Who framed Osama bin Laden?

thZero Dark Thirty is a fiction entertainment piece, part of a larger effort to “kill” Osama bin Laden in our consciousness. I’d be lying if I said I understood why. At the time of the operation, I speculated that the military was leaving Afghanistan and needed to dispense with the cover story. Others I’ve heard discuss the matter think that because it is so widely known outside this country that 9/11 was an inside job that the Pentagon merely wanted to move forward and invent new realities. Most amazing is that the movie makers surely know that the Navy Seals who supposedly pulled off the mission are all dead, and their comrades too. There is an oppressive sense about this movie in that people who made it have to have some inkling of what is true.

Someday some bright light will offer more insight. But I am in awe at the total uniformity of thought among TV news readers, journalists, intelligentsia, public officials, comedians – it’s hard not to believe in this scam! True, the greatest achievement of American propaganda is that most Americans don’t know there is American propaganda. And movies are a large part of our background thought control system. Here’s a paragraph that I wrote to a couple of film reviewers who loved, just loved, ZDT:
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Life in the desert

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. (Voltaire)

I looked this up on the Internet to assure its validity and wound up at Ask.com. Indeed it is a genuine quote, and the following exchange took place:

Question: i couldnt understand thi thought..what does it mean?..u guyz pls explain to me this in simple words?..thanks in advance!! [sic]

Best answer chosen by voters: He is saying that people who are persuasive enough to make you believe something all logic tells you is untrue can also make you do things that your heart tells you not to do.

Take Hitler for instance. …

I stopped there thinking “Aye carumba! Bring it a little closer to home and the present, friend.”

David Sirota leaves AM 630 KHOW

The Rundown with Michael Brown and David Sirota on KHOW, AM 630 Denver
The Glo Show with Gloria Neal on KKZN, AM 760 Denver

Lib+Card+David+SirotaWithout fanfare, David Sirota has left the Denver talk radio scene. Neither he or his former bosses at Clear Channel are willing to talk about it. I have mixed emotions about this, but Budge will certainly be happy to learn of his demise, having long ago had an icy me moment with him.

Sirota is one of those voices that grates on me, like Thom Hartmann, on and on and on and would you get to the point? But I liked his morning show here in Denver, as he was not standard fare. He took Democrats to task as easily as the mirror party, and had controversial guests on like Chomsky, sports writer David Zirin, science journalist Gary Taubes and many others. He was no Democrat, and though it was never said out loud, I assume he went down at 760 because of his repeated attacks on Senator Michael Bennet, who steered the local schools into a financial disaster when employed there; and Governor John Hickenlooper, a Republican who ran as a Democrat and whom Sirota called “Howdy Doody.” I loved it when he played that theme music. I could just see “Hick,” as the Denver Post affectionately calls him, steaming.
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Annoying guy stops by again

  • TG: You are persistent. I’ll give you that.
  • Me: That’s one word for it. A nicer one.
  • TG: All right then. Let’s talk conspiracy.
  • Me: Must we?
  • TG: We must.
  • Me: Well, people conspire.
  • TG: No, not little stuff. Big stuff. You imagine that there are thousands of people who are acting in concert and not talking about it in public. That’s bizarre.
  • Me: Kind of hard to grasp. For all of us.
  • TG: Like, you know, impossible, dude. Impossible.
  • Me: Well, let’s break it down. Let’s say that I wanted to shoot the mayor of Anywhere, USA. How would I do it?
  • TG: Well, you get a gun, and then you shoot him.

    • Continue reading “Annoying guy stops by again” →

Perverse incentives

One of the advantages of living in more civilized countries rather than the United States is general access to health care. If you travel abroad, you might notice clinics everywhere. People can stop in at any time – not to see a specialist or a surgeon, maybe not even a doctor, but a knowledgeable person. Most of our day-to-day concerns are indeed trivial, and most things take care of themselves. But many times treatment of small issues head off large ones. This is a large part of the reason why health care systems in other countries produce better outcomes than ours – easy access to preventive care.

I have noticed with the insurers that I have dealt with that they are backing away from paying for visits to doctors’ offices. Such visits are highly bureaucratic affairs in our land, needing clearance from an insurer to proceed, and each doctor required to deal with every insurer separately. However, I used to be able to see a doctor and only be charged a modest co-pay. The last policy I carried*, which had increased significantly in premium, dropped this feature. Not only were doctor visits no longer covered, but their costs could not be applied towards the policy deductible. Also, there was before an illusory “discount” applied when we visited a doctor who was part of a larger network – that too disappeared. My health insurance policy premium increased dramatically, and they quietly converted it to hospitalization only.

That’s pretty damned short-sighted from a public health perspective, but what can we expect when we entrust public health to private corporations? No doubt as they sat around discussing more ways to gouge us for profit, they saw elimination of the co-pay as a road to riches.

Private for-profit corporations cannot, by their very design, deliver a public good like health care. They can only limit it.
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*Anthem Blue Cross of Colorado. Others I have looked at are doing this now too – this is the nature of competition in monopoly capitalism – when one stops offering a service, so do the others.

State of another union

thOn February 13 President Obama will address the nation on the State of the Union. It will be a television show, constricted in time due to short attention spans, and include some vox populi features such as real praise for fake heroes and fake praise for one or two real ones. It all adds to the illusion that we are self-governed. He’ll throw crap on the wall.

Vladimir Putin recently gave his own Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. It took a long time to read, so I imagine it must have taken well over an hour to deliver, maybe two. I cannot begin to describe its content and do it justice. But most of it could never be spoken here. I did not find any applause lines. He did say “There can be no place in politics for criminals.” If Obama were to utter that line, there would be cold, malevolent stares. He might fear for his life.

Light sources

Shining_City_Upon_a_Hill_by_hawk862There is a long list of things I would change about Americans if I could – turn off the TV, be more aggressive in criticism of public figures other than coaches and general managers, stop trusting politicians, don’t be taken in by advertising, listen, listen listen to me – that’s a a short list, but at the top would be to simply grow up. Countries are sausage factories, and the people who rise to power are the most ruthless and cunning. They manipulate themselves into positions of power, control of resources and other people. They steal, lie, and cheat. They murder people who threaten them. Most “accidental” deaths of prominent people are actually murders.

They do all of this with impunity, as the law is at their disposal too. I laugh at people who think we need a “new investigation” of 9/11. By whom? The ones that did it? An “international body”? That investigation is ongoing, and the people who are calling for a new one are the ones doing it. We may someday know most of the details, but no one of prominence will ever be punished. People who get too close to the truth will be killed. (I do wish that while they are at it they also investigate the anthrax attack – that is part of it as well, but has slipped down the memory hole.)

The United States, like Monty Python’s Camelot, is a very silly place. If it is like that here, it is like that everywhere. We are, however, a large country with several features that make us exceptional:

  • We have natural resources on our continent that have always assured our ability to take care of our own needs;
  • We have oceans on either side so that it is very difficult to attack us;
  • We have neighbors north and south who are not as aggressive and cunning as us, or are just cowed by our hegemonic power.*

All of that makes us a world power.
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TG takes aim

Tomato Guy would be a good blogger but doesn’t think it is worth his time.

  • TG: It’s all so pointless. You measure success by “hits” and “reads.” So what if someone hits your blog?
  • Me: Book successes are measured by number of copies sold. Who actually reads books but a very few?
  • TG: So you’re like an author? That’s a little presumptuous – authors do careful research, make arguments over many pages, reach conclusions …
  • Me: Blah blah blah.
  • TG: Authors have impact. You don’t.
  • Me: There are been a few authors who have influenced the flow of events by the strength of their work. Most are addressing selected small audiences and stroking them – Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, for instance.
  • TG: Chomsky.
  • Me: I suppose. That hurt.
    Continue reading “TG takes aim” →

Mindsets and the arrival of Tomato Guy

knowledge_is_knowing_a_tomato_is_a_fruit_button-p145206992323868011en872_216During the years of this blog I have had an ongoing dialogue with a friend who wants to remain anonymous, and who I will call “Tomato Guy.” Many years ago when my oldest daughter left for college, she wrote me a letter addressed to “That Tomato Guy.” I do not raise nor do I like tomatoes. It was out of the blue and made no sense. It is appropriate for my friend, as it gives no hint of identity.

Tomato Guy wonders why I do this. I have asked him* to write here, making sure his identity is safe. He has no desire to write for limited consumption and just for the sake of writing.

TG wants to know the following: Since no one who reads Piece of Mind has a change of heart or mind, why bother?

It’s a good question. My first response was the standard one that I have used since 2006, that I like to write and argue. But that is not enough to sustain an effort that really only reinforces people in their ego-traps. We are all in a fog as we try to figure out the substance of reality.
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Taking Spain to task for its efficiency

The logic of the fascist is not hard to follow – just think duplicity and lies. Whether it is American justification for current attacks on the rest of civilization or Germany’s cry in 1939 that it was merely defending itself from Poland, it is always easily disassembled and transparent lies. That’s all we get. The shame is that people so easily buy them. But extreme gullibility appears to be the human condition, and it appears incurable.

In most places, that is. Spain has enjoyed a very good public health care system in the post-war era. Currently it spends less than half per capita than the US and achieves better outcomes – full coverage for all citizens and a longer life expectancy.

The bank-generated housing and debt crisis has hit Spain hard, and of course the fascist response is automatic: Attack the public sector, privatize, privatize, privatize. The Spanish government, to “save money,” wants to take its health care system private. Since statistics easily indicate that public systems are far more economical, efficient and effective than our private system here in the US, money cannot possibly be saved in privatization.

There is only one possible outcome here: Less service, higher cost, poorer outcomes, private profit. Spanish people are up in arms. Imposition of a private system, if the US is an example, is unaffordable. But in true fascist tradition, it will be done by force.
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PS: This is nothing more than Naomi Klein’s aptly-worded “Shock Doctrine:” To create a problem and then step in with predetermined “solutions.”