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Saturday Matinee: Memorial Triple Feature

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Today happens to be the day of two pivotal events in American history: the WACO massacre (1993) and the Oklahoma City bombing (1995). In both cases there’s much evidence pointing towards state terrorism and cover-up. Two of the best documentaries which build convincing cases in support of this are “WACO: Rules of Engagement” and “A Noble Lie: Oklahoma City 1995”, both presented here in their entirety.

Lastly, I have recently and belatedly heard the news that whistleblower, investigative journalist and author of “Crossing the Rubicon” Michael C. Ruppert is dead. He reportedly killed himself last Sunday shortly after his final broadcast. Given the nature of Ruppert’s research it would be natural to suspect foul play, but the story is supported by the following statement from a close friend:

Sunday night following Mike’s Lifeboat Hour radio show, he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. This was not a “fake” suicide. It was very well planned by Mike who gave us few clues but elaborate instructions for how to proceed without him. His wishes were to be cremated, and as of this moment, there are no plans for a memorial service. However, I will be taking his show this coming Sunday night, April 20, and the entire show will be an In Memoriam show for Mike with opportunities for listeners to call in. It was my privilege to have known Mike for 14 years, to have worked with him, to have been mentored by him, and to have supported him in some of his darkest hours, including the more recent ones. I am posting this announcement with the blessing of his partner Jesse Re and his landlord, Jack Martin. Thank you Mike for all of the truth you courageously exposed and for the legacy of truth-telling you left us. Goodbye my friend. Your memory will live in hour hearts forever. I have no more details to share than I am posting here. We should have much more information by Sunday night.

Carolyn Baker

Many including myself discovered Ruppert’s work through his early independent 9/11 research on his From the Wilderness website. A few years ago his work on Peak Oil was brought to a larger audience through the critically acclaimed documentery “Collapse” (2009). Rest in peace, Mike Ruppert.

The Science (and Mystery) of Sleep

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Given the widespread use of technology and stresses caused by economic instability, it’s no surprise that more than one out of three adults in America today get less than seven hours of sleep a night and 38% reported unintentionally falling asleep during the day at least once in the past month according to a Centers for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Report. What may come as more of a surprise are results of studies which indicate just how important getting a healthy amount of sleep really is for our physical and mental well-being. According to a recent article by Dr. Joseph Mercola, risks associated with sleep deprivation include:

  1. Reaction Time Slows: When you’re sleep-deprived, you’re not going to react as quickly as you normally would, making driving or other potentially dangerous activities, like using power tools, risky. One study even found that sleepiness behind the wheel was nearly as dangerous as drinking and driving.2
  2. Your Cognition Suffers: Your ability to think clearly is also dampened by lack of sleep. If you’re sleep-deprived, you will have trouble retaining memories, processing information, and making decisions. This is why it’s so important to get a good night’s sleep prior to important events at work or home.
  3. Emotions Are Heightened: As your reaction time and cognition slows, your emotions will be kicked into high gear. This means that arguments with co-workers or your spouse are likely and you’re probably going to be at fault for blowing things out of proportion.

Meanwhile, previous research has found that sleep deprivation has the same effect on your immune system as physical stress or illness,3 which may help explain why lack of sleep is tied to an increased risk of numerous chronic diseases.

In addition, getting less than seven hours of sleep or having regular interrupted and/or impaired sleep can affect hormone levels and expression of genes which can:

  • Increase your risk of heart disease and cancer

  • Harm your brain by halting new neuron production. Sleep deprivation can increase levels of corticosterone (a stress hormone), resulting in fewer new brain cells being created in your hippocampus

  • Contribute to a pre-diabetic, insulin-resistant state, making you feel hungry even if you’ve already eaten, which can lead to weight gain

  • Contribute to premature aging by interfering with your growth hormone production, normally released by your pituitary gland during deep sleep (and during certain types of exercise, such as high-intensity interval training)

  • Increase your risk of dying from any cause

Read the full article here: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/27/sleep-deprivation-risks.aspx

A recent post at Thought Infection also highlights the importance of sleep, speculating on how it could serve as a biological compression algorithm. From the article’s conclusion:

One might think about it like a similar process that happens when a computer is put to sleep. The energetically costly RAM is compressed and dumped to the much more efficient, but also much slower hard disk. Perhaps the brain might operate in a similar way, finding the most energetically efficient means to store new memories in synaptic circuits by connecting new memories to old ones.

Taking this a little further, I think this idea has given me a little bit of insight into how biological brains function. Unlike a computer which fills up the hard drive with new information stored with (more or less) perfect fidelity, organic brains have to have some pre-existing map to connect a novel sensation both in order to make sense of it and to store the memory of it.

An apple is only an apple after you know what an apple is.

The brain does not have an unlimited tape of memory onto which to record, or an infinite supply of energy to build synapses. The brain must make due with what resources it has, and that is the genius of it. Because brains must find ways that new ideas and memories connect to old ones, we are energetically required to find new ways of thinking about the world every night. Sleep reinvents us one night at a time.

Read the full article here: http://thoughtinfection.com/2014/04/12/is-sleep-a-biological-compression-algorithm/

While this theory may possibly explain an important neurological function of sleep, the subjective experience of the dream state remains as shrouded in mystery as ever.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that during sleep it sometimes is not just one’s direct experiences being processed but also future experiences and experiences of loved ones, ancestors, and those of people going through traumatic events as well. In other words, in rare cases it may also be an an interconnected and non-local state of consciousness.

The following two examples were recently featured in an article reposted at Red Ice Creations:

Scene 1. Mark Twain was famous for mocking every orthodoxy and convention, including, it turns out, the conventions of space and time. As he relates the events in his diaries, Twain and his brother Henry were working on the riverboat Pennsylvania in June 1858. While they were in port in St. Louis, the writer had a dream:


In the morning, when I awoke I had been dreaming, and the dream was so vivid, so like reality, that it deceived me, and I thought it was real. In the dream I had seen Henry a corpse. He lay in a metallic burial case. He was dressed in a suit of my clothing, and on his breast lay a great bouquet of flowers, mainly white roses, with a red rose in the centre.

Twain awoke, got dressed, and prepared to go view the casket. He was walking to the house where he thought the casket lay before he realized “that there was nothing real about this—it was only a dream.”

Alas, it was not. A few weeks later, Henry was badly burned in a boiler explosion and then accidentally killed when some young doctors gave him an overdose of opium for the pain. Normally the dead were buried in a simple pine coffin, but some women had raised $60 to put Henry in a metal one. Twain explains what happened next:

When I came back and entered the dead-room Henry lay in that open case, and he was dressed in a suit of my clothing. He had borrowed it without my knowledge during our last sojourn in St. Louis; and I recognized instantly that my dream of several weeks before was here exactly reproduced, so far as these details went—and I think I missed one detail; but that one was immediately supplied, for just then an elderly lady entered the place with a large bouquet consisting mainly of white roses, and in the center of it was a red rose, and she laid it on his breast.

Who would not be permanently marked, at once inspired and haunted, by such a series of events? Who of us, if this were our dream and our brother, could honestly dismiss it as a series of coincidences? Twain could not. He was obsessed with such moments in his life, of which there were many. In 1878 he described some of them in an essay and even theorized how they worked. But he could not bring himself to publish it, as he feared “the public would treat the thing as a joke whereas I was in earnest.” He offered the essay to the North American Review on the condition that it be published anonymously. The magazine refused to do so. Finally, Twain published the article in Harper’s, in two installments: “Mental Telegraphy: A Manuscript With a History” (1891) and “Mental Telegraphy Again” (1895).

Mental telegraphy. The technological metaphor points to Twain’s conviction that such events were connected to the acts of reading and writing. Indeed, he suspected that whatever processes this mental telegraphy involved had some relationship to the sources of his literary powers. The “manuscript with a history” of the first essay’s title refers to a detailed plotline for a story about some Nevada silver mines that one day came blazing into his mind. Twain came to believe that he had received this idea from a friend 3,000 miles away through mental telegraphy.

Scene 2. The American forensic pathologist Janis Amatuzio’s book Beyond Knowing is filled with extraordinary stories of impossible things that routinely happen around death. Here is one such tale.

It began one night when Amatuzio encountered a very troubled hospital chaplain, who asked her if she knew how they had found the body of a young man recently killed in a car accident. Amatuzio replied that her records showed that the Coon Rapids Police Department had recovered the body in a frozen creek bed at 4:45 a.m.

“No,” the man replied. “Do you know how they really found him?” The chaplain then explained how he had spoken with the dead man’s wife, who related a vivid dream she’d had that night of her husband standing next to her bed, apologizing and explaining that he had been in a car accident, and that his car was in a ditch where it could not be seen from the road. She awoke immediately, at 4:20, and called the police to tell them that her husband had been in a car accident not far from their home, and that his car was in a ravine that could not be seen from the road. They recovered the body 20 minutes later.

Read the full article here: http://chronicle.com/article/Embrace-the-Unexplained/145557

 

Saturday Matinee: The Hidden

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In the fine tradition of Robocop and They Live, “The Hidden” (1987) is a sci-fi thriller with a layer of social commentary skewering excesses of late 80s American culture. The plot revolves around the pursuit of a psychopathic body-snatching alien with a predilection for things that happen to be Hollywood action movie tropes (ie. sex, drugs, rock and roll, fast cars, guns, money, etc). Whether intended by the filmmakers or not, the shapeshifting alien is a perfect metaphor for the corporate Id free from the moral and ethical constraints of the Superego; an embodiment of pure unbridled greed. Whatever it wants it takes through brute force with no regard for the interests of others or even the bodies it inhabits, a strategy which gets it dangerously close to the highest levels of political power. Various actors depicting hosts for the villain effectively convey their possession by the same entity while Kyle MacLachlan stars as a more benevolent alien posing as a detective with a performance reminiscent of his role as Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks. Michael Nouri plays a skeptical cop who goes through the traditional buddy cop story story arc (though it’s made more intriguing by the fact that he’s partnered with an alien).

New Cover-up in Boston Bombing Saga—Blaming Moscow

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By Russ Baker

Source: WhoWhatWhy.com

Maybe you heard: the Russians are responsible for the Boston Marathon Bombing. At least indirectly.

That’s what the New York Times says. Had the Russians told the Americans everything they knew about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the bombing might have been averted by the FBI. The Times knows this because it was told so by an anonymous “senior American official” who got an advance look at a report from the “intelligence community.”

***

Anyone who still entertains the fantasy that America is a vigorous, healthy democracy with an honest and reliable security apparatus and an honest, competent, vigilant media need only consider this major news leak just published as a New York Times exclusive. It pretty much sums up the fundamental corruption of our institutions, the lack of accountability, and the deep-dyed complicity of the “finest” brand in American journalism.

Killing Two Birds with One Stone

Just days before the first anniversary of the Boston bombing on April 15, some unnamed “senior American official” puts the blame for the bombing squarely on…Vladimir Putin.

It takes a keen understanding of certain members of the American media to know they will promote, without question, the latest “intelligence community” version of events. Which is that responsibility for the second largest “terror attack” after 9/11 should be pinned on the Russians, currently America’s bête noir over Ukraine.

Consider the cynical manipulation of public opinion involved here. The government permits, presumably authorizes, a high official—the Attorney General or someone of that status, perhaps even the Vice President—to leak confidential information for no apparent purpose beyond seeking to put a damper on legitimate inquiries into the behavior of the American government at the most fundamental level.

And the world’s vaunted “newspaper of record”—its brand largely based on insider access and the willingness of powerful figures to give it “hot stuff” in return for controlling public perceptions— shamelessly runs this leak with no attempt to question its timing or provenance.

Let’s look at what this article actually says. Here’s the opening paragraph:

The Russian government declined to provide the FBI with information about one of the Boston marathon bombing suspects two years before the attack that likely would have prompted more extensive scrutiny of the suspect, according to an inspector general’s review of how U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies could have thwarted the bombing.

And here’s the “takeaway”:

While the review largely exonerates the FBI, it does say that agents in the Boston area who investigated the Russian intelligence in 2011 could have conducted a few more interviews when they first examined the information.

The FBI agents also could have ordered turkey sandwiches instead of pastrami, which surely would have been a little healthier.

***

So, New York Times, should we trust the anonymous individual, or more importantly, the report that none of us have seen?

The report was produced by the inspector general of the Intelligence Community, which has responsibility for 17 separate agencies, and the inspectors general from the Department of Homeland Security and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Now, the Times doesn’t offer any useful context on why these reviews took place, beyond a pro forma effort to respond to complaints from a handful of congressional members (see this and this). The article does not address the quality or credibility of this “self-investigation” and the overall track record of these investigators. Nor does it express undue interest in why the report appears to have been finished just in time for the anniversary of the bombing.

In our view, the article is one hundred percent “stovepiping.” That’s when claimed raw intelligence is transmitted directly to an end user without any attempt at scrutiny or skepticism. This is irresponsible journalism, and it is the kind of behavior (from The New York Times again) that smoothed the way for the U.S. to launch the Iraq war in 2003.

The Times doesn’t even point out how self-serving the report is, coming from an “intelligence community” that has been publicly criticized for its actions leading up to the Boston Marathon bombing and its behavior since. (For more on the dozens of major reasons not to trust anything the authorities say about the Boston Bombing, see this, this, and this. For perspective on the media’s cooperation with the FBI in essentially falsifying the Bureau’s record throughout its history, see this).

Now let’s consider the core substance of the new revelations:

[A]fter an initial investigation by the F.B.I., the Russians declined several requests for additional information about Mr. Tsarnaev….

Did the Times ask the Russians about this? Did they find out if the Russians actually “declined” several requests, or whether they ever got back to the FBI?

The anonymous official notes one specific piece of evidence that the Russians did not share until after the bombing: that intercepted telephone conversations between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother included discussions of Islamic jihad. The official speculates that this information might have given the FBI greater authority to conduct surveillance of the suspects.

However, the reality is that the Russians had already warned that Tamerlan was an Islamic radical, and it is not clear how this additional information would necessarily have provided anything truly substantive to add to a request for spying authority.

It’s also highly questionable, based in part on Edward Snowden’s revelations, whether the FBI or the NSA were actually adhering to such restrictions on spying anyway. Finally, it’s worth noting how truly remarkable it is that the Russians shared such intelligence at all. That they didn’t want to volunteer that they were capturing telephone calls is not that surprising, on the other hand.

Hiding the Real Story?

The Times does mention, almost in passing, what should have been the key point of an article: the timing of the “news” regarding the report:

It has not been made public, but members of Congress are scheduled to be briefed on it Thursday, and some of its findings are expected to be released before Tuesday, the first anniversary of the bombings.

This leak, which clears the FBI of all charges of incompetence or worse, comes just when the “American conversation” will again intensely focus on the nature of the “war on terror” and the trustworthiness of our vast secret state.

It also comes, most conveniently for the Bureau, at the precise moment when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense counsel has been seeking to learn the exact chronology and nature of the FBI’s interaction with the Tsarnaev family.

Months ago, we ran Peter Dale Scott’s rumination on whether the FBI could have recruited Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an informant, as it has done thousands of times before with other immigrants of a similar profile. Recently, the defense for Tamerlan’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, essentially claimed this was correct—that the Bureau at least attempted to recruit the older Tsarnaev. That has been cursorily reported by the major media, but no one seems to have connected the dots linking this claim to the new report that conveniently exonerates the FBI for failing to take action against the Tsarnaevs in time to stop the bombing.

A Curious Little Slip

As we have previously reported, it was the same duo of New York Times national security reporters, Schmidt and Schmitt, who had first, inadvertently it seems, raised a tremendously important question: when did the Tsarnaev family first come to the attention of the FBI?

The Russian warning to the US about Tamerlan Tsarnaev purportedly came in March 2011.

But according to an earlier article by Schmitt and Schmidt (along with a third reporter), the Bureau’s first contact with the Tsarnaevs came in January 2011. Though the Times did not make anything of this fact, it would be enormously consequential—because it would mean that the FBI was interacting with the Tsarnaevs two months before the Russians suggested the US take a close look at Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

If that was in error, the Times should have issued a correction. But it hasn’t. (Neither Schmidt nor Schmitt responded to WhoWhatWhy’s emails requesting comment.)

Interestingly, Schmidt and Schmitt, in subsequent articles, including the recent one, make no more mention of this early FBI contact. As it stands, the New York Times is on record of having asserted, again based on what sources told it, that the FBI was interacting with the Tsarnaevs before the Russians ever contacted it. If that early report was true, then by definition, the Inspector General’s report (and the leaked article about it) would be calculated parts of a cover-up about an FBI foul-up.

Conversely, if the early report was in error, then we need to know who provided it, or how they got that information wrong. Serious investigators know not to reject anomalies and “wrong” early reports as simply the result of haste or rumor without at least checking out the possibility that the early reports were right—but were later suppressed because they might cause problems to someone in power.

***

It is worth noting that the revelations in the new report—sure to be picked up by other media outlets that tend to repeat unquestioningly whatever the Times publishes—will be all the average American remembers about the FBI’s failure to prevent the Marathon bombing, and what may lie behind that failure.

Most members of the public will never know of the substantial indications that something is seriously wrong with what the government has put out about this affair. They will only recall that the FBI was somehow “cleared.” And they will probably remember that Putin’s Russia was somehow at fault.

In the final analysis, what we have just witnessed is the kind of arrant manipulation that shows the contempt of the “system” for the “people.” The “best” news organization gets another exclusive story. The US government gets to point its finger again at the Russian bogeyman. The FBI and the security apparatus get another free pass.

And the American people, once again, are fed pig slop and told to imagine sirloin.

The Begining is Near

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Source: Zen Gardner

We have free will, a majestic gift of choice coupled with conscious awareness at a level that seems to be unique to creation. All of creation has its own vibrational attributes, but humanity has been gifted in a very special way. Whether we utilize this gift consciously or not appears to be the dilemma we’re faced with.

Yet we seek an escape from this life, a place of refuge. Ironic. Or is it a sense of knowing that something more real and wonderful exists?

There’s much talk about portals, energy vortices, jump locations and wormholes. Where we’re trying to go to is a fundamental issue. The point is, how and where do we find a place of transition to other circumstances? Is it activism? Is it our personal way of perceiving reality?

Or both?

Do we already have access to this other reality? Has escape always been the default position in this accosted world resulting in religion and sequestered lives driven by survival and an engineered sense of scarcity? Is this what has happened to the stand and fight mentality?

Does Humanity Get What It “Deserves”?

This is a huge question. Not just the karma issue, but the even deeper innate mechanics of the Universe. If Universe is perfect in every way, everything we’re experiencing is “justified”. Has humanity allowed itself, yes allowed itself, to be so degraded that its very decrepit condition invites and encourages predators?

To continue the analogy, are the parasites and viruses “going for the whole enchalada”?

Pretty serious stuff to consider, especially in the light of society being a reflection or reinforcement of anything imposed upon it. The question remains; does a dying body politic invite the very influences it eschews?

The Universe is Reflective

What we impose comes back. What we are willing to receive is another factor. But just imagine we’re abutted with a huge energetic field, ready to do our bidding. An extremely empowering notion. No matter what is living in this force field is considered fair game for such a Universal force. As an independent resource we should revel in such an idea.

Most profoundly, this “field” reflects our intentions and desires.

Now picture a human race that is enthralled with its own survival, under similarly subjected conditions. But they’re under attack. Where will they place themselves in the scheme of things? Will they realize their condition, or relinquish their autonomy for something that seems to save them?

Taking It Lying Down Is a Choice

A dead or dying organism invites parasites of all kinds. This is the current state of our world. As perverted, drugged down and immune deficient humanity glides into their brave new world of somatazation, we see the growth of the totalitarian police state.

We’re inviting it. By our acquiesced degradation.

A dead animal, or human, decays at an accelerating pace. Parasitic organisms move swiftly to devour and do away with the dead corpse. It’s natural. So the degradation of ethical and spiritual aspects of human culture. As we lay down, we accept the seemingly inevitable. A terrible vortex to find our collective selves, but we are there apparently, circling the drain.

This discourse may seem to meander, but it has its purpose.

Our Aliveness is the Key

An alive, resilient body is not a target for disease. The dead and dying are. The overall diseased “body politic”  today is  a sitting duck for control and manipulation. Ours is to keep alive and activating.

As synchronicity has it, as I was pondering these thoughts, I walked past a dead animal under a tree by the roadside. It was infested with hungry insects devouring the food. The next day all that was there was the fur. They work fast once the subject has succumbed.

Will humanity succumb? It doesn’t look good from a macro perspective. But I know individually the awakening is creating health and wellness at an enormous rate. Will it be in time?

It’s up to us.

Be alive. Be active.

You are in charge. Use your majesty of free will.

Love, Zen

“Radio Free Albemuth” Gets June 27 Theatrical Release

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“Radio Free Albemuth” happens to be my favorite Philip K. Dick novel, so I’ve followed the development of its cinematic incarnation since hearing a production company bought the movie rights nearly a decade ago. As one of the lucky few who has seen an early rough-cut (and has seen nearly every other feature length film based on a PKD novel) I can say with authority that it’s one of the most faithful PKD film adaptations yet. For fans of the novelist, it will probably stand among the ranks of “A Scanner Darkly” and “Blade Runner” but the film should appeal to many non-fans as well because:

  • Stories set in dystopias are all the rage. The alternate reality America depicted in Radio Free Albemuth is particularly compelling because of its similarity to our own.
  • For those not into sci-fi, it’s also a political/psychological thriller with themes of friendship, sacrifice and spiritual awakening.
  • Though not as polished as Hollywood productions with higher budgets, the indie film aesthetic meshes well to the story’s setting (and author’s sensibility) adding to its sense of authenticity.

From the official Radio Free Albemuth website:

Radio Free Albemuth has been in ‘radio silence’ mode while we were in the midst of negotiating relatively complex distribution strategies for the film – and completing the unexpectedly difficult and technically complex “delivery” of the film.

But “delivery” is complete – And we finally have definitive news to announce…

JUNE 27th –

In 1905 – Russian sailors mutinied onboard the Battleship Potemkin (the basis for Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark film
in 1929 – the first color television was demonstrated
in 1942 – FBI captured 8 Nazi saboteurs from a sub off Long Island, New York.
1967 – The world’s first ATM is installed in London.
1969 – Police raid Stonewall Bar in Greenwich Village, NY, hundreds of gay patrons protest against police for 3 days
1990 – Salman Rushdie, condemned to death by Iran for his novel The Satanic Verses.
Birthday of anarchist Emma Goldman, blind-deaf author Helen Keller, and the great Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, and…
In 2014 – the day that Radio Free Albemuth will open in theaters in at least ten cities across the United States. Also the same day that Radio Free Albemuth will be available across a wide array of Video on Demand Platforms in the U.S. To be followed by the DVD release and an exclusive subscription streaming window to be announced shortly.

This is a day that both RFA filmmakers and Philip K. Dick fans have been waiting for patiently – (and sometimes not so patiently!)

The first and most important of several deals with partner companies has been signed – and the ink is not even yet dry on the page. Our theatrical booking for the initial ten city release and digital sales partner will be a Los Angeles based company called Freestyle which has overseen the release and digital sales of other indie films such as Bottle Shock, Me & Orson Welles and The Illusionist.

More details will follow shortly about other distribution partners – and hopefully news on the international front.

Many thanks to all our Distribution Kickstarter Backers, Slacker Backers and Philip K. Dick fans and people who saw Radio Free Albemuth at film festivals for your support, sharing and enthusiasm. We can’t do this without you!

We’ll be asking for your help in the weeks that follow to make this an unprecedented grass-roots success in bringing the vision of Philip K. Dick to the widest audience possible. You can start now by sharing this announcement on social media, signing up on our mailing list and liking Radio Free Albemuth Facebook page.

You can also support the filmmakers through the purchase of items related to the film (available after the theatrical release) on this site: http://www.radiofreealbemuth.com/

Supersize This, Putin: McDonalds Closes Crimean Locations

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Source: Collapse.com

Only in Obama’s America could something like this bit of ‘news’ be sold to the masses of asses by a corrupt cadre of state-corporate media that long ago chucked their first amendment responsibilities into the crapper to become careerist pressititutes riding on the rogue government gravy train. Those economic sanctions that have hurled at Russia with as much real effect as Zell Miller’s legendary “spitballs” now are getting some real clout as the punishment towards the reincarnated red menace grows a set of teeth.  McDonalds, the tip of the spear of the corporate American imperial conquest of the world is closing locations in Crimea. This comes much to the delight of moronic consumers of the cable ‘news’ tabloid infotainment that poisons their minds as surely as the artery clogging food at Micky D’s does to their bodies. It is a sardonically funny real life example of the thoroughly dishonest rhetoric of that pathological political cynic and closet Bircher Paul Ryan’s “full stomachs and empty souls” speech to the low-hanging fruit at the recent CPAC soiree.  Nothing could be more ironically truthful of the state of the American “consumer” today, whether it be focus group tested bullshit or cheap fast food that is being devoured.

Boy that is going to show Putin. I can practically see William Kristol, the Kagan Brothers, John McCain and the rest of the neocons popping the champagne corks over this latest fusillade of indignity. Considering the insane levels of hubris, delusion and arrogance among the “end of history” crowd I can really imagine that they think that depriving Russians of greasy, unhealthy American fast food is going to ignite their desired color revolution that will bring about regime change in Russia. What a bunch of  reckless and dangerous dummies and Obama and his Skull and Bones stooge John Kerry are no better. With the latest edition of the impossible dream of Israel accepting a peace deal with the Palestinians now going up like a flaming bag of dogshit John Kerry has officially become the grand marshal of the US fool’s parade. My God, what a mind boggling fiasco of a first year on the job in thoroughly screwing up everything that the stammering ass from Mass got involved in, wasn’t John Bolton available? Good God Obama, did it ever dawn on you that there was a reason why the Republicans supported Kerry for the Secretary of State gig? How is that “Team of Rivals” thing workin’ out for you now?

The news of McDonalds pulling out of Crimea is already being picked up and fed through the echo chamber with the launching pad being th neocon transmission station at the Washington Post. While it hasn’t reached the columns of the A team of propagandists over at Pravda on the Potomac, namely neocon war wench Jennifer Rubin and Charles “Dr.Strangelove” Kraüthammer some so-called Russian expert named Kathy Lally is practically peeing in her pants with glee while blogging:

Talk about a Big Mac attack. Here’s a sanction with some real bite to it.

The three McDonald’s restaurants in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that has been abruptly annexed by Russia, are now closed. The Ukrainian branch of McDonald’s, based in Kiev, said in a statement Thursday that they had been closed for technical reasons, perhaps referring to the difficulty of supplying your restaurants when they turn up in a foreign country overnight.

Although the United States has imposed financial and other sanctions on Moscow because of its Crimean takeover, American businesses have been left free to operate in Russia. McDonald’s said the closing was temporary, but its offer to move employees to other jobs in mainland Ukraine – and give them a three-month rent payment – made that assertion sound less than persuasive.

Crimean officials tried to minimize the enormity of being forever deprived of the seductive phrase, “Would you like fries with that?”

My fellow Americans, this is how low that we have sunk in that the closing of McDonalds restaurants in Crimea has become to this point the most kick ass club in the bag in terms of all of those threatened economic sanctions that have been endlessly threatened by Team Obama. Oh, and Mighty Taco has banned Putin from eating in any of their restaurants, I am sure that he is already on the phone with his military commanders to get the fuck out of Crimea asap. This coordinated onslaught of Russia bashing is all so ridiculous that it has descended into parody, I cannot even watch my local news anymore without being blasted with propaganda and last night there was a plea for bay area residents to adopt those stray dogs that were being hunted down to be killed prior to the Sochi Winter Olympics. It never ends as we continue to slouch towards Idiocracy, on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last week much to the delight of a woeful nation of TV addled zombies the reigning queen of American ignoramuses that is Sarah Palin was trotted out to partake in a Putin skewering skit , the woman is a national embarrassment yet in a rotting empire where celebrity is the coin of the realm has become mainstream. It is as if the entire nation is slowly being sucked into the vortex inhabited by such morons and is becoming nothing more than a cartoon version of itself.

Likely to further inflame tensions and up the insanity level is the outstanding denunciation of one Russian political figure  who administered a classic smackdown, according to a story in The Guardian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov mocked the current state of lunacy:

“Clearly, the US leadership is really annoyed, and cannot come to terms with the new situation, which has arisen in large part due to the deliberate line taken by the US and its allies in Europe to prepare anti-Russian forces to take power in Ukraine,” said deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, in an interview with Interfax.

“Trying to demonstrate how unhappy it is with the exercise of free will by the population of Crimea and the decisions we took related to it, Washington is ruining contacts even in places where continuing dialogue is in their own interests.”

In addition to sanctions against a number of businessmen and politicians considered to be close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the US has responded with other measures, including cancelling all co-operation between Nasa and the Russian space agency, except for joint work on the International Space Station.

“The situation is turning into a joke when, for example, meetings between meteorologists are cancelled,” said Ryabkov.

“What can we advise our American colleagues? They should get more fresh air, do yoga, eat healthily, maybe watch some sitcoms on television.

“This is better than getting themselves and others all worked up when they know very well that the train has already departed and that childish tantrums, tears and hysterics will not help things.”

HEAR! HEAR! Enough is enough of this silly horseshit. It’s long past time for the adults to intervene, stick a pacifier into Obama’s pie hole and send Kerry, Powers, Nuland, Rice and the neocons to go and sit in the corner until they can behave in the mature manner that should be expected of statesmen and stateswomen. Oh, and take bad ass Billy Kristol out to the wood shed and give him the type of serious spanking that would give David Vitter a hard on. America is the petulant spoiled child of the world and it is embarrassing to be an American these days due to our tantrum throwing political class. For Christ’s sake, listen to rational war criminals for a change like Henry Kissinger and George Schultz and just ignore the diaper-dumping piss babies like Kristol and the rest of his wretched gang of misfits when it comes to Russia.

Maybe the neocons can take solace that McDonalds has suspended operations in Crimea, thereby depriving the citizens of the Russian territory of the crappy food that is a major contributor to a plague of health problems here in The Homeland where we are number one – in obesity. Like the rest of our sick national obsession with being that oh so exceptional people the brainwashing that is used by McDonalds in targeting advertising to children is essential in the indoctrination process. Just like the pledge of allegiance which is something that has no place in a “free” country and more appropriately belongs in the same types of authoritarian states that are defined by the criteria that is steeped in the same hypocrisy that is being peddled to justify the new Cold War.

“The Fries” – Mr. Lif (remixed by Jeremy R. Stern aka Abdul Malik)

Podcast Roundup

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4/2: Guillermo Jimenez has a conversation with Danny Benavides at Traces of Reality to discuss the drug war, the surveillance state, and the increasing use of violence by the Border Patrol among other topics:

http://tracesofreality.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Traces-of-Reality-Radio-2014.03.28-Danny-Benavides.mp3

4/2: At Red Ice Radio, host Henrik Palmgren interviews Mark Gray to discuss occult symbolism, synchronicity and geomancy in  connection to a number of current events. Mystical phenomenon or pattern recognition gone awry? You decide:

http://rediceradio.net/radio/2014/RIR-140402-markgray-hr1.mp3

4/3: Dave Lindorff of This Can’t Be Happening interviews Elena Teyer mother-in-law of Ibragim Todashev, the man executed by the FBI during their “investigation” of the Boston Bombing. They reveal many details about the case which were ignored by corporate news coverage:

http://media62.podbean.com/pb/ca9ac429bc5bf18a823cf98eb9a28f7a/533db613/data1/blogs18/661545/uploads/ThisCantBeHappening_040214.mp3

4/4: On the Meria Heller show, Meria and guest Catherine Austin Fitts deliver useful information on the banking system, investing on priorities and improving one’s lifestyle:

http://meria.net/ipod/040114.mp3

4/5: Computer security expert Conrad Jaeger joins host Greg Carlwood at The Higher Side Chats to talk about the deep web, cyber security and the surveillance state:

http://thehighersidechats.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/101-Deep-Web.mp3