The dawn of a new era

END OF WORLDThere is a mystique around 9/11. We have magnified it out of proportion because it happened to us. We imagine that it is some unique cataclysmic event of epic importance. It is indeed an important event, and the number of real and fake people killed that day is impressive. It was traumatizing, but even in my lifetime it is trivial. A brief list of places that have endured tragedies exponentially larger includes Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Korea, Vietnam, The Congo, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and recently Libya. Of relatively similar proportion are events in Panama, Chile, Serbia, Lebanon, Palestine, Argentina and currently, though it is shrouded in a cloud, Syria. That country may soon join the exponential list. I only include episodes in barbarism that directly or peripherally involve the United States.

In other words, 9/11 was not that big a deal by itself. But what followed – a clash of civilizations, is epic in scale. Millions have been killed, regimes have toppled. 9/11 changed the world. That seemed the objective.

Domestically, Americans are insular and uninformed, geographic grade-schoolers. It’s all about us. The event, well-planned and carried out, also involved an extensive and ongoing cover-up.

This is 2013, and in November we will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the public slaying of John F. Kennedy. That event too is shrouded in mystery, but so much has been uncovered that a majority of the public does not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald “acted alone,” an odd phrase considering the large body of evidence that indicates that he didn’t even “act.” Later this year a movie, Legacy of Secrecy, will attempt to jujitsu this public disbelief in the official story onto a new official perpetrator, the “Mafia,” a loosely affiliated and barely organized group of low-level thugs. Like the similarly mythical “Al Qaeda,” these people could not possibly have pulled it off.

So, fifty years later, the U.S. Government is still conducting an active cover-up of the JFK assassination. Somewhere within the bowels of government there must be a Department of Public Mythology.
Continue reading “The dawn of a new era” →

Against all evidence

imageAnyone 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.

Evidence and deception

I am going to continue in the same vein today, and keep it short. First, my thanks to Steve W, who pointed out an apparent CGI scam even in the midst of discussions about CGI scams. That will be part two.

Part one: Since, as expected, those who believe the official story cannot, will not visit the accumulated evidence from the last eleven years, I’ll bring a small part of it to them. The following are photographs from 9/11. The one below is a parking lot a couple of blocks from the Twin Towers. Our boys have to explain how a pancake collapse toasted them. (The gas tanks were intact and unexploded.)
image

Here’s another, this time of a police car burning up, but only in part, the rest undamaged, and no gasoline explosion. However, paper underneath the car and near the tires is not burning. This was common throughout ground zero – fires that burned but were not hot. Notice also that the fire stops exactly at the door gasket. Also very common. Nothing hit this car – it spontaneously combusted. Firefighters trying to find their way out were aided by cars that combusted. Pancake collapse does not explain this phenomenon.

image

Now, reader can question the validity of the photos, look for CGI, and come up with explanations that do not call into question the official government story about the 19 hijackers and a laptop in a cave (apparently an amazing one). That’s what skeptics do. And when you have an explanation, contact Dr. Judy Wood, as she wants to know. She collects evidence, but if she cannot explain it, she says so. She speculates, and so labels her thoughts as just that.

The second part is the Pumpkin Video. Briefly, I have had many head-slapping moments in this long exercise when some other person explains or exposes something, and I think “Ay carumba! Why did I not see that!” I am not a “researcher,” only a skeptic. My only original thought, from maybe 2002 and which led me down this path, was incredulity at the idea that people were making cell phone calls from airliners. The official story later changed about that – they do have that power to alter the “truth” as it moves about.

So I watched this video, and it never occurred to me that I was not looking at a pumpkin. That’s all they talked about throughout in the comments, so that my susceptibility to suggestion was triggered. Steve W said “Is that a pumpkin?” and I thought he was being sarcastic, but he wasn’t. Another head-slapping moment. Just as when it was pointed out to me that airliners cannot cut through steel like butter, I instantly realized, due to someone else’s sharp perceptions, that I’d been had.

It wasn’t hard, once the initial illusion was pierced, to see a telltale black outline around the van, and realize that it has been superimposed via CGI.

Something hit something. That’s all we know.
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I’ll embed the pumpkin video properly later when I am at my desk.

One true thing

The video of the plane hitting the south tower on 9/11 violates Newton’s Third Law, and therefore cannot have happened. It does not decelerate on impact, and the building, which has heavier mass, offers no resistance. What that plane did on that video is physically impossible. Therefore, the video, which is under the fold here, is fake. We have lots of technology, and did so then too. It is easily done.

Knowing one true thing does not always lead us to other truths, but does clear the air. Because we know one true thing, we also know that many, many things must be false.

If the video is fake, (so too is the one of the plane hitting the north tower), so too is the idea that these two planes were hijacked. (No plane = no hijackers.) If there were no planes, the explosions in the towers had to have been triggered by some other mechanism. If there were no hijackers, then this was not an Arab conspiracy, as Osama and the hijackers are the only Arab link. If there was no plane and no Arab hijackers, then U.S. attacks on the Arab world are unjustified aggression. If this the case, our leadership has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, including the most serious offense to come out of Nuremberg, aggressive war. If we can establish a link between the faked videos and our government, our leadership is culpable under our own and international law.

We may never know how 9/11 was done. They got away with it. It was a psychological and military operation, and it was skillfully pulled off, probably by a small cadre of well-placed people with many unwitting accomplices who are wisely unwilling to speak up. But by demonstrating one true thing, perhaps experts in the field of international law can bring a case at the Hague for prosecution of our officials at that time and those in office now and currently engaged in aggressive war. The Nuremberg punishment was death. They are certainly worthy of that sentence.

It’s a massive undertaking. The odds against success are enormous. But strutting about arguing over the events of that day, bombs and false witnesses and mini-nukes or directed energy devices, news network complicity and toasted cars and fake witnesses and all of that is academic. We’ll never know. But we do not need to understand the entirety of the crime to understand one true thing, and to judge from that thing that a crime was committed that led to many much worse crimes, and that people should be held accountable, as at Nuremberg.
Continue reading “One true thing” →

Wag the Dog

wag_the_dog_ver1This is from VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever, a large book we have on hand that gives capsule summaries of several thousand movies:

Wag the Dog **1/2 1997 (R) Based on the book “American Hero” by Larry Beinhart and adapted by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet. Over-the-top Hollywood producer (Hoffman) is hired by White House officials to stage a military attack against the U.S. to divert media attention from accusations that the President had fondled a Girl Scout. Show biz insiders say Hoffman’s Motss resembles one-time studio head Robert Evans; Washington insiders wonder if it’s a documentary. In fact, the entire film is one big insider’s joke. Luckily it’s smart enough , and short enough, to avoid becoming tiresome. Look for cameos by Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson. Filmed in a speedy 29 days at $15 million budget. 96 min. Dustin Hoffman, Robert DiNiro, Anne Heche, Woody Harrelson, Denis Leary, Willie Nelson, Suzanne Cryer, John Michale Higgins, Suzy Plakson, Kirstin Dunst, William H. Macy, Michael Belson. Director: Barry Levisnon.

I remember this movie so well – one, the big names that were part of it, two the incredible message: For events to be “real,” they do not have to actually happen. They only have to be on TV. Wag the Dog is a subversive movie that attempts to smuggle truth to the public, and also to have a good laugh at our expense. It struck a chord with me, DiNiro’s character, a CIA agent, saying in resignation at one point that “the war is over. I saw it on TV.”

The whole of the “war” was shot on a sound stage in Hollywood. Another group within the Pentagon or intelligence sees what is going on and decides to “end” the war, but it is resurrected again by the appearance of Woody Harrelson’s character, Sergeant William Schumann (“Old Shoe”) a supposed war hero actually retrieved from a mental institution. At one point Heche’s character is on a plane with DiNiro’s, and he’s explaining how reality is not really real, that television is our only reality. She mentions events like the Iranian Hostage crisis and the yellow ribbon phenomenon as an example of people rallying to support their government, and she gets a cold stare. “Oh my god, that too?”, she says. He does not answer.

In the movie, to make fun of the Yellow Ribbon scam, people are encouraged to throw old shoes up over power lines to show support for the military and its war in Albania. Harrelson’s character, Old Shoe, is a fake war hero supposedly rescued from behind enemy lines. Since he is actually crazy, he can’t be used in public and so is killed. Then a military funeral is staged vaguely reminiscent of the one that Ronald Reagan spoke at after 240 marines were blown to bits in Lebanon.

Hoffman’s character is so deriviative of Hollywood producer Robert Evans that Evans said “I’m magnificent in this film!” He is intent that his accomplishments be made public, and DeNiro reminds him not to toy with his life. He insists, and dies poolside of a heart attack.

Now and then in real life I see sneakers hanging from power lines, and realize there is an active subculture in this country that knows what is up. You might call it the “Sounds of Silence.” (It could also be kids having fun.)

Four years after this movie the U.S. would be subjected to a made-for-TV event, 9/11, which might be what led Washington insiders to speculate that the movie Wag the Dog was actually a documentary. It happened on TV, it is reality.

Tomato Guy and the Meaning of Life

My participation troophy
My participation troophy
Tomato Guy and I had it out yesterday and last night. Read at your own peril.

  • Tomato Guy: Shrill, man. You’re getting shrill.
  • MT: I hear ya. It gets frustrating. Lincoln talked about only being able to fool some of the people all of the time, but these Americans are walking wounded. They are barely aware of anything.
  • Tomato Guy: That’s really harsh. Just because they don’t agree with you doesn’t mean they are wrong.
  • MT: There are things that we can disagree on – it’s a very complicated world. I don’t have any answers on running an economy or a massive organization like the government. We try our best and accept failure and success and try to learn as we go. I’m talking about matters of water bring wet – we cannot disagree on hard evidence. Continue reading “Tomato Guy and the Meaning of Life” →

Tester does the Baucus shuffle on Bill Maher’s Real Time

Not shown:" Klieg lights, staff putting dirt on jacket, cameras, or the numerous retakes to get that homey image just right. Barn position is critical, as lines must lead our eyes to our man. The chimney is some kind of weird crown. The camera angle is upward.
Not shown: Klieg lights, staff putting dirt on jacket, cameras, or the numerous retakes to get that homey image just right. Barn position is critical, as lines must lead our eyes to our man. The chimney is some kind of weird crown. The camera angle is upward.
Montana Senator Jon Tester was a guest on Bill Maher’s Real Time recently, and Maher, though fairly clueless himself, asked some questions that Tester is not used to answering. One was about farm subsidies, to which Tester answered that he was against them for large corporations. This roughly translates to mean that he wants to keep his own, which he feels is justified. I doubt that’s ever been raised by a Montana journalist, but I am just guessing.

After the show there was an overtime segment in which Maher takes questions from viewers via the Internet. I recorded it below just to highlight the lightweight status of Bill Maher, who usually only finds out after a guest leaves that s/he lied or dissembled. In this case, Maher could easily have confronted Tester with the fact that he was a beneficiary of Citizens United, and owed his reelection to dark money, and is doing the Baucus shuffle, claiming not to know its origin.
Continue reading “Tester does the Baucus shuffle on Bill Maher’s Real Time” →

Frightened nation

Getting ready to board
Getting ready to board
It is a traveling day today. We are on our way to be frisked by TSA, who are only there to remind us that we should always be afraid. And indeed I am afraid, of TSA. The bastards have cold hands and get really officious sounding when I tell them to back off.

Which reminds me: There is speculation around about the reason for shutting off cell service while flying. The official reason is that it might interfere with airline navigation, which is complete hogwash. The real reason is obvious, to me anyway. The regulation came about after 9/11, and most likely is there so that people could not learn for themselves that cellular communication is impossible from moving aircraft.

Have a nice day, frightened nation! The TSA today will be fingering countless ball sacks in search of box cutters.

Why Gitmo?

Here’s a riddle, the answer to which might clear up a whole lot of foggy thinking. It is this: Why is there a prison at Guantanamo?

I don’t know the answer, but do know some non-answers:

  • It is not there to hold dangerous prisoners. The US routinely kills people it thinks dangerous. If they thought these people represented a true danger, they would have murdered them.
  • It is not due to alleged crimes. There are no such things as crimes in this current system, only punishment. The detainees are indeed being punished, but we do not know for what purpose.
  • They are not being held there for torture. They might indeed have been tortured, they might be running experiments on more effective techniques (in making lamp shades?), but if they wanted to torture these people, they would not choose a publicly known location. They would have done so at a secret site, and probably have.
  • They have not been sentenced, and will only stand trial under extreme publicity. Trials cannot be public! as they might talk about their treatment, or worse yet, the fact that they had no military intelligence value, calling into question, again, the real purpose(s) for the existence of this facility.

imageGiven what we know it is not, what could it be?

  • Precedent – it could be that Gitmo was set up to establish the sovereign right to capture and detain people and hold them without judicial proceeding. This is an important element of fascism – the all-powerful state cannot be held accountable.
  • They screwed up. They had ideas about running a secret torture facility there, but word got out and they had to operate it as a semi-public facility.
  • Training – it could be that the prisoners there are mere window dressing, and that the real purpose is to serve as a training facility for terrorists, agents provocateur, bomb specialists and infiltrators. (If a terrorist incident happens and appears to have no strategic or tactical consequence – say a market square bomb in Beirut – the odds are that western agents are behind it. Then it does make sense – to stir unrest, scare people, and justify intervention. Most of what we call terrorist bombings originate in Langley or MI5-6 or Tel Aviv and are pulled off by low-intelligence dupes like Shoe Bomber, acting under management of western intelligence.)

It must be clear here that I do not know the answer and if it is ever revealed will probably be as surprised as anyone. Furthermore, it could be a combination of factors, all of the above and then some.

The one constant is this: They lie. We are not told anything true about anything. So speculation, even if idle, is useful.
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Sara Flounders, the head of the International Action Center, says Washington’s series of overseas prisons helps the US sidestep the Geneva Convention on the use of torture against prisoners.

“The idea of holding prisoners around the world in secret detention was that they were therefore, according to their twisted logic, immune to any international law, human rights law or conventions that the US had signed,” Flounders said. “The UN report said 27,000 prisoners had been held by the US in secret prisons in of course Afghanistan, Iraq, countries throughout Middle East, countries throughout Europe, in Africa; on more than 17 US ships there were secret prisons,” she added. “So this is really part of a vast scale, of thousands of people being held with absolutely no rights whatsoever and being subject to horrendous torture.”

The U.S. is indeed over.