A deeper kind of dedication

Merton (1915-1968)
Merton (1915-1968)
When my older brother, Steve, spoke at my oldest brother Tom’s funeral, he said that Tom (9 years older than me) had introduced him to the work of Thomas Merton as an eighth grader. Tom was a poet and quiet intellectual, and he and I, even without the age difference, did not have much in common. Merton was just a name to me. I knew such a person existed, but had no interest in him. Religious thinkers have never had any appeal for me. It wasn’t until I read James Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, that I caught a better glimpse of Merton and wondered about my older brother, wishing perhaps that I had known him better.

Here’s the Merton money quote from the introduction to Unspeakable:

“I have little confidence in [John F.] Kennedy, I think he cannot fully measure up to the magnitude of his task, and lacks creative imagination and the deeper kind of sensitivity that is needed. Too much from the Time and Life mentality, than which I can imagine nothing further, in reality, from, say, Lincoln. What is needed is really not shrewdness or craft, but what politicians don’t have: depth, humanity and a certain totality of self-forgetfulness and compassion, not just for individuals but for man as a whole: a deeper kind of dedication. Maybe Kennedy will break through into that someday by miracle. But such people are before long marked out for assassination.”

This was written in January of 1962.

Yazidis were never under seige

I wrote here about the plight of the Yazidis that it had all the earmarks of American agitprop (How to spot lies … use brain). It used the archetype of women being abused by really bad, bad men, a common theme throughout our history. For that reason I suspected that there were no Yazidis in trouble, and that other game was afoot.

It also did not hurt that I knew the “bad men” doing the supposed abuses, ISIS, were people the US is arming and supporting. But that is not unusual either, as the US often backs the terrorists that it later sends in the military to thwart. I heard someone refer to this as “The Hegelian Dialectic,” but am not well-schooled in such fancy talk.

Moon of Alabama dissects the lies, as follows:

Obama today:

“We broke the ISIL siege of Mount Sinjar,” Obama said.

“We do not expect there to be an additional operation to evacuate people off the mountain, and it’s unlikely we’ll need to continue humanitarian air drops on the mountain,” Obama continued.

This “broke the siege” statement is a lie. There never was a “siege” on the Sinjar mountain range. The Yazidi who had fled there were quickly welcomed and evacuated to Syria by the Kurdish PKK and YPG forces. There are now some 15,000 of Yazidis in the Kurdish part of Syria. Some thousand refugees may still be in the mountains but the nomadic shepherds who live there will likely help them along.

The PKK was already there doing the job three days before the first U.S. action took place. …

The only reason Obama sent troops and jets to the area was to protect the city of Erbil with its CIA station, the international airport and the local headquarters of various “western” oil companies.

When dealing with Western media sources, one learns to look for such deceit. Worse yet, one learns to expect it.

Montana senate debacle an opportunity for real change

donkeyelephantThe “two”-party system is a nice containment vehicle, a way to at once allow people the illusion of participation in their governance while preventing it. It requires constant management. Any real leaders who break free of party leadership have to be quickly contained.

The Amanda Curtis affair in Montana is an interesting one, but not unusual. The sacrificial lamb is an old strategy. The idea is that progressives have no place to go in our system but the Democrat Party, whose money-backed leadership finds them repugnant. Once every two years, if there is a contested primary, there might be some outlet for progressive voices in campaign rhetoric. Usually the person giving voice is a false leader who quickly shuts down after the election and reverts to form.

However, there is in the wake of wreckage a chance to teach progressives a lesson, and that is where the sacrificial lamb strategy come into play. The Montana Democrat Party fucked up royally in foisting John Walsh on its members. It’s not that Walsh lacked any real qualification or even the ability to think properly, but rather that these features of his ho-hum persona were exposed. The party’s money backers are perfectly happy with such zombies in office. Now that Walsh and the party leadership have been exposed, they have to beat a strategic retreat. So they assume the mantle of sincerity about putting up a real person in the place of a robot.

democrats-vs-republicans-differences-sop-politics-nonsense-politics-1389740460The Montana Senate seat is lost. It’s time to make lemonade. So Montana Democrat Party leadership is seizing the opportunity to show its progressive wing that progressives cannot win elections.

That is not true. Progressives can win elections. But they have no access to the big money that regular right-wing Democrats enjoy, along with TV exposure, without which no candidate can win. If the party leadership would turn their marketing wing to supporting a progressive, they could make it happen. Seriously, dear reader, if those geniuses can keep Max Baucus in office for 24 years; if they can make a man like John Walsh seem like a real human being; if they can land Jon Tester’s sorry fat ass in office for six years with 48% of the vote … then trust me. They can back a progressive to victory. They choose not to do so.

So the thrust of the Curtis “nomination” (selection) is for 2018 and beyond, to make sure that progressive Democrats in Montana know their candidates cannot win, to keep them in line and supporting the normal cloaked Republicans that the party likes.

As a Nader supporter I am well-schooled in these matters. Nader was not so much a threat to Al Gore as something else. Below the fold here, and linked here, is the 2000 Green Party platform that Nader ran on. Merely publicizing that platform was a reminder of what Democrats do not support. Nader exposed their bankruptcy, which is why the party leadership unleashed a venom on him never visited on Republicans.

The Illusion of Free Choice democrats republicansDemocrats, click the words “continue reading” below here to learn all about what your party is not. It will help you understand the massacre about to unfold in Montana. Perhaps then you will realize that you need an upheaval, that you need to change your heads, get rid of the low-life and lizards that currency run your party. It is time for some fresh air. The cold shower you will enjoy in November is not a defeat, but an opportunity to build a real grassroots party. If Curtis has chops, as she appears to, she might indeed have a vital role to fill in the leadership vacuum that will result.

(Can progressives win? In the coming week I am going to write about opinion surveys I have read about the general attitudes of most Americans. Our two parties are far, far to the right of the American public. You will be genuinely surprised, as my source is unimpeachable.)

Continue reading “Montana senate debacle an opportunity for real change” →

Get your free IQ score here!

IQI recently took a test which is supposed to give me a reasonable approximation of my “true IQ.” It only takes a few minutes. The result is my own business, and I invite the reader to find out an approximation with the understanding that the very fact that you are reading this blog, Piece of Mind, means that you are above average. The test is here.

Why do such tests exist? As a freshman in high school I was placed in a small section of the class at Billings Central Catholic High School, Billings, Montana, knows as the “honors” section. I did not last long. My family’s home life was not conducive to studying, and overwhelmed by distractions, the school officials decided I belonged with the regular kids. Once nice thing about that was the addition of two new class periods to my schedule, study hall and PE. Apparently the brightest kids needed neither.

Continue reading “Get your free IQ score here!” →

America, where even our lefties are righties

Tom Braden, the "left" spokesperson on CNN's Crossfire
Tom Braden, the “left” spokesperson on CNN’s Crossfire
The following passage originally appeared in a 1969 book of essays and such, under the heading American Labor and United States Foreign Policy, and cites Thomas Braden. More about Braden in a second, but if you are like me, when you saw that book title you thought “Wow! There’s a book I’ll never read.” Indeed, I never did. I picked up this passage from The Politics of Heroin, by Alfred McCoy.

In the cited book, Ronald Radosh cites Braden, a CIA agent, as follows:

On the desk in front of me as I write these lines is a creased and faded yellow paper, It bears the following inscription in pencil:

“Received from Warren G. Haskins, $15,000 (signed) Norris A. Grambo.”

I went in search of this paper on the day the newspapers disclosed the “scandal” of the Central Intelligence Agency’s connection with America students and labor leaders. It was a wistful search, and when it ended I found myself feeling sad.

For I was Warren G. Haskins, Norris A. Grambo was Irving Brown, of the American Federation of Labor. The $15,000 was from the vaults of the CIA, and the yellow paper is the last memento I possess of a vast and secret operation…

It was my idea to give $15,000 to Irving Brown. He needed it to pay off his strong-arm squads in the Mediterranean Ports, so that American supplies could be uploaded against the opposition of Communist dock workers.

Historians who rely on declassified documents will be hard-pressed to understand what Braden is talking about, but it has to do with breaking a dock workers’ strike in Marseille, France in the post-war years. Quite a few things were going on. The Corsican mob, with CIA assistance, was strong-arming communist workers* out of the unions, while Lucky Luciano, then living in Italy, was using laboratories in Marseilles to process heroin for shipment to the United States (the “French Connection”). The CIA assisted the Corsicans and Luciano in moving product stateside. The U.S. was also running arms shipments through Marseilles to assist the French in their battle to retain their colony in Vietnam.

In the meantime, CIA was busy infiltrating American labor unions and student organizations, trying to separate them from leftist influence. And, in a separate operation aptly known as “Mockingbird,” CIA was busy infiltrating its people into American media. CIA Director William Colby would later say that the idea was to “Own everyone of any significance in the major media.” No doubt they succeeded, as our American news media is a tame rabbit even as it is portrayed in movie and TV fare as a stalking tiger.

CIA were busy boys in those days! The reason this passage struck me was that anyone who was sentient in 1982 might remember a TV show on CNN called “Crossfire,” and the opening words uttered five nights a week:

From the left, I’m Tom Braden.”

Yeah, that Thomas Braden, speaking from the left no less!. Braden was obviously Mockingbirded into his seat on that show. (He was also a newspaper columnist, and the inspiration for the TV show “Eight is Enough.”)

I call it full spectrum dominance. No matter your point of view in this country, if you get your news from the American media, you’re a right winger. If you’re “on the left,” like Braden, you’re just a righty of another color.
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*Due to McCarthy era propaganda, which went on through 1990, the reader’s assumption might be that the communist workers were part of the Internationale, and took orders from Moscow. Not true. It was merely an organizing force for labor.

Pastyfacedness

A rather long post I wrote yesterday is gone, but not destroyed. I simply took it from public view with the idea that I can say as much with perhaps one-fifth the number of words. Writing long pieces is merely laziness on my part. It is much harder to be succinct.
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“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” (Ron Paul)

“She’s not a girl who misses much.” (John Lennon, Happiness is a Warm Gun)

WSthumbnailI put up a piece some time ago on Dave McGowan’s book, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon. McGowan is a man with a sharp mind and wit. He might be the male counterpart Lennon’s friend above. Mr. McGowan also has a regular life and only writes in his spare time and not to pay bills. He spots anomalies and moves on. He is, however, a fun guy to read. He does not miss much.

A commenter, Mitch H, noted of that post

Delusional pattern recognition is known as “apophenia”. The human mind, which relies heavily on perceptual pre-processing to the point that anyone with any experience takes eyewitness testimony with a great deal of caution, is catastrophically prone to making connections where no connections exist. I’m about halfway through Weird Scenes, and the writer is one of those people of which The Police sang, “he knows all the suicides are faked”. I can sort of filter out of all the paranoid delusions an interesting narrative, but good lord! He makes Robert Anton Wilson seem a marvel of credibility and caution in comparison.

Several things are wrong with Mitch’s outlook, but first I need the antonym to “apophenia.” I choose the term “pastyfacedness,” defined as follows:

Pastyfacedness: Voluntary shutting down of the senses, considered an essential part of intelligence in an Empire of Lies.

In our Empire we can all see an event, whether real or on TV, and form our impressions. Then we listen to the talking heads explain it. After that, we file the anomalies away under “conspiracy theory.” Ours is an oppressive thought control regime, and lies are the norm. It is rare that anyone ever says something true. But to turn off one’s brain, to actually think that natural curiosity is a form of mental illness … is mental slavery.

Another John Lennon line: You’d better free your mind instead.” Voluntarily shutting down of the curiosity function, living in pasty-faced boredom, is thought control.

ledpinspot2-fx2Eyewitness testimony can indeed be untrustworthy. That’s why people with sharp minds sort through it looking for patterns. It’s fraught with danger, so that a person engaged in pattern recognition in eyewitness testimony must use his or her brain.

Here is a common occurrence in our neighborhood – someone spotted a bear. Say that we have four “eyewitness” testimonies:

  • “He must have been 350 pounds, was a boar, and was running down Cypress towards the east.”
  • “It was a cub, maybe two years old, could not have weighed more than 200 pounds, and was cinnamon.”
  • “I heard a noise and looked out and then there was a big thump. My bird feeder was knocked down.”
  • “I was walking late at night, and there were noises and I knew I was being followed, so I hightailed it home. There was a bear out there. I felt it.”

A regular person of normal curiosity discounts the latter two statements, as they filled with speculation, and in the latter case, paranoia. However, it is reasonable to conclude that there were two bears seen in the neighborhood, and that they harmed no one.

Now take something that really happened on 11/22/63: An eyewitness in the crowd looked up, and in the sixth floor window of the book depository saw two men. One of them was [possibly Mexican or black]. a black man. After the shooting, three two employees went down the stairs and out the back door of the book depository, and were met by a large black man.

Significance: It’s Dallas, the president was shot, a [Mexican or] black man was seen in the window, and then later a large black man at the back of the building. People in Dallas in 1963 remember seeing black people. It’s natural.

Conclusion: It’s a lead. Follow it to where it might take you. What did the Warren Commission do? They ignored the sighting of the [Mexican or] black man in the window, and altered the testimony of the women make it a few minutes later. That way, they would have missed Oswald running down the stairs, which they would have seen had it happened, but did not.

That’s how we handle eyewitness testimony in the Empire of Lies. We either ignore it, or change it.

Eyewitness testimony is indeed reliable, but must be carefully sifted with allowance made for speculation and our desire to enjoy a moment in the spotlight. Police detectives, except in a high-profile case like the public murder of a president, seek out all the eyewitness testimony they can find. Then they sift, sort, look for patterns, and use their brains. A pattern becomes a lead, often a dead end. Often not. Any detective will tell you that there is never a shortage of evidence and testimony. The good ones are those who see the underlying patterns and follow them, using their brains in the process.

I cannot emphasize enough the need to turn off our TV’s and turn on our brains. The television is much like carrying a flashlight on a moonlit night – it creates more darkness than light. Without the flashlight the entire countryside lights up, and a whole world of images delight the eyes. It’s not apophenia. Far from it: It is being a sentient human with a functioning brain.

The odd ones

There are things we are told which are plainly obviously lies, such as magic bullets and aircraft slicing through steel buildings like a knife through butter, all utterly impossible, defying logic and physics. Yet dogged doctrinaire supporters of power demand that we pretend to believe these things to be real and undeniably true. This is the source of our cognitive dissonance, power over our perceptions, to tell us that we see one thing that is actually something else. Those of us who do not see what power tells us to see are indeed the odd ones.

I wrote that, and it is bad form to quote myself. But it does, more or less, add yellow highlighter to the center of my existence. And I’ve been kicking it around for a couple of days here as I avoid writing on the blog. If I cannot get one true thing across, what is the point?

There are degrees of acceptance of the above. For me it is easy. I simply say that if something cannot be true, then it is not true. On the far side, the other end, people like James Conner, for instance, ridicule what is obviously true as a belief in impossible conspiracy, as if saying things that are obviously true is stupid! Most people fall somewhere in between, troubled, wanting to belong to the mainstream and so filing away their doubts in a dark place. That is the definition of cognitive dissonance.

What Conner does is a manifestation of denial, of aggressive stupidity, and yet I know he is not stupid. If the dissonance resides so uncomfortably in him that he feels a need to lash out, then he is perhaps on the verge of internal harmony. Perhaps he will come around. Perhaps his isolation right now is a time during which he is confronting his own internal contradictions.

Perhaps not. His writing lately offers no hint of any forward movement.

In the meantime, there is politics. We always have politics. It does us no good; it solves no problems. It merely keeps us busy. The political system is too corrupt for mere intermittent unfocused anxiety expressed as well-intended votes to have any impact on the power behind the candidates. Perhaps, if one can admit that certain physical feats are impossible, then a clean accounting of the soul will yield yet another hard and undeniable truth: We do not live in a democracy, a republic, a democratic republic, or anything even remotely representing that kind of place. There is only one way that public opinion matters in this country, and that is when it is unified against power.

Unless some entertainer suggests on TV that we should do that, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Colin Powell to make UN appearance?

The Kiev Putsch government offered satellite evidence showing that its defense systems were not in the area at the time if the crash of MH17. The problem, says the Russian Defense Ministry, is that the photographs offered up were taken at a time when Ukraine’s satellites, Sich 1 and Sich 2, were at another location. Base on the time of the photographs, it could only have been taken by an American Key Hole satellite. Russia wonders why the US does not wish to claim ownership of the photos, instead allowing Kiev to claim they came from another source.

In response, the Obama Administration today announced that it has ask Colin Powell to briefly come out of retirement to appear at the UN to give a photo presentation of the crash site proving that Ukrainian rebels, using Russian equipment, shot down the airliner. “Our credibility is at stake here, ” said an administration spokesman, “so we wanted an unimpeachable source.”

Distinctions without differences

One of the most incomprehensible features of the Citizens United ruling by our Mullahs, our Supreme Court, was the secrecy provisions. That made no sense – even if they decreed that money should rule, even a modicum of democratic governance would indicate that we should at least know where the money comes from.

As always, it came as a revelation from someone else that made me slap my head … Of course! The secrecy provisions are in place because CU allows unfettered manipulation of political campaigns by organized crime.

We then need to understand what “organized crime” means. There’s an old meme at work that Castro kicked the mob off the island of Cuba in the early 1960’s, along with United Fruit, oil and gas and mining interests, etc. The assumption there is that there are legitimate imperialists, and there are mobsters. But take it one step further: The Mob, and not the CIA, killed JFK, say Hartmann and Waldron. That makes it more palatable.

But what if they are all one and the same? What if the mob operates under the same rules, and with the same exemptions from civil society as do Exxon, Citibank, and Chiquita Banana (once known as United Fruit).

Isn’t it then all an academic exercise? The Mob killed JFK! The CIA did! The military-industrial complex did. But I repeat myself. And the Mob/CIA/MIC obviously own some of our Mullahs, perhaps all of them. That would make them mere tools, or toys of tyrants.