On-air awakening

It is not often you get to hear someone wake up ON AIR to the complete puppet show that is our political system. But this is a delightful example. Talk show host Mark Larsen interviews Mitt Romney and blows a fuse. It's beautiful.

Final score: Romney 0, Paul 1

Hacking Democracy

Here's a jaw-dropping HBO documentary on the problems with electronic voting machines.

Ron Paul is kicking ASS despite attempts to hide him

Ron Paul's fans raised an amazing $6 million in a single day, December 16. That's a record amount, and a great deal more than his last fund drive which raised $4 million. All told he has about $16 million dollars saved for his campaign, which makes it one of the most well-funded of the bunch. And this is despite the mainstream media trying to ignore him when it isn't busy making fun of him.

Here's proof they're trying to find ways to cut Ron Paul people out of the polls:

A good source for up-to-the-minute Ron Paul news is the Lew Rockwell blog.

Naomi Wolf's 10 Steps to Fascism vs. Stephen Colbert

This is some great stuff.

"Clergy Response Teams" employed by US government to quell martial law unrest

This article has to be one of the most insane things I've ever read.

The US Government will employ "Clergy Response Teams" trained to quell unrest in the event of martial law.

What.
The.
Fuck.

Wake up, people!

Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest if Martial Law Ever Declared

Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us.
Charleton Heston's now-famous speech before the National Rifle Association at a convention back in 2000 will forever be remembered as a stirring moment for all 2nd Amendment advocates. At the end of his remarks, Heston held up his antique rifle and told the crowd in his Moses-like voice, "over my cold, dead hands."
While Heston, then serving as the NRA President, made those remarks in response to calls for more gun control laws at the time, those words live on. Heston's declaration captured a truly American value: An over-arching desire to protect our freedoms.
But gun confiscation is exactly what happened during the state of emergency following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, along with forced relocation. U.S. Troops also arrived, something far easier to do now, thanks to last year's elimination of the 1878 Posse Comitatus act, which had forbid regular U.S. Army troops from policing on American soil.
If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie "The Siege", easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that's exactly what the 'Clergy Response Team' helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.
Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff's Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team's mission, "the primary thing that we say to anybody is, 'let's cooperate and get this thing over with and then we'll settle the differences once the crisis is over.'"
Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. "In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they're helping to diffuse that situation," assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, "because the government's established by the Lord, you know. And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated in the scripture."
Civil rights advocates believe the amount of public cooperation during such a time of unrest may ultimately depend on how long they expect a suspension of rights might last.

"To save America we need another 9/11" WTF!?

This op-ed has to be the STUPIDEST thing I've read in a very long time.

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever.

The first 9/11 proved that.

All I can say is "Oh My Fucking God".

Many thanks to Anonymous poster #1 who pointed me to this followup article by the same asshat who wrote the above op-ed. What a fucking moron.

Architect Richard Gage analyzes the collapse of WTC 1, 2 and 7

And concludes it's almost certainly controlled demolition in every case. I found his lecture quite compelling.

A trip down the memory hole

How to create an angry American? Simply recall the lies that passed for truth.

Zeitgeist: The Movie

Feel the urge to swallow a horse-sized Red Pill? Then watch this movie.

Using photographs to enhance videos of a static scene

All I can say is wow. Using this technique, one could up-rez blurry, shaky, poorly-exposed video using automatic image-stitching from related digital imagery. Unwanted components of the original video can be removed seamlessly too.

The ramifications for filmmaking, art, and propaganda are mind-boggling.

On a related note, the new technology of plenoptics, or "light-field" imagery, can take specially formatted images that allow depth of field, exposure, and even position to be altered after the fact. Simply amazing!

Thanks to Chriz for these links.

Science Fiction writers sell out to the Dept. of Fatherland Security

Some of my favorite books are by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Greg Bear. But I have just read they are participating in a group called Sigma which is helping Homeland Security anticipate future threats and devise new weapons capabilities. Their motto is "Science Fiction in the National Interest." I think "Geeks kissing jackboots" is more accurate. Fuck me.

Why are they helping the Empire? In order "to save civilization," as Niven put it. Apparently you don't just need at least one technical degree to participate, you must also be susceptible to propaganda and easily lured to the dark side.

They just lost a fan.

The Human Behavior Experiments

(Many thanks to Andrew Meyer for giving me a working permalink to this documentary.)

The Human Behavior Experiments is a CBC documentary on research into how people can be manipulated into being shockingly cruel to one another. It begins with the famous Milgram experiment in 1962, in which two-thirds of the participants -- normal people -- eventually obeyed the experimenters' instructions to deliver what they believed were lethal shocks to other test subjects. Of course, the shocks and the screams weren't real. The real point of the experiment was to see how far people will go in hurting one another. Very far, it turns out.

The conditions for widespread cruelty can arise spontaneously, as was the case when many people watched Kitty Genovese get stabbled to death without coming to her aid. The conditions can also occur quite deliberately. This is what made the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps, as well as Abu Ghraib, possible. The photos from Abu Ghraib are eerily resonant with the famous Stanford Prison Experiment from 1971. Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who devised that experiment, said,

When the images of the abuse and torture in Abu Ghraib were revealed, immediately the military went on the defensive, saying, "it's a few bad apples". When we see somebody doing bad things, we assume they were bad people to begin with. But what we know in our study is there are a set of social psychological variables that can make ordinary people do things they never could imagine doing.

We take our cues from those around us, and this seems to be very deeply wired within our brains. If no one rises up to stop an injustice, it can go on for quite a while before someone wakes up and realizes the gravity of the situation. In the presence of strong authority figures very few people will rebel, especially when they see their fellows obeying orders.

I believe the technology for producing mass obedience is far more mature than people realize. Like a snake charmer, the mass media has mutated into a hypnotic mechanism of control. It's not perfect control, mind you. Certainly there is educational and nonmanipulative content on the television, radio, in magazines, etc. But make no mistake: there is just enough control to blunt any serious questioning of authority. We are given the appearance of debate, of objection, to this or that policy. But it is simply theater.

For extra credit, and for specific examples of the manipulation I'm referring to, please watch Bill Moyers' excellent documentary Buying The War, as well as Robert Kane Pappas's Orwell Rolls In His Grave. Both can be seen online at the links provided.

Then you might just want to watch They Live again, for kicks.

Now for the good news. All we have to do is wake up. That's all. Just...wake...up.

Propaganda, by Edward Bernays

Sigmund Freud's American cousin Edward Bernays was a propagandist for the US during World War I, and when that war ended he thought to use the same techniques for manufacturing consent in peacetime, both in the private sector and for government.

Here is the complete text of his book entitled Propaganda, which outlines the ways in which consent may be elicited without the public's conscious perception of the process.

And it's an eye-opener. This is quite an old work, but it is from the pen of the man who: 1. Invented the term and profession of "public relations"; 2. Got women to smoke in the 1920s despite strong cultural prohibitions, by piggybacking on the Women's Rights Movement; 3. Made bacon-and-eggs popular as a breakfast meal at the behest of the pork and poultry industries; and 4. Helped jumpstart a brutal coup, engineered partly by the CIA, of the reformist Guatemalan government by creating a fictitious "revolution". The newly-installed regime acted in ways which strongly profited the United Fruit Company. The term "banana republic" stems directly from this masterwork of propaganda. (More info here.) He also played a part in marketing the concept of mass-fluoridation of drinking water.

Here is a quote from Bernays:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind...

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences. A man sits in his office deciding what stocks to buy. He imagines, no doubt, that he is planning his purchases according to his own judgment. In actual fact his judgment is a melange of impressions stamped on his mind by outside influences which unconsciously control his thought. He buys a certain railroad stock because it was in the headlines yesterday and hence is the one which comes most prominently to his mind; because he has a pleasant recollection of a good dinner on one of its fast trains; because it has a liberal labor policy, a reputation for honesty; because he has been told that J. P. Morgan owns some of its shares.

Trotter and Le Bon concluded that the group mind does not think in the strict sense of the word. In place of thoughts it has impulses, habits and emotions. In making up its mind its first impulse is usually to follow the example of a trusted leader. This is one of the most firmly established principles of mass psychology. It operates in establishing the rising or diminishing prestige of a summer resort, in causing a run on a bank, or a panic on the stock exchange, in creating a best seller, or a box-office success.

Truly shocking stuff. One can only imagine the heights to which this art has grown, powered with sophisticated tools such as MRI and CAT-scan-powered neuromarketing techniques.