Timely book by Philip K. Dick
Charles Packer
summarized in the New York Times Book Review last week
as follows:
"The idea is this: Most of mankind lives in vast multistoried
underground 'tanks' that manufacture robots for use in the
nuclear conflagration that is raging at ground level. The
millions of people in the tanks watch news broadcasts about
the war and the poisoning of the planet's surface. They
=know= [emphasis mine], for example, that to go up there
would result in diseases...And so they stay where they are,
until, more or less by accident, one of them ventures into
the sunshine.
"And what that person learns is that all is fraudulent.
There was indeed a nuclear war. That much is true. But the
rest of earthly existence is the secret of a privileged few
who live on an entirely habitable earth on vast estates
serviced by the robots produced by the duped inhabitants of
the tanks. Thus "The Penultimate Truth" is a tale of the
almost infinite manipulability of facts and images, of
a bureaucratic dictatorship whose hold on power is based
on the bureaucrats' control of truth."
Think about =that= the next time you're watching the
shelling of Dubrovnik on CNN!
Dean R Biron
>An interesting-sounding book by Philip K. Dick was
>summarized in the New York Times Book Review last week
>as follows:
>
> "The idea is this: Most of mankind lives in vast multistoried
>underground 'tanks' that manufacture robots for use in the
etc.
>until, more or less by accident, one of them ventures into
>the sunshine.
> "And what that person learns is that all is fraudulent.
>There was indeed a nuclear war. That much is true. But the
>rest of earthly existence is the secret of a privileged few
>who live on an entirely habitable earth on vast estates
>serviced by the robots produced by the duped inhabitants of
>the tanks. Thus "The Penultimate Truth" is a tale of the
>almost infinite manipulability of facts and images, of
>a bureaucratic dictatorship whose hold on power is based
>on the bureaucrats' control of truth."
Hmm...Interestiing. Sounds like "The Machine Stops" meets the
Elisha (sp?) Bailer, R Daneel Olivaw stories. P.K.Dick though,
so I guess I'll have to find it.
db
`'
Beware the vorpal .sig!
Dennis Rivard
>summarized in the New York Times Book Review last week
>as follows:
[good plot deleted]
>Think about =that= the next time you're watching the
>shelling of Dubrovnik on CNN!
So in other words, you think the war in Yugoslavia is a hoax?
--
School:dri...@cs.ulowell.edu | Those who know/What's best for us/|
Work: riv...@claude.ma30.bull.com | Must rise and save us from |
My opinions are my own. | ourselves. - "Witch Hunt" Rush |
Charles Packer
>So in other words, you think the war in Yugoslavia is a hoax?
Actually, since you asked, yes, it seems to be a hoax. I don't watch
TV, but I notice that the newspaper I read has had no pictures of
actual combat. They pointedly show only images of people =looking=
at warfare, not the purported warfare itself. I suspect that if we
reviewed CNN or whatever video bites, I could show you that you
were filling in a lot of blanks with your mind.
Followups to this should be posted only to misc.headlines.
mei...@cch.cov.ac.uk
Charles Packer writes:
> I notice that the newspaper I read has had no pictures of actual
> combat. They pointedly show only images of people =looking= at
> warfare, not the purported warfare itself.
An employee of one of the major TV news companies in the UK (ITN)
was the last journalist from outside of Yugoslavia to remain in
Dubrovnic.
He got shot.
Now, I would personally be disinclined to believe that ITN would go
to the expense and hassle of shooting one of their own men, and before
you go thinking that they were just saying that he was shot, it has been
independently reported in most of the media that he was recovering from
a five-hour operation. Even the BBC News carried the story, which rather
makes me think it has some ring of truth,unless you wish to believe that
all the news we receive is completely falsified,as is everything that we
hear and see around us, apart from what you can touch and feel, which
definitely has to be the biggest conspiracy theory on either side of the
Atlantic. Come to think of it, that gives me an idea for a book.....
Shad.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Sh...@cov.ac.cck.uk or mei...@cov.ac.cck.uk| |
|"Somedays you just can't get rid of a bomb!" |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Migliore
>In article <18NOV199...@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov> pac...@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles Packer) writes:
>>An interesting-sounding book by Philip K. Dick was
>>summarized in the New York Times Book Review last week
>>as follows:
>>
Philip K. Dick (PKD) novels aren't for everyone. I did however
enjoy reading many of them. Here are a few more I can recommend
(these all deal with PKD's favorite subject matter: things are
only apparently real...). By the by the man has been dead since
~1983 right before "Blade Runner" ("Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep") was released.
"The Three Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer"
Earth is pretty much hosed. Main character gets "drafted"
to the Mars colony were he encounters this drug called
Chew-Z which a earthling called Eldritch Palmer brought
back from an encounter with an alien race... will we our
the characters ever determine what level of reality we
are really at?
"Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said"
Man is transformed from a famous star to a nobody and ends
up in a seedy part of a future LA. Will he ever regain what
he has lost (mentally)?
"UBIK"
In the future you don't really die you become half-life'ers
Your favorite relatives can wake you up from the otherside
to ask you important questions. Of course each time they do
so they bring you closer and closer to rebirth. The only
problem is which side of the wall are we really one.
(This was almost made into a movie but the director had
a fatal heartattack.)
"The Man in the High Castle"
Alternate history of the US were we have lost the war (WWII)
and Japan controls the west coast up to the rockies and
Germany controls the east coast. The main character finds
a book which is the driving force behind the resistance
in it describes how the US didn't lose the war....
"The Divine Invasion"
God has to come back to earth to save the day but has to
be born as a child on a colony and return to Earth (the
second coming?) only problem is God has forgotten everything
after being born...
"A Scanner Darkly"
Undercover cop in future L.A. poses as a drug user to crack
a drug smuggling ring. Only problem is he's doing such a
good job that half of him forgets he is a cop and the other
half dosen't realize which drug user hes observing is really
him...
--
| andrew_...@mentorg.com | "If you take life too seriously |
| Mentor Graphics Corp. | you'll never get out of it alive." |
| (503) 685-7000 x7338 | -Bugs Bunny |
Charles Packer
> independently reported in most of the media that he was recovering from
Aye, there's the rub. This "independence" can't be verified
by either you or me, can it? What makes you such a believer in it, and
me such a skeptic?
I can only speak for myself. I've had lots of time to ponder the
question of how we come to trust this extremely odd industry,
the free press. To make a long discussion short, it boils down
to us projecting onto the world the image of our family and
trusted friends from whom we learn about community events via
gossip. We tend to think the news industry is just an extension
of that network. I began to be skeptical of this view.
Anyway, I have two photos in front of me,
clipped from recent issues of the NY Times. Both are credited to
the Time's own photographer.
One shows a house in Vukovar, purportedly damaged by combat, but
it actually looks like a partially =assembled= house, and one,
that on close inspection, is architecturally unlikely. The view
is into roof framing, unshingled. A chimney or flue rises at the
far end, but is squared off neatly -- inside the roof framing,
which is continuous above it -- no opening for the chimney, in
other words. Also, it appears that the two wings of the house
should join in the background, but the view of the approach of
the lefthand wing is blocked by a foreground object, and there
is no structural evidence on the righthand wing that the
lefthand wing ever joined where it should have.
The other photo shows what is said to be a "shell-shattered"
street in Vukovar. Somehow they've had time since the purported
shelling to arrange the rubble, which actually looks like curb
blocks, into a pile along the street that is as almost as
precise as a New England stone fence. But they didn't have time
to remove a corpse, whose hand rests on his chest, index finger
delicately raised...
These and other photos convince me that the Yugoslavian thing
is the most obvious warfare hoax since the invasion of
Panama by the U.S. in 1989.
Dennis Rivard
>In article <1991Nov19....@mips2.ma30.bull.com>, riv...@claude.ma30.bull.com (Dennis Rivard) writes...
>>So in other words, you think the war in Yugoslavia is a hoax?
>
>Actually, since you asked, yes, it seems to be a hoax. I don't watch
>TV, but I notice that the newspaper I read has had no pictures of
>actual combat. They pointedly show only images of people =looking=
Funny, I never saw pictures of combat from Desert Storm either... Do
you deny that happened also?
>at warfare, not the purported warfare itself. I suspect that if we
>reviewed CNN or whatever video bites, I could show you that you
>were filling in a lot of blanks with your mind.
No, I'm not filling a lot of blanks with my mind... I disticntly
remember watching some combat scenes on CNN... saw a couple explosions
too... I think the reason we don't see much combat footage, is because
there is not constant battles... It seems to be the federal army will
strike here or there, and then nothing for a day or two...
I would have been just as easy to fake Desert Storm... i mean, do we
REALLY know that Iraq wasn't flying their own planes over baghdad when
we were shwon the live footage from the Al-Rashid hotel the first
night of the war?
Dennis Rivard
>One shows a house in Vukovar, purportedly damaged by combat, but
>it actually looks like a partially =assembled= house, and one,
>that on close inspection, is architecturally unlikely. The view
>is into roof framing, unshingled. A chimney or flue rises at the
>far end, but is squared off neatly -- inside the roof framing,
>which is continuous above it -- no opening for the chimney, in
>other words. Also, it appears that the two wings of the house
>should join in the background, but the view of the approach of
>the lefthand wing is blocked by a foreground object, and there
>is no structural evidence on the righthand wing that the
>lefthand wing ever joined where it should have.
>
>The other photo shows what is said to be a "shell-shattered"
>street in Vukovar. Somehow they've had time since the purported
>shelling to arrange the rubble, which actually looks like curb
>blocks, into a pile along the street that is as almost as
>precise as a New England stone fence. But they didn't have time
>to remove a corpse, whose hand rests on his chest, index finger
>delicately raised...
I challenge you to watch CNN's video footage... They've shown smoking cities,
the shell-shattered streets you deny, and much more....
Charles Packer
>I challenge you to watch CNN's video footage... They've shown smoking cities,
>the shell-shattered streets you deny, and much more....
You mean, just like in the movies I used to watch when I was a kid?
Come to think of it, they even have that kind of stuff in movies now.
They even use real planes and explosives to make them, too.
The NY Times, the most widely respected and influential newspaper
in the U.S., for some reason as chosen very pointedly to ignore
these scenes and publish photos by their own man that are brain
teasers, as can be seen in the two examples I described.
Drawing on 20 years of experience reading and studying the
Times, (is your experience longer?) I conclude that they're
making a statement by doing this. It's a matter of
interpretation as to what that statement really is, but it's my
hunch that they mean to say -- to the alert reader -- that the
war is a hoax.
You've really got me interested in the TV stuff now, I'll have
to find somebody with both a TV and a VCR, so the material can
be captured and played repeatedly. Trouble is, my co-workers
don't care even the slightest bit about this "war." Maybe =they=
are the smart ones...
Jeffrey Shallit
Mr. Packer, apparently an employee of NASA, has repeatedly posted
very short notes asserting that certain news events are "hoaxes";
these events include the war in Yugoslavia, the US invasion of
Panama, and the recent massacre in Killeen, Texas. On several
occasions, he has provided his "analysis" of photos published in
the New York Times, contending that they are obviously faked.
The existence of the war in Yugoslavia is, to my mind, as uncontestable
as the existence of the terminal on which I type this note.
I have seen coverage by the New York Times, NBC News, CBC News (TV
and radio), NPR, and Le Monde. I have spoken in detail with
Yugoslavian graduate students here at Waterloo, who frequently
talk by phone with relatives in Yugoslavia. Just yesterday, I
heard a first-hand description of the war by a Yugoslavian
geography professor who left the country six weeks ago.
Furthermore, if one knows the slightest amount of information about
the region, the war is a likely, if not inevitable consequence of
the existing ethnic tensions and the fall of the Communists.
If one contends that the war is a hoax, one would have to provide
an explanation for this vast conspiracy, which would include
(a) people who have recently visited the country (b) news media
all over the world (c) Yugoslavian students studying in
North America. Who could possibly coordinate such a conspiracy?
The Yugoslav students I know, are they lying when they say they
have seen destroyed houses? Who would benefit from such a
hoax?
Indeed, the dimensions of such a conspiracy say
much about the scope of Mr. Packer's delusions.
Coverage of war is necessarily spotty. Sensible reporters will
stay on the fringes of a battle. Even from World War II, and
Vietname, the number of combat photographs is limited. Recall
how poor the photographs of the Normandy invasion were?
Without desiring to speak ad hominem, one can only speculate about
the pathology involved in a person who feels that
(i) literally thousands of people are engaged in a vast conspiracy
to deceive him;
(ii) only *he* has the perspicacity to deduce this conspiracy;
(iii) this vast conspiracy, which has taken in *everyone*
else, has somehow failed to silence *him*;
and
(iv) (as he has elsewhere alleged) photographers for
the New York Times are deliberately providing hoaxed photos
to wake people up to the truth.
It makes me worried about NASA, to think such a person
could actually hold down a job there.
Jeff Shallit