New 9/11 Investigation: A call to thought?

Hungover, tired, not understanding how/what to feel regarding love lives, asking your forgiveness for the crummy metaphors and incoherence and length and attached emotion to the contents of this post that I beg you all to read; yet happy– Yahoo! News reports to us some encouraging news:

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Richard Gage, AIA, architect and founder of the non-profit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc. (AE911Truth), will announce a decisive milestone today at a press conference in San Francisco, as more than 1,000 worldwide architects and engineers now support the call for a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. After careful examination of the official explanation, along with the forensic data omitted from official reports, these professionals have concluded that a new independent investigation into these mysterious collapses is needed.Mr. Gage will deliver the news around this major development, accompanied by signers of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth petition. The press conference will be held concurrently in 38 cities in 6 countries.http://www.ae911truth.org/info/160

These prominent architectural and engineering professionals will discuss the organization’s findings and concerns. A brief presentation of the explosive evidence they have compiled will be followed by Q & A. The presentation is an important update of “9/11: Blueprint for Truth – The Architecture of Destruction,” the DVD produced by the organization, and available on their website AE911Truth.org, which analyzes the scientific forensic evidence concluding that the three skyscrapers in New York City were demolished with explosives on 9/11.  The petition will be delivered today to every congressional representative by AE911Truth petition signers throughout the country.  Government officials will be notified that “Misprision of Treason”, US Code 18 (Sec. 2382), is a serious federal offense which requires those with evidence of treason to act…

If you have two hours, you can watch the talk (or just start it, but it’s actually really interesting and mouthwatering and scary. Skip to minute 21, or minute 46, or minute 70, or minute 76, or minute 91, or minute 94, or minute 103, or minute 110, to get disturbed with irrefutable truth). I’m a bit disappointed in the theme/design of his PowerPoint, as our society needs flashiness and class to be won, but whatever: this will make you nervous. This is not Zeitgeist, this is science. This is an example of how we’re only told what we need to be to believe. False consciousness.

On the other hand, it’s inspiring that non-conspirical (well, almost, maybe) groups are taking action: smart people! Humans are thinking!! And asking us why we’re so passive! Thank you TED (and I apologize for not attending even though Long Beach is your regional home at the moment)! How ironic this surfaces from the depths of the news at the same time it’s reported that Obama will make the final call on the “guilty suspects” of 9/11: by closing the case, could this render this independent research illegal, irrelevant? How ironic and sad that no one will listen to any source of information but those sponsored to reach their eyes. I’ll relate this with a rough draft bit from my academic mind right now (almost done being translated into English, I promise):

Throughout the duration of any type of occupation, we see collaboration above all else. Collaboration begins with a government, where a people is always seen under its direction, despite its own ideologies, perhaps stating that the government itself is merely an extension of the hand of the public. The Fourth Republic of France never tried to escape nor hide the fact that it wanted to simplify its people: the country’s new Tryptique stressed work, family, and patriotism, preaching the return to the earth.  This retour à la terre is more often than not perceived as the return to working with the earth to form communities, more sustainable and less dependent on external sources of nourishment or work. Such memorandum is easy to understand and does not threat with harsh implications to the public; thus from where could the complaints of the complacent come? This Révolution Nationale is a prime example of a government controlling the attitudes and mindsets of its people: to reconstruct the national soul is to rotate the perceptions of the individual.

Please understand the base of Marx’ theory of false consciousness: the material and institutional processes in capitalist society are misleading to the proletariat. To make sure the proletariat is complacent, happy, stupid. Let’s continue with the essay:

One has to look no further than our own war/revolution against terrorism and the post 9/11 battles against whomever we could conjure up reason. Look no further than the influence of the mass media in our lives: from that day on we have been constantly bombarded with advertisements for fear, to be wary of the turban and any spoken Arabic. Generally, with a television in almost every household being used almost daily, the average citizen watches the “news,” listens to it on the radio, or keeps “informed” via an online or print publication. Attributed to an obscure status quo developed by to what we unrealizingly expose ourselves daily, the norm of material desire can be simplified to nothing more than a comfortable amount of money and love, and everything that manifests itself with these: a house, a family, and entertainment. The adventure of travel or goals to change the world seem to have disappeared. “Cultural studies, drawing on a Marxist view of the production of reality, draw attention to the essential role of mass-mediated messages in sustaining the status quo, including the interests and perspectives of media managers and the interests they serve, which often are at odds with the everyday life experiences of audiences who use this popular culture content” **. While this is not a government telling us to “return to the earth,” this occupational symptom is unquestionably of the same psychological nature, affecting how a people believe they should be spending their time, living their lives.

**Altheide, David and R. Sam Michalowski. “Fear in the News: A Discourse of Control.” The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Summer, 1999), pp. 475-503.

This actually really makes me want to continue writing the paper… This really makes me want to flee to France and finish Summer in a Prologue with my amazing new narrator character I’ve created and can live my life vicariously through as I type him out. What a bummer that school has to get in the way of everything. There’s so much to comment on regarding these subjects, but I ask one question (or rather, a handful):

What would the exposure of the truth behind 9/11 do? On whom would the blame be placed, assuming all evidence will have been well & destroyed, and the public doesn’t care to believe anything outside of corporate news? It doesn’t matter who did it nor why–though I do think the concept of capitalism could quite perfectly explain that. We’re discussing the French Revolution in my European History of the 19th century class. It was spurred and essentially passed by the bourgeoisie, the upper middle class. Napoleon needed to keep their interests in the forefront of his mind, keeping them happy so economy and society could continue/flourish so he could spread his modernism. Without their economic/power/etc issues regarding the aristocracy, no revolution would have passed. Sure, he played a big physical part in the revolution, but the truth was that no one gave a fuck about the proletariat. A flying fuck. That’s why the church could keep a part of its power under Napoleon, so the people could remain controlled. The bourg are into that shit. Yes, a mere fifteen years after the United States secedes from Britain (by the way, we’re the only ones who call it a “revolution”), France goes through the same shit we might reach in the upcoming years. Imagine what conspiracy theorists would have had to say back then.

Could this possibly make us realize we’re allowed to think? That the truth isn’t always on television? Could this instigate revolution? People say we need reform, what with the economy and bullshit “two party” system, but reform implies keeping the fundamentals the same. We are people with thought & passion, capable of so much. Why do we not realize this? Why must life be as we’re told? I need to finish this goddam paper. Getting a little too worked up, and my thoughts are hardly coherent.

Keep yourself busy with some articles:

We are complacent, passive tools.

FBI wants to keep records of our internet usage. The NSA is teaming  up with Google. Another terrorist attack is scheduled for anytime within 3-6 months. It could kill, or it could destroy infrastructure (economic?), or both. It’s so fucking succinct, I’m surprised they haven’t told us who we’ll kick the shit out of after. Obama already got that extra money for the military. I’m scaaaarredd!!! cry the Dada-toting little girls, running to hide behind commercial rap artist sunglasses.

Cognitive Infiltration. If the words alone don’t draw you with their delicious tones, the concept will: Obama advisors want to infiltrate conspiracy groups, labelled “extremists,” in efforts to disband them. What the fuck? Got fascism? Got a stupid fucking dumbass population that won’t give a shit if Britney Spears’ mental state isn’t involved? Yes. Some more from my paper:

In the United States, we choose not to look at our government like each powerful empire that proceeded it: a struggle for power. “No more fearsome research frontier exists than the secret and covert foreign operations of governments in war and peace. Fearsome, because hard evidence is elusive… [T]ens of thousands of persons have been engaged in a variety of secret activities costing billions of dollars. Most of this activity has occurred beyond public scrutiny. Indeed much of it has gone forward beyond the span of control of executive, let alone legislative authority.”* Perhaps this is not the subject of this article, nor relevant, nor confirmed true; but could one say that he has never heard the simple idea that the United States invaded Iraq for the oil? I would say, despite the truth that rests below everything, that every North American has heard this accusation, if not believed it. This thought alone creates a feeling of fear from any side that the truth may find itself. What Benito Mussolini had said of Fascist Italy of the early twentieth century of his own fascism, il corporativismo, corporativism, has been compared by economists of our own society to the contracts of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal: “’corporativism,’ an ill-defined industrial policy involving official state sponsorship of industry cartels and labor unions, remained something of a taboo topic… Finally, to the extent that a government systematically delegates such licensing or compelling power to private organizations, it is a corporatist government.”*** Putting aside the United States government’s hiring of private military companies like Blackwater Worldwide to assist in the situation in Iraq or Hurricane Katrina relief (through which, among others, the government has paid over $1 billion dollars in less than two decades), let us pose a hypothetical question: imagine China wanted to buy Boeing, a sizeable supplier of our country’s arms. How would the United States government, knowing this acquisition represents a direct threat to the armed forces of the country, act? As ambiguous at the moment as in Occupied France, such situations cannot be properly defined because it is not possible; therefore, all we can do is ask the question.

Stemming from the events following 9/11, Northern Arizona University’s sociology professor Kathleen Ferraro makes a direct, and thought-provoking, comparison of George W. Bush to Hitler: “Once in office, [both] passed laws suspending constitutional rights: the Enabling Act for Hitler, the Patriot Acts for Bush. Both men generated support for military aggression by control of the media and inaccurate portrayals of threats to national security.”** All the average proletariat knows of terrorism is that it is bad; the word inflicts fear, and the images we see concerning the subject are never short of horrifying. Consequently, this is not so strange to affirm that the media—the news, the cinema, advertisements: our daily exposure—reinforces the government’s regime.  Ferraro continues:

“And both men promoted images of a mythical past of harmony and unity of people that they would restore through purging of both polluting foreign and degenerate domestic elements… It includes the uses of language, film, music, photographs, stories and myths, and the spectacular physical landscapes that influence the kinds of questions and answers that people are able to articulate.” **

James Fallows, news analyst of the National Public Radio and regular contributor to The New York Times and Atlantic Monthly, observes that “all countries fall into two categories: those that are so messed up we shouldn’t waste time thinking about them, and those that are messed up in a way that threatens our security […] We have a system of news media that tells people constantly that the world is out of control, that they will always be government by crooks, that their fellow citizens are about to kill them.”**** Today’s administration has succeeded in instilling fear, not only because we choose not to disbelieve it, but because this invisible status quo has disabled the development of the instinct to see the ambiguous gray within the good white and the evil black.

*“Untitled Review: Gehlen, Spy of the Century by E. H. Cookridge The Game of the Foxes: The Untold Story of German Espionage in the United States and Great Britain During World War II by Ladislas Farago, Project Paperclip: German Scientists and the Cold War by Clarence G. Lasby The Double Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945 by J. C. Masterman.” The American Political Science Review Vol. 67, No. 4 (Dec., 1973), pp. 1436-1438.

**Ferraro, Kathleen J. “The Culture of Social Problems: Observations of the Third Reich, the Cold War, and Vietnam.” Social Problems Vol. 52 No. 1 (Feb., 2005):  pp 1-14.

***Whitman, James Q. “Of Corporatism, Fascism, and the First New Deal.” The American Journal of Comparative Law Vol. 39, No. 4 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 747-778.

****Held, Virginia.  “The Media and Political Violence.” The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1997), pp. 187-202

I could give a shit about whatever whoever is trying to do however, wherever. I have my own agenda, I have my own passions to fulfill. I do give a shit about, however, being taught to lack thought. Like mice, ready for testing. We have shitty vocabularies that do nothing but slow down our thought, preventing it from reaching new levels. We are human beings that need to be encouraged to live, to create, to fulfill. Okay, I have to go do homework. If you read this, please post your thoughts. Call my bullshit.

Oh yeah, and above all, I’ll still blame everything on the church:

Spurts of Consciousness & Obsessions

Besides black coffee, of course.

CollegeHumor has been occupying my free moments who are not being occupied by my paper on the Nazi occupation of France in relation to the corporate occupation of America. Am I really writing one of my final papers in the university based on politics? Perhaps social politics and cultural aspects, but politics nonetheless joins in the mix… Wow. Speaking of conspiracies, these guys are genius:

That’s like this guy’s “blunder.” Could it truly be coined domestic terrorism?

Speaking of 9/11… I no longer hold an opinion on the happenings of 9/11. Once I met conspiracy theorists I became pretty apathetic about it all after seeing the hype generated. It’s bullshit in any sense of it, and by discussing it I just keep empowering the fear surrounding it: real or conspirical, the fear exists. Where’s the third option in our society? More of that to come….

This article at Not Exactly Rocket Science relates the meta-self to a camera lens through a study which I found very interesting:

First, he recruited 106 students and asked half of them to pose for a picture. They were told that the other group would rate how attractive they were in either a day or a month. They had to predict those ratings, and write a brief description of how they’d be perceived. In reality, all the judges gave their scores there and then. Epley reckoned that people would be better at predicting how others would judge them in the far future than in the immediate one, because we think about things in the distant future using a broad, high-level perspective – the same lens that others view us through.

Sure enough, the posers were significantly better at predicting the judges’ marks if they thought they were being rated in a month than in a day. The descriptions also supported his explanation. When the posers had to think how they’d be perceived tomorrow, they mentioned specific traits such as “hair tied in ponytail” or “looks tired”. If they had to read the mind of a judge one month in the future, they mentioned general details like “Asian” or “wears glasses”. These are the same sorts of comments that the judges themselves wrote in their descriptions.

A second similar study found the same trends when students had to record a description of themselves for a few minutes. Again, they were told that a listener would use the recording to form an overall impression of them, either later that day or several months from now. And again, they were better at predicting the judges’ actual scores if they were casting their mind into the future.

At first, this trick of looking at yourself through a less, detailed lens might seem a bit like another typical strategy used by would-be mind-readers – putting yourself in other people’s shoes. But that’s not what’s at work here – in these experiments, people are very unlikely to know that other people are using different perspective to their own. Indeed, other studies have found that people aren’t that good at taking someone else’s perspective and the strategy has little value in terms of understanding how others see us.

Maybe I’ll find myself a new lens and get over myself. I’ve been trying so hard to focus my lens I realise I’m too close to see at times. Interjection by Jason Cruz lyrics: sometimes you get too close to see a different side of what life could be, and if you stare too long it all becomes a blur, and its easy to forget just who we are. Don’t stare to hard, just take a look around. Simple simple simple yet so powerful. In a world full of mirrors a reflection is all you see. We’ll save my favorite quote from my punk days for next time.

And of course, among all this introspective contemplation, I find ameta-internet video! I’m so inspired:

I swear, I’m going to rename this blog “Daily Synchronicity.” My eyes hurt after Avatar and its 3D glasses, and I questioned why we’d go see 3D movies often. Then I see that they’re debating making television in 3D. Oh, wow.

One too many TED talks going on in my life right now, so we’ll leave it with one I haven’t watched. But how fucking cool that WordPress has TED tags now:

I’d like to think that science will never be able to find consciousness in brains, though after that DMT research I think that this proves the physical aspect of our connection to a collective consciousness. I no longer believe in imagination, or coincidences. And life is freaky. More on that to come…

Talking to a friend, we discussed the parallels between experienced business gurus and their younger employees and the same exact situation in science. We are youth, we truly are the future. We make change, no one else. We embrace.

Freud’s nephew was the guy we can blame for fucking shit up with consumer culture. Wow, carpe diem is a big mystery? Living in the moment is truly so shocking?. I’ll never understand, though I’ll never deny my involvement in it, either…

One more CollegeHumor vid, since I’m finally having sex (oh yeah, I think I met a soulmate. Is that too personal to blog about?):

I’m officially all up in Twitter since I like, deleted my like, Facebook, like. Follow me or something, you three.