The Dark Soul of American Empire

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Mark Weiser

Whether or not the soul exists may depend entirely on how it’s being defined, and depending on the definition may also depend on faith, religious or otherwise. The human soul is thought by many as inherently good while the absence of a soul leaves open the possibility to commit and even delight in malicious or evil acts – these destructive actions are also interpreted in terms of being dark. Oddly enough, man’s ego enjoys taking credit for his goodness, while he regularly attributes responsibility for destructive behaviors to outside influences, including at times a supernatural consciousness of evil that influences or provokes harmful human behaviors and thereby takes the soul, either in part or in whole.

Good or evil in any combination can manifest entirely from within any individual for what sometimes are no humanly discernible reasons. At other times the soul is absolutely being influenced by outside forces, including human and the forces of nature. Our definition would not be complete without recognizing that works committed during the physical life, whether good or evil, live on after physical death by affecting those who’ll be living in the future. Even the obscure and long forgotten dead can have a profound impact on our current reality if they ultimately influenced the mind, or perhaps saved the life of someone who was or became influential at some point in history.

We begin life with a non-negotiable soul thought by some to be a blank slate at birth, but I’ll argue here that it’s not blank and certain predispositions are dictated by instincts and genetic code(s) which also affect the workings of the mind. There are studies indicating genetic makeup is a factor in experiencing empathy and compassion, and we can’t deny other differing intellectual abilities and inclinations along with given physical characteristics – all of which shape the soul through our experiences. Theoretically the natural soul uninfluenced by outside forces, could range from pure good to pure evil with most people having the potential for either, at times depending on present circumstances or what they’ve been subjected to. Due to diversity of attributes and handicaps we are all unique, but we can generalize regarding those with similar traits and beliefs which dictate the processes of reasoning and/or irrational thinking that ultimately leads to conclusions and the actions or inactions of any individual.

Because the soul is shaped by events in life, we can define it as: the sum total of all a person is given before birth, combined with the understanding acquired from personal experiences in life, while recognizing a person’s interactions with others and the physical world are determined by the soul or its absence, and will yield benevolent, malevolent or neutral actions – the human soul is alive and real, it affects our actions and interactions with others and how we feel about ourselves as well as others, including the world and life in general – and by affecting others in the immediate sense, it also affects others well into the future.

Our physical bodies and brains are the conduit between the soul and the physical world, with the emphasis being on the brain which controls the willful actions of our bodies. Whether committed or imposed by humans or nature, actions can profoundly shape and mold human souls in either direction. Because our perceptions may not be accurate, at times certain events can fill us with an unjust hatred or even the desire to commit physical violence. Because we’re all different, the same events or circumstances will not have the same impact on the souls of all people, but people do have similar and sometimes nearly universal reactions that are predictable concerning certain events or circumstances.

With no other choice, and given the opportunity, a starving person will likely commit theft and may kill to survive; relatively few would accept starvation without trying to impose on others in some way. An individual with a legitimate means of support certainly has no need, and is much less likely to resort to theft or violence for personal gain. If rising flood waters force a person to abandon their home, their soul may be imprinted with sadness as well as the realization of a destiny beyond their control. Depending on age and other circumstances such an event could be the final straw, leading to a level of despair and shock where the person no longer experiences life in the same way and no longer functions as well as they once did; though this may be defined as weakness, it’s also a sure sign the person is human, as we all have different breaking-points and tolerances. Being subjected to the same ordeal could cause profound personal growth in others, making them stronger with greater understanding and compassion going forward while giving them the real potential for helping or leading others. The essence of the soul does change over time through circumstance and experience and ultimately leads us to our understanding of life and people, and could lead to a complete lack thereof.

When speaking of souls, our understanding includes that groups of people, large and small, have a collective soul based on the same factors that make up the soul of an individual. As with catastrophes caused by nature, the ravages of war are certain to leave an imprint on the soul of emotionally conscious human beings. These imprints take on a different dimension entirely when innocent people are unjustly attacked through wanton aggression. As the most violent people on earth, Americans may have become jaded from all the violence witnessed through television entertainment and news, starting with cartoons at an early age. We’re so used to accepting violence as being justifiable, the idea of our government killing and destroying the lives of innocent others may not register with most of us – in matters of war we’re incessantly told America is always right. All of this brings into question how the collective soul of a relatively few individuals who, as a group, knowingly and unjustly deceived their own country, leading to a wholesale basis of callous, if not gleeful slaughter and mutilation of innocent and weaker members of the human race – including the annihilation of their existing culture – all without any just or legal provocation.

In the case of America attacking a weaker country we’ll look at one of the most egregious events in recent history. Destruction was unleashed by the overwhelming power of the US military in attacking a comparatively defenseless 2003 Iraq. The verdict is in, and we know there were relatively very few Americans who participated in the deceitfulness which ultimately fueled the country’s appetite for attacking without one valid or legal reason – but collectively we still made the conscious choice to destroy, displace, kill and maim while leaving emotional scars and hatred in the large majority of our victims who survived. After having committed wanton aggression, with our own blind ignorance we don’t dare ask ourselves why so many in the Mideast and around the world despise our collective soul – as the truth would be awkward and hard for many to accept or explain. For “civilized people” this post-invasion nonchalant arrogance is every bit as astounding as that which led the initial attack. To be clear, the US invasion of 2003 Iraq was never a true contest of “war”, the word “war” was used as propaganda to make wanton killing and the destruction of people and their civilization look like something other than what it was – all for the perceived benefits of those few who were ultimately responsible for misleading America to back the slaughter of Iraqi citizens among a multitude of other predicted catastrophic results. The carnage we unleashed continues to this day and will effect an untold number for generations to come – it can never be undone – as the depraved collective soul of the few asserted itself supreme over the collective American public’s right to the truth and leaves a forward cutting wake that will forever travel on into the future – at least as long as man is alive.

The influence of Israel and pro-Zionists in Washington D.C. concerning American Mideast policies cannot be overstated. In 2002 the Bush administration created the Office of Special Plans (OSP) run by neocon pro-Zionists who fed the Bush administration “raw intelligence” which proved to be nothing more than propaganda for enabling the attack on Iraq. Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy at the time, explained how the OSP usurped real expert intelligence assessments to promote the neocon Zionist agenda as stated in the infamous 1996 PNAC policy report. The PNAC policy first advocated removing Saddam Hussein from power, then going on to Syria and Iran which they’re still trying to accomplish – this is no mere coincidence. It’s all part of Israel’s strategy to eliminate any perceived threat in the Mideast and keep everyone around them weak and fighting amongst themselves. Ironically, Israel’s threats result from its own actions beginning with the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs starting before Israel’s self-declared statehood on those Palestinian lands in 1948 – and the expulsion still continues to this day. Without the undue influence of Israel on U.S. politicians, it is extremely unlikely U.S. public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq would have materialized. Because the dark soul of America is so influenced by Israel, taking a critical look at the soul of Israel is becoming common and it needs to be recognized for what it is.

The major “news networks” and press operating in the U.S. proved themselves as propagandists, partaking in the policy set by the Bush administration to manipulate the American public during the run-up to the invasion. So persuasive was the propaganda before and after the invasion that some people today still don’t know Iraq had no part in the 9/11/2001 attack on the U.S.; or they simply refuse to accept that our government and mass media would betray America and the world on such a large scale. As far as the press is concerned, they are guilty through aiding and abetting the crime of misleading America into an illegal war – and it was illegal as defined by U.S. and international law. The media people who took part in all of this on any level might as well have lined up all those American soldiers sacrificed and wounded along with all the Iraqi’s killed and maimed while having had the balls to pull the triggers, drop the bombs and fire the missiles to commit the slaughter and devastation themselves.

It’s no secret, huge profits were made by the military-industrial complex (MIC) with the 2003 attack, and they’re still profiting today from Iraq and the overall American Empire strategy. With their connections in Washington, it would be extremely naïve to believe the top individuals in our weapons manufacturing industries didn’t know the reasons given for attacking Iraq were absolutely without credible evidence – while much of those reasons were outright lies. There are a number of choice verbs for describing the condition of those souls among the MIC who knowingly remained silent while the US population sacrificed blood and treasure so they could profit through death and destruction unleashed at will on a relatively hapless Iraq.

Many believe the 2003 invasion was predominantly about securing oil, and it certainly was a contributing factor but no one was pushing more than the pro-Zionist crowd. The petroleum industry had been involved in the pre-war planning for the purpose of dividing the spoils of killing and destruction in terms of barrels of oil. Capitalism as practiced needs oil, and although there are alternative energies available, those making huge profits from oil use their considerable influence to thwart conversion to clean energy.

There’s no legitimate argument against the facts; an undeserved and catastrophic devastation had been levied on the Iraqi people with the 2003 U.S. invasion, conservatively resulting in over half a million Iraqi lives being lost by the time of this writing, with likely millions wounded, and over four million displaced from their homes. To put it in perspective, if it happened to the U.S. with the same percentages across the entire population it would conservatively yield over six million dead, millions more wounded, and roughly fifty million displaced from their homes. Many Americans have a vacancy where a soul should exist as they feel absolutely nothing and no American responsibility for the devastation caused. Other Americans exist with a soul as black as pitch having taken pleasure and profit through the slaughter of Iraqis and their culture. Aside from the U.S. government’s responsibility, these attitudes are largely due to the dark soul of both the U.S. government and media in keeping pertinent facts from the public eye. And if there’s been any remorse or apology from U.S. officials or media it’s been sparse and kept out of sight by the same dark forces which hide from the truth. There are a number of people who could have spoken out before the invasion, and in all fairness some did, though they did not get proportionately heard while the front pages and television news had been reserved for the neocon pro-Zionist mantras to attack Iraq and downplay the ensuing consequences. There were also a few dark traitorous souls operating to dissuade anyone who would speak out while they set an example with the Valery Plame / Scooter Libby affair.

With the invasion of Iraq the U.S. set a new precedent of destructive behavior in motion, which under the pretext of “preemptive defense” has been spread further around the Mideast and now is a matter of historical record and modus operandi. With the U.S. government wreaking havoc at will, killing more innocent civilians than “enemy combatants” – it’s become a very neat and logical self-perpetuating industry of war – creating enemies by killing innocent civilians and thereby creating more revenge-minded combatants to kill – perfect for a world being run by a country of sadistic self-masochistic psychopaths for profit at the expense of the American public and anyone else they choose to victimize. This is not the collective soul of the American people – they have been unwittingly led into the dark by the collective soul of vile depravity. This is, however, a reflection of all those dark souls and their accomplices living in fear of truth and hiding behind the concentrated power at the top of the American political body which now exists predominantly for the sake of personal greed while having unlimited power to unjustly impose on others, domestically and otherwise. It is unfortunate those making the decisions and profits while misleading the country aren’t required to put their own lives, and those that matter to them, on the very front lines; they, being afraid of truth and reality as they are, would be the very first to call an end to the madness.

How ‘Awesome’ Is America?

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Reid Mukai

By Robert Parry

Source: ConsortiumNews.com

Fox News host Andrea Tantaros is facing some well-deserved ridicule for refuting the stomach-turning Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture by declaring that “The United States is awesome. We are awesome” and claiming that the Democrats and President Barack Obama released the report because they want “to show us how we’re not awesome.”

Tantaros’s rant did have the feel of a Saturday Night Live satire, but her upbeat jingoism was only a slight exaggeration of what Americans have been hearing from much of their media and politicians for decades. At least since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, any substantive criticism of the United States has been treated as unpatriotic.

Indeed, a journalist or a politician who dares point out any fundamental flaws in the country or even its actual history can expect to have his or her patriotism challenged. That is how debate over “how we’re not awesome” is silenced.

Fox News may be the poster child of this anti-intellectualism but the same sentiments can be found on the Washington Post’s neocon editorial pages or in the higher-brow New Republic. If you dare point out that America or one of its favored “allies” has done some wrong around the world, you’re an enemy “apologist.” If you regularly adopt a critical stance, you will be marginalized.

That’s why so many serious national problems have lingered or gotten worse. If we don’t kill the messenger, we denounce him or her as un-American.

For instance, the data on racial disparities in police killings and prison incarcerations have long been available, but the vast majority of whites seem oblivious to these continued injustices. To point out that the United States has still not done the necessary hard work to correct these history-based imbalances makes you seem out of step amid the happy-face belief that whatever racism there was is now gone. We have a black president, you know.

So, when white police shoot or otherwise apply excessive violence against blacks at a wildly disproportionate rate to whites, many white Americans just shrug. They even get annoyed if black athletes join in some symbolic protests like raising their hands as Michael Brown did before he was shot to death in Ferguson, Missouri. Many people hate to have the real world intrude on their sports entertainment.

In reaction to such events, Fox News and much of talk radio find reasons to ridicule the victims and the protesters rather than address the real problems. The unwelcome evidence of racism is just another excuse to roll the eyes and infuse the voice with dripping sarcasm.

Mundane Neglect

On a more mundane level in Arlington County, Virginia, where I live, many whites simply don’t see the racial disparities though they are all around. While overwhelmingly white North Arlington benefits from all manner of public investments, including a state-of-the-art subway system which cost billions upon billions of dollars and amenities likes a $2 million “dog park renovation,” racially diverse South Arlington, the historic home of the County’s black population, is systematically shortchanged, except when it comes to expanding the sewage treatment plant.

When the County Board finally approved a much cheaper light-rail mass-transit plan for South Arlington’s Columbia Pike and voted for a public pool complex in another South Arlington neighborhood, North Arlington residents rose up in fury. The local newspaper, the Sun-Gazette, which doesn’t even distribute in much of South Arlington – due to the demographics – rallied the political opposition.

Before long, the County Board was in retreat, killing both the public pools and the light-rail plan, all the better to free up taxpayer money for more North Arlington projects. Yet, when I have noted the racial component to how the two halves of the county are treated, many Arlington whites get furious. They simply don’t see the residual racism or don’t want to see it. They view themselves as enlightened even as they favor neglecting their black and brown neighbors.

After I wrote a column about the history of Columbia Pike, which became an African-American freedom trail after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and ex-slaves escaped up the roadway toward Washington, one reader complained that I had slighted Robert E. Lee by saying he had “deserted” the U.S. Army when his fans prefer saying that he “resigned his commission,” which sounds so much more proper.

The point is interesting not only because the commenter didn’t seem nearly as concerned about the fate of the African-Americans, some of whom joined the U.S. Colored Troops to fight for the final defeat of slavery. And not only because General Lee violated his oath as a U.S. officer in which he swore to “bear true allegiance to the United States of America” and to “serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States.”

But the commenter’s point is also interesting because it underscores how white Americans have excused and even glorified the Confederate “heroes” who were fighting to protect a system based on the ownership of other human beings. If you have any doubt about the glorification, just visit Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, where towering statues of Confederate generals dominate the skyline.

Or, if you’re in Arlington and driving on Route One, you might notice that it is still named in honor of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy who was a fervent white supremacist and a major slaveholder. And, if President Davis and General Lee had been successful in their war of secession, it could have meant that slavery might never have ended. Yet, these protectors of slavery are treated with the utmost respect and any slight toward them requires a protest.

Crude Racism

My writings about Thomas Jefferson also have elicited anger from some people who wish to idolize him as a noble philosopher/statesman when the reality was that he was a crude racist (see his Notes on the State of Virginia) who mistreated his Monticello slaves, including having boys as young as ten whipped and raping one and likely other of his slave girls. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Thomas Jefferson: America’s Founding Sociopath.”]

Much like the defender of Robert E. Lee who preferred more polite phrasing about the general’s betrayal of his oath, defenders of the Jefferson myth expressed much more outrage over my pointing out these inconvenient truths about their hero than they did about the victims of Jefferson’s despicable behavior and stunning hypocrisies.

Which gets us back to Andrea Tantaros and how “awesome” America is. The context for her remarks was the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report which detailed what can no longer be euphemized away as “enhanced interrogation techniques” or EITs as CIA officials prefer.

The only word that can now apply is torture, at least for anyone who has read the page-after-page of near drownings via waterboard, the hallucinatory effects of sleep deprivation, the pain inflicted by hanging people from ceilings, and the sexual sadism of keeping detainees naked and subjecting them to anal rape under the pretext of “rectal rehydration” and “rectal feeding.”

The various apologists for this torture – people like Tantaros, Vice President Dick Cheney and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer – prefer to counterattack by questioning the patriotism or the intellectual consistency of those Americans who are outraged at these actions. The torture defenders excuse the behavior because we were scared after 9/11 and wanted the Bush administration to do whatever it took to keep us safe.

All of these excuses are designed to prevent the sort of soul-searching that one should expect from a mature democratic Republic, a country that seeks to learn from its mistakes, not cover them up or forget them.

Instead of Americans confronting these dark realities of both their history and their present – and making whatever amends and adjustments are necessary – the torture apologists or those who don’t see racism would simply have us wave the flag and declare how “awesome” we are.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Podcast Roundup

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Reid Mukai

12/2: On The Progressive Commentary Hour host Gary Null has an in-depth conversation with Peter Levenda on the Nazi legacy, its survival and influence in world events, and its continuation to this day:

Show link: http://s35.podbean.com/pb/1448aab68f3651499d84a256f2ad4c14/54820c63/data1/blogs18/371244/uploads/PCH_120214.mp3

12/3: Host KMO and partner Olga have a wide-ranging discussion with podcaster Duncan Crary, and entrepreneur Vic Christopher on localism, architecture and regenerating community among other topics on the C-Realm podcast:

Show link: http://www.c-realm.com/wp-content/uploads/443_Troy.mp3

12/3: On the latest episode of Guns and Butter, host Bonnie Faulker interviews Judyth Vary Baker (an ex-girlfriend of Lee Harvey Oswald) on the connection between cancer causing bioweapons research and the JFK assassination:

Show link: http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20141203-Wed1300.mp3

12/4: Freeman and author Jamie Hanshaw discuss propagandistic and ritualistic aspects of the American Music Awards on The Free Zone:

Show link: http://freeman.theanomalieschannel.com/amas-american-mind-control-awards.mp3

12/5: On the Corbett Report, Lionel of LionelMedia.com joins James Corbett for an epic discussion on fake stories in the media, manipulation of the historical record, the fake Syria sniper boy video, the Corbett/Lionel law, and the importance of self-correction.

http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/2014-12-04%20Lionel.mp3

Miguel Conner and author Valarie Ziegler discuss the Gnostic subtext of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, one of the greatest television programs of the 60s:

Saturday Matinee: War Documentary Double Feature

Posted on October 11, 2014 by Reid Mukai

“Hearts and Minds” (1974) and “The Atomic Cafe” (1982) are two of the most chilling and persuasive anti-war documentaries ever made (at least for viewers who are not psychopaths). Though the editorial choices of both films clearly reflect an anti-war perspective, their messages are made more powerful by their lack of narration and abundance of archive footage, newsreels, and public statements from military and political officials. Both documentaries were years in the making with much time (nearly the entire time in the case of The Atomic Cafe) spent on research and editing, and the work clearly pays off by expanding the scope of the films to the political, cultural, and psychological factors behind wars. The filmmakers involved in Hearts and Minds and The Atomic Cafe, unlike most corporate news coverage of wars, both display great empathy in their inclusion of footage of “enemy” casualties of the war and “collateral damage” (ie. innocent victims caught in the crossfire). In the context of the current war-mongering from the Obama administration and corporate/government news media, Hearts and Minds and The Atomic Cafe are more relevant than ever and should be required viewing for everyone who values life.

War, Media Propaganda, and the Police State

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Reid Mukai

By James F. Tracy

Source: Memory Hole

The following essay is intended to provide a brief overview of topics addressed in a discussion graciously recorded by Julie Vivier at the offices of the Center for Research on Globalization in Montreal Canada on August 5, 2014.-JFT

Modern propaganda techniques utilized by the corporate state to enforce anti-democratic and destructive policies routinely entail the manufacture and manipulation of news events to mold public opinion and, as Edward Bernays put it, “engineer consent” toward certain ends.

Such events include not only overt political appeals, but also acts of seemingly spontaneous terrorism and militarism that traumatize the body politic into ultimately accepting false narratives as political and historical realities.

Western states’ development and utilization of propaganda closely parallels the steady decay of political enfranchisement and engagement throughout the twentieth century. Upon securing a second term in 1916, the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson plunged the United States into the most violent and homicidal war in human history. Wilson, a former Princeton University academician groomed for public office by Wall Street bankers, assembled a group of progressive-left journalists and publicists to “sell the war” to the American people.

George Creel, Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays and Harold Lasswell all played influential roles in the newly-formed Committee on Public Information, and would go on to be major figures in political thought, public relations, and psychological warfare research.

The sales effort was unparalleled in its scale and sophistication. The CPI was not only able to officially censor news and information, but essentially manufacture these as well. Acting in the role of a multifaceted advertising agency, Creel’s operation “examined the different ways that information flowed to the population and flooded these channels with pro-war material.”

The Committee’s domestic organ was comprised of 19 subdivisions, each devoted to a specific type of propaganda, one of which was a Division of News that distributed over 6,000 press releases and acted as the chief avenue for war-related information. On an average week, more than 20,000 newspaper columns carried data provided through CPI propaganda. The Division of Syndicated Features enlisted the help of popular novelists, short story writers, and essayists. These mainstream American authors presented the official line in a readily accessible form reaching twelve million people every month. Similar endeavors existed for cinema, impromptu soapbox oratory (Four Minute Men), and outright advertising at home and abroad.[1]

With the experiences and observations of these war marketers variously recounted and developed throughout the 1920s (Lippmann, Public Opinion, The Phantom Public, Bernays, Propaganda, Crystallizing Public Opinion, Creel, How We Advertised America, Lasswell, Propaganda and the World War), alongside the influence of their elite colleagues and associates, the young publicists’ optimism concerning popular democracy guided by informed opinion was sobered with the realization that public sentiment was actually far more susceptible to persuasion than had been previously understood. The proposed solutions to guarantee something akin to democracy in an increasingly confusing world lay in “objective” journalism guided by organized intelligence (Lippmann) and propaganda, or what Edward Bernays termed “public relations.”

The argument laid out in Lippmann’s Public Opinion was partly motivated by the US Senate’s rejection of membership in the League of Nations. An adviser to the Wilson administration, a central figure behind intelligence gathering that informed postwar geopolitical dynamics laid out at the Paris Peace Conference, and an early member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Lippmann increasingly viewed popular democracy as plagued by a hopelessly ill-informed public opinion incapable of comprehending the growing complexities of modern society. Only experts could be entrusted with assessing, understanding, and acting on the knowledge accorded through their respective professions and fields.

Along these lines, journalism should mimic the then-fledgling social sciences by pursuing objectivity and deferring to the compartmentalized expertise of established authority figures. News and information could similarly be analyzed, edited, and coordinated to ensure accuracy by journalists exercising similar technocratic methods. Although Lippmann does not exactly specify what body would oversee such a process of “organized intelligence,” his postwar activities and ties provides a clue.

Edward Bernays’ advocacy for public opinion management is much more practical and overt. Whereas Lippmann suggests a regimented democracy via technocratic news and information processing, Bernays stresses a privileged elite’s overt manipulation of how the populace interprets reality itself. Such manipulation necessitates contrived associations, figures and events that appear authentic and spontaneous. “Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval,” Bernays notes,

“and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public’s consent to a program or goal … We reject government authoritarianism or regimentation, but we are willing to be persuaded by the written or spoken word. The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.[2]

Bernays demonstrates an affinity with Lippmann’s notion of elite expediency when pursuing prerogatives and decision-making the public at large cannot be entrusted to interpret. In such instances,

democratic leaders must play their part in leading the public through the engineering of consent to socially constructive goals and values. This role naturally imposes upon them the obligation to use educational processes, as well as other available techniques, to bring about as complete an understanding as possible.[3]

Written in the early 1950s, these observations become especially apt in the latter half of the twentieth century, where the US is typically a major aggressor in foreign (and eventually domestic) affairs. Yet what does Bernays mean by, for example, “educational processes”? An indication may be found by noting his central role in the promotion of tobacco use, municipal water fluoridation, and the overthrow of the democratically-elected Arbenz regime in Guatemala.[4]

With the advent of the national security state in 1947, secret programs emerge where the people are as a matter of course intentionally left unaware of the state’s true rationales and objectives.

Indeed, a wealth of contemporary historical examples suggest how the “engineering of consent” is wholly calculating and anti-democratic, and where the crises requiring such drastic and immediate public relations and military measures are themselves the result of the same leadership’s policies and actions. The US economic provocation of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Tonkin Gulf incident precipitating US military occupation of Vietnam are obvious examples of such manufactured events.

Similar techniques are apparent in the major political assassinations of the 1960s, where to this day the public is prompted to partake in the false reality that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole culprit in the murder of President John F. Kennedy, much as Sirhan Sirhan was responsible for the death of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

In fact, in each instance overwhelming evidence points to Central Intelligence Agency involvement in orchestrating the assassinations while training and presenting Oswald and Sirhan as the would-be assassins.

The US government’s assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., probably the most influential African American public persona of the twentieth century, is not even open to debate, having been soundly proven in a court of law.[5] Yet as with the Kennedys, it is a genuine public relations achievement that much of the American population is oblivious to the deeper dynamics of these political slayings that are routinely overlooked or inaccurately recounted in public discourse.

Along these lines, in the historical context of Operation Gladio, the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing, the events of September 11, 2001, the London 7/7/2005 bombings, and lesser episodes such as the “shoe” and “underwear” bombers, the engineering of consent has reached staggering new heights where state-orchestrated terrorism is used to mold public opinion toward acceptance of militarized policing operations, the continued erosion of civil liberties, and major sustained aggression against moderate Middle Eastern nations to cartelize scarce resources and politically reconfigure an entire region of the world.

Again, the public is essentially compelled to believe that political extremism of one form or another is the cause of each event, even in light of how the sophistication and scope of the Oklahoma City and 9/11 “attacks” suggest high-level forces at work. If one is to delve beneath the public relations narrative of each event, the recent Newtown massacre and Boston Marathon bombing likewise appear to have broader agendas where the public is again purposely misled.

Conventional journalists and academics are reluctant to publicly address such phenomena for fear of being called “conspiracy theorists.” In the case of academe this has severely curtailed serious and potentially crucial inquiry into such deep events and phenomena in lieu of what are often innocuous intellectual exchanges divorced from actually existing social and political realities that cry out for serious interrogation and critique.

The achievements of modern public relations are further evident in the Warren and 9/11 Commissions themselves, both of which have spun the fantastic myths of Allan Dulles and Peter Zelikow respectively, and that today maintain footholds in public discourse and consciousness.

Indeed, the “conspiracy theory” meme, a propaganda campaign waged by the CIA beginning in the mid-1960s to counter criticism of the Warren Commission report, is perhaps as little-known as Operation Mockingbird, the CIA program where hundreds of journalists and publishers actively devoted their services to spread Agency disinformation. The overall effect of these combined operations has been an immensely successful program continues to shape the contours of American political life and mediated reality.[6]

The present socio-political condition and suppression of popular democracy are triumphs of modern propaganda technique. So are they also manifest in the corporate state’s efforts to engineer public acquiescence toward such things as the colossal frauds of genetically modified organisms masquerading as “food,” toxic polypharmacy disguised as “medicine,” and the police state and “war on terror” seeking to preserve “national security.”

Notes

[1] Aaron Delwiche, “Propaganda: Wartime Propaganda: World War I, The Committee on Public Information,” accessed September 28, 2014 at http://www.propagandacritic.com/articles/ww1.cpi.html; George Creel, How We Advertised America, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1920. Available at http://archive.org/details/howweadvertameri00creerich

[2] Edward Bernays, Public Relations, Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952, 159-160.

[3] Ibid. 160.

[4] “You can get practically any ideas accepted,” Bernays reflected on the campaign to fluoridate New York City’s water supply. “If doctors are in favor, the public is willing to accept it, because a doctor is an authority to most people, regardless of how much he knows, or doesn’t know … By the law of averages, you can usually find an individual in any field who will be willing to accept new ideas, and the new ideas then infiltrate the others who haven’t accepted it. Christopher Bryson, The Fluoride Deception, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004, 159.

[5] William F. Pepper, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, New York: Verso, 2003.

[6] James F. Tracy, “Conspiracy Theory: Foundations of a Weaponized Term,” Global Research, January 22, 2013.

Why Independent 9/11 Research and Education Still Matters

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Reid Mukai

Editor’s note: This is a revised article from last year followed by recent podcasts and videos on the topic.

One of the ways corrupt people and institutions retain power is by discouraging criticism and discussions that could lead to organized opposition. A classic tactic is to vilify targets as unpatriotic, disloyal, traitorous, heretical, dangerous, crazy, etc. Think about what happened to critics of capitalism during the peak of the cold-war hysteria. George Orwell’s 1984 depicted how governments could also manipulate language, history, media and other information in order to diminish critical thought (which leads to critical speech and organizing) and to control thought. The creation of a Big Brother-style police/surveillance state is another way to create a climate of fear and foster a culture which discourages the sharing of knowledge about certain topics and prevents people from taking action.

This should be kept in mind when discussing 9/11, because those who still have complete faith in government and corporate media (an increasingly shrinking number), have been conditioned to ignore, deny or dismiss any information that would lead them to question the official story. The most common knee-jerk reaction is to defend the official story by labeling all alternative narratives “conspiracy theory”. Though this argument is not as convincing today, when political scandals and crimes are almost a daily occurrence, the association between “conspiracy theories” and negative terms such as “crazy” and “wacko” are deeply ingrained in the culture, and not by accident.

The term “conspiracy theory” was not used as an ad hominem attack until shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Documented evidence shows the CIA needed to develop new and more effective ways to attack and discredit those who dared to question the Warren Commission Report. So when one counters questions about the official narrative with “That’s just a crazy conspiracy theory” they’re actually using a psy-op attack developed by and for a conspiracy. Because of experience and greater proliferation of information through the internet, fewer people are naive enough to deny extremely wealthy and powerful people would conspire to protect their position and interests. History and hard evidence shows it would be crazier to suppose that they don’t.

Another common argument is “The government is too incompetent to pull off something of that scale and keep it a secret”. It’s true that aspects of the government are incompetent, but the incompetence is generally limited to things they care little about such as medical and educational systems, the food system, domestic infrastructure, safety, financial regulation, disaster relief, fair elections, etc. When it comes to things they prioritize such as wars, bailouts, black budgets, black ops, cronyism, crowd control, surveillance, propaganda, etc., the US government is extremely effective. And the higher up the hierarchy, the easier it is to keep secrets. All it takes is a relatively small number of people in key positions, and through division of labor, compartmentalization, formation of policies conducive to conspiring, and covert actions and communications protected under the cloak of “national security” (with help from a mass culture of conformity, credulity and fear). One should also keep in mind that governments are not monolithic and are comprised of factions with conflicting interests which can be used, manipulated and/or compromised by players involved in the conspiracy (not just within U.S. government but in foreign governments and the private sector as well).

Some simply can’t accept that individuals and factions within U.S. government could intentionally cause an attack such as 9/11 or let it happen. This speaks to the power of corporate media and establishment propaganda on different levels. It shows how a significant majority of Americans can be kept completely ignorant of decades of violent imperialist policy around the world and how false flags have been used to start wars through history. There’s also a long history of state violence against its own people and on American soil going back to the genocide of Native Americans, murders of countless slaves and people of color, multiple massacres of labor activists, assassination of leaders such as JFK, RFK, MLK, Black Panthers, and MOVE, the 93 WTC bombing, WACO, OK City bombing, etc. There’s also ample documentation proving the US government has at least considered actions not dissimilar to 9/11 such as Operation Northwoods and Project for a New American Century. What this argument presupposes is that powerful and wealthy (mostly) white men are inherently more trustworthy, empathetic, and righteous than “Muslim fanatics” or any other “enemy” most Americans have been conditioned to fear and hate.

Other attacks against independent 9/11 researchers include dismissals like “9/11 is no longer relevant” and/or “there’s more important problems to deal with so we need to move on”. I would argue that when such crimes occur that have harmed and killed vast numbers of people and is responsible for countless casualties and elimination of civil liberties more than a decade after due to policies supposedly justified by the event, we have a moral obligation to uncover who did it and why. There’s no peace without justice and no justice as long as the truth behind such nation-changing crimes remains suppressed. Of course there’s always plenty of immediate and equally important issues to address, but those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it. More specifically, those who benefit most from historical events such as 9/11 are motivated to repeat it while those who only know a distorted version of history while remaining ignorant of the truth are more likely to let it happen again.

Because of the work of “conspiracy theorists” we are now more aware of the scope of government/corporate criminality and connections between government, wall street, war-profiteers, and the criminal underworld. For example, without the work of independent JFK researchers we wouldn’t be aware of Operation Northwoods which many now view as a false flag template used for 9/11. Gaining a better understanding of how and why 9/11 happened helps us put current geopolitical events in context while providing insight into how such operations work and how they can be counteracted.

There’s also the “straw man” argument which creates the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing an argument with a superficially similar yet non-equivalent proposition and refuting it without ever having refuted the original position. This is particularly easy to do with complex high profile incidents such as 9/11 and the JFK assassination, where there can be a wide array of theories and speculation due to the complexity of the narrative, widespread interest, deep secrecy and disinformation or misinformation from “useful idiots” and/or those who would benefit from keeping crucial information hidden.

Discussing controversial subjects is never easy but it’s always rewarding when people turn out to be more receptive and thoughtful than one might suspect. Though corporate media does its best to defend the official stories, more people than ever are waking up. On this 9/11 anniversary with the potential for another war on the horizon, it’s as good a day as any to talk about it, share this information and help others wake up.

9/11/14 Update:

On the 9/3/14 episode of “Guns and Butter” Tod Fletcher uses a contextual approach to analyzing events at the Pentagon, explores origins and elements of the hijacker story (ie. telephone calls from the planes, analysis of eyewitness reports, physical debris, photo/video evidence, black boxes and FBI involvement) and investigates means, motive and opportunity.

audio http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20140903-Wed1300.mp3

This episode was followed by the 9/10/14 Guns and Butter: “9/11 and the Politics of Deception” with Christopher Bollyn.

http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20140910-Wed1300.mp3

Project Censored 9/8/14: With the anniversary of the September 11 attacks at hand, Peter and Mickey speak with Ken Jenkins, organizers of the annual 911 Film Festival in Oakland, California, about questions that still linger 13 years after the attacks. Then Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee talks about the scope and implications of the ongoing federal surveillance activities against Americans, and how to resist them. The program concludes with Robbie Martin of Media Roots, speaking about his new documentary “American Anthrax.”

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Pcradiodos/Project+Censored+090514.mp3

9/11: The Mother of All Big Lies by Stephen Lendman

9/11 Truth, Inner Consciousness, and the Public Mind by James Tracy

Thirteen Years After the September 11 Attacks, Blindness Persists by Thierry Meyssan

The Downing of Malaysia Flight 17: Sinister Pretext for War with Russia

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Reid Mukai

By Mike Whitney

Source: Counterpunch

“There is no innocent explanation for the sudden disappearance of MH17 from the media and political spotlight. The plane’s black box has been held in Britain for examination for weeks, and US and Russian spy satellites and military radar were intensively scanning east Ukraine at the time of the crash. The claim that Washington does not have detailed knowledge of the circumstances of the crash and the various forces involved is not credible.”

– Niles Williamson, “Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?”, World Socialist Web Site

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/18/ukmh-a18.html

See: 11 minute you tube “MH17 – We know with 99% certainty who shot down MH17“

The Obama administration has failed to produce any hard evidence that pro-Russia separatists were responsible for the downing of Malaysia Flight 17. The administration’s theory– that the jetliner was downed by a surface-to-air missile launched from rebel territory in east Ukraine– is not supported by radar data, satellite imagery, eyewitness testimony or forensic evidence. In fact, there is no factual basis for the hypothesis at all. It’s merely politically-motivated speculation that’s been repeated endlessly in the media to shape public opinion. The preponderance of evidence suggests a different scenario altogether, that is, that MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian fighters in an effort to frame the pro-Russia separatists and demonize Russia by implication. This is precisely why the MH17 story has vanished from all the major media for the last three weeks. It’s because the bloody fingerprints point to Obama’s puppet-government in Kiev.

So what are the facts?

Fact Number 1: There were eyewitnesses.

According to the Oxford dictionary, an eyewitness is “A person who has personally seen something happen and can give a first-hand description of it.” This is why eyewitness testimony is so important in criminal investigations, because what people actually see matters. In a capital case, eyewitness testimony can be just as damning as the bloody fingerprints on a murder weapon. In contrast, theories are of little or no importance at all. The administration’s missile theory is just obfuscating blabber intended to pacify the public with a soothing explanation that is entirely divorced from the facts. Eyewitness accounts help to cut through government bullsh** and uncover what really happened.

So, what did happen to MH17? Check out this blurb from a report by the BBC:

”The inhabitants of the nearby villages are certain they saw military aircraft in the sky shortly before the catastrophe. According to them, it was actually the jet fighters that brought down the Boeing.

Eyewitness number one: “There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart, (Waves her hands to show the plane exploding) And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everyone saw it….

Yes, yes, It was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was flying underneath…below the civilian plane.”

Many people saw what happened. Many people saw the Ukrainian fighter rise in a shark-on-seal type motion. Many people saw the explosion. Are these credible witnesses? Are they lying? Do they have a political agenda?

We don’t know, but we do know what they said. They said they saw a fighter (probably a Ukrainian SU 25) stalking MH17 just before it blew up. That’s significant and it should have a bearing on the investigation.

Fact Number 2: Russia picked up the Ukrainian fighters on their radar.

According to Russian military analysts:

“Russian monitoring systems registered Ukrainian airforce jet, probably an SU 25 fighter, climbing and approaching the Malaysia aircraft. The SU 25 was between 3 to 5 kilometers away from the Malaysian plane. The fighter is capable of reaching an altitude of 10,000 meters for short periods of time. It’s standard armaments include R-60 air-to-air missiles which are capable of locking and destroying targets within a range of 12 kilometers and which are guaranteed to hit their target from a distance of 5 kilometers.

What was a military aircraft doing on a route intended for civilian planes flying at the same time and same altitude of a passenger plane? We would like an answer to this question? …

To corroborate this evidence we have a picture taken at the regional air traffic control center at Rostov….Ukrainian military officials claimed there were no Ukrainian military aircraft in that area of the crash that day. As you can see, that is not true” (“MH17 Fully Exposed”, The Corbett report; Check minute 34:17 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWlAARb0fN4video

Repeat: “Ukrainian military officials claimed there were no Ukrainian military aircraft in that area of the crash that day. As you can see, that is not true.”

Kiev lied. Not only was one of their fighters in the vicinity, but the warplane also had the capacity to take down a jetliner.

Let’s be clear about how important this information is: We now have hard evidence (Russian radar data and eyewitness testimony) that a Ukrainian fighter was in the vicinity of Malaysia Flight 17 when it was shot down. Thus, the Ukrainian fighter very well may have played a role in the downing of MH17. This is a possibility that cannot be excluded if one is basing their judgments on the facts alone.

Then there the story of Carlos who worked at Kiev’s Air Traffic Control at Borispol but who mysteriously vanished immediately after the crash. Carlos’s twitter feeds on the day of the incident have become something of a legend on the internet, so we would like to narrow our focus to just a few of his communiques.

Carlos tweets on day of MH17 crash:

“Kiev Authorities, trying to make looks like an attack by pro-Russian”…

“warning! It can be a downing, Malaysia Airlines B777 in ukraine, 280 passengers”…

(Military?) “has taken control of ATC in Kiev”….

“The Malaysia Airlines B777 plane disappeared from the radar, there was no communication of any anomaly, confirmed”….

“Plane shot down, shot down, shot down, no accident”….

“Before They remove my phone or they break my head, shot down by Kiev”…

“The B777 plane flew escorted by Ukraine jet fighter until 2 minutes before disappearing from the radar”…

“If Kiev authorities want to tell the truth, It´s gathered, 2 jet fighters flew very close minutes before, wasn’t downed by a fighter”….

“Malaysia Airlines B777 plane just disappeared and Kiev military authority informed us of the downing, How they knew?”…

“all this is gathered in radars, to the unbelieving, shot down by kiev, here we know it and military air traffic control also”…

“military control now officially [say] the plane was shot down by missile”….(“FINAL – Spanish Air Controller @ Kiev Borispol Airport: Ukraine Military Shot Down Boeing #MH17“, Rebel’s Blog)

Shortly after posting the news on Twitter, the Military took over the tower, the SBU seized the Air traffic Control recordings, and Carlos disappeared never to be seen again. At the very least, Carlos’s postings lend support to our thesis that one or two SU 25 fighters were in the vicinity of the Boeing 777 at the time of the incident, which is to say they were in a position to shoot it down.

So why have Obama, Kerry and the entire western media excluded the SU 25s from their analysis? And why are they withholding the satellite and radar data (that everyone knows they have) of the area at the time of the crash? According to the World Socialist Web Site: “The US Air Force’s Defense Support Program utilizes satellites with infrared sensors to detect missile launches anywhere on the planet, and US radar posts in Europe would have tracked the missile as it shot through the sky.”

Indeed, the US does have the capability to track missiles launches anywhere on the planet, so where is the data to support their theory that a missile took down MH17? Where is the satellite imagery? Where is the radar data? What is it Obama doesn’t want the American people to know?

German pilot and airlines expert, Peter Haisenko, thinks that Malaysia Flight 17 was not blown up by a missile, but shot down by the type of double-barreled 30-mm guns used on Ukrainian SU-25 fighter planes. Haisenko presented his theory in an article which appeared on the Global Research website titled “Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile”. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“The facts speak clear and loud and are beyond the realm of speculation: The cockpit shows traces of shelling! You can see the entry and exit holes. The edge of a portion of the holes is bent inwards. These are the smaller holes, round and clean, showing the entry points most likely that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile….” (“Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile””, Global Research)

Haisenko notes that the munitions used on Ukrainian fighters–anti-tank incendiary and splinter-explosive shells–are capable of taking down a jetliner and that the dense pattern of metal penetrated by multiple projectiles is consistent with the firing pattern of a 30-mm gun.

Also, Michael Bociurkiw, who was one of the first international inspectors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to reach the crash site and who spent more than a week examining the ruins– appears to be convinced that MH17 was downed by machinegun fire consistent with the myriad bullet-holes visible on the fuselage. Here’s what he told on CBC World News:

“There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pock-marked. It almost looks like machine gun fire; very, very strong machine gun fire that has left these unique marks that we haven’t seen anywhere else.

We’ve also been asked if we’ve seen any signs of a missile?

Well, no we haven’t. That’s the answer.”

(“Malaysia Airlines MH17: Michael Bociurkiw talks about being first at the crash site,” CBC News. Note: The above quote is from the video)

Now, admittedly, the observations of Haisenko and Bociurkiw could mean nothing, after all, they are just opinions. But for the sake of argument, let’s compare what they have to say to the comments made by Obama and Kerry.

Here’s Obama on the day after the crash:

“Here is what we know so far. Evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from an area that is controlled by Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine.

We also know that this is not the first time a plane has been shot down in eastern Ukraine. Over the last several weeks Russian- backed separatists have shot down a Ukrainian transport plane and a Ukrainian helicopter, and they claimed responsibility for shooting down a Ukrainian fighter jet.

Moreover, we know that these separatists have received a steady flow of support from Russia.

This includes arms and training. It includes heavy weapons. And it includes anti-aircraft weapons.

Now, here’s what’s happened now. This was a global tragedy. An Asian airliner was destroyed in European skies, filled with citizens from many countries. So there has to be a credible international investigation into what happened. The U.N. Security Council has endorsed this investigation, and we will hold all its members, including Russia, to their word…

Now, the United States stands ready to provide any assistance that is necessary…..

Let’s summarize Obama’s allegations:

1–MH17 was shot down in east Ukraine.

2–The separatists have shot down planes in east Ukraine before.

3–Therefore the separatists shot down MH17

Do you find that argument persuasive, dear reader? Keep in mind, Obama has never veered from his original position on the issue nor has he ever addressed the eyewitness reports or the technical data provided by Moscow. When all the media repeat the government’s version of events word-for-word, the facts don’t matter. In other words, Obama hasn’t changed his story, because he doesn’t have to. He knows the dissembling media will assist him in the cover up. Which it has.

Now let’s take a look at what Kerry had to say two days after the crash when he visited all five Sunday talk shows to blast Putin and blame the rebels for downing MH17. According to the Guardian:

”Kerry said all the evidence surrounding the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 points towards pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine…..

“We have enormous input about this that points fingers,” Kerry told CNN’s State of the Union. “It is pretty clear that this was a system from Russia, transferred to separatists. We know with confidence that the Ukrainians did not have such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point of time.”…

Kerry said social media reports and US surveillance put the missile system in question in the vicinity of the crash before the tragedy.

“We know because we observed it by imagery that at the moment of the shootdown we detected a launch from that area,” he said. “Our trajectory shows that it went to the aircraft.” (“MH17 crash: Kerry lays out evidence of pro-Russia separatists’ responsibility“, Guardian)

Needless to say, Kerry has never provided any proof of the satellite “imagery” he referred to on the day of the interview. The administration’s case still depends on the discredited information it picked up on social media and on its own politically-motivated theory. It’s worth noting, that the administration used its shaky claims to great effect by convincing leaders of the European Union to impose more economic sanctions on Russia before any of the facts were known and without any legal process in place for Russia to defend itself. The sanctions, of course, are still in effect today even though the administrations hysterical accusations have come under increasing scrutiny.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly called for a transparent and thorough international investigation, but Washington seems more eager to sweep the whole matter under the rug. Moscow is particularly interested in recovering the Air Traffic Control tapes which were seized by Kiev’s security services immediately following the crash. It’s imperative that these tapes be handed over to international inspectors to analyze communications between the cockpit and the tower. There’s no doubt that Kiev would hand over the recordings if Washington simply demanded that they do so. But Obama has issued no such order. Why is that?

Keep in mind, that the ATC recordings could be much more valuable than the black boxes because they record both sides of every communication on every frequency used by that facility (including frequencies used for communication with other ground facilities and/or agencies), and also on every land line in use at that facility.”

What does that mean? It means that ATC recorders also include communications between ATC operators and, lets say, government or military authorities. They would also have recorded the communications between ATC and any fighters that may have been in the vicinity of Flight 17. In other words, if MH17 was in fact shot down by a SU 25, there’s a good chance the communications would show up in the ATC tapes.

Is this why Obama hasn’t demanded that Kiev surrender the recordings, because he doesn’t really want the truth to come out? Now take a look at this out from the World Socialist Web Site:

“After a month during which Washington has failed to release evidence to support its charges against Putin, it is clear that the political offensive of the NATO governments and the media frenzy against Putin were based on lies.

If pro-Russian separatists had fired a ground-to-air missile, as the US government claims, the Air Force would have imagery in their possession confirming it beyond a shadow of a doubt…..

On August 9, the Malaysian New Straits Times published an article charging the Kiev regime with shooting down MH17. It stated that evidence from the crash site indicated that the plane was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter with a missile followed by heavy machine gun fire.

While it is too early to say conclusively how MH17 was shot down, the preponderance of the evidence points directly at the Ukrainian regime and, behind them, the American government and the European powers. They created the conditions for the destruction of MH17, backing the fascist-led coup in Kiev this February that brought the current pro-Western regime to power.”

(“Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?“, Niles Williamson, World Socialist Web Site)

The media has played a pivotal role in this tragedy, deliberately misleading the American people on critical details related to the case in order to shape their coverage in a way that best serves the interests of the government. The MSM doesn’t care about identifying the criminals who killed 298 passengers. Their job is to demonize Putin and create a pretext for waging war on Russia. And that’s exactly what they’re doing.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

Mind control: Orwell, Huxley, and today’s reality

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Reid Mukai

We are able to see the architecture – the structural patterns – of each kind of mind-control regime. This can help us recognize precursors – signs that such a future is coming our way.

by Richard K. Moore

Source: News Beacon Ireland

Dystopian predictions

In 1984, George Orwell paints a picture of a dark, gray world. People are afraid to say anything contrary to the official party line, and surveillance is universal. Even thinking contrary to the party is a crime, and thoughtcrimes may be treated by radical psychological intervention. Information is closely controlled by the party media, and the historical record is routinely edited, so as to conform to the latest party statements.

By contrast, in Brave New World, Aldous Huxley paints a colorful, superficially pleasant world. Personal freedom of all kinds is encouraged, even to the point of being a cultural imperative. In the book a young boy is referred to a therapist, because he doesn’t want to play sex games with a girl classmate. An adult character is considered aberrant, because he is drawn toward a monogamous relationship. Drugs and distractions are readily available for mood enhancement.

Central to Huxley’s world is the abolition of the family. Sex never results in pregnancy, and embryos are grown in a production process, based on selected seed material. As part of the production process, an embryo can be fed or starved, at various stages of its development, so as to create classes of people (alphas, betas, etc) with differing levels of intelligence and skills. Quotas are set, regarding how many people of each class are going to be needed, and should therefore be produced.

Various kinds of conditioning are then used on infants in order to get them to accept their class, along with its prerogatives and restrictions, as being best for them. Children are raised on a communal basis, with no concept of parents, siblings, or family. From embryo to adulthood, the state has fine-tuned control over the development of the person, and of their thinking. In the resulting society, people behave as they were programmed to behave, and can’t imagine things being any different.

In Orwell’s world, wrong-thought (thoughtcrime) is detected and suppressed. In Huxley’s world, wrong-thought is unlikely to arise. Orwell’s world suppresses the individual; Huxley’s world manufactures the individual. In both cases, mind control – control over what people are able to think – is the strategy of the regime, as its means of social control generally. Orwell explores a brute-force approach to mind control, while Huxley explores a scientific approach.

The novels are useful because they each take one of these basic approaches to mind control, and follow its consequences to the end. If you really want to suppress what people think, you’d need to do A, B, and C. If you really want to program people, you’ve got to start when they’re born and do X, Y, and Z. We are able to see the architecture – the structural patterns – of each kind of mind-control regime. This can help us recognize precursors – signs that such a future is coming our way.

Echoes of Orwell

Consider the world of mainstream journalists, in particular TV news anchors. There we have a world with echoes of 1984, where what is said must conform to the party line. Any thoughtcrime – such as an anchor commenting onscreen that he doesn’t buy the official story of 9/11, or he thinks Russia isn’t an aggressor – would be quickly punished by the equivalent of death – expulsion from the world of journalism.

Thus is maintained the Matrix, the story we are told about US benevolence, the existence of democracy, the sacredness of market forces, and all the rest. With control of major media in just a few hands, the party line can be always maintained, and current (or past) events can be interpreted within that framework. To do otherwise, for a news anchor, would be literally unthinkable. Huxley’s Ministry of Truth is at work in our world, but it is invisible, hiding away in the boardrooms of media conglomerates, and behind the doors of the White House press office.

The same kind thoughtcrime regime is operating in other arenas as well, where socially-sensitive topics are concerned. The peer-review process, and the editorial boards of the relevant journals, ensure that thoughtcrimes are suppressed, when it comes to concerns regarding genetic manipulation, pesticides, fracking, pharmaceuticals, radiation levels, etc. Again, the Ministry of Truth is invisible, residing high up in the chain of corporate boardrooms.

Even though our society doesn’t resemble Orwell’s dystopia, his mind control methods are operating in very critical places, where the population’s ‘information’ is generated. And of course we do have universal surveillance, courtesy of the NSA, omnipresent CATV cameras, and cell-phone tracking. Big Brother is with us, but he stays behind the scenes, he sees all, and he decides what stories we will be told about the world by the mainstream media.

Echoes of Huxley

Huxley wrote a review of 1984, where he talked about the two different future visions. He suggested that we might go through some kind of dark period, reminiscent of 1984, but he thinks such a regime would be unstable and transitional. He goes on to say that the scientific approach to mind control, based on programming people’s belief systems, would be the more sensible choice for a modern totalitarian society.

US Government research into scientific mind control began at least in the 1960’s, and has been ongoing. The first approach – the CIA’s Operation Mind Control – was heavy handed, reminiscent of 1984. This research involved giving people psychotropic drugs, along with post-hypnotic suggestions. Quite a bit could be (and has been) accomplished with these kinds of methods, along the lines of The Manchurian Candidate, but it didn’t provide a general solution: two much work was required to program people on an individual basis.

Research then shifted to cult creation. If people can be herded into cults of various kinds, cult dynamics themselves would serve the programming function. This provides a more wholesale approach to mind control, than the individual methods tried earlier. The CIA has never publicly claimed credit for this later research, but the experiments were very successful, including Reverend Jim Jones and the People’s Temple, and David Koresh and Waco.

In this kind of research, the first step is to identify a natural cult leader, who has already shown some success in gathering followers. Then the cult is given support of various kinds. Covert agents are sent in to join the cult, not only to observe and report, but also to provide organizational skills. Funds are channeled to the cult, and local police are warned off, so that the cult can grow unhampered.

In this way, researchers have been able to study how a skilled cult leader operates, how people are drawn into a cult, how loyalty is maintained, and how people can be pushed into extreme beliefs and actions. When everything had been learned that could be learned from a cult, the cult’s leader and members were then killed, so as to hide the evidence of what had really been going on in the experiment.

Cults and their uses

One of the first large-scale deployments of cult technology, informed by this research, was the creation of the Jihad movement by the CIA. The immediate purpose was to destabilize the Soviet regime, by tying it down in a quagmire in Afghanistan. This operation was quite successful. Since then, the Jihad cult movement – aka Taliban, Al Qaeda, Kosovo Liberation Army, ISIS, etc. – has proven to be an extremely useful tool for the purpose of destabilizing regimes, in pursuit of US geopolitical objectives. These destabilization operations in turn provide an excuse for direct US intervention, as we’ve seen recently in Libya and Iraq, and as we may soon see in Syria.

Cults generally have certain characteristics. There is usually a charismatic leader, who is able to inspire belief and loyalty in cult members. There is always a defining core belief system, that sets cult members off from outsiders, and which provides a strong sense of identity and purpose for members. There is typically an alleged ‘outside threat’ to the cult, which draws members together. There are actions and sacrifices required of members, which serve to bind them more tightly to the cult. There are packaged arguments, that cult members are taught to employ, to repel attempts undermine the core belief system. These programming methods are very powerful, and typically intense deprogramming is needed to ply members away from a cult, once they have been thoroughly indoctrinated.

The society described in Brave New World is in fact a cult-based society. Each of the classes (alpha, beta, etc.) is a cult, and the programming begins at birth. No charismatic leader is needed, when so much control over programming is available. Each cult has its own core belief system, along with packaged arguments to maintain those beliefs. The required actions and sacrifices are simply the lifestyle which has been designed for each class. Such a society would tend to be stable, particularly since deprogramming efforts would be absent from the scene.

It is notable that Huxley’s world is not about a single cult, a uniform society, but rather about multiple cults. This makes for greater stability. Cult members have not only a model of what-to-be, they also have models of what-not-to-be. Each cult is more clearly defined, and drawn more into itself, by the existence of other cults. Being glad you’re not a beta is one of the reasons to be glad you are an alpha.

We see this same multi-cult dynamic operating in the US, in the divisiveness between liberals and conservatives. Liberals are kept in the fold by stories of conservative folly, and conservatives are kept in the fold by stories of liberal folly. In a propaganda-only system of control, there would be one party line for everyone. In this multi-cult system, there are two party lines, which we might characterize as CNN vs. FOX.

While the two party lines have many differences, in order to keep the two cults separated, they in fact share basic essentials in common. They both sustain the myth that state policy is a response to public sentiment, and they blame the other cult for providing support for the ‘bad’ policies. In fact US policy is made outside of government, by financial elites, and the state aims to control public sentiment, not respond to it. In this way we can see CNN and FOX as collaborators, sharing the common goal of hiding this fundamental truth from the people. The Democratic and Republican parties collaborate toward this same goal, using Congress as a stage, where they carry on a theater of divisiveness, providing the appearance of a democratic decision-making process.

The Barack Obama phenomenon provides an excellent example of cult tactics in action. Obama himself is obviously a natural cult leader, articulate and charismatic. He came onto the scene offering an inspiring core belief in deep reform, “The ground of politics has changed; Yes we Can!”. The dramatic effect was intense, as if we were witnessing the Second Coming. Campaign volunteers became the core of the budding Obama cult, and they were given lots of work to do, binding their identity to Obama and his professed mission. The McCain campaign was orchestrated to look like a dangerous threat by a rival cult, binding Obama supporters even more tightly.

The success of this mind-control operation was truly amazing. Obama in fact proceeded to carry on and expand everything Bush had been doing; the ground of politics hadn’t changed at all. But the cult binding was so strong that his support continued, by the very people who had hated Bush because of the same policies. Packaged arguments were put forward, to keep people in the cult, blaming Obama’s performance on Republican opposition – the standard divisiveness tactic. Even today there remain legions of Obama loyalists. Once bound to a cult, leaving becomes psychologically difficult.

Another example of mind control by means of cults is provided by global-warming hysteria. Al Gore played the role, at least temporarily, of cult leader, when he presented the core belief in CO2-caused climate crisis in his scientifically fraudulent, but very popular film, An Inconvenient Truth. The growth of the cult was ensured by the fact that it then became a thoughtcrime in mainstream media and climate journals to question these core beliefs. Cult members are given things to do and sacrifices to make, like riding a bicycle and buying a Prius. They are given a packaged argument, that contrary views are nothing but the propaganda of an outside-threat: the evil petroleum industry.

This kind of mind control operation is much more effective than propaganda on its own. It’s not just that cult members believe in CO2-caused climate crisis, they believe they are fighting a battle against an enemy. They have been fully immunized against counter arguments to their core beliefs, and their only concern is to ‘save the planet’ by supporting anything that looks like it will reduce carbon emissions. Thus they are being led willingly down the garden path to a micro-managed society, as outlined in Agenda 21.

The ‘conspiracy theory’ meme

State control of public schools and mainstream media goes a long way towards programming people’s minds. But it is not enough, particularly in the era of the Internet. There are many sources available that thoroughly debunk mainstream propaganda, and by using those sources a large number of people have escaped, at least in part, from the mind-control regime. In Orwell’s world, the Internet would be banned. In our world, which is developing more along Huxley’s lines, other ways have been found to limit the ability of the Internet to undermine the mainstream narratives.

The ‘conspiracy theory’ meme was launched by the CIA in the wake of the JFK assassination. The official story was so full of holes that more and more people were beginning to doubt it. While the Warren Commission was busy writing its cover-up document, the public began to learn about the existence of ‘conspiracy theorists’. These are people, the story goes, who suffer from paranoid delusions, and sane people should pay no attention to anything they say. If someone even looks at any of those ideas, their own mental stability comes into question.

This mind-control tactic was very effective in marginalizing research into the truth behind the JFK assassination. Anyone who presented evidence contrary to the official story was automatically seen as ‘conspiracy theorist’. By scoffing at such evidence, without looking at it, you could demonstrate that you were mentally balanced. Thus logic and reasoning are banished from the scenario. Either you believe the official story, or your mental health is called into question.

Since then, the conspiracy-theory meme has been carefully nurtured and expanded by the mainstream party lines. This mind-control campaign has been very successful in immunizing the majority of the population against the revelations available on the Internet. Any story not appearing in the mainstream media must by definition be a conspiracy theory, and anything that sounds like a conspiracy theory should be scoffed at and ignored.

Thus for the majority of the population we have a tightly controlled, two-tier, mind-control regime. The thoughtcrime dynamic governs what the media says, and the conspiracy-theory dynamic immunizes people against other views. For the majority, the party line (either CNN or FOX) is ‘truth’, as in Orwell’s world, but without the need for Big Brother’s extreme methods.

By these mind-control methods, a bubble has been created, in which the majority does their thinking. Inside the bubble are the two party-line narratives, and outside the bubble the real world proceeds, invisible to those inside the bubble. It’s a very effective system. The more outrageous the real actions of the state, the more quickly the majority rejects revelations of those actions, as being outrageous conspiracy theories.

In some cases the FOX party line includes accurate revelations which would be thoughtcrimes in the CNN world. In such cases, the CNN world responds by classifying those revelations as ‘right wing’ conspiracy theories. Unlike a propaganda-only system, where state crimes are always hidden, this multi-cult system enables the state to document its own crimes on conservative media, and know that the information will be disbelieved by the liberal cult. This system allows the truth to be hidden from some, through the act of revealing it to others. Very clever.

Mind control outside the bubble

While the majority may be inside the bubble, there is a large and growing number of people who don’t have faith in any mainstream party line, and who are open to considering the various ideas they find from Internet sources. The phrase ‘waking up’ is frequently used to describe the process of escaping from the bubble. More and more people are ‘waking up’ to the reality of false-flag events, routine government lies, the deep corruption of politics and the media, and the sociopathic central bankers who exercise the reins of power from behind the scenes.

However, the Internet is not being ignored by the state, and mind-control operations are underway there as well – designed for those who have ‘woken up’. Such operations are not aimed at moving people back into the bubble, rather they embrace the ‘awake’ ideas, aikido style, and then seek to direct the energy of the ‘awoken’ in ways that serve the state and its objectives.

An example of one of these outside-the-bubble mind-control operations, of the cult variety, is provided by the Zeitgeist Movement – which claims to be the “largest grassroots movement in the world with chapters in over 60 countries”. Peter Joseph is the charismatic leader of this cult, and he offers his set of core beliefs, backed up by persuasive evidence and arguments, in Zeitgeist: The Movie.

For those who are ‘awake’, the film is very powerful. It presents the essential truths about the world, without pulling punches, in a dramatic and compelling way. The film has gone through several versions over time, and the very first version went viral on the Internet as soon as it was released. To the ‘awoken’, it was a film of liberation, with the potential to wake everyone up and transform the world.

After the film was released, and after it gained a massive and enthusiastic audience, the Zeitgeist Movement was launched. Fans of the film flocked to join the movement, eager to ‘spread the gospel of truth’, and help ‘wake up the world’. They were joining an urgently-needed messianic cause, and this bound them to the movement, in the way cults always bind members. Peter Joseph was seen as a prophet figure, the articulator of the gospel, and the one who could lead the way to liberation – and this is more or less the textbook definition of a cult leader.

What these eager cult members fail to realize is that the very thing that attracts them to the movement also guarantees that the movement could never succeed in ‘waking up the world’. The core beliefs that are so liberating to the members are all seen as outrageous conspiracy theories inside the mainstream bubble. While members think they are pursuing a messianic cause, they are in fact a choir singing to itself, with Peter Joseph setting the tune.

The real purpose behind the cult is revealed in a press release on the movement website, entitled, ‘The Zeitgeist Movement defined: realizing a new train of thought’. Here Joseph expands the gospel, going beyond ‘revealing the truth’, and venturing into envisioning the transformed world that the movement aims to help create. Here are three key points from Prophet Joseph’s vision, with emphasis added:

2): The Scientific Worldview: The essay explores how the development of the scientific method has altered human perception and the critical importance of its recognition and larger order application, specifically with respect to the social system.

(5): The Case for Human Unity: This essay explores the reasoning for a unified global society along with tracing the source of national divisions and propensities for conflict. A relevant point is made regarding the advancement of technological warfare and how the dangers of keeping biased economic boundaries as we have could lead to rapid destruction as time moves forward.

(9): Market Efficiency vs Technical Efficiency: This essay argues the difference between true scientific (or technical) efficiency and the business practice of “market efficiency,” showing how the latter actually works against true economic optimization.

This is a prescription for a micro-managed global technocracy, under the control of a one-world government. Both the social system and the economic system are to be ‘scientifically optimized’ – which in fact means a world organized along whatever lines are set down by some technocratic bureaucracy, under the control of an enthroned global elite. In other words, Prophet Joseph is creating an enthusiastic constituency in support of the central bankers’ long-desired New World Order.

The Zeitgeist cult is an aikido masterstroke. It begins with the revelation that ‘evil bankers’ run the world, blending with the energy of the ‘awoken’, and then shifts that energy in a direction that serves the interests of those same ‘evil bankers’. Again, I must say very clever, very clever indeed.

Zeitgeist is only one example of a mind-control operation aimed at those who have achieved one degree or another of ‘awakening’. Numerous movements have been created, characterized by well-designed websites that tell some version of the truth, drawing in audiences with some specific focus of concerns, and which lead those audiences into useless or counter-productive activities.

In Huxley’s world, we see a scientifically designed society, tightly controlled by a full-spectrum mind-control regime, based on conditioning and cult dynamics. In today’s world, we see cult dynamics being used in a variety of mind-control operations, with cults customized for various constituencies both inside and outside the mainstream bubble. Huxley’s world has achieved stabilization by such means; in our world those means are being used to facilitate a transition – to a brave new world order that is likely to resemble Huxley’s in many of its essential features.

The demise of the family?

If the state can achieve full control over the raising of children, without parental interference, then quite obviously that would give the state the power to achieve a full-spectrum mind-control regime. Not only could the state design the society’s culture, it could tune that culture over time, by updating the conditioning process. If full-spectrum mind-control is the goal, then eliminating the family becomes a primary intermediate objective.

If eliminating the family is indeed an objective of the New World Order project, then it is by no means an easy objective to achieve. One would be hard-pressed to imagine an institution that would be more fiercely defended than the family, or to imagine a more painful experience than being separated from ones children or parents. Any campaign to achieve that objective would need to fly under false colors, not advertised as a campaign to eliminate the family, but rather as a campaign aimed at protecting the rights and welfare of the child.

It is in this light, I suggest, that we consider the many revelations that have emerged in recent years regarding child sexual abuse, and the existence of pedophile rings. In many of these cases we learn that the abusive activity have been going on for many, many years, as we see in the case of pedophile priests. Why is it that these longstanding activities have only recently been ‘discovered’?

If there is to be a strong campaign for the ‘rights and welfare of children’, there needs to be first a strong impression that their rights and welfare need protecting. Exposés of child sexual abuse serve that purpose very well. When you see a police drama, where abused children are rescued by noble cops from drug-addicted parents, you are are getting images of a benevolent state, and a social milieu that requires intervention. It becomes a template that can be expanded on as time goes on. And of course there are the interminable ads, where a neglected child sits alone at home (black and white film for effect), fearful and hungry, and you can donate $3 to some child-protection agency.

I don’t recall the link, but I came across a webpage from a UN agency, promoting the virtues of children raised ‘alternatively’. These are children raised as a group, sans parents, reminiscent of Huxley’s scenario. Supposedly these children were ‘more creative’, and showed other positive signs. How very nice. Another good-intention-stone along the garden path to the demise of the family.

Last year, 2013, in both Ireland and New Zealand, constitutional amendments were adopted, declaring that the rights and welfare of the child are paramount, trumping any rights that might be claimed by a child’s parents. In Ireland, a court challenge was immediately launched, based on the fact that the government had illegally campaigned for the referendum that approved the amendment, when by law the government should have been neutral. The challenge was, not surprisingly, rejected by the courts. There is no specific formula in these amendments as to what defines the rights and welfare of children, leaving it up to the discretion of the state, as to when intervention in the family might be appropriate.

As economic conditions worsen, under the screws of austerity, privatization, and eliminated social services, it will become a struggle for an increasing number of parents to feed, clothe, and house their families. It would be all too easy for the state to mandate a ‘minimum level of acceptable conditions’, and take children wholesale into care, based on ‘economic profiling’. That’s just one possible scenario, but it’s the kind of scenario it seems we are being prepared for.

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