Monday, August 31, 2015

Ron Paul and Lost Lessons of War

Neocon dominance has grown so strong in Official Washington that old lessons about the hazards of ill-considered wars are forgotten and must be painfully relearned, a message from Ron Paul’s new book, Swords into Plowshares, as described by retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce. By Todd E. Pierce Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul lays out a…

Schumer’s Troubling Mideast Record

Exclusive: In trying to torpedo the Iran nuclear deal, Sen. Charles Schumer is continuing his longstanding role as a front man for U.S. neocons and Israeli hardliners who favor a Mideast strategy of violent “regime change” over negotiated solutions, as Jonathan Marshall describes. By Jonathan Marshall If Congress derails the hard-won “P+5” nuclear deal with Iran, much blame…

America’s Short-sighted ‘Grand Strategy’

“Tough-guy/gal-ism” remains the dominant rhetorical approach to foreign policy emanating from Official Washington, which may protect the political and media careers of the tough-talkers, but it is doing grave damage to America’s strategic standing in the world, as military analyst Franklin Spinney explains. By Franklin Spinney The contemporary theory and practice of grand strategy by…

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Global Temperature is a Meaningless Statistic

As they say old habits die hard, and the foremost habit is one of unreflectively assuming that a trusted source still remains …a trusted source. Unfortunately the powers that be have been buying off trusted sources or at least the individuals that administrate those trusted sources for decades now unbeknownst to most Americans who still think and rely on those sources like it was 1950.

Tom Harris executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition penned this article that shows exactly how deceptive government sources of information have become.  Who will take time to read this post or the original post compared with the millions who heard the meaningless sound bit- an artifact of statistical manipulation proclaimed on the nightly news as important proof to stoke the steady growth of climate alarmism run amok in this country. This is nothing less than organized propaganda using government agencies supposedly based in science as the mouthpiece.statistics-710653_640

As most readers of this blog already know, this is yet another example of an “Authority Hijack” And as Tom makes clear, good people and excellent scientists within the agencies know that this is dishonest yet they jeopardize their careers if they speak out.

Get the details of how NASA and NOAA are blowing smoke … up the chimney. :) Yet another propaganda example!

Deceptive temperature record claims

The U.S. government is at it again, hyping meaningless records in a parameter that does not exist in order to frighten us about something that doesn’t matter.

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced this week that according to their calculations, July 2015 was the hottest month since instrumental records began in 1880. NOAA says that the record was set by eight one-hundredths of a degree Celsius over that set in July 1998. NASA calculates that July 2015 beat what they assert was the previous warmest month (July 2011) by two one-hundredths of a degree. 

But government spokespeople rarely mention the inconvenient fact that these records are being set by less than the uncertainty in the statistics. NOAA claims an uncertainty of 14 one-hundredths of a degree in its temperature averages, or near twice the amount by which they say the record was set. NASA says that their data is typically accurate to one tenth of a degree, five times the amount by which their new record was set.

So, the new temperature records are meaningless. Neither agency knows whether a record was set.

sun-209495_640Such misrepresentations are now commonplace in NOAA and NASA announcements. They are regularly proclaiming monthly and yearly records set by less than the uncertainties in the measurements. Scientists within the agencies know that this is dishonest.

They also know that calculating so-called global average temperatures to hundredths of a degree is irrational. After all, there is very little data for the 70 percent of Earth’s surface that is ocean. There is also little data for mountainous and desert regions, not to mention the Antarctic. Much of the coverage is so sparse that NASA is forced to make the ridiculous claim that regions are adequately covered if there is a temperature-sensing station within nearly 750 miles. This is the distance between Ottawa, Canada, and Myrtle Beach, S.C. cities with very different climates. Yet, according to NASA, only one temperature sensing station is necessary for the two cities and the vast area between them to be adequately represented in their network.

In the final analysis, it is no more meaningful to calculate an average temperature for a whole planet than it is to calculate the average telephone number in the Washington D.C. phone book. Temperature, like viscosity and density, and of course phone numbers, is not something that can be meaningfully averaged. “Global temperature” does not exist.

In their award winning book, “Taken By Storm” (2007), Canadian researchers Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick explain: “Temperature is not an amount of something [like height or weight]. It is a number that represents the condition of a physical system. In thermodynamics it is known as an intensive quantity, in contrast to quantities like energy, which have an additive property, which we call extensive in thermodynamics.”

Even if enough accurate surface temperature measurements existed to ensure reasonable planetary coverage (it doesn’t) and to calculate some sort of global temperature statistic, interpreting its significance would be challenging. What averaging rule would you use to handle the data from thousands of temperature-sensing stations? Mean, mode, median, root mean square? Science does not tell us. For some groups of close temperature measures (and NASA and NOAA are dealing with thousands of very close temperatures), one method of calculating an average can lead to a determination of warming while another can lead to a conclusion of cooling.coal-fired-power-plant-499910_640

Even if you could calculate some sort of meaningful global temperature statistic, the figure would be unimportant. No one and nothing would experience it directly since we all live in regions, not the globe. There is no super-sized being straddling the planet, feeling global averages in temperature. Global warming does not matter.

Future generations are bound to ask why America closed its coal-fueled generating stations, its cheapest, most plentiful source of electric power, and wasted billions of dollars trying to stop insignificant changes in imaginary phenomena.

The sad answer will be that it had nothing to do with the realities of science, technology or economics. The tragic blunder is based on satisfying political expedience for a privileged few, egged on by vested financial interests, and supported by largely uninformed activists granted the media platforms needed to sway public opinion. As Jay Lehr, science director of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute said, “It is a scam that dwarfs all others that have come before.”

The post Global Temperature is a Meaningless Statistic appeared first on PropagandaGuard.

Friday, August 28, 2015

How Close Was Israel to Bombing Iran?

Israel’s former Defense Minister Ehud Barak claims Israel was poised to bomb Iran several times in recent years but kept encountering internal government resistance. But this new report may just be part of a continuing game of geopolitical chicken, says Gareth Porter for Middle East Eye. By Gareth Porter New evidence has now surfaced from…

Pushing the Edge on Nuclear War

Exclusive: Official Washington’s neocons and liberal hawks are ratcheting up tensions again over Ukraine with the goal of humiliating and even destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia – and there’s no modern-day JFK to tamp down the enthusiasm, an existential risk that ex-U.S. diplomat William R. Polk examines. By William R. Polk Decisions on nuclear weapons are and…

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Will Peace Find a 2016 Advocate?

Exclusive: Campaign 2016 has offered few useful ideas about worsening global crises. On the Republican side, it’s been mostly the same-old tough talk while Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have said little. Is there a way to break through the frozen thinking about world conflicts, asks Robert Parry. By Robert Parry At least since the 1980s…

Our Problem Isn’t Guns or Mental Illness, It’s Godlessness

As you probably know, a guy murdered a reporter and her cameraman on live TV yesterday. He was a black homosexual racist who, according to his own words, was seeking vengeance for the supposed “homophobia” and racism he’d encountered. He said he wanted to start a race war.

Now, because our media and our political leaders are largely corrupt, devious, and manipulative, this dramatic and terrible story will not be in the headlines for long. The racial dynamic is inconvenient and his homosexuality does not fit the narrative. The story will therefore be buried, I guarantee. Maybe it already has. I turned on the news this morning and they were back to talking about Donald Trump again.

So before the incident is completely forgotten and ignored, I think it bears reflecting upon why this sort of thing happens. Many people immediately — and I mean immediately, like literally within seconds — twisted this into a “gun control” issue. According to them, guns are responsible. That’s ridiculous for reasons I’ll explain in this piece. Others say we have a “mental health” crisis in our country. Evil things happen because people have neurological conditions, they insist.

Guns and crazy people. Those are the only two explanations we ever hear anymore.

But I think there’s something much deeper. I think the issue is spiritual. We never talk about the spiritual side of things, we never even say the word “evil,” but that is where our problems are actually rooted. Our country is not suffering from an epidemic of inanimate objects and mental disorders — we are in the throes of utter spiritual and moral anarchy.

That’s what I want to discuss today. It’s an essential discussion we urgently need to have. Truly, if we ever want anything to get better in our culture, we need to recognize the reality of good and evil, and then make the effort to turn towards good, which means turning towards God:

Click here to read.

The post Our Problem Isn’t Guns or Mental Illness, It’s Godlessness appeared first on The Matt Walsh Blog.

The Missed Lesson on Terrorism

Whenever there’s a terrorist attack – even a botched one like last week on a Paris-bound train – the debate turns to tightened security and retaliation. But a key part of a realistic campaign to reduce terrorism is to address underlying causes that fuel the rage behind the violence, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. By…

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Sanders’s Screwy Mideast Strategy

Out of fear of offending the power centers of Official Washington, Democrats won’t or can’t formulate a coherent foreign policy. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders says the solution to Mideast chaos is more Saudi intervention when Saudi intervention in support of Sunni extremists is the heart of the problem, writes Sam Husseini. By Sam Husseini There’s an old joke about…

The Trump/Sanders Phenomena

Exclusive: The prospect of another competition between the Clinton and Bush dynasties has sent activists from across the political spectrum searching for someone new – and leading to the unlikely emergence of unorthodox candidates, billionaire Donald Trump and socialist Bernie Sanders, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry As outlandish as Donald Trump is as a presidential…

Monday, August 24, 2015

The Case for Pragmatism

Exclusive: Since American neocons emerged in the 1980s, they have pushed an aggressive “regime change” strategy that has left bloody chaos in their wake. The cumulative impact, including Mideast refugees flooding Europe and overuse of sanctions, is now contributing to a global economic crisis, says Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Crashing global stock markets – punctuated…

Propaganda and the Iran-Nuke Deal

For years, the anti-Iranian propaganda in the U.S. media has been unrelenting, at times aided by the idiocy of certain Iranian officials. That one-sided presentation and the ignorance that it has engendered are now adding to the public confusion about the Iran nuclear deal, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes. By Paul R. Pillar Polls…

American Jews Split from Netanyahu

Major Jewish organizations and donors are pressing the U.S. Congress to get in lockstep behind Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, but they are out of step with most American Jews who support the accord, reports Lawrence Davidson. By Lawrence Davidson On Aug. 13, The New York Times carried a front-page…

Friday, August 21, 2015

The Riddle of Obama’s Foreign Policy

Exclusive: For nearly seven years of his presidency, Barack Obama has zigzagged from military interventionist to pragmatic negotiator, leaving little sense of what he truly believes. Yet, there may be some consistent threads to his inconsistencies, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Nearing the last year of his presidency, Barack Obama and his foreign policy…

Iraq’s Off-Point ‘Reforms’

After a U.S.-engineered “regime change” comes the dreamy period of “reform” — redrawing organizational boxes, slashing government programs and “privatizing” national assets, but rarely a commitment to realistic compromise among rival ethnic and political forces, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes in Iraq. By Paul R. Pillar The grand neoconservative aspiration underlying the invasion of Iraq 12 years…

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Why US Police Are Out of Control

Exclusive: U.S. police forces are so out of control there’s not even a reliable database on how many times police officers shoot citizens. So, beyond racism and fear of guns, the problem includes fragmentation in law enforcement and gaps in training among the 18,000 police agencies in the 50 states, notes Daniel Lazare. By Daniel Lazare America is clearly an…

If You Still Support Planned Parenthood, You Are Simply Not A Decent Person

Another Planned Parenthood video has been released. I promised I would write about every new video that comes out, so here is my write up on the latest. Please read and share. I don’t usually ask you to share things I write, but in this case, especially because fewer and fewer are writing about them, I am asking. We need to keep this topic going. We need to keep it “trending,” as much as I hate to use that term in relation to something like this. So share this.

The big headline of the newest installment is that, according to the words of Planned Parenthood officials and people who work for these “procurement” companies, sometimes babies are born ALIVE and then dissected while their hearts are still beating. A woman in this video tells one particularly revolting story where she is instructed to cut the face off of a living infant and extract his brain.

It just keeps getting more grotesque. And to make matters worse, this video, which, again, discusses the dissection of living human babies, was buried by news of Jared Fogle and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and celebrity break ups.

It’s insane.

But as much as our society tries to ignore it, the truth is now out there. It’s known. It’s accessible. All you have to do is click a link and read about it. And, at this point, there is simply no excuse to stay silent or remain apathetic. This is not about left vs right or Democratic vs Republican anymore. This is just a matter of basic human decency. Either you are going to be a good person or an evil one, and to stay silent about this evil is evil itself.

People might take issue with me accusing Planned Parenthood apologists of not being decent people, but I think we are far past the point of sugar coating this thing. If I said Nazi sympathizers or KKK fans were not decent, everyone would agree. So what’s the moral distinction between them and a Planned Parenthood supporter? There isn’t one. They are in the same camp, and they ought to know it:

Read and share.

The post If You Still Support Planned Parenthood, You Are Simply Not A Decent Person appeared first on The Matt Walsh Blog.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Pentagon Manual Calls Some Reporters Spies

Exclusive: The Pentagon’s new “Law of War” manual puts some journalists in the category of “unprivileged belligerents,” meaning they can be tried by military tribunals as spies, a further sign of U.S. government hostility toward reporting that undercuts Washington’s goals, writes veteran war correspondent Don North. By Don North Honest war correspondents and photographers who…

The Flimsy Case Against Iran-Nuke Deal

Between Republican partisanship and Israeli pressure, the ranks of U.S. politicians and pundits opposed to the Iran nuclear deal are growing. But their arguments, including from Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Corker, remain logically flimsy and counter-factual, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. By Paul R. Pillar Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,…

The Honduran Coup’s Ugly Aftermath

Exclusive: As Secretary of State in 2009, Hillary Clinton helped a right-wing coup in Honduras remove an elected left-of-center president, setting back the cause of democracy and enabling corrupt and drug-tainted forces to tighten their grip on the poverty-stricken country, as Jonathan Marshall explains. By Jonathan Marshall Imelda Marcos will forever be remembered for her…

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

3 Propaganda Techniques Used to Create Totalitarian Medicine

Blueprint for Totalitarian Medicine

How can the AMA with a membership comprised of only 17% of registered Doctors and which holds no actual legal authority over the medical profession, get away with trying to assume control over what doctors say and do in the media?

Here is the answer…

  1. The AMA is a non-profit organization that has a government-granted monopoly on the medical CPT code industry giving it $218.8 million dollars in revenue far in excess of what it brings in through membership dues.
  2. This money makes it the 5th most powerful special interest group in Washington.
  3. The AMA is closely aligned with the pharmaceutical and vaccine industries that pay millions to influence doctors, the media and ultimately the general public. And as you can read below in the reprinted article, they are engaged in destroying those who share opinions outside the approved orthodoxy.

Authority jackThis is essentially an authority jack. In this case the authority of doctors is stolen and used to sway Americans away from alternative medicine and into the waiting arms of Big Pharma and the vaccine industry. It’s simple blueprint looks like this…

  1. Create non-profit groups that are supposedly neutral and supposedly comprised of learned academic and/or representative of a group whose authority you want to steal
  2. Fund them lavishly
  3. Pay off the right people to promote your agenda or alternately destroy the credibility/reputations of those who would oppose your agenda

Get more of the details in this reprinted article from Natural News…

 

Totalitarian medicine: Medical boards threaten to destroy careers of doctors who question Big Pharma propaganda

 (NaturalNews) The American Medical Association (AMA) is upping the ante in pursuit of total control over the medical industry. Outraged that acclaimed physicians like Dr. Mehmet Oz of The Dr. Oz Show would dare to speak on national television about issues that go untouched by many conventional doctors, the AMA has proposed new “ethical and professional guidelines” for physicians that threaten to censor doctors who deviate from what the AMA deems as medical gospel.

A group of medical students joined by residents and fellows from the AMA recently introduced a proposal before the AMA’s House of Delegates that outlines how physicians are to conduct themselves when speaking through mass media. Because they have the power to influence millions of people when speaking on television and radio, physicians like Dr. Oz “cannot function under the same guidelines as a physician counseling individual patients,” the group contends.propaganda in medicine

So in order to maintain control of the conversation, the AMA is developing a new set of guidelines to govern what it has dubbed “mass medicine,” disparagingly referring to people like Dr. Oz as “quacks” who will “no longer … be able to benefit from a lack of specific standards and professional codes.” And doctors who fail to abide by the new guidelines, which are technically just recommendations, could face discipline for allegedly “violating medical ethics in the media.”

“The AMA will create a document clarifying what disciplinary actions may be taken against a physician who uses the media unethically,” reports the site Doctors in Oz, which is an obvious play on words referencing Dr. Oz. “There are avenues for redress available through the legal system, licensing boards, and the medical societies to name a few.”

AMA represents only 17 percent of physicians, but believes it should control 100 percent of them

Doctors in Oz is apparently directly connected to the medical students who pioneered the AMA initiative, as the writer of the announcement from which the aforementioned quote was extracted added that he plans in future articles on the subject to speak directly to those involved – or as he puts it, “who made this happen.”

Even though the AMA represents as little as 17 percent of all practicing MDs – and this number continues to decrease – the organization seems to think that it deserves full authority over what doctors say and how they advise the public on the latest food and medicine science. And it spends a pretty penny to maintain this medical monopoly, shelling out nearly $20 million annually to lobby Congress to do its bidding.

“Keep in mind that the AMA is not the voice of the medical profession,” warns the Alliance for Natural Health USA (ANH-USA), a health freedom advocacy group that is standing up in defense of medical free speech.

“Its membership has slipped to the point where it represents only 17 percent of MDs, and many of those are free memberships given to medical students, yet it remains the fifth most powerful special interest on Capitol Hill … This gives it the clout to influence Medicare prices, make recommendations that shape national policy, and rake in about $218.8 million a year from its government-granted CPT medical code monopoly.”

AMA membership represents who’s who of drug industry pimps and whores

What the AMA is attempting to do here represents nothing short of medical tyranny. One of the resolution’s authors, a medical student from the University of Rochester, actually referred to the AMA in the media as “organized medicine,” which ironically sounds a whole lot like organized crime. How can this membership-based organization, which holds no actual legal authority over the medical profession, get away with trying to assume control over what doctors say and do in the media?

propaganda techniqueThe answer to this question is that the AMA operates much like the mafia, backed by an extensive network of crony allies in the pharmaceutical and vaccine industries. AMA member doctors are notorious for accepting payouts from drug reps to push the latest pills and jabs on patients, even when safer, more natural, alternatives are widely available.

This is part of what got Dr. Oz in so much trouble with the medical cartels – he openly talks about natural remedies on his show and during media interviews, and isn’t afraid to call out industry kingpins like Monsanto for poisoning the planet and the food supply with deadly chemicals like Roundup (glyphosate). So, to silence him and any others who might try to follow in his footsteps, the AMA is now playing hardball.

“Much of what the drug industry does fulfills the criteria for organized crime in U.S. law,” says Dr. Peter Gotzsche, director of the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen, and author of the book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare, as quoted by The Daily Beast.

“And they behave in many ways like the mafia does, they corrupt everyone they can corrupt, they have bought every type of person, even including ministers of health in some countries … The drug industry buys the professors first, then chiefs of departments, then other chief physicians and so on…”

Sources:

http://ift.tt/1SlfDw8

http://ift.tt/1IBEWFA

http://ift.tt/mBKekP

 

The post 3 Propaganda Techniques Used to Create Totalitarian Medicine appeared first on PropagandaGuard.

Assange and Democracy’s Future

Democracy rests on citizens getting real facts and applying rational analysis. The ability of governments, including the U.S. government, to suppress facts and thus manage perceptions represents the opposite, a power over the people that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange threatened, says Norman Solomon. By Norman Solomon Three years after Ecuador’s government granted political asylum to Julian Assange in its small…

Monday, August 17, 2015

Propaganda Technique 101-Change The Words People Use/Change The Way People Think

How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use, wrote John W. Whitehead attorney for the Rutherford Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties organization based in Charlottesville, VA.

This is a profound statement and one very similar to a statement that I wrote on almost the same day. “Words convey reality-the overthrow of accepted meanings of words inevitably result in the overthrow of the previous culture.”

Words and language are incredibly important. In fact, abusing and attacking the language of a culture actually creates the futile ground for propaganda and tyranny .

Justice Scalia’s recently bemoaned that “words no longer have any meaning”, indeed the recent supreme court decision highlights the reality that the cultural elite have determined that words can mean essentially…whatever they want them to mean.

We are at a critical juncture here.

The term “gender” is being redefined to signify something fluid and malleable.watch out

The term “marriage” is being redefined to include something more than a union between a man and a woman.

In addition to this wholesale attack on language embodying traditional thought, the freedom to express ideas that are traditional is being repressed and maligned.

Dissent allows the free flow of ideas to be exchanged in society without fear of retribution. It provides protection from a monopoly of hand picked ideas uncritically being force-fed to the masses. Ideas being force fed to the masses is the epitome of indoctrination.

When a governments’ main responsibility has shifted from ensuring the first amendment right of free speech to protecting citizens from hurt feelings realize that the wheels are starting to coming off the train. Read John’s article about the death of free speech below reprinted in full

 The Emergence of Orwellian Newspeak and the Death Of Free Speech

“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it…. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use.

In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used. In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.

Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.

It’s political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.

As a society, we’ve become fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant, hateful, closed-minded or any of the other toxic labels that carry a badge of shame today. The result is a nation where no one says what they really think anymore, at least if it runs counter to the prevailing views. Intolerance is the new scarlet letter of our day, a badge to be worn in shame and humiliation, deserving of society’s fear, loathing and utter banishment from society.

For those “haters” who dare to voice a different opinion, retribution is swift: they will be shamed, shouted down, silenced, censored, fired, cast out and generally relegated to the dust heap of ignorant, mean-spirited bullies who are guilty of various “word crimes.”

We have entered a new age where, as commentator Mark Steyn notes, “we have to tiptoe around on ever thinner eggshells” and “the forces of ‘tolerance’ are intolerant of anything less than full-blown celebratory approval.”

In such a climate of intolerance, there can be no freedom speech, expression or thought.

Yet what the forces of political correctness fail to realize is that they owe a debt to the so-called “haters” who have kept the First Amendment robust. From swastika-wearing Neo-Nazis marching through Skokie, Illinois, and under-aged cross burners to “God hates fags” protesters assembled near military funerals, those who have inadvertently done the most to preserve the right to freedom of speech for all have espoused views that were downright unpopular, if not hateful.flag-36421_640

Until recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has reiterated that the First Amendment prevents the government from proscribing speech, or even expressive conduct, because it disapproves of the ideas expressed. However, that long-vaunted, Court-enforced tolerance for “intolerant” speech has now given way to a paradigm in which the government can discriminate freely against First Amendment activity that takes place within a government forum. Justifying such discrimination as “government speech,” the Court ruled that the Texas Dept. of Motor Vehicles could refuse to issue specialty license plate designs featuring a Confederate battle flag. Why? Because it was deemed offensive.

The Court’s ruling came on the heels of a shooting in which a 21-year-old white gunman killed nine African-Americans during a Wednesday night Bible study at a church in Charleston, N.C. The two events, coupled with the fact that gunman Dylann Roof was reportedly pictured on several social media sites with a Confederate flag, have resulted in an emotionally charged stampede to sanitize the nation’s public places of anything that smacks of racism, starting with the Confederate flag and ballooning into a list that includes the removal of various Civil War monuments.

These tactics are nothing new. This nation, birthed from puritanical roots, has always struggled to balance its love of liberty with its moralistic need to censor books, music, art, language, symbols etc. As author Ray Bradbury notes, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

Indeed, thanks to the rise of political correctness, the population of book burners, censors, and judges has greatly expanded over the years so that they run the gamut from left-leaning to right-leaning and everything in between. By eliminating words, phrases and symbols from public discourse, the powers-that-be are sowing hate, distrust and paranoia. In this way, by bottling up dissent, they are creating a pressure cooker of stifled misery that will eventually blow.

For instance, the word “Christmas” is now taboo in the public schools, as is the word “gun.” Even childish drawings of soldiers result in detention or suspension under rigid zero tolerance policies. On college campuses, trigger warnings are being used to alert students to any material they might read, see or hear that might upset them, while free speech zones restrict anyone wishing to communicate a particular viewpoint to a specially designated area on campus. Things have gotten so bad that comedians such as Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld refuse to perform stand-up routines to college crowds anymore.

Clearly, the country is undergoing a nervous breakdown, and the news media is helping to push us to the brink of insanity by bombarding us with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days.

In this way, it’s difficult to think or debate, let alone stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this.

As I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions keep the citizenry tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles and tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms. These sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions are how you control a population, either inadvertently or intentionally, advancing a political agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.Screen Shot 2015-08-17 at 4.18.24 PM

Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul.

Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandists, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks.

Already, the outrage over the Charleston shooting and racism are fading from the news headlines, yet the determination to censor the Confederate symbol remains. Before long, we will censor it from our thoughts, sanitize it from our history books, and eradicate it from our monuments without even recalling why. The question, of course, is what’s next on the list to be banned?

It was for the sake of preserving individuality and independence that James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the press freely.

This freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society. Conversely, when we fail to abide by Madison’s dictates about greater tolerance for all viewpoints, no matter how distasteful, the end result is always the same: an indoctrinated, infantilized citizenry that marches in lockstep with the governmental regime.

Some of this past century’s greatest dystopian literature shows what happens when the populace is transformed into mindless automatons. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, reading is banned and books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize the populace and render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled.

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, serious literature, scientific thinking and experimentation are banned as subversive, while critical thinking is discouraged through the use of conditioning, social taboos and inferior education. Likewise, expressions of individuality, independence and morality are viewed as vulgar and abnormal.

And in George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thought crimes.” In this dystopian vision of the future, the Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the Ministry of Peace deals with war and defense, the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic affairs (rationing and starvation), the Ministry of Love deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing), and the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda). The mottos of Oceania: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

All three—Bradbury, Huxley and Orwell—had an uncanny knack for realizing the future, yet it is Orwell who best understood the power of language to manipulate the masses. Orwell’s Big Brother relied on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary. To give a single example, as psychologist Erich Fromm illustrates in his afterword to 1984:

The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as “This dog is free from lice” or “This field is free from weeds.” It could not be used in its old sense of “politically free” or “intellectually free,” since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed as concepts….

Where we stand now is at the juncture of Old Speak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite have made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.

This is the final link in the police state chain.police-755410_640

Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—we have nowhere left to go. Our backs are to the walls. From this point on, we have only two options: go down fighting, or capitulate and betray our loved ones, our friends and our selves by insisting that, as a brainwashed Winston Smith does at the end of Orwell’s 1984, yes, 2+2 does equal 5.

 

The post Propaganda Technique 101-Change The Words People Use/Change The Way People Think appeared first on PropagandaGuard.

Propaganda, Intelligence and MH-17

Exclusive: Propaganda is the life-blood of life-destroying wars, and the U.S. government has reached new heights (or depths) in this art of perception management. A case in point is the media manipulation around last year’s Malaysia Airlines shoot-down over Ukraine, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. By Ray McGovern During a recent interview, I was asked to express my conclusions…

How Netanyahu Outsmarted Himself

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s brash intervention into U.S. politics to frighten Americans about Iran’s alleged pursuit of a nuclear bomb created an unintended dynamic that led to the recent Iran agreement and now to a historic strain on U.S.-Israeli relations, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. By Paul R. Pillar Those paying attention both to…

Explaining the Trump Phenomenon

Since the days of Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” the Republican Party has played to the grievances of angry white men (and some women), in effect creating a ready audience for a hot-headed and quick-witted showman like Donald Trump, a classic case of reaping what is sown, as Lawrence Davidson explains. By Lawrence Davidson It is…

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Neocons to Americans: Trust Us Again

Exclusive: Marching in lockstep with Israeli hardliners, American neocons are aiming their heavy media artillery at the Iran nuclear deal as a necessary first step toward another “regime change” war in the Mideast – and they are furious when anyone mentions the Iraq War disaster and the deceptions that surrounded it, writes Robert Parry. By…

Reviving the ‘Successful Surge’ Myth

From the Archive: Over the past several years whenever American neocons say they should lead the way on national security, they invoke the “successful surge” myth, claiming that President George W. Bush’s Iraq escalation in 2007 “won” the war and that President Obama pulled defeat from the jaws of victory, a fiction that Robert Parry…

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Neocons Falsify Iraq War ‘Lessons’

Having escaped accountability for the Iraq War disaster, U.S. neocons are urging the use of more military force in the Mideast, in line with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s demand to block the Iran nuclear deal. From their important perches of power, these war hawks also twist the history of their catastrophic misjudgments, writes ex-CIA analyst…

Friday, August 14, 2015

The Saudi Royals — Unchained

Exclusive: With President Obama afraid of upsetting the Saudis anymore after the Iran-nuclear deal, he has given them pretty much a free hand to bomb and blockade Yemen. Meanwhile, the Saudi royals also are displaying their contempt for the United Nations and its Yemen peace efforts, Joe Lauria reports. By Joe Lauria Saudi Arabia’s relations…

Obama’s Stupid Blame-Iran Game

President Obama always bows to Official Washington’s conventional wisdom no matter how wrongheaded it is – and then either falls in line behind some reckless neocon policy prescription or turns away just before falling off some geopolitical cliff. His continued Iran-bashing is a case in point, says Gareth Porter at Middle East Eye. By Gareth…

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Escalating the Anti-Iran Propaganda

Exclusive: The Israel Lobby canceled summer vacations for its operatives in a desperate bid to stop the Iran nuclear deal, and U.S. neoconservatives are committing all their “experts” to the fight to keep alive their hopes for war with Iran, such as alleged weapons specialist David Albright, as Jonathan Marshall explains. By Jonathan Marshall The…

Mideast Glimmers of Hope

Despite Israel’s reliance on a dominated U.S. Congress as a last line of defense for its bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran strategy, other regional and global forces are moving quickly to reshape the Middle East’s geopolitical reality in a more positive way, as ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller discerns. By Graham E. Fuller It is risky to try to…

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Pope Francis’ Appeal for the Future

Pope Francis is pleading for world leaders to defend the rights of mankind and the future of nature against the power of corporations and the pillage of “free market” dogma, a warning about the planet’s survival that vested political and media interests reject out of hand, writes Daniel C. Maguire. By Daniel C. Maguire The…

Congress’ Test of Allegiance: US or Israel?

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has instructed the U.S. Congress to reject an international agreement constraining Iran’s nuclear program and to humiliate the sitting U.S. president, thus testing where the primary allegiance of most members of Congress lies, with the U.S. or Israel, writes John V. Whitbeck. By John V. Whitbeck The choice facing members of…

Gauging the Violent ‘Fox Effect’

The mainstream U.S. media has two standards for describing the motives for mass killings depending on whether the killer is a Muslim or a white man, with “terrorism” usually ascribed to the former and some personality disorder explaining the latter — rather than noting, say, an affinity for watching Fox News, says Mike Lofgren. By…

Monday, August 10, 2015

Spreading the Syrian Chaos

Nearly two decades ago, U.S. neoconservatives put Syria on their “regime change” list and have maintained that goal to the present day, placing it ahead of even blocking the spread of Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorism. That chaos has now drawn in Turkey as it advances its own geopolitical agenda, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains. By Paul R. Pillar The…

Rectifying Israel’s Crimes

Israel’s original sin – the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians – and the ongoing abuse of this subjugated population in the West Bank and Gaza undermine Israel’s preferred self-image as a modern civilized state and lead more people around the world to demand some modicum of justice, writes Lawrence Davidson. By Lawrence Davidson Even before…

I’m Not Angry At Donald Trump, I’m Angry At His Supporters

I’ve noticed that most of my readers are not Trump fans, and I appreciate that. I love you guys for being reasonable and not falling for this glorified circus elephant. But Trump fans will come out of the woodwork because of my latest piece here, and when they do I want you to notice something: they claim they like Trump’s “blunt and unapologetic” approach, but watch how they react when that blunt and unapologetic strategy is turned against them. Watch what happens when someone is blunt and unapologetic towards them.

This is the first sign that Trump’s legion of admirers aren’t sincere. They say they like his tone — which is already a terrible, horrible, ridiculous reason to elect someone president — but it turns out that they just like his tone when he’s regurgitating their own shallow sentiments.

Trump, of course, is the same way. He claims to be the bold, politically incorrect guy, but he cries like a scrawny bully when anyone punches him back. He’s weak. And that’s what led to the now infamous incident a few days ago, where he attacked Megyn Kelly for asking him tough questions, insinuating that she was on her period.

This is what we’re dealing with. A dishonorable, desperate goon who will stoop to any level to insult anyone who fails to worship him, and will resort to any measure to get attention. And this isn’t even the worst thing about him. The worst thing is that he’s a corrupt, liberal, mob-connected charlatan. He’s a Democrat with a Democrat’s agenda, which is trumped (pun intended) only by his primary agenda, which is to serve himself and himself alone.

But Donald Trump is not the problem. The real problem are his supporters. These are conscious, intelligent adults who have chosen to make a mockery of the political process and play games with my country’s future. For this reason, because I love my country and I take it’s fate seriously, I am angry at these people. They know better than this. They are better than this. And it pains me that these reckless, bored people are coming, presumably, from the conservative ranks. I would have liked to think that conservatives wouldn’t fall for the Obama Cult of Personality shtick, but they have. And it’s depressing to behold.

But, much as I’ll be accused of attacking them here, I’m actually the one encouraging them. Most of the rest of the non-Trump fans just treat the Trump Squad like children who can’t be held responsible. I, on the other hand, would never insult them like that. They’re not children. They’re not robots. They have a brain and free will, and it’s about time they freaking use it:

Click here.

The post I’m Not Angry At Donald Trump, I’m Angry At His Supporters appeared first on The Matt Walsh Blog.

Exposing Nixon’s Vietnam Lies

Exclusive: After resigning over the Watergate political-spying scandal, President Nixon sought to rewrite the history of his Vietnam War strategies to deny swapping lives for political advantage, but newly released documents say otherwise, writes James DiEugenio. By James DiEugenio Richard Nixon spent years rebuilding his tattered reputation after he resigned from office in disgrace on…

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Christianity and the Nagasaki Crime

Two of warfare’s great crimes were inflicted when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and – in the bitterest of ironies – wiping out Nagasaki’s Christian community which had survived long-term Japanese persecution, writes Gary G. Kohls. By Gary G. Kohls Seventy years ago, an…

Friday, August 7, 2015

In Case You Missed…

Some of our special stories in July dealt with the failures of U.S. strategy in the Mideast, the Greek financial crisis, the unsavory fighters for Ukraine, the MH-17 mystery, early slip-ups in the 2016 presidential race, and the railroading of NFL quarterback Tom Brady. “Toward a Rational US Strategy (Part 2)” by William R. Polk,…

‘Paint-balling’ the Presidents

In arguing for peace with Iran, President Obama noted he had waged war in seven countries, an admission that if made by, say, Vladimir Putin would have set off tirades, but underscores how routinely violent U.S. presidents have become, a point made by a “paint-balled” mural in Washington, says Sam Husseini. By Sam Husseini A new…

Thursday, August 6, 2015

The Disastrous Neocon Mindset

The neocon mindset, which envisions U.S. military force remaking the Mideast at the point of a gun or the warhead of a drone, has confronted a string of disasters and faces a new challenge from President Obama’s successful diplomacy with Iran, but the mindset will likely survive, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. By Paul R. Pillar President Barack…

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Why Many Muslims Hate the West

Exclusive: Many Americans and Westerners are baffled by the violent rage expressed by many Muslims, but the reasons for their anger are real, deriving from a “deep history” of anti-Islamic wars and colonial exploitation of the Middle East, as ex-U.S. diplomat William R. Polk describes. By William R. Polk The issue of terrorist attacks on…

Obama’s Pragmatic Appeal for Iran Peace

Exclusive: President Obama defended the Iran nuclear deal and urged Americans to support this initiative for peace, but his choice of American University for the speech invited comparisons with JFK’s famous words that “we all inhabit this small planet” and Obama fell far short of that standard, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Trying to…

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Bolton’s Creative Attack on Iran-Nuke Deal

The neocon foes of the Iranian nuclear accord are reaching for any argument imaginable but few have been as creative as John Bolton, a longtime enemy of the UN who fears the Iran deal might somehow erode the principle of Security Council vetoes, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. By Paul R. Pillar As implacable…

How US Allies Aid Al Qaeda in Syria

Exclusive: The dirty secret about the Obama administration’s “regime change” strategy in Syria is that it amounts to a de facto alliance with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front which is driving toward a possible victory with direct and indirect aid from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel, as Daniel Lazare explains. By Daniel Lazare When the U.S.…

Monday, August 3, 2015

Reporter Wins Fifth Amendment Case

The U.S. government’s recurring threats to prosecute journalists who receive classified documents may have created an avenue for some reporters to evade testimony at least in civil cases – by asserting a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, says Marcy Wheeler. By Marcy Wheeler An appellate decision on the long-running dispute between a former prosecutor and the…

Confronting a Very Dark Chapter

This week marks the 70th anniversary of a very dark chapter of human history, the U.S. incineration of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a war crime that has been rationalized in popular U.S. history, writes Gary G. Kohls. By Gary G. Kohls August 6, 2015, is…

Sunday, August 2, 2015

The Soft Power Hoax

U.S. officials love the idea of “soft power,” a concept that applies non-violent means – from propaganda to culture – to induce foreign countries to conform to Washington’s wishes. But the arrogance of the approach has alienated, rather than attracted, many people around the world, writes Mike Lofgren. By Mike Lofgren A recurrent buzz phrase of…

Saturday, August 1, 2015

The ‘Two Minutes Hate’ of Tom Brady

Exclusive: New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady may lose his day in court since the NFL maneuvered “Deflategate” into a corporate-friendly venue in Manhattan – possibly sparing the NFL from explaining why rival owners were allowed to intervene to push harsh penalties for Brady and the Patriots, says Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Now that the National Football League has…

Nuclear War’s Unlearned Lessons

The upcoming 70th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a fitting moment for the world to contemplate the dangers from the continuation of nuclear arsenals and the cavalier attitude that many countries take toward geopolitical crises, as Robert Dodge explains. By Robert Dodge This week the world remembers the events of…