Some regard the Lucas trilogy of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as great movie-making, and classic fiction. Indeed the characters that came out of that series are memorable and that action was enthralling. Special effects impossible before brought it all to life for a young generation. One person said to me that it was Harrison Ford that made the series successful, but that is an oversimplification. Carrie Fisher as Leia, on top of her hotness game and dressed down so that (as she said) “you could see all the way to Cuba”, had a lot to do with young boys and sexual fantasies. Fisher, as Leia, was accessible. Casting hit on the right qualities in choosing her and Ford as Hans Solo.

George Takei put up the photo to the right here on his Facebook page, and I think he has uncovered a fatal flaw. This kind of mistake in writing destroys willing suspension of disbelief, and destroys the whole of Star Wars. I have always been more a Trekkie myself, TNG, so I don’t care but will add one more failing of the Star Wars fantasy: At the end of Return, there is great joy and celebration that the Death Star is destroyed and that the Ewoks and everyone are now free of domination by the Dark Side. It won’t last. Lucas never thought it through. All they did, with the help, of course, of the Great White Interlopers Solo and Skywalker, was to win a battle. But there is no ground-level organizing. Solo and Leia are going off to make babies, Luke to save other planets. This one, the moon Endor, will shortly be taken over some other evil force. They are, after all, mighty warriors, these Ewoks, but they don’t think so good. If they did, they would not have needed a rescue.

Freedom, like dignity, strength or courage, cannot be given. It must be taken by force, and kept by fierce vigilance. I would like to know the exact date that the nascent Republic on the North American continent lost its freedom, but I don’t know. It was not 1947, though that date is important. I suspect that the Enlightenment window that had opened by 1776 had closed by 1812. Ours was a short and failed experiment, kept alive only by smoke and mirrors and two oceans that prevented invasions by the Dark Side. Consequently, we never needed a rescue, never had our cities destroyed. Our (white) people have not been tortured and put behind barbed wire.

Instead, we do that to others, and call it rescue.

Also while perusing Orwell below, just for the fun of it, I stumbled on this, again from 1984:

The invention of print … made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end.

This reminds me of something Marshall McLuhan wrote, that with each advance in technology comes a corresponding loss of freedom. His example was an agent of a bank working out west before the telegraph, pretty much left to his own. Comes the telegraph, and he now has to be at his post all day long, as his bosses back east are monitoring him. Instant communication produced the first technology slave.

The Internet did not just stumble out into the open to be discovered by horny teenagers. The technology long existed, Kissinger having an early version in his brief case when he went to China in 1972. When it became available for public use it was already adapted to snooping, both by government and commercial enterprises. The “information superhighway” quickly became dot.commerce. Google started out as a good search engine because it did not sell its results to merchants, so that a query produced honest results. Now look at them. They are nothing but marketplace whores.

Worse yet, however, was the web browser itself, deliberately designed with back doors so advertisers could monitor our behavior. I only know what I know, and that due to some software I installed. Every time I open a page, in the upper right of my screen a list of companies attempting to monitor my activities appears. Google is always among them even though I do not use GMail, Google the search engine, or any Google product. Microsoft designed the Internet Explorer with merchants in mind, creating all kinds of back doors for entry into our private lives. They always claimed, when various entry points were discovered, that it was an accident.

We should not be surprised that NSA uses those same back doors. I do not have a whole lot of faith in outfits like Microsoft – that is, I do not think they are creative or innovative so much as having been lucky, and so were chosen to be the vehicle for entry of snoops into our private lives. Bill Gates is not that smart. It is not hard to see. Read into him what you will, but vision is not one of his strong traits. He ain’t got any. As the story goes, Netscape made the first browser, and Microsoft stole it. but in my heart of hearts, I wonder if Netscape made the first browser, NSA stole it, and then gave it to Microsoft and said “pretend you invented it, and make sure you leave room for us to move in too.”

The technology is not accidental, and the government and large corporations knew about it long before it became available to us. It would not have become available to us if it could not be compromised. It should come as no surprise that they are using it as Orwell’s two-way technology that ended our private lives.

I was looking up something else and stumbled on this familiar passage from 1984, which describes perfectly the reaction of people when they encounter clear and persuasive evidence that the major events of our time, such as the assassinations, 9/11 and Boston are not at all what we are told to believe they are:

The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to the young children, is called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest of arguments if the are inimical to Ingsoc [English Socialism], and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands control over one’s own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently the object of a propaganda demonization campaign in the United States, and because the same power centers that controls our flow of information also owns the entertainment outlets, he is getting it from every angle, from Jimmy Fallon to Brian Williams, George Will to Barack Obama – from the smart comic to the stupid anchorman, the wily pundit to the weak political tool.

I don’t think this matters in the long run. We cannot stop the propaganda, and anyway, American public opinion has never been anything more than a force to be controlled, kept in its box so that it does not interfere with public policy. When it gets out of its box, as in the “sixties,” leaders get worried. So the demonization, the agitation, has to be ignored, and I think it is once we leave the bubble called the United States. We are our own self-fulfilling war machine, creating and then attacking new demons on a regular basis. We have to have our wars.

In the meantime, Putin is a figure of respect on the international stage, taken seriously in Europe and Asia as well as at home. His words are always measured, and deeds as well. No one doubts his ability to lead, where few outside this country think Obama has real chops.

Russia is currently measuring its response to the Ukrainian junta and its attacks on its own civilians. Putin says that the new ruling committee does have a support base, but not a majority of public approval, and since it is using its military to suppress its own population, and does not consult its parliament (but rather its masters abroad), uses that word, junta,

a council or committee for political or governmental purposes; especially : a group of persons controlling a government especially after a revolutionary seizure of power.

Since 9/11, America has shown awesome propaganda and brute force. The brutality with which the American regime attacked Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and (and currently Syria) was hard to watch, disgusting bestiality, but more disgusting was the complete control of perceptions and opinions within our borders. Any who objected to the attacks were marginalized, even driven off the airwaves for the slightest offense, as was Bill Maher (since dumbed down and tamed). To object to the masters and their whips required yelling out over the carnival and all of the dazzled patrons, none able to think clearly, all drunk with anger and seeking vindication. It was the golden moment for our fascists to attack, seven countries were to fall. I wanted to crawl into a hole, move to another country and be away from the ugliness and stupidity. There was no escape.

More troubling still was how public opinion was measured and manipulated yet again in 2008. Those with the whips knew that Bush had lost what little hold he had, that people were tired of that image as a fake leader and needed a new one, more cerebral and calming. Barack Obama was tagged not in 2008 to be president, but rather, and this is most discouraging, in 2004. We were told that this wonderfully charismatic young black man gave a dazzling speech at the Democratic Convention. It was fairly mundane. He was suggested to us as a potential great leader. But it is impressive to see that the leaders knew to answer to the moral indignation of the liberals of this land by giving them a black man or a woman to choose from, ideological validation. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton are tools and warmongers, she a raging psychopath (married to a suave and clever one), he not so easy to peg. If French President Sarkozy can be given credit for insight, he probably nailed it when he said that Barack Obama is merely a weak man.

Something has changed. The Ukrainian coup d’état was a product of brute force and naked aggression. All of American punditry is required to misidentify these elements, to pretend in public that these are democratic forces that seized power and who are not using military force against their own citizens. Looking about it is hard to know who pretends in public that does not also delude themselves in private. To live a lie is difficult, so that the mind usually follows the pocketbook. News anchors are merely stupid people, but writers and pundits have more on display and have to get it right to be invited to appear on TV. There are brains at work there, and the compromises behind the faces are serious and disabling.

These are not just our right-wing pundits, by the way. It’s all of them, total spectrum dominance. They are all afraid, or don’t know, to speak up. We are a tightly controlled totalitarian state.

At this time, we are witnessing democratic forces in Ukraine playing out a counter-revolution, and the monsters in Kiev are required to adopt the language of civilized people to put it down. Putin is having none of it. I assume that when Russians in Ukraine are threatened with violence, he will act to protect them. American leaders and pundits will squeal like the stuck pigs. Would that they really were just that. As I have said many times, our leadership class needs to be showing us the toe-twitch at the end of a rope that we handed out to the criminals on the losing side of the last great war.

I link below to an interesting interview with Sergey Lavrov by RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze (@SophieCo_RT). He is Russia’s Foreign minister, so it is natural there is going to be some deference there that might not be present if she were interviewing someone from another country, as, say, when the great clown Charlie Rose interviewed Bashar Assad and suddenly became a confrontational journalist. Lavrov gives good background to the crisis, but Russians always play chess, so there is much left unsaid. He states clearly that Americans are running the Ukrainian show from eleven thousand miles away, and that the new regime answers to them and no others.

Regarding the matter of Russian provocations, Lavrov says that they have acted legally, and wonder why the US constantly says “Russia must do this, Russia must do that,” while the US feels no obligation to follow up on agreements reached in Geneva in February. Case in point: the US now demands that Russia disarm Eastern Ukrainian protesters, as if protesting has suddenly become uncool.

Sophie Shevardnadze: Russia cannot pressure these [Eastern Ukrainian] self-defense forces to put down arms unless …

Sergey Lavrov: Yes, and we do not have any moral authority to pressure the East or the South to do something unilaterally in front of the army, being ordered to go against them, in front of the right Sector who should have been, must have been disarmed long ago and in the face of the political prisoners who continue to be taken.

The Kiev government has decided that demonstrations in the country are now acts of terrorism, giving it a right to use violence to put them down. For Russia to step in and demand that Ukrainians disarm themselves in the face of deadly force would be an act of betrayal.

Makes perfect sense. Read the whole interview for better insight than one snippet offers.

Portland is its own place, that is, a place where the book store is a still a hangout and where people dress and think differently than in other places. They are called “hipsters,” some of them anyway. I don’t know how to define them, but do recognize them when I see them.

When we were looking for houses in Colorado, I made it a point to check out book shelves to see what people read, to get a sense of the current owners who wanted us to buy their house. Most houses had no book shelves and few books and so I got no sense of the people who lived within. In Portland there are books and shelves and ideas and attitudes. The TV show Portlandia captures it I suppose, but understand this: There would be no TV show unless they grasped that something is different about this place.

It’s an attitude about life, optimism and possibilities … people seem to think that acting together to achieve common goals matters, so there are constant efforts at organizing. It is on signs and repurposed buildings. Silly little fools they are, they want to matter. They know some things. They redefine the American, and the new citizen speaks up and out, does not bow before power. He demands a different response from compromised government officials and the greedy corporations who also occupy this space.

Maybe it is all silliness – it is hard to navigate this place for all of the bike paths, green lanes, trains – it is as if the roads are designed for everything but cars, but cars dominate. Portlandia wants to be different, and there is a critical mass of people here who can make things different. It really does work that way. So power, though deeply embedded here (the Oregonian is as devoid of content as any newspaper anywhere in this land), is more masked than in other places.

All if this leads to my complaint, and this is serious: Where we live in Colorado we are given two options for pizza: Anthony’s, and Madoff’s. Neither are good. We could go down the hill to Old Chicago, but that is a thirty minute drive, or an hour of our life with the beer buzz worn off by the time we get home. So we live without pizza.

Pizza matters, and so while in Portland, given this opportunity, I Want Pizza! We found a place on Sunday evening, Hot Lips. They know what pizza is. We were going back there last night, but nooooooo … I am told that Oven and Shaker has the best pizza, so we go there.

There is no pepperoni. I am not kidding, and what I am about to tell you will shock you, so gird your loins: One of the ingredients they offered was duck eggs. Duck eggs! I end up having sausage and fennel. It is the only ingredient that I am certain is meat. I forsook the arugula.

People of Portland! That is not pizza! That is tapas! If I wanted mascarpone and yellow foot and hedgehog mushrooms, speck, leeks, chives, and fricking duck eggs, I would go out to the local commune and mingle with the hipsters and learn the names of the animals while holding hands and singing Kumbaya! Or I would go to the continent and lean against a railing and spend two euros for a little blob of God only knows, fish eggs or the like with some cheese I cannot pronounce.

It’s simple: dough, sauce, spices, cheese, and pepperoni. Portland, when did you lose your way?

The CIA is generally headed by civilized looking men in suits, but the current head looks the part of an agency involved in murder, drug smuggling, violent coups, assassinations (domestic and foreign) and terrorism all over the globe.

He is John O. Brennan, and he scares me. He was in Kiev over the weekend trying to find the remnants of a Greystone legion (formerly Blackwater), for-hire terrorists sent into Ukraine during the recent overthrow of that government.

In other news, Thierry Meysson reports that the Polish government under Donald Tusk had trained the agents that went into Ukraine to foment the violence. Says Meysson, these agents were trained for four weeks beginning in September of 2013 in

• crowd management
• person recognition
• combat tactics
• command skills
• behavior in crisis situations
• protection against gases used by police
• erecting barricades, and
• especially shooting, including the handling of sniper rifles.

If I were investigating the February 18 incident in which 25 people were killed, I would start here.

So, if true, we have here a violation of international law by the Polish government, supported of course, by the United States. Just as Turkey is using Al Qaeda to undermine Syria, to too is Poland using terrorists to undermine a government that the west wants done away with. It is international terrorism, Gladio, still up and running.

And we have the usual suspects who eat it all up. It helps to understand how an American administration can get way with this without recrimination. It is the American world view. Democrats hold the White House. That’s all they need to know.

Most of our thinking is done for us by others. Part of what we think is that we think our own thoughts. That’s part of the thinking that is done for us – the part about allowing us to imagine that our thoughts are our own. But they are not.

The means by which is this done is simple. We are given “facts” that can only lead to certain opinions. Any opinions that we might have that do not embrace those facts are out-of-place and considered oddball.

Once we agree on the facts, there is little room for disagreement, but there is some. That minor variation in views creates two parties. But the two parties are more a fracture in personality types than in viewpoints. One party is composed of hard-boiled authoritarians. The other is composed of softer nurturing types.

Here’s an example of how it works: The “facts” are that there is a spontaneous uprising in Ukraine, and it is featured in our news. Our news does not inform us, but rather directs our attention.

Such uprisings are common and usually not featured in our news, but this one was. The president of Ukraine is said to be a bad person who was not elected fairly. The people of his country want to be westerners, and he wants them to be easterners. The spontaneous uprising keeps getting worse. He orders gunmen to to fire into a crowd, and that sets off riots. He flees, and a new government, a good one, takes over. But the Russians Vladimir Putin interfere[s] and keep[s] taking parts of the country for themselves himself.

Here is what we are allowed to think: Our president, Obama, was [or was not] strong enough in standing up to Vladimir Putin. That is it. No other opinions are tolerated.

See how easy thought control is? Control information, control thoughts. Piece of cake.

I write now and then about “portals,” or sea-changes in outlook. They happen to a few of us, but two elements must be present: First, doubt. We must learn to question everything we’ve been taught to believe. Nothing should be held sacred.

Then follows curiosity. Without curiosity, doubt merely produces cynicism.

There’s only a few of us capable if these Herculean mental feats. I witness all about me thought-controlled zombies. It’s creepy.

We’re traveling in the Pacific Northwest. I hope when I get the urge to write, that I look at the words above and decide there is nothing to add.

Peace be with you, brothers and sisters!