Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

What if the government and media corporations effectivly created a propaganda machine in order to manipulate the opinions of the populace? I am regularly floored by the information that appears on the www. I'm such an information junkie that I try to limit my time on-line otherwise I'd develop carpel tunnel ....vision. One of my favorite thinkers is Noam Chomsky simply because he is one who refused to buy into the system which we call economic motivated democracy in the early twenty first century. It's not without it's issues.

Called the most influential thinker today his words are not to be taken lightly. Interestingly enough when I asked my fourth year history prof about Chomsky he said he was over the top and not to be taken seriously. Needless to say I didn't bring him up again...in order to pass...but...I always wondered about his critique of American foreign policy. Especially today...his seems to be more and more real in comparison to what we hear in the media today. What if the system is operating with a designed outcome in mind attempting to shape our outcome? What if the system is not free at all but controlled? If this is so then what is to be made of the American dream espousing freedom and rugged individualism. A sham...a lie...a play...what if we are errand boys sent by grocery clerks .....no-bo-dies....
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What if government and media cooperate to produce an propaganda machine in order to manipulate the opinions of the populace.
What did you dream? Its alright we told you what to dream.

Or is it unemployment?
Or is it underemployment?
Or is it governmental burearcracy?
Or is it the failure of seperate systems to commuicate effectivly?

Read America's "War on Terrorism" by Michel Chossudovsky

As for the Bin Laden reponse to the US smashing of al-Zawahri's face "fuck you asshole." Holy War my arse....

Earth warmest in at least 400 years, panel finds

Humour Me

I think I've figured myself out....I'm a self depreciating narcissist...I love to watch myself get beaten all day.

But seriously who else would remain in a region described as the arm pit of the world.....I always thought it seemed slightly south of the armpit myself.

You know your old when you point out the seven wonders of the modern world to your 10 year old son and he tells your they're all so old fashion ...just like you dad.

My weekend always consists of escaping me....usually this includes long lonely convesations with Captain Morgan and Jack Daniels.

I used to have a big ego...but it left me ....with my wallet one day ....and the hooker who forgot me chanined to a bed.

Yes it's fathers day...I went to see my doctor, asked him why I was such a pain in the ass...he sent me to a proctologist....I arrived there and the guy proceeded to don the gloves lubricant and associated tools....he checked my teeth and exclaimed ....yup just as I thought ...your born that way.

Paul McCartney is 64....and does his wife still love him? Apparently more so now that they're seperating and her limping ass is leaving with several million...thank you very much.

NASA is launching another trip despite the fact the ride is considered a problem with explosive issues. I guess its true NASA is an acronym Need Another Seven Astronauts.

Mercedes is being sued after some rich A-hole bought a 1.7 million dollar car that wont run. He says it's " $2 million of scrap metal" ...this guy is obviously reeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaly stupid because the entire car in made of carbon fiber which unfortunatly sparky.......isn't metal. This should be fun to watch ...it'll be a first class dick waving contest.

Australia is fighting an epidemic of poisonous Cane Toads. Whatever happened to firecrackers and children containing these warty little fucks. Environmentalists want to freeze them....FREEZE THEM? In Aust-fucking-tralia? Jesus Christ Help Us. Okay okay possibly if we can give the lil ones dry ice and gloves...maybe...just maybe.

The Frankfurt School

What I'm reading
Visions of Social Control by Stanley Cohen
chapters 14 and 16
Modern Social Theory by Ian Craib
Conflict Theory and The Frankfurt School
Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti
dry but it has its moments

What I'm listening to: NEWS -CBC then BBC- anything but American propaganda uh sorry I meant news

Just getting back from a guest speaker who was witness to the horrors of Rawanda. I really enjoyed the night ...some of the phrases he used were hauntingly captivating. Speaking on the problems of child soliders he described the trauma inflicted upon the young killers who "feel the trigger...(and witness) through crosshairs, with slowed digital clarity the exploding of a life." Phenomenal . The phrasing that is.

He described how in the post cold war reality "nations stumbled into a new era" ...makes me think of the point in Apocolypse Now when Kurtz asks "Are my methods unsound?" and Willard responds "I don't see any method at all, sir." How close can man get to madness before the whole show goes up in flames?
To assume it will end with a bang is so HOLLYWOOD....we'll all go out in a whimper...a long sustained iron gate moaning squeak...

and this from the chapter Visions of Order in the above mentioned Cohen text

"decayed zones of the inner city inhabited by the old, confused and ill dumped from their institutions and left to rot in broken down welfare hotels or exploited in private nursing homes; psychotics wandering the streets 'locked in or locked out' of dilapitated boarding houses, barely able to cash their welfare checks, the prey of street criminals and a source of nuisance and alarm to local residents too poor to leave; an increasing ecological seperation into 'deviant ghettos' , 'sewers of human misery', garbage dumps for the 'social junk' lost in the interstices of the city." I thought this sooooo sounds like Burroughs and sure enough ...who closes out the chapter. Damned poem .....I'm gonna post it again


A Thanksgiving Prayer
by William S. Burroughs

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream, To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen, feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind the own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the memories-- all right let's see your arms!

You always were a headache and you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

Arabic, Urdu, and Persian editions of The Trouble with Islam Today

Free on-line text THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM TODAY

Enjoying the Unnecessary Sedation?

Meaning is missing in the world...(this) does not imply that the world is void of meaning, but only that many a science is blind to it. V.Frankl

Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right. A.DiFranco

Alternative ideas, values, rules and actions ...(are) threats to what we feel loyalty to. J.M Charon

When you have total control over the media and the educational system ... scholarship is conformist. N.Chomsky

What is essential to life is only to forgo complacency. Kafka

There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. A.Camus

Questioning anothers motives violates one of the most respected taboos....E.Fromm

DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY

Hot talk on the world's hot spots

RCMP arrests 17, foiling alleged Ont. bomb plot

15 of 17 Ontario terror suspects appear in court

Jihad Cult and the Malleable Will of Lost Boys

BACKGROUND

Brainwashing, as a technique, has been used for centuries and is no mystery to psychologists. In this sense, brainwashing means involuntary re-education of basic beliefs and values. All people are being re-educated continually. New information changes one's beliefs. Everyone has experienced to some degree the conflict that ensues when new information is not consistent with prior belief. The experience of the brainwashed individual differs in that the inconsistent information is forced upon the individual under controlled conditions after the possibility of critical judgment has been removed by a variety of methods.

There is no question that an individual can be broken psychologically by captors with knowledge and willingness to persist in techniques aimed at deliberately destroying the integration of a personality. Although it is probable that everyone reduced to such a confused, disoriented state will respond to the introduction of new beliefs, this cannot be stated dogmatically.

PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN CONTROL AND REACTION TO CONTROL

There are progressive steps in exercising control over an individual and changing his behaviour and personality integration. The following five steps are typical of behaviour changes in any controlled individual:

1. Making the individual aware of control is the first stage in changing his behaviour. A small child is made aware of the physical and psychological control of his parents and quickly recognizes that an overwhelming force must be reckoned with. So, a controlled adult comes to recognize the overwhelming powers of the state and the im- personal, "incarcerative" machinery in which he is enmeshed. The individual recognizes that definite limits have been put upon the ways he can respond.

2. Realization of his complete dependence upon the controlling system is a major factor in the controlling of his behavior.The controlled adult is forced to accept the fact that food, tobacco,praise, and the only social contact that he will get come from the very interrogator who exercises control over him.

3. The awareness of control and recognition of dependence result in causing internal conflict and breakdown of previous patterns of behaviour. Although this transition can be relatively mild in the case of a child, it is almost invariably severe for the adult undergoing brainwashing. Only an individual who holds his values lightly can change them easily. Since the brainwasher-interrogators aim to have the individuals undergo profound emotional change, they force their victims to seek out painfully what is desired by the controlling individual. During this period the victim is likely to have a mental breakdown characterized by delusions and hallucinations.

4. Discovery that there is an acceptable solution to his problem is the first stage of reducing the individual's conflict. It is characteristically reported by victims of brainwashing that this discovery led to an overwhelming feeling of relief that the horror of internal conflict would cease and that perhaps they would not, after all, be driven insane. It is at this point that they are prepared to make major changes in their value-system. This is an automatic rather than voluntary choice. They have lost their ability to be critical.

5. Reintegration of values and identification with the controlling system is the final stage in changing the behaviour of the controlled individual. A child who has learned a new, socially desirable behaviour demonstrates its importance by attempting to adapt the new behaviour to a variety of other situations. Similar states in the brainwashed adult are pitiful. His new value-system, his manner of perceiving,organizing,and giving meaning to events, is virtually independent of his former value system. He is no longer capable of thinking or speaking in concepts other than those he has adopted. He tends to identify by expressing thanks to his captors for helping him see the light.Brainwashing can be achieved without using illegal means.Anyone willing to use known principles of control and reactions to control and capable of demonstrating the patience needed in raising a child can probably achieve successful brainwashing.

Six Conversion Techniques

Cults and human-potential organizations are always looking for new converts. To attain them, they must also create a brain-phase. And they often need to do it within a short space of time-a weekend, or maybe even a day. The following are the six primary techniques used to generate the conversion.

The meeting or training takes place in an area where participants are cut off from the outside world. This may be any place: a private home, a remote or rural setting, or even a hotel ballroom where the participants are allowed only limited bathroom usage. In human-potential trainings, the controllers will give a lengthy talk about the importance of "keeping agreements" in life. The participants are told that if they don't keep agreements, their life will never work. It's a good idea to keep agreements, but the controllers are subverting a positive human value for selfish purposes. The participants vow to themselves and their trainer that they will keep their agreements. Anyone who does not will be intimidated into agreement or forced to leave. The next step is to agree to complete training, thus assuring a high percentage of conversions for the organizations. They will USUALLY have to agree not to take drugs, smoke, and sometimes not to eat or they are given such short meal breaks that it creates tension. The real reason for the agreements is to alter internal chemistry, which generates anxiety and hopefully causes at least a slight malfunction of the nervous system, which in turn increases the conversion potential.

Before the gathering is complete, the agreements will be used to ensure that the new converts go out and find new participants. They are intimidated into agreeing to do so before they leave. Since the importance of keeping agreements is so high on their priority list, the converts will twist the arms of everyone they know, attempting to talk them into attending a free introductory session offered at a future date by the organization. The new converts are zealots. In fact, the inside term for merchandising the largest and most successful human-potential training is, "sell it by zealot!"

At least a million people are graduates and a good percentage have been left with a mental activation button that assures their future loyalty and assistance if the guru figure or organization calls. Think about the potential political implications of hundreds of thousands of zealots programmed to campaign for their guru.

Be wary of an organization of this type that offers follow-up sessions after the seminar. Follow-up sessions might be weekly meetings or inexpensive seminars given on a regular basis which the organization will attempt to talk you into taking-or any regularly scheduled event used to maintain control. As the early Christian revivalists found, long-term control is dependent upon a good follow-up system.

Alright. Now, let's look at the second tip-off that indicates conversion tactics are being used. A schedule is maintained that causes physical and mental fatigue. This is primarily accomplished by long hours in which the participants are given no opportunity for relaxation or reflection.

The third tip-off: techniques used to increase the tension in the room or environment.

Number four: Uncertainty. I could spend hours relating various techniques to increase tension and generate uncertainty. Basically, the participants are concerned about being "put on the spot" or encountered by the trainers, guilt feelings are played upon, participants are tempted to verbally relate their innermost secrets to the other participants or forced to take part in activities that emphasize removing their masks. One of the most successful human-potential seminars forces the participants to stand on a stage in front of the entire audience while being verbally attacked by the trainers. A public opinion poll, conducted a few years ago, showed that the number one most-fearful situation an individual could encounter is to speak to an audience. It ranked above window washing outside the 85th floor of an office building. So you can imagine the fear and tension this situation generates within the participants. Many faint, but most cope with the stress by mentally going away. They literally go into an alpha state, which automatically makes them many times as suggestible as they normally are. And another loop of the downward spiral into conversion is successfully effected.

The fifth clue that conversion tactics are being used is the introduction of jargon-new terms that have meaning only to the "insiders" who participate. Vicious language is also frequently used, purposely, to make participants uncomfortable.

The final tip-off is that there is no humor in the communications at least until the participants are converted. Then, merry-making and humor are highly desirable as symbols of the new joy the participants have supposedly "found."

I'm not saying that good does not result from participation in such gatherings. It can and does. But I contend it is important for people to know what has happened and to be aware that continual involvement may not be in their best interest.

Over the years, I've conducted professional seminars to teach people to be hypnotists, trainers, and counselors. I've had many of those who conduct trainings and rallies come to me and say, "I'm here because I know that what I'm doing works, but I don't know why." After showing them how and why, many have gotten out of the business or have decided to approach it differently or in a much more loving and supportive manner.

Many of these trainers have become personal friends, and it scares us all to have experienced the power of one person with a microphone and a room full of people. Add a little charisma and you can count on a high percentage of conversions. The sad truth is that a high percentage of people want to give away their power-they are true "believers"!

Cult gatherings or human-potential trainings are an ideal environment to observe first-hand what is technically called the "Stockholm Syndrome." This is a situation in which those who are intimidated, controlled, or made to suffer, begin to love, admire, and even sometimes sexually desire their controllers or captors.

But let me inject a word of warning here: If you think you can attend such gatherings and not be affected, you are probably wrong. A perfect example is the case of a woman who went to Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship to study Haitian Voodoo. In her report, she related how the music eventually induced uncontrollable bodily movement and an altered state of consciousness. Although she understood the process and thought herself above it, when she began to feel herself become vulnerable to the music, she attempted to fight it and turned away. Anger or resistance almost always assures conversion. A few moments later she was possessed by the music and began dancing in a trance around the Voodoo meeting house. A brain phase had been induced by the music and excitement, and she awoke feeling reborn. The only hope of attending such gatherings without being affected is to be a Buddha and allow no positive or negative emotions to surface. Few people are capable of such detachment.

Before I go on, let's go back to the six tip-offs to conversion. I want to mention the United States Government and military boot camp. The Marine Corps talks about breaking men down before "rebuilding" them as new men-as marines! Well, that is exactly what they do, the same way a cult breaks its people down and rebuilds them as happy flower sellers on your local street corner. Every one of the six conversion techniques are used in boot camp. Considering the needs of the military, I'm not making a judgement as to whether that is good or bad. IT IS A FACT that the men are effectively brainwashed. Those who won't submit must be discharged or spend much of their time in the brig.

Decognition Process

Once the initial conversion is effected, cults, armed services, and similar groups cannot have cynicism among their members. Members must respond to commands and do as they are told, otherwise they are dangerous to the organizational control. This is normally accomplished as a three-step Decognition Process.

Step One is ALERTNESS REDUCTION: The controllers cause the nervous system to malfunction, making it difficult to distinguish between fantasy and reality. This can be accomplished in several ways. POOR DIET is one; watch out for Brownies and Koolaid. The sugar throws the nervous system off. More subtle is the "SPIRITUAL DIET" used by many cults. They eat only vegetables and fruits; without the grounding of grains, nuts, seeds, dairy products, fish or meat, an individual becomes mentally "spacey." INADEQUATE SLEEP is another primary way to reduce alertness, especially when combined with long hours of work or intense physical activity. Also, being bombarded with intense and unique experiences achieves the same result.

Step Two is PROGRAMMED CONFUSION: You are mentally assaulted while your alertness is being reduced as in Step One. This is accomplished with a deluge of new information, lectures, discussion groups, encounters or one-to-one processing, which usually amounts to the controller bombarding the individual with questions. During this phase of decognition, reality and illusion often merge and perverted logic is likely to be accepted.

Step Three is THOUGHT STOPPING: Techniques are used to cause the mind to go "flat." These are altered-state-of-consciousness techniques that initially induce calmness by giving the mind something simple to deal with and focusing awareness. The continued use brings on a feeling of elation and eventually hallucination. The result is the reduction of thought and eventually, if used long enough, the cessation of all thought and withdrawal from everyone and everything except that which the controllers direct. The takeover is then complete. It is important to be aware that when members or participants are instructed to use "thought-stopping" techniques, they are told that they will benefit by so doing: they will become "better soldiers" or "find enlightenment."

There are three primary techniques used for thought stopping. The first is MARCHING: the thump, thump, thump beat literally generates self-hypnosis and thus great susceptibility to suggestion.

The second thought stopping technique is MEDITATION. If you spend an hour to an hour and a half a day in meditation, after a few weeks, there is a great probability that you will not return to full beta consciousness. You will remain in a fixed state of alpha for as long as you continue to meditate. I'm not saying this is bad-if you do it yourself. It may be very beneficial. But it is a fact that you are causing your mind to go flat. I've worked with meditators on an EEG machine and the results are conclusive: the more you meditate, the flatter your mind becomes until, eventually and especially if used to excess or in combination with decognition, all thought ceases. Some spiritual groups see this as nirvana-which is bullshit. It is simply a predictable physiological result. And if heaven on earth is non-thinking and non-involvement, I really question why we are here.

The third thought-stopping technique is CHANTING, and often chanting in meditation. "Speaking in tongues" could also be included in this category.

All three-stopping techniques produce an altered state of consciousness. This may be very good if YOU are controlling the process, for you also control the input. I personally use at least one self-hypnosis programming session every day and I know how beneficial it is for me. But you need to know if you use these techniques to the degree of remaining continually in alpha that, although you'll be very mellow, you'll also be more suggestible.
copyright Dick Sutphen

The above is simply a cut and paste production created with this http://pw1.netcom.com/~ncoic/brainwsh.htm and this
http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/brainwashing.htm

Click here for a history of Jihad