USA Today (similar to “Pravda,” or an official American propaganda outlet), says

Crimea government called fake: Putin decries Ukraine’s leadership as illegitimate, but analysts say he’s got it backward.

The “analysts” are never identified, but I think I’ve got it figured out. They are deep in the bowels of State or the Executive, and are unidentified because that’s how we do “news” in the crazy imperialist country. Anonymous sources make it up, doe-eyed stenographers repeat it, their only job to make it sound officious.

Meanwhile, there is still no hint anywhere in any US propaganda outlet of the facts on the ground: The Russians did not “invade” Crimea. Troops have been there for decades, along with military hardware. It is all by agreement. Additionally, the coup d’état was carried out by neo-Nazi elements within Ukraine, long supported by CIA through NED. CIA itself was a blending of SS and OSS after World War II, given Carte Blanche by a doe-eyed Harry Truman, who would later call it his greatest mistake.

It’s ugly, but true, and so far from official US propaganda, and the doe-eyed attitudes of even sentient Americans, that it seems bizarre. But Bizarroworld is really USA today. That’s how crazy we are.

The US media, the most submissive in the industrial world, is simply lying about Ukraine, and in bold. But turn to the sports section – there they are very good, even burrowing and defiant. There we get actual reporting, even some journalism.

We are moving slowly through North Carolina today, on our way to Spartanburg, SC, eventually to the coast, but no timetable. We spent yesterday in Smoky Mountain National Park. It’s a good time to be there, just as with Yellowstone in spring. There are few tourists other than us.

I had heard of the Trail of Tears, when the US government drove the Cherokee off their land and over to Oklahoma. 4,000 died on that journey, perhaps in despair. What we took from them is a charming land of low, forested hills and mountain streams. Game was abundant, and life, as wilderness life goes, was easy.

We wandered around an old farm this morning, all of the out buildings still preserved. A family could live here on pigs and corn. It was hard work, and not much surplus went to market. It was perhaps nothing like Eastern Montana, where weather always held potential disaster in store. This land gives reason for optimism, and yields a different people.

And the people are nice – charming actually. Bearded men with nasal tone hold your attention, as it takes a little time just to drawl out short sentences. We spent fifteen minutes with Barry Higgs, visitor center guy. His family goes back to the 1700’s. He wants to get out west and see Montana and Colorado. His dad used to go to Twin Bridges every year to fish. I wanted to tell him not to bother, that he’ got is all here, but could not get a word in between his.

I just picked up the Un-Civil War, one of those ‘teacher never told you’ books. Should be fun, and who knows what is true? The events in the Ukraine are not even a week old, and all we got was lies. Can the Civil War be different?

So let’s finish here. Much ground to cover. This area is so much fun to get to know. Even just passing through, I am filled with warmth. It is a place that engenders a fondness that I will take home with me. Just thinking of it will bring back lovely memories. We must return someday.

Off on a new adventure tomorrow, this time the Southeast. We have an aunt and uncle south of Tampa, so we decided to fly into Atlanta and rent a car and just wander, their home the final destination. The trip will include Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and finally, Florida and Bonita Springs.

Years ago we took our family (our five kids ranged in age from 13 on down) on a cross-country trip from Montana to Long Island. Going there I felt a need to schedule, to have a booked motel at every stop. One of those stops was Monroeville, PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh. My stereotype was steel mills, air pollution and devastated landscapes. We arrived late in the day, and the last part of the journey was through the beautiful forests of Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh is part of that, a beautiful city set in rolling hills.

The trip back was delightful – until we got to North Dakota and Eastern Montana, of course. (OK – I might have had a temper tantrum in the Eisenhower Expressway around Chicago.) We had learned how to travel with kids. Each morning we would get up very early, and I carried them one-by-one to the Dodge B300 van, the Blue Zoo. I had built a platform in the back so that between that and the seats there was enough flat space to accommodate all five of them asleep and still have a hold underneath for luggage. It was not safe, I know. One-by-one as they awoke we had an ice cold juice waiting for them, so that it would be a pleasant memory. Then we would stop for a late breakfast. I am not sure how pleasant those memories are for the kids, but we tried to make travel less grueling. In late afternoon, say 4 or 5 PM, we got off the road and found a motel with a swimming pool, and let them go to release all of their pent-up energies.

So the trip, the fact that we traveled, changed me and the way that I looked at Pittsburgh and the way that we should accommodate kids as we force them to sit in a small space for long periods of time.

(New Jersey was just as I imagined, a place that one has to endure on the way to somewhere else.)

It is always interesting to travel, to have formed notions about places and then to learn that those places are not at all what we imagine. In doing so, we open our eyes and ears and hearts. I think Mark Twain had something to say about that too.

I was deeply moved last night hearing the Russians belt out their national anthem. It is a powerful song with mood shifts, somber, serious, glorious and ebullient. Our American anthem is so stiff and requires too much vocal range for ordinary people. It would not even make the top 1000, much less top 40 in the twentieth century. It’s a crappy piece of music. We might as well sing the Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars … bump bump bum dump da dum dump da dum …

Here in Colorado, we have “Rocky Mountain High.” If you ever want a shiver in your spine and a tear in your eye, stand in an auditorium and sing that song at the top of your lungs with everyone else. THAT is an anthem. THAT is what it should be – a glorious celebration of people and place.

Some people want our anthem to be “America the Beautiful.” If we have to choose between only two, I’ll take that one. But Paul Simon’s American Tune is more realistic:

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
Oh, but it’s all right, it’s all right
For lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
We’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong.

Continue reading “Pikus-Pace-in-our-face” →

[Swede Synopsis: Believe what you are told. Do not trust your lying eyes*. Proceed to comment section.]

Today we learn that immediately after the “killing” of “Osama bin Laden” in 2011, Admiral William McRaven, head of US Special Operations Command, ordered all photos of the corpse destroyed or turned over to CIA. Suspicious minds might want to know why such photos might be hidden from view. I suppose it could be due to their gruesome nature, but could as easily be for what they don’t show: Osama bin Laden.

It must be said, however, that bin Laden, as with many NSA intelligence assets, probably had a doppelgänger or two or four. (There were several “Oswald’s” in Dallas, and more than one in Dealey Plaza that day.) The scary videos of him over the years were obviously of impostors. The fact that his beard went from gray to black, that his nose widened, that he started wearing jewelry, and that his dominant hand changed from left to right, is really confusing. So is the absence of deterioration from his kidney disease (which is most likely what killed him in Pakistan in 2001, if he was not murdered by US intelligence agents). The question might then be which, if any, of the multiple bin Laden’s was really killed that day.

Or, another possibility, it could have been some dude who was watching TV and eating Lay’s seaweed potato chips. Or yet another – it could be that the images of the site, with the bodies of Navy Seals and a downed helicopter splattered about, was too revealing of the true nature of that PSYOP.

One never knows in the hall of mirrors that is the National Security State of the United States of America. They do keep us guessing.
_________
*Sorry to make synopsis two sentences long, Swede. I know you like brevity.

[Swede Synopsis: US lies about Syria. Makes terrorism. Skip ahead to comment section.]

When the United States National Security establishment decides to overthrow the government of another country, it does not back down. In the case of Syria it has funded terrorist elements imported into Syria by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with arms funneled in via Turkey. If history is any guide, the arms are supplied by the US but carefully outsourced or stripped on any markings that would indicate the source. During the US-backed insurgency in the 1980’s in Afghanistan, the CIA supplied arms to the Mujaheddin (now called “Al Qaeda) manufactured in Czechoslovakia.

In addition, it appears the that “rebels” kidnapped children from the Alawite villages around Latakia. When the rebels staged a gas attack on August 22, giving a green light for a US attack, many were posed as dead while still alive, but some were murdered by the rebels so that their corpses could be put on display for world media. Of course this behavior is so outrageous that it is not believed here in the land of the low-information citizen – that is, by those who have even traveled away from mainstream news to be exposed to it. I am not surprised at all, as my awakening came in things like Operation Phoenix, the terrorist attack on Nicaragua in the 1980’s, the starving of half a million children in Iraq in the 1990’s. (etc.)

To put it mildly, our country is run by desk murderers – men and women in fine and fancy cars and clothing order death and mayhem around the globe while traveling the cocktail circuit of Georgetown. One of them, Secretary of State John Kerry, opened the talks in Switzerland with the following remarks:

“There is no way, not possible in the imagination, that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain legitimacy to govern.”

Such blatant hypocrisy! Kerry is either deliberately lying or is ignorant of the situation. Who are those remarks directed at? The rest of the world knows what is going on. The American public is oblivious. Are the words meant to reinforce the will of the National Security State even in the face of the rest of the world and the Russians? That’s my guess.

[Swede synopsis: Parties same. US make many wars, blame victims. Skip to comment section.]

I often say, here and elsewhere, that there is no difference between the two parties. Indeed, they have the same corporate masters and push the same policies, usually repackaged for their own constituencies. The party faithful switch sides on various issues depending on who is in office. Democrats seek peace during Republican wars and are warmongers while their own party holds power.

But I have to fess up here – there are indeed difference, and not just the wedge issues like abortion, immigration and guns. I’ve come to realize this lately, and have to publicly state that I have been wrong.
Continue reading “There are party differences!” →

[Swede Synopsis: Student loans bad thing. Should make better. Move ahead to comment section.]
_________

The biggest thing holding a country together is fearsome enemies. Since we don’t have any, we have to invent them. A great deal of effort is expended in this country to create those enemies and make sure that we know they are there and threaten us. Fake attacks have been staged, and television and movie drama highlights how our special men and women of the armed forces are keeping us safe. The FBI spends uncounted hours finding, arming, and then thwarting terrorist attacks, sometimes by pizza delivery boys. The idea that there are terrorists “cells” out there who are planning bad things comes right out of the 1950’s when we were told there were Communist cells planning to do bad things to us.
Continue reading “Submission requirements” →

This is something that has been on my back burner for quite a while, ever since David Sirota mentioned on his radio show in Denver that Steve Jobs credited much of his creative success to having taken LSD on a couple of occasions. He said it was a positive experience and made him more sensitive to touch and color.

I’ve mentioned to friends that I think it might be fun to take LSD, and I get a frightened response, as if it would fry my brain, the old reefer madness syndrome. It’s not legal in the US, but is in Costa Rica, I’m told. Hmmmmm…

Reddit did one of their ask-me-anything forums with Rick Doblin, PhD, of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for a Psychedelic Studies. It’s very long but kept my interest. I liked the following exchange:

Hey Rick et al. Matt Johnson here from Johns Hopkins. Glad you’re doing this AMA. My question is: What do you think the world would be like today if psychedelic research (including therapeutic use research) had not shut down in the 1970? That is, both in terms of medicine and the larger culture. Good luck with all the questions… Thanks!

Hey Matt! If psychedelic research had not been shut down in the 1970s, and if the cultural crackdown had not taken place, I believe there is a very good chance that the United States would never have invaded Iraq and that the War on Drugs would have ended. The reason I say this is that the whole process of scapegoating and finding external enemies is in part because of our inability to handle our own flaws and imperfections, which we then project outward. Also, the process of dehumanization, the demonization of others, is reduced if we have a culture where spiritual experiences and a sense of unity are more widespread, and where we realize that we share more in common in other people than we have differences.

The UNESCO charter says, “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” I think the psychedelic mystical experience is one of the strongest defenses of peace that can be constructed. Albert Einstein said that the splitting of the atom changed everything but our mode of thinking, and that as we “drift toward unparalleled catastrophe,” what shall be required by mankind to survive is a whole new mode of thinking. This new mode of thinking is, I believe, a spiritual orientation.

For me personally, and for many others, psychedelics, more so than traditional religious rituals, have opened the door to spiritual experiences. I therefore think that if our culture had mainstreamed psychedelics in the 1970s rather than demonized them, 45 years later we would have a more spiritual world, a more compassionate world, and would be dealing with the stresses of globalization in much healthier ways.
-Rick Doblin, Ph.D., Founder and Executive Director

Sounds a little peacenicky, but I like it.

This post is really a footnote to the one below, but will be much shorter so that busy people might be more inclined to read it.

I questioned below the funding sources for Democracy Now!, noting that a venerable liberal magazine, The New Republic, owed its funding for decades to Wall Street. I am also wondering if DN! is similarly compromised and is operating as a “This far, no further” left-gatekeeping operation. Here’s some evidence to consider:

Jeremy Scahill is a regular contributor on DN!, and has been supportive of the US in attacking Syria. It’s just his opinion. Another opinion was offered by the Syrian nun Mother Agnes, who has been touring various places and claiming that the chemical weapons attack that was supposed to propel the US into that war was much more than just a hoax. She claims that the Western-backed terrorist forces abducted the children, murdered them, and then filmed their corpses for cover for the Obama attack.

That’s gross beyond words, but not at all beyond the pale for people who eat human hearts. (I do not know if that claim regarding what we are watching in that film is true, if it is a hoax or deliberately staged, and offer only this evidence: CNN is almost always supportive of US wars, even the supposed humanitarian ones. In this situation, it would be then a hostile witness carrying more weight than a normal one.)

Both Scahill and Mother Agnes were invited to a conference sponsored by the Stop the War Coalition in London last November, Scahill made it known that he would not participate if Mother Agnes was allowed to speak.

So much for democracy, now, Jeremy. Some voices should be heard others not. (Mother Agnes demurely pulled back, a typically leftist fault, not wanting to disrupt the conference. Scahill had no qualms about doing the same.)