EXPOSE THE MEDIA

[michelle]

Please post here any examples where the media outright lies, omits the truth, or skews information.

[michelle]

Sunday 9/25/05
There were HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people marching in Washington yesterday.
Here are some examples of how the media is lying about crowd size:

AP LIES:
Demonstrators call for U.S. troops to leave Iraq
JENNIFER C. KERR
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Opponents of the war in Iraq marched by the tens of thousands Saturday in a clamorous day of protest, song and remembrance of the dead, some showing surprisingly diverse political views even as they spoke with one loud voice in wanting U.S. troops home.

REUTERS LIES:
Thousands protest Iraq war, economic globalization
By Lisa Lambert
WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters flooded Washington on Saturday to stage dual demonstrations against the U.S.-led war in Iraq and economic globalization, and to demand that President George W. Bush bring troops home.


Bloomberg Prefers Anonymous Source:

U.K. Rally Against Iraq War Draws 10,000; U.S. Protests Planned
Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- A London demonstration against the war in Iraq drew at least 10,000 people today as similar protests were planned in European capitals including Paris, Rome, Madrid and Oslo, and in Washington. Andrew Burgin of the Stop the War Coalition, which backed the London rally with the Muslim Association of Britain, said there were 100,000 demonstrators in Hyde Park, in the city center. A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman, who declined to be identified, put the number at 10,000.

NO COVERAGE HERE:
No coverage from Cnn, nbc, abc,cbs, fox(of course)

Ban all the media except Cspan

[DT1]

Yesterday cnn had some blowhard telling a(crowd?) how much the troops wanted to "finish the job"...just another B.S. soundbite with no basis in reality..What "job" might that be?Being human shields for Halliburton parasites?Dumping D.U.?Stealing oil?Building megabases?.This right-wing drone seemed healthy and motivated-why isn't HE over there?I will be joining the MSM boycot,as everytime I give them my time,I see&hear something that makes me want to drop-kick the set out the window...Their not-so-subtle slant towards bushworld disgusts me.

[michelle]

Buying of News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled Illegal


By ROBERT PEAR
Published: October 1, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.

In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated "covert propaganda" in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.

The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities.

Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, "The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is committed to education."

The auditors declared: "We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds."

The report also sharply criticized the Education Department for telling Ketchum Inc., a public relations company, to pay Mr. Williams for newspaper columns and television appearances praising Mr. Bush's education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act.

When that arrangement became public, it set off widespread criticism. At a news conference in January, Mr. Bush said: "We will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet."

But the Education Department has since defended its payments to Mr. Williams, saying his commentaries were "no more than the legitimate dissemination of information to the public."

The G.A.O. said the Education Department had no money or authority to "procure favorable commentary in violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition" in federal law.

The ruling comes with no penalty, but under federal law the department is supposed to report the violations to the White House and Congress.

In the course of its work, the accountability office discovered a previously undisclosed instance in which the Education Department had commissioned a newspaper article. The article, on the "declining science literacy of students," was distributed by the North American Precis Syndicate and appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country. Readers were not informed of the government's role in the writing of the article, which praised the department's role in promoting science education.

The auditors denounced a prepackaged television story disseminated by the Education Department. The segment, a "video news release" narrated by a woman named Karen Ryan, said that President Bush's program for providing remedial instruction and tutoring to children "gets an A-plus."

Ms. Ryan also narrated two videos praising the new Medicare drug benefit last year. In those segments, as in the education video, the narrator ended by saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."

The television news segments on education and on Medicare did not state that they had been prepared and distributed by the government. The G.A.O. did not say how many stations carried the reports.

The public relations efforts came to light weeks before Margaret Spellings became education secretary in January. Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman for the secretary, said on Friday that Ms. Spellings regarded the efforts as "stupid, wrong and ill-advised." She said Ms. Spellings had taken steps "to ensure these types of missteps don't happen again."

The investigation by the accountability office was requested by Senators Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats. Mr. Lautenberg expressed concern about a section of the report in which investigators said they could not find records to confirm that Mr. Williams had performed all the activities for which he billed the government.

The Education Department said it had paid Ketchum $186,000 for services performed by Mr. Williams's company. But it could not provide transcripts of speeches, articles or records of other services invoiced by Mr. Williams, the report said.

In March, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said that federal agencies did not have to acknowledge their role in producing television news segments if they were factual. The inspector general of the Education Department recently reiterated that position.

But the accountability office said on Friday: "The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual. The essential fact of attribution is missing."

The office said Mr. Williams's work for the government resulted from a written proposal that he submitted to the Education Department in March 2003. The department directed Ketchum to use Mr. Williams as a regular commentator on Mr. Bush's education policies. Ketchum had a federal contract to help publicize those policies, signed by Mr. Bush in 2002.

The Education Department flouted the law by telling Ketchum to use Mr. Williams to "convey a message to the public on behalf of the government, without disclosing to the public that the messengers were acting on the government's behalf and in return for the payment of public funds," the G.A.O. said.

The Education Department spent $38,421 for production and distribution of the video news release and $96,850 for the evaluation of newspaper articles and radio and television programs. Ketchum assigned a score to each article, indicating how often and favorably it mentioned features of the new education law.

Congress tried to clarify the ban on "covert propaganda" in a bill signed by Mr. Bush in May. The law says that no federal money may be used to produce or distribute a news story unless the government's role is openly acknowledged.

www.nytimes.com/2005/10/01/politics/01educ.html?ei=5094&en=ed2345e1f9cc06db&hp=&ex=1128225600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all

[michelle]

ISSUE

Hardball's pattern of misinformation and imbalance on
CIA leak case
Media Matters for America — J.B., R.S.K., & S.S.M.
Oct 21, 2005
mediamatters.org/items/200510220001
(especially review Claim #1, with Andrea Mitchell's
misinformation on the Oct 13 airing of Hardball)

** ACTION **

>From VirginiaDem <http://tinyurl.com/cckd8> at
DailyKos.com: NBC News contact info here Andrea is
most affiliated with Today/Weekend Today, the Nightly
News with Brian Williams, and Hardball (where the
untruths were told). It wouldn't hurt to hit the
others as well (esp. Dateline NBC, Meet the Press, and
MSNBC TV).

Contact NBC: tinyurl.com/cckd8

Write to your local newsmedia too -- let them know
this is a blatant lie and that you expect them to run
correct information. Heck, I would think the fact a
national correspondent for a major network has been
duped into lying on national TV would also be a story
in and of itself....

[michelle]

A Pact With the Devil

By Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers

11/11/05 "Lew Rockwell" -- -- Recently, over these past few weeks, many newspapers and other mainstream mass media have apologized for not reporting the truth about the Iraq War. Their weak excuses are that they were deceived by the lies put forth by the Bush administration for going to war against a defenseless country and the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Do not be fooled by these feeble excuses. Also, don’t think that these apologies absolve you, the average pro-war American, from your complicity in war crimes committed in your name. The Bush administration is guilty; the mass media is guilty; and – if you supported this vile crime against humanity – you too are guilty. I pray to God every night that all the guilty will receive their proper judgment and the sooner the better.

Of course the newspapers, etc, did not do their jobs in investigating the lies and prevarications of the Bush administration. Of course they are as guilty as the Bush administration itself in leading the American public into a war of aggression and making the United States today’s international pariah nation; a pariah nation unequaled since Nazi Germany. But realizing this fact is not telling the entire story; there is something else to be considered about this entire sordid affair; there is something else that points to an even worse blight on a modern America’s sick society and culture. What price will American’s pay for fame?

The mass media is a business. They are in business to make money. Only a fool would run a business trying to sell people something that they do not want. After 9/11, a very ill-educated, self-centered, and vindictive American public wanted blood. They wanted revenge. It mattered not who was the target of that revenge, average America wanted their blood-thirst satiated in any way possible against the most convenient target. Those targets wound up being innocent people bombed in Afghanistan and trumped up charges against innocents resulting in mass murder in Iraq. "Kill them all and let God sort them out" was the call. Like a school of piranhas on a wild feeding frenzy, an ignorant American public sucked up the propaganda. And what an anti-American, disgraceful sight is was.

The mass media willingly obliged a sick and twisted thirst for revenge by a sick and twisted American public by giving the crowd what it wanted. In show business parlance the words would be, "The show must go on!” and the media gave a spectacular all-American show.

But what is the mass media besides a group of individuals working in a certain business? From what I’ve seen working in the mass media for over 28 years, I can tell you that show business has much more than its share of dishonest, vain, egotistical, and distasteful people. Show business has more prima-donnas and vain-glorious people in it than I have ever had the displeasure of working with in any other business. The mass media is full of the most wretched people you’d ever meet. I can count on my right hand the number of truly honest, good people I’ve met in this business over these years.

Watch that Fox News or CNN newscaster. Besides dressing and putting make-up like a prostitute (which, in a way, she is) she just reeks of insincerity. She doesn’t care if she’s telling the truth or not. All she cares about is her career and being on TV. She, and thousands like her, contaminate the airwaves on your TV nightly. They don’t care about the truth. They only care about their job; and carrying on the façade that they are important. They are the lowest of the low. These are fake plastic people living in a make-believe plastic world. To expect them to tell the truth is like expecting men to bear children; it’s not going to happen.

I’ve even met on-air announcers who threw away their own families and children in the pursuit of fame. What sad and disreputable excuses for human beings these people are. Don’t think that I am talking about just a few of your on-air announcers, I am talking about the vast majority that you see on TV. The truly dedicated and honest ones don’t make it to fame; they have a conscience and drop out while they can still look themselves in the mirror.

Most TV announcers have sold their souls to the devil in exchange for fame. I know, I have met many who readily admit so (it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in God or Satan – the fact remains that these people made a pact with the devil in return for fame). We should not expect anything from them except lies and a full plate of vanity. Of course they lied about Iraq. Of course they’ll lie about anything. They have no conscience. After all, all they want to be is on TV and to do so, they think they have to give the public what it wants. It doesn’t matter if it’s the truth or not. Joe six-pack doesn’t like the truth; if the mass media told the truth, their ratings would go down and our little Miss Hot-Shot newscasters might be out of a job.

And now the public is waking up to the crimes and lies of the Bush administration. Only a fool would expect that these sick examples of human perversion who make up our mass media would suddenly change their ways and begin to tell the truth.

I, for one, look forward to the day when these bastards get what they deserve: And that is to be an unrecognizable no-body out on the street begging for a job.


Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers [send him mail] was born and raised in the USA and moved to Japan in 1984. He has the distinction of being fired from every FM radio station in Tokyo – one of them three times. His first book, Schizophrenic in Japan, is now on sale.

Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10962.htm

[Anwaar]

Mike Rogers says it like it is. The whores of journalism, eternally in the pay of their corporate masters, are prostituting their pens and their voices like never before in the modern history.

Great article Michelle. Thanks for posting it.

Anwaar

[michelle]

I really miss Bill Moyers and the NOW show on PBS...Michelle

Moyers Has His Say
Former Now host on media bias and his feud with former CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson[/b]

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable.com
11/28/2005

Bill Moyers became the central figure in absentia in the controversy surrounding former Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson. It was Tomlinson who pointed to Moyers' NOW newscast on PBS as a chief reason for his efforts to bring "balance" to public broadcasting by adding conservative shows. Moyers has since left NOW and is currently president of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy. He spoke with B&C's John Eggerton in the wake of a CPB Inspector General report concluding Tomlinson had violated the law by dealing directly with a programmer during the creation of a show to balance Moyers' program.

You are the exemplar of liberal PBS bias, according to Ken Tomlinson. Was your show liberally biased?

Right-wing partisans like Tomlinson have always attacked aggressive reporting as liberal.

We were biased, all right - in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden: conflicts of interest at the Department of Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in Congress, neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon cost overruns, the manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq.

We were way ahead of the news curve on these stories, and the administration turned its hit men loose on us.

Tomlinson actually told The Washington Post that he was irate over one of our documentary reports from a small town in Pennsylvania hard-hit by outsourcing.

If reporting on what's happening to ordinary people thrown overboard by circumstances beyond their control and betrayed by Washington officials is liberalism, I stand convicted.

It is an old canard of right-wing ideologues like Tomlinson to equate tough journalism with liberalism. They hope to distract people from the message by trying to discredit the messenger.

NOW threw the fear of God into Tomlinson's crowd because they couldn't dispute the accuracy of our reporting.

And when we weren't reporting the truth behind the news, we were interviewing a wide variety of people: Ralph Reed and Ralph Nader; Cal Thomas and Molly Ivins; Robert Bartley, editor of the Wall Street Journal; Katrina Vandenheuval, editor of The Nation; The Conservative Union's David Keene; Dorothy Rabinowitz (also of the Wall Street Journal); Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity; the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore; historian Howard Zinn; and Indian activist Arundhati Roy. And on and on.

Did you get any direct pressure from Tomlinson or CPB to change the content of your show?

The people at PBS told me they were getting excruciating pressure because of our reporting, including threats to de-fund public television unless "Moyers is dealt with." They never identified the source of that pressure.

We know now it was Tomlinson. [Tomlinson] even told some people [we have confirmed it with two people who were present] that "Moyers is a coward because he doesn't want to talk to people who disagree with him."

Hello? See the above list of all the conservatives who appeared on the show.

What happened to the debate idea between you two?

I asked him repeatedly. He refused. He didn't even respond. But when all this started to unfold early last year, I asked three times to meet with the CPB board and try to find out what was going on.

I thought we could reason together and maybe agree on how to cooperate to protect Public Broadcasting's independence. I mean, I not only read the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, I helped to create it. CPB's job was to be a firewall between guys like them and the producers, journalists, and content of public broadcasting.

I thought at the time that I was dealing with people who cared about this institution. I didn't realize they had gone over to the dark side.

What prompted your departure from NOW?

I needed a break, and I also sensed that we were up against serial abusers and that I could fight back more effectively if I weren't on the air.

[michelle]

IMPEACHPAC RESPONDS TO ATTACK BY ROLL CALL

This morning, Roll Call (the Capitol Hill newspaper) published an attack on ImpeachPAC - and its first endorsed candidate, Tony Trupiano - by "non-partisan" analyst Stu Rothenberg. Trupiano has promised to work for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, and Rothenberg has declared this entirely unacceptable.

Read the article and ImpeachPAC's rebuttal:
www.impeachpac.org/?q=node/60

and Bob Fertik's commentary:
www.impeachpac.org/?q=rothenberg

[michelle]

REAL Independent. W0rld TV NEWS.:.
Gore Vidal, Paul Jay, Naomi Klein, Phil Donahue

A Worldwide Televisionetwork Speaking Truthooray!!!!!!!!

Checkouthe Links to all New-s Approaching

www.iwtnews.com/
New Video: Gore Vidal, Paul Jay, Naomi Klein, Phil Donahue

America needs this:

Corporate television news is undermining your right to know.
Thousands of people have died, and are still dying, in a war that a majority of people believe is based on half truths and misinformation. Congressman John Murtha said, "We've increased terrorism in the Middle East... We've increased instability in the Middle East." The world is a more dangerous place for all of us.

We have a right to know the truth, but corporate television reports on propaganda as if it's reality. This leads to public support for policies that have little to do with the facts.

Watch the new 3 minute video with Gore Vidal, Phil Donahue, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein and Paul Jay at click.iwtnews.com/t?ctl=102C2E8:3E8EFDA See their take on how corporate TV news failed on the Iraq story from the start and how IWTnews is building an independent television network brave enough to report the truth.
Click Here: www.iwtnews.com/

Democracy depends on an independent and responsible media that reports the facts and stands up to power with the truth. With your support, Independent World Television will be such a network. Being free from advertising, corporate control and government funding makes it possible. That's why your support is so important.

Help us cut through the bull. Go to click.iwtnews.com/t?ctl=102C2E7:3E8EFDA and donate to help us produce independent journalism.
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Major donors Susan Adelman and Claudio Llanos have offered a challenge to IWTnews supporters. They will match, dollar for dollar, funds we raise before December 31st, up to $25,000.

We're creating production units in Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans. IWTnews will produce short current affairs documentaries that deliver the uncompromising journalism we so urgently need. Our flagship news show - IWTnews Nightly - will be an hour-long news program, fearlessly reporting on the world as it is. It will be seen on cable, satellite and the web. Your support makes it possible.

Tell the world that your right to know is worth fighting for. Tell the world it's time for independent journalism that will stand up to power. It's time for all of us to step up to the plate and build the kind of news network that defends our right to know.

Help us break the monopoly on information. Bring independent fearless journalism to public view. Donate now at click.iwtnews.com/t?ctl=102C2E8:3E8EFDA

[michelle]

Here's an interesting thread on protesters against the Iraq war and how they are portrayed. The letters posted are in response to an article which I don't have. If interested, I'm sure you can find it.

This past weekend, across the country, many demonstrations were held. Many more are planned in the upcoming weeks. Do you scan your local papers for these types of articles and editorials? Have you written your own letter to the editor?

The first letter is an excellent rebuttal toward an obviously skewed opinion of antiwar protesters. The second, well what can I say? It represents the muddied thinking of trolls who start off agreeing with you and then work to undermine your argument [here meaning the position of the protesters]. I believe the second letter deserves a response.

As I said, there are many demonstrations going on now and in the near future. Will you respond when protesters are portrayed as counter-productive to our country and government? Or are you an armchair philosopher who prefers endless debate about what is wrong with the United States? Use your voice people;
things won't change until you do.

Michelle

Coverage of antiwar 'activists' criticized
Letters to the Editor
Published January 10, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Activists meet with Brown-Waite, Jan. 4 Times:

After reading staff writer Asjylyn Loder's account, I know she deserves no respect as an objective reporter.

Her starter, describing this group as "left-leaning local activists," set the tone of all of the biased reportage that followed. I know a good many of these people and am familiar with their objectives to bring a stop to a war wrought by lies and fraught with disastrous blunders, a war that has killed more than 2,000 young Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

These people have no hidden agenda, no "left-leaning" plot to subvert the republic. They don't work for warmongers or greed merchants. They don't take bribes from Abramoff or steal money from the Indians. And, most of all, they do not lie, unlike the masters of the historical disgrace of the Iraq misadventure.

These "left-leaning activists" are good people, family people, hard-working people, most with some age on them, many of them retired, quite a few of them veterans. Their goal is solely to stop a hideous war and to restore decency to our government. They are patriots.

These people don't work for some dark political agenda. They work for peace and for America. They deserve unbiased press coverage for what they are - not yellow journalism that paints them as left-wingers with an "argument (which) fails to persuade," followed by smear quotations, such as "there was little difference between disparaging the troops and criticizing the war."

History will describe these people as the idealists of our time, and will finally describe the warmongers for what they are - and a compliant, toady of a press for what it is.

Be advised that I intend to do my utmost to persuade my good peace-worker friends to avoid coverage by Ms. Loder in the future and to avoid such bear traps as the office of Brown-Waite.

Ms. Loder, we are going to get to peace in spite of the incumbent politicians, big oil, the military-industrial complex and a cowardly press. We will not falter, we will not suffer discouragement even in the face of biased reportage such as yours.

Though I owe you no favor, here's a tip: Bone up on your objectivity. You might even consider becoming an "activist" to bring courage, truth, unbiased reporting and respect back to the American press.

-- Rafe Pilgrim, Crystal River


War protesters out of touch with reality
Re: Activists meet with Brown-Waite, Jan. 4 Times:

Let's start off by saying I hate war. Hate it. Nobody likes war. You would have to be pretty crazy to like war.

That said, I think these protesters who wanted to meet with U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite are out of touch with reality.

After numerous terrorist attacks on our country, starting with the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, our government did nothing to respond, so the attacks kept coming. After President Bush was elected, 9/11 happened, and he took the action he thought best, rightly or wrongly, based on the information he had.

I am one of those people who, like most perhaps, think the whole Iraq invasion was not thought out properly. But because I truly do support our troops, I am not going to go out and protest because it demoralizes them to see such things in the media.

Unfortunately for these peace activists they don't understand that peace is only possible if both sides want it, and somehow I don't think these Islamic terrorists will stop attacking us even if we pull out of Iraq.

Unfortunately, these activists are too blinded by their hatred for Bush to see that.

-- Peter Stathis, Spring Hill [Last modified January 10, 2006, 01:52:17]

www.sptimes.com/2006/01/10/Hernando/Coverage_of_antiwar__.shtml

[michelle]

Mass Mind Control Through Network Television

Are Your Thoughts Your Own?

By Alex Ansary
Outside The Box

12-29-5

Why do countless American people go along with the War on Iraq? Why do so many people call for a police state control grid? A major component to a full understanding of why this kind of governmental and corporate corruption is to discover the modern science of mind control and social engineering. It's baffling to merely glance at the stacks of documentation that this world government isn't being constructed for the greater good of humanity. Although there are a growing number of people waking up the reality of our growing transparent soft cage, there seems to be just enough citizens who are choosing to remain asleep. Worse yet, there are even those who were at least partially awake at one time but found it necessary to return to the slumber of dreamland.

This is no accident; this is a carefully crafted design. The drive to dumb down the populations of planet earth is a classic art that existed before the United States did. One component to understanding and deciphering the systems of control is to become a student of the magicians of influence and propaganda. In order to defeat our enemies (or dictators), its imperative that we understand how they think and what they believe in.

When people think about mind control, they usually think in terms of the classic "conspiracy theory" that refers to Project MkUltra. This program is a proven example of 'overt mind control.' The project had grown out of an earlier secret program, known as Bluebird that was officially formed to counter Soviet advances in brainwashing. In reality the CIA had other objectives. An earlier aim was to study methods 'through which control of an individual may be attained'. The emphasis of experimentation was 'narco-hypnosis', the blending of mind altering drugs with carefully hypnotic programming.

A crack CIA team was formed that could travel, at a moments notice, to anywhere in the world. Their task was to test the new interrogation techniques, and ensure that victims would not remember being interrogated and programmed. All manner of narcotics, from marijuana to LSD, heroin and sodium pentathol (the so called 'truth drug') were regularly used.

Despite poor initial results, CIA-sponsored mind control program flourished. On 13 April 1953, the super-secret project MK-ULTRA was born. Its scope was broader than ever before, and only those in the top echelon of the CIA were privy to it. Official CIA documents describe MK-ULTRA as an 'umbrella project' with 149 'sub-projects'. Many of these sub-projects dealt with testing illegal drugs for potential field use. Others dealt with electronics. One explored the possibility of activating 'the human organism by remote control'. Throughout, it remained a major goal to brainwash individuals to become couriers and spies without their knowledge.

When it was formed in 1947, the CIA was forbidden to have any domestic police or internal security powers. In short, it was authorized only to operate 'overseas'. From the very start MK-ULTRA staff broke this Congressional stipulation and began testing on unwitting American citizens.

Precisely how extensive illegal testing became will never be known. Richard Helms, CIA Director and chief architect of the program, ordered the destruction of all MK-ULTRA records shortly before leaving office in 1973. Despite these precautions some documents were misfiled and came to light in the late 1970's. They laid bare the spy agency's cynicism. Despite the widespread knowledge of MK Ultra and the civil lawsuits that followed, this form of behavior modification is not the most expansive. The real dangers are the types of thought control that are 'covert' and not the subject of several dozen Hollywood movies like "Clockwork Orange" and Mel Gibson's "Conspiracy Theory."

Our founding fathers faced enormous challenges in the formation of this country and its bill of rights. One challenge was laying down the groundwork or a free society without knowing what kind of technological advances would be made. Who would have guessed in those times that we needed an article in the bill of rights that specifically prohibits the government and it's associates from engaged in mind control or thought control. The closest item that promises our protection from the government is the 4th Article in The Bill of Rights which states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Like many are now beginning to note, the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights are merely given lip service by our supposedly elected officials.

One of the most common examples of mind control in our so-called free and civilized society is the advent and usage of the television set. This isn't to say that all things on TV are geared towards brainwashing you. They're not. But most of the programming on television today is run and programming by the largest media corporations that have interests in defense contracts, such as Westinghouse (CBS), and General Electric (NBC). This makes perfect sense when you see how slanted and warped the news is today. Examining the conflicts of interest is merely glancing at the issue, although to understand the multiple ways that lies become truth, we need to examine the techniques of brain washing that the networks are employing.

Radio isn't any different in its ability to brainwash a population into submission. Sixty-seven years ago, six million Americans became unwitting subjects in an experiment in psychological warfare. It was the night before Halloween, 1938. At 8 p.m. CST, the Mercury Radio on the Air began broadcasting Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. As is now well known, the story was presented as if it were breaking news, with bulletins so realistic that an estimated one million people believed the world was actually under attack by Martians. Of that number, thousands succumbed to outright panic, not waiting to hear Welles' explanation at the end of the program that it had all been a Halloween prank, but fleeing into the night to escape the alien invaders.

According to researcher Mack White ( http://www.mackwhite.com), "Psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted a study of the effects of the broadcast and published his findings in a book, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. This study explored the power of broadcast media, particularly as it relates to the suggestibility of human beings under the influence of fear. Cantril was affiliated with Princeton University's Radio Research Project, which was funded in 1937 by the Rockefeller Foundation. Also affiliated with the Project was Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) executive Frank Stanton, whose network had broadcast the program. Stanton would later go on to head the news division of CBS, and in time would become president of the network, as well as chairman of the board of the RAND Corporation, the influential think tank which has done groundbreaking research on, among other things, mass brainwashing. Two years later, with Rockefeller Foundation money, Cantril established the Office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR), also at Princeton. Among the studies conducted by the OPOR was an analysis of the effectiveness of "psycho-political operations" (propaganda, in plain English) of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Then, during World War II, Cantril and Rockefeller money assisted CFR member and CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow in setting up the Princeton Listening Center, the purpose of which was to study Nazi radio propaganda with the object of applying Nazi techniques to OSS propaganda. Out of this project came a new government agency, the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS). The FBIS eventually became the United States Information Agency (USIA), which is the propaganda arm of the National Security Council. Thus, by the end of the 1940s, the basic research had been done and the propaganda apparatus of the national security state had been set up--just in time for the Dawn of Television."

Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and critically analyzed. The right brain, however, treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body's own natural opiates--thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able to kick the television habit. It's no longer an overstatement to note that the youth today that are raised and taught through network television are intellectually dead by their early teens.

The dumbing down of humanity is represented by another shift which occurs in the brain when we watch television. Activity in the higher brain regions (such as the neo-cortex) is diminished, while activity in the lower brain regions (such as the limbic system) increases. The latter, commonly referred to as the reptile brain, is associated with more primitive mental functions, such as the "fight or flight" response. The reptile brain is unable to distinguish between reality and the simulated reality of television. To the reptile brain, if it looks real, it is real. Thus, though we know on a conscious level it is "only a film," on a conscious level we do not--the heart beats faster, for instance, while we watch a suspenseful scene. Similarly, we know the commercial is trying to manipulate us, but on an unconscious level the commercial nonetheless succeeds in, say, making us feel inadequate until we buy whatever thing is being advertised--and the effect is all the more powerful because it is unconscious, operating on the deepest level of human response. The reptile brain makes it possible for us to survive as biological beings, but it also leaves us vulnerable to the manipulations of television programmers. This is where the manipulators use our own emotions as strings to control us. The distortions and directions we are being moved to are taking place in the subconscious, often undetected.

Propaganda techniques were first codified and applied in a scientific manner by journalist Walter Lippman and psychologist Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud) early in the 20th century. During World War I, Lippman and Bernays were hired by then United States President, Woodrow Wilson, to participate in the Creel Commission, the mission of which was to sway popular opinion in favor of entering the war, on the side of Britain. Edward Bernays said in his 1928 book Propaganda that, "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

The Creel Commission provided themes for speeches by "four-minute men" at public functions, and also encouraged censorship of the American press. The Commission was so unpopular that after the war, Congress closed it down without providing funding to organize and archive its papers. The war propaganda campaign of Lippman and Bernays produced within six months such an intense anti-German hysteria as to permanently impress American business (and Adolf Hitler, among others) with the potential of large-scale propaganda to control public opinion. Bernays coined the terms "group mind" and "engineering consent", important concepts in practical propaganda work. The current public relations industry is a direct outgrowth of Lippman's and Bernays' work and is still used extensively by the United States government. For the first half of the 20th century Betrays and Lip man ran a very successful public relations firm. World War II saw continued use of propaganda as a weapon of war, both by Hitler's propagandist Joseph Gobbles and the British Political Warfare Executive, as well as the United States Office of War Information.

Turn on your local newscast. You have a few minutes of blue-collar crime, hardly any white collar crime, a few minutes of sports, misc. chit chat, random political jibber-jabber, and a look at the weather that no one is forecasting correctly. Is that what happened in your town? And we're supposed to own the airwaves! The mainstream media openly supports the interests of the prison industrial complex. The stories focus on minority criminal groups, and exploit the real threat to appear much more dangerous than they are. Think about the growing per capita number of prisoners in the country. Then remember that this is happening at the same time that our prison boom began. The police on our streets have created criminals. The focus is to keep us in a state of fear, that way the elitists can attack any group they want to without fear of consequence. This is why the media is continuing to craft the timeless art of dehumanization.

The techniques are increasing in their sophistication over time as the mind scientists that serve the empire continue to discover scientific breakthroughs as to how the human brain functions, learns, retains information, and behaves. The most effective brainwashing techniques are used on the most successful propaganda networks. Examine the music bed that lies low during the fright night scope of the second. It's spooky. I wonder if we are supposed to be thinking with our minds or getting ready for stunt. Observe the graphics with the music. They're glitzy and flashing. Like the monkey that is attracted to shiny objects, it's our monkey hand that controls to remote often stops the search for entertainment when the proper amount of glamour catches their attention. Most importantly, notice the repetition behind the lies that the politicians and their corporate media groupies tell us. You see, the unimaginable fallacies are created as 'truth' not because it's logical or provable, but because of the broken record technique. No matter how ridiculous the lie, it's repeated often enough that the brain doesn't know the difference between reality and nursery rhymes. This technique is under estimated in its ability to allow the puppeteers to hypnotize millions of people. Instead of "Fair and balanced" it's "We say it enough times, and you believe it."

READ THE REST:
alexansary.blogspot.com/2005/12/thinking-outside-box12105.html

Note from Michelle: For further reading get a copy of
FOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THE ELIMINATION OF TELEVISION
By Jerry Mander
Copyright: 1977, 1978
Now and as a child I always had my nose in a book. This is what most likely saved my ability to think for myself. After reading Mr. Mander's book in the 1980s my TV would remain dormant up to 6 months at a time. This book explains how the effects of implanted imagery are ideal preconditions for autocracy.
I urge you to find a copy of this book; I'm not sure if it is still in print. And for God's sake, keep your kids away from the TV!

[michelle]

Planted Articles May Be Violation
A 2003 Pentagon directive appears to bar a military program that pays Iraqi media to print favorable stories.

By Mark Mazzetti
From the Los Angeles Times
January 27, 2006

WASHINGTON — A secret U.S. military program that pays Iraqi newspapers to publish articles favorable to the American mission appears to violate a 2003 Pentagon directive, according to a newly declassified document released Thursday.

The information campaign run by U.S. troops in Baghdad and a Washington-based private contractor is the subject of a high-level military investigation. Last month, the top U.S. general in Iraq said a preliminary investigation into the program had found it did not violate U.S. law or Pentagon regulations.

"We concluded that we were operating within our authorities and the appropriate legal procedures. And so we have not suspended any of the processes up to now," Army Gen. George W. Casey told reporters then.

A secret directive on the Pentagon's information operations policy released Thursday, however, appears to prohibit U.S. troops from conducting psychological operations, or psy-ops, targeting the media.

"Psy-op is restricted by both DoD [Department of Defense] policy and executive order from targeting American audiences, our military personnel and news agencies or outlets," says the directive, dated Oct. 30, 2003, and signed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The document, titled "Information Operations Roadmap," was released by the National Security Archive, a research institution based at George Washington University that obtained it under the Freedom of Information Act.

A Pentagon spokesman did not return calls seeking comment.

But one senior Pentagon official said that based on the wording in the directive, the operation seemed to violate Pentagon policy.

"It's clearly a violation based on the language used in the Rumsfeld document," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly on the issue.

Since early last year, the military's Information Operations Task Force in Baghdad has used private contractor Lincoln Group to plant stories in Iraqi media about U.S. and Iraqi military and rebuilding efforts.

It also has placed reports indicating that anti-insurgent sentiment is rising among Iraqi citizens.

American troops write articles, called storyboards, which are then delivered to the Iraqi staff of Lincoln Group. The staffers then translate the storyboards into Arabic and pay newspaper editors in Baghdad to run the articles.

A military investigation of the operation led by Navy Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk should be completed soon, Pentagon officials say.

U.S. law forbids the Pentagon from conducting propaganda efforts that target U.S. audiences. Yet many in the military say that the globalization of media, driven by the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle, makes it likely that information campaigns targeting foreign audiences find their way into U.S. media coverage.

That much is acknowledged in the 78-page document released Thursday, which says that "information for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and psy-op, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience."

The directive recommends that boundaries be established to ensure that U.S. military information operations don't target U.S. audiences directly. It does not say what the boundaries should be.

The document was written to set out policy guidelines and establish the Pentagon's reasoning for elevating information operations to a "core" mission for the U.S. military, Pentagon officials say.

"Information, always important in warfare, is now critical to military success and will only become more so in the foreseeable future," the document says.

tinyurl.com/799vf

[michelle]

FLASH VIDEO from Take Back The Media.com:

IMPERIALISM SEEMS TO BE A REAL TURN ON FOR THE BUSH FAMILY.

"NO ONE CAN TERRORIZE A WHOLE NATION, UNLESS WE ARE ALL HIS ACCOMPLICES." .....Edward R. Murrow

www.takebackthemedia.com/bushnonazi.html

[michelle]

Frog-marching the Media to the Gallows
Mike Whitney
February 11, 2006

No one knows better than the editors of the New York Times that Iran does not have nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons program. The Times editors comb through mountains of information to determine the veracity of particular allegations, and yet, they fail to produce even one reliable source who can confirm their claim that Iran is building nukes.

Not one.

So what’s the game here? Is the Times willing to sacrifice what’s left of its ragged credibility just to pave the way to another unprovoked war?

It seems so.

Apart their from daily articles, which invariably suggest Iranian duplicity and foul play, (none of which can be corroborated) the February 8 editorial reiterated at least 5 times that Iran was developing nuclear weapons.

Huh?

According to the Time’s, Iran has continued to pursue "its two-decade long drive to build nuclear weapons", but it would be preferable if the Iranian government was "more willing to put the economic future of its people ahead of building nuclear bombs."

"Building nuclear bombs"?

Where?

If the Times has knowledge of such programs they should come forward and dispute the findings of the foremost nuclear weapons inspection team in the world (the IAEA), which has consistently found "no evidence" of nuclear weapons programs.

The Times spurious charges are also refuted by the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) which projects that Iran will not be capable of building nuclear weapons for at least 10 years.

The Times, of course, needs neither evidence nor intelligence to fulfill its mandate of fabricating a crisis. They simply rely on a steady stream of baseless accusations that contribute to the rising public anxiety.

Judith Miller may have left, but her legacy of deceit still courses through the paper of record like a surging stream. The strategy for manipulating public opinion is unchanging. The media settles on a narrative grounded in pure fantasy and simply repeats the same fiction over and over again from its many outlets.

The Times has proved once again that the elite-media is a steadfast partner in mobilizing the masses for an unpopular war. Even though countless thousands of innocent people have already been killed by the Time’s reckless reporting and specious fear-mongering on Iraqi WMD, the editors continue to use the corporate bullhorn to call the nation to arms.

It is truly outrageous!

When America’s war of terror finally concludes, the international community will have to determine the culpability of the media in the vast devastation, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. No one should be surprised if the first group frog-marched to the gallows is the editorial staff of the New York Times. Their guilt was already established long before Iran.

Courtesy and Copyright © Mike Whitney
www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=20555&s2=12