The Phantom Victory

 

“In The Past, 

Politicians promised 

to create A Better World. 

They had Different Ways of achieving this, but

Their Power and Authority came 

from the optimistic Visions 

they offered to Their People. 

Those Dreams FAILED. 

And Today, People have 

Lost Faith in Ideologies. 

Increasingly, 

Politicians are seen simply 

as Managers of Public Life. 

But now, They have Discovered 

A NEW Role that restores 

Their Power and Authority. 

Instead of Delivering Dreams, Politicians now promise 

to Protect Us from  NIGHTMARES. 

They Say that 

They will rescue Us,

from dreadful Dangers 

that We cannot See and 

DO Not Understand. 

And The Great Danger of All —

"So much of the news this year has been hopeless, depressing, and above all, confusing. To which the only response is to say, "oh dear."

What this film is going to suggest is that that Defeatist Response has become a central part of a new system of political control. 

And to understand how this is happening, you have to look to Russia, to a man called Vladislav Surkov, who is A Hero of Our Time. 

Surkov is one of President Putin's advisers, and has helped him maintain his power for 15 years, but he has done it in a very new way. 

He came originally from the avant-garde art world, and those who have studied His Career, say that what Surkov has done, is to import ideas from conceptual art into the very heart of politics. 

His aim is to undermine peoples' perceptions of the world, so they never know what is really happening. 

Surkov turned Russian Politics into a bewildering, constantly changing piece of Theatre. 

He sponsored all kinds of groups, from neo-Nazi skinheads to liberal human rights groups. He even backed parties that were opposed to President Putin. 

But the key thing was, that Surkov then let it be known that this was what he was doing, which meant that no one was sure what was Real or Fake. As one journalist put it: "It is a strategy of power that keeps any opposition constantly confused." 

A ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it is undefinable. 

aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com..

It is exactly what Surkov is alleged to have done in The Ukraine this year. 

In typical fashion, as The War began, Surkov published a short story about something he called Non-linear War. A War where you never know what The Enemy are really up to, or even who they are. 

The underlying aim, Surkov says, is not to Win The War, but to use the conflict to create a constant state of destabilized perception, in order to manage and control.

But maybe, we have something similar emerging here in Britain. Everything we're told by journalists and politicians is confusing and contradictory. 

Of course, there is no Mr. Surkov in charge, but it is an odd, non-linear world that plays into the hands of Those in Power.

British troops have come Home from Afghanistan, but nobody seems to know whether it was A Victory or whether it was A Defeat. 

..

Aging disk jockeys are prosecuted for crimes they committed decades ago, while practically no one in The City of London is prosecuted for the endless financial crimes that have been revealed there. 

In Syria, We are Told that President Assad is The Evil Enemy, but then His Enemies turn out to be even more evil than him, so We Bomb Them, and by doing that, We Help keep Assad in Power. 

But the real epicenter of this non-linear world is The Economy, and the closest we have to our own shape-shifting Post-Modern Politician is George Osborne. 

He tells us proudly that The Economy is Growing, but at the same time, wages are going down. 

He says he is reducing The Deficit, but then it is revealed that The Deficit is going up. 

But the dark heart of this shape-shifting world is Quantitative Easing. 

The Government is insisting on taking billions of Pounds out of the economy through its austerity program, yet at the very same time it is pumping billion of Pounds into the economy through Quantitative Easing, the equivalent of 24,000 Pounds for every family in Britain. 

But it gets even more confusing, because the Bank of England has admitted that those billions of Pounds are not going where they are supposed to. 

A vast majority of that money has actually found its way into the hands of the wealthiest five percent in Britain. 

It has been described as the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in recent documented history. 

It could be a huge scandal, comparable to the greedy oligarchs in Russia. A ruthless elite, siphoning off billions in public money. But nobody seems to know. 

It sums up the strange mood of our time, where nothing really makes any coherent sense. 

We live with a constant vaudeville of contradictory stories that makes it impossible for any real opposition to emerge, because they can't counter it with any coherent narrative of their own. 

And it means that We as individuals become ever more powerless, unable to challenge anything, because we live a state of confusion and uncertainty. 

To which the only response, is : Oh Dear. 

But that is 

What They want You to Say.

Kirby on Survival

  

“Now, the idea that A Story is a form of Communication — and entertainment — is one of those facts that appears self-evident upon first consideration, but that becomes more mysterious the longer it is pondered. 

If it is True that A Story has A Point, then it is clear that it is pointing TO something.

But What, and How? 

What constitutes Pointing is obvious when it is an action specifying a particular thing, or a person by a particular person, but much less obvious when it is something typifying the cumulative behavior, shall we say, of
A Character in A Story.

“ There is an old saying: "That which doesn't Kill You, makes You Stronger." I don't believe that. 

I think the things that TRY to Kill You, make you Angry and Sad. 

Strength comes from The Good Things : Your Family, Your Friends, The Satisfaction of Hard Work. 

Those are the things that will keep you Whole. Those are the things to hold onto when You are Broken.

— Jax Teller

"What Happens to People when they are acted-upon by Powerful Ideas from Outside Them?"

AND...

"What Then Happens to Those Powerful Ideas, when They get inside Those People's Heads..?

There are Tigers in The Night.

Creatures bearing great scars inflicted by wrenching confrontations -- lethal rushes on dark, unyielding ground where the body pours all it's strength into fitful instinctive thrusts.

This is The Real Thing! The primal struggle. Throughout history it has cried out for dramatisation on A Cave Wall, The Written Page, or The Panel of a Comic Book.

In my attempt to create a serious novel for our medium, I have chosen that most basic of experiences, one we have all shared at one time or another -- SURVIVAL. I have taken this innate response to danger and have portrayed it in mythological terms.

The concept is simple. Friends and Enemies squaring off in various ways, for various reasons, on some Eternal Battleground where all is won or lost and the debris is cleared away for the next conflict. THEY are Evil, WE are Good. THEY are Plotters and Traitors, WE are Loyal and Clever. THEY are eternally responsible for Our Woes, so WE will someday pull up our guts, stop the shadow-boxing, and go in for The Kill.

Thus I am doing what mankind has always done. I've turned these emotions and reactions into gods, and brought into view the awesome images that haunt our dreams. So it has been throughout the centuries. 

When Zeus' and Hercules' time had passed, Mercury and Mars arrived on the scene. France sent Napoleon's Grande Armée on tour; England subsequently hailed the unshakable heroes of Rudyard Kipling. 

Idols rose and fell all over the world with an odd and fantastic nobility that fairly flipped our history books. 

How we loved them all -- our Horatios at the bridge, our Transylvanian Draculas. 

Grandiose figures such as these symbolized The Real Thing. Territories immemorial have been covered with Average Joe types doing what they've always done "in the name of (fill in the name of your choice; all sides have continually offered so many). 

When my turn came at the draft board during World War II, I chose Superman as My Guardian. Tarzan, at that moment, seemed somehow related to my early teens. Superman was the electrifying hero of the day. Who was going to rub out a guy who hid behind such a patriotic and invincible image? There was even talk in the army about General Eisenhower trading pulp magazines for copies of Action Comics. How could I have landed in a better outfit? It eased my trepidations about having my hair parted by a twenty millimeter shell. 

Experiences like these seem to stimulate and guide one's thoughts into avenues where one's humanity must be examined in relation to The Past, Present, and Future. Darkseid, Highfather, and the rest of the cast have always been sincere expressions of my feelings - reactions to all the things I knew were out there in The Night, like the scrabbling of an unseen army of claws, or the beating of wings in nocturnal vigilance over sleepers in repose. 

Today The Real Thing is something we've never known before, a new something not yet devised, shaped, or defined. It is something we must deeply consider, since Darkseid looms ever larger, like a great, monumental cobra moving ceaselessly and vengefully. 

Ever-present, he is thwarted, sometimes outsmarted, but always eager to swallow us en masse and integrate us into his push-button paradise where his every wish is fulfilled. 

For Darkseid is the god of the silo that houses the death-package. He rules the toxic wastelands and merrily increases their rate of expansion. He seeps into our hatreds and prejudices, and nurtures our biases until they become time bombs --primed and ready to activate The Worst in us. 

Darkseid is playing for keeps in a cosmic minefield that's never supposed to blow After all, isn't that where we all are? Isn't that where we live? Aren't we at the apex of the Big Blast? Well, that's the backyard I'm playing in. 

How is it going to turn out? Suffice it to say that like Darkseid, I too play for keeps. You see, I'm walking that same cosmic minefield. What I have in mind for the Hunger Dogs graphic novel will make your blood race. What will they do, these gods whose situations so strangely resemble our own? The bottom line involves choices. 

Neither gods nor humans have ever stood calmly in a minefield forever. 

Good or Evil, they are bound to choose. And when they do, you will see The Truth of all that motivates us. As a thinking being, you have the obligation to choose. If the fate of all mankind were in your hands, what would your decision be? 

As a Writer and An Artist, I've drawn my answer.

Can't Get You Out Of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World

"What Happens to People when they are acted-upon by Powerful Ideas from Outside Them?"

AND...

"What Then Happens to Those Powerful Ideas, when They get inside Those People's Heads..?"

 

Adam Curtis interviewed by Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode

Simon Mayo & Mark Kermode talk to director Adam Curtis about his new series of documentary films,

 Can't Get You Out Of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World.

"What Happens to People when they are acted-upon by Powerful Ideas from Outside Them?"

A : “I Have a Bad Feeling About This...”

AND...

"What Then Happens to Those Powerful Ideas, when They get inside Those People's Heads..?"

A : The Force Awakens.

Psychic Anarchism - Developing a Self-Policing Inner Life and Liberation Consciousness Without Rules

The Century of the Self - Part 3:

"There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads - 
He Must Be Destroyed"

In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.

Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people's minds by business and politics.

This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help movements like Werber Erhard's Erhard Seminar Training - into the irresistible rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation.

But the American corporations soon realised that this new self was not a threat but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts to read the inner desires of the new self.


Originally broadcast on 2nd May 2002.

Adam Curtis - Bitter Lake

Adam Curtis - Bitter Lake from Spike EP on Vimeo.

"Events come and go like waves of a fever, leaving us confused and uncertain. Those in power tell stories to help us make sense of the complexity of reality, but those stories are increasingly unconvincing and hollow. This is a film about why those stories have stopped making sense, and how that led us in the West to become a dangerous and destructive force in the world. It is told through the prism of a country at the center of the world: Afghanistan." - Adam Curtis

“The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” 

― Lenin

"I am The Walrus"

 ― Lennon

"Establishment Contrarian"

"The Power of Nightmares. The Century of the Self. Pandora’s Box. All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. If you’re familiar with the alternative media, you’ve doubtless come across references to the documentary work of Adam Curtis. But besides the well-known examples of brilliance within Curtis’ work is a deeply doctrinaire strain that seeks to normalize mainstream history and convince us that the driving ideologies of the political elite are exactly what they say they are. Join us today on The Corbett Report as we deconstruct Curtis’ documentaries and look for the deeper meaning behind the globalist ideology."

https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-adam-curtis-establishment-contrarian-video/

Another company of interest, on floor 91 just above the impact zone for the south tower, was Washington Group International (Washington). This company was known primarily as a construction and mining firm, and it had just acquired Raytheon Engineers in July 2000. Raytheon was reported to have also occupied floor 91.

Washington had an interesting history. It had been a contractor for the DOE and its predecessor agencies since 1942, when it was involved in the Manhattan Project. In 1995, a management shake-up at Washington resulted in the temporary installment of William Clark as acting chairman. Clark was a member of the Center for Security Policy, along with many neo-cons including Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Norman Augustine (In-Q-Tel), Douglas Feith, and 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman. After re-organizing the management at Washington, in just a few months, Clark resigned.

In 1996, Washington took over Morrison-Knudsen, an engineering and construction company that had a history of working on large projects around the world, including in China, Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. In Vietnam, Washington led the RMK-BRJ construction project with Brown & Root. During the 1980s, it worked closely on hazardous clean-up projects for the DOE. The Army Corps of Engineers hired Morrison-Knudsen to demolish over 200 buildings in 1995. [52]

In 1999, Washington acquired Westinghouse Government Environmental Services Company (WGESC), a firm that provided management services to the DOE and DOD. In July 2001, E. Preston Rahe, Jr, the President of WGESC, was promoted to Executive Vice President of Business Development for Washington Group's Government operating unit. Rahe went on to form a new company called Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, along with General John A. Gordon.

Gordon was George H. W. Bush's Senior Director for Defense Policy on the National Security Council, and he worked with George Tenet at the CIA from September 1996 to October 1997, as associate director of central intelligence for military support, and as deputy director of the CIA from October 1997 to 2000. During this time, Gordon would have worked closely with A.B. Krongard, who was Tenet's counsel from 1998 to 2001. Later, in 2003 and 2004, Gordon was George W. Bush's Homeland Security advisor.

Apart from Lawrence Livermore labs (LLNL), one of the DOE facilities for which Washington was responsible, well before 9/11, was the Savannah River site near Aiken, SC. In February 1997, LLNL and the Savannah River site signed an agreement of cooperation to share technology. Savannah went on to add "Developing sol gel technology for fuels and other applications" to its portfolio. [53, 54] Sol-gel technology is utilized by LLNL for making nanothermites. [55] In another coincidence, Savannah River Technology staff participated in the search and rescue operations at Ground Zero by providing unique tools. [56]

Today, Washington is owned by URS Corp, and they still "help manage and operate Idaho NL, LANL and LLNL," through a partnership with Battelle. [57] But just before 9/11 they were going through a tough time financially, and sought chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents show that Washington made court-ordered pre-petition payments, as part of these proceedings, to a number of companies including Komatsu. Washington also made payments to Greenhorne & O'Mara, whose employee Theresa McAllister was a lead author for the FEMA and NIST reports on the WTC disaster, and to Sumitomo Bank. [58] Sumitomo Bank was closely allied with Komatsu, and was involved with defense-related production. [59]

Sources:

[52] Mark MacIntyre, Bunker Hill: light at the end of the tunnel, The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, August 20, 1998, http://www.djc.com/special/enviro98/10043970.htm

[53] The agreement between LLNL and Savannah River can be found here - https://www.llnl.gov/str/News597.html

[54] Savannah's reference to developing sol-gels can be found here - http://srnl.doe.gov/mat_sci.htm

[55] Randy Simpson webpage at LLNL - https://www.llnl.gov/str/RSimpson.html

[56] News from the Savannah River National Laboratory, September 20, 2001, http://srnl.doe.gov/newsroom/2001news/nyc_911.pdf

[57] URS Website - http://www.urscorp.com/Divisions/index.php?s=102

[58] SEC document for Washington pre-payments - http://www.secinfo.com/dRqWm.4G1Vx.c.htm

[59] The Ties That Bind, Descended from family business empires, six huge business groups dominate the Japanese economy, Multinational Monitor, October 1983 - http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1983/10/ties.html

History of Morrison - Knudsen to the end of WWII from the company website

Morrison Knudsen Corporation (MK) has long stood as one of the world's largest engineering and construction organizations. A 1954 feature article in Time identified cofounder Harry Morrison as "the man who has done more than anyone else to change the face of the earth." Such words reflect the magnitude and scope of the company's projects, ranging from work on the Hoover Dam to the construction of the then largest building in the world, the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center, to the building of portions of the transAlaska pipeline. Today, MK is active in more than 35 countries, serving the environmental, heavy civil, industrial, mining, operations and maintenance, power, process, transportation, and logistics markets.

Dams Marked Early Years

The company's origin dates back to Idaho's Boise Valley at the turn of the century, when Morris Hans Knudsen and Harry W. Morrison teamed up to exploit business opportunities introduced by the National Reclamation Act of 1902. The U.S. government was subsidizing projects to irrigate vast tracts of desert. Knudsen, a native of Denmark, moved to Idaho with his wife in 1905. He became well known for his skill using horses and basic scrapers to haul dirt. Morrison, a native of Illinois, moved to Idaho in 1904 as a concrete superintendent for water reclamation projects. In 1912 Morrison and Knudsen collaborated on their first job, a subcontract for approximately $14,000 worth of work at a pumping station along the Snake River near Grand View, Idaho. This and other early jobs generated little, if any, profit. The first financially successful endeavor for the duo was the 1914 construction of Three-Mile Falls Dam in Oregon. In addition to yielding a profit, the Three-Mile job established the company as a legitimate player in dam construction, which became one of the company's hallmarks. (By the 1980s MK had built more than 150 dams, including Brownlee, one of three dams erected across the Snake River in Hells Canyon for Idaho Power; Karadj, near Teheran, Iran; San Luis, in California, with a crest length of more than three miles; and Hungry Horse and Yellowtail, both in Montana.)

One of the most significant milestones in the growth of Morrison-Knudsen Company was, in fact, construction of yet another dam, the Hoover (Boulder) Dam, contracted in 1931. The magnitude of the job led to the 1932 incorporation of Morrison-Knudsen Company, Inc. The project was massive, drawing on 5,000 workers. It called for 4.5 million yards of concrete (enough to pave a four-lane highway from Seattle to Miami, according to company sources) and reached a height of 726 feet upon completion. To handle such a formidable task, Morrison brought together a consortium of different companies, Six Companies, Inc., thus introducing the now commonplace practice of joint-venture construction. The dam was completed in 1935, two years ahead of schedule.

Having survived the Great Depression, due, in part, to its success with the Hoover Dam project, MK was prepared to meet the business demands of World War II. The company joined other contractors in a joint venture known as Contractors, Pacific Naval Air Bases. Building airfield facilities on Midway and Wake islands in late 1941, more than 1,200 company workers were captured by the Japanese. On the Hawaiian island of Oahu, MK was also engaged in the construction of 20 huge naval fuel-storage vaults, each 250 feet high and 100 feet in diameter. MK launched its company magazine, the eMKayan, in March 1942, a strategic time to reinforce public relations.

These and other World War II projects established long-lasting ties for MK in the area of military contracting. In addition to extensive building contracts in Vietnam, the company procured a substantial amount of business outside of active battle zones. The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, a chain of bases and radar installations, was constructed and maintained across northern Canada, as was the "White Alice" communications system in Alaska. In the 1960s MK became a leading builder of missile facilities, including the first U.S. underground Titan missile installation at the Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado. The company sponsored a joint venture for the Aeropropulsion Systems Test Facility, an advanced jet engine center for the U.S. Air Force, which was completed in 1984. The company also was involved in the reconstruction of Kuwait following the 1991 Gulf War. According to U.S. News and World Report, such an expensive national reconstruction effort had not been launched since the Marshall Plan molded a new Europe after World War II.

"Matt Albie certainly doesn't speak for the cast, crew and staff of Studio 60, whose thoughts and prayers are with the brave men and women who lost their lives on September 11th."

My Rebuttals to Curtis and the BBC :

Afghanistan 1982 - The Struggle For Freedom Continues from Spike EP on Vimeo.