Tuesday, September 30, 2014

War, Media Propaganda and the Police State

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.

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.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Friday, September 26, 2014

“The Terrorists R Us.” The Islamic State “Big Lie”

Under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council,  with president Obama chairing the Council session, the United States has called upon the international community to adopt strong measures, at national and international levels, to curtail the recruitment of Islamic State fighters.

What is not mentioned in the media reports is that the heads of State and heads of government  who have endorsed America’s campaign against the Islamic State, advised by their respective secret services,  are fully aware that US intelligence is the unspoken architect of the Islamic State, which is part of a vast network of  US supported “jihadist” terrorist entities.  Countries are either coerced into supporting the US sponsored resolution or they are complicit in the US terror agenda.

Lest we forget, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,  have been financing and training the ISIL terrorists on behalf of the United States.  Israel is harboring the Islamic State (ISIL) in the Golan Heights, NATO in liaison with the Turkish high command has since March 2011 been involved in coordinating the recruitment of  the jihadist fighters dispatched to Syria. Moreover, the ISIL brigades in both Syria and Iraq are integrated by Western special forces and military advisers.

All this is known and documented, yet not a single head of state or head of government has had the courage to point to the absurdity of the US sponsored United Nations Security Council resolution, which was adopted unanimously on September 24.

“Absurdity” is an understatement. What we are witnessing is a criminal undertaking under UN auspices.

While international diplomacy is often based on deception, US foreign policy lies are no longer credible. What we are witnessing is a total breakdown of established diplomatic practice.   The “Forbidden Truth” is that the Islamic State is an instrument of Washington, a US ” intelligence asset”. ISIL is not an independent entity, nor is it an “outside enemy” which threatens global security, as conveyed by the Western media.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

The Millennial Cult of Global Warming

The turn of the century has ushered in a golden age of cults.

There are literally hundreds of them, and we’ll talk about some of the main ones in this article, but first we must understand why they are so pervasive in our society.

Those on the ideological Right and Left will often fight to the death to prove that their end of times cult is the biggest threat to civilisation. In 2014, for the Right, it’s Islamic terror, and for the Left, it’s climate change. In reality, genuine threats could be things completely different, like Fukushima, Geoengineering, or Ebola. But as far as 21stcentury death cults go, if their is a promising money-making economy attached to the doomsday threat and the potential to polarise society, then it has a much greater chance of gaining mass traction – in other words: elites will love it!

What is a Millennial Cult?

Millennarianism, or the frequent eruption of millennial cults in society is often associated with the study by anthropologists of non-western “primitive” societies, especially South Pacific islander societies but its historical outbreak in western society are very well known.

Remember the Y2K hysteria in 2000? Or the Maya 13th Baktun of December 2012, after which time the world would surely end?

They threatened “potted disaster”, but in those two cases the political handle was hard to spot, even by seasoned conspiracy theorists. Unconvincing attempts included claims that the 13th Baktun coincided with particularly intense experiments in the US HAARP (high frequency auroral research) program, which would cause complete collapse of all electric power grids, followed of course by the declaration of martial law and the start of the New World Order, which itself is an elite millennial cult – not unlike like global warming. 


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Monday, September 22, 2014

"Climate March" Hides Real Culprits and Real Solutions

Big business and the big political parties and politicians they own have converged in what is being disingenuously called the "People's Climate March."  MSNBC would report in an article titled, "The largest climate march in history kicks off in New York," that:

They’re calling it the largest mobilization against climate change in the history of the planet. On Sunday morning, protesters from all over the United States and the world are converging on Manhattan to demand that global leaders take action to avert catastrophic climate change. Earlier this week Bill McKibben, founder of the environmental group 350.org, projected that the march would consist of “hundreds of thousands” of participants.

Not surprisingly little in terms of actual solutions are mentioned by the organizers and instead the march is meant to set the stage for political and financial deals to be made at the 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris, France. Organizing the march are institutions funded by the very governments and corporate-financier special interests that have helped create devastating environmental and socioeconomic disasters across the planet over the past several decades in the first place.

Also involved are profiteers who have taken advantage of the general population's genuine concern for the environment to propose and benefit from scams consisting of everything from land-grabbing thousands of acres in Africa to peddling "carbon credits" and other financial gimmicks that make immense profits from doing literally nothing at all in terms of production and by creating a false sense of security, may even be compounding environmental catastrophes.

For those drawn to such "marches" and who are dismayed or disillusioned by the disingenuous nature of those trying to hijack their good intentions to peddle self-serving political and financial gimmicks, what can they do to develop and actually make good on the vague promises being made during this year's "People's Climate March?" 

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Thursday, September 18, 2014

A Public Bank Option for Scotland

Scottish voters will go to the polls on September 18th to decide whether Scotland should become an independent country. As video blogger Ian R. Crane colorfully puts the issues and possibilities:
[T]he People of Scotland have an opportunity to extricate themselves from the socio-psychopathic global corporatists and the temple of outrageous and excessive abject materialism. However, it is not going to be an easy ride . . . .
If Alex Salmond and the SNP [Scottish National Party] are serious about keeping the Pound Stirling as the Currency of Scotland, there will be no independence. Likewise if Scotland embraces the Euro, Scotland will rapidly become a vassel state of the Euro-Federalists, who will asset strip the nation in the same way that, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain have been stripped of their entire national wealth and much of their national identity. 
To achieve true independence, Crane suggests the following, among other mandates:

  • Establish an independent Central Bank of Scotland.
  • Issue a new Scottish (Debt Free) Currency.
  • Settle any outstanding debt with new Scottish Currency.
  • Take Scotland out of the EU.
  • Take Scotland out of NATO.
  • Establish strict currency controls for the first 3 years of independence.
  • Nationalize the Scottish oil & gas industry.
  • Re-take control of the National Health Service.
  • Establish a State Employment Agency to provide work/training for all able-bodied residents.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Scottish Independence: What Would Braveheart Do?

No matter how the vote turns out on Thursday in Scotland, either for independence or continued union with Britain, the disintegration of the Old Continent appears almost inevitable.

Already the British government has conceded that, even if the Scots vote for union, Edinburgh will receive greater powers to rule itself.

Cheering for the breakup of the U.K. are Catalans and Basques, Bretons and Corsicans, Tyroleans, Venetians, Flemish, all dreaming of nations of their own carved out of Spain, France, Italy and Belgium.

Europe’s secessionists have waxed ever stronger since the last decade of the 20th century when the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia splintered into 22 nations and Czechoslovakia broke in two.

Abkhazians and Ossetians then broke from Georgia as Transnistria fought free of Moldova. Chechnya went to war twice to escape from Russia. Secessionists now battle Russia in Ingushetsia and Dagestan.

The decomposition of the nations of Old Europe is the triumph of tribalism over transnationalism. The heart has reasons that the mind knows not, said Pascal. And the wild heart is winning.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Friday, September 12, 2014

9/11: The Mother of All Big Lies

It bears repeating. 9/11 is the mother of all Big Lies. Thirteen years of imperial wars followed.

They continue. One country after another is targeted. Ravaging, destroying, colonizing, exploiting and controlling them reflect official US policy.

Homeland wars target Muslims, people of color, Latino immigrants and working Americans.

Award-winning author David Ray Griffin researched 9/11 exhaustively. He did so in 10 books, many articles and lectures. He provided vital evidence too important to ignore.

In April 2006, he discussed “9/11: The Myth and the Reality,” saying:
“It would seem, for many reasons, that the official story of 9/11, which has served as a religious Myth in the intervening years (and still does), is a myth in the pejorative sense of a story that does not correspond to reality.”
In September 2008, Griffin headlined “September 11, 2001: 21 Reasons to Question the Official Story about 9/11.”

The FBI admitted it “ha(d) no hard evidence connecting” 9/11 to bin Laden.

So-called devout Muslim alleged hijackers drank heavily, frequented strip clubs and paid for sex.

Technology in 2001 made cell phone calls made from above 30,000 feet impossible.

The FBI lied claiming Mohamed Atta’s left behind luggage contained “decisive evidence” about Al Qaeda responsibility for the attacks.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Bluster and Bluff in the Baltic

"I say to the people of Estonia and the people of the Baltics, today we are bound by our treaty alliance. ... Article 5 is crystal clear: An attack on one is an attack on all. So if ... you ever ask again, 'who'll come to help,' you'll know the answer — the NATO alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America."

That was Barack Obama in Tallinn, Estonia, last week, reissuing a U.S. war guarantee to the tiniest of the Baltic republics — which his Cold War predecessors would have regarded as certifiable madness.

From 1945 to 1989, no president would have dreamed of issuing a blank check for war in Eastern Europe. Our red line was in the heart of Germany. It said to Moscow: Cross the Elbe, and we fight.
That red line was made credible by hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops permanently stationed in West Germany.

Yet Truman did not use force to break the Berlin Blockade. Ike did not use force to save the Hungarian rebels. JFK fulminated, and observed, when the Wall went up. When Leonid Brezhnev sent Warsaw Pact armies into Czechoslovakia, LBJ did nothing.

Why did these presidents not act? None believed there was any vital U.S. interest in Eastern Europe worth a war with Russia.

And, truth be told, there was no vital interest there then, and there is no vital interest there now. If we would not risk war with a nuclear-armed Russia over Hungary or Czechoslovakia half a century ago, why would we risk it now over Estonia?

Cold War presidents routinely issued captive nations resolutions, declaring our belief in the right of the peoples behind the Iron Curtain to be free. But no president regarded their liberation worthy of war. 

Monday, September 8, 2014

NATO attacks!

First thing we do, let's kill all the myths. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is nothing but the Security Council of the Empire of Chaos. 

You don't need to be a neo-Foucault hooked on Orwellian/Panopticon practices to admire the hyper-democratic "ring of steel" crossing average roads, parks and even ringing castle walls to "protect" dozens of NATO heads of state and ministers, 10,000 supporting characters and 2,000 journalists from the real world in Newport, Wales - and beyond. 

NATO's summit in Wales also provides outgoing secretary-general Anders "Fogh of War" Rasmussen the chance to display his full attack dog repertoire. It's as if he's auditioning for a starring role in a remake of Tim Burton's epic Mars Attacks! 

Fogh of War is all over the place, talking "pre-positioning of supplies, equipment" - euphemism for weapons; boosting bases and headquarters in host countries; and touting a 10,000-strong, rapid reaction "spearhead" force to respond to Russian "aggression" and deployable in a maximum of five days. 

Meanwhile, in a bad cop-bad cop routine, outgoing president of the European Commission, outstanding mediocrity Jose Manuel Barroso, leaked that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him over the phone later last week he could take Kiev in a fortnight if he wanted. 

Read the entire article

Thursday, September 4, 2014

The American Delusion Distracted, Diverted and Insulated from the Grim Reality of the Police State

Caught up in the uproar over this year’s latest hullabaloo—militarized police in Ferguson, tanks on Main Street and ISIS—Americans have not only largely forgotten last year’s hullabaloo over the NSA and government surveillance but are generally foggy about everything that has happened in between.

Then again, so much has happened in the year since Edward Snowden first appeared on the national scene that it’s understandable if the average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the reality of the American police state.

This is not to say that many of these events are not critical or important. However, when we're being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this.

In fact, Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul.
Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandists, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks.”

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

NATO's Options in Ukraine

After provoking what is increasingly a devastating and expanding conflict in Ukraine, NATO appears to be out of options as its proxy regime loses its grip on both its military campaign against its own population in eastern Ukraine, as well as political control in the capital of Kiev itself. However, despite the turn of events, with NATO apparently rudderless, those seeking to undo and reserve the damage the West has created in Eastern Europe must not become complacent.

NATO still possesses several options with which it can respond to its deteriorating proxy regime and the eroding of its interests both in the region, and around the world. 

Propaganda Retrenchment Before Aggressive Military Aid 

As the West has done in Syria, it now seeks to do in Ukraine - a complete retrenchment of the official narrative regarding the nature of the ongoing conflict. Previously, the Western media has gone through great lengths to obscure overt Nazism running throughout both the political front it is propping up in Kiev, as well as across the irregular forces sent alongside what remains of Ukraine's national army. Western media outlets have briefly touched on the issue in attempts to mitigate and manage growing public concern.

Regarding the formation by the Interior Ministry in Kiev of a battalion of Nazis - the Azov Battalion - the BBC would publish, "Ukraine conflict: 'White power' warrior from Sweden," the Telegraph would publish, "Ukraine crisis: the neo-Nazi brigade fighting pro-Russian separatists," and Al Jazeera would publish, "Driven by far-right ideology, Azov Battalion mans Ukraine’s front line." Each would in turn, admit that literal Nazis are fighting on behalf of the NATO-backed regime in Kiev - with the regime itself raising ultra-right, Neo-Nazi battle formations. But each would also attempt to downplay the implications and role of Nazism within the ongoing conflict.

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