The Velocity Of Truth

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."  This is the government's greatest fear. Aeschylus is supposed to have said that “In war, truth is the first casualty.” He may have been technically correct, but truth is a casualty before the war even starts. Truth is a casualty of government. Government subsists on lies. How can it be otherwise, when lying is the path to advancement in government?

Lies have always served government well because people have a tendency to trust their government for some inexplicable reason and even when lies were exposed, it was usually long after the fact and the thing lied about forgotten. There have always been a few people who point the lies out at the time, but they are almost always ignored. There were probably some people at the time who doubted the Gulf of Tonkin Incident or the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor, but they had no effective means of disseminating their views.

Herein lies what I believe to be the greatest problem for government. There is a concept in economics called the velocity of money, and if I may borrow from it I would say that the internet has brought about what I call the Velocity of Truth. The theory works like this: the government puts out a lie to justify some act or contemplated action, but before it can even agree on the details, somebody exposes it as a lie. This usually necessitates another lie – sometimes called a clarification – to cover up the first one. Before you know it, the government has woven itself a tangled web in its efforts to deceive.

Truth and government are antonymous.

This is a problem for government that seems as though it can only get worse. Daniel Ellsberg was an anomaly in his time, but just in the last few years people like Julian Assange, William Binney, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, Sibel Edmonds, et alia have pullulated like chickens. Before the internet they would have been voices crying in the wilderness and could be safely ignored, but not any more because the Velocity of Truth is increasing.

Surveillance can only become a worse problem for the government as video and audio recorders get smaller and ubiquitous and data storage devices shrink and gain capacity. It is similar to an elephant fighting ants or a dog biting at fleas.

Not too long ago, the police could concoct any story to justify their actions, but now they are constantly being caught on video recording devices that contradict their account of events. If John Kennedy were assassinated today, Abraham Zapruder would only be one of thousands with a video record of it, and the modern version would also have audio. As it becomes more common for devices to upload information to a remote location, the cat will be out of the bag, vanished and had kittens. Today government goons can seize the equipment and destroy it or erase the information, but that option will soon evaporate.

The current program of fabricating a reason to attack Syria is an example of the pesky internet. The Daily Mail ran a story on January 29, 2013, titled U.S. 'backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad's regime' that mysteriously vanished, but it was archived here by web.archive.org.  Just a few years ago, it would have required digging up a copy of the original story and making copies of it to disseminate.

Most of us can't imagine the inventions that will soon be commonplace, and many of them will help increase the flow of information. Every advance in the flow of information damages the government's ability to deceive and increases the Velocity of Truth.

Civics Lesson

Back in 1973 there was a popular Paul Simon song called Kodachrome, the first few lines of which are:

"When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall"

It really is a wonder that anyone subjected to public schooling can think at all since the purpose of public indoctrination seems to be to fill the students' heads with error and carefully filtered information. It isn't so much a lack of education that hurts anyone, it's the errors that are taught as fact that do almost irremediable harm.

I don't recall learning anything useful in high school about how our system of government works. Even politically active people seem to believe the malarkey that was taught them in civics class. Some examples would be that we are a nation of laws, popular rule, a "democracy", inalienable rights, etcetera, etc.

If anyone were to publish a textbook explaining how government really works, no school system would adopt it. If it did adopt it, it would probably lose its accreditation. In the interest of assisting some would-be writer/publisher I offer the following observations on how the system works.

The first rule is that the government is not bound by the moral law. It can lie, steal, murder, blackmail, torture (as long as you don't call it torture), imprison, extort or do anything else that seems expedient for achieving its ends. It's as Rod Serling said, "... it has one iron rule: Logic is an enemy, and truth is a menace."

The importance of these principles is emphasized by the assertion of their opposites. Truth, honor, prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, respect for the individual are all fine until they get in the way of some State objective. Initially, the student is taught by means of ritual. Parades, patriotic music, military displays, the pledge of allegiance, wreath layings and so on form a sort of liturgy of the State. Later the student will be taught about how the State has made all good things possible by means of the sacrifices of our forefathers.

Lying is the first tool in the State's tool kit, but it is important to convey the idea that everything the government says is true. If the agents of the state were forced to tell the truth, the whole system would break down. Some countries, such as the Soviet Union had official news agencies to propagate their lies. Everybody everywhere knew that nothing reported by TASS or Pravda could be believed, but in the U.S. the private news organizations usually report uncritically what the government tells them in its press releases.

One of the things the government does over and over is to get some kind of measure - many times a tax - passed by claiming that it is going to be temporary. These things are temporary in the same way that the pyramids in Egypt are temporary. The income tax withholding during WW II was a temporary measure.

Emotional engineering is another important technique used by the State to direct the populace to identify with its goals. Osama bin Laden was a good guy when he was on our side in fighting the Russians, but then he became a bad guy. Saddam Hussein was also both a good guy and a bad guy, but Muammar Gaddafi was a bad guy who became a good guy and then a bad guy again.

If it were decided that the U.S. needed Canadian oil fields and the Canadians wouldn't agree to our terms, we would suddenly find that they were killing babies and old people, and exporting drugs to our youth. Pretty soon there would be an  incident where they attacked one of our border checkpoints or illegally seized a U.S. fishing boat. By this means a friendly people would be transformed into "the enemy."

Blackmail is also useful to keep members of the government in line. It is a good idea to never appoint someone to a high position - such as a Supreme Court Justice - who can't be blackmailed into doing the "right thing" when the need arises. It's also useful when the government wants a private entity to do something it isn't required by law to do, such as turn over phone records. The officials of the intransigent company might find that they are being audited by the IRS or that they are being investigated for SEC violations or that their bank account is being seized for wire fraud or money laundering or any number of things.

Stealing of course is the bedrock of the State. Without the ability to steal, the state could not exist. According to our system of income taxation, the State has a prior claim on all income and it will decide how much the rightful owner is allowed to keep. If the State decides it wants your property it can seize it under its power of eminent domain and pay you the supposed fair market value of it, which obviously is less than you would have sold it for or you would have already sold it. Maybe you wouldn't have sold it for 10 times fair market value, if at all.

The State likes to invoke the name of God in support of whatever it is it's doing, but God should know his place. God cannot be allowed to countermand the dictates of the State, whether it be forcing Jews to eat pork under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, compelling Christians to sacrifice to the Emperor under Domitian, Diocletian, et al., suppressing the Church under Calles, executing dissenters like Jagerstatter under Hitler, or requiring the violation of conscience under Obama. The State is God - the only true God - and will have no strange gods before it. 

The government has made itself the interpreter and arbiter of its own powers, so it should surprise no one that it usually finds for itself. It has answered the question of  "who will guard the guards themselves?" that it will guard them. You might as well appeal to the protection racket to adjudicate a complaint you have against it.

Murder isn't mentioned much in the context of civics lessons, but it is a time-honored way of dealing with troublesome or meddlesome people. It's amazing how many annoying - to politicians - people end up killing themselves or dying in plane crashes. During the Clinton administration the term "Arkancide" briefly came into the lexicon. Most Americans think that our public officials are different from the way they have been throughout recorded history. I previously wrote about this public delusion here. As a wise man once said, "There is nothing new under the sun." and we certainly have not developed a new kind of government official. They are all concerned with the acquisition and retention of power and will do anything to realize that end.

Anyone who believed that our "representatives" actually represent the people should have been enlightened by the bailout of the banks against overwhelming popular opposition to it, or the passage of Obama's socialized medicine bill against popular opposition. Sometimes writing your Congressman or Senator just doesn't seem to do any good.

Reality Dawning

Many years ago, a group of disgruntled patriots, nationalists or terrorists - depending on your perspective - went into the Capitol building in D.C. and shot five congressmen. The assailants were four Puerto Rican nationalists who unfurled a flag of Puerto Rico and then fired thirty shots into the floor of the chamber. This incident happened on March 1, 1954.

As far as I know, nobody tried to claim that these people committed this act for anything other than political reasons or that "they hate us for our freedom."  One of the shooters supposedly shouted "Free Puerto Rico."
There was no talk of "3/1 changed everything." Everybody probably understood that the shooters wanted the US out of Puerto Rico. If someone had inquired as to why the assailants shot the congressmen, they wouldn't have been accused of "trying to justify the terrorists," it would have been recognized as a simple inquiry as to motive.

The same thing is true of the World Trade Center/Pentagon caper, but the public is discouraged from believing the perpetrators. Soon after the attack, Osama Bin Laden appeared in a video tape wearing his US issued Goretex camouflage jacket saying that he had nothing to do with the attack, but that he approved of it and congratulated the ones who pulled it off. He said (paraphrasing) that if the US continued to aid Israel and occupy "Holy lands,"  "I swear to God" it will happen again. After this the government made sure that the people weren't going to hear any more grievances from Mr. Bin Laden by prohibiting the showing of any more videos from him with the excuse that he "might be sending coded messages."

The video is probably on YouTube if it hasn't gone down the memory hole.

Immediately there was a propaganda campaign to assure the public that the attacks had nothing to do with American actions in the Middle East. All of a sudden it was discovered that these people hate us because we are good or because we are free. Has there ever been another case in history of one group being so resentful of another group that has not harmed them in any way that they are willing to kill themselves to inflict harm on the objects of their resentment? Would it be rational for someone to say to himself, "I'm barely eking out a living and my neighbor has millions of dollars and lives in a mansion. I think I'll crash a plane into his house to kill myself and perhaps kill him too?" The question answers itself.

If this were motivated by the Islamic religion, it would seem that all the disgruntled practitioners would not be concentrated in one area as I wrote about here.

Fortunately, there is a slow movement toward reality and now 43% of Americans believe that the attacks might have been motivated by something the US government did, according to this article about a poll by Pew Research Centre. According to the article:

"The shift, however, was mainly confined to self-described Democrats and independents, half of whom now believe US policies may have motivated Al Qaeda.

Republicans, on the other hand, remained steadfast, as on a number of other key issues, in their view that the attacks were not motivated by anything the US had done.

The survey also found major differences between age groups on this question. More than half (52 percent) of respondents under 30 said US actions may have motivated the attacks, while only 20 percent of respondents 65 and older were open to that explanation."

This might help explain why Rick Santorum and Rudy Giuliani claim to believe the party line. It's doubtful that anybody who has spent time in government would believe the "official" story. If these two are regular church-goers, they would have recited thousands of times the part of the Confiteor that says "...I have sinned through my own fault,... in what I have done and what I have failed to do..." i.e. taking responsibility for one's own actions. Why would governments be any different from individuals since people in the upper echelons of government are many times some of the worst people? The principle seems to be that whatever "we" do is fine and everybody had better like it.

Imposing sanctions and no-fly zones, supporting dictators, occupying territory, aiding one's enemies, toppling elected officials, etc, generates ill will from the victims of such actions. This is probably a universal rule.

When little Johnny keeps poking the rattlesnake with a smoldering stick we shouldn't be too perplexed as to why the rattlesnake bites little Johnny. It isn't because of Johnny's freedom or because he is good or any other kooky explanation. Sending out hordes of people to fight the rattlesnakes over there so we don't have to fight them over here is not the solution. The solution is to leave them alone and reprimand Johnny, although the latter would probably not be necessary since he has learned a valuable lesson on his own,

Trying to impose your will on another people is a sure-fire way to make enemies. Even if you have a benevolent intention - rarely the case - sending lots of armed men (usually boys) into another country is sure to cause trouble. Boys will be boys, and when they start drinking and fighting and whoring, the locals take a disliking to them and all who sent them.

Almost 2000 years ago, the Jews were preparing to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread in Jerusalem when a smart-alecky Roman soldier mooned them and uttered some insulting remark which resulted in a riot. Soon after the "mooning" episode, another soldier tore up the Jewish Books Of The Law and threw them in the fire. As everybody knows, things went down hill from there with the Temple eventually being destroyed.

The lesson from this - or one of the lessons - is that people don't like foreigners coming into their country and pushing them around. This is something that Rick and Rudy and all others "in denial" should ponder.

History You Might Have Missed

The commander of the carrier group had decided to attack on Sunday morning because he knew that the officers slept late at Pearl Harbor. He had been running with no lights and in radio silence in heavy seas. Before sunup he launched 152 planes from his carriers.

About an hour later, they appeared in the sunny skies over Pearl Harbor, dropping 20 tons of bombs on the airfields and anchored ships while the fighter planes strafed the airfields destroying the planes on the ground. Not a single fighter got off the ground to defend against the attackers.

Twenty-four hours later, the carriers had still not been located by the defenders. It was a rout for the attackers. The defenders later tried to claim that they had hit 45 of the attacking planes with anti-aircraft fire, which they had not.

In typical government fashion, a report was filed on the incident stating: "...it is doubtful if air attacks can be launched against Oahu in the face of strong defensive aviation without subjecting the attacking carriers to the danger of material damage and consequent great losses in the attack air force."

Japanese agents apparently didn't agree with the navy report and forwarded a report of their own to Tokyo regarding Admiral Harry Ervin Yarnell's February 7, 1932 attack. Nine years later, the Japanese proved that an air attack could be launched against Oahu with real bombs (instead of flour sacks), real torpedoes and bullets. Yarnell had shown the way, but was ignored because the Navy was dominated by battleship admirals.

If you don't remember spending much time studying about Admiral Yarnell, don't feel left out, I don't remember any mention of him either. The first mention I ever saw of him was in a book called Pearl Harbor: The Story of The Secret War by George Morgenstern.

If you went to school recently, surely your civics or political science class would have spent quite a bit of time studying Operation Northwoods, but in case the details are a little murky here's a brief thumbnail outline.

Operation Northwoods was a plan to cook up a pretext for starting a war with Cuba. As stated on the face of the document:

Subject: Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)

1. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the attached Memorandum for the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, which responds to a request of that office for brief but precise description of pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.

Further on:

5....World opinion, and the United Nations forum should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere.

(Three follows five because the numbering sequence changes between pages. See PDF at link above)

3. This plan, incorporating projects selected from the attached suggestions, or from other sources, should be developed to focus all efforts on a specific ultimate objective which would provide adequate justification for US military intervention. Such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well as the United States....this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.

The plan goes on to describe several scenarios in the government's bag of tricks, such as having friendly Cubans in uniform stage an attack on Guantanamo, start rumors using clandestine radio, capture Cuban saboteurs (friendly) inside the base, start riots near base main gate (friendly Cubans), sabotage ship in harbor, sink ship near harbor entrance and conduct funerals for mock victims.

One that I really like because it harkens back to another war is:

3. A "Remember the Maine" incident could be arranged in several forms:

a. We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba

b. We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in Cuban waters. . . . .The US would follow up with an air/sea operation covered by US fighters to "evacuate" remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.

The ever imaginative public servants thought of several more provocations such as sinking a boatload of Cubans (real or imagined) enroute to Florida and shooting Cuban refugees in Florida. Another one that the Dominicans probably wouldn't like was burning the cane crops in the Dominican Republic with Soviet Bloc incendiaries from planes made to look like Cuban aircraft and "intercepting" arms shipments to Communists in the Dominican Republic.

Probably the most ambitious plan was blowing up a passenger plane (drone) loaded with "students" and recovering debris off Cuba. The plane would send mayday signals before being blown up to make it seem more legitimate.

If you were in school prior to 1998, you wouldn't have studied this since it was classified until November 1997, but I'm sure they spend several hours going over this in government-run day prisons today. The next time you hear that some rogue nation is picking on poor little Uncle Sam, print out a copy of Operation Northwoods and read it. Keep it handy as a refresher course in government marketing of its programs.

Operation Northwoods was never implemented because John Kennedy apparently would not approve it, but how many similar plans have been approved and implemented?

If a 1960s version of Daniel Ellsberg or Bradley Manning had exposed Operation Northwoods to the public, would he have been a hero or a villain?