer piece is a smoke screen, flak designed to take attention off MWA and redirect it at a critic.

The problem of bison

I read one source years ago suggesting that the primary control mechanism of bison was the human population on this continent, as many as eighteen million at the arrival of the Europeans. Thus followed a human die-off, and the bison population exploded. Migrating settlers were confronted with millions upon millions of the beasts. The slaughter of that era had two purposes – to open range for cattle, and deprive natives of their primary food source. Both succeeded.

BisonIn the real power structure, the Montana Stockgrowers Association is the group that makes and enforces policy regarding bison in Montana. The Montana Department of Livestock holds titular authority, and underneath that is the governor, charged with grabbing a baton and leading the parade after it is moving.

In the early 1990’s, the Governor or Montana was Stan Stephens, and during his administration Montana became a nationwide laughing stock. The Yellowstone bison herd had overgrown and had to be culled. To do so, Stockgrowers invited a public harvest. The nation was shown images of “hunters” dressed in hunting garb standing fifty feet away from their trucks and prey and dropping them. It was disgusting to watch.

The next governor, Marc Racicot, had better advice. He built a wall, and did the slaughter away from cameras. No images, no outcry, no problem.

I was a writer for Writers in the West at that time, and reacting to the buffoons masquerading as hunters, wrote a column describing the cat-and-mouse game played by Racicot. I was ego-boosted when a friend of my daughter’s, in school in Wisconsin, said my WITW piece was a subject of discussion in one of her classes.

At issue are brucellosis, wolves, the real power structure, and the real effect of absence of apex predator on the landscape. Once it was humans. Now we rely on wolves and grizzly bears.

Brucellosis is a disease that causes abortion in elk and bison, and undulant fever in humans. It is under control in our cattle population, but the mere threat of species transmigration is enough to affect markets and cause quarantine. So the Stockgrowers watch it closely. Even the perception of threat to cattle will cause them to bring out the big guns. I get this, and given the unbridled power of the MSA, not much can be done to stop them.

There is not enough predation in Yellowstone national park to keep the bison herd down to a reasonable number. Wolves are great hunters, grizzlies less so, but in bison they both meet their match. Wolves prefer elk, and bears the carrion created by wolves. As a result, the bison population in Yellowstone regularly gets out of hand. Three methods of control are die-offs, migration, and culling.

Culling by humans is not allowed in the park. When food supply wanes, bison migrate into the greater ecosystem, and the Stockgrowers spring into action. These days, the killing is done out of sight, and the meat carted off to Native American reservations.

I do not know of a better solution. The effects of bison overpopulation on the landscape are devastating. Perhaps we could invite our Native American friends in each year to enjoy a harvest, as their ancestors did.

But culling is essential. There is no way around it. Nature is out of balance. Human management is essential. In my view. I invite others to set me straight.

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

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.