Mind control -- epilogue

Right after I posted my reflections about the subject of "mind control", my neurons went onto a rampage and fired indiscriminately into all direction causing an eruption of ideas, notions, visions, newly arising questions and doubts. There came so much things into my mind that I had to start writing again and paragraph after paragraph appeared on the screen.

I don't want to include these additional considerations into my blog post about mind control, the post is already 3800 words long and will probably challenge the endurance and exceed the attention span of most readers. To make it a bit easier I package these additional ideas into a separate post, but I have to remind everybody who takes the burden to read this text, that all considerations are based on the preceding blog post.

Readers of the preceding post may have got the impression, that I don't take anything for granted and that I am skeptical about any claims, especially when they are made by governments and corporate media. These readers are right, and even if I join now a mass choir of voices bigger than the Washington State Mass Choir, the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir, or the Harlem Gospel Singers, I have to declare:

We are lied to, we are duped, fooled, tricked, swindled, deceived, cheated, misinformed and mislead.

You can take that for granted! And it is the only thing that you can take for granted. (period)

When I voiced my dismay and horror about the NATO bombing campaign in Libya, many people got very angry with me. They felt comfortable and cheerful about the successful toppling of a brutal dictator, they felt victorious, they had a party and I was the spoiler who tried to ruin the party.

I was not against the NATO bombing because I'm convinced that Gaddafi is a saint, a brilliant thinker, and an integer and responsible leader. I am against violence and weapons on principal grounds. I am against bombing raids because I imagine the bodies of people torn apart or burned to ash. I imagine pieces of flesh laying around, blood puddles, severely injured survivors bleeding to death, people groaning in pain and agony. 

I am not in the position to make a judgment about Gaddafi, I don't know him. I was intrigued when I read his Green Book, which includes many socialist ideas. I don't know, if he followed the ideals that were explained in the Green Book -- words and deeds are often different. It would not have mattered much, if Gaddafi would have been a saint, a brilliant thinker, and an integer and responsible leader. Once the bombs fall, everything changes and the rules of war override any other rules. To all the evangelists of liberation through bombing I can only say: Are you sure, that things were so much worse than now, after ten thousand people died and hungry and thirsty survivors stray between smoldering ruins? Are you sure that things were bad enough, to justify the carnage? Were you there?

=================

The NATO bombing campaign in Libya has polarized not only the Libyan population, but also bystanders around the world. The bombing campaign has split the world population in two distinctive parties, who cannot see eye to eye and who are separated by an ocean of mistrust, enmity, acrimony, and loathing.

The bigger and by far more powerful party is constituted by the bomb lovers. 

Bomb lovers consider bombs as a force for good, as a way to achieve positive change. Bombs represent the resolve, the courage, the firmness and determination of the bomb makers and they are a testimony of their ingenuity. Bombs are symbols of power and grandeur, they are impressive, majestic, magnificent. They can break any barriers and overcome any obstacles. Bombs ensure victory for the good and beautiful and they destroy evil and send the sinners to hell. 

Bomb lovers consider bombing as a kind of weeding. Like weeds would spread in a garden and soon overgrow and strangulate all useful plants, the social weeds, the hooligans, gangsters, evildoers, troublemakers, bums and slackers would overtake and destroy a society, if they would not be weeded out. Sometimes societies garden is not cared for and maintained properly and the social weed grows exponentially beyond a point, where individual weeds can be taken out one by one.

When this happens, large scale measures are needed to clear the weeds away. In a garden, herbicides have to be sprayed, in a society, bombs have to be rained down.

Bombing is weeding out the bad guys, it is that simple!

And one last word: We live on a small planet, crowded now by nearly seven billion humans. These humans do immense harm to the ecological systems and will soon destroy nature and maybe make any kind on life based on DNA/RNA/proteins impossible. Wouldn't it make sense to diminish the human population by weeding out the undesirable and unworthy individuals? Wouldn't this alleviate the environmental strain that is caused by humans? If nothing else, at least this point should give the naysayers and complainers, the critics of bombing campaigns food for thought!

The other party, much smaller and far less influential, are the bomb haters.

Bomb haters consider bombing as destructive and they refuse to see the beneficial effects of a bombing campaign. The bomb haters don't believe, that bombs only wipe out monstrous thugs, criminals, hoodlums, terrorists (in short: creatures who deserve it in anyway to be destroyed), and they assume, that bombs inevitably also hit innocent bystanders, women, children, elderly and disabled.

Bomb haters even go so far to claim, that everybody, including the evildoers, terrorists, and bandits deserve human rights, due process and a fair trial.

Bomb haters also point out the ecological damage of bombings, the destruction of habitats and the poisoning of the ecosphere as well as the gigantic amount of materials and energy that is needed to build and deploy bombs.

Bomb haters consider bombs as symbols of a psychopathic cult of masculinity, spiced with necrophilia, satanism, and the infantile joy about blazing fires, deafening noise, destruction and chaos.

=================

As I was writing down arguments of both bomb lovers and bomb haters I discovered, that my feelings about this issue changed significantly while I was formulating the arguments. I am a lifelong and unwavering pacifist and abhor weapons of any kind but formulating arguments of the bomb lovers evoked a strange kind of sympathy for them.

This is the emotional power of words. Every word in our vocabulary has an emotional connotation, and so do phrases and often used sentences. One can describe bad things with positive words that stimulate positive emotions and completely change the feelings about these things alone by the right wording.

The masters of mind control are also masters of semantics and constantly change the meaning of words, rewrite the dictionaries, and invent new euphemisms and descriptive phrases.

People are not killed by bombs, they have "lost their lives". It they are enemies, they have been "taken out," "taken care of," been "terminated." If they are lucky enough not to be perceived as enemy soldiers, insurgents, or terrorists, they are "collateral damage." Prisoners are never tortured to death but parish in a "correction facility" as a result of "enhanced interrogation."

Politicians, press secretaries, TV and Radio show hosts, journalists, pundits, they never lie, they maybe "bend the truth", or "color the truth", they misspeak, misstate, misrepresent, or are misinterpreted.

=================

Wendy just wanted to come in and she scratched at the door. Of course I went up to let her in -- she cannot open the door by herself. Her colleague Cindy occasionally jumps at the door handle in an effort to pull it down, but until now Cindy always failed, she is not strong enough.

Wendy sits now on my lap, purring softly as always. What would she do, when a bomb falls and explodes? If she would survive, she would run for cover and hide in the darkest cave and she would stay there for a long, long time, frightened to death and deeply traumatized. I hope, that my beloved Wendy will never experience such an event.

Wendy is not intelligent enough, to consider good and evil and the positive or negative aspects of bombs. Her central executive and her working memory are tiny and her vocabulary is too small to define objects and make abstract logical conclusions. I have to admit though, that she produces an astonishing variety of funny sounds that go far beyond the usual cat language of purring, meowing, growling, hissing, whining, screaming. Her vocabulary includes chirping, tweeting, clucking, squeaking, grunting, and much more, including sound that I am unable to describe.

I love listening to her and I'm always glad when she starts talking. I'm sure that with systematic training she could develop a language out of that vocabulary which would also include grammatical rules. Grammatical rules which could then become logical rules. Due to such a systematic training and with regular exercise maybe one day I could discuss more complicated matters with my friend Wendy. But this is not a pressing issue or a problem that has to be solved urgently. For the time being our communication is not impeded too much by the lack of grammar and we understand each other perfectly.

Cats don't like to be trained. Cats don't like to comply and adhere to rules and they generally refuse to obey orders. Cats are very wary and suspicious and stubbornly reject any suggestions and any advice. One cannot command a cat and tell her or him what to do. One has to negotiate with a cat and convince her or him that the suggested move is also in the cats interest.

Cats are creatures of habit just like we humans are, and if they are used to a procedure they will repeat it again and again. In the morning my cat family waits in the kitchen till I come and open a can and fill up the food cups and in the evening when it is time for our daily walk the cats wait in front of the door till I come down from upstairs and put on my boots and then we start our adventurous journey into the adjacent forest as we did so many times before.

When we walk, my little friend sometimes follow me and sometimes go ahead and quite often take a turn and choose a route that was not in my plans. Cats are very individualistic, they have their own mind, they are cautious and skeptical. The masters of mind control would have a hard time with my cats.

The masters of mind control will have a hard time with me too!

And I hope with my readers also.

Stay skeptical, stay cautious!

Mind Control

I don't give much weight to conspiracy theories, also not to "mind control". Of course, everybody practices "mind control," the authorities, every talk show host and TV commentator, pundits and experts of all colors and leanings and statues. The most nimble advertising agency practices mind control and is a laboratory for deception and disinformation. We live in a world of artifice, illusions and delusions, figments, fallacies and ambiguities. Mind control is everywhere, it is practiced by everybody, it is a ubiquitous and unavoidable aspect of our life.

Yet, as the Internet is buzzing with inventive and imaginative conspiracy theories, I recently wanted to take a quick look at this topic to be sure, that I don't miss any mind-blowing revelations. First I gathered infos about the CIAs involvement in mind control:

It seems plausible, that the CIA explored and still explores various brainwashing technics and that Bluebird, MKULTRA and related projects indeed existed or still exist. After all, the CIA experimented also with LSD and hypnosis, and that is not disputed anymore. 

So, the CIA dabbles with mind control? Not a big deal, the CIA has a long history of bribing politicians and military leaders, organizing coups, training militias, distributing shiploads of weapons to bandits and desperadoes, and assassinating undesirable individuals. The CIA kidnapped perceived troublemakers by the busload to hold and torture them in secret prisons and right now the CIA conducts a worldwide campaign of assassinations per drones. Mind control seems to be a rather benign and harmless pastime, compared to the other just mentioned activities of the CIA.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is also accused of funding mind control research.

David Rockefeller described himself as an "internationalist," translated in todays terminology: he was (not surprisingly) a supporter of globalization. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund supported all initiatives, institution, and projects that increased economic, social, and cultural integration, well aware, that a capitalist economy needs to grow, to expand, and to include as much real estate as possible. Unfortunately the Rockefeller brothers, trapped in their ideology, were unable to grasp, that the globe is finite. They were unable to understand, that there is no further expansion possible, when capitalism has engulfed the whole planet (unless we colonize Moon and Mars).

I'm quite sure that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also bankrolled projects for education and training, that psychologist, sociologists, neurologists received grants and that advertising agencies and journalists were involved. One could easily construct any kind of mind control theories from that, but this is, as I said already about the alleged CIA involvement, not a big deal. Every big corporation practices mind control by paying advertising and marketing experts, employing PR managers and lobbyists, funding think tanks, scientists, and whole university research centers.

The HAARP microwave facility in Alaska is also rumored to be used for mind control, but that seems far fetched alone for technical and scientific reasons. I share suspicions and fears that this installation could do great ecological harm though I'm not yet worried enough to crawl into a faraday cage or spend the night in a faraday bunk bed (I would maybe consider such measures if I would have to live in Alaska.)

I don't buy these mind control conspiracy theories. I don't buy them for the above mentioned reasons and I don't buy them because such conspiracies are unnecessary and a waste of time and money. Mind control, as I declared at the start of this text, is already practiced in a big way and it is a ubiquitous and unavoidable aspect of our life.

Television and mind control

Everybody who makes the mistake to turn on television, is lost. TV, together with Hollywood, presents a virtual world, a world of illusions that not too often corresponds with reality. TV depicts a world, where consumerism, globalization, steady economic growth and the replacement of natural systems with our own artificial constructions can go on forever without negative consequences. On TV everything is fine or will be fine in the end. On TV justice is done or will be done one day. On TV the superrich become good samaritans (Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, the Rockefeller family), political leaders are first and foremost concerned about the welfare of the people, and corporations are forces for good, guaranteeing prosperity for all.

Moving pictures are very powerful and convincing. Together with the right soundtrack they can be emotional touching and persuade the viewer, that the images he sees on a big or a small screen have indeed some conformity with reality (or what the majority of people perceive as reality) and mirror normal everyday life. Film producers, script writers, sound track composers, camera men, and actors have honed their skills now for 120 years and over all this years they became quite good in mind control.

If you ever wondered, why the American way of life is so desirable and appealing to other nations despite the fact, that 48 million Americans live in poverty and 43 millions can only get by with food stamps, just watch a few movies and TV shows.

Cuba trumps the USA in various social parameters (health care, income equality, crime, employment). The unemployment rate is between 2 and 3 percent, social security is a universal right. Poverty is one of the lowest in the developing world (fourth lowest in Latin America). The reason that thousands of Cubans still want to emigrate to the USA is television. Cubans watch the shows of US networks and they see good looking and well dressed people who drive expensive cars and live in luxurious homes.

They don't see the homeless, the destitute, the overworked and underpaid, they don't see the families who just had to leave their foreclosed homes and are packed in an overcrowded flat of a relative. They don't see the dreadful pictures from Haiti which could lead them to the conclusion that their country would very likely be in a similar state if the Bay of Pigs invasion had succeeded.

They see gang crime on "Law & Order" or on similar shows, but on these shows the criminals are dealt with fast and decisively. Justice is done and the evil guys are eliminated. The causes of crime, the suffering of the victims, the painful and bothersome judicial process, the mistrials and wrongful convictions, these aspects are not part of a TV show (except when a celebrity like O. J. Simpson is on trial).

In Hollywood films and on US TV good always prevails over evil and justice is done in the end. The bad guys meet their well-deserved fate and become the dead guys and the heroes walk or ride triumphantly into the sunset. It is so easy to resolve conflicts, just raise your gun, pull the trigger and send the bad guys to hell.

Computer games and mind control

Pull the trigger and send the bad guys to hell, this kind of thinking, based on an ideology of violence is also the basis of many computer games like: Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, God of War, Mortal Combat, Soldiers of Fortune, Gears of War, Postal, Night Trap, Smash TV, Doom, Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt, Fallout, MadWorld, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dead Space, Splatterhouse, World of Warcraft. Every gamer will absorb and incorporate the rules of these games and act accordingly also in real life.

If this kind of thinking, if this method of conflict resolution only would be confined to film and television screens! If it only would be confined to US society. Unfortunately it is also the essence of US foreign policy and is practiced daily by US soldiers and secret agents (and drone operators).

The ideology of violence is so deeply embedded in US culture that a near change seems unlikely. The mass media outlets mirror the mood of the population and the popular mood in turn is influenced by the media, this is a feedback loop, a vicious circle that is unescapable and that ever so often spirals into mass hysteria.

Wether this ideology of violence was first ignited or taught by the media or is latent in the American psyche is a moot question, but it seems worth to remember, that the United States were created on the basis of the genocide of red indians (with 12 million victims one of the biggest mass murders in human history).

The Americans will seldom be bothered by introspections about the plight of Native Americans or slavery or more recent controversial issues like Jim Crow, McCarthyism, the Vietnam War. Mind control includes also collective amnesia.

It would be unjust to depict the USA as a lonely bad example of violence. Many societies are violent, some even more violent than US society. But the Americans have weapons, more that any other nation, and they produce weapons and sell them all around the world. Weapons and violence, what an explosive and destructive combination!

Television and mind control (revisited)

As I stated before, everybody who makes the mistake to turn on TV is lost, and it doesn't matter which channel one choses, which direction one turns the dial. For some month I was impressed by Al Jazeera, but as the Libyan war proved, this broadcaster has a hidden agenda like every other media outlet and it has to serve the interests of its financial backers (Qatar's Al-Thani dynasty, maybe the UAE and some global equity company -- who knows?)

It turned out that Al Jazeera is nothing else than another commercial TV company. It is TV the American way and accordingly its most important function -- if it is to flourish -- will be to turn dissatisfied and angry Arabs into eager consumers.

Who owns the US TV networks?

General Electric: NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Universal, Telemundo, hulu

Time Warner: CNN, TNT, Headline News, Turner Classic

Disney: ABC, ESPN, Lifetime

Rupert Murdoch: Fox, Sky, Premiere, National Geographic

Sumner Redstone: CBS, Viacom, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central

One doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to make the conclusion, that just a handful of persons exert extraordinary influence and can shape public opinion in any way they like. One doesn't have to be paranoid to be worried about this fact.

I hardly ever looked TV. My parents couldn't afford a TV box and so I grew up without television -- I read a lot of books instead. Moving pictures in general disturb me, no matter what's the source. Occasionally I try to watch MTV music video clips at the recommendation of my pupils, but the fast cuts, the hectic camera movements, and silly effect gimmicks make me feel itchy. The quality of YouTube videos is terrible, they make my eyes bleed. Video in flv format should be forbidden, mp4 is a little bit better but also tiresome to watch.

No, I don't want be bothered with blurred pictures, with shapes and colors flickering across the screen. I don't want to take all that strife and burden and ruin my eyes just to get my daily brainwash. I pity my fellow humans who are wasting their time sitting in front of a screen. It is for sure not healthy, we are not built for that, evolution has optimized us to move around, to be active, to walk and run and do things. We are not optimized for sitting motionless in front of a screen. Why not abolish TV and computer altogether? The saved time could be used for reading and writing, painting, making music, gardening, spending time with family and friends, walking in the woods, meditation etc...

I'm not addicted to television or computer, unfortunately I spend more hours on the computer than I would like to. I try to restrict my computer session to three times four hours a week. I'm not there yet….

For a few years I listened to radio via satellite (Astra and HotBird here in Europe). First to BBC, which had a reputation of high journalistic standards. Tired of UK government propaganda I migrated to NPR, which was said to be liberal. Diane Rehm, (Diane Rehm Show), Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield (On The Media), Terry Gross (Fresh Air) were my favorites. I realized soon that NPR, though not as conservative as Clear Channel and not as venomous and rancorous as talk radio, is nevertheless middle of the road, is pointless and dull.

The Internet and mind control

Nowadays I don't want to waste my time with mainstream media anymore. I visit Democracy Now, being still impressed and deeply grateful to Amy Goodman, I read the Guardian online, Common Dreams and various blogs. When an issue arises, I use search engines and compare the various infos, which are always conflicting, inconsistent, and incongruent. It helps to consider the source and possible intrinsic agendas. In any way, the bigger part of the infos are absurd, illogical, ludicrous and therefore easy to filter out.

Persons who realize, that the world of mainstream media doesn't match their daily experience and fatefully/hopefully turn to alternative media and to the blogosphere, are confronted with a fascinating but confusing and exhausting kaleidoscopic collage of images, a patchwork of contrasting information splinters, a cacophony of voices, including political fringe lunatics, extremist goons, religious fanatics, over the top buffoons, scoundrels, skeptics and pessimists (which are eager to share their chronic depressions,) serious and thoughtful, though naive idealist.

The diversity and variety of the blogosphere results from the convergence of distant and disparate societies/cultures and it is intentionally exacerbated. There are many deliberate attempts to add to the confusion and blur the picture even more, there are many deliberate attempts to muddy the waters!

It is easy to muddy the waters and it is just too tempting, too cheap and easy to set up a blog, a web site, upload YouTube videos, or assume a fake personality and set up multiple accounts on social media sites. Everybody can do that, individuals with good or bad intentions, con men and other criminals, contractors and government agents.

It has been proven that Wikipedia entries are regularly rewritten by corporations, governments, and secret services (CIA/FBI). Israel and the USA have recruited and trained students to assume fake personalities and participate in chat rooms, comment sections, and social media sites. These agents work in various ways, either defending criticized governments and corporations, or voicing radical views in order to attain credibility and get access to inner circles (in order to collect incriminating evidence or start a sting operation). Some of the agent provocateurs have to display a frivolous and silly attitude to discredit the cause of dissidents.

Just yesterday I read about a new scientific paper by Navid Hassanpour, titled "Media Disruption Exacerbates Revolutionary Unrest." The paper analyzes the recent uprising in Egypt, using complex calculations and vectors that are representing decision-making by potential protesters. The conclusion is, that: "full connectivity in a social network sometimes can hinder collective action," and that the decision of Mubarak to shut down Internet and cellphone services rather advanced the protest movement instead of quelling it.

Though the political or military leaders according to this study would be well advised, not to switch off the Internet at the high of a public rebellion, access would probably very fast be curtailed and content be strictly censored if there would not be an interest to:

1. give the citicens a channel to let off steam

2. be informed about the popular mood

3. track down and identify dissidents

Irritated by Chinese hackers, civil disobedience activists like Anonymous/ LulzSec, and whistleblowers like WikiLeaks, the US administration wants to more tightly regulate the Internet and has introduced various bills to control it. The "Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act" of 2010 would have allowed Obama to switch off the Internet. It failed but a similar bill is now again in Congress. COICA (Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act) would have allowed the government to shut down websites who allegedly were infringing intellectual property or trademarks. Search engines and other sites would have been barred to link to infringing foreign sites. The bill was blocked by Sennator Ron Wyden of Oregon, but the Protect IP Act, a copy of COICA, is right now considered in Congress.

Disguised as an anti-child pornography bill, H.R. 1981 (Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act) wants to end anonymity on the Internet. The bill would require ISPs to keep a record of a customers activity for 18 month and hold name, address, phone number, credit card/bank account, and IP address readily available for a government investigation. Though the bill refers to pornography in its title, logs kept by ISPs could also be accessed in other cases, such as insurance fraud, divorces, terrorism, and hacking. The bill still has to make it through the House of Representatives and the Senate.

These legislative attempts to make the Internet more transparent and end anonymity and privacy are not pressing because the big web portals and e-commerce as a whole are eager to lift the vail of anonymity, to collect as much personal information as possible -- and to do the bidding of the government.

Companies already use cookies, Flash cookies and extensive databases to record every move on the net. Google+ erased accounts when it suspected the use of fake names and insists that members reveal their real identity. Facebook has a similar policy though it is not yet strictly enforced.

Even web surfers with dynamic IPs are easily to identify. As soon as the user logs in to a social network site or accesses emails the IP is correlated with the identity and all following activities are registered. The only chance to remain anonymous is to use proxy sites which relay the Internet data. The proxy sites should be though in safe countries, when LulzSec brought down the CIA’s website and released names and passwords of the US Senate’s site, the FBI seized entire servers from a hosting company to track down the activists.

I'm not bothered by the customized and targeted advertising, my ad blockers work very well and I'm also not prone to impulse purchases. I cancelled my credit card long ago and recently took out all my savings from my bank account (I also configured my bank account in a way that no overdraft is possible.) Through these measures I denied myself the possibility to shop online. I'm not worried about the targeted advertising, but I don't like the idea, that by tracking all my moves, online marketing and advertising agencies like DoubleClick, Optimum7, Majon, RickyDeez, ValueClick, are able to build a very accurate personal profile of me.

I cherish my privacy!

The question arises, what my ramblings about loss of privacy have to do with the initial theme of mind control, and in order to answer this question I first have to define the term "mind control." (I should have done it right at the start.)

A narrow definition of mind control is, that it describes the process of subjecting individuals to systematic psychological pressure and coercion or applying advanced psychological methods like hypnosis and psychoactive drugs in order to break their personality and change or implant views, ethics, values, behaviors.

Synonyms are: brainwashing, coercive persuasion, mind abuse, thought control, reeducation.

A wider definition of mind control includes any attempt to influence individuals and change their thinking. This includes advertising, marketing, propaganda, as well as recent attempts by the US military, to "win the hearts and minds" in occupied countries.

Synonyms are; conditioning, indoctrination, persuasion, seduction.

When William B. Caldwell, a three-star Army general in charge of training Afghan police was accused of using "psyops" on visiting politicians, the army cleared him of any impropriety. He didn't order soldiers trained in psychological operations to influence visiting American senators in hope to get more money for the war. He only told public affairs officers to inform the senators and supply comprehensive material about the war efforts.

It was not mind control (in the narrow definition), it was a briefing of political leaders, it was the attempt to provide sound information and put things into the right perspective.

Back to privacy:

For me it is very clear that the loss of anonymity will make people more careful, will suppress dissent and criticism, will prevent calls for protest actions and civil disobedience. The loss of anonymity will quiet opposing voices and will make an open discussion about controversial issues difficult if not impossible. When Big Brother is watching, only the undaunted and most courageous will continue to raise their voice. The timid and faint-hearted will comply and obey -- and retreat into "inner emigration."

The blogosphere will become more quiet, less disharmonious, less confusing and also less interesting. The self censorship of corporate media will be step by step extended to alternative media and to the blogosphere. We will hear only one story and see only one view. We will be fed government and corporate propaganda by mainstream media, by alternative media, by everyone. This is mind control -- what else should one call it?

A few unsorted ideas, unsolved questions, and missing clarifications at the end of this text: 

There are examples, that the mind control schemes of the ruling elites not always get traction. The mind control efforts sometimes fail because the targeted population speaks another language, has a distinctive culture, and has a way of thinking, that the masters of mind control cannot comprehend. Mind control efforts flopped in many Latin American countries, in the Arab world, in some small European countries.

In such cases the masters of mind control will try to bribe the leaders of these countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrein, Columbia), and if that is not possible organize a coup (Honduras, Haiti) or occupy the country (Iraq, Afghanistan).

I daubt, that the masters of mind control in Washington ever aimed to win hearts and minds of Arab populations, at least not for their cause. Maybe they are glad if they can recruit Afghans for the Taliban with deadly night raids and drone attacks. Maybe they are glad when they can recruit Somalis for Al-ASabaab. The masters of mind control in Washington need the Taliban, Al Queda, Al-ASabaab, Boko Haram and other militant islamists as a justification for their wars, for ever increasing military spending, for chipping away civil rights, and for installing a strict surveillance regime.

Is the incitement to hate and revenge by raining down bombs also a form of mind control?

The remarkable Cristina Fernandez

She looks stunningly good for a woman with 58 and I cannot rule out, that this fact made even me, a distant observer, interested in her case. To deflect the inevitable accusations of sexism I have instantly to correct and amend the leading statement and make clear that I meant: She fits the contemporary and prevailing male ideals of beauty and femininity perfectly.

Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder and I can truly and wholeheartedly confirm that I regard all of my female role models as beautiful: Vandana Shiva, Alice Walker, Amy Goodman, Lama Tsultrim Allione, Maude Barlow, Asha Hagi Elmi, just to randomly name a few. Some of the entries in my long list of accomplished and revered women may not be considered as top contenders by an all male jury in a beauty contest, but that doesn't diminish their accomplishments and their charisma, it only shows the shallowness and frivolity of todays consumer culture.

Nevertheless, looking good can be an essential asset for a woman, who is dealing with men, and Cristina Fernandez, the subject of this blog post, has to prevail in a male dominated business: in politics. Cristina Fernandez is the widow of former Argentinian president Nestor Kirchner and she is the incumbent president.

Her speeches are emotional and often dramatic, it is clear that she uses her femininity to calm and disarm her male political opponents.

Her opponents accuse her of an authoritarian attitude, and of turning to the left and following the "Chavez model." Her four years in office were tumultuous and controversial, but Argentina's economy is booming, to some extend fueled by high prices for agrarian exports, but mostly because of government investment and social spending instead of IMF-style austerity.

It is not surprising that conservative pundits and WTO officials are fuming about her rule. Argentine is ranked 138th out of 179 countries in the Heritage Foundation’s 2011 Index of Economic Freedom and an IMF official complained that Argentina “has introduced about 100 limiting measures since 2009, affecting its trade with 174 countries, and has the most restrictive trade policy in the world."

Her decisive victory with 50 percent of the votes in a primary election on August 14 makes a re-election in October almost a foregone conclusion, while giving her more room to advance a progressive economic agenda. She benefitted from divisions within the opposition and the fact, that her opponents Ricardo Alfonsin and Eduardo Duhalde are not charismatic at all and recite mindlessly from the neocon textbook that was sent them together with a lot of funds from across the equator (not charismatic maybe even an understatement, compared to Cristina her political contenders look like walking corpses.)

The neocon textbook that her opponents received was for sure perfectly translated into Spanish, but it is nevertheless North American and will never resonate with Argentinian souls. Milton Friedman and his Chicago school of economics were very interested in Latin America and especially in Argentine, but they only understood economics, they didn't understand culture. If Friedman would have listened to Adriana Varela, Carlos Gardel, Astor Piazzolla, Eduardo Falu, his economic model would have been different -- maybe.

Argentinians have not a good experience with Friedman and the neocon recipes. In 1976, when a junta seized power from Isabel Peron, their country, together with Chile, Uruguay and Brazil (the other dominions ruled by US backed juntas) became a laboratory of Chicago School economics, and Argentina's capitalist economy was further liberalized during the 1990s, along lines drawn by the IMF and the USA. Argentina's leaders did just about everything the economic theorists said they should do to be prosperous and the USA rewarded them with 40 billion US$ in support.

During the Carlos Menem administration, Argentina, under the guidance of IMF, World Bank, and US Treasury. continued to borrow heavily, and public debt sky rocketed as loan payments had to be postponed.

Argentina commenced a neoliberal restructuring process (stabilize, privatize, liberalize). A number of labour market reforms were enacted, including new regulations for public employment, deregulation of the private sector along with weakened labor laws, and the partial privatization of social security. Argentina’s foreign debt grew substantially from 57 billion US$ in 1990 to 178 billion in 2003. The high debt, coupled with the devaluation of the Argentine peso, led to hyperinflation, high unemployment rates, a large informal sector, increased poverty, and cuts of health services and education. A reduction in public salaries and lay-offs stemming from privatization resulted in massive loss of income, effectively eliminating the middle class.

The neoliberal structural adjustment program eventually led to a severe economic crisis from 1999 to 2002 that brought the country to the brink of economic collapse. Unemployment was 20 to 30 percent, homelessness doubled and half of the population were below the poverty line. The government had to freeze all bank accounts for a year, allowing only minor sums to be withdrawn. Argentinians resided to barter trading, subsistence agriculture, and scavenging. Many Argentinians suffered from malnutrition.

Nestor Kirchner, a lawyer who won the presidential race against the disgraced Carlos Menem in 2003, abandoned the neoliberal policies and his four-year presidency was notable for a dramatic fall in poverty and unemployment. Argentina's bankruptcy was the largest in financial history and gave Kirchner significant bargaining power against the IMF. He achieved an agreement to reschedule 84 billion US$ in debts with international organizations. In 2005 Kirchner announced the cancellation of Argentina's debt to the IMF in full and offered a single payment of 9.810 billion US$.

Argentine severed the close economic links with the USA, rejected the Free Trade Area of the Americas and turned to Mercosur. Kirchner also bravely overturned amnesty laws for military officers accused of torture and assassinations during the junta reign.

When Nestor Kirchner tragically died of heart failure on 27 October 2010, he was not Argentina's president anymore, because he had promoted his wife Cristina, also a lawyer, as his successor, leading to her election in 2007.

In an interview with Time Magazine shortly before her election in 2007 she stated: "Women are the politicians of the future, because they're culturally formed to be citizens of two worlds, public and private.…We see the big geopolitical picture, but also the smaller daily details of our citizens lives."

This statement sounds genuine because she has raised two children, Maximo and Florencia (florkey.)

Cristina Fernandez became an advocate for human rights and public health improvements, and she continued her husbands politic of increased government influence and stronger regulation of private businesses. Argentina's relations with the USA deteriorated further as a result of this and also as a result of allegations, that Venezuela had made illegal contributions to her election campaign.

In 2008, she introduced a new sliding-scale taxation system for agricultural exports, raising levies on soybean exports from 35 to 44 percent, which met stiff resistance from big farmers and was defeated in the Argentine Congress. In 2008 Cristina proposed the transfer of nearly 30 billion US$ in private pension holdings to the social security system, this bill passed.  In 2009 she launched a universal child benefit plan as a way to fight poverty with the goal to reach million children and youths. The program has been credited for having boosted school attendance rates and reduced poverty.

In 2010, her administration completed the debt swap which was started by her husband in 2005, clearing 92 percent of the bad debt left from the bankruptcy in 2001. Argentinas external debt now is 30 percent of the country's GDP, the Central Bank foreign reserves are 49 billion US$. She implemented a one-to-one foreign trade policy, anyone bringing imports to the country must match their value with exports. A bill to limit foreign ownership of Argentine rural land that her office submitted to Congress in April would bar individual foreigners from owning more than 2,500 acres and would limit aggregate foreign ownership to 20 percent of Argentina's total rural land.

She also signed a bill legalizing same sex marriage.

Christina Fernandez is not an environmentalist, she vetoed the "Law of protection of the glaciers," a move, which could threaten over 75 percent of the country's water reserves and reopened the Pilcaniyeu uranium enrichment plant, put on ice in the 1990s. She also faces allegations of impropriety, because since their arrival to power in 2003, her and her late husbands declared assets have increased by 570 percent.

She likes expensive fashion cloth and jewelry and always wears makeup. That does not exactly match my ideals of a modest and environmental couscous lifestyle, though I have to concede that she has a good taste.

Nobody is perfect, and despite not being as humble and frugal as Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Theresa, I admire Cristina and wish her the best of luck!

How to wreck a society {1}

If I wanted to destroy a country, create complete chaos and convert this country into a failed state, I would know now how to proceed because it was just demonstrated successfully that it can be easily done.

First I would distribute to all the young unemployed men, to all the members of the city gangs, to all the trouble makers assault weapons and also some heavy machine guns and pickup trucks and I would provide them with a basic training how to use these killing tools.

I would then bomb the headquarters and the stations of the police and other security forces, the universities and the TV stations and important government buildings.

After the government institutions had broken down a state of lawlessness would emanate and I would have to say, that there had been no institutions in the first place.

(In the case of the USA I could for instance easily argue, that after two decades of deregulation and funding cuts by both the Democrats and  the Republicans many institutions have been hollowed out and become empty shells and are not able anymore to protect the citizens from usury, racketing, and profiteering or defend the social contract from being broken by a clique of reckless and corrupt parvenus.)

I would have to say, that there had been no institutions in the first place, to deflect criticism and counter possible allegations that my bombing campaign had caused the emerging misery and the suffering of the population.

The heavily armed young men would go on a rampage and lute stores and warehouses and also the weapons depots of the destroyed police and security forces. They would take what they could carry and what was presumably useful for them and they would destroy the rest.

They would also free their fellow gang members and all other criminals  from the prisons to join their rampage.

After an initial euphoria about the fall of the state and their free ride the heavily armed young men would start to quarrel about the loot and the control of their gang territories and they would turn on themselves. The ensuing battles would kill many of them but even more uninvolved bystanders, especially elderly, women and children.

I have to stop with my tale at this point because my cats are just gathering in the kitchen and want to eat and after that we will probably all together make a walk in the forest.

Don't worry, this is not the end of the story. A sequel will follow soon and it will be breathtakingly dramatic!

Another take on empathy

I was sitting in front of my bowl of muesli this morning , wondering what kind of activity I would still be able to pursue with an ecstatically purring cat on the lap who was waiting to be cuddled and caressed. I had just finished breakfast, the bowl was empty, but my little friend Wendy, who is, as I wrote in another post already, the closest resemblance of any living creature to a teddy bear, was not in the mood to go up and start the days work.

Wendy is lovely cat and the most social cat that I ever have see, She always approaches the other members of the cat family and even visiting cats with high expectations, undeterred by earlier disappointments where her fellow cats put her down and hissed and growled at her.

Wendy's social character unfortunately doesn't not include other fellow animals and she will mercilessly torture and kill a captured mouse or a bird. She feels no empathy for her hapless victim. The mice may squeak and the bird chirp in terror and desperation, little Wendy will be unmoved and finish her bloody business leaving only some indigestible body parts like intestines, tails, or bird feathers as evidence on the crime scene.

Empathy can be very selective and its intensity and reach differs. Apparently my cats feel some empathy towards me (for being their most reliable food provider and spending a lot of time with them), but animals in general feel empathy only for their own species, with elephants, dolphins, wales being the most notable exceptions.

Most humans feel empathy only for humans, others restrict their feeling of empathy to a certain race or nationality or only to their nearest friends and relatives (a study on racial empathy by Gutsell/Inzlicht found physical evidence that white people have difficulty empathizing with non-whites).

People, that cannot feel empathy are often described as sociopaths or psychopaths.

Why don't political leaders feel empathy and scruple, preventing them from starting another war, preventing them from causing misery and death to so many of their fellow humans? Why don't the air force pilots, the gunners in the attack helicopters, the drone operators, the soldiers of the occupation forces feel empathy?

Why don't weapons manufacturers and weapons dealers feel empathy? Why are Western nations shipping huge quantities of arms to everybody who can pay or is willing to do their bidding and fight proxy wars? Why does the USA kill Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemenites, Somalis, Libyans with drone strikes and bombs?

I am told by the corporate media that this are just wars, preemptive wars, humanitarian interventions, this are military actions in defense of our western values of democracy and liberty. Even "liberal media" outlets like the New York Times and Al Jazeera are in lockstep with the government and pundits from left to right inform us about the dreadful consequences of not taking decisive action.

Reading Ethan Bronner's propaganda pieces about imperiled, vulnerable Israelis and vicious Palestinians gives me an idea about the truth content and the integrity of NY Times reporting. Listening to Al Jazeera's reports about Gaddafi's atrocities makes me suspicious. A massacre in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison, allegedly killing 1,200 inmates is mentioned to justify NATO's intervention. This was 1996, isn't it a bit late to react now after 15 years with a bombing campaign? 

Concerning Libya (an actual topic):

A fabrication is a fabrication only until you have told it 100 times. After the hundredth repetition it has been transformed into a fact. Sometimes it will maybe need even less repetitions, only 80 or even only 60, to turn a fabrication into a fact. After the transformation into a fact one can refer to the former fabrication as a part of "common knowledge." Choosing the right media helps a lot: "you've seen it on Fox, MSNBC, CNN, YouTube, so it must be true!" Pure and true like crystal clear sparkling bottled water….

I went out to look for additional alternative news sources and applied common sense and logic to the various conflicting and contradictory informations. My findings resulted in the blogpost A Few Notes about Libya, which includes a detailed assessment of the media campaign against Gaddafi, a campaign which was so insidious and deceitful that it would have even made Dick Cheney and George W. Bush blush. 

It was a remake of the media campaign that prepared the Iraq invasion, and the scheme worked well again. Didn't people remember that the Iraq media campaign was, what is now clearly documented and many times proven, crooked and a bunch of lies? Are people really that forgetful?

“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” Friedrich Hegel

I cannot rule out, that atrocities were committed by the Libyan army and I cannot rule out, that there were serious misgivings about Gaddafi's dictatorial attitudes, about cronyism and corruption, but I consider these crucial facts:

The Libyan population has one of the lowest poverty rates in the world (6 percent), a 82 percent literacy rate, and a life expectancy of 77 years (10 percent above the world average).

The fertility rate is 2,88 (comparatively modest for Africa). Women in Libya enjoy a reasonably high status. They have been able to vote since 1964, and Libya has signed the "UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women" (Cedaw). In 2004 it was the first Arab country to adopt an optional protocol allowing women to petition a UN committee about violations of their rights. As part of Gaddafi's bid to alter society after his takeover in 1969, he promoted a greater role for women, specifically calling on them to join the workforce. Most famous are his female bodyguards, known as the revolutionary nuns.

All this was of course before the NATO war and every quality of life parameter will be significantly lower now -- probably lower forever.

The protests against Gaddafi were dwarfed by daily (later nightly) demonstrations for him in Green Spare. Why should the majority of Libyans have been against Gaddafi, when he had kept Libya free from outside influence and exploitation for 42 years. He had not been bought and bribed, he had not sold out to Western corporations!

The rebels are represented by the Transitional National Council (TNC), lead mainly by former government officials who were ousted because of corruption or infighting. The rebel army consists of jihadist fighters from Afghanistan and Iraq, radical islamists, beduin tribes who see an opportunity to settle old scores with rival clans, and opportunists who gladly take the inpouring funds from NATO, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar.

Even rebel commanders admit that some of their fighters have al-Qaeda links. The main fighting force is the Islamic Libya Fighting Group, which is a Libyan “mujahadeen" force. There are other interests of course represented too: one powerful person in the military leadership is General Khalifa Hifter, an US-based exile with CIA ties.

A draft 14-page "constitutional declaration," states that: "Libya is a democratic and independent state, the people are the source of authority, Tripoli is the capital, Islam is the religion and Islamic sharia is the principal source of legislation."

The rebels began rolling back the participation of women as their size increased. Enas Eldrasy, a 23-year old therapist, did quit the rebels saying: "when the revolution started, women had a role, but it disappeared."

The rebel fighters are desperadoes, they are not representing the population. It is a blatant media lie that this is a popular uprising. The Libyan people didn't raise up to chase Gaddafi out, it was a terrifying NATO bombing campaign which destroyed most of the military infrastructure and also hit many civilian targets, it was the heavy bombardment by naval artillery, it were NATO commandos aiding and training rebel fighters.

After a fact-finding tour to Libya in June former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney condemned the NATO bombing. She had witnessed several bombings of Tripoli and said: "Tripoli is under heavy aerial bombardment in all areas, also in civilian areas."

According to the Libyan Red Crescent NATO bombed 300 civilian targets between February and July, killing or wounding a total of 6,232 Libyans. These targets included the Libyan Down's Syndrome Society, a school that provided speech therapy, handicrafts and sports sessions for disabled children as well as Tripoli’s Nasser University, Libyan TV installations (killing 3 journalists and injuring 15), homes, schools, medical facilities and food storage warehouses.

Bombing such sites is outlawed by the Geneva Conventions and constitutes war crimes.

NATO uses ammunition, missiles and bombs with depleted uranium. Large parts of Libya will be forever radioactive contaminated (nearly forever - DU has a half-life of 4.6 million years). Why is the use of DU weapons not decried as a war crime and internationally banned? If the use of DU weapons is not a warcrime, what else constitutes a war crime?

http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/docs/163.pdf

http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/

http://www.rense.com/general56/dep.htm

NATO's attacks on Libyan government forces with bombing raids, combat helicopters and artillery and missiles from warships were an intervention in a civil war and were not backed by the UN resolution 1973 authorizing a no-fly zone. Providing the rebels with weapons was a breach of the UN arms embargo.

The attempts to assassinate Gaddafi, his children, and grandchildren was also a violation of the rules of engagement set by the UN Security Council resolutions 1970 and 1973. These UN resolutions didn't allow for the targeting of Libyan officials, or sanction the murder of Gaddafi and his children and grandchildren and other family members.

The USA and NATO are above the law.

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I don't want to repeat myself and refer to my earlier blog post about Libya for details, but I need to write down the main conclusions that I draw from the collected infos:

Removing Gaddafi from power was deemed necessary because Libya is the African country with the largest oil reserves in Africa and the ninth largest in the world (46 billion barrels). Libya was also one of the few African countries which are self-sufficient and free of Western influence and it has helped many other African countries financially to reduce their reliance on IMF loans.

Gaddafi had planned to fund three ambitious financial projects: the creation of an African investment bank, an African monetary fund and an African central bank. These Africa-centered institutions would have diminished the continents dependence on the IMF and the World Bank -- institutions who pressure African nations to privatize natural resources and to allow unlimited access to Western companies.

The USA had an eye on Gaddafi since a long time and only waited for the right pretext to strike. It will be interesting to see how their strategic plan works out. At present it looks like Gaddafi will join Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, and Salvador Allende in the shrine of fallen heroes. The six month NATO bombing campaign and a total naval blockade have weakened the Libyan army enough to allow a rebel takeover of Tripoli. Before that the rebels moved into the strategic important towns of Zlitan and Zawiya, after NATO had blanketed the towns with bombs and forced the Libyan army to retreat.

The thousands of killed Libyan's, the destruction of Libya's infrastructure and the widespread radioactive contamination with deputed uranium could have been avoided by Gaddafi stepping down and scheduling immediate democratic elections supervised by international organizations like the Carter Center. He could have remained some influence as an elder statesman guiding and advising his successors. But such a solution was not fathomable for a man who achieved power by a military coup and ruled for 42 years as a military dictator. This was not a thought Gaddafi would have ever been able to think.

Let me go back again to my initial musings about empathy:

Beside all geopolitical considerations (competition with China), the necessity to grab the worlds dwindling oil resources, and the push of the "military industrial complex" for more wars, did the leaders in Washington not spend any thought about the human costs of the Libyan war?

I have to ask again, why don't the political leaders feel empathy when they start another war, why don't the air force pilots, the gunners in the attack helicopters, the drone operators, the soldiers of the occupation forces feel empathy?

Does the US soldier feel any kind of empathy when he uses the Afghan farmer for target practice? The soldier will argue that this farmer was very likely to joy the Taliban after his brothers family was wiped out in a missile strike, so it was necessary and logical to wipe him out too. The soldier will maybe even argue that it will be necessary to wipe out the whole village because the villagers are enraged by the killings and likely to become ardent Taliban supporters.

Aren't the political and military leaders concerned about their legacy? Aren't the lobbyist, the propagandists and agitators ashamed, aren't the soldiers troubled, distressed, traumatized?

The later seem to be indeed troubled, distressed, and traumatized.

32 US soldiers committed suicide in July, the highest number since the Army started releasing monthly figures. That is one soldier per day. The annual number of suicides in the Marine Corps, which doesn't release monthly figures, is on pace with the Army. More than 1,000 military personnel have taken their own lives since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These figures do not include the suicides of veterans, which average 18 per day.

The political leader, the generals and the media agitators though are doing fine.

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Footnotes and unsorted tidbits:

Gaddafi will not join Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, and Salvador Allende in my shrine of fallen heroes. I don't condone his dictatorial rule and his iron grip on power, though I give him credit for putting the national interests of Libya before the interests of the international corporations.

He could have avoided the destruction of Libya by stepping down.

US Senator and former presidential contender John McCain tweeted last year: "Late evening with Col. Qadhafi at his ranch in Libya - interesting meeting with an interesting man." Gaddafi is or was for sure an interesting personality, but I don't want to spend much more thought on him, he is now irrelevant. I rather direct my attention to the remaining national leaders who stand up against IMF, Word Bank, and the G8 powers.

Will Hugo Chávez, Cristina Fernandez, Daniel Ortega, and the Castro brothers be the remaining keepers of the flame? (I didn't include Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, and Dilma Rousseff because of their negative environmental record.)

How would Cuba look today, if the Bay of Pigs Invasion would have succeeded? Would it look like Haiti? Would it look like Jamaica?

+++++++

In August Al Jazeera English launched in New York City on Time Warner Cable, a major step in the network’s goal of expanding further into the U.S. cable market and a chance to reach two million households in the world capital of culture and commerce. The network also became available on Verizon FiOS. Joining the media blitz about Gaddafi's atrocities has payed of (one knows which way the wind blows, when Hillary Clinton and John McCain are praising Al Jazeera.)

+++++++

Concerning NY Times reports: I would never pay for this kind of journalism, I only read some reports, because the NY Times paywall is easy to surpass.

I still ponder about an opinion piece of Paul Krugman on August 15 with the title "Oh! What A Lovely War!" It started with the sentence: World War II is the great natural experiment in the effects of large increases in government spending, and as such has always served as an important positive example for those of us who favor an activist approach to a depressed economy (meaning more government spending).

Wanted Krugman to make a case for increased stimulus spending without realizing that his argumentation could also be used for starting more wars? Or does ha actually think that wars help the economy?

This is from a Nobel laureate! An allegedly bright man who nevertheless isn't able to grasp the idea that a growing economy means more environmental destruction, a man who is not able to envision an economic system that is not based on continuous growth!

+++++++

Three weeks ago I scanned the headlines in salon.com and read:

Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are in love!

This was inevitable indeed, I thought, she probably will be his mistress, main adviser, and running mate in 2012. A moment later I realized, that I just misread, and the headline in fact was:

Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are in Iowa!

Politics is not that simple…

What a great story it would have been! Cleopatra and Marcus Antonio again."

They share so many interests. Especially the passion to shoot and kill. Though they have slightly different approaches and Sarah is more the hands on type while Barack prefers to use drones, precisely because of this different approach they would have complemented each other very well. They would have been the perfect killing team!