The eye-flick

Some years ago – it’s been over a decade – I had gotten to know a young film student at MSU in Bozeman, Montana. I don’t know how this came about other than her being a barista at the coffee shop we frequented. We attended the showing of her film along with many others at graduation that year – she was part of a group, and I have no memory of their film. Later, and again I do not know how it came about, I passed along to her a copy of the original slave narrative from the University of North Carolina that was the basis for the Hollywood treatment of the incident called Amistad. (It got a royal Spielberging, which is why I am reluctant to sit through his rendition of Lincoln.)

This incident comes to mind because of another memory: while waiting for her to serve my coffee one morning, she told me about a film being made about the Ottoman treatment of Armenians, which she called the “first genocide of the twentieth century.” I responded that, as I recalled from my own reading, the first genocide of that century was in the Philippines, and was carried out by the United States. Her eyes flickered – and it is that flicker I remember so well. She was not stupid or shallow – far from it. The movement of the eyes was a reflex reference to her intellectual framework – she had quickly scanned her knowledge base and come up empty. My reference to a “genocide” carried out by the United States was outside her realm of the possible. No doubt within 30 seconds the conversation left her mind, never to return.
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PSYOP

A few months back I reluctantly plunged headlong into the ongoing investigation by others into the events of 9/11/01. I say “reluctantly” not because I am on some mission, but rather because I know myself, my obsessive nature, and that I would be absorbed until spent. Below is a summary of my sifting of books, YouTubes, movies and interviews. There are tons of such platforms out there on this subject, and most of it is nonsense. There is a thread of substance weaving through it, serious people who have done serious work. But it’s hard to separate wheat from chaff.

I find a self-directed Q&A format an easy writing device. Here goes:

  • Q: Who did it?
  • A: Unknown. It’s much easier to say who did not do it, specifically, Osama bin Laden and those 20 others. But that is not the question to ask. First, we need to know what happened.
  • Q: It’s not obvious to you?
  • A: It appeared so. But it is not at all obvious. 9/11 was a large operation, both military and psychological – the preparation had to have taken years. There are many sub-operations within the events of that day – placement of Bush in the presidency, use of the news media to plant the ideas of “Al Qaeda,” “Osama bin Laden,” and “planes hitting buildings.”
  • Q: Osama didn’t do it?
  • A: It appears he was as surprised as all of us – that’s what I read in his final interview before he died in 2001. He was not terribly smart; apparently did not even know that the US was backing him as he fought the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. And anyway, he certainly did not have access to the resources necessary to shut down the national air defense system that day. But set that aside. The question is, again, what happened?
  • Q: So what happened?
  • A: Maybe two planes were taken off course. They didn’t hit anything.
  • Q: I saw them hit the buildings.
  • A: We all did. More on that later. Here is the key to 9/11 in my mind: There were a large number of military and civilian drills going on that day that distracted our people, used vital resources, sent F16’s off to Alaska, and confused everyone. The military does this on a regular basis to keep their people sharp. One of fifteen or so drills on 9/11/01 was a scenario where planes would be flown into the Twin Towers. As the day unfolded, NORAD and other personnel were looking at blips on radar screens they thought to be part of drills.

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Galileo in jail, Part II

As long as we are doing basic Newtonian physics here, there’s another aspect of 9/11 that violates his principles. The Pentagon was supposedly hit by an airliner that day, flown so close to ground level that it clipped light posts that were seen scattered about on the street and lawn.

Let’s do some basic math: The plane had just made an amazing maneuver prior to coming in, so let’s be charitable and say that it had slowed to a speed that the body of the plane could withstand at ground level, 300 mph. At that speed the object is moving at a rate of 440 feet per second. A football field is 120 yards long, including end-zones, or 360 feet. So imagine that you are sitting at ground level on the fifty yard line, and an object travels by … one-thousand-one – blink of an eye, it has traveled the length of the field and then some, hard to even see.

That is the speed of the plane as it hit the light posts. Newton’s third law* says that it does not matter what is in motion and what is stationary – the transfer of energy takes place and the object with the greater mass will prevail. In this case, it is either the aluminum wings of a jet airliner, so light that, as we have all seen, there are warnings painted on them telling maintenance staff not to walk on them, or the light posts. Those light posts are made of steel, I would guess a 1/4″ or 3/8″ hollow tube, and fastened in place usually by four very heavy bolts. The transfer of energy takes place, the light posts absorb some of it, but the wings take a beating, are probably sheared off, and end up somewhere on the lawn of the Pentagon.

But they are gone, nowhere to be seen. The official story says that the building absorbed them, that itself impossible, but second in line on that list.
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Better equipment allows better knowledge, and deception

We watched an interesting episode of NOVA last night, this one dealing with the history of the telescope. Current NOVA’s are hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, our modern-day Carl Sagan, or public interface with science. Sagan reminded us in his many writings that people have not gotten smarter over the centuries, but merely have better instruments available to observe natural phenomena. With better tools we make better observations.

Part of the episode was devoted to the tribulations of Galileo Galilei, the 17th century astronomer. He was found “vehemently suspect of heresy” in 1633, and put under house arrest with the understanding that he could be imprisoned or executed at any time. His crime, advocacy of heliocentrism, was really nothing more than subterfuge for enforcement of a larger regime, thought control, by the Catholic Church. The church was the predominant military and financial power center of that time. These were not stupid people, and church insiders were probably no less convinced than Galileo of the essential integrity of his work.

One talking head during the episode remarked that people were not “dumb” back then, the pretext being that we have advanced so much that incidents like the imprisonment of Galileo do not happen anymore. That is not true. Nothing could be further from the truth, in fact. We have not changed an iota.

I am not Galileo, and have no pretense or delusions about great intellectual abilities. My advantage over others is simply my situation in life – I cannot lose my job or pension, and don’t care (too much) about ridicule if I think I am right. The opinion of others is important to me, but my own personal integrity far more so. In fact, my internal constitution will not allow me to profess to believe things that I know are not true. Self-employment, or personal freedom, does that to a person.

As a person of average intellect but more than average freedom, I can easily see that 9/11 was an inside job. All I had to do was expose myself to the evidence. So too can many others, but in their positions will lose their jobs, their lives, fortunes and sacred honor if they go public. If nothing else, they will be ridiculed, and if a public person, marginalized. The United States security state is every bit as oppressive as the Catholic Church of the seventeenth century.

Below the fold is a YouTube. It a snippet from is what is called the “Hezarkhani video.” It was shown late on the evening of September 11, 2001 by CNN. It is fake. It took all day to put it together. Hezarkhani had his camera in place when bombs when off at a predetermined location on the tower, and the image of the plane flying through the building, absorbed as if into a sponge, was added later by technicians using software widely available at that time.

This is where mere bonehead science enters the discussion. What happens in the video cannot happen for real. The plane is made mostly of aluminum, and the wings are especially weak, like beer cans. The building is concrete and steel. It does not matter if a plane flying at 560 mph (itself impossible) hit the building, or the building hit the plane at that speed – the plane would be demolished and the streets below would be littered with wreckage, bodies, luggage and kerosene. The building would sustain slight damage, as it is designed like a spider web to spread the impact of such a force. People would have been hurt and killed, fire would have burned until available fuel was used up, and nothing further.

The Hezarkhani video is a jumping off place for anyone of a scientific bent with just a modicum of natural skepticism. Since what happens in that video violates Newton’s third law, then other videos, photos, and testimony of talking heads must also be false. And in fact, diligent investigators have combed through the lists of eyewitnesses to talk to people who actually saw a plane hit the building that day. Other than those connected to news networks or government agencies and paid actors featured prominently in on-the-street interviews that day, there was but one person. One.

Anyway, click below to watch the video, or not. I assume you won’t. I don’t need a lot of science to understand why not, either. I’ve been reading about this phenomenon for twenty years, writing about it for six. It is the effect of social forces on individual thought patterns and perceptions. We don’s see with our eyes alone. We are quite suggestible, and see with the whole of our minds, often overriding visual evidence provided by our sight mechanism. It’s a hard way to live, friend, much harder than openly describing what is seen. I don’t envy you.
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Coming soon to your town: “The Fiscal Cliff”

Obama seems to be that type of personality that lights up when adulation comes his way. He naturally gravitates towards the speaker’s podium. We have projected leadership qualities on him based on that carefully crafted image, but what we really have there is a mystery. (The fact that we cannot view his college transcripts is weird.)

The expression “The White House” usually refers to some faceless executive branch operative. “Obama” is, in the public mind, the person exerting control over that vast apparatus. Whatever he may be underneath, Obama is the mask of power. He is probably a ribbon cutting teleprompter reader, but “Obama”and “The White House” are useful shorthand. Do not confuse words with reality.

Obama and the White House are controlled by “Wall Street,” another shorthand term which refers to the financial oligarchy* that operates behind politics. There are many familiar names and faces, and many more we do not know. (I doubt the Koch brothers ever wanted a high profile.) Perhaps the “New York-London financial axis” helps to illuminate the arrangement.

Obama is a “Wall Street Democrat,” that is, his party is a mask of a faction of the oligarchy. Republicans are but another faction. Each of these factions has attached themselves to various elements of the general population. It appears that Democrats have a more successful formula right now, and that Republicans are doomed to be the party of religious zealots, rednecks and the racist south. But they are smart, and will soon rebrand.

The stakes are very high during electoral contests, which is why the oligarchy is willing to invest billions of dollars in office holders. The White House and the Congress offer a pathway to the Treasury, the commons, the law enforcement and securities regulation apparatus, and of course, The Pentagon.
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Stupid me goes to a Bond movie … stupid stupid stupid!

What he said.

What am I doing going to a Bond movie anyway? In the opening scenes Bond is shot in the shoulder, yet functions as if not even wounded. A bullet to that part of the body is disabling and recovery will take months. Later he is shot again, falls several hundred feet and lands on water, surviving. In movies, you see, water is soft. In real life, it is like landing on concrete.

It is Bond, I know. I was only there because I had time to kill before catching a flight and didn’t want to be at an airport.

Javier Bardem reprises his Anton Chigurh role (No Country for Old Men, a villain done right), this time as a blond. He overacts, or is over-directed. He works too hard at being bad rather than just letting it come out naturally. As Coren mentions, (link above) a young woman is first molested by Bond after showing no interest in him, and then is murdered after a terrifying ordeal in which men are shooting at a whiskey shot glass on her head, the name of the whiskey featured prominently. She is gut shot! It is a horrible, slow and agonizing way to die, and you have to wonder if Bond is sad that he can’t bang her again.

If only it stopped there … there are public hearings about secret intelligence, a subway disaster where not one victim is shown, and at least six security guards murdered like so many pawns … cars drive through crowded markets as if people did not matter. Do you ever wonder, like me, how long it takes the poor vegetable stand owner to recover his losses after Bond rolls over him in his Aston Martin? What about wrecked and stolen cars and cycles? It’s a police report/insurance claim nightmare.

And then the come final scenes at Skyfall. I can’t tell you much about that, however, as watching planes take off and land had more appeal at that point. What is it about movie critics? Journalists can’t do journalism in this country. That’s understood. Have critics gone down that road? Are they afraid to tell us when a movie is bad? Will they too lose their jobs if they do their jobs?

Maybe they are perception managers. If 94% of them say they liked it, will people imagine they liked it when they really didn’t?

Two faces of our one party

Jon Tester owes his election to some big money that came out of unknown places for a final slam before election day. The mis-named League of Conservation Voters ran a series of ads, really effective ones, urging voters to support Libertarian Dan Cox.

Cox’s support swelled from one percent to over 6 per cent, and that was enough to put Tester over the hump. It was a maneuver that even Max Baucus, the ultimate last-minute campaign snatcher, had to admire.

Where did the money come from? A group calling itself Montana Hunters and Anglers Leadership Fund fronted for the donor(s), and that money was funneled through the “League of Conservation Voters,” a group that has long backed anti-environment Democrats.

Jon Tester has been ineffective so far in advancing his “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,” a timber lobby-backed bill that would be a death knell for Montana’s remaining roadless lands. Developers and roadless backers have long been stalemated, a good thing. But lack of formal roadless designation meant that the lands were always in a precarious state. Tester is but the latest senator to attack them.
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Chainsaw Jon Tester

The greatest threat now, with reelection of Jon Tester to the Senate, is an attack on national forests and wilderness areas that he is spearheading. Because he is a Democrat, there is reflexive support behind him. Fortunately, most Democrats have headed back to football and Jersey Shores (“our work here is done”) but the professionals are still hard at it. (Had Dennis Rehberg been elected, the timber lobby bill, called the “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, would likely have come from another quarter under another name, perhaps Ron Wyden. But the burden now falls on Tester.)

These are dangerous times, and as with all political disputes it sometimes feels like end times. But it is not. It is merely time to redouble and organize. The two most effective forces in fighting for Montana’s wild lands are Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Matt Koehler’s Wild West Institute. These groups are information clearing houses, a source of professional organizing and a good gathering place for activists. I’ll be following their activities closely, and this blog is open to them for announcements and articles, such as it is.

I find myself wishing that I was still a Montana resident as I hear the words “It’s on” in the back of my mind. Democrats are trying to lure environmentalists into their camp. Here’s an appeal from Polish Wolf:

This is but one iteration of the biggest problem facing the environmental movement in the coming decades: breaking the perception (and the reality, where it exists) that environmentalism means preserving nature close to wealthy, largely white populations even at the economic, social, and health expense of poorer communities and countries.

One, he speaks presumptuously, as if he is part of “the environmental movement,” and two seeks to draw our attention away from the only place where organized opposition to Tester has meaningful consequence: his back yard. Tester has his chain saw fired up. Polish Wolf is urging American environmentalists to head off to Ghana and get busy being inconsequential. At home we are a pain in the ass for the timber lobby and their tool.

It would be helpful if we could get some reflexive support from Republicans, as the two-party framework suggests we should. But oddly that doesn’t happen in environmental matters.

Zombieland

It gets tiresome. There’s no substance! It’s a fricking desert out there!

People are now analyzing election results and vote-counting. Some elections are “very important” but we don’t really know why. Control of Congress is a big issue, especially the Senate, but we don’t know why!

The Democrats will soon vote to allow continuation of the filibuster rule, thereby negating their majority. Obama will now openly pursue the Neocon agenda, including aggressive war, torture, detention and attacks on civil liberties. The mere label “Democrat,” the thinnest of disguises, hides it from view.

Next comes austerity, including attacks on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. In 2014 we’ll be forced to pay exorbitant premiums to private corporations for crappy insurance and we will no longer be allowed to talk about it. That is settled, now, and health care is fixed. (Remember they said that we need to pass that crappy bill so we can come back and fix it later? It’s just a start, they said. Force that issue on them, demand that they start fixing it. See where it gets you.)

It is all happening before their eyes, and they are happy about it! At least the mean old Republicans didn’t win those doggoned elections!!! Sheeeeit! Republicans really would have screwed us!

The following is called “show business.”

Trust me. Karl Rove is not unhappy about this election. The Neocons are still in charge. This is, as I understand it, being called a “meltdown.” It’s nothing of the kind. It’s actually nothing. As with Howard Dean’s “I have a scream” speech, without TV anchors to explain our perceptions to us, we don’t know what to think. And when Karl Rove is unhappy (he’s not even a very good actor), then Democrats know they should be happy. Do you ever feel even a tad manipulated?

TV is not a source of news. It is our reality. We are a mindless nation of zombie-followers. I’m 62. There are far more people who are younger than me than older. But if you have by chance been around longer, please tell me: Has it always been like this? Have Americans always been this way?

Election reflection

I maintain that in an oligarcy such as ours, elections are nothing more than a pressure relief valve. Yesterday felt like January 1, hangovers all about. All of the celebrations of November 6 has all of the impact of a New Year’s Eve party. Back to work now. Nothing has changed, folks.

2006 was a referendum on Iraq, and Democrats took control of the House and effectively the Senate, and thereafter funded a “surge,” or expansion of that war. In 2008 the Democrats took control of the executive, and effectively had a “veto-proof” senate*, and thereafter became the party of aggressive war, terror, military spending, torture, Gitmo and other secret prisons, tax cuts, indefinite detention and even assassination of Americans. Obama has transformed the party in total to its perceived opposite.

All indications now are that in addition to all of this, the Democrats will now become the austerity party. It is an Orwellian body snatch, so perhaps you can understand how, on Tuesday evening as I saw the happy faces and wild celebrations, I thought of Donald Suherland letting out that awful howl, and turned to an old episode of Spin City. At least that show is reality-based.
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