ARTHUR SILBER: Matt Taibbi—et tu liberal?

Hardhitting, Dissenting Journalism — Without the Hardhitting, Dissenting Part

By Arthur Silber

Taibbi

In a recent essay, I mentioned Matt Taibbi as one of the examples of a phenomenon I call “The Obedient Dissenter,” and said I would be examining that phenomenon in further detail soon. This isn’t that lengthier analysis, but more in the nature of a sneak preview.

–

Taibbi posted this entry yesterday: “Another March to War?” His remarks deal with the major media’s warmongering about Iran and the distortions they rely upon. All true, and all old news to those who’ve been awake however briefly in recent years. Note what he drops into the middle of his discussion:

from November 2006. That entry offered excerpts from Hampton Sides’ book, Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West. Sides writes:

The mission on which Kearny led the Army of the West [in 1846] had no precedent in American history. For the first time the U.S. Army was setting out to invade, and permanently occupy, vast portions of a sovereign nation. It was a bald landgrab of gargantuan proportions.

…

Realizing that neither diplomacy nor outright bartering would achieve his expansionist ends, Polk was determined to provoke a war. He dispatched Gen. Zachary Taylor to disputed territory, between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, in southern Texas. It was an unsubtle attempt to create the first sparks. In April 1846, Taylor’s soldiers were fired upon, and Polk was thus given the pretext he needed to declare war.

“American blood has been spilled on American soil,” Polk spluttered with righteous indignation, neglecting to mention that Taylor had done everything within his power to invite attack, and that anyway, it wasn’t really American soil–at least not yet. Mexico had “insulted the nation,” the president charged, and now must be punished for its treachery, beaten back, relieved of vast tracts of real estate it was not fit to govern.

The simple truth was, Polk wanted more territory. No president in American history had ever been so frank in his aims for seizing real estate. …

Perhaps to dignify the nakedness of Polk’s land lust, the American citizenry had got itself whipped into an idealistic frenzy, believing with an almost religious assurance that its republican form of government and its constitutional freedoms should extend to the benighted reaches of the continent then held by Mexico, which, with its feudal customs and Popish superstitions, stood squarely in the way of Progress. To conquer Mexico, in other words, would be to do it a favor.

We might also mention America’s deliberate and carefully calculated decision to embark upon an overseas Empire — with the annexation of Hawaii, followed by the occupation and war in the Philippines.

And so on and so forth. In “The Slaughter of the Diseased Animals,” I described this repeated pattern. In discussing the torments inflicted by Israel on the prisoners of Gaza, I wrote:

For a very long time, the United States government has specialized in the pattern pursued by Israel. The vastly more powerful nation wishes to act on a certain policy — almost always territorial expansion, for purposes of access to resources, or to force itself into new markets, or to pursue the evil notion that economic and ideological success depend on brutality and conquest — but a specifically moral justification for its planned actions does not lie easily to hand.

So the powerful nation embarks on a course designed to make life intolerable for the country and/or those people that stand in its way. The more powerful nation is confident that, given sufficient time and sufficient provocation, the weaker country and people will finally do something that the actual aggressor can seize on as a pretext for the policy upon which it had already decided. In this way, what then unfolds becomes the victim’s fault.

The United States government has utilized this tactic with Mexico, to begin the Spanish-American War, even, dear reader, in connection with the U.S. entrance into World War II, most recently in Iraq, possibly (perhaps probably) with Iran in the future, and in numerous other conflicts. It’s always the fault of the other side, never the fault of the United States itself. Yet the United States has always been much more powerful than those it victimizes in this manner. The United States always claims that its victims represented a dire threat to its very survival, a threat that must be brought under U.S. control, or eliminated altogether. The claim has almost never been true. This monstrous pattern is “The American Way of Doing Business.”

This preview turned out to be longer than I had anticipated. Taibbi made it necessary — for he is not merely “mistaken” (pity the poor child). Rather, he appears to have missed all of American history, as well as the stratagems utilized by the powerful throughout all of history whenever they seek to increase their power still more.

But Taibbi tells us he “ha[s] to believe” in the Eden of his concocted fantasy, and that he “ha[s] to believe” in an America that never existed then and that has never existed at all. That is because he has absorbed every critical element of American exceptionalism, and he seems to lack even the faintest understanding of the false set of beliefs to which he clings so desperately.

So Taibbi is inexorably led to call Ahmadinejad “nuts,” and to proclaim that this “nut” must “definitely” not be “allowed” to have nuclear weapons. The propagandists in the media and in Washington are laughing with delight, for they could not ask for more. With opposition and dissent like this, they can begin the next war this afternoon, and nothing will stand in their way.

But some of us are not laughing. No, we most certainly are not.

—Arthur Silber publishes the ONCE UPON A TIME / POWER OF NARRATIVE blog .

_______________________________________________________________________________

¶

ADVERT PRO NOBIS

IF YOU CAN’T SEND A DONATION, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, AND YOU THINK THIS PUBLICATION IS WORTH SUPPORTING, AT LEAST HELP THE GREANVILLE POST EXPAND ITS INFLUENCE BY MENTIONING IT TO YOUR FRIENDS VIA TWEET OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS! We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you. Do your part while you can. •••

Donating? Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Grammy Awards, Corporate Greed and Cultural Genocide

A Black Agenda Report Radio commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Listen to the audio—press tab on left side below

“

in their elimination of more than thirty musical categories [4], including Latin jazz and 3 other Latin music categories, 4 R&B categories, zydeco and Native American music, one Gospel, one Rap and one World Music category.

Herbie Hancock, Eddie Palmieri, Paul Simon Bill Cosby, Esperanza Spalding, Bonnie Raitt, Stanley Clarke, David Amram, Pete Escovedo, Oscar Hernandez and Larry Harlow.

A number of artists filed suit against the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, demanding the minutes of meetings at which the elimination of these awards were discussed. Although they were dues paying members of long standing who recruited and contributed labor to its outreach programs, the academy denied access to these records through the courts on the grounds that they were “a foreign corporation established in Delaware” and so not subject to the transparency laws applicable to domestic non-profits.

www.grammywatch.org [6]. The decisions of what music to study and play and listen and dance to are decisions that audiences and artists should make. They are much too important to be reserved for greedy and racist recording industry executives. Letting them make that decision for us IS cultural genocide.

www.blackagendareport.com [7].

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and based in Marietta GA, where he is a state committee member of the Georgia Green Party and a principal in a technology consulting firm. Contact him at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20120215_bd_grammys_cultural_genocide.mp3

[8]

_______________________________________________________________________________

¶

ADVERT PRO NOBIS

IF YOU CAN’T SEND A DONATION, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, AND YOU THINK THIS PUBLICATION IS WORTH SUPPORTING, AT LEAST HELP THE GREANVILLE POST EXPAND ITS INFLUENCE BY MENTIONING IT TO YOUR FRIENDS VIA TWEET OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS! We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you. Do your part while you can. •••

Donating? Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

CBS on Syria: Annals of disinformation (27) (w. VIDEO)

Patrice Greanville, TGP

Rose: Putting a cultured veneer on blatant disinformation.
•

Of course, as we might expect, all these cosmetics have served no purpose in terms of raising the quality of the show, as this item on Syria proves. [Watch it below. The addendum also carries the CBS text accompanying this presentation.]

editor in chief.
___________________________________________

Key people at CBS
Leslie Moonves, Chairman of CBS
Nancy Tellem (President of CBS Network Television Entertainment)

ADDENDUM

February 11, 2012 8:03 AM

Ex-ambassador: U.S. needs to do more in Syria

Play CBS News Video

The Arab Spring

(CBS News)

Syrian general slain in Damascus, regime says
Satellite spots tanks in Syrian city
Diplomat: U.S. military not the answer in Syria

Ginsberg also discussed the news this morning that gunmen assassinated an army general in Damascus on Saturday, the first killing of a high-ranking military officer in Damascus since the uprising began. He described the assassination as a reprisal attack.

_______________________________________________________________________________

ADVERT PRO NOBIS

IF YOU CAN’T SEND A DONATION, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, AND YOU THINK THIS PUBLICATION IS WORTH SUPPORTING, AT LEAST HELP THE GREANVILLE POST EXPAND ITS INFLUENCE BY MENTIONING IT TO YOUR FRIENDS VIA TWEET OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS!
We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you.
Do your part while you can.
•••

Donating? Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mind Control Theories and Techniques used by Mass Media

By Vigilant Citizen | Originally published April 28th, 2010 | Category: Vigilant Reports

Image source deesillustration.com

Mass media is the most powerful tool used by the ruling class to manipulate the masses. It shapes and molds opinions and attitudes and defines what is normal and acceptable. This article looks at the workings of mass media through the theories of its major thinkers, its power structure and the techniques it uses, in order to understand its true role in society.

Most of the articles on this site discuss occult symbolism found in objects of popular culture. From these articles arise many legitimate questions relating to the purpose of those symbols and the motivations of those who place them there, but it is impossible for me to provide satisfactory answers to these questions without mentioning many other concepts and facts. I’ve therefore decided to write this article to supply the theoretical and methodological background of the analyzes presented on this site as well as introducing the main scholars of the field of mass communications. Some people read my articles and think I’m saying “Lady Gaga wants to control our minds”. That is not the case. She is simply a small part of the huge system that is the mass media.

Programming Through Mass Media

In the 1958 preface for A Brave New World, Aldous Huxley paints a rather grim portrait of society. He believes it is controlled by an “impersonal force”, a ruling elite, which manipulates the population using various methods.

A Brave New World

His bleak outlook is not a simple hypothesis or a paranoid delusion. It is a documented fact, present in the world’s most important studies on mass media. Here are some of them:

Elite Thinkers

Walter Lippmann

Walter Lippmann, an American intellectual, writer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner brought forth one of the first works concerning the usage of mass media in America. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann compared the masses to a “great beast” and a “bewildered herd” that needed to be guided by a governing class. He described the ruling elite as “a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality.” This class is composed of experts, specialists and bureaucrats. According to Lippmann, the experts, who often are referred to as “elites,” are to be a machinery of knowledge that circumvents the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the “omnicompetent citizen.” The trampling and roaring “bewildered herd” has its function: to be “the interested spectators of action,” i.e. not participants. Participation is the duty of “the responsible man”, which is not the regular citizen.

Mass media and propaganda are therefore tools that must be used by the elite to rule the public without physical coercion. One important concept presented by Lippmann is the “manufacture of consent”, which is, in short, the manipulation of public opinion to accept the elite’s agenda. It is Lippmann’s opinion that the general public is not qualified to reason and to decide on important issues. It is therefore important for the elite to decide ”for its own good” and then sell those decisions to the masses.

It might be interesting to note that Lippmann is one of the founding fathers of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most influential foreign policy think tank in the world. This fact should give you a small hint of the mind state of the elite concerning the usage of media.

Some current members of the CFR include David Rockefeller, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, mega-church pastor Rick Warren and the CEOs of major corporations such as CBS, Nike, Coca-Cola and Visa.

Carl Jung

Carl Jung is the founder of analytical psychology (also known an Jungian psychology), which emphasizes understanding the psyche by exploring dreams, art, mythology, religion, symbols and philosophy. The Swiss therapist is at the origin of many psychological concepts used today such as the Archetype, the Complex, the Persona, the Introvert/Extrovert and Synchronicity. He was highly influenced by the occult background of his family. Carl Gustav, his grandfather, was an avid Freemason (he was Grand Master) and Jung himself discovered that some of his ancestors were Rosicrucians. This might explain his great interest in Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology and symbolism. One of his most important (and misunderstood) concept was the Collective Unconscious.

The collective unconscious transpires through the existence of similar symbols and mythological figures in different civilizations. Archetypal symbols seem to be embedded in our collective subconscious, and, when exposed to them, we demonstrate natural attraction and fascination. Occult symbols can therefore exert a great impact on people, even if many individuals were never personally introduced to the symbol’s esoteric meaning. Mass media thinkers, such as Edward D. Bernays, found in this concept a great way to manipulate the public’s personal and collective unconscious.

1955 Time Magazine cover featuring Carl Jung. Looks a little like Avatar, doesn’t it?

Edward Bernays

Edward Bernays is considered to be the “father of public relations” and used concepts discovered by his uncle Sigmund Freud to manipulate the public using the subconscious. He shared Walter Lippmann’s view of the general population by considering it irrational and subject to the “herd instinct”. In his opinion, the masses need to be manipulated by an invisible government to insure the survival of democracy.

“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.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Bernay’s trailblazing marketing campaigns profoundly changed the functioning of American society. He basically created “consumerism” by creating a culture wherein Americans bought for pleasure instead of buying for survival. For this reason, he was considered by Life Magazine to be in the Top 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century.

Harold Lasswell

In 1939-1940, the University of Chicago was the host of a series of secret seminars on communications. These think tanks were funded by the Rockefeller foundation and involved the most prominent researchers in the fields of communications and sociological studies. One of these scholars was Harold Lasswell, a leading American political scientist and communications theorist, specializing in the analysis of propaganda. He was also of the opinion that a democracy, a government ruled by the people, could not sustain itself without a specialized elite shaping and molding public opinion through propaganda.

In his Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Lasswell explained that when elites lack the requisite force to compel obedience, social managers must turn to “a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda.” He added the conventional justification: we must recognize the “ignorance and stupidity [of] … the masses and not succumb to democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests.”

Lasswell extensively studied the field of content analysis in order to understand the effectiveness of different types of propaganda. In his essay Contents of Communication, Lasswell explained that, in order to understand the meaning of a message (i.e. a movie, a speech, a book, etc.), one should take into account the frequency with which certain symbols appear in the message, the direction in which the symbols try to persuade the audience’s opinion, and the intensity of the symbols used.

Lasswell was famous for his media analysis model based on:

Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) What Channel (with) What Effect

By this model, Lasswell indicates that in order to properly analyze a media product, one must look atwho produced the product (the people who ordered its creation), who was it aimed at (the target audience) and what were the desired effects of this product (to inform, to convince, to sell, etc.) on the audience.

The analyzes of videos and movies on The Vigilant Citizen place a great importance on the “who is behind” the messages communicated to the public. The term “Illuminati” is often used to describe this small elite group covertly ruling the masses. Although the term sounds quite caricatured and conspiratorial, it aptly describes the elite’s affinities with secret societies and occult knowledge. However, I personally detest using the term “conspiracy theory” to describe what is happening in the mass media. If all the facts concerning the elitist nature of the industry are readily available to the public, can it still be considered a “conspiracy theory”?

There used to be a variety of viewpoints, ideas and opinions in popular culture. The consolidation of media corporations has, however, produced a standardization of the cultural industry. Ever wondered why all recent music sounds the same and all recent movies look the same? The following is part of the answer:

Media Ownership

As depicted in the graph above, the number of corporations owning the majority of U.S. media outlets went from 50 to 5 in less than 20 years. Here are the top corporations evolving around the world and the assets they own.

AOL Time Warner owns:

64 magazines, including Time, Life, People, MAD Magazine and DC Comics

Warner Bros, New Line and Fine Line Features in cinema

More than 40 music labels including Warner Bros, Atlantic and Elektra

Many television networks such as WB Networks, HBO, Cinemax, TNT, Cartoon Network and CNN

Madonna, Sean Paul, The White Stripes

Viacom owns:

CBS, MTV, MTV2, UPN, VH1, Showtime, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, TNN, CMT and BET

Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies, MTV Films

Blockbuster Videos

1800 screens in theaters through Famous Players

“Disney ownership of a hockey team called The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim does not begin to describe the vastness of the kingdom. Hollywood is still its symbolic heart, with eight movie production studios and distributors: Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Miramax, Buena Vista Home Video, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Buena Vista International, Hollywood Pictures, and Caravan Pictures.

The Walt Disney Company owns:

Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Film Corp., Dimensionand Buena Vista International

Miley Cyrus/ Hannah Montana, Selena Gomez, Jonas Brothers

Vivendi Universal owns:

Universal Studios, Studio Canal, Polygram Films, Canal +

Numerous internet and cell phone companies

Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas, Lil Wayne, Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Jay-Z

Sony owns:

Columbia Pictures, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Classics

15% of US Music sales, labels include Columbia, Epic, Sony, Arista, Jive and RCA Records

Beyonce, Shakira, Michael Jackson, Alicia Keys, Christina Aguilera

A limited number of actors in the cultural industry means a limited amount of viewpoints and ideas making their way to the general public. It also means that a single message can easily saturate all forms of media to generate consent (i.e. “there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”).

The Standardization of Human Thought

The merger of media companies in the last decades generated a small oligarchy of media conglomerates. The TV shows we follow, the music we listen to, the movies we watch and the newspapers we read are all produced by FIVE corporations. The owners of those conglomerates have close ties with the world’s elite and, in many ways, they ARE the elite. By owning all of the possible outlets having the potential to reach the masses, these conglomerates have the power to create in the minds of the people a single and cohesive world view, engendering a “standardization of human thought”.

Even movements or styles that are considered marginal are, in fact, extensions of mainstream thinking. Mass medias produce their own rebels who definitely look the part but are still part of the establishment and do not question any of it. Artists, creations and ideas that do not fit the mainstream way of thinking are mercilessly rejected and forgotten by the conglomerates, which in turn makes them virtually disappear from society itself. However, ideas that are deemed to be valid and desirable to be accepted by society are skillfully marketed to the masses in order to make them become self-evident norm.

In 1928, Edward Bernays already saw the immense potential of motion pictures to standardize thought:

“The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions. The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation. Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect, emphasize and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only of ideas and facts which are in vogue. As the newspaper seeks to purvey news, it seeks to purvey entertainment.”
– Edward Bernays, Propaganda

These facts were flagged as dangers to human freedom in the 1930′s by thinkers of the school of Frankfurt such as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. They identified three main problems with the cultural industry. The industry can:

validate the idea that men actually seek to escape the absurd and cruel world in which they live by losing themselves in a hypnotic state self-satisfaction.

The notion of escapism is even more relevant today with advent of online video games, 3D movies and home theaters. The masses, constantly seeking state-of-the-art entertainment, will resort to high-budget products that can only be produced by the biggest media corporations of the world. These products contain carefully calculated messages and symbols which are nothing more and nothing less than entertaining propaganda. The public have been trained to LOVE its propaganda to the extent that it spends its hard-earned money to be exposed to it. Propaganda (used in both political, cultural and commercial sense) is no longer the coercive or authoritative communication form found in dictatorships: it has become the synonym of entertainment and pleasure.

“In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”
– Aldous Huxley, Preface to A Brave New World

A single piece of media often does not have a lasting effect on the human psyche. Mass media, however, by its omnipresent nature, creates a living environment we evolve in on a daily basis. It defines the norm and excludes the undesirable. The same way carriage horses wear blinders so they can only see what is right in front of them, the masses can only see where they are supposed to go.

“It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.”
– Jacques Ellul

One of the reasons mass media successfully influences society is due to the extensive amount of research on cognitive sciences and human nature that has been applied to it.

Manipulation Techniques

“Publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public’s perception of a subject. The subjects of publicity include people (for example, politicians and performing artists), goods and services, organizations of all kinds, and works of art or entertainment.”

The drive to sell products and ideas to the masses has lead to an unprecedented amount of research on human behavior and on the human psyche. Cognitive sciences, psychology, sociology, semiotics, linguistics and other related fields were and still are extensively researched through well-funded studies.

“No group of sociologists can approximate the ad teams in the gathering and processing of exploitable social data. The ad teams have billions to spend annually on research and testing of reactions, and their products are magnificent accumulations of material about the shared experience and feelings of the entire community.”

The results of those studies are applied to advertisements, movies, music videos and other media in order to make them as influential as possible. The art of marketing is highly calculated and scientific because it must reach both the individual and the collective consciousness. In high-budget cultural products, a video is never “just a video,” Images, symbols and meanings are strategically placed in order to generate a desired effect.

“It is with knowledge of the human being, his tendencies, his desires, his needs, his psychic mechanisms, his automatisms as well as knowledge of social psychology and analytical psychology that propaganda refines its techniques.”
– Propagandes, Jacques Ellul (free translation)

Today’s propaganda almost never uses rational or logical arguments. It directly taps into a human’s most primal needs and instincts in order to generate an emotional and irrational response. If we always thought rationally, we probably wouldn’t buy 50% of what we own. Babies and children are constantly found in advertisements targeting women for a specific reason: studies have shown that images of children trigger in women an instinctual need to nurture, to care and to protect, ultimately leading to a sympathetic bias towards the advertisement.

Sex is ubiquitous in mass media, as it draws and keeps the viewer’s attention. It directly connects to our animal need to breed and to reproduce, and, when triggered, this instinct can instantly overshadow any other rational thoughts in our brain.

Subliminal Perception

What if the messages described above were able to reach directly the viewers’ subconscious mind, without the viewers even realizing what is happening? That is the goal of subliminal perception. The phrase subliminal advertising was coined in 1957 by the US market researcher James Vicary, who said he could get moviegoers to “drink Coca-Cola” and “eat popcorn” by flashing those messages onscreen for such a short time that viewers were unaware.

“Subliminal perception is a deliberate process created by communications technicians, by which you receive and respond to information and instructions without being consciously aware of the instructions”
– Steve Jacobson, Mind Control in the United States

This technique is often used in marketing and we all know that sex sells.

Although some sources claim that subliminal advertising is ineffective or even an urban myth, the documented usage of this technique in mass media proves that creators believe in its powers. Recent studies have also proven its effectiveness, especially when the message is negative.

A famous example of subliminal messaging in political communications is in George Bush’s advertisement against Al Gore in 2000.

Right after the name of Gore is mentioned, the ending of the word “bureaucrats” – “rats” – flashes on the screen for a split second.

The discovery of this trickery caused quite a stir and, even if there are no laws against subliminal messaging in the U.S., the advertisement was taken off the air.

As seen in many articles on The Vigilant Citizen, subliminal and semi-subliminal messages are often used in movies and music videos to communicate messages and ideas to the viewers.

Desensitization

In the past, when changes were imposed on populations, they would take to the streets, protest and even riot. The main reason for this clash was due to the fact that the change was clearly announced by the rulers and understood by the population. It was sudden and its effects could clearly be analyzed and evaluated. Today, when the elite needs a part of its agenda to be accepted by the public, it is done through desensitization. The agenda, which might go against the public best interests, is slowly, gradually and repetitively introduced to the world through movies (by involving it within the plot), music videos (who make it cool and sexy) or the news (who present it as a solution to today’s problems). After several years of exposing the masses to a particular agenda, the elite openly presents the concept the world and, due to mental programming, it is greeted with general indifference and is passively accepted. This technique originates from psychotherapy.

– Steven Jacobson, Mind Control in the United States

Predictive programming is often found in the science fiction genre. It presents a specific image of the future – the one that is desired by the elite – and ultimately becomes in the minds of men an inevitability. A decade ago, the public was being desensitized to war against the Arab world. Today, the population is gradually being exposed to the existence of mind control, of transhumanism and of an Illuminati elite. Emerging from the shadows, those concepts are now everywhere in popular culture. This is what Alice Bailey describes as the “externalization of the hierarchy”: the hidden rulers slowly revealing themselves.

Occult Symbolism in Pop Culture

Metropolis – a movie by the elite, for the elite?

Contrarily to the information presented above, documentation on occult symbolism is rather hard to find. This should not come as a surprise as the term “occult”, literally means “hidden”. It also means “reserved to those in the know” as it is only communicated to those who are deemed worthy of the knowledge. It is not taught in schools nor is it discussed in the media. It is thus considered marginal or even ridiculous by the general population.

Occult knowledge is NOT, however, considered ridiculous in occult circles. It is considered timeless and sacred. There is a long tradition of hermetic and occult knowledge being taught through secret societies originating from ancient Egyptians, to Eastern Mystics, to the Knights Templar to modern day Freemasons. Even if the nature and the depth of this knowledge was most probably modified and altered throughout the centuries, mystery schools kept their main features, which are highlysymbolic, ritualistic and metaphysical. Those characteristics, which were an intricate part of ancient civilizations, have totally been evacuated from modern society to be replaced by pragmatic materialism. For this reason, there lies an important gap of understanding between the pragmatic average person and the ritualistic establishment.

The “simpler code” devised for the masses used to be organized religions. It is now becoming the Temple of the Mass Media and it preaches on a daily basis extreme materialism, spiritual vacuosity and a self-centered, individualistic existence. This is exactly the opposite of the attributes required to become a truly free individual, as taught by all great philosophical schools of thought. Is a dumbed-down population easier to deceive and to manipulate?

In Conclusion
This article examined the major thinkers in the field of mass media, the media power structure and the techniques used to manipulate the masses. I believe this information is vital to the understanding of the “why” in the topics discussed on The Vigilant Citizen. The “mass population” versus “ruling class” dichotomy described in many articles is not a “conspiracy theory” (again, I hate that term), but a reality that has been clearly stated in the works of some of the 20th century’s most influential men.

Lippmann, Bernays and Lasswell have all declared that the public are not fit to decide their own fate, which is the inherent goal of democracy. Instead, they called for a cryptocracy, a hidden government, a ruling class in charge of the “bewildered herd.” As their ideas continue to be applied to society, it is increasingly apparent that an ignorant population is not an obstacle that the rulers must deal with: It is something that is DESIRABLE and, indeed, necessary, to insure total leadership. An ignorant population does not know its rights, does not seek a greater understanding of issues and does not question authorities. It simply follows trends. Popular culture caters to and nurtures ignorance by continually serving up brain-numbing entertainment and spotlighting degenerate celebrities to be idolized. Many people ask me: “Is there a way to stop this?” Yes, there is. STOP BUYING THEIR CRAP AND READ A BOOK.

_______________________________________________________________________________

¶

ADVERT PRO NOBIS

IF YOU CAN’T SEND A DONATION, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, AND YOU THINK THIS PUBLICATION IS WORTH SUPPORTING, AT LEAST HELP THE GREANVILLE POST EXPAND ITS INFLUENCE BY MENTIONING IT TO YOUR FRIENDS VIA TWEET OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS!
We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you.
Do your part while you can.
•••

Donating? Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol: It might have been worse

By David Walsh, WSWS.ORG

These loathsome actioners are one of the most exploitative vehicles served up by a degenerate Hollywood film industry. All stunts, kicks and chops, explosions, and CGI effects, they lack plots and even the semblance of character development. Any connection with reality is erased. They’re an insult to the intelligence of even children. Only conditioned morons can enjoy them, morons for whom suspension of disbelief is a way of life. —Eds.

Mission Impossible—Ghost Protocol // Directed by Brad Bird, written by Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec.

The fourth installment in the series, Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocolfollows the exploits of Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his Impossible Missions Force (IMF) team as they attempt to prevent the outbreak of a cataclysmic war between the US and Russia.

The new film gets down to business in Moscow, where Hunt is freed from prison by the efforts of IMF agents Jane Carter (Paula Patton) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg). He then leads those two in an operation to penetrate highly guarded archives in the Kremlin and locate files on a figure known as “Cobalt.” The latter, it turns out, is Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), a Swedish-born Russian nuclear strategist, now working on his own, who is convinced that a nuclear holocaust would help initiate a new and higher phase of human evolution. Hendricks plans to launch a Russian nuclear missile against a major American city, thus setting off a cataclysmic war.

Cobalt is an evil mastermind, seemingly always a step ahead of the Mission: Impossible forces. Hunt’s team gains a new member, William Brandt (Jeremy Renner), when his superior, the “Secretary” (the head of the secret agency, played—briefly—by Tom Wilkinson) is killed by a Russian police bullet as the IMF personnel are fleeing the authorities in Moscow.

Next stop is Dubai, where Hunt climbs out a window on the 119th floor and crawls up the outside of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest manmade structure, as part of the plan to foil Cobalt. The team attempts to fool the criminal genius and a female assassin, Sabine Moreau (Léa Seydoux ), from whom Cobalt plans to buy the nuclear activation codes. Things at first go well with the complicated scheme, then they go wrong, and a chase ensues. Eventually, a dust storm intervenes, and Hendricks escapes, with the codes in his possession.

Then it’s on to Mumbai, where Cobalt-Hendricks plans to commandeer a privately owned satellite to launch a missile from a Russian navy submarine in the Pacific Ocean. The glamorous Agent Carter seduces an Indian billionaire and extracts from him the satellite override code. The seconds tick away, and the question is: will our heroes deactivate the missile’s warhead in time? Will the Russians, who believe the US has blown up part of the Kremlin, retaliate with their own act of war?

Hunt, Carter and Brandt are each given the opportunity to show us his or her human side. Each team member has a tragedy or more in his or her past. Hunt has apparently lost his wife in the line of duty, and Brandt, we learn, was in charge of keeping her safe. In the film’s opening sequence, Carter loses her lover to the French woman killer. As Benji, Simon Pegg, the British comedian, is primarily there for mild comic relief, although his character too comes through in the end.

Aside from the short-lived appearance by Wilkinson, the fourth Mission: Impossible is missing the presence of a veteran performer (sometimes as a government or agency official) such as a Vanessa Redgrave, Jon Voigt, Jean Reno, Anthony Hopkins, Brendan Gleeson, Phillip Seymour Hoffman or Laurence Fishburne, who graced the first three installments of the series. This is in keeping with the Ghost Protocol in the title, which indicates a situation whereby the US government disavows the IMF team and its members are left entirely to their own devices.

The four Mission Impossible films, each with Cruise in the leading role (as well as serving as co-producer), have cost a combined $500 million and brought in close to $2 billion at the global box office. Understandably, given those figures, a fifth part is apparently in the works.

Ghost Protocol takes the form largely of a series of high-tech and special effects set pieces, connected by scenes of exposition in which the team members interact and discuss the progress of their efforts. Some of the effects are dizzying, especially those associated with Cruise’s scaling of the Burj Khalifa. The IMF team, as usual, accomplishes technological marvels beyond the abilities of ordinary mortals. A number of spectacular aerial shots of Budapest, Moscow and Dubai brighten up the lengthy (two-and-a-half-hour) proceedings.

Based on the evidence on screen, most of director Brad Bird’s concentration, as well probably as that of the producers and crew, was focused on the logistical challenges of this latest, $145 million installment of a popular franchise. The writing and acting are not distinguished. Functional might be the appropriate word.

Working under the right conditions, Cruise can be an energetic, effective, even self-critical or socially critical, performer: for example, in The Color of Money, Rain Man, Born on the Fourth of July, Magnolia and War of the Worlds. He does well as a smooth- or fast-talking, opportunistic operator of a specifically American type, insincere, self-involved and ruthless in equal measure (Rain Man, Magnolia), but the 49-year-old actor also demonstrated a good deal of empathy and social insight portraying disabled anti-war veteran Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July.

Absent a strong director or script, Cruise tends to fall back on predictable and somewhat complacent gestures and delivery, and the result is often dull, as in this case. His enormous wealth and celebrity cannot possibly help matters.

Compensating in Ghost Protocol for the lack of substance to his role, Cruise makes sure we see Hunt sweating and straining, almost martyring himself in his efforts to thwart Cobalt. This does not convince us the actor is seriously intervening in the world; he seems mostly to be calling attention to himself and his work ethic. Again, however, the principal culprit is a screenplay far more concerned about its engagement with computers, security systems, satellites, elevators and skyscrapers than with human beings. The awkwardness demonstrated by Jeremy Renner, normally an excellent actor, is a further indication of the film’s overall failings.

Mission: Impossible began life as a television series in September 1966, most memorably starring husband and wife (at the time) Martin Landau and Barbara Bain and featuring the soon-to-be-famous theme music composed by Lalo Schifrin. The show, firmly situated in the Cold War, emphasized the ability of the IMF, portrayed as an independent agency, to outwit and bring down various tyrants and regimes. It lasted seven years on CBS. The concept had a brief revival as a television series in 1988 on ABC, partly as a response to a writers’ strike and the lack of new scripts.

The first Mission: Impossible feature film, starring Cruise, appeared in 1996, a far more cynical and world-weary affair than the original television program, which tells us something about the intervening 30 years in the US. More cynical, but less shame-faced about US operations: the Impossible Missions Force was now identified as a subdivision of the CIA. Whether anyone involved in the various productions saw or sees any irony in an organization with the initials “IMF” operating around the globe in a violent and covert fashion to shore up American interests is not known to me.

The new film makes little pretense at treating current events in a lifelike manner. This is a piece of fantasy-adventure, which can either be enjoyed as such, or not at all.

Usefully, Hollywood spy thrillers since World War II have often let us know the identity of the national government or political movement (the USSR, “Red China,” Castroite guerrillas, the IRA, German “anarchists,” Arab “terrorists,” etc.) perceived by those in charge of the film industry at least—and such people have fairly sensitive antennae—to be the chief threat to US interests at any given moment.

Russia is in the sights of this edition of Mission: Impossible, but somewhat ambiguously. Cobalt-Hendricks is a psychotic renegade, an independent operator, although his origins lie in the Russian or Soviet nuclear weapons program. Determined Moscow policeman Anatoly Sidorov (Vladimir Mashkov) and his colleagues are portrayed as brutal but patriotic, and not necessarily, in the end, the enemy. By the final credits, an armed truce has more or less been established between Hunt, his team and the Russian representatives.

People will go and watch the newest edition of Mission: Impossible, partly out of nothing better to do and partly because it boasts cast members they like or promises spectacular sequences. Films like this do not leave a lasting impression. For that, a work, whatever its genre, has to be more recognizably related to and interested in real life.