This is a lesson for all of us, but especially for me: Power owns truth. Believing is seeing.

Working in oil and gas as I have all these years, I have met and worked with technically brilliant people. The science of finding oil in the ground is one that requires both high intelligence and nuance – the technical data tells them things, but they have another voice that plays along side that data and offers another interpretation. That is high intelligence – not a rote reading of data, but an integration of data and experience, scientific knowledge and sideways vision. That is the case with every serious profession out there except economics. And yet these same brilliant people fall for easily detected political lies, impossible coincidence and manufactured evidence. Power owns truth.

I can be played, like anyone, based on my sympathies. Apple computers are just like all other computers, but their advertising created an aura, and I bought in. I’m older now and can see through advertising, and movies have to be very good to even be memorable. But our churches are filled with older people who are still muttering the prayers embedded in their minds in their youth, turning their money over to the likes of Pat Robertson. He’s an actor, a man who is knowingly fleecing people, becoming a billionaire in the process. It is no surprise the that he ran for president, merely taking the act to another level. (It is also no surprise to learn that Billy Graham urged Richard Nixon to bomb the dikes in North Vietnam, killing maybe two million people. It appears from evidence up there that our military murderers tried and failed.) Politics and religion are variations on the same theme.
Continue reading “Power owns truth” →

The phenomenon witnessed at this blog the past couple of weeks has less to do with the events of 9/11 than with human psychology, and it is fascinating. I’d be foolish to presume to understand it in any great depth. People who do that sort of thing are often themselves caught in a trap, as a psychologist I saw in a YouTube saying that the people who don’t believe the official story of 9/11 are mentally unstable, or the “skeptics” at Skeptics Guide to the Universe or Brian Dunning at Skeptoid saying that we just have to trust our government on this one. They all exhibit the trait they arrogantly claim to describe. The most common name for it, not that it is at all descriptive, is “cognitive dissonance.”

I have read of CG and seen it described as the ability to hold contradictory beliefs, firmly believing in each. Another merely describes it as “certainty” in the face of contradiction. Whatever it is, it is the human condition, so that just like the pompous asses of SGU, if I describe it without including myself, I am a naive fool. Let it be understood that this brief essay is about “us,” and not “you.”

Every now and then I get a brief ray of sunlight on some of my behaviors in past years, and see myself as others might have seen me. It creates a shock wave of pain. Very quickly my inner defenses will rush to the breach and reconstruct that past in a favorable light, and project the problem outward. They had a problem, not me.
Continue reading “What is cognitive dissonance?” →

These past couple of weeks have been spent here talking about 9/11. As an idealist, I cannot long live in duplicity, having a secret set of beliefs while pretending otherwise.

I was suspicious of the events of that day from the start and kept quiet about it due to social pressure that is part of the ongoing cover-up. As seen here, it takes no evidence to convince most of the public to believe the official story, and if doubtful, they are programmed to avoid even looking at counter-evidence.**

This is an expertly run PSY-OP. The methodology is to traumatize us, and then implant ideas in that state. Once implanted, the ideas are hard-wired and will never go away. Pearl Harbor* was such an event. It mobilized an isolationist population to participate in a world-wide conflagration.

In 1999, a group of “Neo-Cons” put together a planning document urging President Clinton to attack Iraq. It was called the “Project for a New American Century,” and a paragraph therein said that it would be difficult to get the American people to support the level of war they wanted without some mobilizing event, a “New Pearl Harbor.”
Continue reading “Moving on …” →

David Sirota departed the radio scene here in Denver late last year, and no one is talking about it. I assumed while he was on-air that his goose was being slow-cooked in a crock pot. The only allowed “alternative” radio voices are rank-and-file Democrats like blow-hard Ed Schultz or motor-mouthed Thom Hartmann. The only discussion allowed on our airwaves is about the microscopic differences between the parties. Sirota was openly critical of President Obama, Sen Michael Bennet and Gov John Hickenlooper. Democrats, not known for tolerance, were steaming. When he left radio, I pictured those three eating a dish served cold.

Here’s another view. Sirota had also urged listeners and readers to sign a White House petition for Obama to create a “Do not kill” list so that some of us could be protected from his terrorist drone strikes. Did this make him a target? Is that why he was removed from radio? Will he soon exit the planet?

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of recent postings here is an attitude that I regard a “studied ignorance.” Mindsets are like prisons, and the bricks and bars are held in place by egos. The cell is a secure environment.

There is a Catch 22 involved here too: When told of the massive scam that has been perpetrated on the American people (the rest of the world is far less fooled), the automatic response is “no one could keep a secret like that.” But people on the inside looking out can and do keep secrets, as they and their loved ones’ lives are at stake. As was made very clear to people who immediately knew what was up, via the anthrax scare, the game is real and deadly, the people behind it cold-blooded murderers.

But the mass of easily uncovered evidence of that day was bound to make its way public. Most of it is hidden in plain sight. Supposed hijackers were still alive, flight manifestos for the two flights that actually took off had no Arab names. The video of two hijackers allegedly making their way to Boston was not date and time-stamped. There was no identifiable wreckage anywhere to be found. Aluminum wings that cut through steel in New York bent backwards and were sucked into the round hole in the Pentagon. One of the alleged hijackers packed his last will and testament in his luggage that he intended to take with him on a doomed flight. The “plane” that hit the Pentagon evaporated, but corpses survived. Not one toilet, computer screen, printer or telephone survived the Ground Zero inferno, but a hijacker’s photo passport did.

This is all insane, of course. What sort of person believes all of this nonsense? Only prisoners sealed tight in their egos.

But the Catch 22 is this: All of the above and much, much more evidence has come out, and yet the prisoners will not go near it. The reason? It’s a “conspiracy theory.” This is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the American indoctrinary system that I have encountered. The word “conspiracy” has been sheepdipped, and all real world intrigue surrounding it removed. What is left is only fantasy. If it is a conspiracy theory, it is false.

Simple fact: Powerful people, even regular people, engage in secret activity. In an oligarchy where politicians receive private bribes to stay in office it is more the norm than exception. By definition money carries with it a hidden agenda, so that most business and affairs of governments are done in secret. How then to protect information that inevitably becomes public knowledge? Merely scare people away. The weapon that frightens the prisoners is ridicule. For the journalist (or any public person) it spells end of career. For anyone else, it is mere disdain of peers.

It is indeed fascinating to watch as Sir Isaac Newton is set aside, easily seen video forgeries are accepted as real, and a plot so farcical as to be part of the movie Airplane is treated with utter stone-faced seriousness.

If you are a prisoner, if I speak from the outside looking in, the most important key to this whole puzzle of the human psyche: Your cell is not even locked. You are free to go. It’s a big scary world out there, and nothing comes easily, especially “truth” or even information. Insecurity is the norm. We never know who to trust out here. It’s a damned hard row to hoe. It takes chops to live outside that cell. The question is, do you have it in you? Do ya, punks?

(See footnote)

I did not have to look through more than three pages of search engine results to confirm my suspicion: This matter is blacked out of American news. A British defense contractor, Britam, was hacked on January 22nd. Hacking is about the only real source of news left to us anymore.

Among the files uncovered was this, an email from the company’s business development director David Goulding to another director, Phillip Doughty, a former British Special Air Services officer:

It reads:

Phil

We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.

We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have.

They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.

Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?

Kind regards David

Continue reading “Britamgate” →

From About.com: At least we still have a sense of humor.

Continue reading “Politcal sines that maek you tink” →

Anyone who has traveled and spent time in Utah or around Mormons for any extended time, as I have, might offer a similar view: They tend to be very nice people, especially the youth, and they are very deeply indoctrinated. Perhaps the message here is that religion makes people happy, offers them safety from uncertainty and comforting answers to life’s exasperating complexity. They look to their leaders, and while it appears ridiculous to the rest of us that their bishops tell them what to think each Sunday about everything, including world affairs and politics, to them it seems perfectly normal.

That is thought control done on a very large scale, and very effectively. The key, of course, is that they are immersed as youth and the system is reinforced at every turn. When they reach maturity, it is too late. Youthful indoctrination is extremely hard to overcome, and while “Jack Mormons,” who drink or smoke, are not uncommon, Mormons who dispute matters of faith and politics are. They are subject to all our outside influences, live among us as friends and neighbors, and are under complete domination by their higher authorities.

Joseph Smith spotted something in the human species, as there were a lot of people in around before he started, but no Mormons. He had to invent them. He seemed to know that a cult of leaders was necessary, as was reaching people in their youth. Once he succeeded, he used his powers as a path to panties and pocketbooks, not uncommon. A new religion was born.

My upbringing was similar in the Catholic Church at a time when they were much more severe in their teachings and methods. I was indoctrinated in grade school, and “confirmed” when I reached the “age of reason,” twelve. (Little did they know – I am 62 now and have still not gotten there.) In high school I went through a “Search,” similar to a movement still active called “Cursillo.” We gathered at the school, and stayed awake for two days while listening to talks and attending worship services, all the while maintaining silence. (Because I was with a kid named Nordlund, I had fits of giggling the entire weekend.) My brother, prior to his ordination, said that the object of a Search was to drain us, keeping us awake a whole weekend. In that sleep deprived state, he said, they could tell us anything and we would believe them. It seems that Catholics knew something about our species too.

In the early sixties, the Catholic Church under John XXIII went through many reforms, loosening up on the indoctrination, reaching out to other faiths, and setting free millions of people as a consequence. They are often called “recovering” Catholics. Comedian George Carlin went to a liberal Montessori school where they had the notion that kids would arrive at Catholicism on their own and due to its merits. When the kids were instead set free, they stopped doing that.

The Mormons never made that mistake, never let up, so that ex-Mormons are rare. Perhaps, due to social pressure, shunning and loss of business connections, many of them simply keep their heads down, but that is a hard way to live, in constant tension between outer expressions and inner beliefs. It is much easier just to believe.

Yes, you know where this is going. There is no “them,” not in Utah, The United States, Saudi Arabia, China or Zimbabwe. There is only “us.” Religion is a set of irrational beliefs that we accept in faith and without evidence. All religion beliefs are handed down by authority figures, and we believe because they believe, and aqainst evidence. We are introduced in youth, reinforced, and take great joy and comfort in these beliefs.

Americanism is such a religion. We believe ourselves to be an exceptional nation, against all evidence.