Happy B-Day George Carlin!

george carlin was born 85 years ago may 12. he died almost 14 years ago, but left behind a great body of work.

every great act deserves a good opener. FAMILY GUY is a great opener. if u love FG and george, we have a little something in common. this little scene is pretty representative of FG's crude, lewd, and rude double entendre humor. i think it's art at it's finest. if it doesn't bust your gut, u have a strong gut, or maybe a weak sense of humor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VErb9_vCRJ8

this is probably my favorite carlin bit, in which he takes down dogmatic religion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r-e2NDSTuE

george lived quite a full and fascinating life. here he talks about it at length:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm4YnDl5hOk

Atrocity Propaganda

recently a progressive friend of mine cited as fact a claim she'd heard or read somewhere that the russian military had bombed 300 hospitals in ukraine during it's recent invasion of that nation. i don't believe this, just as i doubt just about everything that comes from corporate american media that purports to be 'news'.

i've just discovered a new term which relates to this sort of claim: 'atrocity propaganda'. it's an old trick which has probably been used for centuries if not millennia to drum up support for wars against supposedly evil enemies of all sorts. as it happens, i know of a very good example of it to cite that's extremely well documented, relatively recent, and that was directed mainly at the american public to incite war fever against iraq for the first invasion there by usa forces in 1991.

this involved a 10 million dollar p.r. campaign and the daughter of the kuwaiti ambassador to the usa who was also a member of the royal family. she presented herself as a regular citizen who as a volunteer hospital worker claimed to have witnessed iraqi soldiers stealing incubators from the hospital and pitilessly leaving the babies taken from them to die on the cold floor. she gave this testimony to some sort of congressional panel tearfully and earnestly and it was all just a well rehearsed big lie which got sopped up not only by the establishment media and the american public, but by other supposedly more discerning and trustworthy groups like amnesty international. it wasn't until a couple of years later, after this propaganda bs had served it's purpose in galvanizing public support for an invasion that the truth came out.

u can read about it in the short article linked below or watch an award winning canadian documentary titled To Sell A War which is about the same event also linked below. the bottom line being imo that u may have a lot to learn about the pervasiveness of deceitful propaganda that's regularly sold to the public on a whole host of things including international relations which consistently demonize one side or the other. imo, there's been such a thing going on to demonize russia quite endlessly for the past decade, quite similar to other campaigns which demonize other supposedly evil regimes like those of cuba, venezuela, iran, syria, and so on.

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Nayirah_al-%E1%B9%A2aba%E1%B8%A5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hExlqV-fsP8

The Grayzone

i think it's a pretty good rule of thumb to assume that the u.s. government and most american media including some supposedly independent and objective sources can't be trusted, or even worse, can be trusted to be deceitful and on the wrong side of most conflicts / issues. for many years i've placed much more trust on alternative media which are openly critical of the american government and mainstream media, including russia today, a platform financed by the russian government which employed several american journalists and social critics who have been effectively banned from appearing on american media outlets because of their refusal to toe the establishment line. russia today has itself now been deplatformed by tptb that control internet access, like google, owner of youtube, so that there are fewer and more difficult to find sources of radical disagreement to what might be termed 'consensus media (sur)reality' to be found.

one that remains is the grayzone. as far as i know, it depends on no governmental or corporate funding. regarding the current ukrainian russian war, it takes a far different stance as to which side is more to blame, more reprehensible, than can be found in the near unanimous decree from other american media that this is 'putin's war', or 'russia's war' and that it's the russian side that is totally evil, while ukrainians are the heroic resistant victims. if u wish, check this alternative view out, which paints almost the opposite picture:

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/17/traitor-zelensky-assassination-kidnapping-arrest-political-opposition/

Ukraine On Fire

i just watched a 6 year old documentary titled Ukraine On Fire, executive produced by 'controversial' film maker oliver stone, who was also behind the film 'jfk' which prompted me on my own journey as an independent researcher and 'conspiracy theorist' some 30 years ago.

imo Ukraine On Fire presents a much more accurate and nuanced version of the situation in ukraine than that commonly found in american corporate media. this version shows the american establishment to be supporting and promoting far right wing nationalists (including neo-nazis) in Ukraine who staged a violent coup d'etat there in 2014, much like the american government (especially the cia) has been behind a great many political assassinations and violent coup d'etats all around the world over the past century, subverting democracy in favor of installing pro (american) business right wing governments which favor oligarchs at the expense of the general public.

this documentary is being censored on youtube. the first youtube site for it i visited was censored. by chance i happened upon a second, which as of a moment ago has yet to be censored. with luck perhaps it still will be available should u wish to check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iaUWtbE0Os

The Ugly Truth

20 years later, architects and engineers for 9/11 truth is still at the lonely and thankless task of trying to expose the ugly truth about what happened on sep 11 2001, namely, that it had to have been an inside job, because steel frame buildings do not collapse from fire, and steel frame buildings that collapse in the manner that the 3 towers did that day can only be the result of controlled demolition designed to make them fall straight down at free fall speed.

the implications of this are staggering. here are the main ones:

besides being an inside job, 9/11 truth reveals that not just the american government, but the whole establishment, especially corporate mass media, is as corrupt and rotten as can be.

the surREAL perpetrators of 9/11 were able to proceed with utmost confidence that their lies would be accepted by the vast majority of the american public. how could they know this? because, not just americans, but sheeple all over the world have been being systematically brainwashed to believe utter nonsense, like the claims of dogmatic religions, for thousands of years, with great success.

sheeple simply aren't very smart generally. most prefer comforting lies over ugly truths.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJPuWy9utss

Rainy Days And Mondays

i've just been watching the pbs documentary on the american musical group THE CARPENTERS for about the 4th time (it's on during pledge drives every year). i love documentaries, and thanks especially to this documentary, the carpenter's music. karen carpenter had such a lovely melodic voice, and their hit songs imo are pretty uniformly terrific...

after they became hugely successful in the early 70s, karen developed some awful eating disorders, anorexia and bulimia. she was one of those young women who for whatever reason become obsessed with their weight and dieting and in extreme cases continue to insist that they feel ugly and fat even when they've become skin and bones. this is what happened to her and it eventually killed her when she was in her early 30s.

i'm very curious: why does someone like karen carpenter, who was young, reasonably attractive  and had achieved immense success and fame thanks to talent and good fortune, have such severe psychological problems? i think she must have been tremendously unhappy and sad, unfulfilled.

there's another strange self destructive behavior that like eating disorders, affects primarily young women: they cut themselves. even though i've read a good deal on these strange crazy maladaptations to the stresses of dystopian life. i still don't fundamentally understand them

because of my curiosity about the details of karen carpenter's sad tragic short life, i read the one biography of her that came to my attention, a book titled LITTLE GIRL BLUE. it was alright, perhaps about the best bio that could be written about her, but it left my desire to understand better what drove her to such extremes mostly unsatisfied. she had family issues, primarily with her mother. i think being typical religious 'conservatives' they were quite repressed, including emotionally. of course, i think sexual repression plays a huge role in many neurosies. i find it strange beyond words the way society and culture stigmatize and repress our sexuality, and how virtually no one seems very troubled by it, or recognizes it as a serious problem. it's been a serious problem for me throughout my life. i woke up to this fact, this awareness, way too late, around the age of 30. being awake to it, i still haven't figured out how to deal with it, or even know if their is an effective way for me.

now i have great empathy for the downtrodden and unfortunate. i relate to karen because while i haven't starved myself to death (self esteem must be rock bottom to do such a thing... perhaps mine has never been that low) or anything like that, i feel my whole life has been out of my hands. i didn't choose to be born into this world and many times i've wondered if this life that's been thrust upon me has been worth the grief, the pain and torment. as i've aged and perhaps grown wiser, i think i've become more aware of the horror of it, not just for me...

book i'm currently reading is another nonfiction account of a horrific legal case involving 4 young black men (one was only 16) falsely accused of raping a 17 year old white woman. lynchings and an evil corrupt sheriff who was a brutal murderous racist, well known as such, and still elected to (7) 4 year terms as his county's leading law enforcement officer.  and lynch mobs.

then there's these horrible common sheeple like this 17 year old 'girl' who for a variety of reasons was persuaded to cooperate fully in framing 4 innocent men, which she did with no apparent public remorse or subsequent apology, even decades later... my point is, i'm horrified by america and americans. all one need do is look beneath the surface to see it's and their ugliness, stupidity, callous, bigoted cruelty and oppression. smh!

in dystopia, dystopia goes unnoticed for the most part by the vast majority who don't look beneath the veneer, who more or less embrace the propaganda that's taught in schools and corporate media, who think america's just great the way it is or has been in the past (trump's MAGA lunatics especially!). this is a great part of what makes dystopia so dystopian to me. as i've wrote b4, it makes me feel sort of like the protagonist in a twilight zone episode. while other progressives share some of this perspective, no one i know comes close to sharing all the knowledge and views i've acquired leading to this blog. being unique in any way is a recipe for loneliness. being uniquely cognizant of dystopia and looming doom... is a fate i didn't choose, nor am happy about.

about 30 years ago i was seeing a therapist and posited that i just might be a loser. i liked and still like his response, which was to the effect that if someone fails consistently to succeed at whatever, at achieving to some degree one's goals and thus happiness, then yes indeed, one might be considered a loser. by that definition, i think i am a loser. but i surreally don't know why. adverse circumstances and genes i suppose. i certainly didn't choose it, am not happy with it. i don't know how to change it, change my life, get it out of it's comfortable but deadly rut. so in a way i'm like karen. i identify with 'losers', or victims. i see myself as a victim, a helpless victim, just like sheeple who starve or cut themselves.

as a lifelong loser i feel cursed, but having learned so much about the sometimes much greater misfortunes of others, and especially thanks to having learned scientific facts and projections which make the future of our world and species look horribly bleak with doom relatively imminent, i now think we're all cursed, all losers, all victims.

here's a good video of the late great karen carpenter, singing one of the carpenter's memorable songs, whose lyrics are appropriate to this doomer post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjFoQxjgbrs

Peter Joseph And Zeitgeist

i wrote when i began this blog that i would rely heavily on the work of others to articulate and expand upon my own views, as a means of transcending some of my own limitations.

peter joseph is a brilliant independent film maker and author. i thought for sure i'd already posted links to some of his work previously here, but apparently i haven't.

the link below is to a youtube video of him talking about his views, how they developed and how his first documentary film, zeitgeist, came to be. it's 50 minutes long and excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIinwXB1IqI

he made a series of 3 zeitgeist films. these are apparently no longer available for download on youtube. however, fragments of them are. this link is the beginning of the first zeitgeist movie segment that dealt with the topic of dogmatic religion, focusing on christianity and it's origins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzMqlsAGL14&t=349s