Musings, articles and sundry postings of a Geordie class warrior, adhering to the Orwellian maxim: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
Charlotte Iserbyt is to be greatly commended for having put together the most formidable and practical compilation of documentation describing the deliberate dumbing down of American children by their education system. Anyone interested in the truth will be shocked by the way American social engineers have systematically gone about destroying the intellect of millions of American children for the purpose of leading the American people into a socialist world government controlled by behavioral and social scientists.
What is so mind boggling is that all of this is being financed by the American people themselves through their own taxes. In other words, the American people are underwriting the destruction of their own freedom and way of life by lavishly financing through federal grants the very social scientists who are undermining our national sovereignty and preparing our children to become the dumbed-down vassals of the new world order. It reminds one of how the Nazis charged their victims train fare to their own doom.
One of the interesting insights revealed by these documents is how the social engineers use a deliberately created education crisis to move their agenda forward by offering radical reforms that are sold to the public as fixing the crisis which they never do. The new reforms simply set the stage for the next crisis, which provides the pretext for the next move forward. This is the dialectical process at work, a process our behavioral engineers have learned to use very effectively. Its success depends on the ability of the change agents to continually deceive the public which tends to believe anything the experts tell them.
The May 1st presidential announcement of the execution of Osama bin Laden has been f礙ted as a great tactical victory by the White House, by Western governments and the world’s media. The longed-for news saw a wave of nationalistic, back-slapping hysteria in the US and the killing has served as a sorely needed propaganda tool to enhance the standing of the US military in the eyes of the domestic public.
Despite world-wide celebrations and Obama’s rise in popularity at home and the propaganda value of the killing, there is no evidence that the death will have any impact on the flagging military and political situation of the US in South Asia, the Middle East and other theatres of high tension.
The Socialist Party are not conspiracy theorists, but we note that the initial White Housebin Laden story was so amateurishly broadcast, that within three days it had been altered several times, making it seem that Obama was involved in a game of Chinese whispers with his advisors. And what stands out is the nonchalant and haughty clumsiness of this and similar official announcements, as if the White House has become so convinced of its ability to hoodwink us that practically no attempt is made to make reports credible.So long as the US has an agenda then it can be sold with any version of a story, regardless of its credibility.
So just what agendas does the news of a dead bin Laden story help promote? Well, firstly, and not surprisingly, within a few hours of Obama’s statement, CIA director Leon Panetta ominously suggested that bin Laden’s death would trigger new 9/11-type attacks from al Qaedians seeking revenge for the death of their leader. Paradoxically this can only increase the demand for more profits from the military-industrial complex, whose lobbyists will waste no time in promoting the case for more investment in the US war machine.
Homeland Security jumped on board and posited that the killing of bin Laden would inspire “homegrown violent extremists” (inclusive of environmentalists and anti-war protestors) to acts of political fanaticism.
Helping with the post-Osama spin, Senator Hilary Clinton seemed all too keen to help boost the profits of the military/security complex and the authority of Homeland Security, by asserting that bin Laden’s death was testament that the war on terror was paying off and must be allowed to carry on, unfettered, until the enemies of the US are no more.
Elsewhere, others in the Obama administration quickly seized on the Pakistan achievement to promote their own sinister agenda, with Americans reliably informed that their doubts on the use of torture were misplaced and thatbin Laden was actually found as a directresult of information gleaned by the CIA’s torture of captives
Some have suggested the death of bin Laden affords the US an escape strategy from Afghanistan, bringing closure to a decade of embarrassment in the country. To be sure, the US’ attempts to create a pliant puppet regime in Kabul are failing. The Taliban, indeed, al Qaeda, is no nearer defeat than ten years ago and still notching up US casualties. Quite significantly, in the latter regard, at Kabul airport on 29th April, nine high-ranking US military officers were assassinated by a "reliable" Afghan fighter pilot That this attack happened in an ostensibly high security area, implies that no place in Afghanistan is secure from attack by the Afghan resistance, that anyone is vulnerable, and that not even allied Afghan military personnel can be trusted.
With the US tied down in an unpopular war in Afghanistan, domestic woes rising and his political standing falling, it would seem Obama was desperate for a military success story, moreso considering 9/11 is now a decade ago and years of rampant military expenditure are factoring high in the current budget deficit.
Undoubtedly, the ‘War on Terror’ will continue to serve many interests, with politicians promoting the concept at every opportunity to justify overseas military excesses and to keep the public in a state of mild panic. It is thus worth looking at the concept of terrorism itself and to judge the definers by their own definition.
The US Army Manual definition of terrorism is “the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence, to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature, through intimidation, coercion or instilling fear.”
This is quite close to the British government’s definition, which is “the use, or threat, of action which is violent, damaging or disrupting, and is intended to influence the government, or intimidate the public, and is for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological case.”
When these two definitions are considered, then it becomes clear that the very creation of government terrorist-related propaganda, pumped daily by a fawning media, is itself an act of terrorism on us. Make no mistake, the war on terror is intended to frighten us – to get us all paranoid about a freedom-loathing bogeyman who is just waiting to come and destroy all we hold sacred – and to get us to fall in line behind the wider objectives of US and British foreign policy, which are in reality the objectives of a small corporate elite who really call the shots in both countries.
George Bush was every bit the terrorist when he introduced the “Shock and Awe” strategy of 2003 and indeed when he announced “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists”. Likewise with Tony Blair who announced to a terrified British public that Saddam could reach Britain with his WMDs within 45 minutes – a fact that that later proved to be total fallacy.
It is, perhaps, important to set the war on terror in context. America, for 45 years, terrified us with the threat of the Soviet menace, meanwhile expanding its reach all over the world.
When the Kremlin’s empire collapsed, America suddenly found itself deprived of its hegemonic credentials, no longer able to use its anti-communist passport to interfere in global affairs from Cuba to Vladivostok – the end of the cold war meant it was stamped null and void.
It now needed a new propaganda framework through which to assert its authority on the international stage, a new enemy, a new bogeyman to protect us all from – and the first bogeyman who reared his head was Saddam Hussein, who invaded Kuwait within two years of the Berlin Wall falling, sparking the first Gulf War and the start of the US obsession with Iraq that has lasted 20 years. Saddam would later be joined by Osama in 2001 after 9/11, the events of which all of us are now over-familiar with.
Notably, the language and jargon used to discuss the war on terror, all its definitions, is chosen by the US political elite. Likewise it is the US that gets to delineate the ideology of the enemy, whether it be fascist or communist or militant Islamic. In the case in question it would have been insensitive in the extreme to declare a war on Islam, so North Korea had to be incorporated into Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’, less the entire Islamic world rise up against the USA.
The US has certainly benefited from the war on terror, extending its reach like no empire in history. It now has in excess of 700 military bases around the world, and these bases can be found in 177 of the world’s 193 UN recognised countries. More likely, it seems the war on terror has everything to do with full spectrum dominance and the desire of the US capitalist elite to control the world’s mineral wealth, trade routes, foreign markets, areas of influence and to maintain the strategic sites from which all these sources of profit can be defended. Little wonder there are many who claim that if Osama bin Laden did not exist, it would be necessary to create him to get into Afghanistan.
Then why Afghanistan? The CaspianBasin, which the country borders, contains an estimated $12 trillion dollars worth of oil. It is not the case that he US wants this oil for itself, but needs a presence in Afghanistan to be able to control just who does have access to it.
There are real contenders for US economic supremacy, namely India, Russia and China, all with a growing and insatiable thirst for oil to lubricate the wheels of their own profit machines. By controlling as much oil as they can, the US gets to stack the odds in its own favour.
But before you can mobilise to take over the world’s scarce resources you first need to terrify your people. You need them on your side. You need their consent, their support and their approval of you as the champion of freedom.
This is why George Bush could so cleverly tell the American people: “They hate our freedom, our freedom of religion, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with one another,” and that “you are either with us or with the terrorists.”
This was not just Orwellian double-speak. This tactic came straight from Nazi Germany and from Joseph Goebbels:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.”
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the governments of George W. Bush and Barack Obama and Tony Blair have told and repeated a “lie big enough" to confirm Joseph Goebbels' statement, and the American and British people have come to believe it. It is the "War on Terror."
Whilst we were informed that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were in retaliation for 9/11, it is now clear that the Bush administration had them clearly in mind upon taking office, and set in motion as early as Feb. 3, 2001, some seven months before 9/11 and thus had nothing to do with terrorism.
9/11 presented a fantastic opportunity. In the ensuing anger and bewilderment, the bush administration could disguise its objective and the true nature of its intended wars and swing into action.
In Afghanistan, the duplicity of the "War on Terror," however, is clearly revealed if we consider a few simple facts:
In Afghanistan the state was overthrown instead of capturing the terrorists. Taliban offers to hand over Osama bin Laden, if the US could provide proof he was responsible for 9/11, were dismissed.
Neither the CIA nor the FBI have ever stated that Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11. Although bin Laden was on the FBI’s list of most wanted men, it was for something unrelated.
A quite recent survey in Afghanistan’s Helmand province found that 97% of people interviewed had not heard of 9/11 almost 10 years after the event.
The War on Terror has not only validated the US passport- allowing it to play the role of globo-cop to further the interests of its own capitalist elite -pushing aside anyone who gets in its way -it has also strengthened the hand ofthe state at home also. For out of the war on terror came the Patriot Act (USA) and the Terrorism Act (Britain) which put civil disobedience on a par with a felony. Any one of us can now be charged under anti-terror legislation if we step out of line and challenge the power of the state and, with it, the capitalist system which it overseas.
Orwell’s words come only too readily to mind when contemplating White House pronouncements:“Who controls the present controls the past. Who controls the past controls the future.”
Well, this site has been inactive too long, not least because I couldn’t remember the bloody password or email address that opened it and also, its fair to say, that my spirit has been kicked to f**** for some time.
Anyway, this is me re-launching Class Warfare with a recently unearthed poem that I penned twenty-plus years ago, in the wake of the Battle of Orgreave.
Thoughts after watching pickets on TV
Disheartened miners knew just who to blame. Perhaps they found analogy in Scargill’s name – a vengeful shark? “But then, just when w’ thought that it was safe t’ go back in t’ pit, w' saw’ a comrade gettin' fisted off the law. ‘E nearly got away but slipped in horse’s shit”
Most viewers watched with empathy the charge of mounted police on humble moles and serg- eants urging desk-acquainted cops, “advance and cosh.” The angry pickets, lacking MUFTI train- ing, hurled abuse and bricks and sticks in vain. It seems they weren’t as disciplined, nor half as posh.
I watched in shock the state-rewarded thrust Of wooden batons on some miner’s crust. His temple spewed the colour of his politics. He grabbed a sound recordist’s coat and said, while pointing to his coal-seem-gaping head, “I ‘ope your bleedin’ camera’s catchin’ all of this.”
What was that army beating shields and chant- ing one in unsion? Some muffled rant intended to un-nerve their foe? Will right-wing press explain away the carnage here without the commie imagery – the front page clout at Marx – neglecting to include the Russian mess?
Will evolution give the miners thick- er skulls to help absorb those downward sick- ly thuds, or elongate the long arm of the law? Will miners one day grow immune to pain, or will they calmly compromise and gain a mole’s buck teeth, his quite efficient digging paw?
Richard Barnbrook - the BNP's third highest elected official and their only member of the London Greater Assembly (pictured doing a Monty Python Holy Grail impression) - has been exposed fabricating two murders in a high profile BNP campaign. He has been found guilty of bringing both the Greater London Authority and the Barking and Dagenham Council into disrepute - his lies show the depths the BNP are willing to stoop to in their propaganda war.
Because of the severityof his lies, Barnbrook has been suspended by the Council for a month, forced to submit a written apology to the Greater London Authority and made to undertake "training." This is just the tip of the iceberg - the BNP has been capitalising on fear for years in an attempt to take over working class communitiues But this time is different - this time we have proof in black and white that their campaign is entirely based on fear, falsehood and hatred.
Barnbrook is right to be concerned about people in Barking and Dagenham who carry blades, and who think nothing at all about posing for pictures with them.
Nostradamus, eat your heart out! Colin Powell and Joe Biden, both on the same day, are talking about a crisis that will occur in January 2009, on or around the 22nd. Can someone define a “generated crisis”? All that's missing from these videos is reference to the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Sut Jhally & Bathsheba Ratzkoff / U.S. / 2003 / 80 min
Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.
Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one. The documentary also explores the ways that U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel's PR campaign. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.
Interviewees include Seth Ackerman, Mjr. Stav Adivi, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Hanan Ashrawi, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Neve Gordon, Toufic Haddad, Sam Husseini, Hussein Ibish, Robert Jensen, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Karen Pfeifer, Alisa Solomon, and Gila Svirsky.
This film perhaps makes more sense in light of the US political elite’s response to the bloodshed in Gaza.
You just knew in advance ofthe vote on US Resolution 1860 on the 8th January that it was going to be shit on by the US. Of the 101 Israel-related irresolutions voted on at the UN, 65 have been critical ofIsrael; none ofthe Palestinians. Israel has observed none of them. The US has scuppered them all. What is instructive is that the US so blatantly looked for the tiniest breach of UN resolution to launch a war on Iraq.
Ironically, Condoleza Rice who assisted in the preparation of the aforementioned resolution was eventually instructed not to vote fort it. Seemingly, according to the boastings of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, when he heard the US intended to vote on the resolution he demanded to get Bush on the phone, and refused to back down after being told that Bush was at that moment giving a lecture in Philadelphia. In double-quick time, Bush interrupted his lecture to answer Olmert's call, so Olmert has claimed, and to be told which way the US was expected to vote at the UN.
Now cast your mind back a few years. On the morning of September 11th, President Bush is interrupted while reading a story to school children and told the WorldTradeCenter had been hit------and he went on reading. Hit for the second time by aplane, that is – having been informed before he entered the class that one plane had already hit the twin towers. The US was so clearly under attack by hijacked planes and Bush sat for seven more minutes, the book My Pet Goat, being far more interesting.
Now, here we have Olmert calling Bush and demanding he comes to the phone and Bush responds in an instant? Jeez, who is cracking the whip in the USA?
Israeli politicians have been boasting for years about the respect they command in the US and their power and influence there. Consider the line form my last posting: “A member of the Israeli war party once commented that New York has only two Senators representing it in Congress.
LIkerwise, you needed no crystal ball to know that The House of Representatives would vote in support of Israel. Indeed, they voted 390-5 for a resolution that backed Israel in its Gaza onslaught, affirming "Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza." A day earlier, the Senate overwhelmingly supported Israel and its right to defend itself against terrorism.
The US Senate (8th January) voted 100% on a non-binding resolution promoted by the influential Israeli lobby AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee), and effectively endorsing Israel’s war on Gaza. The resolution, entitled “A resolution expressing solidarity with Israel in Israel’s defense against terrorism in the Gaza Strip” recognizes “the right of Israel to defend itself against attacks from Gaza” and reaffirms “the United States’ strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas”.
Is it any wonder New York Zionists can thus celebrate on the streets? Is it any wonder they feel so unashamed of their ostentatious shows of jingoism, when Israeli state violence is so clear;ly endorsed by Congress and indeed the president?
Oh, here’s Bush again, having been told that a second plane had hit the twin towers:
A member of the Israeli war party once commented that New York has only two Senators representing it in Congress. Israel has fifty. The same goes for the House. Of Reprobates s. They just voted a "two thumbs" up for Israel's military assault on Gaza.
It's hard to get Congress to agree on anything, especially in matters relating to the future and physical and economic health of the US. However, one thing both sides of the aisle can agree on - consistently and overwhelmingly - is that anything the Israeli war party wants to do is fine by them.
You really should see this following video.
Regardless of his politics, you just have to admire Ron Paul for telling it like it is – in this instance that Hamas was largely an Israeli invention and that militant Islam can be placed at the doorstep of US foreign policy.
Dr . Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor in Gaza, tells Sky News that the number of civilians injured and killed in Gaza proves that Israel is deliberately attacking the population.
Transcript:
“Just a little bit more than an hour ago the Israelis bombed the central fruit market in Gaza city and we had a mass influx of about 50 injured and between 10 and 15 killed. At the same time they bombed an apartment house with children playing on the roof and we had a lot of children also. So this is really like speaking from the dumps of Inferno, it’s like hell here now, and it’s been bombing all night. Until now close to 500 people have been killed and the number of casualties is getting to 2,500 of which 50% are children and women.
Are your hospitals reaching capacity? Can you deal with these people?
We have been doing surgery around the clock. I have just talked with one of my colleagues in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit), he's not been sleeping for three days and the hospital is completely overcrowded, we are running 6 - 7 Ors (Operating Rooms) and there are injuries you just don’t want to see in this world… children coming in with open abdomens and legs cut off. We just had a child that we had to amputate both legs and an arm. And their only crime is being civilians and Palestinians living in Gaza. The relief now is not more doctors and more drugs; the relief now is to stop the bombing immediately, this cannot go on, it’s a disaster.
You’ve talked about the civilians, the women, the children, the men who aren’t involved in this, but are you also getting casualties that are Hamas fighters?
To be honest, we came on New Year’s Eve in the morning. I’ve seen one military person among the tenths… I mean hundreds that we’ve seen and treated, so anybody who tries to portrait this as a totally clean war against another army are lying. This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza, and we can prove that with numbers. And you have to remember that the average age of the Gaza inhabitants is 17 years, it’s a very young population, and 80% are living below the poverty limit of the UN. So this is a poor and very young people, and they are able to escape absolutely nowhere, because they cannot flee like other populations can in war time, because they are fenced in and they are in a cage, so they’re bombing 1.5 million people in a cage… young people, poor people and, you know, you cannot separate between the civilians and the fighters in such a situation.”
Judging by the ubiquitous media-generated euphoria that greeted the Barak Obama victory in the US presidential election, you could be forgiven for thinking that the class struggle had ended in the USA. Across the globe, the world’s media intimated that this was the dawn of a new age and hundreds of millions of workers breathed a sigh of relief, convinced President Obama will now undo all the wrongdoing carried out by President Bush and generally improve the quality of their lives and the safety of the planet.
The first thing to note, however, is that this had been the most expensive American election so far. The pooled cost of the Republican and Democratic campaigns was a cool $1 billion. The McCain camp raised $340 million whereas the Obama team secured $640 million.While Obama’s team boasted that most of their money came from small $100 and $200 donors, in truth the great bulk of his financial support came from Wall Street and the US corporate elite and was way in advance of that given to John McCain, suggesting the US capitalism plc feels its profits are best protected via Obama. The US power elite bankrolled the Obama campaign and for no other reason than that they know he will have to repay their loyalty.
An estimated 64 percent of the US electorate turned out to vote – a record by all accounts - 62.3 million votes. The majority of the extra voters were Blacks and Latino, not only drawn to the ballot box by the longing to oust a reactionary Republican regime, or by Obama’s promise of ‘change’ but, moreover, because Obama was non–white. Socialists could only watch on and comment that this election was not a race issue, but a class issue and lament their selective amnesia. One time Secretary of State Collin Powell rose through the ranks covering up the My Lai massacre and famously presented false evidence to the UN in furtherance of the US justification for the invasion of Iraq. Consider too his successor Condoleezza Rice, the zealous maid-servant to Bush’s imperialist strategy.
To be sure, Obama was not breaking any mould, despite his hope-fused rhetoric. The vast majority of voters, indeed workers the world over, were heartily fed up with Bush’s wars, his imperialist conquests, the US disregard for international law and the increasing pariah status this had earned America and sincerely wanted to see the back of it. The signs, however, that Obama was more of a wolf in sheep’s clothing were already there, not least in the Senate where he sanctioned every increase in funding for the Iraq war that George Bush requested.
Furthermore, like Bush, Obama is a supporter of the death penalty. He is pro-pollutant nuclear and coal industries and, whilst the Guardian could optimistically run a headline “Obama will move to veto Bush laws” (10 November), has not mentioned eradicating repressive legislation such as the Patriot Act, homeland security, the Military Commissions Act, internet control, and wiretapping and spying on the US populace.
It certainly looks like the Bush administration’s imperial ambitions will continue under Obama. He has already spoken about building up US military power by 20,000 troops and has declared his intention to cut troop numbers in Iraq and transfer them to a surge in Afghanistan and indeed spread war to nuclear armed Pakistan. All of this will be, as under Bush, carried out to further the interests of a profit-hungry corporate elite and veiled in pompous patriotic oratory about spreading democracy and American values and fighting the “war on terror.” Undoubtedly, Obama will soon be using the hackneyed theme of social unity to wage the class war internally and abroad on behalf of a small power elite.
He also undertaken, to “isolate Hamas”, elected in democratic elections that were verified by an international team of observers and, picking up the baton from Bush, used his first press conference as president-elect to likewise cock a snook at the US National Intelligence Estimate and evidence presented by the IAEA on Iran’s nuclear intentions, and accused Iran of the "development of a nuclear weapon" and vowed "to prevent that from happening."
If Obama apologists think President Obama will put a halt to the blood letting they are going to be sorely disappointed. Make no mistake; whilst the left are fond of castigating Republicans as the masters of war, the truth is that historically the Democrats have started far more wars than the GOP. More recently, under the last Democrat to hold office, President Clinton, one million Iraqis are said to have died under US enforced sanctions, 500, 000 of them children. Sorties over Iraq were flown every single day Clinton was in power. Yugoslavia was mercilessly bombed and a much needed pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was bombed on the pretext that it was manufacturing Chemical weapons, and villages in Afghanistan were flattened because Bin-Laden was presumed to be living there. And who could forget the US invasion of Somalia, with troops storming the beaches live on prime time TV!
Who will make up the Obama administration is at the time of writing speculation, though we do know his Chief of Staff is Israeli army veteran Rahm Emanuel, popularly viewed as Likudist hawk and that his National Securtiy Adviser will be architect of the Mujahedeen Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Not only is Obama incapable of ushering in significant change, bar a few miserly reforms, but neither is there anyone he can bring to his administration capable of bringing the change that was so promised in his election campaign for no other reason that changers do not get confirmed by the Senate. There exist quite influential interest groups – the AIPAC, the military security complex, Wall Street etc to hinder the advancement of such undesirables
The hope many have in Obama to implement policies that will benefit the class that matters is misplaced. His political rawness means he will be manipulated by more experienced advisers, little different from the neo-cons, maybe even key figures from the Bush administration, and pressured by a corporate elite who funded his victory to execute policies that fit in with their own agenda.
The outcome of US elections carries one truth: namely that whichever candidate becomes president, he has but one remit once in office – to further the interests of the US corporate elite. It’s just not a feasible option for any newly elected president to entertain any idea other than guaranteeing a safe playing field for the domestic profit machine and doing what’s needed to try to ensure the US maintains its global hegemonic status.
Wikipedia informs us that the custom of putting up a Christmas tree can be traced to 16th century Germany, though neither an inventor nor a single town can be identified as the sole origin for the tradition, which was a popular merging of older traditions; in the Cathedral of Strasbourg in 1539, the church record mentions the erection of a Christmas tree.
Back then the guilds started putting up Christmas trees in front of their guildhalls: a Bremen guild chronicle of 1570 reports how a small fir was decorated with apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers, and erected in the guild-house, for the benefit of the guild members' children, who collected the dainties on Christmas day.
But, nuff of that bollocks…after all the Xmas tree is used to help the workers decorate their homes during the festival of the birth of the Christ-child, to help them numb the pain of their oppression. Whilst many will defend the growing of conifers for use during Xmas festivities, there is another “green tree” of sorts, which has had a bad press and which needs far more promotion by workers – a wee tree that has countless uses and benefits; one that could feed and clothe and help house millions of the world's poor and increase the standard of living for everyone., and which this blog has covered in the past. Just one snag, for various reasons, our masters oppose its mass cultivation. The following film explains…
Why is the massively valuable and versatile hemp plant illegal in the United States and indeed elsewhere? Three reasons. Making hemp illegal:
1. Provides make-work for a vast army of "law enforcers" who then are available to be used for other social control work 2. Protects the market share of numerous well organized lobbies: alcohol makers, plastics and chemical manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and cotton growers (still a powerful economic force in America 200 + years after the Civil War.) 3. Gives fascist minded politicians yet another way to control the population
Two themes I often return to on this site are mind control and food adulteration. This video focuses on both. It commences with a Dr Russell Blaylock talking about the “chemical dumming down of society” to make people generally gullible, unable to think for themselves and dependent on governments and moves onto mass neuro-toxity via mercury poisoning and water fluoridation (a theme covered elsewhere on this site). The film also refers briefly to the work of Edward Bernays (again covered elsewhere on this site), a champion of water fluoridation.
Bernays helped the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) and other special interest groups to convince the American public that water fluoridation was safe and beneficial to human health. This was achieved by using the American Dental Association in a highly successful media campaign.
Call it conspiracy theory if you want, but if our leaders thought there were chemicals they could get us to ingest on a daily basis, chemicals that could indeed “dumb is down”, make us more manageable, do you think they would hesitate in using them?
The film cites a source I’m yet to confirm, although there are many references to it in cyber space. It suggests that the fluoridation of water was first introduced in nazi concentration camps and quotes a Charles Perkins, a chemist, who wrote the following to the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 2nd 1954: 'in the 1930s, Hitler and the German Nazis envisioned a world to be dominated and controlled by a Nazi philosophy of pan-Germanism. The German chemists worked out a very ingenious and far-reaching plan of mass control, which was submitted to, and adopted by, the German General Staff. This plan was to control the population in any given area through mass medication of drinking water supplies. By this method they could control the population in whole areas, reduce population by water medication that would induce sterility in women and so on. In this scheme of mass control sodium fluoride occupied a prominent place.'Still with Bernays, these quotes from his 1928 book Propaganda show why he was so useful to the ruling elite of his day, and indeed right now.
Still with Bernays, these quotes from his 1928 book Propaganda show why he was so useful to the ruling elite of his day, and indeed right now.
p37 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. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons-a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million-who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government, and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence in our national politics of anything like the modern political machine. But the American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens of hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four.
In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion without anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issue so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public question; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.
It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda.
p59 Who are the men, who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the ownership of public utilities .. about immigration who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put into them, what menus we should serve at our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at?
p60 A presidential candidate may be "drafted" in response to "around popular demand," but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting L.. around a table in a hotel room.
p61 A man buying a suit of clothe imagines that he is choosing, according to his taste and his personality, the kind of garment which he prefers. In reality, he may be obeying the orders of an anonymous gentleman tailor in London. This personage is the silent partner in a modest tailoring establishment, which is patronized by gentlemen of fashion and princes of blood. He suggest to British noblemen and others a blue cloth instead of gray, two buttons instead of three, or sleeves a quarter of an inch narrower than last season. The distinguished customer approves of the idea.
But how does this fact affect John Smith of Topeka?
The gentleman tailor is under contract with a certain large American firm, which manufactures men's suits, to send them instantly the designs of the suits chosen by the leaders of LondonBoston, and Philadelphia wear them. And the Topeka fashion. Upon receiving the designs, with specifications as to color, weight, and texture, the firm immediately places an order with the cloth makers for several hundred thousand dollars' worth of cloth. The suits made up according to the specifications are then advertised as the latest fashion. The fashionable men in New York Chicago, man, recognizing this leadership, does the same.
Women are just as subject to the commands of invisible government as men. A silk manufacturer, seeking a new market for its product, suggested to a large manufacturer of shoes that women's shoes should be covered with silk to match their dresses. The idea was adopted and systematically propagandized. A popular actress was persuaded to wear the shoes. The fashion spread. The shoe firm was ready with the supply to meet thee created demand. And the silk company was ready with the silk for more shoes.
p63 The new profession of public relations has grown up because of the increasing complexity of modern life and the consequent necessity for making the actions of one part of the public understandable to other sectors of the public. It is due, too, to the increasing dependence of organized power of all sorts upon public opinion. Governments, whether they are monarchical, constitutional, democratic or communist, depend upon acquiescent public opinion for the success of their efforts and, in fact, government is government only by virtue of public acquiescence. Industries, public utilities, educational movements, indeed all groups representing any concept or product, whether they are majority or minority ideas, succeed only because of approving public opinion. Public opinion is the unacknowledged partner in all broad efforts.
The public relations counsel, then, is the agent who, working with modern media of communications and the group formations of society, brings an idea to the consciousness of the public.
p71 The systematic study of mass psychology revealed t7 students the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group. Trotter and Le Bon, who approached the subject in a scientific manner, and Graham Wallas, Walter Lippmann, and others who continued with searching studies of the group mind, established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose. If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?
p73 If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.
p.74
But when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of clich矇s, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences. Not many years ago, it was only necessary to tag a political candidate with the word interests to stampede millions of people into voting against him, because anything associated with "the interests" seemed necessary corrupt. Recently the word Bolshevik has performed a similar service for persons who wished to frighten the public away from a line of action.
By playing upon a old clich矇, or manipulating a new one, the propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass group emotions.
p75 It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud( who have pointed out that many of man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which has been obliged to suppress. A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself. A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion, whereas the fact may be that he would really prefer not to be burdened with it, and would rather walk for the sake of his health. He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in business, or a means of pleasing his wife.
This general principle, that men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves, is as true of mass as of individual psychology. It is evident that the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do.
p75 Human desires are the steam which makes the social machine work. Only by understanding them can the propagandist control that vast, loose-jointed mechanism which is modern society.
p84
... while, under the handicraft of small-unit system of production was that typical a century ago, demand created the supply, today supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand. A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable. This entails a vastly more complex system of distribution than formerly.
p109 No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of 3 the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clich矇s and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.
Fortunately, the sincere and gifted politician is able, by the instrument of propaganda, to mold and form the will of the people.
p110 The political apathy of the average voter, of which we hear so much, is undoubtedly due to the fact that the politician does not know how to meet the conditions of the public mind. He cannot dramatize himself and his platform in terms which have real meaning to the public. Acting on the fallacy that the leader must slavishly follow, he deprives his campaign of all dramatic interest. An automaton cannot arouse the public interest. A leader, a fighter, a dictator, can. But, given our present political conditions under which every office seeker must cater to the vote of the masses, the only means by which the born leader can lead is the expert use of propaganda.
Whether in the problem of getting elected to office or in the problem of interpreting and popularizing new issues, or in the problem of making the day-to-day administration of public affairs a vital part of the community life, the use of propaganda, carefully adjusted to the mentality of the masses, is an essential adjunct of political life.
p119 It is not necessary for the politician to be the slave to the public's group prejudices, if he can learn how to mold the mind of the voters in conformity with his own ideas of public welfare and public service. The important thing for the statesman of our age is not so much to know how to please the public, but know how to sway the public.
p120 Good government can be sold to a community just as any other commodity can be sold.
p120 One reason, perhaps, why the politician today is slow to take up methods which are a commonplace in business life is that he has such ready entry to the media of communication on which his power depends.
The newspaperman looks to him for news. And by his power of giving or withholding information the politician can often effectively censor political news. But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources.
p123 Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.
p123 The criticism is often made that propaganda tends make the President of the United States so important that he becomes not the President but the embodiment of the idea of hero worship, not to say deity worship. I quite agree that this is so, but how are you going to stop a condition which accurately reflects the desires of a certain part of the public? The American people rightly sense the enormous importance of the executive's office. If the public tends to make of the President a heroic symbol of that power, that is not the fault of propaganda but lies in the very nature of the office and its relation to the people.
