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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A glimmer of hope

Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana in last night’s otherwise pointless election. It’s a futile gesture, as Obama and the Neocons will not ease up on pot. There’s a simple reason: It is too powerful a tool in the hands of police to give up easily.

Marijuana is everywhere. I don’t indulge, but if I wanted to it would be easily attainable. Cops know this, and do not care. The reason for prohibition is just that – it is widely available and widely used, so that they can selectively enforce the law against selected victims. It is generally aimed at minorities but any of us are vulnerable. It is a tool of tyrants – to find something everyone does, make it illegal, and arrest selected subjects.

For that reason it is easy to see that the government in Washington will ignore last night’s referenda.
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I had an attack on Budge up here, and it was quite a bit of fun thinking of new words for the miserable bastard, but took it down out of respect for my daughter, who I am having lunch with. She said I should never call anyone a dickless douche, b-alless cheese wad, or miserable bag of blood and bones. She’s right of course.

Election update #17

David Sirota listed at least a dozen issues that Obama and Romney are identical on, and not small matters. Both are war hawks, both will attack Social Security and Medicare, carry on with the fake drug war, fake terrorism scares at home, tax cuts and austerity. And yet, as I watched all of the cheers and beers last night, I realized again the power of American propaganda. Illusions are far more powerful than reality. Democrats really were scared of Romney and the mean old Republicans. The really cannot see – genuinely cannot see – the real agenda.

Please don’t get on me for being omniscient and better than you and stuff. It is what it is. It takes a special event, a flash of light, a new view on an old movie, to see what is all around you. Thought control is a powerful tool. After Sirota did his list, people still called in and insisted that there were “real and important” differences. When asked what they were, it was really weird. They were not specific – they only spoke in vague generalities. It’s real, they insisted. They did not know why. It’s just real. It is their reality.

Oh well. It must be advancing age. It’s probably always been like this and I was just blind to it. The turning point for me was reading “Propaganda” by Jacques Ellul back in the late 90’s. Only then did I begin to see the massive apparati that control our perceptions. Many (including Ellul) think it is done for benign reasons, and it true that in spite of it all, we have had some good leaders over the decades. Napoleon remarked that people simply do not want to be free. But it appears that with the Joe McCarthy charade and the infestation of our minds with anticommunism n the 1950’s that there has been a conscious fear regime used to assure support for American aggression all over the globe. Chomsky says that the government views the American people as “the domestic enemy,” and works to keep us under thumb along with every other enemy. Last night, I saw no domestic threats to existing power.

Our best hope is credible enemies to keep our troops parked at home. I see the rise of China and Russia as a good thing for world peace, and resistance movements in Latin America, Greece and some Mideastern countries as a sign of perpetual hope. People are born free. They have to be taught to live under tyrant regimes and better yet, imagine that they are free as their minds are enslaved. American indoctrination starts at a very young age, so I don’t see much hope here. But we are not the world. Others are not controlled by fear and yearn for real freedom, and are willing to spend blood to achieve it. Last night the lantern flickered and went out here in the Land of the Free, but it still burns bright elsewhere. Obama now sets out for four more years of house-to-house light-dousing.

The fight goes on.

Election update #5

Tosh had some good footage of a Jamaican gal doing some really erotic dancing. He gets away with a lot. Channing Tatum is rumored to be this year’s sexiest man alive. The Red Sox have shown interest in Torii Hunter, Rob Bradford of WEEI.com reports. Hunter, a free agent, has previously expressed interest in playing in Boston alongside David Ortiz. Hillary Clinton goes on record as opposing extremist elements taking control of the Syrian government. She does not name names, winking, but “Al Qaeda” is not on her list. American voting machines are really easy to hack.

Greece is grinding to a halt. That, friends, is how democracy works. What we have here … I don’t know what to call it. The United States is a silly place. Greeks could learn us a thing or two.