The_Propagandist
Registered: 09/02/07
Posts: 10
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Reply with quote | #1 |
By: An American Guesser
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe that they are free" - Goethe.
In this article, I will attempt to wake you up to the reality that most people refuse to believe, and inform you as to how and why most refuse to believe it. I must admit, though, that I don't have very high expectations. I know that those who know do not need to be told, while those who do not know, seldom listen. It seems a rather hopeless task, as those who don't respond with harsh criticisms or ad hominim attacks may simply dismiss or ignore what I am about to say. Nevertheless, I feel the need to make the attempt anyway, because, as in the words of Mark Twain, "The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry out is not a patriot, but a traitor." Either you do not "see" democracy failing, and so believe society's democratic clothes are still ok, or perhaps you see that things are messed up, but feel hopeless and defeated, or you are just ignorant of and apathetic about such things and don't even care. This is not entirely your own fault. You are a victim of mind control. Chances are, you don't realize how serious the war being waged for your heart and mind really is, if you even suspected there was one in the first place. That in itself would be evidence that you are losing this fight... your heart and mind may no longer be your own, if they ever even were. This war is waged with subtle weapons, such as that of propaganda.
 Propaganda is the systematic spread of a given doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of such a doctrine or cause. In the Russian language, propaganda simply means "dissemination of ideas" and doesn't bear any of the negative connotations that it carries in the English language where the term has become pejorative. Propaganda is commonly applied to messages that may only mention facts that further a cause and fail to paint a complete picture. However, the term can still apply even if it does paint a fair and accurate picture.
Propaganda which is untrue and where the source is unidentified is called "black propaganda," and it is often disguised to appear to be coming from one side of a conflict when in actuality it is coming from the opposing side. Black propaganda is often used in order to misrepresent and demonize an enemy and contrasts with grey propaganda in which the source is unidentified and white propaganda in which the real source is identified. Most propaganda focuses on influencing the emotions rather than objective reasoning of a target audience in order to alter attitudes, perception and behavior. Censorship often goes hand in hand with propaganda as it achieves the same purpose, only it prevents people from knowing true information as opposed to filling people's heads with false information.
Propaganda techniques were first codified and applied in a scientific manner by journalist Walter Lippman and psychologist Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud's nephew and the father of psy-ops, mass spin control and modern propaganda) early in the 20th century. During World War I, Lippman and Bernays were hired by then United States President, Woodrow Wilson, to participate in the Creel Commission (The Committee on Public Information). This group's mission was to sway popular opinion in favor of entering the war, on the side of Britain. Bernays also coined the terms "group mind" and "engineering consent," which are important concepts in practical propaganda work. Edward Bernays said in his 1928 book, "Propaganda," that, "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed; our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of." One of the patterns that Bernays (and others since him) used over and over again was to turn a harmless entity into a fearsome enemy through lies and manufactured news items, and then use the "threat" of that manufactured villain to justify an attack.
Adolf Hitler was impressed by the power of Allied propaganda during World War I and believed that it had been a primary cause of the collapse of morale and revolts on the German home front and in the German Navy in 1918. Shortly after Hitler took power in 1933, he appointed Joseph Goebbels propaganda chief, in charge of the "Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda" (Propagandaministerium). One of Bernays' biggest fans was Joseph Goebbels, a fact which Bernays bragged proudly about. Hitler and Goebbels made famous the propaganda technique known as "The Big Lie," described in the following often used quote:
"...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying..." - Hitler - Mein Kampf
Though still debated by some historians, it is believed by others that a communist named Marinus Van Der Lubbe who was blamed for the Reichstag (German Parliament) fire was just a patsy. The idea is that the Nazis themselves were likely to blame, and used the incident to scare the public with exaggerated fears of communism and terrorism, and that only with the Reichstag Fire Decree (which suspended all of the civil rights provisions of the Weimar Constitution), and later the Enabling Act (which effectively bypassed the Weimar Constitution altogether), could the German people be safe and protected from the imaginary hobgoblins. This is basically how Hitler was able to become a dictator. If the burning of the Reichstag wasn't an example of the Big Lie in action, Operation Himmler was. Comprising 21 separate incidents in all, Operation Himmler was a false flag project to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany, which was then used as justification for the invasion of Poland.
The pattern is this: Problem, Reaction, Solution.
1) The government creates or exploits a problem, blaming and demonizing someone, possibly a scapegoat or patsy.
2) The people react by asking the government for help, and by being willing to give up their rights
3) The government offers a solution that was planned long before the crisis, which often involves the centralization of power, and the removal of more and more of our basic freedoms as "they" advance further towards their goal of an Orwellian global socialist/fascist police state.
The precursor to the CIA, called the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), described the primary rules used by Hitler in its psychological profile of him:
"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media," former CIA Director William Colby was quoted as saying in the book "Derailing Democracy" by Dave Mcgowan. Some people suspect William Colby died under "mysterious circumstances" because he knew too much. "Owning" the media was part of Operation Mockingbird, which was intended to "influence" domestic and foreign media. This was one of the many things revealed in 1975 during the Church Committee (United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). A few of the many other projects the CIA has been responsible for (that are known of) include such operations as:
*Project Paperclip, where the CIA imported Nazi German scientists and intelligence operatives to America after WWII, including SS officers and war criminals.
*MKULTRA, a project involving the mind control of people using techniques used by Nazi scientists to wipe out the existing personalities of the victims and the creation of "Manchurian Candidates (mind controlled slaves, sometimes acting as assasins)."
*Operation CHAOS, a domestic espionage project monitoring, infiltrating, and sabotaging the efforts of anti-war activists and political dissidents.
The FBI had a similar project to Operation CHAOS called COINTELPRO, designed to "increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections" among various cultural and political groups including the entire New Left socio-political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups. While claims are made that these programs are no longer in operation, no one should be so naive as to doubt that they still do in some form; As with illegal guns, they don't go away, they just go underground.
Even without the CIA's influence, there are several reasons why you can't really get an accurate view of the world around you if you rely on the mainstream media. The U.S. media is rapidly being monopolized by a dwindling number of parent corporations (such as: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, General Electric, Time Warner, Disney, and Viacom, among others), resulting in less diverse opinions and voices available in the media and a poorly informed public. There are constant conflicts of interest demonstrated by the fact that several of these corporations share members of the board of directors with a variety of other large corporations, including banks, investment companies, oil companies, weapons manufacturers, health care and pharmaceutical companies and technology companies. In the mainstream media which is heavily reliant on advertising dollars, you, the media consumer, are the product being sold to the advertisers, and the interests of the advertisers often come before the interests of the consumer/product. Information critical of the news industry itself, its owners, or of various advertisers is not likely to ever be published or broadcast, and if it is, it will of course be "spun" and swept under the rug as soon as possible in favor of news about Brittney Spears or Paris Hilton or other such distractions. This is done to protect the bottom line. You must not forget that these corporations have an obligation to put shareholder profits above all other concerns and so news items that might endanger the corporate financial interests of those who own the media will face bias and censorship. The goal of maximizing profits is often in conflict with the practice of responsible journalism.
And then you've got your PR firms. Public relations has become a multi-billion dollar propaganda-for-hire industry, where public relations wizards concoct and spin the news, organize phony 'grassroots' front groups, spy on citizens, and conspire with lobbyists and politicians to thwart democracy. These secretive, little-known mega-firms such as Hill and Knowlton, Burson-Marsteller and Ketchum PR, are the "invisible men" who control our political debates and public opinion, twisting reality and protecting the powerful from scrutiny. At least as recently as just a year ago, federal authorities were investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting "Video News Releases" (VNRs) produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news, not saying who had produced the items. The Media as a whole has compromised principles for personal gain, becoming Intellectual Prostitutes.
 In the case of homosexual "male escort" James Dale Guckert (A.K.A. Jeff Gannon), the "journalist" for front organization Talon News who was issued press credentials by Karl Rove at Bush's request and was actually photographed being kissed and embraced by President Bush, becoming an intellectual prostitute wasn't much of a leap. Of course this scandal didn't blow up like it probably should have, because the media, and Americans in general, are trapped in a state of denial of a disease so cunning and powerful that most Americans refuse to see the underlying malaise, either as individuals or as a nation. When the disease itself is bias, where often people see what they want to see, and not what is, it becomes difficult to realize there even is a problem. This disease creates a world of Newspeaking Doublethinking docile Sheeple where 2 + 2 = 5 and we relieve cognitive dissonance with self deception. Cognitive dissonance is a term which describes the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting (dissonant) thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs, or from conflicting experiences. A recent study was done which sheds some light on the situation.
Prior to the 2004 Presidential election, researchers asked both Democrats and Republicans to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate. The subjects' brains were monitored (with Functional magnetic resonance imaging: fMRI) while they pondered.
"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."
The test subjects reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.
Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.
"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Westen said. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."
There's a good chance that your brain has already been working to dismiss much of what you've just read and is rewarding itself with a "fix" for doing so. People who are involuntarily exposed to information that increases dissonance (like right now, perhaps) are likely to discount that information, either by ignoring it, misinterpreting it, or denying it altogether. In addition to rejecting dissonant information that doesn't already support their own (sometimes) warped world-view, people often actively seek out consonant information to reinforce their beliefs, often with little to no interest in truth.
There could be mass hysteria if all news outlets were to continually broadcast this bias study for several weeks straight, not that they would dare. Talk about a buzz kill... or would there be a greater collective "high" from biased people from all sides dismissing the study and the implications concerning the ways the phenomena affects their memories and perception of history? The average political person usually seems to fall into the line of simplistic binary thinking (on/off, 0/1, left/right, etc). If he/she hears news that glorifies his/her side (or any member of it) he/she enters a state of bliss and glory; and feels personally right. When such a person hears negative information about his view or side, they automatically start searching for reasons why this negative information must be false, and may possibly rationalize it as simply a smear campaign by the other side.
Politically biased people (and to a lesser extent, politically apathetic people) are a far greater threat to society than even drug addicts because drug addicts mostly only pose a threat to people or property that they may come into contact with, while the politically biased person threatens the very freedom and democracy our country once stood for. Political "junkies" who can't properly perceive political issues put our nation in jeopardy while they are getting their fix from ignoring reality. This is dangerous because it allows political leaders to get away with anything - no wonder nobody cared when the news got out about both Bush and Kerry being members of the ultra-elite Skull and Bones. It's not like it's even a theory; it's a fact and it even made mainstream news, yet nobody cared. So if you get millions of people who disregard issues like that and forget about them, what will happen when you show them far worse things which are more important and far more vast in scope? Dismissed! Political bias is also dangerous because you'll get people who will believe bad things against the "enemy" without actually checking into the claims. Just like most drug addicts never realize there is an actual problem until it gets out of control, politically biased individuals need to realize that they have a society threatening problem or they will have little to no chance of recovery.
The whole aim of politics is to keep the people divided & in a state of contant fear, and where that leaves off, the media and entertainment industry steps in to keep people distracted and complacent and unaware of things that really should matter a whole lot more. In 1972, 74% of Americans in their mid-30s said they read a newspaper every day. Today, fewer than 28% do so. And while many point to the Internet as the best hope for rekindling interest in the news, only 11% of young people list the news as a major reason for logging on - entertainment, e-mail, and Instant Messaging are all ranked far higher on their list. Most young people just don't care. I think a lot of younger people today consciously or subconsciously realize that they are being lied to. They may realize that the "system" is broken and yet people are all so hopelessly dependant on it that they will fight to protect it (in its broken state), even to their own detriment. In a world where your parents and most of society around you is unwilling to break away from the rest of the herd of sheeple and wake up to what's been going on, what are you to do but feel hopeless and defeated, so that you give up and just distract yourself with trivial things? It's either that or risk being condemned or criticized by your family, friends, co-workers, and others around you whenever you try to show them something (which might increase cognitive dissonance) that they don't want to see. It can be extremely difficult to try to get people to overcome their previous conditioning, especially when that conditioning is telling them to get you to just "go with the flow" and conform.
In the 1976 movie, "Network," T.V. anchorman turned "mad prophet of the airwaves" Howard Beale (Peter Finch) said in one of his rantings, "...we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad!" Like Howard Beale, I don't know what to do about all of the problems of this world, but I do agree that you've got to get mad. You've got to say 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
Consider this your wake up call. Wake up. This is not a Republicrat or Demopublican issue, but an American issue, and we all need to wake up fast before we completely lose all of our allegedly "God given" rights. Do you realize that, while you were sleeping, the Bush administration and others are quietly creating a "North American Union" combining Mexico, the U.S., and Canada into one government? This "Security and Prosperity Partnership" is no secret; you can find out the government's slant on what they're doing at spp.gov, but it has received very little coverage in mainstream media and almost no one I've asked has ever heard of it. This "union" is being created without having to present the proposition first to the American public or the U.S. Congress for debate and approval, even though (or because!) it may mean the end of America and our constitution. There are many other issues of great importance that I would love to tell you about, but without this article first, there is little chance that any of what I would say would get past people's mental "filters."
Keep in mind that if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem. The most important thing you can do right now to start being part of the solution is to educate yourself and, if you can, others. Learn to see past all the B.S. Get involved somehow. A lot of what you might learn can be very discouraging, but we must not give up or lose hope however difficult the task. We must defeat defeatism. Face reality and do something. If there is nothing in your life worth fighting for, there is nothing worth living for. We need to realize that if we are willing to trade our freedom for temporary security, we deserve neither and will lose both. Timid men may prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty, but as for me; give me liberty or give me death.
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, depart from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -Samuel Adams
The author can be contacted via the Grover News forum @ http://www.websitetoolbox.com/mb/scrisci
where he has also posted related quotes and links to online articles.
Most of the links above go to Wikipedia even though there has been recent evidence of several of the pages being tampered with by the likes of the CIA, Voting-machine company Diebold, Wal-Mart, the Vatican, & others. See:
Lifting Corporate Fingerprints From the Editing of Wikipedia
Wikipedia ’shows CIA page edits’
See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign
A few Xtra links:
The CIA and the Media
Media ownership study ordered destroyed
Diversity, Democracy And Access: Is Media Concentration A Crisis?
Sex, Lies and Call Girls: Why the U.S. Media Is a Whore
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The United States
Homo politicus: brain function of liberals, conservatives differs
I'll save some for next time.... Find some yourself.
3 must see movies (on Google video):
Orwell Rolls Over in his Grave
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
A few quotes:
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliment, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
-Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremburg Trials after WWII
"People who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and never will be."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana.
"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it."
- Hitler
"The masses have little time to think. And how incredible is the willingness of modern man to believe."
- Hitler
Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.
- General Douglas MacArthur
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
- George Orwell, 1945
"When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective, ' all else is `propaganda."
- Studs Terkel
“The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses.”
- Dr. Albert Einstein (Nobel Laureate and refugee from Nazi fascism. 1879-1955)
"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together… They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers."
- U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway (Quote 1917)
“These international and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the Invisible Government.”
- President Theodore Roosevelt (denouncing global cartel power, President from 1901-1909)
“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”
- Richard Salent (former President CBS “news”)
"News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising".
- Rubin Frank (former NBC “news” President)
“It is possible to fool all of the people all the time; when government and press cooperate.”
- George Seldes (legendary investigative reporter, 1938)
“You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.”
- Philip Graham (editor of the Washington Post quoting his CIA operative source as he discussed the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. Quote 1991)
"Have you ever stood & stared at it? Marveled at it's beauty, it's genius? Billions of people, just living out their lives..... oblivious."
- Agent Smith from "The Matrix"
"We demand zero tolerance of violence against journalists and press freedom. But today more subtle threats to freedom of expression come from within media as a result of media concentration, globalization and a culture of greed within the industry."
- International Federation of Journalists, May 2001
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6427
For example, a recent New York Times/CBS News survey finds that six years after 9/11, "33 percent of all Americans, including 40 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats, say Saddam Hussein was personally involved." In reality, there has never been any evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with it. 1/3 of Americans have fallen under the spell of the Big Lie propaganda tactics employed by the pro-war lobby. (These are likely a large part of the roughly 26 to 39% of people who still approve of the job Bush & co. have been doing - http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm).
You can contact "The Propagandist" by emailing 
Also visit: http://prophaganda.blogspot.com/index.html
__________________
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years... It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries."
-David Rockefeller, Trilateral Commission Founder - 1991 |
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