Noam Chomsky on Taming the Bewildered Herd

(The “crisis of democracy” in the 1960s gave birth to the Lewis Powell memo of 1971 which served as a blueprint for how they needed to retake control of America, and by that I mean the corporate and banking elites and the special class of their servants in politics and the media. From that was born the “think tanks” and the Libertarian Party and basically the need to instill the neoliberal ideology that would later permeate our society’s “special class, ie. the “Washington Consensus” )

Noam talks about how Walter Lippman defined modern “democracy” – “you need something to tame the bewildered herd (so they don’t cause trouble) and that is public relations or manufactured consent…. the media, the schools, the popular culture has to divide for the political class… it has to instill the proper beliefs.”

“and if the specialized class (politicians like Ron Paul, Clintons, Bush, Obama, ect. and media figures like Wolf Blitzer, Glenn Beck, Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, ect.) can come along and say “I will serve your interests” (to the elites) then they will be allowed to be part of that group…. that means they have to have instilled in them the beliefs and the doctrines that will serve the interests of private power. Unless they can master that skill they are not part of the specialized class.”

Part 1

“State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes, and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned by Hitler and by many others and it has been pursued to this day…. the Business community learned alot from the successes of the Creel Commission and creating the Red Scare and its aftermath and in fact the public relations industry underwent a huge expansion at that time” Noam Chomsky

The Vietnam Syndrome – the “sickly inhibitions against the use of military force”

Wikileaks Rest in Peace

Cryptome

The original Wikileaks initiative is dead, replaced by a bloated apparatus promising 260,000 cables at slower than a snail’s pace. At the rate of 20 cables a day it will take 13,000 days to finish — some 35 years.

The original merits of Wikileaks have been lost in its transformation into a publicity and fund-raising vehicle for Julian Assange as indicated in the redesign website which billboards him.

Its once invaluable, steady stream of documents, packaged in its own, no-frills format, is now a tiny dribble of documents apparently regulated by a compact with a few main stream media which amplify the material well beyond its significance. Days go by when nothing new is offered except outpouring of manufactured news about Assange and a slew of trivial news and bombastic commentaries for and against the initiative.

“T.” Carter’s Video Resurgence and the Gatekeepers of the Pentagon

by Scott Creighton

There seems to be a huge effort going on right now to frame the entire question of what happened at the Pentagon on Sept. 11th between two artificially opposed positions:

1. (CIT) – “Fly Over” Theory – Endorsed by the father of modern drones – (CIT actually created their own “Hit List” of people who dared question their all important “13 witnesses” (all of whom work for either the Pentagon or the Department of the Army…go figure))

2. (Gregg Roberts’) – “Believe the Official Story” Theory – endorsed by Donald Rumsfeld (no link needed)

When you get down to it, these aren’t as opposed as you might first think. One says that Flight 77 “flew over” the Pentagon and a bomb or something blew up just before they got there and the other says Flight 77 flew into the Pentagon, even though evidence doesn’t suggest that. Nor does logic for that matter.

Do you see it?  “Flight 77” . In both cases, Flight 77 has to be what people saw at the Pentagon.  And that is the entire point. And that is why someone posted up an old video of a highly questionable ‘witness” over at 9/11 Blogger. Seems that even unbelievable testimony supporting the official story of 9/11 is better than none at all, at our friendly neighborhood “Truth” site.

American Everyman Extending Our Reach

I don’t really like talking about the website itself and I don’t  spend much time worrying about stats, but I saw an article over at WTCdemolition and thought I would look into how our numbers were doing in comparison to other Truth and anti-globalization websites. Turns out, American Everyman is certainly on an upswing. Thought you would like to know.

(see stats after the break)

NATO Trains Afghan Army To Guard Asian Pipeline

(In Aug of 2008 I wrote about the Vulcans Path to the Caspian Sea Basin. The article detailed one of the great untold stories of 9/11; how control of oil and liquid natural gas reserves factored into the need to invade and occupy Afghanistan before the invasion of Iraq. This story also dealt with the severely under-reported fact that Condi Rice had the plans for the invasion of Afghanistan finalized and on President Bush’s desk just two days prior to the “surprise” attacks on 9/11. In 2005, Condi Rice killed a deal between India, Pakistan, and Iran (called the “Peace Pipeline”) which would have effectively created a lasting peace in that region. Now they have a new deal which will potentially make billions for Chevron, the company Condi Rice worked for prior to her joining the Bush foreign policy planning team (the Vulcans) in 1999 and 2000 (before Bush was “elected”).   Condi helped make billions for Chevron and like Cheney and Halliburton, she never forgot them once she got into office. They never forgot her either.

You want to know why Obama had to surge the war in Afghanistan, the “Good War’, and why we will not leave no matter what the American public wants?  Take a look at the maps below and read the important article from Global Research. This is your “war on terror”… this is your 9/11. This is your “CHANGE”.  In the planning since the Clinton administration, the Trans Afghan Pipeline (now TAPI) will be realized, no matter how many civilians and soldiers have to die in the process.)

by Rick Rozoff, Global Research

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On December 11 the presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan and the energy minister of India met in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat to bring to fruition fifteen years of planning by interests in the United States to bring natural gas from the Caspian Sea to the energy-needy nations of South and East Asia.

Presidents Hamid Karzai, Asif Ali Zardari and Gurbangulu Berdimuhammedov along with Indian Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora signed agreements – an Inter-Government Agreement and the Gas Pipeline Transmission Agreement – to construct a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. The initials of the first three countries involved lend themselves to the project’s acronym: TAP, now known as TAPI.

The Inter-Government Agreement “enjoins the four governments to provide all support including security for the pipeline.” [1]

The next day, Wahidullah Shahrani, Afghanistan’s Minister of Mines and Industries, confirmed that “Afghanistan will deploy about 7,000 troops to secure a major transnational gas pipeline slated to run through some of the most dangerous parts of the war-torn country.” [2]

Speaking at a press conference in the Afghan capital, Shahrani added: “This huge project is very important for Afghanistan. Five thousand to seven thousand security forces will be deployed to safeguard the pipeline route….We will also keep an eye on the security situation….If more troops are needed, we will take action.” [3]

[read the rest, here]

Empire – Hollywood and the war machine

Ron Paul Advocates Demolition of Social Security

by Scott Creighton

G*ddamn, I hate Ron Paul.

Let’s get this straight; Ron Paul is nothing more than a kinder/gentler face for the Chicago School neoliberalization program supported by the neocons on one side and the Clitonista/Obama New Dems on the other.

He is yet another flavor of  the oligarchical corporatist tools, who fully expected his son to be handed a seat in the senate, by birthright, and therefore a government paycheck for the rest of his life.

Now Ron is helping to bolster the neoliberal calls for the pending doom of Social Security while he himself knows full well just how nice his government pension entitlement check is going to be for him and his corporatist kid.

Ron Paul is a pathetic fraud. Let’s hope this opens the eyes of some of his sleep-walking supporters.

Globalist Hillary Clinton: More Prison Time for Khodorkovsky Could Be “Bad for Business”

by Scott Creighton

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russian oil oligarch, has been found guilty of looting 200 tons of oil from a company he once owned, Yukos, and then laundering the proceeds from that theft from 1998-2003.  When this trial started, Khodorkovsky was already serving an 8 year sentence for tax evasion from back in 2005, but he was hoping to get out in a little while in 2011. The typical free market globalists like Hillary Clinton are upset because they think holding billionaire thieves accountable for their actions sets a bad example and it certainly makes the investors over in Wall Street and Goldman Sachs a little nervous.

From Huxley to Orwell

Chris Hedges explains how we have been sliding toward Orwell’s dystopian state.

… Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse. 

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” Orwell wrote in “1984.”  “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” …  Chris Hedges

[read the entire article, here]

Kosovo: Europe’s Mafia State. Hub of the EU-NATO Drug Trail

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Accused of Running Human Organ, Drug Trafficking Cartel

(“captives” were “‘filtered’ for their suitability as donors, based on sex, age, health conditions and ethnic origin. “We heard numerous references to captives’ not merely having been handed over, but also having been ‘bought’ and ‘sold,’” the special rapporteur told the Times.”

“Some of the guards told investigators,” the Times reports, “that a few captives understood what was about to happen and ‘pleaded with their captors to be spared the fate of being chopped into pieces’.”

On Dec. 15th of this year, I wrote an article about this very same topic which also detailed a very recent trip Hilary Clinton made to Kosovo to show her support of the criminal regime who have committed these atrocities.

… He (Bill Clinton) and I and President Obama and all Americans have been proud to stand with Kosovo through the years. We are honored to be your friends and your partners and we are impressed by all that you have achieved in the past few years. So my being here is a real vote of confidence, Mr. Prime Minister, in what you are doing and in the future that you are attempting to chart.” Hillary Clinton, Oct. 13, 2010)

by Tom Burghardt, Global Research

In another grim milestone for the United States and NATO, the Council of Europe (COE) released an explosive report last week, “Inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo.”

The report charged that former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) boss and current Prime Minister, Hashim Thaçi, “is the head of a ‘mafia-like’ Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe,” The Guardian disclosed.

Journalism of Appeasement. Corruption, Smoke and Mirrors

(A must read)

by David DeGraw, Global Research

Here’s a brief summation of my recent reporting:

If we continue to let our politicians and wealthy members of society live in comfort, free from the consequences of their actions, we are complicit in our own demise.

Our country is so overrun with corruption, we cannot remain passive and expect things to get any better.

The economy is propped up by smoke and mirrors and will inevitably collapse. Without immediately breaking up the banks and holding the thieves accountable, we will continue on our downward spiral with increasingly severe and devastating consequences.

These are extremely unpleasant truths that we are now forced to confront. We have to act now. If you are not calling for revolution or organizing, you are either unaware of what’s happening around you, horribly naïve or a fascist sympathizer.

In response to statements like those above, I’ve been exchanging emails with colleagues (journalists and news editors) who have become “uncomfortable” with my reporting style and been saying some variation of the following: “You’re being too radical. This is too extreme for us to publish.”

While I appreciate their opinions, I want to make something 100% clear. I am fully aware that these words are harsh, and may turn off some people. However, in extreme times, telling the truth will make you sound extreme. Ultimately, I don’t mind if you think I sound “too extreme,” I don’t care if I make people “uncomfortable,” or if, in your opinion, I’ve become “too radical.” Try telling that to the 52 million Americans who are now living in poverty. Tell that to the millions of American families who have lost their homes and jobs. Tell that to the 59 million people who can’t afford health insurance. Tell that to the overwhelming majority of the population who are stressed out, living paycheck to paycheck, buried in debt they will never get out of and desperately struggling to make ends meet.

Try telling that to all the people who have emailed me explaining their dire situations due to this economic crisis. Tell that to all the people I personally know who have taken major pay cuts.

I will not participate in the journalism of appeasement.

Friendly

(H/T What Really Happened)

Israeli Foreign Minister: Peace Deal is “Impossible” and “Forbidden”

(Many of us knew what this racist zealot was going to be about when he first got the job. And here we are, the rest of the world ready to recognize a Palestinian state, a good first step to lasting peace, and the U.S. congress and the racists in Israel’s government see that as “forbidden”.  Prepare to see wholesale slaughter in Gaza paid for by your tax dollars, while Obama’s “death panels” condemn poor people who are no longer healthy enough to work for WalMart.)

by Daniel Estrin, Associated Press

Israel’s foreign minister said Sunday a peace deal with the Palestinians is impossible under current conditions and that Israel should pursue a lesser deal instead — a concept the Palestinians swiftly rejected.

The latest diplomatic spat between the two sides came as violence along the Israel-Gaza border simmered. After days of accelerated Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel and Israeli airstrikes in response, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians on the border early Sunday.

Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, told a conference of Israeli diplomats that instead of a full peace deal, Israel should seek a long-term, interim agreement on security and economic matters. Palestinians have consistently rejected that approach.

“It’s not only that it is impossible” to reach an overall agreement, he said. “It is simply forbidden.”

[read the rest, here]

Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir

(Just like the formation of the Austerity Commission, when the neoliberals in the Obama administration can’t get their agenda passed through the congress, they just pass it via presidential decree.  The “death panels” are back.)

by Robert Pear, New York Times

When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.

[read the rest, here]

Julian Assange Gets Another Payday

by Scott Creighton

Julian Assange is looking to hit pay-dirt once again as reports of a new book deal with a subsidiary of Random House are surfacing.

“The book deal is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $1.5 million and he’s expected to deliver the manuscript in March.” Huffington Post

Of course, he’s only doing it for all of us.

“According to SBS, an Australian news outlet, he told Britain’s Sunday Times that, “I don’t want to write this book, but I have to.”"

“I have already spent 200,000 pounds for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat,” he added.

It was recently announced that Assange is drawing a salary of roughly $86,000 per year from WikiLeaks. Huffington Post

What a reluctant hero that Julian Assange is, huh? How noble of him to make the ultimate sacrifice by allowing a globalist publication firm to pay him 1.5 million dollars for attaching his name to a ghost written biography. Will this guy’s heroic actions never cease?

Here’s a partial list of other authors that Julian’s publishing house has deals with..

Thomas Kean co-chair 9/11 Commision Report

Lee H. Hamilton co-chair 9/11 Commision Report

Bill Clinton