A modest tour

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We took a tour of San Jose yesterday – after seeing Rome, Florence, Prague, Barcelona, not much measures up. But we did get a sense of the place. The building above is a National Museum, very modest in terms of grandeur, as are the presidential home and congressional buildings. The art museums were sparsely furnished. We spent a long time underground looking at Columbian artifacts, not my thing, but I did note that sun worship was prevalent, as in Europe, and that certain images, such as a sun eagle, were a match for the Egyptian God Horus.

One of our tour companions wants to move here, is ready for a life change, and is finding it difficult, many hoops. Despite having universal health care here, people from other countries have to buy in, so she would end up paying $700 a month, cheap by American standards. Local authorities want her to invest, but she would not be able to work here. In addition, she needs to put $60,000 in the bank and withdraw $2,500 a month to live on, and do that regularly while renewing her visa while avoiding the tag “perpetual tourist.” All very difficult.

Costa Rica has no army, has not since 1949. People wonder why they have never been invaded in that time, and the answer is seen all around in MacDonalds, Taco Bell, KFC and other American companies. They have. But they have not resisted American corporate power, and so the US military has had no need to take off the gloves. If you live like a serf, you can live in peace. Got that Nicaragua? Venezuela? None of this going your own way nonsense.

There is no poverty in the extreme, no beggars, and no extreme wealth either. Faces on the streets are mostly serious, as if needing to be somewhere quickly. Very few smiles, and those mostly in younger people. It is a large city, somewhat dirty, with bars over windows and razor wire everywhere. It is not unlike Lima, but far far more inviting and healthy than Dehli or Kathmandu, based on our brief experiences.

Voting for show

I write about this often. It is unimaginable to people that fraud is so widespread as it is, that elections, all of them, are either rigged or riggable. People cannot fathom such a thing. This is America. We send observers to backward countries to watch their elections when they should be sent here instead. We are backwards.

I could not help but notice in last night’s voting that Bernie Sanders won every caucus state, while Hillary Clinton won every electronic state except one.

It reminded me of 2012 where Ron Paul won every caucus state.

Caucuses, with their paper ballots, can be rigged too, just as elections prior to electric machines could be rigged (Truman in 1948 and JFK in 1960, for instance). But it is much harder than with an electronic counting machine. There is a higher likelihood of a clean count when there are auditable paper ballots backing up the tally.

Do I think the vote outcomes were rigged last night? Of course! As a CPA I know that where there is an opening for fraud, there is fraud. If we have no eyes on the ball, and we do not, it is even easier. I would venture that Sanders actually won every state last night except South Carolina, and that the machines gave them to Clinton. It is easy to do and therefore, is done.

Yes, it is that bad, we are that corrupt. Until you come to grips with it, it makes no difference who you support, who you vote for. It is out of your hands. Like everything else in a fake republic, voting is just for show.

Travelogue …

imageWe are in Costa Rica and will be for the coming ten days or so, the next two days on our own in San Jose. We are here with two Montana friends and will stay in the city for two days, and then join a bus tour that will have forty-four others. Most likely we’ll be seniors, though I don’t know where from. I imagine there will be walkers and canes, bladder and hearing issues, and that the bus will travel down the highway with its left blinker going.

I actually saw a sign in Florida a couple of years ago that said “Turn your blinker off.”

PhRMA: Please send money to fight Zika

See update below.

I’ve been reading various articles and listening to interviews and podcasts concerning the Zika virus. The whole thing is a nasty hoax. It is done for money (it will cost billions to develop a bacteria against a threat that does not exist) and to keep us in a state of tension (frightened people are much easier to control – that goal lay behind every hoax).

The center of the hoax is Brazil, where we now have seventeen confirmed cases of the virus being present in cases of microcephaly. The presence of the virus is meaningless, as it was first discovered in 1947, is harmless, and often present in our environment. Finding it anywhere is likely, especially if you’re looking for it, which is why it was chosen.

For it to be a real threat, it would have to be present in massive numbers and a pathway from virus to disease would have to be demonstrated. Neither criteria is satisfied.

Why Brazil? The Olympics will be there this summer, tens of thousands of people traveling there. That helps establish the need to do something, something very expensive, to remedy the situation. Now! It’s an emergency!!!

If you assume that because WHO is behind it, the threat is credible, and that because we have a burrowing news media to uncover the hoax, it would be exposed, please take note of the following:

Montana Art Revival For Kids
PO Box 77737
Belgrade, MT 59904

Please send $50 per month to that address. If you want, you can abbreviate the name of the organization on  your check: M.A.R.K.
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Update: This just landed in my email basket, from Jon Rappoport. Microcephaly has been linked to pollution from petrochemicals, according to an ongoing study at the University of Haifa. It is causing a huge uproar in Israel, where the disease is emergent. In this case then, the Zika virus is serving as a cover tool for industry, a distraction, a diversion. That too makes sense. There will be no lawsuits for a disease that is caused by nature, rather than industrial pollution.

This time it is for real

imageI encountered the above photo and quote on Facebook, where else? As I scroll down the entries there, I think man, never an original thought. It is all boilerplate cut and paste. That’s Facebook. We’re not exchanging ideas. We’re reading billboards.

Anyway, I commented on the above

“Pretty cool, especially since Teddy was a JP Morgan man.”

My comment got no likes!!!

Just so you know, Teddy Roosevelt, the “Trust Buster,” was controlled opposition, a man put in place to make sure certain interests advanced while others did not, and for whom historians have reconstructed reality. They have made him a man who acted independently of influence.

As a Morgan man, TR was charged with assuring the election of another Morgan man, and so in 1912 ran a third party campaign as a Progressive, the Bull Moose Party, to assure enough votes taken away from William Howard Taft to elect Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson then gave us the Federal Reserve, the income tax, World War I. The Morgan agenda. All of that was thanks to TR, the Trust Buster, who, incidentally, forgot to bust the Morgan trust.

Politicians are puppets on strings. All of them! Ever was it thus.

imageIn the comment string below the TR image I found this, however: Bernie Sanders.  He is running an independent campaign for president, is is under the influence of no one in particular. He just up and decided to run one day. He is no puppet, there are no strings. This time it is for real.

lucy-footballAnd that has nothing to to, nothing, with this other image that constantly comes to mind as I watch the Bernie campaign suck so many people in.

Honestly, I find it so hard to sit here and watch, as if politics were real, candidates were genuine, and there were no puppet masters.

People please, grow up.

The illusion of an educated mind

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.” (Daniel J. Boorstin)

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My wife and I, like so many people in this land, often watch Jeopardy in the evening. though we are bad Americans and skip over the commercials. (Commercials are often embedded in clues on that show – there is no escape.)  The show has a reputation for being brainy, bringing on smart contestants, and I suppose many of them are. But mostly they are just good at trivia.

I have thought from time to time that I might like to take a shot at getting on the show. To do so requires taking a test, and assuming I could pass that hurdle (I make no such assumption), I would have to begin a long process of study. But what to study? There are no systematic themes running through it, as categories can be anything from literature to geography to pop culture, with more emphasis on the latter. I would have to subject myself to repeated questioning about various topics, memorizing the answers, hoping that the broad knowledge would help me get lucky on the show and face a category or two with which I have some memorized knowledge.*

It is an exercise in rote memorization without ability to connect dots, think intelligently, or challenge authority and assumptions. In short, it would be like studying for the SAT. It is the American education system in microcosm.

I would like to take a sampling of people who have done well on Jeopardy, and test them on their ability to unwind American propaganda. I would quiz them on events like Vietnam, 9/11, Sandy Hook, Boston, San Bernardino, the Snowden, Manson and OJ affairs, the current hoax regarding Zika, and see if they have been able to sift and see through them. My guess would be no, that these winners exemplify the whole point of our education system, a fact-rich non-thinking environment.

Perhaps that’s why the show enjoys continuing popularity. It gives us ignorance in the form of illusion of knowledge.
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*Cliff Claven on Jeopardy(Cliff Claven, a character on the TV show Cheers, was fortunate in that all six categories on the night he appeared were about beer. He ran up a score of $22,000 in and blew it all when the Final Jeopardy question was on another topic.

Also, has anyone but me noticed that Alex Trebek is a disappointment in terms of personal engagement? After decades of exposure to trivia, he seems unable to carry on a conversation, and has at best a hokey-pokey sense of humor. I suppose that makes him perfect host for the show.

Weird scenes in Cibolo Creek Ranch

“There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.”

The above words, from the song For What It’s Worth, purportedly written by Stephen Stills, were taken by most to be a war protest song. In reality, it was about the Sunset Strip riots, and the object of protest was closure of a night club. That kind of confusion is not unusual, as Stills, from a military family, was never one to object to war. He even bragged to others that he was in Special Forces in Vietnam.

The words came to mind as I reviewed the events surrounding the passage of Antonin Scalia.

Continue reading “Weird scenes in Cibolo Creek Ranch” →

The importance of being wrong

It was a long process from beginning to end to come to grips with the matter and then stating publicly that I was convinced by writings and a movie that John Lennon’s 1980 shooting was a fake event, that he may in fact still be alive, and was for certain alive in 2008.

That’s not important, although crossing that little bridge from absolute belief to uncertainty would benefit everyone. It would lead to that side of the river where nothing can be taken at face, where everything is held open to question. That’s a good way to live.

But people, for the most part, cannot deal with that. They want certainty. Life offers very little of it.

People are layered beasts, most projecting phony images. Other than our small circle of friends, with whom he can be candid, there’s very little honesty in the world. There is no honesty in politics, and news is almost always fake. Virtually everything that comes to us via the TV screen is a concocted lie in some form, save perhaps weather forecasts. (Ah, but sporting events are genuine!  I have no reason to think that true. There is, after all, large money at stake. That leaves it open to question.)

That makes life both interesting and unpredictable. It leaves us to our own devices to understand things. We have no one we can trust.

Knowing that, it is important to understand that we can be fooled, that we can be wrong. That is not big deal. Once fooled, we can be un-fooled. We are always in a  state of flux. Life is about movement towards truth, not arrival there. When we happen upon a truth, as I did about Lennon and so many other fake events, it’s just a sign we are on the right road, but there still await may choices of turns and dead ends.

That last little paragraph above has helped me understand so much, and will continue to be my guiding light – that I have been wrong, have been fooled, and will be again and again as I move forward. On the day that I stop doubting and start trusting, I will also stop moving forward.

I know many people who never admit error about anything. They are usually wrong about just about everything.

Undamming the damned

Big Swede stopped by recently and left a comment … a long quote from someone else regarding Bernie Sanders. It has to do with Bernie’s public persona as a “socialist” and Swede’s perceptions of a black/white world where the are people like him producing stuff for other people to consume, the whole John Galt meme. It’s craven nonsense, but has driven a whole generation now into supporting fascists at various levels of government. That was probably its purpose, probably the reason why Ayn Rand was promoted , why her economics, which do not for a minute describe the real world, became such high profile reading material in the 50s and 60s.

But I felt bad that Swede took time to cut and paste such a long piece for us, and it simply vaporized before his eyes. I know that feeling, the arrogance of people who lock themselves away from criticism by banning. I didn’t ban Swede because he and I don’t see eye to eye. I can handle criticism from all ranks, from Kralj to Kurtz all the way up to Budge and Crisp and Kemmick. I have taken it from the best, and stand as I am, rattled but sincere. I have self awareness, and know how I am perceived, which must be unsettling for some, as I believe in myself, my own mind and abilities.

So I went into WordPress settings and unbanned Swede and everyone. It’s annoying that cutting and pasting takes the place of thinking and exchanging views, but then again, people who are so insecure as to be unable to handle criticism are annoying too. I don’t think if myself like that, but I did ban four people. I don’t fear them. I just didn’t like the way that comment strings go a predictable route, mindless, wandering like a stray dog, nothing ever changing.

So Swede, Kralj, Kurtz, Moore, try something different. Before commenting, exercise the brains rather than reflexive muscles. Give us what you got, not someone else’s thoughts. You’re welcome here, but please, no cutting and pasting. Please.

Law enforcement versus Apple: Another fake showdown

The fake battle between Apple and law enforcement over the Apple iPhone used by the fake terrorist is hard to understand. What is really at stake?

First, the San Bernardino event was fake. I investigated just one of the supposed victims, “Sierra Clayborn,” a fake person with fake photos and identity and family. Piece of cake. If I can do that anyone can. (What was odd that there was another “Sierra Clayborn” in Chicago, and she was as fake as the California one. Two fake people, same name, different parts of the country. What gives?)

When the spooks stage these events, they have to make up persons, giving them occupations, names, photos, family – because the American news media is state controlled and the public too dumbed down to know better, they don’t have to try too hard, which is why it is so easy to spot the fakery. The Sierra Clayborn photos were so amateurish that they had to be laughing as they put them together.

Secondly, there is nothing “locked” about an Apple phone. The technology came out of DARPA, and was designed to track us. Government has been able to eavesdrop on our cell phones from the get go.

Thirdly, there was no “terrorist” doing any shooting, so whoever supposedly did the fake deed is either a fake name or a spook or Green Beret or Seal or private terrorist from Blackwater or its successors. All is known about that person already.

So what is up with wanting to know the fake information on the fake phone? My guess: Legal precedent, one less constitutional protection. We had no privacy to begin with, but now they apparently want to formalize our subservience to the surveillance state.