Osama bin Laden is Dead

[goldengirl777]

Obama Announces Killing of Osama bin Laden

By Helene Cooper, May 1, 2011, 11:29 pm

WASHINGTON —President Obama announced late Sunday that Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, was killed in a firefight during an operation he ordered Sunday inside Pakistan, ending a 10-year manhunt for the world’s most wanted terrorist. American officials were in possession of his body, he said.

“On nights like this one, ‘’ the president said, “we can say that justice has been done.’’

The fate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Al Qaeda number two in command, was unclear.

The death of Mr. Bin Laden is a defining moment in the American-led war on terrorism. What remains to be seen is whether the death of the leader of Al Qaeda galvanizes his followers by turning him into a martyr, or whether it serves as a turning of the page in the war in Afghanistan and gives further impetus to the Obama administration to bring American troops home.

President Obama said that on Sunday, a small team of U.S. operatives launched a “targeted assault’’ on a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad where months of intelligence work had established that Mr. Bin Laden was living. Mr. Bin Laden was killed after a firefight, and the troops took custody of his body.

The killing ended a 10-year manhunt in which Mr. Bin Laden repeatedly eluded his pursuers, deeply frustrating the Bush administration and counterterrorism officials.

The news of the death of the leader of Al Qaeda electrified the world — crowds gathered outside the White House, cheering, as they waited for the president to confirm the news. Mr. bin Laden was able to elude capture by hiding out in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere. He initially escaped from Tora Bora in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan after an American invasion routed the Taliban, his protectors.

Since then, he issued some 30 messages, in audio, video or electronic text, sometimes taunting, sometimes gloating, sometimes urging new terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials believe the messages were passed from hand to hand repeatedly to obscure any trail back to his hiding place. Even while in hiding, he remained a potent symbolic figure. And American officials believe, based on intercepted communications from second- and third-tier Qaeda operatives, that he also still helped shape Al Qaeda’s strategy.

thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/

[goldengirl777]

Obama Calls World ‘Safer’ After Pakistan Raid

By Steven Lee Myers and Elisabeth Bumiller, May 2, 2011

WASHINGTON — Calling it a “good day for America,” President Obama said on Monday that the death of Osama bin Laden had made the world “a better place,” as new details emerged about the overnight raid and firefight in Pakistan that killed him.

“The world is safer,” Mr. Obama said as he appeared at a White House ceremony bestowing the Medal of Honor to two soldiers killed in the Korean War. “It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden.”

Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda and the most hunted man in the world, was found not in the remote tribal areas along the Pakistani-Afghan border where he has long been presumed to be sheltered, but in a massive compound in the city of Abbottabad, about an hour’s drive north from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

The compound, only about a third of a mile from a military academy of the Pakistani Army, is at the end of a narrow dirt road and is roughly eight times the size of other homes in the area. It has no telephone or Internet connections. When American operatives converged on the residence on Sunday, Bin Laden “resisted the assault force” and was killed in the middle of an intense gun battle, a senior administration official said, but details were still sketchy Monday.

The raid carried extraordinary risks — and not just from Mr. Bin Laden and those with him in the compound. As the battle sounds shook the night, Pakistan scrambled jets to respond to a military operation that its military had not been informed was taking place.

“They had no idea about who might have been on there, whether it be U.S. or somebody else,” said President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, in a briefing on Monday. “So we were watching and making sure that our people and our aircraft were able to get out of the Pakistani airspace, and thankfully there was no engagement with Pakistani forces.”

Mr. Obama and his national security advisers gathered in the White House to follow the raid, which had been planned and carried out in extreme secrecy. “It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time, I think, in the lives of the people who were assembled here yesterday,” Mr. Brennan said. “The minutes passed like days.”

The tensest moment for those watching, he said, was when one of the helicopters that flew the American troops into the compound broke down. A senior military official said Monday that it stalled as it flew over the 18-foot wall of the compound and prepared to land.

President Obama considered other options that would have been less risky, like an airstrike, but ultimately opted to send in commandos because, Mr. Brennan said, “it gave us the ability to minimize collateral damage” and “to ensure that we knew who it was that was on that compound.”

Even a day later, not all of the details of the operation were known — some may never be. Officials did say that Bin Laden resisted arrest but it was not clear, Mr. Brennan said, whether he opened fire himself.

One of Bin Laden’s wives, who was living in the compound with him, identified his body after the fighting stopped, and officials said the Central Intelligence Agency analysis found a “virtually 100 percent” match between his DNA and that of several members of his family.

The whereabouts of Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, were unclear.

The administration disclosed that military and intelligence officials first learned last summer that a “high-value target” was being protected in the compound, and they began working on a plan for going in to get him. Beginning in March, Mr. Obama presided over five national security meetings at the White House to review plans for the operation. On Friday morning, just before leaving Washington to tour tornado damage in Alabama, Mr.. Obama gave the final order for members of the Navy Seals and C.I.A. operatives to strike.

Three men besides Bin Laden were killed during the 40-minute raid, one believed to be his son and the other two his couriers, according to an American official who briefed reporters under White House ground rules forbidding further identification. A woman identified as one of Bin Laden’s wives was killed while shielding Bin Laden, and two other people were wounded.

“No Americans were harmed,” Mr. Obama said in a late-night televised statement, adding that the American operatives “took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”

Muslim tradition requires prompt burial, generally within 24 hours, but American authorities found a way to comply with that requirement while denying his followers a shrine. His body was washed in accordance with Islamic custom, placed in a white sheet and then inside a weighted bag, a senior defense official said. Aboard the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea, a military officer read religious rites — translated into Arabic — and then the body was placed on a board, tipped up and “eased into the sea,” the official said. Mr. Brennan said that the raid was intended to capture Bin Laden, though those who planned it assumed he would resist. “If we had the opportunity to take him alive, we would have done that,” he said. The killing ended any hope of prosecution.

American intelligence officials said that the team removed a large trove of documents and materials from the residence, and that the C.I.A. was just beginning to go through it.

The reaction in Washington the day after was ebullient. Mr. Obama recalled the sense of unity and purpose that immediately followed the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon nearly a decade ago. “Today we are reminded that as a nation there’s nothing we can’t do when we put our shoulders to the wheel, when we remember the sense of unity that defines us as Americans,” he said.

There were words of caution, too. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton praised Pakistan for its cooperation in fighting Al Qaeda, even as some analysts and officials voiced disbelief that Bin Laden could have lived where he did without the knowledge of Pakistani officials.

“Continued cooperation will be just as important in the days ahead,” she said, “because even as we mark this milestone, we should not forget that the battle to stop Al Qaeda and its syndicate of terror will not end with the death of Bin Laden.”

The raid, months in the planning, came after intelligence officials learned the identity of one of Bin Laden’s couriers and traced him to the hideout.

Last night, an official said that “detainees” had identified a few years ago the nickname of one courier who “in particular had our constant attention.” He described the courier as, among other things, a “trusted assistant” of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who was the No. 3 figure in Al Qaeda until his capture in 2005. Officials later learned the real name for that courier, which in turn eventually allowed them to trace him to the compound in Abbottabad.

One of the Guantánamo detainee-assessment files disclosed recently to WikiLeaks and obtained independently by The New York Times may provide a clue about the origins of the intelligence that led to the breakthrough.

That document, an assessment of Mr. Libbi, who was transferred from a secret C.I.A. prison to Guantánamo Bay in September 2006, discusses his interactions with a courier for Bin Laden — who is identified in the document by the initials UBL — in Pakistan. Footnotes to those sentences cite what appear to be C.I.A. accounts of interrogations of Mr. Libbi in 2005 and 2006.

“In July 2003, detainee received a letter from UBL’s designated courier, Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan, requesting detainee take on the responsibility of collecting donations, organizing travel, and distributing funds to families in Pakistan,” the assessment says. “UBL stated detainee would be the official messenger between UBL and others in Pakistan.

The file then immediately connects Mr. Libbi’s activities at that time to Abbottabad, stating: “In mid-2003, detainee moved his family to Abbottabad, PK and worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar.”

A footnote to that section also includes an analyst’s note saying that in May 2005 Mr. Libbi stated that “he was responsible for facilitation within the settled areas of Pakistan, communication with UBL and external links. He was responsible for communicating with al-Qaida members abroad and obtaining funds and personnel from those al-Qaida members.”

Bin Laden’s demise is a defining moment in the American-led fight against terrorism, a symbolic stroke affirming the relentlessness of the pursuit of those who attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. What remains to be seen, however, is whether it galvanizes Bin Laden’s followers by turning him into a martyr or serves as a turning of the page in the war in Afghanistan and gives further impetus to Mr. Obama to bring American troops home.

How much his death will affect Al Qaeda itself remains unclear. For years, as they failed to find him, American leaders said he was more important symbolically than operationally, because he was on the run and hindered in any meaningful leadership role. Yet he remained the most potent face of terrorism around the world, and some of those who played down his role in recent years nonetheless celebrated his death.

Given Bin Laden’s status among radicals, the American government braced for possible retaliation. A senior Pentagon official said late Sunday that military bases in the United States and around the world were ordered to a higher state of readiness. The State Department issued a worldwide travel warning, urging Americans in volatile areas “to limit their travel outside of their homes and hotels and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations.”

The strike could deepen tensions with Pakistan, which has periodically bristled at American counterterrorism efforts even as Bin Laden evidently found safe refuge on its territory for nearly a decade. Since taking office, Mr. Obama has ordered significantly more drone strikes on suspected terrorist targets in Pakistan, stirring public anger there and prompting the Pakistani government to protest.

Mr. Brennan, like Mrs. Clinton, defended Pakistan, even as he acknowledged the tensions between the two countries over fighting terrorism. “We’ve had differences of view with the Pakistani government on counterterrorism cooperation and areas of cooperation and what we think they should and shouldn’t be doing,” he said. “At the same time, I’ll say that Pakistan has been responsible for capturing and killing more terrorists inside of Pakistan than any country, and it’s by a wide margin.”

Bin Laden’s death came nearly 10 years after Qaeda terrorists hijacked four American passenger jets, crashing three of them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington. The fourth hijacked jet, United Flight 93, crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside after passengers fought the militants.

“This is important news for us, and for the world,” said Gordon Felt, president of the group, Families of Flight 93. “It cannot ease our pain, or bring back our loved ones. It does bring a measure of comfort that the mastermind of the September 11th tragedy and the face of global terror can no longer spread his evil.”

The mostly young people who celebrated in the streets of New York and Washington saw it as a historic moment, one that for many of them culminated a worldwide manhunt that started when they were children. Some climbed trees and lampposts directly in front of the White House to cheer and wave flags. Cigars and noisemakers were common. One group started singing, “Osama, Osama, hey, hey, hey, goodbye.”

Maureen Hasson, 22, a recent college graduate working for the Justice Department, came down to Lafayette Square in a fuchsia party dress and flip-flops. “This is full circle for our generation,” she said. “Just look around at the average age here. We were all in middle school when the terrorists struck. We all vividly remember 9/11 and this is the close of that chapter.”

The city of Abbottabad where Bin Laden was found has had other known Al Qaeda presence in the past. A senior Indonesian militant, Umar Patek, was arrested there earlier this year. Mr. Patek was protected by a Qaeda operative, a clerk who worked undercover at the main post office, a signal that Al Qaeda may have had other operations in the area.

The Pakistani military cordoned off the roads and alleys leading to the compound on Monday. But residents of the middle-class area who were reached by phone said they had not been suspicious about the residents of the house, despite its size and the fact that very few people ever seemed to leave the compound.

Analysts said Bin Laden’s death amounted to a double blow for Al Qaeda, after its sermons of anti-Western violence seemed to be rendered irrelevant by the wave of political upheaval rolling through the Arab world.

“It comes at a time when Al Qaeda’s narrative is already very much in doubt in the Arab world,” said Martin S. Indyk, vice president and director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “Its narrative was that violence was the way to redeem Arab honor and dignity. But Osama bin Laden and his violence didn’t succeed in unseating anybody.”

Al Qaeda sympathizers reacted with disbelief, anger and in some cases talk of retribution. On a Web site considered an outlet for Qaeda messages, forum administrators deleted posts by users announcing Bin Laden’s death and demanded that members wait until the news was confirmed by Qaeda sources, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors radicals.

Even so, SITE said, sympathizers on the forum posted messages calling Bin Laden a martyr and suggesting retaliation. “America will reap the same if the news is true and false,” said one message. “The lions will remain lions and will continue moving in the footsteps of Usama,” said another, using an alternate spelling of Bin Laden’s name.

In the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy organization, said it welcomed Bin Laden’s death. “As we have stated repeatedly since the 9/11 terror attacks, Bin Laden never represented Muslims or Islam,” the group said in a statement. “In fact, in addition to the killing of thousands of Americans, he and Al Qaeda caused the deaths of countless Muslims worldwide.”

The president stressed that the United States is not at war with Islam. “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims,” Mr. Obama said. “Indeed, Al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”

Reporting was contributed by Elisabeth Goodridge, Mark Landler, Charlie Savage, Scott Shane, Michael Shear, Benjamin Weiser and Ben Werschkul from Washington; Jane Perlez from Sydney, Australia; Pir Zubair Shah from New York; and Salman Masood from Abbottabad, Pakistan.

www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/asia/osama-bin-laden-dead.html?pagewanted=print

[only2percent]

Circus Clowns And Sideshow Freaks


"In my worst nightmares, when the lights are swallowed by the smog of some nefarious gloom and the air itself becomes a stale sarcophagus into which I am entombed, and the grim hands of putrefied fate sink their wretched grip into the thick of my neck and all seems irrevocably lost, I merely recall that soon I will awaken to the horror of a terminal America infested by career criminals and certifiable morons, and suddenly, my off color dreams don’t seem so bad. Ultimately, there is nothing worse to me than a public majority that takes everything they hear from the mouths of political warlocks at face value. Even the fear of death is truly a pittance compared to the threat of being enveloped by a stampeding herd of frightened, stupid, human cattle.

Is this melodramatic? Not at all. When a man is aware, and by aware I mean honest with himself, he inevitably suffers the pain of being certain while the rest of the world enjoys the bliss of false assumptions. We live in a culture that inflicts great punishment on those who know, and lavishes enticing but short lived rewards on those who ignore. In such a place as this, meaning disappears, and countries die.

The first century satirist, Decimus Juvenalis, grief-stricken by the destruction of the Roman Republic at the hands of a succession of emperors and tyrants, wrote: “The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now meddle no more and long eagerly for just two things — bread and circuses." At that time, the autocratic rulers of the empire were highly visible. Even celebrities. They played the hollow Roman Senate like a pipe organ and created elaborate events, moments of pageantry in the otherwise terrifyingly bleak lives of the citizenry, and of course, the people were thoroughly distracted while their economy, their government, and their land crumbled around them.

Today, our autocratic rulers in the form of a corporate oligarchy keep rather hidden from the prying eyes of the commoners, but they wield the same power as the emperors of old, with the same obvious results. America is ripping apart at the seams. Our currency has been destroyed. Our treasury is indebted beyond the point of any return. The cost of our daily survival is quickly rising beyond any average person’s means to pay. And, our political system is a never ending parade of googly-eyed muppets singing and dancing to the tune of the false left/right paradigm. Yet, where has our attention been lately…?

Apparently our impending doom is not as entertaining as the Osama Bin Laden Show, which has been written and choreographed like a bad Tom Clancy novel, or a contrived episode of ‘24’ (Jack Bauer finally shoots Bin Laden square in the head with his hawk-like vision and badass marksmanship while Osama in typical TV land fashion uses a woman as a human shield. Sorry to spoil the ending for you if you haven’t seen the final episode yet). Or how about the battle of “wits” (I say this knowing full well the irony) between Barack Obama and Donald Trump, two soulless rock-em’ sock-em’ robots in a fake duel for fake polls, fake votes, and a fake presidency. Let’s not forget about the “Royal Wedding”, the eagerly awaited international event that featured a throng of throwbacks from the Dark Ages prancing around in Nutcracker outfits and partying to the tune of millions in British taxpayer dollars.

Do any of these things really matter? Not in the slightest. How long must we endure this hokey carnival ride before we finally start focusing on legitimately important issues? That’s really up to us…

Day after day, we allow ourselves to be conned, befuddled, and frightened by a cast of clowns and freaks. Why do we do this? How can we stop the madness? First, we have to understand how the propaganda works, before we can diffuse it. Let’s examine some of the tactics of disinformation being used today, as well as the purpose behind some of America’s most prominent distractions.

“The Boogeyman Is Under Your Bed…”

A collapsing dollar, state funding on the brink, a still irradiated Japan, gasoline price spikes, and, the only thing that has lately been able draw people outside of their television and microwave fajita saturated cocoons is the orchestrated hoax of Osama Bin Laden’s death. No independently corroborated physical evidence? No independently corroborated video? Body dumped at sea in less than a day without independent verification of the identity (apparently to avoid his rising from the grave as the invincible Zombie Bin Laden)? No problem! We fully believe every word the Obama Administration says without question! Lets go do keg stands on the White House lawn, yeehaw!

A boogeyman is a very powerful tool for corrupt governments. In fact, every despotic regime in history has concocted one fantasy villain after another in order to maintain their psychological stranglehold on the populace. Killing one only means a replacement is soon to be introduced. While many Americans are intelligent enough to at least express some concerns about the obviously deceitful manner in which the Bin Laden death has been handled and promoted, there is still a significant swath of the population that has invested themselves so completely in the Bin Laden myth that they will support the official story without question.

Sadly, villains often become the drivers of history. Most events on the human timeline are merely reactionary movements of states and peoples to counter a dangerous antagonist, whether actual or fabricated. Very rarely do people act in concert to change the shape of their society or their surroundings without a symbolic devil to spur them on. This is not to say that there are not real ghouls to be dealt with in every generation, but problems surface when we become ADDICTED to the idea of villains. We become so lethargic when it comes to putting in the effort of determining our own destinies that soon we start to need monsters to inspire us to take action in life. We welcome governments to conjure enemies for us because it makes us feel as though we have purpose again. As though we are a “team”. Just look at the deluded lemmings that roamed D.C. enthralled at the unconfirmed and unsupported claim of Bin Laden’s death. A civilization caught in this circle of pure reaction usually devolves into something utterly pathetic; a people without principles feeding on each other for comfort.

Interestingly, the fermentation of amoral or destructive behavior is found most often in power structures, like governments and corporate institutions, where the desire for overt control can be satisfied. It is at the top of the pyramid that we find the bottom of the barrel in terms of humanity. So, it is not strange at all to consider the fact that elitists seek to create monsters out of thin air, like the “axis of evil”, terrorists, lone gunman, homegrown extremists, barter networkers, or Amish dairy farmers. They know that people seek out dragons to slay and so provide proxies and facsimiles. If they didn’t, the masses may turn their attentions towards a real threat, like the elites themselves.

Again, this is common sense and a consistent tactic, one which has been admitted to openly by establishment authorities for decades. The true boogeymen are not under your bed, they are not your next door neighbors who participate in activist groups, they are not right wing extremists, they are not even men in caves in Afghanistan or Pakistan. The only monsters worth so much attention and dedication are those that are closest to us. To find them, we have only to follow where all our money goes, where all our votes are misspent, and where all our decisions are made without our consent.

“If You Didn’t Vote, You Have No Right To Complain…”

Perhaps the most effective scam of all time is the construction of the false left/right paradigm. Anyone who does not understand this fundamental fallacy of our political system will never be able to understand the bigger picture of how our government works or why or “elected” officials do the things they do. If you cannot accept the fact that both major parties are essentially the same, supporting the same primary legislation and differing only in rhetoric, then you will probably attribute the constant failings of our leadership to “greed” or “stupidity”. This is simply not the case.

When Obama went back on his election year promises to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and pull troops out (there are still thousands of troops and private contractors in Iraq too, for those that bought the second pullout lie), for instance, or when he decided to support the Patriot Acts after criticizing them, this was not because he has a bad memory, or even because he wanted to win your vote. He made promises and then nixed them because that’s HIS JOB; to perpetuate the false idea that the Democratic Party is anti-war, and different from the Republican Party.

When Bush Jr. ran on a platform of limited government and conservatism, then tripled the size of the Federal Government, it was not because he is an idiot man-child. It is because it was his job to pretend as if he cared about traditional conservative values, while instituting socialist globalist programs under our noses.

When a hypocrite and a bottom feeder like Donald Trump, a confessed liberal on taxes, health care, and trade, a man who stooped to using eminent domain in an effort to steal an elderly woman’s home so he could pour a limousine parking lot on top of it, is suddenly presented as the new hope of the Republican Party and limited government, I think its time to pack up our preconceptions about there being any such thing as a two party system.

In the end, most political leaders are more like circus clowns, meant to amuse us. They bumble about the center ring spraying seltzer water at each other and cracking each other’s skulls with rubber mallets, but who really cares which clown wins this slapstick contest? They may make us feel as though we have a choice, and thus a voice, in our government, but at bottom, it is the ringmaster that decides the course of the show. The clowns are a sidenote. Not voting for either of them seems to be only the option left, or, voting with one’s conscience for a candidate that’s not an establishment favorite (aka Ron Paul).

“War Is Necessary To Perpetuate Freedom…”

War leads to many things, but rarely does it ever lead to people being more readily free. WWI (a fabricated war) led to the implosion of Germany and the subsequent rise of National Socialism (a banker fabricated political movement) which led to WWII, which then destroyed most of Europe making way for the construction of the EU (a banker fabricated supranational union), basically a more subversive and insidious form of socialism with even greater control and unaccountability. Most wars are planned like cross country vacations; you may deviate here and there, but eventually you’ll find yourself at the destination mapped out for you before hand. The vitriol brewing in the Middle East today is no exception.

Wars not only break down and then centralize sovereign systems, they also rally the masses to support governments they otherwise might oppose. Wars create fear, not to mention the thrill of tribal victory. Wars collectivize societies, dissuade and shame individualism, and bring everyone under a single banner and a single philosophy. Where I might be applauded today as a writer for speaking out against the nonsensical involvement of the U.S. and the EU in an internal civil war in Libya, I may be attacked tomorrow if a terrorist bombing occurs in Libya’s name. Where I might point out that only a year ago and despite his disturbingly violent nature Gaddafi was the globalist go-to man for the African Union, and supported widely by the UN for purchasing African Union memberships for poorer nations with Libyan oil money, others might say that I am undermining U.S. solidarity in the “war on terror” by being factual. Wars have the ability to turn the common man into a mini-tyrant, not to mention a censor for the establishment.

In the end, if you want to distract the public away from the horrifying strife of economic collapse or even hyperinflation, the only conceivable avenue is war. Nearly every engineered financial disaster in modern history has been followed by an engineered conflict to muffle the cries for new management. In America’s case, these wars are always preempted with calls for the “spread of democracy”, making the target country more than a target, but a monster (as discussed earlier) and making us the knight in shining armor off to rescue the poor helpless villagers of the planet. We play out the myth then find that we have again only furthered the aims of globalists, and weakened ourselves in the process.

The Show Must Go On

The world that we experience through what is often termed the “mainstream” is, quite simply, an illusion. The life many live is not real, but an elaborate production. A rented life. A life they do not own.

Is this not the stuff of “conspiracy”...? That is the wrong question. Is this the stuff of fact? THAT is what we should be asking ourselves.

It is time for the American people to stop fooling around with what is “probable”, or “more likely”. Occum’s Razor (the misinterpreted version of the principle) has never been applicable in terms of human systems, and especially not those dominated by a handful of men, as most usually are. The “simplest explanation” for a social situation is rarely the correct one, and is completely up for interpretation. I would replace the word “simplest” with the word “practical”. What I deem as practical (the influence of elite minorities over the flow of historical events) may be considered outlandish by others because their perception is skewed by their lack of knowledge. Perception changes with knowledge. Practical explanation changes with awareness. The underlying truth, after all is said and done, is constant. The truth does not change, we change.

Propagandists have always understood this condition, and the science of manipulating perception with diversion, bias, and fear, is ever present today. Whether it’s a faux attack on an Al-Qaeda compound containing a Bin Laden body we’ll never see first hand, a sham of an election with marionette candidates, or a war in Libya that is never officially categorized as a war, you will be lied to by government, and these lies, whether you accept it or not, will eventually hurt you, or someone you care about. Recognizing the distraction is the first step in dismantling disinformation. Knowing what we are facing is the key to undoing the damage done.

“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.”

From ‘Propaganda’ by Edward Bernays (named one of Life Magazine’s 100 most influential people of the 20th Century)."


www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-circus-clowns-and-sideshow-freaks?utm

[goldengirl777]

only2percent:

Thank you for your dissertation.

When you get the other 98percent please do continue.