Neal Barnard MD discusses the science behind food additions. Willpower is not to blame: chocolate, cheese, meat, and sugar release opiate-like substances. Dr. Barnard also discusses how industry, aided by government, exploits these natural cravings, pushing us to eat more and more unhealthy foods. A plant-based (vegan) diet is the solution to avoid many of these problems. Neal Barnard is the founder of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).
Amidst the subtle cerebral circumvention of the gullible populace, through a multitude of manipulated mediums, lies one of the most diabolical atrocities perpetrated upon a segment of the human race; a form of systematic mind control which has permeated every aspect of society for almost fifty years.To objectively ascertain the following, one may need to re-examine preconceived ideologies relating to the dualistic nature of mankind. http://www.aches-mc.org/monarch.html
The world has been gripped with fears of swine flu in recent weeks. In an interview with SPIEGEL, epidemiologist Tom Jefferson speaks about dangerous fear-mongering, misguided, money-driven research and why we should all be washing our hands a lot more often.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Jefferson, the world is living in fear of swine flu. And some predict that, by next winter, one-third of the world’s population might be infected. Are you personally worried? Are you and your family taking any precautions?
Tom Jefferson: I wash my hands very often — and it’s not all because of swine flu. That’s probably the most effective precaution there is against all respiratory viruses, and the majority of gastrointestinal viruses and germs as well.
SPIEGEL: Do you consider the swine flu to be particularly worrisome?
Jefferson : It’s true that influenza viruses are unpredictable, so it does call for a certain degree of caution. But one of the extraordinary features of this influenza — and the whole influenza saga — is that there are some people who make predictions year after year, and they get worse and worse. None of them so far have come about, and these people are still there making these predictions. For example, what happened with the bird flu, which was supposed to kill us all? Nothing. But that doesn’t stop these people from always making their predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur.
SPIEGEL: Who do you mean? The World Health Organization (WHO)?
Jefferson: The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They’ve built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there’s a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.
SPIEGEL: On your Italian homepage, there is a “pandemic countdown” that expires on April 1. Don’t you think the situation calls for just a bit more seriousness?
Jefferson: I’m just using it ironically to expose the false certainty that we are fed. Will one-third of the world’s population get swine flu? Nobody can say for sure right now. For now, at least, I don’t really see any fundamental difference, no difference in the definition between this and a normal flu epidemic. Swine flu could have even stayed unnoticed if it had been caused by some unknown virus rather than an influenza virus.
SPIEGEL: Do you think the WHO declared a pandemic prematurely?
Jefferson: Don’t you think there’s something noteworthy about the fact that the WHO has changed its definition of pandemic? The old definition was a new virus, which went around quickly, for which you didn’t have immunity, and which created a high morbidity and mortality rate. Now the last two have been dropped, and that’s how swine flu has been categorized as a pandemic.
SPIEGEL: But, year after year, 10,000-30,000 people in Germany alone die from influenza. In the Western world, influenza is the most deadly infectious disease there is. Read the rest of this entry »
How to Create a Mind-Controlled Slave — by Fritz Springmeier & Cisco Wheeler See the 12 chapters below for the whole book. Note that a copy of these files was found in the internet archive. Further note that Fritz Springmeier and his wife were arrested by the FBI in the spring of 2001 whereby all their research material was confiscated.
Chapter 1 — The Science of Victim Selection & Preparation
Chapter 2 — The Science of Traumatizing and Torturing the Victim
Neuro-linguistic programming (or NLP) is a controversial interpersonal communication model applied in psychotherapy and other contexts of communication and change. It was initially co-created by Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder in the 1970s based on the communication and behavioral patterns acquired from gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, family systems therapist Virginia Satir and psychiatrist Milton H. Erickson. The originators emphasize modeling of excellence as the core methodology of NLP, that is, the methods they used to imitate and produce the models of exceptional communicators. They also claim that the basic assumptions of NLP draw from aspects of neurology (“neuro-”), transformational grammar (“linguistics”) and cybernetics (“programming”). It has often been promoted as an art and science of effective communication and defined as ‘the study of the structure of subjective experience’. Others put more emphasis on the tools, techniques and applications specific to contexts such as psychotherapy, business management and communications training, motivational seminars, personal development, and teaching.
Why is America so brainwashed by the corporate media? Why do we care more about American Idol and sports games than being poisoned with mercury in our vaccinations and sodium fluoride in our water supply? America needs to wake up and get the facts about our chemical manipulation before it’s too late.
Leslie Stahl makes some very interesting comments on the morality and ethics of mind-control.
Here are mine:
1. The technology called FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance) is OLD and ARCHAIC actually. Mengele and others were “reading” brain waves via magnetic resonance graphing in the early 70’s. Boston-Logan Airport is already using NEW light-wave beams to scan AND READ air traveler’s INTENTIONS before they board the planes.
2. The GERMAN individual Stahl interviewed was very HESITANT TO REVEAL exactly WHO HAD THE MIND-READING TECHNOLOGY TODAY. Again, just look at the U.S. PATENTS issued in the last decade to realize the height and breadth of the mind-control explosion – and keep in mind that patents are usually applied for AFTER the technology has been proven to be commercially viable via working models. —.
3. The FMRI “computer” that “reads the mind” is just one side of the coin. IT IS MUCH, MUCH EASIER TO PRODUCE EMOTIONS AND IMPULSES INTO the brain than to actually READ the brain via computer programs.
4. This technology needs much more bandwidth space than is currently provided by ANALOG SIGNALS in order to be implemented. Thus the need to switch to DIGITAL SIGNALS EXCLUSIVELY.
5. THIS TECHNOLOGY, IN THE WRONG HANDS, IS A BIGGER THREAT TO INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM THAN ANY STANDING ARMY.
6. IS HOMELAND SECURITY THE “WRONG HANDS”?? Why is this just now beginning to be reported by such news programs as “60 Minutes”?
Read this patent abstract, and then read my expose on DIGITAL TV once again in the context of Stahl’s report.
TITLE: Nervous System Manipulation by EM Fieldsfrom Monitors
Issued to: Loos, Hendricus
Abstract: Physiological effects have been observed in a human subject in response to stimulation of the skin with weak electromagnetic fields that are pulsed with certain frequencies near 1/2 Hz or 2.4 Hz, such as to excite a sensory resonance. Many computer monitors and HD TV screens, when displaying pulsed images, emit pulsed electromagnetic fields of sufficient amplitudes to cause such excitation. It is therefore possible to manipulate the nervous system of a subject by pulsing images displayed on a nearby computer monitor or DIGITAL TV set. For the latter, the image pulsing may be embedded in the program material, or it may be overlaid by modulating a video stream, either as an RF signal or as a video signal. The image displayed on a computer monitor may be pulsed effectively by a simple computer program. For certain monitors, pulsed electromagnetic fields capable of exciting sensory resonances in nearby subjects may be generated even as the displayed images are pulsed with subliminal intensity.
This technology is about to be used, albeit in a more subtle fashion, against American citizens in a highly classified and covert operation to mind control and manipulate the entire population into ‘compliance’ with our New World order overlords. The technology will utilize a combination of HAARP transmitters, GWEN towers, microwave cell phone towers, and the soon-to-be-mandatory High Definition Digital TV that will enter your home via: a) cable, b) satellite, c) HD TVs, or d) those oh-so-easy-to-obtain “digital converter boxes” that the government is so anxious to help you obtain and underwrite most of the cost on your behalf.
But why is the government so anxious to help American citizens experience a clearer and more highly defined television picture? Does that make sense to you? Since when is the government so concerned about the visual quality of our televised entertainment that congress would pass an undebated statutory proclamation which mandated that the HD conversion take place on Feb. 17, 2009 and and then subsidze about 90% of the associated cost?
I’m only guessing, but if there are 200 million “regular” televisions in America to be converted into HD, then that $40 in government subsidy per TV x 200,000,000 = $8 billion. Why is the government so anxious to spend 8 billion dollars on her citizens to improve the clarity of a TV picture? Or is the recently touted “additional bandwidth” cover story that supposedly is to be gained with the HD technology the only and genuine reason for spending so much taxpayer dollars on HD conversion?
The second service that this author performs is to “out” two of our more deceptive CIA/Pentagon ‘assets’ masquerading under the rubric of natural health advocates. Their names are Rima Laibow and her husband, “former” Major General Albert Stubblebine. If your e-mail Inbox has been filling with warnings and articles in recent months about the coming Codex regulations and the “wonderful” job that Rima and her retired Army husband have been doing to try and stem the tide, then you know who I’m talking about.
What do “The Man Who Would Be King” (Rudyard Kipling), Stargate, Star Wars, The Matrix, Dogma, the Simpsons, & Harry Potter have in common? Everything! It is the messiah story the story of the Masonic Christ, which is really the FREEMASONIC story of the chosen one, the savior of humanity (Lucifer – Satan).
There are some prophecies illustrated in this video from the “Apocryphal Books” from which i do not subscribe, as they are not in the bible. Nonetheless, the author of this video has really good arguments showing how Hollywood is trying to brainwash us with the same story over and over told in diferent yet similar ways. This is the story of
A very interesting clip on the popular website Facebook. Includes who has money in it, its origins (including US government offices) and their privacy policies and terms of agreement which state they can use and profit from any of the information you post on the site.
There is an idea these days which is widespread and pervades most peoples minds like a virus, it spreads throughout their psyche and sucks out their reason, all the while they are completely oblivious. This idea is that of a perfect guru, a truth seeker who is free of all faults and must be nothing more than the second coming of Jesus in order to be heard.
This idea is given to us through popular culture, it suits the powers that be that people hold this idea, people take this idea as one which is self evident and whenever they hear of a truth seekers faults they jump on them as though their having faults in any way discredits the truth they speak.
This idea has its roots mainly in religion. Jesus is said to be “perfect,” free of all faults, he always made the right decisions and never made mistakes. While the historical accuracy of that statement might be argued, what cannot be argued is the incredible pressure that puts on anyone trying to live a moral and decent lifestyle. The incredible pressure it puts on truth seekers and truth speakers trying to help people just as the character Jesus did, through spreading the truth which will set them free.
To know truth you do not have to be perfect, the reality is no one is perfect. I don’t know everyone in the world, but forgive me if I don’t believe you can find a single person who is perfect, a person who never made a mistake in his life, a person who always made the right decisions. Why then should this ideal be used as a battering ram to assault any truth seeker who dares to have faults?
Many people say our faults are what make us special, our imperfections. When two people are in love all the imperfections of their partner seem to disappear, the person becomes perfect as they are. Is it not normal and human to treat the truth seekers and the martyrs who sacrifice themselves for us in the same manner?
This perception is not the same everywhere in the world, I have heard of places in India where the idea of a perfect guru is viewed as absurd, places where people do respect a person for who they are and accept all their faults as what makes them human. There is no reason anyone who claims to care about truth should hold to this idea of “the perfect guru.” It is a destructive idea which serves only to disempower those who genuinely want to help others and serves to empower those who want to control others through the exploitation of this very belief.
Every dictator in history is always portrayed as perfect, a holy being without faults, a man who knows exactly what he wants, where he is going, and what we all must do to get there. No one who is honest truly knows these things. Anyone who is honest will tell you they don’t know everything, but what they do know is right from wrong, truth from lie, when you have that gift of discernment those other things do not matter: you know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
This is the reality which people endlessly cease to avoid, the reality that truth and truth alone will free you, for truth begets an entire way of being which is entirely misaligned with the tyranny of lies, self-deceit, and denial. The truth literally sets you free, and believing lies and deceit enslaves you.
They say in psychoanalysis that awareness of a neurosis can cure you of it. I have found this to be true in my own life as when I finally achieve a full understanding of a problem the problem ceases to exist, it can’t exist any more because you understand it in such depth that it no longer has control of your mind. Whereas before I fully understood the problem, before I understood the full truth, I was stuck in an endless maze of programmed and heavily conditioned self-sabotage, conditioning which is impossible to break when you are not honest with yourself.
This is why if people wish to be free they must break out of this world of “condition-response”. We are all brainwashed to believe that human beings are mere robots, nothing more than “the product of our environment,” who are “born as blank slates.”
This idea is a complete and total lie. Human beings are born with an ingrained nature, just as deer or cats or dogs have their own unique ingrained nature, human beings do as well. By denying the “imperfections” of human beings and falling prey to believing in “perfect” leaders, we allow ourselves to be enslaved by those who care about us least, and we starve and destroy those who wish to help us most.
The text below is of unknown origin (and lacks a title), but interesting nonetheless.
“A covenant, in its most general sense, is a solemn promise to engage in (or refrain from) a specified action. More specifically, a covenant, in contrast to a contract, is a one-way agreement whereby the covenanter is the only party bound by the promise.”
An illusion it will be, so large, so vast it will escape their perception. Those who will see it will be thought of as insane.
We will create separate fronts to prevent them from seeing the connection between us. We will behave as if we are not connected to keep the illusion alive. Our goal will be accomplished one drop at a time so as to never bring suspicion upon ourselves. This will also prevent them from seeing the changes as they occur.
We will always stand above the relative field of their experience for we know the secrets of the absolute.
We will work together always and will remain bound by blood and secrecy. Death will come to he who speaks.
We will keep their lifespan short and their minds weak while pretending to do the opposite. We will use our knowledge of science and technology in subtle ways so they will never see what is happening.
We will use soft metals, aging accelerators and sedatives in food and water, also in the air. They will be blanketed by poisons everywhere they turn. The soft metals will cause them to lose their minds. We will promise to find a cure from our many fronts, yet we will feed them more poison. The poisons will be absorbed trough their skin and mouths, they will destroy their minds and reproductive systems.
From all this, their children will be born dead, and we will conceal this information. The poisons will be hidden in everything that surrounds them, in what they drink, eat, breathe and wear.
We must be ingenious in dispensing the poisons for they can see far. We will teach them that the poisons are good, with fun images and musical tones. Those they look up to will help. We will enlist them to push our poisons. They will see our products being used in film and will grow accustomed to them and will never know their true effect.
When they give birth we will inject poisons into the blood of their children and convince them its for their help. We will start early on, when their minds are young, we will target their children with what children love most, sweet things.
When their teeth decay we will fill them with metals that will kill their mind and steal their future. When their ability to learn has been affected, we will create medicine that will make them sicker and cause other diseases for which we will create yet more medicine. We will render them docile and weak before us by our power. They will grow depressed, slow and obese, and when they come to us for help, we will give them more poison.
We will focus their attention toward money and material goods so they many never connect with their inner self. We will distract them with fornication, external pleasures and games so they may never be one with the oneness of it all. Their minds will belong to us and they will do as we say. If they refuse we shall find ways to implement mind-altering technology into their lives. We will use fear as our weapon.
We will establish their governments and establish opposites within. We will own both sides. We will always hide our objective but carry out our plan. They will perform the labor for us and we shall prosper from their toil. Our families will never mix with theirs. Our blood must be pure always, for it is the way. We will make them kill each other when it suits us.
We will keep them separated from the oneness by dogma and religion. We will control all aspects of their lives and tell them what to think and how. We will guide them kindly and gently letting them think they are guiding themselves. We will foment animosity between them through our factions. When a light shall shine among them, we shall extinguish it by ridicule, or death, whichever suits us best.
We will make them rip each other’s hearts apart and kill their own children. We will accomplish this by using hate as our ally, anger as our friend. The hate will blind them totally, and never shall they see that from their conflicts we emerge as their rulers. They will be busy killing each other. They will bathe in their own blood and kill their neighbors for as long as we see fit.
We will benefit greatly from this, for they will not see us, for they cannot see us. We will continue to prosper from their wars and their deaths. We shall repeat this over and over until our ultimate goal is accomplished. We will continue to make them live in fear and anger though images and sounds. We will use all the tools we have to accomplish this. The tools will be provided by their labor.
We will make them hate themselves and their neighbors. We will always hide the divine truth from them, that we are all one. This they must never know! They must never know that color is an illusion, they must always think they are not equal. Drop by drop, drop by drop we will advance our goal.
We will take over their land, resources and wealth to exercise total control over them. We will deceive them into accepting laws that will steal the little freedom they will have.
We will establish a money system that will imprison them forever, keeping them and their children in debt. When they shall ban together, we shall accuse them of crimes and present a different story to the world for we shall own all the media.
We will use our media to control the flow of information and their sentiment in our favor. When they shall rise up against us we will crush them like insects, for they are less than that. They will be helpless to do anything for they will have no weapons.
We will recruit some of their own to carry out our plans, we will promise them eternal life, but eternal life they will never have for they are not of us. The recruits will be called “initiates” and will be indoctrinated to believe false rites of passage to higher realms.
Members of these groups will think they are one with us never knowing the truth. They must never learn this truth for they will turn against us. For their work they will be rewarded with earthly things and great titles, but never will they become immortal and join us, never will they receive the light and travel the stars.
They will never reach the higher realms, for the killing of their own kind will prevent passage to the realm of enlightenment. This they will never know. The truth will be hidden in their face, so close they will not be able to focus on it until its too late.
Oh yes, so grand the illusion of freedom will be, that they will never know they are our slaves. When all is in place, the reality we will have created for them will own them. This reality will be their prison. They will live in self-delusion. When our goal is accomplished a new era of domination will begin.
Their minds will be bound by their beliefs, the beliefs we have established from time immemorial. But if they ever find out they are our equal, we shall perish then. THIS THEY MUST NEVER KNOW.
If they ever find out that together they can vanquish us, they will take action. They must never, ever find out what we have done, for if they do, we shall have no place to run, for it will be easy to see who we are once the veil has fallen. Our actions will have revealed who we are and they will hunt us down and no person shall give us shelter.
This is the secret covenant by which we shall live the rest of our present and future lives, for this reality will transcend many generations and life spans.
This covenant is sealed by blood, our blood. We, the ones who from heaven to earth came. This covenant must NEVER, EVER be known to exist. It must NEVER, EVER be written or spoken of for if it is, the consciousness it will spawn will release the fury of the PRIME CREATOR upon us and we shall be cast to the depths from whence we came and remain there until the end time of infinity itself.
“…our impulses are being redirected. We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness that resembles sleep…..the movement was begun eight months ago by a small group of scientists who discovered, quite by accident, these signals being sent through tele……the poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices……their intention to rule rests with the anihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent, to ourselves, to others, we are focused only on our own gain. We ha……please understand, they are safe as long as they are not discovered. That is their primary method of survival. Keep us asleep, keep us selfish, keep us sedated……they are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery. The revolu……we cannot break their signal, our transmitter is not powerful enough. The signal must be shut off at the source. We have…”
The ego in humanity, individually and collectively, is a possessing entity which is an illusion in itself. It was born in fear, feeds on fear, and is manipulated in fear; fear in all it’s branches and manifesting archetypes. Therefore the pain and dysfunction on the planet is rooted in fear and all of it’s fractions.
The science of manipulation is a well studied art amongst the “elite”, and is applied through the subversive use of the occult, to subliminally influence the sub-conscious fears the ego is rooted in. Through the hegelian dialectic
the ego is manipulated on a collective level through the equation of, thesis +antithesis = synthesis. This equation passes through the form of the machiavellian protocol of, problem – reaction – solution. The examples of content that pass through this form and equation are numerous, but 9-11 is the most pertinent hegelian event to understand this science of
manipulation through the effects that followed and surround that event.
Equation + Form (Content) = Social Engineering
The science of manipulation is well studied and practiced by the secret
society networks of the old world that are still with us today, having manifested themselves in it’s more modern forms as “intelligence” agencies; CIA , MI6(Britain), Mossad(Israel), ISI(Pakistan), and so forth. In fact in military circles this science is known as psychological warfare or psy-ops(psychological operations).
This science works very much like music theory does in regards to music when it is applied and then can be called social engineering. The manipulating of societies by directing the forward inertia of the social trends and ideologies, implanting people with what to “think” or by diverting people from thinking at all with events of no real importance.
This is ego manipulating ego in a concerted effort. Societies are played or directed much like a maestro would an orchestra by the tune of “the end justifies the means”. Human beings are objects to be used as seen fit by the orchestrating “elite” to justify the end of what they seek, being the new world order global dictatorship.
For most of the public the ego works through the unconsciousness in them, while the “elite” consciously employ the ego and seek to be further possessed by it. This is why they conduct the satanic rituals they do, to strengthen the influence of the ego within themselves and to traumatize the victims of their machinations into unconscious servitude to them. These satanic rituals provide this for their mind controlled slaves as well is done in public rituals such as 9-11.
This is the applied science of manipulation at work, it is not creative and therefore is limited in scope. The content can always be changed, but the equation and form or theory at work does not.
If people would cease to be lulled into this game by the manipulating unconscious agent within themselves(the ego), this social engineering could not take place. The content is numerous the method is not, but there are so many ego identities tailored and sold to the people that it in-turn creates a compartmentalized society that is very easily manipulated. Out of this manifest the hierarchical control paradigm or the pyramidal control structure that arises from this ego identification that is encouraged in the education system. Hence it is the reason professions have become highly “specialized” to reinforce this compartmentalization throughout society. It is also the reason why children from a young age are encouraged to want “to be something when they grow up”, when they should only be encouraged to be themselves and to follow their hearts.
All life is interconnected, because people have been fooled into believing otherwise, the compartmentalization of society has occurred, the “elite” being well aware of this phenomena at work within human beings. That is why everything that has to do with a holistic approach is suppressed , from science to technology to health. Because it threatens the monopoly of control that the “elite” have held for so long and the only way it continues is because people continue to play along.
Consider this one fact and know that it applies to all of life in a multi-faceted manner. That a tree breathes out oxygen and we breath it in, and that we breath out carbon dioxide and the tree breathes it in. Hence the lessons are in nature and this is where true solutions are to be found, by comprehending and copying nature while also removing all of the content of the new world order that is at the root of the problems to begin with. We are not in this dire position we find ourselves today because of human stupidity, rather it is happening by design coupled with the exploitation of human naiveté.
Note: The digital conversion has been “delayed” until the arbitrary date of June 12th Expect for the date to continue to be delayed, the arbitrary setting of a final date is a scare tactic to get people to comply. Make no mistake, the threat of people NOT having television, as this article talks about, is too great for the powers that be to risk. – IL
This is an extremely timely and important essay. It overviews a secret Pentagon psychotronics technology known as Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (SSSS) that has been fully operational since the early 1990s. I first found out about the use of this technology from Al Bielek in a 1992 video he made with Vladimir Terziski. This technology was used against battle-hardened Iraqi troops fortified in deep underground bunkers in Kuwait and Iraq in the first Gulf War in January of 1991.
The physical, emotional, and psychological effects of this technology were so severe that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops surrended en masse without firing even a single shot against US led coalition forces. The numbers reported in the news were staggering: 75,000 and then annother 125,000 (or more) Iraqi troops would come out of their deep desert bunkers waving white flags and falling to their knees before approaching US troops and literally kiss their captor’s boots or hands if given the opportunity.
Why would eight year veterans of Middle Eastern warfare (with Iran 1980-1988) behave this way? Simple. They were subjected to a technology that was so extreme and incomprehensible that they were suddenly reduced to the level of compliant children and felt grateful to still be alive in the wake of their mind-wrenching experience.
This technology is about to be used, albeit in a more subtle fashion, against American citizens in a highly classified and covert operation to mind control and manipulate the entire population into ‘compliance’ with our New World order overlords. The technology will utilize a combination of HAARP transmitters, GWEN towers, microwave cell phone towers, and the soon-to-be-mandatory High Definition Digital TV that will enter your home via: a) cable, b) satellite, c) HD TVs, or d) those oh-so-easy-to-obtain “digital converter boxes” that the government is so anxious to help you obtain and underwrite most of the cost on your behalf. Read the rest of this entry »
December 17, 2007: While U.S. efforts to deploy it’s microwave Active Denial System (which transmits a searchlight sized bean of energy when makes people downrange feel like their skin is on fire) continue to be delayed, another non-lethal system, LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) has been quietly deployed to Iraq. And there the story gets a little strange.
LRAD is basically a focused beam of sound. Originally, it was designed to emit a very loud sound. Anyone whose head was touched by this beam, heard a painfully loud sound. Anyone standing next to them heard nothing. But those hit by the beam promptly fled, or fell to the ground in pain. Permanent hearing loss is possible if the beam is kept on a person for several seconds, but given the effect the sound usually has on people (they move, quickly), it is unlikely to happen. LRAD works. It was recently used off Somalia, by a cruise ship, to repel pirates. Some U.S. Navy ships also carry it, but not just to repel attacking suicide bombers, or whatever. No, the system was sold to the navy for a much gentler application. LRAD can also broadcast speech for up to 300 meters. The navy planned to use LRAD to warn ships to get out of the way. This was needed in places like the crowded coastal waters of the northern Persian Gulf, where the navy patrols. Many small fishing and cargo boats ply these waters, and it’s often hard to get the attention of the crews. With LRAD, you just aim it at a member of the crew, and have an interpreter “speak” to the sailor. It was noted that the guy on the receiving end was sometimes terrified, even after he realized it was that large American destroyer that was talking to him. This apparently gave the army guys some ideas, for there are now rumors in Iraq of a devilish American weapon that makes people believe they are hearing voices in their heads.
by John R. Lott Jr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 225 pages
About half the U.S. population lives in one of the 31 states with relatively permissive laws regulating who may carry a concealed firearm. These states range from northern New England (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont) to the deep South (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida), the Piedmont (Virginia, North Carolina) to the Southwest (Oklahoma, Texas), the upper Midwest (the Dakotas) to the Pacific Northwest (Washington). They include urban states (Pennsylvania), suburban states (Connecticut), rural states (West Virginia and Montana), and everything in between. The other half of America’s people live in jurisdictions like New York, where access to concealed-carry permits is limited to those who can demonstrate a specific need for potentially deadly self-protection, or Illinois, where no one other than peace officers may carry a gun.
A massive natural experiment is thus under way, one that will ultimately tell us whether liberal gun carrying laws are good or bad policy. The early results are striking. It can no longer be seriously argued that relaxing the rules against concealed carrying of handguns is an invitation to violence, to bloody shootouts over fender-benders or football games. That sort of thing, always rare, is essentially absent from crime statistics, no matter what a state’s rules concerning who may carry a gun in public. What’s more, it is beginning to look as though, when a state authorizes private persons to carry handguns, it takes an important step toward suppressing serious crime.
What is at issue in gun control debates is people’s (mostly untutored) intuitions about which of two conflicting theories of human behavior has the upper hand in the real world. The first of these theories, sometimes called the “instrumentality theory” of lethal outcomes, holds that when firearms are more readily available, offenses such as armed robbery and murder–and impulsive homicides especially should increase because guns make it easier to commit crimes.
The opposite theory is that of “general deterrence,” which can be summed up in one phrase: more guns, less crime. That, not coincidentally, is the title of an important new book by one of America’s most resourceful and fearless econometricians, John Lott, who for the last several years has been the John M. Olin Visiting Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School.
Each of these theories captures a certain amount of reality. We know, for example, that x number of impulsive homicides would not occur in a gun-free world. On the other hand, we also know that the prospect of meeting armed resistance changes the calculations of human actors, whether they intend good or mischief. That is why we insist that Brinks guards, soldiers, and Secret Service agents carry guns. We recognize that if they did not, their ability to deter predators would shrink or, in some cases, altogether disappear. To know what firearms policy to pursue, one has to know which of these tendencies dominates the other. Like so many other questions with a seemingly ideological leading edge, this one, at bottom, turns out to be empirical.
In our society, men are made to be women and women are made to be men. Let me repeat that: In our society, men are made to be women and women are made to be men.
We are brainwashed with a million varieties of “Queer eye for the straight guy,” where homosexual men tell heterosexual men they need to primp themselves and “get in touch with their feminine side.” Men need to cut their hair short, shave their facial hair, shave their chests and body hair etc. They even say men should wear make-up and other ridiculous nonsense. This is all supposedly because women find this attractive.
Forgive me for asking, but since when did homosexual males become the sole arbiter for what women find attractive?
Is this really what women find attractive, or is this what homosexual men find attractive? I’ve never known a self-respecting woman who truly cared about a man’s looks, the most they say is they like it if a man cares somewhat about his appearance, but even if the man didn’t care at all it would never be a deal breaker. Intelligent women judge a man by their character, their “emotional content” for lack of a better word. I realize this is generalizing to a degree, but in general this is the reality.
Now, obviously these shows are totally fake, the so-called reality shows are the phoniest and most blatantly scripted of all TV, but the image they create is real. TV and advertising are all about “perception management,” people emulate what they see on TV. The image of homosexual men being the peak of health and sole arbiter of women’s desires is a common one.
“This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.” – Adam Curtis
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings profoundly. His influence on the 20th century is widely regarded as massive. The documentary describes the impact of Freud’s theories on the perception of the human mind, and the ways public relations agencies and politicians have used this during the last 100 years for their “engineering of consent”.
Among the main characters are Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in advertising. He is often seen as the “father of the public relations industry”. Freud’s daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as well as Wilhelm Reich, one of the main opponents of Freud’s theories.
Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitude to fashion and superficiality.
The business and, increasingly, the political world uses PR to read and fulfill our desires, to make their products or speeches as pleasing as possible to us. Curtis raises the question of the intentions and roots of this fact. Where once the political process was about engaging people’s rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a society, the documentary shows how by employing the tactics of psychoanalysis, politicians appeal to irrational, primitive impulses that have little apparent bearing on issues outside of the narrow self-interest of a consumer population. He cites a Wall Street banker as saying “We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”
In Episode 4 the main characters are Philip Gould and Matthew Freud, the great grandson of Sigmund, a PR consultant. They were part of the efforts during the nineties to bring the Democrats in the US and New Labour in the United Kingdom back into power. Adam Curtis explores the psychological methods they now massively introduced into politics. He also argues that the eventual outcome strongly resembles Edward Bernays vision for the “Democracity” during the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
To quote the BBC site:
To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?