The Obama administration is, for now, giving up on official “regime change” training ops in Syria and is unlikely to go for more intense fighting against the Islamic State. But that is only the official position. Unofficially, we can safely assume, the CIA and various shady Pentagon entities will continue their mischief in Syria and in Iraq.

But thanks to the Russians, it is now for all to see that the U.S. was never serious about fighting the Islamic State or about reigning in al-Qaeda and other Jihadis in Syria. While the U.S. has flown a total of 137 air attacks in Syria in some thirteen month[s] the Russians delivered 148 airstrikes within just one week.

(From Moon of Alabama.)

The intrigue surrounding Syria is complex, with the U.S. aiding and abetting the terrorist forces trying to unseat the regime and at the same time portraying that regime as the real terrorists. The propaganda and disinformation coming out of Washington prompted Joseph Goebbels to say “Guys, sometimes you gotta mix in a little truth!” Seeing all of the violence visited on that land by Western-backed forces, Josef Stalin was heard to mutter “My god, what horrible monsters these people are … these Americans.”

The Russians have attacked forcefully and effectively and set the terrorists and Washington back on their heels. They are acting as a civilizing force.

But it ain’t over. If there are two words to describe the current reign of terrorists and desk murderers that hold power in DC, they would be “fucking relentless.”

I put a residential rental unit on the market earlier this year, and in closing was told that I had to install $1,600 in radon mitigation equipment in the crawl space. I objected, as radon is not a problem for anyone other than coal miners who also smoke cigarettes. But I was told that one of the tenants in the building was afraid her child would get cancer if I did not act.

Shit, I thought. Fear works. It forces me to buy nonsense equipment that serves no purpose other than to line the pockets of greedy businessmen who got into EPA via the revolving door and created our bullshit radon regulations.

So too with all this gun nonsense. Bad things happen, but statistically speaking, we’re as safe as a swaddled baby in a crib. To go out and buy a gun is a personal choice, but for me not an option. I refuse to be part of the problem. And I refuse to let fear rule my life.

I know there was an incident in Roseburg, Oregon. I have not read about it, and won’t. I suggest to readers that if they are curious about that incident, to proceed as follows:

• Verify by independent means that the victims were real people who really died that day.
• Verify by independent means that the alleged shooter was a real person.
• If it is determined that alleged shooter was real, do a deep background check on him, find out his acquaintances and friends, and associations. The object would be to see if he was manipulated by others to be where he was that day, and if he has been used by others, possibly sheepdipped and set up as a patsy.
• Find out the number of shots fired, their source and direction, and caliber bullet to see if they came from one gun only.
• Find out if there were any civilian, police or military training drills going on in that area at that time. (Such drills are the lever by which government resources are used – the drills can be “flipped live” to make fake events real.*)

A lot of work, right? However, if you don’t have time, just wait. Others will do the legwork, and you can learn more from them. Then go and get the information. Don’t wait for it to fall into your lap via news sources, as that will not happen.

In the meantime, stop being afraid.

*This is the method by which regular innocent people are recruited to participate in these incidents, unknowingly part of a larger script.

I was looking for the origins of the phrase “wild men in the wings.”

I was pondering the significance of an event ranked way down low on the list of atrocities committed by the United States in the postwar era, the deliberate bombing of a trauma hospital in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan.

The phrase sounds Shakespearean, but the Google can only point me at sports teams and chicken recipes and bars …  oh, one other item, a 1967 essay by Noam Chomsky called “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.”  It was published in the New York Review of Books prior to his being banned from that haven for liberal intellectuals … this taxes my sense of irony. I must stop!

Deep in the essay Chomsky quotes McGeorge Bundy, a liberal intellectual and Camelot guy who was an important mover behind the US invasion of Vietnam. That is where the words “wild men in the wings” appears. (If the phrase has another origin, please let me know in the comment section.)

The Responsibility of Intellectuals is one of the most important essays ever written by Chomsky. I strongly urge that readers capable of prolonged concentration give a look. Chomsky addresses the question asked throughout human history – why do intellectuals align themselves with power and against ideals like simple justice and humanity? His prose is accessible and easily understood, though the essay is long.

The Eastern seaboard and California coast and every major city in the United States are bursting with liberal and right-wing intellectuals justifying the fascist course this country has taken since 1945. No atrocity is so significant that it cannot be trivialized. Motives are never questioned. Barbarity, slaughters, genocides are pedestrian affairs ascribed to high ideals.

“Wild men in the wings” refers to military men who run with a policy and turn it into slaughter and mayhem. But they could not succeed without backing from the intellectual class. Who, then, are more dangerous?
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PS: For the benefit of those who do not read the essay, which is deed a homework assignment, I will slip you the answer: “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 that, please alert your local authorities.

Since I have entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in commerce and manufacture are afraid of somebody, afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when the speak in condemnation of it. (Woodrow Wilson, circa 1912)

I have grown more detached and distant from partisan politics since I began to understand it better – a mere distraction. This is not to say that the offices held by various officials are not important, but rather that our selections usually guarantee that no true outsider ever makes his or her way in. Further, office holders are usually corrupt – in fact, corruption is a qualification for office, as it makes a person easier to control.

So I imagine that even relatively decent people who make their way of high office, if not compromised beforehand, are after. Washington is a world of eavesdropping, easy sex and bribes, and two-way mirrors. And if no controversy exists, one can be manufactured.

So I don’t think voting matters. Any way we look at it, we lose.

The office of president is not cast to the wind, however – it is too powerful, too important, to be left in the hands of amateurs. The people who happen to grace that office can be highly astute or very dumb, from Rhodes Scholars and professors to mere caretaker generals to very dumb men like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. The dumb ones don’t actually take part in policy discussions – in fact, Reagan was shunted to the side and ignored after his attempted assassination right after taking office. We really had twelve years of George H.W. Bush.

It’s all interesting, however, and I’ve stumbled across this before … that Theodore Roosevelt, trust buster, was actually a JP Morgan man, and was persuaded to run as an independent in 1912 to weaken Howard Taft and clear the way for Wall Street’s preferred candidate, Woodrow Wilson.

It makes me reflect on my own ill-considered support for Ralph Nader in 2000, whose only impact was to weaken Al Gore. I don’t care about Gore, just another phony, but I wonder about Nader’s genuineness creds, and of course feel abused and ashamed at being played so easily.

We’ve had a string of interesting men in office, however, and Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are not fools – I imagine each is (was) actively involved in formulating and carrying out mischievous US policy, always subject to oversight, of course,

Which leads me to something that just floors me, it is so intriguing. I don’t know what it means. I believe in coincidence – it has deeply affected my own life. But this is so strange …

Hale Boggs, father of NPR correspondent Cokie Roberts, was a member of the Warren Commission, but a disgruntled one. He only signed on to the final report reluctantly and under pressure. He later became an open critic of the report, wanting a new and better investigation of the JFK murder …

…except, he died in a plane crash in Alaska, his body never recovered. That’s very fishy, and sounds like murder, but without a body, there is no crime to investigate. That event is not uncommon in American politics where small planes are deadly for dissidents of all stripes. The Kennedy family alone has lost three members to small planes, almost a fourth.

Here’s what is so intriguing: Boggs was driven to the airport that morning, October 16, 1972, by a young man whose name we all recognize … William Jefferson Clinton.

In airline talk, there is what I call the “rule of four,” meaning take any delay they announce multiply by four. So a ten-minute delay will actually be forty. Yesterday we flew from Milan to Frankfurt, and had one hour to get from an A gate to a Z gate in the massive Frankfurt terminal, not knowing where the Z gates were. While waiting in Milan, they announced a ten minute delay in boarding. Oh oh, I thought, forty minutes. We’re cooked.

Happy ending, we are running through the Dufry (duty-free) in the massive Frankfurt air terminal when a Lufthansa employee appears in the distance and yells out out “Denver?” and we shouted “Yes!” and he waved for us to follow and ran ahead of us, handing us off to another person who also ran and took us to the gate where a smiling flight attended said “you can relax now.”

September 11 should not pass without remembrance of honorable people who died in an act of disgraceful cowardice. A building symbolic of democratic government had its dome blown to bits. A respected president was shot by American Greeen Berets, execution at the hands of thugs. Then followed concentration camps and inquisitions, and a fascist government installed – one of the great criminals of the 20th century, Augusto Pinochet, came to power.

September 11, 1973 was the day the democratically elected government of Chile was overthrown in a US backed coup d’etat. It is a dark day in history.

May we never forget Pinochet or the thousands of victims left in his wake. May we 32 years later vow that it never happens again.

Well, we left Ljubljana and drove through northern Slovenia and Italy in our rented car. It was a spectacular drive. A few photos follow.

We drove from Ljubljana to Vicenza, a huge mistake – not the drive, but entering an Italian city with a car. They do not mix. There happened to be an annual fair in the city, and parking was hard to find. We ended up parked at the railway station with a warning from the hotel clerk that the car might be towed if left overnight. (There was that to worry about, but with no other parking to be had, we had no choice. It was not towed, and we paid €9.10 to retrieve it the following morning.)

Which reminds me: Mr. CPA here has his numbers backwards – the current exchange rate, dollars to euros is $.89, meaning that euros are worth about $1.10. Oopsie.

And then we drove to Florence. There is no parking to be had in Florence. None for tourists, anyway. Having a car there was foolishness, so we turned it in four days early. That was cheaper than parking in the streets or garages in a place not designed for cars.

Here’s a couple of Florence pictures:

There are naked men all about this city, statues, that is, far outnumbering women. I managed a camera angle on this one to keep it clean or family viewing.