Friday, April 27, 2018

Does Anyone Really Believe This BS?

When you look at the stories that started with the "poisoning" of Mr. Skripal and his daughter through the alleged "gas attack" you have, on the face of it without even thinking about evidence, a kind of a Lucy and Ethel show, or a Laurel and Hardy routine or, even more, a Three Stooges in charge of the world scenario--the stories are absolutely ridiculous. The more you look into it the worse it appears--hey here's an idea you Ruskies--if you want to kill someone--throw them out of a high building or maybe just shoot them--ever think of that? The utter contempt both the National Security State (the British State is fully owned by Washington) and the mainstream media hold for us is, at this point, astonishing. The State has put out some clearly false stories in the past but they had some surface possibility of being true. But not these stories--only those whose salaries, in the media, depend on them consistently and constantly "believing" these stories have gotten ahead in the mainstream media--those who actually reported the truth, if it varied with State Narratives, lost their careers and credibility and the same hold true today.

You expect the State to lie and craft self-serving Narratives, and I expect the media to echo them faithfully but the amateur quality of these stories broadcasts two possibilities. The first is that the intel people have not even bothered to create a sensible Narrative because they are incompetent or just high on drugs or alcohol. The second, is that they are trying to make ever more outrageous stories to see how far they can go in trumping reality. If they say, for example, that shit is cheese and people start eating shit as a result--that's the final destination of this bullshit. 

Reader, you ought to feel insulted--you need to take this personally and understand that these Gauleiters of the Ministry of Truth increasingly resemble cartoon Nazis under Herr Goebbels. This is the level we have descended to--we have Donald Trump as POTUS and a Congress filled largely with hacks in the pay of various industries who preside over a State that depends on permanent war to stay in power and we tolerate it--doesn't that say something about us--you and me?

There are a hundred different ways to remedy this in all areas of our lives that would free up resources from what are, essentially, corporate gangsters who care NOTHING WHATEVER about their fellow citizens. They aren't "job-creators" they are oligarchs who use government to enforce their monopolies, eliminate competition, and bribe regulatory agencies. We can do nothing at all unless we start to remove ourselves from the propaganda from the "news" industry and, even more importantly, the entertainment industries that create a largely false view of the world and where we form our mythological framework--we must understand how important myth is particularly the myth of "good guys" vs. "bad guys" this is not only obviously false but deeply toxic--for it creates in our mind a whole series of associations. We think we live in a "dangerous" world but the danger, as far as I can see, only comes from those who try to convince us it is a dangerous world and keep repeating this mantra in the media. Thus we need to spend twelve times what the Russians spend on the military to protect us--really? And we refuse to look at where the money goes--why does it take that much money? Why does every part of our political economy cost so much particularly education, health-care and "defense"? Why do are we among the slowest in internet speeds and highest in costs around the world--we invented the internet didn't we? Why aren't you asking these questions? Not wanting to think about it isn't going to help you when you have a tapeworm in your gut.

Our capitalist corporate sector is no longer fueling innovation--it is resisting it because free money and restricted markets (in most not all sectors) is where it's at. They are now parasites looking for angles, fixes--they are no different from the mafias that live in the underground economy. The NY City mobs made their payoffs through certain fixed races at the various racetracks. This is how many NYC politicians made money for European trips, expensive mistresses and so on back in the day--I don't know if that still goes on but that's the way it was when I was familiar with the scene. 

Monday, April 23, 2018

Some Thoughs on Conspiracy Theories

The term “conspiracy theory” was invented by the CIA in order to ridicule people who questioned the Warren Report on the Assassination of JFK. The implication is that those who believe, as anyone who has studied history, that conspiracies are part of the reality of Washington politics are fruitcakes, tin-foil hat wearing psychotics and so on. In this way a large chunk of real politics is automatically eliminated from consideration in the media and “polite society.” One the main ways this notion was transmitted to the “liberal” public was an article (and later a book) “The Paranoid Style of America Politics” by Richard Hofstadter in 1964 which critiqued right-wing populism in general as if they were a result of paranoid fantasies—this latter theme was picked up by the psyops department of the CIA in 1967 to establish this idea in the press (which, through “Operation Mockingbird” the CIA partly controlled).

Since then the term has been used for anyone who believes or reports on conspiracies within the federal government. The idea is now universally accepted by most of the left and right in America and only flourishes on the populist right and left who don’t care if the mainstream media approve or don’t approve of them. Those who are, for example, on the “left” even radicals avoid questioning the official Narratives of the great events of our time particularly those events that made a big difference like the assassinations of the 60s, 9/11, and many other events. No matter how compelling the evidence most political commentators and reporters will not even acknowledge or dialogue with someone who brings it up. If I believe, as I stated and insisted on, that the political assassination of the 60s were hits ordered by the government or elements within the government that evidence is not addressed but actively avoided by nearly all the left whether its Noam Chomsky or Chris Hedges or Amy Goodman—they will not go there. Yet, it seems to me that if there is evidence that a sitting U.S. President was assassinated by a segment of the State as a coup d’etat, which is what I claim, then it ought to be at least considered. But even in private conversations with people who have no reason to defend the official story, particularly if they are left-wing American intellectuals, the evidence will be dismissed regardless of how compelling it is. In fact, no books relating to the Assassinations are ever reviewed by any major media outlet or even small magazines. All scholarly research on the subject is dismissed as “conspiracy theory” and ascribed to mental illness or “sensationalism” to sell books which is obviously absurd since no book that even questions small details of the Warren Commission conclusion gets reviewed while ANY book that backs up the Warren Report (there are very few) will get glowingly reviewed by the usual hack book-reviewers. No purely scholarly examination of the Assassinations or 9/11 is allowed in the American Academy.

The mainstream argument shared by all but left and right populists (and very few of those) is that it is impossible for government officials to conspire to break the law because our system “works” to keep serious hanky-panky at bay because, if anything shady happened the press would find out and, since they always wanted to publish an exciting story they’d be on it. Of course that ignores the reality of “the street” and the fact a low-status reported is not going to ignore the fact that anyone who steps out of line in his/her profession is not every going to work again—or if that reported is really obstinate and won’t listen to reason then other fates await. The mainstream media is and has been pretty much captured by the National Security State and thus they are singing from the same song sheet. If the State (here I mean the permanent government aka “the Deep State”) wants people to believe that Trump  (there has been none so far) elected because of Russian collusion (whatever that means) there is no reason to ask for evidence—if they say there was collusion then there is collusion. If the State wishes to bomb Syria they accept that Assad, in order to seize defeat out of the jaws of victory, gassed residents of Douma for no sane military reason but just because he is a “monster” that needs to be exterminated which is how the American media tends to categorize anyone who does not follow orders from Washington. There was no evidence for this assertion but there were procedures to go and find evidence—instead bombing commenced without proof of anything simply because the government and its propaganda organs decreed that it happened and that declaration, like the official story of the Assassinations, has to be true because, well just because. And as the Red Queen said sentence first and verdict later. These assertions from the U.S. government of 100 major news outlets in the USA not one questioned the State’s assertions despite the startingly obvious fact that Assad had to be crazy to gas people for no reason—just to be cruel—and the fact is that Mr. Assad had been under attack by hired Jihadis and other soldiers (many of the soldiers in ISIS were mercenaries looking to loot and rape) and endless supply of money for insurgents from Saudi Arabia and material and logistical support from the U.S., Britain, Turkey, and Israel and yet, Mr. Assad still has triumphed and what I’m saying here would be considered a “conspiracy theory” because I’m using reason and evidence which is not allowed in propaganda.

The most obvious and now generally accepted notion of a conspiracy is the attack on Iraq in 2003. The lead up to the war featured clearly false planted stories of how dangerous Saddam Hussein was to the world. The Blair government in the UK claimed Brits were threatened with nuclear attack while those with intimate knowledge of the situation, like Scott Ritter, said 99% of all “WMDs” were accounted for by the inspection regime. Ritter was told by CNN execs if he said that publicly he would be banned from all media outlets despite his celebrity status as a hero of sorts—and, in fact, Ritter was airbrushed from not only all of the media but history itself. That was a conspiracy—the media claims it actually believed the government but I know for a fact they knowingly published false information. Later they said, as they always say after the usual catastrophe, that “everyone” believed the fake stories—well I didn’t because I checked the assertions the best I could and was sure the stories were fabrications. In the same way, financial journalists claimed they “no one” knew the 2008 financial crisis was going to happen when I know for a fact that if they talked to people on Wall Street (which is supposed to be their job) they would have known what was going to happen. How do I know this? Because I talked to a Wall Street insider in 2006 and he told me that a lot of people knew the bubble would crash but in the meantime they would ride it out for awhile—and he directly cited these fraudulent credit-default swaps that are still raising heck with some banks (like Deutchebank) to this day.

If you’ve read this far, you probably suspect that the official stories are probably there to deceive us and you would be right. A look at the evidence of the President Kennedy hit is obvious. Whether it is the magic bullet, or the absurd notion that the alleged rifle was used—which was not a rifle anyone would use or could use to fire those shots or the hurry by the coup plotters to remove the body from Dallas by the use of force to dozens of other proofs of the absurdity of the official story—like motive. I don’t want to go into. You can do your own research. I will mention only one actual case because it is easy and simple to describe. In the RFK murder the “conspiracy” part of all this is very obvious Sirhan Sirhan was found guilty of killing Senator Kennedy—only he could not have done so—and the evidence is a smoking gun. The official Coroner’s report in the case which was actually entered into evidence but ignored said that the fatal shots were fired at near point-blank range (powder burns) to the back of the Senator’s head from someone who below pointing upward. Since Kennedy was facing Sirhan who was no closer than 2.5 feet according to witnesses he could not have killed Senator Kennedy—not only that but he could not have fired 13 shots from an 8 shot revolver as recorded by sound analysis and witnesses who the shots sounded like “firecrackers” which meant that there was more than one gun since no one can fire a .22 revolver to mimic the sound of firecrackers. If what I say is true (and you can check for yourself) then this involved, cops, prosecutors, public officials, the judge and the defense attorney.

Yes, the U.S. news media companies do act together no so much in a “conspiracy” as such but as a consortium. They are a conspiracy however when the plot together with the government to enable illegal activity such as war (all recent wars have been technically illegal under U.S. and international law), non-reporting of corrupt illegal activity both in government and the private sphere. Without understanding that powerful people and groups conspire to get an advantage and to it ALL THE TIME, every day, all day long. As we speak there are plots within governments, within corporations, NGOs, and so on—in fact anywhere there are large scale rewards. This is why the drug-war has stimulated the drug trade and the corruption of police officers and DEA agents and to think that war, drugs and human trafficking do not stimulate crimes and conspiracies in the USA.

Without understanding what happened in 1963 and 1968 and investigating those cases you cannot possibly understand politics since then or politics now. I think one of the main reasons why the left in American died and was resurrected as the Republican Party of the 50s (corporate Democrats as personified by the Clinton wing and the Congressional leadership) is that even radicals refused to understand that the coup of 1963 had deep effects on public policy. The “left” that is those to the left of even the left part of the Democratic Party like Chomsky and his acolytes complicit with the mainstream Narrative because they believe that not going along with the mainstream Narrative would mean they are being discredited and the public, utterly hypnotized by the mainstream Narrative, would discredit them. Well, they have no power anyway so that’s a dead-end. I’ve run into this consistently in the past decade and a half where any major question of the mainstream Narrative on left-leaning sites means you’re banned for life. I had this happen to me on the Naked Capitalism site where they sid, in so many words, the didn’t want to lost the attention of the Obama White House who was reading them—Yves, who runs the site, was gloating over how the blog was being read by public officials and didn’t want to be undermined by conspiracy theorists. Ultimately, I was kicked out because I insisted on two things—first the RFK murder as evidence for the existence of a conspiracy that goes beyond RFK, and second for insisting on the term “deep politics” and “the Deep State” the last of which is no in common use on the Naked Capitalism site. NC is typical of left wing sites that strain to be “respectable” they do their good deed by presenting some ideas unlikely to be in the mainstream media but won’t allow us to color leftists are always worried about what the mainstream media will say so they soft-pedaled their opposition to imperialism and oligarch. Well the fact is the left has had NO voice whatsoever—the only “debates” were between corporate pro-war Democrats and corporate pro-war Republicans and the anti-imperial, pro-class struggle Democrats went the way of Bernie Sanders who was cheated out of the nomination and told the STFU,  he did—he has family.

It seems creating fables our of events and ignoring even the most obvious bits of evidence would be hard to get away with. However, what the State does realize is that public opinion is pretty easy to regulate—to put it bluntly—the majority of Americans want to be told what to believe. In order to have an orderly life conformity to some accepted “norm” is very important to all people. No matter how absurd the belief, if the rest of your community believes in a lie and saying the lie is a lie would banish you from family, friendships, jobs and so on it is a bit irrational to believe in the truth and most people choose not to believe in the truth—I believe this is unconscious but also conscious. I’ve had some people with graduate degrees from top universities say something to the effect that even if what I say is true—they refuse to believe it. A sure way to clear a room is to say 9/11 was in “inside job” you can trot out all the evidence you want and most people you know, even if they agree with you in private, and they’ll still not want to hear it.

Do We Want to Be Happy?

Many people and perhaps most people would answer that they do want to be happy. However, most of us lack the understanding of what it takes to be happy and, even worse, society's values today steer us in the opposite direction.

There is such a thing as "happiness studies" that spells out pretty clearly the factors that make us happy. Money, up to a certain point, can make us happy because we can let go of fears of homelessness, sickness, not being able to pay bills and so on. We live in a society that valorizes wealth over all other consideration since another basis of our society is not to trust anyone money/wealth also insulates us from dangers from others. We all know that if we have a legal problem money will fix most of them--we simply don't have anything resembling "equal justice under law" as a practical matter. We may daydream that our culture is what the propaganda says it is but anyone who understand life at the "street level" knows that's bullshit. 

So should we pursue money if we don't have a surplus of it? That's a powerful question and it depends on what you have to do to get it. And therein lies a moral problem that could crimp your happiness--if you have to do things you don't believe in or work for a toxic corporation whose effects in society are very negative then this is going to weigh on you despite the money and your happiness is unlikely to increase. 

But the studies on happiness universally tell us that cultivating mindfulness, gratitude, forgiveness, and kindness will increase our happiness quite a lot. Focusing on making myself happy will tend to do the opposite because happiness comes from doing what you can to help others and those qualities listed above will tend to do that. We also know from the work of Victor Frankl that "meaning" is critically important--do we have a purpose of mission in life? We also know from humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow who studied the most "exemplary" (people like Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass people of his time to find out what made them function so well and came up with his "hierarchy of needs" which has stood the test of time. 

Now, what is "self-actualization"? It is much the same as "Self-realization" of the Vedantists and such people have the following characteristics:
  1. Self-actualized people embrace the unknown and the ambiguous.
  2. They accept themselves, together with all their flaws.
  3. They prioritize and enjoy the journey, not just the destination.
  4.  While they are inherently unconventional, they do not seek to shock or disturb.
  5. They are motivated by growth, not by the satisfaction of needs.
  6. Self-actualized people have purpose.
  7. They are not troubled by the small things.
  8. Self-actualized people are grateful.
  9. They share deep relationships with a few, but also feel identification and affection towards the entire human race.
  10. Self-actualized people are humble.
  11. Self-actualized people resist enculturation.
  12. Despite all this, self-actualized people are not perfect.
If we think about this we can see how this makes sense--this is the highest level of being as described by Maslow but that doesn't tell us how we get there. We know, however, how not to get there and the ills that are caused by unhappiness, depression, anxiety and toxic addictions. And here we need to talk about the social sphere.

I urge people to investigate what causes happiness and work in that direction. The longest longitudinal study on health and happiness/life satisfaction was the Harvard Study of Adult Development that began in 1938 and is still ongoing. For a TED talk on this go here. Many other studies have produced similar results. Today there are other things you can do to improve your feelings of happiness and decrease your stress level to insure depression and anxiety aren't your constant companions. These things come to three major areas--first to cultivate close intimate relationship, second, to give to others, that is, to put a priority on giving in your own way, and third is to focus on the small things, the scent of a flower, the feeling of wind on your legs, taking a bath, and nurturing yourself as best you can--not through an ambitious exercise program, but through what comes natural to you. We need to start with children--I regret I didn't even think of this so wrapped up was I in me, me, me. And, on a larger level, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is worth considering.

My question to all of you is, have you noticed, that our culture is generally opposed to most of the things that make us happy? Have you noticed that our culture valorizes competition over compassion, revenge over listening, war as the answer to anything, lies created to alienate us from each other, medical care using the model that we are a machine not a unit and so on?

Thursday, April 19, 2018

People of the Lie

Of course, all this bullshit can't go on very much longer. Societies must have common Narratives and mythological frameworks in order to have common currency with ones fellows. The smiley face that signifies America is looking worn. We are deeply divided along various tribal lines and sub-tribal lines--just like high school really. And like in high school, we have not the slightest clue about the notion of critical thinking or, for that matter, anything beyond the superficialities. The mainstream media that has been proven wrong about what is going on time after time after time after time after time is still believed by most people. Their commentators that have been proven wrong time after time after time get to stay and are promoted while those who are right are fired or demoted. Only lies are accepted. If events like the obviously phony "gas attacks" which are so audaciously false on the face of it kind of fade from the news when they are debunked though the debunking stories are never published. The mainstream media presstitutes don't even bother to say, as the great Emily Littella used to say "never mind" when shown by Chevy Chase that her elaborate story could not possibly be true. 

One of the truest political statements was by Walt Kelly of Pogo fame--one of the best comic series ever created--that statement was "We have met the enemy and the enemy is us." To me this means, in today's cultural/economic/political milieu that while most of our major public and private institutions are increasingly authoritarian, corrupt, and deeply malevolent the fact is that we actually want it that way. We want to be lied to by the mainstream media--we don't want to know that we are the, by far, major cause of war, violence, corruption, anti-democratic regimes around the world--we don't want to know that we claim to be "spreading democracy" but are spreading, for the most part, the opposite of not just democracy but governments that care for their people. 

Like all groups of marks, chumps and suckers the American people are so embarrassed at spending trillions on wars that are fought mainly to use up armaments that to even admit that would cause great emotional pain and we wouldn't have the energy to lick the ass of our bosses every day to keep our families unlimited cell-phone plans. Every study about everything you can imagine, health-care, education, transportation, the military, mental-health, drug policies, prisons, the courts and justice system, police, energy and power sector, the FIRE sector (our most powerful sector second only to the Military Industrial Complex ill of these and more are run in wasteful and impractical and unscientific ways. All of those areas all have solutions to lower costs, improve services and outcomes that would greatly outstrip where we are now. For example, our health-care system that features rationing by income that does not cover everyone costs twice the OECD average. Most of the money goes to a combination stupid and outdated procedures and paradigms (using drugs to treat everything) and blatant corruption. 

As I said, we don't want to hear about it. People with new pragmatic solutions are demoted and those with the ability to lie creatively are promoted and celebrated at least at higher levels. Generally speaking, for example, the maximum rank of an honorable military officer is Colonel. Higher than that rank and anyone honest won't survive. Usually what people do is they are "good" in their family life and "bad" in their job justifying themselves by saying the are doing it for the children. Thus if any SS officer would have felt at home in our covert services. 

M. Scott Peck wrote a book that shocked the people that read his famous book The Road Less Travelled that book was called People of the Lie and faced squarely the problem of evil. Americans don't like to think about evil in their lives. Evil is a term reserved for "them" whether its Russia, or Muslims, or some public figure like Trump. Peck saw this evil alive in some people he encountered in his practice and the stories in his book are chilling and though I believe "Evil" as such is a spiritual energy I don't believe people are ever Evil--they are organisms wherein Evil makes a nest--most of the time there is always a shred of light within these evil people that offers the possibility of escaping from a career of spreading misery but this can only be accomplished by spiritual means. I don't mean here the usual "possession" of spinning heads and fierce voices--that whole idea is waaaay overrated. Most possession is more subtle because people engage in it willingly. Evil, as an energy, meets personal needs for power because it eliminates the needs of others--some call this state a "personality disorder" like sociopathy but for me the situation allows Evil to manifest--Evil, as a spiritual force requires a human host to spread and endure so people who are naturally shut down of off are easy marks. I've written one half of an essay on the problem of Evil on this blog so I don't want to go further at this time. Rather, I want to note that Evil is a force that is, very much as the Star Wars series describes it as "the Dark Side of the Force" and at present it seem to be manifesting in more obvious ways than it ever has. Yes, mass killing occurred in the 30s and 40s and, in some Asian locales, in the 50s, 60s and 70s (China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia) but never in the history of the planet has the world been so endangered just by the way human beings live in terms of chemical pollution, climate change, and massive species die-offs. These problems all have major consequences that are utterly unprecedented--at the same time the threat of nuclear war still exists more than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

All of the problems we face from global poverty, nuclear war danger, environmental crises, depression, anxiety, and all the ills of a society obsessed with radical materialism all have pragmatic potential courses that would largely eliminate the worsening of these problems and solve most of them. There is no reason whatsoever except the fact that radical materialism that tells us that the only final arbiter of human morality is money--and money that goes only to me, to the part of us that is selfish, isolated and, yes, carries Evil with it. It is not human beings, again, who are evil, but our beliefs and values that are evil. If you believe that human beings only learn through punishment and rewards then you believe, contrary to social science, that human beings are too deeply flawed to ever solve their problems when, in reality, it is only the most radically materialistic among us who keep that idea alive by deliberately repressing all possible solutions for the better to any of our major problems. Instead, you have the weird idea that slaughtering mass numbers of people will somehow bring some kind of "security" as if that was the ultimate goal of life.

I believe, and social science backs me up, that human beings are compassionate and spiritual people (by my definition of "spirituality") who are happiest when their lives have meaning, purpose to help others--this has clearly been shown in studies of happiness and studies of anxiety and depression. The quickest way out of depression = helping other people. Yet, our society de-emphasizes those qualities by valorizing competition over compassion, fear over love in almost every department of life. Again, sentimental appeals to positive emotions is always given by cultural "leaders" but the "bottom line" mentality ALWAYS trumps.

This cannot last for long. Social cohesion built on what we call moral capital eventually runs out and, while it never entirely goes away since people are naturally social and compassionate, when it is to the advantage of the political master, they will pump out fear and hate as they have, particularly after the 2016 election--while much of this was aimed at particular people that is less important than the cultural polarization that the oligarch class has created, deliberately in my view. It's not that we fell into this state--we were manipulated into it by the forces that dominate the media.

As such, as a society, we lie and demand our institutions lie to us to avoid cognitive dissonance that could be alleviated through the process of acquiring knowledge by digging deeper than the superficiality we live with every day. We accept superficiality, lies, fantasies, delusions, national chauvinism, fear-mongering, deliberate manipulation of opinion because we have, it appears, a constitutional inability to do anything else. We are not even remotely "the land of the free and home of the brave" any longer. I think the description could have held up a half century ago but not today. We are, instead so obsessed with safety and security that we can only go along to get along, for the most part. Courage is no longer a virtue but is considered a vice today except in fantasies where we increasingly live. We are rapidly becoming the Eloi and our overlords, the oligarchs are becoming the Morlocks. 

But we don't want to look at our direction. We don't want to look at the logical end to current trends either social, political, or environmental. We want to hid in the fantasy worlds created by Hollywood and Silicon Valley. We are rapidly becoming the people of the lie.

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

WTF--Where is the Anti-War Left?

Where is the anti-war Left? It does exist in a few areas on the fringe but real opposition to imperialism and the permanent war state actually is centered on the right. Trump, if you believed his speeches, took on a relatively less-militant stance and anti-imperialism stance than Clinton during the last campaign. Clinton, after this recent "gas attack" fiasco, would not have bombed empty buildings--she would have brought us square into conflict with Russia because she is a genuinely neoconservative ideologue. After the election all Democrats and most of the "left" decided to double down on the canard of "Russia stole the election" and "Trump is Putin's puppet" and vigorously supported and still supports censorship of dissident web-sites by declaring them Russian agents and anti-patriotic and the whole 1950's red scare propaganda toolbox, our undermining America and the West in general.

Prominent voices against permanent war and expansion of those wars are centered increasingly on the right. Foremost journalists are Tucker Carlson and foremost media outlets are The American Conservative Magazine, The Duran, Zerohedge, Infowars, Vineyard of the Saker, and Antiwar.com (Libertarian). There are others but those are the sites I generally look at for info. Sites on the left like Counterpunch.org, Truthdig, Moon of Alabama are active but not as concentrated on anti-imperialism as the right wing sites are.

There is no figure on the left that are like Rand Paul, Pat Buchanan, or Tucker Carlson all of whom are far more influential than any anti-war figure coming out of the left. Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders are silent on this issue and go along with the generally belligerent ideology of the Democratic Party who are now more right-wing (in the old sense) when it comes to slaughtering people for fun and profit. This seems fairly confusing except there is one simple answer to why the Democratic Party and most of the so-called left favors imperialism and permanent war--that answer is Israel. Israeli lobbyists, who don't have to register as foreign agents, are one of the main supporters of the Democratic Party and, through the financial industry, much of the mainstream media. It is largely forbidden to talk about Israeli power in Washington because the minute you do that you are going to be considered "anti-Semitic" and therefore whatever you say is dismissed out of hand. This is one of the tricks of the fake-left that is equivalent to the old-right's use of the word "communist" except the left has developed a series of terms: racist, homophobe, sexist and so on that automatically stops any dialogue because if you are called a racist whatever you say is dismissed out of hand as much or more than if you are called a communist or fascist. These terms are so loaded. This is how the right in Britain (which is actually the reverse of here--it is pro-American Empire and pro-war) categorizes the Labor Party's leader Jeremy Corbin as an anti-Semite--if you read the British press you will see that is the critique of Labor in the mainstream British press which is, on balance, right-wing--even the formerly leftish Guardian. At least in Britain there is one left-leaning paper left, *The Independent.*

I've clicked around on various leftist sites in the U.S. like *The Nation* who you would expect to be anti-war but has kind of ignored the whole Syria gas attack as have many others who may mention that going to war is a bad idea but generally, don't question the whole obviously false story of the Syrian gas attack. To put it bluntly, they don't seem to question the obvious idea of why Assad and his government which has been mainly efficient, smart, and strategically sound in their defense of their country against Jihadis financed and supported by the West (Saudi Arabia, USA, Britain, Israel, France, and Turkey) would gas people who were in the process of surrendering. On the face of it the story is complete bullshit. Imagine a boxer clearly ahead on points, in the last round, with a staggering opponent the boxer could easily put away suddenly started kicking the guy in the balls and disqualify himself--WTF? Yet most of the "left" accepts this argument--WTF? WTF?

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

What Is Real?

I don't think we have a solid sense of what is real and not real. Certainly, it should be obvious, that there is a lot more going on than the authorities wish to tell us. The Narrative created by the mainstream media outlets is curiously the same and very arbitrary. An event happens and then, immediately without any examination of evidence, without any consideration of alternative explanations a story is presented as the truth and the bizarre thing as that people want to believe it because people need consistent Narrative or conceptual framework in which to live their lives. If they start to question authority--where does it end? What are the consequences of coming to a different conclusion than the one echoed in every news outlet, almost every periodical and every dinner conversation (well to the extent anybody talks about anything which is incredibly rare). So anything the bosses and the authorities say is obviously true because we need a view of life that is predictable and true. If I were to tell you that we are being ruled by an illegal regime that has not the slightest interest in our well-being and only in whatever they can do to loot the U.S. Treasury you wouldn't want to believe it. Evidence, I've found, is not usually critical but it is the mythological framework we choose to inhabit that is what truly moves us.
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The usual story I tell to attempt to break them out of the mainstream Narrative is to state the simplest and most obvious proof, using evidence, that the mainstream Narrative is false. Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of killing Robert F. Kennedy who was going to be the Democratic Party nominee for President and he would have probably won in 1968--thus his murder was one of the most critical events in our history. The Coroner's report actually exonerated Sirhan but, while it was entered in evidence it wasn't really looked at--Senator Kennedy was killed at close to point-blank range to the back of the head from below Sirhan was in front of him and no closer than three feet. In addition, sophisticated sound analysis of the recordings of the killing recorder 13 shots coming out of an 8 shot revolver. Even if you listen to the soundtrack and listen to the description of witnesses it sounded a lot like firecrackers and no revolver can be fired that fast. In order for this to past muster, the prosecutor, judge and the defense attorney all had to be in on the fix and, of course, LAPD, the Secret Service, and probably the FBI. Sirhan did fire shots but none of those shots were fatal.

If you believe what I just said then the real political situation in the USA if drastically different and other events may well have been completely different. Anyone looking closely at JFK assassination scholarship cannot possibly believe the Lee Harvey Oswald shot the President with a third rate rifle without some divine intervention. Whatever you believe the Warren Report came to conclusions its own report failed to support (and much was left out). If you believe the most blatant forensic evidence on John Kennedy's brother (and how can you not?) then it's fairly easy to understand that there was a coup d'état in 1963 and then the whole house of cards that is the mainstream Narrative falls apart and should make you begin to suspect that events that are reported in the media may actually not be true when it suits the powers-that-be. Who are those powers? I'll wait for another post to get into that.

But the falsifying of reality in the official media is, I suggest, routine and systemic. If you, as a media personality, reporter or editorial writer deviate from the official positions on issues you are attacked mercilessly from all sides (right, left and center) and must seek alternative employment as several famous journalists who cannot be published in the U.S. have found out. Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and his views don't exist for the mainstream and he has to work in the alternative media. Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh can no longer publish in the U.S. so he has to go to Europe to see his stories published.

But this manipulation of reality by "the authorities" doesn't stop there. It also includes any kind of alternative view of reality whether it involves ESP, UFOs, alien abductions, magic and even spirituality as a major force in human affairs. The so-called "invisible world" that often becomes very visible is reported by millions of people just in this country and even more elsewhere where magic. The official stance is that people who see alternative realities are deluded even if there are a dozen people viewing exactly the same thing they are, by definition, delusions or lies because ghosts, "aliens" and things that go bump in the night CANNOT EXIST because the authorities say so. No because there is no evidence, not because it has been conclusively been proven that once a person dies he or she dies like a bug--it's over. The saying often when you come up with an unconventional fact that you are derided and told "you probably believe in flying saucers too" a saying that goes back to the fifties. This, despite the fact, these mysterious objects in the skies are proven to exist and encounters with strange beings (I hate to call them "aliens") has been proven over and over again as a real experience by none other than the late Pulitzer prize winning Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School the late John Mack whose books are available at Amazon.

The technique of those that guard official reality is to call those that see the facts as they lay as being delusional or "conspiracy theorists" (as if conspiracies, always central in all high-stakes contests of power, are also delusions). Seldom are these "authorities" ever able to articulate a coherent argument other than simply stating that those of us who see the evidence and make our own conclusions are just "wrong." What attempts are made to "debunk" these stories are nitpicking and filled with artificial constructions that make even less sense than the theories they are trying to debunk. I've read debunkers and their intellectual methods consist primarily of bullying though sometimes they do debunk things that need to be debunked because not all stories that come from the alternative community are true or even well-meaning--some of them are clearly planted by mischief makers to discredit.

There may be no more important and vital national security operation than keeping the American (and world) public ignorant and awed by authority. The authorities in our society learned over a century ago that they can easily manipulate the public through hypnotic and post-hypnotic suggestion, obvious propaganda (began with the Committee for Public Information or CPI in 1917) and continued in less formal ways until WWII when the media and the entertainment industry were all enlisted in supporting that war effort and, after the National Security Act of 1947, secret propaganda efforts were made under the CIA's "Operation Mockingbird" that paid and threatened various reporters and editors to print CIA propaganda not just in the USA but all around the world. Operation Mockingbird was replaced in the late seventies (due to Congressional investigations into the abuses of the CIA) but is now just woven into normal CIA operations.

A dramatic example of how this control of the press can be shown in two incidents. First was the  release of Oliver Stone's movie JFK which was the story of Jim Garrison's (New Orlean's DA) to get to the bottom of the assassination of JFK. Like a Greek chorus the entire news establishment came down hard on Stone but, sadly for them, the movie was actually well-done and entertaining so this time business trumped "national security" and the movie did well--but the entirety of the press had to come out against it on orders, in my view, from "above." Unlike Oliver Stone, Gary Webb was not a celebrity or a proven film director but an honest reporter who was willing to investigate the CIA's drug running (the drugs trade has been woven into the CIA for some time). Most people today believe the Webb's reporting was honest and true (except the main CIA newspaper the WaPost) but when he came out with his accusations the entire mainstream media (as one Voice) destroyed  his career and life and he eventually committed suicide (or not as some people believe) and this is documented in the movie Kill the Messenger.

We saw the same mob-mentality during 9/11, during the lead up to the Afghan War, to the lead up to the Iraq War, to the "gas attacks" (clearly fake) in Syria to get the U.S. to invade Syria. What is interesting is that the official largely CIA controlled is losing its touch. People kind-of believe Russia is responsible for every ill in the world but these obvious exaggerations are becoming absurd despite the endless chants of "down with Putin" repeated by the American media like so many muezzins calling the faithful to prayer. It doesn't stop there--these campaigns against the enemy of the day are reflected in news and entertainment.

Yes, there is a vast conspiracy that is no longer a conspiracy but a solid and largely invulnerable secret government some call "The Deep State" (a term I insisted on some years back and was kicked out of for using that term--a few years later the term was allowed to be used--how and why that happened is an interesting subject by itself) or "Shadow Government." This "State" is not the Constitutional Republic we think we are living in but something that, like in the time of Caesar Augustus, when Rome became an empire but still had the form of a republic. It is the same with us, we have an external form of a republic but power lies elsewhere which is why you see little if any change in policies no matter who is in power and what policies are brought out are made to be major but when looked at closely really are not. Bottom line, we are always at war and the rich are getting rich and the rest of us poorer and have been since the late seventies. Most people are content with this and that is the sad part of all this.

We are so worn down by confusion and lies spread as fact that the American people have lost a lot of the confidence we once had in ourselves and our society. I see people continually shutting themselves down so they don't have to think about our public life--they may passively accept the 24/7 propaganda but sullenly. Most people suspect that nothing makes much sense so just cocoon in their family unit, their friends, their churches, their workplaces and pretend everything is ok.

We live today in a society that mirrors M. Scott Pecks brave book on the nature of evil called People of the Lie wherein he categorizes people who live in lies and spread lies as truly evil. Today, we live in a society that is a "society of the lie." When Peck wrote his book lies were predominant in the public sphere but not ubiquitous--today there are only lies and games using lies. We can not go further in this without, literally, disintegrating as a society and disintegrating as individuals. Even when the truth seems far away we need to endure in our quest for it even if we take wrong turns which we all do from time to time. The "truth" is not about specifics but a general stance towards the world--the stance that we are willing to face reality as we perceive, perhaps very imperfectly, but we are willing to go through the journey of living in truth about ourselves and the world we live in knowing it will never be perfect but when we face in that direction our spirits become strengthened and our capacity for truth increases. Never lose that faith!



Thursday, April 12, 2018

Left has Left?

Some time ago I, at a certain level, removed myself from normal political divisions. The left I was a part of the late sixties has nothing to do with the left today--they seem to be almost on the opposite side. Not that the left was very coherent back in the day--but we gave it a good try. That's all over now. Mainly we didn't believe the mainstream Narrative and it was much less absurd then because the news media still had real journalists some of whom attempted to get at the truth. Today, that type of journalist simply doesn't exist at all and here we are without any honesty at any level of our society as we drift into war and environmental and cultural degradation.

Three incidents immediately stand out that indicate this tendency. First, observe what happened to a the reporter who broke the story on the importation of cocaine by the CIA (which has a long history of importing drugs into the USA that predates even Vietnam) during the famous "Contra War" where the USA to get around a Congressional prohibition of sending arms and money to the "contras" fighting the legit government of Nicaragua because they overthrew the CIA stooges that were the Somoza family that regarded their country as made up of peasants that allowed any military officer to seize women and girls from families and rape them and worse. That journalist's name was Gary Webb. He was forced out of his job as a reporter and harassed and condemned by mainstream journalists and the security services so much that he committed suicide or maybe not.

The second journalist was Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer-prize winning veteran journalist who was the Middle East Bureau Chief of the NYT who made a speech attacking the obvious lies his paper was spreading about WMDs in Iraq in order to attack Iraq and overthrow their government. He was forced to resign. He was right and his editors and his fellow journalists at the Times were not only dead wrong but most of them knew the data was false--of that I am absolutely certain.

The third journalist was another Pulitzer Prize winner who managed to stay in play until about three or four years ago. His name is Seymour Hersh. Hersh had been in the doghouse but the once great The New Yorker picked him up where he wrote about national security affairs since Hersh was one of the few journalists that dissident military officers would speak to because they knew that most mainstream journalists would just report these officers who would have their careers ruined. When Hersh reported on the famed "gas attack" was a fake as told to him by insiders and other and may have been partially responsible for the fact and, worse he went against the narrative about the famous Bin Laden murder. He hasn't written for them in three years--and they only published his stories if the went along with the mainstream Narrative. He could only publish abroad--first in the London Review of Books and the last major story I now of was even too hot for the LRB.

There are many more excellent journalists, experts, ex-CIA, ex-NSA, ex-military officers who are never allowed to comment in the media or invited as experts no matter how high their qualifications are. One such expert, Scott Ritter who was the American who knew the most about WMD's in Iraq who was a media hero in the 90s when he publically stood up to Saddam Hussein and his French counterparts (who Ritter believed were undermining the inspection regime) and made it his personal mission to make sure those WMDs (mainly nerve agents) would be destroyed. He knew personally after years of work that almost every single piece of ordinance was accounted for. He was invited to be interviewed by CNN brass to see what he would say if he was put on the air--he told them the truth during the lead to the invasion of Iraq. The head of CNN told him that hew not only would never be allowed on CNN but he would not be allowed on any network or major media outlet unless he changed his tune.

So here we are on the edge of war with Iran, Russia, Syria and perhaps China. This "war" has been ramping up for some years and its momentum has been unchanged. War in this country is the only way for the federal government which is increasingly corrupt and incompetent to stay in power along with all their cronies in the predatory industries: finance, health-care, "justice", energy, chemicals and so on. They are, naturally, interlocked with the heavies in the government.

As I see it the players in this game have different goals but are now, after a couple of years of confusion, all on the same page. They are pushing for major war. In the past whenever it seemed like an invasion of Iran was about to happen I said "no way" this was not going to happen--there was no reason to upset the profitable apple-cart. Today, I feel differently. Things have changed.

The spur to all this is the rise of so-called "populist" movements in Europe and the USA. As it is Americans elected someone who had been thought of as running a joke campaign who ended up winning! There are serious threats to the Empire in Europe--the EU and NATO have become tools to make sure all European countries continue to be vassals of Washington but the natives are restless despite the fact Washington has control of all the major media there as well as here. Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung claimed he worked for the CIA and said most European outlets did as well. 

This global situation is now impossible. The global Empire either asserts power through drastic means or suffers death from a thousand cuts. There is now a close alliance between Russia and China who are not only coming closer militarily but also, even more dangerous, establishing new economic agreements of global significance. China is now a big player (easily dwarfing Russia) which is cultivating countries all round the world including those who are direct vassals of Washington. Remember, the USA wants to be the ONLY superpower and block any rival power from even thinking about asserting power. The USA is the global power and is destined to rule the world--this is now the main ideology of both neoconservatives and neoliberals and they don't need to get approval of the American people to maintain Empire or go to war.

Trump is irrelevant to all this. The best he can do is to drag his feet creatively as Obama did but he does not seem to have any way of reversing the war decision even if he wanted to which I don't think there is any way for us to know but it doesn't matter--Trump has to follow the general policies already in place neither he nor anyone else can change this.















The second 

Monday, April 9, 2018

Queen of the Sciences

Words—usually I just use them without thinking of what these words mean or what they actually sound like or what they could sound like. Imagine if you could slow down words and slowly glide over each letter and think of the sound, the meaning, the origin, the history of the word and why that particular group of sounds came to signify something. The deeper and, perhaps, slower we go in this direction we are sure to find something shocking, a sudden shift in the current of consciousness. It doesn’t have to be words, in could be sounds on a piano, a flower, clouds drifting across the sky, or even riskier things like driving down the road where the additional edge is to stay on the road while your mind is moving. It’s that edge that seems to have to be there to make whatever we are doing vital and alive. Eve had to eat the fruit or we wouldn’t be here.

The reality is that we go to the depths in order to be firmly on the surface. A healthy flow between our daily live and the deep wells within is what can make us bloom. This is the source of mysticism, spirituality, magic and what Colin Wilson called “Faculty X” that faculty that emerges that takes us to strange and magical places. Wilson defines it or evokes it “the key to all poetic and mystical experience” and “Faculty X is a sense of reality, the reality of other times and places…time is an illusion, so is my sense of being uniquely here, now, ‘I am not here; neither am I elsewhere’ says Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.” This is a mysterious description and filled with paradox. Anything in what I call “magic” is paradoxical, non-local, non-specific, a blending of many things and yet it is precisely what it is—magic evokes a strong feeling of what Abraham Maslow called “peak experiences” that kind of sweep us away in some flow but not a flow where we our will is ignored but one where our will and “that” which we are flowing with is ourself. This feeling can be also described as “amazing”, wondrous, and, of course magical. This feeling has been a constant in human experience but is discouraged in our own culture while at thes same time coming out in myths, in stories, in literature, and shows. And it is that deep source within us that feeds and refreshes our body, our mind, and our soul. We cannot live without magic and while both Church and Science has tried to ban it to the best of their ability—it endures and comes out through art, TV shows, music and so on. It’s all around us in some form but we often not able to truly see it.

All moral philosophy comes fromTtheology once called the “Queen of the Sciences” not because people in the Middle Ages were stupid but because they understood a lot more about Magic as I’ve described it. Theology which means the study of first principles, the soul, essence the most real of real and Magic is always the answer and the state of consciousness that will be able to even ask the question. Once we have a sense of this “state” of being that is the real study of Theology because it always means, also, the study of eternity and the multi-verse as physics is beginning to all it.

Whether you approach it through direct experience, contemplation, drugs, trance states, dreams, prayer, the arts does not really matter. With Magic/Theology nothing other than conscious perception matters. If you understand what that perception is or even have some sort of intuition about it you don’t have to “understand” it or “figure it out” because the more you try to go in that direction the further away from Magic you go. Description can only be a crude map to the realm of Magic, the realm of the divine. Most deep mystical traditions across culture agree that you cannot know what we have called Magic through reason—it would be like trying to fly by flapping your hands. Many people who are unable to go in that direction yet have pretensions of wisdom are upset if they are told that there is no entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven through creating a thought construction but what an ancient sage called “the Cloud of Unknowing.” At best, the mind will allow you to find a place in a camp outside the walls where maybe you can meet some people or a set of experiences that can transport you into the Kingdom, usually through a number of winding but exciting roads or, on rare occasion you land there like Eckart Tolle experienced:

It’s interesting that stepping out of thought was actually triggered by a thought. At that moment, consciousness looked at the thought “I can’t live with myself,” and I realized there are two here—“I” and the “self I can’t live with.” And then there was another little thought: Who is this self that I can’t live with? But there was no answer; that was the last question. And then it didn’t matter. This peace had changed my perception of the world of form too, of the external world. When I woke up the next morning, everything was beautiful and intensively alive and peaceful.
(https://www.eckharttolle.com/article/Spiritual-Awakening-Of-Eckhart-Tolle)

So the “right” mental thoughts or mental constructs can at the right time and place shatter our illusions of duality as it did with Tolle—this basic insight has been explained in similar in several spiritual traditions and are always available to us if we are willing to question deeply and once we struggle with these questions strange things begin to happen.

But this “enlightenement” journey is usually a long struggle because the primacy of the executive part of our brain, the ego, has to change and this is enormously hard for people living in a culture like this one where feeding the ego is thought of as the only legitimate goal whether that food is to do “good works” or sheer narcissism. And some of the worst sorts of ego are everywhere in the neighborhood of the Kingdom—the ego loves going through all kinds of initiations, processes, spiritual practices and the Buddha did but these, as Gautama recognized, are pointless and lead nowhere only the close examination of our lives as we experience it truly give us the answer. Certainly it is helpful to have spiritual guides, visible and invisible but ultimately it is a choice to give up our ego or not.

Only this sort of consciousness can be the true basis of a useful moral philosophy. From the great Mystery of Magic comes the laws we can live by. I think, clearly, that we are in need of a new sort of moral philosophy because the ground of that philosophy is largely missing by religions that have not been able to renew themselves but, rather, try to ignore the modern world and hope to simply not see why and how we got to the place where religion no longer makes great sense except as a kind of opiod to keep our lives from spinning out of control.

I see this in the anguish of people who have truly spiritual experiences and then try to contain them within a tradition that discourages those experiences as having, at their source, some sort of evil. It is important here to describe, in simple terms, what Evil and Good really are. Good as far as I can see are those goals, thoughts and activities that connect us—and it doesn’t matter what we are connecting to it is the act of connection, of reaching out to the world, to other people, to God, to magic, to parts of us we don’t know and haven’t integrated, and to everything. Evil is the opposite—it is those thought and activities that break connections and isolate us but also, even worse, trying to isolate and discourage other people through acts of destruction for the sake of destruction. This is a pretty sound basis for morality. That doesn’t mean loners are evil because loners are usually people who are rejected who want to connect with others. Doesn’t mean that socialites are good because they could be social in order to manipulate others or gain power.

Evil is actually quite rare. Most people who do evil things are confused, angry, suspicious, fearful and in the thrall of negative emotions and find themselves swept up by negative emotions. These emotions can reach epidemic proportions as we see in the dramatic growth of depression, anxiety increase in our society. This is why it is important to step back and look at our negative feelings. First we have to accept them and observe them in action. If I’m having a disagreement with someone and feeling agitated where is this coming from? Sometimes it is important to express it, sometimes it is important to say nothing—it depends on the situation.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Toxic NPR

I only listen to NPR when I’m driving and I rarely drive these days. Their editorial policies have changed dramatically over the years so as to be utterly unrecognizable. When NPR started (1970) and became a kind of boomer showcase that reflected an earnestly of what was then a liberal point of view (pain, ignorance and war was not so good and compassion, peace, and knowledge were good) that was a welcome contrast to the major media which was vaguely liberal that was way over-dignified and, well, Ted Baxterish. NPR tended to look at issues in depth and with an often irreverent but not disrespectful stance. It could be relied on to show a fairly broad spectrum of viewpoints not often available on other outlets. It struck a chord with most of us. It stayed away from far left discourse but occasionally gave it voice as it did with the right.

Something happened when NPR became more successful. Producers, reporters, and news-readers became increasingly concerned about careers as they made families, bought houses, and needed mony to feed their various addictions, just like everyone else. By the eighties this trend became even more pronounced as people who ran and staffed NPR recognized that their leftish tendencies and “off the reservation” forays into corners that made the rapidly forming “establishment” nervous were not going to cut it at CNN or Fox or any of the other major networks.

We have to understand that the period between 1965 and, more or less, 1978 was a time of rapid and extreme change in society where the traditional power-elites also were in disarray. NPR found itself, when it started, to be in the middle of major societal changes and kept a relatively open mind. The old Northeastern establishment had seen these splits particularly with their youth who rejected the old polite elite society and wanted a more rock n’ roll aesthetic. They tended to hold progressive cultural views on race-relations, sexual politics, dress-codes, recreational drugs and had a love-affair with “openness” and free-expression.

In 1978 money entered the Democratic Party and moved it sharply to the right. NPR, which knew its listnership was mainly sympathetic to the Democratic Party went with the flow. In 1980 Reagan’s win and the desire to return to “normalcy” which meant a return to a 1950s America captured the imagination of all but the emerging professional class made up of former flower-children and their sympathizers who were now concerned with marriage(s), house payments, children and, above all, professional advancement. While these people held on to their socially progressive views, their views of the economy and foreign affairs tended to drift to the right as their incomes and wealth grew. The needs of the working class still had some sympathy but since 1978 money came to dominate the political process it was easy for the oligarch class to forget about the bottom 80% who were seeing, continued growth in productivity but no growth in pay --this trend that continues to this day.
he views of the working class was characterized as being full regressive social tendencies on women, religion, guns, race, war and so on. The do-your-own-thing movement of the 60s gradually married the consumerist radical materialist culture of the boomers parents and the love generation retreated into creating the culture of narcissism that the boomers created for all.

NPR followed this trend and, like the rest of the media, during the early part of the Reagan administration, decided to ignore concerns about human rights and became, bit by bit, to be the cheerleaders of American Exceptionalism and imperialism. The opposition to war was forgotten as the idea of war and violence towards enemies (as dramatically rendered by movies and TV) gradually diluted what was left of compassion except, of course, for selected “victim classes” like African-Americans, Hispanics, women and the homosexual/bisexual/ambi-sexual communities while class-struggle and imperialism became concerns of the few on the more radical left and, increasingly, as time passed, the libertarian anti-authoritarian right.
Gradually, NPR became increasingly staffed with journalistic careerists who care almost exclusively for their careers and, also increasingly, came from upper-class/upper-middle-class backgrounds and posh university backgrounds. NPR became a farm team for media players like Fox and CNN. Staff were able to join other celebrities journalists at parties, vacations with Washington and corporate heavy-hitters and became part of the ruling class elites as junior partners, of course. Having friends and lovers in powerful place made life much easier for not only NPR staff but all staff in all major news organizations.

There is nothing essentially “wrong” about any of this. What is wrong is that people who turn on NPR still believe that this organization along with all the other mainstream media outlets are reporting realistically and independently on what is going on in this country and around the world. This is obviously and objectively false as the notion that the US. news media is “objective” or “fair and balanced” because such things are not possible—they would not be possible even if the media companies were not owned by corporate oligarchs but because they are their views and approaches to “news” will be pro-oligarch, pro-war, anti-working-class both economically and culturally. It is no problem for the media to denigrate, for example, religion and traditions seen as “primitive” by people who live in LA and NYC. If you have a choice of working f
with the powerful who wisely paid special attention to media personalities who were essential to manufacturing consent. Perks, vacations on Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons, extravagant dinner parties with celebrities and so on was heady stuff for many in the media. The old-guard who believed it was better to maintain some distance from the powerful or true investigative reporters gradually faded when their stories were, increasingly, killed and their lack of cooperation with the powerful was duly noted by ambitious editors and producers.

NPR like every media outlet today is just like other networks except stylistically it is not as overwhelmingly boring and stupid as the cable channels and makes an attempt to show a bit more nuance—they will go a bit more in depth about the media Narrative but almost only interview and talk to members of the ruling class or those who work directly for them. You will never hear anything about positive reforms that have happened over the decades in other industrialized countries like universal medical care, family leave, free or low-cost education, much lower crime rates and levels of incarceration, and lower levels of violence particularly in the relationship between police and citizens. You will never hear about the extraordinary corruption of the military-industrial-complex, or the cruel brutality of the US. military that has destroyed major sections of the MENA region. You never hear anything but a one-sided account of Cold War II which we are now in the midst of not because there is any real conflict but because the State requires conflict to maintain power and money going into the most corrupt sector of our society—the military. You never hear anything positive about about any country designated as an “enemy” by the National Security State. NPR is a propaganda agency like other specifically engineered for the upper-middle class and up demographic.

I don’t blame NPR for this—they were just doing what any industry would do to keep themselves in business—I blame the chumps who funded and still fund this company—stop it right now people. Public TV also has gone through a similar change and, again, the fault lies with the audience of self-satisfied elitist professionals who are obsessed not with justice or peace but safety and security and thus are now more conservative than traditional conservatives such that the left, basically Bernie Sanders voters, are further from power than they were at any time since a legitimate left emerged towards the end of the 19th century and the excesses of the Robber Barons. Today’s Barons have nothing to fear from the left and NPR is one of the chief tools keeping a legitimate left from emerging other than a kind of cartoonish version of the left that is displayed by young people’s obsession with gender, race and culture. This version has no intellectual foundation other than the absurdity of a perversion of post-modernism that is opposed to both dialogue and free-inquiry.

Thoughts on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Assassination of Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King was murdered 50 years ago today by the U.S. National Security State as it murdered President Kennedy in 1963 and Robert Kennedy a month later. Any sane and rational person can look over the evidence for themselves. All three of these people were direct threats to the power of the National Security State (formed in 1947 by the National Security Act, which President Truman signed and later regretted signing that WWII spawned and the Cold War nurtured.

Since all major security agencies act in secret without close supervision of either Congress or the President/Executive Branch it is obvious that these agencies and their contractors (where the action is these days) would go their own way and focus on gaining and maintaining power.  This is what people do when in power. The only counter-argument is that these people may be acting out of patriotism and be an elite protecting us from threats we are too dim to comprehend and thus they must act in secret to eliminate those threats. I don't doubt that people in the security apparatus tell themselves they are acting in the interests of the American people--but they are acing in our interest without our permission.

So, how do I know Dr. King was killed by the U.S. government? Because I know that is what the security services do to any perceived "enemy", whether foreign or domestic, to the power of the State first they use persuasion, then threats, then death. William Pepper has written and spoken extensively on the matter and I'll let you look into that I don't have the time or the interest in educating you, dear reader, in what you ought to be researching on your own you can start with this video. Instead of proving anything about King I will say two things. First, the Knig family is convinced King was not killed by James Earl Rae but by the U.S. government. Second, there is a smoking gun in the case for U.S. government involvement with domestic assassinations of political figures. So I will move onto the RFK assassination because the smoking guns here are so obvious and quick to tell.

The bullets that killed Senator Robert Kennedy were delivered at near point blank range to the back of the head from behind whereas Sirhan Sirhan the man convicted of the murder fired his shots from the front at no closer than two and a half feet according to witnesses. Case closed. Now, in addition, sound analysis of the shots fired that evening indicate, clearly, that thirteen shots were fired out of an eight shot revolver--again , case closed. Yet they convicted Sirhan which meant LAPD, the District Attorney, the Judge, the Defense Attorney were all in on the plot. Sounds paranoid but that's how it worked--the evidence is obvious. So if they could do that, as they clearly did, they could also kill King since he was as big a threat to these people as JFK and RFK were.

King was threatening to bring together marginal people, minorities, anti-war activists, labor at all levels into a coherent and much more radical movement that the FBI and others had been working through Cointelpro and other processes that the government had been working for quite some time. King threatened to bring all these disparate elements. He had to go.

My point here is not who killed any of these men who stood up for our country and its best traditions against the new government installed during the coup of 1963 that, essentially, rules us now. We need to realize that we have deliberately allowed ourselves to be put to sleep. It's true that we have been lied to but we have been lied to because we wanted to hear lies--we are mainly interested in convenient myths. The choice is yours.


Just as, sorry to say, sadists tend to be attracted to police and prison guard duty (not to say that most police officer or prison guards are sadists, only those careers offer them great scope in working out their fantasies of power just as priest, scout leaders, teachers and others working with children mainly have no sexual interest in children but they are occupations that attract that sort

The big turning point in our history came with the election of President Kennedy in 1960 and President Eisenhower's famous and almost astonishing Farewell Address in 1961. In that address Ike warned the country about the "military-industrial complex" (a term Eisenhower coined) that had been eating away at the President's power--Eisenhower knew a crisis was unfolding because this complex which included the covert agencies like the CIA had become too powerful to control. Kennedy inherited the crisis and tried to indulge the powers-that-be in that system as best he could. JFK was determined to wrest power back into the hands of the President and he partially succeeded. He refused to invade Cuba and he refused, as he was advised by his Joint Chiefs, to carry out a first-strike against the Soviet Union (estimated 150 million dead) for which the military never forgave. The military at that time believed that wiping out the people of the Soviet Union was a "victory" because in the USA "only" forty million people would probably die and that was an acceptable cost for "victory" over a rival power. The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis is an amazing story that speaks volumes about everyone involved and I urge you to look into it--most of the information is freely available. But the upshot is that President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev began to agree on many matter including ending the Cold War. Kennedy was soon shot and Khrushchev was soon out of power.

The 1963 assassination of JFK was a full-scale coup d'état that continued until Nixon left office, the last remaining President with power. Other

Monday, April 2, 2018

Thinking About Easter and Mythological Frameworks

It's hard for us at this point in the development of our society to get our minds and hearts around the meaning of Easter. We are, even in the USA, becoming less religious in the full sense of the term. Religion is something that we bind ourselves to, an overall framework that anchors our life. Christians should understand that Easter is central to their religion--here Jesus Christ after a horrible death rises out of his tomb to hang out and further instruct his disciples--being born is cool and all that but the drama is in death and resurrection because Jesus defeated death just as spring defeats the winter and life is renewed. Certainly, Easter is much less of a big deal these days.

The question is did the events surrounding Jesus really happen? To those who live by the mythological framework that is conventional Christianity they believe that yes the story is true. Many in my part of the world (the South) believe that every word in the Bible is not only inerrant but literally true--none of this is a metaphor or symbolic or mythical it's as true as waking up in the morning. Believers must believe all this or, as some have said, the whole story falls apart and, therefore, the whole framework of life. But I don't think most Christians really believe that the events in the Bible are literally true--it's just that they must believe it and it makes them feel really good to "believe" because certainty is calming--you have a good framework, millions of people, your family, your friends all believe in the framework whether it is actually true or not doesn't matter that much unless you are really serious about your life, spirituality and truth. Or, maybe you are serious about all those things but need a safe psychological "space" to explore from.

Thinking that highly religious people are stupid or deluded is not very smart--in many way we ought to envy them their certainty and communities. they don't have to think so hard about everything, they don't have to think as much about structure or always be on the lookout for something new. The only major problem I have with Christianity is the idea of Hell. To think that a loving God would send people into punishment that lasts forever is ugly at best and psychotic or even evil at worst. We punish people in order to correct them--once they have gone to Hell what good will punishment do--they have no opportunity to change. In Tibetan Buddhism they believe in various "hell realms" that you experience and grow out of--it's not permanent it's just there to refine souls. Besides, how is it possible that eternity is "in" time--that is endless time. Eternity is not in time--it is a dimension outside of time and so the concept is entirely foreign to me. I've experienced heaven and hell and I believe they are states of being not real estate locations. Besides, the dominant Christian story just doesn't follow from the actual scripture. Still, the certainty Christianity brings people seems to work and convincing them to get of that train is pointless. Some just leave and then come to people like me to give them a different sort of framework.

This brings me to the fact that many people are convinced that human beings primarily are moved by facts, by truth, by logic. I've never found this to be the case regardless of ethnicity, social class, education or anything else. Social science backs this up by findings that indicate that most people once they take hold of a point of view will stick to it despite new information that contradicts that view. From an evolutionary point of view this makes sense--the most important adaptation strategy for human beings is to be a social animal--that was our advantage over competitors--we could function in groups thus we kept to our group, it's mores and its stories and myths because these things hold human communities together. This may be why there's an increasing sense of panic in our culture--we lack these common stories and even those stories we tend to share, somehow, they change so quickly and move the focus of concern constantly.

So, whether we think its a good thing or a bad thing it is mythology that is the primary motivator and not truth. Without frameworks you cannot create or build anything whether it is physical or metaphysical. We cannot live without them. My own framework is based on the Western Humanist tradition which includes, for me spirituality at its center--for me this spirituality is based in Christianity because that is the framework I grew up in--but I've re-interpreted it as something that is connected to what Aldous Huxley called the "Perennial Philosophy" which is the framework of the saints and mystics across religious traditions and cultures. 

The Deeper Side of 9/11

The events of 9/11 go beyond the events to something far deeper and more important. Yes, the deaths of a bit less than 3k people is impor...