The blog was down this morning – a computer at WordPress identified it as a source of spam or some such thing. Having been raised Catholic, my first move was to examine my conscience – have I used copyrighted photos? Offended people? And second thoughts – blogging is such a merry-go-round, nothing ever changes, hardly anyone reads or thinks independently, and those who do know who they are.
And, of course, I was frustrated that some unknown person somewhere had such power over me. I hate it when people have power over me!!! I pay $99 a year for a domain name and was under the impression I owned my content here. Apparently not.
Anyway, all’s well, but I will be more careful about copyrights and stuff. That was a jolt. And I will be nicer. Starting now.
My wife’s son works for a company that has four season tickets directly behind the third base dugout at Wrigley Field. Yesterday we got to use them. It is as close as I have ever been to a major league game. Interesting too that the people around us seemed like everyday people, no one rich and famous. Those folks are probably behind the glass walls high up above.
The beer vendors came around every two minutes, but we only wanted water. That vendor never showed. The lines were so deep underneath that it would have taken half an hour to get waited on. And anyway, it would have been $10 for two Aquifinas.
But we did not have to pee, the whole time, saving another half an hour.
I was given a choice last night of movies to watch, Zero Dark Thirty (recommended) or Mad Max (1980). I chose Mad Max thinking it would be a better portrayal of real life and have a little more accurate historical content.
Mel Gibson was so young, barely recognizable, but a stud. He fills the screen like few actors can. I’ve long forgiven him for his bout with anger and letting true things slip, and hope he is busy making movies.
We took a boat trip yesterday, the Chicago Architectrual Tour. I expected it to be interesting, and was not disappointed. I am at a loss for words to describe the genius, ingenuity and “imagine-it-so-make-it-so” engineering ability of our fellow humans.
At the same time, surrounded by such genius, I wonder why the same people are so easily fooled by false flag events and political lies, large and small. Things we know to be physically impossible are believed with credulous blank stares. Lame explanations by authority figures are not just swallowed whole, but with great enthusiasm.
Part of it is faith. We are raised from the cradle to believe in our government and institutions. The notion that they would so boldly lie to us is impossible to accept. Doubt requires setting aside a life of fables. The implications of doing that are too severe to contemplate.
Another part was voiced by Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s:
It is extremely difficult to obtain a hearing from men living in democracies, unless it be to speak to them of themselves. They do not attend to the things said to them, because they are always fully engrossed with the things they are doing. For indeed few men are idle in democratic nations; life is passed in the midst of noise and excitement, and men are so engaged in acting that little remains to them for thinking. I would especially remark that they are not only employed, but that they are passionately devoted to their employments. They are always in action, and each of their actions absorbs their faculties: the zeal which they display in business puts out the enthusiasm they might otherwise entertain for idea.”
Emphasis added, or course. and keep in mind that back then most people were self-employed. Employment by others, having a “boss” in our lives, is now seen as normal but is an even more debilitating experience. We must constantly monitor our thought content to make sure it aligns with those who have power over us.
People are too busy to think here in our fake democracy. They are easily fooled by our overlords. But as seen on the architectural boat tour, there is genius among us and on display all about.
I’ve read quite a few of these. But first, people, please: Shake your heads, get rid of the cobwebs. There’s no “Osama,” he wasn’t killed, there was no library. They just make this shit up. The question is, why?
My first thought, given the range of work covered here, that some are thrown in for believability sake – some of the Arab titles, Bob Woodward, hardly a threat to anyone in power. But the intended audience is English-speaking, and the message appears to me to be sinister. This is after all, CIA, our mind masters, our Murder, Inc., the people who wander the landscape killing off people who might disrupt the orderly flow of lies. They are thought police, Gestapo, image masters, a lie factory, and the murderer of presidents. (Their Motto: No Person, No Problem.)
What’s the point of the list? Scorcisi’s Last Temptation of Christ was going nowhere until Christians picketed it. He might have hired them. Putting these books on the list draws attention when our dreamweavers would much rather the norm, that people just don’t know about these books.
But then, this is The United States. People don’t read.
OK, I’m confused. It will clear up over time, I hope. But now, I merely pose the question: WTF?
This passage is taken from the opening passages (page vii) of the introduction to Chomsky’s Necessary Illusions, referred to in the post below. The book is indeed subversive. I can see why Langley wanted to poison the well by associating it with their long-dead employee/patsy, Osama bin Laden.
In the advanced industrial societies the problem is typically approached by a variety of measures to deprive democratic political structures of substantial content, while leaving them formally intact. A large part of this task is assumed by ideological institutions that channel thought and attitudes within acceptable bounds, deflecting any potential challenge to established privilege and authority before it can take form and gather strength.
Chomsky here is talking about how, in fake democracies such as ours, private power eliminates interference with its rule. The key to success of American facism is to leave form intact, allowing the outer shell of democratic governance – voting, news, education, and political discourse – intact, while robbing them of real substance.
There is no need for jackbooted thugs when people have their minds right.
I was going through books yesterday, getting rid of them. Some are a little hard to part with and I hung on to one even as I knew I would not look at it again. Just by coincidence JC posted below that when they “killed” “Osama” they “found” his “last will and testament.” It was probably next to an airline ticket and “confession.” And among “his” books was Chomsky’s Necessary Illusions, an early 90s collection of lectures he gave in Canada.
I did not know it was printed in a large print terrorist edition. Langley must be the publisher.
Man, this is funny, sort of. They are just taunting us now. There is only a small segment of the public, maybe one percent of the U.S., who would even know about that book or Chomsky for that matter. The message is aimed at us? What? Quit reading? Quit thinking? Go flowwise?
It’s amusing too as Chomsky, knowingly or ceding to intimidation, is a gatekeeper. He ridicules those of us who are incredulous of official truth about JFK and 9/11. So I wonder if “Osama” believed the official story of 9/11? Hard to know. His last known public utterance he said it was news to him too. That was late 2001.
Anyway, we are flying today, and yes, I brought my copy of NI along, and yes I’ll read it on the plane. It’s been over twenty years since I glanced at it.
Along with his terrorist war [on Cuba], Kennedy imposed a trade embargo of unprecedented severity, barring any transaction involving merchandise “of Cuban origin” or that “has been located or transported from or through Cuba [or] is made or derived in whole or in part of any article which is the growth, produce, or manufacture of Cuba.” In the years that followed, huge resources have been devoted to monitor international commerce to ensure that the strictures are upheld …
On illustration has been provided by the treasury Department, reporting to Congress in April 2004 on the activities of its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), responsible for investigating suspicious financial transfers, a central component of the “war on terror.” OFAC informed Congress that of its 120 employees, four were assigned to tracking the finances of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, while almost two dozen were occupied with enforcing the embargo against Cuba. From 1990 to 2003, OFAC reported 93 terrorism-related investigations with $9,000 in fines; and 11,000 Cuba-related investigations with $8 million in fines. (Chomsky, introduction to Voices From the Other Side, by Keith Bolender)
In fairness to OFAC, they might well have known what the rest of us came to understand later, that by 2004 both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were dead.
Even so, it is interesting to note the vigor with which our government fights to withhold basic freedoms from little Cuba while virtually ignoring its own self-proclaimed War on Terror.
I was raised to believe in a man named “Jesus” who lived in my mind and monitored my thoughts and behaviors. Most importantly, he loved me. I was special to him.
Such thought control devices are common. When implanted in the mind of young children, they often last a lifetime. My mother, deeply lost in Alzheimer’s, still bowed her head in deep devotion as my brother invoked the name before slipping her a wafer.
Murdock
DM Murdock, author of The Christ Conspiracy and a bunch of other stuff, relieved me of much of the mystery. I had long been set free from Jesus before reading her, but she explained the origin of the symbols of Christianity – sun worship.
As with so much of mythology, the explanation is hidden in plain sight. Even so, transcending generations and language development, to this day most Americans believe in and worship the “Son.” Cue the Twilight Zone theme!
Murdock now suffers from a very aggressive cancer. She’ll soon be gone, but her body of work will long outlive her. Because this is the United States, aggressive health care to treat her aggressive cancer is unaffordable, and her friends and supporters are crowd-sourcing to finance her treatment. Good luck with that, and thanks Acharya S for living a good and useful life.
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Asch
Solomon Asch was a social psychologist who dreamed up an experiment in thought control, usually done in a classroom. Students, most in on the trick, are shown a set of lines and asked which one is longest. When those not in on the game identify the obvious choice, the group responds negatively, and later still, by group consensus, a shorter line is “voted” to be the longest.
The question is whether the subjects rebel, go along, or really get their minds right. Judging from my experience with 9/11 and other mass illusion phenomena, I am guessing that most students truly believe their perceptions are wrong and the crowd is right. We are but children, after all, and I was 38 years old before I disabused myself of that Jesus guy.
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People react to the word “propaganda” just as they do to “shit” or “thought control.” The word causes a blockage of cognitive thought processes. Propagandists know this, and so have changed their names to “public relations” and “information” agents. That’s too bad, because the field is rich with explanatory power about all that goes on around us, just as Murdock’s revelations so easily exposed the Jesus scam.
I won’t go into detail on Patrick’s work, as people who saw the fright words in the above paragraph have already quit reading. He invoked Jacques Ellul, and offers a much more refined reading of the man than I could muster.
Ellul reminded us that propaganda gives meaning to an otherwise meaningless existence. It is not something done to us as much as something we deeply need. It validates us, makes us morally and intellectually superior to our peers and to people in other lands. It is our raison d’être.
I have come recently to understand that voting is a scam – that is, public opinion is herd management and nothing more. Actually counting votes would be an absurd practice. We have thousands of people who think they are part of the process every election day. With patriotic music in the background, public officials pretend that voting matters and that votes are actually counted.
Voting gives us meaning. It is the government telling each of us, individually, in a cubicle with a curtain drawn, that we matter, that our opinion counts.
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Anyway, thank you D.M. Murdock, Solomon Asch, Brian Patrick Anse, Jacques Ellul, my mother and most of all, Jesus, for helping me through this crazy fucking life. It just keeps getting more interesting.
A little thought experiment: imagine two men dropped from a helicopter into the wilderness, and left to their own devices to survive.
One man is given a saw and shovel and a pack of seeds.
The the other is given a box of $100 bills, and is a millionaire.
Who survives?
Money does not produce, think, invent, or work. Having a pile of money does not make a person smart or useful. If it did, trust babies would be our most, rather than least, important citizens.
The notion that the wealthy are necessary to our survival is nonsense. They do not create wealth. They merely harvest it from others. They can be useful in the allocation and investment process, but should be our servants and not our masters.
Piece of Mindful 