“When an honest man, honestly mistaken, comes face-to-face with undeniable and irrefutable truth, he is faced with one of two choices, he must either cease being mistaken or cease being honest.” – Amicus Solo

I suffer from the illusion that people will actually look at the evidence in matters of criminal behavior, especially the major events of our time. But they don’t. That’s my bailiwick. Most people get their opinions via absorption of mass media. Consequently, evidence can scream at them but they will not hear it.

For example, take just one small matter, that of the murder of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The coroner’s report by Thomas Naguchi said that RFK died from a gunshot wound fired at close range directly behind his right ear and leaving powder burns. Sirhan was in front of him and too far away to have fired that shot.

There you have it.

But here’s a critical point: Hardly anyone knows about what I just wrote there. It passes into a void of fear and silence, and anyone with a public reputation who brings it up will come under severe attack. That’s why I conclude that there is considerably more power exerted in covering up these crimes than their actual commission. The culture of fear we live under is as oppressive as any Stalinist state, and don’t get me wrong here: I know Stalin had people murdered who knew too much. I am not being hyperbolic.

Here’s but one small example, an unimportant person, comedic actor, legendary dissipator, Charlie Sheen. He’s not even terribly bright, but he did have some swagger and had the balls to appear on Alex Jones’ Prison Planet (did I mention that Charlie is not that bright? Jones is nothing but a gatekeeper, in my opinion.) He said he did not believe the official story of 9/11.

We’re conditioned never to connect dots, but what happened to Charlie after that indeed was a direct result of his speaking up. He lost his job on Two and One-Half Men, Where I enjoyed his work, and later found himself locked in a closet in Manhattan covered in cocaine and surrounded by hookers. I assumed at the time that Charlie was supposed to be killed that night, but have since reconsidered. Our spooks are so goddamned good at the art of killing, if they meant to kill him he’d be dead. Charlie merely received a message:

STFU.

Celebrities have more impact on public opinion than politicians, and certainly more than academics and intellectuals. That’s why Charlie was singled out. His Jones appearance got the attention of a lot of people. He had to be silenced.

More importantly, any other celebrity who did not have his mind right got that message. That’s our culture of fear.

We had a lengthy discussion below, and I am pasting a redacted and long comment I made for the simple reason that it is the evidence contained in Dr. Judy Wood’s book Where Did the Towers Go? Like the bullet that got Bobby, people will shy away from knowing about this. Many will stop reading right here. But I am putting it up here anyway because just like a dog barking in the night, it may recede into the background of your consciousness, but will not go away. If you read this, it will trouble you.

Good bye, then.
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Continue reading “Our culture of fear” →

I got no takers below on the question of who is behind ISIS. I kind of expected that result. The minute I suggest that people are being diddled by mainstream media, there’s a rush for the exits. Why, the very idea!

We could be self-reliant, never trusting, always verifying, and dredge through information trying to piece together complicated scenarios to explain the behavior of power. We could use deductive reasoning, insight and experimentation, and try and fail until we form a coherent picture.

Or, we could just watch TV and, in a semi-hypnotic state, and passively absorb our views. We could just be somnambulist sponges.

Here’s Eric over at 4&20:

Well JC, it’s sure nice to know that Russia did not take back Crimea, and that their troops and tanks aren’t anywhere near Ukraine – LOL.

It’s the “LOL” that got me. The guy is not only stupid, but smug to boot! I’m not worried about hurting his feelings, as my take on Eric over these many years is that he’s impenetrable, and also, that he never comes near this blog. So feel free to talk about him, even insult him, as this is an Eric-free zone.

I’ve got a bigger mission here … why these constant wars? There’s no moral justification for them. We are in no way threatened by the countries we attack. But we are constantly attacking people. Why?

The character O’Brien in Orwell’s 1984 says to Winston Smith,

The primary aim of modern warfare … is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living … if it became general wealth it would confer no distinction. … The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must also not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

O’Brien also says

“You could grasp the mechanics of the society you lived in, but not its underlying motives … [that] the party seeks power entirely for its own sake.”

But there’s something more going on with our empire than that. These guys appear to be running scared.

We’re bankrupt, have been for decades. That’s a given. The only reason the rest of the planet pays us any heed is because of our military. Fletcher Prouty, whom I’ve just begun to appreciate, wrote that after World War II the US had a massive cache of weaponry stored in Okinawa, and that half was shipped to Korea, the other half to Vietnam.

The bomb, said Prouty, was a game changer. It was well-understood that we could not afford a nuclear war, and yet needed these constant wars. So rather than global conflict, US planners decided that future conflicts would be localized. Apparently they knew shortly after the war ended where the ensuing conflicts would take place.

But it’s hard to keep people in a constant state of fear and anger necessary for public support of wars. It requires constant agitprop. Planners settled on the Soviet Union as the source of all evil, and launched a massive agitprop campaign that went on for decades. No matter who the U.S. attacked, it was because of the Soviets. When that threat vanished, terrorism was used as the new motivational force, and our planners gave us 9/11.

But agitprop is a destructive force in itself. Have you ever tried to unlock your car, get in it, start it up and drive off when you are in a state of fear? That’s because our primitive brain, the amygdala, has overridden our cerebral cortex, or modern brain. This constant state of fear that agitprop keeps us in – of terrorists, immigrants, communists, terrorists, criminals, blacks, terrorists … it takes its toll on our thinking abilities. It reduces normally intelligent people to what we see around us, frightened fools.

So if I read Orwell right, we are kept at constant war to prevent ordinary people from benefiting from our massive material output. That is done because powerful people always crave more power and fear losing it. And I add to that the state of the Empire, in protracted collapse, and suggest that our leaders are running scared.

What, after all, did Iraq ever do to justify its destruction? They had switched from dollars to euros to trade their oil. If a little matter like that can cause such a huge panic response, how vulnerable are we?

It does not bode well for the immediate future of the species. There is pain and suffering in store for millions of people, and we will be the cause.

A while back I linked to an online IQ test and suggested readers take it and keep results to themselves. Please go back and review, as it is testing our problem solving and pattern recognition skills. Dr. Judy Wood, who uncovered much of the apparent technology in play behind 9/11, suggested two three reasons why Americans cannot connect the dots around that and so many other crimes:

• 1: Poor problem solving skills;
• 2: Fear of the implications;
• 3: Group think.

Problem solving skills involve pattern recognition. If you go back and take the IQ test again, you’ll see that’s all they are testing. The better your recognition skills, the higher your score. Journalists are trained not to recognize patterns, as they believe it introduces bias into reporting. The rest of us are scared away by the use of “conspiracy theory” meme, which implies mental instability and lack of intelligence.

Quite the opposite, patterns are all around us, easily seen, and problems are easily solved. It’s just the implications that are so damned troublesome.

So why, on one hand, are Americans scored during their education based on pattern recognition abilities, and then ridiculed when those skills actually come into play? It is simple: In the Empire of Lies, blindness is a virtue, incredulity a vice.

The reason why the powers behind the throne can do awful things like shooting down airliners and beheading people and get away with it is a simple matter of faith. This is evil shit, and we do not want to think that our leaders are behind it. That places enormous responsibility on us to change our leaders. And anyway, we like Obama and cannot imagine he would do such stuff.

But that problem is easily understood once we understand the implications of 11/22/63: The office of president since has very little power, and is usually occupied by actors.

So set Obama aside, as he is just a spectator, and like most politicians, just a third-rate human. “He” is not doing this stuff. But who is? Much easier to think it was “them,” and if the “them” happens to be darker skinned people who live in far-away places, who we shown on TV to be irrational anyway, so much the better. Then we can demonize them, bomb them, topple their heads, take their land and resources, and even feel morally superior in the process.

Please understand, people, that the patterns are right before your eyes, and that the evil resides within our country, and not without. Solving the problem is the easy part. Accepting the implications is tough. Please do so. The hardest part: Accepting responsibility. We allowed this sinister force to take control of our government, and now look the other way whenever it misbehaves. It is time to grow up.

The rest of the world very badly needs for Americans to topple our own heads.

I suppose the objective is the bombing campaign to decapitate Syria and partition Iraq, delayed by the Russians last year after the false flag chemical attack in Syria did not work. Now that the Russians are sidelined in Ukraine, immobilized, the beheading videos, which are probably fake, are meant to scare the crap out of you and get you to support a new bombing campaign. God only knows how many innocent people Obama will behead with those bombs, but that part will not be broadcast.

I did not realize that ISIS was meant to be the new Al Qaeda, scaring the panties off Americans. Always behind the eight ball here.

• Psychological projection: A theory in which humans defend themselves against unpleasant impulses by denying their existence in themselves, while attributing them to others.

In prosecuting his widening war in Ukraine, [Putin] has also resurrected the tyranny of the Big Lie, using state-controlled media to twist the truth so grotesquely that most Russians are in the dark — or profoundly misinformed — about events in their neighbor to the west. Most Russians get their news from state-controlled broadcast outlets, which have moved beyond mere propaganda into outlandish conspiracy theories and unhinged jingoism.

The above words are from a Washington Post editorial dated August 31st. Since it is the United States that is prosecuting a wider war in Ukraine by means of proxy, and it is the American public that is profoundly in the dark, kept so by its state-controlled news media, I conclude that the editors of the Post are either profoundly dishonest, or deranged.

Regarding the state of awareness in Russia, who is to say. We cannot do much about them. We can only affect our own leaders.

Reading the above piece, which I should note came to my attention via Moon of Alabama, I was reminded of a document written in 1950 and declassified in 1975 known as NSC-68. It should be required reading in all of our classrooms, for in it are contained the seeds of the “Cold War,” the expenditure of a trillion dollars on unnecessary military hardware and the loss of tens of millions of innocent lives. The document is written is readable prose and so is accessible to mere mortals. It tags the Soviet Union, the ” Kremlin,” as the source of all evil on the planet. It says that they want to overrun Western Europe, bury Great Britain, and ultimately rule the world.

The Soviet Union at that time was barely limping, recovering from the loss of twenty million citizens and destruction of two-thirds of its industrial base in the Second World War. Much of its military capability was horse-drawn. Its people were largely peasantry incapable of engaging in an industrial world. Having been attacked by Germany and Japan, Stalin was rightly distrustful of the other imperial powers, especially those calling themselves the “Free World.”

The Soviet Union posed no threat to the U.S. It was time for rapprochement and peace. But the newly founded U.S. National Security State, freshly infused with Paperclipped German SS and the American OSS, was ambitious. Peace was not an option.

Reading NSC-68, one is tempted to think that the Soviet Union in 1950 was a fully formed military power ready to strike. Why the paranoia? Why the urgency?

I can only imagine that our new creations, CIA and NSC, were intent on doing exactly what they were laying on the Soviets. The Department of War had been changed to “Defense,” and every evil had been projected on the Soviets. That meant, as Orwell advised around that time, that every evil imaginable was going to spring forth from a new Washington, intent on War and and not Defense. NSC-68 was the declaration of World War III, not against the Soviets, but against the world, done by the only superpower standing at that time.

As I read WaPo above, given that organ’s proximity to the seat of power, I have to assume that they, like the authors of NSC-68, are knowingly lying and projecting their own evil intent on others. While Moon of Alabama regards it as lunacy from a “Funny Paper,” I tend to take it more seriously. These are deranged psychopaths, as is our military leadership and Capitalism’s Invisible Army. There’s a sense of urgency in the words, meaning there is great danger now to the world. The source of that danger is Arlington, Langley, and Foggy Bottoms.

Below the fold here are a few choice paragraphs from NSC-68. I know a few who traffic here have or have or will read the whole thing. It is well worth the time. It helps to form a sense of the enemy, and the paranoia of those who run our funny farm.
Continue reading “A glimpse into madness” →

The best way to make communists is to put the Americans into a place where there were no Communists before. (Norodom [Prince] Sihanouk of Cambodia)

“Whoever has the Americans as allies does not need enemies” (Madame Nhu, wife of assassinated South Vietnamese leader.)

Americans often feel snubbed when they learn that they are not liked abroad. From a typical dis-informed viewpoint, we Yanks imagine we have been giving foreign aid and rebuilding places, sending food to places where they have earthquakes and tsunamis and are also busy liberating slaves. All we get in return in disrespect.

“So screw the world,” is the attitude that naturally follows.

What Americans do not know, of course, is that we live in a huge disinformation enterprise known as the United States Mainstream Media (MSM). Even so, if it were only “news” given to us, its range would be limited. But it also extends to entertainment media. It repeats the message and helps us in the illusion that our foreign policy is all about do-goodiness. In movies and on TV, our terrorists (called “Special Forces,” Seals” and “Green Berets”) are big burly men with guns protecting children from thugs. They even hand out candy. Our military adventures are designed to “rescue” people and install democracy rather than merely keep the path clear for control of resources by America’s giant corporations. Getting hold of those resources usually involves removal of democratic governments and installation of thugs and terror regimes.

It’s simply failure to communicate. The rest of the world is very well-informed about who we are and what we do. American tourists are readily accepted (so long as we are not boorish and overbearing, like the guy our daughter told us about – wearing a cowboy hat, he stood up in a British pub and sang the Star Spangled Banner). But it is the typical American ignorance of the behavior of our CIA and special forces, our military, “our” corporations’ that creates a gulf between us and people abroad. They don’t like “us” for good reason, and we don’t know about it because we never see that face of “us.” We only see what we are meant to see, and so live in what is often referred to abroad as the American bubble.

It’s merely ignorance, easily remedied by expanded knowledge.

When my older brother, Steve, spoke at my oldest brother Tom’s funeral, he said that Tom (9 years older than me) had introduced him to the work of Thomas Merton as an eighth grader. Tom was a poet and quiet intellectual, and he and I, even without the age difference, did not have much in common. Merton was just a name to me. I knew such a person existed, but had no interest in him. Religious thinkers have never had any appeal for me. It wasn’t until I read James Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, that I caught a better glimpse of Merton and wondered about my older brother, wishing perhaps that I had known him better.

Here’s the Merton money quote from the introduction to Unspeakable:

“I have little confidence in [John F.] Kennedy, I think he cannot fully measure up to the magnitude of his task, and lacks creative imagination and the deeper kind of sensitivity that is needed. Too much from the Time and Life mentality, than which I can imagine nothing further, in reality, from, say, Lincoln. What is needed is really not shrewdness or craft, but what politicians don’t have: depth, humanity and a certain totality of self-forgetfulness and compassion, not just for individuals but for man as a whole: a deeper kind of dedication. Maybe Kennedy will break through into that someday by miracle. But such people are before long marked out for assassination.”

This was written in January of 1962.

I recently took a test which is supposed to give me a reasonable approximation of my “true IQ.” It only takes a few minutes. The result is my own business, and I invite the reader to find out an approximation with the understanding that the very fact that you are reading this blog, Piece of Mind, means that you are above average. The test is here.

Why do such tests exist? As a freshman in high school I was placed in a small section of the class at Billings Central Catholic High School, Billings, Montana, knows as the “honors” section. I did not last long. My family’s home life was not conducive to studying, and overwhelmed by distractions, the school officials decided I belonged with the regular kids. Once nice thing about that was the addition of two new class periods to my schedule, study hall and PE. Apparently the brightest kids needed neither.

Continue reading “Get your free IQ score here!” →

The following passage originally appeared in a 1969 book of essays and such, under the heading American Labor and United States Foreign Policy, and cites Thomas Braden. More about Braden in a second, but if you are like me, when you saw that book title you thought “Wow! There’s a book I’ll never read.” Indeed, I never did. I picked up this passage from The Politics of Heroin, by Alfred McCoy.

In the cited book, Ronald Radosh cites Braden, a CIA agent, as follows:

On the desk in front of me as I write these lines is a creased and faded yellow paper, It bears the following inscription in pencil:

“Received from Warren G. Haskins, $15,000 (signed) Norris A. Grambo.”

I went in search of this paper on the day the newspapers disclosed the “scandal” of the Central Intelligence Agency’s connection with America students and labor leaders. It was a wistful search, and when it ended I found myself feeling sad.

For I was Warren G. Haskins, Norris A. Grambo was Irving Brown, of the American Federation of Labor. The $15,000 was from the vaults of the CIA, and the yellow paper is the last memento I possess of a vast and secret operation…

It was my idea to give $15,000 to Irving Brown. He needed it to pay off his strong-arm squads in the Mediterranean Ports, so that American supplies could be uploaded against the opposition of Communist dock workers.

Historians who rely on declassified documents will be hard-pressed to understand what Braden is talking about, but it has to do with breaking a dock workers’ strike in Marseille, France in the post-war years. Quite a few things were going on. The Corsican mob, with CIA assistance, was strong-arming communist workers* out of the unions, while Lucky Luciano, then living in Italy, was using laboratories in Marseilles to process heroin for shipment to the United States (the “French Connection”). The CIA assisted the Corsicans and Luciano in moving product stateside. The U.S. was also running arms shipments through Marseilles to assist the French in their battle to retain their colony in Vietnam.

In the meantime, CIA was busy infiltrating American labor unions and student organizations, trying to separate them from leftist influence. And, in a separate operation aptly known as “Mockingbird,” CIA was busy infiltrating its people into American media. CIA Director William Colby would later say that the idea was to “Own everyone of any significance in the major media.” No doubt they succeeded, as our American news media is a tame rabbit even as it is portrayed in movie and TV fare as a stalking tiger.

CIA were busy boys in those days! The reason this passage struck me was that anyone who was sentient in 1982 might remember a TV show on CNN called “Crossfire,” and the opening words uttered five nights a week:

From the left, I’m Tom Braden.”

Yeah, that Thomas Braden, speaking from the left no less!. Braden was obviously Mockingbirded into his seat on that show. (He was also a newspaper columnist, and the inspiration for the TV show “Eight is Enough.”)

I call it full spectrum dominance. No matter your point of view in this country, if you get your news from the American media, you’re a right winger. If you’re “on the left,” like Braden, you’re just a righty of another color.
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*Due to McCarthy era propaganda, which went on through 1990, the reader’s assumption might be that the communist workers were part of the Internationale, and took orders from Moscow. Not true. It was merely an organizing force for labor.