…no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and families were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland — a loss equivalent to the destruction of this country east of Chicago. (John F. Kennedy, American University Speech, June 10, 1963)

In writing a piece yesterday on my search for meaninglessness, I reflexively apologized for invocation of a Nazi analogy, saying “Not to go all Godwin on you.” I’ve been wondering why I did that. Analogies are sometimes appropriate, often not. As a class of analogy, Nazism compared to modern day United States often works.

“Godwin’s Law” is as follows:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches.

Mike Godwin says he came up with the concept because Nazi analogies trivialize the holocaust.

No event, historical or allegorical, has penetrated the American consciousness more than the Holocaust. Seventy years later our movies and bookshelves are still obsessed with Nazis.

Few of us know that over twenty-four million Russians died in that war, ten million Chinese, almost six million Poles. The group that stepped forward and siezed the official mantle of victimhood is the Jews, most of whom did not fight.

Such is the power of Jewish propaganda that we are forced to step back in reverence when mention of their war deaths is raised, and this is reinforced by Mike Godwin.

Most people had to rebuild, reconstruct their lives and move forward as best they could. Jews were given Palestine, much to the chagrin of Palestinians. I had something to do with a bogus historical claim on land. So please, it was a really nice reward. Shut up now.

The object of that war was to allow the rise of post-Versailles Germany. It was rearmed, all its aggression leading up to Barbarossa forgiven. Ultimately Germany was to bring down Mother Russia. That objective was shared by Germans, certain powerful British and American factions, and Japanese.  It failed.

The Russians gave the most, lost the most, and were the primary victims of fascism. A neo-Nazi government installed now on their western border naturally concerns them. This particular aspect of history, western encroachment and aggression against Russia, is ripe for analogy. I propose we dispense with Godwin and talk about it.

Jews suffered immensely and are worthy of official victim status, but please, step back, let the other far more worthy victims enjoy a little sunlight. Let’s start with the Russian people, as it appears that fire of aggressive war is relit and growing.

Here’s some tobacco for your pipe.*
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*I understand that the reader will be naturally suspicious of Russian sources, and only wish that in a rational world, such skepticism would be leveled at all sources of news and information.

All U.S. citizens, vigilant and regular, need to take some time now with the release of the 6,000 page Torture Report to ignore that report and review the following:

Limited hangout: A limited hangout, or partial hangout, is a public relations or propaganda technique that involves the release of previously hidden information in order to prevent a greater exposure of more important details.

If I understand the report correctly, and I am not going to waste my time reviewing the details (which are well-known around the world), the abuses of the Bush era are exposed in this report, and an executive order by Obama ended the practice.

Bullshit. The purpose of the report then would not be to expose wrongdoing (or punish anyone), but rather to provide a sense of closure. In effect they are saying that the era of torture is ended.

Bullshit. That is a classic limited hangout.

A wonderful gal, married to my cousin, sent me the above YouTube. She’s a reader and ponderer and has traveled the waters of doubt and deceit, as have I, so I took time to watch it. (There’s a lot of disinformation and deliberate deceit in the YouTube world, just like every other nook of American media. Nothing is untended in our garden of lies.)

The first words to come to my mind after watching it were “golden apple.” Let me explain. Dan Rather was a mostly useless apparatchik in American news, but in 2004, late in his career and perhaps believing his own press clippings, he got brave. Presented with the ” “Killian documents”, he went forward with a report detailing George. W. Bush’s AWOL status during his military service in the National Guard.

Not too long after airing, the Killian documents were revealed by a blogger to have been typed on an instrument that was not available in 1972. They were forgeries.

The entire Rather/Killian episode was an intelligence covert op, and it ended Rather’s career. More importantly, the Killian documents were a golden apple, or planted evidence. The exposure was well-planned, the blogger* either manipulated or actually in on it. The overall effect: All reporters knew from that day forward never to mess with Bush’s service records.

There’s a lot of that in our news, reports from supposedly “independent” sources that make stories seem credible. The key to its effectiveness is that we have to stumble on such evidence by our own efforts. It cannot be handed to us. This makes skepticism about regular news a minefield. Even as we know the mainstream is lying to us, intelligence agencies also go to great lengths to give us false leads and evidence, just to keep us confused.

The “Pentagon Papers” are, in my view, a golden apple. That’s another story. To a far higher level of deceit, Edward Snowden is performing the golden apple function. He appears to be rogue and speaking out of school. He is telling secrets and yet … not telling us anything new, and telling us exactly nothing about the most important events of our times. What is his function? As with the Pentagon Papers, it is the “limited hangout,” telling small truths as a way to conceal large ones. He keeps our eyes off the ball.

I first encountered the term “golden apple” via Jim Garrison, the district attorney in New Orleans who investigated the JFK assassination. As I look back on his work, I realize what a smart man he was.** His image should be on our postage stamps and dollar bills. He was an honest man! He took on the entire intelligence establishment and the U.S. media to boot. He wondered toward the end of his life if it had all been worth it. Would be not have been better off just letting that dog sleep? He was so abused during his life, and yet he did get one small reward – in the movie of 23 years ago, JFK, Oliver Stone cast him in the role of Earl Warren.

Anyway, back to the video: I know that subliminal suggestion is part of advertising. We’ve all heard that they used to splice movie pre-rolls with the words “Drink Coke.” How effective was (or is) it? I don’t know. That’s proprietary information, buried deep in the bowels of ad agencies. I do know this: Advertisers spend billions of dollars making their products. They do it because advertising works. Really well. The beating heart of every ad agency is the behavioral psychology team. They craft the message, and the rest of the agency is on board to embed that message in those three things they have found effective in selling products: Humor, sex, and fear.

So was our government sending us a subliminal message all those years when TV stations used to sign off playing the national anthem off every night? Here it is as revealed by this YouTube:

TRUST THE US GOVERNMENT
GOD IS REAL GOD IS WATCHING
BELIEVE IN GOVERNMENT GOD
REBELLION WILL NOT BE TOLERATED
OBEY CONSUME OBEY CONSUME

I suppose so. It’s possible. It could also be planted evidence designed to make people who fall for it look stupid when we find out it was a hoax. That would make it a Killian scam.

It wasn’t but a few hours after the CIA was created, put together of remnants of the American OSS and Nazi SS, that the agency went rogue. By the time Bill Casey came on board in 1981, they had managed to infiltrate American media, placing moles and disinformation agents at every critical junction. At his first staff meeting after he took over, Casey was quoted as saying

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Mission accomplished, I suppose. But is the video above real, or a golden apple? I don’t know. If real, it is clumsy. They are better at persuasion than that. Way better.
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*Having a lowly blogger do the big reveal was classic CIA sting. It adds credibility.
** RFK, as I understand, sent a private courier to Garrison during the investigation saying that he was watching closely but could not speak publicly, and would reopen the JFK investigation after he became president. Garrison thought that was foolish, that Bobby needed to go loud, as keeping secrets endangered his life. He said that once you are public with information, they can no longer kill you to silence you. (They might kill you anyway just as a STFU example, but what are you gonna do?) Bobby did not listen. However, and this is what I call the Kennedy Curse, that whole family has to shut up about everything, as they all know that if they say anything in public they might run into a large pond or a tree or their small aircraft might disappear into the ocean. So I look at RFK’s 11 children all doing good work and staying silent, and admire them deeply.