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January 17, 2006
WB: Alternate Reality Department
Comments
Nicte to know Billmon still reads MoA?
So who has agreed to what?
Russia cautions on Iran sanctions, China urges ‘diplomacy’
UK not seeking immediate move to sanctions on Iran – British official UPDATE
Russia Not Signing Off on Iran Referral
and here is the ace in the discussion:
Oil prices soar to three-month high on Iran fears
Oil Surpasses $65, Reaching Three-Month High, on Nigeria, Iran
Venezuela Warns about $100-a-barrel Oil
Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech and Opinion Control since 9-11,
Nancy Snow, Seven Stories Press, p.173, $9.95.
WITH propaganda becoming the chief weapon of control when violent means are unavailable, black lies, white lies and double talk are common features of any democracy. In the last couple of years, the intellectual weaponry of George Bush has been armed by none other than Charlotte Beers, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, who formerly ran ad campaigns for Uncle Ben’s Rice. We have also seen the political support given to Bush by Rumsfield and Poindexter, who were convicted of aiding terrorists in the 1980s.
The scenario looms dark. As Howard Zinn writes, “If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves”. This domination is through a supposedly free press, but it is free for those who are its owners. As pointed out in this book, Nancy Snow, former United States Information Agency employee, maintains that the expression “mass media” is nothing but “an insider’s joke”. The masses have “the `mass’ media but have no power to make the tough policy decisions”. It is the triumph of the system over expression, turning the nation into “a deeply anti-intellectual society as a whole”. If one was to only examine the education given to the young, there seems to be no liberating alternatives to the lessons they are taught; critical thinking is simply not encouraged. Mass manipulation of language and thought control takes care of the political and social security of the elite.
Snow emphasises the propaganda techniques that the government uses to control information at home and abroad. President Bush has “mastered the art of saying nothing” with his excessive use of platitudes of emptiness that reinforce mistaken ideas. Such a controlled campaign of misinformation, reinforced through a kind of “sugar pill that allows the bitter truth to go down easily”, is salient to Washington. The new propaganda methods in the war on terror have led to the setting up of a 520-million-dollar, 24-hour Arabic language satellite news network called Radio Sawa. There is another Middle East Television Network that is at present hotly competing with Al Jazeera. The intentions are as obvious as what Woodrow Wilson had in mind when he advised his countrymen to “go out and sell goods that will make the world more comfortable and happier and convert them to the principles of America”.
Language manipulation and the use of traditional marketing techniques in advertising such as the emphasis on the emotional and the rational that Charlotte Beers is so adept at are methods close to the procedures employed by the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels who was of the opinion that “there is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content”. Empty words like freedom and democracy are enough to bypass the need for any debate. Simplicity and vividness, salesmanship and statesmanship are enough to reshape Americanism and its image worldwide. No questions are raised on the defence of freedom or on whose freedom is at stake. As Snow points out, it is mainly the freedom of McDonnell Douglas and Exxon Mobil that is of any concern to the military-industrial complex. To this we can safely add the role of the media and the film industry to complete the picture of State manoeuvring. Almost $50 million were spent on film production after the attack on Pearl Harbour for purposes of state propaganda and the upholding of American military heroism. Media and the Internet are continuously being employed as “manipulative mind-managers” for rumour mongering and planting publicity stories, an overt conspiracy to keep the public ill-informed on sensitive issues.
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&requesttimeout=500&folder=10&paper=24
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vf01.cfm?folder=10&outfit=pmt
http://www.hindu.com/lr/2005/09/04/stories/2005090400330500.htm
….
It’s funny — when I saw the Post headline this morning, my immediate thought was that they were spinning this to make it look like a US success. I wondered how the foreign press would be portraying it. In this case, I didn’t even need to look to the foreign press; the NYT had a more realistic description. Because the Post is my local paper, I see it as simply another sad sign of how a once mighty voice for a free press has coopted itself to become simply another organ of the Republican government.
Posted by: Aigin | Jan 17 2006 23:06 utc | 3
Paradoxical Psychological Manipulation is a technique often used by the military and the media.
A powerful strategy of clandestine brainwashing is to send a communication with two, paradoxical messages.
Even intelligent people can be taken in by this brainwashing technology of paradoxical messaging. An example of this phenomenon is a current operation by the Advertising Council.
In June of 2003, the Ad Council was stating its overall purpose in this way: “We marshall [sic] the volunteer forces of advertising agencies and media companies to affect [sic] positive social change.” As of December, 2003, they have corrected their statement to read: “We marshal the volunteer forces of advertising agencies and media companies to effect positive social change.” You can, in the example below, interpret “effect positive change” to mean “brainwash people into fearful submission.”
One of the Council’s current operations is called the “Campaign for Freedom.” If you believe the Council,
“The initiative is designed to assist Americans during the war on terrorism through the development and distribution of timely and relevant public service messages. This first round of PSAs for the campaign has been created to celebrate our nation’s freedom and remind Americans about the importance of freedom and the need to protect it for future generations.”
“According to research, Americans are looking for messages that will inform, involve and inspire them during the war on terrorism. This inspirational campaign is advertising’s gift to America on the occasion of its birthday, Independence Day.” All of the ads conclude with the powerful tagline, “Freedom. Appreciate it. Cherish it. Protect it.”
I recommend you examine all six Ad Council “messages” to see the paradoxical communications in each.
“The average person in the US watches about four hours of television each day. Over the course of a year, we see roughly twenty five thousand commercials, many of them produced by the world’s highest-paid cognitive psychologists. And these heavily produced advertisements are not merely for products, but for a lifestyle based on a consumer mind-set. What they’re doing, day in and day out, twenty-five thousand times a year, is hypnotizing us into seeing ourselves as consumers who want to be entertained rather than as citizens who want to be informed and engaged. We need to take back the airwaves as a sphere of mature conversation and dialogue about our common future.”
Duane Elgin, “On Simplicity and Humanity’s Future, IONS, Noetic Sciences Review, December 2002
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 18 2006 0:20 utc | 4
beq, it works even better for print. Billmon’s lastest post leads me to conclude, the only thing that can be concluded, that the American Government is using full scale Psychological warfare on it’s own people. Using as we know the biggest newspapers in the country NYT’s and the Washinton Post. I know this sounds completely mad. But a few hard fact examples may shed some light in making my case:
During the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, a television ad campaigning for Republican candidate George W. Bush showed words (and parts thereof) scaling from the foreground to the background on a television screen. When the word BUREAUCRATS flashed on the screen, one frame showed only the last part,RATS.
Also, anybody remember Bush’s New Orleans press conf has his hypnotizingnecktie?
Finally, I remember listing to the Thom hartman show and Thom mentioning how Bush and Cheney often use Neurolinguistic Programming in their speeches.
Now, take the above w/what ever grain of salt one needs while wearing their tin hats, but it is clear to me that we are being asaulted, mugged and power manipulated on what ever level they can get by with and john q. public has no clue.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 18 2006 1:09 utc | 6
@hanshan
I decided a while back that the major cause of these assholes getting their simplistic messages out there and hardly anyone calling them out, was the failure of educational institutions to teach students how to think critically.
I realise that any passing academic may give lie to that statement by taking it apart piece by piece, but nevertheless I shall try to explain.
Just as nowadays it is common for audiences to give a debating team points on the basis of which side they personally agree with, instead of awarding the win to the side which argued their p.o.v. the best, in many academic disciplines where it was previously possible to disagree with the accepted p.o.v. and still get good grades as long as one could use well argued evidence, this is no longer true.
Teachers no longer accept students straying from the ‘teachings’.
I have always held the change in nomenclature of some humanities disciplines from humanities to ‘social sciences’ responsible for this.
Trying to make a discipline such as psychology, sociology or economics a ‘science’ where ideas are clear cut and there is only one correct answer, is risible imho.
Yet observing today’s students struggling with these subjects where they are being encouraged to accept an idea that doesn’t seem to be intellectually credible for them is painful.
Sure later on in postgraduate studies students may be encouraged to think more critically but many of the students won’t get that far.
If I were to bail up a tertiary teacher on this issue I would be told that the ‘incredible pressure’ on today’s students to get a qualification as quickly as possible lest education fees send the student and/or the family broke means their is no time to explore issues at undergraduate level. That the students ‘prefer’ it this way because that is how they have been taught during their primary and secondary education and that the notion that there may not be one single correct answer ‘unsettles’ them.
There is some truth to that as anyone who has been asked ‘will this be in the exam sir?’ can attest.
Whatever the reason for this situation is, it means that many people do accept the pap which is fed them, that they can’t get a grip on what a news story implies until an NBC news analyst tells them.
I know a bloke, who I wouldn’t call a friend, because I find it difficult to get close to people who believe that if it’s not against the law it must be O.K. Whatever our relationship is this bloke is quite a large corporate fish in a pretty small corporate swimming tank but he has a graduate employment program in his corporation to recruit the next generation of assholes and over the past few years he has decided that he will only accept arts or literature graduates. He claims that they are the only grads who are still trained to look at a situation from all points of view. That they can think outside the box whereas many other disciplines encourage people to think linearly.
Paradoxically it seems there is another discipline where nothing is black and white but open to the best constructed interpretation and that is the one that many people expect to be black and white. That is the law.
It’s because this freedom of interpretation is encouraged within the legal process that torture, kidnapping or wiretapping can suddenly become legal.
Weird isn’t it?
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 18 2006 2:13 utc | 7
All speeling and greammer errors in the proceeding post are intentionel. I always found that hennessy and pedantry make for a great penmanship. ;-P
“I don’t mind being accused of being an “escapist.” On a planet that increasingly resemble on huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.”
-Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II: Down To Earth
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 18 2006 6:14 utc | 8
A powerful strategy of clandestine brainwashing is to send a communication with two, paradoxical messages.
Same with many contradictory messages.
Beware the corporate sponsored Ad Council. There are precious few, if any, progressive PSAs (Public Service Announcements) coming from them.
@debs-
Trying to make a discipline such as psychology, sociology or economics a ‘science’ where ideas are clear cut and there is only one correct answer, is risible imho.
Chomsky makes this point quite cogently, too, having excelled at both.
DING DING DING DING!!!
Same with many contradictory messages.
Malooga, has won! I was hoping someone would bridge that gap.
You have won a all tube induced weekend at Bush’s newly passed “Disrupters” re-education camp! And a brand new NSA file! Please report to the back, (the free speech zone) citizen 48792511278. Thanks for playing.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 18 2006 8:14 utc | 11
Addendum:
Does anybody else besides me, see Bushes intrepid and “little-noticed provision” to criminalize protesters under Patriot Act as “disruptors” remind anybody else of Stalins, Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code).
Also, this whole Gore/Whitehouse (Bush) feud falls into and
demonstrates the strategy of clandestine brainwashing i.e false dichotomy on a emic (insider) and etic (outsider)scale and works the same as a victim/perpetrator cycle. A model. Etic is the functional opposite of emic; it refers to a objectified and analyzed perspective.
Sorry, if I wasn’t about half blitzed I could make this more coherent, but I think you intelligent people get my drift.
Bartender! Coffee please, and pass them smuggled in Iranian pistachios over.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 18 2006 8:56 utc | 12
“The Bush presidency was MUCH better than “Cats.” I intend to elect him again, and again.”
Posted by: Sandtoe | Jan 18 2006 17:00 utc | 14
@debs
am terribly dismayed at the current
model & practice of education, from elementary to
college ; when higher
ed became a commodity & students regarded
learning, not for it’s own sake, but for the
future remuneration returns, the curve trended
ever downward.
Don’t know about the kiwi’s but in the states this
process began in the early 70s & students who
matriculated by mid 70s were thoroughly caught up
in the mercantile mindset. Corresponding changes
occurred w/in academia.
I think a watershed
realization incurred w/ ph.d’s driving cab
(NYC & Boston) as they
couldn’t find a position w/in their field.
These were often liberal arts (humanities)
grads.
W/ the ever deteriorating food production methods
(in the name of progress), the ever expanding adulteration
of food through the use of additives-preservatives,irradiation,
& GMO products,
the corresponding degredation of health
will (& has) expand exponentially.
I don’t have any illusions about anyone educated
in the US being able to think.
Malooga & $cam both spot-on
…
Posted by: hanshan | Jan 18 2006 18:05 utc | 15
alternate realities
some interesting reads:
Bewilderness
This means that the United States government is planning to use secret military operations in order to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. In a strange twist of logic, it seems the plan is to somehow combat terrorism by causing it. According to the report, other strategies include stealing money from terrorist cells or tricking them with fake communications. The Defense Department already maintains a secretive counter-terror operations group known as Delta Force that is called in when a crisis happens.
Appropriately enough for a story about the deepest possible covert operation — penetrating terrorist cells and provoking them into action — the saga of the Pentagon’s “Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group” (P2OG) went straight back into the dark after strutting its brief hour upon the stage. There has been no new information about the group since it was first mentioned nationally in the Los Angeles Times as part of a larger story on Pentagon plans for new “secret armies.” Was it funded? Is it operational? Has it “flushed out” any terrorists lately by goading them into “action”? Are any of the post-Iraq War spate of terrorist atrocities linked to P2OG activities? We don’t know. And with Donald Rumsfeld’s openly avowed penchant for “strategic misinformation,” how will we ever know? Certainly the mainstream press has done nothing to enlighten us. Although the CounterPunch article (which appeared simultaneously in The Moscow Times) provoked a lively response in the “alternative” media (print, web and radio), there has not been a single subsequent mention of the group in the U.S. national press. In the UK, John Pilger has raised warning flags about P2OG in The New Statesman and the Daily Mirror, while The Ecologist also ran a version of the CounterPunch article. The rest is silence. At first glance, this decided lack of interest might seem a curious reaction, given the American media’s insatiable—and profitable—obsession with terrorism. But the media’s equally intense, and equally profitable, abhorrence of moral ambiguity—especially when it involves possible American complicity in mayhem and murder—makes the silence easier to understand.
P2OG
One hundred “highly specialized people with unique technical and intelligence skills such as information operations, PSYOP, network attack, covert activities, SIGINT, HUMINT, SOF, influence warfare/deception operations” could constitute a new, elite “Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG),” reporting to the National Security Council with an annual budget of $100 million.
The proposal is the latest sign of a new assertiveness by the Defense Department in intelligence matters, and an indication that the cutting edge of intelligence reform is not to be found in Congress but behind closed doors in the Pentagon.
“We know that secrecy by its very nature may affect the personality of its practioners,” the unnamed author wrote.
“This is true of all forms of secrecy from the primitive secret society to the codeword compartment. The latter is a heightened form of secrecy that resembles the former in many ways. It has the aura of a secret society. It has its initiation, its oaths, its esoteric phrases, its sequestered areas, and its secrets within secrets. And in place of passwords and hand signs, there are letter designations on badges. There are in-groups and out-groups. No wonder, then, if the codeword compartment has unintended psychological effects.”
Among other effects identified, cleared personnel tend to assign undue accuracy and weight to highly classified information, and to equate access levels with professional status.
Secrecy
….
Posted by: hanshan | Jan 18 2006 20:29 utc | 16
don the shades…
Every human group has within it competing subgroups, jousting for power. The more highly classified the group and its activities, and the less that is known about it outside its confines, the more strongly and secretly the subgroups can play. So they can emerge as rogue groups pursuing their own agendas, not that of their duly elected governments. In the extreme, such a deep black program can even become a “captured” program, which is totally in the hands of rogues and no longer reports to or is bound by the dictates of the parent government.
It has long been suspected in some quarters that even the US’s highly classified research community may be riddled by such rogue groups, and so may be certain highly sensitive parts of the Research and Development community.
Remember that, in every large and powerful human organization, the basis for rogue groups is power and secrecy. They are always seeking to increase their power, control, influence, prestige, etc. Nothing else. Patriotism and mission are—to rogue groups—often just idle words. They have their own agendas. And being rogue groups, they may well bring in unethical, immoral tricks: assassination, bribery, entrapment, disinformation, plausible deniability, etc. A certain percentage of a highly secret rogue group will wind up using all these things and more. It’s a human characteristic, the old primate dominance game. Only now disguised and hidden under deep classification.
Internal divisive groups exist in all large and powerful groups, and joust for power. In highly classified groups, these groups are greatly enabled to joust more widely, unethically, and immorally because it is so deeply hidden. So very deep classification evokes the growth and intensity of rogue groups. It’s the old “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” routine.
The implication is that in the West one or more highly classified, sustained, heavily funded developments in advanced mind control programs, probably exists and probably has existed for some time. Due to loose formation of rogue groups inside such programs, they may have dual or triple purposes, may not operate under very much legitimate government control at all, and may operate specifically for the purposes of the rogue group or groups that have gained control.
In a nutshell, that’s what may be going on in the clandestine mind control projects in several Western governments. The involvement of at least some rogue groups, some being “cowboys” who operate well outside all laws and ethics, could also result in such things as assassinations, clandestine testing on individuals without their consent, etc. In short, it could account for what seems to be actually occurring. As also is “usual” in such a mess, one or more of the rogue groups eventually may become very powerful because their secret weapons are very powerful. They may become confident, thinking they have the “best in the world.” They may actually believe they are ahead of the Russians.
Part III pg. 5
no rules game
Posted by: hanshan | Jan 18 2006 20:33 utc | 17
great posts, hanshan.
Uncle$cam- I’ll report back to the community after I finish my all tube induced re-education.
@citizen – notes from the gone world
isn’t it always the way – don’t understand what the
problem is w/type pad, or, if it’s even in the software.
herew/ as clearly as can – will punch in manual
P2OG
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/P2OG.html
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/4.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd1101.html
London bombings could be covert US P2OG type “psycho-op”
repost from alternet | 11.07.2005 13:27
… millions thought it is a US P2OG op.
Posted by: verite on Jul 11, 2005 4:14 AM [Report this comment]
Whether a “stimulating actions” US P2OG type initiated atrocity (to maintain UK troops in Iraq) or not, the effect among an the better educated (than US) population will be to increase demand for withdrawal of UK troops now, as happened in Spain.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/07/317952.html
Federation of American Scientists:
Special Operations & Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism
Dr. Ted Gold
Mr. Don Latham
link
No Rules Game:
link
apparently for the above ( cheniere
you first have to go to the link & then manually click
pg. 5 in Pt. III.
Let me know if it doesn’t work
….
Posted by: hanshan | Jan 19 2006 16:19 utc | 20
the problem w/ those links is the extra character in the url. if you remove the ending forward slash (/) from the original links, you can still load the file from the link
Posted by: b real | Jan 19 2006 16:43 utc | 21
June 22 , 2005
An Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner
The Bush Administration’s Psy-Ops on the US Public
By KEVIN ZEESE
Sam Gardiner has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College. He was recently a visiting scholar at the Swedish Defence College. During Gulf II he was a regular on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer as well as on BBC radio and television, and National Public Radio. He authored “The Enemy is Us” an article describing how the Bush Administration used disinformation and psychological warfare – weapons usually used against the ‘enemy’ – against the American public in order to support the war in Iraq. He has done an extensive analysis of the media coverage before the war, during the war and during the occupation as well as of the statements of Administration officials. His conclusions are startling and of great concern. He has put his findings in a report entitled: “Truth from These Podia”.
Psyops American style
Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working On News At CNN?
3/27/00
Reports in the Dutch newspaper Trouw (2/21/00, 2/25/00) and France’s Intelligence Newsletter (2/17/00) have revealed that several officers from the US Army’s 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group at Ft. Bragg worked in the news division at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters last year, starting in the final days of the Kosovo War.
In the U.S. media, so far only Alexander Cockburn, columnist for The Nation and co-editor of the newsletter CounterPunch, has picked up on the story. Cockburn’s column on the subject is available at http://www.counterpunch.org.
The story is disturbing. In the 1980s, officers from the 4th Army PSYOPS group staffed the National Security Council’s Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), a shadowy government propaganda agency that planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration’s Central America policies.
A senior US official described OPD as a “vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory.” (Miami Herald, 7/19/87) An investigation by the congressional General Accounting Office found that OPD had engaged in “prohibited, covert propaganda activities,” and the office was soon shut down as a result of the Iran-Contra investigations. But the 4th PSYOPS group still operates.
CNN has always maintained a close relationship with the Pentagon. Getting access to top military officials is a necessity for a network that stakes its reputation on being first on the ground during wars and other military operations.
What makes the CNN story especially troubling is the fact that the network allowed the Army’s covert propagandists to work in its headquarters, where they learned the ins and outs of CNN’s operations. Even if the PSYOPS officers working in the newsroom did not influence news reporting, did the network allow the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against CNN itself?
For instance, one PSYOPS officer worked in CNN’s satellite division. According to Intelligence Newsletter, rear admiral Thomas Steffens, a psychological warfare expert in the Special Operations Command, recently told a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to “gain control” over commercial news satellites to help bring down an “informational cone of silence” over regions where special operations were taking place.
An unofficial strategy paper published by the U.S. Naval War College in 1996 and written by an Army officer (“Military Operations in the CNN World: Using the Media as a Force Multiplier”) urged military commanders to find ways to “leverage the vast resources of the fourth estate” for the purposes of “communicating the [mission’s] objective and endstate, boosting friendly morale, executing more effective psychological operations, playing a major role in deception of the enemy, and enhancing intelligence collection.”
Historical outreach?
Published on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times
PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror
The use of misleading information as a military tool sparks debate in the Pentagon. Critics say the practice puts credibility at stake.
by Mark Mazzetti
Morphing
….
Posted by: hanshan | Jan 19 2006 17:55 utc | 23
hanshan, thanks for all the links. Still chewing.
One thing we can surely say, though, is that in a modern complex world, so-called government credibility will always mean an easily available cover under which certain officials will enevitably betray the law, betray us citizens and the people we love.
When they say, trust me a responsible citizen must beware, and decline.
Posted by: citizen | Jan 19 2006 18:15 utc | 24
@citizen, Malooga,$cam, debs, et al
The Global Drug Meta-Group:
Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11
By Peter Dale Scott (18,734 words) 10/29/05
See also A Ballad of Drugs and 9/11
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. The Meta-Group, the Russian 9/11, and Kosovo
• Violence and the Political Requirements of the Global Drug Traffic
• A Digression: Drugs, Meta-Groups and the Compradorial Revolution
• The “Russian 9/11” in 1999: Bombings and Plans for War
• The Meeting in Khashoggi’s Villa, July 1999
• Khashoggi’s Interest in Chechnya
• Dunlop’s Redactions of His Source Yasenev
• The Khashoggi Villa Meeting, Drugs, and Kosovo
II. The Meta-Group, Drugs, Salafist Islam, and America
• The Role of Anton Surikov: The Dunlop and Yasenev Versions
• Surikov, Muslim Insurrectionism, and Drug Trafficking
• Allegations of Drug-Trafficking and Far West, Ltd
• Far West, Ltd, Halliburton, Diligence LLC, New Bridge, and Neil Bush
• The U.S. Contribution to the Afghan-Kosovo Drug Traffic
• How the U.S. Restored Narco-Barons to Power in Afghanistan, 2001
III. The Meta-Group, the War on Terror, and 9/11
• U.S. Geostrategic Goals and Chechnya
• The Meta-Group’s Geostrategic Goal: Maintain the War of Terror
• Concluding Question: The Meta-Group and the United States Government
• The False Dilemmas of 9/11 Theories
Bitesized
MIRROR NEURONS AND THE BRAIN IN THE VAT [1.12.06]
by V.S. Ramachandran
Researchers at UCLA found that cells in the human anterior cingulate, which normally fire when you poke the patient with a needle (“pain neurons”), will also fire when the patient watches another patient being poked. The mirror neurons, it would seem, dissolve the barrier between self and others. [1] I call them “empathy neurons” or “Dalai Llama neurons”. (I wonder how the mirror neurons of a masochist or sadist would respond to another person being poked.) Dissolving the “self vs. other” barrier is the basis of many ethical systems, especially eastern philosophical and mystical traditions. This research implies that mirror neurons can be used to provide rational rather than religious grounds for ethics (although we must be careful not to commit the is/ought fallacy).
Reflections in a Golden Eye
tx b real for fixin’ the links above
Posted by: hanshan | Jan 19 2006 20:53 utc | 25
“Let’s try waving Osama at ’em again!” Many say Osama bin Laden is – a dead nemesis perpetuated by the US government.Be that as it may:
Today’s Booga Booga; trying to drive Bush’s numbers back up by waving the dead guy at us. Funny how their replies were set and ready to go. In less than two hours of the booga booga. Just in time w/the Justice Dept. memo saying NSA wiretapping ‘legal’
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 19 2006 21:18 utc | 26
HKOL, you will enjoy hanshan’s link a few posts above (“bitesized”), a well-footnoted essay by Peter Dale Scott:
I have tried to suggest in this paper that in fact the meta-group had both motive – to restore the Afghan opium harvest and increase instability and chaos along the trade routes through Central Asia – and opportunity – to utilize its contacts with both al-Zawahiri in al Qaeda and the CIA in Washington. It is furthermore the best candidate to explain one of the more difficult anomalies (or indeed paradoxes) of the clues surrounding 9/11: that many of the clues lead in the direction of Saudi Arabia, but some lead also in a very different direction, towards Israel.”
In it some of your favorite names appear, and he stitches together a theory that examines international drug trafficking, Turkish passports, US, Russian and other nationals — both officials and private citizens. Nice one, h.
Posted by: jonku | Jan 19 2006 23:07 utc | 28