Readership here, which normally runs 2-300 hits per day, has dropped of precipitously during my three week hiatus.

Has anyone got any ideas on how to bring it back up? I’m all ears.

Imagine that it is virtually impossible to make a call from a cell phone to the ground below from an aircraft traveling at high altitude.

As I read it, it is indeed virtually impossible. Aircraft have to be equipped with special communication equipment to achieve this feat, and hardly any are, none in 2001. And, in my routine flights here and there over the last ten years, I have tried to do so. I often made contact – that is, the phone tells me that I have a connection, but it does not complete the call. It is just dead air.These days we we can be fined, even arrested for trying to do so, and it is odd, as it does not interfere with the aircraft in the least.

Anyway, set that aside. Religious groups insist on adherence to dogma, as do political groupings. And yet, internally, most people know that group dogmas are false, that two plus two does not equal five. They internalize such dogma to achieve harmony, as it is important to belong to a group structure. So people who profess otherwise know that there was no rising from the dead or walking on water or virgin birth. They are merely submitting to group dominance.

The suppression of the knowledge that the beliefs are false is often described as “cognitive dissonance,” which is simply the ability to adhere to irreconcilable beliefs.

Some of us do not bond easily to groups, and suffer accordingly. But we learn to live on our own, without approbation. The odds of us meeting are slim, as most people meet other people via membership in various groups. But the blogs are a good way to meet outliers.

A nasty aspect of my personality is to hold in disdain those who define themselves by group membership. I rebel when groups try to bind me and force me to conform to group norms. I was never a good employee,and never happy as an employee. I was not a good Republican, and was horrible Democrat. I even found the Greens restrictive – they more than any party have a large share of nonconformists, but it was a little bit oppressive.

What is the mechanism by which groups enforce cohesion? I think there are two elements: One is a need in each of us to belong, and the other are enforcers who patrol the fringes of groups to make sure that none leave the herd. These are self-appointed sheepdogs.

In real life, I am a nice person and indistinguishable in a crowd. I do ordinary work for ordinary pay, watch football with family on Thanksgiving, smile and joke and do all of the normal things. But on the blogs I am impatient, condescending, snippy, and even mean at times. The people who have been on the receiving end of this negative torrent are genuinely nice and caring of the people around them. But on the blogs, they too exhibit different characteristics.

These are the sheepdogs. They patrol the edges of groups, and define what is acceptable and what is not. Or so I perceive. each of them, as I perceive them, is so caught up in group insight that they have lost track of what is real, in fact, have no desire to know what is real.

And so they literally whip people, citing grouptruth, using absurdly tedious reasoning to force reality into a square box. “It is so, as my words force it to be so.“ The act of banning is a sheepdog at work, patrolling the outer perimeters of the group. Mormons call it shunning.

The whole of the allowed political spectrum in the U.S. is right-leaning. In such an environment, Republicans are free to explore as far into the extremities of thought on that parameter as they please. Thus we have our Beck’s and Coulter’s, each day bringing us new outrageous thoughts, never disciplined. Lefties, on the other hand, are not even seen. Noam Chomsky* is not allowed on the airwaves. But even those who we perceive to be leftist – right-leaning centrists like Ed Schultz or Paul Krugman, have to constantly watch their words and mind their manners, as jobs are lost, promotions denied … there is no easy way for even a right-leaning centrist to make it in this in mad mad city called Rightwingville.

Democrats who hold steady to party doctrine know this, and so internalize massive contradictions and acknowledge 2+2=5. To do so as well requires enormous self-persuasion and internal denial, a need to belong to a group that runs so deep that they cannot embrace the idea of not belonging.

So what has all this to do with the ability to make a cell phone from a jet aircraft? There is a mechanism in place that forces group adherence. It is accomplished by sheep dogs riding the perimeter. When you read that cell phones cannot make phone calls from airplanes, you immediately felt the pressure of the group and thought to yourself … “oh god, he’s not going there, is he?” That, my friend, is group pressure at work, the power of conformity. You just experienced it.

I don’t know what happened that day, and am missing so much information that I cannot begin to ever know what happened that day. I merely doubt the official conspiracy theory – the one about 19 Arabs.

I refuse to waste my time worrying about this, as whoever had enough power to unleash that event controls perceived reality. There’s no changing that. Essential information is missing, and will not appear in my lifetime, if ever.

But inside, when I think of the official explanation of the events of that day, I sort of doubt it all. There were no phone calls, there was no “Let’s roll!” The aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was surely shot down.

But I know nothing of demolition dynamics or the behavior of metals at high temperatures. I cannot begin to parse together the behaviors of thousands of people in utter chaos. It’s too much for me. It is madness. And compared to the crimes my own country has committed against others in response, it is minor.

My only point here is that it isn’t just me, but you too, who doubts the official version of events on 9/11, and the only difference between us is that you will never say so publicly, because you know you will be ridiculed and brought back into line by group strictures.

I don’t cotton to sheep dogs, I guess. It is not necessarily a good thing. It is what it is. So now, at this time, group member,, your appropriate response to this post and the thought crime contained therein is … ridicule. Have at it.

________________

*PS: I hasten to add here that Professor Chomsky does not disparage the official version of events on 9/11. He is not guilty by the fact that he is mentioned here. He merely exemplifies official “shunning” as practiced in the U.S.

Here’s a post by “HoHo Mustachio” over at LITW excoriating Rep Dennis Rehberg for missing three votes to tend to personal business. The margins for the votes in question: 360-26; 264-114; 379-0.

This is, to date, the dumbest post they have ever put up over there.

Here’s a little dose of realpolitik: Most votes in the House and senate are lopsided and foreordained. Members of either party are free to vote either way without affecting the outcome. They can thereby manufacture voting records to please their various constituencies.

I do remember one very important vote on an national forest issue that was up in the Senate some years back. I was still active in Montana Wilderness Association. It was very close, so close that the deciding vote would be cast by Sen Max Baucus, who was away on business. So they held the vote back until his return. John Gatchell of MWA was sure that Max would come down on the environmental side of the issue. I was equally sure that he would not. I do wish I could remember more than this.

Anyway, Max voted Nay, killed the bill, I was right, Gatchell wrong. Truth. And more than that, I imagine that Baucus was really pissed at being exposed like that. Normally he would have been able to cast a cosmetic “Yea” that did not affect the outcome of the bill.

I am sometimes amazed that the transparent theater of politics is not obvious to those who take a sincere interest in issues. HoHo Mustachio, I hope, learns something today. Just sayin’.

The following interview was published in France but has never seen the light of day in the U.S.

The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski
President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser

Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998
Posted at globalresearch.ca 15 October 2001

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at
Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing

Note that neither the interviewer nor Brzezinski had any thoughts about the effects of a ten-year war on the Afghan people. Also note that Brzezinski has little respect for the supposed world-wide Islamic threat.

Email I sent to Super 8 Motels:

I elected not to stay in your Sheridan unit. I almost made the reservation but then learned that you no longer allow cancellations. You merely keep the money.

For that reason, we booked our entire trip in other motels. And we will never stay with you again.

This greed stuff is getting out of hand. Ya think?

Actually, it isn’t just Super 8. Even little Alamo Motel in Sheridan has adopted the no-cancellation policy. It’s a bit like the airlines – where there is no real competition, those few remaining players can act in concert to pick our pockets. We ended up booking with another chain that also, coincidentally, now has a ‘no-cancellation’ policy. We had no real choice.

Airlines decided to charge extra for checked baggage. They all fell in line. Soon they will charge for carry-ons. Once one does it, the rest will too. There is just not enough competition. If one of the players were to see an advantage in underselling the others that exceeds the profit of going along, he would do so. But in a non-competitive environment, that advantage is not there.

Anyway, as you make your motel reservations in the future, check the fine print. And if you find yourself in a no-cancellation corner and must change your travel plans, do not tell them you won’t be showing up! That will only allow them to both keep your money and re-sell the room for that night.

Instead, let it sit empty. That’s the only market power we have.

PS: Here is Super 8’s cancellation policy:

Cancellation Policy: There will be no credit or refund for early departures, cancellations, no shows, or changes in your reservation for any reason. Guests will not receive any refund or credit.

The owner of the Alamo Motel in Sheridan claims that his cancellation policy remains unchanged, and I have stayed there many times over the years and he is a nice and sincere man. What happened is this: He signed on to a centralized reservation system for independent motels. They tell people that their clients do not allow cancellation. He did not know this about them.

In the United States we have a massive “news” operation whose primary purpose is to shield us from stuff that is true. Here are a few examples:

Bradley Manning: Pfc. Bradley Manning leaked a film of U.S. soldiers massacring civilians below from a helicopter above. But this story really goes way, way back, to Vietnam. Many on the right blame “the media” for our “loss” in Vietnam. In a sense they are right, but it wasn’t an organized media conspiracy that led to wide public disenchantment with that war. It was pictures. They simply did not understand their impact. Even as Walter Cronkite was reading a submissive narrative on how the U.S. was achieving its objectives, as was his job, the pictures that accompanied his words were telling a different story.

After Vietnam, the U.S. had to gently ease us back into war-making. The war in Afghanistan in the 1980’s had to be done out of sight, and Nicaragua and El Salvador had to be fought by proxy.

Grenada (October 25, 1983) was the first test case for the new strategy for news management in war. In that attack, all of the reporters were put on a ship and spoon fed bullshit about what was going on. Only later, after the conflict, were they allowed to view the damage.

The strategy was successful, but required a compliant news corps. There were renegades who refused to buckled under the new guidelines, like Peter Arnett of Associated Press, and later CNN.

He and his breed are long gone now, and news reporting of war is done mostly stateside, and by reporters who seemingly are in the war zone, but are in fact embedded within the shadow of Pentagon brass, and being fed bullshit. On-the-ground reporters are embedded with American soldiers, where they tend to bond and view events in a sympathetic manner. Otherwise, they would never be allowed near battle zones.

Images are tightly controlled. We are not even allowed to view the coffins of dead soldiers. Major U.S. news outlets cooperate with this regime, and do not show the grisly aftermath of bombing or the effects of our violence on ordinary people. It’s all part of thought control – images tell stories, while words are mere sound.

Bradley Manning, under the new regime, has committed a “crime.” He leaked some truth to us in the form of images which tell a story that completely negates years of intense propaganda.

For this, he might be imprisoned for up to 52 years. In earlier times he might be called a “hero.” Under the current regime, he will waste away, and will serve as an example to any others who are so impudent as to think they can countermand orders to keep the American public in the dark. The full weight of military justice will come to bear on him.

Meanwhile, the helicopter pilots who murdered twelve people that day in the film that Manning leaked … no action. Not guilty!

See how it works? This is both imperialism and counterinsurgency. Both are easier to ingest if we don’t have to see the images.

RNC Chairman Michale Steele: Mr. Steele is in trouble on a much lower scale, and his punishment will be far less severe, and he is surely no hero, as he was merely doing his job: analyzing the political implications of our latest war within earshot of a microphone.

But he too will pay a price. He’ll have to step down now that he has said something true.

Here’s what he said:

“Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. But it was the president who was trying to be cute by half by building a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?”

Steele is being lambasted for his “gaffe”, which indeed it is. One must understand our toxic environment, as a “gaffe” is merely a true statement. Obama did indeed “demonize” Iraq, for political purposes. Even though “he” has prosecuted that war in the same manner as Bush before him, our perceptions have been altered. That war is no longer given much coverage, and emphasis is now on Afghanistan. Obama did say he was going emphasize Afghanistan while campaigning. All that indicates that that the policy shift had already taken place within the Pentagon in early 2008.

Obama is no more in charge of war policy than children are of household budgets. All that can be read here is as follows: The Iraq conflict was widely understood to be “won” – the bases and puppets were in place, and the population subdued by massive violence (as exposed by Pfc. Manning above). Virtually all was concealed from us. It was merely time to move on.

In 2001, while George W. Bush was president, the Pentagon launched on an ambitious plan to take control of the Middle East and Central Asia. Afghanistan was but a doorway, with Osama bin Laden the hated face used to justify the attack.

But the real prize was Iraq. Soon after that Iran, Syria and Lebanon were to fall. Afghanistan matters, as a pipeline will run through it, and maybe the resources are important.

One can only guess, but it seems as well that Afghanistan is a parking lot. Plans to topple Iran have stalled, the Russian bear is resurgent, and yet we need to be poised and ready. If an “event”, staged or real, opens up a new front in Iran, I suspect that Afghanistan will once again hit the back burner.

Steele didn’t do anything wrong but offer up for public consumption the inside knowledge that Afghanistan is merely a diversion. Lives and dollars, civilians and poppy plants .. none of it matters. Afghanistan, if Steele is telling us the truth, is merely a place to park troops and tanks as we wait for (or cause) the Middle East to explode again.

Michael Steele is going down, of course. He said something true, and that is not allowed here in the Land of the Free.

Hillary Clinton on Georgia: This has a humor element to it. Secretary of State Clinton criticized Russia for its “occupation” of Georgia, which is considered a “breakaway” state. The Russians are angry that she used the word “occupation,” but mostly just shrugged.

Pictures help here. In the map above, the state of Georgia can be found between the Black Sea and Azerbaijan, and directly north of … Iran. It’s very small and not easy to spot on the map. The location is just a coincidence, I suppose.

But of course what Russia is doing is an “occupation,” just as the U.S. is currently occupying Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Panama, and the sovereign state of “just about everywhere else” with our 700+ military bases.

The U.S. wanted to occupy Georgia, but as Russia grows in strength, it is getting harder to make incursions on former Soviet territories. Military bases in that region are a prized asset. The U.S. invested a lot of money in Georgia, undermining their elections and instigating an uprising. But the Russians were surprisingly aggressive, and fought back. For the time being, it appears that military bases in Georgia will have a decided reddish hue to them.

And for that reason, Hillary Clinton is pissed. The Cold War is still going on. It never stopped, really. The Soviet Union imploded, lost much of its territory, most notably the ‘stans’ of Central Asia and the countries on the Balkan Peninsula. But the Bear is back, and is contesting U.S. aggression on a modest scale.

As Russia and China grow stronger, the world will be safer. If they and India ally and form a power bloc to contest the mighty U.S., we might experience a decade or two of peace on Earth.

I mentioned some time ago how the company Blackwater’s name had become so sullied in the public mind that they changed it to the unpronounceable “Xe”.

Apparently BP is having the same image problem, and since the name is available anyway, they have decided to change their name to “Blackwater.”

(Surely not original.)

Guess the year this was written:

“The greatest opportunity in American history to educate the voters by debating the large issues of the campaign failed. The main reason … was the compulsions of the medium. “The nature of both TV and radio discussion programs are compelled to snap question and answer back and forth as if the contestants were adversaries in an intellectual tennis match. Although every experienced newspaperman and inquirer knows that the most thoughtful and responsive answers to any difficult question come after long pause, and that the longer the pause the more illuminating the thought that follows it, nonetheless the electronic media cannot bear to suffer a pause of more than five seconds; a pause of thirty seconds of dead time on the air seems interminable. Thus, snapping their two-and-a-half minute answers back and forth, both candidates could only react for the cameras and the people, they could not “think.” Whenever either candidate found himself touching a thought too large for two-minute exploration, he quickly retreated. Finally, the television-watching voter was left to judge, not on issues explored by thoughtful men, but on the relative capacity of the two candidates to perform under television stress.”(Daniel J. Boorstin)

Thus we entered the age of actor as politician, and politician as rock star.

Like everyone on the outside looking in, I am surprised that Afghanistan has so many natural resources. Up until this time I thought we had attacked the country due to its strategic location and a desire to quash one pipeline and build another.

The question is, why are they telling us this? This is really weird.

In American journalism there is a phenomenon seen now and then called “Now it can be told.” After the fact, after the importance of immediacy has passed, when knowledge of government activity no longer makes a difference, we are sometimes told the truth.

Here is a document written in 1965 by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton – an internal document never meant to be read in public. He’s answering the question asked by many in government: “Why we are in Vietnam?”

70% – To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat. …20% – To keep SVN (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands….10% – to permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.

ALSO – To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used. NOT – to “help a friend.”

This document is part of the Pentagon Papers, or the real history of Vietnam. It was an internal history of our involvement in Vietnam commissioned by Robert McNamera and meant only for internal use. Daniel Ellsberg, then working for RAND, read the papers and found them so important that he risked his life and freedom to get this truth to us. He almost went to prison over it, and was only saved by an untimely burglary by Nixon. What the Pentagon Papers told us is that never once – never once had the American people ever been told anything true about Vietnam. Beyond just lying was the unavoidable conclusion: Lying was policy. It was natural and accepted. No one questioned it. Except this Ellsberg guy, who they wanted to send to prison.

Ellsberg said recently that he wanted more people like him in the Pentagon to release the truth to the American public. He wondered where they are, why the truth never gets out.

The release of information on the natural resources of Afghanistan might just be an appeal to our imperialist instincts. But it doesn’t fit.

So I am wondering if there is an Ellsberg in the Pentagon. Did someone get hold of some internal documents and release them? Is the press being told now about the true nature of the Afghan conflict because the information is going to come out no matter what?

That’s my guess.

Footnote: The extent and numerous locations for these minerals means that have not recently been “discovered’. Exploration has been ongoing, probably for decades. Was this the reason for the U.S./mujahedeen (aka “Al Qaeda”) expulsion of the Soviets in the 1980’s?
Footnote 2: Get ready for paternalism and a new, deep and abiding concern for the people of Afghanistan. Amity Schlaes of Bloomberg has captured the right tone in this op-ed – She says “now those tribes really have something to fight about.” Are you catching the arrogance? They are irrational, fighting over nothing. “We’re rational, they’re not” is the gilded gold coating on the attitude behind “imperial hubris”, one reason among many (another being the bombing and killing) concerning this conundrum that so many great minds have wrestled with: Why do they hate us?
Footnote 3: The idea that these resources will actually benefit the people of that country is odd. It’s never happened before with a resource colony. It would be a first.

The late (and sorely missed) Mitch Hedberg said that he never met a tennis player who could beat a wall, the best player ever.

Here’s an anonymous poster named “Lizard” over at 4&20, saying something very important:

one thing’s clear, this is going to be one long summer.

this is Obama’s big chance, and Holder’s responsibility, to stand up to the 4th largest corporation in the world, and finally hold these blood suckers (sorry vampires) accountable for the negligent homicide and ecological plague their arrogance and greed has unleashed on the gulf.

but it’s hard when “the media” obsesses over the mood of the prez, analyzing his every gesture, and making his “ass-kick comment” the major feature of attention.

meanwhile, for those who can filter the bullshit, the story is out there: there was an on-deck showdown between trans-ocean and bp, and the greedy, shortsighted decision to replace the heavy drilling mud with salt water, combined with sloppy oversight of the blowout device (which had a broken seal that affected it’s ability to warn of changing pressure) caused this disaster to happen.

but that’s just the way the media rolls. same thing with Israel’s most recent murderous assault. i mean, imagine if this footage, got wide spread mainstream air time. and imagine if it was more widely known that the IDF had to admit it released edited video with doctored audio, inserting someone shouting “go back to Auschwitz”.

but no, it’s much more important for our slobbering propaganda blowhards to facilitate Ari Fleischer’s take out of Helen Thomas, because somehow her words are deemed more obscene than idf soldiers executing Turkish peace activists, journalists, and an American citizen in international waters.

watch the footage. Afterall, it’s your money that allows these atrocities to happen.

I’ve come to know Lizard a little but. He’s passionate, insightful, and seems well-read for his young age. Maybe he graduated in liberal arts; maybe he was a poor student in primary schools, as his mind is not tracked. And he thinks that in order to reach people it is important to say things in a nice way.

The thread that led to his comments was about the elections results. (They don’t matter at all.) And somehow it got sidetracked, and at some point the Israeli flotilla raid was injected.

Voting ≠ democracy. Israel ≠ a force for good. Palestinians ≠ evil. But this is a mindset that Lizard is dealing with, and understanding mindset is what matters.

The Republican mindset validates in the Israeli atrocity as a football fan watching a game. And they will try to pin the BP oil spill (now known in the media as the “Gulf” oil spill) on the Democrats. That’s easily understood. It doesn’t take much thought to be a Republican, as ignorance is far easier to grasp than denial.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have to somehow internalize all of this with the odd fact that there is a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic congress. Republicans “cause” bad things to happen, while bad things “happen to” Democrats.

The flotilla raid, therefore, is assigned in the mind of the Democrat to a sphere called “Neverland.” It happened, and is easily understood. It simply does not penetrate consciousness.

And the “BP” (not “Gulf”) spill … Ken Salazar doing a heckuva job … Obama feigning ass-kicking anger … all of that provides some refuge for the Democratic consciousness. Obama’s supposed anger reinforces the notion that there was “change” in November of 2008. If Bush were president and all of this had happened, as it would have, Democrats would be livid.

Neverland is a place of benign neglect. There are important issues all about – EFCA, single payer, Israeli barbarism, expanded wars and income and estate tax reform. These are the issues of our times. And yet when Democrats take power, the issues are no more addressed than with Republicans. They are merely acknowledged. There is a vague sense that they exist and that something positive should be done, and some effort among progressives to bring them to the surface. And then nothing.

Democrats are Hedberg’s tennis partner, that wall. His best shots coming bouncing back … the wall wins every time.

We will never beat the wall. The best thing to do is to stop playing the wall’s game.