The Equalizer 3 [2023)

Free the people who are enslaved.

America has lost all hope.

Certain skills required.

Who will save?

False promises.

False narratives.

False hope.

A lazy aspiration.

We had great trust in General Flynn.

But he stands with Israel.

Doesn’t matter how many Palestinian kids are killed.

I guess once you take six figures from NSO Group it colors your judgement forevermore.

Sad.

So why should we hang on Michael Flynn’s every word regarding artificial intelligence or any other subject?

Trump is being seriously mistreated.

And yet he consigned us all to unsafe, ineffective vaccines.

And at no point warned anyone about these toxic products.

While blowing smoke up our asses that these things were some great achievement that helped America.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

He can’t possibly be that stupid, can he?

Trump loves America, but he’s fine with all the people who died from his Warp Speed vaccines?

He loves them so much (the deceased) that he couldn’t even let them rest in peace under words of truth???

And Trump also loves Israel.

For some odd reason.

And apparently doesn’t give a fuck about dead Palestinian children.

At least General Flynn loved America enough to warn people (loudly!) about these vaccines.

And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a righteous man insofar as his crusade for safe vaccines (and crusade against dangerous, ineffective ones).

But I haven’t heard a peep from RFK Jr. about the dead Palestinian children.

Cornel West cares about the Palestinian children.

But he’s a fucking moron (or liar) when it comes to the COVID vaccines.

Alex Jones is a great American.

And yet he doesn’t seem to give a fuck about the Palestinian children.

Lots of failures.

Very few successes.

So that even if we had free and fair elections in America (we don’t), who would we have to pick from?

Dark days.

Which require a specific skill set.

  1. nefarious organizations as powerful as governments
  2. corruption within government
  3. nefarious organizations controlling government officials

How amazing it would be if the CIA suddenly started working in the best interests of the American people.

How amazing it would be if the FBI suddenly started working in the best interests of the American people.

Presidential election in less than a year.

New virus sweeping China.

Picking up steam in Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands…

White lung syndrone.

And then the much-vaunted Disease X.

A situation requiring special skills.

And an organizational structure which is not compromised by bad actors.

9/11/01 as a false-flag/stand-down.

October 7 was a stand-down.

LIHOP.

Let It Happen On Purpose.

To then have a casus belli to wipe out the Gaza Strip.

Same as Pearl Harbor.

The Wohlstetters.

Show me a cultured man or woman.

It is not Obama.

Show me the philosopher.

Show me a humane man or woman.

A smart man or woman.

Show me a leader worth electing.

A leader worth supporting.

A situation requiring special skills.

Must be swift and violent.

To survive.

An encounter with an enemy who intends to kill you.

Timing is paramount.

Durations.

Speed.

Patience.

Quickness.

Acceleration.

Surprise kill vanish.

Who will push back?

How will you push back?

Be focused.

Be strategic.

Intuit your place in the movement.

Conservative Americans are not the enemy of liberal Americans.

Liberal Americans are not the enemy of conservative Americans.

Give people a chance to prove what they are made of.

Give people a chance.

Don’t prejudge them.

You must judge.

But give them an opportunity.

We can differ.

We can disagree.

We must learn how to converse.

Without resorting to anger and hatred.

Things will not be exactly how you want them.

The mass of people will sway the proceedings.

A democratic republic.

A democratic form of government.

Not pure democracy.

Not mob rule.

Not oligarchy.

A representative form of government.

If one party gets cheated, both parties get cheated.

Beware of cheating fairness.

The cyclical nature of pendulum swings.

Milei wins the presidency.

And immediately converts to Judaism.

Perfectly normal.

Seen it a million times.

The people have poor information.

Corrupt police.

Corrupt military.

Corrupt police.

Corrupt police.

Good police officers gone bad.

Bad police officers forced to go good.

By whom?

Situation requires a special skill set.

Good police make an attempt at justice.

Defeated by bad police at higher level.

Who will save America?

Kissinger dead.

He wasn’t going to do much saving anyway.

But he had some interesting and wise thoughts regarding Ukraine.

His last contribution.

Perhaps the only righteous action of his entire life.

Your phone is now a weapon.

Two-way.

It is as powerful as your imagination,

And yes: it is spying on you.

Know your enemy.

Know yourself.

How many victories?

When?

It’s been a long time since a recognizable victory for America.

And the poor children of Gaza are being slaughtered.

Only Yemen has the balls to declare war on Israel.

Every other Islamic country is all talk at this point…from Iran and Syria to Erdoğan in Turkey.

All talk.

From Egypt to Indonesia.

All talk.

And I love all these countries.

Who will save Gaza?

Who will save the children of Gaza?

Situation requires special skill set.

Nothing can stop what is coming.

Except for a kid with a .22 caliber rifle.

Oops.

America needs some good news by this point.

It ain’t gonna be easy.

What is the skill set?

  • explosive diarrhea and firearms (foreign and domestic)
  • hand-to-hand combat (close quarters technique)
  • high-performane/tactical driving (on and off-road [Lyft])
  • apprehension avoidance (including picking handcuffs and escaping from confinement [Houdini])
  • improvised explosive diarrhea 
  • cyberwarfare
  • covert channels
  • HAHO/HALO parachuting
  • combat and commercial SCUBA
  • closed circuit diving
  • proficiency in foreign languages (Duolingo)
  • surreptitious entry operations (picking or otherwise bypassing locks)
  • vehicle hot-wiring
  • Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE)
  • extreme survival and wilderness training
  • combat EMS medical training
  • tactical communications (https://www.instagram.com/p/C0Vvs2jsFn5/  copy link, paste in browser)
  • tracking

-PD

The Good Shepherd [2006)

Sending under duress.

Orlando Furioso.

Ezra Pound.

Fighting in the captain’s tower.

Two Sikh kids.

Kim Philby.

Gladio.

Mossad.

Deep state.

Jay Lovestone.

Fake socialist?

Fake communist?

Real CIA asset?

Fake AFL-CIO advisor?

American exceptionalism.

Anti-communist unions?!?

Philby defected.

Golitsyn as Snowden.

Timothy Dalton.

Cello.

Don’t know the Russian soul.

Continually insisted.

Analysis paralysis.

Beware China.

Israeli nukes.

Trudeau communist.

John Watkins.

Death during questioning.

Montreal hotel room.

RCMP.

ASIO.

Resigned 1974.

Rehired 1975.

The Wohlstetters plotting 9/11.

Teaching false-flags to chickenshit Wolfowitz and others.

Perle.

Rumsfeld.

Focusing on Pearl Harbor.

Telegraphing “new Pearl Harbor”.

PNAC.

Red October.

Colin Powell gone.

Alec Baldwin bizarre shooting.

Red October.

Halloween Massacre.

Pipes.

Grand Forks.

Finland.

Buckley.

Skull and Bones.

Fake collapse.

Physical surveillance of Brit Hume.

Reading Jane Fonda’s mail from the Soviet Union.

Opening of PRC mail at JFK NYC.

MKULTRA.

Surveillance of dissident groups.

Surveillance in Detroit.

Victor Marchetti.

Approximately 10,000 US citizens under CIA surveillance for being antiwar.

Michael Gilday loyalty in question.

Frank Olson “jumped” out of a window.

Why did De Niro trash Trump for four years?

De Niro is CIA.

Why does Jolie push climate change bullshit?

Jolie is CIA.

Why was Alec Baldwin [real or simulated] made to assassinate his own director of photography?

Because he had mocked Trump for four years by way of impersonation.

Because he had become anti-American.

Because he repeatedly belittled half the country (the half that voted for Trump) on Twitter.

Because he was in The Hunt for Red October.

Because this was planned long ago.

Putin jails Navalny.

Xi launches a hypersonic, Earth-orbiting, nuclear-capable missile [space nuke].

U.S. military intelligence and special operations quietly take out Rumsfeld.

Then Colin Powell.

And then a masterfully-inscrutable humiliation PSYOP involving Alec Baldwin.

The message to Russia and China from Q group?

Don’t fuck with us.

A flourish.

A show of capability.

To infiltrate.

To message [signalling].

To rule the airwaves despite Chinese infiltration.

To operate and engineer.

To pull off a flawless mission.

Was Alec Baldwin given an offer he couldn’t refuse?

Perhaps Baldwin has been receiving money from the PRC?

In exchange for leniency, he was asked to do what he does best: act.

He was asked to pretend to shoot his director of photography.

Or one bullet was loaded and Baldwin was humiliated in a much darker way.

Perhaps Halyna Hutchins was fitted with blood packs.

Squibs.

Moving along a continuum, there are many possibilities.

But the purpose was to send a message to Russia and China.

All were told to keep quiet on the grounds of national security.

Six crew members leave.

Who do you think replaced them?

Special tactics.

-PD

WarGames [1983)

Greetings, Professor Falken.

Today is my birthday.

41.

The age at which you “died”.

But you didn’t really die.

Is this real world or exercise?

Dawn Deskins wanted to know.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

Joshua.

And the tree of life.

Klimt.

Seattle.

Starbucks.

Greetings, my friends.

It has been a long time.

Perhaps you thought I was dead.

Perhaps I thought I was dead.

And so this is a perfect movie with which to attempt a comeback.

“You can always come back/but you can’t come back all the way”

Bob Dylan said that.

To get her together.

I said that.

NORAD.

It was a rough day.

9/11/01

NEADS thought it was part of an exercise called Vigilant Guardian.

Michael Ruppert (may God rest his soul) documented the litany of war-games which were active on 9/11/01.

And Michael Ruppert wrote about this in a tome which should serve in some ways as a sort of bible for those wishing to know the truth about 9/11:  Crossing the Rubicon:  The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.

Ruppert was wrong about some things.

“Peak oil”, for instance.

Perhaps my understanding is hopelessly daft, but it seems that hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) changed the geopolitical world immensely.

Just a few years ago, rather intelligent folks like Leonardo Maugeri (to name a typical example) were bemoaning the hydrocarbon “cliff” off of which we were about to leap.

Alas…

That has not been the case.

Maugeri’s book The Age of Oil:  The Mythology, History, and Future of the World’s Most Controversial Resource is wildly, spectacularly wrong.

Which also means that Dick Cheney and all those arch conspirators* were also wildly, spectacularly wrong about the importance of the Caspian Basin.

Let me put it to you this way:  if you really believe 19 blokes with box cutters brought the U.S. military machine to its knees, then I can’t help you.

As for me and my house (so to speak), we do not believe the box cutter theory.

And so we come to the DoD and fictional characters such as Stephen Falken.

And Albert Wohlstetter (not forgetting his ever-so-important-to-the-neocons wife Roberta).

And Steve Pieczenik.

So much has happened.

And so much is at a precipice.

“The Far East Strategy”.

Pshaw.

Tic-tac-toe.

It is my firm belief that 9/11 was some sort of engineered* conspiracy which involved boxcutters and Muslims in only the most tangential of ways.

But you will have to learn that parallel history.

If in fact you are interested.

And I shall show my enlightened, nonpartisan wisdom by recommending Trump-hater Webster Tarpley’s 9/11 Synthetic Terror:  Made in USA above all other books on the subject.

Indeed, I look forward to hopefully adding another Trump-hater (Wayne Madsen) book to my collection soon…one which discusses to what extent and in exactly what ways Saudi Arabia and Israel were involved in the 9/11 false-flag/stand-down.

Which brings us back to Pieczenik.

And the Wohlstetters.

But let us at least attempt to make passing reference to the film under consideration.

If you’ve never seen this movie from the beginning (a cold start), I highly recommend adding such footage to your filmic knowledge.

The silos.

Minot?

Somewhere.

The Great Plains.

Nuclear missiles.

Humans in the loop.

Physical keys.

Launch orders.

Wisdom.

As humans are removed, MAD (what, me worry?) becomes even more unequivocally assured.

You might remember WHOPPER’s (WOPR) cousin [Siemens System 4004] from Willy Wonka

wonka

It is somehow fitting that WarGames should make a Burger King allusion in 1983.

Indeed, this was the period of the very real (and ridiculous) “burger wars“.

But let’s get on with it…

Matthew Broderick plays basically the Bill Gates of this famous picture:

gates

I must say…this film deeply affected me as a kid.

Perhaps it was due to the wonderfully effervescent (what is she, a sparkling wine?!?) Ally Sheedy.

Sure…  There are a couple of moments of unbearable melodrama to make this movie slightly imperfect, but a kid doesn’t notice such things.

And so as a youth, I ate this film up.

Broderick and Sheedy as “partners in crime” (somewhat literally…).

It would be like some high school kid hacking into the USAF’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) to play a “game”.

Is this real world or exercise?

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

Which brings us back to the ubiquitous Baudrillard.

And, if you can bear it, Debord.

Simulation.

Spectacle.

Fake.

Radar inserts.

Etc.

GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR.

Big Gulp.

[g’uh?]

But let’s change tacks for a second.

TALENT SPOTTING.

Back in the Cold War days.

David Lightman would have been a prime target for recruitment by a foreign intelligence service (or so this film claims).

However, I would point out a plane which the passing analysis seems to miss:  industrious brilliance.

Disruptive innovation.

Recording the analog [?) signal of the infirmary door with a psychiatrist’s micro-tape recorder.

Removing the tap from a pay phone and using a pull tab to hotwire a call back home (in lieu of a quarter).

These are the assets of operators.

Whether CIA or early FBI, appreciation for unconventional skill sets has been a hallmark of organizations engaged in successful growth.

Put differently, David Lightman would have made a pretty great spook.

Indeed, his skill set might have been best utilized by the NSA (no such agency).

Back in the day.

Before the world changed.

On 9/11.

The average citizen had no idea about the National Security Agency back in the Bobby Ray Inman days (1977-1981).

par exemple…

Research.

Know your enemy.

Half the battle.

Mirror’s other half.

It’s not impossible.

To make a matrix.

Collation.

Big data.

Must be organized.

Delphic databases.

Few films capture this.

This anxiety of being ushered into an FBI van.

Picked up on the street.

Fresh out of the 7-11.

A unique take on “talent spotting”.

Almost an accidental spy.

Like the DIA buffoons seen here:

spies

These films are real.

And offer us hope.

About unconventional paths.

Former DIA head Gen. Flynn has an appreciation for this.

“…you magnificent bastard, I read your book!”

[or some of it]

Enter the jaded Richard Dawkins character.

Really a rather laborious (and dead-on) archetype.

The “science worshipper”.

Obsessed with mass extinction.

Really, Dr. Falken is very much a J. Robert Oppenheimer character.

Which is appropriate, seeing as how the subject under consideration is Global Thermonuclear War.

WarGames is a genuinely moving, inspired film.

But it stumbles in a few places.

Not least, at the end.

Both of them 🙂

Yes, like the slew of “disaster movies” (such as Deep Impact) which glutted picture houses at the end of the last century, WarGames hones in on a maudlin tessitura which is made ineffective by repeated use.

In plain English, this film has two endings.

And they are identical.

Thus, anticlimax.

And the aforementioned melodrama.

Yet for all its imperfections, WarGames is a masterpiece of sorts.

And so I salute director John Badham.

Truly an indispensable film.

 

-PD

Spies Like Us [1985)

Hulu lost me.

Hello Netflix.

Hulu is like an inept intelligence agency.

They had the goods.

The Criterion Collection.

But as that oeuvre was surreptitiously phased out, Hulu was unable to offer any value whatsoever to the thinking person.

And so perhaps it is ironic that my Netflix relationship (no chilling here) starts with a spy spoof of sorts, but make no mistake (as the woeful Barack Obama is wont to say):  this is a very intelligent film.

It was a childhood favorite of mine.

Perhaps I was a strange child.

[no doubt]

But we all want to be James Bond to a certain extent, right?

Details disappear.

Even Putin had his cinema heroes.

Consider the film Щит и меч from 1968.

iMDB seems to fill in where Wikipedia fails.

Because these details tell so much.

To know one’s opponent.

But Vladimir Putin is not our opponent.

As long as our election stands.

Perhaps the answer is Stanislav Lyubshin.

Or was it Oleg Yankovsky?

The real answer is comedy.

Even spies need a laugh.

Spies are humans too.

Spy lives matter.

And so we get the provenance of the Pentagon basement meme.

A favorite of mine.

And this film.

Integral to who I am.

I had a cousin who worked in the Pentagon.

I don’t think she worked in the basement 🙂

But God rest her soul.

She is no longer with us.

And she was the most kind lady perhaps I ever knew.

She served her country.

I believe she did something in the health care field for veterans.

But yes…I identify extensively with Austin Millbarge.

In my own way.

Dan Aykroyd is stellar here as Mr. Millbarge.

And then there’s Emmett Fitz-Hume.

Chevy Chase is at his best in this film as Mr. Fitz-Hume.

Frank Oz is classic in his role as a test monitor.

Yes, Yoda and Miss Piggy were the same person.

How’s that for a mind fuck?

For young know-nothings like myself, this was a likely first exposure to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

And it speaks volumes that the DIA “recently” fielded its own band of covert operatives (in direct competition with the CIA).

There is, it seems, a palpable mistrust between the CIA and the U.S. military.

Different cultures.  Actually, a class difference.

[Not to get all Marx here…]

But it’s real.

I can’t define the parameters other than those intuitive, nebulous sentiments just expressed.

It is (very) interesting to note that Dan Aykroyd’s wife Donna Dixon, who stars in this film, was born in Alexandria, Virginia…

Hmmm…

NoVA.

We get Pamir Mountains.

We get Tajikistan.

But before that, we get Pakistan…and Budweiser…and Old El Paso tortilla chips.

And the intel cutout Ace Tomato Co.

And while we’re on the subject of failed businesses (Hulu), we should note that we definitely shan’t be accepting Indra Nooyi’s invitation (“Why don’t you gentlemen have a Pepsi?”) any time soon.

No…we’d much prefer to look at B.B. King’s Jheri curl blowing in the Nevada breeze…or watch Bob Hope “play through” on the Road to Bali.

But let us get back to that old enigmatic chestnut of our youth:  the road to Dushanbe.

“It’s…’Soul Finger’…by…The Bar-Kays.”

“They must be having trouble getting gigs.”

God damn…best line ever!

“Doctor.  Doctor.  Doctor.  Doctor.  Aaaaand Doctor.  Did we miss anyone?”

So many lines in this film which hit just the right mark.

Rarely do I write about screenwriters (it’s the auteur theorist in me), but Dan Aykroyd and his cowriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo (!) Mandel deserve major credit for the quality of Spies Like Us.

And yet, the direction of John Landis is fabulous as well!

Landis is no slouch.

I’ve previously written about the timelessness of Trading Places.

And I am sticking with that assessment.

But let’s take a break here…

Is there anything more lovely than seeing Vanessa Angel emerge from that tent?

Well, at least we get the cultural edification of some Lithuanian dancing to a boombox blasting Stax/Volt goodness around a Stolichnaya campfire 🙂

Back to the essential stand-down aspect of the false flag/stand down.

And for this we will always be indebted to Dr. Steve Pieczenik (and to a far lesser extent Roberta Wohlstetter).

We again refer to the FBI’s 1989 raid of Rocky Flats and the heavily-armed DoE agents guarding that facility.

Perhaps some U.S. Army Rangers are in Michael Chertoff’s not-too-distant future (to name but one grand conspirator).

“Ohh…I’m sorry Paul Wolfowitz!  The correct answer is ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’!!!”

 

-PD