Reality vs. perception management: the tinfoil controversy

[bobthedrummer]

There have been quite a few threads on the general topic of tinfoil or conspiracy theory.

The fact is that the neo-conservatives comprising the "shadow government" of the George W. Bush administration employ perception management.

The DOD Dictionary loosely links it to psychological operations (PSYOPS) as well as cover and deception.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-pcep.htm#perception_mgt

The Rendon Group is a good example of perception management.

The bottom line is that the advocates of perception management don't give a damn about reality.
That's what we're up against.

Imo it's historical use by totalitarian regimes has led to a new form of fascism in our nation.

Any comments on perception management as practiced by the administration would be appreciated.

I'll be adding some additional links to this thread.

They (the shadow government) all lied to US and the world, that's going on 24/7.

[bobthedrummer]

1. Piss On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management

of War by Stan Goff 10-17-2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/goff10172003.html

Bush's 'Perception Management' Plan by Robert Parry 11-18-2004
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2004/111804.html

[Octafish]

17. Ueberrat said: 'Control what they think...'

...And you control what they do."

[Acryliccalico]

2. Social Psychology 101

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Brainwashing America

Brainwashing America
by Dr. Norman Livergood

The puppet Bush regime is using new, aggressive forms of brainwashing to change the very way Americans think and feel.

This is the psychological dimension of the demonic cabal's general onslaught against American workers, just as the "war on terrorism" is the military dimension and corporate crime and tax cuts for the rich comprise the economic dimension.

We are living under the beginning stages of a military dictatorship in precisely the same way that 1930s Germans suffered under the Nazi regime.

As in the case of Nazi Germany, state-sponsored propaganda (brainwashing) is a vital part of the Bush regime's strategy.

http://www.hermes-press.com/brainwash1.htm

[bobthedrummer]

5. Domestic psychological operations, a controlled media, domestic

spying, private military companies...

Perception management, like "FREEDOM IS ON THE MARCH"...

It's not tinfoil, I don't think it's a theory either.

[EFerrari]

6. (And, DU reels at the perceived overstatement)

We have now reached the point where intuition is more accurate than televised "news".

Buckle up.

[bobthedrummer]

4. I mentioned The Rendon Group (TRG) in the opening post

Here's a couple of interesting links about these perception managers (of course you may have read about them elsewhere including here at DU).

Kucinich Sends Letter To Rumsfeld Demanding Answers On His Role In Promoting Misinformation In The Lead Up To The War Against Iraq (December 5, 2003)
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/oh10_kucinich/031205rumsfeldltr.html

Information Warriors: Rendon Group Wins Hearts and Minds in Business, Politics and War by Pratap Chatterjee 8-4-2004
http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11486

They don't care about reality at all.

Douglas Feith, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Condoleeza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove etc...

[Octafish]

18. NYT mag: Without a Doubt

Gee. Some people just "know" when something is right.

Right. Image is everything. Right.

Without a Doubt

By RON SUSKIND
The New York Times Magazine
October 17, 2004

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''

Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'''

Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.''

CONTINUED...

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/sloth/2004-10-16b.html

That's where I start screaming...

[Cats Against Frist]

52. The most chilling words I've ever heard in my lifetime, and probably

some of the most chilling words in history:

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend – but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

This has 27,000 hits on google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%2B%22we%27re+an+empire+now%22+%2Bsuskind&btnG=Search

The importance of that quote to history should not be underestimated.

[Jose Diablo]

55. Sounds like a passage from the book, "1984"

Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. It also follows that though the past is alterable, it never has been altered in any specific instance. For when it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this new version is the past, and no different past can ever have existed. This holds good even when, as often happens, the same event has to be altered out of recognition several times in the course of a year. At all times the Party is in possession of absolute truth, and clearly the absolute can never have been different from what it is now. It will be seen that the control of the past depends above all on the training of memory. To make sure that all written records agree with the orthodoxy of the moment is merely a mechanical act. But it is also necessary to remember that events happened in the desired manner. And if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or to tamper with written records, then it is necessary to forget that one has done so. The trick of doing this can be learned like any other mental technique. It is learned by the majority of Party members, and certainly by all who are intelligent as well as orthodox. In Oldspeak it is called, quite frankly, 'reality control'. In Newspeak it is called doublethink, though doublethink comprises much else as well.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the Party has been able -- and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years -- to arrest the course of history.

All past oligarchies have fallen from power either because they ossified or because they grew soft. Either they became stupid and arrogant, failed to adjust themselves to changing circumstances, and were overthrown; or they became liberal and cowardly, made concessions when they should have used force, and once again were overthrown. They fell, that is to say, either through consciousness or through unconsciousness. It is the achievement of the Party to have produced a system of thought in which both conditions can exist simultaneously. And upon no other intellectual basis could the dominion of the Party be made permanent. If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility with the Power to learn from past mistakes.

[omega minimo]

7. Look at how underwhelmed

"even DU" is too perception-managed to see outside the fishbowl.

Thank you for trying to bring up such important info.

[bobthedrummer]

8. Nope. Perhaps you are taking things out of context.

There have been many threads here about perception management and, in context, The Rendon Group-which have also been published in The Washington Post, The New York Times, New Yorker, American Prospect, Rolling Stone, Buzzflash, Truthout, Judicial Watch, Corp Watch and several others.

on edit: some DU threads re TRG
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1983406

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1921994

[omega minimo]

11. Nope, perhaps I'm taking things out of the fishbowl

You wrote:

"The bottom line is that the advocates of perception management don't give a damn about reality. That's what we're up against."

Right. And the general tone on DU that this started with Bush or "the last five years" is a bit of a perception managagement crisis.


(if your "context" is the supposition that readers read the same threads as you and then you don't explain in the OP........... sorry :hi:)

[Octafish]

9. Rolling Stone: The Man Who Sold the War

The same turds helped sell Gulf War I, the Search for Black Gold helped produce Gulf War II, the Search for More Money.

The Man Who Sold the War

Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.

On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

CONTINUED...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8798997?rnd=1136610870015&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.1465

Most important subject, bobthedrummer. Too bad so few understand the power of an idea.

[JohnyCanuck]

10. The Army of Good Americans

The Army of Good Americans
by Manuel Valenzuela

<snip>

With blind faith enveloping his existence, with every lie and deception and manipulation told by governance taken as true, the good American can easily be molded to fear and hate any scapegoat or bogeyman created and enemy manufactured, for if his bubble of comfort is said to be threatened, if his way of life is in any way said to be compromised, he can be made to become mesmerized to threats real and created, transforming an ordinary citizen into an agitated piston serving to embolden the engines of war. In this way, one more soldier of hate is molded from the clay of those in control and one more slave of power is created, joining millions more as pawns in the games those at the top play.

Manipulating the ingrained hatred, fear and xenophobia of good Americans, the elite concoct a potent army of political power that allows them unfettered control over the direction of the nation. With the loyal allegiance of the most ignorant, unenlightened, gullible, naïve, weak-minded and easily led, by controlling the racists, bigots and the most faithful and religious, those that will never question and never challenge authority, an entire army of good Americans can be manufactured, combining an amalgam of personalities and characters, fusing them to the dictates of power, creating an easily manipulated army of citizens that will remain quiet, complacent and subservient, even when lies and deceptions become readily apparent, when the corruption and incompetence of leadership is made known and even when the worst war crimes upon innocents become manifest. For in the army of good Americans, like the good Germans of decades long past, the crimes of leaders are known and the wickedness is apparent, yet in the silence and failure to act complicity and acquiescence is inferred.

In spite of the tangled web of lies and deceptions by the corporatists having been exposed, despite the vast assortment of war crimes being uncovered, regardless of the enormous betrayal and exploitation of emotions of the citizenry by those in power, and notwithstanding the blatant corruption and incompetence by government that has been apparent for years, a vast percentage of the army of good Americans still refuses to deviate from its beliefs, maintaining its grand illusion of the fantasy concocted for its consumption, reluctant to escape the bubble of comfort it would rather not deviate away from.

Even with the obvious criminality and the apparent debauchery of its heroes and leaders, in spite of what truth and reality have uncovered, good Americans still cling to the belief in an illusion they have been living in since 9/11, that the president is an honorable man, not the immoral deviant he appears to be, that he has restored integrity to the White House, not brought the quite evident level of incompetence and criminality, and that he has their best interests at heart, not those of the corporate world that owns him. They fail to escape their insulated bubble of infallible circumstances, unable to see that their devout faith has been exploited, their fears abused and their ignorance fomented, all for their precious vote and political allegiance, failing to comprehend that their emotions have been molded to enable the corporatists in power to maintain hegemony over the nation. In furtherance of criminality and corruption they have been manipulated, falling for the propaganda of the keepers at the gate, still to this day unable to see that their blind faith and loyalty to the same government damaging their interests is inevitably eroding the fabric of the country and the freedoms and rights both of themselves and their progeny.

http://valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/2006/01/army-of-good-americans.html

[Karenina]

12. Kick!

:kick:

[Octafish]

13. Mother Jones: The Lie Factory

White House Iraq Group, OK. But what about the Office of Special Plans?

MotherJones.com / News / Feature

The Lie Factory

This special Mother Jones investigation late last year detailed how, only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.

Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest
January/February 2004 Issue

It's a crisp fall day in western Virginia, a hundred miles from Washington, D.C., and a breeze is rustling the red and gold leaves of the Shenandoah hills. On the weather-beaten wood porch of a ramshackle 90-year-old farmhouse, at the end of a winding dirt-and-gravel road, Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski is perched on a plastic chair, wearing shorts, a purple sweatshirt, and muddy sneakers. Two scrawny dogs and a lone cat are on the prowl, and the air is filled with swarms of ladybugs.

So far, she says, no investigators have come knocking. Not from the Central Intelligence Agency, which conducted an internal inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, not from the congressional intelligence committees, not from the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. All of those bodies are ostensibly looking into the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, amid charges that the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated, distorted, or just plain lied about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda terrorists and its possession of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In her hands, Kwiatkowski holds several pieces of the puzzle. Yet she, along with a score of other career officers recently retired or shuffled off to other jobs, has not been approached by anyone.

Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence‚ -- it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials‚ -- including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February‚ -- that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.

Until now, the story of how the Bush administration produced its wildly exaggerated estimates of the threat posed by Iraq has never been revealed in full. But, for the first time, a detailed investigation by Mother Jones, based on dozens of interviews‚ -- some on the record, some with officials who insisted on anonymity‚ -- exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html

What Dorothy Parker said about "Horticulture."

[Octafish]

14. NYT: Military's Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive

Of course, BushCo communications consultants have operations overseas...

Propaganda

Military's Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive

By JEFF GERTH
New York Times
December 11, 2005

The media center in Fayetteville, N.C., would be the envy of any global communications company.

In state of the art studios, producers prepare the daily mix of music and news for the group's radio stations or spots for friendly television outlets. Writers putting out newspapers and magazines in Baghdad and Kabul converse via teleconferences. Mobile trailers with high-tech gear are parked outside, ready for the next crisis.

The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and those writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden.

"We call our stuff information and the enemy's propaganda," said Col. Jack N. Summe, then the commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, during a tour in June. Even in the Pentagon, "some public affairs professionals see us unfavorably," and inaccurately, he said, as "lying, dirty tricksters."

The recent disclosures that a Pentagon contractor in Iraq paid newspapers to print "good news" articles written by American soldiers prompted an outcry in Washington, where members of Congress said the practice undermined American credibility and top military and White House officials disavowed any knowledge of it. President Bush was described by Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, as "very troubled" about the matter. The Pentagon is investigating.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/politics/11propaganda.html?hp&ex=1134277200&en=9c0b816a0b08ce5f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[staticstopper]

29. limited hang-outs,

red herrings, controlled opposition, agent provacaturs, etc...all's fair in love and war, right?

Would we do this sort of stuff if we felt we were right, and there were bad people out to end the good? I know it is not normally in liberal ideas to do so, yet we should take care. Chomsky is great at listing what's wrong in the institutions but I think lacking in calling out certain things...

I think we should judge the content more not just the means of spreading rhetoric.

What i'm poorly trying to say is that we should get to know "lefty" values more and act / react in tune with them because a lot of liberals too want centralized power (just as long as it is of the correct sort) and is that what we want or not? Micheal Moore sort of comes to mind.

[bobthedrummer]

15. Pentagon Sued For Records On Propaganda, PSY-OPS And

"Perception Management" Targeting U.S. Civilians
from Judicial Watch 3-4-2005
Some of these perception management programs targeted US children on the Internet
http://www.judicialwatch.org/temp2/printer_4303.shtml

[Octafish]

16. TV Guide: Military Interns Booted From CNN, NPR

Of curse, the MI-Complex wouldn't do any domestic propaganda. Would they?

Military Interns Booted From CNN, NPR

How Did Army Officers Get Into The News Business?

TV Guide April 15-21, 2000
The Robins Report By J. Max Robins

Top executives at CNN and National Public Radio were more than a bit surprised when they learned that their organizations had used interns from a rather nontraditional source-the United States Army's Psychological Operations unit (PSYOP).

"We have interns from all over the world, but they are accredited journalists or studying ," says Eason Jordan, CNN president of news gathering and international networks. "But those interns had no business being here."

Both internship programs were ended shortly after top management learned of their existence.

A highly specialized unit of the military, PSYOP personnel are often trained in the production of videos as well as television and radio programming used to advance American policy abroad. "In Somalia, we broadcast on radio and shortwave," says Lt. Col. Paul J. Mullin. "We've helped countries in South America produce antidrug public-service announcements."

According to CNN executives and military officials, the intern program began last June and ended in March. A total of five PSYOP sergeants were assigned to the network's Atlanta headquarters-two at the Southeast bureau, two at CNN Radio and one at the satellite department. At NPR's Washington, D.C., base, three PSYOP personnel worked for periods ranging from six weeks to four months from September 1998 through May 1999 on such programs as All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

CONTINUED...

http://www.greaterthings.com/News/Martial_Law/Turner_psyops.htm

That would be wrong. Wouldn't it?

[Beam Me Up]

19. Who ever controls your perception of reality, controls you.

By controlling what you BELIEVE to be true, your motivation for action is also controlled.

Most people who directly experienced the events of 9/11, for example, were in a state of shocked horror not comprehending what could be happening. If you listen to radio programming from that day, for example, you'll often hear on the scene reporters say, "This is unbelievable." When the buildings collapsed, this was even more unbelievable. Even emergency workers on the scene could not believe their eyes. Those of us watching on television could not believe our eyes either.

And yet, obvoiously, they did "collapse." We've all seen the video footage over and over again--as we are reminded that the EXPLANATION for this is that al Qaeda 'did it' by flying commercial airliners into them. Since some questioned this, someone had to come up with the 'pancake' theory--something about support structures being weakened by the fire and then giving way into a "collapse."

So the way it works is, something happens for which the mind seeks explanation. Explanation is provided by a government official or a talking head that mimics what he/she has said--and this is repeated over and over again so it becomes fixed in the average citizens mind as being "reality." From that point on, any statement that questions the officially accepted story is regarded as a "conspiracy theory" regardless of how much actual credibility the official story may have.

I've said it over and over again and I'll keep saying it: 1) Less evidence that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were responsible for the events of 9/11 has been presented by the Bush administration than has been presented to convince us and the world that Sadam Hussain had WMD. Less. Far less. And yet, most everyone "believes" the official story. 2) It is physically impossible for a steel frame building to collapse into a pile of rubble where the beams are severed in relatively neat, 30' long segments and where most EVERYTHING else (concrete, glass, plastic, aluminum, computers, body parts, etc.) are pulverized into a very fine silting dust AND for there to be hot spots of molten steel in the sub-basements of the WTC for weeks on end without the additional heat and energy generated from explosives. The official story is as physically impossible as apples floating in mid air after coming loose from the trees that grew them. The potential energy in the mass of the structure being acted upon by gravity simply is insufficient to produce these observed effects. Many thousands of times that potential energy would be required and the only logical explanation for that additional energy, given the evidence, is that explosives were used and the towers did not "collapse" but were demolished right before our eyes.

Explosives, however, are NOT apart of the official story. Therefore, one can only conclude that the official story must be false. Once that is accepted the mind again is thrown back into that "This is unbelievable" point, casting about for some "explanation." --A substitute theory to account for the events.

My point is: WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT MADE THE EVENTS ON 9/11 HAPPEN. We do NOT know who was responsible. It is not necessary to generate alternate theories absent a genuine investigation, complete with the power of subpoena. All that is necessary is to point out as so many have: The official story can not possibly be true. It is a fiction, just as the evidence for WMD was a fiction, and it is a fiction being used to to justify curtailments of domestic civiliberties, launch TWO attacks against sovereign nations AND transfer great quantities of wealth from one sector of our society to another (mostly from private to energy and military and paramilitary conglomerates).

This, ladies and gentlemen, IS THE CRIME OF THE MILLINEUM. And if we do not rise up and hold accountable whoever is responsible for this deception, there can be no future worth living for any of us. If you let mass murderers and traitors have access to the offices that control OUR OWN weapons of mass destruction, our own military, how long can it be before another tragedy, far worse than 9/11, befalls us. If we allow them to move forward with their Imperial agenda by attacking Iran, for example, how long will it be before we are engaged in a fully declared--not only regional but GLOBAL World War? How long before our entire society is put on a permanent military footing with martial law and a draft?

Your lives and the lives of everyone you know and love are at stake.

Edit: html

[LibertyorDeath]

26. Brilliant post Beam Me Up re-post this in GD it deserves its own thread,

One of the best posts I've read in 4 years at DU bar none.

I know it may or will get moved as it
discusses in a concise and rational manner the events of 9\11 but don't let that stop you.

http://www.reopen911.org/Tarpley_ch_6.pdf

[Beam Me Up]

27. Thanks, LibertyorDeath.

I've taken your recommendation and reposted it with some modifications here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x76399

[Octafish]

20. Chicago Tribune: U.S. pays PR guru to make its points

Gee. There's big bucks involved.

U.S. pays PR guru to make its points

-- Firm's Pentagon work is lucrative, and top secret

By Stephen J. Hedges
Washington Bureau
Chicago Tribune
12 May 2002

http://www.chicagotribune.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=chi%2D0205120237may12
http://www.antiwar.com/latest.html

WASHINGTON -- When U.S. troops go into a war zone, John Rendon is rarely far behind.

He was in Panama in 1989 for the brief invasion that toppled strongman Manuel Noriega. He was in Kuwait when allied forces took it back from Saddam Hussein in 1991, making sure that citizens had little American flags to wave for the conquering troops and television cameras. He has worked in Haiti and in the Balkans, and is now fully engaged in the war against terrorism.

But John Rendon is not a military officer, government adviser, diplomat, spy or journalist. He is, to use his own words, "an information warrior and a perception manager."

Rendon makes images, manipulates scenes and manages news. He advises politicians and spreads propaganda.

Rendon and his public-relations firm, The Rendon Group, have many clients, but none bigger--or more loyal--than the U.S. government.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Pentagon gave Rendon a $100,000-a-month contract to track foreign news reports and offer advice on media strategy. Rendon also worked for the Defense Department in the Balkans, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

CONTINUED...

http://cndyorks.gn.apc.org/news/articles/usprguru.htm

Who'd a thought journalists could be paid so much?

Is is possible for honest ones to get that kind of money?

[GuvWurld]

21. Cold Civil War, Intentional Divisiveness, Rift in Reality Perception

The illegitimate US government has created a Cold Civil war, intentionally dividing the population into the reality-based community and the faith-based community (where faith refers not to religion, but those who unquestioningly accept the government line, on faith) lined up on opposite sides of a rift in the perception of reality.

See Blueprint For Peaceful Revolution (.pdf).

[bobthedrummer]

22. 8 years ago this article was published in the US Army War College

periodical Parameters.

It is about targeting human information processing and the expansion of psychological operations.
It is closely related to perception management.

The Mind Has No Firewall by Timothy L. Thomas (Parameters Spring 1998)
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/98spring/thomas.htm

[bobthedrummer]

23. Perception management utilizes our 21st century technology

The NSA is heavily involved in this and, as we now know, not just in foreign nations.

Huge contracts were awarded by the NSA to companies like SAIC. I have no doubts that a company like SAIC would engage in criminal domestic perception management and psychological operations programs.
http://corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=17

edited for spelling

[rman]

24. "the manufacture of consent ... a revolution in the practice of democracy"

"the manufacture of consent ... a revolution in the practice of democracy"...
a technique of control "usefull and necesary, because the general interests elude the public"..
this has to be the domain of "a specialized class"..
-- Walter Lippmann, "Public Opinion" (ca 1921)

====

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippmann

Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 - December 14, 1974), was an influential United States writer, journalist, and political commentator.

Lippmann was born in New York City to German-Jewish parents, Jacob and Daisy Baum Lippmann. The family lived a comfortable, if not privileged, life. Annual family trips to Europe were the rule.

At age 17, he entered Harvard University where he studied under George Santayana, William James, and Graham Wallas. He concentrated on philosophy and languages (he spoke both German and French) and graduated after only three years of study.

<snip>

Early on, Lippmann was optimistic about American democracy. He believed that the American people would become intellectually engaged in political and world issues and fulfill their democratic role as an educated electorate. In light of the events leading to World War II and the concomitant scourge of totalitarianism however, he rejected this view. Lippmann came to be seen as Noam Chomsky's moral and intellectual antithesis: He agreed with the Platonic view that the population is a great beast, a herd, that has to be controlled by an intellectual specialist class. In this sense Lippmann might be viewed as a forerunner of US neoconservatism. Chomsky used one of Lippmann's catch phrases for the title of his book about the media: Manufacturing Consent.

====

Manufacturing Consent - A Propaganda Model
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
excerpts
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufacturing_Consent.html

[Acryliccalico]

25. Kick..........n/t

[bobthedrummer]

28. Take a look at some of these perception management businesses

Phoenix Consulting Group, Inc.
http://www.intellpros.com/CommClasses/competitive_Assurance_Catalog.htm

The Lincoln Group
http://www.lincolngroup.com/

The Carlyle Group (does own some perception management assets)
http://www.thecarlylegroup.com/eng/index.html

Perception Management Group (executives)
http://manwithplan.com/about.htm

The Rendon Group
http://www.rendon.com/

[Karenina]

30. And don't forget

the professional propagandists of the *corporate media...

[bobthedrummer]

31. There's little doubt that the truth was the first victim, Karenina.

The perception managers don't care about reality, truth, facts, history or anything outside of their agenda.

[Karenina]

32. As an ex-pat looking on with some distance

and constantly being called upon to explain the madness, my view is that Amis have been subjected to several decades of highly organized "dumbing down" and that the propagandist's spew of such inanities as the "War on X-mas" are no more than tests by TPTB to gauge the effectiveness of their tactics. I must say that I find the results quite appalling.

[Octafish]

38. They haven't gotten all of us, dear Friend.

The children, though; I worry for them, once we are gone...

[Karenina]

39. That knowledge

makes the current morass even more painful... :loveya:

[bobthedrummer]

33. Enron utilized a perception management consultant

The Talent Myth
Are Smart People Overrated?
by Malcom Gladwell 7-15-2002 The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content?020722fa_fact

I wonder who The White House used for managing perceptions about this Iraq/War on Terror business?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq

[bobthedrummer]

34. Propaganda Media from US Army based on PSYOPS courses

Propaganda Media
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm33-1/fm33-1m.htm

Any doubts that this is what we have here at home today?

[Octafish]

35. CorpWatch: The Booming Business for Psy/Ops

Gee. Where have all the good ideas gone?

Like, "Freedom of Speech"?

US: The Booming Business for Psy/Ops

No one is sure how well psychological operations have worked in Afghanistan or Iraq, but that's not stopping efforts to step them up, using contractors to do it.

by Jason Vest, Government Executive
November 30th, 2005

From the State Department to the Pentagon, winning hearts and minds is an increasingly important element of U.S. national security strategy. But while Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes has been the highest-profile example of U.S. public relations in action, the Defense Department quietly has been tinkering with its own systems of overseas influence.

Among these are psychological operations, or PSYOPS. But after-action reports on the invasion of Iraq are skeptical about PSYOPS' success, and a psychological operations unit in Afghanistan recently tried to "demoralize" the enemy by desecrating Islamic corpses. Questions about these matters have led some policymakers to wonder how enhancing PSYOPS will complement other elements of military information operations, such as public diplomacy and public affairs. In addition, increasing reliance on contractors to conduct these operations is raising eyebrows, especially because the contract prices aren't small and some firms hired have murky pasts.

Psychological operations, defined by the military as the "systematic process of conveying messages to selected foreign groups to promote particular themes that result in desired foreign attitudes and behaviors," traditionally have been the nearly exclusive purview of the 4th PSYOPS Group (Airborne) of the Army's Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the military services have shown renewed interest in mass persuasion. For example, two-and-a-half years ago at Fort Bragg, N.C., the Army unveiled its Special Operations Forces Media Operations Complex, a 51,756-square-foot facility replete with all the tools 4th PSYOPS requires - printing presses, studios and digital audiovisual production facilities - in the service of producing materials to win hearts and minds wherever the U.S. military finds itself in the world.

Col. James A. Treadwell, the 4th's commander, said at the time that the facility's opening "marks PSYOPS as a growth field." But PSYOPS had entered a boom phase well before the new complex's ribbon was cut. From the post-9/11 involvement in Afghanistan to the end of what have been termed "major combat operations" in Iraq, Army PSYOPS units produced a deluge of media, including but not limited to 150 million flyers and leaflets and more than 20,000 radio broadcasts in Afghanistan and Iraq. And in the wake of Baghdad's collapse, there was a tremendous sense of satisfaction that a virtually uninterrupted flow of PSYOPS material had played a critical role in hastening the almost anticlimactic end of Iraq's military.

But when the Army's mammoth Operation Iraqi Freedom lessons-learned report was published in 2004, it revealed that PSYOPS weren't all they were cracked up to be. Part of this had nothing to do with quality; some PSYOPS units had been incredibly useful, but failed in their duty as "force multipliers" simply because there weren't enough of them. This was hardly surprising, as PSYOPS accounts for only 4,800 soldiers, 76 percent of whom are reservists. But the report also concluded that, for reasons that had nothing to do with numbers, PSYOPS simply hadn't had as profound an effect as some had thought. Not long after the lessons-learned report, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board - echoing an earlier Defense Planning Guidance report and a somewhat neglected 2003 Pentagon "Information Operations Roadmap" - concluded that when it came to conception and coordination of strategic communications, including PSYOPS, the military's efforts had languished. The board strongly endorsed a number of nascent structural and philosophical efforts at Defense and elsewhere to win a global battle of ideas.

CONTINUED...

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12841

[bobthedrummer]

36. Alito hearing kick

on edit: Yahoo is now featuring the blog of AP 101st Airborne embedded reporter Ryan Lenz

[Octafish]

37. NATO and Strategic PSYOPS: Policy Pariah or Growth Industry?

Hey! If this works against our enemies, why not try it with our friends?

NATO and Strategic PSYOPS: Policy Pariah or Growth Industry?

Steven Collins

(Reprinted with the author's permission)

Abstract:

In the aftermath of 9/11, NATO must adapt and face the realities of the modern security environment -- where current and potential threats to peace will seek to confront NATO through asymmetric means, particularly aggressive local and international perception manipulation, rather than through the use of conventional military forces. This paper examines current NATO PSYOPS policy, reasons why NATO should make changes, how NATO fared in its PSYOPS efforts during ALLIED FORCE, and recommends specific changes to the status quo.

"The Serbs&were excellent in organizing press coverage and directing it toward NATO mistakes. Where were the compelling eyewitness stories and snapshots of the ethnic cleansing, the brutality and destruction? In this war, a camera inside Kosovo would have been worth a dozen strikes on Serb vehicles." (Clark 2001)

In the aftermath of 9/11, among many other changes to its defense establishment, the United States has undertaken a significant re-vamping of its strategic psychological operations (PSYOPS) structure and capabilities (Dao and Schmidt 2002). Similarly, NATO must now determine if it can adapt and face the realities of the modern security environment -- where current and potential threats to peace will confront NATO through asymmetric means rather than through the use of conventional military forces. Of particular interest in this study, are unconventional attempts to confront NATO via aggressive regional and international perception manipulation (Murray 1999 and Thomas 1999).

Presently, NATO PSYOPS efforts are limited by a restrictive policy that prohibits the organization from conducting any perception management activities above the level of the local military commander. Operating in this hamstrung manner exposes a tremendous weakness in NATO's political and military capabilities, as amply demonstrated during Operation ALLIED FORCE. This paper examines the current NATO PSYOPS policy, reasons why NATO should make changes, how NATO fared in Operation ALLIED EFFORT in its PSYOPS campaign, and recommendations as to what changes should be made.

Lies, Damned Lies, and PSYOPS

CONTINUED...

http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&requesttimeout=500&folder=64&paper=985

Hey, MK/Ultra types: Don't try this at home.

What? It's too late? It's just business?

[JohnyCanuck]

40. Televison and the Hive Mind.

Television and the Hive Mind
by Mack White

<snip>

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.

This numbing of the brain's cognitive function is compounded 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.

It is not just commercials that manipulate us. On television news as well, image and sound are as carefully selected and edited to influence human thought and behavior as in any commercial. The news anchors and reporters themselves are chosen for their physical attractiveness--a factor which, as numerous psychological studies have shown, contributes to our perception of a person's trustworthiness. Under these conditions, then, the viewer easily forgets--if, indeed, the viewer ever knew in the first place--that the worldview presented on the evening news is a contrivance of the network owners--owners such as General Electric (NBC) and Westinghouse (CBS), both major defense contractors. By molding our perception of the world, they mold our opinions. This distortion of reality is determined as much by what is left out of the evening news as what is included--as a glance at Project Censored's yearly list of top 25 censored news stories will reveal. If it's not on television, it never happened. Out of sight, out of mind.

Continued at: http://www.mackwhite.com/tv.html

[bobthedrummer]

41. There is great concern about the media and perception management

Here is a link to some recent issues of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
http://www.rcfp.org/index.html

By the way, this group was successful in a 2002 FOIA request ruling granting access to the CIA's mind control programs known as MKULTRA, which are a component of perception management.
http://www.rcfp.org/news/2002/0819kellyv.html

[bobthedrummer]

42. The niece of a former CIA Director handled perception management

for the Taliban in the US prior to 9/11/2001.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0124/ridgeway.php

[IChing]

43. I did a piece on thought coercion also a link to an interesting read

which was posted in GPD then took the elevator down to "that forum"
It was on marginalization of opposition to govt. policies and talking points by psy-ops on internet forums, also on creating disinformation sites


COINTELPRO agents -

either conscious or dupes of those who are.
The objective seems to be to attack and “neutralize”
those who are seeking the answers.

Those who are sincere, who do bona fide research
and seek to explicate the truth,
are infiltrated,
attacked,
and marginalized
according

to standard
COINTELPRO procedures.




http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x65998

[bobthedrummer]

44. "Message to the People of Iraq" Donald Rumsfeld broadcast 4-30-2003

http://www.dod.gov/transcripts/2003/tr20030430-secdef0138.html

This was a Commando Solo II mission. Classic perception management.

[bobthedrummer]

45. "Pentagon to broadcast to millions of U.S. homes" from the DU

archives.
This thread was started by lovuian last February and discusses perception management and PSYOPS on The Pentagon Channel.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1223030#top

[bobthedrummer]

46. I think we're seeing a lot of perception management at the Alito

hearings.

And a lot of vital stories are being neglected/ignored by MSM.

[bobthedrummer]

47. Columbia Journalism Review has a very good MSM ownership guide

maintained by Aaron Moore, Ph.D., called Who Owns What
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/

[bobthedrummer]

48. LBN: "Pentagon to set new communications policy-official"

from Reuters by Charles Aldinger (this mentions DoD contracts with The Lincoln Group)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11382187.htm

[Clara T]

49. Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda

Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty
Carey, Alex

EH-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [e-mail] (October, 1997)

Alex Carey. Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty. History of Communication Series; introduction by Noam Chomsky. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Introduction and notes. $15.95 (paper), ISBN 0-252-06616-2.

Reviewed for H-Business by Karen S. Miller <[e-mail]>, Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia

Taking the Risk Out of Democracy opens with a discussion of Henry Wallace's notion of "the century of the common man," a twentieth century American society ruled not by individual power or class privilege but by common consent. It is the "failure to move significantly" toward Wallace's vision that concerns Carey, a failure he attributes "in important measure to the power of propaganda." Propaganda, he asserts, especially corporate propaganda, has been used to "control or deflect the purposes of the domestic electorate in a democratic country in the interests of privileged segments of that society" (p. 11).

In Carey's view, U.S. corporate propaganda emerged because of the growth of democracy (specifically, increased popular franchise and the union movement) and the growth of corporate power, which clashed to create a climate where business leaders perceived a need to protect corporate power against democracy. Thus they developed both internal and external programs that identified free enterprise with cherished values, and government and unions with tyranny and oppression--a Manichean juxtaposition he refers to as the Sacred and the Satanic. Business leaders also coopted social science to aid their cause, and they exported their free enterprise campaigns to other countries, including Carey's home, Australia. By taking corporate power out of the range of public discussion, Carey argues, propaganda has closed minds and society.

The book, a collection of essays ably edited after Carey's death by Andrew Lohrey, contains three sections. The first includes five chapters on "Closing the American Mind." Carey discusses in detail the Americanization movement and the post-World War I red scare, McCarthyism, and the credibility gap of the Vietnam and Watergate eras, arguing that "by 1947 the war for control over the American mind had all but been won," for "bjection to democratic propaganda on ethical grounds had almost completely disappeared by this time" (p. 81). He makes a strong case that corporations have been tremendously active propagandists, noting time and again the huge amounts of money devoted to free enterprise--anti-union, anti-government-campaigns. He also presents an engaging discussion of the relationship between the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism and the public relations community, focusing especially on the elastic meaning of "truth" within both spheres.

http://www.eh.net/bookreviews/library/0039.shtml

Alex Carey

... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
Australian social scientist, quoted by Noam Chomsky in World Orders Old and New

[bobthedrummer]

50. A kick for all who shed real tears

[Mnemosyne]

51. Thanks bob, this is so much

more important than most people ever wrap their brains around. How sad that when you and others have done so here it ends up in the cellar.

Do ya' suppose? Naw..

Peace to you

V

[bobthedrummer]

56. Nice to hear that, vickiss- it has something to do with the

subject.
Peace to you also.
Bob

[bobthedrummer]

53. "Spinning Media for Government" by Chris Raphael 2-10-2005

from Corp Watch. This is some great domestic perception mangement investigative work, imo.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11836

[Clara T]

54. The corporate medias aim

is to stifle the discussion and silence the adversaries, an aim that is much more ideological than you would care to think. It also explains perfectly, for example, why the whole of the press often say the same things. The rule is that the people controlling the media have to be totally reliable: they don’t even have to be told what to say. They already know it by heart. They have already internalised the rules of the game. Being reliable is something that requires lengthy training and considerable single-mindedness. On every level of the information hierarchy you have to prove that you have a total disregard for the truth, a complete readiness to deceive and an absolutely impenetrable cynicism. This, as a rule, is the only way of getting up to the next level.

[bobthedrummer]

57. Another coincidence-murder victim NYT journalist David Rosenbaum

contributed to a NYT article published 12-24-2005 about Mr. Alito's 1984 memo favoring immunity for top officials involved in domestic surveillance.

The Senate Alito hearings took a brief recess to honor Mr. Rosenbaum this morning.

Here's an abstract of the article. (These coincidences sometimes fuel CT, the article seems appropriate to this thread)

"Domestic Surveillance: The Nomination; Alito Memo in '84 Favored Immunity for Top Officials"
by Adam Liptak and David E. Rosenbaum NY Times 12-24-2005
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30C12F83E540C778EDDAB0994DD404482

[bobthedrummer]

58. Who else has some examples of the lies, liars and tech manipulating

our perceptions?