The 'war on terror' isn't real, but the illusion is: False flags part 2

truman_show_scrn

In The Truman Show, Truman discovers that an illusion is the only reality he has ever known.

This is Part 2 of Barrie Zwicker’s exclusive Truth and Shadows series on false flag operations. False flags revised

Part 2: Maximum Illusion Time
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.  Charles MacKay in the1852 preface [1] to his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds 

Where madness is concerned there’s always been a contagion effect, as Charles MacKay suggested in 1852. But in recent times, global power elites have increasingly been able to inject herds with particular madnesses.
The predominant one of these is the “war on terror.” [2]
In a sane world a question widely and repeatedly posed would be whether there is such a phenomenon as the “war on terror” as presented (for instance in newspaper headlines, TV news, speeches by “leaders,” most books on the subject and by almost everyone we encounter at home, school and work).
We who are skeptics can answer that question with a resounding “No!” We also know that the answer of most people  – “Yes, of course” – represents a windmill that we must, like Don Quixote, continue to joust with.
The “war on terror,” which should never be allowed to go out alone without its quotes on, is essentially a mass delusion. In case this offends anyone I downgrade it here to an illusion. Because the trouble isn’t essentially within the brains of the herd members. The trouble is what the herd is being fed. Call it mad crowd disease.
This “war” is integrated with other mutually supportive, artificially created forms of madness.
 Just one of these is “market fundamentalism.” That’s the quasi-religious belief that global monopoly capitalism not only is benign, not only is the best socio-economic system ever devised, but also is one “to which there is no alternative.” (“Democratic capitalism,” by the way, is not an “alternative.” It is an oxymoron.) [3]
The bogus “war on terror” along with largely market-created economic uncertainty, rapid technological change, [4] environmental destruction and more, comprise important components of the human condition today. For multitudes this concoction is a source of debilitating free-floating anxiety. (As opposed to facilitating anxiety, which is beneficial [5]) punctuated with dollops of often or usually unjustified deer-in-the-headlights fear.
An essay entitled Age in Psychosis on Hub Pages, includes The Scream by Edvard Munch…
…and includes this passage:

Today, many feel that they have changed in some way that is hard to define. And yet, under closer scrutiny in the age of economic uncertainty and the war against terror, we can see how the collective temperament has indeed changed in some way. But the change has been almost imperceptible and many people only feel that they have changed somehow without being able to define it. It takes an objective observer and good memory to see this change.

The_ScreamThe change is toward more fear and it works, as intended [6], to the advantage of the global power elites that I call the diaboligarchy. [7] Fear is the natural, unavoidable and helpful reaction of most humans to genuine threat (some psychopaths are exempt). The threat could be a tornado, wild animal or actual invading army.
Three basic courses of action are available: fight, flight or play dead. None of these are available to the average TV viewer exposed to most mediated (“if it bleeds, it leads”) threats. (An exception would be media reports of a rapist loose in one’s neighbourhood.)
The prices extracted from long-suffering humanity by the diaboligarchy’s “fear sector” include the killing of untold numbers of innocent human beings, ongoing destruction of the environment and steady reduction of freedoms for most people everywhere and an unrelenting increase in police state surveillance and other activities.
At the same time, global monopoly capitalism bestows minimum or no economic or other benefits upon anyone lower than the elites on the ladders of wealth, power and privilege. All the negative outcomes contradict the “pro-democracy” baloney, the “trickle down” nonsense, the cant about “fighting for freedom” (freedom being the most abused word in the language) and other self-serving fictions promoted and disseminated by the power elites across multiple platforms. It must be considered hopeful progress that in just the last decade it has become widely known that it’s the 1% versus the rest of us. [8]

Oligarchies dominated by psychopaths pursuing their own selfish interests at the expense of everyone else have risen spontaneously since civilization as we know it was born in Sumeria. To know this, however, is small comfort and should not be taken either as a sentence upon the future or cause for despair.
Rage is a reasonable reaction to the historical record as well as the present situation. “The truth will set you free,” someone said, “but first it will make you angry!” Once you learn truths hidden behind fiction after fiction you can never go back to believing the old fictions.
One of these fictions is to unduly equate our present pickle with previous pickles, such as that the world faced in September 1939. Things are very different today than they were even a few years ago, let alone decades or centuries ago. And “history” is as illusory as is the present. History, it has been said, is written by the victors. And it’s hard to find a more unsavoury lot than history’s victors.
As “speed-up” tightens its grip on all of us, it’s justifiable to state unambiguously that “civilization” faces an unprecedented and extremely dangerous situation. Its components are multiple and mostly growing crises. [9]
Some of these crises are developing at an exponential rate.
There’s also more than one possibility of a worldwide catastrophic event, such as the eruption of the Yellowstone Park volcano. These are beyond human control to prevent and therefore outside the mandate of this series. [10]
Unlike an asteroid strike that, even if human civilization took concentrated precautions to avert, would still rest in the hands of fate, false flag ops have been and remain an unnecessary concentrated calculated human activity, essentially in the hands of a small minority of humanity, not fate. I consider it obvious that numerous plans in various stages of completion are at the ready in the inner sancta of organizations such as the CIA, FBI, Mossad and MI-6. One targeting Iran could trigger World War III, even as it continues to be true that false flag operations remain the least-recognized source of wars and misery.
The upshot of the injected madnesses is that to one extent or another many significant events and ideas taken – beyond our personal bubble – as “realities” are illusory. In a mind-boggling number of cases they are outright deceptions. In this series the reality of false flag operations is the focus. All merge into Maximum Illusion Time.
CRISES: KILLERS OR SAVIOURS?
 Although it’s not entirely accurate [11 ] to say that the two letters in the Chinese alphabet representing crisis also stand for opportunity, the nub – that crisis is arguably the greatest change agent – holds true.
Crisis is a high-octane change agent in individual lives, society and history, dwarfing most other drivers. When I interviewed him in his home in California in the early 1970s, sociologist and futurist Richard Farson told me: “Most people believe they learn from their mistakes. That’s seldom true. It’s more true that people learn from their successes. But what causes people to learn the most by far, in a way that actually changes their behaviours, is crisis.”
He mentioned bankruptcy, divorce and life threatening illness. Later, in his 2003 book, Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins, he writes: “As with individuals, sometimes crisis is the only thing that can move organizations. […] Paradoxically, adversity and upheaval can be far more powerful agents of change than planning and consultants. […] The lesson for managers, obviously, is not to arrange calamities, but to recognize that calamities, when they do occur, can be opportunities for significant and needed change.”
But diabolical managers would use Farson’s insight to “arrange a calamity,” wouldn’t they?
None know better that crises create opportunity, or take more advantage of it, than the diaboligarchs. Rather than waiting for crises advantageous for them, they manufacture them. [12] This is done largely, if not mainly, through false flag operations.
These help drive the herd mad while opening up repeated opportunities for the diaboligarchy to expand its powers, seize new ones, amass more wealth and privilege and further consolidate its overall grip on the herd, as well as impact the trajectory of history — for the worse, much the worse.
The madnesses are easier than ever to inject because of important advantages – some age old, some unprecedented – enjoyed by the power elites. These will be dealt with at some length in Part 6. But stripped to the core we can say here that the elites accomplish their goals mainly through their use in tandem with their control of the mass media of false flag events, pseudo-events, [13] organizations and agents.
Virtually all students of the “big picture” agree that the elites control the media – and furthermore that the media are the most crucial amplifiers “verifying” past and ongoing deceptions. The media also pre-clear the populace to board future fake flights of perception.
THE WIRING OF “PERCEPTION BOMBS”
The detonation of a false flag “terrorist” bomb can be thought of – in a ones-and-zeroes sense – as pure information. It can simultaneously be thought of as disinformation, because of its origin and agency.
All meaning is negotiated. For most people the meaning of a false flag “terrorist” bomb is “negotiated” with the mass media. This is a one-sided negotiation for most people who have themselves – what is called “the illusion of the unified self” [14] – on one side, and the media and other controlled aspects of “reality” on the other.
One upshot, isolated for our purposes here, is to make false flags completely real for most people most of the time. This is true because it’s true that most people get most of their information about most things most of the time from the mainstream media. And even though more and more people are increasingly getting information from non-MSM – mainly Internet-accessed – sources the MSM continue to impose our main dose of “reality” through a combination of agenda-setting, disinformation and critical omissions – all persuasive and repetitive.
False flag ops are real even for those of us who are skeptics – but in a significantly different way. We skeptics are forced to acknowledge the truth that these lies are “the truth” for most others. Hence the paradox in the flashline at the top, that the “illusion” of the so-called “war on terror” is “real.”
Simple, yet complex.
“LANGUAGE IS EVERYTHING” [15]
So how is Maximum Illusion Time created and maintained? First, by language. The term “war on terror,” for instance, is literally [16] broadcast, heard, published, read and spoken thousands of times per hour, 24/7, worldwide. This has been true year in and year out since 9/11. This repetition alone creates a huge chunk of “reality.”
The two pillars of communication are persuasiveness and repetition. Explosions and bombings and arrests of dark- skinned bearded young men with Arab names, and court cases involving them and successful conviction of them and jailing of them are persuasive “facts,” to say the least, for most people unaware of the webs of deceit involved almost every step of the way in almost every case.
Integral to the phrase “war on terror” are images. No wonder. That phrase appears in headlines in close proximity to pictures of burned-out cars, blood-spattered marketplaces or mug shots of dark skinned bearded young men with Arab names – or pictures of them being led away in handcuffs or…
Inherent in the images are concepts.
Without consciously knowing about the phenomena transpiring in their crania, millions of people millions of times a day feel fear while, in micro-seconds, parts of their brains subliminally generate some version of dark skinned bearded young men with Arab names. Or planes crashing into buildings. Or blood-spattered marketplaces or…
The neural pathways to these feelings, images and subliminal phenomena impossible to describe except at book length (if then) have been trained, for 999 people out of 1,000, by a synthetic perceptual environment.
The thousandth person might have literally experienced something related to terror. But that person mathematically most likely suffered the experience at the hands of Americans or their proxies in Vietnam or Chile or Guatemala or El Salvador or Iraq or at Guantanamo. Or in Pakistan or Yemen. Or in the scores of countries, including Iran, where the USA has “projected its power.”
That thousandth person almost certainly has neural pathways leading in very different directions from those of the “great unwashed.”
The late Princeton University professor Julian Jaynes in his landmark book The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind sheds considerable light on the percepts (not precepts) involved in Maximum Illusion Time. This is thinking about thinking.
He writes (page 9) that thinking is not something under our (supposedly “conscious”) control. It happens faster than we can control. He writes (page 38): “In introspecting we always have hundreds of words to describe what happens in a few seconds. What an astonishing fact that is!”
As Wikipedia puts it, “Jaynes defines ‘consciousness’ more narrowly than most philosophers. Jaynes’ definition of consciousness is synonymous with what philosophers call ‘meta-consciousness’ or ‘meta-awareness.’” Human consciousness, in Jaynes’ view, is defined by reflection, introspection. It’s not just “seeing a table.” Any dog or cat can do that.
On the critical matter of concepts (this would include “the war on terror”), Jaynes writes that they are not in [his definition of] consciousness, so language is required to access them. On page 31: “…one of the great functions of language is to let the word stand for the concept, which is exactly what we do in writing or speaking about conceptual material. And we must do this because concepts are usually not in consciousness at all.”
On page 27: “To be conscious of the elements of speech is to destroy the intention of speech.” This is significant for skeptics who, as outsiders as it were, can “meta consciously” see language being used and abused by charlatans.
It lies outside this series to deal with the subject of language let alone consciousness in anything like the depth they deserve. They will figure again in Parts 4 through 10. Meanwhile my approach is to question or highlight particular uses of language, consciousness and unconsciousness as I encounter them.
The general question posed earlier – Is there such a phenomenon as the “war on terror” as presented?– can be divided into four others. Are there different ways to perceive this “war?” Yes. Significantly different? Yes. Is the most significant alternative perception that the “war” is a contrived illusion? Yes. Can this be proven for reasonable people beyond a shadow of a doubt? Yes. These answers imply much heavy lifting on our [17] part for a long time.
Two more questions: Are we fighting only a rearguard action? Maybe. Can we win? Depends both on what we mean by win and also on future unforeseen developments. You never know your luck. We’ll return in Part 12, “Ways Forward,” to this territory.
THE COGS OF THE MAXIMUM ILLUSION MACHINE, AS PRESENTED
“As presented” includes repetition, as already suggested: trillions of bytes of digital embroidery– printed and electronic output that endorses and promotes, explicitly or implicitly, the Big Lie of 9/11, and the interlaced cascade of prior and subsequent false flag operations and other lies in support of the whole ball of wax. This is accomplished with images and repetitive terminology in what I’ve already termed a synthetic perceptual environment. It’s laden with a continuous outpouring of mutually reinforcing language, “facts,” images, interpretations and opinions.
The opinions are especially interesting in that they differ (a few examples are provided further on) yet in their most important respect differ only superficially. That most important respect is the “takeaway.” In that they’re identical.
This is because all these “different opinions” are based on a shared unarticulated major premise: that these events and pseudo-events, including 9/11, are as they have been presented.
These “different opinions” therefore, serve to validate the cooked-up aspects of reality comprised of the language, images and “facts” provided by officialdom and the media. Their common and most important characteristic is, in fact, a lack of factuality – or even questioning. Thus they endorse the Big Lie of the official 9/11 narrative through repetitive omission, distraction and misdirection. By extension they endorse and promote the fraudulence of false flag operations.
“As presented” includes a November 7th2010 New York Times opinion piece promoting the “war on terror” by Thomas L. Friedman, one of the more restrained members of the commentariat. Friedman writes:

When Muslim jihadists are ready to just gun down or blow up unarmed men, women and children in the midst of prayer – Muslim or Christian – it means there are no moral, cultural or religious restraints left on the Islamic fringe.

This single example will here have to stand in for literally millions like it. Earlier in the same column he states that “the savage madness emanating from al Qaeda…is only increasing.”
In a more recent piece, Friedman discusses the bloody events in Syria without mentioning the false flag elements of “the opposition” – except to indirectly hide such U.S. (and Israeli) operations by referring to other types of their involvement or contemplated involvement.
The vast majority of books on 9/11 exhibit the same fact-free, fact-denying or fact-twisting information/disinformation. Most of the books in my own library of hundreds of 9/11 titles fail abjectly to question the official 9/11 narrative. The exceptions are fewer than two dozen titles by the likes of David Ray Griffin, Michael Ruppert and Paul Thompson.
The hundreds of books supporting the official narrative include religious or spiritual commentary (good on ethics, hopeless on facts); personal accounts (whether honest or dishonest, lacking the context of sufficient or any available evidence and therefore buttressing the overall lie); specialist literature such as from psychologists, overly technical and also lacking evidentiary context and even books by supposedly towering intellectuals on subjects other than 9/11 but that reference it in a major way.
(The most egregious example of intellectual treason I’ve encountered is the first 10 pages of “Words and Worlds,” the first chapter of Steven Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature. Pinker, a hero of mine otherwise whose brilliant intellect cannot be denied, nevertheless devotes those pages which launch his book to total, dogged, virtually incredible acceptance of the official 9/11 narrative. He concludes “…aside from the kooks, most people agree on the facts.” The last part is accurate if by facts he means “facts.” The put-down of those who question those “facts” is unforgivable.)
The worst 9/11 books on my shelves are pure disinformation. These include, most egregiously, “children’s books” that an informed 10-year-old could see through. In a book-length version of this series I will expose specific titles representing all these categories.
In addition to overwhelming reproduction in mass media “news” and “special reports” and in books, the world of illusion is reinforced in periodicals and “independent” documentaries; [18] in movies, mainstream TV documentaries and docudramas such as Flight 93; relevant programs on most “history” and “current affairs” specialty channels and in artistic output, including poetry and even quilting. It’s true. The book title is America from the Heart: Quilters Remember September 11, 2001. [19]
All recycled in a myriad of reincarnations such as in text messages, on Twitter, on Facebook pages and in email forwards and telephone and other personal messages and conversation.
The infosphere is polluted with the Big Lie of the “war on terror” and its linchpin, the false flag fraud of 9/11, like a giant fart in a global elevator.
BOSTON AND OBAMA’S SPEECH “ENDING” THE “WAR ON TERROR”
 As I was writing this, two relevant developments occurred. One was the Boston Marathon false flag op and some other concurrent “terrorism” developments.[20]
I’m cutting back on my observations about Boston to make room for comments on Barack Obama’s May 23rd speech at Washington’s National Defense University, a speech widely hailed as a call to end the “war on terror.” First, Boston.
The Boston events are being treated compellingly on this blog, so it’s unnecessary for me to duplicate fascinating details of duplicity. I restrict myself to three observations.
1 –The narrowness of the path onto which the media are immediately forced (not that their past performance would indicate they have any desire to deviate from that well-worn path).
The assumptions the media make, the questions they ask, the questions they don’t ask, the words they use (“senseless act,” “jihadists,” “disaffected radicals”) and above all their framing of the events – all are laid out as thoroughly as the route of a marathon. No TV reporter, assignment editor, anchor, no newspaper editor, columnist, production assistant or copy editor can deviate significantly from the path of the premeditated story.
Even the most thoughtful mainstream commentators are forced to hew to the detonated narrative. The Globe and Mail’s Doug Saunders opened his April 20th two-page news feature about Boston  this way:

A busy public place, a dense and peaceful crowd of onlookers, a celebratory moment – and then the sharp rupture of a blast. There are bombs. There is panic, there is destruction, there is tragedy and heroism and death.

The reader is usefully tricked by Saunders into thinking he or she is reading here about Boston. But in this unusually independent-minded and historically-oriented piece Saunders assesses the phenomenon of terror bombings going back more than 100 years. The lead paragraph in fact refers to an event similar to the one in Boston that occurred in Lower Manhattan in 1820 [21]. Saunders continues, almost subversively (the emphases are mine):

Our political future is often determined by what we pour into that empty interval – the words we employ during that long moment, before the arrests are made, when we try to make sense of an act that by definition cannot make any reasonable sense. We point to foreign threats and peoples, we point to the neglected menaces and failures within our own society, we raise our security and perhaps lower our tolerance for reduced civil liberties, and in the process we allow a new political moment to take shape.
To a surprising degree, the policies and international actions of Western nations over the past century have been shaped by the decisions made, and the narratives constructed, in those blank days after a bomb.

As refreshingly historical and insightful as this is, it’s notable – as is the rest of his long piece – in its acceptance of the official portrayal of the “terrorists.”
2 – Several kinds of fuel drive – typically – this false flag story forward: the shock value (amplified with individual stories and pictures of victims); the victimization angle (everyone’s innocent); the bravery angle (everyone’s a hero); the tragic angle (persons in the wrong place at the wrong time); the luck angle (those a little ahead or a little behind, and so escaping injury); the city-under-siege angle; the pulling together angle (we will not let the terrorists win); the patriotic angle, with the crowd at Boston (TD) Garden lustily singing The Star Spangled Banner. Attacks on the motherland, the fatherland, the homeland are guaranteed to deliver patriotic fervour. And of course the biggest angle of all: “terrorists” who hate America did it.
3 The puzzle of apparent sloppiness by the perpetrators. Pretty well any false flag entails months of planning, training and rehearsals. Yet false flag agents (“crisis actors”) are easily caught acting anomalously on analyzable video, as shown in Sheila Casey’s post on this site.
We skeptics are handed — on digital silver platters — compelling evidence of staging. The perpetrators could not get their ducks in a row sufficiently to withstand scrutiny. Or could they?
Could the “sloppiness” be deliberate? The tissue of lies of a Carlos, for instance, will predictably be discovered by those of an already skeptical bent who possess the analytical skills required and who take the time and effort to reveal and share them. (That’s us, the maligned Truthers.)
Just as we Truthers cannot help sensing our misgivings, cannot help seeing the anomalies, contradictions and absurdities of the official Boston narrative and cannot help sharing our damning observations, the public is being royally snookered by a weeks-long blanket of mainstream “coverage” driving home “the terrible reality” of this latest deception.
Our questions, evidence, analysis and opinions show up — entirely on the Internet — in the same time frame as the MSM “dumb show.”
This opens the door wide for dishonest MSM sidebar references to our work, accompanied by the labels “kooks” and (yawn) “conspiracy theorists.”
In the short term our skepticism, our honesty, our courage, our work become fodder for MSM “media whores” who choose (or are assigned) to dismiss us, dismiss our evidence, dismiss our analyses, and dismiss our findings.
The first example of this predictable development coming to my attention was an opinion piece entitled “Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories” in the New York Times on May 21st. It was written by contributor Maggie Koerth-Baker. [22]
“…in recent years,” Koerth-Baker, writes, “it seems as if every tragedy comes with a round of yarn-spinning, as the Web fills with stories about ‘false flag’ attacks and ‘crisis actors’ — not mere theorizing but arguments for the existence of a completely alternate [23] version of reality.[24]”
Because “rational people” (at least those fed the MSM version of Boston and with minimal or no exposure to, or curiosity about questions or opinions pointing to evidence of fakery) could hardly imagine an amputee as a “crisis actor,” our best efforts are here used against us in “the court of public opinion.”
In this tactic of the diaboligarchy, if that’s what it is, aided by agents such as Koerth-Baker, if that’s what she is, we’re destined to be made dupes, forever playing “evil clown” parts. Looked at this way, the apparent sloppiness of the false flag agents would be a deception planted within a deception.
If the majority of people cannot believe that the Boston Marathon events were a staged false flag operation, and further cannot believe the claims of skeptics who point out clanging anomalies (no blood accompanying legs blown off) what chance is there that they would believe the anomalies were planted as a trap for truth-seekers?
The answer surely is “very little,” and it buttresses the claim that the Maximum Illusion Time is real, if by real you mean that it works – for the herd.
Now to the second recent development: the May 23rd“landmark” speech delivered by U.S. president Barack Obama on May 23rd.
IS THE “WAR ON TERROR” BEING WOUND DOWN?
I’m not betting on it. The reason this question can be raised at all is because of Obama’s speech and coverage of it, reflected in this page-wide headline in the Toronto Star of May 24th:
“Obama calls for pullback in war on terrorism”
Wow. I for one was not expecting this. Flanked by a row of American flags on poles topped by eagles reminiscent of Hitler’s iconography, the American president spoke for an hour at the National Defense University [25] in Washington, D.C., in what was billed as a “major policy speech.” The Globe and Mail story, also with a page-wide headline, said Obama “shifted the United States away from a ‘boundless war on terror…’” It was The Toronto Star’s Mitch Potter [26] who called it a “landmark speech.”  And it was. But it was only a speech. Obama has so far proven himself a master of bait-and-switch, the king of broken promises, the prince of letdowns.

Reaction to Obama war speech

The military reaction to Obama’s speech was shock and dismay.


Be that as it may, judging by just one picture, his military-affiliated audience was taking him at his word and was not amused (see New York Times photo, right).
Left to right (starting with the lady) I see worried concern, growling contempt, alarm, thoughtful concern (third row), near disbelief (bow tie), wonderment (behind bow tie), indecipherable (third row) and grave disbelieving disappointment (far right). Okay, it’s a bit like phrenology, but faces do tell stories.
What did Obama say, what might it mean, and what were some post-speech reactions?
He said: “Our nation is still threatened by terrorists. We must recognize, however, that the threat has shifted and evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11.”
He said: “America must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.” He said: Al Qaeda is “a shell of its former self.”
He said: “Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight…”
He said: “History will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect [the existence of the U.S. prison in Guantanamo] of our fight against terrorism and those of us who fail to end it.”
He said he wants to limit drone strikes and he (again) said that he wants to close Guantanamo.
MSM RESPONSES TO THE SPEECH MORE EVIDENCE OF THE ILLUSION
With, as I write this, miles to go by way of assessing MSM reportage and reactions, let alone assessing (unlikely) actions by the U.S. empire to make good on Obama’s rhetorical undertakings, let’s begin with the May 26th op ed column by the Toronto Star’s Haroon Siddiqui.
A liberal, [27] Siddiqui called Obama’s speech “courageous,” adding: “He confronted the hysteria that has defined America and affected much of the world, including Canada, for 12 years.”
Siddiqui noted that the speech amounted to “a rebuke to [Canadian Prime Minister] Stephen Harper and others who have profited from the politics of the ‘war on terror’ [28] – and its by-products – militarism, narrow nationalism and cultural warfare.”
It’s nice to see Harper’s hardline right wing rhetoric and his hardline pro-military pro-war ideology and actions compared unfavourably to Obama’s anti-war rhetoric. (Harper may compare favourably in one respect: not being as monstrous a double-talker as Obama.)
Siddiqui accurately notes that the MSM generally “highlighted Obama’s edict to curtail but not kill the drone program, and his renewed determination to close Guantanamo Bay.” Instead, Siddiqui writes, apparently taking the US president at his word: “What should command our greater attention is his clarion call to abandon perpetual war.”
It’s nice to see perpetual war named and decried, however.
Siddiqui asserts what to many of us has been obvious for years: “…we need to see how the president would translate his rhetoric into action.”
A possible clue about eventual action, if any, may be found in the New York Times report on the speech. It’s written by Peter Baker of the Washington bureau and is headlined “Pivoting From a War Footing, Obama Acts to Curtail Drones.” Baker writes: “Officials said they anticipated that the eventual transfer of the CIA drone program in Pakistan to the military would probably coincide with the withdrawal of combat units from Afghanistan at the end of 2014.”
That’s a fairly long wait considering the U.S. president could figuratively halt the drones in midair at the stroke of a pen. Also, the “policy guidance” from the president on the matters on which he spoke is “classified.”
Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the antiwar group Code Pink, was in Obama’s audience, and shouted at the president to release prisoners from Guantánamo and halt CIA drone strikes. And “apologize to Muslims for killing so many of them,” she yelled as security personnel removed her from the auditorium. “Abide by the rule of law! You’re a constitutional lawyer!”
Siddiqui finds Obama’s “bathing” his rationale “in a legal and moral framework” … “unconvincing.”
Three or four stars for Siddiqui, I would say. After that it’s downhill in the MSM especially south of the border, on several counts. Too much uncritical acceptance of the rhetoric. Too much emphasis on promises of closing Guantanamo, especially in light of much too little reporting for a decade of the stomach-turning facts and the illegality of Guantanamo, “military trials” (another oxymoron) and the rest of the so-called “war on terror.”
Too much emphasis on promises of reduction of drone strikes. Too little emphasis on the horrors and illegality of those. Too much uncritical reporting of the madness of the Republican herd in response.
I borrow comments on MSM coverage of Obama’s speech from an outstanding dispatch by Stephen Lendman who writes regularly for the outstanding site Mathaba:

They didn’t surprise. Media scoundrels support his worst policies. His neo-liberal harshness is endorsed. His alliance with monied interests gets no coverage. His crimes of war, against humanity and genocide go unmentioned.
His partnership with Israel against Palestine isn’t explained. His systematic disdain for rule of law principles gets ignored.

Turning to the so-called “progressive press,” Lendman singled out The Nation magazine:

Throughout his tenure, [The Nation] largely endorsed Obama’s agenda. Criticism when expressed most often was muted. Lawless policies are mostly ignored or glossed over.
Accountability’s been largely unaddressed. It’s longstanding Nation magazine policy. It pretends to support rule of law principles, equity, justice, peace, and other democratic values. Often it falls woefully short.
It’s a virtual voice for Democrat party politics. On issues mattering most, both parties support each other’s agenda. Duopoly power runs America. Monied interests control it.
Supporting Obama and other Democrats endorses what demands condemnation. The Nation magazine and other faux progressives do it consistently.
They betray loyal followers in the process. They aid and abet lawless state policy. They remain unaccountable. Supporting wrong over right happens too often.

Given Obama’s self-chosen powerlessness, one can be forgiven for asking, when push comes to shove, who will more likely decide on the timing of the end, if indeed there is an end, of the so-called “war on terror” – Obama or the U.S. military. History shows the military are totally invested in perpetual war. Death is their life.
Pentagon officials testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 16th, 2013 were asked how long the war on terror (the reality of it, as presented, completely unquestioned by anyone present) could go on. Replied Michael Sheehan, an assistant secretary of defense: “At least 10 to 20 years.” (Perhaps, by coincidence, the length of time until his retirement?)
On May 17th the “Democracy Now!” website carried this story based on those Committee hearings:

From Boston to Pakistan, Pentagon Claims Entire World Is a Battlefield
Pentagon officials today claimed President Obama and future presidents have the power to send troops anywhere in the world to fight groups linked to al-Qaeda, based in part on the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed by Congress days after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Speaking at the first Senate hearing on rewriting the AUMF, Pentagon officials specifically said troops could be sent to Syria, Yemen and the Congo without new congressional authorization.
Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, predicted the war against al-Qaeda would last at least 10 to 20 more years.
Senator Angus King (I-Maine) challenged the Pentagon’s interpretation of the Constitution and that the entire world is a battlefield. “This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing I’ve been to since I’ve been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution here today,” King said. “You guys have invented this term ‘associated forces’ that’s nowhere in this document. … It’s the justification for everything, and it renders the war powers of Congress null and void.”

Back to the “landmark” Obama speech. Following it, the Center for Constitutional Rights responded:

(U)nless (Obama) takes immediate steps to resume transfers and ultimately close (Guantanamo), his administration will not escape the “harsh judgment” of history.
Lifting the ban on Yemeni transfers fell short. So far it’s rhetoric, not policy. (W)e are disappointed by (Obama’s) comment that cleared men will only be released “to the greatest extent possible.
Obama’s equivocation is troubling. After eleven years of detention without charge or trial, all of the men President Obama does not intend to give fair trials should be released and reunited with their families.
Anything short of that threatens to worsen a potentially deadly crisis unfolding at Guantanamo.
Targeted drone strikes remain policy. Reasserting the right is equally flawed and dangerous.
Whether or not the United States can use lethal force under the laws of war is not a matter of policy preference – it is a matter of law and facts.
Continuing current policy in any forms sets a dangerous precedent for future administrations and other countries.

Lendman dug out information about an equally well-crafted speech made by Obama May 21st 2009 at the National Archives. Addressing “national security,” Obama said America “can’t be safe…”

…unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. The documents that we hold in this very hall – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights – these are not simply words written into aging parchment.
They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality, and dignity around the world.
(O)ur government made a series of hasty decisions. (O)ur government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.
(W)e set (aside fundamental) principles as luxuries that we could no longer afford. In other words, we went off course. (Americans) called for a new approach – one that rejected torture and one that recognized the imperative of closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
We must act with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process, in checks and balances and accountability. (D)ecisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach.

“He pledged change,” Lendman noted. “He said he took steps to prohibit torture. He ordered Guantanamo closed, he claimed.

He made other high-minded promises. He “swore an oath to uphold the Constitution,” he said. He systematically spurned it. He did so across the board. He represents the worst of rogue leadership.

Obama’s May 23rd 2013 speech might mean he seeks to leave a “peace” legacy or at least less of a war legacy. It might mean he sees the military and “intelligence” budgets threatening to beggar his country.
But given that a Republican-dominated Congress thwarts most of what he attempts (including gun control that, whatever side one is on regarding that issue, is a recent major example), and given that time after time he gives the appearance of a man trapped in a bottle even when he has the power, what he means may not matter all that much, except to say that Obama is a master illusionist in Maximum Illusion time.
As to post-speech reactions, the right wing hawks were in full cry, reinforcing multiple illusions. Railed a furious Senator Lindsey Graham: “The enemy is morphing and spreading, there are more theatres of conflict today than in several years…our allies are more afraid than I have ever seen.” Woo woo.
If Obama really and truly wants to wind down the “war on terror” and put his war-ending political boots on U.S. political ground, it will be a long time until he succeeds.
And if he really tries, he’ll spend all the time in the crosshairs of the same diaboligarchy that dispatched JFK. But judging by his track record [29], this speech is fancy hot air, with follow-up action both optional and difficult to impossible to achieve in a country where much of the herd is mad and the leading establishment beasts close to stark raving mad.
A harsher observation is that the speech is deceptive cover for the diaboligarchy’s war-and-surveillance business as usual, just another oratorical gimmick of Maximum Illusion Time.
I borrow from Julian Jaynes to describe the total import of Maximum Illusion Time.
In referring (page 441) to “scientisms,” that he calls “clusters of scientific ideas which come together and almost surprise themselves into creeds of belief,” he describes what could also be a description of the “worldview” manufactured by the diaboligarchy, in this passage:
…they share with religions many of their most obvious characteristics; a rational splendor that explains everything, a charismatic leader or succession of leaders who are highly visible and beyond criticism [I would say “who must be accepted by the majority mind” – BZ], a series of canonical texts which are somehow outside the usual arena of scientific criticism, certain gestures of idea and rituals of interpretation, and a requirement of total commitment.
In return, the adherent receives what the religions had once given him more universally: a worldview, a hierarchy of importances, and an auguring place where he may find out what to do and think, in short, a total explanation of man.
And more relevantly to this series, he continues:
And this totality is obtained not by actually explaining everything, but by an encasement of its activity, a severe and absolute restriction of attention, such that everything that is not explained is not in view.

FOOTNOTES

[1] MacKay was a Scottish journalist. Extraordinary Popular Delusions &the Madness of Crowds was first published in 1841. It’s still in print, particularly for its prescience about economic bubbles and psychopathology.
[2] I appreciate that madness, or insanity, is a label too easily applied and one that deserves to be questioned.
When applied to an individual in an attempt to disparage or refute his or her beliefs, it’s an ad hominem argument. When applied to individuals in the context of clinical psychology or psychiatry, the diagnosis of mental illness is an attempt in the vast majority of cases to be neutral and indeed helpful. (The exceptions to this do not defeat the rule.)
Psychosis is a generic psychiatric term for “loss of contact with reality.” Within or overlapping this can be found “delusional beliefs.” The definition “a distorted or nonexistent sense of objective reality” is found in the free dictionary.
Within the psychiatric literature “mass psychosis” is generally accepted. The thrust of the psychosis then needs to be fleshed out. Arguably Hitler induced mass paranoia in the German body politic at a time of great national stress, through persuasive repetitive propaganda. Near the centre of that was a grotesquely-unfounded fear of communists, socialists and Jews.
My adoption of crowd “madness” in this text is meant both as a quasi-scientific descriptive term and as metaphor. I attempt to qualify my uses as I go along. For instance “delusion” is a term used both within medical circles and popularly. When a large population shares a belief that reasonable study of the evidence would show is simply untrue, that population can fairly be called deluded. If the population is subject to multiple delusions, the population can fairly be called delusional.
I tend to use the lower-octane word “illusion.” Perhaps I’m underplaying the phenomenon and its ugly outcomes.
[3] This grossly misleading term is used by Canadian born and Harvard educated Roger Martin, dean of The University of Toronto’s business school, no fewer than seven times in a 550-word opinion piece published on the front page of the business section of the Saturday Toronto Star of May 18th, 2013.
His is one of three “think pieces” appearing under the heading “Where capitalism goes from here.” Named one of the world’s top management thinkers by Thinkers50, Martin apparently thinks there’s no conflict between democracy and capitalism. It apparently escapes him that it is an oxymoron, because it is abundantly clear that capitalism, apart from small locally-owned enterprises, corrupts and opposes democracy in almost all its forms in a multitude of ways. The general truth about capitalism is that as it grows it bends, seemingly inevitably and with very few exceptions, toward crime and eventually fascism.
[4] Working handguns now are being produced with 3D printers.
[5] Most 9/11Truthers, fortunately, experience the facilitating kind. This is partly because we have a better grasp than Joe and Jane Public of the larger picture and details within it. To rationally understand there are human conspiracies, and possess some information about them, makes for better mental health than does living in fear of the many “threats” paraded daily to startle the herd and maintain fear control. Activist Truthers further enhance their facilitating anxiety because, as has been said: “worry is a substitute for action.”
[6] Not the least invested in the “fear sector” is Big Pharma and much of the psychiatric establishment. There’s gold in them thar pills.
[7] “Global power elites” is an understandable though somewhat vague term to describe what often is even more vaguely referred to as “the powers that be” or the “powers behind the throne.”
“Power elites” is widely accepted terminology, or at least not widely challenged. In this series it is unavoidable to refer, not infrequently, to those individuals and groups of individuals that possess demonstrably more power than the vast run of humanity. To avoid tiresomeness I use most of these synonyms on occasion.
These include Deep State (Peter Dale Scott); power elites (the term originated by C. Wright Mills); global supra-society (Russian historian Alexander Zinoviev, see especially Part 6); Invisible Government (Theodore Roosevelt); New World Order (Hitler), a term that George H. W. Bush tried unsuccessfully to rehabilitate; oligarchs, the oligarchy, the Permanent Committee and The Illuminati. My own invented term, the Diaboligarchy (with or without the caps) is a hybrid of theological and sociological terms.
[8] John Reynolds, a member of the Bertrand Russell Society, opened a copy of the Selected Writings of Bertrand Russell to this passage from the introduction, written in the 1920s on the eve of the Great Depression:
“It is evident that, in a world where there was leisure and economic security for all, the happiness of all would be greater than that of ninety-nine per cent of the present inhabitants of the planet. Why, then, do the ninety-nine per cent not combine to overcome the resistance of the privileged one per cent?
Reynolds researched the quote – sure the 99 Percent movement was inspired by Russell – but found no connection. It appears the good philosopher, as usual, was just ahead of his time.
[9] The crises include:
1 – global climate change (I acknowledge that some readers, unlike myself, might list this within quote marks as a hoax. But even as a hoax, I think those readers might agree it’s a large and important enough hoax to qualify as one of the crises);
2 – the size of the human population already exceeds the carrying capacity of the Earth;
3 – natural resources depletion;
4 – still-growing pollution of the natural environment, mainly through human activity;
5 – possible escape into large populations of natural or manmade viruses and infections resistant to antibiotics (so-called “superbugs.” A current apparent threat is a novel corona-virus named Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome [MERS] of which, according to a report on May 19th, 2013, there had been 41 confirmed cases of which 20 were fatal);
6 – rogue nano-technology;
7 – food shortages that already have sparked widespread social unrest;
8 – one or more “black swans” that could be novel or a result of merging of any of the previous six crises listed.
[10] It could be argued that a worldwide natural catastrophe, and/or almost any of the crises listed in the previous footnote can render moot the major premise of this series – that false flag deceptions are “history’s deadliest deceits.” I would disagree.
That false flag ops are deceits is inarguable. As to their deadliness, in terms of loss of human and other life and destruction of the natural environment (think defoliation in Vietnam), the built environment (think Iraq) and cultural treasures, false flag ops match or exceed the natural and other man-made catastrophies of at least the last 2,000 years. All false flags are the spawn of calculated human (albeit essentially psychopathic) designs that through time have arguably done almost irreparable harm to the whole human experiment.
I was going to include an asteroid strike as “beyond human control to prevent” but deleted that. If just a fraction of the trillions squandered on armaments were switched to scientists’ efforts to track, and devise means of diverting future threatening asteroids, we could breathe a little easier.
Whether the existence of three asteroids close to Earth – one entering our atmosphere – in early 2013 is coincidental, they are at least reminders that our planet has dangerous space company. The latest one came close by cosmic standards. It was 3.5 kilometers in diameter. Had it scored an Earth hit, it would have been “the end of civilization,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation science specialist Bob McDonald noted. Noted by me was the bizarrely jokey demeanor of the news anchor introducing the subject.
[11] The Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22) on this common belief questions its accuracy, stating: “Some Western linguists consider this analysis fallacious, arguing that the character alone does not necessarily mean ‘opportunity.’ ”
[12] Just one example of the elites’ conscious creation of crises was seen in Ontario, Canada when John Snobelen was caught on videotape saying his government needs to “bankrupt” and to create a “useful crisis” in the province’s education system so as to initiate “significant reforms.” This was in 1995. At the time Snobelen was Minister of Education and Training in the rightwing Mike Harris Ontario government. The government ‘s “reforms” were controlling school board budgets to reduce them and providing tax credits for parents of students in private schools. This succeeded in convulsing the education system, with reverberations that lasted at least eight years.
[13] The concept of pseudo events was invented by American sociologist Daniel Boorstin. Although Boorstin’s focus was on publicity and advertising, his essential insight is highly applicable to false flag pseudo-events. Wikipedia’s entry on Boorstin’s concept is helpful: “Boorstin’s 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America is an early description of aspects of American life that were later termed hyperreality and postmodernity. In The Image, Boorstin describes shifts in American culture — mainly due to advertising — where the reproduction or simulation of an event becomes more important or ‘real’ than the event itself.” Pseudo-event describes an event or activity that “serves little or no purpose other than to be reproduced…”
[14] The illusion is well established, going back to the ancients. In his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Steven Pinker writes (pps. 43-4):
The conscious mind – the self or soul – is a spin doctor, not the commander in chief. Sigmund Freud immodestly wrote that ‘humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science three great outrages upon its naïve self-love’: the discovery that our world is not the center of the celestial spheres but rather a speck in a vast universe, the discovery that we were not specially created but instead descended from animals, and the discovery that often our conscious minds do not control how we act but merely tell us a story about our actions.
[15] For whatever reasons I was conscious of language as a significant phenomenon (rather than something we normally use unthinkingly) to the extent that by around the age of 20 I thought I’d like to make lexicography a career. I became a journalist etc. instead. Then, only a few years ago, my friend Bruce Sinclair, an Edmonton Truther, crystallized my appreciation of the centrality of language (I had been calling it the “the incision point into reality”) with a simpler construct: “Language is everything.” It isn’t, if we take into account subliminal phenomena. But Bruce’s assertion is highly thought-provoking and may even be true if we consider that we can’t think about/discuss consciously subliminal phenomena without language. We have to ask – using language – what “language is everything” means. This inescapably leads to the issue of consciousness. Julian Jaynes writes tellingly that language preceded consciousness in the development of our species.
[16] The word literally has become widely misused – so much so that a British language expert recently suggested we should throw in the towel on it; we should accept that when people say “The senator was literally buried alive in the Iowa primaries,” they mean the opposite. They mean figuratively.
As Dictionary.com puts it: “Since the early 20th century, literally has been widely used as an intensifier meaning ‘in effect, virtually,’ a sense that contradicts the earlier meaning [which is] ‘actually, without exaggeration.’ The use is often criticized; nevertheless, it appears in all but the most carefully edited writing.”
A practical but wry guide for the use of Washington Post writers virtually bans the use of literally because of its widespread misuse.  And because it has become a cliché. Good for the Washington Post on this. I think the word should if possible be reinstated, be re-appreciated for what it conveys. It is a synonym for truly, actually, really. Throughout this series, when I use the word literally I mean it in the strict dictionary sense: “In exact accordance with, or limited to, the explicit meaning of [the word or words or text it modifies].” – Collins English Dictionary, Third Edition
[17] Speaking again of language, in most cases in this series I use our and we to signify Truthers or skeptics. The use by pundits and writers of letters to the editor and politicians and TV news anchors of the word “we” to signify everyone drives me up the wall. Frequently I disagree strongly with what they tell me “we” think or believe. That includes me, gaddammit. Even in restricting my use of we and our to mean skeptics or Truthers I’m sure I’m driving a good number of these up the wall.
[18] An easily accessible example is on this blog. It’s my review of Shadows of Liberty. After I wrote the review I learned it was the top featured documentary at the 2013 National Conference for Media Reform, a body controlled by false flag agents who never have permitted more than the slightest reference to 9/11Truth. And then only once and only after pressure that amounted to (justified) near blackmail from a prominent academic.
[19] Curated by Karey Bresenhan and published by C&T publishing (ISBN 1-57120-145-9 (paper trade)
[20] By this I mean the public being informed via the MSM of the apprehension by Canadian police of a couple of would-be passenger train derailers or bombers living in Canada. A connection was immediately made to Iran. A short time previously, Canadian “news consumers” “saw” the emergence of up to four “home grown Canadian terrorists.” Two were among those killed in a bloody hostage taking in Algeria. It’s a continental new spate of “terrorist” events.
[21] Saunders in the middle of his piece refers back to “the habit” of the need for “a message to fill the silence” after the blast:
I believe this habit began on the morning of Sept. 18, 1920. The day before, a bomb blast surprisingly like the one that hit the Boston Marathon struck the busy streets of Lower Manhattan. It was the first time in history that a bomb had been used in quite this way, and The New York Times pulled a word out of obscurity to describe the act.
The most reasonable theory of the explosion is that it was intended as a terrorizing demonstration. It is not the first. It surely will not be the last,” the Times wrote in an editorial bearing the then-novel headline “To Put Down Terrorists.” The editorialists then set to work employing a set of phrases to become clichés…
[22]One of a series of opinion pieces entitled Eureka, to which Koerth-Baker contributes monthly.
[23] She’s misusing “alternate.” Alternate  meansevery other, or every second, as in she was asked to attend on alternate days or in alternating current.  She should have written “alternative,” which means one of two or more available possibilities, as in she had no alternative but to break the law.
[24] Koerth-Baker is scorched by Russell Baker in a piece in on the site WhoWhatWhy.
[25] (P.24) Misnamed because this “university,” among a slew of similarly misnamed institutions (leadingly the U.S. “Defense” department) are key instruments exerting the destructive powers of the aggressive, not defensive, U.S. empire. In 1949, not coincidentally when the “Cold War” was gaining full traction, the previously aptly named “War Department” was switched to linguistic stealth mode. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_War)
[26] Potter, the Toronto Star’s Washington Bureau chief, in many previous instances has been one of those stenographers dutifully reporting with minimal or zero questioning major false flag operations.
[27] I use the word “liberal” in the Canadian sense, meaning knowledgeable, thoughtful, intelligent. Not in the sense used so often in the USA as meaning a contemptible if not idiotic communist pedophile, probably of French background. Siddiqui – generally a critic of the establishment – also has been critical of the so-called “war on terror” in many of his past columns.
[28] It’s nice to see quote marks increasing wrapped around “war on terror,” quote marks hardly seen since 9/11.
[29] The chasms between Obama’s words and actions, and even between his words and his words, are becoming so large that you can’t see the other side of the chasm from this side. Even MSM are beginning to recognize this. Here’s Elizabeth Renzetti on page 2 of the Globe and Mail of Saturday June 8th after she noted Obama’s apologia for massive secret spying on millions of Americans by the National Security Agency:
Here’s what President Barack Obama had to say in 2008, when he was nobly seeking office and not uncomfortably occupying it: “I’ll make our government open and transparent, so anyone can ensure that our business is the people’s business. … no more secrecy, that’s a commitment I make to you.’’ He quoted Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis: “Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant.”
Roger that. But the sunlight is coming from whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg and now Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance). Manning is facing life in prison and Snowden probably worse, from a darkness that talks about sunlight.

103 comments

  1. “The late Princeton University professor Julian Jaynes in his landmark book The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind..”
    Barrie, you are the first person I have met, or communicated with who has also read this fascinating book. And it is quite remarkable, pushing a lot of historical and “psychological” boundaries. The idea that the people who built the Great Pyramids were not “conscious” in the way we understand the term is, to say the least, “far out”. But his theories are fleshed out very rationally and seem quite sound in many aspects.
    At any rate, I am going to have to give this latest essay you offer several more readings to get a real handle on it. It is certainly meaty. Thank you, as far as I have gotten so far is delicious.
    \\][//

  2. I am delighted to have read this piece Barrie and I give it top marks for being the most thought provoking piece I have read in a long long time. I have much to consider after reading it and I will enthusiastically promote it to as many people as I can. I am looking forward to the next installment eagerly.
    In reference to your reference point #9 I do hearby acknowledge that the global warming hoax does qualify as a crisis in your example simply because so many people believe it to be a genuine crisis and have therefore caused a real crisis as a result. On that count I agree with you 100%. However I can easily expose the false nature of the global warming (rebranded “climate change”) hoax and I humbly suggest that you add it to the list of false flags you expose in your series because it is one of the biggest false flags in history. I will be happy to distill the issue down into the most concise package possible for you and the other readers if you and they are interested. Basically though all your criticism and points you make about how false flags and the war on terror narrative are implanted into the herd mind apply equally to the global warming hoax. They fit like a glove in fact.
    One indisputable fact I will give you now though about this issue is this: CO2 levels follow temperature changes they do not cause those changes. Ice core studies prove that to be true. In fact there is about an 800 year lag time between the temperature change and then the following CO2 level change. This single fact alone exposes the entire climate change hoax if you really consider it. The hoaxers whole myth is based on the falsity that CO2 changes cause the temperature changes when in reality it is the opposite that is true.
    I will be glad to go into more detail on another discussion. For now all I can say is Bravo Barrie this is an outstanding piece of work. I loved it.

    1. On Framing and Reframing; a short response to Centrino105:
      We might perhaps argue that since her pubic hair is darker than her blond head hair that she is not a ‘natural blond’. This of course dismisses the fact that she was wearing her bikini bottom every time she sunbathed, and natural blonds do have their hair bleached easily by sunlight.
      Of course the question of “does she or doesn’t she” may seem moot when we consider that the question is being considered by pathologists at the county morgue who are preparing an autopsy for the blond in question.
      Are perhaps the bruises around her shoulders and neck of more relevance?
      And now to take the mystery out of my puzzling allegory, is the question of CO2 levels akin to the question of the difference in the hue of this unfortunate lady’s hair distribution?
      Or to put it more directly dear Centrino, is it your opinion that Earth still has a healthy ecosystem?
      \\][//

      1. I signed up under another name briefly to go on another blog where I did not want the unsavory trolls there to have my real name. To make a long story short Centrino105 is me. As to your question HR1 no our ecosystem is not healthy at all we have serious pollution, deforestation, and toxin issues in our environment. The Climate change issue is all about CO2 which is NOT an issue at all. Sorry about the name change thing I forgot to change it back after going behind enemy lines.

      2. So Adam,
        We are agreed, “does she or doesn’t she” isn’t relevant to this elephant which is extinct in the wild. I understand that the plant world still takes a breath or two on occasion, which one would presume entails an exhale.
        \\][//

  3. Dear Mr. Zwicker,
    Quite excellent.
    I particularly liked the turn of phrase, “mad crowd disease” and that we should always emphasize the quotation marks around the bogus “war on terror.”
    You’ve nailed many of things that are “a source for debilitating anxiety.” However, anxiety might be too strong and may only be valid for an initial period. Then it gets turned off or ignored just like advertizements and commercials have trained us to do.

    Oligarchies dominated by psychopaths pursuing their own selfish interests at the expense of everyone else have risen spontaneously since civilization as we know it was born in Sumeria. To know this, however, is small comfort and should not be taken either as a sentence upon the future or cause for despair.

    After the waters have been disturbed and given a chance to calm, dregs fall to the bottom and scum rises to the top. Always. With no solution to change it, it is both a sentence upon the future and a cause for despair … that I am tempted to just tune-out and turn-off.
    In my younger days, I day-dreamed about taking a steady and righteous course in my studies and career, and then to branch into politics as the outsider with the grand day-dream of becoming El Presidente El Once de Los Estados Unidos. [I have never disputed Mr. Rogue’s charges that I was naive.] Early on, though, a hint was given in a distainful way that those seeking political office have to “give away” or “compromise away” too many of the virtues and values that were their original value-add to the situation. I then observed it myself in the small political pools of my employment, the nature of those who rose to the top.
    Loved this distillation:

    The narrowness of the path onto which the media are immediately forced… all are laid out as thoroughly as the route of a marathon.
    Several kinds of fuel drive this false flag story forward: the shock value; the victimization angle; the bravery angle; the tragic angle; the luck angle; the city-under-siege angle; the pulling together angle; the patriotic angle. The biggest angle of all: “terrorists” who hate America did it.
    The puzzle of apparent sloppiness by the perpetrators.

    Is the last paragraph before the footnotes a quotation from Julian Jaynes?

    And this totality is obtained not by actually explaining everything, but by an encasement of its activity, a severe and absolute restriction of attention, such that everything that is not explained is not in view.

    //

  4. I’m gratified that my brief and inadequate references to Julian Jaynes have sparked, at least early on, the kind of response I would wish for. That there’s a fellow Jaynesnian is icing on the cake. The way Jaynes plumbs the mysteries of consciousness and the centrality of language is so revelatory that his companion finding about the significance of metaphor seems almost incidental. Yet his insights into metaphor could be the basis for a whole school of thought. Something to mull over when considering Hybridrogue1’s blonde in a bikini.

    1. Barrie,
      I’m glad that you brought up and re-sparked my interest in THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS. I read the book more than 20 years ago, and am getting much more out of it this time around.
      And now that I have finished your piece here – a few times over, I want to compliment you on it again in fullness. There are a few points, not in the article itself, but in your notes that I might take exception to, but I think that would just take us off topic to joust over.
      \\][//

  5. I was starting to get worried, Hybridrogue1, that you and I had no differences of opinion or outlook at all, so your finding nits to pick among the footnotes is reassuring. The late great ecologian Thomas Berry, upon being told at a party that two other guests were “completely alike,” replied “Well then, one of them is unnecessary.”

    1. Hah…Barrie, that is an amusing reply made by Mr. Berry.
      I think you likely recall some hints as to our differences on certain topics. I think it would be most interesting to someday discuss these issues together. I wouldn’t want to frame it as a ‘debate’, as I don’t think it necessary to bring everyone or anyone around to my particular way of thinking. In fact I would be much more comfortable in a society that cherished such individualism, where differences of opinion weren’t automatically ‘grounds for battle’.
      Perhaps at some point some venue will present us with the opportunity for such a discussion.
      ~Willy Whitten – \\][//

    2. Hello Barrie: This may not be considered under the topic of false flags completely, but where do you put weather wars under in your schemata? The name escapes me, but the secretary of state under the Clinton Administration believed that other countries were engaging in weather wars against the United States.
      Do you believe weather wars exist based from the technology of HAARP? I believe it exists or I feel compelled to say that the strong likelihood of this type of technology exists to promote erratic weather patterns and weather catastrophies.

  6. The seeds of thought are coming to me that there is something very much akin to the synthesis of a neo-bicameral mind being developed in this postmodern society, wherein the media replaces the voice of the gods. The effects are already apparent in the masses. A lack of conscious awareness, lack of introspection as to where the messages they believe, actually originate. This paradigm based on delusions generated by the Public Relations Regime; The ‘scripts’ that echo in the minds of the brainwashed, are so similar to the ‘orders’ given by the ‘gods’ of the bicameral mind…that are obeyed without conscious consideration.
    Is society being reverse engineered to achieve a simulation based on this idea Jaynes put forward? This seems to be the case, again rather allegorically.
    Perhaps Barrie has some thoughts as to this idea…I am assuming for the time being that he is the only other here who has read the book [???]
    \\][//

    1. Hypnosis and Enchantment…Chapter 4
      “To fully realize that consciousness is a culturally learned event, balanced over the suppressed vestiges of an earlier mentality, then we can see that consciousness, in part, can be culturally unlearned or arrested. Learned features, such as analog ‘I,’ can under the proper cultural imperative be taken over by a different initiative, and one such instance is what we call hypnosis. The reason that that different initiative works in conjunction with the other factors of the diminishing consciousness of the induction and trance is that in some way it engages a paradigm of an older mentality than subjective consciousness.”~Julian Jaynes
      {from: THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND}
      . . . . . . . . .
      This is what caught my attention:
      “…then we can see that consciousness, in part, can be culturally unlearned or arrested.”
      And this is what is alarming when we truly grasp that modern electronic media does in fact put the “viewing audience” into a trance state bypassing the conscious mind. This could be said to be a persistent ‘unlearning and arresting’ – habituating the mind to rely on the ‘authority’ of the ‘voices’ of the TV for commands that require the same sort of obedience that the people of the past relied on for decision in novel situations.
      When we then consider the theories of “Transhumanism”, we can very well imagine the reemergence of a sort of neo-bicameral mind for the “underclasses” – and the emergence of an ‘overclass’ of demigods drawn from the current puppet master elites.
      \\][//

  7. The Swirl of Controversy Continues As Per Snowden/NSA Leak:
    “Was Edward Snowden spotted before he decided to leak documents, and set up by the NSA?
    Substantial evidence supports the possibility that he was. Numerous questions cast doubt on the authenticity of the Power Point slide show describing PRISM, but the UK Guardian has not seen fit to release it to the public. Perhaps Glenn Greenwald should anonymously leak this file: In the words of Snowden himself, “The public needs to decide.”
    Romas/COIN, Odyssey; real NSA surveillance programs.
    Is it possible that the PRISM leak was intended to mislead the American people into dramatically under-estimating the real domestic surveillance capabilities of our National Security Agency? You might well think so, but this reporter could not possibly comment.”
    ~Steve Kinney
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/nsa-deception-operation-questions-surround-leaked-prism-documents-authenticity/5338673
    \\][//

  8. Is the Snowden/NSA Leak in actuality a False Flag operation?
    As time passes, the usual critics of the maximum security state seem to be coming to, if not that conclusion, a deep suspicion that this is so.
    I haven’t heard much from Naomi for some time now, so I thought I would bring her newest article published by Global Research today:
    Naomi Wolf:
    “Finally in my experience, real whistleblowers are completely focused on their act of public service and trying to manage the jeopardy to themselves and their loved ones; they don’t tend ever to call attention to their own self-sacrifice. That is why they are heroes, among other reasons. But a police state would like us all to think about everything we would lose by standing up against it.”
    “But do consider that in Eastern Germany, for instance, it was the fear of a machine of surveillance that people believed watched them at all times – rather than the machine itself – that drove compliance and passivity. From the standpoint of the police state and its interests – why have a giant Big Brother apparatus spying on us at all times – unless we know about it?” ~Naomi Wolf
    And this is the essence of the “Panopticon” – self policing of inmates always under blanket surveillance.
    [See: Foucault]
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/my-creeping-concern-that-the-nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-is-not-who-he-purports-to-be/5339161?
    \\][//

    1. To all and especially for those whose hearts are in the right place: Let’s not forgot why we have this massive spying program going on in this country in the first place. As much as the agents of the state believe “we” the activists are paranoid, “they” are much more so as they are doing the will of their masters who need to know those who will or who are willing to expose the central bankers credit monopoly scams. Then, at some time in the future, they can isolate those people and put them in camps or worse.

  9. thanks much, barrie, for your excellent take on things. very deep. it will take a couple of more reads for me to absorb it all. ditto some of the comments and links.
    i must say that i did not like the original broadening of the definition of “false flag,” but have come to see the wisdom in that approach, as so many other non-classical false flag events can be brought in under the expanded definition.
    i have not come around to feeling attached to your “diaboligarchy” — six syllables in one word, i guess, i’m not ready for 😉 how do you pronounce it? die-uh-BO-lih-gar-key?
    can you give us a hint as to what you will say re what we can do about all this? from what you write above (e.g., the obvious crisis actor sloppiness at the boston marathon), we observers here and elsewhere are actually being used by the power elite. (evil geniuses that they are, i think they are also laughing at how much absurdity they can get away with and probably have a pool going on that.) in any event, i can’t believe that it is better for us to say nothing. i can’t imagine that you would believe that either, or else, why this series on false flags, and all of your previous outspokenness? or are you changing your mind? in sum, i believe it is preferable to share thoughts, insights, observations, and even theories, if only to see that we are not alone in our thoughts and assessments. but then again, these are only beliefs. maybe i’d be better off watching the mets lose another meaningless baseball game.
    my two cents,
    –d

    1. Let me add a penny to those thoughts Dennis,
      Orwell’s prescription was very simple. To paraphrase, ours is not so much to think we can change things beyond the turning, but to remain sane. To keep the heritage of sanity alive personally. And for this time being, counselling amongst others who we deem to be sane as well. And if the time comes, as it seems it may, to remain sane under a mask of the common insanity__until the gyre of time has that pass as well.
      I have no intention of being silent at this point. The time is past for that.
      “Do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also,  and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of a fiasco. But there’s also the possibility of bliss.”~Joseph Campbell, on the hero’s journey
      \\][//

      1. thanks, willy. remaining “sane” in an insane world is a challenge. where are the markers? in the 60’s, around here at least, we were proud to be viewed as insane, normalcy being intolerable.
        yes, the hero’s journey. i have heard about that, in hank wesselman’s shamanism circles. have not read it yet, but from what i understand, it seems like a preferred path.
        –d

      2. Yes Dennis,
        The 60s headspace was the same for me as well…and remains that too.
        “Normalcy” should never be construed as ‘sanity’ in a pathological culture.
        \\][//

  10. Spin/Counter-Spin.
    .Snowden the Hero/Snowden the Fraud.
    All theoretical. Mostly pure guesswork. I would suggest all of it more autobiographical than pertinent to Snowden.
    Whatever happened to the principle of ‘Innocent Until Proven Guilty’?
    Whatever happened to admitting to oneself that there is not enough information to make an intelligent judgment? Concurrent to that, what is wrong with suspending judgment until more is discovered?
    There is a danger of creating ones own bias by too early an investment in a certain point of view.
    \\][//

      1. Well,
        I have critiqued Tarpley previously as he seems to base his commentary on the proposition that these political actors in their titular positions actually have the powers of the offices that they hold.
        To propose that Obama has the power to do anything beyond read his teleprompter is absurd. All of these “personalities” are front men taking orders from the shadows, from the powers behind the throne. Even the ‘Bully Pulpit’ is compromised by script writers, and if Obama goes off script, he’s a dead Kennedy.
        Obama is neither “the Manchurian candidate”, nor “the ONLY thing standing between us and WWIII,” he is a puppet. And Tarpley has gone hysterically hyperbolic, becoming just another fan pleasing rhetoric salesman.
        I guess it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on anyone who makes their living dealing with “the shit”. ‘Popularity’ is money to authors. Staying on the front burners is important to their lifestyles.
        \\][//

    1. Addendum to my first response
      Thanks for that link Dennis,
      Tarpley’s analysis is, as usual very strong, and lifted up by historical example and facts.
      Webster’s work reminds my of the solid approach of May Brussels, who’s early work on the JFK assassination taught many up-and-coming researchers the basics of open source intelligence analysis.
      \\][//

      1. thanks willy. i remember the name may brussels, but not much else.
        it was actually a favorable passing reference to tarpley that you made here some time ago (something like “tarpley has stated that. . . “) that got me into paying some attention to him. i became aware of the tarpley article via willyloman who has now offered a motive for the whole snowden affair. see http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/the-missing-motive-of-the-snowden-psyop-cispa-yes-cispa/
        –d

  11. Thank you much Dennis,
    “The Shock Opera of the Snowden psyop has a final chapter written and directed by 800 major corporations.”~willyloman
    After a long expanded moment of WTF…
    not buying the Snowden spin/counterspin one way or the other; this finally clicks it into place.
    A very good and convincing analysis by Mr Creighton.
    \\][//

    1. Before leaving the subject of Snowden for the time being, I would simply like to make these observations.
      Let us not loose sight of who the actual enemy is here – that is clearly the panoptic surveillance state. With that in mind, I think we should still beware of considering Snowden as some sinister ‘agent’, but accept the likelihood that this whole affair has been manipulated by the puppet masters in charge.
      I still have the opinion that Snowden acted with good conscience on his part. I think Greenwald did as well. When we get to the Media, this is where the ball is handed off for spin, and distraction. And we should be ever aware of acting as agents of such distraction ourselves.
      It is in my opinion, a distraction to put too much emphasis on this one actor in this larger scheme of things; while meanwhile the levers of despotism continue to move the fascist state deeper into fruition. It isn’t Snowden that is going to make CISPA law, it is the money powers that have bought off the “government”.
      \\][//

      1. willy,
        i liked scott’s article but for me, the jury is still out on this whole affair. whether or not snowden acted with good conscience, i don’t know. ditto greenwald but i do not trust him one bit. currently, i view him as a gatekeeper.
        on facebook, i am friends with drg’s co-creator of the 9/11 consensus panel, elizabeth woodworth. she has noted that she thinks snowden is the greatest thing since daniel ellsberg. i sent her the tarpley article. she was impressed but reserved judgment. as i wrote to elizabeth about this on facebook,
        “thanks for reading the article, and your feedback, elizabeth. yes, so much has to be filed under possibilities and revisited, and revisited, and revisited. i’ve done that with ellsberg. as i see it, the tipoff that snowden is a plant is all the mass media coverage. would they be covering him if his “revelations” included key information on the JFK, RFK, and/or MLK assassinations, and/or 9/11? obviously not. to me, these are the KEY political issues of our time. in short, i like tarpley’s take on ellsberg and the pentagon papers, as presented in this article. to me, it adds up. i remember reading somewhere that the cia had wanted to get nixon because he had threatened to blow the lid off “the bay of pigs thing” (which i remember nixon referencing on tape so many years ago, and at the time wondering what he was talking about). apparently what he was talking about was the jfk assassination, and this made nixon a security risk. as for ellsberg’s not retiring, well, some people just can’t do it. witness dick clark, among others. 😉 also, that ellsberg continues to work keeps him in the public eye as the premier whistleblower, and thus advances the credibility of what he stands for, e.g., snowden. ellsberg’s out-of-hand dismissal as “obvious forgeries” of key government documents indicating government involvement in the assassination of MLK is for me another tipoff. ( i learned this from an impeccable source.) tho like every effective gatekeeper–e.g., noam (jfk and 9/11 don’t matter) chomsky)–ellsberg says a lot of “good things.” one more thing re nixon…look who came into power once nixon left office: warren commissioner gerald ford who, if memory serves, brought with him cheney and rumsfeld.”
        in response, elizabeth suggested i view this http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/?csp=Dailybriefing
        i could only bear to touch the surface, and wrote to her as follows.
        “i started to watch the 3 nsa videos (thanks) but bottom line, i don’t trust these guys. my current perception is that there is a psyop going on and these guys are part of it. binney, somewhere else, had high praise for julian (9/11 is a false conspiracy) assange–end binney’s credibility. another of the three (not sure which one, it’s not transcribed) offered that the u.s. government “unchained itself from the constitution after 9/11.” UNCHAINED ITSELF? so we are no longer a constitutional form of government? anyone want to discuss that? or what really happened on 9/11? no. they are just gently letting the people know the constitution is gone. it is the fascist shadow government coming into the light. that seems to be a subtle part of the psyop. then there are all the references of the terrorists out there, when in fact we both know that the real 9/11 terrorists are here. so they keep pushing the terrorist 9/11 myth while pretending to be guardians of the constitution. i will try to get into this video a little deeper at some other time, but this is my initial response from a quick glance. meanwhile, i’m more inclined to agree with the analysis here http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/the-missing-motive-of-the-snowden-psyop-cispa-yes-cispa/ we’ll see soon enough how it all shakes out, i guess”
        offered here for consideration and comment.
        –d

  12. p.s. i went back and read the transcript. i must admit that these nsa whistleblower fellows are saying all the right things. were i not so cynical and pessimistic when it comes to the mass media, i would be impressed.

    1. Dennis,
      I would only comment that it is the spin that the mass media puts on things that is the PR enchantment.
      But another underlying thought; Do they really need a continuing psyop at this time? They don’t need an excuse anymore to do anything. As it stands their excuses are such thin gruel that it is passed unnoticed by the vast majority of the people who let these reports go in one ear and out the other.
      As Jersey Girl put it on COTO today: “Creighton, Tarpley, Rappaport are as you point out, missing one very important point. THEY DON”T NEED NO STINKIN’ PSYOP TO PASS A DRACONIAN BILL!!”
      All essential legislation – or diktat necessary to further the agenda is written. If it isn’t done publicly it is done secretly. Pretense is very quickly becoming a thing of the past.
      Just for a bit of balance here give this essay a shot:
      http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/who-are-the-real-traitors.html
      \\][//

    2. Okay, I just now read the interview with the 3 NSA veterans by USA TODAY
      My critique of them is what is said in the final portion of the interview, in answer to this question:
      Q: Is there a way to collect this data that is consistent with the Fourth Amendment, the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure?
      None of them seems to realize that the ‘War on Terrorism’ is a hoax…even at this late date, that is not part of their consciousness.
      The prime issue is point blank – prima facea; that there is zero rational reason to collect this data – and concurrent to that is there no conceivable way to make a mass collection of private data consistent with the Fourth Amendment.
      And we don’t need a “national debate” about this that will again be manipulated by spurious perception manipulation – what we do need is to dissolve this government, to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as shall seem most likely to effect our Safety and Happiness.
      \\][//

  13. Worldwide, 74% of countries that used torture on an administrative basis were U.S. client states, receiving military and other support to retain power.
    My question is this; Do we eliminate in toto the critique of any we designate as a “left gatekeeper’?
    We may, and I have as well, lambasted the notion of “Blowback” as the all defining answer. But this is only because in focusing only on Blowback there is the tendency to dismiss the reality of False Flags.
    But Blowback is eminently rational in terms of cause and effect. It is only the irrationality of dismissing the historical fact of False Flag operations to defend the Blowback theory that becomes clickish error.
    As an example of what I am trying to express here can be examined in this quote by Chomsky, who is well known as a ‘Left Gatekeeper’:
    “The Obama administration is dedicated to increasing terrorism. In fact, it’s doing it all over the world. Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history: the drone assassination campaigns, which are just part of it […] All of these operations, they are terror operations.”
    Do we reject this obvious truth simply because Chomsky is on record as seeing 9/11 Truth as insignificant in his overall critique of systemic power?
    I don’t think anyone here would argue with Chomsky, or say this statement is incorrect, or even an attempt to hide something deeper. There is a range of opinion and analysis, and I think it best to keep in mind that there are valid issues and expositions that can come from both the left and the right, and it is in their totality that we see the synthetic nature of the dialectical between them. The Left makes accurate critiques of the Right, and visa versa. It is in remaining aware of each and not rejecting either that stands as the middle ground of sanity, in my view.
    \\][//

  14. willy,
    re: “None of them seems to realize that the ‘War on Terrorism’ is a hoax.” good point. and they go forward in the belief that it is a war that must be fought. that seems to me to be part of the snowden psyop (not saying he’s doing it consciously), i.e., getting prominent people to say this over and over, establish as an irrefutable given, and drive home from every angle, the need to continue the war on terror. (this mentality is painfully present in the quotes in the article you suggested i read (above), and am still reading.) then they (the powers that be) can frame the debate in terms of whether or not we have to bother with the constitution when the paramount objective is to “keep us safe.”
    yeah, it would be great to be able “to dissolve this government, to abolish it, and to institute new government,” the question becomes HOW? to do so, certain notables have advocated a cross country march that attracts millions, leading to an ongoing sit-in on washington, ala MLK, and the reconvening of the constitution. there used to be a good website on this at http://www.reconvene.us but the link is now dead. and so, it appears, is the movement which was supposed to launch in 2012. maybe that’s what all those fema camps are about.
    –d

    1. Thank you for that reply Dennis, your points are well taken in my corner.
      What this criminal cabal posing as “the government” is afraid of, even more than the Constitution, is the Declaration of Independence, which contains the founding principles of the nation. This criminal syndicate has been able to pretend at the procedures given in that Constitution, it can rhetorically confuse and obfuscate such issues in endless “debate” – but what it cannot do is openly address the principles that laid the foundation for the Constitution.
      How to abolish and re-institute? That is the main problem isn’t it? The answers will only be found in the crisis that the criminal syndicate is now fomenting. Whatever mistakes are made, in how far is too far for the people, and what reactions the people may have that is not reckoned for. I have a feeling that it will be a longer struggle than either side is contemplating at this point. It is my firm conviction that Liberty is a natural born flame, not so easily dowsed by despotic rule.
      The results of this “final battle” cannot be augured beforehand. But I do feel in my heart that eventually Liberty will once again be regained. It is in the human spirit.
      \\][//

    2. And now a note from what is called “the Right”, or the Libertarian position. And note most of all, the opening remark:
      “Perfect safety is not the purpose of government. What we want from government is to enforce the law to protect our liberties. The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We need to turn the cameras on the police and on the government, not the other way around. We should be thankful for writers like Glenn Greenwald, who broke last week’s story, for taking risks to let us know what the government is doing. There are calls for the persecution of Greenwald and the other whistle-blowers and reporters. They should be defended, as their work defends our freedom.” ~ Ron Paul
      “.. whether or not we have to bother with the constitution when the paramount objective is to “keep us safe.”~Dennis
      “Perfect safety is not the purpose of government.”~RP
      \\][//

  15. willy,
    i finished the essay at http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/who-are-the-real-traitors.html
    in sum, i find it to be at best ill-advised, and at worst the work of an agent provocateur, seeking to inspire violence.
    the author (who is he anyway, any history?) says a number of things with which i agree, e.g., his assessment of where this government is at. but his citing of Julian (9/11 is a false conspiracy) Assange as a hero, and to a lesser extent Daniel (likely CIA asset) Ellsberg, turned me off completely. another of the listed heroes, William Binney, speaks highly of assange—end of Binney’s credibility as well. as far as i’ve looked into it (not very deep) bradley manning appears to be for real, but look what happened to manning after he went thru assange. gee, thanks julian!
    the article gets worse. this is the author’s solution: “It will require patriots taking to the streets and more people like Edward Snowden stepping forward to lead us back out of the abyss into which we have fallen.” how is that going to work, exactly? (“Well, you know we’d all love to see the plan.” – John Lennon, “Revolution”) personally, i think the time for taking it to the streets is over–unless perhaps we can have a peaceful, coordinated, nationwide march/live-in on/at washington ala MLK, and a perfectly legal attempt to reconvene the constitution, as mentioned earlier. even that i’m not too crazy about, unless some very effective leadership emerges and details exactly HOW we can do this, how people will be financed, and fed, and cared for, where the backing is coming from, etc. i see nothing of the sort on the horizon.
    and just exactly how will “Edward Snowden [be] stepping forward to lead us back out of the abyss?” with emails from china? or perhaps he will skype us from assange’s digs in iceland? http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/20/julian-assange-is-helping-edward-snowden
    worst of all, and this is the total deal-breaker for me — a peaceful solution is NOT what this author is calling for. specifically he says: “Their abuse of power and looting of the national wealth have put us on a path towards a BLOODY revolution.” [emphasis added.] and, “When the government tyrants classify all of us as enemies of the state, it is time to dismantle the state and water the tree of liberty WITH SOME BLOOD…” [emphases added.]
    “Don’t you know that you can count me out”? – John Lennon, “Revolution”
    my two cents,
    –d

    1. Thanks again Dennis.
      No…I have no interest in spilling blood either.
      That doesn’t mean that I don’t see that for the future. But I don’t wish to be any part of the instigation.
      “You don’t always get what you want…but if you try sometime you get what you need.”
      ~Jagger
      I don’t see a ‘ground-up’ revolution coming to Amerika. What I do see is what you intimate to in that article__a provocation by masterful manipulation by the Public Relations Regime.
      The only thing that will stop that is integrity as per the difference between aggression and self defense. The sort of wisdom I do not see in great numbers in the Amerikan people, especially when driven to the type of desperation that the [likely] coming financial collapse will bring down on our heads.
      This is why I say that this is going to take a great deal of time to sort out…perhaps a ‘bottoming out’ of civilization before it can be reworked in a proper fashion. We seem to be facing a period in human evolution much like the one faced at the end of the bicameral period, which ended in utter chaos lasting centuries. It has been a long long story, and I have a feeling it has a lot more chapters before it’s all over.
      Of course something like those mighty mushroom clouds could intervene at any moment.
      Who knows? I am not as adept at prophesy as I once was. I knew all my life we were coming here…I just don’t remember where we go from this point.
      \\][//

    2. On the one hand I understand where you are coming from Dennis, on the other I fear we may be estranging ourselves from some natural allies by being too hard core in our critiques of these ‘gatekeepers’ – while the enemy is unified by a type of regimentation that a free association of individuals is incapable of.
      If we have to agree on every little detail we will never find a large unity. At some point even 9/11 becomes a detail in the larger arc of history. Meanwhile the despots keep manufacturing legions of mindless widgets.
      \\][//

  16. NSA whistleblower Russ Tice:
    “All of it is set up to silence the whistleblower.”
    I think if you pay close attention to this it will dawn on you what the difference is as to the process Snowden used to release his information, how he learned from the initial NSA whistleblowers as to how the media stabbed them in the back, as well as congress and the courts – and why what he has done now verifies what the first whistleblowers said with actual documentation.
    So to say that Snowden isn’t saying anything we didn’t already know is rather a false dig. He has offered smoking guns, whereas others have said that they have seen the weapon, they just didn’t have it to bring to court {a quick allegory there}.
    http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-685-russ-tice-reveals-the-truth-about-nsa-spying/
    \\][//

    1. willy,
      thanks for all the feedback.
      re russ tice—will watch the video if i get a chance. i see it is an hour long.
      here’s the overriding thing for me, today. i don’t see the nsa eavesdropping as a high priority when compared to what else is/has been going in plain sight for so long, e.g., ongoing illegal imperialistic wars, destabilization of democratically elected governments worldwide, drones killing innocent women and children on an ongoing basis, assassinations of our leaders (jfk, rfk, mlk), 9/11, etc. etc. and yet, it’s the eavesdropping that’s getting all the mainstream media attention, and thus is (intentionally?) serving as a distraction (and also a warning to potential legitimate whistleblowers–agreed). if all this coverage and the encapsulated (limited hangout?) debate over whether snowden is a hero or traitor gets the sheeple riled up enough to take some peaceful effective action, great, but i don’t see that happening.
      re: “I fear we may be estranging ourselves from some natural allies by being too hard core in our critiques of these ‘gatekeepers’” yes, i agree that is a legitimate concern. but julian (9/11 is a false conspiracy) assange sickens me, and if a so-called whistleblower props him up as a hero, or doesn’t bother mentioning that he may be an asset, i default to thinking the whistleblower is either ignorant (hard to believe of the nsa whistleblowers) or an asset.
      –d

      1. Living in a house of mirrors, it’s even hard to shave without cutting off your own nose.
        Yo Dennis, I am with you on this as far as I understand your core message, that being, let’s step back and look at the big picture as this current theater plays out.
        For myself it has been obvious for a very long time that the US is a police state. Police states have a certain MO and life cycle…and this is unmistakable. So regardless of the complexity before us, the goal is to insist on living a life of Liberty, and understand that there is certain coercion that we must bear while still being free in our minds. So again, I keep returning to personal sanity as the ashram in the storm.
        Pax Nous,
        \\][//

  17. This is an intriguing take on the NSA-Snowden leak story. It is rather long and deep, but I think it is worth taking in:
    . . . . . . . . .
    “If the seriousness of these NSA unconstitutional acts and crimes against “we the people” were properly recognized and processed by the American citizens, this would result is such a strong reaction it would bring down the current regime which illegally seized the SSG in 1963 with a coup de etat that assassinated JFK.
    The NSA is trying to portray Snowden as a big traitor that committed treason, when that could not be further from the truth. He is a stand up man that had a conscience and unconstitutional and highly illegal acts by the NSA. They are the ones doing these crimes not Snowden or any others who previously reported these serious crimes and unconstitutional acts.
    Does the Snowden disclosure signal a major lane change inside the SSG, the high military command or certain sectors inside the highest level of intel? Might it involve a significant number of former high ranking Brass and Flag Officers or high intel?”
    http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/06/21/snow-job-over-at-the-nsa/
    “Edward Snowden was not the first NSA whistle-blower, but perhaps the one that may have “broke the camel’s back”.~Preston James – Veterans Today
    \\][//

    1. You know what might lead people out of the abyss? It’s going to come as a surprise but I believe that if people ever wake up to demanding quality food from a quality food supply, and realize that a big part of social engineering or what you might call, a part of full-spectrum dominance is the damage fake and other poor quality food is causing to the body and the brain, people might stop accepting the unacceptable in this country.
      If you’d like, I’ll give details and explain myself further morrow.

  18. Barrie,
    I finally caught up and read this article today, after having procrastinated for 11 days due to this reason or that. I must commend you on some very heavy, but deep, writing. If nothing else, your writing style is thorough, to the nth degree. Also, I love some of the terms you coin, such as “mad crowd disease” and particularly “diaboligarchy.”
    And you had me chuckling out loud too; the 9/11 lie, in particular, is indeed the “giant fart in the global elevator.” I would be even more descriptive and say “beer fart.” Because as someone who used to guzzle lots of Coors Light (you know it’s as cold as the Rockies when the mountains on the can are blue), I can tell you that beer farts are pretty pungent. (It also reminded me of when OneSliceShort said that John Bursill’s Pentagon disinfo was about as welcome at this blog as “a fart in a spacesuit.” But I digress.)
    Some more thoughts:
    You mention how the sloppiness inherent in some of these staged events, particularly the recent Boston Bombings, might be intentional. Yes, they know that this is the internet age, where citizenry investigations (oh, sorry, “conspiracy theories”) flourish and spread like wildfire. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do what we’re doing, or that Sheila Casey shouldn’t have written her recent article, because we should be and she should have. But, it is indeed ammo for an MSM who largely panders to those who, in DRG’s words, have a less than 30% open mind, and are not interested in going down rabbit holes. These individuals will hear a news report say, “these kooks think Bauman was a crisis actor.” (Or, “these kooks think Lloyde England is a liar.”) And of course, it will probably reinforce what they already “know” about us “nutjobs.”
    But I also have noticed another thing: these more recent events have caused rifts between people who are united on the front that 9/11 was an inside job. A couple examples: just recently, I was going through old facebook album photos and noticed that a friend who had left a comment on a photo of my cat, a few years ago, now had the words, in faint gray font, “7 mutual friends” next to her clickable blue name on the comment. The stuff in the gray font wouldn’t be there if she was still on my friend list; obviously she had “unfriended” me. I messaged her to ask. Here is the exchange:

    ME: Nancy, why did you unfriend me?
    NANCY: Hi Adam, Newtown. I was disheartened to see you post about the little girl in her sister’s dress. If that is what the 911 investigation has morphed in to, I will have to remove myself. Conspiracies of the day can discredit the very serious 911 study. I’m sorry.
    ME: Not that I care too much about such petty things as who’s on my fb friend list, but your mentality is no different from those who feel that talking about taxi driver Lloyde England being a fake witness discredits the “very serious” WTC demolition study. You’ve become just like the credibility cops at 911blogger. I would never remove someone based on a difference of opinion, especially one opinion. For the record, I do think Newtown was a staged event and that there’s enough evidence to show that.
    NANCY: Apparently it is more than one difference. Now you are telling me about my mentality and what I believe about Lloyd England. This is exactly what I am talking about. Our ways are parted.

    That’s one example. Another example (also on FB) involves the Boston Bombings. There’s a 9/11 Truth Movement group with over 35,000 members. One of the admins goes by “Ken Doc.” He started a new group called “Boston Marathon Bombing Think Tank.” There, he declared (without evidence, I might add) that the crisis actors/fake victims meme is “disinfo” designed to discredit from the “real” questions. He created a very biased-worded poll in order to take a vote. The wording declared from the outset that this avenue was disinfo, and after declaring that, asked the audience to vote: Should this subject still be allowed to be entertained here? A majority voted ‘no,’ and so the censorship of ideas and even 911blogger style purging commenced. A friend of mine posted Sheila’s article there, and NO ONE actually refuted anything from the article; the most it got was some denialist-sounding “The blood doesn’t look fake” type responses, but then they wouldn’t go into it further. My friend would try to get them to elaborate, but instead, conveniently, one of the admins simply kicked him out of the group. I didn’t get purged but I voluntarily left the group because after my experience in the 9/11 movement, I live by the creed that censorship of ANY ideas is wrong; let bad arguments be defeated with better arguments in vigorous debate. The weak ideas will be sifted out eventually if not quickly.
    Back in January or thereabouts, roughly a month after Sandy Hook, Abby Martin went on to her “Breaking the Set” show and actually denounced Sandy Hook truther seekers, saying that such discussion of a staged/faked shooting in order to further a political agenda was not only silly, but made the more sane and sober truth seekers look crazy by association. (This, incidentally, got a big thumbs up from 9/11 LIHOPper Jon Gold.) Where have we heard this logic before? Oh yeah… those pesky nutjob Pentagon “no-planers” (or no-plane-crashers) make the sane, sober WTC demolitions wing of the movement look crazy by association. (Or, as I saw David Chandler say it on an AE911Truth team email that I was forwarded: the “scientific wing” of the movement.) There are so many microcosms and macrocosms within the greater sphere.
    I have more thoughts (primarily regarding “history is written by the winners”), but I must turn in for the night. More later. Bravo, Mr. Zwicker!

  19. I have a suggestion that should be considered by the 9/11 Truth community and the larger community of dissidents and critics of this plainly criminal syndicate sitting in DC posing as “the federal government”.
    That would be the independent formation of a Grand Jury under the common law language of the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution, specifically this passage:
    “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.”
    . . . . . . .
    The historic powers of citizens’ grand juries were eliminated in 1946. To understand the current situation and the true sovereign power of the people as established by the Constitution, please see the two URLs that follow:
    http://www.clgj.info/the-4th-branch-of-government.html
    http://www.clgj.info/uploads/3/7/5/3/3753794/__the_federal_grand_jury_is_the_4th_branch_of_government.pdf
    \\][//

  20. Everything gets gory in this alley, for it is the allegory that makes the story and all the stories are in that vast mysterious internal space called consciousness…
    and the truth is: Like is not.
    \\][//

  21. “Edward Snowden was not the first NSA whistle-blower, but perhaps the one that may have “broke the camel’s back”.~Preston James – Veterans Today
    The value of Professor James’ approach is that it reminds of the essentials of what is the critical point of the unmistakably illegal and constitutionally unlawful the whole surveillance state is. The core foundations of Liberty have been attacked viciously and are critically wounded. To fall into the carousels of chatter that distracts from the essential matters of utter criminality of the so-called “government” are to be chumped into ‘Fun-House’ distractions through warped mirrors.
    I feel that all this nit-picking on what and who Showden is, fogs the very clear proofs that should be what is kept in focus and pressed forward as the prime point and target to prosecute by public exposure:
    It is now simply undeniable that DC is infested by a criminal syndicate representing and instating a thinly veiled global despotic agenda.
    As a crisis this is a ball in play.
    \\][//

  22. “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary…”
    . . . . . . . . .
    “Even when we speak of peaceful revolution founded in civil disobedience, if you think that an unfailingly polite, neat, and manicured revolution is a contradiction in terms, you’re correct. A well-mannered revolution is one doomed to fail. In the current circumstances, polite, rules-abiding challenges to authority have been rendered irrelevant and utterly without meaning.”~Arthur Silber
    http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/in-praise-of-mess-chaos-and-panic.html
    \\][//

    1. There will be no revolution, peaceful or otherwise. America needs real leaders; people who are real change agents guiding a growingly aware populace along a path. America has neither real leaders nor a populace that is aware, growingly or not. What may happen, and why this country has lined as many unlawful ducks in order, is some revolt, spontaneous or otherwise. Some things are on a collision course and the stooges at the top, know this.

  23. I thought it was common courtesy to respond to another’s post, especially if one has already responded to a post. Apparently, this is what makes online dialogue meaningful. I hope that this site is not composed of crisis chasers and monopolizers.

    1. I would like to add that I would like to see a broader discussion of topics that people need to know about to limit or avoid oppression by the elites. So far, I haven’t read really anything here about the dangers of GMO’s or the power of companies like Monsanto. I have to believe that like-minded people are actually having like-minded thoughts and pursuits such as what I just mentioned and more.

    2. Dsn6,
      I apologize if you are referring to me with these remarks. I should have said earlier; that although I am aware and concerned about the monstrosity Monsanto, GMO poisining , and all the issues surrounding such – I personally only have so much capacity and focus.
      As it is, I feel as if I am “leading” the conversation in an attempt to keep the dialog running on this page. I am disappointed with the lack of responses and lively conversation on this particular thread. But I have been purposely holding back because seeing so many stacks of my gravitar in a row is as depressing to me as it is to some of my detractors.
      I invite you to bring whatever information you find essential to the table. I am not a stickler on binding one with ‘The Topic’ as a ball and chain – all of the sociopolitical issues are interconnected.
      I hope you accept my apologies Dsn6, and understand my personal sense of dilemma here. I have a certain uneasiness due to a history of having my enthusiasm and prolific commentary being thrown back in my face as some sort of vaguely defined ‘sin’ by a certain anonymous “accountant”. So you see, we all have our sensitivities and social uncertainties.
      \\][//

      1. Hello Hybrid: I really think that articles addressing other forms of oppression need to be presented here so we all can discuss them to figure out how to confront particular forms of oppression. Though I understand everyone’s pet causes or obsession on particular fronts, it is this very interconnectedness that you speak which makes it necessary that we address every conceivable topic that voids our natural rights.

      2. Well Dsn6,
        As far as the articles that are published here on T&S, I have no say on the matter. Like everyone else here, I am just one of the commentators in the discussions that follow an article. Mr McKee is the one to make the case you have just made to.
        As it is, it seems that our host has been more than generous in allowing the discussions to expand and develop as to the interests and urges of the participants – and especially so as ‘current events’ arise in the course of the days that a thread is going on.
        What I would suggest is to simply address whatever issues you find compelling and take it from there. If Mr McKee isn’t comfortable with a comment he will usually let you know why, the forum has been pretty open so far. Craig may step in here with some input as well. Like I say, he’s the captain of this ship and it’s up to him to say yea or nay as to the course it takes.
        \\][//

        1. dsn6 and Hybridrogue1,
          It is true that no article about Monsanto has been published on Truth and Shadows. The focus, particularly for the first couple of years that the blog existed, was 9/11. I felt that it was important to build up a body of work on the subject and to engage members of the Truth Movement in a discussion about the many aspects of this false flag operation. This subject will always be front and center here.
          But there has been quite a range of topics addressed, including 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King’s assassination, false flag operations in general, the war on terror, the Colorado theater shooting, the Sandy Hook shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, Guy Fawkes and Gunpowder Plot, the Oklahoma City bombing, conspiracy theories and how they are marginalized, and the police brutality and elimination of civil rights at the G20 in Toronto. Countless other topics have been brought up in the comments section, just as you have brought up Monsanto.
          Undoubtedly, I or some other contributor will write a piece or pieces on Monsanto just as I intend to tackle geoengineering and the chemtrail phenomenon, which I have been following closely. Please feel free to continue suggesting topics and helping others to see how different types of oppression by the elites are indeed interrelated.

  24. “RT: The US is focused on chasing Snowden, which seems to have distracted from his revelations – is anyone in the States asking whether the surveillance system prism was constitutional?
    Chris Hedges: Some people are, but not many, which is quite distressing. You have Glenn Greenwald, the journalist from The Guardian who broke the story. You have lawyers Michael Ratner from the Center of the Constitutional Rights asking those kinds of questions, but I think that for those of us who care about freedom of information, about protecting sources, about stopping wholesale government surveillance, I think it’s been a very lonely time. And I think one of the things that’s been so distressing is that the serious questions that should be asked are not being asked.
    RT: Does that play into the hands of the government and what Washington would like to keep secret?
    CH: Well they can’t keep it a secret anymore, it’s exposed. But I think what they have done is divert attention to that kind of a mini-soap opera that is now taking place, as Snowden leaps from Hong Kong to Moscow, to ostensibly Cuba, Ecuador. They knew we saw the same thing happening to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to Bradley Manning, who exposed war crimes and is now on trial in military court in Maryland. It’s a very similar and oppressing kind of scenario, where the state propaganda machine has quite effectively diverted attention away from where it should be, which is the effect that there is no more privacy anymore left in the United States, and focused attention on character, on activities of Snowden. Through their lens, it’s not a dispassionate view of either Snowden or what he’s done.”
    http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/chris-hedges-americans-have-no-privacy-left-no-capacity-to-communicate-without-govt-watching/
    \\][//

    1. Snowden’s role in this is like if he put a hole in a life raft aboard the Titanic prior to it hitting an iceberg. Utter conflation.
      The real issue is the massive spying program and its ramifications – nothing is private. The big eye in the sky is watching you – be careful what you say and do. Also, it sets up a great blackmailing system against all – even the plebes.
      The eye of Horus is upon us. And yes, most of the elites have a penchant for the occult. Everyone with a moral compass and moral fiber should be outraged that this has happened in the land of the free.
      Not to mention, the Paula Deen fiasco isn’t about her, it’s about what happened to her. What a witch hunt with the pc police coming out with mortar rounds on this one. People have done far worse regarding far significant events and found redemption with the power elites. This is one of many reels showing people what the New World Order is like. People, take heed.

  25. I’m halfway through watching the new TWA 800 documentary, set to air on July 17 on the somewhat obscure cable channel EPIX. However, a bootleg (high quality, in synch as well) has already leaked to YouTube. Incidentally, some of the same arguments used by “debunkers” within (and outside) the 9/11 movement to dismiss the many NoC Pentagon witnesses, are also used to dismiss the voluminous witnesses who saw the missile streaking up to hit TWA 800. (I.e., “the human memory is fallible in times of trauma…”)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0yxXpGml8U

    1. Watched the whole thing.
      It’s the most compelling eyewitness documentary I’ve seen in a long time.
      It’s one thing to read somewhere in an article that more than 200 witnesses reported seeing a missile. But watching these witnesses tell their story, one, after another, after another…. talk about compelling.
      I thought one effective aspect of the film was how the witnesses went on the record to testify how the “debunkings” were an insult to their intelligence as human beings.

      1. Wish I could afford to watch this video Mr Syed,
        I have a wi-fi internet connection that would make it very pricey to watch such a long piece.
        I do recall textual revelations on the witness testimony, that was convincing enough at the time. Now some of the actual members who reconstructed the plane have come out recently to blow the whistle on the fact they were forced to lie, and cover-up what their actual forensic discoveries were. A bombshell that lasted a one day press cycle on mainstream media…in one ear and out the other along with shampoo commercials and the antics of Baby Booboo.
        That’s life in Enchantapolis.
        \\][//

      2. Here’s the problem conspiracy movements have. They have to win the frame debate early in the process less social engineering takes place filling people’s minds with garbage which they eventually hold to be true. Unfortunately, it happened with 9/11 too. A consensus within the movement took too long and people were bombarded with the official story and other heuristics about this country not being able to do such a terrible deed.
        Most people are unmovable in their believed falsehoods regarding TWA 800, 9/11, the Kennedy Assassination and other seminal events throughout history. We’ve bucked the mind control and have the ability to discern clearly what to others appears foggy. It’s too bad it isn’t contagious.

      3. on adam’s suggestion, i watched the movie, “twa flight 800.” in a word, excellent! right up there with jfk and nsa, in my view. more compelling in certain ways, e.g., the number of people who stood up to make this movie, because, as one witness or family member stated, it was the “right” thing to do.
        left unanswered was the status of the petition for a new investigation, signed on camera at the end of the movie, by the experts and family members. wondering where that will lead, if anywhere. it’s the crux of it all, really. in street lingo, “yeah, so what? what are you gonna do about it?” the petition to reopen an inquiry into the destruction of twa flight 800 would indeed manifest in an honest and true reinvestigation if we were living in a sane and just society. however, this is amerika, 2013.
        i thought the analysis of the msm’s tv report of the rocket test was especially good, as it showed clearly what the msm is all about in terms of how they adroitly twist reality into govt propaganda. a superb deconstruction.
        ditto the movie’s take on the cia propaganda film which kept driving home, to the point of absurdity, “it was not a missile.” the cia’s approach reminded me of this moment in the naked gun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NNOrp_83RU
        as most or all of those who visit this site know, we must always be aware when the govt tries to tell witnesses what they really saw, and/or change the laws of physics. this is what the govt does, and gets away with, over and over and over again, courtesy of the media. indeed, this was the fbi’s approach during their rigged investigation into what happened to twa flight 800, as presented in the film.
        i also very much appreciated at the end of the film, the list of culprits who refused to be interviewed. a quasi-5th amendment cop-out that reinforced the film’s subtext, i.e., these people are nothing but liars. and in my view, accessories after the fact to mass murder (or at least negligent homicide, depending who shot down flight 800, and why).
        the movie did not go into who might have fired the missiles (note: plural), but if the fbi was, as the movie indicates, so intent on NOT having the truth come out, i think we can say with some assurance that the suspects include whoever had the power to order fbi agents to engage in this calculated, illegal, massive coverup. maybe bill clinton himself? surely then-fbi director louis freeh was not acting on his own. the BIGGER question is: who was pulling the strings? and why was flight 800 targeted for destruction in the first place? the movie doe not speculate on any of this–a wise choice, in my view.
        this is but a glimpse into the film; there is so much more. watch it! you will not be disappointed.
        –d

    2. After watching this video I am just so sick to my stomach that I can’t really even explain it. I don’t think if I were a family member of anyone on Flight 800 I could ever have a peaceful nights sleep again. To KNOW and I mean really KNOW that a US military missile took the life of my loved one and to even try to live with that would be impossible for me. The systematic cover up would not be something I could live with. I have a hard time living with it now even though no one I knew was on board. It just reminds me all over again of 9/11. I just wish I could tell the lady at the end who said no one gives a shit that I care and so many of us care.
      What I have to do now and I think what all of us individually have to do is decide what we are going to do about it. What are we each going to do with what we know? What?

        1. Gee, A., are you pointing to this report to show how the documentary is wrong? I hope not. There are several things wrong with this report starting with the fact that the FBI’s Kallstrom was given considerably more time to talk (the filmmaker was allowed to speak twice). The most offensive thing was that Kallstrom had the nerve to say that if those investigators questioning the findings of the FBI “were real men” they would have come forward sooner (as if they would have been listened to). Kallstrom also says that digging this up is terribly hard on the families of those who died. That one again. He ignores the fact that a number of families participated in the film. Obviously the truth was important enough to them to revisit this difficult subject.

      1. Interesting that A Wright says nothing – just lets “authority” speak for him.
        Typical for those who are unthinking obedient pawns to authority.
        So all we get are slurs aimed at those who bravely came forward. This is typical as well. Nothing but empty denial from a system that is a prima facea criminal syndicate, with a known MO for exactly the type of murderous acts such as in the TWA 800 case.
        Even in the face of all these eyewitnesses, even with the testimony of intimidation and changing their testimony by the gestapo tactics of the FBI…
        All I can do is laugh at what a total idiot Wright is for buying such blatant bullshit as the official story, here and all the others he attempts to defend. Whatta dolt!
        \\][//

      2. As if we needed any further confirmation of Popular Mechanics’ role as official state propagandists…
        They are now saving us TWA 800 truthers, including the witnesses, from our gullible selves.
        http://popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/3-reasons-to-doubt-the-twa-flight-800-conspiracy-theory-15629315?click=pm_news
        If PM has one redeeming feature, it’s that they actually allow people to leave real time comments via Facebook. Here’s the top-rated comment:

        Your article is the perfect example of poor analytical thinking. Yes. The center fuel tank exploded producing numerous low velocity damage points. No one disputes that the tank exploded. But ignoring a plethora of evidence that it was not the initiating event simply is bad science. PM is not a peer reviewed journal because its Entertainment, not science. So, no matter how smart you try to sound, your methods and conclusions are no more worthy of consideration than the average blogger. As it has been said : you have been measured; you have been weighed; and you have been found wanting.

      3. Craig, you said:

        The most offensive thing was that Kallstrom had the nerve to say that if those investigators questioning the findings of the FBI “were real men” they would have come forward sooner (as if they would have been listened to).

        Yes, I once saw a similar talking point used by the Amazon’s top reviewer of the Popular Mechanics 9/11 book. Originally parroting the talking point about “no” relevant experts supporting the truth movement, “A. Daniels Jr.” later dismissed the petition signers at AE911Truth as just a few ragtag crackpots coming out of the woodwork. He said that if controlled demolition were true, EVERY architect and engineer IN THE WORLD would have LOUDLY cried foul ON THE DAY! And then went on to trot out the meme: “every profession has a few crackpots.”

      4. “And then went on to trot out the meme: “every profession has a few crackpots.”~A. Daniels Jr. — as quoted by Adam Syed
        And this meme is proven false by the well known cultural malady of ‘going along to get along’, the general pathology of a regimented hierarchical society. The pressure to conform, to not rock the boat, to take cues from figures in authority. The whole gambit of psycho-social ills that results in a totalitarian society.
        Anyone who grasps the significance of the Milgram studies on ‘Obedience to Authority’, and the follow-up experiments through the years, must certainly come to the conclusion that most every profession is led by and composed of legions of crackpots – that in fact the lunatics designed and built this asylum.
        \\][//

      5. adam ruff,
        re: “What I have to do now and I think what all of us individually have to do is decide what we are going to do about it. What are we each going to do with what we know? What?”
        the family members and experts in the film have a petition to reopen the investigation, i believe to be presented to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). maybe that will lead somewhere.
        i share your frustration. with all of this stuff that we discuss here, there is just so much one can do (always looking for new ways). it’s not like we have a representative government that actually works for the people.
        on a personal level, i think it’s very important to know not only who you but where you are. the latter requires an assessment of the activities of the behaviors of the american government. with twa flight 800, it’s quite clear what america is really about. maybe the film will help awaken a few more people. the more that come out of their trance-induced state, the better.
        meanwhile, i would suggest, don’t forget to take some time out from all we focus on here, and experience some joy.
        my two cents,
        –d

      6. As a reply to group, via Dennis and Adam Ruff:
        I am going to leap ahead in a game of chess metaphor, with my Pawn now sidled up to the opposing King; forced to that position in the last move. It is now my move and my ‘Checkmate’… this as a response to a dialog that has not actually taken place but in my {Zen} consciousness, having to do with all ideas to do with becoming “action men” in “revolution” against the system…with the inevitable conclusion of “meet the new boss – same as the old boss”:
        Strength in numbers?
        No, only dissolution of individual will – and a joining in a mass psychological mob mind. That is the error of “government” as proximate cause. The acceptance of, and obedience to authority.
        Simply go your own way.
        \\][//

      7. A.Wright,
        I don’t put garbage in my brain by watching corporate monopoly media propaganda. I also have zero respect for you or trolls like you and so you can jump off a cliff.

      8. @Ruffadam
        I could say that the reason you don’t put garbage in your brain is that there isn’t room for any more, but that would be a bit of a glib facile ad hominem comment, like your ‘jump of a cliff’ remark. Someone whose brain is full of nonsense like a plane didn’t crash at the Pentagon or there were explosives at the WTC and now , God help us, the people in Boston were pretending to have their limbs blown off- do you really believe that?- , is on a hiding to nothing when it comes to finding out the facts about a past event, so distorted has their perception of what is plausible and what isn’t plausible become. Which is at the end of the day the only way we can judge anything i.e. increase the chances of finding out the truth. Each distorted evidence assessment leads on to the next so that basically everything becomes plausible, and there is then no way to judge the plausibility of anything, which is the only thing preventing people believing foolish things.

      9. Re: “what can we do?” about 9/11 and other false flag events, and all the evil in the world around us, e.g. perpetual war, drone attacks, the sociopaths in Washington DC, etc. Here’s an out of the box suggestion for people who can think out of the box, and out of the box again. If/when you have 45 minutes and the inclination, check out the video here in the upper left hand corner http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/dispelling-wetiko/
        The speaker, Paul Levy, goes into what others have hit on re dreaming things into existence, and the evil we see in the world being, on some level, the evil in us. I got to the video after a friend who knows I delve into the mystic, turned me onto the Levy’s article here http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/the-masters-of-deception/
        The article cites the teachings of the late Hawaiian elder Hale Makua and shamanic teacher/practitioner Hank Wassermann, both of whom I think very highly.
        On a more down to earth level, I came across this , which may be of interest
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eEIM-3GNGag
        For what it’s worth,
        –Dennis

  26. Let me ask a few fundamental questions to those that really care: Do people in general really care?
    And, why aren’t more people stewards and shepherds towards the Earth and their fellow human traveler? We used to be as a society; oh no, we aren’t much anymore.

    1. “Do people in general really care?”~Dsn6
      No, not in general, not in the main…as a majority. They are short circuited by the enchantment of the technocratic black magic of the Public Relations Regime. For most people this is a long lasting, constantly cued trance state. It is a form of hypnotic somnambulism, permanent and terminal in a majority of cases.
      I don’t think that people aren’t nice to each other in general settings. Most are capable of acts of kindness in simple face to face human matters. It is not seeing the larger issues, not being capable of grasping the larger political issues of the national and international scale.
      This is why there are such deep dichotomies in the average person, who is a decent person lost in a vile maze of deceit. People who wouldn’t dream of hurting a puppy yet don’t even blink at the knowledge that a million Iraqi children are dead because of US sanctions on Iraq.
      As a Native American would say, the PR Regime has “Powerful Medicine”.
      \\][//

    2. To add some needed balance to my reply to Dsn6 above, I would like to offer this URL to the Corbett Report podcast, and make this comment;
      What Corbett is speaking to is the same thing I mean when I bring up and warn against believing the system is a “Manichean Devil” – an omnipotent, all powerful god-like entity.
      It is well to speak to the fact that we have still managed to keep on keeping on – as crazy as the whole world has become!
      http://www.corbettreport.com/episode-273-we-are-still-winning/
      \\][//

  27. “Between these alternatives (limited and unlimited government) there is no middle ground. The Constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.
    If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law; if the latter part be true, then written Constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable…
    Anything passed as law in obvious violation of the US Constitution is not law, but void.”~Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall
    \\][//

  28. The film has been removed! I had a feeling this would happen. Oh well, we’re probably going to have to wait until after it’s aired on TV, before they stop caring about the bootlegs.

    1. Hi Adam,
      Hopefully this won’t be another instance where a great documentary won’t be released to the public for years. I fully understand the producers trying to cover costs (and rights) but when the information is so crucial to build a head of steam, money is secondary. I mean, although I respect and admire the producers of “A Noble Lie”, it’s incredible that it’s still not in the public domain! (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
      Cases like OKC and TWA are stone clad proof that the FBI lies. That the media lies (in goosestep formation). That the NTSB heads lie. That every single witness who sees a John Doe 2 or a blatantly obvious missile, will be ignored or censured. The information needs to get out there now! Before “noobies” are even introduced to 9/11.
      And now, especially now, that the NSA “revelations” have made the MSM, for whatever reason the presstitutes are reporting what we already knew, the time is right when whatever percentage of “noobies” are snooping around the “alternative media” sites, to shepherd them towards the most powerful, mind opening information. Let curiosity do the rest.

  29. “Stupid is as stupid does Ms Amerika.”~Forrest Gump
    Bostonians will face airport security-style measures if they wish to attend the city’s major annual July 4 event, with virtually all personal items being banned along with mandatory checkpoints, snitch hotlines and bag searches, begging the question – what “freedoms” are they supposed to be celebrating?~Paul Joseph Watson
    Yes…What Freedoms??? As if we needed to be cavity searched on the 4th of July to recognize that Liberty is done dead in Amerika.
    http://www.prisonplanet.com/some-americans-abandon-july-4-celebrations-over-outrageous-security-measures.html
    \\][//

  30. A.Wright on JULY 5, 2013 at 2:46 PM:
    Again proves he is adept at stringing together a series of vague generalities that add up to saying nothing – in a manner that is supposed to give the appearance of critical thinking.
    He seems to be concerned about people believing “foolish things”.
    What are these foolish things to his mind? Are they believing that Amerika is actually “the land of the free, the home of the brave”? That the Republic founded in the Constitution still stands? That the US does not torture systematically? That the so-called “President” hasn’t taken it upon himself to act as judge, jury, and executioner of anyone he deems fit for execution?
    Perhaps Mr Wright would propose to us that the US is still a nation of laws and not ruled by caveat and diktat. What say you Wright? Do you hold this series of propositions I just put forward as even vaguely “plausible”?
    Do you propose Mr Wright, that the “war on terror” is real, that there is now the need for ultra-surveillance of each and every Amerikan to make sure that no one steps out of line?
    Do you propose that our way of life is under such dire threat that we should now surrender all of our Liberties for the sake of ‘Security’?
    You seem to have mainlined some of that good old American-Exceptionalist Jingo “Patriotism” this 4th of July, and are ready to join the fray again here. Don’t back off now Mr Wright, tell us some more about “plausibility” and what “foolishness” is.
    I am filled with anticipation.
    \\][//

  31. Perhaps Mr Wright would care to attempt a critique of the concepts driving this text:
    “A long-held desire of the technocratic worldview involves manipulation and control of a national and even international body politic. “This planetary consciousness,” Zbigniew Brzezinski observes, brings into closer view a single indivisible humanity united by the soft tyranny of depersonalized and omnipresent coercion. “The sense of proximity, the immediacy of suffering,” he wrote at the height of the Cold War, “the globally destructive character of modern weapons all help to stimulate an outlook that views mankind as a community.”~’Between Two Ages’ 1970, pg. 59, 60.
    “More so than ever the population witnesses major catastrophic events such as the recent mass shootings in Tucson Arizona, Aurora Colorado, and Newtown Connecticut, and the Boston Marathon bombing through the two-dimensional (audio-visual) lens of major news outlets and social media platforms. A less-examined aspect of this development is how United States law enforcement and intelligence agencies operating under the Department of Homeland Security utilize such media to create and promote news of designer tragedies capable of generating a potent emotional response from the citizenry.
    Moreover, the vicariously imagined trauma of such events provides a window of public acquiescence wherein government officials may shape popular sentiment and introduce restrictive legislative programs (stricter gun control in the case of Tucson, Aurora and Newtown) or forthright militarized oppression (the rescinding of posse comitatus and Fourth Amendment protections in the case of the Boston Marathon Bombing) that under normal circumstances would be rejected by the citizenry.”~James F. Tracy
    Catastrophic Events, Mass Traumatization and the Body Politic – Memory Hole Blog
    \\][//

  32. I see that the legal case against the suspect in the Boston bombing has started so I hope the people on this site like Sheila Casey, Jim Fetzer and Barrie Zwicker and others will be contacting the defence lawyers with their evidence that not only was he not guilty of the crime but that a crime wasn’t committed. The evidence is obvious apparently so it would need to be just pointed out to them. I know for me if I had evidence that someone about to be tried for murder didn’t do it and I could prove it, I would basically have to come forward with that evidence- not to would be a case of perverting the course of justice.

    1. You make your naïveté totally obvious with every post you make here Wright.
      Your utterly unfounded presumptions that the US has a fair and just legal system are the catch in your {sic} “reasoning”.
      You avoid that FACT that Amerika is a despotic system run by a criminal syndicate, and that this is documented in the open source literature, and has been for close to a century.
      You also avoid addressing this in debate here, and continue your inane trolling one-offs.
      We continue to get the same old-same old bullshit from you time and again. Which is illustrative in it’s mundane monotony.
      \\][//

      1. @Hybridrogue1
        I didn’t think you were going to. But people who had all this evidence that someone was innocent of a crime and that a crime had not even been committed would pass on that evidence to the defense team. They would have to, if they were so committed to the principles of justice and preventing miscarriages of justice – what would they have to loose? Is it too much trouble to just send an email with a link to this site with Ms. Casey’s and Mr.Zwickers articles where they state prettty catagorically that the whole thing was staged with actors? Presumably they have some pretty compelling evidence to support that or they wouldn’t be saying it. Or is it all just self-indulgent vacuous posturing?

      2. A Wright,
        As the Boston controversies are all over the web, the idea that the defense would not be aware of these is the only self-indulgent vacuous posturing evident on this thread.
        You miss the most important points that the defense should be aware of in this case, which are the obvious connections that the older brother had with US Intelligence, and the amount of information that has spilled out of this; such as the FBI murder of one of Tamerlan’s martial arts friend in Florida – plainly an execution style killing with several cover stories that melted within hours of the event.
        You ignore as well the evidence that the bomb was announced by the authorities, as an exercise just previous to the explosion.
        You have proposed this ridiculous scenario before,of alerting the defense or the authorities. I recall once during the Sandy Hook threads. Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence, that your “reasoning” is based on a false paradigm. Discussing these things with you is like joining in on a delirious conversation written by Kafka.
        \\][//

      3. ‘The most important points that the defense should be aware of..’ Maybe you should make sure they are, which is what I suggested you do. I would think the most important points would be that people were not killed or injured , making it not a crime but a faked , staged event. That surely is the most important point ,and since it was staged in such a way as to make it obvious to the astute contributors to this site but not to the general populace, it’s something that needs to be just pointed out.

      4. This is a non-issue Wright, as I explained before, belief in the US “Justice” system is like believing in the tooth fairy. They system isn’t going to set up a false flag and frame patsies without designing the end-game into the program.
        \\][//

    2. @Hybridrogue1
      So now we have the jury members involved in perverting the course of justice. The plot thickens.

      1. When members of a jury do not understand the legality and concept of ‘Jury Nullification’ – yes this is most often the case in the Brave New Amerika.
        And you can bet your jingo ass that in high profile/high stakes trials such as these political show trials, everything is scripted and manipulated completely.
        \\][//

      2. As you Mr Wright, are so fond of generalization, here is a set for you to ponder:
        Popular History is a Modified Limited Hangout. Government is a racket. Gangsters and pirates run the world. And naïveté is not innocence.
        And a warning hint:
        Going along to get along is fine until you get where they are taking you.
        \\][//

  33. Not to be contrary necessarily, but it is possible that Obama is not really as powerful as one might think? Have we forgotten what happens to presidents who don’t toe the line?
    It is possible that Obama had good intentions when he started out, but was blackmailed or threatened or coerced in some other way into participating in the prescribed way with the program and agenda of those who are really in power?
    It is possible that I’m just having some difficulty reconciling the ideas spoken of by this man versus the actions that he has taken and some of his other spoken words. I’m not confident with the contention that he is some sort of two-faced monster. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not defending him at all because I don’t know what the truth is. I’m just trying to understand how someone could seem so completely sincere and be lying at the same time…and most of all, to fool me, since I thought I had a very good B.S. detector.

  34. I heard something interesting the Bernie Sanders said. It sounds like Bernie plans to end whistle blower prosecution. That’s great news for Edward Snowden then isn’t it? If it actually comes true though…

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