Television Eye

[Octafish]

Words to a great song by a great man, John Mayall:

Television Eye

Television Eye,
hypnotizing me in my bed.
I’ve got no time to sleep,
my eyes are turning bloodshot red.
You’ve got me in your eye,
staring at your many channeled head.

Television Eye,
before you got me hooked,
I used to read.
Now you’re by my bedside,
shining empty lights on me.
‘Round the clock commercials,
Trying to sell me things I’ll never need.

It’s hard to turn you on,
even though you’ve never turned me on.
Trying to slow my thinking,
I feel my mind is nearly gone.
Television Eye,
You’ve had me in your power too long.

I’ve got to be crazy or something.
It’s just ridiculous.
Why am I wasting time watching you?
I’ve got better things to do.
I’ve got to leave…

-- John Mayall



Now, IMFO:

If you can control what people think about, you can control what they do.

This is the essence of public relations, marketing and psyops.

And it is why the Bushies and the satanic turds they serve spend so much time and money “catapaulting the propaganda,” to borrow a phrase from an incurious monkey.



The nation's Founders mention only one business by name in the Constitution -- a Free Press. They knew, for a democracy to survive -- for our Republic to succeed -- required an informed citizenry.

(That was in 1776 -- before radio or photography, "General" Alberto Gonzales.)

Frank Capra explained it perfectly: “A free press means a free people.”

Meaning, the more the People know -- the more Truth -- the better the government.

And that is why the Press is no longer free. It is owned and operated by the BFEE.

So people don't hear the facts about Bush lying America into war. Or about his family and cronies profiting from war. Or about torture being employed on a mass scale. Or about spying on Americans... It's also why public education and the arts are de-funded and ignored.

You see, an educated populace is harder to mis-lead. That makes the enlightened enemies of the fascist state.

[H2O Man]

1. Sometimes I wonder

if Victor Lasky won the battle to control how the media reports.

Nominated.

[Octafish]

3. That Operation MOCKINGBIRD is really something.

From the good folks at Covert Action Information Bulletin:

Disinformation and Mass Deception: Democracy as a Cover Story

By William Preston, Jr. and Ellen Ray
CAIB 19

During World War 1, the atrocity story came into its own as an instrument of foreign policy. In those simpler days, governments could turn public opinion against the enemy with tales of individual brutality: the rape of a nun, the bayonetting of a baby, or the execution of a Red Cross nurse. Such propaganda externalized the issues and focused national attention on an appropriate scapegoat. Doubters or dissenters were swept aside in the patriotic fallout, in an emotional downpour that insisted, “Once at war, to reason is treason.”

This crude propaganda, however, had a temporary, war-related quality which often foundered on its own exaggerations. The idea of truth in those days had not yet been obliterated by the continuous covert manipulation of information in peacetime just as in war; nor had deception, secrecy, and lying come to be so much a part of the national menu as to be swallowed whole like the junk food that satiates the public appetite. Today there is no better example of the corrupted circumstances that now confront the consumer of news than the undercover campaign of official disinformation about Cuba.

SNIP...

“Project Democracy” and Public Diplomacy: Conclusion

On June 8, 1982 in an address to the British Parliament, President Reagan announced a new ideological offensive to turn the tide against Communism in the battle for the mind of the world’s population. Designed to “foster the infrastructure of democracy” in a dozen ways, it clearly enlisted information as its top recruit. Charles Wick said there would be “a new assertive propagandistic role” to “win the war of ideas.”

Elsewhere, as the democracy project unfolded, there were references to information as “a vital part of the strategic and tactical arsenal of the United States.” Wick again pictured ideas as the only useful weapons that could be shot at an enemy in the absence of hostilities-such as the Radio Marti venture aimed at Cuba. Other government officials elevated public diplomacy to the status of diplomatic and military policy in serving the needs of national security. But all spokesmen insisted that the United States at all times “must speak the truth, clearly, vigorously and persuasively.”

Since truth is the first casualty in war, whether total, limited, or ideological, as Woodrow Wilson put it, how is the Reagan Administration planning to pull off this miracle? They are not planning to, in all probability. What they are doing is building a new Trojan Horse so that the covert programs of deception, fake propaganda, slanted information, and disinformation can move forward without being under the suspect auspices of the CIA, DIA, and others of that ilk. “Project Democracy” and public diplomacy are clearly a rehabilitation process for government propaganda, an attempt to restore information manipulation under new sponsorship. Will it work? Will you believe it? Or are you ready to be fooled?

First of all, the proposal was born with original sin. Conceived in secrecy as a classified executive order, Project Democracy can hardly live up to its claim of democratic openness. A CIA covert feature initially existed in the plan, but was withdrawn, or so we and the Congress are told. Still, National Security Council Decision Directive 77 placed the program under the National Security Assistant’s control where it is “to support U.S. policies and interests..” Those chairing the top four committees come from agencies with long-time commitments to secrecy and the protective cover of classification. But there are more serious problems with this deformed Reagan progeny besides the wartime psychology that gave it birth and the secrecy with which it was raised.

On its face the idea is implausible because American foreign policies and CIA operations have not evidenced any connection with an infrastructure of democratic principles, except as they are manipulated to suit the purposes of the U.S. Democracies have had empires before, from Athens on. Whatever the U.S. may call its overseas political, economic, and cultural mission, its support of client regimes, its overthrow of leftist democratic governments, its active support of “moderately authoritarian” right-wing allies, its backing of powerful multinational corporations - none of that has ever been analyzed internally for its democratic fallout. The credibility of any government information must inevitably be tested against the deeds as well as the rhetoric of a nation.

CONTINUED...

http://covertaction.org//content/view/172/75/

That was from way back in 1984. Thank you for understanding, H20 Man and thanks for remembering.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. I think it's funny when people complain about TV

...on internet message boards.

Me myself, I'm going to scrawl a rant regarding the lack of skywriting literacy on the wall of a bathroom stall.

[Octafish]

4. How False Narrative Works

Your sense of irony is interesting.

What Robert Parry has to say:

How False Narrative Works

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
November 14, 2007

Editor’s Note: Over the past couple of decades, the Republicans have benefited enormously from their ability to create and disseminate false narratives through the Right’s large, well-financed media apparatus.

With mainstream journalists unwilling to challenge the false narratives – and thus put their careers at risk – American voters often go to the polls believing things that are almost the opposite of the truth.

In this excerpt from Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, the authors present a case study from Election 2000:

During Campaign 2000, conservative groups were given wide leeway in smearing Democratic candidate Al Gore without being called to account, even when the Vice President was falsely portrayed as a traitor.

For instance, in the weeks before Election 2000, Aretino Industries, a pro-Republican group from Texas, ran an emotional ad modeled after Lyndon Johnson’s infamous 1964 commercial that showed a girl picking a daisy before the screen dissolved into a nuclear explosion.

The ad remake accused the Clinton-Gore administration of selling vital nuclear secrets to communist China, in exchange for campaign donations in 1996. The compromised nuclear secrets, the ad stated, gave China “the ability to threaten our homes with long-range nuclear warheads.”

But the ad – which aired in “swing” states including Ohio, Michigan, Missouri and Pennsylvania – was filled with disinformation. The actual evidence was that the key breach in national security, contributing to the modernization of China’s nuclear arsenal, occurred in the 1980s, not the 1990s.

In other words, the secrets were lost during the Reagan-Bush administration, not the Clinton-Gore administration.

CONTINUED...

http://consortiumnews.com/2007/111407a.html

Gee. I don't recall hearing that part on TV.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

5. Shhh. Football/Nascar/PrideFighting is on.

Can't you see the "Do Not Disturb" sign?

[Octafish]

6. Corporate McPravda Spotlights anything but the Treason, Imperialism and Warmongering Agendii.

Of course, "Corruption" is just another word for "Treason."

Take "Oil." Please.

Attacking Iran: Americans will kill even their own

by Mohamed Elmasry
(Saturday, November 17, 2007)

"Today’s gold is oil. And today’s Columbus and his brothers are George W. Bush, his administration, and his allies. But the doctrine and motivation are the same. For the sake of looting-for-profit, death, suffering and destruction are all justifiable. Any measure of lying is also acceptable in the process, along with the despicable tools of distorted religion, propaganda, war-mongering and hate speech that aggressor-criminals wield to lure a misinformed public to their side."

To penetrate the mindset of the Bush administration on whether it will attack Iran or not, you must read a perceptive book by Canadian historian Prof. R. T. Naylor.

At first glance, Naylor’s "Canada in the European Age, 1453-1919" (first published in 1987 and reprinted in 2006 by McGill - Queen’s University Press) <1> might seem dated and irrelevant to current affairs topics like the American invasion of Iraq, or the risk of war against Iran.

But this book prophetically illuminates the mind of Washington and, for me at least, leads to the sad conclusion that Iran will be attacked.

The background to my conclusion is rooted in the doctrine of colonization: looting other people’s wealth and enslaving them, while killing outright those who resist. And this seems to be the dominant doctrine in Washington today.

It is a doctrine that has never changed from the earliest days of European settlement of the Americas. The cost of colonialist looting was, and still is, considered limitless - so high, in fact, that the price tag includes scarifying the lives of your own people.

Naylor is an excellent storyteller. But the story he tells is a tragic one of unbridled human greed, a passion for obtaining wealth at any cost and using brute force power to loot, rob, kill and enslave other people whom their aggressors deem to be less-than-human.

CONTINUED...

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/47526

Imperioilism

Paupers can't own the oil.
Oil is gold.
Gold buys power.
Power transfoms politics.
Politics trumps peace.
War kills Paupers.

Repeat until the oil is gone.
Then, find something to be the new oil.
Water, say.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

7. Your poem at the bottom sums it up.

This is a very sad time for those of us with our eyes open.

[Kurovski]

8. Gee, that family couldn't even wait to get it out of the box,

just to stare at Dinah's choppers.

While doing chores today I switched between both CNN channels. for three hours it was "soap opera" news. People crying (literally) and fretting over things completely unrelated to government, with some happy horseshit tossed in for good measure.

One local news channel has at least two individuals crying each broadcast about everything but the sorry state of the United States of America. (At least when I happen to tune in.) I figure it must be station policy, or else It's a hell of a coincidence.

[Kurovski]

9. It's Tuesday morning, and on a lark I once again tuned into CNN.

I find a story about a polygamist on trial and ten minutes (so far) on the woman who died while getting plastic surgery.

23 minutes.

Now it's a story on a traffic accident in Baltimore.