CasaZaza asked: “Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one’s self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.” - Michael Rivero
Frozen Moments at the Altar of Truth
It all started for me in 1959 when I was born, I mean the way I’ve been lied to through mainstream media. One of my earliest memories was sitting in front of the TV with my family after JFK was assassinated. My mother and grandmother weeping uncontrollably, my father and grandfather - avowing that this was a “good man” and it’s “always the best who get taken so young”. I had no idea what was going on, being just four and a half years old - but that moment solidified like crystal in my mind - my first big “frozen moment”.
A few short years later we were all sitting there again in front of the TV at 3am watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, uttering those prophetic words. I’ll never forget the neighbour beside us, this old Italian guy who was saying that the entire lunar mission had to be a hoax, we were a bunch of suckers for believing it, it couldn’t be true. Everybody I knew thought he was nuts, myself included. I was busy having my head filled with such grand thoughts about the nobility and goodness of mankind, and like my family and almost all my neighbours, I was once again willing to believe in my heart that whatever these icons of the public trust on TV told us was the absolute truth - after all, these were the same folks who gave us the news every night, every single evening around the dinner hour, so we could find out what’s happening in the world, what to think about, how to judge those people over there, over here, anywhere. I’ll never forget how proud I was watching man walk on the moon, my 10 year old heart bursting out of my chest, feeling so lucky to be alive at that time and watching it on TV. This was a huge “frozen moment”.
There are other mental snapshots which of course remain quite vivid in my mind. Robert Kennedy & Martin Luther King assassinations, the war in Vietnam that spanned my entire childhood, the Nixon Watergate hearings, Iran Contra. It could not enter our mind that anything we saw on television could be any less than the gospel truth, because we live in the Western hemisphere, the best, most noble hemisphere on this planet. Just ask Walter Cronkite, or Dan Rather, or Ronald McDonald, or Barney the Friggin’ Dinosaur - any talking head that props up in a medium shot while occupying the standard 4 by 3 aspect ratio, mind-inhibiting confines of this ribald human invention. They must be telling the truth - gotta be real, after all, “I saw it on TV”.
Jump to Sept. 11th 2001.
I’m sitting in my office when a news bulletin flashes on my computer screen and I’m alerted to the 9/11 attack in NYC. As if by some secret homing mechanism, my workmates also wander outside of their respective cells and converge in the communal coffee area - and so it starts, we immediately begin parroting the official myth fed to us by the news media about this event. Talk is about Osama and the crazed 19 Muslim hijackers. Ooh boy, those rag-heads are goona get theirs, those bastards are sure to pay - I hope Uncle Sam really nukes them back to the stone age for what they’ve done, and on and on we chattered for days and weeks, all the while being spun and manipulated as always. The biggest “frozen moment” of my life so far.
I’ll never forget that day and the horror of watching those planes hit the towers, or the people falling to their tragic deaths, and like the other “shock and awe” moments, I can literally close my eyes and transport myself to that situation, just like I was there at that very moment. And when I remember, the images and ideas as portrayed to me by my lifelong companion the television are there in my mind, with the pictures, movies, sounds - Nay, it isn’t really there with me - it IS me. I’m nothing more, at those times in my life, than a biological download mechanism that will barf up all the crud it’s been fed by the societal teat from which I’d been trained to suckle on for all my ideas and opinions since birth.
And so another 5 years will elapse, almost every single day - let’s catch some news and see what’s happening, let’s tune in before bed and follow that story, let’s wrap our life around this version of reality, which is hardly any reality at all. But I still didn’t know that, not until 5 full years after 9/11.
“Doubt is the vestibule which we all must pass through before we can enter the temple of truth” - osho
Awakening
Thank you 9/11.
Once I saw the truth about this event my life changed forever, and ultimately for the better. It didn’t happen all at once, nor was it easy or very pleasant at all, this process demands so much of you, and unless you are the kind of person capable of a paradigm shift you won’t get there. Doesn’t matter how smart, how much money, how high you can jump - not everyone is able to look objectively at their social conditioning, step outside of themselves and honestly analyze their programming, fiddle with the knobs and make an adjustment. I remember this “moment” as the biggest, most life changing of all - that exact instant when I “got it”, and it wasn’t just the getting of 9/11 that was realized at that pivotal moment. It was so much more, for I knew in that nanosecond that I had apprehended a truth - I could now define a mechanism of which media was only but an important part. This gigantic contrivance that could so easily promulgate these lies was now revealed to me, and deserved my faith in their impartiality and honesty for the last time. I had depended on them for more than 40 years of my life, and it turns out they are quite willing to not only lie to everyone, but even more important - I realized that there are so many things they are willing to not tell us at all.
“We won’t get fooled again” - the Who
That moment of illumination occurred while I was listening to a lecture by Dr. David Ray Griffin, he was explaining why the official account of 9/11 could not be true - the logic irrefutable, the proofs incontrovertible, the evidence overwhelming, but what struck me most was the grace and dignity of this man, able to manifest such a positive aspect in the revealing of truth, all the while dealing face to face with such an ugly, disgusting reality. Probably the last “frozen moment” I will ever experience.
“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” Galileo Galilei
And so I sat atop this long slope looking straight back down at my life which ascended upward like one side of a pyramid, the slant provided to me by my once trusted patriarchal friend the media, it was time to say goodbye. My existence was different from that moment on, and so was my relationship with the world, like when you find out that your best friend has been sleeping with your girlfriend for the last 2 years and everybody’s been lying about it to your face. I vowed to myself at that very moment that I would refuse to accept any more lies in my life, and I would take responsibility for my own opinions. I made a promise to no longer listen to BS without calling to account those responsible for the lies and hypocrisy. At the very least we should stand for something worthwhile in our lives, like truth.
It was too convenient to settle on the official explanations for 9-11 at the time, and I forgive myself, and you too if you still believe them. It would simply be unreasonable for me to be at odds with anyone just because they occupied a temporal reality where I once stood.
I have yet to meet an ignorant man whose roots are not embedded in my soul. - Kahlil Gibran
If somebody came to me a year before I was open to the truth, I would have probably got angry and turned them aside. The best we can hope for is to present people with anomalies regarding the official narrative, and let each person face the myriad incongruities and come to their own conclusions. You see, some people figured it out right away, but finding out the truth is not any indication of how intelligent you are - that judgement comes later. It took me 5 years, not because I couldn’t understand it, but rather because I was unaware of it, and didn’t even consider that what I was told was false.
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” Galileo Galilei
It’s the classic difference between ignorance and stupidity - I was ignorant, I became aware of the facts, no more ignorance. A stupid person, however, continues to believe something even after receiving lots of information to the contrary. If you don’t know the truth about 9/11 you must educate yourself, if you do know the truth then you are compelled to educate others. Looking back is not easy, neither is facing the real truth about the situation now. I disagree with those who say, never mind 9-11, let’s deal with the war, or the environment - there are all these other problems now - that was 6 years ago. WRONG - BIG X on that one. It is my firm belief that if we are unable to approach the biggest examples of deceit and injustice so prevalent at this very moment, it behooves us to examine that which is really important in our lives, not to mention any concerns of social conscience or morality. I’m so sick of hearing about the “war on terror”, about “al Qaeda”, etc. So much suffering and injustice has resulted from the continued insistence on this mythology - predicated on the lie of 9/11.
“You cannot win a War on Terrorism. It’s like having a war on jealousy” - David Cross
“The World is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.” - Albert Einstein
This issue calls everyone to account, you have to make a decision, and its not a happy conclusion to arrive at, so many prefer to remain comfortable within the lie - the problem being, there are many fellow human beings on this planet who are getting killed every day, right now as a matter of fact. Each day this continues we must ask ourselves how and if our actions, or non actions, are contributing to this injustice. It sickens me, I **** this situation - I didn’t create it yet I must face this moral dilemma - if I don’t speak out against it and do everything within my power to change it, then I must admit I’m part of the problem that allows it to continue. I don’t want my great great grandchildren to look back and say, “Why did the people of WWII Germany and 21st century America allow ****** and Bush to gain so much power and commit such atrocities?” “Gee, I don’t know, Fleeble-Bop Four of Seven, I guess those people were just spineless sheep”.
“He who allows oppression, shares the crime.” - Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin
“Noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.” - Gandhi
When I was young I used to enjoy watching those old WWII movies, and I’m sure that like most people, along with pretending I was one of the valiant heroes being portrayed, I wondered how folks in Germany could allow ****** and his ***** to gain such power in that country. Now I understand, many of the German people were as much victims as all of us at this moment, unable to voice their opinions without being ridiculed and attacked, rights and freedoms taken away by a fascist state, having to bear the ignominy of witnessing your government commit acts of genocide, terror and torture, all the while pretending to be noble and good. And let’s not forget our old friend the television - gone are the days of my youth when we could witness some actual journalistic integrity on the news, along with some innocently entertaining shows like “Gilligan’s Island”. Now we must listen to the corporate propaganda machine spew forth so much sewage they call news, all the while trying to amuse and divert us with salacious filth and mindless stupidity dressed as entertainment.
“Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.” Napoleon Bonaparte
I used to think that knowledge of humanity was cumulative, that we could learn from the examples throughout history and say, no, **** Germany could never happen now, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just a one-off, we’ll never make those mistakes again. True freedom must be defended continually, and against all enemies. People have asked me, aren’t you afraid of speaking out about 9-11, aren’t you worried? Now whom should I be worried about, the awful Muslim radical type Al Qaeda terrorists that have been so well defined by the US government, or the US government itself?
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” - Abraham Lincoln
Come on folks, is anybody really falling for the oldest trick in the book? First, you must make the people afraid that they will be attacked, so we attack ourselves and frighten the bejeezes out of everybody, then we smear and vilify anybody who doesn’t defend our position as being unpatriotic, and sympathetic to the terrorists. It’s the old “bait and switch” routine, and if you buy it so readily then go downtown and play a few games of 3 Card Monty - I hear there’s pretty good odds there too. My being gets filled with revulsion when I watch that “commander in filth” stand there and utter ridiculous statements like, “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists”. Now what kind of specious, dumb-ass logic is that? Especially when you consider that he himself is the terrorist in question. Reminds me of that original Star Trek episode “The Changeling” when they slap the anti-gravs onto Nomad the robot. “If you are the creator then you are perfect, but if you made a mistake then you cannot be the creator”. Now let’s try it today, “If I am not with you, then I am with the terrorists, but, if you are the terrorist, then how can I be with you and not with the terrorists…. Kaboom!” Me and Nomad both have smoke billowing out our *** - where’s the miniskirt blond from Rigel 6 when you need her?
“It takes a whole village to raise an idiot, and a controlled media to make him president” - Peter Zaza
Realize that everything you experience from the limited lamestream media perspective is a form of low-level reality - riddled with half-truths, partial-truths, and a lot of no-truths at all. Designed to confuse and program you, the enemy - yes, that’s right - it isn’t some Iraqi, or Iranian, or Korean, or Chinese - they are all targets as well, nobody is exempt from this vast scourge creeping over the earth - and lest you think this is mere paranoia, the proof is now being publicly exposed everywhere, all you have to do is open your eyes, or more directly - open your mind. The proof is in the utter secrecy surrounding plans for unification, the proof is in the writings of the United Nations and Agenda 21, the CFR, the Bilderberg Group. The proof is in the way they have been systematically spraying the skies of this planet for 4 decades now, and denying it. Just go outside and look up, or if you don’t get out much - look up “Chemtrails” on your Google. Lots of theories about this one; are they dumping chemicals that cause or inhibit global warming? Are they forcing some mind altering drug on everyone? Is it connected to the HAARP technology? Is it killing off the bees? Weather creation? Population control? Let’s get some answers, after all - we’re being sprayed like cockroaches, and our tax dollars and health are paying for it.
More proof
The proof is in the way I have yet to hear one cogent, logical explanation from the US government about key issues concerning the 9/11 tragedy, like WTC 7 and its mystery collapse, like molten metal found under all 3 sites, like stand-down of the military, like put options, like war-games, like *** orders, like evidence destruction, like the first time the NTSB doesn’t do an investigation on a plane crash, like many warnings not to fly, like melting of steel by jet fuel, like no black box recordings released, like wire transfers of money to supposed terrorists, etc. One of my biggest proofs is the fact that the upholders of the official story continue to shout smears and ad hominem attack on anyone who questions any of these anomalies - but absolutely refuses to address the issues raised and offer resolution of the incongruities put forth. The proof is in the way I’ve sent many letters to politicians, newspapers and magazines concerning 9/11 truth - and not one single person has ever had the decency to write me back, or even acknowledge receipt of my communication - yet, every time I have written to people like Dr. David Ray Griffin, Dr. Bob Bowman, Barry Zwicker, Kevin Barrett, Paul Craig Roberts, and many others, I get a reply - usually within a few days.
One important proof worth considering is the fact that those planes had not even brought down those towers yet and we had news reports about the al Qaeda terrorists and Osama being fed to us. Did anybody think to ask within those first few hours what evidence there was, and how did they get this evidence? Those forensics boys work pretty quick, but that’s ridiculous. I’d like to know how anybody can piece together a case like that and have it announced while we’re still watching a gaping, smoking hole in the WTC towers.
I suppose it was important to begin inculcating everyone with the myth at this critical time – the wound is wide open, time to implant the insidious virus which will begin it’s work - you always remember the first story you hear as being the most logical, especially when your reasoning faculties are suppressed and more easily manipulated. Subjects are in a state of shock - training over decades has bred complacent, child like collective mentality that looks toward authority figure of government for help and direction. People will easily be imprinted with the first story that fits their world and offers any explanation or possible resolution. The psychological warfare and it’s manipulations of the public consciousness is capped off with the date itself, 911, my goodness, when there is a huge emergency what do you do? Better call 911. There’s fear, panic, dogs refuse to bark all over the neighborhood, help me daddy, I’m calling, can’t you hear me, 911, 911…
The proof is in the way I haven’t seen one piece of evidence that those 19 Arab guys were even on any of those airplanes, no passenger manifests, no pictures or video tapes from the airport showing them boarding planes, no record of ticket purchases. Don’t you see how obviously ridiculous it is? Come on - you’ve got the airport videos showing passengers, so just show us the video of the hijackers with the other passengers, we will all believe you in 2 seconds if you show the proof, what? you don’t want to release the information to back up your case? Why the hell should I believe your story when you have evidence but won’t show it to me, that just tells me what you say is a lie. No video of the “plane” hitting the Pentagon either, or the seized tapes from a gas station and hotel nearby. Why on earth would you want to withhold such vital evidence unless you were guilty? There is simply no logical explanation for them hiding and destroying the evidence, unless the evidence points directly at them.
Perhaps the best theory I’ve heard about this event is the one put forth by Webster Griffin Tarpley. He explains how there were around 20 or more war game exercises taking place the day of 9/11, with more than a few of them enacting scenarios wherein hijacked planes would be flown into buildings. At the last couple of seconds, the drill is “flipped live” and the attack being simulated is committed for real. Tarpley explains how the secret network responsible have moles infiltrating the highest levels of government in order to pull off this complex operation, using CIA groomed Muslim patsies to take the fall. He also explains how the shadow government threatens Bush, and gets him to capitulate to their demands or else “angel is next”. In effect, there was a coup that took place that day - code words fly about the globe, secret agencies from other countries have parts to play, the military is running around all confused playing war games, other nations are on high alert - it’s like a well-crafted espionage novel except we are still living it - the way I figure, right now in the story is about the time you and I jump in and do something. Would you be surprised to discover that the London 7/7 bombings also had drills involving terrorist bombers being played out at the exact same time the actual events occurred? Incredible coincidence, eh Watson?
Meet the Press
“There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. “I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. “The business of the Journalist is to destroy truth; To lie outright; To pervert; To vilify; ….. We are intellectual prostitutes” - John Swinton, the former chief of staff of the New York Times 1880
“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” - William Colby, former CIA director
“We know in the not too distant future, a half dozen corporations are going to control the media.
We took this step (merger) to ensure we were one of them”–Time Warner spokesperson.
That’s the nub of it for ya - currently there are 5 corporations that own all of the mainstream media, and those same people have vested interests in the military industrial complex. They make all kinds of wonderful products that enrich our lives, as well as bombs that kill and mutilate - pass the sugar. We have been trained our entire life to believe that what we see on that TV is somehow representative of reality. And now? Now I believe that you can take whatever message they give you - search for the diametrical opposite in your mind, and be sure that the negative value of what they say is instead the truth. Show me the United Nations with their slogans about peace and harmony, I’ll tell you about misery and bloodshed. Sing me the lyrical song about Harmonization and Prosperity - I will tell you about corporate fascism, segregation and cultural divisiveness. Talk about bringing Freedom and Democracy to Iraq - just look at the tyranny and genocide. Watch the fecal matter fly out of their mouths about the “War on Drugs” - I’ll show you a CIA complicit in the Central American and Afghanistan drug trade. Then we can look at the big business of the prison industrial complex, a commercialized system of slave labour. Corrections facilities are filled with many people who have never aggressed upon another individual, or another person’s property - locked up for years of their life, in some cases working for 20 cents an hour for big American Companies who don’t have to worry about employee benefits - and they get to use labels that say “made in the USA”.
War on Drugs? War on Poverty? War on Terror? It’s always war on somebody with these people - marginalization and exclusion of a targeted group, aggression, deceit, injustice. Create that differential through disturbance, because when there’s a steady state there is no movement, fluctuation provides great opportunity for profit and control. If you have prescient knowledge of the variables, you can create the crisis, induce reaction, offer resolution, and clean up profit-wise on the differential inherent in the controlled dynamic. Slap on a few no-bid contracts for your buddies, adjust a few widgets here, shove these assets over there, kill those ones there, no wait, sorry, I meant kill those ones AND those ones over there. Set up the false left-right struggle and watch the boneheads duke it out - all the while we control both sides, so guess who always has to win. Look in the mirror everybody - what a putz!
How far should we go? Maybe we could explore the malfeasance inherent within the entire Federal Reserve System, a misnomer of course - they are not Federal, and they don’t have any reserves. What about the IRS, absolutely ruining peoples lives for how many decades now without the legal authority to actually do anything. The CIA? Tell me how its ok to use tax dollars to plan military takeovers of democratically elected governments, or carry out assassinations, import drugs, and contravene any pretense of international law. Oh, and as a complete non sequitur - I could never figure out why the big reconstruction contracts for Iraq were not handed to the Iraqis themselves, give them a wage, let them build their country back up while building up their bank accounts, the bootstrap thing, the American way - You know, all that horse-shit! Enough examples, there are literally hundreds of things we could talk about at great length - and it just makes you sick, assuming you have a pulse.
I’ve stopped paying attention whatsoever to mainstream media, like many others I utilize alternative news sources that provide me with more honest accounts of reality than the TV’s lead story and the never ending web of lies. I’ve lost so much anger and frustration with my life through this awakening, and it’s all because I’ve figured out how and why I’ve been manipulated for so long. I used to sit there and swear at the TV, feeling as if my intelligence was being insulted, but not understanding why. About 20 years ago I started putting on the mute button during all the commercials, so then I would just swear at the news. I used to play video games, now I don’t - perhaps such activities provide a release mechanism for all that pent up frustration. I stopped wondering why every single network would carry the same stories, the same way - stopped wondering why that cheese-dick kid in Asia was wearing the same stupid shorts half way down his *** with a ball-cap turned sideways, or backwards on purpose, as all those other cheese-dick kids in the States, Italy, you name it. I had to wonder what force could make the same styles and trends popular everywhere, at the same time. Don’t you ever wonder about such things? like when a movie or book comes out dealing with the wild west, or aliens, or whatever - a bunch of others come out at the same time, and not just copycats mimicking to cash in on a popular idea, I mean they all get released concurrently, it’s as if the popular culture is dictated to and operating via mandate, and indeed it is. Network television is thus relegated to the same level of truth and integrity as any late night infomercial we are beleaguered with when yon Morpheus denies us respite from the daily moil.
After somebody lies to me 10,000 times over my entire life, I’m a bit reticent to believe their stories “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event” like hearing some actual truth for once. They must be telling a lie - after all, “I saw it on TV”.
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers” - Thomas Jefferson
Annie
