@curious – it didn´t feel right for now. Maybe another day.

Posted by: b | Mar 8 2006 20:41 utc | 4

Come on join the party
Dress to kill
Won’t you come and join the party
Dress to kill.

Posted by: correlator | Mar 8 2006 21:07 utc | 6

One HOSTILE TAKEOVER comming right up!
I haven’t been this freaked since I first read about
Executive Outcomes INC. several years ago.
This is like living in some kind of John Carpenter film (think, 1994’s ‘ In the Mouth of Madness’ ). These people are truely on the brink of complete insanity. And the frightening thing is they are taking us up into their delusions.
Either the following is complete propagenda or we, –humanity– has stepped over the threshold into mass psychosis.
Strategic Communication Laboratories

Strategic Communication Laboratories has pioneered a new methodology to enable governments and countries to manage their relationships with their key audience groups through more powerful communication.
In a world where the perception is the reality, all countries need to have the capability to manage their own perceptual alignment – otherwise someone else will.

A direct quote from the website of Strategic Communication Laboratories, a London based company that offers “the most powerful weapon in the world”, the ability to manage every aspect of a conflict from one operation centre.
Take a look around their website and witness sickening quote after quote explaining how their vision is to allow the total control of citizens by their government or their military, to keep it that way, and to facilitate conflicts with and the takeover of other countries and the execution of total control over their citizens.
The idea put across by SCL is that if you can control the perceptions people have of reality, then you can control reality itself.
it is a tight rope walk in distinction.
George Orwell was right on the money when he envisaged the coming 21st century as a battle based on the PERCEPTION of reality. in 1984, his classic warning to the world, Orwell told us that we would have to face this threat:
The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.
‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.
– George Orwell, 1984, Chapter 3 (1948)
SCL’s vision is no different from the constructed artificial reality designed to house the minds of the human race portrayed in the feature film The Matrix. If you present all the people with a fabricated collective illusion of reality, and enough meaningless distractions, they may stop questioning that reality when things don’t seem to add up.
Someone please pinch me and tell me this is a hoax, otherwise, I want my mommeeeee!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 9 2006 6:41 utc | 8

Errie Uncle,
Your Orwell quote came up in a Jusin Raimondo piece I linked on the OT:
The idea is breathtaking: after years of propaganda directed at the alleged moral depravity of the Sunni-based Ba’athist regime, which – we were told – killed millions and was on a par with Hitler’s Nazis, Biddle wants the U.S. to consider an Orwellian turn-on-a-dime. As poor old Winston Smith put it:
“At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.”
One big problem with Biddle’s proposal is that it overlooks the difficulties of selling such a strategy at home, where support for the war has waned practically beyond the point of no return. While the oppressed and blissfully ignorant “proles” of Orwell’s future dystopia were kept in a state of permanent indifference to the daily depredations of their rulers – partly through terror, partly on account of a limitless supply of “Victory gin” – the American public is still a few notches above that level of mental and moral degradation.
………………
(lets hope so)

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 9 2006 10:20 utc | 10

(AP) DENVER The father of a Colorado teacher who compared President Bush’s State of the Union address to speeches made by Adolf Hitler said he and his family have received at least 12 death threats.
Maybe ‘land of the free’ was a bit optimistic, but let’s hope there are still a few brave souls.

Posted by: DM | Mar 9 2006 11:55 utc | 12

uncle, salon published a piece on SCL last year around the time rummy wanted us to invest in his flu vaccine

LONDON—Over the past 24 hours, seven people have checked into hospitals here with telltale symptoms. Rashes, vomiting, high temperature, and cramps: the classic signs of smallpox. Once thought wiped out, the disease is back and threatening a pandemic of epic proportions.
The government faces a dilemma: It needs people to stay home, but if the news breaks, mass panic might ensue as people flee the city, carrying the virus with them.
A shadowy media firm steps in to help orchestrate a sophisticated campaign of mass deception. Rather than alert the public to the smallpox threat, the company sets up a high-tech “ops center” to convince the public that an accident at a chemical plant threatens London. As the fictitious toxic cloud approaches the city, TV news outlets are provided graphic visuals charting the path of the invisible toxins. Londoners stay indoors, glued to the telly, convinced that even a short walk into the streets could be fatal

Posted by: annie | Mar 9 2006 15:27 utc | 14

Why is Congress bothering here at all?
To pretend that the rule of law still has some validity and can be reasonably discussed – is an issue to ponder, argue, discuss. The facade of a ‘proper’ democracy has to be maintained, both to fool the public (the voters) and the actors themselves.
They (congress) show they are serious; they know they have to do that to keep their incredibly lucrative and powerful positions.
For that reason, they will put their heads in the sand, skirt close to embracing delusion and denial. They will prefer not to know, not to understand, and will avoid delving deeply.
They will latch onto any jingly formula, Orwellian double-speak, fake enquiry, etc. Serious head will nod: this is crucial, vital, the crux. So from one day to the next, the issues will change. None will lead anywhere.
They have to be purposely ignorant to continue the charade. They cannot read papers, or the internet, look at an atlas, or pay any kind of attention to their constituents. So they don’t. That is their survival strategy. Head in the sand.
The ‘incompetency’ defense has got looong legs.
Of course, in this way they mirror their electorate, who would prefer not to know.
Anything.

Posted by: Noisette | Mar 9 2006 19:51 utc | 16

Strategic Communication Laboratories UPDATE:
With Lord Peter Varnish OBE on their Advisory Board, anything goes.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 10 2006 19:59 utc | 18