Apparently FOX News considers the American Flag the “least incendiary” item to ban in order to “protect the children.” They just released a poll debating the merits of banning the American Flag in public schools in order to quell potential race fights.
What country is this? The fact that FOX News would even OFFER “Banning the American Flag…” as a poll choice is beyond logic and reason. But the worst part?
67% are in FAVOR of banning the flag.
Sixty Seven Percent! You can find the poll here.
The poll was posted in response to the recent controversy at Live Oaks High School in California (Kaliphornistan?). They decided it was necessary to ban two students from campus grounds for wearing shirts which displayed images of the American flag. Shortly after, the school district stated that they ‘do not concur’ with the actions of Live Oak faculty and that the students would be allowed to return to school without suspension.
This is the effect our mass media is having on American minds. Trying to be politically correct in a violent world will not cut it. This is America. Political issues and immigration status aside, this is our nation’s flag we’re talking about. Banning it, even on (and especially on) school grounds would send a message to the rest of the world – and to future generations – that America has completely sold out. No longer do we hold these Truths to be self evident. No longer would the word patriotism have any meaning. The mere idea of banning the American flag in American schools should create a media shockwave similar to a nuclear bomb detonating.
But it hasn’t.
Should we hoist our flag upside down from this point forward?
America is in dire distress. Help!
see for yourself: http://www.infowars.com/fox-news-suggests-banning-the-american-flag/
What this country is coming to I sure would like to know If they don’t do something bye and bye The rich will live and the poor will die Doggone, I mean the panic is on!
–Song from the Great Depression
As the Great Depression of the 1930’s was getting underway, President Herbert Hoover refused to acknowledge it. In the weeks following the events of Black Tuesday, Hoover called the economy “fundamentally sound.” Months later, he still insisted that the strength of the American economy was “unimpaired.” However, by 1931 he could no longer hide the truth. With the economy in shambles, Hoover was forced to declare that America was indeed in a ‘depression’. He chose the word ‘depression’ because he believed it to somewhat innocuous and far less provocative than terms like ‘panics’ or ‘crises’ that had previously been used to refer to significant economic downturns.
That same semantic game is being played on us today. What we now call a ‘recession’ is what was known as a ‘depression’ back in the 1930’s. As economist John Williams explains:
“The Great Depression was one that was so severe that in the post-World War II era, those looking at economic cycles tried to come up with a euphemism for “depression.” They didn’t want to create the image of or remind people of the 1930s. Basically, they called economic downturns recessions, and most people think of a depression now as a severe recession.”(1)
The lies propagated by our government and their paid shills are perhaps their greatest crime. Deceiving the people concerning the scope and magnitude of our financial crisis denies them the opportunity to prepare for the tough days ahead. Even the word depression does not fully impress upon the people the serious predicament we now face. Perhaps its time we do remind people of the 1930’s and draw parallels between those tragic times and our current situation.
Today’s unemployment rate is fast approaching the worst levels seen since the Great Depression. The official unemployment rate (U3) released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is currently at 9.9%. This is the number often reported by the mainstream media for public consumption but is far removed from reality.
To get closer to the real number we must consult the (U6) figure that is often touted as ‘true unemployment’. This figure adds into the equation those who fall under the contemporary definition of ‘discouraged worker’ and those who can only find ‘part-time’ work. That number puts the ‘true unemployment’ rate at 17.2%. But wait, there’s more!
Today’s definition of a discouraged worker is one who has not found work within the last year. Prior to 1994, a discouraged worker was defined as one who had not found work within the last month. That’s a big discrepancy. If we add those lost souls back into the equation, we come up with a more realistic unemployment rate of right around 22%. That’s just three clicks shy of the 25% often cited for the worst levels of the Great Depression in 1933. That 25% unemployment figure was reflective of all workers both on and off the farm.
Many economists, intent on disproving any comparison of today’s unemployment with that of the ‘Great Depression’, will often site the non-farm unemployment figure of 34%. But it should be pointed out that during that time, 27% of America’s employed worked on the farm. Today that number is only 2%.
Unlike today, The Great Depression of the 1930’s was deflationary. The Consumer Price Index was at 17.3% when it began in 1929. By 1933 it was down to 12.6%. In other words, as the depression progressed, the cost of things dropped; what cost $1.00 in 1929 only cost 73 Cents in 1933.(2)
Not so with the depression of today. Ours is an inflationary depression that is fast becoming hyperinflationary. Hyperinflation comes when the increase in the money supply causes prices to rise so rapidly that the highest denominated bank note becomes less valuable than toilet paper. This is being facilitated by industry bailouts, unnecessary wars, foreign aid to Israel and entitlement programs that were not factors in 1933.
Since 1933, inflation has increased 1,627.23%. To calculate its decimal equivalent you need to move the decimal point two places to the left. So 1,627.23%=16.2723 in decimals. This means that what cost $1.00 in 1933 costs approximately $16.27 today.(3)
The average American’s annual income in 1933 was $1,550.00. Today, that would be the equivalent of $25,218.00. According to the last Bureau of Labor Statistics report for 2009(4), the average American’s annual income was $28,592.00 (mid range between highest and lowest by State for 1 person). This may seem like we’re ahead of the game compared to the Great Depression. However, when you consider that the lowest bracket of income tax was levied at 4% in 1933 compared to 15% in 2010, you can see that we are almost on par. But you also must consider the plethora of other taxes and deductions that have since been siphoned out of the average American’s paycheck. Contemporary sales taxes and compulsory enrollments like mandatory insurance (both auto and health) must also be added into the equation to get a better gauge as to where we are now compared to days gone by.(5)
Prices of things, on average, were much more affordable back during the Great Depression than they are now. Here are some basic items for comparison:
Cost of a new house 1933: $5,750.00 (equivalent to $93,565.72 in 2010)
Cost to rent a house in 1933: $18.00 per month (equivalent to $292.00 in 2010)
Brand New Plymouth in 1933: $445.00 (equivalent to $7241.17 in 2010)
Gallon of gas in 1933: 10 Cents (equivalent to $1.62 in 2010)
Loaf of Bread in 1933: 7 Cents (equivalent of $1.13 in 2010)
1 Lb. Of Hamburger Meat in 1933: 11 Cents (equivalent to $1.79 in 2010)
Can of Campbell’s Vegetable Soup in 1933: 10 Cents (equivalent to $1.62 in 2010)
Dozen Eggs in 1933: 5 Cents (equivalent to 81 Cents today)
Take the equivalent monetary values listed above for 2010 and do your own research. Can you buy the same items today for that little cash? According to the 2009 census, the cost to rent a house is approximately $775.00 per month, on average. The cost of even the cheapest automobile is in the tens of thousands and I don’t need to tell you about everyday household goods. Consider these the good times. When hyperinflation sets in, these prices will soar. We don’t live today like they did back in the 1930’s when people were, at most, one generation removed from the farm. As was pointed out previously, 27% of American workers made their livings on the farm and were able to provide many of their own basic needs from that culture. Today, that number is only 2%.
Despite this data, deniers will refuse to believe that they are living through a depression. Some need tangible, salient evidence. They need to feel the depression, or at least have a cognitive reference point that coincides with the black and white images they have come to associate with a depression. Where are the soup lines? Where are the shantytowns? Where are the armies of disheveled hobos playing harmonica as they roast a can of beans over a roadside campfire?
The complexion of today’s depression is certainly different from the hard luck images of the 1930’s. But these are just cosmetic differences. When you strip away the veneer, you find that we are afflicted with the same problems as they were back then. Today’s soup lines come in the form of food stamps. Public housing and tent cities are today’s shantytowns. Hobos are now called ‘the homeless’, and many of them are disappearing from the streets and ending up in a burgeoning penal system that swallows them up on petty drug charges.
There are other factors that keep this depression suppressed in the minds of the American public. The most significant of these is unemployment benefits. This did not exist during the Great Depression. When you were out of work, you were out of money. This hit people immediately and many had no way to obtain even the most basic subsistence to feed their families. The welfare system is another contemporary mechanism that was not in place during that time. Right now, these are perhaps the only two things that distance the human suffering from our true economic reality. But they weren’t built to last, and the only reason they have lasted this long is because the government has a vested interest in keeping these entitlement programs going. Providing basic subsistence keeps the people dependent and apathetic to their plight. As long as people have a roof over their head and enough to eat they will allow those who provide those things to take everything else they have.
The Federal infusions of funds into the unemployment and welfare systems will continue only for as long as it takes the bankers to fully rob the American people of everything they own. In the meantime, unemployment will continue to rise and the depression will deepen to levels unimaginable as the unsuspecting unemployment recipient spends his jobless days as if he were on a paid vacation. He’ll waste his checks on beer and porn and stretch out on the couch until the final week. Then he’ll get serious, only to find that things are not as rosy as the liars on CNBC promised they’d be.
Unlike 1933, our depression comes at a time when there is increased foreign war spending and many of our potentially unemployed youths are serving overseas. Imagine what would happen to the unemployment rate if these wars came to an end. Then imagine what would happen if unemployment benefits and welfare entitlement programs ceased to exist. When you do, you can understand why all of these things continue to be funded.
This is a robbery, and the hostages are being held in the back of the store learning to love their captors. Most Americans are under a spell best described as the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims. The syndrome is named after the Normrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from August 23 to August 28, 1973. In this case, the victims became emotionally attached to their captors, and even defended them after they were freed from their six-day ordeal.(6)
Until the American people snap out of their trance, they will refuse to believe that they are in a depression, recession, panic or crisis. To them, it will be a loving embrace by a charismatic savior. Only until they feel the peircing bite of cold air on their necks and the pains of an empty stomach will they finally come around to the realization that the panic is not coming—but that the panic is on!
Today at 1:30 pm Eastern time Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will host a press conference announcing the fifth Senate reinvention of “cap-and-trade” global warming legislation since 2003, the “American Power Act”. Call it the American Power Grab Act, instead, for reasons that will become obvious momentarily.
The orchestrated spectacle, with a cast expected to be in the dozens which massive alignment of special interest groups is apparently supposed to persuade you of the justness of their cause, is in fact a manifestation of all that is wrong with Washington and what Americans have become increasingly enraged by.
At this press conference, Sens. Kerry and Lieberman have both already indicated, they will insist that their scheme isn’t “cap-and-trade” because… they aren’t going to use that term this time around. Kerry has even said that “this is not an environment bill.” It seems that the public aren’t buying that argument, either, so it’s really about whatever appeals to you. Just not what it was about the previous four times they’ve tried to slip this Power Grab past you. Except that a summary of the bill makes plain it is, too, cap-and-trade. And worse. It includes billions of dollars each year in gas tax revenue to underwrite the wealth transfers these companies are so in favor of.
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From the Tea Party Movement to State Legislators, the American people are drawing a line in the sand. On what side of it will you stand? Has the government our Founders created been forgotten by Washington DC? Is a Patriot Uprising ready to capture the spirit of 1776? “Don’t Tread On Me: Rise of the Republic” gives the viewer a look into the movements, mindset, and legislation that will catapult the “Great Restoration” into households across America.
What is the choke-collar the Federal Government uses to reign in the States? Are the States sovereign or subjects of Washington DC? What did the Founders foresee and how did they seek to protect us from a tyrannical government?
“Don’t Tread On Me: Rise of the Republic” exposes the commerce clause, defines Sovereignty, the proper role of government, a Constitutional Militia and much more. “Don’t Tread On Me: Rise of the Republic” offers sound solutions to take back rights stolen by our out-of-control, despotic federal government. “Don’t Tread On Me: Rise of the Republic” will educate, inspire, and activate a nation desperately seeking direction.
New transfers of wealth from middle class go directly to French and German banks
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Monday, May 10, 2010
American taxpayers have been freshly liberated of hundreds of billions more dollars as part of the IMF’s new bailout package which is principally going straight to European banks, in addition to the Federal Reserve program to ship U.S. dollars to Europe, in a move that represents little more than a desperate effort to save the Euro and rescue the credibility of economic global governance.
“The Federal Reserve late Sunday opened a program to ship U.S. dollars to Europe in a move to head off a broader financial crisis on the continent,” reports the Associated Press.
“The Fed’s action reopens a program put in place during the 2008 global financial crisis under which dollars are shipped overseas through the foreign central banks. In turn, these central banks can lend the dollars out to banks in their home countries that are in need of dollar funding to prevent the European crisis from spreading further.”
As we reported last time this program was enacted, the Federal Reserve refused to say which foreign banks had received an estimated half a trillion dollars in credit swaps. The program is unconstitutional under Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution which states, “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.”
In addition to the credit swap program being re-enacted, the IMF portion of a separate European bailout package amounts to around $287 billion dollars. Since American taxpayers represent around 20 per cent of IMF funding, they will fork out something in the region of $57 billion dollars which which primarily go straight to French and German banks, not to mention the billions more in transfers of wealth that will occur through the Fed’s credit swap program.
“Politicians everywhere applaud this most recent rape of America’s working class, even as communism is now the global ideology,” writes Tyler Durden. “Who needs TheOnion.com when reality is now 10 times more surreal. And the direct recipients of taxpayer generosity: SocGen, AXA, Dexia, CA and all other French and German banks, which right now are all up ~20%.”
But it’s not just American taxpayers who have been looted to save the crumbling facade of the Euro single currency. British taxpayers will be forced to underwrite an estimated £10 billion pounds of the bailout as part of the IMF package.
And all for what? The two primary reasons for the bailout are to rescue ailing confidence in the globalist Euro single currency, which was forced upon European citizens against their will when it was introduced, and to prop up the casino stock markets. Neither of these justifications provide any benefit for the average citizen or the middle class, and yet we are the ones paying for it with our depreciated savings, our evaporating pension funds and our crumbling infrastructure and public services, which are all being forgotten in pursuit of one massive banker bailout after another.
Credibility in the agenda to impose global economic governance run by the Nazi-founded Bank for International Settlements rests in upholding confidence in the Euro. If the Euro collapses and ceases to exist, which many financial experts are now seriously predicting, then the entire raison d’être for centralized economic planning in pursuit of global governance will be completely discredited. The globalists must save the Euro in order to legitimize future plans for a North American Union single currency which will replace the dollar.
When the dollar sank to alarming lows against other global currencies little over two years ago, we saw none of the same concern or hand-wringing on behalf of the elite as we are seeing for the Euro. That’s because the survival of the dollar is not part of their framework of global economic governance. For all the elite cares, the dollar can crash and burn but rescuing the Euro from the same fate is imperative.
Indeed, it appears as if the chaos in Greece is being deliberately provoked and hyped in order to justify the continued re-alignment and centralization of the entire financial system into fewer globalist hands.
As The Economic Collapse Blog writes today, “Could Greece bring down the entire world economy? Hardly. The truth is that you could remove Greece from the world economy tomorrow and most people would hardly notice. The economy of Greece is only about 2% the size of the United States economy, and it takes in less than 0.1% of U.S. exports. But we are being led to believe that Greece has suddenly become the epicenter of a financial crisis which is going to bring down everything. Could it be that this Greek debt crisis is purposely being hyped and manipulated? Could it be that this Greek debt crisis is yet another example of the “problem, reaction, solution” paradigm that the global elite have employed so many times before?”
“Right now almost all of the governments in the western world operate debt-based economies that rely on ever-inflating amounts of paper money in order to survive. The elite international bankers of the world have made a killing by creating money out of nothing and loaning it to the nations of the world. The interest on those loans is the primary method by which the wealth of the world is slowly transferred into the hands of the ultra-wealthy. When the interest on the loans starts to become too much for a particular nation, they borrow even more money so that they can stay afloat. It is a debt trap that is designed to continue indefinitely. Even the most powerful nations in the world are caught in this debt trap. In fact, most people are absolutely amazed when they learn that it is mathematically impossible to pay off the national debt of the United States. But the United States is far from alone in that respect. Almost all of the other major nations in the world are in the exact same boat.”
It’s horribly ironic that the Euro, global economic governance, and the entire European project was sold under the justification that centralization meant stability, and yet now we are being told that the chaos in Greece is contagious and could spread to Spain, Portugal and Italy unless taxpayers are looted for billions and trillions more.
Reality has proven that centralization of economies under the banner of the EU and the Euro causes economic chaos to go viral. When nearly every country on a single continent uses the same currency, they infect one other with the disease. This is then habitually exploited as an excuse with which to rob taxpayers whose living standards are declining as their currency devalues and their pensions wither on the vine.
Almost every US Corporation will do and say anything to keep us spending money, regardless of what they know about the fragility of our entire financial system. Bankster’s are now using world governments as patsies to commit the largest heist in world history. Stealing a trillion dollars from US citizens proved to be too difficult, as they had to receive congressional approval to bail themselves out. They’re recent scam involves using central banks to bypass democracy & funnel money to offshore entities without oversight.
So-called financial experts and analysts in the U.S. who never warned us about the financial/debt crisis are now putting out propaganda regarding our risk and exposure to the EU bailout. If you don’t see what’s happening, let me reveal it to you: Banksters are skirting US regulation & the US Constitution to ship money offshore to foreign central banks. The US Treasury is the pawn Bankster’s have chosen to filter $50 billion to the IMF —– like a thief in the night. Bankster’s will never tell you the truth about our economic outlook because if they did, we’d all default on our mortgage loans and stop spending money altogether.
The US Government doesn’t want you to know the truth either, nor do they want you to know that they’re funneling taxpayer money to foreign banks.
The US Treasury has evaded the direct questions I’ve asked them about why, and on what authority they’ve given $50 billion dollars to foreign Bankster’s. (In fact, almost every time I called the US Treasury press office to speak to someone, it seemed as though their office is run by disorganized teenagers who fumble with the phone, mumble incoherent excuses as to why my questions couldn’t be answered, and when I finally reached a responsible person, they sent me a list of talking points that never answered my questions directly.)
Ladies and Gentleman, the Banking system has bought-and-paid-for laws that allow them to skirt regulation & oversight, and they’ve built one of the largest powder kegs that’ll destroy the entire global economy; the $700 trillion derivative’s scam.
You see, derivative’s are ticking time bombs that should actually be called “insurance”, but by calling them something else (like derivative’s), Bankster’s are able to get around the regulatory system set up for the insurance industry to minimize risk. Now, we have a $700 trillion ticking time bomb that was built without oversight, regulation, and accountability. (If you don’t know how much $700 trillion dollars is, Google “GDP of the global economy” — the entire world GDP is estimated at $70 trillion). As these risky insurance policies (called derivatives) have to be paid out, Bankster’s are losing their shirts, and now they’re extorting trillions more in bailout funds to cover what they knew all along were bad, risky bets.
The US Treasury is merely as high-rollin gambler with the audacity to give foreign Bankster’s $54 billion of our hard earned taxpayer dollars. What’s worse, they have an incurable gambling addiction don’t know when to stop borrowing money to offset their losses.
The Treasury is lying to you when they say “The IMF has ample financing…” No, Ladies and Gentlemen, there are no countries or banks that have enough money to cover the $700 Trillion dollars in bad bets that were allowed to be placed. The US Treasury is merely trying to cover their betting losses, and do so by going around the American people. The New World Order has been set up to avoid the US Constitution.
We cannot afford $50 billion dollars to cover a Bankster/government gambling problem. We cannot afford to let any government agency raid the safe and throw money to foreigners without accountability to the American taxpayer.
If it’s legal; just remember who paid the politicians to pass laws that allowed them to get away with it.
Our government has been corrupted by Banksters, and we need to get rid of both entities if they chose to continue stealing from us.
Wake up people. When are we going to Storm the Bastille? They’ve destroyed the US financial system, now they’ve moved on to implode the entire Global Economy.
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Tuesday, May 11, 2010
President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is perfect in every way – perfect that is if you think the role of the highest judicial body in the United States is to ban free speech, indefinitely detain Americans without trial, resurrect command and control socialism, while urinating on everything the Constitution stands for.
We already discovered Kagan’s penchant for treating Americans as guilty until proven innocent, or in fact just plain guilty without even the chance to be proven innocent, when she was quoted as saying, “That someone suspected of helping finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield law — indefinite detention without a trial — even if he were captured in a place like the Philippines rather than a physical battle zone.”
So under that definition, if you send money to a charity later linked with some nebulous terrorist group then you are financing Al-Qaeda and could be thrown in Gitmo or some other CIA black site never to be seen again. And this is the woman being forwarded to sit on a body that is supposed to safeguard civil liberties? That would be like hiring Charles Manson to coach the high school basketball team.
But it gets worse. Now we learn that Kagan thinks certain expressions of free speech should be ‘disappeared’ if the government deems them to be offensive. On the surface that’s any opinion on racial, sexuality or gender issues, but since criticizing Obama is now deemed racist, where will it all end?
In a 1993 University of Chicago Law review article, Kagan wrote, “I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation.” (emphasis mine).
“In a 1996 paper, “Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine,” Kagan argued it may be proper to suppress speech because it is offensive to society or to the government,” reports World Net Daily.
Kagan also argued as recently as September that corporations shouldn’t be allowed to engage in free speech, and that the government can censor things like newspaper editorials, as well as the political opinions of radio talk show hosts or television reporters.
Chief Justice John Roberts blasted Kagan’s argument at the time, reports Newsmax.
“The government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern,” he wrote.
Kagan’s standpoint on free speech, that it is subject to regulation and definition by the government, has no place in America, completely violates the fundamental premise of the First Amendment, that even unpopular speech should be protected, and would be better suited for countries like Iran, Zimbabwe or North Korea.
Little surprise therefore when we learn that in her undergraduate thesis at Princeton, Kagan lamented the decline of socialism in the U.S. as “sad” for those who still hope to “change America.”
If Kagan is approved she is going to find an eager ally in White House information czar Cass Sunstein, who in a January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” called for the government to tax and outright censor political viewpoints it deemed unsavory.
(VigilantCitizen) – Mass media is the most powerful tool used by the ruling class to manipulate the masses. It shapes and molds opinions and attitudes and defines what is normal and acceptable. This article looks at the workings of mass media through the theories of its major thinkers, its power structure and the techniques it uses, in order to understand its true role in society.
Image source deesillustration.com Most of the articles on this site discuss occult symbolism found in objects of popular culture. From these articles arise many legitimate questions relating to the purpose of those symbols and the motivations of those who place them there, but it is impossible for me to provide satisfactory answers to these questions without mentioning many other concepts and facts. I’ve therefore decided to write this article to supply the theoretical and methodological background of the analyzes presented on this site as well as introducing the main scholars of the field of mass communications. Some people read my articles and think I’m saying “Lady Gaga wants to control our minds”. That is not the case. She is simply a small part of the huge system that is the mass media.
Programming Through Mass Media Mass media are media forms designed to reach the largest audience possible. They include television, movies, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, records, video games and the internet. Many studies have been conducted in the past century to measure the effects of mass media on the population in order to discover the best techniques to influence it. From those studies emerged the science of Communications, which is used in marketing, public relations and politics. Mass communication is a necessary tool the insure the functionality of a large democracy; it is also a necessary tool for a dictatorship. It all depends on its usage.
In the 1958 preface for A Brave New World, Aldous Huxley paints a rather grim portrait of society. He believes it is controlled by an “impersonal force”, a ruling elite, which manipulates the population using various methods.
“Impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare; and this impersonal pushing is being consciously accelerated by representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of the masses.” - Aldous Huxley, Preface to A Brave New World
His bleak outlook is not a simple hypothesis or a paranoid delusion. It is a documented fact, present in the world’s most important studies on mass media. Here are some of them:
Elite Thinkers Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann, an American intellectual, writer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner brought forth one of the first works concerning the usage of mass media in America. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann compared the masses to a “great beast” and a “bewildered herd” that needed to be guided by a governing class. He described the ruling elite as “a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality.” This class is composed of experts, specialists and bureaucrats. According to Lippmann, the experts, who often are referred to as “elites,” are to be a machinery of knowledge that circumvents the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the “omnicompetent citizen.” The trampling and roaring “bewildered herd” has its function: to be “the interested spectators of action,” i.e. not participants. Participation is the duty of “the responsible man”, which is not the regular citizen.
Mass media and propaganda are therefore tools that must be used by the elite to rule the public without physical coercion. One important concept presented by Lippmann is the “manufacture of consent”, which is, in short, the manipulation of public opinion to accept the elite’s agenda. It is Lippmann’s opinion that the general public is not qualified to reason and to decide on important issues. It is therefore important for the elite to decide ”for its own good” and then sell those decisions to the masses.
“That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. . . . as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power. . . . Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.” –Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion
It might be interesting to note that Lippmann is one of the founding fathers of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most influential foreign policy think tank in the world. This fact should give you a small hint of the mind state of the elite concerning the usage of media.
“Political and economic power in the United States is concentrated in the hands of a “ruling elite” that controls most of U.S.-based multinational corporations, major communication media, the most influential foundations, major private universities and most public utilities. Founded in 1921, the Council of Foreign Relations is the key link between the large corporations and the federal government. It has been called a “school for statesmen” and “comes close to being an organ of what C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite – a group of men, similar in interest and outlook shaping events from invulnerable positions behind the scenes. The creation of the United Nations was a Council project, as well as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.” - Steve Jacobson, Mind Control in the United States
Some current members of the CFR include David Rockefeller, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, mega-church pastor Rick Warren and the CEOs of major corporations such as CBS, Nike, Coca-Cola and Visa.
Carl Jung
Carl Jung is the founder of analytical psychology (also known an Jungian psychology), which emphasizes understanding the psyche by exploring dreams, art, mythology, religion, symbols and philosophy. The Swiss therapist is at the origin of many psychological concepts used today such as the Archetype, the Complex, the Persona, the Introvert/Extrovert and Synchronicity. He was highly influenced by the occult background of his family. Carl Gustav, his grandfather, was an avid Freemason (he was Grand Master) and Jung himself discovered that some of his ancestors were Rosicrucians. This might explain his great interest in Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology and symbolism. One of his most important (and misunderstood) concept was the Collective Unconscious.
“My thesis, then, is as follows: In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.” - Carl Jung, The Concept of the Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious transpires through the existence of similar symbols and mythological figures in different civilizations. Archetypal symbols seem to be embedded in our collective subconscious, and, when exposed to them, we demonstrate natural attraction and fascination. Occult symbols can therefore exert a great impact on people, even if many individuals were never personally introduced to the symbol’s esoteric meaning. Mass media thinkers, such as Edward D. Bernays, found in this concept a great way to manipulate the public’s personal and collective unconscious.
1955 Time Magazine cover featuring Carl Jung. Looks a little like Avatar, doesn’t it? Edward Bernays
Edward Bernays is considered to be the “father of public relations” and used concepts discovered by his uncle Sigmund Freud to manipulate the public using the subconscious. He shared Walter Lippmann’s view of the general population by considering it irrational and subject to the “herd instinct”. In his opinion, the masses need to be manipulated by an invisible government to insure the survival of democracy.
“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 are 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.” - Edward Bernays, Propaganda
Bernay’s trailblazing marketing campaigns profoundly changed the functioning of American society. He basically created “consumerism” by creating a culture wherein Americans bought for pleasure instead of buying for survival. For this reason, he was considered by Life Magazine to be in the Top 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century.
Harold Lasswell
In 1939-1940, the University of Chicago was the host of a series of secret seminars on communications. These think tanks were funded by the Rockefeller foundation and involved the most prominent researchers in the fields of communications and sociological studies. One of these scholars was Harold Lasswell, a leading American political scientist and communications theorist, specializing in the analysis of propaganda. He was also of the opinion that a democracy, a government ruled by the people, could not sustain itself without a specialized elite shaping and molding public opinion through propaganda.
In his Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Lasswell explained that when elites lack the requisite force to compel obedience, social managers must turn to “a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda.” He added the conventional justification: we must recognize the “ignorance and stupidity [of] … the masses and not succumb to democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests.”
Lasswell extensively studied the field of content analysis in order to understand the effectiveness of different types of propaganda. In his essay Contents of Communication, Lasswell explained that, in order to understand the meaning of a message (i.e. a movie, a speech, a book, etc.), one should take into account the frequency with which certain symbols appear in the message, the direction in which the symbols try to persuade the audience’s opinion, and the intensity of the symbols used.
Lasswell was famous for his media analysis model based on:
Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) What Channel (with) What Effect
By this model, Lasswell indicates that in order to properly analyze a media product, one must look at who produced the product (the people who ordered its creation), who was it aimed at (the target audience) and what were the desired effects of this product (to inform, to convince, to sell, etc.) on the audience.
Using a Rihanna video as an example, the analysis would be as follows: WHO PRODUCED: Vivendi Universal; WHAT: pop artist Rihanna; TO WHOM: consumers between the ages of 9 and 25; WHAT CHANNEL: music video; and WHAT EFFECT: selling the artist, her song, her image and her message.
The analyzes of videos and movies on The Vigilant Citizen place a great importance on the “who is behind” the messages communicated to the public. The term “Illuminati” is often used to describe this small elite group covertly ruling the masses. Although the term sounds quite caricatured and conspiratorial, it aptly describes the elite’s affinities with secret societies and occult knowledge. However, I personally detest using the term “conspiracy theory” to describe what is happening in the mass media. If all the facts concerning the elitist nature of the industry are readily available to the public, can it still be considered a “conspiracy theory”?
There used to be a variety of viewpoints, ideas and opinions in popular culture. The consolidation of media corporations has, however, produced a standardization of the cultural industry. Ever wondered why all recent music sounds the same and all recent movies look the same? The following is part of the answer:
Media Ownership
As depicted in the graph above, the number of corporations owning the majority of U.S. media outlets went from 50 to 5 in less than 20 years. Here are the top corporations evolving around the world and the assets they own.
“A list of the properties controlled by AOL Time Warner takes ten typed pages listing 292 separate companies and subsidiaries. Of these, twenty-two are joint ventures with other major corporations involved in varying degrees with media operations. These partners include 3Com, eBay, Hewlett-Packard, Citigroup, Ticketmaster, American Express, Homestore, Sony, Viva, Bertelsmann, Polygram, and Amazon.com. Some of the more familiar fully owned properties of Time Warner include Book-of-the-Month Club; Little, Brown publishers; HBO, with its seven channels; CNN; seven specialized and foreign-language channels; Road Runner; Warner Brothers Studios; Weight Watchers; Popular Science; and fifty-two different record labels.” - Ben Bagdikan, The New Media Monopoly
AOL Time Warner owns:
•64 magazines, including Time, Life, People, MAD Magazine and DC Comics •Warner Bros, New Line and Fine Line Features in cinema •More than 40 music labels including Warner Bros, Atlantic and Elektra •Many television networks such as WB Networks, HBO, Cinemax, TNT, Cartoon Network and CNN •Madonna, Sean Paul, The White Stripes Viacom owns:
•CBS, MTV, MTV2, UPN, VH1, Showtime, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, TNN, CMT and BET •Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies, MTV Films •Blockbuster Videos •1800 screens in theaters through Famous Players
“Disney ownership of a hockey team called The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim does not begin to describe the vastness of the kingdom. Hollywood is still its symbolic heart, with eight movie production studios and distributors: Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Miramax, Buena Vista Home Video, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Buena Vista International, Hollywood Pictures, and Caravan Pictures.
The Walt Disney Company controls eight book house imprints under Walt Disney Company Book Publishing and ABC Publishing Group; seventeen magazines; the ABC Television Network, with ten owned and operated stations of its own including in the five top markets; thirty radio stations, including all the major markets; eleven cable channels, including Disney, ESPN (jointly), A&E, and the History Channel; thirteen international broadcast channels stretching from Australia to Brazil; seven production and sports units around the world; and seventeen Internet sites, including the ABC group, ESPN.sportszone, NFL.com, NBAZ.com, and NASCAR.com. Its five music groups include the Buena Vista, Lyric Street, and Walt Disney labels, and live theater productions growing out of the movies The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and King David.” - Ibid
The Walt Disney Company owns:
•ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN, A&E, History Channel •Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Film Corp., Dimension and Buena Vista International •Miley Cyrus/ Hannah Montana, Selena Gomez, Jonas Brothers
Vivendi Universal owns:
•27% of US music sales, labels include: Interscope, Geffen, A&M, Island, Def Jam, MCA, Mercury, Motown and Universal •Universal Studios, Studio Canal, Polygram Films, Canal + •Numerous internet and cell phone companies •Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas, Lil Wayne, Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Jay-Z
Sony owns:
•Columbia Pictures, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Classics •15% of US Music sales, labels include Columbia, Epic, Sony, Arista, Jive and RCA Records •Beyonce, Shakira, Michael Jackson, Alicia Keys, Christina Aguilera A limited number of actors in the cultural industry means a limited amount of viewpoints and ideas making their way to the general public. It also means that a single message can easily saturate all forms of media to generate consent (i.e. “there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”).
The Standardization of Human Thought
The merger of media companies in the last decades generated a small oligarchy of media conglomerates. The TV shows we follow, the music we listen to, the movies we watch and the newspapers we read are all produced by FIVE corporations. The owners of those conglomerates have close ties with the world’s elite and, in many ways, they ARE the elite. By owning all of the possible outlets having the potential to reach the masses, these conglomerates have the power to create in the minds of the people a single and cohesive world view, engendering a “standardization of human thought”.
Even movements or styles that are considered marginal are, in fact, extensions of mainstream thinking. Mass medias produce their own rebels who definitely look the part but are still part of the establishment and do not question any of it. Artists, creations and ideas that do not fit the mainstream way of thinking are mercilessly rejected and forgotten by the conglomerates, which in turn makes them virtually disappear from society itself. However, ideas that are deemed to be valid and desirable to be accepted by society are skillfully marketed to the masses in order to make them become self-evident norm.
In 1928, Edward Bernays already saw the immense potential of motion pictures to standardize thought:
“The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions. The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation. Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect, emphasize and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only of ideas and facts which are in vogue. As the newspaper seeks to purvey news, it seeks to purvey entertainment.” – Edward Bernays, Propaganda
These facts were flagged as dangers to human freedom in the 1930’s by thinkers of the school of Frankfurt such as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. They identified three main problems with the cultural industry. The industry can:
1.reduce human beings to the state of mass by hindering the development of emancipated individuals, who are capable of making rational decisions; 2.replace the legitimate drive for autonomy and self-awareness by the safe laziness of conformism and passivity; and 3.validate the idea that men actually seek to escape the absurd and cruel world in which they live by losing themselves in a hypnotic state self-satisfaction. The notion of escapism is even more relevant today with advent of online video games, 3D movies and home theaters. The masses, constantly seeking state-of-the-art entertainment, will resort to high-budget products that can only be produced by the biggest media corporations of the world. These products contain carefully calculated messages and symbols which are nothing more and nothing less than entertaining propaganda. The public have been trained to LOVE its propaganda to the extent that it spends its hard-earned money to be exposed to it. Propaganda (used in both political, cultural and commercial sense) is no longer the coercive or authoritative communication form found in dictatorships: it has become the synonym of entertainment and pleasure.
“In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” – Aldous Huxley, Preface to A Brave New World A single piece of media often does not have a lasting effect on the human psyche. Mass media, however, by its omnipresent nature, creates a living environment we evolve in on a daily basis. It defines the norm and excludes the undesirable. The same way carriage horses wear blinders so they can only see what is right in front of them, the masses can only see where they are supposed to go.
“It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.” – Jacques Ellul
One of the reasons mass media successfully influences society is due to the extensive amount of research on cognitive sciences and human nature that has been applied to it.
Manipulation Techniques “Publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public’s perception of a subject. The subjects of publicity include people (for example, politicians and performing artists), goods and services, organizations of all kinds, and works of art or entertainment.”
The drive to sell products and ideas to the masses has lead to an unprecedented amount of research on human behavior and on the human psyche. Cognitive sciences, psychology, sociology, semiotics, linguistics and other related fields were and still are extensively researched through well-funded studies.
“No group of sociologists can approximate the ad teams in the gathering and processing of exploitable social data. The ad teams have billions to spend annually on research and testing of reactions, and their products are magnificent accumulations of material about the shared experience and feelings of the entire community.” - Marshal McLuhan, The Extensions of Man The results of those studies are applied to advertisements, movies, music videos and other media in order to make them as influential as possible. The art of marketing is highly calculated and scientific because it must reach both the individual and the collective consciousness. In high-budget cultural products, a video is never “just a video,” Images, symbols and meanings are strategically placed in order to generate a desired effect. “It is with knowledge of the human being, his tendencies, his desires, his needs, his psychic mechanisms, his automatisms as well as knowledge of social psychology and analytical psychology that propaganda refines its techniques.” – Propagandes, Jacques Ellul (free translation) Today’s propaganda almost never uses rational or logical arguments. It directly taps into a human’s most primal needs and instincts in order to generate an emotional and irrational response. If we always thought rationally, we probably wouldn’t buy 50% of what we own. Babies and children are constantly found in advertisements targeting women for a specific reason: studies have shown that images of children trigger in women an instinctual need to nurture, to care and to protect, ultimately leading to a sympathetic bias towards the advertisement.
Strange old 7up ad using the cuteness of babies Sex is ubiquitous in mass media, as it draws and keeps the viewer’s attention. It directly connects to our animal need to breed and to reproduce, and, when triggered, this instinct can instantly overshadow any other rational thoughts in our brain. Subliminal Perception What if the messages described above were able to reach directly the viewers’ subconscious mind, without the viewers even realizing what is happening? That is the goal of subliminal perception. The phrase subliminal advertising was coined in 1957 by the US market researcher James Vicary, who said he could get moviegoers to “drink Coca-Cola” and “eat popcorn” by flashing those messages onscreen for such a short time that viewers were unaware. “Subliminal perception is a deliberate process created by communications technicians, by which you receive and respond to information and instructions without being consciously aware of the instructions” – Steve Jacobson, Mind Control in the United States This technique is often used in marketing and we all know that sex sells.
Although some sources claim that subliminal advertising is ineffective or even an urban myth, the documented usage of this technique in mass media proves that creators believe in its powers. Recent studies have also proven its effectiveness, especially when the message is negative. ” A team from University College London, funded by the Wellcome Trust, found that it [subliminal perception] was particularly good at instilling negative thoughts. There has been much speculation about whether people can process emotional information unconsciously, for example pictures, faces and words,” said Professor Nilli Lavie, who led the research. We have shown that people can perceive the emotional value of subliminal messages and have demonstrated conclusively that people are much more attuned to negative words.” - Source
A famous example of subliminal messaging in political communications is in George Bush’s advertisement against Al Gore in 2000.
Right after the name of Gore is mentioned, the ending of the word “bureaucrats” – “rats” – flashes on the screen for a split second.
The discovery of this trickery caused quite a stir and, even if there are no laws against subliminal messaging in the U.S., the advertisement was taken off the air.
As seen in many articles on The Vigilant Citizen, subliminal and semi-subliminal messages are often used in movies and music videos to communicate messages and ideas to the viewers.
Desensitization In the past, when changes were imposed on populations, they would take to the streets, protest and even riot. The main reason for this clash was due to the fact that the change was clearly announced by the rulers and understood by the population. It was sudden and its effects could clearly be analyzed and evaluated. Today, when the elite needs a part of its agenda to be accepted by the public, it is done through desensitization. The agenda, which might go against the public best interests, is slowly, gradually and repetitively introduced to the world through movies (by involving it within the plot), music videos (who make it cool and sexy) or the news (who present it as a solution to today’s problems). After several years of exposing the masses to a particular agenda, the elite openly presents the concept the world and, due to mental programming, it is greeted with general indifference and is passively accepted. This technique originates from psychotherapy.
“The techniques of psychotherapy, widely practiced and accepted as a means of curing psychological disorders, are also methods of controlling people. They can be used systematically to influence attitudes and behavior. Systematic desensitization is a method used to dissolve anxiety so the the patient (public) is no longer troubled by a specific fear, a fear of violence for example. [...] People adapt to frightening situations if they are exposed to them enough”. – Steven Jacobson, Mind Control in the United States Predictive programming is often found in the science fiction genre. It presents a specific image of the future – the one that is desired by the elite – and ultimately becomes in the minds of men an inevitability. A decade ago, the public was being desensitized to war against the Arab world. Today, the population is gradually being exposed to the existence of mind control, of transhumanism and of an Illuminati elite. Emerging from the shadows, those concepts are now everywhere in popular culture. This is what Alice Bailey describes as the “externalization of the hierarchy”: the hidden rulers slowly revealing themselves.
Occult Symbolism in Pop Culture
Metropolis – a movie by the elite, for the elite? Contrarily to the information presented above, documentation on occult symbolism is rather hard to find. This should not come as a surprise as the term “occult”, literally means “hidden”. It also means “reserved to those in the know” as it is only communicated to those who are deemed worthy of the knowledge. It is not taught in schools nor is it discussed in the media. It is thus considered marginal or even ridiculous by the general population.
Occult knowledge is NOT, however, considered ridiculous in occult circles. It is considered timeless and sacred. There is a long tradition of hermetic and occult knowledge being taught through secret societies originating from ancient Egyptians, to Eastern Mystics, to the Knights Templar to modern day Freemasons. Even if the nature and the depth of this knowledge was most probably modified and altered throughout the centuries, mystery schools kept their main features, which are highly symbolic, ritualistic and metaphysical. Those characteristics, which were an intricate part of ancient civilizations, have totally been evacuated from modern society to be replaced by pragmatic materialism. For this reason, there lies an important gap of understanding between the pragmatic average person and the ritualistic establishment.
“If this inner doctrine were always concealed from the masses, for whom a simpler code had been devised, is it not highly probable that the exponents of every aspect of modern civilization – philosophic, ethical, religious, and scientific-are ignorant of the true meaning of the very theories and tenets on which their beliefs are founded? Do the arts and sciences that the race has inherited from older nations conceal beneath their fair exterior a mystery so great that only the most illumined intellect can grasp its import? Such is undoubtedly the case.” - Manly P. Hall, Secret Teachings of All Ages
The “simpler code” devised for the masses used to be organized religions. It is now becoming the Temple of the Mass Media and it preaches on a daily basis extreme materialism, spiritual vacuosity and a self-centered, individualistic existence. This is exactly the opposite of the attributes required to become a truly free individual, as taught by all great philosophical schools of thought. Is a dumbed-down population easier to deceive and to manipulate?
“These blind slaves are told they are “free” and “highly educated” even as they march behind signs that would cause any medieval peasant to run screaming away from them in panic-stricken terror. The symbols that modern man embraces with the naive trust of an infant would be tantamount to billboards reading, ‘This way to your death and enslavement,’ to the understanding of the traditional peasant of antiquity” - Michael A. Hoffman II, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare
In Conclusion
This article examined the major thinkers in the field of mass media, the media power structure and the techniques used to manipulate the masses. I believe this information is vital to the understanding of the “why” in the topics discussed on The Vigilant Citizen. The “mass population” versus “ruling class” dichotomy described in many articles is not a “conspiracy theory” (again, I hate that term), but a reality that has been clearly stated in the works of some of the 20th century’s most influential men.
Lippmann, Bernays and Lasswell have all declared that the public are not fit to decide their own fate, which is the inherent goal of democracy. Instead, they called for a cryptocracy, a hidden government, a ruling class in charge of the “bewildered herd.” As their ideas continue to be applied to society, it is increasingly apparent that an ignorant population is not an obstacle that the rulers must deal with: It is something that is DESIRABLE and, indeed, necessary, to insure total leadership. An ignorant population does not know its rights, does not seek a greater understanding of issues and does not question authorities. It simply follows trends. Popular culture caters to and nurtures ignorance by continually serving up brain-numbing entertainment and spotlighting degenerate celebrities to be idolized. Many people ask me: “Is there a way to stop this?” Yes, there is. STOP BUYING THEIR CRAP AND READ A BOOK.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.” - Thomas Jefferson
Related Documentation
Download “Propaganda” By Edward L. Bernays free E-book in pdf from knowledgefiles.com
Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri Posted by sakerfa on May 9, 2010
(Rense) – Part 1 – For decades, we have known that heavy metals and chemicals can cause grave physical harm. Going back to Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” we have known and been amply warned of the serious consequences of using or being exposed to these poisons in our daily activities. Thousands of these are well-documented carcinogens. Building on Carson’s ground-breaking research, we also know that certain kinds of chemicals can and do disrupt human [and other animals'] entire immune system. Going back 30 years, researchers were investigating what became known as endocrine [hormone] disrupting chemicals and how they were affecting frogs [who sometimes had five legs or hermaphroditic characteristics], other aquatic animals, and mammals. These animals were the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. In another pioneering book, “Our Stolen Future,” authors Dr. Theo Colburn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers clearly demonstrate that 1 + 1 hormone-disrupting chemicals did not equal 2. Rather, in a nightmare of mathematical proportions, these poisons acted synergistically; and 1+1 could equal up to 1,600 times the original dose. We are also exposed to more than 100,000 chemicals regularly. Most of them have never been tested for human safety. Even so, almost nothing has been done to reduce human exposure to a myriad of hazardous chemicals. In fact, over the past decade, the Bush administration dismantled many environmental laws in existence for 30 years, to let corporations off the proverbial hook. [Just look at what's unfolding in the Gulf with BP horrific oil spill.]
Although this information, on the dangers of hormone disruption, is now more widely available on Internet sites, it still is not well known by the average person who gets news mostly from mainstream media.(1) Most of these highly toxic chemicals are invisible; and, therefore, are easily off our collective radar. With the high stress level created by the deliberately orchestrated financial crisis –where millions have lost their jobs and homes a degraded/collapsing environment or serious health problems are not priorities most especially, if very little is reported in mainstream news. This disaster scenario is part of the larger picture of what Naomi Klein writes about in her book “The Shock Doctrine.” We have so many major crises, one after another, that it is hard just to keep up with one’s daily routine let alone have time to read and consider the toxicological health ramifications of massive amounts of thousands of heavy metals and chemicals that have poisoned our entire food chain and, thus, our own supposed “health.” We are at the very top of this wrecked food chain.
Now, however, there is another far more insidious layer of toxicity that is not being addressed at all in any mainstream, corporate-controlled news, and it is affecting our very survival. It is, however, being addressed more and more by independent researchers who have supporting evidence to back up their Internet reports.
For more than a decade, first the United States and then Canada’s citizens have been subjected to a 24/7/365 day aerosol assault over our heads made of a toxic brew of poisonous heavy metals, chemicals, and other dangerous ingredients. None of this was reported by any mainstream media. The US Department of Defense [DOD] and military have been systematically blanketing all our skies with Chemtrails (also known as Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering).(2) These differ vastly from the usual plane contrails that evaporate rather quickly in the sky. Chemtrails do not dissipate. Rather, planes (fitted with special nozzles) release aerosols “lines” in the sky that do not evaporate. Multiple planes are deployed, flying parallel (or often “checkerboard” patterns) overhead; and soon the sky is blanketed with many grayish-white lines [miles and miles long, although this is changing]. At first, these lines are thin; but soon they expand and, in a short time, merge together. Our once-blue sky has vanished and has been replaced by a grayish-white toxic haze that blots out and greatly diminishes our usual sunshine.
Military and commercial planes are involved in more than 60 secret operations. Last year, when I flew across the country, I saw a United Airlines jet (flying below us at about 37,000 feet) spraying a black aerosol that went for miles and miles across the sky. This clandestine program now includes aerosol-spraying planes in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand [all NATO countries]. Over the years, hundreds (if not thousands) of people have called and written their public officials to get answers. Replies from US and Canadian officials are not forthcoming; or, if they do reply, queries are dismissed. This remains an ongoing, deliberate cover-up. No one is held accountable, while we all continued to be poisoned daily. This is not the first time, however, that citizens are being used as experimental laboratory test subjects. The US government and its military have a very long and sordid history of using us, without informed consent, in this illegal manner. As Carole Pellatt notes: The U.S. military has been spraying chemical and biological weapons in open air testing over civilian populations since the 1940′s. They are called “vulnerability tests”. This is not a controversial statement. The military has admitted to this practice on many occasions and there’s plenty of documentation from the government to corroborate it. There is also documentation of intentional, experimental releases of radiation on civilian populations. Unfortunately, this information tends to surface long after it could have saved lives, or eased the suffering of victims.(3)
Over the past decade, independent testing of Chemtrails around the country has shown a dangerous, extremely poisonous brew that includes: barium, nano aluminum-coated fiberglass [known as CHAFF], radioactive thorium, cadmium, chromium, nickel, desiccated blood, mold spores, yellow fungal mycotoxins, ethylene dibromide, and polymer fibers. Barium can be compared to the toxicity of arsenic.(4) Barium is known to adversely affect the heart. Aluminum has a history of damaging brain function. Independent researchers and labs continue to show off-the-scale levels of these poisons. A few “anonymous” officials have acknowledged this on-going aerosol spraying.(5)
Numerous tests have been done to verify that these poisons are off the scale in their toxicity. They are documented in our water, in our soil, and in our air. For more than 10 years, researcher Clifford Carnicom has been valiantly and systematically reporting on the various detrimental aspects of these aerosols and what they are doing to our entire environment, as well as our blood.(6) Various “sky watch” groups also have been carefully documenting and diligently reporting about these daily assaults.(7)
With all these poisons surrounding our every breath, it is not surprising to see a dramatic increase in illnesses. There are numerous reports of the increase in cardiac deaths and upper respiratory illnesses (asthma, chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, and often multiple chronic illnesses). Chemtrails toxicity has already dramatically affected our deteriorating “collective health.” The significant increase in heart disease and various upper respiratory illnesses has been linked to a vast increase in “particulate matter” in our air. This can be seen by some revealing statistics: 1. Coronary heart disease is now the leading cause of death in the US. According to the CDC, in 2006, 631,636 died of heart disease. This means 1 out of every 5 Americans are affected.(8) In Canada, every seven minutes someone dies of heart disease.(9) 2. Asthma and upper respiratory illnesses. Between 100-150 million people suffer from asthma worldwide. In the US, 16.4 million adults have asthma and 7 million children have it. Chronic bronchitis and emphysema: 9.8 million Americans were diagnosed with chronic bronchitis this past year; for emphysema the figure is 3.8 million.(10) Total: 37 million Americans afflicted. In Canada, 2.4 million have been diagnosed with asthma. 3. Particulate matter in air pollution. Particulate matter [PM] consists of tiny particles 10 microns or less. [1 micron is about 1/70 the thickness of a single human hair.] These particles can lodge in the deepest part of your lungs; and over a period of time, they can damage lung function. This kind of pollution, that we breathe daily, can and does cause various upper respiratory illnesses, coronary heart disease, and premature aging and death. Particulate matter can also exacerbate any existing illness.(11) Unanswered questions: Does hazardous particulate matter act in synergistic ways in human bodies (as do endocrine disrupting chemicals)? How does PM affect millions who already have multiple chronic illnesses?
Brain Injury Even with the increases in preventable illnesses, the issue that has not been linked or addressed with what Clifford Carnicom rightly calls “aerosol crimes” is the deterioration of cognitive function. Our immune system is already under siege daily; and this has resulted in millions (possibly billions) of people with not just one illness, but often multiple ones. The skin, the largest organ in our body, is a permeable membrane. This means that invisible toxins in our air, including Chemtrails and other highly dangerous chemicals, go right into our skin. Poisoned rainwater (or snow touching our skin) does the same thing. When the air we breathe is filled with a dangerous assortment of toxins, with each breath we take, these poisons assault our entire immune system. These poisons also affect our brain and, thus, our cognitive function.
Aluminum is another major component in these aerosols. Although it is our planet’s most abundant metal, our body has no biological need for it. Pesticide Action Network North America [PANNA] lists it as “toxic to humans, including carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, and acute toxicity.”(12) Yet, aluminum is commonly used [this is a very short list] in vaccines, deodorants and anti-perspirants, over-the-counter medications, soft drink and beer cans [aluminum leeches from the cans], baking powder, cake mixes, processed cheeses, and other food products and additives.
Over years, aluminum accumulates in the brain, tissues, and to a lesser amount the bones. It causes brain degeneration, dysfunction, and damage due to the blockage and reduced blood flow and oxygen of brain arteries. The brain shrinks, as brain cells die. This causes dementia. Symptoms include: emotional outbursts, paranoia, forgetfulness and memory loss, speech incoherence, irritability, diminished alertness, changes in personality, and poor/bad judgment. All these are on the rise, as more than 4-million Americans are afflicted. Brain deterioration and dementia take decades to cause serious and visible harm. Eventually, however, dementia is fatal. “Alzheimer’s” is now being used incorrectly as a catch-all term for all kinds of dementia. Just a few days ago, the front page of the New York Times had a headline: “More with Dementia Wander from Home.”(13) People afflicted with, what the Times terms “Alzheimer’s” were interviewed. One person mentioned he “has a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.” This is patently wrong. Alzheimer’s dementia can only be accurately diagnosed after death when a post-mortem can be done. However, heavy metals poisoning can be diagnosed through lab testing; but this is rarely done for basic check-ups.
What is not addressed in this increase in dementia is the more than 10 years of breathing Chemtrails with nano aluminum-coated fiberglass. Billions of tons have been sprayed on us.
With all these sources of aluminum added to the air we breathe with each breath, the cumulative toxicity is very high. Even in daily events, it is obvious to anyone who is paying attention that many people are behaving oddly. While it may be considered “anecdotal” reporting, there are millions of people whose behavior is strange. There have been numerous times in just the past year when I have asked someone a question and received an answer that is totally unrelated. There have been more and more uncontrolled outbursts in public areas: someone “snaps” for no apparent reason. Violence levels are up in our society; and we already have epidemic proportions of it. Look at all the shootings on school campuses. There are more unexplained auto accidents that never should have happened. In just one day a few weeks ago, I witnessed three traffic accidents that need not have happened. The news is full of these stories.
Add to this already highly toxic body burden is the US military’s use of aluminum in its aerosols. It is used because of its electrical conductivity, durability, and light weight. The US Air Force reported in 1997 that it released “2 million, 6-7 ounce bundles of CHAFF.” These are laid by military aircraft form 15-50 miles in length.(14) Other unanswered questions: Why are they using this toxin? Why is the USAF not releasing up-to-date figures?
A 2002 report notes that: “over the last 25 years, the US Navy [has released from planes] several hundred thousand pounds of aluminized chaff during flight operations over a training area on the Chesapeake Bay.”(15) If the Navy used hundreds of thousands of pounds in just this small area of the US, what could be extrapolated for the release of possibly billions of tons of nano aluminum by all the military divisions throughout the US and Canada more recently than 2002? CHAFF is also being stored that has lead in it. Has that been released, without our knowledge, and added to these aerosols? What enormous, yet invisible, harm has that created for all of us?
Dr. Hildegarde Staninger reported last year that “exposure to aerial emissions of nano composite materials resulted in cholinesterase inhibition.”(16) The human body has three kinds of cholinesterase: for the brain, for plasma (manufactured by the liver), and red blood cells. Some pesticides and nerve gases inhibit cholinesterase. VX nerve gas, an organophosphate, has been burned and released into the air by the Army at Umatilla, Oregon, for the past five years. This deadly toxin is in the air all over the Pacific Northwestand there was very little public discussion. The chronic inhibition of this enzyme (that normally circulates in red blood cells), and caused by the spraying of these Chemtrails aerosols [for weather modification, is also used for mosquito and other insect eradication]. This causes chronic poisoning. This exposure causes severe neurological disorders, including paralysis in humans.
In a ground-breaking 2003 online essay, Dr. Kaye Kilburn, asks: “Why is Chemical Brain Injury Ignored?”(17) His article lists 13 concealed factors that affect our willingness to believe that dangerous chemicals do affect the brain. They include: 1. “It’s all in your head” [meaning real symptoms are ignored by allopathic medicine]. 2. Resistance to vulnerability [individuals, and society collectively, cannot believe the brain is at risk]. 3. The acceptance of mind-altering prescription drugs [such as Paxil] that can and do affect the brain [millions are on anti-depressants what long-term damage does that also do to cognitive thinking?]. 4. Chemical brain injury is considered not to be “an imminent threat.” 5. Competition from other serious threats [causing indifference or denial]; 6. Delay in acknowledging health risks. 7. Economic interests [delaying tactics by big corporations are well known delay continues profits and ignores taking responsibility. We are all expendable for corporate profits]. 8. The field of neurology has been slow to consider causes [how many independent researchers are left who do not have any ties to the pharmaceutical/chemical companies?].
In all these valuable reasons for not addressing this human crisis, the one that Dr. Kilburn has not addressed directly is the chronic assault of breathing/absorbing these now billions of tons of hazardous aerosolized Chemtrails and heavy metals over more than a decade without our informed consent. When one does not look for or address primary causes, then other issues can be blamed. This, on top of a government’s silence or refusal to respond and the corporate media’s complicity, make for an extremely dangerous combination that puts us all at grave and daily risk. As brain function is diminished, and other things are blamed for it, any population is easier “to control.”
Dr. Kiburn’s research clearly shows that chemicals do affect and seriously harm the brain [and, thereby, cognitive function]. Chemicals especially a daily onslaught of toxic chemicals over many years can damage our ability to think clearly. Even if we find this hard to believe, the evidence is there. Dr. Kilburn has expanded this essay into the first book to research this: “Chemical Brain Injury” (published in 1998). Dr. Kilburn notes: The brain’s preservation represents the only possibility of survival for mankind. To find in many parts of the country and in many individual patients that its function is eroded seriously by chemicals, chemicals that have been introduced into the environment basically in the last 50 years, is bad news indeed.(18)
It seems almost unbelievable that millions/billions of people could look up at the sky and not notice the dramatic changes that have occurred from what it was, for instance, in the mid-1990s. Then our sky was a gorgeous, deep blue. Clouds were a beautiful assortment of shapes. The sun was glorious. But people under 30, may not have a real sense of recollection about looking up every day and seeing this panoramic magnificence. Most of them are too busy texting or chatting on their cell phones. There are other issues to consider, as well: People are in their own comfort zones; and denial is a very powerful human emotion. In the hustle and bustle (now quite out of hand, for reflective time), how many people look up at the sky? It also takes huge courage, a very deep, internal willingness to examine politically motivated corporate controlled media spin, and search for the real answers. Humans like their regular routines. To re-examine what we think we know, based on new evidence, takes a willingness to think outside the proverbial box; to want to find out the truth not the pervasive Orwellian doublespeak that pervades our society. If everything in our daily routine belies what is truly going on, it requires fortitude to explore the unknown. We must question the litany.
Another courageous person is Dr. R. Michael Castle who continues to address the Chemtrails toxicity issue. He is a noted polymer chemist who has been interviewed frequently and has written articles about the extreme hazards of Chemtrails. Dr. Castle has also written a ground-breaking document, the Universal Atmospheric Preservation Act [UAPA]. This document has been in Congress since 2008; but is tied up in committee. The only way to have this vital piece of legislation passed is to have real congressional representatives actually representing us (instead of the corporate lobbyists). See:
Given these issues, since our collapsing society has so many different levels of deceit the financial debacle, the lies and deceit of government and the Federal Reserve blaming people for the housing/mortgage nightmare, the emerging police state, the disasters that envelope our fragile environment it becomes increasingly difficult just to maintain a daily routine and survive the economic depression and its daily fallout. Mainstream media does its supporting role and continues to deceive us. Millions, like the proverbial lemmings, hasten to join the group demise. There are countless historical instances of this collective insanity. We Homo sapiens [sic, wise men?] have never learned the lessons of 5,000 years of history. This is because each new generation of corrupt political leaders (often tied historically to previous ones) never has the real interest of their constituents as a basic part of their political practice. Further, there is no Precautionary Principle in place.(19) It’s not the way the political game of deception works. Precaution is not part of an equation that is broken from the beginning. Humans are gullible and want to believe the Orwellian deceptions. How much now is exacerbated by Chemtrail brain damage?
To add to this already heavy burden, to ask uninformed, although supposedly “well educated” people to reconsider what they think they know about what is really going on this takes enormous internal strength. What does “educated” actually mean, given that much of our higher education has omitted much of what Prof. Peter Dale Scott calls “deep political events” that never get into our history books It requires profound courage. The basis of this “courage” actually means creating new synaptical pathways in the brain. Without them, we feel scared, nervousbecause those new synapses have not yet been created. It takes repeated effort, and, thus, an emerging sense of ease, to create these new synapses.
If, however, millions of people are already on prescription pharmaceuticals to “calm them down” [long term, what is this doing to their ability to think clearly?] and, in addition, are breathing poisoned air rife with mind-distorting chemicals, then how clearly (if at all) is anyone able to think? How can anyone feel well and safe, if the very air we breathe is deliberately poisoned and is affecting our ability to think cogently? It is already evident that no one in any official capacity is willing to tell the truth. It is like Diogenes, the ancient Greek, searching for a truthful individual. No one seems to have the desire, or courage, or authority to stop this massive poisoning, because it is the secret plan of the elite insiders to deliberate destroy everything we once knew.
In these turbulent days, our BASIC human rights, constitutional and international laws are mere paper. Our rights and laws have all been torn asunder by those in charge. It has been done by stealth. We must organize peacefully. PEACEFULLY is the operative word. If these many-pronged aerosol attacks by military and commercial planes can spray these horrific toxins on us, year after year with impunity against all laws then it is absolutely imperative that we organize peacefully. As Peter Dale Scott notes in Jason Bermas’ new DVD “Invisible Empire”: we must use the Internet and our peaceful intellectual powers to come together and shut this nightmare down. It is possible to do this.
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Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri is author of the highly acclaimed book, “The Uterine Crisis.”
NOTES
1. See: www.ourstolenfuture.org
2. See Michael J. Murphy. “What in the World Are They Spraying?” March 3, 2010: www.countercurrents.org/murphy030310.htm; and G. Edward Griffin. “Chemtrail vs. Contrail” April 14, 2010: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsWpSPBwA-w
3. Carole Pellatt. Connections. “What’s going on in the air? Yes, we are being sprayed.” Aug. 8m 2007: http://homepage.mac.com/carolepellatt/yeswearebeingsprayed; and
4. See Pesticide Action Network North America [PANNA]: http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC41174
5. March 12, 2010: www.lightwatcher.com/chemtrails/text/faa_confirms_Chemtrails. An interesting conference at the University of California, San Diego [UCSD], “Atmospheric Aerosols: Health, Environment, and Climate Effects” addresses some of the cardio-vascular increases due to “atmospheric aerosols” but these academics never use the word Chemtrails. Yet, satellite photos they show clearly indicate the atmospheric impact of Chemtrails. See: Jan. 31, 2008: UCSD: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztHV5RF-xyw
6. For numerous detailed reports, see: www.carnicom.com; www.carnicominstitute.org; www.bariumblues,com; and Dr. Marijah McCain. “Chemtrails and Barium Toxicity.” April 6, 2002: www.rense.com/general21/tox.htm; Material Safety Data Sheet, University of Utah: HYPERLINK “http://www.chemtrails911.com/docs/bariumhealth.htm” www.chemtrails911.com/docs/bariumhealth.htm. This last cited website is very outdated. It does not address the increased amounts of barium now found in our air. Additional info: “Local News Station Confirms Barium in Chemtrails.” Nov. 10, 2007: www.youtube.com/watch?v=okB-489l6MI
13. May 4, 2010: www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/05search.html?hpw
14. [14. See: Rosalind Peterson. "Public and federal agencies concerned about the potentially harmful or undesirable effects of chaff on the environment." www.californiaskywatch.com/documents/htmldocs/chaff_goa_dod.htm]
15. “Effects of Navy chaff release on aluminum levels in an area of the Chesapeake Bay.” PubMed. US National Library of Medicine. June 2002: HYPERLINK “http://www.ncbi.nl.nih.gov/pubmed/12061831″ www.ncbi.nl.nih.gov/pubmed/12061831
17. Kaye H. Kilburn. “Why is Chemical Brain Injury Ignored. Pondering Causes and Risks.” Editorial. Archives of Environmental Health. March 1, 2003: www.mindfully.org/Health/2003/Chemical-Brain-Injury1mar03.htm
