The Infectious Mindset and Rivero's 10%

Following that Holocaust thing I wrote recently, a fellow dropped into the comments section and declared Mike Rivero of What Really Happened was a Jew and perfectly untrustworthy on the subject of the Holocaust etc. He declared Rivero a gate-keeper who only let through 90%. Jewishness aside, the former claim was specious nonsense. But the latter was true. Mike Rivero does have his 10%.

But let's rewind a little. To a certain extent I started on WRH. It was the story of the USS Liberty that really did my head in. To a fellow with a Time Magazine mindset, the Liberty story was perfectly impossible, and yet here were the survivors laying it all out. It was impossible and it was true. Time and again, WRH has tripped me over the line of impossibility: remote control of wide-body passenger jets; molten as opposed to softened steel in the WTC collapse; the placement of bombs in OKC bombing; Pearl Harbour foreseen; the Holocaust; and now even global warming.

This is the infectious mindset. Once you've started, you're fucked. There is no cure for the red pill. But that's not to say that there aren't variations of red pills. There are. I wonder how many people stick with WRH as their sole provider of media-impossible stories? I understand the temptation. It's a one-stop shop. You hit it once a day and get everything you need. Curiosity's pangs of hunger nourished with a set daily diet. Who needs to go trawling through google, looking stuff up, when we have Mike to do it for us?

But like I said in an earlier piece, WRH's world is finite. It has limitations. You can spend all the time you like there and will never encounter Dave McGowan nor any mention of the 'pedophocracy'. (For late arrivals, The Pedophocracy is a must-read. It can be found here). And sure, the pedophocracy is explicitly a phrase of McGowan's creation, but the word itself is neither here nor there. It's the concept that counts. Give it whatever name you like, as long as it describes a network of immensely powerful people who traffic in children, have a penchant for satanism, and are seemingly untouchable. In terms of this big picture, I haven't a shred of doubt. The pedophocracy exists, and it exists big time.

McGowan took the red pill long ago. He wonders at things. He does not dismiss inconsistencies or make excuses for them. He asks questions, searches, and if sacred icons get smashed, well, what's a feller to do? Apart from 'Get Smashing!', ha ha.

But it's not all just iconoclasm. McGowan arrives at inevitable conclusions regardless of those conclusions being completely and utterly at odds with any sing-from-the-same-songsheet media message. We get this don't we? It's what we do. We know the media has bullshitted us on pretty much everything - certainly everything big. We're so completely there, that whatever the media says, we now start in the total and opposite direction to see if we aren't nearer the mark. That's our mindset. That's how our brains work now.


Where was I? Oh yeah, WRH's 10%. Rivero does do pedophilia from time to time. He does priests (so much so that we're now all perfectly familiar with his jokey refrain about 'always picking on the Catholics'), and he does the Franklin scandal. But that's pretty much it. Ironically, for a fellow who gives us all the stories the media ignores, on this subject he seems never to stray from the media line. The media loves to trash the Catholic Church and does pedophile priest stories to death. In fact, for many of us, the first thing that pops into our head upon hearing the word 'pedophile' is the word 'priest'. And then there's the Franklin scandal of twenty years ago. This too made the media. It was on the front page of the Washington Times no less. And sure, it was then buried and let die but that's neither here nor there. Fact is, we heard about all of it without WRH.

But Mike does other stories too. Here's a recent one, the basic thrust of which is that the current pedophile witch-hunt has run amuck. Read the link if you want, but for mine, it's the comment that's really interesting.

Feb7
Child porn scourge creates more suspects than can be arrested

Mike's Comment -
Now, I will be the first to admit that there are some very sick individuals who do some very strange things to little kids (especially among the clergy), but when I hear the word "resources" it sounds like the true scale of the problem is being exaggerated to protect someone's budget from the axe during these difficult economic times.

I recall the brouhaha about Satanic Ritual Abuse in the 1980s and 1990. A media-fed panic swept the nation that children were being abducted and in some cases intentionally bred for the purposes of use in rituals to Satan. Despite many sensational stories in the media, and huge sums of money budgeted for the investigators, not a single case of actual Satanic Ritual abuse was ever found.

One of the most famous cases of accusations of child molestation, including Satanic Ritual abuse, involved the McMartin Pre-School. One of the mothers, an alcoholic and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, accused one of the workers at the school of molesting her child. There was an arrest, nut in the absence of evidence no charges were filed. That this same woman had a history of false allegations of sexual abuse of her child was kept private, but a "Confidential" letter was circulated warning customers of the school that the issue of sexual molestation had been raised. Fanned by the media and by a local Catholic church that openly called for the death of the main McMartin suspect, Ray Buckey, the situation exploded into hysteria. Parents were convinced their children were victims. Interrogators pressured the children to "remember" the abuse, and forensics tests which contradicted the claims were scrapped while new and unproven testing procedures were tried.

After six years and $15 million, the case ended with no convictions. In hindsight, it was recognized that this had been a witch-hunt in the truest Medieval sense of the word. Popular imagination had run wild, and the people paid to find molesters had seen molesters at every turn, whether they were truly there or not.

In hindsight, it was clear that the children had simply gone along with whatever the interrogators suggested had happened, more in the spirit of a game than our of malice. That no evidence was ever found off the secret underground tunnels that figured in the lurid stories should have been a warning but it was not. The trials proceeded to their humiliating end.

Now, as I said above, I understand that there really are some very sick people out there. But when I hear claims that there are simply too many of them to arrest without more resources, I have to wonder if this is a problem with the economy, rather than with the real crime.

In her book, "Who Stole Feminism" Christina Hobbs Sommers revealed that while rape is and remains a real crime, there was no explosive epidemic of rape in the 1990s. The so-called rape "crisis" was a manufactured issue used to fill talk shows, sell books, and mostly to justify funding for campus rape centers and rape counselors, most of whom sat idle a great deal of the time. Like the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic, the Rape Crisis resulted in a flood of false accusations of rape which had the long term result of making it more difficult for real rape victims to get be believed. But the money flowed to the self-appointed saviors and that was the important thing.

So, I have to view the huge numbers of offenders mentioned in this article and wonder if (not unlike the global warming scam) the situation is being exaggerated to make a grab for more public funds, or at least dodge the budget ax as the economy slides.

If there is one lesson to be learned from the real Medieval witch hunts, it's that when you pay people to see witches, they will believe witches truly exist, and that bystanders, rather than miss out on the fun, will gladly join the hysteria.

What a long comment! Especially given that it's not factual. Unless there were two McMartins and I was watching another one, that is. Whilst McMartin was pre-red pill for me, that's not to say I wasn't paying attention. I was, and my recollection was not of a media witch-hunt per se, but rather of a media condemnation of a witch-hunt, pretty much precisely like Mike's above. As I understood it at the time - the whole thing was hysteria, the McMartin folks were innocent, and the parents and counsellors were all nutters, drunks, and villains. That's what the media told me and I believed them. Between an impossible crime, and the oh-so-credible False Memory Syndrome Foundation telling us that people just invented these crazy stories, I bought the 'false memory' line. It never occurred to me at the time that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation might be a creation of the CIA, funded by God knows who, and entirely staffed by 'ex'-spooks and 'ex'-pedophiles.

But never mind all that, best to keep things simple. So I wrote to Mike and set him straight on a key fact -

Hi Mike,

I hate to tell you this, but the tunnels under the McMartin school were found precisely as described. Google 'E Gary Stickel Phd McMartin tunnels'. That should sort you out.

Stickel by the way is actually famous. He's the archeologist Spielberg went to when he needed a consultant for Raiders of the Lost Ark. He's the real deal. And he found the tunnels and said so.

The tunnels were there. And if the tunnels were there, the kids and the parents weren't bullshitting. The drunk you mention only got that way because no one would believe her. Can't say I blame her myself.

It wasn't a witch hunt mate. It was real.

If it's any consolation I thought it was bullshit too. But the facts are undeniable and I changed my position.

best,

nobody

Mike's not a chatty fellow so I got no reply. Nor did my thing appear on his letters page. But this one did -

READER: Thank you for your mention of the McMartin Preschool fiasco. A few points are worth mentioning. You wrote, "There was an arrest, but in the absence of evidence no charges were filed." Not so - charges were filed against 7 people, though dropped for all but 2, Peggy Buckley and her son, Ray. Ray Buckley spent 5 years in jail on a no-bond hold. Peggy's bond was $1million. The investigation and subsequent 2 trials resulted in a criminal case even longer and more expensive for Orange County, than OJ's. Actually, it was the longest and most expensive in American history. At the same time, as you note, other such cases against preschool teachers (and parents, grandparents, clergy) popped up around the country (bringing to light the phenomenon of 'false memory syndrome'). The second most well-known one occurred in North Carolina, the Little Rascals/Edenton Seven. Again, after the hysteria and trial, all were acquitted. A good website recap on the McMartin case is http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcmartin/mcmartinacco... And an award-winning 1995 movie starring James Woods covers the subject well - 'Indictment; The McMartin Trial.'
WRH: There were no charges in the initial arrest; the one following the single accusation by the women who was a paranoid schizophrenic. The charges you describe occured later after a media-whipped frenzy made it politixally imperitive that someone be charged with something.

Um... is that interesting? I guess. Mike certainly seems down on the details. And it's certainly good reinforcement of the themes of 'hysteria', 'schizophrenic', 'waste of money', and 'false memory syndrome'. Pity they're all false. So I wrote to Mike again -

Hello Mike,

It seems my email yesterday went astray. I'm sending it again since you seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that there were no tunnels under the McMartin school. There were tunnels. Like I said, just google 'E Gary Stickel Phd McMartin tunnels'.

I look forward to you addressing this issue.

best,

nobody

PS By the way, that False Memory Syndrome is a product entirely of the creation of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. If you google the names of the founders +pedophile, and +CIA, you might be in for a surprise - Martin T Orne, Louis Jolyon West, Ralph Underwager, and Peter and Pamela Freyd. Otherwise, did you not ever wonder where they got their funding?

Sure enough, no reply. But front page on WRH the next day is the ever reliable Franklin Scandal as a prompt for another comment on McMartin.

Feb 8

Franklin scandal (curiously, no use of his standard 'Flashback' preface)

Mike's comment -
The McMartin pre-school scandal made headlines for months and cost $15 million and wound up finding all parties innocent, but THIS scandal never saw the light of day because the corporate media refused to touch it.

Weirder and weirder! To highlight the fact that the Franklin scandal never saw the light of day because the corporate media refused to touch it, Mike actually posted the front page of the Washington Post on which it appeared. Ha ha ha ha. (Go on! That has to be worth a laugh, surely?!)

Am I the only person wondering what's going on here? What's up with this obsession with a twenty year old scandal that was covered in the media anyway? Isn't WRH all about the stories the media doesn't tell you? Go search WRH, see if you can find any mention of 'The Finders'. In spite of it being one of the biggest mindfucks ever, it doesn't exist on WRH. Just for the record, that's '0' results. Keep searching, look for 'Dutroux', look for 'West Point' or 'Presidio', hell, just put in 'pedophile'. For this last obvious search input, the new WRH provides two results, both of which are above. On the old WRH, you get fifteen. To put that in perspective, now try putting in 'Israel'.

I shake my head on this. I can sort of understand his position on McMartin and 'false memory syndrome' since it used to be my position. But that was before I was seized by the infectious mindset. And what, Mike doesn't have this mindset? Huh? Didn't I catch it from him? Surely his head is there.

Okay, so how is it that his site contains no mention of 'The Finders'? How is that possible? It's the perfect WRH story - crims caught dead to rights with a van full of kids; a customs agent's report detailing the bust of their headquarters (!); the CIA, the FBI, the Washington Metro police shutting down the investigation; and overall, the obviousness of wickedness at a colossal scale. Plug it into McMartin, the military childcare scandal, and yes, even Franklin, and the whole thing goes exponential.

But not at WRH it doesn't. On this subject, WRH is with the media. There is only one variety of pedophilia, and that mostly in the Catholic church. Beyond this there are individual perverts who occasionally seem to act in concert, but in no significant fashion. Any talk of childcare centres, global networks, or satanism, are notreallyhappened non-events, or otherwise discreditable variations of witch-hunt craziness, bad schizophrenic craziness, or just regular, old-fashioned alcoholic craziness. Which is to say, the victims imagined it all.

Is it just me, or are we in 'nothing-to-see-here-folks-move-along' territory?

I'll leave it to you to take your pick of excuses. Either the subject is too distasteful for Mike (unless Catholics are involved) and he prefers not to go there. Or it's a hurdle too far for him to get over - the Holocaust, no problem - but for the pedophocracy, his mental horse shies. Or perhaps some other reason occurs to you. Perhaps it occurs to me too. And?

And, let's just say Mike Rivero has a 10%, and this is it.

Burn in Hell you deniers of the Holocausts!

Ha! Call me a sell-out if you like, but I've decided to join with those who demand that history not be questioned. I now condemn all those who deny the Holocaust. And as a man not given to half measures I'm upping the ante. It is no longer good enough to condemn those who question the Holocaust. Since there were two Holocausts, both of them must be sacrosanct. Both of them demand that anyone who questions any aspect of either of them deserves to be jailed, broken, and have their life ruined. One is not good enough. It's both or nothing.

What two Holocausts you say? Fact is, there was a Holocaust in each of the World Wars. Before the Holocaust of WWII was the Holocaust of WWI. If you're wondering why you've never heard of it, you need merely look to the anti-Semitic media. As we all know, Jews never get an even break in the media. If only they had a voice! A means to tell us of their suffering!

Never fear, I shall be their voice!


To dwell on the Holocaust of WWII alone is not enough. Any right thinking person must also acknowledge the Holocaust of WWI. To not do so is to dishonour the memory of the victims of a Holocaust. Every aspect of German wickedness delivered upon the innocent Jewish victims was present in both events. Both had gas chambers. Both had soap rendered from human victims. Both had lampshades made from human skin. And crucially both had six million victims. 6,000,000! To not scream in shrill indignation over both of these events is the absolute height of moral depravity.

Consider the enormity of those who only discuss one of these two Holocausts. For mine, it's the moral equivalent of a Palestinian mother who had ten children shot by the Israelis but only wants to talk about the five that she liked. Admit the truth you dreadful woman! The Israelis shot all ten of your children and all that rubbish about choosing five is just embroidery to, a) slur the good name of the Israelis and, b) save you acknowledging the five children you never liked anyway. Honestly, was there ever a people more deserving of their genocide than the Palestinians? The media is right to perpetually paint them as villains. How dare they resist their righteous Jewish masters!? Bloody untermenschen!


Where was I? Oh yes - as in all topics deserving of shrill moral condemnation, silence equals complicity. I'll say it again - Silence Equals Complicity. Anyone who wants to pretend that the first Holocaust isn't the equal of the second may as well just lather up with human soap, settle down in bed next to a human-skin lamp, and read AJP Taylor's History Of The First World War. I read this hateful tome and it appallingly failed to contain a single mention of gas chambers or 6,000,000 Jewish victims. Taylor is a denier pure and simple, and if he isn't dead already, he certainly deserves to be.

And for those who want to start bleating about any other Holocausts, I spit in your face. I have no time for such piss weak 'moral equivalency' arguments. Fuck the massacre of the Armenians under the Donmeh Turks. Fuck the mass starvation of the Kulaks under the Bolsheviks. Were Jews involved in any of these? As victims, that is? NO. As we all know it's only genocides directed at Jews that are worthy of shrill condemnation. And since here we have two Jewish Holocausts with identical features it follows that the shrillness must be doubled. Subsequently those who deny that two Holocausts took place are twice as condemnable as those who only deny one. Don't argue, the logic is bullet proof.


It's always a beautiful thing to have the moral high ground. I am now one up on those who only ever seem to bang on about the Holocaust, as if there was only one of them. Their moral unimpeachability is now laid bare as a sham, a hollow thing of no substance. Anything they say in their defence, ie: it never happened; the numbers don't add up; there's no evidence etc etc, falls at the first hurdle. As they've said themselves in their one-Holocaust campaign, to argue the point is to be a denier - the Worst Thing In The World! Shrillness is all they deserve. Don't argue with them. Just scream '6,000,000 Victims!' How dare they dishonour Their memory! Sickening.

And besides, anyone who disputes this, instantly disappears up their own clacker. What does it mean if one Holocaust is true and the other isn't? That the Jews merely imagined the first one? That they just made it up? What mad inhuman creatures would do this? What possible reason could Jews have for marching around America telling people that they'd been victims of an unparalleled injustice? Why would they do that? I can't think of a single reason. To even suggest that such a thing is possible is a tremendous slur against Jews. A clear case of anti-Semitism. Me - I reject anti-Semitism, I reject Holocaust denial, I embrace all that I am meant to.


Anyone who objects to the 'facts' of the first Holocaust, whether they like it or not, legitimises the questioning of the 'facts' of the second one. Both Holocausts carry nearly identical features - both were conducted against the Jews by the Germans, both had six million victims, both involved the same monstrous atrocities of lampshades, soap, and gas chambers. Between the two alternatives: that Jews recycled the same story to paint themselves as the world's greatest victims; or that Germans are the world's greatest monsters who pull the same shit over and over, only one of these is permissible.

As anyone who's been to the cinema knows, Jews are always victims and Germans are always villains. We cannot flip this coin and reverse these descriptions. To do so would be to say that all those Holocaust movies were a load of shit. Perish the thought! Jews cannot be fraudulent villains who've tricked the world. Germans cannot be the victims of a colossal hoax. The very idea is monstrous. Thus we have no choice but to double the charges. Therefore Jewish victimhood climbs to ever greater Olympian heights (of the God-like variety not the sporting one) and German villainy doubles again, plunging to a whole new nadir.

Is Dante still alive? Someone should get in touch with him and tell him to rewrite his Inferno with an added 34th circle of hell reserved just for Germans. God knows they deserve it.


So! I stake out my territory. I take the highest of high moral ground. I refuse, unlike all those other people who question unquestionable orthodoxies, to deny anything. It's all or nothing. Either both are true, or both are questionable. And I reject the latter. No fence sitting! Silence Equals Complicity. And so, I point my finger - J'Accuse! Acknowledge both Holocausts or be hoist on your own petard of Holocaust denial. Ignorance is no excuse! Anything other than accepting the truth of both Holocausts is no different to pushing that gas chamber button. Twice!

Burn in Hell you deniers of the Holocausts!

I Declare Victory! No wait... what's the other one? Oh yeah, defeat. I Declare Defeat!

A while back I had a brilliant idea. It was to be an experiment using google that would appear to be what the searchers were looking for but was actually no such thing. Instead what they got was me screwing with their heads.


It took the form of a fake interview about the new release of a famous computer game. The targets of the exercise were the people who wrote the game and the people who played it. This particular game is an assassination game. Each level comprises a series of targets (as designated by a fictional 'agency'), which the players then have to assassinate by way of shooting, knifing, poisoning etc. I shan't name the game for reasons that will become obvious.

The nature of the game is such that if the creators of it aren't on the CIA's payroll, then they're idiots who are missing out on free money. This game is precisely to the CIA what those Death-to-Arabs army games are to the US military.

The plan was merely to leave the interview on my blog (complete with an unmissable title) and let the assassination obsessed fans find it via google. This strategy worked a treat. The fans arrived in droves. The next part of the plan, wherein I would screw with their heads by way of the developers explaining: the enormity of what they had done; their desire for atonement by means of a new different game; and how in the new game the targets would consist of the agency and other warmongers who'd previously been the bosses, was an abject failure.

Of the thousands and thousands who arrived and read it, not a single one got it. They were utterly unable to view their bent for assassination in an holistic fashion. Forget the wide-angle, the only lens in their head was a 500mm scope that, if it didn't have a target filling the viewfinder, couldn't see anything at all. Every single comment left was perfectly moronic. Okay, there was one fellow who got it, but he pretty much shrugged his shoulders and went back to the strangling etc.

Eventually it was all too much for me. Every day, every goddamn day, about a quarter of my arrivals here were these idiot gamers. It was a tsunami that never ended. This thing was just relentless.

I tried tweaking the experiment by going so far as to explain the point of the exercise, and it made no difference. They just didn't want to know. What they wanted was a new series of people to assassinate. And they just kept coming.

Rather than surrender I deleted the previous text and inserted a new piece. Brilliant. But it was pointless really. Nothing changed. The game's name was still in the address path, and the idiot legion of gamers seemed to stretch into infinity. Sure enough, no one got the new piece either. "This doesn't seem to mention ______ at all! Who am I meant to kill? What bullshit!" And every day my statcounter thingy gave me the depressing news. More fucking gamers.

And so, I give in. I wave the white flag and surrender unconditionally. Which is to say, I have deleted the whole entry. The gamers won. I declare defeat.


*Anyway, the second piece I wrote may be of interest to those small numbers of people who don't groove on assassination, and it is immediately below. Yoroshiku.

An evil time and place

Think of an evil time or place. Think of some country that we all condemn as wicked villains. Presumably this country was some variety of fascist or communist. They probably sent their troops to invade innocent countries, kill the locals, and steal their shit. Imagine them in their villainous costumes goose-stepping about in big militaristic parades. Perhaps your historical villains were the kind of murderous racists that picked on some ethnic minority and put them into concentration camps. For the purpose of the exercise, the more villainous the better.


So, do you have that time and place fixed in your head? Excellent.

Now go sideways and wonder at the boys and young men in this place. As sure as eggs is eggs the vast majority would have grooved on the thought of their nation as ass-kicking powerhouse. There were no t-shirts back then but they probably had pictures of their weapons of war on their walls - tanks and fighter planes, that sort of thing. And there was probably no TV at the time but they'd have had some equivalent like the cinema, and they'd have gone to see the movies that made heroes of the soldiers that we now view as the greatest villains who ever lived. And they'd have cheered those villains. Because for them, they weren't villains, they were heroes. That's how it is in evil times and places. If you want to call those boys and young men brainwashed, I won't argue with you. They were brainwashed.


But that's no surprise is it? In those evil times and places, everything would have been like this - the movies, the radio, the newspapers, the comics, everything right down to the cigarette and bubblegum cards. Every single form of media that existed would have been this way. And all those kids would have thought that this was normal. It would never have occurred to these kids that what they were doing was wrong. And yeah sure, there would have been other stuff too, boring stuff for girls and for grown-ups. But the boys wouldn't have been interested. They would have been too busy with all that neat stuff with soldiers, cops, and spies, all with tons of gunfights, chases, and action, action, action.


Imagine if you were able to magically teleport back in time and tell those kids that what they were doing was evil. It's a complete certainty that they'd never have believed you. They'd have told you that you were stupid, crazy, a complete bullshit artist. Even the nice ones would have heaped shit on you. They'd have told you that the 'bad guys' attacked them first. Everyone knows that. The 'bad guys' wanted to destroy their country, whether they were a million miles away, or here at home waiting to fill up those concentration camps. And those brainwashed kids would have defended everything their goose-stepping heroes did, whether it was bombing civilians or torturing innocent men and women.


It's also possible that some of those boys didn't like what their evil government was doing. But they still loved their weekly instalment of Stormtrooper Hero, or whatever it was called back then. "You should see it. It's great!" But you wouldn't have the heart for it. It'd be too sickening, watching these fucking villains bombing those villages and hauling those people off to the concentration camps. Even the best of those kids would have had you shaking your head at how they didn't get it.


So with this picture in your head of this evil time and place and of those brainwashed kids, why don't we try a really crazy experiment? Imagine (it's crazy I know, but just humour me) what it would look like if this was your country, here and now? What would that look like? And what would it be like for the boys and young men? How would they dress? Can you imagine them wearing military camouflage and t-shirts with pictures of tanks or gunships on them?


Imagine if everything, from the movies to the computer games were full of our soldiers, spies, and whomever, going overseas and killing the people there. Imagine if there was some minority back home that every piece of media told you were the bad guys. Imagine we were told that they attacked us first.


Imagine that there were TV shows where the hero actually tortured this minority and that no one thought that that was evil, or weird, or any other thing. They just watched it and grooved on the excitement. Imagine computer games that would have fitted right in with the propaganda of that other evil time and place, with whoever was playing being told to go and kill whomever and them doing it and thinking it was the coolest game ever. Can you imagine that?


And one small step now - imagine some guy zapping in from some other time and place and telling you that the whole fucking thing was evil and that when you wore those t-shirts, and watched those shows, and played those games, that you were participating in something really monstrous? What would you say to that guy? Would you think he was nuts? Would you tell him he was bullshit?


You? Brainwashed? Ha! Those other kids in that other evil time and place, sure - but not you, no way. Go ahead, tell me I'm "stupid, crazy, a complete bullshit artist." You know you want to.

Pilger McGowan Chavez and m_astera.

I suspect that North Americans might not be too familiar with the journalist John Pilger. I'm utterly familiar with him, what with him being a fellow countryman. For mine he's one of the greatest Australians ever. He pretty much tops my list of People Who Aren't Bullshit. I'm a cynical bastard but I've yet to see Pilger set a foot wrong.


Pilger started in Vietnam with his documentary, The Quiet Mutiny. Even now, forty years later, it's still a mindfuck. He makes clear that the Vietnam War didn't end because of the hippy movement, but because the US military was on the verge of total collapse due to widespread revolts and mutinies. The 'fraggings' of officers weren't occasional occurrences, they were well on their way to becoming the norm. But even they were nothing compared to the number of ships and army bases back home that saw complete revolts. For mine, The Quiet Mutiny might just be the only truly anti-war movie ever made. It's not for no reason that you never heard of it, and instead only get served up the usual pro-war anti-war movies.

(And the flipside of this discussion is Dave McGowan's Laurel Canyon series which convincingly posits the hippy movement as a CIA psy-op designed to split the opposition and have everyone stoned and otherwise wasting their time with innocuous shit. Go read it, because afterwards nothing is ever the same again.)

Vietnam aside, Pilger has been everywhere and always with a sharp eye for bullshit. He's never been a stringer, or been embedded, or otherwise run around at someone else's say so. He follows his own nose seeking out injustice and oppression. In this regard he is perfectly catholic. He's covered Palestine, South America, South Africa, Neocons, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Chagos Islands, Timor, the treatment of Australian aborigines, the rise of fascism in the UK, and every time he goes straight to the heart of the matter.

He will never give a platform for motherfuckers to spout their shit. He pins them down and makes them look like the fools, liars, and psychopaths they are. I'll never forget John Bolton tearing off his microphone and stomping out mid-interview pathetically muttering something about 'communist'. Pilger's latest two pieces over at his website about Israel and Palestine are easily the most vicious things I've seen written in the Western Press. And the word 'vicious', when used to describe those seeking the truth is, in my mind, the very highest compliment.

Anyway, there I was in front of the teev and Pilger's brilliant documentary The War On Democracy came on. On Foxtel, believe it or not. It's a perfect primer on the CIA's relentless campaign to crush democracy in Central and South America. We see the smashing of Guatemala, the campaign against Cuba, the death of Allende and the rise of Pinochet, the School of the Americas, on and on. Death squads, torture, massacres, the raping of nuns, the shooting of priests - it's relentless. Members of the CIA actually discuss what they did in terms of it being a 'terror' campaign. They say it, right there on camera, without even a hint of 'Oh shit, did I just give the game away?'


And sure enough, Chavez of Venezuela has his place in The War On Democracy as today's version of Arbenz, Allende, or Ortega. He's another in a long heroic line of democratically elected leaders who are not there to serve a wealthy oligarchic minority. Astoundingly, he's there to serve the sweeping majority who know that without that leader their lives will be an horrific nightmare of fear, deprivation, and death and suffering.

And just like all those who went before him, Chavez is invariably portrayed in the bloc-media as a villain. Back in the day, Arbenz, Allende, and Ortega all had their names blackened by way of the epithet 'communist' - never mind their rejection of communism, their adherence to democratic principles, and the fact that they were wildly popular with all but the tiny oligarchy whose hatred of the masses knew no bounds. Did this newly enfranchised majority get airtime in the US? Of course not. The people of the US got a single message, the message of the motherfuckers. These leaders were communists who 'hated us for our freedom'.

Okay, so that's the current buzzword for Muslims. But it's the lot of the English language to be raped over and over, so that we might shake our fists at those the psychopaths want to throw down. Against all sense and logic, 'Muslim' is now a dirty word. Sure, that's how it works.


How now to portray Chavez? 'Communist' is devalued. No one would buy it. Nor is he a Muslim. So what might they call him? How might they go about blackening his name? And don't be mistaken. They did precisely this every time previously. Because that's how it's done. The CIA has the funds, it has the time, and God knows they have nothing better to do than convince you (yes, you reading now) that it's right that Chavez is a villain who should be brought down.

And now I'm going to break some hearts. Forget the CIA guys in Pilger's doco telling us that, yes, they ran a terror campaign. Whilst it's true that they gave the game away, they also sent us a message. The message is - 'We are ham-fisted and obvious. You can spot us easily. Just look for the guy who is a dead giveaway.'

Thanks CIA! I'll keep it in mind. I'll completely banish from my thoughts the concept that the CIA might be adept as appearing as the very opposite of what they are. Perish the thought that heroic icons of the right-thinking, such as Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, CSNY, and all those other bards, poets and philosophers, could be spooks. (If you haven't read McGowan's Laurel Canyon, go read it. Sheesh). The CIA could not possibly be clever enough to have those who might otherwise resist their plans perpetually tripping and/or stoned, with the odd moments of sobriety spent endlessly blathering about peace, love, and understanding. (As opposed to taking sledge-hammers to B-52's and that sort of thing).

Yeah, yeah, sarcasm aside, the above is precisely what happened. They manufactured the LSD and we all know it. And Operation Mockingbird, wherein writers, journalists, and talking heads in every branch of the media were suborned into acting as contracted propaganda agents for the CIA, was blown open years ago. There's no excuse for being confused anymore. Sure enough mockingbird doesn't exist now. Not under that name at any rate. But if anyone thinks that the programme to fuck with our minds stopped with the Church commission, or whatever, you're a fool. There is no way in hell that the insane efforts that took place in the fifties, sixties, and seventies aren't taking place right now. It's neither impossible nor unlikely. I declare it as a deadset certainty.

And what would they look like? These efforts to appear right-thinking, to appear poetic, to appear as someone we should revere as Jim Morrison-style wordsmiths of the new age? Would they repeat themselves and form long-haired pop bands and release a bunch of vinyl LP's? Or would they get with the times and hang out on the internet? Ha ha ha - As sure as eggs is eggs!

Don't forget, the point isn't to preach to the converted. They're already preaching to themselves and can be safely left to it. No, the targets will be us, those who dissent. The purpose of the exercise will be a) to push their memes, and b) to disguise it by way of appearing right thinking - the very sort of person we will all admire and think brilliant things of. And regardless of how savvy we think we are at spotting bullshit artists, some of us will fall for it.

And how would I go about it? It's the old 'what would I do if I was a motherfucker' game. Me, I'd start with the big blogs that had the most readership. Places like WRH, AntiWar, Rense, SOTT, CounterPunch, etc. Sure enough, they're not under my control and might see through me and ban me. Oh well, I did my best, time to move on.

Who else gets big readership and is clearly after the truth, and otherwise against the CIA programme? What's the vibe there? How might I fit in? First comes schmoozing. Toujours Le Schmoozing. Also it pays to be active. This is a paid gig so I'd have to earn my dough. Me, I'd make lots of comments and dominate the discussion. There's no point being shy and retiring. I'd have my own blog sure, but it's not so easy dragging people away from blogs run by the truly charismatic. Mostly I'd just be a major presence in the comments.

And of course, I'm going to fit in. There's no point being there otherwise. If I get it right, I'm going to be admired for my beautifully written versions of whatever today's psycho-babble equivalents of peace, love and understanding are. Of course. Ain't no point otherwise. That's the way it was done then and that's the way it is done now. People will be in awe of what I say. They'll admire the beauty of my soul. Or what I show them of it anyway. I will be Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa, and CSNY all rolled into one. And did any of them talk about their spook backgrounds? Of course not.


The trick will be to keep it simple. Not too many memes. Perhaps just one. If I overdid it, I'd give myself away. These people are sharp, remember. So, I just stick with Chavez. He's the purpose of the exercise and everything else is limited-hangout cover. Okay, but how to distinguish myself and otherwise counter savvy people who know a bit of history? The ideal don't-argue would be to live there. Or, more correctly, to be 'based' there. I couldn't pretend since everyone has a hit-counter telling them where the hits are coming from. Fine, I now have the skeleton of 'being-there-and-knowing-what's-what' on which to flesh out my case. Instant credibility and the perfect all-purpose argument, good for whatever.

And besides, it's not like I wouldn't have company. I'd have Company company! Venezuela is crawling with spooks - NAD, USAID, State Dept, you name it. You trip over a gringo there and it's odds-on he's a spook. And me tapping away at a keyboard wouldn't take up too much time, so I'd make myself handy distributing funds, meeting people, organising. These coups don't run themselves you know! It was always this way. Over and over.

Astoundingly hardly anyone would put the obvious two and two together: CIA agents exist; coups happen; CIA agents misrepresent themselves; CIA agents get sent to countries that are the targets of coups; Venezuela is a coup target; I am in Venezuela; I'm a gringo who hates Chavez. But forget that - as if a spook would write as prettily as me?! Impossible! Ha ha ha ha. That's all it takes. Simple simple shit.

Anyway here's the message in case anyone has missed it - Chavez is a communist, a terrorist, a corrupt tyrant, a wicked villain, he hates us for our freedoms, his people hate him, he's banned the media, he's stolen women's kidneys - he is precisely that fellow that we must hate. Won't somebody do something to stop this rampaging monster?

And so it goes. Are we surprised? It was always this way. Go watch The War on Democracy. But don't view it as a discussion of some isolated thing from the past. Plug it into now. Plug it into you and where you're at, right now, today. Because you're it. The propaganda is for you.

Welcome to m_astera.

I cease opposition. The Government was right. War is the answer.

What does a country have to do before we in the West do that thing, and bomb the shit out of them? We've done it so many, many times for all sorts of pretexts. Think of every country we ever declared war on. Think of any country we didn't declare war on but just 'intervened' in. It's a long list, and no mistake.


Think of the reasons we went in. They made sense didn't they? They certainly made enough sense for the soldiers to troop off happy that they were doing the right thing. They made enough sense for the media to pile in enthusiastically. And they made enough sense for the rest of the population to think little of it and carry on with their law-abiding lives. Sure, a protest here, a protest there - big deal. Mostly we were happy with the reasons given.


And all those people who want to pipe up with their own version of the truth, just sit on it for a minute. If you want to tell me that we visited death and destruction on these countries on account of a pack of lies, I got no time for that today. Today I am a supporter of everything our governments have told us about us as good guys, them as bad guys, and why we should blow their shit up. Our governments have done this many, many times and now it's time to agree to the rightness of the logic.


Sure enough, the logic makes sense. Each of us understands the rightness of standing up to bullies who beat up those weaker than themselves. Britain declared war on Germany for precisely this reason. The German bully was beating up on the Polish underdog and the British were going to do the right thing and help the little guy. Once more - forget counter-propositions. We're running with the posited logic. We're conceding the rightness of that case.


How does the case go again? The people we have to bomb are racists and murderers. They're ethnic cleansers. They commit genocide. They know no pity. They commit atrocities beyond counting. They deliberately kill women and children. They're a threat to their neighbours. They've demonstrated a clear history of having done this over and over. Unless stopped they'll continue to do it again and again. They're enemies of democracy. Their behaviour is beyond boycotts, beyond sanctions, beyond time-wasting talk. We must bomb them. They understand no other language.

That's how it goes isn't it?


And all the while, as our leaders make the case, we're told horrific stories and shown horrific images so that we might know precisely how villainous these people are. You know the kind of thing - We must intervene because these bastards shoot civilians in cold blood. They bulldoze houses with the people still in them. They tell the survivors to surrender and shoot them when they stagger out, white flags held aloft - grandmas, kids, everyone. They have no pity. They use the bodies of children as target practice and laugh about it. They use white phosphorus on crowded civilian areas and burn people alive. All while their citizens sit on a ridge, drinking pepsis, and cheering. They torture people. They starve them. They are cruel beyond imagining. They are pitiless, supremacist motherfuckers who will never see reason and will never be stopped unless we stop them. With force.


These are the stories we are told - by our own governments - to explain the rightness of our going to war against an evil people. Okay. I need no more convincing. I'm there. I concede the rightness of the government's case.


Forget talk of sanctions. Forget UN resolutions. We've had a hundred of the damn things and what happened? Nothing. We've talked for years and years and none of it made a lick of difference. Academic boycotts, trade boycotts, protesting, shaking our fists, it's all a waste of time. These people are villains and force is all they'll understand. We must take military action.


Where to start? How about their navy? Let's send it to the bottom of the ocean. Let's destroy the labs where the satanic weapons are manufactured. Let's take out their illegal WMD's. Take out their radar and destroy the command centres. Let's bomb their runways and shoot down their planes. Let's target all their military infrastructure. Let's take out their tanks and strafe their troops. Hell, I'll even concede to the rightness of the government's case for the targeting of power, water, and sewerage. This is how we do things isn't it? Okay, so let's do it.


Me, I no longer need convincing. The government's case that genocidal villains require a military response has won me over. I'm with them. I concede the rightness of what they say. If they are somewhat shy, it's okay. I shall make their case for them. I will remind them that if it was right before, it's most certainly right today. Let the stirring speeches begin!


"We in the West, we are not craven. We do not shirk our duty, regardless of how onerous it is. If we see a wrong, we look to right it. We will not let evil go unpunished. We will not stand idly by as innocent men, women, and children are murdered in their homes. Never will we tolerate genocide and crimes against humanity. Were we to do so, who would we be? We are not that. We reject it. Just as we reject the lies that would have us view sins as virtues. No more! We shrug off our torpor and do now what is right. With a clear conscience we say to those genocidal murderers - lay down your arms and surrender unconditionally, and we will demonstrate the quality of mercy, a thing you clearly don't understand. You will be tried for war crimes, your people re-educated, and your wealth given to those upon whom you inflicted such untold misery and suffering. Resist and we will crush you. We will embody a righteous, clear-eyed nemesis to your hubris. Your fate is in your hands. We stand ready and await your decision."

your own genuine Obama shrine

Obama is a place and I've been there. It's a middle size town in Fukui prefecture on the West Coast of Japan. It's chock full of Buddhist temples, and one of them is where I went to spend the rest of my life, or seven days, whichever came first. And in this picture postcard temple was a picture postcard shrine called a butsudan. It was pretty much the centre of the temple.


It occurred to me that if some bright spark in Obama started manufacturing genuine Obama shrines they'd make out like bandits. There'd be a photo of Barrack Obama there with candles either side and a little space out the front for offerings of rice, fruit, and cakes etc. An Obama we can believe in! And how better to express your belief than by praying at a shrine that's not only for Obama, it's from Obama.

I don't see why anyone should have a problem with this. Obama is just like all those other things we have to believe in. He said so himself - 'change you can believe in'. Ayah! Another belief, and we have so many already! Anyway, since it's all about belief, you may as well do it properly and have a shrine. A genuine Obama shrine!


Anyway there it was on TV - millions of believers, their eyes full of tears. Reality? Banished. What I saw on TV was so like what one sees in the born-again hallelujah halls it was spooky. And everyone said the same things. It was like listening to a mantra. The American dream was true after all! A black man as president! In our lifetimes! We never thought we'd see the day! If only my grandfather had lived to see this!

Mantras are good. They work to neutralise the brain and stop distractions entering. And who needs to be distracted by little things like Obama's years working at a CIA front company, or his cabinet appointments of the same old warhawks, bankers, and dual citizens, and never mind his abject kowtowing to AIPAC. Between wake-up-and-smell-the-catfood and warm-and-fuzzy, it's a no-brainer. And God bless the no-brainers, say the powers that be. In no-brainers they trust.


And in amongst the 24/7 adoration on the TV, not a single soul had a single word of doubt. No sentiments along the lines of - 'I'll believe it when I see it'. God forbid anyone should stand up and say, 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss' (or perhaps that should be - Meet the new puppet, same as the old puppet?) What's American for 'Burn them at the stake?' 'Burn them like a steak', I guess. Grain fed, of course.

But really you have to go hats off to the PTB. Obama is a stunning move. And really breathtaking in its cynicism. An African American gets dropped into the Presidency at the precise moment that the whole thing goes tits up. It's like handing the car keys to the teenage boy just as the rings, the diff, and the gearbox are all about to shit themselves. And when it starts grinding metal on metal, guess who gets the blame?


Otherwise, for those not already drugged into stupefaction Obama is the perfect Soma. But never mind Aldous Huxley, how about George Orwell? Honestly, what sort of regime would have a stern looking fellow as its pin-up boy? Is Ronald McDonald stern? Orwell never worked in marketing obviously. Those who've given the world Obama, get marketing.

Speaking of meat products, humans are smarter than cattle. This is obvious since we eat them, and not the other way round. But perhaps 'smarter' is the wrong word. Let's put it this way, are cattle capable of belief? No - but we are. And unlike those stupid cattle there's no way we're going to be led to the slaughterhouse unless we believe it's the right thing to do. And finally, with McSmiley Obama we can all believe again. Those who had lost faith have found it anew - the disillusioned, freshly re-illusioned.

The masses that George Bush had united in disbelief are now back on board. We are one, they all chant. Obama, we'll follow you to hell and back - for that smile, those adorable kids, those reassuring words - anything. And those doubters? Those enemies of the American dream? A black man is president! We waited our whole lives for this! Send them to wherever enemies of the state get sent. It's the least they deserve.


And as the miseries become legion: bankruptcies climb; old neighbourhoods become deserted; the hunger-driven discontent rises; law and order breaks down; the cops go berserk; and reality just generally goes to hell, the freshly minted believers will turn to their leader for solace. They'll light some more candles, put out a votive twinkie, and let the mantra fill their head banishing all distraction. A black man is president! I never thought I'd live to see the day! The American dream is true!