Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. (Voltaire)

I looked this up on the Internet to assure its validity and wound up at Ask.com. Indeed it is a genuine quote, and the following exchange took place:

Question: i couldnt understand thi thought..what does it mean?..u guyz pls explain to me this in simple words?..thanks in advance!! [sic]

Best answer chosen by voters: He is saying that people who are persuasive enough to make you believe something all logic tells you is untrue can also make you do things that your heart tells you not to do.

Take Hitler for instance. …

I stopped there thinking “Aye carumba! Bring it a little closer to home and the present, friend.”

The Rundown with Michael Brown and David Sirota on KHOW, AM 630 Denver
The Glo Show with Gloria Neal on KKZN, AM 760 Denver

Without fanfare, David Sirota has left the Denver talk radio scene. Neither he or his former bosses at Clear Channel are willing to talk about it. I have mixed emotions about this, but Budge will certainly be happy to learn of his demise, having long ago had an icy me moment with him.

Sirota is one of those voices that grates on me, like Thom Hartmann, on and on and on and would you get to the point? But I liked his morning show here in Denver, as he was not standard fare. He took Democrats to task as easily as the mirror party, and had controversial guests on like Chomsky, sports writer David Zirin, science journalist Gary Taubes and many others. He was no Democrat, and though it was never said out loud, I assume he went down at 760 because of his repeated attacks on Senator Michael Bennet, who steered the local schools into a financial disaster when employed there; and Governor John Hickenlooper, a Republican who ran as a Democrat and whom Sirota called “Howdy Doody.” I loved it when he played that theme music. I could just see “Hick,” as the Denver Post affectionately calls him, steaming.
Continue reading “David Sirota leaves AM 630 KHOW” →

On February 13 President Obama will address the nation on the State of the Union. It will be a television show, constricted in time due to short attention spans, and include some vox populi features such as real praise for fake heroes and fake praise for one or two real ones. It all adds to the illusion that we are self-governed. He’ll throw crap on the wall.

Vladimir Putin recently gave his own Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. It took a long time to read, so I imagine it must have taken well over an hour to deliver, maybe two. I cannot begin to describe its content and do it justice. But most of it could never be spoken here. I did not find any applause lines. He did say “There can be no place in politics for criminals.” If Obama were to utter that line, there would be cold, malevolent stares. He might fear for his life.

The US military has long had a drug problem. The army was severely impaired in Vietnam due to drug use, much of it supplied by the CIA via the airline called Air America. In the 1980’s, when the Congress outlawed funding of the Contras in Central America, the CIA turned again to drugs for finance. Gary Webb ran an expose’ in the San Jose Mercury News that eventually cost him his job and his life – suicide was the official cause of death, but with spooks, deaths of those who try to expose their activities are always suspicious.

The money from drug operations has to enter the “legal” economy at some point, and international banks play a key role. As British journalist Ed Vulliami wrone in a Guardian piece last July, “Global banks are the financial services wing of the drug cartels”,

The notion of any dichotomy between the global criminal economy and the “legal” one is fantasy. Worse, it is a lie. They are seamless, mutually interdependent – one and the same.

With that in mind, take a look at the photographs supplied by the Pentagon in this piece, US/NATO troops patrolling Opium Poppy fields in Afghanistan. There is a disconnect between the captions and the images, some hilarious. For instance, farmers are smiling in the photograph above as they “destroy” crops that they are obviously harvesting. Troops walk astride fields, well known to all, not to destroy them, an easy task, but rather to guard them.

This could be a key to understanding out continued presence in Afghanistan – protection of a drug and drug money pipeline. The Taliban was highly effective in destroying the poppy fields prior to arrival of the Americans. Production now flourishes.

Bankers are currently doing a heavy push on a product called a “Reverse Mortgage.” They are targeting seniors. You will see these products heavily advertised on Jeopardy and The Price is Right. Having already bled the working and middle class housing market, they are looking for new ways to feed.

If anyone you know has been approached about such a product, advise them to treat a reverse mortgage as a scam to be avoided like a beer fart. Avoid the person and institution promoting it. Technically speaking, the word “scam” does not apply, but these are among the most expensive financial products ever invented. They are designed to bleed the customer to death rather than merely slashing the throat.

If you or your parents or anyone you know are desirous of enjoying their estate while alive rather than leaving it to descendents, seek qualified advice from a non-banking financial person. There are other, less expensive ways to convert a house to cash while still living comfortably. A “life estate” comes to mind, and surely there are other, less expensive ways to go.

When we attacked Libya, we called them Libyan freedom fighters, though they were only terrorists and acted as death squads. Now in Syria we call them Syrian opposition forces. Same deal – terror, death squads, massacres. Our money, our weapons. Even though they are Saudi-trained (or KLA), they go by the name we used when they were fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, where we armed, trained and financed them. Later that name became a scary word.

They are trained thugs, well armed and organized, following our orders. Even when we needed to make them look like an enemy, on 9/11, which they had no part in, they were our guys.

We call them “Al Qaeda.” It gets even worse – you’d be amazed where they get their money, at least in part. But I’ll stop there. If you understand that you are half way home in undestanding how the world works – at least piercing through the filtered American media. Nothing is as it appears.

I am reprinting Mathew Koehler’s comment from 4&20, and he is quoting his friend Jeff Gibbs – co-producer and composer for “Bowling for Columbine,” who had this to say about the most recent school shooting tragedy…”the 18th (!!) since Columbine”:

“A world full of guns and empty of mental health care is, well, the hell we are living in. Violence is down? HAHAHA! Almost a thousand times more American’s kill each other with guns than in other “civilized” nations. Time to grow up and stand up to the egoistic gun nuts. No one wants your guns, you’re not that important. It’s just that the rest of us don’t want to live in a world in which blow-hard egoists carry guns to the mall, schools and sporting events. You stand almost zero chance of using that gun to stop violence. Far greater is the chance someone will use your gun to do terrible things in your own family. We don’t want to live in a world in which your children take your guns and commit suicide, kill a family member, or massacre people which is exactly what happened yesterday and at Columbine. If you enjoy the gun toting lifestyle, move to Somalia, Juarez or join the Taliban. Or rent an island to play-pretend you live in the wild wild west with your buddies while the adults come up with some sensible laws here in what’s left of America.”

There is no horror that compares to loss of a child. The shock is settling in and grieving right now is intense. There will be a genuine outpouring of love and support from family, friends and even strangers. People get back to their lives, and then comes the slow and only partial recovery. “The hours,” those times alone, in the early morning hours, force reflection and acceptance, and out of that can come strength. But there will be no forgetting. For a parent, the loss of a child is a wound that can only be compartmentalized as life moves forward. It will never heal.

Iraqi, Afghani, Serbian, Libyan, Panamanian, Vietnamese parents feel no less pain. They surely look on the actions of the American killing machine as being as senseless as those of Adam Lanza. They grope for explanation, try to make sense of it all.

Back in late 1989, only coincidental to the departure from office of George H.W. Bush, the United States struck Panama. Since “communism” was a flagging enterprise, the cover story was drug interdiction. During that attack an ordnance of some kind was released on a barrio in Panama City, and by their accounting, as many as 2,000 people were killed, after which ensued bulldozers and a mass grave.

We’ll never know, of course, as we were not the victims, and so there was no investigation. Interesting, however: there was no apparent tactical purpose for use of the bomb, which has led to speculation that the U.S. was merely experimenting with a new device of some sort, perhaps delivered by a then-new stealth bomber. If that is the case, it would have to be an anti-personnel weapon, and “personnel” would have to be people living in close quarters, or civilians. Military leaders are too smart to house soldiers in high concentrations in a few buildings, 1983 in Lebanon aside..

Since our own lives have beginnings, middles and ends, there is a tendency to attach far too much historical significance on events of our times. Americans have a maudlin sense of victimhood about 9/11, not even knowing it was self-inflicted. In the larger picture it is the events that followed, the attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Now Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran (these are the military operations we know about*) that might warrant a paragraph in a history book.
Continue reading “Sanity and survival” →

I told my wife that we should see Les Miserables before the Oscars, as it will probably be the “best picture.” It has everything – a musical, a book few have read, and big stars – it is only missing a British-speaking cast member to punch it through.

I had not thought it through – “Zero Dark Thirty” is a shoo-in. I see where this thing called “Rotten Tomatoes”, which I assume is just a bunch of critics, like it at 100%.

It is about the killing of Osama bin Laden. Right away I thought a movie about a ten-year manhunt to find and kill a guy who has been dead for over ten years ought to be called “Mission Impossible.”

Now that I think about it, that movie and Argo will surely be nominated, as both have big-name actors, both are based on recent American lies, and ZDT will win. After all, this is America. We are first patriotic, and only secondly stupid, and each movie has great appeal in both areas.

Les Miserables? Bad timing, that’s all. Anyway, if 100% of our critics liked ZDT, it is safe to say that our critics are as stupid as our public.
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Oh, alright alright – in answer to the complaint that I am snide and condescending, please understand that there are many ways to approach a subject like 9/11 and the supposed killing of Osama – presentation of evidence and good manners, appeal to logic and such things. No approach works. So I just lay it out there. 9/11 and OBL and all of that are easily undone by evidence, or in the case of his killing, the lack of it. But people cling to the official stories anyway, and refuse to look at evidence, meaning that we are dealing with religious belief.

In that situation, 9/11 is no longer a real event, and Osama is not a person. We are dealing with metaphors and icons. There is a level at which religious belief transcends metaphor, and if smart people choose to indulge in such belief and ritual with the knowledge that it is the deeper meaning that matters, then I have no problem. 9/11 becomes a symbol for the United States and justification for aggression. We can have informed debate on that level. But if you, the reader, insist on clinging to the official word of authority figures on these issues, then I suggest that you are … words, words – what words to use … less than informed. Being uninformed is not a problem, as we are all such on many, many topics. But insisting on staying that way is … words words … reveling in ignorance.