Replace this …I write here quite a bit about false-flag attacks. The gas attack in Syria was one. 9/11 was one, Tonkin, Maine, Reichstag, most likely Israel is hammering itself with harmless rockets right now. Poking sticks at unchained monsters is stupid, which is why the people who want the wars have to make the events to start the wars. Read history for, like, all of recorded time if you’ve a chance.
…with thisMH17 is looking like a false flag event, and guess who is reading from the script? It is difficult to understand, and I am aghast that the US wants an open confrontation with Russia, but in Ukraine they have been begging for it. In case you don’t follow non-American news, Kiev has been beating the crap out of its own citizens, 400,00013,500* have fled to Russia. A bomb was launched on a Russian city. The US is begging for war, it appears.
Generally, throughout my life anyway, American wars have been against harmless victims, countries that cannot fight back. This is something new.
Here’s some outside input. And here. And here. Get away from American news if you want a balanced view.
_______________ PS: I just ran across a term that describes the two psychopaths pictured above. If only there were just these two. These are public faces, but the whole of our empire from top to bottom, our political, corporate and military leaders, are of this type. They are “deranged predators.”
*My mistake, as 400,000 is the number of refugees out of Syria fleeing the western back terrorists attacking that country. I do not know the current number of Ukrainian refugees, as 13,500 was a month ago and the Kiev attack as intensified since then.
Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. (JFK, Yale graduation, 1962)
If newscaster ‘facts’ land in your lap and you uncritically accept them as true; if you find yourself siding with one or another pundit in a televised debate; if you repeat talking points; if you’ve never looked at the hard evidence of the major events of our times, accepting official explanations as true; if you have ever ridiculed someone who does not accept official truth….
You’re an American. A thought-controlled, behavior controlled, no-threat-to-anyone-in-power American.
American public opinion is under complete control of the state. You, as a Democrat, might vociferously disagree with Republicans. That’s allowed, even encouraged, and the state will even furnish the issues you are allowed to vociferously disagree about. (Abortion, gun control, etc.) Once elected, they are the same people. But if you stray beyond the bounds of party politics, you’ll be ostracized, marginalized.
Think of what they do now at political conventions: They erect fenced areas, force demonstrators inside them, and then ignore them. They are called “free speech zones.” I am not kidding about that. This is what they are called.
That’s a nice metaphor for party politics. But there are real jails too. Eugene Debs campaigned from a prison cell in 1920, and Ralph Nader was arrested when he appeared at the two-party “debate” in 2000. We are only allowed freedom within the fences. Stray outside, the gloves come off.
Once every two or four years you get to throw the bums out. It does not change anything, but validates you. That is why we have elections. Otherwise, we might have real change, real progress, which is not allowed.
If the man or woman you support enjoys wide media coverage and is welcomed at newspapers editorial board meetings for serious scrutiny by serious journalists, and gets to ride on floats and is touted as a “front-runner” … move on. You’re supporting an apparatchik. Your candidate has already been vetted and found acceptable to insiders.
American party politics is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
We are in Aspen, Colorado today. Our trip here started two days ago when we drove, late in the day, to Crested Butte, a gateway to the Maroon Bell Snowmass Wilderness. Its claim to fame is flowers. On the Crested Butte side, the glacial till provides high moisture retention and flowers grow in amazing abundance. There is an eleven-mile trail through there, over a mountain pass, to where we are now. We decided last year to book a room here and make that hike, and spend a couple of days here during their music festival.
Since we are here without a vehicle, we had to pack our street clothing and stuff in, meaning I loaded a regular backpack instead of a day pack. I haven’t done that since 2011, carried such a heavy load. The hike was long, and included a 2000 foot ascent over a pass and then a 3000 food drop into Aspen. There were a couple of stream crossings, but all told, it was not a difficult affair. Yet we were very tired. Must be that aging thing I keep hearing about.
Maroon BellsThe focal point of the area on this side are the Maroon Bells, two fourteeners that sit at the head of the valley we came down. One young man we talked to while waiting for the bus yesterday is going to climb them, both of them, later this week. It looks like a technical affair to me, as these are not walk-ups. It makes me feel old and silly for being so tired after having merely walked through the area.
Other folks we met on the trail were doing the “four pass” trek, a 20+ mile trip that, as the name says, takes them up and over four high mountain passes on a circular route starting and ending in Aspen. (I say “in Aspen,” but it is a shuttle bus trip of about ten miles to the trail heads.) That’s an overnight affair, at least a two-day trip.
As we got closer to the trail head, where the bulk of the hikers are found, we found a cacophony of languages, much like hiking in the Alps. This is always a delight.
The photos shown here are pulled off the Internet, explaining their high quality.
And then … we were so tired we just turned on the tube and vegetated last night, and were reminded once again what is being done to the American people. The programming is stupid, and the ads incessant. I don’t, can’t make myself watch “news,” as that is the source of my countrymen’s colossal ignorance. It has two effects, one to dumb them down, and two to insulate them so that they do not know its true impact. They do not know what they do not know. It’s diabolical. Merely having that thing on has got to be harmful to people, and god almighty … what about the children?
Even BBC’s coverage, however, would be better than we get in the US, where the bloody part on the right would be said to be Israeli victims of Palestinian bombs. That was disgraceful, and good grief, not an accident. Not an accident, OK? If these gaffes were accidental, every now and then one might go the other way.
I know the mind of my readers, most of them anyway … I am just a tad presumptuous, I know. There was a discussion of the USS Liberty incident in 1967 over at 4&20 recently. People struggle to get their arms around that one. After scouting the ship, and knowing it was American, unmarked Israeli aircraft attacked it with intent to sink it and kill all aboard. Radio communications were shut down, but before the job could be completed, sailors managed to get a radio message out. The gig was up. The cover-up began. Continue reading “Israel attacks Gaza again: “Look here, not there””→
Savetheinternet.com, a lobby group which exists to defend net neutrality and is strongly opposing the FCC’s moves, claims that American web users are in serious danger of having their freedoms swept away: “expect internet blackouts that extend far beyond the popular content vendors as smaller websites are caught in the crossfire. Tweets, emails and texts will be mysteriously delayed or dropped.”
“Videos will load slowly, if at all. Websites will work fine one minute, and time out another. Your ISP will claim it’s not their fault, and you’ll have no idea who is to blame. You also won’t be able to vote with your feet and wallet, as there’s no competition in broadband, and all ISPs will be playing this game,” the group states on its website.
As a CPA I’ve had constant exposure to wealthy people over the years – they cannot be grouped anymore than Hispanics or teenagers. But I have noticed a tendency that puts them under the heading “humans.” Unless they inherit their wealth, more common than not, they are bright and ambitious risk takers during the initial phases of wealth acquisition. This is because there is far more to gain than lose in their risk-taking behaviors. It’s perfectly natural.
With success the objective shifts from acquisition to preservation of wealth. Risky behavior goes out the window. Now the objective is security, and that requires a different strategy. This naturally leads them into politics, where their wealth is most at risk. The anti-tax attitude dominates, in fact becomes an obsession.
It’s perfectly natural. In their shoes, I would probably behave in the same manner. But the greater good requires minimizing pools of private wealth, as in the end these great private fortunes take over the political system, and we lose our democracy and personal freedoms.
Oh wait. Too late about that. Done deal.
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There’s something similar going on now with the Internet, the fight for “net neutrality.” The same principle is at work – those companies that have had success on the Internet do not want any upstarts bumping them off. MySpace was taken down by Facebook, and does anyone remember Netscape? It will happen again and again unless someone puts a stop to innovation and competition.
That someone is Obama. His strategy was simple: He lied his ass off. While claiming to be a champion of a free and open Internet, he quietly put people on the FCC determined to take it down. Now he’s silent on the matter.
Here’s a great op-ed piece on Internet history and net neutrality, predictably from a non-American source.
Do you ever wonder why, after the success do the movie Rocky, that there was Rocky II, III, IV, V, VI …. people eat it up, that’s why. A successful movie formula is gold, money in the bank.
Even so, I do wish that the American public were a tad less gullible. Just once. Just a tad.
Read this. And this. And get your beer. We will cry together.
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*I was looking for a dead, moribund movie franchise to name this post, and remember the Police Academy movies, and then discovered that Police Academy 8 is scheduled for release in 2014! This post just writes itself! The American public will eat it up!
One of my favorite movies of recent times is The Bourne Legacy. People had low expectations for it, as Matt Damon was not aboard to reprise his title role in this fourth Bourne movie. They brought Jeremy Renner aboard as Aaron Small and with Rachel Weisz, the results were stunning. The last half hour was one of the best chase sequences I have ever seen.
Robert Ludlum invented Jason Bourne – I was a big Ludlum fan too. His books were formulaic, of course, even predictable. What I liked, however, was that every good guy was a potential bad guy, and there were no saints. Americans were not exceptions. In the world of spycraft, they were all shits. Continue reading “Movies and TV present fantasy images of journalists”→
You figure the rest out! We just got back from a week in Yellowstone, sleeping with the grizzlies, walking until my feet burned like firecracker punks. Man I am tired!
Here’s some extraneous data to consider:
1. When they say bombing “Iraq,” they mean “ISIS, or the US/French/Turkish-run terrorists that have recently been turned out of Syria.
2. The U.S. rarely turns down a bombing opportunity.
3. Ergo, they might be bombing and not telling us about it, or might be holding back.
4. If they do bomb, it will not be against ISIS forces, which are allies in terror, but rather to assist ISIS forces. So if they bomb, it will be against Iraqi cities and towns, to soften the place for ISIS.
5. They will lie about that.
5. That’s because they lie about everything they do.
*Pathocracy (n). A system of government created by a small pathological minority that takes control over a society of normal people.
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This almost sounds like an Onion headline, but I ran across a Facebook post that said that a new study by Princeton and Northwestern found that the United States government does not represent the will of the people. We are an oligarchy, it concludes.
Theirry Mayssan at Voltaire Network (Jihadism and the Petroleum Industry) goes a long way in simplifying the “ISIS” attack on Iraq, reducing it to a squabble among oil companies, primarily Exxon/Mobil (aka “Qatar”), and Aramco. The big losers in the conflict are Turkey, Britain, China, and if course, beleaguered Iraq (under unrelenting attack by the US since 1990). The winners are the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel. ISIS itself is a well-financed terrorist force under US, Saudi and French command.
Saudi Arabia claims it has increased production to make up for any shortfall in world supplies due to this conflict. They do not have that capability. The US-backed democratic kingdom, where criticism of the government results in imprisonment or decapitation, is merely fronting for ARAMCO and selling the oil stolen from Iraq on the world market. As Meyssan points out, ISIS could not market anything without cartel, that is, US support.
The goal? It has not changed since put forth by the Bush Administration in 2001, to redraw the map of the Middle East. This particular facet of the oil cartel (NeoCon) scheme involves breaking Iraq into three manageable provinces. The policy has not changed and is unaffected by three presidential elections during that time. US elections do not affect policy, and are mostly for show, a puppet-shuffling affair.
These issues remind me of the old notion of elephant sex, where there is a lot of shuffling of feet on he ground, while the real action is going on high upstairs.
Piece of Mindful 