I have been unable to find San Diego’s Mayor Bob Filner’s full statement on resignation, and so have to piece it together with ellipses. But I thought it instructive as he tells us how it works in politics: Many are called, few are chosen. Anyone in office can be scandalized out of office. A scandal can be manufactured, or in this case blown out of proportion by a tooly media and persistent and nagging victims, probably paid off, who might have gotten unsolicited attention from “Pat McCann,” Car Talk’s sexual harassment counselor. Continue reading “It could happen to anyone”
Back in in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR …
The tenor of our times can largely be personified in the form of people who walk free, attend banquets, and enjoy easy access to a clueless and compliant media. George (HW and W) Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Barack Obama, David Petraeus, Robert Ford and a host of others are men and women who should be put on trial for war crimes, walk free and enjoy privileged lives. They will never see the inside of a court room, much less a jail, as they live in a system where only injustice is served.
Continue reading “Back in in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR …”
Time sink
If you do not have time to waste, avoid this Reddit thread. It is the first time I have seen a comment thread go viral.
It’s interesting how much of this stuff I already knew:
- Funeral industry is total scam …
- Regular and organic milk is taken from same tete
- … we should avoid touching anything but sheets on bed in a motel.
More interesting stuff is tech talk …
- Software programmers and doctors relying on Google …
- Most investment managers living off inside trading …
- 90% of all tax returns are simple and should be done by the taxpayer. Now it can be told.
- Mutual funds fees eat the retirement account alive before we ever get to enjoy it. (Stick it in savings and don’t touch it. Even low-interest accounts are better than professionally managed ones.)
- I too got scammed royal by a local mechanic shop and am embarrassed that I was so trusting. Now I am leery of all mechanics … Duh. Most of the world already knew this.
Much of it has to do with large companies who are double-faced, one prettied up for the public by PR and ad agencies, the other a monster ghoul that bleeds employees because they can’t quit or are easily replaced. I may never go to a restaurant again, but if I do, I will be really nice to everyone there. They not only deserve it anyway, but can also get validation in their own ways.
One intriguing entry has Apple stores acting as money laundering fronts, drug money being used to buy up iPhones that are then resold around the world. Knowingly done. That’s why they are often short on inventory, says the commenter.
It’s a time sink. If you have work to do today, avoid this thread. I stumbled on it last night around 8 PM and did not cover more than a third of it.
Here we go again
[Note to readers: It is important to understand that “news” in the US is put forward by only a few entities, and is not a random process. The major organs are dominated by intelligence agency moles who sit at critical junctures. This situation was first exposed by the Church Committee in the late 1970’s, and has never again been addressed by an official body. So it is safe to assume it still exists. But there is not unanimity behind the scenes as various powerful factions make power plays to achieve unstated objectives, so that the appearance of “news” that is repeated and emphasized to achieve maximum impact (i.e. the Monica Lewinski tabloid scandal) is public notice to one faction that another faction is making a play. Evidence to support this view can be found on any given day in the important stories that do not see light of day, non-barking dogs. So now we have the Snowden affair, which could easily be suppressed and ignored, as are the Kiriakou and Brown incidents. Instead, it is being heavily promoted in mouthpiece news organs.]
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The Watergate affair that eventually brought down Richard Nixon was both circus and farce. Imagine this: Highly trained CIA/FBI agents commit a clumsy burglary, almost begging to be caught. There is no apparent purpose for it. The men involved all have shady backgrounds, many in the Bay of Pigs. Two were involved in the Kennedy assassination:
- E. Howard Hunt, who confessed on his death bed to his son that he was part of it, but only as a “back bencher;”
- Frank Sturgis, suspected by some in the JFK research community to be one of the gunmen in Dealey Plaza that day.
You feel it, I merely give it a name
We had a very busy weekend, with a mountain hike, hours spent on a large carpentry project (which a real carpenter could knock off in two), a family birthday gathering that consumed all of last evening, and a couple of hours spent watching the movie Wonderland. My wife also handily dispatched me in a game of Super Scrabble.
I only mention all of that because in the midst of all of that, I also spent hours reading about the Boston Marathon bombing and viewing photographs thereof. The photos are of a very high quality, and of course it is easily seen that the events are staged, that there were no real injuries, that crisis actors were used, and any amputees after were amputees before.
I am tempted to go on a long rant about the particulars, but anyone who is curious about it can find that information. Here is just a summary, and I am deliberately limiting myself to 100 words:
There were no destructive devices used that day, no shrapnel or pressure cookers. It appears that the some of the actors were gathered inside the Lens Crafters store, and assembled outside after a loud explosion a couple of stories above. The area is quickly emptied, and “victims” appear. They are laboriously drenched in blood and fitted with devices imitating bloody stumps. “Medical” personnel, indifferent to victims, wander about as the major players are dressed and presented to waiting cameras – Jeff Bauman, Krystie Campbell, Sidney Corcoran, et al. Other victims, not present, will appear in staged hospital scenes. That’s 97 words.
I have more important matters to address:
- I took time. I spent probably 3-4 hours looking at the visual evidence. But I had to go find it. If I were a typical citizen, I would wait for information to fall in my lap via the television and Huffington Post.
- This is yet another use of the “conspiracy theory” meme. People are curious, but that curiosity is dulled by mainstream media saturation of the “correct” description of events. Real curiosity is stymied by fear of branding, ridicule and marginalization.
- What’s with the pictures? Just about every image seen by mainstream viewers was vetted by the Boston Globe, CNN and other palace guards. Yet I was able to look at high quality stills, about 216 of them. If every other outlet is guarded and output heavily censored, why is it so easy for me to find these 216 stills? That’s a real question, not rhetorical. Something is amiss.
- Man, the power of suggestion. I watched a video of a TV news reporter interviewing a doctor who had supposedly been on the scene helping victims, and the reporter says “Look at you. You’re covered in blood.” But the doctor has not a drop of blood on him.
I have deliberately not linked to anything nor grabbed any images, but easily could. I am not your curiosity. If you have any, you have to feed it yourself. But if you are tempted and stop in your tracks right here, fearing “conspiracy” talk, understand the power of thought control. The fear that stops you from looking further goes by that name.
Why NSA = STASI
The individual is more sensitive to the voice of the herd than to any other influence. It can inhibit or stimulate his thought and conduct. (Wilfred Trotter, British psychologist, 1916)
We live in the post-Lippmann, post-Bernays, post-Dewey, post-Le Bon and post-Trotter age. Their work is long done, generations have passed. Their efforts have been inculcated into our attitudes and industrial practices. Most of it had to do with framing the employee mindset in the industrial society. People had to be melded into efficient groups of employees, unions eliminated, with everyone accepting dominance by others as wholesome and natural. The work of these men translated easily into politics and consumerism.
I was a poor student in high school, a lousy employee who didn’t take well to dominance by insecure territorial dictators, and so escaped (or grew out of) most of it. Self-employment* is true freedom.
Continue reading “Why NSA = STASI”
Syria update
This is a follow-up on a footnote to the last post, what has become of Syria? When it leaves our mainstream news coverage, the most submissive and compliant media on earth, after months of aggressive and biased reporting, something is up. I can only speculate, but here are some facts:
- There was a world-wide terror alert last week, and as many as fifteen embassies will be closed. I doubt that there is such widespread terror, or that any secret “Al Qaeda”* communications were intercepted, unless between Langley and the Pentagon. So I thought perhaps they are setting the stage for new false-flag attacks, after which they would blame and bomb Syria.
- The original strategy against Syria failed – that is, the so-called red line wherein the death squads used chemical weapons, maybe, and then blamed the Assad regime. They could never quite pull this off – too many people paying close attention.
- Part of the reason for Morsi’s overthrow in Egypt was his order to mobilize Egyptian military units against Syria. Since Syria and Egypt are the old United Arab Republic, there are still ties there, and the military refused.
- This I just learned: The Egyptian military is conducting a large operation in North Sinai to rout “Al Qaeda” forces there. It’s a smart move, as the presence of such forces could have been a justification for NATO to sieze the Suez Canal.
I never discount the United States military and CIA, the most sophisticated fighting and terrorist force in the history of the planet. But the marked failures so far are very encouraging.
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*I put “Al Qaeda” in quotes, as it is largely a US-invested and US-run organization used to run terrorist operations and justify a US response. See how it works? In the same manner, the British originally founded the Muslim Brotherhood, and the U.S. and Israel were originally behind Hamas and Hezbollah. It is not clear, to this day, if original ties are severed. The world is full of surprises. But that is indeed how it works. Since there are no real anti-imperialist “terrorist” forces (there are resistance fighters, as in Iraq), we have to invent them.
Meh.
I have to express some disappointment at a good man and hard thinker in that JC started out in his post on the right track, civil liberties, but spent the rest of the post dwelling on partisan politics. It reminded me of when the Republican strategists who brought Reagan to office had mastered the art of direct mailing to bring voting blocs together.
That sort of thing goes on all day every day. I don’t like it. I don’t dislike it. I nothing it. It’s partisan politics. If Mitt Romney had won, had out-maneuvered the Obama people, would we be worse off? According to the first part of the long post, no. That’s what matters – Bush III.
A good man was I think a bit intimidated into using only acceptable mainstream sources. NY Times, WaPo. Isn’t it interesting how, in doing so, he went completely thought-free and partisan on us?
A big “Meh.”
World-wide terror alert! World wide terror alert!
I disregard such news as manipulation, and look to see what is not reported while such stories grab headlines. Suggestions would be useful as I don’t really have time to look for real news today.
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Speaking of news management, which does not happen in the land of the free, Glenn Greenwald was scheduled to testify before an informal hearing chaired by Alan Grayson on the NSA wiretaps.
But as Grayson said, “Obama developed a sudden and newfound interest in House Democrats and scheduled a meeting with them for that same time.” The hearings were canceled. [Politico Link.]
Obama is not known to go to Capitol Hill for anything, much less unannounced and impromptu. See how it works?
Budgeism debunked
When it is all over, I hope to have added one term to the English language: Budgeism. It came from my interactions with the Missoula financial adviser. I began to notice over time that the bulk of his theories on economics were untestable. Yet he addressed matters with certainty – if only we did x instead of y, z would happen instead y … I shortened it to the following:
I believe my theories will work and yours will fail, in the future. Prove me wrong.
From there it’s easy to see how it works as a debate tactic. Take health care – the European systems are working well, adjusting as they must, and are not in any way threatened or unpopular. They will fail in the future. The US health care system is a colossal bust, with worse outcomes and immensely higher costs while inaccessible to a large portion of the population. In the end, it will work.*
Budgeism is useful in understanding the arguments of economists of the Randian, Austrian, or neoclassical schools. They can’t explain the past or present nor predict the future, and yet get paid for it. If neoclassical economics actually worked, they’d be out of a job, right? Don’t markets eliminate bad products?
The video below is of Steve Keen, a rebel who loves taking potshots at the neo’s while advancing his own theories. I certainly don’t have the chops to evaluate his work, but I do like his attitude and humor.
My favorite line:
Neoclassical economics: The application of bad mathematics to wishful thinking.
26-minute video below fold. Enjoy!
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Piece of Mindful 