Underground Knowledge — A discussion group discussion

Excerpt from The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy:


All too often news stories deliver one viewpoint, or one dominant viewpoint, so the audience will likely draw one particular conclusion. This can be done so cleverly we are usually none the wiser – unless we’re on the lookout for such subterfuge.

Politicians and political parties are very aware of this, as are our military leaders. Media manipulation they call it – off the record of course. To sell their message to the public, they need to use the media to their advantage. Sometimes they go direct, oftentimes they use the spin doctors.

A classic example of this was how the US Administration used the media to convince the American public Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction before the troops were sent in. How wrong they were, but how effective their advance publicity was. It was swallowed hook, line and sinker by most Americans and, indeed, by much of the Western world. Certainly, Britain and others weren’t slow to send their troops in to Iraq either. And it’s worth noting this was initially a conspiracy theory, but now even mainstream media outlets commonly accept this was fabrication or at least exaggerated spin to start a war.

Clearly, the media can be used by political administrations as a propaganda tool.

The 1922 speech of former New York City Mayor John Hylan we quoted from in an earlier chapter is worth quoting from again: “These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”

An article titled 'Edward Bernays' "Propaganda" Theory Has Been Perfected' relates to this subject I think http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12...

When six mega-corporations who depend upon other mega-corporations, Wall Street banks and political parties for their revenue, control all of the news and information flowing to the masses, you have all the ingredients needed to control, influence and mold the opinions, tastes and ideas of the people. We are being manipulated by men who constitute the real government, hiding in the shadows and pulling the strings. Nothing reported by these six mega-corporation media mouthpieces for the oligarchs can be trusted. Their job is to coverup, subvert, and obscure the truth. And best of all, they have succeeded in convincing the people we are free and informed. Edward Bernays would be so proud.

“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.”
-Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

This video on media control worth viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4nYZ...

I thought that some here might appreciate this article I wrote recently. It is pretty basic, but includes some good links. I could have written much more but it was already deemed too long. In fact in the original version I had a quote from the blog of one of the members here.. but my editor culled it :/ . Anyway for those who would like to read.... It is called 10 sign you've bought spin....

"We live in a world with an incredible imbalance of power. Whether you believe in ‘conspiracies’ or not, there is no doubt that a tiny fraction of the world population has the means to manipulate and sway public opinion in order to maintain a paradigm that promotes and maintains their ability to control and profit off the masses. Common sense would dictate that any group who had the wherewithal to successfully claw their way into a top position would naturally invest heavily in ensuring their interests were protected. As increasing corruption is exposed in so many areas of society, we would be naïve to think collusion wasn’t happening at the highest levels as well" Full article at this link: http://wakeup-world.com/2016/01/31/10...

Christina wrote: "I thought that some here might appreciate this article I wrote recently. It is pretty basic, but includes some good links. I could have written much more but it was already deemed too long. In fact..."

An insightful article Christina... It should be compulsory reading for those who believe everything they see, read or hear in the media.

Christina wrote: "Whether you believe in ‘conspiracies’ or not, there is no doubt that a tiny fraction of the world population has the means to manipulate and sway public opinion in order to maintain a paradigm that promotes and maintains their ability to control and profit off the masses. ..."

Correct. And that's now a mainstream belief even tho it's a conspiracy theory in itself.

When a form of "alternative medicine" gathers sound scientific proof of its effectiveness, it becomes known as "medicine".

wordwizards...that's what I've heard as well....that the fact that it says 'alternative' means that it's used as an alternative to medicine...and then like you said, once it has the data to back it up, it isn't an alternative anymore, but rather will be considered medicine.

I am not sure about that, as therapies like acupuncture that have so much scientific backing that here in Australia they are now included in Medicare ... are still considered alternative therapies.
Also things like garlic and colloidal silver which have been shown to out preform anti-biotics are still considered 'alternative' to conventional medicine. I would say instead that what becomes known as 'medicine' is that which the pharmaceutical companies can profit off.

Yup, I second that Christina.
Also, science is not some universally accepted thing worldwide and mainstream medicine really means Western medicine (one of numerous medical systems worldwide).
So in response to the bold claim that scientific evidence is non-existent for all other forms of medicine, how about all the evidence scientists in China and India are sitting on to support two of the world'a oldest and still most popular medical systems (tho still curiously labelled "alternative medicine" in the West) in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Ayurveda.

Anyway, I have no idea how a thread on media manipulation has drifted into the unrelated topics of Western medicine, Big Pharma and Alternative Medicine!

James Morcan wrote: "Anyway, I have no idea how a thread on media manipulation has drifted into the unrelated topics of Western medicine, Big Pharma and Alternative Medicine!"

It is all related. Media manipulation hides the conspiracy of killing alternative medicine that Pharma cannot profit from. Big Pharma, banking, conglomerates and dirty governments everywhere are working in cahoots to bring about the NWO and the destruction of all power that benefits the peeps. Six degrees can connect anything!

Agreed J.D. - 100% mate.
but am concerned there'll now be 300 posts on the subject of Big Pharma FDA-approved "healthcare" versus actual healthcare ;)

I believe media manipulation is a very important subject and don't want to see it become solely about medicine (for which there's a whole other section in the group for debating that). as you imply, the mainstream media is promoting a lot of lies to the mass population at present and it's a huge problem!

James Morcan wrote: "Agreed J.D. - 100% mate.
but am concerned there'll now be 300 posts on the subject of Big Pharma FDA-approved "healthcare" versus actual healthcare ;)

I believe media manipulation is a very import..."

I agree. There is a lot of leeway for media manipulation here. The powers that be have discovered that the average human being are easily led to whatever place the powers want to have them using the media. I do not think that there is any part of our consensus world that is not being intently manipulated by the media.

Christina wrote: "I thought that some here might appreciate this article I wrote recently. It is pretty basic, but includes some good links. I could have written much more but it was already deemed too long. In fact..."

The world has always been that way. The Chinese were ruled by a tiny upper class for millennia assisted by a caste of bureaucrats. Ditto the ancient Egyptians. Think about the Church in medieval Europe. Church attendance was compulsory. In England, William Tyndale was tried, convicted and executed - for what? TRANSLATING THE BIBLE INTO ENGLISH. Is that not media control? There was the Mongol Empire created by Genghis Khan. (That one was actually fairly liberal unless you got seditious. Then your head came off.) Think about czarist Russia, and the USSR, and communist China. In the West, the last 300 years - the period of the Enlightenment - have actually been an improvement. Before that, it never even occurred to most people that there was anything wrong with being controlled by the top 1%. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. But the fact that we can both express that, and challenge the existing order, and want to make changes without the expectation that we will be ruthlessly suppressed 100% of the time - that's something it would have been difficult or impossible to do in almost any large organized society for pretty much the entire history of human civilization. If you had expressed your sentiments in, say, 14th-century France, not only the ruling elite would have been aghast; so would the ordinary citizens. It simply would not have occurred to them that the existing order was not the natural order of things. In fact, the very first stirrings of challenge to the existing order in France began in the late 1300s; nevertheless, the movement needed fully 400 YEARS to gather momentum that culminated in the French Revolution. The Russian Revolution occurred in early 1917; the czars had ruled Russia since 1543.

Morgan Freeman: “F*ck the (Mainstream) Media” http://themindunleashed.org/2016/02/m...

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Morgan Freeman, the famed actor who most people would want to narrate their lives, had some surprising commentary regarding the cable news media’s coverage of the Baltimore uprising.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Freeman said, “Look at MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN. Go between those three. There’s a take, there’s a take, and there’s a take. It’s just commentary. CNN wants to be pure news, but the others are just commentary. They’re just commenting on things.”

Essentially, he stated that the so called TV news is not news at all, rather just opinionated commentary.

On the corporate media’s coverage of Freddie Gray protests, Mediaite notes that Freeman made the argument that Baltimore has been suffering for a long time. It took setting something on fire for the media to finally notice. “People are saying, ‘You were not all there when we were just talking and trying to make a point, but if we set something on fire, all of a sudden you’re all here.”

But Freeman sees the light at the end of the alternative media tunnel. He continued to say, “Why is that? What’s the difference? And some young reporters are listening. That sort of observation is very useful.”

He continued, “The other thing is that technology lets us see behind the scenes a little bit better[…]Police have a standard reaction to shooting somebody. I fear for my life and I fear for my safety. Now, at least you can see, ‘Hey, his hands were up in the air! What part of your safety were you afraid of? The guy was running away, what part of your safety was in danger?’ There was one situation I saw where a cop told a guy to get out of the car, said, ‘Show me your driver’s license,’ and the guy reached back into the car and the cop shot him!”

Morgan Freeman seems to be pretty well versed both in the police accountability movement, advances in technology that have enabled citizen journalism, and the value of independent reporting.

He brilliantly closed out his interview with The Daily Beast with two simple yet profound statements that we here at Anti-Media greatly appreciate: “Anyway, off the media,” he says, waving his hands in the air. “Fuck the media!”

Remember the days of Watergate? When people were outraged at the thought of their own government and police forces spying on them?

The latest new laws concerning internet privacy look like they're going to be passed in the U.K.

"It would mean that the UK has one of the most draconian surveillance laws of any democracy with mass surveillance powers to monitor every citizen's browsing history," according to Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics...

Funny how it got little news coverage then, as the papers sidetracked everyone with EU nonsense.

You use the example of the Iraq war and maybe this belongs more in one of the proper Iraq War discussion threads, but the reporting is imbalance both when the media reported on the search for WMDs at the beginning, and on the lack of WMDs once the public turned on the War.

Bottom line is those weapons were there. Our troops have been uncovering and destroying chemical weapons all throughout the occupation. The thing is, it's like you said, the threat was overblown, but it was not nonexistent as we're now led to believe.

Quick Google search turns up a treasure trove from the NYT.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/20...

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/1...

"Like many Americans, I questioned the rationale for invasion after the United States failed to find weapons of mass destruction in 2003. But now, in February 2007, I was staring at color photos of chemical weapons taken just hours before."

Problem is, for a country tired of war, we don't want to hear that Bush was to some degree right about Iraq, nor is it in the government's best interest to admit the weapons existed when they have medical claims to payout due to exposure.

The media was quick to report when the Bush administration claimed the weapons weren't there, but the stories of actual discovery have been buried and muted.

Someone brought race into this discussion, so this fits right in. I'm in NC and a few years ago, there was an accident that got a brief mention in the local news (nothing too big in the grand scheme of things. Two black guys had broken down on a highway and were killed by another driver when they tried to push their car off the road. They were doing nothing wrong and the whole thing was an unfortunate accident, but for "some reason," the local news outlet decided to dig up the victims' criminal history and broadcast it. Again, they were the victims and that criminal history had no relevance to the tragedy, but where you don't normally have that kind of information come out in a tragic accident, but it was strange that because these victims were black that we had to know they served time.

J.J. wrote: "You use the example of the Iraq war and maybe this belongs more in one of the proper Iraq War discussion threads, but the reporting is imbalance both when the media reported on the search for WMDs ..."

Er, no, WMD were never found. The first article you list says:

"During the Iraq war, at least 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to aging chemical weapons abandoned years earlier.
•These weapons were not part of an active arsenal. They were remnants from Iraq’s arms program in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war."

We know that Iraq had chemical weapons - we sold them to Saddam, so it's not surprising that in the second article there is talk of chemical weapons being used (much the same as them being used in Syria, probably by Assad, regardless of those weapons not officially being in the stockpile of the government). So if some chemical weapons were used in the last Iraq war, that most certainly isn't the same thing as Weapons of Mass Destruction.

WMD were never found. They weren't there. A quick Google search will show that.

Yep, you nailed it Harry.
You can rest assured if any WMDs were even found our sociopathic leases like Blair & Bush would have shouted it from the rooftops!

Also the Iraq War under Bush Jr was to do with avenging 9/11 even tho there was no link between the supposed culprits and Iraq.

Furthermore, as per this article in The Diplomat, there is a commonly held view that chemical weapons are not WMD...

http://thediplomat.com/2013/08/chemic...

James Morcan wrote: "Also the Iraq War under Bush Jr was to do with avenging 9/11 even tho there was no link between the supposed culprits and Iraq. ..."

Actually, no. Bush W was planning to invade Iraq even before he became president. He told a biographer if elected he would invade Iraq to complete was his father failed to do (W hates his father). It would also give him credence as a "war president" and the political capital to push through his policies (like privatizing social security).

The bulk of Bush's cabinet were members of the Project for a New American Century, which had publicly advocated for an invasion of Iraq since the mid-1990s to take control of the Iraqi oil fields. To do so, PNAC said, would create an American "hegemony" in the area. PNAC also said a "Pearl Harbor-like event" would be needed to gain public support for such an invasion. Dick Cheney is known to have met with oil industry leaders early in the administration to discuss carving up Iraq's oil fields. When 9/11 happened (or was allowed to happen by the administration), they had their Pearl Harbor-like event. In that event, yes, it was said to be avenging 9/11 (in some bleary, drug-induced logic). But, in truth, we were doomed to invade Iraq the minute Bush was anointed president by the Supreme Court.






..."

Also, the Iraq invasion was only presented as being associated with 9/11 in the U.S. Here in the UK it was all about the 15 minute claim of WMD hitting us. So, not only were there no WMD, but the 15 minute claim (as proven) came out of thin air.

Harry wrote: "J.J. wrote: ""During the Iraq war, at least 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to aging chemical weapons abandoned years earlier...."

Those soldiers were exposed while burning the remnants of chemical weapons shells and bombs. There was residue left on the inside of the shells, and they burned them in open pits -- something you should never do with chemicals because it makes worse chemicals -- and/or handled them without proper MOPP protection. The shells should have been sent to Johnson Island for proper disposal.

Despite what the Bush administration said, it is generally accepted by WMD experts that the last of Hussein's WMDs were destroyed in the Operation Desert Crossing bombing campaign under President Clinton. The only stuff left was debris that couldn't be used as weapons. Still dangerous to anyone who mishandled it, but it couldn't be used as weapons to attack the US or whatnot.

Harry wrote: "J.J. wrote: "You use the example of the Iraq war and maybe this belongs more in one of the proper Iraq War discussion threads, but the reporting is imbalance both when the media reported on the sea..."
From wikipedia (so trust is as much as you want) chemical weapons are WMDs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_...

Googling "WMDs in Iraq" comes up with a page of references to the NYT pointing to the discoveries. I'll come out and admit I consider myself Conservative, but this isn't coming from Fox News. I offered links to the New York Times because it's considered liberal. Searches will come up with far more articles than the two I linked, but the reaction to the evidence I presented goes to prove the point of the original thread: the media has downplayed news to brainwash people into buying the narrative they want to sell.

No one is saying they found the ultimate cache to vindicate GWB and prove the war was completely justified, but to suggest those weapons don't count because they're holdovers from the first war is to say our own nuclear stockpile no longer counts because those weapons are fifty years old.

What the discoveries are suggesting is that we should have a more nuanced opinion of the conflict. Yet that thinking doesn't favor the media's narrative in the past ten years that Bush's presidency was a total disaster.

J.J. wrote: "Harry wrote: "J.J. wrote: "You use the example of the Iraq war and maybe this belongs more in one of the proper Iraq War discussion threads, but the reporting is imbalance both when the media repor..."

It's a completely different issue to WMD, as noted in above comments.

The war was about WMDs, not aging chemical weapons (which we all knew existed, and is therefore not surprising to hear).

Just to be clear, J.J said: "chemical weapons are WMDs." That is not correct.

WMDs are chemical weapons, not the other way round.

Hey, I just realised I brought this thread back on track to the subject of Media Manipulation:

"Chemical weapons are WMDs."

"No, WMDs are chemical weapons."

"It's the same thing."

"No, it's not."

Thank you Mr Harry Orwell (born 1984 on an animal farm).

Harry wrote: "Hey, I just realised I brought this thread back on track to the subject of Media Manipulation:

"Chemical weapons are WMDs."

"No, WMDs are chemical weapons."

"It's the same thing."

"No, it's not.""

....like a true wolf, Harry....gathering the "pack" of information back where it belongs ;)

J.J. wrote: "Googling "WMDs in Iraq" comes up with a page of references to the NYT pointing to the discoveries. I'll come out and admit I consider myself Conservative, but this isn't coming from Fox News. ..."

Those articles refer to the remnants of chemical weapons (shells, casings, etc.) that I mentioned in an early post. They were NOT usable weapons, just casings with residue. Everyone knew they were there.

Not long before Operation Desert Storm, when I was an investigative reporter, I wrote one of the first in-depth articles on Iraq's WMD program. (Iraqi agents were caught trying to smuggle nuclear weapons detonators from San Diego, where I live, to Baghdad and a Customs source tipped me off to the investigation.) Anyway, all the nonproliferations agencies and groups were saying Iraq had WMDs; the Reagan/Bush administrations said Iraq didn't. Years later, when W started saying Iraq had WMDs, the same nonproliferation experts said they didn't, that they had all been destroyed during the Clinton administration (Operation Desert Crossing). That's how I knew Bush was lying us into a war.

As for the NYT being liberal: The fact is the Times was one of the biggest cheerleaders for a war with Iraqi, largely because their prime reporter on the story was playing cozy with the Bush administration. All that reporting was later discredited.

New Software Set To Bend Reality (and create fake news reports?) -- https://www.goodreads.com/videos/1008...

The thing I wonder is if this technology is in the public domain now, how many years (or decades) has it existed within the classified arena??

James Morcan wrote: "New Software Set To Bend Reality (and create fake news reports?) -- https://www.goodreads.com/videos/1008...

The thing I wonder is if t..."

I think this is just an extension of what's been going on in media for decades, since the digitization of photos and video. Anyone can make a photo show whatever they like; all you need is Photoshop. (I once created a photo of a flying saucer taking off from the North Island Naval Air Station and sent it to a friend who works there. He got a kick out of it.) Video is just as easily manipulated. Here the States, a group of conservative activists have been using manipulated video "reporting" to get Planned Parenthood defunded.

1984

American electronic televised newsmedia has been hilariously incompetent, clueless, gutless, manipulated, manipulative, and simply picayune & negligible for decades. It has never made a real difference when it ever mattered. It is always 'looking the other way'; it is always reporting on jewelry and handbags instead of filming the payoff passing from one hand to the other.

The real breakthroughs in our media have always been carried out by loners like Woodward & Bernstein; Daniel Ellsworth; and other whistle-blowers. TV newsmedia is a tool engineered to bemuse, bewilder, and bamboozle the country's docile, uncritical, gullible, dunderheads. Who else would ever place any stock in what appears before them on these corny, 54" Big-Brother-style flatscreens hanging up all over the place?

I often overhear conversations which start off like this: "...and, so, yeah, like, geez, based on all the coverage going on lately in the media..." as if they expect this to reinforce their remark. Hey look kiddo--if you preface your opinions by acknowledging that you avidly follow the news, then you are alerting me that you haven't got anything salient to say. Before you even get to expounding your own view, I know it will be worth less than third-or-fourth-hand 'information'.

Noting that there's a media 'buzz' about something indicates that your own view about whatever-it-is, is already being influenced. Pay no attention to 'hoopla'. All 'buzz' is rigged! Controversies are contrived; hype is paid for; 'hot stories' are 'kept alive' regardless of content. 'Coverage' is promulgated upon us, stories are planted; PR is time-released, seeds are planted, leads are disseminated (on purpose), press conferences are charades. Some stories are over-emphasized, some are under-cut. Others are clearly intended to distract and divert attention from something else going on at the same time.

The media is at best, simply the blunt tool of the establishment. Read 'Advertising Age' sometime. Audiences are 'bought' and 'sold' between corporate marketing teams. The goal is manufacturing opinion and fixing your eyes on the bright, entrancing, mesmerizing images is playing along with them. You're not doing your own thinking when you're watching TV; your judgment is being hijacked.

I know people who literally have their eyes on some kind of screen (television, computer, or phone) every waking moment of their day. And they're gonna tell me 'facts' about anything? Any topic at all? Sheeesh

They didn't find WMD, they used the mass graves to justify their arrest after they admitted there wasn't any WMD. People then thought there must have been mass killings by Saddam Hussein. But in a lot of countries mass graves are normal, due to people being too poor to be able to afford single plots, lack of room (China is urging more people to be cremated for this reason), religion, war, natural disasters. It can be normal to burn whole bodies in mass due to disease. If you have watched MASH, one episode the burned the clothes of soldiers and civilians because they were infested. A lot of the time it is interpreted as bad if another country does not do things the same way you do.

Too true. But its far worse than that. The whole reason for 'going to war' in the first place was drummed up. Phony. Bogus. The supposed Iraq expatriates appeared in interviews and depositions GALORE in the run-up to the invasion, remember???

Oh, Hussein has death camps. Oh, Hussein is doing medical experimentation. Oh, Hussein is carrying out genocide and purges. (Yeah? According to what script?)

Weeping black-haired foreign women and stalwart dark-eyed men, flinching with emotion, flooding American airwaves, And all of it ENTIRELY SHAM. All the 'talking heads' on NBC and CBS. Utter frauds.

A complete media-fomented war. Closed system. Govt using media to create the false humanitarian motive, going to war, and then using the media to explain the whole thing away.

How is this any different than the medieval era?

Quote by someone about Edward L. Bernays who wrote Propaganda. I suspect this quote is from The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and The Birth of Public Relations:

“Bernays sold the myth of propaganda as a wholly rational endeavor, carried out methodically by careful experts skilled enough to lead “public opinion.” Consistently he casts himself as a supreme manipulator, mastering the responses of a pliable, receptive population. “Conscious and intelligent manipulation,” “invisible governors,” “they who pull the wires which control the public mind,” “shrewd persons operating behind the scenes,” “dictators exercising great power,” and, below them, people working “as if actuated by the touch of a button”—these are but a few expressions of the icy scientistic paradigm that evidently drove his propaganda practice, and that colored all his thinking on the subject. The propagandist rules. The propagandized do whatever he would have them do, exactly as he tells them to, and without knowing it.”

Propaganda through media - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaga...

SUBVERTING THE MEDIA http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/subver...

Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

Your right to know: why newspapers across Australia are blacked out today
https://amp.news.com.au/national/when...
When government keeps the truth from you, what are they covering up?

Today media companies from all over Australia unite in an unprecedented action to fight for press freedoms and the public’s right to know what’s going on in this country.
Australia’s Right To Know coalition of more than a dozen of the nation’s top media companies and industry organisations is campaigning for change to six critical areas of law that is allowing a veil of secrecy to being thrown over matters important to all Australians.

Since 2002, there have been 75 pieces of federal legislation intended to protect the public from national security threats but that have found new ways from stopping the public’s right to know what the Federal Government is doing.