Why was the military trying to film a plane low-flying over NYC?
I don’t buy the explanation – the only one given – that they were just trying to update file photos. Because according to this article, the exercise cost nearly $330,000!
But what really disturbs me are two lines in this story:
… The Federal Aviation Administration said the aircraft, which functions as Air Force One when the president is aboard, was taking part in a classified, government-sanctioned photo shoot.
… New York Police Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne said the department had been alerted about the flight “with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it.”
Classified?
Why would such a public act be “classified”?
Why would the government officials direct the NYPD to keep silent?
I mean, why shouldn’t I jump to a conclusion here. Why not pre-film a plane low-flying over NYC and then use that in some story later to present an event as real that might be entirely fake? A “Wag the Dog” scenario, so to speak?
I’d really like to hear a better explanation. Because lacking one, this story reeks of something far more sinister. I hope Obama and McCain join forces to get to the bottom of why this plane was launched on such a mission, which ended up retraumatizing some citizens of NYC. I know how they feel. I start to feel ill when I see planes over downtown Los Angeles, and we weren’t even attacked. It’s a horrible feeling, to be afraid of something I never gave a second thought to before.
I really want to know, now.
What the heck was the military doing?
Here is my current speculation.
First, though, let me note than when I first saw the story, it made no sense, and then when I saw the video on Catherine Austin Fitts blog, a bunch of (in)famous bank buildings got featured prominence. Then I went back to the story, and saw that some of the same banks were overly prominent there too.
So:
Obama has just delivered a horse’s head to the bankers’ beds. I mean, all the insiders know how 9/11 was done, and more or less by who, and now this incident re-invokes 9/11 itself. Of course Obama denies he had anything to do with the fly-by–it was an underling’s mistake–but more, nobody can admit they know what he is saying. But he is saying it, and he is saying that whatever it is he has a mind to do–if they don’t shape up (whatever shaping up means, but he has already told them privately what shaping up means in plain English)–he can do it AND get away with it, just like we-all-know-who got away with 9/11.
It’s a warning, perhaps a final one.
It is public, so that the public can read it too–though again no one can admit they read it. It is subliminal, which is very important.
What happens now?
The bankers back down. Else, metaphorically–or not! gang war breaks out in the streets. The public is not currently happy with bankers, so the public nature of the warning redoubles the threat: Nobody is going to cry if something bad happens to these people–and Obama can and will arrange that it is not him doing it anyway. He will have clean hands. This is the central meaning of letting 9/11 be the image conveying the threat.
Actually, there is more. There are banking connections to 9/11 that could come out. We’re not talking jail time. Gas-chamber, electric-chair stuff. The public would demand it. Won’t happen, of course, because this is blackmail, only blackmail–blackmail that will work.
Obama could not do this alone: He has some really big power behind him. Time is short and the bankers are in the way; something bigger than the bankers is ready to take them out of the way.
The next move should be interesting.
Wow – that’s pretty big speculation. Interesting, but I don’t see evidence to support any of that.
I really don’t think Obama was in on this at all, and I do think he’s running his presidency more than anyone else in recent years. I don’t see a big hand moving behind the scenes.
That may change, of course. But for now, I think he’s truly the president, and I haven’t felt that way in years.
I was looking at this event for its symbolic value, since that seemed to be how it was being reported. The reference to 9/11 was NOT subliminal, only the import of that.
And you can slice and dice this many ways. You emphasize the military, and the rather absurd secrecy being imposed on a public event, but were they working for or against Obama? I was assuming for.
If you assume AGAINST, then the symbolic value is to associate the bankers with the victims of 9/11, and associate Obama with the hijackers, reviving the “Obama as crazy muslim” meme. In this case, the message is for the public only. Has this all been properly focus-grouped? Surely. Too bad we don’t know who focus-grouped this and what they found.
Big powers are definitely moving now. The timing is interesting: Recently Obama was in Mexico and the head of the archaeological museum who he met there died the next day of what is suggested to be the Swine Flu.
So if Obama is sending messages as I suggest, he is not the only one.
Big games are in play. We may not know what all the pieces on the chess board are, and where they are positioned, but they are no longer merely moving about. They are about to start flying off the board–and that we WILL see.
Your suggestion that they might be documenting “news” before it happens is a good one. What news is being pre-documented here?
All just scenerios, of course.
.
See the comment in my diary on the A/H1N1 virus.
His death is most likely not counted as flu inflicted by Mexican officials ’cause the numbers need not climb higher for economic reasons.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“Wow – that’s pretty big speculation…”
not really.
keep in mind Obama’s chief of staff once mailed a dead fish (mafioso style) to a political enemy.
NOTHING surprises me anymore.
That was LONG before Rahm became Obama’s Chief of Staff, to be clear.
WHATEVER… Rahmbo is still the same pit bull.. that part hasn’t changed.
dead fish.
Not only CAN Obama deny he is saying what he is saying, but more, no one else can NAME what Obama is saying without labeling himself a crank.
😉
A threat does not get more perfect than that.
Do you really want to cross somebody who is able to do this? And what is behind the threat? This is where the military comes in, and why IT is prominent in the story. Assuming still that the military is for Obama rather than against, I note not only that the military are natural enemies of the bankers–because their power comes from different, competing sources–but tactically, the military can always prevail.
(That needs elaboration. The bankers and the military often–and have long–worked hand in hand. But the military needs the State, while the bankers may choose to work against the State, and when that happens–as now–the alliance falls apart.)
So all that is left is the media. But can the bankers count on the media to defend them? The media right now is helping to deliver the threat! And even before now the banks have lost the guarrantee of good press.
Again the image of 9/11: Everyone knows what a key role the media played in that. If the media is not with you, then what?
As the “cranks” in the forum at this link point out, the hell the DoD couldn’t PHOTOSHOP this “photo opp” without the actual planes scaring actual civilians in person:
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=145806
The damage control needs to kick up a LOT of dust to cover whatever might’ve been going on. Drudge certainly helps kick more dust…
to my hypothesis–that the military is OPPOSED to Obama.
Well, well!
So many interesting scenerios!
At the very least, this absolutely makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER as a “photo op”.
The effect could be rendered in paint.exe w/o any flight over NYC, without any alert to keep it all seekrit skvirrle to the NYC police, etc.
good points.
as far as needing the media as an ally.. I agree to a certain extent, i.e. the extent of people that actually pay attention to the mainstream media.. I’m guessing not a majority of our population, not even close to a majority.
I defer to Jello Biafra who said “Don’t complain about the media, become the media!” the advent of the internet, blogging, etc., has made this possible.
I read/depend on NO U.S. mainstream media for the issues I care about. I can read the BBC, Financial Times, etc.
Cryptogon has put up a YouTube of Obama’s press conference, in which he repeats that it was “a mistake,” says, “I heard about it along with you.” and calmly apologizes, “It won’t happen again.”
(Obviously it will not.)
Cryptogon’s comment: WTF
My comment: Obama is not someone I want to play poker against!
If you look at the way it was reported initially, it was laid at Obama’s feet. It was the White House military liason, or something like that, which would seem to make it Obama’s, when he apparently knew nothing about it.
Rather than it being Obama throwing a high, hard one under the chin of the bankers, I think it’s just the opposite. I think it was something done deliberately by the military to embarrass Obama. Maybe it was symbolic of something (using Air Force One), but if you listened to cable news you’d think that Obama planned this in order to strike terror and fear in New Yorkers and waste tax dollars.
So on one level it seems to have been done to embarrass President Obama. But I suspect that there are other levels. There is something that stinks about this. I suspect this is a low-level sabotage of the administration by the military. This is the men in the Pentagon and Langley pushing back.
There have been other incidents that I felt may have been messages to Obama. The emergency landing of his aircraft during the campaign. The peculiar failure of the Secret Service to run the metal detector at a campaign event in DALLAS.
This:
http://southofheaven.typepad.com/south_of_heaven/2009/02/past-is-prologue-again.html
is what I believe is going on. And a few months into the Obama Administration you can see how the military-industrial complex seems to be immune to how the voters voted last fall.
Thanks for sharing the link.
But, on the one hand I do think Obama knows what his job is, and on the other, the banker faction is going to get dealt with, because it has to be, and that is why I doubt the military are in true opposition to him.
What do I mean? The problem is not Americans being reduced to serfs and debt slavery. NOBODY of political significance cares about that. The problem is the US disintegrating outright in the coming economic collapse.
Obama’s job is to hold the country together–to keep it from becoming a failed state like Mexico. And the bankers have gone off-program–are standing in the way.
I think you are right.
Every state is controlled by wealth and by power and it is organized so that the vast majority of that wealth and power goes to a very small segment at its top. The post-WWII alliance in America has included an expanding permanent military, the international corporatists (most prominently Big Oil), the bankers, and the intelligence community. The intelligence community and the military, while initially separate entities, has pretty much merged as one now.
The military’s purpose has been to secure control of product overseas, most consistently oil. Not for the product, but for the profit of oil companies.
The problem is that oil as a way of life is approaching its endgame. Not that I believe that carbon-based energy is about to run out, but rather that we’ll run out of arable land and breathable air a lot sooner. Suddenly Big Oil’s interests aren’t the interests for the rest of the alliance (or humanity). The military’s purpose, to seize and hold these resources, becomes more difficult because current wars don’t work as effectively as traditional wars. The intelligence community still manages coups and removes those regimes that don’t continue to dance vigorously to our piper’s tune, but even that isn’t as efficient as it has been. The military needs a rationale for existing, and so must produce “endless enemies.”
Likewise, the banking section of the alliance, always propelled by greed, has exceeded all reason and has stolen enough to create the current worldwide recession. This should not be a surprise. One can look at the last three generations of the Bush Family as a clan of bank robbers, from Prescott Bush who handled Nazi investments for Brown Brothers Harriman (profiting from the gold teeth snatched from the mouths of the Nazis’ victims); GHW Bush, who oversaw various CIA bank scams and oversaw the deregulation and destruction of the S&Ls for Reagan and whose Enterprise used BCCI; and Dubya, overseeing the current crisis. GHW Bush, who comes from a family of bankers, who has probably been a player in the CIA since his college graduation, and who has been deep in Big Oil, could be seen as a unifying figure for the alliance. I said as much 15-20 years ago to Carl Oglesby, author of THE YANKEE AND COWBOY WAR, and he agreed.
Nevertheless, the alliance is coming undone. I suspect that Robert Gates was put into place during the Bush Administration precisely because the Bush faction had overstepped its boundaries and was wrecking the gravy train. The military/intelligence faction realized that Iraq was a loss for the military.
There is now an ongoing reorganization. Each constituency is pushing to keep its share. Someone’s gotta give back something.
The military/intelligence faction doesn’t want to bankrupt the system, but it doesn’t want to lose its position. I don’t think that the military/intelligence faction is quite ready for an outright coup, but they’ll push back to keep their higher-ups, for example, from going to jail for torture. I think the CIA’s position is that the Lyndie Englands can take the fall, and when it looks like it went higher up they’ll let Dubya and his cronies take the political hit, but the intelligence/military will not go down like that. And to protect their interests they’ll listen in on every phone call of every American and blackmail who needs to be blackmailed.
So, yes, I don’t think that the military is in fierce opposition to Obama. But I think that they feel that they need to remind him who’s boss.
Look at the territorial pissings between Obama and the military. For ex, gays in the military becomes “Let’s get back to that later.” The whole FISA/NSA/Echelon/Etc. evolution has been the slow but steady legalization of the military/intelligence community spying on Americans. Last year Obama caved on that one, a couple days after his airplane had “mechanical problems.” There are other examples which I might cite if I had more coffee in me.
By the way, government spying has been going on since before J. Edgar Hoover bought his first package of index cards. The current situation is just vaster and more profound.
So far Obama has blinked when pushed by the military.
I do believe that Obama sees that America would do better if the peasants could get another few percent back on their side of the ledger. For that he’s more of a hero than David Sirota could ever imagine. The generals want to keep their show going. The corporatists frankly only worry that the peasants don’t have the money to be good consumers. The bankers keep squeezing for more blood from that stone. It’s a crisis of capital that could be simply solved if the rich and powerful could be given hearts.
That last sentence – well said.
yet you are wrong to say the crisis could be solved.
Because the deeper problem is that it is no longer possible to get a return on investment through economic growth. Peak Light Sweet Crude was in 2005. Peak All Petroleum Liquids was last year–2008. As production goes into permanent decline, the abundant energy necessary for a growing economy is not there. This in turn creates scarcities in other resources, in a cascade.
This is not, really, a sudden event. For over a decade it has been increasingly difficult to find an investment that would yield a return–hence the turn to asset bubbles. Capitalism is dead. But there is nothing else: We are all capitalists now. So this is a crisis from which our civilization will not recover.
By changing mind (and our concepts of a “way of life”) survival is likely possible. But nobody wants to change mind–which is as true for the “left” as it is for the “right”–and even more so for our political and economic leaders. So the crisis will not be solved–because it can’t be–and we will not change to a different way, because we don’t want to.
Obama’s job is not to solve the crisis, but to keep the game going.
A substrategy of that–because it is necessary for the game–is to keep the US going as a political state. It is this mid-term strategy that the banks are interfering with.
to ensure Obama wouldn’t even nod at any reasonable discourse on drug regulation/legalization?