Monday, February 26, 2024

"USS Liberty – Tragic Blunder or Mass Murder?"

"USS Liberty – Tragic Blunder or Mass Murder?"
by Martin Hanson

"Never before in the history of the US Navy has a Navy board of inquiry ignored the testimony of American eyewitnesses and taken, on faith, the word of their attackers.”
- Captain Dr. Richard Kiepfer, USS Liberty survivor

“A danger to national security exists whenever elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel’s interests when they conflict with American interests.”
- Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1970-1974

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
- Mark Twain

"At dawn on June 14, 1967 a battered American intelligence-gathering ship, the USS Liberty limped into the Grand Harbor at Valletta, Malta. Six days earlier it had been attacked and almost sunk by Israeli air and naval forces while in international waters 13 miles off the coast of Egypt. Fewer than a third of the ship’s complement of 294 escaped death or injury in what survivors are convinced was a deliberate attempt by the Israelis to sink the ship with all hands.

What was the ship doing there? Though a naval ship manned by naval crew, the Liberty was a state-of-the art intelligence gathering ship. Bristling with radio antennae, its National Security Agency (NSA) staff below decks could eavesdrop on radio communications in nearby countries. On board were NSA linguists able to intercept and understand communications in Russian and Arabic. In response to rising tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the Liberty had been sent to the Eastern Mediterranean from its previous location off the coast of West Africa.

The ship arrived at its destination just in time for the beginning of the ‘six-day-war’ on June 5, in which Israel inflicted devastating surprise attacks on the air forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, destroying hundreds of planes before they could get off the ground. Israel now occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Only Syria was still resisting; Israel had not yet taken the Golan Heights. This would have involved rushing troops and materiel north from Sinai to the Syrian border, for which secrecy was essential. The presence of the Liberty therefore posed a threat to the completion of General Dyan’s plans.

AIR RECONNAISSANCE: June 8 in the Eastern Mediterranean was a crystal-clear day with perfect visibility. At 4 A.M., Ensign John Scott began his watch duty on the bridge of the Liberty. Mindful of the fact that the Liberty was in a war zone, the skipper, Commander McGonagle, had been relentlessly drilling his crew to deal with possible air attack. At 5:15 A.M. Scott spotted a lone Israeli ‘Noratlas’ photoreconnaissance plane circling the ship, the first of many such overflights. These flights did not concern Liberty’s crew, as the ship was in international waters.

Lieutenant James Ennes, who survived the attack, had just ordered a clean 5-foot-by-8 foot ‘Stars and Stripes’ flag to be hoisted to replace the previous one that had become discolored by the ship’s smoke. All surviving eyewitnesses reported that the flag flew freely in a 5-10 knot breeze. Moreover, on the hull, its identity, consisting of the symbols ‘GTR’ (four feet high) and ‘5’ (eight feet high), made it impossible for any Israeli aircraft to mistake it for an Egyptian ship. So off-duty crew continued to sunbathe while Israeli planes had been flying over the Liberty all morning. Crew member Lloyd Painter reported that the planes flew so low that they could wave to the pilot, who waved back.

AIR ATTACK: Armed only with four .5-caliber machine guns for repelling boarders, the Liberty was defenseless against air attack. At 1.58 P.M. three Mirage fighters appeared out of the sky and attacked the ship. It was methodical; 30-mm cannon and machine guns targeted the bridge, and heat-seeking rockets attacked the antennae that would be needed to send out distress signals. Every 45 seconds the jets returned with another attack.

Within minutes, the Liberty’s deck was running with blood. After the Mirage fighters ran out of ammunition they were replaced by Super-Mystère fighter-bombers armed with napalm that was used to flood the bridge with fire. The planes vanished, leaving nine men dead. Commander McGonagle suffered a severe shrapnel wound to his right leg, leaving him weak from loss of blood.

Bryce Lockwood, a US Marine Corps linguist specializing in Russian, said in interview: “They were jamming both our distress frequencies and our tactical frequencies.” As James Kavanagh, communications technician aboard the Liberty pointed out, jamming distress frequencies is a violation of international law, and only an ally would know the tactical frequencies. And Israel was the only ally anywhere near.

Why napalm? Covering the decks with fire would have prevented any attempt to repair the radio antennae, thus preventing the Liberty getting out a distress signal. With its huge array of 45 radio antennae, giant satellite dish and its large American flag flying freely, the ship was clearly identifiable. As eyewitness Lieutenant James M. Ennes, who was on the bridge during the attack put it: “They ignored the 5-by-8 foot American flag that flew in plain sight from the mast while firing on medical personnel and firefighters nearby. The Israeli identity of the planes was not known at this stage because they were unmarked, a breach of the rules of war”.

Furthermore, as Ennes said in a radio interview many years later, the men below decks were listening in to the Israeli pilots, who repeatedly reported that the ship was flying an American flag. And arguably most important of all, the radio jamming Liberty’s five American emergency radio channels made misidentification impossible since jamming requires knowledge of the frequencies used by the target.

Quite apart from the views of surviving eyewitnesses, there were others, much further away from the scene, that were listening in to conversations between Israeli pilots and their control. Captain Richard Block, a US air force intelligence analyst, was monitoring radio intercepts of the attack. In an interview in 2007 for the BBC documentary USS Liberty: Dead in the Water, Captain Block stated that his intelligence gathering group on the island of Crete received instant translations of the communications between Israeli attack pilots and their headquarters from an American RC-130 plane near the Gaza Strip.

"The communication I had in my hand originated from an Israeli flight commander. Evidently, from his questioning to ground control, he had been given specific orders to attack that ship before he left the ground, and when he saw it was an American ship he questioned those orders to his ground control. That same conversation that I had in my hand specifically noted that the ground control said ‘proceed with the attack’, and there was still doubt in the Israeli pilot’s mind. And he said ‘no, this is an American, repeat those orders again’. And he was told, flat out: ‘do attack this ship’”.

TORPEDO ATTACK: At 2.24 P.M. McGonagle observed three torpedo boats approaching in attack formation, some 5 miles away. He ordered the remaining, forward machine guns to be manned and a new flag to be hoisted to replace the one shot down. At 7-by-13 feet, the new one was the largest they had. Even at its top speed of 18 knots, the ship would have had no chance against the 30 knot-torpedo boats.

When the MTBs were about two thousand yards away, McGonagle saw a blue and white Star of David Israeli flag. As the torpedo boats closed, they opened fire with 20-mm and 40-mm cannon and .50-caliber machine guns, killing four more sailors. The machine guns, however, were of far less concern than the two torpedoes carried by each of the Israeli boats.

Through the loudspeaker, the crew heard McGonagle’s warning: “Standby for torpedo attack.” The chief engineer ordered all non-essential men to don life-jackets and climb the ladders out of spaces below. Now the sailors could only await the blast. Altogether five torpedoes were launched, but only one struck its target, at 2.35 P.M., hitting the starboard side. The explosion tore a hole thirty nine feet wide by twenty four feet high, killing 25 men. Had it struck the engine room it would have been curtains for the ship, but it mercifully stayed afloat. Survivor Lloyd Painter reported that as preparations were being made to abandon ship, he witnessed “the machinegunning of life-rafts as they floated by, the Israeli torpedo boat crew members raked the life rafts thoroughly with machine gun fire, making sure that if there had been anyone in the life rafts, they would not have survived.” This was a clear violation of the Geneva conventions.

Soon after the torpedo boats left, survivor Phillip Tourney recalls the arrival of a large, troop-carrying helicopter. As it hovered only seventy five feet away, he exchanged middle-finger gestures with a marine armed with a sub-machine gun. He was sitting on the floor, ready to descend to the deck of the ship, but suddenly the attack was called off.

In total over two thirds of the crew were killed or injured: 34 killed and 171 wounded, only 30% of the crew escaping injury or death. Had the objective of the Israelis been to prevent the Liberty gathering information, this would have been accomplished in the first few minutes. The survivors took a different view; that the torpedo attack and machine-gunning of life rafts showed that the intention had been to sink the ship and leave no survivors.

DISTRESS CALLS: A transmitting antenna emits heat, enabling the Israelis to target them with heat-seeking missiles. But by good fortune, one of the radio antennae had been out of commission and so escaped the missiles’ attention. Risking his life, radio technician Terry Halbardier ran across the Liberty’s deck while it was being strafed and took a co-axial cable to this undamaged antenna. The Sixth Fleet was about 500 miles westward of the Liberty, off the coast of Crete.

“Any station, this is Rockstar [Liberty’s call sign]: “We are under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance.” The Israelis intercepted that message and fearing a US response, immediately broke off the attack, returned to their bases, and sent an “oops” message to Washington confessing to their unfortunate “mistake.” At 3.55 P.M., by which time the attack was over, radio contact with the Sixth Fleet had been re-established and some details of the ship’s plight given. McGonagle dictated the message: “Request immediate assistance. Torpedo hit starboard midship. Flooding. List has stopped at nine degrees. Approximate casualties four dead, three seriously wounded, 50 wounded. Radar, fathometer and gyroscope inoperable. Will require navigational aid consisting of sea and air escort.”

Though the Liberty was without power or steering, her desperate appeal had been received by the Sixth Fleet. It was assumed that the attackers were Egyptian, and two nuclear-armed Douglas A-4 Skyhawk bombers were launched, along with fighter escort. The skyhawks were minutes away from making a nuclear attack on Cairo.

RESCUE AIRCRAFT RECALLED: Naval communications were being monitored by Chief Petty Officer J.Q. (“Tony”) Hart, working as a US Navy communications supervisor at a relay station in Morocco. Soon after the A-4s were launched, he passed a Pentagon message to the navy, ordering the recall of the aircraft. Ten minutes later, on a direct phone link, Defence Secretary McNamara confirmed the order to recall the aircraft. The Fleet Commander Admiral Martin asked permission to send conventionally-armed aircraft to rescue the Liberty. The conversation was monitored by Tony Hart, who said that McNamara said that no aircraft were to be launched.

Lieutenant Commander Dave Lewis, Senior Signals Intelligence officer on the Liberty, spoke with Rear Admiral Geis, who was deeply upset by being forbidden to send rescue aircraft. He told Lewis that after recall of the nuclear armed planes, he had launched conventionally armed planes and that he had informed Washington to that effect. McNamara ordered these planes to be recalled, and Geis said he wouldn’t, unless he heard from a higher authority. So President Johnson came on the line, saying that he “didn’t give a damn if the ship sank; he would not embarrass his allies.” So one has to ask how the President knew the attackers were Israelis, in view of the fact that at that stage the Liberty crew did not know the identity of the attackers.

EMERGENCY SURGERY: Meanwhile the crippled Liberty was steaming at half-speed towards the Sixth Fleet. Some electrical power had been restored, though steering had to be manual. The fathometer was working but was no help in navigation as the gyrocompass and radar were kaput.

Richard Kiepfer, the ship’s only physician, had been working flat out since the attack began. Though suffering shrapnel wounds in the abdomen, he performed emergency surgery in the mess deck for 28 hours without a break. In the mess deck he treated shrapnel wounds and broken bones. On the bridge he gave saline solution to skipper McGonagle, helping to stave off the effects of blood loss from a wound in his right leg. It was the skipper’s resolute insistence on remaining in command that helped sustain the morale of the crew.

Soon after dawn the next day Sixth Fleet destroyers, that had been racing to the rescue at 30 knots, met with the Liberty. Fifty injured men were transferred to the America by helicopter, followed by the bodies of nine dead. For the first time since the attack seventeen hours earlier, non-improvised medical aid was available to treat the wounded, but even now McGonagle insisted on remaining on the Liberty.

There was a total media blackout; the press were prevented from talking to the injured men by guards outside the rooms in which the injured men lay. The military action was over, but the political fallout and cover-up were about to begin.

WASHINGTON REACTS: The news reached Washington at 9:11 A.M., Washington time, just over half an hour after the torpedo struck. At this stage, nobody knew who the attackers were, and the possibility that it was the Soviets that were responsible was deeply worrying. However, by 11 A.M. the administration had learned from the Israelis that they had admitted responsibility, saying that it was the result of a mistake, and accordingly the Soviet government was immediately notified. Washington breathed a sigh of relief; the possibility of WWIII with the Soviets had disappeared.

With that news, the situation had changed from a military nightmare to a political headache. Somehow the news had to be broken to the American public that an American ship had been torpedoed and almost sunk by the forces of a close ally. The announcement to the media ran as follows: "A US Navy technical research ship, the USS Liberty (AGTR-5) was attacked about 9 A.M. (EDT) today approximately 15 miles north of the Sinai Peninsula in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The Liberty departed Rota, Spain, June 2nd and arrived at her position this morning to assure communications between US Government posts in the Middle East and to assist in relaying information concerning the evacuation of American dependents and other American citizens from the countries of the Middle East. The United States Government has been informed by the Israeli government that the attack was made in error by Israeli forces, and an apology has been received from Tel Aviv. Initial reports of casualties are 4 dead and 53 wounded [the figures that were known at that time]. The Liberty is steaming north from the area at a speed of 8 knots to meet US forces moving to her aid. It is reported that she is in no danger of sinking.”

In stark contrast to the emollient official public statement, individuals in the Johnson administration were in turmoil. Secretary of State Dean Rusk didn’t for a moment believe that such a well organized attack, preceded by so many reconnaissance flights, could have been a case of mistaken identity. Moreover, in an interview with Charles Roberts of Newsweek, President Johnson said that the United States had accepted Israel’s apology, but not the explanation, saying that the attack was deliberate. The interview was conducted on the condition that attribution had to be to senior but un-named officials. In stark contrast, some members of both sides of Congress were willing to accept Israel’s version.

ISRAEL’S REACTION: From the moment the attack became public, the Israelis accepted responsibility but denied culpability, saying that it had been a terrible mistake. The Israelis accepted that reconnaissance flights had identified the Liberty and marked its position on the combat information map. Later that morning, reports came in of the Sinai coast being shelled from the sea, but by this time the Liberty’s position had been erased from their map. Patrol boats were sent to investigate the shelling, and the only ship they found was the Liberty.

Whereas the Liberty’s maximum speed was 18 knots, the Israelis say they misread its speed at 28 knots, which meant it must have been a military ship. The next mistake, the Israelis said, was that they confused the Liberty with an Egyptian troop- and horse-carrying ship, the El Quesir, which was just over half the Liberty’s length and lacked the conspicuous arrays of antennae. Its maximum speed was 14 knots and bore markings in Arabic. With that erroneous and threadbare information, the air force had been sent to attack the Liberty.

THE NAVAL COURT OF INQUIRY: A navy Court of Inquiry was set up by Admiral John S. McCain Jr., then Commander-in-chief, Naval Forces Europe, charged with the task of inquiring into“all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the armed attack; damage resulting therefrom; and deaths of and injuries to Naval personnel.”

McCain was acutely aware of the potential explosiveness of the issue; not only was Israel a close ally, but there was substantial domestic support from American Jews. The court was chaired by Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, with Captain Ward Boston, Jr. as senior legal counsel and two junior Judge Advocate General officers, Capts. Bernard Lauff and Bert Atkinson.

Admiral Kidd and Captain Boston were given only a week to gather evidence, despite the fact that they had estimated that such an inquiry would take at least six months to conduct. They gathered hours of testimony from about 15 survivors, but could not gather evidence from the more than sixty others who were still in hospital. When Kidd and Boston expressed the need to travel to Israel to interview the Israelis who took part in the attack, Admiral McCain was adamant that they were not to travel to Israel or contact the Israelis concerning this matter.

The Liberty had barely had time to tie up in harbor that the court began its hearings. Kidd and Boston had already witnessed the damage done to the Liberty, having been taken by destroyer to the stricken ship only four days after the attack, so they saw the 821 cannon and rocket holes at first hand. They interviewed Ensign Dave Lucas and Commander McGonagle at length, and later, a dozen more officers and crew, representing only a small proportion of the total ship’s complement of 294 men.

Some of the men who had been on deck during the attack and thus were best placed to give evidence, did not testify because they had been airlifted to hospitals on land. Those who did testify told of harrowing experiences; men blown into several pieces, the deck covered with blood, a gunner with his head completely shot away, and so many injured that the ship ran out of stretchers.

Captain Boston observed a sailor vomiting after finding a headless body. Sights such as these, together with the pre-attack reconnaissance and the colossal damage, led Boston and Kidd to conclude that the attack must have been deliberate, though at this time such views were only expressed privately.

Many of the Liberty’s officers later said that the court was not interested in evidence that pointed to Israel’s culpability. Whereas skipper McGonagle testified that the first reconnaissance flight was at 10.30 A.M., others reported that they began much earlier, at 5.15 A.M. In fact, Ensign Scott photographed one of the reconnaissance planes at dawn, nine hours before the attack began. His testimony was ignored in the final report, which stated that reconnaissance flights began much later. Other officers later said that the court asked few questions and wasted time with irrelevant questions, such as the cost of a damaged tape recorder.

The inquiry, they said, was ‘shallow’, ‘cursory’, and concerned with ‘process rather than product’. Some of the witnesses testified for only a few minutes, if that long. Other relevant details were ignored. Lieutenant Lloyd Painter testified that the Liberty was seventeen and a half miles from the Egyptian shore and 38 miles from the coast of Israel just before the attack, well outside territorial limits of Egypt or Israel, but this fact was not included in the final report.

The court did not follow up the testimonies of Chief Petty Officers Wayne Smith and Carl Lamkin that the attackers had jammed the Liberty’s communications, which indicated that they knew the ship’s identity. Petty Officer James Halman, who had radioed for help, was not even called to testify, even though he was available.

Some important testimony that had been given but was unfavorable to Israel was deleted from the final transcript. The machine-gunning of life rafts by the torpedo boats, as testified by Lloyd Painter, was witnessed by other crew members but was not mentioned in the final report. Petty Officer 2nd class Charles Cocnavitch, who was a radar man, was sworn in and gave testimony, but his name was not even mentioned in the report.

One thing all witnesses agreed upon: the American flag was visibly flying. Ensign John Scott, Lieutenant George Golden, Lieutenant Lloyd Painter, Commander William McGonagle, Lieutenant Malcolm Watson, Chief Petty Officer Wayne Smith, Lieutenant George O’Connor, all were emphatic that the flag was flying and clearly visible.

In fact McGonagle testified that on the approach of the torpedo boats he ordered the hoisting of the ship’s largest flag, at 7 feet by 13 feet, to replace the standard 5 feet by 8 feet flag that had been shot down. The report stated that “the calm conditions and slow ship speed may well have made the American flag difficult to identify”, implying uncertainty that was in flat contradiction to unanimous witness testimony.

Most important of all, the court was expressly forbidden to go to Israel to interview the pilots, torpedo boat skippers, despite a directive “to inquire into all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the attack.” An investigation in which the chief suspect cannot be questioned is not an investigation in any properly understood sense of the word. Neither did the US government require the Israelis to produce flight books, ship logs, or recordings of pilot communications. Taking the uncorroborated word of the accused is clear evidence of a strong desire by both governments to conceal rather than to reveal.

The report was sent to Merlin Staring, Legal Officer for Admiral McCain, and later the navy’s top lawer, for his examination. After having had less than 24 hours to read the 700-page document he was asked to return the file to Admiral Kidd. In an interview for the BBC Documentary USS Liberty: Dead in the Water, he said: I simply could not find an evidentiary basis for that conclusion. I had considerable trouble with the record, as I read through it, attempting to find the evidence, the testimony, or other evidence, that would support some of the findings, or opinions or conclusions that the court of inquiry had drafted and had reached.”

In a documentary he would later make, he said, "In the course of my career as a Navy lawyer, I have been called upon to review and take action upon hundreds of investigations of various degrees of importance and volume. This is the only instance in which a record of such an investigation was withdrawn from me before I had been given an opportunity to complete my advice to the convening authority.”

Many years later Staring learned from Liberty survivors and Capt. Ward Boston the truth about the coverup of the official investigation: "It was a political thing. We were ordered to ‘put a lid on it.’ The facts were clear. Israel knew it was an American ship and tried to sink it and murder its entire crew. The outrageous claims by Israel’s apologists who continue to claim the attack was a mistake pushed me to speak out. The official record is not the one I certified. My initials are not on it.” Despite these restrictions, the official report stated that it was a case of “mistaken identity”.

THE RON INQUIRY: Whereas the US naval inquiry was careful not to interview Israeli eyewitnesses, neither of the two Israeli inquiries interviewed American eyewitnesses. The first Israeli investigation lasted only four days, and was conducted by Colonel Ram Ron, an ex-paratrooper and later a military attaché in Washington, with no professional legal experience. He interviewed only twelve witnesses, none of them attacking pilots, and six of them identified by letters such as “Lieutenant R” and “Commander B”.

The only eyewitness interviewed was a torpedo boat commander, who was named, Lieutenant Avraham. All witnesses were Israelis, and there were no expert witnesses. Evidently, testimony from American surviving witnesses was not considered relevant to determining the truth. Though Ron had been given access to the Liberty’s logs, his report made no mention of them.

The report, extending a mere seventeen pages, began by stating that in response to a report that an unidentified ship had shelled the Egyptian town of El Arish, three motor torpedo boats had been sent to investigate. One of the torpedo boats reported that the ship was travelling at thirty knots, a speed that only military craft could achieve, twelve knots faster than the Liberty’s maximum and nearly six times faster than its actual speed.

According to Ron, Israeli reconnaissance planes had identified the Liberty early that morning, but that the torpedo boats had did not realize that it might be the Liberty because of its mistaken speed of thirty knots, so the torpedo boats called in an air strike. After the air strike officers on the torpedo boats concluded that the Liberty was the Egyptian troop and horse-carrying ship the El Quseir which, at 275 feet long and 2,180 tons, was just over half the length of the Liberty’s 455 feet, and less than a quarter of its 10,150 tons displacement.

Moreover it was manifestly different in outline as it lacked the conspicuous radio antennae and satellite dish. The El Quseir was marked in Arabic letters, in stark contrast to the GTR-5 on the Liberty. And with a maximum speed of 14 knots, it was even slower than the Liberty’s maximum of 18 knots.

Just before the torpedo boats began their attack, McGonagle had ordered the hoisting of the ship’s largest flag, measuring 7-by-13 feet. Yet on page 14 of his report, Ron seems to be putting responsisbility on the Liberty when he states that: “The entire ship as enveloped in thick smoke, and when asked to identify itself, it failed to do so and behaved suspiciously.” And on page 15 is the extraordinary statement: “it seems that the ship made every effort to conceal her identity, both by flying a small flag which was unidentifiable from a distance and by retreating when she realised that she was spotted by our forces”. Furthermore, implying that the Israeli forces attacked because they couldn’t see the American flag is self-contradictory because the smoke was a result of the attack. In his conclusions, Ron stated that “the attack on the ship by the Israeli Defence Forces was made neither maliciously nor in gross negligence, but as the result of a bona fide mistake."

The informal reaction in Washington intelligence circles was one of incredulity. In a memo to Undersecretary of State Nickolas Katzenbach, Thomas Hughes, director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Hughes stated that he believed the attack could not have been an accident, pointing out that Liberty crew members could identify the hull number of one of the small, fast moving torpedo boats, but the Israeli boat commanders seemingly failed to identify the much larger name of the Liberty on its stern. Hughes believed that Israel’s explanation “stretched all credibility”, and other senior staff agreed, believing that Israel would not allow the United States to read its wartime military messages.

THE MOORER REPORT: So disgusted were senior naval officers at the cover-up that a number of retired admirals and other distinguished individuals conducted their own inquiry. They were led by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer who, from 1970 to 1974 had been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking officer in the US armed forces. He was assisted by:Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, United States Navy, (Ret.), Former Judge Advocate General Of The Navy. General Raymond G. Davis, United States Marine Corps, (MOH Former Assistant Commandant of The Marine Corps, Ambassador James Akins, (Ret.) Former United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

The conclusions in their report in October 2003 differed radically from the official report, and can be summarised thus:The attack on the Liberty was a deliberate attempt to sink the ship and kill all 294 crew. Fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the US Navy from coming to the defense of the Liberty by recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while the ship was under attack.

There had been an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history. A danger to national security exists whenever elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel’s interests when they conflict with American interests.

THE COVER-UP CONTINUES: For his bravery Commander William McGonagle was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award for valor. This is normally presented at the White House by the President, but on this occasion it was presented by the Secretary of the Navy at the Washington Navy Yard, the only time a Medal of Honor has been awarded in this manner. Throughout the entire ceremony there was no mention of Israel; the citation made no mention of the identity of the attackers, and the gravestones of dead sailors showed no details of how they died. Six of them were buried at Arlington National Cemetery, with gravestones marked, “Died in the Eastern Mediterranean.” There was no mention of the Liberty, Israel, or even of the attack, though later they were amended slightly to read, “Killed USS Liberty”, but there was still no mention of Israel.

Commander McGonagle’s award was but one of many. In fact the Liberty crew were the most decorated for a single engagement of any ship in US naval history: two Navy Crosses, thirteen Silver Stars, twenty Bronze Stars, nine Navy Commendation Medals, and one National Security Agency Exceptional Service Civilian Award (to Allen Blue, the only civilian). Six were awarded posthumously. In addition, over two hundred Purple Hearts, more than two thirds of the ship’s complement, were awarded.

But these were part of the cover-up. With one exception, none of the citations indicated the whereabouts of the Liberty or the identity of Israelis as the attackers. The exception was the Silver Star awarded to Terry Halbardier, whose total disregard for danger enabled the Liberty to send out its distress signal. The feeling among the survivors was that the awards were an appeasement.

12 years later Lt. Commander James M. Ennes broke the silence of the survivors by publishing a book, Assault on the Liberty. As Ennes put it in an article: “Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty remains the only major maritime incident in American history not investigated by Congress. Queries to Congress bring boilerplate replies and no serious attention. Why? Because the attack by Israel on the USS Liberty is simply too politically sensitive.”

JAY CRISTOL INTERVENES: And there, officially at least, it rested, until 2003, when A. Jay Cristol published "The Liberty Inciden"t, which attempted to show that the Liberty attack was the result of mistaken identity. The book was savagely criticized by surviving eyewitnesses for misrepresenting and distorting the views of those who investigated the attack. Five of those eyewitnesses wrote reviews on Amazon, Terry Halbardier (first edition) and Ernie Gallo, Ronald Kukal, Joel Lehman, Joseph Meadors (second edition), stated that they had not been interviewed by Cristol.

This attempt to whitewash the facts prompted Boston to break his silence in January 2004, by making a sworn affidavit to say that President Johnson had ordered Kidd to conclude that the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In his affidavit Boston recalled that each evening, after hearing testimony all day, he and Admiral Kidd exchanged their thoughts about what they had seen and heard. He remembers hearing Admiral Kidd repeatedly referring to the Israeli forces responsible for the attack as “murderous bastards.” It was their shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony they received first hand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew and could not possibly have been an accident.

Boston was certain that the Israeli pilots and their superiors who had ordered the attack were well aware that the ship was American. He saw the American flag, riddled with bullet holes, and heard testimony that made it clear that the Israelis had intended that there would be no survivors because Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned three lifeboats that had been launched in an attempt by the crew to save the most seriously wounded, which is a war crime.

He also recalled that Admiral Kidd had told him that he had been ordered to rewrite portions of the court’s findings, and that Admiral Kidd also told him that he had been ordered to “put the lid” on everything having to do with the attack on U.S.S. Liberty, and that they were never to speak of it and they were to caution everyone else involved that they could never speak of it again.

In his affidavit Boston said that the Court of Inquiry transcript that had been released to the public was not the same one that he certified and sent off to Washington. He said that he knew this because it was necessary, due to time limits, to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages. He had examined the released version of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore his hand corrections and initials.

Moreover, the testimony of Lt. Painter concerning the deliberate machine gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which he distinctly recalled being given at the Court of Inquiry and included in the original transcript, had been deleted.

More recently, in May 2014, Cristol gave an ‘Eight Bells’ Lecture at the Naval War College Museum, the theme of which was to show that the attack on the Liberty was a case of ‘mistaken identity’. In his hour-long lecture he relied solely on evidence from the parties over which the cloud of suspicion lay: the Israeli and American governments. No mention was made of evidence from the survivors, who were the only non-Israeli eyewitnesses. Also conspicuously absent was any mention of the Moore report and the sworn affidavit of Captain Ward Boston.

Cristol’s attempts to mislead the public are so numerous that one of the most blatant will have to suffice. Page 161 of the second edition to his book shows the USS Liberty and El Quseir in silhouette. Apart from the conspicuous differences that any trained military person would spot, he omits the most obvious difference of all – size.
The Liberty’s 455 feet was over 60 percent longer than the 275 feet of the El Quseir. Yet he manipulated the profiles to make them look the same length. In the illustration below, the Liberty is shown above the El Quseir. Cristol’s version is shown on the left, and on the right are the ships shown in their correct relative proportions. His book is subtitled “The Definitive account of the 1967 Israeli attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship”. The illustration above is but one of many deliberate attempts to mislead, showing a highly elastic meaning to the word ‘definitive’.

In his book, Cristol refers to people who doubt the official explanation as ‘conspiracy theorists’. A conspiracy theorist is generally regarded as someone who has an irrational tendency to disbelieve official statements from people in power. The important word here is irrational. In that context it is pertinent to remind ourselves of the official brief of the U.S. naval inquiry, which was to examine…“all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the armed attack; damage resulting therefrom; and deaths of and injuries to Naval personnel.”

Cristol evidently considers that the refusal of Admiral McCain to allow the official U.S. navy inquiry to interview the chief suspects – members of the Israeli Defense Forces – was consistent with this brief. If the police were to refuse to interview the chief suspect in a murder inquiry, one would naturally suspect corruption – yet Cristol describes such people as ‘conspiracy theorists’. Indeed, in the second edition to his book he devotes an entire chapter to such people.

So who are these ‘conspiracy theorists’? In addition to those already mentioned, here are just a few of the many reputable people who are on record as stating their belief that the attack was deliberate: Dean Rusk, President Johnson’s Secretary of State, who stated in his memoirs (p388): “I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. Their sustained attack to disable and sink Liberty precluded an assault by accident or some trigger-happy local commander. Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn’t believe them then, and I don’t believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous.”

Admiral Rufus Taylor, former CIA Deputy Director; Oliver Kirby, former deputy director for operations/production, National Security Agency; Adlai E. Stevenson III, United States Senator, 1970-81.

For Cristol to imply that such people are not rational is more revealing than anything in his book. By labelling them with the term ‘conspiracy theorists’, he is exploiting a deep need in human nature. Like almost all primates, humans are intensely social beings and as such, most people feel the need to belong to a group of other, like-minded people. Being one of a majority may be an inheritance from our primeval past, when everyone belonged to a tribe. In our highly sophisticated, technological society, tribes as such don’t exist, but the need to be part of a group persists in our sports teams, clubs and societies.

So when a person publicly expresses a preference for evidence over hearsay before making up his or her mind over a political issue that threatens the powerful, the ‘conspiracy’ bludgeon is a crude but effective weapon. And having identified with the majority, reversing one’s view seems to be much more difficult.

A comment reportedly mis-attributed to Mark Twain puts it nicely: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled”. As Mark Twain did remark: “In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.”
o

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "Spiritual Warfare, Evil Is Running Loose In America"

Jeremiah Babe, 2/25/24
"Spiritual Warfare, Evil Is Running Loose In America
This Is The Greatest Financial Bubble In History"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

Full screen recommended.
Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

Musical Interlude: Moody Blues, "Candle Of Life"

Full screen recommended.
Moody Blues, "Candle Of Life"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame. 
Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been identified as binary galaxies, forming a gravitationally stable binary system. But recently discovered faint dwarf galaxy Cassiopeia II also seems to be part of their system, forming a gravitationally bound group within Andromeda's intriguing population of small satellite galaxies."

Chet Raymo, “Mortal Soul: The Great Silence”

“Mortal Soul: The Great Silence”
by Chet Raymo

“If there is one word that should not be uttered, it is the name of – no, I will not say it. Any name diminishes. In the face of whatever it is that is most mysterious, most holy, we are properly silent. It is appropriate, I think, to praise the creation, to make a joyful noise of thanksgiving for the sensate world. But praising the Creator is another thing altogether. When we make a big racket on His behalf we are more than likely addressing an idol in our own image. What was it that Pico Iyer said? “Silence is the tribute that we pay to holiness; we slip off words when we enter a sacred place, just as we slip off shoes.” The God of the mystics whispers sweet nothings, as lovers do.

In a diary entry for “M.”, near the end of his too-short life, Thomas Merton wrote: “I cannot have enough of the hours of silence when nothing happens. When the clouds go by. When the trees say nothing. When the birds sing. I am completely addicted to the realization that just being there is enough.” The natural world was for Merton the primary revelation. He listened. He felt a presence in his heart, an awareness of the ineffable Mystery that permeates creation. It was this that drew him to the mystical tradition of Christianity, especially to the Celtic tradition of creation spirituality. It was this that attracted him to Zen.

There come now and then, perhaps more frequently in late life than previously, those moments of being (as Virginia Woolf called them) when creation grabs us by the shoulders and gives us such a shake that it rattles our teeth, when love for the world simply knocks us flat. At those moments everything we have learned about the world – the invaluable and reliable knowledge of science- seems a pale intimation of what is. In Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves”, the elderly Bernard says: “How tired I am of stories, how tired I am of phrases that come down beautifully with all their feet on the ground! Also, how I distrust neat designs of life that are drawn upon half sheets of notepaper. I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement.”

In moments of soul-stirring epiphany, it is reassuring to feel beneath our feet a floor of reliable knowledge, the safe and sure edifice of empirical learning so painstakingly constructed by the likes of Aristarchus, Galileo, Darwin and Schrodinger. But at the same time we are humbled by our ignorance, and more ready than ever to say “I don’t know,” to enter at last the great silence. Erwin Chargaff, who contributed mightily to our understanding of DNA, wrote: “It is the sense of mystery that, in my opinion, drives the true scientist; the same blind force, blindly seeing, deafly hearing, unconsciously remembering, that drives the larva into the butterfly. If the scientist has not experienced, at least a few times in his life, this cold shudder down his spine, this confrontation with an immense invisible face whose breath moves him to tears, he is not a scientist.”

The whole thrust of the mystical tradition, the whole thrust of science, is toward the great silence- an awareness of our ignorance and a willingness to say “I don’t know.” A lifetime of learning brings one at last to the face of mystery. We live in a universe of more than 2 trillion galaxies. Perhaps the number of galaxies is infinite. And the universe is silent. Achingly, terrifyingly silent. Or, rather, the universe speaks a little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement.”

“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”

“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”
by Brandon Smith

"Perhaps the most destructive idea ever planted in the minds of the general public is the notion that nothing in this world is permanent – that all things can and must be constantly changed to suit our whims. The concept of impermanence fuels what I call “blank slate propaganda.” The usefulness of the blank slate as a weapon for social control should be explained before we examine the nature of good and evil, because these days it infects everything.

The push for never ending social “evolution” has been called many things over the decades. In the early 1900s in Europe it was called “futurism;” an art and philosophical movement that helped spawn the rise of communism and fascism in politics.The argument that all old ideas and longstanding traditions should be abandoned to make way for new ideas, new technologies, news systems etc., assumes that the supposedly new ways of doing things are superior to the old ways of doing things. Things are rarely this simple, and in most cases the new methods so proudly championed by movements for social change are usually recycled and repackaged old ideas that are notorious for failure.
The blank slate theory is designed to confuse people with self-doubt and to misrepresent the constructs of nature as constructs of society. It most effectively disrupts people’s relationship to their own moral compass by suggesting that moral compass should be completely ignored as artificial. The argument by blank slate proponents is that all boundaries are created by society instead of by inborn conscience, and that these boundaries often hold us back from achieving our goals, bettering ourselves as a species and generally getting what we want out of life.
But the things we want are not always the things we need, and this is something that movement’s for social change often refuse to grasp. If we are all blank slates and if morality and the human soul are myths, why not do whatever the hell we want, whenever we want and live life as if it is one big Roman orgy of feasting, self-medicating and overall addiction to sensation?
The problem with the blank slate concept is that while it purports that all restrictions in the human psyche are taught to us rather than being inborn and that they can be abandoned any time we want, we still can’t seem to avoid the consequences of breaking those restrictions.  People lose their sanity, societies crumble and nations fall to ruin over time the more we cast aside our principles in the name of social evolution or short term gain. It is unavoidable.
The only people who seem to benefit from the spread of the blank slate are the people already in political and economic power. For if they can convince the masses to ignore their conscience, they can then convince us to accept almost any other conditions.
To act in a manner consistent with inherent conscience, or to ignore conscience and act destructively, is a choice. It is the core pillar of free will. The choice to act destructively does not erase the reality of inherent conscience; in fact, people often have to be fooled into believing that a destructive and immoral action is a “good thing” before they are convinced to carry it out. Inherent conscience must be bypassed through trickery.
The problem with choosing to stick by one’s principles is that it is easy during times of relative stability, but increasingly difficult during times of struggle. In perilous days, the temptation to use destructive tactics to maintain an expectation of comfort or to merely survive can be high. It is no coincidence that power elites, the same people that tend to promote blank slate propaganda, also tend to deliberately engineer social crisis and chaos. But perhaps this needs a deeper explanation. We must define something most of us already understand intuitively. We must define “evil.”
Like inherent conscience and moral boundaries, blank slate theorists and social change advocates attempt to muddy the waters of what constitutes evil. Some will say there is no such thing — that evil is whatever we deem it to be in any given era depending on our biases.  Others will claim that tradition, permanence and anything in society that remains static is evil. The only “good” for them is constant change.
But evil is not as illusory and changing as these people suggest. In fact, most men and women recoil automatically from certain specific behaviors regardless of how they were raised, what environment they come from, what culture they were born into or what era they lived.  The people who don’t recoil at these behaviors are the people we have to watch out for because they are missing something integral to the heart and mind that makes the rest of us human.
In psychological terms, the characteristics of high level narcissists and sociopaths match most closely with our historic concept of evil.  And, in my view, most great evils done in history are in fact done by people with multiple narcissistic traits.  As far as global elitists are concerned, they represent a rather insidious threat, because they are narcissistic sociopaths that have organized into a predatory gang, so all the traits consistent with the behavior of your average serial killer are now magnified a thousandfold by their access to unlimited resources.
How do we identify these people? Well, this is a difficult prospect at times because narcissistic sociopaths commonly hide in plain sight.  Some people live with them for years before realizing exactly what they are. They also like to insert themselves into nonprofit organizations that claim to do good for the community as a cover for their more insidious motives.
Some traits and behaviors that are common are a lack of normal emotional response to traumatic events or joyous events, or they will mimic the responses of others to blend in but they come off as “forced” or “fake.” They have no concept of empathy; it does not exist for them.
They seek out centers of power and are drawn to positions of authority. They always seem to be demanding the efforts of others while rarely offering their own help. They make terrible leaders, always attempting to lead from a place of safety while letting their conscripts take the risks. Leading by example is a foreign concept to them.
They will lie repetitively about their accomplishments and their accolades. They will misrepresent their professional achievements in order to gain people’s trust. Ask them to prove through actions that they can do all the things they claim they can do, and they will try to avoid the test or respond indignantly and angrily.
They will gaslight their ideological enemies or people they are trying to control. They will accuse others of being “narcissists” or “sociopaths” or fascists or any moniker that will push the buttons of their target. Whatever evils they are guilty of, they will try to flip and lay at the feet of their enemies.
They always seem to have “minions” to do their dirty work for them and attack those that oppose them. People that have dealt with narcissistic sociopaths in their personal lives sometimes refer to these minions as “flying monkeys,” referencing the flying monkeys enslaved by the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Flying monkeys are essentially useful idiots that the narcissist employs through fraud and sometimes through pay. Whenever the narcissist is under threat of being exposed, they unleash their flying monkeys onto the streets or onto the internet to undermine truth tellers.
They do not believe in moral or personal boundaries which is why they are always trying convince people that such boundaries are a myth.  They will cross moral lines, always testing the fences for weaknesses; trying to wear others down until they give up and stop fighting back.
They desperately want to come out of the shadows and into the light of day. They want to be adored as the monsters they are, rather than the fake philanthropists they portray themselves as. In order to do this, every narcissistic sociopath makes it their duty to erase the idea of conscience, whether they are part of the globalist cabal or just another ghoul down the street. Their natural inclination is to corrupt whatever they touch, and if they cannot corrupt a thing, they will attempt to destroy that thing.
Most of all, narcissistic sociopaths want everyone around them to believe that we are just like them. That “deep down” all of us are unprincipled and morally bankrupt and all it takes is a crisis or calamity, just a little chaos to bring out the devil in everyone.
But if this were really the case, then humanity would have died out long ago through endless self-destruction; something keeps bringing us back from the brink in our personal lives and in society as a whole. Conscience keeps defeating evil by refusing to grant evil people the utopia of blank slate chaos they want so badly. And this is what give me confidence that no matter how terrible our days might become there is something on our side that goes beyond the physical world.
Every crisis is a test, a test of each person and a test of our culture. Can we act with reason and courage and principle even in the worst of times, or will we be lured to make our struggle easier through malicious means? Will we do right by those around us, or will we happily trample over them in the name of “survival?”
In the end, the worst men bring the best men to the surface. This is the only “good” they will ever do.”

The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, "We Are Those People"

"We Are Those People"

"I have abhorred the wars and despised the liars,
laughed at the frightened
And forecast victory; never one moment's doubt.
But now not far, over the backs of some crawling years, the next
Great war's column of dust and fire writhes
Up the sides of the sky: it becomes clear that we too may suffer
What others have, the brutal horror of defeat -
Or if not in the next, then in the next - therefore watch Germany
And read the future. We wish, of course, that our women
Would die like biting rats in the cellars,
our men like wolves on the mountain:
It will not be so. Our men will curse, cringe, obey;
Our women uncover themselves to the grinning victors
for bits of chocolate."
- Robinson Jeffers

"World War III Prelude, 2/25/24"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 2/25/24
"Alert: Emergency NATO Meeting,
 Major Events Unfolding"
Comments here:
o
Scott Ritter, 2/25/24
"Russia Has Destroyed the U.S. Military
 and NATO is Not Ready for What is Next"
Comments here:

"It doesn't make a damned bit of difference
 who wins the war to someone who's dead.'"
– Joseph Heller, "Catch-22'"

The Daily "Near You?"

Liberty, South Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"I Wish..."

 
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf "and so do all who live to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

- J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"

“More to Come…”

“More to Come…”
By Jeff Thomas

“Years ago, when visiting the US, I’d often watch late night television. Just prior to each interval, in order to ensure that viewers would sit through the adverts, the show would run a panel that said, “More to Come.” This, of course, was effective, as the viewer would be anticipating that the best part of the program would come in a later segment and would be more likely to continue watching.

Today, we’re looking at the reverse of that situation. The program we’re watching is The Decline and Fall of the American Empire and those who recognize the decline are viewing with ever-increasing trepidation, the developments that are unfolding there. Even those of us who are not American and don’t live there are glued to our screens, as we’re aware that were viewing the early stages of a collapse that promises to be the greatest social, political and economic event that we’re likely to see in our lifetimes.

Following World War Two, the US was in a boom beyond anything the world had ever seen. The Americans came to the war late, after having built up their manufacturing capacity for war dramatically, at the expense of the Allied powers in Europe. And they did this, essentially for free. It was paid for with the gold from the vaults of the European allies. After the war, Europe was trashed and it would take decades for them to get on their feet again. Meanwhile, the US had been going flat out in production, had first-rate modern factories and, most important, held the majority of the world’s gold.

The 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement ensured that the US dollar would become the world’s default currency and, later, become the petrodollar, ensuring American hegemony over much of the rest of the world. There can be no doubt that, in the first decades after the war, the US had an amazing run and was, arguably, one of the best places to live in the world.

But, unfortunately, as so often happens, American political and industry leaders became full of themselves and couldn’t resist going out on limb to gain even more for themselves. In so doing, they turned the US from the world’s foremost creditor nation into the world’s foremost debtor nation. Worse, when they reached this unprecedented point, they opted to just keep going.

Worse still, it would appear that today’s leaders are aware that the mother of all bubbles that they’ve created is going to pop sometime in the near future, as they’re preparing themselves for the mother of all pushbacks from the populace when the crashes come.

The FBI, CIA, NSA, and a host of other authorities have either been created or expanded, allowing the creation of the world’s foremost police state. And, beginning in 2001 with the Patriot Act, have created a host of laws to assign authority to any of those bodies to exert ever-increasing control over the population. Capital controls, migration controls, higher taxes, confiscation of deposits in banks and quite a bit more have been passed in legislation, including the ability to declare the US in its entirely to be a “battle zone,” through which habeas corpus and the court system can be suspended nationally.

Yipes. (Or, blimey, depending on where you’re from.) At this point, any American who’s paying attention could be forgiven if he’s genuinely frightened at where his government is going with all this.

And so, we come back to the title of this essay – “More to Come.” A regular flow of proposed laws is now coming down the pipeline that would have been considered the stuff of a bad movie a few decades ago, but is now only too real and threatening to the freedoms of the average citizen. Instead of “more to come” meaning that the best is still on the way, the opposite would appear to be the case, and the worst is here, now.

But, how can this be, we ask ourselves. Surely those in power – the politicians, the industrialists, the central bankers, etc., must have seen this coming and, if that’s so, surely they’d have done something to stop it. Well, historically, that’s never been the case. Those in the greatest positions of power have never suddenly reversed an empire when it was about to self-destruct. What they tend to do instead is to guard against becoming casualties of the disaster they’ve created.

So, is that what’s happening this time around? In a word, yes.

The Bernie Madoffs of the world go to jail. However, those who commit the same fraudulent acts from within the system never go to jail. For example, if the heads of a bank commit massive fraud, the bank pays an enormous fine. The fine is then paid by the stockholders. And should the fine be large enough to crash the bank, the bankers can appeal to the government to bail them out, as they’re “too big to fail.” Thus, the taxpayers pick up the bill.

At this point, what we’re witnessing is an era in which laws are regularly being passed to ensure that the creators of the bubble will get a “Get Out of Jail Free” card and others will sustain the losses.

This is the very essence of what happens in an endgame run. Just as a hitman who places a bomb in a building makes his exit before the bomb can go off, the creators of bubbles safeguard themselves before the economic bomb can go off. They have no intention of being around to live with the resultant devastation that they’ve put into play.

Pete Townshend wrote prophetically, “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” in 1971, in which he hopes that the latest gang of leaders will be better than the last. In the final line of the song, he grimly announces, “Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.”

And, in fact, this is the usual outcome. Perhaps the reason why empires collapse much in the same way, time and again, and their citizens consistently fail to see it coming, is that empires general last a long time before collapsing. The Venetian Republic lasted 200 years. The Spanish Empire lasted just over 120 years. Holland lasted 130 years, Russia – 200, the UK, just under 120. And it’s been much the same for the others. In every case, they last longer than a single lifetime, so it’s rare that any individual sees more than one empire collapse in his own lifetime and doesn’t understand that empires don’t end with a whimper. They end with a crescendo, not unlike the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

We are witnessing the collapse of the world’s foremost empire. This is not mere conjecture. The US has all the symptoms that we’re now coming close to the final stages. And, if history plays out yet again, as it has repeatedly, we can expect that, in the lead-up to the collapse, the controls by governments will become increasingly draconian. As we consider, “more to come,” we should be braced for the likelihood that the worst controls are yet to be revealed.”

"This Life..."

 

“Hannah Arendt on Time, Space, and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides”



“Hannah Arendt on Time, Space,
and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides”
“The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”
by Maria Popova

“In Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ the White Queen remembers the future instead of the past. This seemingly nonsensical proposition, like so many elements of the beloved book, is a stroke of philosophical genius and prescience on behalf of Lewis Carroll, made half a century before Einstein and Gödel challenged our linear conception of time.

But no thinker has addressed how the disorienting nature of time shapes the human experience with more captivating lucidity than Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975), who in 1973 became the first woman to speak at the prestigious Gifford Lectures. Her talk was eventually adapted into two long essays, published as ‘The Life of the Mind’ (public library) – the same ceaselessly rewarding volume that gave us Arendt on the crucial difference between truth and meaning.

In one of the most stimulating portions of the book, Arendt argues that thinking is our rebellion against the tyranny of time and a hedge against the terror of our finitude. Noting that cognition always removes us from the present and makes absences its raw material, she considers where the thinking ego is located if not in what is present and close at hand:

“Looked at from the perspective of the everyday world of appearances, the everywhere of the thinking ego – summoning into its presence whatever it pleases from any distance in time or space, which thought traverses with a velocity greater than light’s – is a nowhere. And since this nowhere is by no means identical with the twofold nowhere from which we suddenly appear at birth and into which almost as suddenly we disappear in death, it might be conceived only as the Void. And the absolute void can be a limiting boundary concept; though not inconceivable, it is unthinkable. Obviously, if there is absolutely nothing, there can be nothing to think about. That we are in possession of these limiting boundary concepts enclosing our thought within (insurmountable) walls – and the notion of an absolute beginning or an absolute end is among them – does not tell us more than that we are indeed finite beings.”

Echoing Thomas Mann’s assertion that “the perishableness of life… imparts value, dignity, interest to life,” Arendt adds: “Man’s finitude, irrevocably given by virtue of his own short time span set in an infinity of time stretching into both past and future, constitutes the infrastructure, as it were, of all mental activities: it manifests itself as the only reality of which thinking qua thinking is aware, when the thinking ego has withdrawn from the world of appearances and lost the sense of realness inherent in the sensus communis by which we orient ourselves in this world… The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”

T.S. Eliot captured this nowhereness in his exquisite phrase “the still point of the turning world.” But the spatial dimension of thought, Arendt argues, is intersected by a temporal one – thinking invariably forces us to recollect and anticipate, voyaging into the past and the future, thus creating the mental spacetime continuum through which our thought-trains travel. From this arises our sense of the sequential nature of time and its essential ongoingness. Arendt writes:

“The inner time sensation arises when we are not entirely absorbed by the absent non-visibles we are thinking about but begin to direct our attention onto the activity itself. In this situation past and future are equally present precisely because they are equally absent from our sense; thus the no-longer of the past is transformed by virtue of the spatial metaphor into something lying behind us and the not-yet of the future into something that approaches us from ahead.”
[…]
In other words, the time continuum, everlasting change, is broken up into the tenses past, present, future, whereby past and future are antagonistic to each other as the no-longer and the not-yet only because of the presence of man, who himself has an “origin,” his birth, and an end, his death, and therefore stands at any given moment between them; this in-between is called the present. It is the insertion of man with his limited life span that transforms the continuously flowing stream of sheer change – which we can conceive of cyclically as well as in the form of rectilinear motion without ever being able to conceive of an absolute beginning or an absolute end – into time as we know it.”

Once again, it is our finitude that mediates our experience of time: “Seen from the viewpoint of a continuously flowing everlasting stream, the insertion of man, fighting in both directions, produces a rupture which, by being defended in both directions, is extended to a gap, the present seen as the fighter’s battleground… Seen from the viewpoint of man, at each single moment inserted and caught in the middle between his past and his future, both aimed at the one who is creating his present, the battleground is an in-between, an extended Now on which he spends his life. The present, in ordinary life the most futile and slippery of the tenses – when I say “now” and point to it, it is already gone – is no more than the clash of a past, which is no more, with a future, which is approaching and not yet there. Man lives in this in-between, and what he calls the present is a life-long fight against the dead weight of the past, driving him forward with hope, and the fear of a future (whose only certainty is death), driving him backward toward “the quiet of the past” with nostalgia for and remembrance of the only reality he can be sure of.”

This fluid conception of time, Arendt points out, is quite different from its representation in ordinary life, where the calendar tells us that the present is contained in today, the past starts at yesterday, and the future at tomorrow. In a sentiment that calls to mind Patti Smith’s magnificent meditation on time and transformation, Arendt writes: "That we can shape the everlasting stream of sheer change into a time continuum we owe not to time itself but to the continuity of our business and our activities in the world, in which we continue what we started yesterday and hope to finish tomorrow. In other words, the time continuum depends on the continuity of our everyday life, and the business of everyday life, in contrast to the activity of the thinking ego – always independent of the spatial circumstances surrounding it – is always spatially determined and conditioned. It is due to this thoroughgoing spatiality of our ordinary life that we can speak plausibly of time in spatial categories, that the past can appear to us as something lying “behind” us and the future as lying “ahead.”
[…]
The gap between past and future opens only in reflection, whose subject matter is what is absent – either what has already disappeared or what has not yet appeared. Reflection draws these absent “regions” into the mind’s presence; from that perspective the activity of thinking can be understood as a fight against time itself.”

This elusive gap, Arendt argues, is where the thinking ego resides – and it is only by mentally inserting ourselves between the past and the future that they come to exist at all: Without [the thinker], there would be no difference between past and future, but only everlasting change. Or else these forces would clash head on and annihilate each other. But thanks to the insertion of a fighting presence, they meet at an angle, and the correct image would then have to be what the physicists call a parallelogram of forces.

These two forces, which have an indefinite origin and a definite end point in the present, converge into a third – a diagonal pull that, contrary to the past and the present, has a definite origin in the present and emanates out toward infinity. That diagonal force, Arendt observes, is the perfect metaphor for the activity of thought. She writes:

“This diagonal, though pointing to some infinity, is limited, enclosed, as it were, by the forces of past and future, and thus protected against the void; it remains bound to and is rooted in the present – an entirely human present though it is fully actualized only in the thinking process and lasts no longer than this process lasts. It is the quiet of the Now in the time-pressed, time-tossed existence of man; it is somehow, to change the metaphor, the quiet in the center of a storm which, though totally unlike the storm, still belongs to it. In this gap between past and future, we find our place in time when we think, that is, when we are sufficiently removed from past and future to be relied on to find out their meaning, to assume the position of “umpire,” of arbiter and judge over the manifold, never-ending affairs of human existence in the world, never arriving at a final solution to their riddles but ready with ever-new answers to the question of what it may be all about.”

“The Life of the Mind” is one of the most stimulating packets of thought ever published. Complement this particular portion with Virginia Woolf on the elasticity of time, Dan Falk on how our capacity for mental time travel made us human, and T.S. Eliot’s poetic ode to the nature of time.“

"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "Is Your Money Really Safe?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 2/25/24
"Is Your Money Really Safe?"
Comments here:

Adventures With Danno, "Outrageous Price Increases At Walmart!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 2/25/23
"Outrageous Price Increases At Walmart! 
This Is Ridiculous! What's Coming?"
In today's vlog, we are at Walmart and are noticing some outrageous price increases on grocery items! It's getting rough out here as food continues to get more and more unaffordable!
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: The System Is Hyperinflating"

"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/25/24
"Markets, A Look Ahead: The System Is Hyperinflating"
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"Humanity: Where Conspiracies Come To Die" (Excerpt)

"Humanity: Where Conspiracies Come To Die"
by Alex Krainer

Excerpt: "Conspiracies do exist; they arise in pursuit of specific objectives. Usually, the greater the objective, the more people must be organized to carry out the plan. The organization will shape up in some form of command and control hierarchy. People at the top of that hierarchy, those who originated and planned the conspiracy are usually the only ones who know what the plan is about. Lower rungs of the hierarchy must include individuals who may not know what the plan is about, but whose competence and operational capabilities are essential to the plan's success. In addition to competence however, these individuals must be willing to carry out the tasks necessary for the plan's execution. To make sure that they’re willing, conspirators regularly deceive them.

Competence trumps obedience: But this is where conspiracies run into unpredictable headwinds and often fail. In my experience, the more capable an individual is, the more difficult it is to deceive them. They tend to be engaged in their occupations and have a good understanding of the purpose and importance of their work. They also tend to have a high degree of personal and professional integrity and usually care about the quality of their work. If they're asked to work toward potentially nefarious ends, they may refuse to carry out their tasks, perform them poorly, sabotage them or even quit their positions. It is often exactly the most capable individuals who have those choices because their service could be in high demand elsewhere.

Google’s Project Maven: For example, when the US Department of Defense launched its drone assassinations program under the Bush-Cheney administration, the pilots they trained did not like the idea of killing unknown people around the world for unknown reasons. The pilots started quitting in large numbers or reporting incapacity due to moral injury, conflict of conscience or depression. Their superiors tried simply commanding them to follow orders, but this couldn’t reverse their unwillingness. The DOD sought to overcome the problem by resorting to artificial intelligence (AI). In April 2017, Google launched "Project Maven," or Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (AWCFT). The idea was to develop AI targeting software and replace the unwilling human pilots. But as it turned out, Google's engineers weren't keen on the idea of killing people either. Many were outraged and about a dozen of their top engineers quit.

In the process, they compiled a master document of personal accounts detailing their decisions to leave, prompting nearly 4,000 employees to sign a petition opposing the company's involvement in the program. The company management tried to salvage the project by claiming that their AI won't be used to actually kill anyone, but apparently this reassurance wasn't sufficient. In addition to the petition circulating inside Google, the Tech Workers Coalition launched a petition in April 2018 demanding that Google abandon its work on Maven and that other tech companies, including IBM and Amazon refuse to work with the US DOD: "We can no longer ignore our industry's and our technologies' harmful biases, large-scale breaches of trust, and lack of ethical safeguards. These are life and death stakes," the petition read. Who knew? It turns out that trust and ethical safeguards are important to people.

The brightest and the best leaving the NSA: The National Security Agency (NSA) was about to learn that same lesson. In a January 2, 2018 article, The Washington Post reported that "NSA is losing its top talent at a worrisome rate as highly skilled personnel, some disillusioned with the spy agency's leadership... Since 2015, the NSA has lost several hundred hackers, engineers and data scientists..." Apparently, WaPo wrote, "the potential impact on national security is significant." "Some synonym of the word 'EPIDEMIC' is the best way to describe it," said one Ellison Anne Williams, former senior researcher at the NSA: "The agency is losing an amazing amount of its strongest technical talent, and to lose your best and brightest staff is a huge hit." Some groups within the NSA have lost almost half of their staff, another former official stated.

It is important to recognize how real and how powerful dissent and noncompliance can be. Often, only a small handful of dissenters armed with nothing more than truth and courage, can bring down colossal conspiracies of the world’s most powerful people. Theranos was the perfect example of this."
Full article is here:

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "Another Mysterious Balloon Flying Over America; Society Keeps Collapsing"

Jeremiah Babe, 2/24/24
"Another Mysterious Balloon Flying Over America; 
Society Keeps Collapsing"
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"And It Was Pointless..."

“And it was pointless… to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell… for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn’t changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You’re left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it’s knowing you carry your scars with you.”
- Charles Frazier

"Never be ashamed of a scar. 
It only proves you were stronger than what tried to hurt you."
- Unknown

Musical Interlude: Gnomusy, "Dolmen Ridge"

Gnomusy, "Dolmen Ridge"