Total spectrum dominance

Rolling StoneWe live in a thought controlled environment. People freak out at that notion

“Why, I’ll tell you right now that no one ever, EVER!, tells me what to think about anything. I am my own person, think my own thoughts. Got that?”

Thus says the person who thinks the exact same thoughts as everyone else in his circle, not too much different from those in other circles.

The key to understanding thought control is that people have to imagine they think for themselves. So we are given a range of acceptable views, none of which are threatening to real power, and are allowed to choose among them. Thus the pro-choice pro-Obama anti-gun pro-Keystone Democrat is identical to the pro-life pro-gun pro-Romney pro-Keystone Republican in every way that is of any importance. The two can duke it out and even have an emotional investment in their candidate. This false choice imparts that essential illusion, that we are freely thinking and making our choices. On the night that they laugh about it shout about it, and either celebrate electoral victory or cry in their beer, the circle is complete.

The photo above is from Rolling Stone magazine, the recent one with KISS on the cover. In a thought-controlled environment, it is important that there be widespread agreement on certain essential ‘facts.’ It could be some thing big and confusing like 9/11, or a minor matter as Crimea’s choice to become part of the Russian Federation. In those matters, there is no room for disagreement, and there is total spectrum control. Dissent regarding 9/11 is not only not allowed in our media, but is only ridiculed from a distance, never allowed even a moment’s discussion in mainstream media.

The Crimea matter must be of huge importance to the people who control our thoughts, as it too is intoned by one solemn voice in every corner of our media. Crimea’s people did not make a rational choice. “Putin” stole the country by force. The notion that Ukraine was subject to violent coup d’état, its legitimate government overthrown by outside forces …. I am yet to see it broached anywhere save one, a radio interview conduct by Terry Gross a few weeks back.

But Americans are not news hounds, and don’t know geography. They don’t travel. They mostly absorb their views from entertainment sources. That too is under strict control. I don’t know the process whereby Rolling Stone, which performs a left gate keeping function, joined the parade in condemning “Putin”. I just know that it did.

In the matter of Crimea’s decision to be part of the Russian Federation, there is no dissent in the United States. All talking heads, radio voices, comedians and magazines from all sides of our supposed spectrum, are of one voice. “Putin” stole the country.

Thought control is usually not so heavy-handed as that. This must be a matter of great importance to our leaders.

As Syrian government wins on the home front, Turkey steps up

It appears that another false flag operation was scheduled, this one on its Syrian border designed to allow Turkey to make war. Our covert forces are in mad rage these days, setting fires in Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and probably behind violence in Iraq as well. Something big is afoot, maybe, as a commenter says that we are on the verge of economic collapse. This is the full story from Al-Monitor, a news service I subscribe to:

Turkey ‘unhinged’

Turkey’s municipal elections campaign became consumed by the political crisis which swept the country and social media this week.

On March 27, an audio tape was posted on YouTube appearing to capture a conversation among four of Turkey’s top national security officials, including Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, discussing orchestrating an attack on the Tomb of Suleiman Shah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, which is just over the border in Syria but which Turkey considers its territory, as a pretext for a military action in Syria.

The leak led the government to deny Internet users access to YouTube just one day after a Turkish court overturned an earlier government ban on Twitter.

On March 23, a Turkish F-16 shot down a Syrian MiG-23, which Kadri Gursel suggested could have been a useful distraction to energize popular support for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he rallies voters for his Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The preoccupation with a rationale for action in Syria was also evident in Turkish military preparations to defend the tomb following a threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), as Fehim Tastekin reports. Davutoglu has alleged that ISIS is allied with the Syrian government.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told Amberin Zaman this week: “Erdogan recognizes that he is in trouble. That is why he wants to go to war with Syria. We raised the issue of the Tomb of Suleiman Shah [the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman dynasty whose tomb is protected by Turkish troops]. They instantly shot down the Syrian plane. They are doing their best to go to war against Syria, to drag us into that quagmire. To this end, they are playing good cop, bad cop with al-Qaeda. They tell al-Qaeda, ‘Go attack and tear down our [Turkish flag raised over Suleiman Shah’s tomb] so we have an excuse to go in.’ Syria is no threat to Turkey. The whole world knows this. The Syrian plane was a reconnaissance plane that was seeking al-Qaeda targets. By shooting it down, they helped al-Qaeda.”

The bans on Twitter and YouTube provoked criticism from European and US officials and, as Cengiz Candar writes, “Erdogan and associates continued with their established practice of blaming the Gulen movement for its troubles, accusing it of bugging the ‘Syria war planning’ meeting and for its disclosure via the Internet. They labeled the incident as an ‘espionage offensive,’ signaling the possibility of a witch hunt after the March 30 municipal elections.”

Mustafa Akyol agrees “it is undeniable that Turkey is in a downward spiral toward authoritarianism, in part because the government feels threatened by hidden enemies using effective tactics — including wiretapping, hidden cameras and other forms of espionage — and is therefore responding with extreme measures, such as blocking Twitter and YouTube.”
Akyol adds, “The March 30 elections are so significant, because they will show how popular the government’s alarmism is concerning its hidden enemies,” concluding, “If Erdogan wins big, a dark era will begin for all the ‘traitors’ at whom he has been pointing his finger. If he instead faces his first political setback, the war of attrition against him, especially by those veiled forces behind the wiretaps, will probably push for a bigger fall. In any case, Turkey is likely to continue to be a political war zone in the months to come, at least until the presidential elections scheduled for August 2014.”

Henri Barkey describes Turkey as on “the road to Fahrenheit 451.” He writes: “The lesson from Turkey is that a secretive and nontransparent government can easily be unhinged by the almost instant free flow of information. And when it becomes unhinged, it will resort to all possible means to contain the flow. When it undoubtedly fails, it will resort to increasingly more draconian measures.”

The course of human events

I deliberately avoid American news reporting, as it is so shallow and full of lies. Most of what is important to know is not included. So my absorption process is slow, but a fuller picture does emerge.

News is dominated by the interests who benefit from the control of news. Someone ought to mention now and then, other than in a comedy setting, that NBC is owned by General Electric, a weapons manufacturer. Major corporations are dominated by cross-directorships, so that every news outlet is governed by the same powerful people. Naturally our various news outlets march lockstep. People balk at the idea that our “news” is discussed each day before it is given to us, and that all of the outlets are in agreement at the very top levels about what will be reported and how. That’s how it works. (At various times, as during Katrina and 9/11, this mold is broken and we see good reporting in the chaos. That is the exception.)

Ted Turner was a maverick who came aboard with the idea that he could change this power structure. As he now says, he kicked the shin of power and got a broken toe. CNN is now just another cog and is now among the worst in terms of submissiveness to power. But a few have noticed, and this is the kind of thing that ought to set inquisitive minds to work, that CNN World News, seen in many American airports, has a completely different reporting structure. It carries many stories and slants that its domestic branch does not.
Continue reading “The course of human events” →

Songs are like friends

Exercising a the gym today I listened to Rocky Mountain High, by John Denver, and the line

“Talk to God and listen to the casual reply”

struck me. JD had a special talent with words and imagery. I heard the song like first time ever, and it put me in a place, an attitude, and it added exuberance and understanding to my day.

Rocky Mountain High is Colorado’s second state song. Here is the first, one to which very few people know the melody:

Where the Columbines Grow
Written & Music by A.J. Fynn

Where the snowy peaks gleam in the moonlight,
above the dark forests of pine,
And the wild foaming waters dash onward,
toward lands where the tropic stars shine;
Where the scream of the bold mountain eagle,
responds to the notes of the dove
Is the purple robed West, the land that is best,
the pioneer land that we love.

chorus:
Tis the land where the columbines grow,
Overlooking the plains far below,
While the cool summer breeze in the evergreen trees
Softly sings where the columbines grow.

The bison is gone from the upland,
the deer from the canyon has fled,
The home of the wolf is deserted,
the antelope moans for his dead,
The war whoop re-echoes no longer,
the Indian’s only a name,
And the nymphs of the grove in their loneliness rove,
but the columbine blooms just the same.

chorus

Let the violet brighten the brookside,
in sunlight of earlier spring,
Let the fair clover bedeck the green meadow,
in days when the orioles sing,
Let the golden rod herald the autumn,
but, under the midsummer sky,
In its fair Western home, may the columbine bloom
till our great mountain rivers run dry.

OK. Not all that bad, but a little overdone, too flowery and fluffy. It’s fairly typical fare for state songs coming out of the 19th and early twentieth century. But here is what I understand of poetry, which is not much: It is freeze-dried language that evokes images, emotion and meaning in as few words as a talented poet can use.

There was a lot of controversy about using Rocky Mountain High for the state song, especially the line

Friends around the campfire and everybody’s high.

If you don’t know what that means, you have not lived well, my friend.

So which is it?

Let the violet brighten the brookside,
in sunlight of earlier spring,
Let the fair clover bedeck the green meadow,
in days when the orioles sing,

or

And the Colorado Rocky Mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply
Rocky mountain high, Colorado.

No brainer, if you ask me, who was the better poet.

Power

Years ago, 1989 to be precise, I watched a press conference on TV. The US had just bombed Panama. We still have not been told why.* The Secretary of Defense was answering questions, and as I watched him shivers ran down my spine. I was watching and listening to pure evil. His name was Richard Cheney.

This morning I read where one of the fascists who was pivotal in the Ukrainian coup d’etat, Oleksandr Muzychko , was killed point-blank. He was dragged from his car, and once it was determined he was not wearing a bullet proof vest, was dispatched by two gunshots to the chest.

The question: Was Muzychko shot by resistance forces, or was his death ordered by the new Ukrainian government as it tries to clean up its image? If the former, it can be morally justified on grounds of defense of homeland, though it is creepy. If the latter, I get that shiver down my spine again. The mother is eating her children.

This is clipped from an interview with German Left opposition leader Gregor Gysi published on RT.com:

Yes, there are real fascists in the [new Ukrainian] government. They are currently in leading positions. They have the vice-prime minister position, defense minister, and minister of agriculture and environment minister positions. Besides that, there is the co-founder of Svoboda party, who is not a member of this party right now, but he is in charge of the security committee, some sort of intelligence service.

Of course there are democratic forces in the government, but fascists never give up the power they have got hold of.

I had a semantic disagreement with a commenter here one time about JFK’s murder – was it coup d’état? Of course it was, but I said it was not. I was making a finer point and chose poor wording. JFK was dispatched by people who had already taken power and were in key positions to allow the murder to go forward. The real coup d’état took place in 1947 with passage of the National Security Act, Truman’s greatest blunder. (His first, Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the man was a walking disaster, one of the most tragic figures in history.) At that time he allowed the fascists access to positions of power without accountability. In 1963 they merely sealed the deal. We’ve not had a meaningful election or real change of power since. OSS + SS = CIA.

We’re not dealing with ideology. Back in 1989 I was not repulsed by Dick Cheney’s conservatism or belief in free markets (or neoliberalism’s creepy mirror image twin, neoconservatism). Ideology is nothing but a cloak. Ayn Rand provided that cloak, and was too stupid to realize it. Fascists have no ideology but power. That we even call them “fascists” merely concedes that we don’t have a good name for them. “Neo-Nazis” implies that Nazism was some sort of intellectual endeavor. It was not. There is nothing new. These are people who want power for power’s sake. They will use any means to get it.

Who comes to mind? A man who merely described it as he tried to grovel his way back into employment: Niccolò Machiavelli.
_________________
“I wonder if Americans think it’s extraneous to analyze the economic precedents of the Panama invasion and the fact that two American cabinet members – not to mention many lower ranking officials – had economic interests that conflicted with Panama’s attempt to broaden its commercial relationship with Japan.” (Manuel Noriega, America’s Prisoner, Noriega/Eisner)

Lies

American news outlets, it does not matter which one as they are all alike, are reporting now that Russian troops are amassing on the Ukrainian border. The Russians say that this is not true. I happen to know what is true. I’ll share it.

The Americans are lying and the Russians are telling the truth.

That simple bit of knowledge could rock your world, dear reader, if only it could somehow penetrate the castle wall of propaganda with which our news, education and entertainment systems have so fortified you since you came on board. I remember way, way back that it was but one simple fact, that Americans were lying and Cubans telling the truth about some insignificant matter, that put a small hole in my own dike.

Please watch the movie Wag the Dog. It explains it all. It’s a very funny movie with big names like De Niro and Hoffman and Harrelson and even Willie Nelson. It is entertaining, but in true Hollywood tradition, is smuggling truth to us. It is actually a documentary.

Fear primordial

Steve Jupa
Steve Jupa

Instead of mountain men we are cursed with a plague of diggers, drillers, borers, grubbers; of asphalt spreaders, dam builders, overgrazers, clear-cutters, and strip miners whose object seems to be to make our mountains match our men – making molehills out of mountains for a race of rodents – for the rat race. (Edward Abbey, Down the River with Henry Thoreau)

Imagine two people spending their nights alone in the wilderness. One is only barely asleep, aware of every noise and certain that in the thick soup are bears and mountain lions. He will awake at the slightest noise, holding perfectly still until he resolves its puzzle in his mind. Wind caused a pine cone to drop on the tent? Deer passing through? A ragged coyote looking for an easy meal? Each noise creates a moment of panic. The woods at night are dangerous. They need to be so. If we remove the danger, we remove the most important thing that wilderness offers: Wild. It is a journey into the soul.

Our second man is a coward. He’s in the woods out of necessity, hunting for game. That’s not a problem. We’re omnivores, after all. The problem is that he feels a need to have a gun at his side to help him sleep. He doesn’t own his fear. He has not yet let his inner child have a vision quest.
Continue reading “Fear primordial” →

Fallonacies

"He's Just Not That Into You" World Premiere - ArrivalsWe have taken to watching the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon lately. He’s very funny and the show is very entertaining. He might have a good long run, and I wish him the best. Fallon is a practiced comedian, that is, he works very hard on his bits. All of his accents and characters are the product of hours before a mirror, honing them to perfection. That, coupled with his personal happiness, natural charm and friendliness, makes him the perfect host for that show.

NBC is using him for cross-marketing purposes, however. His monologue each night is laden with current fashionable politics. The official US propaganda line these days is that Vladimir Putin is a monster. Most Americans are aware of events in Ukraine, and many can now locate it on a world map. That’s highly unusual. Our propaganda machine wants such awareness. So Fallon’s writers, who no doubt don’t give two shits for anything other than getting good laughs, have been instructed to introduce topical material into the monologue. They have have him opening with Putin impressions and bits. It’s Cold War fever again!

The last show I saw had Fallon mocking the vote in Crimea to remain part of Russia, inferring that the count had to be rigged since it goes counter to what we are told to think about that situation. Who can know. But he should temper that humor a bit. In the US our elections are true farces. The candidates are controlled by the same money, and when they are not, the results are stolen by easily-hacked electronic counting machines. So let’s contain the mockery. We’re in no position to judge.

I understand the confusion, however. I have a hunch the Crimean vote represented a true expression of public sentiment, and that would indeed be a foreign thing for any American to witness.

Total spectrum dominance

I stopped watching TV news decades ago, and quit newspapers shortly after I realized that Obama was a fraud, some time around late 2008. I only gather up impressions, and even though I say so myself, feel as “informed” on this issues of our time as anyone I know.

But as an outsider, I think it worth mentioning here that the United States news media is a state-run outfit with one point of view offered on all outlets from the supposed “right” over at Fox to the “left” over at MSNBC. NPR and Limbaugh are in harmony. They are just packages with outer wrapping designed to appeal to different audiences.

Limbaugh listeners are reactionary, needing the hostility he projects against perceived “liberals” to validate their own views.

Those views, incidentally, are identical to those of NPR listeners, who need to feel intellectually superior to reactionaries for their own validation.

Of course that’s a broad sweeping statement and is not true if analyzed in detail. There are, within our doctrinal confines, disagreements that are constantly being debated. Is abortion OK? Immigration? Gun control? Gay marriage? Marijuana? Taxes too high or low? These are “wedge” matters, used to segment us for advertising and voting purposes, but otherwise of no consequence. We are allowed our debates on those matters for the precise reason that they do not threaten real power.

But on the important issues of our time there is no dissent anywhere in the narrow spectrum. Further, anyone voicing dissent is quickly dispatched. On Bill Maher’s Real Time, for instance, a panelist recently spoke of the painfully obvious fact that there never was any “war” in the Cold War, that it was just a framework that allowed the US to justify its perpetual aggression against resource colonies. He was quickly hushed by all of the panelists, “right” and “left” alike. Such a foolish man, saying something obviously true. He won’t be asked back.

And now, with the EU-forced violent coup d’état in Ukraine and Crimea’s breakaway, I see complete and universal agreement on the lies that are being told. You can judge for yourself, but it’s only a matter of degree. Limbaugh is probably saying that Obama was soft and Putin took advantage of him. I imagine Thom Hartmann is defending Obama, saying he handled the matter correctly. On those shows that do allow some real news, like the Daily Show and Maher, Putin is likely being caricatured as a Hitler-like bare-chested monster.

But that’s how it is done in a state-controlled environment: Agreement about the lies is universal. Details are a matter of dispute. Anyone calling a lie a lie is shown the door.