But, you, reply, is that what most people think? Wouldn't they answer those questions the same way as I do? Well, the answer to that is yes. But, we would remind you that just because the majority of people might believe something to be true, doesn't make it true. All it means is that you and most of your neighbors are suffering from a mass delusion-- or put, more bluntly, you are brainwashed. So the question is, really how did you get this way? How did you come to believe things like those statements in the first questions were true. ``Well, I heard it on... Well, I saw it on...Well, I read it in...'' You needn't bother finishing those statements; we can do it for you: you, and your neighbors were told, read, or saw the ``truth'' by the media.
The American media, which is so proud of calling itself ``free'' and has been patting itself on it back for the wonderful job it has done for all us during and after Sept. 11, is the largest, most expensive mass brainwashing machine ever assembled in human history. It is a machine that so completely brainwashes the hundreds of millions of American people that the Nazi's infamous propaganda minister Josef Goebbels would be envious.
Here are the simple facts of the Sept. 11, the essential facts. According to Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche, whose assessment is shared by many competent specialists on terrorism in this country and around the world, what took place was not a terrorist attack, but strategic, covert special-operation organized to have the appearance of a ``terrorist'' attack. Mr. LaRouche and others concur that both its scope, and the extent of the cover-up and misdirection, that such operation could not have been organized by any Arab terrorist networks or terrorist cells, or by an Arab or Middle Eastern state, or any combination of the above; it had to be organized from within the United States, with the participation and connivance of a rogue network within the Anglo-American intelligence and establishment.
As with any such covert-special operation, there is a psychological warfare component intended to maximize the effectiveness against a targetted enemy, to confuse that enemy and misdirect him. In the case of the Sept. 11 operation, the targetted enemy is the population of the United States and its constitutional government. The ``psywar'' component of the operation is being carried out by the American media machine, with the intent of those behind the ongoing operation-- a coup against our constitutional government-- to brainwash the American people.
Does that mean that the leaderships of the American media are involved in the operation; no, it doesn't work that way. As EIR has explained and documented in a 1997 special report, the U.S. media is controlled and run as a cartel by the Anglo-American establishment. As such, it routinely serves the interest of that establishment, reporting what it wants and suppressing whit it doesn't want reported, or slanting reporting to conceal reality. Thus, the media's performance before, during and after Sept. 11 could be prediscounted by those who planned the operation, so as to become a feature of it; it were merely required to insert certain specific ``psyops'' content into this media brainwashing apparatus for it to be spread far and wide with the desired effects on you and your neighbors.
The brainwashing methods are relatively simple and classic. First, use the terror itself to put people into a state of shock, making them more susceptible to suggestion. Then resort to the ``Big Lie'' technique to hammer home repeatedly your psywar message--those affirmative answers to the questions we first asked. And most importantly, lie by suppressing all counter-evidence, by refusing to report anything that might point to the assessment shared by Mr. LaRouche and others: the cover-up. All this has been done, along with initial softening of the population to the mass delusional suggestion of the enemy image and the alleged capabilities and motivations of the so-called terrorists, prior to the launching of the attack itself.
Don't be so hasty in dismissing the possibility of your own brainwashing. The enemy knows your profile and uses it. Doesn't that make you a bit mad-- maybe for the right reasons, for the first time in a few weeks.
Our report below is designed to give you a view from inside this brainwashing process, to see how it has worked on you and your neighbors. And, while we can't yet say who precisely is behind what was done to this country-- is still being done-- we can show you how they think ablout brainwahsing and use your weaknesses against you.
Before we can discuss the brainwashing operation itself, we provide a little brackground on the use of terror against mass civiliam populations. Not surprisingly, this pioneered by the brainwashers of the Anglo-American establishment.
As commentators on the scene at ``Ground Zero'' of the World Trade Center attack Sept. 11 surveyed the devastation, they reached for metaphors to describe the incredible scene. ``It looks like Dresden,'' said one, referring to the firebombing of that city by the Allies ion 1944..
Dresden had no military value as a target. For centuries, it had been a center of German cultural heritage--a heritage that had everything to do with positive developments in human civilization, and nothing to do with the Nazi disease that had been imposed on Germany by the Anglo-American financial élite. Dresden was chosen for destruction as an act of terrorism, directed, not against the Nazis, per se, but the German people.
The firebombing of Dresden, creating a raging inferno of destruction that slaughtered more that 100,000 human beings, was conceived and directed by a group of social psychiatrists at the Strategic Bombing Survey, affiliated with the Special Operations Command of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). This group was effectively overseen by the head of the British Psychological Warfare Directorate, Brig. Gen. John Rawlings Rees, the director the Tavistock Clinic in London, which, since the 1920s, had served as a center of psychological warfare operations of the British Empire.
The team at the Strategic Bombing Survey, which included a host of U.S.-based Tavistock operatives, such as Kurt Lewin, Rensis Likert, and Margaret Mead, theorized that the terror inflicted on the German population through the ``message of Dresden'' would break their will to fight, leaving them fearful, frightened and disorganized; they projected that it would have a lasting effect on Germany, removing that nation from among the great states of Europe, making it a permanently psychologically scarred entity. The German people, they argued, would be made to realize ``all that is German'' could be wiped away, all of its culture and history, in an instant, as it were, by powers who would oppose an assertive future Germany.
In his 1941 book, Time Perspective and Morale, Kurt Lewin described the psychology behind the use of this terror tactic for mass effect:
``One of the main techniques for breaking morale through a `strategy of terror' consists in exactly this tactic--keep the person hazy as to where he stands and what just he may expect. If, in addition, frequent vacillations between severe disciplinary measures and promises of good treatment, together with the spreading of contradictory news, make the cognitive structure of this situation utterly unclear, then the individual may cease to know when a particular plan would lead toward or away from his goal. Under these conditions, even those individuals who have definite goals and are ready to take risks will be paralyzed with severe inner conflicts in regard to what to do.''As the pilots and their crews came to realize what they had done--the creation of a raging inferno, burning civilian targets and civilians--many returned to their bases horrified. At the instruction of the psyops warriors, the crews had not been fully briefed on the mission, so that they might not balk at carrying such inhuman tactics out. Now, they were greeted by teams of psychologists and others, who would profile their responses to the terror they had unleashed; they were told, as the later crews that dropped, unncessarily, atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, that it would ``shorten the war.''
As one former intelligence officer remarked decades later, ``we killed for pure terror, slaughtered people as a terrorist would. And, it had no effect on shortening the war. In fact, it seemed to help rally the German people to the Hitler government. The fools who designed this mission probably extended the war'' (emphasis added).
The attack on the U.S. Sept. 11, in particular the WTC attack, was designed for a similar psywar brainwashing effect.
The Sept. 24 issue of The New Yorker, writing about the attack on the WTC and Pentagon, comments that according to ``defense experts,'' the Sept. 11 strike ``was clearly an example of what military strategists call `psyops'; that is, a brand of warfare whose aim is not to disable military targets but to sap the overall will of a nation and its people.''
The article goes on to quote from a 1999 paper by military strategist and analyst Joseph Cyrulik of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., ``Asymmetric Warfare and the Threat to the American Homeland'':
``By killing and wounding people, damaging and destroying their homes and communities, disrupting their jobs and economic livelihoods and undermining their confidence and sense of security, an enemy can inflict pain to the point that people demand a change in their government's policies.Cyrulik is part of a network of ``thinkers'' who seek to change all military doctrine to meet alleged 21st Century threats; in so doing, this network wants to elevate psyops, including ``covert warfare'' such as assassination; while we can't say that such people are directly responsible for what occurred Sept. 11, their assumptions about strategy, tactics, and the elevated value of psychological warfare, as well as the misdirection involved in their ascribing powers to ``terrorist organization'' or ``rogue states'' that they clearly don't have fits nicely into the overall operation.``Used at the right time and place ... an attack could destroy the people's faith in their government, their military, and themselves. It could become a decisive attack against the political will of an entire populace.''
There are new methods, not available at the time of the Dresden attack, for maximizing the psychological effects of a terror campaign that parallel standard brainwashing techniques. One involves the repetition of terrifying images, the kind that would make a person recoil, and then compelling that person to continue viewing them. Such terrifying images weaken the ability of the mind to reason, making it more susceptible to suggestion and manipulation.
In the hours following the attack on the World Trade Center, every television media outlet in the United States broadcast and rebroadcast, again and again, the shots of the plane hitting the tower, from all conceivable angles, and then, the shots of the two towers collapsing. It was easily the most terrifying real-life image that most Americans had ever seen.
A population induced into a state of terror and shock was then bombarded with suggestion: images started to appear, the mugshot-like photos of the alleged perpetrators, and the image of the ``evil mastermind'' behind the deed, Osama bin Laden.
And, you still believe that you weren't brainwashed?
``God, this is just like a movie,'' exclaimed CBS anchor Dan Rather as the first of the World Trade Center towers collapsed. ``Only, it's the real thing.''Did you have the sense, as you were witnessing the horror of the TTC attack, that you, too, had seen this before. You probably had-- and that is part of the brainwashing operation.
In the last five years, there have been at least a half-dozen movies, whose plots have centered on a terrorist attack on the United States. Hollywood statisticians have estimated that these have been viewed, both in theatrical and video release, by more than 100 million people. While some of these feature films have rather fantastic scenarios involving bizarre conspiracies, in the most recent period they have portrayed ``Arabs'' or ``Muslim fundamentalists'' behind the terrorist assaults.
Each of these latter films has some ``expert'' advisor, usually a ``former counterterrorism expert'' and in some cases, someone who has worked in the military. While it would be a leap to say that the movie-production companies or the ``experts'' are necessarily witting accomplices in the current plot, the movies, with their ``steered'' scripts helped people believe that ``Arab'' terrorists might be capable of what was done on Sept. 11.
Long before there was television, images were placed, for ``playback'' in America's memory banks-- first by the print media, and then, starting early in this century with the first of the real mass media, the movies. Hollywood is a component of the Anglo-American media cartel, a point made more obvious by recent creation of ``entertainment congolmerates'' through mergers and acquisitions. Thus, literally a handful of companies with interlocking boards comprised of people within the Anglo-American establishment controls all of what we see in the multiplexes, on television, in the print media, and, more lately, on the Internet.
As movies were becoming a truly mass media phenomena, the Anglo-American commentator Walter Lippmann described their power, along with the popwer of media generally, in shaping ``public opinion''-- what you and your neighbors think. In his 1921 ``handbook'' on the mass manipulation of the public mind, Public Opinion, Lippmann, who had been trained by among others Tavistock's Rees at the British propaganda operation in World War I, writes in his introductory chapter, ``The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads'':
``Public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them.... The pictures inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes and relationships, are their opinions. Those pictures acted on by groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion with capital letters...The picture inside [the head] so often misleads men in their dealings with the world outside.''Somewhere in your memory banks, were planted the ``pictures in your head'' of the WTC attack. New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane writes in the magazine's Sept. 24 issue,
``How often have we listened to these words [since Sept. 11]. The statement of fact: `The worst terrorist bombing since Oklahoma City.' The promise: `Make no mistake about it--we will hunt down the enemy, we will find the enemy, and we will kill the enemy.' The caution: `You can't fight a war against an enemy you can't see.' And the ominous look ahead: `This is a time of war; the fact that it is inside our border means that it is a new kind of war.' We have learned such sentiments like a script; that we have heard it again and again [in the days since Sept. 11] has not diminished the sternness with which we have given our assent.The plot of that movie involves a network of ``Arab'' terrorist cells, which commit acts of increasingly violent intensity, against civilian targets in New York City. Video clips of President Clinton commenting on the attacks launched, by his Administration, against the networks of Osama bin Laden are spliced into the movie footage. As the terrorists wreak more havoc and kill more people, New York City is placed under martial law; all people who even look Arab are rounded up and placed in internment camps, even as the violence continues.``Just one problem: it is a script. All the lines quoted come from `The Siege,' a 1998 thriller directed by Edward Zwick.''
In the end, the movie becomes a sermon on how to moderate attacks on the constitution and on ethnic profiling of Americans, while the nation goes on to fight the foreign, ``Arab''-terrorist enemy.
When ``The Siege'' opened in November 1999, it was greeted with protests from Arab-Americans charging that it was a blatant, anti-Arab propaganda film ``that portrays Arabs and Muslims as an homogenous, threatening mass,'' according the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. For this promotion of the ``clash of civilizations,'' the ADC labelled the film, produced by Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox, ``dangerous and incendiary.''
Despite such protests, and relatively poor reviews, the movie sold several score millions of dollars worth of tickets and has done well in its video release. In remarking how successful to movie brainwashing effort has been, the Lane noted that the majority of Americans reacted to those events with the same kind of unreasoned emotion that they express at the multiplex or in the home theaters:
``And the exclamations from below, from the watchers of the skies caught on video, as they see the aircraft slice into the side of the tower: where have you heard those expressions most recently--the wows, the whoohs, the `holy shits'--if not in the movie theaters, and even on your own blaspheming tongue.''Hollywood, through films like the ``The Siege'' and ``Die Hard,'' writes Lane, has provided a ``sensory education ... fed to a hungry public.''
In the days following the attack, President Bush's approval rating shot up to above 90%, and stayed there, especially after his nationally televised address Sept. 13. Following the speech, a CNN commentator observed that President's approval was so high because he was behaving the way Americans expected him to: ``Like the President in `Independence Day' [a blockbuster movie about an attack on Washington and the U.S. by aliens] or the guy from the West Wing [a popular television show].''
And, you haven't been brainwashed?
Take a close look at the image of Osama bin Laden, as it appears on the television screens, in this time of a new ``war.'' In psyops terms, bin Laden has become the image of the enemy--the picture that a targetted population keeps in mind as the person, or, specifically, the type of person it is fighting. There is the swarthy complexion, the beard, the burnoose, the weapons in hand--it is all there, all as expected, an ideal subject for the projected rage and hatred of an injured nation. No matter that bin Laden is not the ``evil mastermind'' behind what has occurred.
In the days and weeks leading up to the attack, media-watch organizations reported that the major U.S. television news outlets, including the cable networks CNN and Fox News, devoted an inordinate amount of what passes for their ``international'' coverage to bin Laden, describing him as a ``terrorist mastermind'' or ``terrorist controller,'' almost always accompanied by a photo or video clips.
But his creation by the media as ``terrorist mastermind'' doesn't really begin there. To understand what happened, one needs to look at a nearly 30-year span of news reporting that led us to this point where some character, a former and current asset of U.S.-British-Israeli intelligence networks, operating from ``caves'' and other bases in one of the most remote and isolated areas of the world, has become ``Public Enemy Number One'' of the United States.
Look at the bin Laden enemy image as a morphing process that begins with the television image of the Black September terrorists of the 1972 Olympics. Then, continue to the 1973 images of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat; later, there are the images of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni and the fanatic mullahs.
Think of someone in Hollywood central casting trying to find a person to portray the terrorist archetype, given these past figures and images; and a filthy rich, almost mystical cleric type (although he holds no religious position), who looks like a morph of ``enemies'' Arafat and Khomeni, gets the ``part.''
The population has also been pre-conditioned to accept the ``storyline'' that terrorists who would do such things as took place Sept. 11 must be Arab and/or Muslim fanatics, as thousands of televised hours of misreporting has repeated. Arab organizations in this country report polling results showing that, by a large margin, Americans believe, even without supporting evidence, that any act of terrorism has ``Arab'' origins and ``Arab'' perpetrators.
As one intelligence source said this week, within minutes of the World Trade Center attack, Americans had decided that this was done by ``Arab terrorists'' connected to ``terrorist mastermind'' bin Laden. ``They didn't need to be told to think this,'' said the source. ``They had already been conditioned to believe it.''
Are such people not ``brainwashed?''
We are told that our press is ``free'' But isn't that a lie? How ``free'' can it be if the most important event of our time is lied about, at almost every turn, misreported; if the truth is nowhere to be found from among the smorgasboard of media news outlets that comprise our glorious, ``free press.''
In Nazi Germany, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels boasted that the press was free to report whatever it wanted. But that press was ``coordinated'' through the operation of a ``press trust,'' that encompassed all media. The Nazis planted stories in the press to suit their ends, and the trust dutifully reported them, with various spins that might give the appearance that not all media were receiving information from the same spiggot.
While Americans might find it hard to believe, there is no practical difference between the propaganda operation of the Nazi press trust and the Anglo-American media and entertainment cartel.
It is not hard to slant the coverage of any event, to suit almost any purpose-- as long as that purpose fits the needs of those elites that control the media. All it takes is the planting of a few key items of content, which are then flushed down through the media sewer pipes. Before you know it, the poor citizen is deluged. In a certain sense, the Nazi operation was less insidious, because it was more overt; only fools would fail to realize that they were being fed the ``line'' by Goebbels and his crew. Here, the appearance of choice, the appearance of a flood of information, confuses the average citizen into believing that he must be getting the truth, from somewhere.
But even cursory content analysis of all or most sources of news, especially the major television providers of the same, shows that the general content line from all sources is basically the same. The has been the case, for example, in coverage of Lyndon LaRouche and his policies; in major media, the coverage of LaRouche has followed the line dictated by the late Lazard Frères-linked Katharine Graham of the Washington Post to never cover LaRouche, unless it is to slander him. Similarly, the decision to black out the present global depression and financial collapse. While there may be no formal meetings among the controllers of the media cartel, where such policy is laid out, as is the case with other cartel operations, a policy consensus, nonetheless, ruthlessly enforces a content line on what is reported.
In periods of crisis like the current one, however, some of the controls become more visible; less is left to chance.
It has been reported by some sources, that within a few hours of the Sept. 11 attacks, Executive Orders were issued that put the U.S. media under effective wartime censorship. That is not to say that government auditors of news reporting actually issued orders censuring reports; it is to say that they moved quickly to block any reporting that might have gone away from the official ``line.''
(There was also coordination on the extent of coverage as well. It was reported that all broadcast media were given the recommendation to cease normal programming in favor of 24 hour coverage of the ``Terrorist attack on the United States'' and ``America at War,'' as the ``ID logos'' that appeared on all the networks. It is also reliably reported, that the White House and National Security operatives participated in the decision to cancel all major sporting events.
(The television networks claim that this was done at great sacrifice of their advterizing revenues. But even that is a lie: There are reports that they intend to write off much of what they did as ``public service;'' and meanwhile, the viewership of such sewers as CNN and Fox News more than quadrupled and have stayed way up. Since the major network viewership didn't decline, they have apparently taken the viewers away from such things as the ``all cooking channel.'' Sic transit gloria mundi.)
What this translates into, we have been told, is that a muzzle has been placed on government sources, and that all information coming out about the attacks and the investigation, is under top-down control. This is understood by those who control the news reporting of the major media outlets, who have thus submitted to a voluntary censorship.
And you of course have managed to understand the truth in this brainwashing environment? As they say, ``Give me a break.''
There was a brief interval, that morning of Sept. 11, as the great brainwashing machine allowed for the visual impact of the terrorizing message that it portrayed to sink in, before the floodgates were opened for the talking heads to proclaim whom we should wage war against.
If it appeared to some that no matter which channel--broadcast or cable--you tuned to in those first hours, you saw the same dozen or so talking heads, you weren't mistaken; this has been confirmed by various media watch outfits. For example, one media-watch organization tallied more than a dozen appearances by former CIA Director James Woolsey in the first few days after the attack, each repeating the message about the need to wage war against Iran, Iraq and anyone else who sponsored the likes of bin Laden. An only slightly less strident Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) appeared numerous times; we lost count on Henry Kissinger. This vast recycling machine of propaganda for war has continued.
As the media watch group, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) stated, in the wake of Sept. 11, what little hope that the media might present an unbiased account of what happened, that it might resist the drive for an ill-defined war, went out the window. FAIR, in several articles and reports, said that the print and broadcast media issued emotional tirades for war, echoing what they believed to be the sentiment of the American people; in so doing, there were no contrary views presented, and, in effect, Americans still have no clear idea about what happened, or exactly what the Bush Administration is proposing to do to protect them from future terrorist threats.
Look at these following selected examples, which could be amplified by many more:
One of those ``inconvenient facts'' was the well-documented involvement of U.S. ``special ops'' people, and the Brzezinski crowd, and later Ollie North and the Bush people, with bin Laden, dating back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which amounted to the biggest ``state sponsorship'' of terrorism, or at least sponsorship by a then-dominant faction of our government and intelligence community. FAIR and other media watch groups report that almost no one mentioned these ``inconvenient'' matters, amidst the vast flow of war propaganda, and if they did, it was only to lie that it was a policy that had long since been abandoned.
Similarly, much attention was given to reports about FBI and other agencies work in putting together the ``conspiracy'' behind the attack. To this date, no one in the major media outlets of the United States has mentioned that there is even a possibility of involvement of U.S. elements. Instead, the reporting has focussed on a combination of ``spade work'' on clues and leads, as well as, alleged connections to the bin Laden networks. FAIR remarked on such coverage, saying that the shots of bin Laden and his camps gave the impression that there had been more than circumstantial evidence linking them to attacks. The only proof offered was from ``intelligence leaks'' coming from the wartime propaganda apparatus created by the Executive Order or from assertions made by the talking heads and other ``experts.''
The only characteristic, universal to all the coverage, is the cover-up of any possible trail leading to a domestic source for the control of the terrorism.
Is all reporting being so ``coordinated and steered?'' It is clear that some of the wackos like Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, a particularly vile character, are simply being given free reign to mouth their brand of lunacy.
On Sept. 17, he demanded that, if the Taliban does not turn over bin Laden, ``the U.S. should bomb Afghan infrastructure to rubble--the airport, the power plants, their water facilities, and the roads.|...
``This is a very primitive country. And taking out their ability to exist day to day will not be hard. Remember, the people of any country are responsible for the government that they have. The Germans were responsible for Hitler. The Afghans are responsible for the Taliban. We should not target civilians. But if they don't rise up against their government, they starve, period.''He went to advocate, in that broadcast and others, to make the ``Iraqi population suffer another round of intense pain'' and to blockade Libya from all food supplies: ``Let them eat sand.''
As is typical with a ``grey psyops'' propaganda campaign, the most extreme ravings are played off against those only slightly less lunatic to make the latter appear sane. Thus, an O'Reilly makes a Woolsey look like a sober analyst as he calls for a war to take out governments that support terrorism, and for ``careful'' and ``calculated'' escalating response against bin Laden.
To hold people's attention, to keep them on ``message,'' it were necessary to keep them in a highly emotional state. To do this, there was a steady stream of stories about the grief of affected victims, about the courage of rescue workers and those who perished, an shots of average citizens grieving. While the courage and grief are real, the constant bombardment of them is brainwashing condtioning. If it weren't done, you'd have, after a few days, turned off CNN and the ``news'' coverage.
And neither you or your neighbors have been taken in by this?
Lost amid the war hysteria, or more precisely ``spun'' inside of it, is the coverup of what would otherwise biggest story of the day: the fullscale crash and blowout of the financial markets. The markets, at last look had plunged nearly 20% since Wall Street reopened Sept. 17. A fall that precipitous is normally called a ``crash,'' ensuing widespread panic, not only among traders and brokers, but among the general population. But in the two weeks of this crash, not one commentator on a major network has used the term! And we are told, it is our patriotic duty to have faith in the eventual recovery of both the markets and the economy. ``We can't let the terrorists defeat us and bring our economy down,'' said financial commentator Louis Ruckeyser on his televised weekly economic show.
As Lyndon LaRouche has stated, the crash would have occurred anyway, given the bankrupt state of world financial system, even without the Sept. 11 events. However, now the financial analysts who appear on the television news and in the print media are universally blaming most, if not all of what happened, on ``Osama bin Laden.'' This was to be expected, they claim, in what is the biggest ``Big Lie'' of them all, given what happened Sept. 11.
As one trader reported, ``My God! The bottom has fallen out and nobody calls it a crash. It is like it's your patriotic duty not to mention the word. Hell, the Dow's lost more than 1,500 points--that's a crash. But if I am overheard saying this people look at me. `Where's you're American flag! Remember who you are and what's going on. Do you want to help the Osama bin Laden in his plot to destroy our economy?'' Unbelievable!
But as so many other media brainwashed Americans, this trader was, in his words, ``going with the program. It's not a crash, it's a terrorist event.''
Several nights after the Sept. 11 attacks, CNN flashed images on the screen of National Guard personnel patrolling the streets of Washington, and heavily armed special police in New York City, inspecting cars at a tunnel entrance. Then, images were flashed of Israeli military personnel on the streets of Jerusalem, inspecting cars. The voiceover, by CNN news-witch Greta van Susteren, spoke of America, in response to the ``terrorist threat,'' becoming an increasingly ``policed society,'' where civil liberties had to be sacrificed for the protection of its citizens. We have seen this before, she said, not just in Jerusalem, but in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as a response to ``political terrorism'' of the IRA and Protestant militia. After a while, people get used to it, she said. ``Life goes on.'' Interviews were presented with Israelis who seemed to concur with the sentiment that, under conditions of ``internal war with terrorists,'' one needs to adjust to sacrifices in civil liberties. ``Americans will get used to it, just like we did,'' the Israeli said.
Thus, the media prepares--or more precisely, conditions--the country to accept a form of police state, justified by a threat that has not really been dealt with, and whose true source has been covered up. Not surprisingly, when Attorney General John Ashcroft, proposed legislation for a sweeping abridgement of civil liberties, it was given relatively short shrift by the same media. FAIR reports that the legislation was not even discussed at all, on two of the three network news broadcasts, and hardly mentioned on CNN or Fox News. The print media, while reporting it, maintained the theme of the ``necessary sacrifice'' of civil liberties for personal safety and security.
Back in the mid-1970s, Eric Trist and Fred Emery, two leading Tavistock brainwashers and ``experts'' on the effects of mass media, forecast that, by the end of the century, the United States were likely to become just such a fascist police state.
The two developed a theory of ``social turbulence,'' by which a society is delivered a series of ``shocks''--administered as shared, mass phenomena--energy shortages, economic and financial collapse, and terrorist attack. If the ``shocks'' were to come close upon each other, and if they were delivered with increasing intensity, then it were possible to drive the society, taken as a whole, into a state of mass psychosis, Trist and Emery said. They said that individuals would become disassociated, as they tried to flee from the terror of the shocking, emerging reality; people would withdraw into a state of denial, retreating into popular entertainments and diversions, while being prone to outbursts of rage.
That rage could easily be steered, said the two brainwashers, by those who had access and control over the means of mass communication, most notably television.
It was the view of Trist and Emery, in two works widely circulated among the networks of brainwashers and social psychiatrists associated with Tavistock, and among the psychological-warfare operatives of the U.S. and Britain, that the process of watching television was itself a brainwashing mechanism. They cited their own studies, that regardless of content, habituated television viewing shuts down the cognitive powers of the mind, and has a narcotic-like effect on the central nervous system, making the habituated viewer an easy subject for suggestion and manipulation; in addition, they found that such effectively brainwashed ``zombies'' would hysterically deny that there was anything wrong with them, or, even, that such manipulation of what they ``thought'' were possible.
In a chilling metaphor, Trist and Emery proposed that the terrorized, violent society of the Anthony Burgess book, ``A Clockwork Orange,'' made into a movie by Stanley Kubrick, was the logical societal outcome for an America that would, by the end of the century, have been subjected to more than 50 years of mass brainwashing by the ``boob tube.'' Burgess's world is one of perpetual violence and terrorism, as a daily part of life; it is accepted that, if you go out at a certain time, or walk in a certain neighborhood, you will be attacked and/or killed. There is no purpose to the violence--it is random and meaningless, and therefore all the more terrifying. The wealthy are protected; everyone else is told to go about their business with knowledge of the risk.
With terrorist youth gangs roaming the streets, people stay home, watching their televised entertainments, or going to only certain areas, which are heavily protected by police and military. The most sickening thing about Burgess's image is the sense of hopelessness, of inevitability, that nothing can be done about it--it is just ``the way it is,'' as Dan Rather's predecessor as CBS newsanchor, Walter Cronkite used to remind us each night, as he closed his broadcast.
While the reading of the Trist-Emery these is not exactly required reading in the caves of Afghanistan, it is among the psywarriors and brainwashers who have launched a war on the American population. There is a particular kind of oligarchical evil that would think like this, that would see a Clockwork Orange society as a necessary outcome, to protect their continue privilege and power. Are we Americans already so brainwashed that we would allow this to happen? The next weeks and months will determine whether we truly do have the moral fitness to survive.
``The end of the world. Details at 11. Now back to your regular programming.''Remember: The first step in deprogramming yourself from mass media brainwashing, from freeing yourself and your neighbors, from its evil clutch, is to recognize that you and they are, indeed brainwashed. It gets a lot easier, and things begin to get much clearer from there on.
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Readings from the American Almanac. Contact us at: american_almanac@yahoo.com.