Tuesday, June 13, 2006

That Bill Hicks Moment



Carved next to his name, his epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game. - Bob Dylan


Just trying to get my groove back, here.

I've written before that it's never been enough, or even likely correct, to say Bush Knew. As usual, it's the under-examined things that suggest why that may be.

From The Longboat Observer, September 26, 2001 (and it's a surprise to see this still online; so many of mainstream stories that don't make an easy fit to the official fabrication have become dead links):

At about 6 a.m. Sept. 11, Longboat Key Fire Marshall Carroll Mooneyhan was at the front desk of the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort as Bush prepared for his morning jog. From that vantage point, Mooneyhan overheard a strange exchange between a Colony receptionist and security guard.

A van occupied by men of Middle Eastern descent had pulled up to the Colony stating they had a "poolside" interview with the president, Mooneyhan said. The self-proclaimed reporters then asked for a Secret Service agent by name. Guards from security relayed the request to the receptionist, who had not heard of either the agent or plans for an interview, Mooneyhan said.

Possibly the same van was reported later that morning by a resident awaiting the presidential motorcade to pass, just minutes after Flight 11 struck the North Tower. Two men of Middle Eastern descent were seen "screaming out the windows, 'Down with Bush' and raising their fists in the air."

Earlier - "in the middle of the night" according to Monica Yadov's report for ABC's Sarasota affiliate - a "warning of imminent danger was delivered...to Secret Service agents guarding the President.' With peculiar precision, she noted it came "exactly four hours and thirty-eight minutes before Mohammad Atta flew an airliner into the World Trade Center." That would place the warning at 4:10 AM.

There are more than a few odd things here.

The Secret Service, allegedly in receit of a warning of imminent danger to their charge less than two hours earlier, simply turn the van away, telling its occupants to "contact the president’s public relations office in Washington." This, despite the fact that just two days earlier, the Taliban's greatest foe, Shah Massoud of the Northern Alliance, was assassinated under the ruse of a phony interview, by a bomb hidden inside the video camera.

If the "poolside interview" was an assassination attempt, it was less likely to succeed than the alleged plot of some Toronto kids to storm parliament and behead the Prime Minister. (Abandoned, sensibly enough, because they didn't know their way around Ottawa.) Showing up at six in the morning - any morning - dropping the name of a non-existent Secret Service agent and making the easily-checked false claim of an interview is not a winning tactic. The Secret Service would have had to be Dealey Plaza-negligent to have allowed them anywhere near Bush, yet they acted surprisingly nonchalant in light of the warning of "imminent danger" to the President they'd received just two hours previous and the recent example of death-by-interview of Shah Massoud.

Coincidentally, according to three eyewitnesses, including bartender Darlene Sieverts, Atta himself was in town September 7 "drinking rum and coke" at the Holiday Inn and meeting a man identified as Marwan Al-Shehhi, the alleged pilot of Flight 175. (Memorably, "he left a $20 bill to cover a $4 tab," Sieverts tells Daniel Hopsicker in Welcome to Terrorland.) Sepetember 7 was also the day Bush's visit to Booker Elementary was publically announced.

The poolside plot was not a serious assassination attempt, though it may have seemed as though it was to the men in the van who were permitted to go so far but no farther. But neither was it meant as a public shadow play that Bush was himself at risk. If it had been, the propaganda value of a thwarted assassination attempt would have been played up, rather than hushed up. I think, instead, it was a private display of power to the play-acting president that even a Bush had better not hold illusions of being his own man.

This lesson was reinforced later that morning, with the "credible threat" delivered, appropriately, by Dick Cheney, that "Angel is next", which effectively kept Bush out of both Washington and Cheney's alternate control and command loop until events had run their course. Remember? An anonymous White House caller, speaking in code, declared Air Force One a target. Though the administration soon quietly denied this awkward story that no longer fit, it's been supported by interviews with many principals, including Air Force One pilot Mark Tillman. "It was serious before that but now it is - no longer is it a time to get the president home," said Tillman. "We actually have to consider everything we say. Everything we do could be intercepted, and we have to make sure that no one knows what our position is." Tillman requested an armed guard at his cockpit door, and Secret Service double-checked every passengers' identity. This threat, at the highest level, was also made at the highest level.

What implication can we draw from the conflicting accounts? That there was no anonymous call to the White House, but Dick Cheney did phone in the threat to Air Force One. And Bush wasn't in on the hoax.

Bill Hicks famously said that he had "this feeling" that whoever's elected president,

no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down... and it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll.... And then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, 'Any questions?'

"Just what my agenda is."


Message received, over and out.

63 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff. Welcome back! Great post!

"I think, instead, it was a private display of power to the play-acting president that even a Bush had better not hold illusions of being his own man."

Are you suggesting Cheney is the guy behind this? (This has been dicussed on numerous occasions, and is certainly plausible.) Or that there is someone, or some group, behind Cheney?

By the way, I tired linking through the "Angel is next" quote and it asked for a blogger password....

6/13/2006 02:54:00 PM  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

Thanks, I fixed the link.

About Cheney, I don't know that I could say, simply, that he's "behind it," because I think 9/11 happened by a coalescence of interests, some perhaps not even in communication with one another (except perhaps by a wink or a nod). I think Cheney's role may come down to the facilitation of the paralysis of response. He took upon himself, a few months before, the task force for determining a response to domestic terror attacks. And Norman Mineta's testimony to the 9/11 Commission I've always found telling, even though Lee Hamilton, predictably, wouldn't follow it up:

Mineta: There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out.The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?"

And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant. And.

Hamilton: The flight you're referring to is the.

Mineta: The flight that came into the Pentagon.

...

Hamilton: And so there was no specific order there to shoot that plane down.

Mineta: No, sir.


So the order wasn't to shoot down the aircraft, and it seems the young aid came to quetion the orders the closer the aircraft came. What were the orders that Cheney snapped back still stood?

6/13/2006 03:23:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with the sentiments of this post. I have felt this way for quite some time. The liberals that hold Clinton up as some Knight in White Satin are delusional. He did, and does "their" bidding. They're (Presidents) actors, plain and simple.

Yeah, that was a pretzel, alright. Jeff Gannon's pretzel log, no doubt.

6/13/2006 04:20:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff...we missed you, and hope things work out for the best!

This post reminded me: did you ever think about adding and updating info like this to "The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11" and keeping it updated?

I still find that one of the most accessible and stirring arguments about 9/11 that I've come across. In other words, I feel like it doesn't alienate anyone, and yet it forces them to pose questions to themselves about what they choose to believe.

Keep on keepin' on brotha!

6/13/2006 04:56:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff,
Trying to direct your loyal following to the new sight.
Any opinions on the now seemingly defunct Rove indictment?
So glad your back!

Tony

6/13/2006 05:09:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff, in the midst of all the technical shenanigans, it may be encouraging to know that two excellent and very different bloggers have made a point of praising and recommending your work recently:

John Pistelli:

"All of which is prologue to my recommendation of a blog I discovered on the Colonel's blogroll: Rigorous Intuition. That's some good and terrifying shit."

http://sweet-nothing.livejournal.com/

and:

Mathias Bröckers:

http://www.broeckers.com/

- who has quoted from RI several times, and who called it his "new favourite blog" sometime late last year:

http://www.broeckers.com/

Bröckers is co-author (with Andreas Hauss) of one of the best books ever written about 9/11, a German bestseller.

6/13/2006 05:58:00 PM  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

Thanks bismillah. I was very discouraged a few days ago and thinking, well, that's it then. But my spirits have lifted, thanks to so many wise and big hearted people here. I just got the conversation rolling; the great virtue of the place is the commentary.

6/13/2006 06:35:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Back on your bike, hey Jeff. Back up, kick it over and keep riding, thats the way.

I always tell the kids I coach that when your opponent starts to hit you or try to take you out other ways it means you are beating them.

And they know they can't stop you by playing fair.

I wouldn't expect any fair play in this game, but when you get their attention you are starting to hurt them. On some level.

Anyway its good to see you back.

Bill hicks is good value, an eggs still an egg, and this one is rotten: "And then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, 'Any questions?'"

I'd like to think I would say:"Do you really think I am a gutless wonder?"

At least the people who started the US had aome measure of courage and were prepared to stick their necks out.

I am reminded of a film I once saw. Its from the 70s and is pretty good, although it was probably one of those late night movies, couldn't tell you about the quality of it as a film.

But the point it made was brilliant.

It was called "Twilight's Last Gleaming".

6/13/2006 06:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

jeff, are you reading or re-reading webster tarpley's book on synthetic terror? i got about halfway through it but would like to finish. he was taking a while delivering the goods, though the model has influenced my view of events. i haven't seen a full-bodied review of the book anywhere, which is frustrating. his book on bush senior was excellent, the half or so that i read of it. another one to finish eventually.

i'm open to theories to the effect that cheney and rumsfeld are not quite the apex alpha males, though they must be close.

i just had to laugh recently when refreshing my historical memory and seeing that for a while in the 1976 timeframe, rumsfeld was defense secretary, cheney was white house chief of staff, and bush senior was cia director. just amazing how certain people keep popping up, and how they send their sons when the time comes.

bush senior and rumsfeld are huge rivals. this more or less explains rumsfeld's absence from government for 24 years (1977-2001). sid blumenthal just reported that bush senior led the group of retired generals to try to push rumsfeld out.

i did see it written somewhere that rumsfeld recommended bush senior to ford as cia director, so that at least raises a question.

as for bush senior and cheney, it must be true that they are now deeply estranged, if they weren't always. bush appointed cheney secretary of defense in 1989, but one motive might have been to ensure that cheney did not become speaker of the house. this might be a stretch, i realize.

in any event it amuses me to speculate on dubya telling his father that he wanted to ask cheney to vet potential running mates. bush senior might have supported the idea, thinking that cheney would thereby not be a candidate himself. but cheney did a svengali on dubya and got the job.

as soon as they finished stealing the election, cheney prevailed on dubya to name rumsfeld defense secretary, and the commandeering of the new bush administration was complete. imagine bush senior's shock and dismay.

if i finish tarpley's latest book, i believe he's going to say that the 9/11 plot had significant roots in the military. he labels cheney and rumsfeld "moles" right on the cover.

so, jeff, i'd love to see your comments on the book, and of course we are all relying on you to find out who the apex alpha males really are.

keep up the great work, and best of luck with the site.

6/13/2006 06:51:00 PM  
Blogger gary said...

Good to discover you're back. I will update my link to Rigorous Intuition. Maybe one day you'll add me to your links. I had the most visitors this week when someone referenced something from Covert History on your discussion forum.

6/13/2006 07:29:00 PM  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

Gary, I'm sorry; I meant to long ago. I'll do it right now.

6/13/2006 08:13:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Someone earlier mentioned Colonel. I surely hope they weren't referring to that arrogant bastard, Collounsbury.

As you alluded to in previous posts, the revolution will not occur in Bloggerville. Bloggerville is likened to the Manhatten Project in its effect, consciously, or unconsciously. Compile the most brilliant scientific minds in the Country, nay the World, in one place with a singular focus; that being, create a device that can annihilate our species.

Granted, Bloggerville couldn't annihilate our species, not directly, of course, although an argument could be made that it could contribute to our annihilation in an indirect way. However, Bloggerville does serve as containment, just as the Manhatten Project did. Surely they didn't need all of those liberal leaning eggheads to build that bomb.

The simple fact is that keyboard junkies are just that......junkies in dire need of their next fix. It's mental masturbation......and when it's all said and done, a rather pathetic way to feign connection.

As we type, the march continues, unabated. We can play sportscaster, but our accounting of events will not, nay cannot change the outcome.

It will happen because it must happen.

6/13/2006 08:37:00 PM  
Blogger lemme howdt said...

i added a footnote at the Zone - http://www.howdt.com/blog . Michael Ruppert seems to have 9/11 nailed in Crossing the Rubicon. Close enough to run with, at any rate.
I was wondering whether you've ever pinpointed the connection between Tesla and the Philadelphia Experiment. Seems to me that as tough as it is to find info on Tesla, the stealth and HARRP technologies must be embedded with his alternative theories. It's like they are keeping the good science secret while feeding us uncomposted manure.

6/13/2006 08:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good luck with your new paper route.

I remember Hamilton Jordan saying right before Carter's election that if they won, and Zbigniew Brezenski was made National Security advisor, then they had really lost. He was, and they did, I suppose.

Kind of (Gary) sick, when you think about it.

In 'The Best and the Brightest,' David Halberstam gives a fairly detailed account of how JFK was brought to meet with Bob Lovett, and given a short list of who could be on his cabinet.

And of course, Reagan himself was forced to take Geo. Bush, Sr., as his running mate, although he despised the man. Then later Hinckley delivered his message about who was really in charge at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

And of course we shouldn't forget "Col." Mandell House, Wilson's game controller.

Is 'Mad Dog' Dick Cheney the eminence grise? Hardly. I think you're absolutely right, he was a facilitator. Take a spin on Google video, watch the 15 minute trailer for Aaron Russo's 'From Freedom to Fascism,' it becomes pretty clear who really runs the show.

But hey, 'Lost' is on--gotta run!

6/13/2006 08:48:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ah, Shrubster, always the optimist.

It's easy to pigeonhole phenomena, because then it's easier to be dismissive. Hundreds of thousands of people writing and posting to a univerally-available information source is, thus, "Bloggerville." I always thought it was unfortunate that the Robot Wisdom dude's truncation of 'weblog' became the name for this form of writing, but that one hain't going away anytime soon.

Sneer if you will, but the "blogs" have a tremendous power to educate. Look at the increasing number of people suspicious of the events of 911--you think that happened thanks to the MSM? Or the huge skepticism about the run-up to the Iraq war--again, where do you imagine it came from? Are the prominent writers using the internet able to push us towards a critical mass, a (cliche alert) tipping point? I hope so, and it just might happen, and that's why our beloved elites are scrambling trying to short-circuit the damn thing. You can scoff, sure, but who else is out there right now trying to speak truth to power? David Broder?

And by the way, that little town at the end of Lon Giland? It's spelt Manhattan. Sorry to be a prig, but sheesh.

6/13/2006 09:05:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Slightly off topic.....ignore if you think it is too tangential or thread jacking.

But has anyone studied how the pancreas is the best candidate as an organ, not only for it's high susceptibility for cancer when doped with the right toxins, but for it's easy accessibility via ingestion.

Laugh at me if you want. "He was JUST a comedian, after all."

And Paul Wellstone was just a senator from Minnesota.

I can tell you who was more famous and who was drawing more attention, or rather drawing the publics attention to matters verboten.

The ghost of Bill Hicks must be desperate to incarnate, or do a walk-in.

Shit.

6/14/2006 12:16:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The group behind Cheney et al. are still middle managers. The real Alphas are almost anonymous; few have met them.
C'mon. A little history, a little eclectic research can jog our holographic memory. This conflict has been going on for quite a while.
Their profile: Arrogant, disdainful, cruel, quick, hot tempered, cold hearted.
Maybe it's time to send these
'clicker' bastards packing.

6/14/2006 12:23:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But has anyone studied how the pancreas is the best candidate as an organ, not only for it's high susceptibility for cancer when doped with the right toxins, but for it's easy accessibility via ingestion.

In "American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story" it's told how Hicks first started to feel the pain in his side from pancreatic cancer as he was touring Australia. As I recall, his initial visit to the doctor upon his return to the U.S. didn't yield a test because, as the doctor later said, no one that young ever gets cancer of the pancreas.

The long flight to Australia would have been an excellent opportunity...

6/14/2006 02:00:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This post reminded me of the look on Bush's face when he allegedly first learned of the attacks: a sort of nervous, impotent, enraged, grim half-smirk; like he was feeling seven or eight different emotions at the same time.

He had the look of a man who knew it was coming, but could neither help nor hinder it because he was out of the loop and just a figurehead.

It also explains why he didn't jump up right away. He wasn't in a position to do anything, and was probably in fear for his life. So he waits for further instructions, trying to keep a straight face. He was probably both enraged and fearful for his life at that point.

BTW - More links would be nice, especially to the Mineta testimony.

Also, anyone hear of the "rumor" that the images of a dead Uday and Qusay were nothing more than images of wax figurines, just like that delicious Thanksgiving turkey [later morphed in a platter of human skulls to hilarious, albeit grim effect]?

Finally, just imagine how terrifying this whole thing would be WITHOUT the Internet. You'd still know something was up, but you'd be more isolated, more Balkanized.

6/14/2006 02:00:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you follow the twisted trail with your eyes wide open it will lead you all the way back to Dealy Plaza.

There has only ever been one conspiracy, the take-down of the US Presidency and ultimately the co-opting of Congress itself.

This has essentially been accomplished through a relentless process of fear, intimidation, extortion, bribery, blackmail and of course, assassination by way of "unfortunate" accidents for anyone who has threatened or gotten in the way of that agenda.

Many of the people involved in the present day scenario are all intimately tied, one way or another, to that very black day in Dallas.

Of course all of us who experienced the psychic shock of that precise moment had it permanently etched into our consciousness right along with any miscellaneous personal details that inadvertently accompanied it.

All those memories remain as razor sharp and painfull as ever despite any of our efforts to try and leave them behind. We've never gotten over them, we've merely gotten used to carrying them around.

It has become one of our generations's little "grotesqueries", if I may call it that, that is shared by countless millions of us all over the planet. We cannot forget where we were or what we were doing when we first heard JFK had been shot nor has the passage of time diminished those recollections in any way.

There is, however, one singular exception from our group, and it is also a matter of record. In a public interview, George Bush Sr. when asked for his recollections of that fatefull moment said he simply couldn't recall where he was that day or even when he first heard the news. Several years later, administrative papers and records surfaced showing that he was actually in Dallas on that very day.

Prescott Bush, incidentally, was the bonesman who selected, financed and groomed Richard Nixon for the Republicans while his own son was still learning the ropes in the CIA.

6/14/2006 02:23:00 AM  
Blogger Civic Center said...

Jeff, what a treat to read your voice again, and sorry for all the hazing you've been going through. Plus, you're right about your commentators. They're a brilliant, interesting group. See silverfox above, for instance.

6/14/2006 04:06:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shrubageddon: "Someone earlier mentioned Colonel. I surely hope they weren't referring to that arrogant bastard, Collounsbury."

No! John Pistelli was referring to a brilliant American in Paris who goes under the name of "Le Colonel Chabert":

http://lecolonelchabert.blogspot.com/

Along with RI and Lenin's Tomb, this blog is at the top of my "favourites" list. (She has also linked to and quoted from RI several times.)

6/14/2006 07:08:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Excellent post as usual, Jeff. The enemy of truth is not only ignorance; just as important is forgetfulness. To connect the dots accurately, it's important to keep them from fading.

In early 2003, I started writing a book about 9/11, which I gave up after I was told repeatedly that it was "too sensitive" and that NOBODY would publish it here in Cairo.

What I did write took up almost 40 typewritten pages, representing a lot of hard work, and some information I haven't seen published elsewhere. I'd hate to have it collecting dust on my hard-drive instead of being read. May I have your permission to post it on the ezboard?

Here is an excerpt relevant to your post:

"...scattered bits of data continue to float to the surface, some disappearing into a "memory hole", others lingering as loose threads dangling from the frayed edges of what Kupferberg calls “the official legend of 9-11”.

One of these is the dramatic White House announcement that Air Force One, and therefore President Bush himself was originally a target of the September 11 hijackers, a story which was widely circulated by Reuters and the Associated Press.

AP reported that:

[There was real and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were targets of terrorist attacks and that the plane that hit the Pentagon was headed for the White House.]

ABC News also reported on September 12 that Colin Powell had confirmed the "credible information" about the threat. As the Sunday Herald reported on September 16, 2001:

[Codes known only to the most senior security and defence officials were, according to intelligence sources, used by 'terrorists to make a credible threat'. That threat was simple: 'Air Force One is next.' …

Rove went on: 'The Secret Service informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts. In light of the specific and credible threat, it was decided to get airborne with a fighter escort.'

Rove did not say it, but there is only one implication from the story he related: that somewhere, maybe in the White House, the NSA or the CIA, there is a mole who is selling information to terrorists.]

William Safire, in his New York Times column on September 13, had first discussed the "implications" of this threat:

[How did they get the code-word information and transponder know-how that established their mala fides? That knowledge of code words and presidential whereabouts and possession of secret procedures indicates that the terrorists may have a mole in the White House – that, or informants in the Secret Service, FBI, FAA, or CIA.]

World Net Daily provided a few more details on September 20, 2001:

[The terrorists' message threatening Air Force One was transmitted in that day's top-secret White House code words.

6/14/2006 07:36:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Helloo...I posted the above as "Alice", not anonymously. Not only that, I never pressed "publish your comment", only "preview". Huh.

6/14/2006 07:50:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The rest of my post was cut off:

World Net Daily provided a few more details on September 20, 2001:

[The terrorists' message threatening Air Force One was transmitted in that day's top-secret White House code words. As the clock ticked away, the Secret Service reached a frightening conclusion: The terrorists had obtained the White House code and a whole set of top-secret signals.

This made it possible for a hostile force to pinpoint the exact position of Air Force One, its destination and its classified procedures. In fact, the hijackers were picking up and deciphering the presidential plane's incoming and outgoing transmissions.

The discovery shocked everyone in the president's emergency operations center – Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. Their first question was: How did the terrorists access top-secret White House codes and procedures? Is there a mole, or more than one enemy spy in the White House, the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA or the Federal Aviation Administration?

In the week after the attacks in New York and Washington, more hair-raising facts emerged. The terrorists had also obtained the code groups of the National Security Agency and were able to penetrate the NSA's state-of-the-art electronic surveillance systems. Indeed, they seemed to have at their disposal an electronic capability that was more sophisticated than than that of the NSA.

… Intelligence and counter-terror sources report that, while rescuers in New York and Washington were sifting through rubble inch by inch, US government experts were changing codes one-by-one – and even more difficult, replacing procedures and methods of encryption. The nagging question of a mole in the highest reaches of the U.S. government and intelligence community – with direct or indirect links with bin Laden – remains. Since no single individual has access to every top-level code at any given time – a single mole would not answer the case; it would have to be a large, widely spread number.]

And then, suddenly, this dramatic story…died. It was briefly resurrected on September 26, when a reporter asked White House Spokesperson Ari Fleischer about the September 11 threat to Air Force One. Fleischer's response was buried in the next day's Washington Post:

[. . . it is not an uncommon occurrence for people to threaten the government of the United States, regardless of whether it's President Bush or any of his predecessors. And that's why there are security precautions taken at the White House as a matter of routine.]

End of story."

6/14/2006 07:52:00 AM  
Blogger Peter of Lone Tree said...

"And by the way, that little town at the end of Lon Giland? It's spelt Manhattan." -- Anonymous

Anyone who visits knows that the above correct spelling should be "Lawn Guyland". The indisputable source of this information is webmistress Blondesense Liz who lives there.

Alla dem goils at Blondesense is reel smart, but sumtimes dey use notty langwidge.

6/14/2006 10:24:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank goodness you can't keep a good blog down. Thanks Jeff for the most daring foray into the darkness of the unknown the internet has seen so far.

Instead of SIGINT
We have RIGINT

6/14/2006 10:33:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You have to love it!! Focus on a misspelled (gee, did I spell misspelled correctly?) word in order to discredit a poster's point.

I have nothing against optimism, so long as it's not blind.....and I see an awful lot of that these days.

Before we can change anything, we must change ourselves, individually.

Here's a start.

1.) Once and for all, let's shed the Cult of Celebrity/Personality. No meaningful paradigmatic change can incubate without the eradication of this tendency.

There's more, but let's start with that.....because that's an enromous subject, and obstacle, in and of itself.

Oh, and like a good soldier, please spell check what I just wrote because it's a pain in the ass to have to paste and copy from Word after spell checking.

6/14/2006 10:50:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting. I went to the spammed site, Blondesense, and I'll be damned if I didn't catch several misspellings, right off. Ordinarily, I could care less, but since we're pointing it out, let's be fair, shall we?

But hey, Circle The Wagons, Boys (And Girls), someone's shakin yo container.

6/14/2006 11:35:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shurb:

I didn't "focus" on your misspelling, but c'mon on, dude. You kept repeating the mistake. The ability to spell is a sign of...uh...never mind.

The point of your post seemed to be that "blogs" were a mechanism of containment, which I disagree with. A.J. Liebling's old quote about "the press being free to he who owns one" has been turned on its head by the internet. John Perry Barlow was making this point ten years ago. It's a revolutionary technology, whether you think so or not.

Who's talking about a "cult of personality?" Only you.

6/14/2006 11:42:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was going to ask if anyone thought this was possible. Then I realized what a stupid damn question that would be.

http://www.sonic.net/sentinel/usa5.html

Everyone within a 50-mile radius of Port Chicago - located in Contra Costa County, felt a tremendous blast. At first most residents in the Bay Area, including Napa County, thought it was an earthquake. The night was Monday, July 17, 1944. Port Chicago has now been named the Concord Naval Weapons Station.

The Hiroshima blast was a year later, in August 1945. Not until the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki blasts was the general population of the world aware of terms such as "bright white light" and "mushroom cloud" in reference to a military explosion.

The coincidences and the oddities surrounding the Port Chicago explosion are only surfacing today. Some of those are:

* The U.S. claimed it could not test the Hiroshima bomb because it only had a small supply of U-235, allowing for the making of only two bombs. Records obtained from the U.S. Government indicate that enough U-235 existed in 1944 to make several bombs, and more in 1945.

* The head of Port Chicago was promoted to commodore immediately after the explosion and also headed up tests in the Pacific, and was also aboard the Enola Gay when it dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. After Hiroshima he was made a rear admiral. He was Captain Parsons - who had been stationed at Los Alamos Laboratories before the explosion at Port Chicago.

* Liberty ships were loaded while crews remained aboard the vessel. The Liberty ship that exploded at Port Chicago had no crew aboard.

* Documents from Los Alamos show that at the time of the Port Chicago explosion it was believed that the only way to deliver an atomic bomb to the enemy was by ship, detonating in the harbor. It was called the Hydrodynamic Theory of Surface Explosions.

* Records of contents of two box cars unloaded at Port Chicago are missing. A complete list of all box cars were kept - except those two. Did it contain the 9000 pound bomb?

* Port Chicago was rebuilt in one week after its destruction. Two hundred black sailors died in the explosion.

* There was a Navy mutiny at Port Chicago after the blast.

* The Navy was photographing the entire blast from across the Bay.

* In a top secret report on a nuclear detonation after Port Chicago, the notes state that it was a "Port Chicago-type" explosion in similarity and form.

* One of the highest rates of cancer in the United States is in Contra Costa County.

6/14/2006 12:24:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wonder if those "Middle Eastern Men in a Van" were anthing like the other "Middle Eastern Men in a Van":

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html

"Police received several calls from angry New Jersey residents claiming "middle-eastern" men with a white van were videotaping the disaster with shouts of joy and mockery. (2)

"They were like happy, you know … They didn't look shocked to me" said a witness. (3)
[T]hey were seen by New Jersey residents on Sept. 11 making fun of the World Trade Center ruins and going to extreme lengths to photograph themselves in front of the wreckage. (4)

Witnesses saw them jumping for joy in Liberty State Park after the initial impact (5). Later on, other witnesses saw them celebrating on a roof in Weehawken, and still more witnesses later saw them celebrating with high fives in a Jersey City parking lot. (6)

The FBI sent out an alert to area cops, reading: "Vehicle possibly related to New York terrorist attack . . . Three individuals with van were seen celebrating after initial impact and subsequent explosion." (7)"

When caught, the "Middle Eastern Men" were found to be - Israelis.

"Based on that phone call, police then issued a "Be-on-the-Lookout" alert for a white mini-van heading for the city's bridges and tunnels from New Jersey.

When a van fitting that exact description was stopped just before crossing into New York, the suspicious "middle-easterners" were apprehended. Imagine the surprise of the police officers when these terror suspects turned out to be Israelis!

According to ABC’s 20/20, when the van belonging to the cheering Israelis was stopped by the police, the driver of the van, Sivan Kurzberg, told the officers:
"We are Israelis. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are your problem." (10)"

6/14/2006 12:45:00 PM  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

re the other white van, I thought about adding that to the mix, but determined it would sidetrack the main subject. (As the introduction of possible Mossad involvement invariably does.) I want to return to this eventually, though. "A Tale of Two White Vans," perhaps.

6/14/2006 01:25:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Glad I found you. Thought you'd been kidnapped by aliens or some other nefarious cretins! (BFEE?)

6/14/2006 03:14:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

from Chris Floyd:

"So I was going to write about all this, and how the suicides bring home the morally corrosive nature of torture and inhumane treatment, and how the aggressive, hyper-macho bluster of insecure national leaders create the noxious atmosphere in which atrocity and dehumanization thrive....but then I remembered that Bob Dylan had covered all this more than 40 years ago, in the middle of another godforsaken military adventure that saw torture, murder and mass destruction wielded in the name of democracy and freedom, way back when George W. Bush was still a high-school creep chugging brewskis and chasing tail, long before his apotheosis as the law-transcending War Leader. It was these lines from "Tombstone Blues," from the 1965 album, Highway 61 Revisited:

Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, "Tell me great hero, but please make it brief,
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?"

The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly,
Saying, "Death to all those who would whimper and cry!"
And dropping a bar bell he points to the sky,
Saying, "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken."

What more can you say about our current situation? Those who are given the illegal orders from the leaders of a government they have been taught to respect and believe are the only ones who might feel troubled at the moral hell they've been plunged into; but the Commander-in-Chief is too full of pseudo he-man blather and sexually anxious swagger to notice or care.

But of course, Dylan wrote these lines four decades ago; this stain goes deep in our republic, it's been around a long time: the bellicose liars of the Bush Regime are only its latest manifestation."

full article at http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/floyd7.html

6/14/2006 03:22:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"SUPERB"
Yes yes yes; Professor Pan is right; i was So Glad when i went to his site this morning and found where Rigorous Intuition had gone. i check your site every day and i was beginning to get seriously worried that you had been injured or something! your writing is always so cogent, so lucid, and so focussed.......thank you, always, for the continual/continuous stimulation and "provocation."

6/14/2006 03:37:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So, it's only containment when it suits your fancy? I see. Nice double standard........so convenient.

Whilst I agree about the assertions concerning the assassination of JFK and the course of history since, my point still remains.

Quit being so naive. You are being contained, both at your own hands, and at the hands of the PTB.

Information overload serves to obfuscate, and paralyze. The very thing you set out to conquer, becomes the very source of your daily fix. If you eliminate your intriguing nemesis, you fall into a destabilizing state of detoxification. A new nemesis must be found to numb the pain.

Bloggerville, like Hollywood, or Religion, or Politics partakes in the Cult of Personality/Celebrity. Idols/Heroes must be created because whatever the medium, we are programmed to worship, or be worshipped. Rock Stars have their groupies, and Bloggers have their's.

6/14/2006 04:07:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

shrubageddon...

The blog world may have it's groupies, and we may all be blind, sure. You might be right. But, your comments are adding nothing to what we've all come here to accomplish. In fact, your condescending, know-it-all, sneering tone, and your insults and petty arguing with everyone else here, are just taking away from what we're doing. If you think we're misguided, feel free to give us a better suggestion, or leave. I'm speaking for myself here, but I don't think anyone cares to hear what you've been saying thusfar.

At least in this thread.

Now, I recall your name going a while back on this site. You've participated in the discussion. Why you have in the past, and why you're now claiming it's such a waste of time, I don't know. I only point this out because I'm not saying 'why don't you just leave already', but that leaving would be more productive than taunting.

6/14/2006 05:29:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shrubageddon is making an important point obnoxiously, which is better than not making it at all:

What we do with the knowledge we gain from the Internet?

Jeff has made the point unobnoxiously and better, as have several other bloggers. (It's becoming a "meme", i.e. something unignorable.) And the point remains, however it's made: We gain essential knowledge as isolated monads stuck to a machine indoors. How does this translate into political change?

I said yesterday on another board - after Rove had got off scot-free, "Zarqawi" had been killed under very murky circumstances, and an unknown number of children had been killed by a three-day series of rockets in Israel - that the problem is scandal-overload. It's very hard to focus for long enough on one particular Bad Thing. And in any case, "focusing" is not the problem. The problem boils down to money, and who has it.

As things stand, we're the best-informed slaves in history.

6/14/2006 06:28:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank goodness your back Jeff, I was beginning to think I might see your name on Loren Coleman's Mothman Death List! No more reason to visit his overhyped crypto-nonsense! Hoo-ray!

6/14/2006 06:49:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not to further derail this train wreck of a thread, but here's an interesting quote:

...To be sure, we are aware of all the differences that may exist between the Soviet state and the American state, the British state, or the French state. There are juridical and constitutional differences, differences of practice and intention. They exist, but are of little consequence compared with the similarities, and particularly the general trend. There are more differences between the American state of 1910 and that of 1960 (despite the constitutional sameness) than between the latter and the Soviet state (despite the constitutional differences).
-- Jaques Ellul, The Political Illusion

1960! Imagine what Ellul would say about 2006, were he alive. The trajectory of modern times seems to be always towards totalitarianism, or, if you will, totalism. If the internet disrupts, or even slows, that tendency, then why view it as a negative?

What did cause the collapse of the Soviet Union? Clearly, a critical mass of people had become dissatisfied with the System, and that dissatisfaction had infected the nomenklatura, the party elite. It took generations, and millions of deaths. The internet can catalyze a similar transformation, and hasten the process. People change their minds, even died-in-the-wool neocons (think Francis Fukayama, or John Derbyshire, both of whom have recanted their suppport of the Iraq war).

Things that cannot last, don't.

6/14/2006 07:10:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"But once organized, the citizen must possess a truly democratic attitude in order to depolitize and repolitize; this attitude can only be the result of his being freed of his illusions. The crucial change involved focuses not on opinions and vocabulary but on behavior.

This means that we must try to create positions in which we reject and struggle with the state, not in order to modify some element of the regime or force it to make some decision, but, much more fundamentally, in order to permit the emergence of social, political, intellectual, or artistic bodies, associations, interest groups, or economic or Christian groups totally independent of the state, yet capable of opposing it, able to reject its pressures as well as its controls, and even its gifts. These organizations must be completely independent, not only materially but also intellectually and morally, i.e., able to deny that the nation is the supreme value and that the state is the incarnation of the nation. What is needed is groups capable of denying the state’s right--today accepted by everybody--to mobilize all forces and all energies of the nation for a single aim, such as the grandeur or efficiency of that nation.. . "
-- Jaques Ellul

Ever the optimist, I would suggest that "skeptical blogistan" fits the bill pretty well, whether its RI or Kos or Antiwar or HuffPo. People who read are re-acquiring the habit of thinking critically about official pronunciamentos. All to the good.

6/14/2006 07:21:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous, 4:10 pm: [i]"Things that cannot last, don't."[/i]

I doubt if this thought was much comfort to Anne Frank or Osip Mandelstam, or Martin Luther King, or Gary Webb.

6/14/2006 07:26:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The head of Port Chicago was promoted to commodore immediately after the explosion and also headed up tests in the Pacific, and was also aboard the Enola Gay when it dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. After Hiroshima he was made a rear admiral. **He was Captain Parsons** - who had been stationed at Los Alamos Laboratories before the explosion at Port Chicago."

Hmmmm any relation to Jack the mad rocket scientist?

"We gain essential knowledge as isolated monads stuck to a machine indoors. How does this translate into political change?"

Is political change gonna do anything? I think it needs to go deeper, beyond politics as that is a symptom of a sick culture.

These things are happening now and the net allows communication, but like any time spent talking about the future, its only part of the process. Acting on it is also vital and that can only come from yourself and your desire to create the world you want to live in instead of suffering thru someone elses version of hell.

One thing about this blogworld is that you realise you are not alone, on a huge scale, its not just a few people I know who think this, theres's a whole world out there. That can be comforting and give you strength to act. But you have to get up off your arse at some point.

"It's very hard to focus for long enough on one particular Bad Thing. And in any case, "focusing" is not the problem. The problem boils down to money, and who has it."

Very true, but focusing on good things is also important. In the context of that, if you want to use this net to do something really actually truely positive, go to this website and buy the CD up for sale.

Sorry for plugging something on your blog Jeff, but this goes to the heart of Bismillah's point I feel.

http://www.unahi.org/index.htm

Its the UNAHI website.

the united association of Higanopn tribes of Mindinao.

I posted a link to their website, and tribal political leader (he answers to his elders and the community, he is not the boss, a figurehead.)

They will use the money to help in the building of a buffer zone of private titled land around their traditional home, the last virgin rainforest (ie it hasn't been fucked yet) on Mindinao. They have 500000 hectares of jungle to support 350000 people, no money not much of anything cept heart and spirit.

It boils down to money, so why not do something good with it.

There are probably thousands of other projects in the "3rd world" or whatever that need similar support. That is one practical use of the web.

Another one is this, slightly less practical, on some levels.

A few years ago I was a mod on a site, the guy who set the site up is someone I have never met. He lived in Florida at the time.

We did some experiments where we tried to communicate using ESP, RV or whatever. They seemed to work, but in the process some pretty weird shit started to happen. Not scientific, but the results were (kind of surprisingly) good, I could definitely see potential, and it gave me a greater understanding of the talents we all have for this sort of thing, and how to develop those talents.

Shrub you are essentially right.

On its own posting on blogs all the time can be incredibly pointless. And not lead anywhere. Like sitting in a pub talking shit about all the things you are gunna do in the future.

However like all tools, the more creative you are with its use the more you will get out of it.

After all this is virtual reality, what we do means very little if we can't make its influence leak into real reality.

I kind of think you may be feeling this frustration too (I am probably way off but anyway):

The internet is weird cos you can develop a relationship with a disembodied "voice", as humans we tend to develop relationships with people, this virtual interaction thing is a new thing.

Cos its words, and they often seem to pass the turing test (my personal one anyway). So these are people, and if you like the words they type (that seem ike a voice), if their words move you then that desire to connect kicks in. And how can you do it with no way of seeing them face to face.

It is important to put faces on voices if the move you. Its part of how we humans get to know the world. Thats how I used to feel anyway. These days I make up faces in my head,or little discrete packets of Anonymous face I can't quite see. That way when reading people's word or thinking about them or typing back I can maintain some conection that is more real than pixels and phone lines.

Like trying to phone someone you love in a disaster area. When you can't get there physically, you start reaching out with your heart and soul, to somehow get thru.

Getting way off topic here. opps

6/14/2006 07:42:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"i.e., able to deny that the nation is the supreme value and that the state is the incarnation of the nation."

Hear hear.

Trying to get this back on track.

Datu always makes me think. There's not many people I have that much respect for.

"I posted a link to their website, and tribal political leader (he answers to his elders and the community, he is not the boss, a figurehead.)"

"when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there"

"About Cheney, I don't know that I could say, simply, that he's "behind it," because I think 9/11 happened by a coalescence of interests, some perhaps not even in communication with one another (except perhaps by a wink or a nod)."

"I agree with the sentiments of this post. I have felt this way for quite some time. The liberals that hold Clinton up as some Knight in White Satin are delusional. He did, and does "their" bidding. They're (Presidents) actors, plain and simple."

"The group behind Cheney et al. are still middle managers. The real Alphas are almost anonymous; few have met them.
C'mon. A little history, a little eclectic research can jog our holographic memory. This conflict has been going on for quite a while.
Their profile: Arrogant, disdainful, cruel, quick, hot tempered, cold hearted.
Maybe it's time to send these
'clicker' bastards packing."

Thinking about it.

It seems to be a natural process. The "leader" isn't the leader if he doesn't lead the people where they are supposed to go culture wise.

All these men in backrooms, the 12 capitalists with their ability to shoot the leader of any country.

If the liberals who hold Clinton up voted for him, of course he should do their bidding, that is how mandates work, and decisions given a context re the peoples attitude. That is one thing elections express.

Its all well and good to say 2004 was stolen, but was it really?

If the vast majority of Americans had wanted him out and actually gone and voted, then 2004 would have had record numbers of voters, perhaps the highest percentage since the 19 century. And endless amounts of very mainstream noise would be drowning out so much else in US society.(You SS ociety??)

Same thing in Aussie, it shames me to think of the self interest and fear that drove the Aussies to vote little Jonny Turdburgler in yet again.

But that is our society.

In datu's culture there is one reason for living, to look after and be part of the rainforest. in mine... well what can I say.

When that Bill Hicks moment kicks in, "Whats my agenda" is really just about the details.

The fact is the perpetuation of this system happens because everyone accepts it. That is who we are - economic capitalist bastards who know we are killing ourselves and our home, but so what, at least we will be comfortable, and have the illusion of success and memetic security. And at least when we are all choking on our collective waste, we will have additives that make the shit we eat taste good, and the things we eat it off a bit more stylish than those poor ignorant non western savages in the rest of the world.

Fed to the urban beast, cold as a concrete web, your privilege, out of reach

We're up to our necks in it.

6/14/2006 08:20:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One more thought.

Remeber when Dubya fell of his mountain bike?

6/14/2006 08:29:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bismillah: Dying is never fun. Without indulging in conventional hagiography, I would guess that MLK could see a brighter future, although, if you were to push the point, nothing is comforting when you're bleeding out from a rifle wound.

Mandelstam wrote his "Stalin Epigram" probably after seeing the results of the Great Famine. Why would he pen his own death sentence? To effect a change, I would guess. Otherwise, pretty pointless.

Were others, nameless, touched by his words? I would guess yes. Did his poem, his wild act of rebellion, give them strength, hope even? Again, yes. Did all of them know Mandelstam? No. Just as I never knew George Orwell, or Ghandi, or Gary Webb, Mandelstam was for many if not most of his readers a disembodied presence, a "virtual" presence, if you will. Does that lack of facetime vitiate the power of his words? I don't think so.

Your question, ultimately, is "what do words accomplish?" To which I would answer: quite a lot. Without going all Chomsky here, I would contend that "creating our own reality" begins with words. For contemplatives, it begins and ends with words--the words of their prayers. For legions of teachers and professors and scribblers, words--the logos--are the tools of education. The very stuff of thought, of human essence, is words. All the people you mentioned used words to good effect.

Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences. And ideas, like it or not, are expressed in words, whether spoken, or on paper, or, nowadays, on screens.

Things change when enough people realize that change is necessary. I don't understand the point of denying the power of language to effect change. The mass demonstrations against the war didn't stop the war. The elites, feeling that policy decisions )theirs) are safely disconnected from politics (Chomsky again), felt safe to make their bloody grab.

But it is through an outpouring of words that their margin of safety is reduced, in the end, to zero.

Sorry for hectoring.

6/14/2006 08:30:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've found a new favorite ice cream, and I'm not normally a big fan of ice cream. It's Edy's Slow-Churned 1/2 the Fat Chocolate. It is wonderful. I use to like Ben & Jerry's, but since they were acquired, their quality has suffered. They're skimping on the Cherries in Cherries Garcia, and that just won't do.

The reason I brought up the ManhattEn (flips middle finger) Project is because I watched The Day After Trinity the other night and the idea of containment came to me. I applied that concept to The Web. My initial comments were as much self-flagellation as they were external admonishment. I tend to be brutally honest with myself, so consider it a compliment that I hold you to the same standard.

I only got obnoxious when another poster decided to take personal jabs at me. That's my right. I'm a fighter, and if someone personally attacks me, I'm going to punch back.

My comments were directed at the group, as a whole, but no one in particular. In response, I've been labeled stupid, obnoxious and have been asked to leave. Jules is the only poster who has acknowledged my statements without taking it personally, and for that, I applaud him.

If we can't be brutally honest with ourselves and truly introspective, then we remain vulnerable to self-delusion. Sorry if I didn't sugar coat it, but that's not my style. On occasion, it's preferable to deliver it straight down the middle, especially when curve balls are expected.

6/14/2006 08:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shrub--thanks for sharing that with us. Can you tell us more about yourself? Because that's why we come here. To help you.

6/14/2006 11:20:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"If we can't be brutally honest with ourselves and truly introspective, then we remain vulnerable to self-delusion. Sorry if I didn't sugar coat it, but that's not my style. On occasion, it's preferable to deliver it straight down the middle, especially when curve balls are expected."

Speaking for myself, I think that no matter how hard I try to do the first thing I am still self delusional.

I guess thats what life is all about, maybe people die, cos the Gnostics were right, and death is just the result of seeing through our self delusion(IE the delusion that we have a self.)

Maybe not, but I take some comfort in Jaz Coleman's lyric

"And at the end of my life
Yes at the end of my life
All shall be well
All is as it was always meant to be."

Hopefully I'll have worked it all out by then (ha yeah right).

The containment concept is a good one. Providing an outlet for energy gives a certain level of control to those providing the outlet. The solution is to have as many outlets as possible, not put all your eggs in one basket, or one hard drive, or one medium of expression.

Sometimes posting stuff on the net trips my ego. Although those words may well be of great benefit to others, getting off on that thought will hinder my ability to actually do it.

And sometimes saying stuff online can be worth it because those words are just what someone needed. not on a macro scale, like Mandelstam, who I have never heard of. (My better half is into Russian lit, so I might chase that name up for her cheers.)

Like that example then is what I am talking about.

If I track down Mandelstam's stuff, and my wife reads it, and it brings something to her life, simple pleasure at good writing, or some deeper thing, then this blog has done at least one worthwhile thing, and I can think of many others.

Shrub, your comments put in mind of a Triffids song I was listening to earlier.

Its called Stolen Property, from a record called Born Sandy Devotional.

"You just lie around waiting on a signal from heaven
Never had to heal any deep incision
Darling you are not moving any mountans
You are not seeing any visions
You are not freeing any people from prison
Just an aphorism for every occasion
As if the only thing that ever matters
Is your place at the table
you never read the writing on the label when yu drank from the bottle
it said keep away from children."


No point being here if it stops seeing visions freeing people and moving mountains.

"Shrub--thanks for sharing that with us. Can you tell us more about yourself? Because that's why we come here. To help you."

Bullshit, you are doing fine mate, you don't need our help. Just keep doing your thing.

6/15/2006 12:12:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

>>Mandelstam wrote his "Stalin Epigram" probably after seeing the results of the Great Famine. Why would he pen his own death sentence? To effect a change, I would guess. Otherwise, pretty pointless.<<

Back to that moment.

Its an old cliche, but its better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

I have had a great life, and I love it. It is the greatest gift I could ever have got. the people I have met, and loved. The music the beauty, even the pain and fear.

It has been fantastic. When it is gone ... the only thing I really fear about death, is the loss of that gift. And thats more a sorrow than a fear.

I owe it to that gift to follow the example of mandelstam (whoever he was), King, and the thousand of millions of others who have done the same thing over history.

My life means something to me, and to live it in a way that may compromise that is unthinkable.

Sometimes effecting change isn't even the answer. It goes deeper than your bones to the fibre of your being.

This demands this response. the consequences are their own but no matter how painful they are for me, I must respond like this. it is who I have chosen to be. And I will live this life.

These responses come from places you cannot control, or maybe they are the ultimate in self control. The petty side of me cannot overrule them.

The simplest example of this is Aussie rules football. It is high a speed contact sport. It has no structure ala lines of scrimmage, so the play comes from everywhere.

To play the game you run in support of your teammates, and you look out for them. you shepherd them by using your body to impact on the nearest threat to your teammate. You get no recognition for this, cept from your grateful teammates, and thats the only reason you do it, to look after them cos we are all in this together, working for a common goal, or 20. And you trust they will do the same thing.

I am no different from any other footy player in this respect:

I am chasing the ball and see a teammate under pressure and i see someone that weighs 30 kilos more than me you bearing down on them. I cannot help myself, I know its gonna hurt so I try and hit as hard as I can so the other guy cops it too. But I have to put myself between them. To not do so would be unthinkable. I may as walk off the field and go home.

You know the consequences of your actions, and they are pain and possibly serious injury. If it all goes horribly wrong, possibly even death. (Tho I don't think its ever happened.) My mate came close last year. he's still playing with a loose plate and loose screw in his skull. Well I guess he's always had a few loose anyway, but this ones made of surgical steel. See he's a great example. I have to shepherd him every chance I get. you have to support your mates or you may as fuck off and die. He still does the same thing too. Courage or stupidity you tell me.

He always had a screw loose anyway.

After that long piece of self indulgent crap, think about it in the context of this.

WHAT WOULD (did) MLK OR GHANDI SAY WHEN FACED WITH THAT BILL HICKS MOMENT.

And why?

Maybe this:" if you shoot me in the balls I will live long enough to scream your name to the world motherfucker."

But I think they had more dignity and couth.

6/15/2006 12:42:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I hate the term sheeple, because it's almost always arrogantly applied to others.


It's easy to pigeonhole phenomena, because then it's easier to be dismissive. Hundreds of thousands of people writing and posting to a univerally-available information source is, thus, "Bloggerville." I always thought it was unfortunate that the Robot Wisdom dude's truncation of 'weblog' became the name for this form of writing, but that one hain't going away anytime soon.



Hmmmm......a similar theme of regret over unofficial, yet seemingly universally accepted terminology. Whilst I agree with the sentiments of both posters, I stop and wonder, are they different posters, or one in the same? See, I'm just attempting to connect the dots. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but who isn't?

I can say this about myself. I have no reputation to uphold. If my stream of consciousness, or unconsciousness upsets your stomach and makes you barf, so be it. I'm still going to announce myself as Shrubageddon because I don't care about reputations, and because I believe in looking you square in the eye. I have never, and will never engage a poster for whom I have disdain under the guise of Anonymous. I'm not saying that's what has occurred here, but nothing surprises me, just as the White Van doesn't surprize me.

6/15/2006 09:20:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Has anyone visited SourDove's Blog Page? He/She has been a Blogger member since 2004, yet the Blogger Page So Damn Relevant appears to be a facade.

What gives?

6/15/2006 09:44:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

god (or whatever) love you, 'shrub.

you too, jules...wish I had time to trade RV/ESP salvoes with you but I don't know how.

Keep the faith, Jeff, thanks for toughing it out and making it to another venue, even if brief.

If it weren't for this community (and a precious few like it I've found) I would have gone crackers more than a year and a half ago.

See you all on RIB...

S.

6/15/2006 10:36:00 PM  
Blogger Ouish said...

The possible Bush assassination attempt on Tuesday morning is mentioned in The Terror Timeline.

I've never believed Bush was complicit in the attacks. He would have had a better response prepared.

Cheney is more suspicious, but I think if he was involved in planning the operation there would have been evidence pointing to Saddam instead of Bin Laden.

It's possible that the 9/11 conspirators were a small trojan horse that infiltrated the hidden world of government-sanctioned drug smuggling and used it as a cover until they were ready to strike. That would explain why people in the government would protect them from investigation by the rest of the government.

I've read that the U.S. trade deficit is now higher as a percentage of the GDP than should be possible without a correction, but no crash comes. A few hundred billion dollars in off-the-book inflow might explain the disparity.

As I write, I am struck by the perverse idea that Air Force One, since it was flying from Florida to Washington D.C. that day, might have been carrying a large load of drugs. Florida is an entry point, right? And Washington is both a large market and a well-situated distribution hub. Who's going to search AF1 for contraband? That could explain how some small-time drug pilots might have brushed against that day's AF1 codes. It could even explain AF1's erratic flight path that day: They had to find some inconspicuous way to get rid of their cargo before they could let outsiders on board. Heh heh. (I'm not being very serious here, but the rest of my post is as serious as pure speculation can be.)

The subsequent failure to investigate 9/11 adequately might have been motivated by the need to cover up the drug smuggling, not the 9/11 attacks themselves. For example, this is where Sibel Edmonds got blocked and gagged.

Can anyone recommend a good book on the BCCI scandal? I never really understood what that was about, but my second-hand impression is that it involved all these players in an earlier stage of evolution.

6/16/2006 10:47:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Wouldn't you like to see a positive LSD story on the news? To hear what it's all about perhaps? Wouldn't that be interesting? Just for once?"
"Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration... that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather."

By Bill Hicks.

6/18/2006 06:44:00 PM  
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