Category Archives: propaganda

Ruling-Class Supremacy and the Free World

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By Mark Weiser

Source: Dissident Voice

Soon after children start noticing differences between others and themselves, they’re old enough to believe they’re superior or entitled in some ways. These feelings come naturally, and are reinforced by adults as children learn social behaviors by comparing attributes and values so they can fit in with, or be seen apart from, certain others in society. This is all instinctual to some degree and a normal part of life. To make the case for instinct and superiority, think about what anyone would consider when choosing a partner for a serious or long-term relationship. If a potential partner does not meet the standards of another, by default one person is considering their self above the other in some way. And speaking generally for superior humans, when considering procreation, they don’t want their superior self to mix with inferior genes. Everybody has standards of age, looks, intelligence, income, occupation, social standards and more or less, it’s different for everybody.

Pro-creationist superiority is instinctual to best insure our genetic code is passed along into the future. Of course there’s pure romantic attraction, but that’s only triggered because the partner being considered hasn’t been ruled out. It could ultimately be the depth and types of emotions which compel the romantic to get deeply involved, but they still make relative comparisons the first time meeting someone and along the way. We’re not speaking hypothetical, these attitudes are accepted realities and I would guess, at minimum, 96% of all readers over age twenty can relate by direct experience, even if they’ve not been in a serious intimate relationship.

Instinct and human nature overlap when it comes to seeking society with others, and societies or social groups necessarily have a culture that sets boundaries for ideological beliefs, abilities, practices, social status etc. If a group doesn’t set boundaries, by default, that group would be all inclusive and non-judgmental concerning any specific particulars. As individuals or groups looking at others, it’s all so much instinct and human second-nature, we may not be aware we’re being judgmental. Whether superiority by comparison is instinct due to genetics and the natural workings of the mind, or is influenced by personal nature and prejudices, or results from ideological and social culture, it makes no difference at all in the real world if the end result is the same.

What does make a difference in the real world is whether or not we unjustly impose on others. If our sense of imposing or taking advantage of others is not disabled, and we do impose unjustly on others, ultimately it’s some sense of superiority or entitlement which allows us to impose. Benign superiority is basically harmless as no actions are taken which harm or impose on others; although, if a person feels superior to others and doesn’t participate in something that could benefit himself, he could be a victim of his own perceived superiority.

In the U.S. we have laws against supremacist entitlement being imposed on the unwilling, but because of social conditioning there are times we might assume we’re not being imposed on when, in fact, we are the victim(s). It’s often considered justifiable that one should feel morally or intellectually superior to racists or sexists. But what about assuming religious or ideological superiority and entitlement(s)? Why would either of those be considered fair game in certain circles or social situations? If you have moral values you may feel superior to Wall Street bankers and our enabling Washington D.C politicians – as those two groups were literally the driving forces behind the 2008 economic crash – while at the same time they enriched themselves at the expense of innocent U.S. and world citizens.

The 2008 economic collapse was brought about by the deregulation and non-enforcement of banking laws which resulted in the Federal Reserve and banks both taking excessive risks. There was the Federal Reserve policy of giving the banks too much low interest money to begin with. The banks relaxed loan qualifications which led to real estate and stock market bubbles. It was all tied to fraudulent mortgage default insurance known as credit default swaps being used to prop up bundled mortgage securities which were sold all over the world to individuals, groups and all sizes of governments. The fraudulent mortgage default insurance and grossly exaggerated security ratings made the bundled mortgages securities look much less risky than they actually were, and the bundled mortgage securities were fraudulent due to the grossly misrepresented financial risks. So great were the cumulative risks of all combined, the world economy in 2008 was lined up like dominoes and literally ready to fall as soon as the mortgage defaults started adding up. By the time this was all recognized publicly as the unsustainable confidence game it was, the banks’ corporate officers had already pocketed hundreds of million$ and intended on leaving you and your grandchildren to pay for their entitlements.

With D.C. politicians, the regulatory boards, and Department of Justice looking the other way – while they’re supposed to oversee banking practices in some manner – the bankers were able to pull off the greatest financial scheme in human history. The two main groups which lined those dominoes up, the bankers and D.C. politicians, in this instance are prime examples of interdependent criminals. Our Republican and Democratic parties essentially accepted election campaign funding (bribes) from the bankers, in exchange for legislation the bankers wanted, which finally led to the 2008 crash. And because politicians wanted those campaign funding bribes to continue after 2008, they didn’t pressure the U.S. Attorney General to prosecute the bankers and most likely instructed him not to. These types of crimes and failure to prosecute are nearly guaranteed with the existing campaign funding laws when combined with the accepted political culture among the “ruling-class” in Washington D.C. Not only was the 2008 crash painful for many at the time, but people in the U.S and around the world are, in fact, enslaved to a certain degree while the true costs of those violations are still being paid off.

Assuming they didn’t suffer from psychological disorders, the bankers necessarily had to feel superior or entitled to put their personal interests above the U.S. law and country. A complex and intertwined scheme of 2008 magnitude could only have taken place if the laws on the books prior to the crash were non-existent (deregulated), corrupt as written, corrupted as practiced, or corrupted by enforcement (or non-enforcement) thereof; and we had all of those contributing factors leading up to the crash.

In the U.S. today we have a ruling-class supremacist culture holding itself, the self-chosen few, above the law. And they demand you comply with the law as they cultivate systemic enslavement to a degree as it’s being imposed on the vast majority of citizen-victims. And by all means they invite you, as a dupe, to join their party as a Democrat or Republican, neither of which are looking out for the American people; but join them, and you too can shill for the status quo. If big money likes you enough, they might select you through a screening and grooming process, to be in the U.S. Senate or Congress representing the personal best interests of ruling-class elites to the overall detriment of the country.

As a collective in the U.S. we believe ourselves to be validly non-supremacist as decreed by law, while also believing our culture is morally grounded, and that moral citizens wouldn’t impose unjust self-entitlements by forcing citizens into a degree of slavery. So what is it in our human instinct, human nature or various cultures which allow these types of supremacist-entitlement violations to occur? If the collective sense of injustice is not disabled by some psychological disorder, then as a “moral culture”, these transgressions could only take place by having a population with sufficiently corrupted-intellects, or by having a few corrupted-intellects imposing on the vast majority through concentrated political power. Corrupted-intellect for our purposes here would include the mindset to commit any act of deceitfulness, denial, or false rationalizations by either the perpetrators or victims, which allow legal violations to be committed without eventual prosecution. And regardless of whether or not we suffer from a disabling disorder, corrupted-intellect has collectively disabled our society from attaining a reasonable amount of “liberty and justice for all”. Among those unable to maintain intellectual integrity due to the influence of religious, academic or political cultures, collective denial can take the form of institutionalized supremacist-entitlements as we’ve seen with bankers and politicians surrounding the 2008 fiasco.

Does that mean we’re stuck in a non-democracy being run by a collective of predominately corrupted-intellects of a self-entitled ruling-class supremacist culture? That may depend on Americans understanding just how openly and blatantly they’re still being taken advantage of, and whether or not enough of them are outraged enough to demand some changes. Our two-party political system is essentially a self-perpetuating power structure and would require a major mutiny among members of at least one party to change the existing campaign funding laws, or the Supreme Court would have to overrule itself; the first case is extremely unlikely specifically because getting elected requires receiving huge amounts of campaign funds from the excessively wealthy “ruling-class”, and there’s little hope for the Supreme Court considering the corrupted-intellects sitting there on the bench without a clue.

The joke may be on “we the people” for the time being, but unjust power structures historically fail as the one in question is failing now by eroding the strength and health of its own population. It’s only a matter of time as to when and how a major shift takes place. And regardless of anyone’s sentiment toward the system as is, it’s not working to represent the best interests of the country. What’s left to be said for a system that has systemic corruption guaranteed by existing laws enjoyed by unjustly self-entitled ruling-class supremacists? According to the Declaration of Independence “we the people” have final say and it’s our duty as patriotic Americans, “to throw off such Government”.

Another group which more than deserves mention in the grand scheme of supremacy-entitlements is the so called “news” media. The press has immense power to pressure both, corporate industry and the government to operate within legal and moral parameters that would be beneficial to our overall society. What’s often referred to as “corporate news” isn’t really news, but is actually manipulative propaganda. And those running the show behind the scenes perceive personal benefits by having a bias slanted strongly toward corporate or special interests – which also means not exposing the government because the government works for corporate and special interests also. With the press not using its immense power to benefit U.S citizens and country as a whole, the people running the major news networks are performing a great disservice to the country by denying citizens the absolute truth for their own considerations. Corrupted-intellects are everywhere…

And going back to speaking of dupes, we need to acknowledge the entire subservient culture of politicians around the globe that cater to the whims of Washington D.C. Those foreign office holders often see their compliance to Washington as benefitting themselves personally while it victimizes their own citizens. If those “leaders” are not plain ignorant for any reason, then by default they are willing accomplices on some level. Whatever the case, they’re arguably not fit to look out for the best interests of their own countrymen – just as they’re currently not doing. This subservience is not only applicable to economic issues at present, but also enables unjust military incursions and illegal “wars” of chosen aggression for some perceived political or monetary gain.

If a constant and stable life could be realized, the vast majority of world citizens would prefer to live without trespassing on others. But the brokers of industry, media, and politics, who seek extreme wealth and power, are a different sort – some of these people are beyond being supremely self-entitled, where sociopath or psychopath would be a fitting definition. They act without consideration for truth or the lives they abuse and destroy. Nothing is beneath them, not robbing granny’s life savings while personally benefitting, not starting and backing unnecessary wars of personal choice for monetary or political gain. Over just the last five-and-a-half decades the U.S is directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions in various places around the world. The worldwide self-entitled “ruling-class” supremacists of the “free world” predominately exists in a cultural bubble of extreme criminal immorality and exceptionalism — all due to a combination of genetic instinct, human nature and social culture(s) rendering their corrupted-intellects incapable of acknowledging absolute truth and the motives behind their actions. With most of these activities being approved and orchestrated from the epicenter in Washington D.C., the destructive earthquakes travel around the globe through varying forms of imposed ideological and economic tyranny, often with a military “solution” being carelessly and recklessly forced on countless innocent victims of the current day, year, decade or century as the case may be… The “ruling-class” puts all of our lives at risk by keeping our planet in constant jeopardy.

Due to the shear waste and destruction of war along with the possibility of wanton escalation, the entire earth and the world’s population are threatened by the practices of a tiny and miniscule minority comprising the collective ruling-class supremacist culture; and with everything on earth being directly and indirectly interconnected to everything else, their victims, I’m sure you know, include all living things and every last human being.

 

There is no reasoning with an empire waging a world war of deception

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By Larry Chin

Source: Intrepid Report

On September 24, 2014, the United Nations passed a resolution paving the way to open-ended “anti-terror” warfare against the Islamic State (IS), the “network of death,” promising a war that will “last for years.”

The “war on the Islamic State” is a lie. It is the same fetid Big Lie that is the “war on terrorism,” reheated and updated with new, bloodier special effects, new propaganda, a familiar but revised cast of demonic villains and a new military attack calendar.

Three thousand lives were sacrificed on 9/11 for the fabricated “war on terrorism” against “Al-Qaeda” and Osama bin Laden. Now, thirteen years of continuous imperial onslaught and tens of thousands of deaths and atrocities later, the “Islamic State” escalation will topple Syria, Iran, transform Iraq, and provide yet another pretext to wreak havoc anywhere else the empire wishes.

But it is the same lie, built on the same propaganda cornerstones: the myth of the “outside enemy,” the threat of “Islamic terror,” eternal pretexts to galvanize public opinion behind an Anglo-American agenda of conquest and war that will never end.

It is the same lie, founded upon the idea that “Islamic terrorists” are enemies of the West, when, in amply documented fact, these terrorists are the West’s finest foot soldiers and military-intelligence assets.

The Islamic State, like Al-Qaeda and all entities that comprise the “Islamic Jihad” is a creation of the CIA and Anglo-American intelligence (Pakistan’s ISI, Saudi intelligence, British MI6, the Israeli Mossad, etc.). The various jihadist militias and military-intelligence assets and fronts—IS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusrah, etc.—are “American made,” openly supported and utilized by the United States and its allies, as they have been continuously from the Cold War to this very second. These forces are carefully manipulated and guided weapons for US-NATO. Terrorists are instrumental to the ongoing US-led covert and overt operations in Syria. Terrorists run by the US and CIA destabilized and toppled Libya, are integral to coming regime changes. Under both direct and indirect orders of US-NATO sponsors and handlers, these “demon hordes” are, and will continue to be, the leading military-intelligence assets behind every major geostrategic action in the region.

The IS joins Al-Qaeda as today’s favorite “boogeyman” target. The war masks the true intent, which is the toppling of Syria and Iran, and onward.

The “terrorists” are depicted in propaganda as either villains or “freedom fighters,” depending on the day and the military theater. The horrific acts of the death squads, including beheadings and other atrocities, are standard operating procedure in CIA black operations, terror techniques going back to the Vietnam War and the Phoenix Program, and are done upon orders of US and US-allied military-intelligence. Decapitations of Syrian civilians have been ongoing for years, to media silence. The recent spate of beheadings of Americans and British have been selectively carried out (and in some cases staged) for propaganda purposes. Political theater designed to galvanize the dimwitted, ignorant masses to support massive retaliatory war.

According to recent polls, four out of five registered American voters overwhelmingly support military attacks against the Islamic State. The acquiescent, ignorant American masses, still irretrievably pacified by the propaganda “shock and fear” effect of 9/11, enthusiastically back any “retaliation” against “bad guys who cut off heads” and “threaten America,” and have no problem sending American youth to the front lines to be cannon fodder. They are “defending freedom.” The American sheeple believe—even love to believe—the Big Lie. Whereas the citizens of Hong Kong and in other countries take passionately to the streets to fight for their democracy, the average American has long abdicated his and her duty as an informed, vigilant citizen. Far too busy shooting nude selfies on handheld gadgets—their brains addled by inane entertainment, and Hollywood celebrations of the national security apparatus—to care.

So-called liberals and progressives also back action against the Islamic State. The few who have any inkling that Islamic terror is a product of the US war machine wind up wringing their sweaty hands over the red herring of “blowback”: the tired idea that the US created but lost control of a Jihadist force that it now must contain. It is bogus. These militias are the American empire’s key foot soldiers and operatives, the leading force behind plans to topple Syria, just as they were in Libya. This is not blowback, but a well orchestrated military-intelligence operation, cloaked beneath a criminal conspiracy that is maintained by an ironclad elite consensus.

Islamic terrorism “stops” the minute that its sponsors at CIA, MI, ISI, etc. stop using it. The war itself stops when the elites who have planned this Final Solution to seize control of the last remaining oil supplies on the planet—the very life blood of the Anglo-American empire—stop, and give up their war of conquest and greed. The entire apparatus collapses. But this will not happen in this lifetime. Not even in the event of planetary calamity.

To threaten humanity, to pretend to wage war against boogeyman that they themselves created, and continue to support and use, only those of world class evil could conceive of and carry out this horror.

The American network of death goose-steps to the abyss

With each passing day, more of the Anglo-American empire’s veneer falls away, revealing the violence at its core.

Leading the charge in front of the United Nations, the mendacious President Barack Obama thundered: “No God condones this terror. There can be no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.”

Here was a performance directly out of the playbook of the Third Reich and Bush/Cheney, brimming with threats, false morality, pseudo-religious claptrap, and invective directed against the perceived enemies. Here was Obama being who he really is, a war criminal. The ghost of Hitler has to be envious.

No God condones deceit. No God condones the terror of the Anglo-American empire’s war of conquest. No God condones the extermination of tens of thousands of lives in more than a decade of imperial conquest for oil.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the criminal leadership of an empire that will thrash and kill to the brink of extinction. There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with warmongers who have wiped out entire swaths of humanity.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with an empire so desperate and out of answers that gangsterism replaces the rule of law, and false flag operations constitute foreign policy. There is no reasoning with those who could, in the span of just a few months, set off false flag destabilizations in Syria, false flag operations in support of a neo-Nazi cabal in Ukraine, plan and cover up the false flag shootdown of Flight MH-17 (blamed on Russia), support the bombing and conquest of Gaza by Israel (blamed on Hamas, in the wake of the murder of Israeli teenagers by ISIL terrorists), and set off the “sudden” rise of the Islamic State.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with an empire that must and will stop at nothing to control every inch of the Eurasian subcontinent, and destroy all opposition along the way, including potential nuclear confrontations with Russia and China.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the functionaries and enablers of this empire in governments, in media, everywhere. There is also no reasoning—no negotiation—with the cognitively impaired sheeple.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the killers, the world planning orchestrators speaking the “language of force”; these “great men and women” who hold humanity in contempt.

There is, indeed, no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil.

Larry Chin is an Associate Editor of Intrepid Report.

 

From Washington’s ‘Fear Factor’ playbook: The Khorasan Group is coming to get us

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By Dave Alpert

Source: Intrepid Report

While our attention had been focused on ISIS, the new and heretofore unheard of Khorasan Group has been organizing and planning to implement a terror attack here in the United States.

Who are these people? According to U.S. officials, they are linked to al-Qaeda and consist of radical veteran fighters who are “running amok in the Middle East and bent on destruction” (primarily in the U.S.).

James Comey, head of the FBI, stated in an interview with 60 Minutes on CBS, “Khorasan was working and you know, may still be working on an effort to attack the United States and our allies, and looking to do it very, very soon.” Comey also admitted he knew the identities of those Americans fighting alongside radical groups in the Middle East.

I don’t know about you but I find this very strange. Khorasan was initially introduced to the Western world in the middle of September and just as suddenly was never mentioned for the subsequent three weeks. And now, they’re back.They are supposedly very dangerous and may attack us very, very soon. But, we know very little about them and they have successfully remained off our radar screens.

But the icing on the cake came when Comey stated that the government knows the names of these Americans who have fought with ISIL. They have American passports and if they wish to return to the U.S., they have every right to do so. But, he promised that they will be tracked very carefully.

Initially, I thought Comey was rehearsing for some stand-up comedy routine he was performing. Here we have Americans who have been fighting alongside jihadist fundamentalists in Syria, a country we are bombing, and they are members of a terrorist group who is planning to attack the U.S.; the FBI knows their identities, and we are told they have the right of return. This is something even Palestinians do not enjoy and all they want is to go home.

I may have misunderstood, but there are heavy consequences in place for those Americans who give aid and support to any organizations that have been deemed terrorists by our government.

Case in point: In May of 2013, the Obama administration targeted and killed, Awlaki, a United States citizen. What was his crime?

Mr. Awlaki was a radical Muslim cleric, born in New Mexico, and, at the time of his death, living in Yemen. Awlaki made anti-U.S. speeches to members of his congregation and encouraged Muslims to confront and fight U.S. imperialism. The crime of “imminent” threat was that sometime in the future he might be involved in a terrorist act in the U.S.

Two weeks later, Awlaki’s 16 year old son, Abdulrahman al- Awlaki, who was born in Denver, Colorado, was targeted and killed. The explanation offered by U.S. officials was that because of who his father was, he might someday grow into a terrorist and commit acts against our homeland. His crime was that he had the wrong father.

A more recent story is about Shannon Maureen Conley, 19, a certified nurse’s aid who was arrested at Denver International Airport last April. She had planned to fly to Germany and eventually an ISIS camp near the Turkish border. She was taking this long trip because she was planning on meeting her suitor, Yousr Mouelhi, whom she met online and planned to marry. Unfortunately Yousr is a member of ISIS.

Conley thought she could be helpful in Syria by using her skills as a nurse’s aide.

In a plea agreement, Conley pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. She faces up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

As part of the plea agreement, Conley must provide law enforcement agencies with information about others looking to provide help to terrorist organizations abroad.

None of those mentioned above had any active role in organizing or implementing a terrorist attack. Yet, two men have been executed and a naive young woman has been sentenced to prison.

However, the 12 or so Americans who can be identified, are welcomed back on U.S. soil, despite the fact that the FBI claims they fought alongside terrorists and have been trained to implement terrorist attacks inside the U.S.

This whole scene seems unbelievable. As Glenn Greenwald stated, “The last thing the Washington political class and the economic elites who control it want is for this war to end. Anyone who doubts that should just look at the express statements from these leading Democrats, who wasted no time at all seizing on the latest Bad Guys to justify literally decades more of this profiteering and war-making.”

“As the Obama administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the ‘homeland.’ A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval.

“The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded ‘The Khorasan Group.’ After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat—too radical even for Al Qaeda!—administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore.”

People have called me a “conspiracy nut” because I don’t accept the official 9-11 story but the government needed a “New Pearl Harbor” to gather support for military engagement in the Middle East and 9-11 ensured they got it. It may be time now for the government to stage another event to gather support for its predicted 30-year war in Syria and its fight against ISIS.

BEWARE! It’s not the Khorasan Group that worries me, it’s our own government.

 

 

Saturday Matinee: War Documentary Double Feature

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“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

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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.

 

BOSTON UPDATE: FBI War on Marathon Bombing Witnesses Continues

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By James Henry

Source: WhoWhatWhy

The Boston Marathon bombing is much more important than has been acknowledged, principally because it is the major domestic national security event since 9-11 and has played a major role in expanding the power of the security state. For that reason, WhoWhatWhy is continuing to investigate troubling aspects of this story and the establishment media treatment of it. So even as it slips from the headlines, we will be exploring new elements of the story regularly as the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev approaches. 

***

Since the Boston Marathon bombing a year and a half ago, the FBI appears to be intimidating, harassing, and silencing friends and acquaintances of the Tsarnaev brothers. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers have noticed it too—they’re having trouble getting anyone to talk to them, recent court papers reveal.

In what WhoWhatWhy previously described as the FBI’s “war on witnesses”, the Bureau seems to be employing a scorched earth strategy of destroying anything that might be of use to the “enemy.”

On August 29, Tsarnaev’s lawyers filed a motion requesting a continuance for more time to prepare their defense, noting the fact that they were given only half the median preparation time that federal courts have allowed over the past decade for defendants on trial for their lives. (The judge did grant a two-month delay while refusing the defense request to move the trial out of Boston.)

The lawyers cited “outpaced requirements” in building a proper defense for their client: (1) the international nature of the investigation—including language and geographic barriers, (2) the large amount of evidence that has to be scrutinized, and most tellingly, (3) the climate of intimidation and fear created by the FBI’s investigative efforts since the bombing. They write:

Domestic defense mitigation investigation has been conducted amid a growing atmosphere of anxiety and agitation generated by highly-publicized arrests, indictments, prosecutions, deportations (and, in one instance, the FBI killing) of members of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s peer groups.

Most news reports brush over that last part. As if shooting to death an unarmed man involved in this case—as an FBI agent did to Tamerlan’s friend Ibragim Todashev—is not relevant to the difficulties the defense team has had in getting witnesses to talk to them. But even less extreme events are enough to silence potential witnesses, such as the mysterious closing of their bank accounts.

Prosecutors resisted this and an earlier attempt to have the trial delayed. The victims have a right to see justice done—swiftly, the thinking goes.

The victims and their families certainly deserve justice for this horrible atrocity. True justice should include a full accounting—something a hurried, one-sided investigation is not likely to produce. And of course Boston and the American public deserve, and need, the truth, whatever it may be.

Yet a close read of the motion document reveals FBI activities that seem more of an effort to conceal than to illuminate.

The FBI’s March to the Sea

Tsarnaev’s defense team makes reference to the most troubling—and most anxiety-producing—action by the FBI since the bombing: the shooting to death of Tamerlan’s friend, Todashev. (See our earlier story on the head-scratching circumstances surrounding that shooting, including the questionable history of the agent who pulled the trigger.)

Some of the FBI’s aggressive tactics described in the defense document look like outright intimidation. For instance, individuals “with lawful immigration status have been detained for hours and required to surrender their electronic devices upon re-entry to the United States.”

And take a look at this excerpt:

“The investigation has been further hampered by aggressive FBI follow-up tracking and questioning of potential witnesses, as well as by the unrelenting attention of the news media.”

It is one thing to be aggressively tracking and questioning individuals suspected of committing crimes, but to be doing this to presumably innocent witnesses reeks of intimidation. Witness intimidation is a tactic ordinarily associated with mafia or drug cartel defendants.

Notably, this “tracking” must have been brought to the attention of defense lawyers by witnesses themselves, indicating overt surveillance: “We’re watching you.”

Then, farther down in the document:

“These difficult circumstances are compounded by a continuing pattern of aggressive FBI re-interviewing of potential witnesses — on occasion within hours of an attempted contact by defense investigator [emphasis added].”

Within hours of an attempted contact by defense investigator? Is the defense team being watched too? (We reached out to Tsarnaev’s defense team hoping they could expand on that, but have not yet had a response.)

It wouldn’t be the first time the FBI was caught spying on defense lawyers in a high-profile terrorism case. Lawyers for accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed allege that the FBI has been surveilling  them.

Whether legal counsel are being watched directly or simply getting caught up in the surveillance of Tsarnaev’s acquaintances, the effect is the same: the feds know who is talking to whom, and when.

That’s a Nice Immigration Status You Got There…

Witnesses who are not U.S. citizens—which describes the majority of Tsarnaev’s friends, family, and many in the local Muslim community—are particularly vulnerable to law enforcement manipulation. The threat of deportation is a clear and present danger to these individuals, “regardless of whether criminal charges are ever brought or proven against them,” Tsarnaev’s lawyers wrote.

Indeed, a handful of people loosely connected to the Tsarnaevs have already been deported, or had deportation proceedings initiated against them, despite having nothing to do with the Boston Marathon bombing. These include:

–   Konstantin Morozov: friend of Tamerlan, arrested and jailed pending deportation reportedly after refusing to wear a wire for the FBI as the Bureau sought information on one of Tamerlan’s Chechen friends.

–   Tatiana Gruzdeva: girlfriend of Ibragim Todashev, deported after speaking with Boston Magazine about the circumstances surrounding her boyfriend’s death.

–   Ashurmamad Miraliev: friend of Ibragim Todashev, was reportedly denied a request for an attorney while interrogated by FBI for over six hours, and transferred to an immigration detention center where deportation proceedings were initiated.

–   Khusen Taramov: friend of Ibragim Todashev, denied reentry to the United States after visiting Chechnya, despite having a Green Card.

Why hasn’t Boston’s “liberal” media made more noise about this? Arguably, the most newsworthy portion of Tsarnaev’s motion for continuance—potential witness intimidation—has been glossed over or ignored in most mainstream media accounts.

The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations reached out to the media and the public to expose the intimidation and harassment of Todashev’s friends and associates—and got a fair amount press coverage by their local media. The same cannot be said for the Boston area press.

Have they, albeit indirectly, been intimidated, too? The Boston media has historically had a close relationship with law enforcement, and when it ever so slightly challenged the police, found its usual (and needed) sources shut down.

However, if ever there was a moment for the local press to do the right thing, this is surely it.

Ebola Outbreak: The Latest U.S. Government Lies. The Risk of Airborne Contagion?

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By Prof. Jason Kissner

Source: Global Research

We begin with the Public Health Agency of Canada, which once (as recently as August 6) stated on its website that:

“In the laboratory, infection through small-particle aerosols has been demonstrated in primates, and airborne spread among humans is strongly suspected, although it has not yet been conclusively demonstrated (1, 6, 13). The importance of this route of transmission is not clear. Poor hygienic conditions can aid the spread of the virus.”

No more; the “airborne spread among humans is strongly suspected” language has been cleansed:

“In laboratory settings, non-human primates exposed to aerosolized ebolavirus from pigs have become infected, however, airborne transmission has not been demonstrated between non-human primates

Footnote1 Footnote10 Footnote15 Footnote44 Footnote45.

Viral shedding has been observed in nasopharyngeal secretions and rectal swabs of pigs following experimental inoculation.”

Are we to suppose that very recent and ground-breaking research was conducted that indicated there is no longer reason to “strongly suspect” that airborne Ebola contagion occurs? Surely, the research was done three weeks ago, and we only need to wait another couple of days until the study is released for public consumption. Feel better now?

If not, perhaps the 9/30 words of the Centers for Disease Control accompanying the Dallas Ebola case will provide some solace. Or, perhaps those words just contain another pack of U.S. Government lies. Let’s investigate.

Before addressing the CDC’s Statement, we should articulate some pivotal Ebola Outbreak facts we’re apparently not supposed to mention or even think about, since they’ve been buried by the Government/MSM complex. So, consider this from an earlier Global Research contribution by this author, drawn from a 2014 New England Journal of Medicine article:

“Phylogenetic analysis of the full-length sequences established a separate clade for the Guinean EBOV strain in sister relationship with other known EBOV strains. This suggests that the EBOV strain from Guinea has evolved in parallel with the strains from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon from a recent ancestor and has not been introduced from the latter countries into Guinea. Potential reservoirs of EBOV, fruit bats of the species Hypsignathusmonstrosus, Epomopsfranqueti, & Myonycteristorquata, are present in large parts of West Africa.18 It is possible that EBOV has circulated undetected in this region for some time. The emergence of the virus in Guinea highlights the risk of EBOV outbreaks in the whole West African subregion…

The high degree of similarity among the 15 partial L gene sequences, along with the three full-length sequences and the epidemiologic links between the cases, suggest a single introduction of the virus into the human population. This introduction seems to have happened in early December 2013 or even before.”

The take-home message is that we now confront a brand spanking new genetic variant of Ebola. Furthermore, we still have no idea at all how the “single introduction of the virus in the human population” of West Africa occurred. And, the current Ebola outbreak appears to be orders of magnitude more contagious than previous outbreaks. It also presents with a fatality count that far exceeds all previous outbreaks combined. But it’s certainly not airborne, so who cares about nit-picking details such as these!

In spite of the above facts, we are supposed to believe that all questions regarding the current Ebola outbreak can be answered with exclusive reference to what has occurred in connection with previously encountered—in terms of genetic composition—and known—in terms of initial outbreak source—Ebola episodes.

Here are a couple of questions. When was the last time an Ebola outbreak coincided with instructions to U.S. funeral homes on how to “handle the remains of Ebola patients”? Not to worry, since Alysia English, Executive Director of the Georgia Funeral Homes Association, is quoted (click preceding link) as saying “If you were in the middle of a flood or gas leak, that’s not the time to figure out how to turn it off. You want to know all of that in advance. This is no different.” So it’s just about being prepared, you see. Of course, nothing resembling this sort of preparation has ever transpired alongside any other Ebola outbreak in world history, so what gives now?

“Oh, it’s because we now have that Ebola case in Dallas.” True, but this response suffers from two fatal defects. First, we’re not supposed to worry about one tiny case as long as it’s in America, right, since according to the CDC on 9/30:

…there’s all the difference in the world between the U.S. and parts of Africa where Ebola is spreading. The United States has a strong health care system and public health professionals who will make sure this case does not threaten our communities,” said CDC Director, Dr. Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “While it is not impossible that there could be additional cases associated with this patient in the coming weeks, I have no doubt that we will contain this.”

If the U.S.’ strong health care system (which is apparently far superior to hazmat suits) is so effective at containment, what explains the funeral home preparations again? If U.S. containment procedures are so superb and the virus is no more contagious than before, what difference does it make whether the case is in Dallas, Texas or Sierra Leone? To be sure, maybe the answers to these questions are simple, and it’s just about corrupt money and the like.

However, the corrupted money explanation isn’t very plausible (at least on its own) either, for the very simple, and extremely disturbing, reason that the “funeral home preparations” article was first published on 9/29 at 3:36 PM PST—a day before the Dallas case was confirmed positive. Of course, this makes the following language at the very head of the article all the more eerie:

“CBS46 News has confirmed the Centers for Disease Control has issued guidelines to U.S. funeral homes on how to handle the remains of Ebola patients. If the outbreak of the potentially deadly virus is in West Africa, why are funeral homes in America being given guidelines?”

If the rejoinder is that “well, people thought the Dallas case might turn out positive”, the reply must be that there were several other cases, in places like Sacramento and New York, that might have turned out positive, but resulted in neither funeral home preparations nor a rash of CDC “Ebola Prevention” tips (wash those hands, since they’re running low on hazmat suits!)

Hopefully, you are in the mood for two more big CDC lies, because they really are quite important. From the 9/30 CDC statement: “People are not contagious after exposure unless they develop symptoms.” This is a lie for three basic reasons. First, the studies that inform the CDC’s professed certainty on this issue relied upon analyses of previous outbreaks of then-known known Ebola variants. The current strain, as stated here early on, is novel—genetically as well as geographically. Second, the distinction between “incubation” and “visible symptoms” is a continuum, not discrete in nature; a few droplets might not be rain, but they’re not indicative of fully clear skies either—so the boundary drawn by the CDC is, like nearly everything else the U.S. government does, arbitrary. Third, as even rank amateurs at statistics know, previous outbreaks have consisted of too few cases to confidently rule out small but consequential probabilities of asymptomatic transmission—completely leaving aside the fact that we have a new genetic variant of Ebola to deal with.

The last major CDC lie mentioned in this article is the claim, repeated ad nauseam, that “infrastructure shortcomings” and the like is wholly sufficient to explain the exponential increase in the number of cases presented by the current outbreak. We should believe that only when presented with well-designed multivariate contagion models that properly incorporate information about Ebola outbreaks and generate findings that socioeconomic differences as between West Africa and other regions of Africa (such as Zaire) alone can fully explain observed differences associated with the current outbreak. It seems to this author that we should strongly doubt that the current contagion can be fully explained without at some point invoking features of the novel genetic strain.

Dr. Jason Kissner is Associate Professor of Criminology at California State University. Dr. Kissner’s research on gangs and self-control has appeared in academic journals. His current empirical research interests include active shootings. You can reach him at crimprof2010[at]hotmail.com   

 

ISIS War Is Peace: Obama Vs. Orwell

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By Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton

Source: Truthstream Media

“We must declare war on war, so the outcome will be peace upon peace.”

This is what our Nobel Peace Prize Winning President said in front of the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2014 — the same day  U.S. military weapons hit some 168 targets including a dozen oil refineries in Syria…

It’s as if Obama is trying to reconcile his peace prize with his legacy of war by arguing that the U.S. is not at a traditional war (because the U.S. is always at war) but just as we go to yet another war, we’re actually at a war against war in the name of peace.

So…war is peace.

Ever read a book called 1984 written by George Orwell?

From The Corbett Report: