Worth watching …

imageYou all probably know about this, since I am usually several years behind on TV viewing.

Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan’s widow, and Seth McFarlane, who gave us Ted, have produced a new Cosmos series with Neil deGrasse Tyson in the place of Sagan. It is a wonderful production, with graphics so intense that our recent houseguests, who are our age, were enthralled, could not look away. I imagine that it would have the same effect on kids. There will never be another Sagan, but Tyson is very warm and has that ability to make complex matters understandable to us, a sign of true intelligence.

imageThe first thirteen episodes are available on Netflix without ads, and current episodes are to be aired on Fox and National Geographic Channel.

When they say what they really think … it gets interesting!

Zbigniew Brzezinski is one of those characters that operates openly in the shadows, a powerful man with easy access to other powerful people. Among his protegé are Madelyn Albright and Barack Obama. He speaks with a heavy accent, and because he never worries about electoral politics, sometimes publicly says what he thinks privately. It’s not a bad thing – I thoroughly enjoyed him on Morning Joe that morning when he told Scarborough that he was “stunningly superficial.” Joe thought not, saying he reads the New York Times.

It’s that classic situation where a person cannot fathom his own stupidity because he does not possess the intellectual resources to see that he does not have intellectual resources he needs. Better said, stupid people do not know they are stupid. If they knew it, they would not be stupid. That’s the great conundrum of life.

I just mention this because Zbig gave an interview to Le Nouvel Observateur*, Paris, 15-21 January 1998, the meat of which follows:

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 more than what unites the Christian countries.

Translated from the French by Bill Blum

Let’s not be superficial here. Brzezinski words about Muslims are as true now as then. They are not a unified force any more than “Christians” or “Jews” or “Hindus” are, and present no threat to civilization. For foreign policy purposes, to control the domestic audience, the U.S. has incited hatred of Muslims as the center plank to justify its military aggression, 2001 forward.

In Afghanistan in the 1980’s, somewhere between 850,000 to 1.5 million people died, millions more left the place – those who could got the hell out. Left behind was a US-trained fighting force, the Mujahadeen, that would continue to be useful to this day operating under various names such as “Al Qaeda”, and perhaps now “ISIS” (though I do not reduce that Western-backed force to that one element).

Brzezinski has the typical veneer of the psychopath, glibly unaware of the suffering that he’s caused, indifferent to the tragedy of Afghanistan, seeing it only in geopolitical terms. He qualifies, as does Albright**, as a monster.

Even so, I delighted in his manhandling of Morning Joe. (By the way, sitting next to Morning Joe was Zbig’s daughter, Mika.)
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*Keep in mind that this interview, published in France, has never been republished or mentioned in U.S. state-controlled media.

**Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq, 60 Minutes, 5/12/1996, a famous interview where Albright is unable to grasp the concept of human suffering:

Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

Our culture of fear

“When an honest man, honestly mistaken, comes face-to-face with undeniable and irrefutable truth, he is faced with one of two choices, he must either cease being mistaken or cease being honest.” – Amicus Solo

I suffer from the illusion that people will actually look at the evidence in matters of criminal behavior, especially the major events of our time. But they don’t. That’s my bailiwick. Most people get their opinions via absorption of mass media. Consequently, evidence can scream at them but they will not hear it.

For example, take just one small matter, that of the murder of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The coroner’s report by Thomas Naguchi said that RFK died from a gunshot wound fired at close range directly behind his right ear and leaving powder burns. Sirhan was in front of him and too far away to have fired that shot.

There you have it.

But here’s a critical point: Hardly anyone knows about what I just wrote there. It passes into a void of fear and silence, and anyone with a public reputation who brings it up will come under severe attack. That’s why I conclude that there is considerably more power exerted in covering up these crimes than their actual commission. The culture of fear we live under is as oppressive as any Stalinist state, and don’t get me wrong here: I know Stalin had people murdered who knew too much. I am not being hyperbolic.

imageHere’s but one small example, an unimportant person, comedic actor, legendary dissipator, Charlie Sheen. He’s not even terribly bright, but he did have some swagger and had the balls to appear on Alex Jones’ Prison Planet (did I mention that Charlie is not that bright? Jones is nothing but a gatekeeper, in my opinion.) He said he did not believe the official story of 9/11.

We’re conditioned never to connect dots, but what happened to Charlie after that indeed was a direct result of his speaking up. He lost his job on Two and One-Half Men, Where I enjoyed his work, and later found himself locked in a closet in Manhattan covered in cocaine and surrounded by hookers. I assumed at the time that Charlie was supposed to be killed that night, but have since reconsidered. Our spooks are so goddamned good at the art of killing, if they meant to kill him he’d be dead. Charlie merely received a message:

STFU.

Celebrities have more impact on public opinion than politicians, and certainly more than academics and intellectuals. That’s why Charlie was singled out. His Jones appearance got the attention of a lot of people. He had to be silenced.

More importantly, any other celebrity who did not have his mind right got that message. That’s our culture of fear.

We had a lengthy discussion below, and I am pasting a redacted and long comment I made for the simple reason that it is the evidence contained in Dr. Judy Wood’s book Where Did the Towers Go? Like the bullet that got Bobby, people will shy away from knowing about this. Many will stop reading right here. But I am putting it up here anyway because just like a dog barking in the night, it may recede into the background of your consciousness, but will not go away. If you read this, it will trouble you.

Good bye, then.
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Continue reading “Our culture of fear”

Somnambulists

watching-tvI got no takers below on the question of who is behind ISIS. I kind of expected that result. The minute I suggest that people are being diddled by mainstream media, there’s a rush for the exits. Why, the very idea!

We could be self-reliant, never trusting, always verifying, and dredge through information trying to piece together complicated scenarios to explain the behavior of power. We could use deductive reasoning, insight and experimentation, and try and fail until we form a coherent picture.

Or, we could just watch TV and, in a semi-hypnotic state, and passively absorb our views. We could just be somnambulist sponges.

Here’s Eric over at 4&20:

Well JC, it’s sure nice to know that Russia did not take back Crimea, and that their troops and tanks aren’t anywhere near Ukraine – LOL.

It’s the “LOL” that got me. The guy is not only stupid, but smug to boot! I’m not worried about hurting his feelings, as my take on Eric over these many years is that he’s impenetrable, and also, that he never comes near this blog. So feel free to talk about him, even insult him, as this is an Eric-free zone.

I’ve got a bigger mission here … why these constant wars? There’s no moral justification for them. We are in no way threatened by the countries we attack. But we are constantly attacking people. Why?

The character O’Brien in Orwell’s 1984 says to Winston Smith,

The primary aim of modern warfare … is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living … if it became general wealth it would confer no distinction. … The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must also not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

O’Brien also says

“You could grasp the mechanics of the society you lived in, but not its underlying motives … [that] the party seeks power entirely for its own sake.”

But there’s something more going on with our empire than that. These guys appear to be running scared.

We’re bankrupt, have been for decades. That’s a given. The only reason the rest of the planet pays us any heed is because of our military. Fletcher Prouty, whom I’ve just begun to appreciate, wrote that after World War II the US had a massive cache of weaponry stored in Okinawa, and that half was shipped to Korea, the other half to Vietnam.

The bomb, said Prouty, was a game changer. It was well-understood that we could not afford a nuclear war, and yet needed these constant wars. So rather than global conflict, US planners decided that future conflicts would be localized. Apparently they knew shortly after the war ended where the ensuing conflicts would take place.

But it’s hard to keep people in a constant state of fear and anger necessary for public support of wars. It requires constant agitprop. Planners settled on the Soviet Union as the source of all evil, and launched a massive agitprop campaign that went on for decades. No matter who the U.S. attacked, it was because of the Soviets. When that threat vanished, terrorism was used as the new motivational force, and our planners gave us 9/11.

But agitprop is a destructive force in itself. Have you ever tried to unlock your car, get in it, start it up and drive off when you are in a state of fear? That’s because our primitive brain, the amygdala, has overridden our cerebral cortex, or modern brain. This constant state of fear that agitprop keeps us in – of terrorists, immigrants, communists, terrorists, criminals, blacks, terrorists … it takes its toll on our thinking abilities. It reduces normally intelligent people to what we see around us, frightened fools.

So if I read Orwell right, we are kept at constant war to prevent ordinary people from benefiting from our massive material output. That is done because powerful people always crave more power and fear losing it. And I add to that the state of the Empire, in protracted collapse, and suggest that our leaders are running scared.

What, after all, did Iraq ever do to justify its destruction? They had switched from dollars to euros to trade their oil. If a little matter like that can cause such a huge panic response, how vulnerable are we?

It does not bode well for the immediate future of the species. There is pain and suffering in store for millions of people, and we will be the cause.

Snuff films

Alex Carey, an Australian observer who died in 1987, said that the greatest accomplishment of American propaganda was to convince Americans that there is no American propaganda. We are, of course, swimming in it. Most of it is benign – the false history and fake accomplishments, military flyovers and soldiers pretending to be defending us – it even serves a useful purpose, holding us together as a nation. Propaganda validates us, gives us a reason to feel good about ourselves.

Every country on earth swims in such nonsense. It’s far more intense in fascist states – only in Nazi Germany or the U.S. will you see flags the size of a football field. The more militarily aggressive countries go for big images and symbols.

Still, I’ve no problem with it. However, every now and the our controllers decide that they have to ramp up the game. Then we step up into agitation propaganda. That’s a different animal. While normal American propaganda merely keeps us misinformed and content in our ignorance, agitprop it is intense, psychologically destructive, and done with an immediate objective.

9/11 was the most intense agitprop I have ever seen, essentially a snuff film. It was a television show, and because of the power of television, people assumed everything they saw and heard was real. Even now, thirteen years later, when it is so easy to demonstrate how much of it was done using CGI, people cling to the belief that it was real.

If it is on TV, it is real.

Our agitprop people seem to have a fixation on aircraft and beheadings lately. Whether or not the Sotloff murder was real or simulated does not matter. The question you have to answer, and I mean this very seriously, is this: Who is behind ISIS? There’s a reason why they are shocking us now, traumatizing us with those horrible images. The Pentagon is going to start snuffing innocent people in Syria and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of people will be murdered. Agitprop of the intensity we are seeing is intended to dull our senses and prepare us for what is to follow.

So I urge that you turn off your TV, burn your newspaper, turn the radio over to a music station, and do some investigation. Who is behind ISIS? Please, leave the bubble to do so.

I’ll wait.

Time to topple our own heads

A while back I linked to an online IQ test and suggested readers take it and keep results to themselves. Please go back and review, as it is testing our problem solving and pattern recognition skills. Dr. Judy Wood, who uncovered much of the apparent technology in play behind 9/11, suggested two three reasons why Americans cannot connect the dots around that and so many other crimes:

  • 1: Poor problem solving skills;
  • 2: Fear of the implications;
  • 3: Group think.

Problem solving skills involve pattern recognition. If you go back and take the IQ test again, you’ll see that’s all they are testing. The better your recognition skills, the higher your score. Journalists are trained not to recognize patterns, as they believe it introduces bias into reporting. The rest of us are scared away by the use of “conspiracy theory” meme, which implies mental instability and lack of intelligence.

Quite the opposite, patterns are all around us, easily seen, and problems are easily solved. It’s just the implications that are so damned troublesome.

So why, on one hand, are Americans scored during their education based on pattern recognition abilities, and then ridiculed when those skills actually come into play? It is simple: In the Empire of Lies, blindness is a virtue, incredulity a vice.

The reason why the powers behind the throne can do awful things like shooting down airliners and beheading people and get away with it is a simple matter of faith. This is evil shit, and we do not want to think that our leaders are behind it. That places enormous responsibility on us to change our leaders. And anyway, we like Obama and cannot imagine he would do such stuff.

But that problem is easily understood once we understand the implications of 11/22/63: The office of president since has very little power, and is usually occupied by actors.

So set Obama aside, as he is just a spectator, and like most politicians, just a third-rate human. “He” is not doing this stuff. But who is? Much easier to think it was “them,” and if the “them” happens to be darker skinned people who live in far-away places, who we shown on TV to be irrational anyway, so much the better. Then we can demonize them, bomb them, topple their heads, take their land and resources, and even feel morally superior in the process.

Please understand, people, that the patterns are right before your eyes, and that the evil resides within our country, and not without. Solving the problem is the easy part. Accepting the implications is tough. Please do so. The hardest part: Accepting responsibility. We allowed this sinister force to take control of our government, and now look the other way whenever it misbehaves. It is time to grow up.

The rest of the world very badly needs for Americans to topple our own heads.

US Ministry of Propaganda pulling out all stops

I suppose the objective is the bombing campaign to decapitate Syria and partition Iraq, delayed by the Russians last year after the false flag chemical attack in Syria did not work. Now that the Russians are sidelined in Ukraine, immobilized, the beheading videos, which are probably fake, are meant to scare the crap out of you and get you to support a new bombing campaign. God only knows how many innocent people Obama will behead with those bombs, but that part will not be broadcast.

I did not realize that ISIS was meant to be the new Al Qaeda, scaring the panties off Americans. Always behind the eight ball here.

A glimpse into madness

  • Psychological projection: A theory in which humans defend themselves against unpleasant impulses by denying their existence in themselves, while attributing them to others.

In prosecuting his widening war in Ukraine, [Putin] has also resurrected the tyranny of the Big Lie, using state-controlled media to twist the truth so grotesquely that most Russians are in the dark — or profoundly misinformed — about events in their neighbor to the west. Most Russians get their news from state-controlled broadcast outlets, which have moved beyond mere propaganda into outlandish conspiracy theories and unhinged jingoism.

The above words are from a Washington Post editorial dated August 31st. Since it is the United States that is prosecuting a wider war in Ukraine by means of proxy, and it is the American public that is profoundly in the dark, kept so by its state-controlled news media, I conclude that the editors of the Post are either profoundly dishonest, or deranged.

Regarding the state of awareness in Russia, who is to say. We cannot do much about them. We can only affect our own leaders.

Reading the above piece, which I should note came to my attention via Moon of Alabama, I was reminded of a document written in 1950 and declassified in 1975 known as NSC-68. It should be required reading in all of our classrooms, for in it are contained the seeds of the “Cold War,” the expenditure of a trillion dollars on unnecessary military hardware and the loss of tens of millions of innocent lives. The document is written is readable prose and so is accessible to mere mortals. It tags the Soviet Union, the ” Kremlin,” as the source of all evil on the planet. It says that they want to overrun Western Europe, bury Great Britain, and ultimately rule the world.

The Soviet Union at that time was barely limping, recovering from the loss of twenty million citizens and destruction of two-thirds of its industrial base in the Second World War. Much of its military capability was horse-drawn. Its people were largely peasantry incapable of engaging in an industrial world. Having been attacked by Germany and Japan, Stalin was rightly distrustful of the other imperial powers, especially those calling themselves the “Free World.”

The Soviet Union posed no threat to the U.S. It was time for rapprochement and peace. But the newly founded U.S. National Security State, freshly infused with Paperclipped German SS and the American OSS, was ambitious. Peace was not an option.

Reading NSC-68, one is tempted to think that the Soviet Union in 1950 was a fully formed military power ready to strike. Why the paranoia? Why the urgency?

I can only imagine that our new creations, CIA and NSC, were intent on doing exactly what they were laying on the Soviets. The Department of War had been changed to “Defense,” and every evil had been projected on the Soviets. That meant, as Orwell advised around that time, that every evil imaginable was going to spring forth from a new Washington, intent on War and and not Defense. NSC-68 was the declaration of World War III, not against the Soviets, but against the world, done by the only superpower standing at that time.

As I read WaPo above, given that organ’s proximity to the seat of power, I have to assume that they, like the authors of NSC-68, are knowingly lying and projecting their own evil intent on others. While Moon of Alabama regards it as lunacy from a “Funny Paper,” I tend to take it more seriously. These are deranged psychopaths, as is our military leadership and Capitalism’s Invisible Army. There’s a sense of urgency in the words, meaning there is great danger now to the world. The source of that danger is Arlington, Langley, and Foggy Bottoms.

Below the fold here are a few choice paragraphs from NSC-68. I know a few who traffic here have or have or will read the whole thing. It is well worth the time. It helps to form a sense of the enemy, and the paranoia of those who run our funny farm.
Continue reading “A glimpse into madness”

Fog of news

“From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”
(Andrew H. Card Jr., White House chief of staff, on why the Bush administration waited until September of 2002 to press for public support of its Iraq policy.

It takes some intelligence, depth and insight to see through the fog of American propaganda. It is, as CIA’s Frank Wisner, one of the men behind Operation Mockingbird, a “Mighty Wurlitzer” than can play any propaganda tune it wants. That tune resonates throughout the country, in every bar, social gathering, church service, and now, Facebook pages.
Continue reading “Fog of news”

The bubble

The best way to make communists is to put the Americans into a place where there were no Communists before. (Norodom [Prince] Sihanouk of Cambodia)

“Whoever has the Americans as allies does not need enemies” (Madame Nhu, wife of assassinated South Vietnamese leader.)

Americans often feel snubbed when they learn that they are not liked abroad. From a typical dis-informed viewpoint, we Yanks imagine we have been giving foreign aid and rebuilding places, sending food to places where they have earthquakes and tsunamis and are also busy liberating slaves. All we get in return in disrespect.

“So screw the world,” is the attitude that naturally follows.

Photos like this are not staged. No sireee ... not staged. No way.
Photos like this are not staged. No sireee … not staged. No way.
What Americans do not know, of course, is that we live in a huge disinformation enterprise known as the United States Mainstream Media (MSM). Even so, if it were only “news” given to us, its range would be limited. But it also extends to entertainment media. It repeats the message and helps us in the illusion that our foreign policy is all about do-goodiness. In movies and on TV, our terrorists (called “Special Forces,” Seals” and “Green Berets”) are big burly men with guns protecting children from thugs. They even hand out candy. Our military adventures are designed to “rescue” people and install democracy rather than merely keep the path clear for control of resources by America’s giant corporations. Getting hold of those resources usually involves removal of democratic governments and installation of thugs and terror regimes.

It’s simply failure to communicate. The rest of the world is very well-informed about who we are and what we do. American tourists are readily accepted (so long as we are not boorish and overbearing, like the guy our daughter told us about – wearing a cowboy hat, he stood up in a British pub and sang the Star Spangled Banner). But it is the typical American ignorance of the behavior of our CIA and special forces, our military, “our” corporations’ that creates a gulf between us and people abroad. They don’t like “us” for good reason, and we don’t know about it because we never see that face of “us.” We only see what we are meant to see, and so live in what is often referred to abroad as the American bubble.

It’s merely ignorance, easily remedied by expanded knowledge.