Critical thinking skills applied to some evidence from 9/11

“The CIA’s campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.” (Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America)

Conspiracy theorists are really nothing more than skeptics. But as the case put forward by the Warren Commission began to collapse in the late 1960’s, CIA saw a need to immunize the general population from doubt, and so instructed its media moles to start branding skeptics as that. (In the late 70s we learned that CIA had placed 400 or more moles in the news media and academia, giving us our nightly news and scholarly books on current events, basically rewriting our history as we go.)

Skeptics, now belittled as conspiracy theorists, are the vigilant citizenry that a republic might need if there still existed a chance to keep it.

It appears now that the education system, nothing to brag about from the 1900’s forward, has gotten very proficient at turning out graduates at all levels who are not capable of exercising skepticism, or critical thinking skills. Consider this:

In 2003 the Department of Education did a study of adult literacy, and the findings were unsettling. Here is how it defined “proficient,” its highest level of skill:

DOE Study

Only 13 percent of Americans qualified as proficient. More interesting, only 31 percent of college graduates did. [More disturbing yet, see page 15 of the study: The grouping of those involved in graduate studies is only 36% proficient!]

Knowing the basic skill sets of most Americans, government, the media, advertisers and public relations people, writers and elected officials are able to lie with ease. And they do. As the bumper sticker says, everything we know is wrong. Here’s an extreme example (a 17 second clip):

(I do like that the news reader in this clip said “if you can believe that.”)

Stop and think: We were told that a jet aircraft slammed into a building at 500+ miles per hour* and that in the resulting inferno the planes and everyone aboard were incinerated.

passportKnowing that, what are the chances that one piece of paper encased in plastic not only survived, but ended up several blocks away? It has to escape the blaze, be transported in some manner, and be found in the huge mess that was Ground Zero. It has to be that one person’s passport, and not that of another passenger or airline employee, or even one of the several thousand people who died that day.

I do not have to calculate odds here. It is simply impossible. That passport came from some other source.

Given that the passport could not possibly have survived the inferno and then move blocks away, what are the implications?
________________
*Passenger airliners can only travel at those speeds in rarified air at 30-40,000 feet. At ground level, flying at that speed would cause a jet aircraft to disintegrate in midair due to resistance. The process of landing an airliner takes a half an hour or more because the pilot is slowly reducing his speed to allow him to enter heavier air as he approaches the airport.

A stroll down memory lane … ahhh, nostalgia

One of my favorite teachers growing up was a nun with a mustache, Sister Janice (ju-neese’), who I had in fifth and sixth grade. I probably did not learn anything worthwhile. By that time I knew how to read and cipher, so school was just repetition and testing. I do remember her, standing by the window overlooking First Second Avenue South in Billings as she talked about the death of Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations on September 18th of 1961, the day before. Sr. Janice, of course, thought that it was the International Communist Conspiracy that killed him, and we kids were brought up in that paranoid circus, so we thought that too. She spoke with gloom abut the world we were going to inherit.

Dag Hammarskjold
Dag Hammarskjold
It would be years before I came to learn that Hammarskjold had been gunned down by our old buddies in the CIA, who had not too long before that also murdered Patrice Lumumba. In the coming months CIA would also dispatch Ecuadorian President Jose Velasco and General Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic.

The theme behind the murders was the dominant propaganda meme of the time, that they were communists. The real reason for their deaths was that in the wake of World War II, with Britain and France greatly weakened, former resource colonies were breaking free of chains and charting independence courses for themselves. The CIA, Capitalism’s Invisible Army, was appointed the new keeper of order and was in brush fire mode.

The murders served both to get rid of pesky democratic forces, but also to warn all others in the colonial world that a new sheriff was on the beat. Any who got in the way of American corporations’ access to local resources would encounter assassins, marines, fighter jets and thugs parading as American elected officials.

LBJ pointing at his ...surgical scar.
LBJ pointing at his …surgical scar.
One such thug was Lyndon Baines Johnson, a crude and coarse man who once, when asked why we were in Vietnam, took out his dick and shook it at reporters saying “This is why.” Johnson was a murderer, but only a local thug. Many have inferred that his crimes in Texas suggest he had a role in the assassination of President Kennedy, but he was, in my view, merely controllable due to his corruption, much like Harry Truman. Those who wheeled him into the Vice Presidency, and ultimately presidency, knew he could be easily managed due to his past. His rightful place was in prison, or passing into the netherworld in a Texas gas chamber. He was that corrupt.

That’s just how it works – to the naive it appears that men and women arise from the grassroots and run for office and get elected and do the people’s business. There are indeed many people like that, but they don’t often get elected. They are not corruptible. One key to getting elected is a skeleton in the closet, a lever by which a person can be controlled.

 Ashley Dupré, used to honey trap Elliot Spitzer
Ashley Dupré, used to honey trap Elliot Spitzer

  • Side note: Often enough, if a good lever does not exist, it can be supplied. For instance, the amazingly beautiful woman who did business with Elliot Spritzer and brought him down as governor of New York was part of a honey trap, a common ploy used to compromise troublesome officials. Please ask yourself, gentlemen, what you would do if this woman stumbled into your lap.

Many people know about Bobby Baker. He was a scandalous Washington, DC figure in the early 1960’s who ran a club where powerful people could engage in trysts and enjoy some protection. The Kennedy boys were clients, and JFK’s famous dalliance with an East German spy, Ellen Rometsch originated there. But Baker had many irons in the fire, and was tied to Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, and so JFK had decided that in the 1964 election, Johnson would be dropped in favor of North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford.

Mac-walking-freeThat’s all filthy, but not unusual. Anywhere there is power, there is corruption, hookers, drugs, bag men and assassins. Johnson’s favorite assassin was guy named Mac Wallace. One witness has placed Wallace in a certain book depository on 11/22/63, but that’s more a rewriting of history, as CIA is anxious to do anything to deflect blame from itself in that murder. So there’s a school of thought that traces the JFK murder to LBJ, but it falls apart on close examination. Johnson was not powerful enough to orchestrate an event of that magnitude.

But Mac Wallace was a busy man.

Another friend of LBJ’s was Billy Sol Estes, who was doing a sale/leaseback scam for fertilizer storage tanks in West Texas. It sounds mundane, but there were 33,000 of them and it was a multi-million dollar enterprise. Following the money led back to a man in the Agriculture Department, Henry Marshall, who was tied to LBJ.

Billy Sol Estes
Billy Sol Estes
LBJ ordered Marshall’s death – “get rid of him.” A man resembling Mac Wallace asked direction to Marshall’s home one day, and thereafter Marshall was bound with a plastic bag over his head and a hose running from an exhaust pipe, and was plugged with five bullet wounds. It was very clumsy. His body was moved to a nearby farm, and when the five bullets holes were tied to a shotgun found nearby, it was ruled a suicide. I guess it makes perfect sense in Texas.

In the succeeding months thereafter, George Kritilek (carbon monoxide), Harold Eugene Orr (ditto), Howard Pratt (need you ask?) and Coleman Wade (small plane crash – gotcha!) all turned up dead, and all ties between Billy Sol Estates and LBJ were severed. Billy Sol testified to all of this in 1984, after LBJ was dead, naming LBJ as a participant.

That’s your country, folks, just a small slice of real history. A thief and murderer sat in the White House for four years, in real life a man who should have been sitting in prison. Had he waved his dick at anyone there, it would have been severed.

A Democratic consensus for America

The population of the United States is a smart bunch, generally, well-educated and well-versed in politics. Not much gets by them. I have been in and around politics most of my adult life, and so have familiarity with the attitudes and ideas, and the tactics by which people are grouped, for all our good, into movement politics.

By far the most effective, educated and cagey group is the Democrats. I was born and raised to be a Republican, but as I like to say, I got over to the other side as soon as I could. Once enmeshed with the culture, I found a rich garden, a full life complete with outlets for activism, self-education, and leadership. Democrats had all the bases covered. If I wanted to work to preserve the environment, they offered candidates and pamphlets and legislation designed for that purpose. If I wanted to work for human rights, where else to go? The Democratic program for Central America, the Middle East, South America and Southeast Asia was a feed bag of programs designed to advance development, democracy, and basic human dignity. The national platform included platforms on anti-racism, choice, the environment, control of the corporate sector, and most importantly, peace.

That’s why our society is so well equipped for world leadership. It’s not our leaders – sometimes we introduce clinkers like George W. Bush, but the society as a whole is so vibrant, so well schooled in ground-level organization, and so well-educated that he was but a passing ship in the night, an aberration. Soon enough he was upended and put out to pasture, and a real leader took is place, a highly intelligent man, a scholar, a community organizer, a charismatic figure, and one who was of a minority race. That sort of man could only come to a leadership position by the vehicle known as the “Democratic Party.”

So it is with some regret that I see Barack Obama’s term come to an end. Yet, and this speaks so highly of the party, there is no shortage of leaders. The party has a strong bench. Waiting in the wings is another person of intelligence, compassion, vision and skill, and a woman. I am four paragraphs into this, far enough down that everyone has stopped reading. I’ll return to the theme for the last paragraph, where most eyes generally skip when bored.

James Carville spoke at the Mansfield-Metcalf dinner in Helena last weekend. I should not have put the words “Mansfield-Metcalf” in this paragraph, as skimming eyes might pick up and read what is really being written here. But I think I am safe that most are moving on to the last paragraph. Swede brought me a quote, verified, from Carville, a man who I like for some reason. He said “The voter is basically dumb and lazy. The reason I became a Democratic operative instead of a Republican was there were more Democrats that didn’t have a clue than there were Republicans.” I am feeling a surge of pride in reading that, as I said as much on my own accord in the post below this, that Republican leadership does not have to lie to its base the way that Democrats do, as they are all “Benghazi crazy,” or on the same page ideologically, right-wing extremists who feed on and support one another.

Democrats are a wonderful party. I had to say that at paragraph opening for deflection purposes. Here is what is real. Democrats are a largely ineffective group, tending to be soft and idealistic to a degree, but who care more about winning elections and earning validation points than actually knowing anything about politics and policies. They are so easily buffaloed. Even now, as they are set to say goodbye to Neocon Obama, they are welcoming Neocon Hillary into leadership. She’ll win their nod because she stands a good chance of winning, and because her being a woman feeds their need for that sense of moral superiority they so crave. They’ll ignore her warmongering tendencies and vote her into office, if possible. This country is such a zoo, a well-to-do banana republic with a political iq somewhere in the teens. What was that blockbuster Tracy Jordan movie? Oh yeah. It was called Hard to Watch.

With Obama leaving office, we now might stumble, but I trust the Democrats, with such a deep bench, will put up another person of such intelligence and vision. I hope it’s Hillary, but I trust my party. If not her, someone of equal talent will rise through the ranks. Remember, Obama was known to no one, and by a natural process of grassroots percolation, found himself in Chicago at Grant Park in November of 2008. I saw the tears, the smiles, the hopes of a nation. Maybe that moment will never happen again, but I trust that in 2016, November, an New York, a similar moment comes about when a woman, with her former-president husband and daughter and grandchild at her side, speaks to the throngs of worshiping admirers.

This is our essence, our sense of purpose, our homeland, our hope for the future. We are all Americans, but as a Democratic American, I stand just a little higher in pride and fulfillment than the honorable members of the other permitted party.

Travel day

We are traveling today. We leave New Zealand at 6:30 PM Monday and arrive in Denver at 9:00 PM, Monday. It will take about 21 hours in total. We’ve gotten good at it over time, making sure devices are loaded with podcasts and having on hand books and sleeping pills. We play a lot of Scrabble when awake, and are both on an equal competitive level with one another so that winning is never easy. Such are the things that make a happy marriage.

The above video reminds me how much Noam Chomsky has aged since I first encountered him. He’d be 63 64 or 65 here in 1993, combative, assertive and confrontational. I remember listening to him in 1988, a speech at American University broadcast on CSPAN where he talked like this. As a right-wing Christian conservative reflecting my upbringing and education, everything he said flew in my face. It was outrageous. Nobody talked like that. Nobody.

And it would not have even registered with me, just as it will not register with those who watch but two or three minutes here and turn away. But I was gripped at that time with a burning question – who the fuck killed JFK? – that was causing me to look at things I’d never looked at before, opening a few doors, allowing curiosity to overcome the thought control system.

Chomsky, of course, pooh-poohs any curiosity about Dallas or 9/11, but I hold out that such events, if one lets go of the indoctrination system and looks at them in a questioning manner, are portals that will lead to sea changes in outlook. They disrobe the world before our youthful eyes, and begin the path towards intellectual maturity.

Dispelling harmful illusions

“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day…. A series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through a change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematic plan for reducing us to slavery. (Thomas Jefferson)

“The US mainstream hypnotic media, along with everything else in the US, has been weaponized.” (Comment by jfl, Feb 4, 2015 7:45:22 PM, Moon of Alabama)

Tribal cultures even today simply cannot comprehend the concept of the individual or of the separate and independent citizen. Oral cultures act and react simultaneously, whereas the capacity to act without reacting, without involvement, is a special gift of “detached” literate man.” (Marshall McLuhan, The playboy Interview, March, 1969)

“But what if your own eyes and your innate (though suppressed) ability to think critically and independently tell you that what all the institutions of the State insist is true is actually a lie? What do you do then? Do you trust in your own cognitive abilities, or do you blindly follow authority and pretend as though everything can be explained away? If your worldview will not allow you to believe what you can see with your own eyes, then the problem, it would appear, is with your worldview. So do you change that worldview, or do you live in denial?” (Dave McGowan, Wagging the Mooddoggie)

I live in a bizarro kind of world, shared by a few others who know exactly what I am talking about. My world is built on not just evidence, but rather easily uncovered and understood evidence.

Those things I know to be true are not things I happen to “believe,” as if such knowledge is subjective. Rather, I objectively see a plethora of evidence demonstrating that the major events of our times, be it Dallas, Watergate, 9/11, Boston or the supposed killing of Osama bin Laden, as explained to the public, are a gigantic, bold and easily untangled web of lies.

These lies have been untangled, uncovered, exposed, and in such a way that it is not merely the opinions of a few freaks and geeks. Rather it is a preponderance of unassailable facts discovered and uncovered by scholars and researchers of high integrity, and done with great care. There is no doubt in my mind that these men and women are closer to truth than any other Americans.

The events in question are not nuanced for the public, handled so as to keep certain important and sensitive information secret. They are simply big lies.

  • The murder of President Kennedy was a giant domestic covert operation followed by an even larger coverup.
  • Watergate has roots going all the way back to JFK and Dallas and involving the same people. Like Dallas it was a large conspiracy to undo the results of an election, to keep wars going.
  • 9/11 was mostly a television show, complete with CGI, but the basic evidence is even stranger than supposed planes flying unhindered through steel buildings.
  • The Boston Marsthon “bombing” is so easily seen to be a hoax that readers who believe in the lost limbs and miracle recoveries ought to be embarrassed to be so gullible.
  • And supposedly killing a guy, tossing his body in the ocean, not showing photographs … please. People. You insult your own intelligence, much less mine. You should be embarrassed.

What’s up with you? What the hell is wrong with you?

I was impressed by the words “hypnotic media” in one of the quotes above. Hypnosis appears to be a large part of our problem, although groupthink and social pressure have a lot to do with it too. Critical thinking skills are like great books. Everyone talks about them, but few actually experience them. Teachers all claim to teach critical thinking skills. Few actually do, or even know how for themselves.

I was traveling across a couple of states with a young relative a few years back, and having read a book about roads and highways, was struck by the author’s statement that the vast majority of youth today believe that the lines on our roads are two to three feet apart. So I asked my companion what he thought the distance was. “Two feet” was his answer. When I told him the truth – 22 feet of between Interstate highway lines, I was in for an even larger surprise. He did not believe me. He still doesn’t.

It is right there in front of him, easily discovered. Yet he clings … to what? A myth? An impression? They have to put the lines far apart to create the sensation that we are moving slower than we really are when we travel on highways. Otherwise we would not be able to drive for hours on end without becoming mesmerized, disoriented, even nauseous. He is clinging to an optical illusion.

But why does the illusion rule? I have never thought such nonsense as he does. I have never for a second had any notion that highway lines are two feet apart. I trust my whole generation is like me. Most of us have walked on or beside highways and see the evidence. What is up?

In a similar manner most people suffer from easily shattered illusions regarding the events I name above, and many others. Our leaders regard those illusions as “necessary,” as in the words of Reinhold Neibuhr. Chomsky called it “thought control in democratic societies,” referencing Niebuhr in a series of lectures in Canada. These illusions are the glue holding us together. But we need to come apart, as this glue, this togetherness, is not wholesome. It is hard on the rest of the world, including those countries we are currently attacking and others we plan to.

If you’ve read this and are feeling safe that I am in a twilight zone while you are comfortably ensconced in hard reality, think again. I am the sane one here. Not you. It is your feet that need to touch terra firma, where mine have been firmly planted now for decades. I and others are evidence and reality-based thinkers, while you are steeped in lies, illusions, and CGI.

KEEP IT MILD

We are socked in for a day here and decided not to spend twelve hours hiking in the rain. I stand by that decision. Consequently, we are hanging out, reading and walking up and down a country road. How awful.

I was thinking of a bumper sticker we once sported on our vehicles that used to inspire rage. It was merely three words, “Keep it Wild.” We often came down from hikes to find epitaphs written in the road dirt on our vehicles suggesting impossible sexual acts. I once got a ticket for trespassing that I suspect had to do with the three words. Little known fact, the Department of Fish and Game rides fenceline for large landowners, identifies with them, feels for them. Those are the real employers.

“Keep it Wild” was the motto of Montana Wilderness association, now a collaborative group. I am told that the organization was well down that path even when I was active, but my own perceptions were newly formed and years away from clarity. But I have suggested a new motto for them, a bumper stcker sure not to offend anyone:

KEEP IT MILD

Bob Decker, then the executive director of MWA, suggested to me something hard to grasp at the time, now easily seen to be “framing.” He tried to explain to me that in order to sit and discuss issues with then-Senator Max Baucus, you had to get in the room. And the room was heavily guarded. The only way in was to check testicles at the door.

Current MWA elite are proud of their collaboration with Senator Jon Tester, not aware that they are merely working with the replacement Senator from the Timber Lobby. They were excited to be part of the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, to be asked to sit in the room! The resulting bill, once thought to be the Conrad Burns agenda, is now dressed up as something new. MWA members are proud of their friendship with Tester and proud they are in the room. As I mentioned to MWA executive Gabriel Furshong in a friendly little tweet, it sort of makes me want to puke.

But it’s more than just being in the room. The whole organization has had to go through a mind shift, from combative to collaborative, and not be ashamed about it. To accomplish this they have demonized the fighters, the strong men and women who gave us the lands that are preserved to date. They are “rock throwers,” we are told. They just don’t play well with powerful people.

Well, you decide. For me, rock throwing beats moral cowardice every time, hands down.

But how, you ask, can anything ever be accomplished without compromise and effort at common ground?

That is the wrong question. Those things have a place, but compromise comes after, and not instead of battling. The politicians are bought and put in place to work for the monied interests. Jon Tester has no interest in compromise or collaboration. He receives guests on bended knee. If you are allowed in his office, you have already lost. You can only be held in undignified posture, your saving grace the imagined respect you think you’ve earned by acts of capitulation.

The political system crushes moral mousiness. There is only one way to deal with the Testers of this world, and that is to inflict pain as punishment for misdeeds. That is the only language that bought politicians understand. How often have we all heard Democrats (and that is all MWA is now, Democrats in action) say “Well, I don’t support so and so on this or that, but I will still vote for him.” Thank you sir, I’ll have another.

Effective punishment of politicians requires ground-level organization, and that is why MWA was founded. Money found a way, and replaced all of the fighters with collaborators, so that now Keep it Wild is Keep it Mild.

It would help, however, if in addition to yielding the agenda, MWA would also give itself a new name. No longer Montana Wilderness Association, they should be called Montana Wimps Amalgamated. Associated with the Timber Lobby, they’ve become a key driving force in the art of losing while feigning dignity.

Rain-soaked Milford

View from McKinnon Pass, Milford Track, New Zealand
View from McKinnon Pass, Milford Track, New Zealand

Milford is actually a fjord, and not a sound, but Milford Sound sounds bletter than Milford Fjord. It is an especially beautiful body of water on the western side of the south island of New Zealand. To get to it we opted to hike with a group of similarly minded people over a 33.5 mile track over three days. There was but one mountain pass, easily managed. The hike was mostly flat and not straining except that we endured five inches of rainfall over the last two days.

imageBut we were not cold, and after the rain penetrates boots and ponchos and everything is wet, there’s no worry left. Things cannot get wetter. At the end of each day was a hut and a private room with a shower. There is also a communal drying room where we put our clothing, packs and boots so that for the first half hour of the following day we would be dry.

Our group covered the globe, North America, Holland, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan. It was not a tight-knit group as we have experienced before, but nice people nonetheless. Our three guides were perky and attentive, as they are paid to be. We were group #91 of this tracking season. Most groups are 40-50 people, but ours was only 21. I do not know why.

The highlight of the trip was the scenery. The mountains here are fierce and steep, jutting abruply out of Middle Earth with vertical rises as steep as Eiger. The entire landscape is glaciated, and the amount of water running over and through these mountains is of Noah proportions. With the two-day deluvium the steep mountain sides were overrun by countless waterfalls. The entire countryside as we hiked was a wall of water. We crossed 286 bridges, many but a couple of feet wide, and many more streams that were unbridged. “Don’t try to go around the puddles,” we were told as the rains set in. There was no point. We were going to get wet. At times the water was up to our thighs.

It all ended today with a boat ride down the fjord, excuse me, sound. The sun was out, waterfalls tamed, as this countryside is used to disposing of large amounts of rain in short order. There was on the sound a massive luxury yacht we were told belonged to a Russian oligarch on the ‘outs’ with the current government. I cannot load photos from my camera to here just now, but the yacht was huge and splendid, reminding me in its shape of the Starship Enterprise. I imagine it takes thirty people to move it about, and that the owner is named or is related to someone named “Boris.”

Tomorrow we are on a bus and off to do part of the Routeburn Track, a higher mountain climb. This time we’ll be day hiking, no groups or huts – this will be the way for the rest of our trip.

An anachronism

An “anachronism” is a chronological inconsistency, something that does not fit in a sequence of events or is out-of-place in a timeline. For instance, if we are watching a movie about the old west and see a man on horseback who also happens to be wearing a wristwatch, an astute observer might wonder if he is really just watching fiction.

Thus do we read the following in Le Figaro, 11 October 2001:

Dubai, one of the seven emirates of the Federation of the United Arab Emirates, North-East of Abi-Dhabi. This city, population 350,000, was the backdrop of a secret meeting between Osama bin Laden and the local CIA agent in July [2001]. A partner of the administration of the American Hospital in Dubai claims that public enemy number one stayed at this hospital between the 4th and 14th of July.

Having taken off from the Quetta airport in Pakistan, bin Laden was transferred to the hospital upon his arrival at Dubai airport. He was accompanied by his personal physician and faithful lieutenant, who could be Ayman al-Zawahari–but on this sources are not entirely certain–, four bodyguards, as well as a male Algerian nurse, and admitted to the American Hospital, a glass and marble building situated between the Al-Garhoud and Al-Maktoum bridges.

To the casual observer, this makes no sense, and so is shelved. But some of us know not to disregard anachronisms when events of a suspicious nature like 9/11 (or Boston, Charlie Hebdo, or the public execution of a president) occur. Seen in the proper framework, the CIA agent meeting with Osama bin Laden as he receives care for his very serious kidney condition makes perfect sense if …

… Osama bin Laden was a patsy. We know he had been in the service of CIA for many decades going back to the covert war in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. In July of 2001, a big event was on the horizon, scheduled for September, and the patsy had to be available to take the fall. So in the intervening months he had to be babysat. That’s part of a routine service provided by CIA, a full-service spook agency. They were tending to his health. He could not die before the event. (Evidence suggests he did die shortly after.)

How do I know this? I have spent countless hours trying to understand the events of that day, hundreds of hours listening to talks, watching videos, and even reading books. But we all know the truth is hard to come by. Those lectures, videos and books could be full of lies. So I deal in volume, and wait, patiently, for some order to emerge from chaos. And the babysitting of Osama bin Laden is part of that order that emerged over time.

The use of patsies is commonplace throughout recorded history. Famous patsies include Guy Fawkes, Gavrilo Princip, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray. Also common is the construction of a false narratives designed to obfuscate, obscure, confuse and distract curious people from real events. Often the videos, lectures and books on the subject are part of the obfuscation effort. One has to be wary at all times.

Given all of the false leads and deliberate obfuscation that goes on, how do I know that the CIA meeting with Osama at a hospital in Dubai really happened? It could be that the Le Figaro article of October, 2011, is also a planted story, a “golden apple,” or false evidence meant to be found.

Nothing is 100% reliable. If we learn that CIA is just messing with us by planting the Le Figaro article, then it is back to the drawing board. The search for truth has no end and many detours.

I guess it would be easier just to turn off my brain and buy into the official story with all its inconsistencies, impossibilities, and anachronisms. That would sure make this vigilant citizenry business more manageable. However, for any who do not swallow whole on the official story, I can help by eliminating some unnecessary distractions. Those people who are telling us that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition, nano-thermites, or by use of “mini-nukes” are part of the obfuscation crew, put out there to mislead. Part of the task in understanding events is to decide who is telling lies, who is not. There are a few rules, but no guarantees. One rule is that when a plane is close to its target, it tends to draw more flak.

CoverPage_blue_sWith that in mind, I urge anyone ready for some unsettling, disturbing and mind-altering drugs to read Where Did the Towers Go?, a 500 page exposition of evidence without firm conclusion, written by a professor of mechanical engineering who specialized in experimental stress analysis, structural mechanics, deformation analysis, materials characterization and materials engineering science. She does not claim to know who, or even how, and instead focuses on what happened that day. It is startling.

It appears to me that for all my hundreds of hours trying to understand 9/11, Dr. Judy Wood draws the most flak. She might be a golden apple, but might also be the real deal. My guess at this point in time is that she is closer to truth than any others.

But then of course, that could be wrong too. CIA and other spook agencies around the world, who know no national loyalty, are masters at the construction of riddles.

Stupid American tales

The following video, sent to me by a relative, made me sad. People actually fall for this stuff.

That reminds, me, listening to sports programs on the radio yesterday, the deflated balls story is consuming lots of bandwidth. It’s not a real story, and will go away next week when the real Superbowl hype kicks in. This appears to be a planted story to keep the game in the news and on people’s minds.

People imagine such things happen naturally. These would be the same people who are now checking their mobile phone flashlights to see if the Russians or Chinese have invaded.

Philistines

I had breakfast yesterday morning in a small restaurant nearby, and sat with my back to the wall, as is my custom. I like to watch people. At the table next to me was a couple, obviously not married, as they were conversing. She spoke in a loud voice, self-assured and used to commanding attention. She calmly explained to her partner that the reason for current low gas prices was a plot to put the Bakken producers out of business, so that the United States would not attain energy independence.

As the conversation went on she tossed out some technical jargon, and I realized that she was probably a CPA, or somehow connected to taxes and finance.

She’s part of the best and the brightest, I suppose. I don’t think she has a clue, but she operates on that high level of cluelessness that insulates her from reality, probably reading the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Forbes. Those are all good publications, of course. They are just not enough of the world.

I spent most of my career on the perimeters of the oil and gas business, among small producers. These are smart and technically gifted people, engineers, land swappers, geophysicists, and yes, even geologists. I started out knowing nothing, of course, and learned a lot from them.

But a man has to be a man, at least once in a while. The adhesive glue that binds those people together is no different from that which binds teachers, Democrats, or the Ku Klux Klan: groupthink.

These men and women, called “independent oil and has producers,” need a huge gift from the public, access to our commons. To approach the public with that idea and to say “we want to do it because we hope to get rich” does not fly. They need a cover story, so they use energy independence.

What a crock. Higher up the line, in the real oil business, the one where they talk about “elephants” instead of the small pockets of hydrocarbons that independents chase, there are no national boundaries. None could care less whether or not the United States makes enough oil and gas to feed itself. There’s no need to let these people onto our lands, building their roads and pads and pipelines. They like to imagine they have no impact, but that is only true in the same sense that the impact of the desk sitting here in my office is measured only by the small footprint the four legs have.

Anyway, I did something both stupid and smart at once … there was a meeting held by the supervisor to the Lewis and Clark National Forest in Billings one night, a woman who stood up against the oil and gas people and was eventually hounded (and personally threatened) out of her job. That night I sat on the side of the room with some fellow Montana Wilderness Association members, and spoke against allowing these people on to the Rocky Mountain Front. I’ll never forget the palpable greed and anger that filled that room, the searing glances … “He spoke against us” said a fellow named Mac the next day. I’d never have a another client in that room, and shortly thereafter took a hefty pay cut from one for whom I did work.

Eventually I would ease out of Billings entirely, make my way to Bozeman, and eventually Colorado. This is not a straight line, a linear progression. I was changing in so many ways, and was unknowingly easing myself out of that business. To that point it was all I knew, but my world was getting bigger by the day. Many things were going on in my life, but from an economic standpoint, having so few ties to the business in Billings certainly helped make it easier to decide to move on.

Some might say I did a stupid thing. In retrospect, I suppose it isn’t that big a deal, and did not make that much difference. I was a well-known progressive anyway, so that my words that night were not a coming-out so much as pure defiance. And, I did OK after, not like I entered a monastery.

But group pressure and financial incentives are a driving force that will eventually destroy everything around us. It can be no other way. Anything that has the potential to produce private wealth, no matter its aesthetic value, will be destroyed by incessant pressure of unrelenting commerce. Roadless lands, wilderness, even national parks will come under pressure, and never a true word will be said about the reason for their destruction – greed. All other supposed motives are window dressing.

The only thing that stands between assets of high non-monetary value and the Philistines of the world of commerce is government. So it should come as no surprise that “gubbmint” is a hated evil, one that industry despises. They will always despise government until they take complete ownership. They are very close to their goal.