D5E:destruction, degradation, denial, disruption, deceit, and exploitation

[ParanoidPat]

Before you believe another word on CNN, read this! :evilgrin:

CONCEPT PAPER

Working Group on Preventive and Preemptive Military Intervention

William W. Keller and Gordon R. Mitchell1
Project Coordinators

<Snip>

U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Intelligence Committee, called for an FBI investigation into the forgery of documents cited by President Bush and Secretary Powell as proof of Iraq’s nuclear transactions with Niger. As Rockefeller explained in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller: “There is a
possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.”26

The timeliness of Rockefeller’s proposed inquiry was underscored by the
appearance of official documents that lay out official American deception plans: "In a document last autumn, the joint chiefs of staff stressed the need for strategic deception and influence operations as tools of war. The army, navy and air force have been directed to devise plans for information warfare."27 According to defense analyst William Arkin, the Bush strategy lays out goals for information warfare that pursue D5E: "destruction, degradation, denial, disruption, deceit, and exploitation." Arkin notes that the wide array of sites and ractices of information control brought into the range of this policy "blurs or even erases the boundaries between factual information and news, on the one hand, and public relations, propaganda and psychological warfare on the other."28

This fusion of military deception programs with media propaganda efforts enabled the Office of Strategic Influence to commission officers from the U.S. Army's Psychological Operations Command to work as interns in the news division of CNN.29

<More>

[ParanoidPat]

1. Is this thing on?

:shrug:

And then there was the Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And “oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.” I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing, fine, I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.30

The political implications of blurring military strategic deception and public sphere propaganda are worth exploring, given Arkin's concerns about military deception that "while the policy ostensibly targets foreign enemies, its most likely victim will be the American electorate." 31

[Karenina]

2. Way back in the way back

the Russian students hammered home this point: You have little to fear from "communsm" as Harvard Business School will be the force that sinks America.

[ParanoidPat]

7. They got that right!

:evilgrin: :thumbsup:

:kick:

[Stephanie]

3. Leo Strauss - Rule One: Deception

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15935

Rule One: Deception

It's hardly surprising then why Strauss is so popular in an administration obsessed with secrecy, especially when it comes to matters of foreign policy. Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Neocons Dance a Strauss Waltz
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EE09Ak01.html

While a New York Times article introduced readers to Strauss and his disciples in Washington, interest was further piqued this week by a lengthy article by The New Yorker's legendary investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, who noted that Abram Shulsky, a close Perle associate who has run a special intelligence unit in Rumsfeld's office, is also a Straussian.

His unit, according to Hersh, re-interpreted evidence of Iraq's alleged links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network and possession of weapons of mass destruction to support those in the administration determined to go to war with Baghdad. The article also identified Stephen Cambone, one of Rumsfeld's closest aides who heads the new post of undersecretary of defense for intelligence, as a Strauss follower.

In his article, Hersh wrote that Strauss believed the world to be a place where "isolated liberal democracies live in constant danger from hostile elements abroad", and where policy advisers may have to deceive their own publics and even their rulers in order to protect their countries.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.thedubyareport.com/prophet.html

The Prophet of Prevarication and His Disciple In-Depth
Special to The Dubya Report
August 4, 2003

Thirty years, two months and five days after North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin gaveled to order the Senate Watergate hearings, congress opened hearings into the use of "intelligence" to justify military action in Iraq. 1973 also marked the death of Leo Strauss, a little-known German émigré philosopher who fled Nazi Germany and found a home at the University of Chicago. While at Chicago, Strauss and mathematician Albert Wohlstetter trained a number of students who themselves became, or whose students became important figures in the neoconservative movement. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz studied with Strauss protégé Allan Bloom, and earned his Ph.D. from the U of C in 1972. William Kristol, chairman of the currently influential conservative advocacy group the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), studied with Strauss student Harvey Mansfield. NSC southwest Asia specialist Zalmay Khalilzadp earned his Ph.D. under Wohlstetter in 1979, 10 years after Ahmed Chalabi, the "man who would be king" of Iraq.

~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16378

Volume 50, Number 10 · June 12, 2003
Feature
The Neocons in Power
By Elizabeth Drew

Perle, Woolsey, and Wolfowitz are all disciples of the late Albert Wohlstetter, a University of Chicago professor who had worked for the RAND corporation and later taught at the University of California. Throughout the cold war he argued that nuclear deterrence wasn't sufficient—that the US had to actually plan to fight a nuclear war in order to deter it. He strongly advocated the view that the military power of the USSR was underrated. Wolfowitz earned his Ph.D. under Wohlstetter; Perle met Wohlstetter when he was a high school student in Los Angeles and was invited by Wohlstetter's daughter to swim in their pool. Later, Wohlstetter invited Perle, then a graduate student at Princeton, to Washington to work with Wolfowitz on a paper about the proposed Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Wohlstetter opposed and which has been abandoned by the Bush administration. Wohlstetter introduced Perle to Democratic Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson of Washington, an aggressive cold warrior and champion of Israel's interests. Woolsey (who calls himself "a Scoop Jackson Democrat") came to know Wohlstetter in 1980, when they both served on a Pentagon panel. Of Wohlstetter Woolsey said in a conversation we had in mid-April, "A key to understanding how Richard and Paul and I think is Albert. He's had a major impact on us."

And through Wohlstetter, Perle met Ahmed Chalabi, then an Iraqi exile who had founded the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of Iraqi groups, many of its members in exile.

~~~~~~~~~~

[ParanoidPat]

4. Great post Stephanie!

Thanks for those links. :)

More people here need to stop worrying about the poll results and start paying attention to the psychological warfare being waged against the American electorate and the world at large!

[Beam Me Up]

15. I'll second that!

WOW :kick:

[kaitykaity]

9. Total keeper.

Good on you, Stephanie. :thumbsup:

[Stephanie]

5. I can't read that link right now

But what is the background of that report? Date, etc.? Is it recent? Who wrote it? Did the press cover it at all? (LOL!)

[ParanoidPat]

6. The PDF file was created 2/11/04 at 4:56:35PM.....

.....But no date appears on the report. :)

The original source is from...
http://www.fordinstitute.pitt.edu/home/research/PPM/RidgwayCP_Preventive_Preemptive_Intervention.pdf

As far as press coverage, LOL! :evilgrin:

[hang a left]

16. A little on the Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation's history of collaboration and interlock with the CIA in pursuit of U.S. world hegemony is now a well-documented fact...The Ford Foundation has in some ways refined their style of collaboration with Washington's attempt to produce world cultural domination, but retained the substance of that policy...The ties between the top officials of the Ford Foundation and the U.S. government are explicit and continuing.—James Petras in "The Ford Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of philanthropic collaboration with the Secret Police" on 12/15/2001

[ParanoidPat]

18. Thanks! Here's a link to a PDF of that document......

...... http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/FordFandCIA.pdf :evilgrin: :thumbsup:

[hang a left]

19. Where does it stop?

"Alternative" media paymasters: Carlyle, Alcoa, Xerox, Coca Cola...? The Ford Foundation, historically closely linked to the CIA and the military-industrial-academic complex, has in recent years provided substantial funding grants to a number of "alternative" media organizations, such as FAIR, Progressive magazine, and Pacifica. Also participating in this type of funding are other elite foundations such as MacArthur, Soros, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Schumann. General policy for grant-making at the Ford Foundation is handled by the Board of Trustees. Approval for all grants over $100,000 must be personally signed by Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford, who is also a member of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission and the Ford Foundation-subsidized Council on Foreign Relations Inc.. So, for example, a $150,000 grant to FAIR by the Ford Foundation in 2001 for "general support to monitor and analyze the performance of the news media in the United States" was approved directly by Trilateral Commission member Berresford, in accordance with the grantmaking policy guidelines established by the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees. Given the tremendous power that the Ford Foundation has historically wielded in influencing cultural, academic, and political affairs, one must ask, who makes up this board of directors whose policies the Ford Foundation president implements—and what interests do they represent? In May 2002, the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees welcomed a new member, Afsaneh M. Beschloss, former World Bank investment officer and CEO / President of Carlyle Asset Management Group, which is a division of the Carlyle Group, the defence-related international investment firm which enjoys all-star revolving door influence in the Bush White House and is enjoying a post-9/11 profit bonanza. Beschloss first joined Carlyle Asset Management Group in 2001 as a managing director. She also happens to be married to George W. Bush's official presidential historian, Michael Beschloss. It would appear that the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees is within the Bush administration's sphere of cronyism. Is this who should be entrusted to decide how grant money gets doled out to "alternative" media organizations? Is the CEO of Carlyle Asset Management Group and wife of a current presidential historian likely to smile upon funding alternative media organizations which are eager to go beyond offering the usual cut-and-paste complaints about Carlyle Group influence in the White House, and ask more probing questions about this company's role the "War on Terrorism", such as its alleged investment in anthrax vaccine maker Bioport or its past business ties with the not-quite-completely-estranged-from-their-errant-son bin Laden family? http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs0209/0929_ford_trustees.html

[ParanoidPat]

20. With us I hope! Welcome to the front lines of the second civil war!

GW* once said, "the Internet is more dangerous than guns". Probably the only truthful comment he ever made.

Let's prove him right! :evilgrin: :toast:

[Sugarbleus]

36. It's funny that you should mention that as

I've often said the same thing to friends... Stating that "the powers that" be must be kicking themselves in the ass for letting this "internet thing" get so out of control..lol

I wait in wonderment to see if "they" will shut this wonderful intenet tool down. Lucky for us, if the internet were to be messed with, we've already absorbed the data....the cat is outta the bag.

[ParanoidPat]

41. We have the data, the torch has been passed on to us.......

......now what are we going to do with it? :shrug:

How are we going to get such a scary and complex subject 'packaged' for 'consumption' by a largely snowed and unaware public who are more concerned with watching the next episode of Survivor rather than the survival of our democracy? :(

[Sugarbleus]

56. ......now what are we going to do with it?

It would appear that "greed", comfort, and instant gratification are the opiums of today. This nation, and now other's on the horizon, has become spoiled and lulled into a false sense of security and "foreverness". A thorough Brainwashing, however it is done/applied, is a very very difficult thing to "de program".

If not actually funding a REAL free press and putting it out in the public's face, I fear the only thing left to make people wake up is "something" too terrible to speak of.

In the meantime, Teach the children what we know so they can go into the future with a better message for mankind.

I ask people I do business with, even my doctor and lawyer, what their politics are......there's an opening for dialogue, not to mention I can determine from the response whether I'm going to get a good deal for my money.

Keep the message alive in anyway that presents itself and in every place until things either change or they shut us down permanently....
I want to go to my grave with the knowledge that at least I tried to make a difference.
Peace

[JohnyCanuck]

8. Brainwashing America

From the article, Brainwashing America, by Dr. Norman Livergood formerly of the US Army War College:

The puppet Bush regime is using new, aggressive forms of brainwashing to change the very way Americans think and feel.

This is the psychological dimension of the "High Cabal's" general onslaught against American workers, just as the "war on terrorism" is the military dimension and corporate crime and tax cuts for the rich comprise the economic dimension.

We are living under the beginning stages of a military dictatorship in precisely the same way that 1930s Germans suffered under the Nazi regime.

As in the case of Nazi Germany, state-sponsored propaganda (brainwashing) is a vital part of the Bush regime's strategy.

http://www.hermes-press.com/brainwash1.htm

[ParanoidPat]

11. Another great article! Thanks JC!

This needs to stay kicked until everyone here realizes the significance of what's going on in our media. :evilfrown:

This is NOT a 'conspiracy theory' this is FACT! :wow:

[JohnyCanuck]

42. You're welcome PP

I post the link to Livergood's article every chance I get. However, I think many people would rather not think about the implications of what he has to say. If Dr. Livergood's theory is valid, it seems to make much of what we do on DU and other like-minded boards seem like reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic while ignoring the iceberg looming ahead.

Personality simulation systems are being used to create political campaigns that apply voter profiles to control their voting behavior. TV commercials and programs use personality simulation to profile viewers to control their purchasing and viewing behaviors. And sophisticated propaganda and brainwashing techniques are being used by the Bush junta to keep American citizens under control.

Brainwashing America

[robertpaulsen]

10. Bookmarking this

I want to read all of this. Sounds like documented proof of what Christiane Amanpour was hinting at by saying her network was giving slanted coverage of the war. When it comes to the cable networks, no news is good news.

[ParanoidPat]

12. Shameless self kick!

:kick::evilgrin:

[FDRrocks]

13. Chomsky

:)

[hang a left]

14. The Depraved Spies and Moguls of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird

Tales from the Crypt

The Depraved Spies and Moguls

of the CIA's Operation MOCKINGBIRD

by Alex Constantine

Who Controls the Media?

Soulless corporations do, of course. Corporations with grinning,
double-breasted executives, interlocking directorates, labor squabbles
and flying capital. Dow. General Electric. Coca-Cola. Disney.
Newspapers should have mastheads that mirror the world: The
Westinghouse Evening Scimitar, The Atlantic-Richfield Intelligentser .
It is beginning to dawn on a growing number of armchair ombudsmen that
the public print reports news from a parallel universe - one that has
never heard of politically-motivated assassinations, CIA-Mafia banking
thefts, mind control, death squads or even federal agencies with
secret budgets fattened by cocaine sales - a place overrun by lone
gunmen, where the CIA and Mafia are usually on their best behavior. In
this idyllic land, the most serious infraction an official can commit
__is a the employment of a domestic servant with (shudder) no
residency status.

This unlikely land of enchantment is the creation of MOCKINGBIRD.

It was conceived in the late 1940s, the most frigid period of the cold
war, when the CIA began a systematic infiltration of the corporate
media, a process that often included direct takeover of major news
outlets.

In this period, the American intelligence services competed with
communist activists abroad to influence European labor unions. With or
without the cooperation of local governments, Frank Wisner, an
undercover State Department official assigned to the Foreign Service,
rounded up students abroad to enter the cold war underground of covert
operations on behalf of his Office of Policy Coordination. Philip
Graham, __a graduate of the Army Intelligence School in Harrisburg,
PA, then publisher of the Washington Post., was taken under Wisner's
wing to direct the program code-named Operation MOCKINGBIRD.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MOCK/mockingbird.html

[hang a left]

17. Here is some more interesting stuff

by bob feldman

http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/bigoil_pbs.html9 December 2002


Some of the profits that San Francisco-based Chevron Texaco has made during the last ten years has gone to PBS's Washington, D.C. outlet, WETA-TV. In 1992, for instance, a foundation grant of over $2.4 million was given to WETA-TV by Chevron to fund PBS¹s National Geographic Specials. That same year Chevron¹s foundation also gave money to the following other ³non-profit² organizations:

Stanford University was given 3 grants, totaling $455,000, by Chevron
University of California-Berkeley was given 2 grants, totaling $217,000 by Chevron
The American Enterprise Institute For Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. was given a $70,000 grant by Chevron
The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. was given a $60,000 grant by Chevron
The National Council of La Raza in Washington, D.C. was given a $65,000 grant by Chevron
The NAACP in New York City was given a $55,000 grant by Chevron
Among the ³non-profit² organizations who received foundation grants from Chevron two years later, in 1994, were the following:
San Francisco¹s KQED/Channel 2, which was given a $152,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
The San Francisco Opera Association, which was given an $86,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
The African American Institute in New York City, which was given a $90,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, which was given another $70,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
Stanford University, which given 4 grants, totalling $495,000, by Chevron¹ s foundation
University of California at Berkeley, which was given a $342,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
The Hoover Institute On War, Peace and Revolution in Stanford, California, which was given a $120,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
The Center for Strategic and International Studies in D.C., which was given another $100,000 in tax-exempt money by Chevron¹s foundation

snip

ChevronTexaco¹s foundation is not the only foundation that gets its grant distribution money from a business involvement in the oil industry. The MacArthur Foundation¹s $2 billion-plus corporate stock portfolio included at least $31 million in oil company stock a few years ago. The Sister Fund¹s assets are derived from Hunt Oil, a firm which sometimes competes with Chevron in the marketing of Middle East and African oil. And, as long ago as 1973, The American Oil Industry: A Failure of Anti-Trust Policy pointed out the following about the relation between large U.S. foundations and the oil industry: ³Some of the largest foundations in the country have been established with oil money. A foundation can be both a means of retaining control and seeking favorable tax treatment.

[ParanoidPat]

21. The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk?

http://www.iwar.org.uk/psyops/resources/cnn-effect/Belknap_M_H_01.pdf

The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk?

USAWC STRATEGY RESEARCH PROJECT

by
Margaret H. Belknap
United States Army

Colonel David. W. Foxworth
Project Advisor

The views expressed in this academic research paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, or any of its agencies. ;-)

U.S. Army War College
CARLISLE BARRACKS, PENNSYLVANIA 17013

[hang a left]

22. Techniques of Propaganda Generation

Techniques of Propaganda Generation

Some time has been spent analyzing the means by which propaganda messages are transmitted, and that work is important, but it's clear that information dissemination strategies only become propaganda strategies when coupled with propagandistic messages. Identifying these propaganda messages is a necessary prerequisite to studying the methods by which those messages are spread. That's why it is essential to have some knowledge of the following techniques for generating propaganda:

Appeal to fear: Appeals to fear seeks to build support by instilling fear in the general population - for example Joseph Goebbels exploited Theodore Kaufman's Germany Must Perish! to claim that the Allies sought the extermination of the German people.

Appeal to authority: Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position idea, argument, or course of action.

Bandwagon: Bandwagon-and-inevitable-victory appeals attempt to persuade the target audience to take a course of action "everyone else is taking." "Join the crowd." This technique reinforces people's natural desire to be on the winning side. This technique is used to convince the audience that a program is an expression of an irresistible mass movement and that it is in their interest to join. "Inevitable victory" invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those already on the road to certain victory. Those already, or partially, on the bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is the best course of action.

Obtain disapproval: This technique is used to get the audience to disapprove an action or idea by suggesting the idea is popular with groups hated, feared, or held in contempt by the target audience. Thus, if a group which supports a policy is led to believe that undesirable, subversive, or contemptible people also support it, the members of the group might decide to change their position.

Glittering generalities: Glittering generalities are intensely emotionally appealing words so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that they carry conviction without supporting information or reason. They appeal to such emotions as love of country, home; desire for peace, freedom, glory, honor, etc. They ask for approval without examination of the reason. Though the words and phrases are vague and suggest different things to different people, their connotation is always favorable: "The concepts and programs of the propagandist are always good, desirable, virtuous."

Rationalization: Individuals or groups may use favorable generalities to rationalize questionable acts or beliefs. Vague and pleasant phrases are often used to justify such actions or beliefs.

Intentional vagueness: Generalities are deliberately vague so that the audience may supply its own interpretations. The intention is to move the audience by use of undefined phrases, without analyzing their validity or attempting to determine their reasonableness or application

Transfer: This is a technique of projecting positive or negative qualities (praise or blame) of a person, entity, object, or value (an individual, group, organization, nation, patriotism, etc.) to another in order to make the second more acceptable or to discredit it. This technique is generally used to transfer blame from one member of a conflict to another. It evokes an emotional response which stimulates the target to identify with recognized authorities.

Oversimplification: Favorable generalities are used to provide simple answers to complex social, political, economic, or military problems.

Common man: The "plain folks" or "common man" approach attempts to convince the audience that the propagandist's positions reflect the common sense of the people. It is designed to win the confidence of the audience by communicating in the common manner and style of the audience. Propagandists use ordinary language and mannerisms (and clothes in face-to-face and audiovisual communications) in attempting to identify their point of view with that of the average person.

Testimonial: Testimonials are quotations, in or out of context, especially cited to support or reject a given policy, action, program, or personality. The reputation or the role (expert, respected public figure, etc.) of the individual giving the statement is exploited. The testimonial places the official sanction of a respected person or authority on a propaganda message. This is done in an effort to cause the target audience to identify itself with the authority or to accept the authority's opinions and beliefs as its own.

Stereotyping or Labeling: This technique attempts to arouse prejudices in an audience by labeling the object of the propaganda campaign as something the target audience fears, hates, loathes, or finds undesirable.

Scapegoating: Assigning blame to an individual or group that isn't really responsible, thus alleviating feelings of guilt from responsible parties and/or distracting attention from the need to fix the problem for which blame is being assigned.

Virtue words: These are words in the value system of the target audience which tend to produce a positive image when attached to a person or issue. Peace, happiness, security, wise leadership, freedom, etc., are virtue words.

Slogans: A slogan is a brief striking phrase that may include labeling and stereotyping. If ideas can be sloganized, they should be, as good slogans are self-perpetuating memes.

See also doublespeak, information warfare, meme, psyops

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Propaganda

[hang a left]

23. Techniques of Propaganda Transmission

Techniques of Propaganda Transmission
Common methods for transmitting propaganda messages include news reports, government reports, historical revision, books, leaflets, movies, radio , television , and posters.


Recognizing Propaganda
Some of the most effective propaganda techniques work by misdirecting or distracting the public's finite attention away from important issues. It's important to read between the lines of the news and see what isn't being reported, or what is reported once, quietly, and not followed up. In an age of information overload, distraction techniques can as effective as active propaganda. One way to test for distraction is to look for items that appear repeatedly in foreign press (from neutral and hostile countries) and that don't appear in your own.
All active propaganda techniques can be tested by asking if they tend the target audience to act in the best interests of the distributor of the propaganda. Propaganda presents one point of view as if it were the best or only way to look at a situation.

Sometimes propaganda can be detected by the fact that it changes before and after a critical event, whereas more honest information like medicine, science or any training manual should largely remain the same after the event as before. If there are big disparities, or if some "valuable lesson" or "wake-up call" has occurred, it means that what was provided before the fact was not really "instruction" but "guessing," or - if there is no consistent explanation that survives - propaganda.


References

Howe, Ellic. The Black Game: British Subversive Operations Against the German During the Second World War. London: Futura, 1982.
Edwards, John Carver. Berlin Calling: American Broadcasters in Service to the Third Reich. New York, Prager Publishers, 1991. ISBN 0-275-93705-7.
Linebarger, Paul M. A. (aka ]). Psychological Warfare. Washington, D.C., Infantry Journal Press, 1948.
Shirer, William L. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941. New York: Albert A. Knopf, 1942.
Much of the information found in Propaganda techniques is take from: "Appendix I: PSYOP Techniques" from "Psychological Operations Field Manual No.33-1" published by Headquarters; Department of the Army, in Washington DC, on 31 August 1979. I'm sure there are copies of this whole manual on the web, I'll try to find a good link soon.

[ParanoidPat]

24. United States and the Free Press

From http://www.shianews.com/hi/articles/politics/0000394.php :evilgrin:

United States and the Free Press

By Arif Ahmad

<Snip>

This fate met Bill Maher, the host of ABC's Politically Incorrect who on 17, September last year in his show questioned George W Bush's credibility on the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Iraq. The question as a result prompted all major advertisers including Federal Express (FedEx) and Sears to terminate all financial sponsorship to the show and several other stations ended Bill Maher's show from their line-ups.

The comment even made its way to the highest levels in Washington where Ari Fleisher in a news briefing at Pentagon described Bill Maher's remark "a terrible thing to say" and added that "There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say and watch what they do." The following days, Ari Fleischer also took the freedom of requesting all major newspapers not to print any of Osama Bin Laden's messages.

The request was given very warm response and in an official statement by CNN they said: "In deciding what to air, CNN will consider guidance from appropriate authorities". Similar declarations came from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation who promised: "We'll do whatever is our patriotic duty."

Many news organizations have been the long arm of the White House, but made it official only in the Iraq war and its aftermath. On the request of Pentagon, ABC, CBS, Fox News and PBS made a joint collaboration to make a program called "Toward Freedom."

The president of CBS, Andrew Heyward, became convinced of the idea and said that: "It is a good thing to do...a patriotic thing to do." Although this might seem as disturbing, this comes as no surprise given the elements within the news organizations having cosy relationship with the political establishment in Washington.

In February 2000, reports confirming this were revealed in Dutch and French newspapers where Abe de Vries, a correspondent for the daily newspaper Trouw, discovered that several officers from the Fourth Psychological Operations Group of Pentagon had been working in the news desk in CNN's Atlanta headquarters. The project was called "Training with the Industry" where a dozen military personnel, also called PSYOPS, engaged in news stories under the unfolding Kosovo war 1999. Major Thomas Collins of the US Army Information Service reluctantly confirmed the presence of the PSYOPS at CNN but insists they didn't have any influence in the news writing.

Abe de Vries, says: "The facts are that the US Army, US Special Operations Command and CNN personnel confirmed to me that military personnel have been involved in news production at CNN's news desks. I found it simply astonishing. Of course CNN says these PSYOPS personnel didn't decide anything, write news reports, etcetera. What else can they say? Maybe it's true, maybe not. The point is that these kind of close ties with the army are, in my view, completely unacceptable for any serious news organization. Maybe even more astonishing is the complete silence about the story from the big media. To my knowledge, my story was not mentioned by leading American or British newspapers, nor by Reuters or AP."

<More>

[hang a left]

25. "The CIA & The Media" from Rolling Stone, 10/20/77.

The CIA and the Media

Here's just a snippet from Carl Bernstein's famous 1977 article entitled "The CIA & The Media" from Rolling Stone, 10/20/77. Anyone with access to a library should try to find this - it's a truly breakthrough piece - 16 pages long in the reprint!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America's leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists' relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services -- from simple intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America's leading news organizations.

The history of the CIA's involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception for the following principal reasons:

The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence-gathering employed by the CIA. Although the agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 (primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalists are still posted abroad.
Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950's and 1960's with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism.
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Services. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune.

By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.

<...>


http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/media/ciamedia.htm

[hang a left]

26. Propaganda in this nation has never been more incessant than today

December 16, 2003—Propaganda in this nation has never been more incessant than today. From the hundreds of lies, misrepresentations and deceits being told to us by both government and corporate media about battles, deaths, injuries, the resistance, security and the deteriorating state of the occupation of our quagmire in Iraq to the distortions and chicanery the Bush administration seemingly launches at us in wave after wave of lies to the purposeful distortion and omission by corporate media of the corrupt going-ons of the embarrassment and scandal that is the bordello called Congress.
Propaganda, it seems, has never been used so systematically and methodically. While the corporate Leviathan launches war against us its media merrily downplays or ignores its truth or consequences or our daily lives. With the growing power of the Leviathan becoming ever stronger, in essence becoming our government, we are witnessing propaganda, conditioning and manipulation on a scale never seen before. Our nation is being devastated by both government and business propaganda. As a result, we are being made brainless puppets attached to the willful strings of the powerful elite. What follows is an examination of this growing phenomenon and how it is affecting us all, our democracy and the direction this nation is headed in.

He who controls the media controls the masses. Today, America's media is controlled exclusively by fewer than a dozen multinational conglomerates and their many interests. NewsCorp, AOL, Viacom, General Electric, Disney and others have formed a media oligarch that reaches into every American home and most every citizen. These few omnipresent entities hold as paramount the belief in assuring for themselves perpetual loyalty from as many of the people as possible. Revenue and profit, corporate growth and power, executive pay and ego, these are all determined by us, the masses, and helps explain why the oligarchy has decided to invest and take an interest in all forms of media that reaches and influences us.

We are the lifeblood of the conglomerate, of vital importance, and, as such, it is in its best interest to control as much of our lives as possible, transforming us into obedient servants of obliviousness. Is it no coincidence, then, that the United States has become a nation whose masses no longer question authority or the propaganda that passes for news? Is it any wonder why we seem so ignorant as to what is being done to us and incurious as to what is happening in the world, readily and naively accepting as true everything that is spewed out of our televisions and newspapers? We have allowed the oligarchy to hide the keys of democracy while we carelessly follow it on the road to fascism, where the elite have control of all aspects of our lives, including our minds.

snip

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Media/121603Valenzuela/121603valenzuela.html

[hang a left]

27. The poll, as used by the media

The poll, as used by the media, is a special form of the fallacy Ad Populum. The irony about polls is that the very act of reporting a poll either reinforces or changes the opinion that the poll measures.

The actual questions asked in the polls are never reported. They simply divide the results into simplistic "for" and "against" categories, but these results are skewed because of deceptively phrased questions.

For instance the question could be "Do you support balancing the budget by putting senior citizens out on the street?" The majority of answers will probably be in the negative. They then report something to the effect of, "A majority of Americans believe that the budget should not be balanced by cutting Medicare and Social Security."

Or, the poll is skewed because of an unbalanced sample population. For instance, Kinsey’s study on homosexuality polled prisoners (kinda like doing a study on virginity in a whorehouse).

The methods of the poll are usually not very scientific and it is designed to get a specific result. And the purpose of polls is to say to the audience, "Here is what everyone else thinks, you should too."

Now, there are accurate polls. But these polls are used by the politicians to gauge the sentiments and beliefs of the populace so that they know precisely what to tell them. These are really not just polls though, because usually they are coupled by "test balloons" in which the responses of the audience are measured and then re-polled. Politics is down to a science now. Polls help the political class to scientifically pander to the voters. Political campaign propaganda is a specialization of the science of modern propaganda.

http://www.propaganda101.com/Propaganda/NewsMediaPropaganda/NewsMediaPropFrame.htm

[ParanoidPat]

28. Is anyone reading this?

From http://www.saag.org/papers10/paper948.html

South Asia Analysis Group

IRAQ WARS-WESTERN MEDIA PROPAGANDA ARMS OF GOVERNMENTS AND CORPORATE INTERESTS

Paper no.948 12. 03. 2004

by K. Gajendra Singh “Demand a broader view.“ BBC

BBC’s Director General Greg Dyke, who resigned after Lord Hutton “white wash” of the British government role in the spat over correspondent Andrew Gilligan (in a Channel 4 News poll last week 90% thought Hutton was unfair), said that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s top spin doctor Alastair Campbell had written letter after letter throughout the conflict. “What Alastair Campbell was clearly trying to do was intimidate the BBC so that we reported what he wanted us to report as opposed to what we wanted to report,” he said. Dyke had attacked American television reporting of Iraq war "For any news organisation to act as a cheerleader for government is to undermine your credibility," he said. "They should be... balancing their coverage, not banging the drum for one side or the other." He added that research showed that of 840 experts interviewed on American news programmes during the invasion of Iraq, only four opposed the war. "If that were true in Britain, the BBC would have failed in its duty."

How ever, BBC itself gave in its over all coverage a mere 2% time to opposition’s anti-war voices, which was really the majority view of the British people. It was the worst of the leading broadcasters, including US networks, according to Media Tenor; a Bonn-based non-partisan media research organization. So much for the most hyped pristine western media outlet. ABC of USA with 7% was the second-worst case of denying access to anti-war voices.

In a 4 July, 2003 comment in “ the Guardian” titled “Biased Broadcasting Corporation”, Justin Lewis, Professor of Journalism at Cardiff University confirmed the above result while refuting the anecdotal view that BBC was anti-war in its coverage. “ Just the opposite was the truth”. A careful analysis by the university of all the main evening news bulletins during the war, concluded that of the four main UK broadcasters - the BBC, ITN, Channel 4 and Sky, BBC’s coverage was the worst in granting anti-war viewpoint. The BBC had "displayed the most pro-war agenda of any broadcaster." Matthew d'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph described how "in the eyes of exasperated Blairites - the BBC whinged and whined, and did its best to sabotage the war effort". But the pattern that emerges from their study was very different.

The supposed “impartiality” of the BBC did not fool many opponents of the war, who correctly saw it as a voice of the government. On March 29, 2003 for example, a demonstration by 400 anti-war protesters was held outside the BBC’s office in Manchester and criticised the BBC for its pro-government and anti-Iraq coverage.

<More>

[hang a left]

29. Governmental Agitprop

Governmental Agitprop
Replaces U.S. News
Excerpted from Eric Margolis's Foreign Correspondent
The Toronto Sun: Sunday, September 28, 2003
A fascinating March study of network TV news by New York's Fairness and Accuracy in Media shows how Americans were misled into war by outrageously biased programming on Iraq.

The analysis found:

76% of all commentators about Iraq on TV were present or former government officials

only 6% of commentators expressed skepticism regarding the need for war - when 61% of the public supported more time for diplomacy and inspections

on the four TV networks, less than 1% of sources were identified with anti-war groups.
And more than two-thirds of commentators were from the U.S., 75% either present or former government or military officials. The small number of foreign commentators mostly came from nations like Britain and Israel which were backing Bush's war policy.

In short, the major networks, under White House prompting, beat the war drums and blatantly excluded commentators with contrary views, giving Americans a badly warped view of world events.

No wonder so few Americans understand what is going on abroad, how the outside world really sees them, or why America has so many enemies overseas. Small wonder many Americans are turning for balanced news to the CBC, BBC and the Internet.

Citizens of the old Soviet Union suffered the same information isolation. Like Americans since 9/11, they were force-fed agitprop and patriotic pap disguised as news, and deprived of all knowledge of the real world around them.

http://www.newswatch.org/agitprop.htm

[hang a left]

30. Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery

US Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
By John Stanton and Wayne Madsen

A crisis without precedent is underway in the United States. And its consequences will be far graver than those wrought by the U.S. presidential election of 2000 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The collapse of the Jeffersonian "free and uncensored press" in America endangers the liberties of all Americans and, arguably, citizens from all walks of life around the globe. As the U.S. prepares to invade Iraq and preemptively strike anywhere in the world it feels threatened, the only remaining barrier to monstrous U.S. totalitarianism is a sickly and crippled U.S. media, an aggressive foreign media, and the hope that the heretofore somnambulant American public will awaken from its stupor.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, "Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears." Not so in 2002, because irrationality and indoctrination sell. ABC's Diane Sawyer's interview with a para-psychologist who talks to the "dead" gets big billing. U.S. media interests regularly report unsubstantiated government claims about terrorist capabilities and threats to the populace. They ignore and, indeed, mock the message of peaceful anti-establishment protests around the world and here in the U.S. They editorialize on issues that please advertisers and the profit margin. They plagiarize day's and week's old news stories from the foreign and trade press and claim them as their own. They pound home the message of "just get over it," whether "it" is election malfeasance, intelligence and defense failures or corporate theft. In these environs, can it be long until a daring American author mimics Czeslaw Milosz and pens the American version of The Captive Mind?

With precious few exceptions most notably the nation's "City Papers," independent Internet sites - like the Indy Media Center -- and grass roots broadcasters such as Pacifica, U.S. print and broadcast organs from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from NBC to Fox, and from AM radio bands to FM bands, spew out a vile and banal concoction of information that numbs the mind and homogenizes the thought processes of a U.S. citizenry scurrying about to support the "war effort." So-called "news programs" seek to pacify and assure during the commute, the thunderstorm, the shopping spree, the murder. Weather, roads, guns, cars, food are all endowed by newsreaders with character as if those "things" are conscious entities. As Herbert Marcuse so adroitly pointed out, in this environment people don't "see" themselves, they project themselves into "things". Viewers are commodities to the U.S. media interests. "Thought" need not apply here.

Fantasy is Fact

Instead of reporting on how many people are killed in various grass roots insurgencies against U.S. backed tin horn dictators around the world, networks now report how well movies do at the box office. Little wonder, considering how the news networks are so tightly welded into Hollywood's infotainment empires. Even PBS is not immune from such corporate infiltration, even though it would have you believe differently during its long and painful fund drives. Consider the recent ignoble treatment of Wall Street Week host and founder Louis Rukeyser. Because AOL Time Warner could not find a time slice on CNN to plug its Fortune magazine, it simply gobbled up Rukeyser's show for the magazine. Even PBS's famed documentaries are not immune to such corporate power moves. The highly-acclaimed wildlife show Nature has been forced to drop its long time narrators in favor of personalities like Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan, whose major contributions to environmental studies were their respective complaints that life in Mongolia and the hills of Thailand was just not as cozy as that in Beverly Hills, California.

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen0425.html

[ParanoidPat]

31. The 'Rendon' connection.....

.....from http://www.med.sc.edu:1081/howtosellawar.htm

How To Sell a War

The Rendon Group deploys ‘perception management’ in the war on Iraq

<snip>

The Information War

John Rendon’s refusal to discuss his activities makes it difficult to do more than speculate about the full scope and extent of his firm’s involvement in Iraq, but an incident during the war itself provided a rare breach in the wall of secrecy. On March 23, TV cameraman Paul Moran was killed in northern Iraq by a suicide bomber while on assignment for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His obituary, published in his home town of Adelaide, Australia, noted that Moran’s activities “included working for an American public relations company contracted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to run propaganda campaigns against the dictatorship. … Company founder John Rendon flew from the United States to attend Mr. Moran’s funeral in Adelaide on Wednesday. A close friend, Rob Buchan, said the presence of Mr. Rendon—an adviser to the U.S. National Security Council—illustrated the regard in which Mr. Moran was held in U.S. political circles, including the Congress.”

Moran’s work for the Rendon Group apparently included producing the only television interview with Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri, the Iraqi engineer who claimed that he helped build special underground facilities for Saddam’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program. According to a report by the Australian news show Dateline, Moran was one of two reporters who were granted access to al Haideri by Chalabi’s INC. (The other was the New York Times’ Judith Miller, whose reporting has come under scrutiny since it was revealed that Chalabi and INC were the primary sources for her numerous stories about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Zaab Sethna, INC spokesman, told Dateline, “The information that al Haideri provided went directly to President Bush, it went to Tony Blair.” Indeed, Bush quoted the information provided by al Haideri in his State of the Union address as he made his case for war. Yet the underground facilities that al Haideri claimed to have helped build have never been found, perhaps because they never existed.

In December 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported in The American Prospect that the Bush administration actually preferred Chalabi’s INC-supplied analyses of Iraq over the intelligence coming from the CIA. “Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency,” wrote Dreyfuss. “The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq. … Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war.” Much of the pro-war faction’s information came from INC, even though “most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing with that country’s tumultuous politics consider INC’s intelligence-gathering abilities to be nearly nil.”

“(INC’s) intelligence isn’t reliable at all,” Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official and counterterrorism expert, told Dreyfuss. “They make no distinction between intelligence and propaganda, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, (creating) cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches.”

<More>

[ParanoidPat]

32. Information Operations: Doctrine, Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures

If you're a real die hard, here's the official military field manual in PDF format! All 314 pages. :evilgrin:

WARNING: LARGE DOWNLOAD, 7MB!

http://www.iwar.org.uk/iwar/resources/doctrine/fm-3-13.pdf

[hang a left]

33. I will kick ya and add to ya in the morning. I am getting sleepy.

great thread!

[ParanoidPat]

34. Thanks liberalnproud, Lots of great contributions......

.....but I'm afraid it might be a lost cause. :evilfrown:

I might as well give it up. I don't think many people here could give a shit. We can get 879 responses to a thread about nothing just to see who can kill it, 134 responses to a thread about Novak being a 'Douche Bag for Liberty' and less than 10 people who care about this. :crazy:

Oh well. We tried. :( Thanks all who replied for your help. :hi:

[uhhuh]

35. I care

I'm bookmarking this, and trying to read as much of it as I can, but there's alot to get through. Thank you both for putting this all in one place. I'm sure a lot of people are viewing this and just not responding. I sometimes miss the views function on DU. It's hard to tell now what is really popular.
I think a topic that is being heavily read should be kicked just like a topic that has lots of posts. I'm sure that it would be hard to keep people from kicking their own posts by opening it over and over.
I suppose there could be a function that counts unique views and returns the topic up the list for those.
I think I might post an Ask The Admins post about it.

Once again, thanks for all the info!!!
It's great that a lot of info is out there about how we are all being propaganized, but how can we fight against it when the sources of the propaganda are can drown out any message or distract people with irrelevancies?
I guess all we can do is tell people face to face, one on one, and hope they can see what's going on.

And, of course, kick this topic back up!

[Sugarbleus]

37. I REALLY care about this too...it's 3 am here and I need sleep...I will

bookmark, read, and save these items for further study and use in debates. I appreciate your work in the extreme.

Thank you all very much....nighty night...catch ya on the flip side
:thumbsup:

[leftchick]

38. I care and I bookmarked it Pat!

thanks to all of you for a fantastic thread! Even though it really makes me want to cry.... :(

[hang a left]

39. Your welcome and a kick

[ParanoidPat]

40. Morning all! Sorry about the rant......

....It was late, I was tired and frustrated, yada yada...:evilgrin:

The point is, this is real. Every day as more and more people sign up here I see more and more concern about the 'bogus' poll results we're being fed. We need to act to expose the methods being used against us! We have DU (for now!) let's use it while we can. :)

[redqueen]

43. Same old story

But now more have their eyes OPEN!

So, how many of you will be putting this in a flyer format and passing it around? If you do, be sure to put a big bold line on that flyer: COPY THIS AND PASS IT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN!

:evilgrin:

[ParanoidPat]

44. I'm working on it......

.....BBV, PSYOPS & The Future of Democracy! :evilgrin:

I'm hoping Will Pitt might catch someone's ear at Air America. :)

[cclark401]

45. So much info....

I'm bookmarking to read later. Someone posted eailer about printing copies to place around. Where is the flyer or are we to make our own?

[redqueen]

46. That would be great, BUT

we can't wait for others to do this. We know many people won't be able to listen. This has to go out far and wide and NOW.

PLUS, right wingers sure won't hear it on Air America. Some of them care about this too!

Flyers are the way to go. Door to door, person to person. And if you find someone who gets passionate about them, make sure you keep in touch, and pass along other important info to them! Sorry, don't mean to lecture, but after this long, we can't wait on any media or establishment types to help. We have to make sure people know about this.

Scary thing that happened to me -- one time I was going around and talking to folks about this stuff, and this lawyer I was talking to said, "you shouldn't be telling me this, what if I were with the CIA?"

Scared me for a while, but I decided my children's futures were worth the risk. :)

[redqueen]

47. Back to page one

:kick:

[ParanoidPat]

48. Kick 'cause there are still too many 'what's up with CNN?' threads!

They can't call it a 'conspiracy theory' when they admit it's happening! :evilgrin:

:kick:

[Old and In the Way]

49. Sadly, it's not us that need to read this thread.

It's those that haven't a clue that their worldview is a product of RW programming.

[redqueen]

50. I disagree strongly

I think many centrist Dems need this info too. The 'conventional wisdom' they adhere to comes straight out of the psyops manual.

[ParanoidPat]

51. I totally agree with ya' redqueen! The link to the manual is right there..

.....for all to read. Just the number of :wtf: is up with ______? posts here in the last few days should prove that point.

Look at what Bev Harris has accomplished in the last year to get the word out about BBV! This is one of the few places left to get ourselves organized to fight the takeover of our country before a full scale civil war is necessary. We have LESS THAN A YEAR to DO SOMETHING about it!

If everyone here were to understand the significance of what's happened to our 'free press' and the FCC under Michael Powell, and decided to act in concert to inform others as well as let our representatives know that we're on to them, we might stand a chance.

If not........:scared: :nuke: :evilfrown:

[hang a left]

52. I am with you redqueen.

All you have to do is look at the threads in GD. Everyone is in denial. They don't realize the ride they have been taken on since last Sunday when Clarke was on MTP. It is all one big huge show being played for the masses.

PP maybe there is too much reading in this thread. Maybe you need to start over with a different subject line, and break the discussion down.

[ParanoidPat]

53. Just like the rest of America, 'dumbed down for your protection'!

Yeah, I agree! Any suggestions? :shrug:

Who are people going to believe? CNN or their own lying eyes!

[hang a left]

54. Yeah a couple.

Don't know if they are any good or not.

First of all try a snazzy subject line. Maybe with the word urgent in it. Or something like "Bigger than BBV" Then use part of the original post, and write something on your own, then lead to it. Talk about the way you felt when you came upon the realization. Invite discussion. I guess that is a place you can start.

[hang a left]

55. kick

[redqueen]

57. Kick it

:kick:

[Zan_of_Texas]

58. Yes, great thread!

I always seem to find em when everyone else has gone on to other things.....

Heard this on the radio today:

Take the chains
Off your brains!

(Pacifica radio, natch)

Also heard them discussing what regular Germans said, when asked why they allowed the Jews to be sent off to the concentration camps:

"We didn't know."

But, people know what they choose to know.

If you know many of the very uncomfortable, frightening, horrendous things we talk about here, it compels you to do something. If you really really know, you must act. And, if you really really know, you know you are up against brutal ruthless powers. So, many just take a step or few backwards, and put it out of their minds with easy epithets like "conspiracy theorists" and "if that were true, it would be on the front page of the New York Times."

[ParanoidPat]

59. This thread, Letterman, CNN, Whitehouse......

......is there still any question about what's really going on? :shrug: :evilgrin:

Knowing and acknowledging it is half the battle. Spreading the word and stopping it is the other half. :)

:kick:LETS GO GET THOSE BUSH* BASTARDS!:kick: