A plane could not knock down the WTC buildings:
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Why Is Society Being Dumbed Down?
Do you think that there is an intentional dumbing down of society?
Saturday, October 4, 2008
New Evidence?
Has anyone seen this video? It appears that there's some new evidence about 9/11 based on the scientific method and not the political method:
http://newsmiths.blogspot.com/2008/06/dr-steven-jones-new-911-evidence.html
http://newsmiths.blogspot.com/2008/06/dr-steven-jones-new-911-evidence.html
Monday, September 8, 2008
How To Deprogram Your Own Mind
I find this article quite interesting. A. Orange explains how to deprogram your mind:
http://www.geocities.com/drugsandalcoholinfo/webpagesandpapers/howtodeprogramurownmind.htm
How To Deprogram Your Own Mind
by A. Orange
Recognize that programming is everywhere, and it isn't all bad. Your programming started with your parents teaching you things, and both consciously and unconsciously programming you with all of their beliefs and attitudes. That is not necessarily bad -- it is usually good. You are better off for having had parents who cared about you and wanted to teach you. But unfortunately, you also inherited all of their misinformation, superstitions, mistakes, and irrational and untrue beliefs.
And you also inherited your "culture", which includes all of the false, irrational, and wrong beliefs of your entire society. And you are left with the job of figuring out which of those beliefs are good and true, and which are stupid and crazy.
And you are always vulnerable to pressure from your peer group, which will always try to make you conform to their beliefs, standards, and behavior, even if your friends are not even really aware of the fact that they are doing it.
Recognize that programming and deprogramming are constant, on-going processes. Even while you are trying to deprogram and clear your mind, television commercials will be trying to program you into believing that you really should buy their product; you will be so happy if you do, and you'll be beautiful and get laid too. And the politicians will always be trying to make you believe that they are wise and right about everything, and if you are patriotic you will never criticize them.
Want to know the truth. This is essential. This is the whole ball game. If you don't want to learn the truth, you probably won't.
Love the truth, even if it is sometimes inconvenient or unpleasant. Respect the truth, cherish the truth, seek the truth above all.
People stay trapped in cults, or trapped in illusions, because they don't really want to know the truth:
Sometimes, they are afraid to know the truth --
They fear that their world will fall apart if they stop believing certain things, or admit the truth of other things. That is one of the beliefs with which they got programmed -- the idea that if they don't believe the right things, they will go to Hell, or they will lose their ticket to Heaven, or something else really bad will happen to them. One of the things that cults do is implant phobias about leaving the cult, or learning the truth about the cult.
They are afraid of losing their status or membership in the group -- they are afraid that they will be shunned and ostracized if they don't believe the same things as the other people around them.
They fear that they will have to leave the cult if they stop believing in it, and they will stop believing in it if they learn a bunch of negative things about it. ("Then what will I do with my life?!") So they plug their ears and close their eyes, and play "Hear no evil, see no evil..."
Some people just don't want to see that they were fooled.
"I refuse to believe that I spent twelve years of my life in a cult. It isn't a cult. It can't be a cult. It's a wonderful movement."
As they say, "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt."
Some people just don't want to give it up.
"If I leave the group, I will be lonely because I won't have any friends. So shut up and quit telling me disturbing things about it."
"I have lots of time invested here. I'm a respected elder. If I quit the organization, I'll be a nobody."
Don't condemn yourself. Self-condemnation and self-criticism are part of the brain-washing and indoctrination process, and they are counter-productive when it comes to deprogramming. If you find that you have been programmed to believe some goofy idea, then just recognize that it is an irrational, illogical, goofy idea, and reject it, but do not condemn yourself for having believed it for a while.
It's just like, if, while exploring the Wild West, you find that you have an arrow stuck in your back, pull it out.
Don't wallow in self-contempt and guilt, condemning yourself for having stupidly gotten an arrow stuck in your back.
Don't imagine that you are somehow all fucked up for having gotten stuck with an arrow.
Don't imagine that finding an arrow stuck in your back proves that you are somehow inferior.
Just pull the arrow out and then get on with your life.
Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't examine your behavior, and change it if you are doing something wrong. But be wary of excessive fault-finding and self-criticism. Cults will teach you to do that, and will even try to convince you that you will make yourself more holy by constantly condemning yourself and putting yourself down and feeling guilty about everything. All that really accomplishes is messing up your mind, destroying your self-confidence and self-respect, and making you unable to think clearly or act decisively.
Watch out for other people condemning you.
People who want to control you will try to make you feel stupid, inferior, flawed, and mentally incompetent for disagreeing with them.
As mentioned above, self-condemnation and self-criticism are a big part of the brain-washing and indoctrination process, so those who would like to control you would also like to get you criticizing yourself and being down on yourself. And Margaret Thaler Singer added that inducing feelings of powerlessness, covert fear, guilt, and dependency in the victims was also a part of the brainwashing process.
So don't let them make you believe that you are flawed and inferior. When someone is reading your beads and listing your faults, it almost always means that they want to control you -- to change your behavior to something that they want.
Also watch out for other people trying to clip your wings, and keep you from being your whole self.
For example, one of the commonest crippling stunts that cults or churches pull on people is demanding that they not feel their feelings. "You must only feel Eternal Bliss" or "You must only feel Serenity and Gratitude". Anger, especially anger at the evils of the cult and its leaders, is supposedly very bad.
Bill Wilson wrote:
It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also. But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about "justifiable" anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self-righteous folk? For us in A.A. these are dangerous exceptions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William Wilson, page 90.
What rot. You are wrong to get mad when somebody hurts you or commits crimes against you? Such anger should be "left to those better qualified to handle it"? And just who is that?
Nobody.
All it means is, you can't feel your anger. You have to "stuff your feelings."
Pseudo-religious garbage like that will do a good job of crippling you, and keeping you from making trouble for your oppressors.
Likewise, some churches or cults will tell you that you shouldn't feel horny, or find the opposite sex attractive, or think about sex with them. Nonsense. You brain is hardwired to think about it and want it -- That's what keeps the human race going. We would be extinct if we could be logical and rational about sex and having children. "Too much bother; a big hassle; too expensive..." But logic has nothing to do with it, and that's why we are still here.
Another common crippling stunt that cults pull on their members is demanding that members stop thinking critically -- stop what they call "having doubts":
"If you are really holy, then you won't have any doubts."
Nonsense. Normal, sane, healthy people have lots of doubts when con-men and phony holy men try to foist a stupid illogical hoax on them. Those doubts are your remaining sanity warning you that something sounds fishy.
Similarly, cults and other mind-manipulators will tell you that you cannot trust your own mind and your own thinking (so you should let them do your thinking for you). If you buy into that idea, it will really cripple you. You won't be able to think anything without also thinking that it must be wrong, because you thought it. (But then the thought that your thinking is wrong should also be wrong... So your thinking must be right...)
Beware of wanting to believe.
On the TV show "The X-Files", Mulder had a poster on the wall of his office that said, "I Want To Believe". That's okay for the X-Files and stories about flying saucers, but it leads to disaster in real life.
Instead of wanting to believe, want to know the truth.
Wanting to believe is perhaps the most powerful dynamic initiating and sustaining cult-like behavior.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 137.
Billy Graham says that everyone really wants to believe in a dogmatic, fascist religion:
"The world longs for authority, finality, and conclusiveness. It is weary of theological floundering and uncertainty. Belief exhilarates the human spirit; doubt depresses."
Billy Graham
quoted in Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America's Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, page 144.
Also see: The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 143.
Certainty (as Billy Graham testified) is one of the great benefits of [dogmatic] religious belief.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 144.
Watch out for self-deceptive ego games.
For example, in some cults or religions, they will flatter you and tell you that you are very important, and involved in very important work, doing the Will of the Lord, ushering in the Millenium, saving the world, if you believe what they say and do what they say. But if you buy into their game, it is you who is allowing yourself to be deceived, and it's you who is enjoying the big ego game.
Part of the attraction of believing the leader's views and actions to be of paramount importance is that the follower's own sense of importance is heightened.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 67.
"If the leader and his religion are saving the world, and I follow the leader, then I am saving the world, which makes me very good and very important."
Conversely, if someone criticizes the cult, its leader, or its teachings, then that reflects badly on the member. If the cult member believes the criticisms to be true, then he will go from being a noble savior of the world to being just a foolish follower of an evil charlatan. So the member has a vested interest in rejecting any criticism of the group or its leader -- all based on his own egotism. Thus he will resist learning the truth, out of purely selfish interests.
Beware of comparing apples and oranges.
Beware of equating things that are not equal.
For example, many people say that they really like the A.A. program because it is such a wonderful social club with such brotherhood and fellowship. Excuse me, but it is supposed to be an alcoholism treatment program. They seem to forget that it doesn't actually work to cure alcoholism, and just proclaim that it's great because they like the social life, the brotherhood and the "spirituality". That's mixing apples and oranges. When I go to the doctor to get some medical care, I don't expect a big party in the waiting room. I just go get the pills, and go home. If I want a party, I go someplace else.
Watch your own mind.
Watch your thoughts, attitudes, and slogans.
Also watch your desires and fears.
This is the heart of the deprogramming program. This is a constant, never-ending task. Watch your mind all day long, or as much as you can remember to.
You have to not only watch what people are telling you, but watch how you react to it, and what it makes happen inside your head. Watch what you are thinking, and if you can, understand why you are thinking that.
Notice your desires, and how certain statements can arouse them. I'm not knocking desires, or asking you to. Just look at them and make a note of what it is you actually want: love, approval, status, power, sex, wealth, possessions, knowledge, wisdom, compassion, virtue, goodness, whatever. Then notice how certain ideas or statements can arouse certain desires. And then notice how some people (especially politicians) are skilled in tossing out buzz-words, phrases, and slogans that will arouse certain desires in you. They are messing with your mind by manipulating your feelings.
Likewise, watch your fears, and see how politicians and preachers are good at arousing them to manipulate your thinking.
"If you don't suspend the Bill of Rights and let the Homeland Security Force violate everybody's privacy and spy on everybody, then the nasty Arabs will get you."
"If you don't give the oil billionaires a big tax cut, and let them drill for oil in every wilderness and wildlife preserve in the world, then they will go broke and run out of oil and you will freeze in the dark."
"If you don't believe all this stuff, and give your money to the preacher man, then God will get mad at you and you will go to Hell."
Watch out for commonly-accepted fallacies -- the things that "everybody knows" are true, but which aren't.
For example, it is commonly accepted that alcoholics can't or won't quit drinking until they "bottom out" or "hit bottom". That is completely untrue. People quit at all stages of alcoholism; some even quit before they could even be called alcoholics, because they see a nasty problem starting to develop.
So how did the idea that alcoholics must hit bottom come to be such a universally-accepted piece of folklore? Well, what happened is Bill Wilson found that ordinary, relatively-sane people wouldn't join his cult religion or believe in his grandiose, bombastic sermons, or accept his brain-damaged superstitious nonsense. Only the really sick, frightened, dying people who were desperately grabbing at anything that might save their lives would swallow Wilson's bullshit. So Wilson made up a story about how alcoholics can't really quit drinking and start to recover until they hit bottom and "the lash of alcoholism drives them to A.A." (see: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 24). A.A. members have been spreading that little piece of misinformation for the last 60 years, and now, everybody who thinks he knows something about alcoholism repeats it. But it is still untrue.
You can find plenty of similar examples, everywhere. The common wisdom often isn't.
Read Kasl and Sagan:
Charlotte Kasl "Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps",
and
Carl Sagan "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark".
What those two books have in common is that they both push common sense and logic, and leave me with a sort of positive, upbeat feeling. They will help to clear things up and put some good ideas in your head.
Understand the games that the mind-programmers and brainwashers play on people's heads, and the techniques that they use for mind-control
For instance, there is the phenomenon called "cognitive dissonance". What it means is: People want to keep all of their beliefs, actions, thoughts, and feelings in harmony with each other. People want to do what they believe is right and good, and if they do otherwise, they feel bad -- they feel "dissonance". The "dissonance" is just like musical dissonance -- it feels jarring and discordant and wrong.
Brainwashers have discovered that they can use cognitive dissonance to change people's behavior, beliefs, feelings, and thoughts -- force a change in one, and the others will follow. If you force people to perform certain actions, they will eventually come to believe that it's okay -- it must be okay, because they wouldn't want to be doing bad things all of the time. If you force people to say something out loud to a group over and over again, the speakers will eventually come to believe that it is true, because they don't want to feel like they are habitual liars. The subconscious mind's solution to the problem is: believe that it is all true, so now there is no conflict. (That's why A.A. instructs newcomers to "Fake It Until You Make It.")
Since we normally only reveal our innermost, most embarrassing and damaging secrets to our closest and most trusted friends, if we confess everything to a room full of strangers, then cognitive dissonance kicks in, and our subconscious minds will start to assume that those people must really be our closest, most-trusted, friends. That eliminates the conflict over having told embarrassing personal secrets to a bunch of complete strangers. Our feelings will actually change so that we feel much closer to those people. Organizations like Werner Erhard's "est" scam, Alcoholics Anonymous, and various cult churches use this technique to create feelings of instant closeness, "brotherhood", and "fellowship" among the members of a group.
Likewise, if you force people to perform horrible acts, like kill Jews in a concentration camp, then the killers will change their beliefs about the victims to make their actions okay, and will eventually come to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong after all. "It isn't really murder because they aren't really people. They are enemies of the state, and need to be eliminated. They have it coming for what the Jews did to us. They are a threat to us, and must be eliminated." That stunt usually (but not always) works even if the killers had originally thought that Jews were okay people. (A small, seldom-mentioned detail of history is that not all German soldiers could stomach killing the Jews. Some soldiers had to be transferred out of the concentration camps because they were going nuts just from seeing all of the Jews killed.)
A recent movie showed how the Nazis would pick out some Jews to act as workers in the concentration camps, forcing them to manage the other Jews who were being herded into the gas chambers. Those worker Jews would of course experience horrible conflicts over their job of helping to kill their fellow Jews, but cognitive dissonance would kick in, and they would end up seeing everything in terms of proper order, proper behavior, and proper functioning: "A Jew who makes a fuss and disrupts the efficient workings of the gas chambers is a trouble-maker and a bad Jew. Good Jews should just go along with the procedure and not make any trouble."
Break the exclusivity of information input.
Avoid getting all of your information from just one group or one source. (Any one source. Don't trust anybody that much.) Examine both (or all) sides of an issue. Don't let anyone dictate what you may read, see, or hear. One of the most powerful tools that cults or Communists use to brainwash people is information control -- preventing the victims from getting any information contrary to the brainwashing.
Recognize that three different people who all say the same thing is not necessarily three different sources of information. For example, the evening news programs of NBC, ABC, and CBS may all tell you exactly the same story, just parroting the information that was just released by the White House. Also, the corporate owners of the networks often keep Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather from telling the ugly truths or asking the hard questions. (They similarly muzzled the New York Times, and kept it from reporting how Gov. Jeb Bush rigged the election in Florida in 2000, so such problems are everywhere.) Sometimes, National Public Radio or Public Television will tell you something else, but sometimes you may have to go on the Internet and check out BBC or the London Times to get the other side of the story. (And also check out Canada and Sydney, Australia, and New Delhi, India while you are at it. They speak English, too.)
Break self-programming.
People often get programmed to program themselves:
Think about the guy who is always playing "motivational" tapes that will supposedly teach you how to get rich quick or build up your self-esteem or something... Now lots of cults are into it too, and they have a set of tapes for you.
And then there are the people who are always reading the same book or small set of books over and over again, as if those books held all of the wisdom in the world.
Then there are people who just constantly repeat slogans, which effectively stops them from actually thinking.
And there are some people who practice meditation or chanting constantly, reprogramming themselves and stopping rational thought, all day, every day. (Note that meditation and chanting can be good things, but phony gurus teach people to use them excessively, as mind-control tools.)
And then there are meetings, services, and get-togethers. Churches and cults have church services and "Bible study" and socials, and A.A. and Amway have a meeting for every occasion. Note that this is a matter of frequency, and of how much time they take out of your life. One church service a week is normal for all churches, but when someone tells you to do "90 meetings in 90 days", or to come to chanting or meditation or prayer or Bible study sessions every single day, then the warning bells should be going off in your head. And you should be hearing klaxon horns and air raid sirens when people brag about doing three meetings per day.
And then there is denial and rationalization. Some people will endlessly deny or rationalize every negative thing they hear about their leader or their church or cult (or their corporation or their political party, or whatever). They will never actually let a contrary idea get into their heads.
-- Which leads to self-censorship. Some people censor their own minds, and will not even allow themselves to think one forbidden thought. So of course they stay programmed.
TV Commercials sell you images, and they are very powerful. Watch out. They tell you that you will be beautiful and sexually attractive if you look like their images.
"You want to buy these clothes, and style your hair like this, and wear these glasses, and lose weight, and make your waist narrower and your boobs bigger, if you are a female. And if you are a male, you will want to flash the cash and drive this kind of a car, and buy this kind of a house so that you can move in a trophy wife..."
They are selling you images of "the beautiful people". After a while, you will start to feel like there must be something wrong with you if you don't look and act like the people on TV. And you will start to think you must be a weirdo if you don't believe and say what the people on TV believe and say. But the beautiful people on TV are paid to only say non-disturbing things, to not rock the boat. They won't tell you about their sponsors -- corporate polluters -- poisoning your children, not a word. They won't tell you that the sponsor's car is a deathtrap, likely to roll over or explode in flames. They won't tell you that their sponsor cheats its own employees out of their retirement funds and health insurance. They won't say anything about their sponsors feeding your children pesticide- or herbicide-contaminated or genetically-altered food, not a word. That would be making trouble.
So just how beautiful are those beautiful people, really? Are you sure you want to be like them?
Nevertheless, those images are still extremely attractive, aren't they?
Years ago, there was a rather iconoclastic Commissioner of the FCC named Nicholas Johnson who said that there was a lot more on TV than met the eye. He observed that furniture polish commercials actually sell expensive hardwood furniture as well as the polish. They imply that your life will somehow be happier, more elegant, genteel, and cultured, if you have a beautiful house full of the kind of furniture that requires furniture polish.
So, as you watch TV, watch how they are trying to program your mind. Watch what they are really selling. Notice what they are selling, besides what they seem to be selling.
As a defense, don't watch so much TV. And even if you are an addicted media junkie, you can still watch video tapes instead of channels with commercials. That way you, not they, control your information input. Oh, and Public Television isn't so bad, either.
Read the web page on Propaganda Techniques several times. It helps to understand and recognize the stunts they pull on you and the mind games they play on your head to get you to accept certain ideas and beliefs.
Click Fruit for Menu
Secret Agent Orange working with www.AAdeprogramming.com
Last updated 7 December 2002.
The most recent version of this file can be found at http://www.geocities.com/ageorange/
Copyright © 2002, A. Orange
http://www.geocities.com/drugsandalcoholinfo/webpagesandpapers/howtodeprogramurownmind.htm
How To Deprogram Your Own Mind
by A. Orange
Recognize that programming is everywhere, and it isn't all bad. Your programming started with your parents teaching you things, and both consciously and unconsciously programming you with all of their beliefs and attitudes. That is not necessarily bad -- it is usually good. You are better off for having had parents who cared about you and wanted to teach you. But unfortunately, you also inherited all of their misinformation, superstitions, mistakes, and irrational and untrue beliefs.
And you also inherited your "culture", which includes all of the false, irrational, and wrong beliefs of your entire society. And you are left with the job of figuring out which of those beliefs are good and true, and which are stupid and crazy.
And you are always vulnerable to pressure from your peer group, which will always try to make you conform to their beliefs, standards, and behavior, even if your friends are not even really aware of the fact that they are doing it.
Recognize that programming and deprogramming are constant, on-going processes. Even while you are trying to deprogram and clear your mind, television commercials will be trying to program you into believing that you really should buy their product; you will be so happy if you do, and you'll be beautiful and get laid too. And the politicians will always be trying to make you believe that they are wise and right about everything, and if you are patriotic you will never criticize them.
Want to know the truth. This is essential. This is the whole ball game. If you don't want to learn the truth, you probably won't.
Love the truth, even if it is sometimes inconvenient or unpleasant. Respect the truth, cherish the truth, seek the truth above all.
People stay trapped in cults, or trapped in illusions, because they don't really want to know the truth:
Sometimes, they are afraid to know the truth --
They fear that their world will fall apart if they stop believing certain things, or admit the truth of other things. That is one of the beliefs with which they got programmed -- the idea that if they don't believe the right things, they will go to Hell, or they will lose their ticket to Heaven, or something else really bad will happen to them. One of the things that cults do is implant phobias about leaving the cult, or learning the truth about the cult.
They are afraid of losing their status or membership in the group -- they are afraid that they will be shunned and ostracized if they don't believe the same things as the other people around them.
They fear that they will have to leave the cult if they stop believing in it, and they will stop believing in it if they learn a bunch of negative things about it. ("Then what will I do with my life?!") So they plug their ears and close their eyes, and play "Hear no evil, see no evil..."
Some people just don't want to see that they were fooled.
"I refuse to believe that I spent twelve years of my life in a cult. It isn't a cult. It can't be a cult. It's a wonderful movement."
As they say, "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt."
Some people just don't want to give it up.
"If I leave the group, I will be lonely because I won't have any friends. So shut up and quit telling me disturbing things about it."
"I have lots of time invested here. I'm a respected elder. If I quit the organization, I'll be a nobody."
Don't condemn yourself. Self-condemnation and self-criticism are part of the brain-washing and indoctrination process, and they are counter-productive when it comes to deprogramming. If you find that you have been programmed to believe some goofy idea, then just recognize that it is an irrational, illogical, goofy idea, and reject it, but do not condemn yourself for having believed it for a while.
It's just like, if, while exploring the Wild West, you find that you have an arrow stuck in your back, pull it out.
Don't wallow in self-contempt and guilt, condemning yourself for having stupidly gotten an arrow stuck in your back.
Don't imagine that you are somehow all fucked up for having gotten stuck with an arrow.
Don't imagine that finding an arrow stuck in your back proves that you are somehow inferior.
Just pull the arrow out and then get on with your life.
Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't examine your behavior, and change it if you are doing something wrong. But be wary of excessive fault-finding and self-criticism. Cults will teach you to do that, and will even try to convince you that you will make yourself more holy by constantly condemning yourself and putting yourself down and feeling guilty about everything. All that really accomplishes is messing up your mind, destroying your self-confidence and self-respect, and making you unable to think clearly or act decisively.
Watch out for other people condemning you.
People who want to control you will try to make you feel stupid, inferior, flawed, and mentally incompetent for disagreeing with them.
As mentioned above, self-condemnation and self-criticism are a big part of the brain-washing and indoctrination process, so those who would like to control you would also like to get you criticizing yourself and being down on yourself. And Margaret Thaler Singer added that inducing feelings of powerlessness, covert fear, guilt, and dependency in the victims was also a part of the brainwashing process.
So don't let them make you believe that you are flawed and inferior. When someone is reading your beads and listing your faults, it almost always means that they want to control you -- to change your behavior to something that they want.
Also watch out for other people trying to clip your wings, and keep you from being your whole self.
For example, one of the commonest crippling stunts that cults or churches pull on people is demanding that they not feel their feelings. "You must only feel Eternal Bliss" or "You must only feel Serenity and Gratitude". Anger, especially anger at the evils of the cult and its leaders, is supposedly very bad.
Bill Wilson wrote:
It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also. But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about "justifiable" anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self-righteous folk? For us in A.A. these are dangerous exceptions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William Wilson, page 90.
What rot. You are wrong to get mad when somebody hurts you or commits crimes against you? Such anger should be "left to those better qualified to handle it"? And just who is that?
Nobody.
All it means is, you can't feel your anger. You have to "stuff your feelings."
Pseudo-religious garbage like that will do a good job of crippling you, and keeping you from making trouble for your oppressors.
Likewise, some churches or cults will tell you that you shouldn't feel horny, or find the opposite sex attractive, or think about sex with them. Nonsense. You brain is hardwired to think about it and want it -- That's what keeps the human race going. We would be extinct if we could be logical and rational about sex and having children. "Too much bother; a big hassle; too expensive..." But logic has nothing to do with it, and that's why we are still here.
Another common crippling stunt that cults pull on their members is demanding that members stop thinking critically -- stop what they call "having doubts":
"If you are really holy, then you won't have any doubts."
Nonsense. Normal, sane, healthy people have lots of doubts when con-men and phony holy men try to foist a stupid illogical hoax on them. Those doubts are your remaining sanity warning you that something sounds fishy.
Similarly, cults and other mind-manipulators will tell you that you cannot trust your own mind and your own thinking (so you should let them do your thinking for you). If you buy into that idea, it will really cripple you. You won't be able to think anything without also thinking that it must be wrong, because you thought it. (But then the thought that your thinking is wrong should also be wrong... So your thinking must be right...)
Beware of wanting to believe.
On the TV show "The X-Files", Mulder had a poster on the wall of his office that said, "I Want To Believe". That's okay for the X-Files and stories about flying saucers, but it leads to disaster in real life.
Instead of wanting to believe, want to know the truth.
Wanting to believe is perhaps the most powerful dynamic initiating and sustaining cult-like behavior.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 137.
Billy Graham says that everyone really wants to believe in a dogmatic, fascist religion:
"The world longs for authority, finality, and conclusiveness. It is weary of theological floundering and uncertainty. Belief exhilarates the human spirit; doubt depresses."
Billy Graham
quoted in Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America's Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, page 144.
Also see: The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 143.
Certainty (as Billy Graham testified) is one of the great benefits of [dogmatic] religious belief.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 144.
Watch out for self-deceptive ego games.
For example, in some cults or religions, they will flatter you and tell you that you are very important, and involved in very important work, doing the Will of the Lord, ushering in the Millenium, saving the world, if you believe what they say and do what they say. But if you buy into their game, it is you who is allowing yourself to be deceived, and it's you who is enjoying the big ego game.
Part of the attraction of believing the leader's views and actions to be of paramount importance is that the follower's own sense of importance is heightened.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 67.
"If the leader and his religion are saving the world, and I follow the leader, then I am saving the world, which makes me very good and very important."
Conversely, if someone criticizes the cult, its leader, or its teachings, then that reflects badly on the member. If the cult member believes the criticisms to be true, then he will go from being a noble savior of the world to being just a foolish follower of an evil charlatan. So the member has a vested interest in rejecting any criticism of the group or its leader -- all based on his own egotism. Thus he will resist learning the truth, out of purely selfish interests.
Beware of comparing apples and oranges.
Beware of equating things that are not equal.
For example, many people say that they really like the A.A. program because it is such a wonderful social club with such brotherhood and fellowship. Excuse me, but it is supposed to be an alcoholism treatment program. They seem to forget that it doesn't actually work to cure alcoholism, and just proclaim that it's great because they like the social life, the brotherhood and the "spirituality". That's mixing apples and oranges. When I go to the doctor to get some medical care, I don't expect a big party in the waiting room. I just go get the pills, and go home. If I want a party, I go someplace else.
Watch your own mind.
Watch your thoughts, attitudes, and slogans.
Also watch your desires and fears.
This is the heart of the deprogramming program. This is a constant, never-ending task. Watch your mind all day long, or as much as you can remember to.
You have to not only watch what people are telling you, but watch how you react to it, and what it makes happen inside your head. Watch what you are thinking, and if you can, understand why you are thinking that.
Notice your desires, and how certain statements can arouse them. I'm not knocking desires, or asking you to. Just look at them and make a note of what it is you actually want: love, approval, status, power, sex, wealth, possessions, knowledge, wisdom, compassion, virtue, goodness, whatever. Then notice how certain ideas or statements can arouse certain desires. And then notice how some people (especially politicians) are skilled in tossing out buzz-words, phrases, and slogans that will arouse certain desires in you. They are messing with your mind by manipulating your feelings.
Likewise, watch your fears, and see how politicians and preachers are good at arousing them to manipulate your thinking.
"If you don't suspend the Bill of Rights and let the Homeland Security Force violate everybody's privacy and spy on everybody, then the nasty Arabs will get you."
"If you don't give the oil billionaires a big tax cut, and let them drill for oil in every wilderness and wildlife preserve in the world, then they will go broke and run out of oil and you will freeze in the dark."
"If you don't believe all this stuff, and give your money to the preacher man, then God will get mad at you and you will go to Hell."
Watch out for commonly-accepted fallacies -- the things that "everybody knows" are true, but which aren't.
For example, it is commonly accepted that alcoholics can't or won't quit drinking until they "bottom out" or "hit bottom". That is completely untrue. People quit at all stages of alcoholism; some even quit before they could even be called alcoholics, because they see a nasty problem starting to develop.
So how did the idea that alcoholics must hit bottom come to be such a universally-accepted piece of folklore? Well, what happened is Bill Wilson found that ordinary, relatively-sane people wouldn't join his cult religion or believe in his grandiose, bombastic sermons, or accept his brain-damaged superstitious nonsense. Only the really sick, frightened, dying people who were desperately grabbing at anything that might save their lives would swallow Wilson's bullshit. So Wilson made up a story about how alcoholics can't really quit drinking and start to recover until they hit bottom and "the lash of alcoholism drives them to A.A." (see: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 24). A.A. members have been spreading that little piece of misinformation for the last 60 years, and now, everybody who thinks he knows something about alcoholism repeats it. But it is still untrue.
You can find plenty of similar examples, everywhere. The common wisdom often isn't.
Read Kasl and Sagan:
Charlotte Kasl "Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps",
and
Carl Sagan "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark".
What those two books have in common is that they both push common sense and logic, and leave me with a sort of positive, upbeat feeling. They will help to clear things up and put some good ideas in your head.
Understand the games that the mind-programmers and brainwashers play on people's heads, and the techniques that they use for mind-control
For instance, there is the phenomenon called "cognitive dissonance". What it means is: People want to keep all of their beliefs, actions, thoughts, and feelings in harmony with each other. People want to do what they believe is right and good, and if they do otherwise, they feel bad -- they feel "dissonance". The "dissonance" is just like musical dissonance -- it feels jarring and discordant and wrong.
Brainwashers have discovered that they can use cognitive dissonance to change people's behavior, beliefs, feelings, and thoughts -- force a change in one, and the others will follow. If you force people to perform certain actions, they will eventually come to believe that it's okay -- it must be okay, because they wouldn't want to be doing bad things all of the time. If you force people to say something out loud to a group over and over again, the speakers will eventually come to believe that it is true, because they don't want to feel like they are habitual liars. The subconscious mind's solution to the problem is: believe that it is all true, so now there is no conflict. (That's why A.A. instructs newcomers to "Fake It Until You Make It.")
Since we normally only reveal our innermost, most embarrassing and damaging secrets to our closest and most trusted friends, if we confess everything to a room full of strangers, then cognitive dissonance kicks in, and our subconscious minds will start to assume that those people must really be our closest, most-trusted, friends. That eliminates the conflict over having told embarrassing personal secrets to a bunch of complete strangers. Our feelings will actually change so that we feel much closer to those people. Organizations like Werner Erhard's "est" scam, Alcoholics Anonymous, and various cult churches use this technique to create feelings of instant closeness, "brotherhood", and "fellowship" among the members of a group.
Likewise, if you force people to perform horrible acts, like kill Jews in a concentration camp, then the killers will change their beliefs about the victims to make their actions okay, and will eventually come to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong after all. "It isn't really murder because they aren't really people. They are enemies of the state, and need to be eliminated. They have it coming for what the Jews did to us. They are a threat to us, and must be eliminated." That stunt usually (but not always) works even if the killers had originally thought that Jews were okay people. (A small, seldom-mentioned detail of history is that not all German soldiers could stomach killing the Jews. Some soldiers had to be transferred out of the concentration camps because they were going nuts just from seeing all of the Jews killed.)
A recent movie showed how the Nazis would pick out some Jews to act as workers in the concentration camps, forcing them to manage the other Jews who were being herded into the gas chambers. Those worker Jews would of course experience horrible conflicts over their job of helping to kill their fellow Jews, but cognitive dissonance would kick in, and they would end up seeing everything in terms of proper order, proper behavior, and proper functioning: "A Jew who makes a fuss and disrupts the efficient workings of the gas chambers is a trouble-maker and a bad Jew. Good Jews should just go along with the procedure and not make any trouble."
Break the exclusivity of information input.
Avoid getting all of your information from just one group or one source. (Any one source. Don't trust anybody that much.) Examine both (or all) sides of an issue. Don't let anyone dictate what you may read, see, or hear. One of the most powerful tools that cults or Communists use to brainwash people is information control -- preventing the victims from getting any information contrary to the brainwashing.
Recognize that three different people who all say the same thing is not necessarily three different sources of information. For example, the evening news programs of NBC, ABC, and CBS may all tell you exactly the same story, just parroting the information that was just released by the White House. Also, the corporate owners of the networks often keep Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather from telling the ugly truths or asking the hard questions. (They similarly muzzled the New York Times, and kept it from reporting how Gov. Jeb Bush rigged the election in Florida in 2000, so such problems are everywhere.) Sometimes, National Public Radio or Public Television will tell you something else, but sometimes you may have to go on the Internet and check out BBC or the London Times to get the other side of the story. (And also check out Canada and Sydney, Australia, and New Delhi, India while you are at it. They speak English, too.)
Break self-programming.
People often get programmed to program themselves:
Think about the guy who is always playing "motivational" tapes that will supposedly teach you how to get rich quick or build up your self-esteem or something... Now lots of cults are into it too, and they have a set of tapes for you.
And then there are the people who are always reading the same book or small set of books over and over again, as if those books held all of the wisdom in the world.
Then there are people who just constantly repeat slogans, which effectively stops them from actually thinking.
And there are some people who practice meditation or chanting constantly, reprogramming themselves and stopping rational thought, all day, every day. (Note that meditation and chanting can be good things, but phony gurus teach people to use them excessively, as mind-control tools.)
And then there are meetings, services, and get-togethers. Churches and cults have church services and "Bible study" and socials, and A.A. and Amway have a meeting for every occasion. Note that this is a matter of frequency, and of how much time they take out of your life. One church service a week is normal for all churches, but when someone tells you to do "90 meetings in 90 days", or to come to chanting or meditation or prayer or Bible study sessions every single day, then the warning bells should be going off in your head. And you should be hearing klaxon horns and air raid sirens when people brag about doing three meetings per day.
And then there is denial and rationalization. Some people will endlessly deny or rationalize every negative thing they hear about their leader or their church or cult (or their corporation or their political party, or whatever). They will never actually let a contrary idea get into their heads.
-- Which leads to self-censorship. Some people censor their own minds, and will not even allow themselves to think one forbidden thought. So of course they stay programmed.
TV Commercials sell you images, and they are very powerful. Watch out. They tell you that you will be beautiful and sexually attractive if you look like their images.
"You want to buy these clothes, and style your hair like this, and wear these glasses, and lose weight, and make your waist narrower and your boobs bigger, if you are a female. And if you are a male, you will want to flash the cash and drive this kind of a car, and buy this kind of a house so that you can move in a trophy wife..."
They are selling you images of "the beautiful people". After a while, you will start to feel like there must be something wrong with you if you don't look and act like the people on TV. And you will start to think you must be a weirdo if you don't believe and say what the people on TV believe and say. But the beautiful people on TV are paid to only say non-disturbing things, to not rock the boat. They won't tell you about their sponsors -- corporate polluters -- poisoning your children, not a word. They won't tell you that the sponsor's car is a deathtrap, likely to roll over or explode in flames. They won't tell you that their sponsor cheats its own employees out of their retirement funds and health insurance. They won't say anything about their sponsors feeding your children pesticide- or herbicide-contaminated or genetically-altered food, not a word. That would be making trouble.
So just how beautiful are those beautiful people, really? Are you sure you want to be like them?
Nevertheless, those images are still extremely attractive, aren't they?
Years ago, there was a rather iconoclastic Commissioner of the FCC named Nicholas Johnson who said that there was a lot more on TV than met the eye. He observed that furniture polish commercials actually sell expensive hardwood furniture as well as the polish. They imply that your life will somehow be happier, more elegant, genteel, and cultured, if you have a beautiful house full of the kind of furniture that requires furniture polish.
So, as you watch TV, watch how they are trying to program your mind. Watch what they are really selling. Notice what they are selling, besides what they seem to be selling.
As a defense, don't watch so much TV. And even if you are an addicted media junkie, you can still watch video tapes instead of channels with commercials. That way you, not they, control your information input. Oh, and Public Television isn't so bad, either.
Read the web page on Propaganda Techniques several times. It helps to understand and recognize the stunts they pull on you and the mind games they play on your head to get you to accept certain ideas and beliefs.
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Secret Agent Orange working with www.AAdeprogramming.com
Last updated 7 December 2002.
The most recent version of this file can be found at http://www.geocities.com/ageorange/
Copyright © 2002, A. Orange
I find this article quite interesting. A. Orange
How To Deprogram Your Own Mind
by A. Orange
Recognize that programming is everywhere, and it isn't all bad. Your programming started with your parents teaching you things, and both consciously and unconsciously programming you with all of their beliefs and attitudes. That is not necessarily bad -- it is usually good. You are better off for having had parents who cared about you and wanted to teach you. But unfortunately, you also inherited all of their misinformation, superstitions, mistakes, and irrational and untrue beliefs.
And you also inherited your "culture", which includes all of the false, irrational, and wrong beliefs of your entire society. And you are left with the job of figuring out which of those beliefs are good and true, and which are stupid and crazy.
And you are always vulnerable to pressure from your peer group, which will always try to make you conform to their beliefs, standards, and behavior, even if your friends are not even really aware of the fact that they are doing it.
Recognize that programming and deprogramming are constant, on-going processes. Even while you are trying to deprogram and clear your mind, television commercials will be trying to program you into believing that you really should buy their product; you will be so happy if you do, and you'll be beautiful and get laid too. And the politicians will always be trying to make you believe that they are wise and right about everything, and if you are patriotic you will never criticize them.
Want to know the truth. This is essential. This is the whole ball game. If you don't want to learn the truth, you probably won't.
Love the truth, even if it is sometimes inconvenient or unpleasant. Respect the truth, cherish the truth, seek the truth above all.
People stay trapped in cults, or trapped in illusions, because they don't really want to know the truth:
Sometimes, they are afraid to know the truth --
They fear that their world will fall apart if they stop believing certain things, or admit the truth of other things. That is one of the beliefs with which they got programmed -- the idea that if they don't believe the right things, they will go to Hell, or they will lose their ticket to Heaven, or something else really bad will happen to them. One of the things that cults do is implant phobias about leaving the cult, or learning the truth about the cult.
They are afraid of losing their status or membership in the group -- they are afraid that they will be shunned and ostracized if they don't believe the same things as the other people around them.
They fear that they will have to leave the cult if they stop believing in it, and they will stop believing in it if they learn a bunch of negative things about it. ("Then what will I do with my life?!") So they plug their ears and close their eyes, and play "Hear no evil, see no evil..."
Some people just don't want to see that they were fooled.
"I refuse to believe that I spent twelve years of my life in a cult. It isn't a cult. It can't be a cult. It's a wonderful movement."
As they say, "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt."
Some people just don't want to give it up.
"If I leave the group, I will be lonely because I won't have any friends. So shut up and quit telling me disturbing things about it."
"I have lots of time invested here. I'm a respected elder. If I quit the organization, I'll be a nobody."
Don't condemn yourself. Self-condemnation and self-criticism are part of the brain-washing and indoctrination process, and they are counter-productive when it comes to deprogramming. If you find that you have been programmed to believe some goofy idea, then just recognize that it is an irrational, illogical, goofy idea, and reject it, but do not condemn yourself for having believed it for a while.
It's just like, if, while exploring the Wild West, you find that you have an arrow stuck in your back, pull it out.
Don't wallow in self-contempt and guilt, condemning yourself for having stupidly gotten an arrow stuck in your back.
Don't imagine that you are somehow all fucked up for having gotten stuck with an arrow.
Don't imagine that finding an arrow stuck in your back proves that you are somehow inferior.
Just pull the arrow out and then get on with your life.
Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't examine your behavior, and change it if you are doing something wrong. But be wary of excessive fault-finding and self-criticism. Cults will teach you to do that, and will even try to convince you that you will make yourself more holy by constantly condemning yourself and putting yourself down and feeling guilty about everything. All that really accomplishes is messing up your mind, destroying your self-confidence and self-respect, and making you unable to think clearly or act decisively.
Watch out for other people condemning you.
People who want to control you will try to make you feel stupid, inferior, flawed, and mentally incompetent for disagreeing with them.
As mentioned above, self-condemnation and self-criticism are a big part of the brain-washing and indoctrination process, so those who would like to control you would also like to get you criticizing yourself and being down on yourself. And Margaret Thaler Singer added that inducing feelings of powerlessness, covert fear, guilt, and dependency in the victims was also a part of the brainwashing process.
So don't let them make you believe that you are flawed and inferior. When someone is reading your beads and listing your faults, it almost always means that they want to control you -- to change your behavior to something that they want.
Also watch out for other people trying to clip your wings, and keep you from being your whole self.
For example, one of the commonest crippling stunts that cults or churches pull on people is demanding that they not feel their feelings. "You must only feel Eternal Bliss" or "You must only feel Serenity and Gratitude". Anger, especially anger at the evils of the cult and its leaders, is supposedly very bad.
Bill Wilson wrote:
It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also. But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about "justifiable" anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self-righteous folk? For us in A.A. these are dangerous exceptions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William Wilson, page 90.
What rot. You are wrong to get mad when somebody hurts you or commits crimes against you? Such anger should be "left to those better qualified to handle it"? And just who is that?
Nobody.
All it means is, you can't feel your anger. You have to "stuff your feelings."
Pseudo-religious garbage like that will do a good job of crippling you, and keeping you from making trouble for your oppressors.
Likewise, some churches or cults will tell you that you shouldn't feel horny, or find the opposite sex attractive, or think about sex with them. Nonsense. You brain is hardwired to think about it and want it -- That's what keeps the human race going. We would be extinct if we could be logical and rational about sex and having children. "Too much bother; a big hassle; too expensive..." But logic has nothing to do with it, and that's why we are still here.
Another common crippling stunt that cults pull on their members is demanding that members stop thinking critically -- stop what they call "having doubts":
"If you are really holy, then you won't have any doubts."
Nonsense. Normal, sane, healthy people have lots of doubts when con-men and phony holy men try to foist a stupid illogical hoax on them. Those doubts are your remaining sanity warning you that something sounds fishy.
Similarly, cults and other mind-manipulators will tell you that you cannot trust your own mind and your own thinking (so you should let them do your thinking for you). If you buy into that idea, it will really cripple you. You won't be able to think anything without also thinking that it must be wrong, because you thought it. (But then the thought that your thinking is wrong should also be wrong... So your thinking must be right...)
Beware of wanting to believe.
On the TV show "The X-Files", Mulder had a poster on the wall of his office that said, "I Want To Believe". That's okay for the X-Files and stories about flying saucers, but it leads to disaster in real life.
Instead of wanting to believe, want to know the truth.
Wanting to believe is perhaps the most powerful dynamic initiating and sustaining cult-like behavior.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 137.
Billy Graham says that everyone really wants to believe in a dogmatic, fascist religion:
"The world longs for authority, finality, and conclusiveness. It is weary of theological floundering and uncertainty. Belief exhilarates the human spirit; doubt depresses."
Billy Graham
quoted in Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America's Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, page 144.
Also see: The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 143.
Certainty (as Billy Graham testified) is one of the great benefits of [dogmatic] religious belief.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 144.
Watch out for self-deceptive ego games.
For example, in some cults or religions, they will flatter you and tell you that you are very important, and involved in very important work, doing the Will of the Lord, ushering in the Millenium, saving the world, if you believe what they say and do what they say. But if you buy into their game, it is you who is allowing yourself to be deceived, and it's you who is enjoying the big ego game.
Part of the attraction of believing the leader's views and actions to be of paramount importance is that the follower's own sense of importance is heightened.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 67.
"If the leader and his religion are saving the world, and I follow the leader, then I am saving the world, which makes me very good and very important."
Conversely, if someone criticizes the cult, its leader, or its teachings, then that reflects badly on the member. If the cult member believes the criticisms to be true, then he will go from being a noble savior of the world to being just a foolish follower of an evil charlatan. So the member has a vested interest in rejecting any criticism of the group or its leader -- all based on his own egotism. Thus he will resist learning the truth, out of purely selfish interests.
Beware of comparing apples and oranges.
Beware of equating things that are not equal.
For example, many people say that they really like the A.A. program because it is such a wonderful social club with such brotherhood and fellowship. Excuse me, but it is supposed to be an alcoholism treatment program. They seem to forget that it doesn't actually work to cure alcoholism, and just proclaim that it's great because they like the social life, the brotherhood and the "spirituality". That's mixing apples and oranges. When I go to the doctor to get some medical care, I don't expect a big party in the waiting room. I just go get the pills, and go home. If I want a party, I go someplace else.
Watch your own mind.
Watch your thoughts, attitudes, and slogans.
Also watch your desires and fears.
This is the heart of the deprogramming program. This is a constant, never-ending task. Watch your mind all day long, or as much as you can remember to.
You have to not only watch what people are telling you, but watch how you react to it, and what it makes happen inside your head. Watch what you are thinking, and if you can, understand why you are thinking that.
Notice your desires, and how certain statements can arouse them. I'm not knocking desires, or asking you to. Just look at them and make a note of what it is you actually want: love, approval, status, power, sex, wealth, possessions, knowledge, wisdom, compassion, virtue, goodness, whatever. Then notice how certain ideas or statements can arouse certain desires. And then notice how some people (especially politicians) are skilled in tossing out buzz-words, phrases, and slogans that will arouse certain desires in you. They are messing with your mind by manipulating your feelings.
Likewise, watch your fears, and see how politicians and preachers are good at arousing them to manipulate your thinking.
"If you don't suspend the Bill of Rights and let the Homeland Security Force violate everybody's privacy and spy on everybody, then the nasty Arabs will get you."
"If you don't give the oil billionaires a big tax cut, and let them drill for oil in every wilderness and wildlife preserve in the world, then they will go broke and run out of oil and you will freeze in the dark."
"If you don't believe all this stuff, and give your money to the preacher man, then God will get mad at you and you will go to Hell."
Watch out for commonly-accepted fallacies -- the things that "everybody knows" are true, but which aren't.
For example, it is commonly accepted that alcoholics can't or won't quit drinking until they "bottom out" or "hit bottom". That is completely untrue. People quit at all stages of alcoholism; some even quit before they could even be called alcoholics, because they see a nasty problem starting to develop.
So how did the idea that alcoholics must hit bottom come to be such a universally-accepted piece of folklore? Well, what happened is Bill Wilson found that ordinary, relatively-sane people wouldn't join his cult religion or believe in his grandiose, bombastic sermons, or accept his brain-damaged superstitious nonsense. Only the really sick, frightened, dying people who were desperately grabbing at anything that might save their lives would swallow Wilson's bullshit. So Wilson made up a story about how alcoholics can't really quit drinking and start to recover until they hit bottom and "the lash of alcoholism drives them to A.A." (see: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 24). A.A. members have been spreading that little piece of misinformation for the last 60 years, and now, everybody who thinks he knows something about alcoholism repeats it. But it is still untrue.
You can find plenty of similar examples, everywhere. The common wisdom often isn't.
Read Kasl and Sagan:
Charlotte Kasl "Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps",
and
Carl Sagan "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark".
What those two books have in common is that they both push common sense and logic, and leave me with a sort of positive, upbeat feeling. They will help to clear things up and put some good ideas in your head.
Understand the games that the mind-programmers and brainwashers play on people's heads, and the techniques that they use for mind-control
For instance, there is the phenomenon called "cognitive dissonance". What it means is: People want to keep all of their beliefs, actions, thoughts, and feelings in harmony with each other. People want to do what they believe is right and good, and if they do otherwise, they feel bad -- they feel "dissonance". The "dissonance" is just like musical dissonance -- it feels jarring and discordant and wrong.
Brainwashers have discovered that they can use cognitive dissonance to change people's behavior, beliefs, feelings, and thoughts -- force a change in one, and the others will follow. If you force people to perform certain actions, they will eventually come to believe that it's okay -- it must be okay, because they wouldn't want to be doing bad things all of the time. If you force people to say something out loud to a group over and over again, the speakers will eventually come to believe that it is true, because they don't want to feel like they are habitual liars. The subconscious mind's solution to the problem is: believe that it is all true, so now there is no conflict. (That's why A.A. instructs newcomers to "Fake It Until You Make It.")
Since we normally only reveal our innermost, most embarrassing and damaging secrets to our closest and most trusted friends, if we confess everything to a room full of strangers, then cognitive dissonance kicks in, and our subconscious minds will start to assume that those people must really be our closest, most-trusted, friends. That eliminates the conflict over having told embarrassing personal secrets to a bunch of complete strangers. Our feelings will actually change so that we feel much closer to those people. Organizations like Werner Erhard's "est" scam, Alcoholics Anonymous, and various cult churches use this technique to create feelings of instant closeness, "brotherhood", and "fellowship" among the members of a group.
Likewise, if you force people to perform horrible acts, like kill Jews in a concentration camp, then the killers will change their beliefs about the victims to make their actions okay, and will eventually come to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong after all. "It isn't really murder because they aren't really people. They are enemies of the state, and need to be eliminated. They have it coming for what the Jews did to us. They are a threat to us, and must be eliminated." That stunt usually (but not always) works even if the killers had originally thought that Jews were okay people. (A small, seldom-mentioned detail of history is that not all German soldiers could stomach killing the Jews. Some soldiers had to be transferred out of the concentration camps because they were going nuts just from seeing all of the Jews killed.)
A recent movie showed how the Nazis would pick out some Jews to act as workers in the concentration camps, forcing them to manage the other Jews who were being herded into the gas chambers. Those worker Jews would of course experience horrible conflicts over their job of helping to kill their fellow Jews, but cognitive dissonance would kick in, and they would end up seeing everything in terms of proper order, proper behavior, and proper functioning: "A Jew who makes a fuss and disrupts the efficient workings of the gas chambers is a trouble-maker and a bad Jew. Good Jews should just go along with the procedure and not make any trouble."
Break the exclusivity of information input.
Avoid getting all of your information from just one group or one source. (Any one source. Don't trust anybody that much.) Examine both (or all) sides of an issue. Don't let anyone dictate what you may read, see, or hear. One of the most powerful tools that cults or Communists use to brainwash people is information control -- preventing the victims from getting any information contrary to the brainwashing.
Recognize that three different people who all say the same thing is not necessarily three different sources of information. For example, the evening news programs of NBC, ABC, and CBS may all tell you exactly the same story, just parroting the information that was just released by the White House. Also, the corporate owners of the networks often keep Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather from telling the ugly truths or asking the hard questions. (They similarly muzzled the New York Times, and kept it from reporting how Gov. Jeb Bush rigged the election in Florida in 2000, so such problems are everywhere.) Sometimes, National Public Radio or Public Television will tell you something else, but sometimes you may have to go on the Internet and check out BBC or the London Times to get the other side of the story. (And also check out Canada and Sydney, Australia, and New Delhi, India while you are at it. They speak English, too.)
Break self-programming.
People often get programmed to program themselves:
Think about the guy who is always playing "motivational" tapes that will supposedly teach you how to get rich quick or build up your self-esteem or something... Now lots of cults are into it too, and they have a set of tapes for you.
And then there are the people who are always reading the same book or small set of books over and over again, as if those books held all of the wisdom in the world.
Then there are people who just constantly repeat slogans, which effectively stops them from actually thinking.
And there are some people who practice meditation or chanting constantly, reprogramming themselves and stopping rational thought, all day, every day. (Note that meditation and chanting can be good things, but phony gurus teach people to use them excessively, as mind-control tools.)
And then there are meetings, services, and get-togethers. Churches and cults have church services and "Bible study" and socials, and A.A. and Amway have a meeting for every occasion. Note that this is a matter of frequency, and of how much time they take out of your life. One church service a week is normal for all churches, but when someone tells you to do "90 meetings in 90 days", or to come to chanting or meditation or prayer or Bible study sessions every single day, then the warning bells should be going off in your head. And you should be hearing klaxon horns and air raid sirens when people brag about doing three meetings per day.
And then there is denial and rationalization. Some people will endlessly deny or rationalize every negative thing they hear about their leader or their church or cult (or their corporation or their political party, or whatever). They will never actually let a contrary idea get into their heads.
-- Which leads to self-censorship. Some people censor their own minds, and will not even allow themselves to think one forbidden thought. So of course they stay programmed.
TV Commercials sell you images, and they are very powerful. Watch out. They tell you that you will be beautiful and sexually attractive if you look like their images.
"You want to buy these clothes, and style your hair like this, and wear these glasses, and lose weight, and make your waist narrower and your boobs bigger, if you are a female. And if you are a male, you will want to flash the cash and drive this kind of a car, and buy this kind of a house so that you can move in a trophy wife..."
They are selling you images of "the beautiful people". After a while, you will start to feel like there must be something wrong with you if you don't look and act like the people on TV. And you will start to think you must be a weirdo if you don't believe and say what the people on TV believe and say. But the beautiful people on TV are paid to only say non-disturbing things, to not rock the boat. They won't tell you about their sponsors -- corporate polluters -- poisoning your children, not a word. They won't tell you that the sponsor's car is a deathtrap, likely to roll over or explode in flames. They won't tell you that their sponsor cheats its own employees out of their retirement funds and health insurance. They won't say anything about their sponsors feeding your children pesticide- or herbicide-contaminated or genetically-altered food, not a word. That would be making trouble.
So just how beautiful are those beautiful people, really? Are you sure you want to be like them?
Nevertheless, those images are still extremely attractive, aren't they?
Years ago, there was a rather iconoclastic Commissioner of the FCC named Nicholas Johnson who said that there was a lot more on TV than met the eye. He observed that furniture polish commercials actually sell expensive hardwood furniture as well as the polish. They imply that your life will somehow be happier, more elegant, genteel, and cultured, if you have a beautiful house full of the kind of furniture that requires furniture polish.
So, as you watch TV, watch how they are trying to program your mind. Watch what they are really selling. Notice what they are selling, besides what they seem to be selling.
As a defense, don't watch so much TV. And even if you are an addicted media junkie, you can still watch video tapes instead of channels with commercials. That way you, not they, control your information input. Oh, and Public Television isn't so bad, either.
Read the web page on Propaganda Techniques several times. It helps to understand and recognize the stunts they pull on you and the mind games they play on your head to get you to accept certain ideas and beliefs.
Click Fruit for Menu
Secret Agent Orange working with www.AAdeprogramming.com
Last updated 7 December 2002.
The most recent version of this file can be found at http://www.geocities.com/ageorange/
Copyright © 2002, A. Orange
How To Deprogram Your Own Mind
by A. Orange
Recognize that programming is everywhere, and it isn't all bad. Your programming started with your parents teaching you things, and both consciously and unconsciously programming you with all of their beliefs and attitudes. That is not necessarily bad -- it is usually good. You are better off for having had parents who cared about you and wanted to teach you. But unfortunately, you also inherited all of their misinformation, superstitions, mistakes, and irrational and untrue beliefs.
And you also inherited your "culture", which includes all of the false, irrational, and wrong beliefs of your entire society. And you are left with the job of figuring out which of those beliefs are good and true, and which are stupid and crazy.
And you are always vulnerable to pressure from your peer group, which will always try to make you conform to their beliefs, standards, and behavior, even if your friends are not even really aware of the fact that they are doing it.
Recognize that programming and deprogramming are constant, on-going processes. Even while you are trying to deprogram and clear your mind, television commercials will be trying to program you into believing that you really should buy their product; you will be so happy if you do, and you'll be beautiful and get laid too. And the politicians will always be trying to make you believe that they are wise and right about everything, and if you are patriotic you will never criticize them.
Want to know the truth. This is essential. This is the whole ball game. If you don't want to learn the truth, you probably won't.
Love the truth, even if it is sometimes inconvenient or unpleasant. Respect the truth, cherish the truth, seek the truth above all.
People stay trapped in cults, or trapped in illusions, because they don't really want to know the truth:
Sometimes, they are afraid to know the truth --
They fear that their world will fall apart if they stop believing certain things, or admit the truth of other things. That is one of the beliefs with which they got programmed -- the idea that if they don't believe the right things, they will go to Hell, or they will lose their ticket to Heaven, or something else really bad will happen to them. One of the things that cults do is implant phobias about leaving the cult, or learning the truth about the cult.
They are afraid of losing their status or membership in the group -- they are afraid that they will be shunned and ostracized if they don't believe the same things as the other people around them.
They fear that they will have to leave the cult if they stop believing in it, and they will stop believing in it if they learn a bunch of negative things about it. ("Then what will I do with my life?!") So they plug their ears and close their eyes, and play "Hear no evil, see no evil..."
Some people just don't want to see that they were fooled.
"I refuse to believe that I spent twelve years of my life in a cult. It isn't a cult. It can't be a cult. It's a wonderful movement."
As they say, "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt."
Some people just don't want to give it up.
"If I leave the group, I will be lonely because I won't have any friends. So shut up and quit telling me disturbing things about it."
"I have lots of time invested here. I'm a respected elder. If I quit the organization, I'll be a nobody."
Don't condemn yourself. Self-condemnation and self-criticism are part of the brain-washing and indoctrination process, and they are counter-productive when it comes to deprogramming. If you find that you have been programmed to believe some goofy idea, then just recognize that it is an irrational, illogical, goofy idea, and reject it, but do not condemn yourself for having believed it for a while.
It's just like, if, while exploring the Wild West, you find that you have an arrow stuck in your back, pull it out.
Don't wallow in self-contempt and guilt, condemning yourself for having stupidly gotten an arrow stuck in your back.
Don't imagine that you are somehow all fucked up for having gotten stuck with an arrow.
Don't imagine that finding an arrow stuck in your back proves that you are somehow inferior.
Just pull the arrow out and then get on with your life.
Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't examine your behavior, and change it if you are doing something wrong. But be wary of excessive fault-finding and self-criticism. Cults will teach you to do that, and will even try to convince you that you will make yourself more holy by constantly condemning yourself and putting yourself down and feeling guilty about everything. All that really accomplishes is messing up your mind, destroying your self-confidence and self-respect, and making you unable to think clearly or act decisively.
Watch out for other people condemning you.
People who want to control you will try to make you feel stupid, inferior, flawed, and mentally incompetent for disagreeing with them.
As mentioned above, self-condemnation and self-criticism are a big part of the brain-washing and indoctrination process, so those who would like to control you would also like to get you criticizing yourself and being down on yourself. And Margaret Thaler Singer added that inducing feelings of powerlessness, covert fear, guilt, and dependency in the victims was also a part of the brainwashing process.
So don't let them make you believe that you are flawed and inferior. When someone is reading your beads and listing your faults, it almost always means that they want to control you -- to change your behavior to something that they want.
Also watch out for other people trying to clip your wings, and keep you from being your whole self.
For example, one of the commonest crippling stunts that cults or churches pull on people is demanding that they not feel their feelings. "You must only feel Eternal Bliss" or "You must only feel Serenity and Gratitude". Anger, especially anger at the evils of the cult and its leaders, is supposedly very bad.
Bill Wilson wrote:
It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also. But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about "justifiable" anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self-righteous folk? For us in A.A. these are dangerous exceptions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William Wilson, page 90.
What rot. You are wrong to get mad when somebody hurts you or commits crimes against you? Such anger should be "left to those better qualified to handle it"? And just who is that?
Nobody.
All it means is, you can't feel your anger. You have to "stuff your feelings."
Pseudo-religious garbage like that will do a good job of crippling you, and keeping you from making trouble for your oppressors.
Likewise, some churches or cults will tell you that you shouldn't feel horny, or find the opposite sex attractive, or think about sex with them. Nonsense. You brain is hardwired to think about it and want it -- That's what keeps the human race going. We would be extinct if we could be logical and rational about sex and having children. "Too much bother; a big hassle; too expensive..." But logic has nothing to do with it, and that's why we are still here.
Another common crippling stunt that cults pull on their members is demanding that members stop thinking critically -- stop what they call "having doubts":
"If you are really holy, then you won't have any doubts."
Nonsense. Normal, sane, healthy people have lots of doubts when con-men and phony holy men try to foist a stupid illogical hoax on them. Those doubts are your remaining sanity warning you that something sounds fishy.
Similarly, cults and other mind-manipulators will tell you that you cannot trust your own mind and your own thinking (so you should let them do your thinking for you). If you buy into that idea, it will really cripple you. You won't be able to think anything without also thinking that it must be wrong, because you thought it. (But then the thought that your thinking is wrong should also be wrong... So your thinking must be right...)
Beware of wanting to believe.
On the TV show "The X-Files", Mulder had a poster on the wall of his office that said, "I Want To Believe". That's okay for the X-Files and stories about flying saucers, but it leads to disaster in real life.
Instead of wanting to believe, want to know the truth.
Wanting to believe is perhaps the most powerful dynamic initiating and sustaining cult-like behavior.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 137.
Billy Graham says that everyone really wants to believe in a dogmatic, fascist religion:
"The world longs for authority, finality, and conclusiveness. It is weary of theological floundering and uncertainty. Belief exhilarates the human spirit; doubt depresses."
Billy Graham
quoted in Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America's Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, page 144.
Also see: The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 143.
Certainty (as Billy Graham testified) is one of the great benefits of [dogmatic] religious belief.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 144.
Watch out for self-deceptive ego games.
For example, in some cults or religions, they will flatter you and tell you that you are very important, and involved in very important work, doing the Will of the Lord, ushering in the Millenium, saving the world, if you believe what they say and do what they say. But if you buy into their game, it is you who is allowing yourself to be deceived, and it's you who is enjoying the big ego game.
Part of the attraction of believing the leader's views and actions to be of paramount importance is that the follower's own sense of importance is heightened.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 67.
"If the leader and his religion are saving the world, and I follow the leader, then I am saving the world, which makes me very good and very important."
Conversely, if someone criticizes the cult, its leader, or its teachings, then that reflects badly on the member. If the cult member believes the criticisms to be true, then he will go from being a noble savior of the world to being just a foolish follower of an evil charlatan. So the member has a vested interest in rejecting any criticism of the group or its leader -- all based on his own egotism. Thus he will resist learning the truth, out of purely selfish interests.
Beware of comparing apples and oranges.
Beware of equating things that are not equal.
For example, many people say that they really like the A.A. program because it is such a wonderful social club with such brotherhood and fellowship. Excuse me, but it is supposed to be an alcoholism treatment program. They seem to forget that it doesn't actually work to cure alcoholism, and just proclaim that it's great because they like the social life, the brotherhood and the "spirituality". That's mixing apples and oranges. When I go to the doctor to get some medical care, I don't expect a big party in the waiting room. I just go get the pills, and go home. If I want a party, I go someplace else.
Watch your own mind.
Watch your thoughts, attitudes, and slogans.
Also watch your desires and fears.
This is the heart of the deprogramming program. This is a constant, never-ending task. Watch your mind all day long, or as much as you can remember to.
You have to not only watch what people are telling you, but watch how you react to it, and what it makes happen inside your head. Watch what you are thinking, and if you can, understand why you are thinking that.
Notice your desires, and how certain statements can arouse them. I'm not knocking desires, or asking you to. Just look at them and make a note of what it is you actually want: love, approval, status, power, sex, wealth, possessions, knowledge, wisdom, compassion, virtue, goodness, whatever. Then notice how certain ideas or statements can arouse certain desires. And then notice how some people (especially politicians) are skilled in tossing out buzz-words, phrases, and slogans that will arouse certain desires in you. They are messing with your mind by manipulating your feelings.
Likewise, watch your fears, and see how politicians and preachers are good at arousing them to manipulate your thinking.
"If you don't suspend the Bill of Rights and let the Homeland Security Force violate everybody's privacy and spy on everybody, then the nasty Arabs will get you."
"If you don't give the oil billionaires a big tax cut, and let them drill for oil in every wilderness and wildlife preserve in the world, then they will go broke and run out of oil and you will freeze in the dark."
"If you don't believe all this stuff, and give your money to the preacher man, then God will get mad at you and you will go to Hell."
Watch out for commonly-accepted fallacies -- the things that "everybody knows" are true, but which aren't.
For example, it is commonly accepted that alcoholics can't or won't quit drinking until they "bottom out" or "hit bottom". That is completely untrue. People quit at all stages of alcoholism; some even quit before they could even be called alcoholics, because they see a nasty problem starting to develop.
So how did the idea that alcoholics must hit bottom come to be such a universally-accepted piece of folklore? Well, what happened is Bill Wilson found that ordinary, relatively-sane people wouldn't join his cult religion or believe in his grandiose, bombastic sermons, or accept his brain-damaged superstitious nonsense. Only the really sick, frightened, dying people who were desperately grabbing at anything that might save their lives would swallow Wilson's bullshit. So Wilson made up a story about how alcoholics can't really quit drinking and start to recover until they hit bottom and "the lash of alcoholism drives them to A.A." (see: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 24). A.A. members have been spreading that little piece of misinformation for the last 60 years, and now, everybody who thinks he knows something about alcoholism repeats it. But it is still untrue.
You can find plenty of similar examples, everywhere. The common wisdom often isn't.
Read Kasl and Sagan:
Charlotte Kasl "Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps",
and
Carl Sagan "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark".
What those two books have in common is that they both push common sense and logic, and leave me with a sort of positive, upbeat feeling. They will help to clear things up and put some good ideas in your head.
Understand the games that the mind-programmers and brainwashers play on people's heads, and the techniques that they use for mind-control
For instance, there is the phenomenon called "cognitive dissonance". What it means is: People want to keep all of their beliefs, actions, thoughts, and feelings in harmony with each other. People want to do what they believe is right and good, and if they do otherwise, they feel bad -- they feel "dissonance". The "dissonance" is just like musical dissonance -- it feels jarring and discordant and wrong.
Brainwashers have discovered that they can use cognitive dissonance to change people's behavior, beliefs, feelings, and thoughts -- force a change in one, and the others will follow. If you force people to perform certain actions, they will eventually come to believe that it's okay -- it must be okay, because they wouldn't want to be doing bad things all of the time. If you force people to say something out loud to a group over and over again, the speakers will eventually come to believe that it is true, because they don't want to feel like they are habitual liars. The subconscious mind's solution to the problem is: believe that it is all true, so now there is no conflict. (That's why A.A. instructs newcomers to "Fake It Until You Make It.")
Since we normally only reveal our innermost, most embarrassing and damaging secrets to our closest and most trusted friends, if we confess everything to a room full of strangers, then cognitive dissonance kicks in, and our subconscious minds will start to assume that those people must really be our closest, most-trusted, friends. That eliminates the conflict over having told embarrassing personal secrets to a bunch of complete strangers. Our feelings will actually change so that we feel much closer to those people. Organizations like Werner Erhard's "est" scam, Alcoholics Anonymous, and various cult churches use this technique to create feelings of instant closeness, "brotherhood", and "fellowship" among the members of a group.
Likewise, if you force people to perform horrible acts, like kill Jews in a concentration camp, then the killers will change their beliefs about the victims to make their actions okay, and will eventually come to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong after all. "It isn't really murder because they aren't really people. They are enemies of the state, and need to be eliminated. They have it coming for what the Jews did to us. They are a threat to us, and must be eliminated." That stunt usually (but not always) works even if the killers had originally thought that Jews were okay people. (A small, seldom-mentioned detail of history is that not all German soldiers could stomach killing the Jews. Some soldiers had to be transferred out of the concentration camps because they were going nuts just from seeing all of the Jews killed.)
A recent movie showed how the Nazis would pick out some Jews to act as workers in the concentration camps, forcing them to manage the other Jews who were being herded into the gas chambers. Those worker Jews would of course experience horrible conflicts over their job of helping to kill their fellow Jews, but cognitive dissonance would kick in, and they would end up seeing everything in terms of proper order, proper behavior, and proper functioning: "A Jew who makes a fuss and disrupts the efficient workings of the gas chambers is a trouble-maker and a bad Jew. Good Jews should just go along with the procedure and not make any trouble."
Break the exclusivity of information input.
Avoid getting all of your information from just one group or one source. (Any one source. Don't trust anybody that much.) Examine both (or all) sides of an issue. Don't let anyone dictate what you may read, see, or hear. One of the most powerful tools that cults or Communists use to brainwash people is information control -- preventing the victims from getting any information contrary to the brainwashing.
Recognize that three different people who all say the same thing is not necessarily three different sources of information. For example, the evening news programs of NBC, ABC, and CBS may all tell you exactly the same story, just parroting the information that was just released by the White House. Also, the corporate owners of the networks often keep Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather from telling the ugly truths or asking the hard questions. (They similarly muzzled the New York Times, and kept it from reporting how Gov. Jeb Bush rigged the election in Florida in 2000, so such problems are everywhere.) Sometimes, National Public Radio or Public Television will tell you something else, but sometimes you may have to go on the Internet and check out BBC or the London Times to get the other side of the story. (And also check out Canada and Sydney, Australia, and New Delhi, India while you are at it. They speak English, too.)
Break self-programming.
People often get programmed to program themselves:
Think about the guy who is always playing "motivational" tapes that will supposedly teach you how to get rich quick or build up your self-esteem or something... Now lots of cults are into it too, and they have a set of tapes for you.
And then there are the people who are always reading the same book or small set of books over and over again, as if those books held all of the wisdom in the world.
Then there are people who just constantly repeat slogans, which effectively stops them from actually thinking.
And there are some people who practice meditation or chanting constantly, reprogramming themselves and stopping rational thought, all day, every day. (Note that meditation and chanting can be good things, but phony gurus teach people to use them excessively, as mind-control tools.)
And then there are meetings, services, and get-togethers. Churches and cults have church services and "Bible study" and socials, and A.A. and Amway have a meeting for every occasion. Note that this is a matter of frequency, and of how much time they take out of your life. One church service a week is normal for all churches, but when someone tells you to do "90 meetings in 90 days", or to come to chanting or meditation or prayer or Bible study sessions every single day, then the warning bells should be going off in your head. And you should be hearing klaxon horns and air raid sirens when people brag about doing three meetings per day.
And then there is denial and rationalization. Some people will endlessly deny or rationalize every negative thing they hear about their leader or their church or cult (or their corporation or their political party, or whatever). They will never actually let a contrary idea get into their heads.
-- Which leads to self-censorship. Some people censor their own minds, and will not even allow themselves to think one forbidden thought. So of course they stay programmed.
TV Commercials sell you images, and they are very powerful. Watch out. They tell you that you will be beautiful and sexually attractive if you look like their images.
"You want to buy these clothes, and style your hair like this, and wear these glasses, and lose weight, and make your waist narrower and your boobs bigger, if you are a female. And if you are a male, you will want to flash the cash and drive this kind of a car, and buy this kind of a house so that you can move in a trophy wife..."
They are selling you images of "the beautiful people". After a while, you will start to feel like there must be something wrong with you if you don't look and act like the people on TV. And you will start to think you must be a weirdo if you don't believe and say what the people on TV believe and say. But the beautiful people on TV are paid to only say non-disturbing things, to not rock the boat. They won't tell you about their sponsors -- corporate polluters -- poisoning your children, not a word. They won't tell you that the sponsor's car is a deathtrap, likely to roll over or explode in flames. They won't tell you that their sponsor cheats its own employees out of their retirement funds and health insurance. They won't say anything about their sponsors feeding your children pesticide- or herbicide-contaminated or genetically-altered food, not a word. That would be making trouble.
So just how beautiful are those beautiful people, really? Are you sure you want to be like them?
Nevertheless, those images are still extremely attractive, aren't they?
Years ago, there was a rather iconoclastic Commissioner of the FCC named Nicholas Johnson who said that there was a lot more on TV than met the eye. He observed that furniture polish commercials actually sell expensive hardwood furniture as well as the polish. They imply that your life will somehow be happier, more elegant, genteel, and cultured, if you have a beautiful house full of the kind of furniture that requires furniture polish.
So, as you watch TV, watch how they are trying to program your mind. Watch what they are really selling. Notice what they are selling, besides what they seem to be selling.
As a defense, don't watch so much TV. And even if you are an addicted media junkie, you can still watch video tapes instead of channels with commercials. That way you, not they, control your information input. Oh, and Public Television isn't so bad, either.
Read the web page on Propaganda Techniques several times. It helps to understand and recognize the stunts they pull on you and the mind games they play on your head to get you to accept certain ideas and beliefs.
Click Fruit for Menu
Secret Agent Orange working with www.AAdeprogramming.com
Last updated 7 December 2002.
The most recent version of this file can be found at http://www.geocities.com/ageorange/
Copyright © 2002, A. Orange
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Germans Call 9/11 a "Reichstag"
This rap video is actually pretty good. They think that 911 was an inside job. What do you think?
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Lou Dobbs calls for a new investigation of 9/11!
Is the government's credibility lost as a result of 9/11?
Do you think that more debate is needed on 9/11?
Do you think that more debate is needed on 9/11?
Good Video Explanation about 9/11
Has everyone had a chance to see this video? I don't understand why questions are not being answered about 9/11?
Friday, August 29, 2008
A Debate About the War on Terror
What is your view about this video? Is there any truth to this at all?
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Alex Jones Confronts Michelle Malkin at DNC
Does Michelle Malkin really support torture and to round up Americans and put us in camps?
Friday, August 22, 2008
Flight 93 Landed at Clevend Hopkins Airport?
Has anyone seen this video about flight 93? I didn't realize that it really landed in Ohio and Mayor Michael R. White gave a speech saying that there was a bomb on board this aircraft:
The Brits are Waking Up!
It looks like the Brits are starting to wake up too. They realize that the television is all about deception and lies of the MSM and others:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2600676/Three-in-four-dont-trust-television.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2600676/Three-in-four-dont-trust-television.html
Telling the Truth or Deception?
How could CeeCee's husband have talked to her if she only left a message on his phone when she supposedly only called once with a cell phone (which is not possible) on the plane during the hijacking? This is obviously a deception.
Debunking NIST's Conclusions
Here's a good explanation about WTC 7 and NIST's latest report:
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/08/debunking-nists-conclusions-about-wtc-7.html
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/08/debunking-nists-conclusions-about-wtc-7.html
Sam's MySpace
Has anyone seen this guy's myspace? What are your thoughts about his myspace material?
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=14162455
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=14162455
Friday, August 15, 2008
Media Mind Control - Two Screens, Two Pills
The media is completely sold out!
An explanation about brain chemistry and the television:
An explanation about brain chemistry and the television:
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Vaccine Awakening Blog
Has anyone seen this vaccine blog? I think that Barbara Fisher is doing a great job reporting the vaccine issues in this blog:
http://vaccineawakening.blogspot.com/
http://vaccineawakening.blogspot.com/
Friday, August 8, 2008
The FBI has Concluded That Barbara Never Called Ted
What's going on with this story. I'd like to know how Barbara Olson said all of these things if the FBI has concluded that she did not call her husband Ted:
David Ray Griffin drops Bombshell on Charles Goyette Show
This is an interesting, informative video about the latest FBI conclusions regarding the events of 9/11:
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
The Collapse of the World Banking System
I think that John Galt makes some pretty good points in the blog about the pending economic collapse:
http://morality101.net/blog/?p=78
http://morality101.net/blog/?p=78
Monday, August 4, 2008
Missing Frames with 9/11 Evidence
Has anyone seen this video yet? It appears that not only did the public not get all of the video evidence from the Pentagon attack on 9/11 but also the video evidence that was shown may have been tampered with by someone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEGvcDJYJaw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEGvcDJYJaw
Friday, August 1, 2008
Celebrating America’s Capitalist Revolution
The American Revolution was a revolution for capitalism instead of mercantilism:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo72.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo72.html
Economic Collapse of 2008 An Inside Job
I found this on the internet the other day. Is there any truth to this discussion regarding the pending economic collapse:
NOTE: Elements within the U.S. Government have been threating web site administrators all over the internet and forcing them to take down the following article because it's exposes the Bush/Cheney cabal's involvement in the coming economic collapse of 2008.
Everyone make copies of this article and send it everywhere so everyone will be fully aware of how the economic collapse was engineered to happen on purpose. -----------------------
"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That's how it goes, Everybody knows" - Leonard Cohen
PROTOCOLS FOR ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN AMERICA by Al Martin
And this is how the U.S. Treasury would handle an economic collapse. It's called the 6900 series of protocols. It would start with declaring a force majeure, which would immediately be interpreted by the marketplaces as a de facto repudiation of debt. Then the SEC and the various regulatory exchanges would anticipate the market's decline, hour by hour -- when Japan's markets opened the next day, what would happen when the European markets, and all the inter- linkages of the global markets. On the second day, US Special Forces would be dropped in by parachute in the cities where the twelve Federal Reserve district banks are located.
The origin of these protocols comes from the Department of Defense. This is contingency planning for a variety of post-collapse scenarios. Those scenarios would include, obviously, military collapse, World War III, in other words, and its aftermath. What we're talking about now is aftermath -- how the aftermath would be handled.
One does not necessarily know how the events would transpire that would cause the collapse, whether it's military collapse or economic collapse. In World War III, it would become obvious -- when the mushroom cloud started to appear over cities.
Economic collapse scenarios were always premised on the basis of a US declaration of force majeure on debt service. It's a very extensive scenario. The scenarios are all together, i.e., military, economic, political and social complete destabilization leading to collapse. Then they break down individual scenarios. In the economic collapse scenario, the starting point would be the United States Treasury declaring a force majeure on debt service, which is de facto repudiation, and that's how it would be interpreted by the world's capital marketplaces. Then the scenario goes on from there. The US Treasury would obviously declare a force majeure sometime after the European markets had settled down. In other words, they had gone out on the day, which means 11:38 a.m. EDT, our time. They'd wait until the European markets closed, and the US markets had been open for a couple of hours. That's when they'd determine how to begin the process of unwinding or controlling the collapse to the best extent possible, mainly because they know that the greatest hedge pressure would be people seeking to use other markets to hedge their long exposure in the United States and that the US would be the biggest seller in all the rest of the world's markets. Therefore you would want to declare the force majeure when the rest of the world's markets closed. The declaration of force majeure would be precipitated by the declaration that the United States is no longer able to service its debt. That's pretty simple. Who makes that decision? The Treasury Department. The President does not make that decision. The Secretary of the Treasury does. He has that authority. You might ask -- wouldn't he have his arm twisted not to do that?
The answer is that if there isn't any money left to service the debt, it doesn't make any difference what the current regime might want to do.
The day of reckoning is now coming. What has happened in the interim, from 2001 to present, is dynamic, global economic deterioration. The economic deterioration visited upon the United States by Bushonomics is not a localized event. It is, in fact, global. We have a planet now that is sinking into a sea of red ink.
The United States is consuming 80% of the planet's savings rate to finance its debt. The central banks of Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia are no longer the powerhouses they used to be. Their reserves have now been substantially depleted. They can, therefore, no longer hide the fact that they own a certain number, likely in the trillions of dollars, of U.S. Treasury debt that isn't being serviced, because they can't hide it through bookkeeping tricks anymore because their reserves are so depleted.
Therefore somebody has covertly been putting demands on the Bush- Cheney regime for payment. Why do you think 2900 metric tons of gold is depleted from U.S. inventory since March of `01?
Why do you think that $2 billion in currency seized from Iraq last May is now unaccounted for?
Someone is putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime. Someone is saying to the Bushonian Cabal that -- You've got to start servicing this debt because we, foreign central banks, are in nations - European and Asian - whose reserves are now nearly exhausted.
Who could be putting that kind of pressure on them?
It has to be coming from whoever is organizing this thing at the very top, which I would tend to think has got to be most likely a cabal of people that would involve Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George Schultz, possibly William Simon. It would be somebody at the very top that is familiar with how to do this. It would have to be someone familiar with finances.
So would this be one faction of a cabal blackmailing or forcing another faction? No, it's not really blackmailing. It's being done out of desperation. The German, Japanese and Saudi central banks are saying to the Bushonian cabal, You've got to start servicing this debt because we don't have the reserves to cover you anymore. We can no longer make it appear that the debt is being serviced because our own reserves are so substantively depleted. Therefore you must begin to cover this debt. If you don't, then, at some point, we will have to publicly admit in order to save our own necks -- that we were the end buyers of a lot of stealth debt, a lot of debt that your Treasury issued illegally and has never serviced. That would then expose the whole cabal.
The Kissinger-Baker faction are at the top of how this was done on the economic side of the equation. They were not the original insiders so much, but the managers of the conspiracy from the U.S. Treasury, to wit, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve role-play the part.
Take Henry Kissinger. It may not have occurred to anyone why in the last 3 years Henry Kissinger has been back in Washington more than he has in the last 30 years. And why are all these quiet meetings in Washington with alleged senior Bush-Cheney regime officials, as foreign news services endlessly put it. It's because Kissinger is the point man. He's the one that is telling them the disposition of other foreign central banks.
Kissinger would probably also be involved in transfer or hypothecation of any assets from the cabal. In other words, they're being stolen from the American people by the Bush-Cheney regime and the Bushonian Cabal, and they are being used to hypothecate, transfer, service, or otherwise carry this debt held by certain foreign central banks.
The process of unraveling has already begun because of ever-spiraling Bushonian budget deficits. The Bush-Cheney regime, even in its overt policies (now they're overt political, economic, social and military policies) is generating $600-billion-plus deficit per year, which is consuming 80% of the planet's net savings rate.
It doesn't have the slack. In other words, it can't refinance stealth debt by issuing more stealth debt anymore. Nor can they bleed money out of the system like they could in the 1980s by hiding it when the overt policies of the Bush-Cheney regime are already producing a budget deficit of 6% of Gross Domestic Product. There is no other mechanism that they could use anymore to hide expansion of debt that could be used to service said stealth debt, and they are, frankly, running out of assets that they can steal from the American people.
So the proverbial day of reckoning is coming. The Bush-Cheney regime (and I give them credit for this) are telling the American people what's coming, knowing the American people are too stupid to understand. They are telling the American people about the re- institution of the Gold Confiscation Act and the sudden scrapping of the Treasury's emergency post-collapse gold note scheme to maintain domestic liquidity.
David Walker, US Comptroller General and chief of the GAO has said that should the Bush-Cheney regime be re-ensconced into power and, hence, the scourge of Bushonomics persist, that the United States could no longer service its debt beyond 2009. They're not hiding it from anybody anymore. They are telling you what's happening. Now, what does that mean? The key is in what Walker is saying when he says the debt can no longer be serviced. I've been asked this on the radio shows. People have noticed what Walker said because he's out in the news more often than he used to be. It's unusual for the Comptroller General of the United States, which is a rather arcane position, to be out in the news so much.
It simply means that when he says the United States will no longer be able to sustain Bushonian budget deficits, he means that by 2009, if Bush-Cheney have a second term in office, the United States will be consuming 100% of the planet's savings rate to finance Bushonian budget deficits.
Therefore, if the planet can no longer generate any more liquidity to lend to the United States, one of three things have to happen: A) There has to be a sudden and dramatic reduction in federal spending. There are only two places that can come from. There would have to be an immediate $100-billion cut in defense spending, which would end any hopes the Republicans had of getting into office for years to come because it would destroy any confidence the NFWCs (Naïve Flag Waving Crowd) had in them. Or you would have to scrap the multi-trillion- dollar Bushonian tax cuts for the Republican rich, something that's equally unpalatable.
The other option, B, as Paul O'Neill mentioned, is a dramatic increase in the rate of federal income taxation from the current nominal rate of 28% to 65%, which is what the Treasury Department estimated would be required post-2009 to provide the U.S. Treasury with sufficient revenues to continue to service debt.
The third option, or C, becomes the declaration of a force majeure on credit service of U.S. Treasury debt by the United States Treasury, which is tantamount and would be accurately construed as de facto debt repudiation by the United States of America.
There are other signs to look for. They're not going to happen now, but if Bush-Cheney is re-elected, you'll begin to see more signs that the end is coming. I know a lot of people may disagree, but you wait and see. If Bush-Cheney has a second term, see if they do not institute some currency expatriation control. See if that doesn't come in the way Nixon tried it in May-June of 1971.
In the second term, there will be some sort of currency expatriation control in the United States, but there will also be loopholes that will allow the large money to escape. The restrictions will apply to the 10- and 20-thousand-dollar people. It ain't going to apply to the 10- and 20-million-dollar people. It would be self-defeating to do that.
When that day comes, in other words, when the U.S. Treasury declares a force majeure on debt, it wouldn't be broad-cast on mainstream media. There's no sense because the American people don't even understand what it means. But the announcement would actually be put on the Federal Reserve wire system, which would, of course, immediately be picked up by all media outlets anyway.
The U.S. Treasury would declare a force majeure on debt after the Asian and European markets closed, probably at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The reason why that hour was always selected is because Asian and European markets close. It's also the lunch hour for the markets. It's when you're going to have the fewest people on the floor of the exchanges. That would be the ideal time to make such an announcement.
A few seconds after that announcement was made, all United States markets, both equities debt and commodities i.e., stock, bonds, commodities, that have trading collars or permissible daily limits would all be limit-offered with pools. Limit-offered means that there are more sellers at the limit i.e., limit down, than there are buyers.
So-called 'pools' would immediately begin to form, probably a thousand contracts every few minutes. 'Limit-offered with pools' - this is trader language. Pools to sell 2,000 lots, 3,000 lots. That means, the number of sellers over and above the available buyers at the limit- offered price. That would begin to build.
By 1:00, the news would begin to sink in because it would take awhile before panic selling would arise from the public. This news is being released at lunch hour.
A lot of the American people initially would not even understand the temerity of the news. You would see professional selling first, and as that professional selling intensified over the afternoon, the SEC, the CFTC, NASDAQ, and various market regulatory authorities would begin to institute certain emergency market protocols. This would be the installation of the so-called 'declaration of fast market conditions,' for instance; the declaration of 'no more stop orders,' the declaration of 'fill at any price,' etc. in a desperate bid to maintain liquidity.
That first day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related indices on a percentage basis would lose about 20% of their value by the close of business that day. The real impact would come overnight when the American people found out what this was all about and when it was explained to them.
At 7:30 a.m. EDT, the Tokyo markets would open, and no price would be affixed for probably three or four hours into the session due to the avalanche of selling. Once prices were established, the government of Japan would close all of its financial markets. Europe would not even open. All European governments would close all capital exchanges the next day.
The United States would, in order to accommodate global electronic trading, attempt to open the market on the second day, which they would do, regardless of price, just to maintain some liquidity. At the end of Day Two, the Dow Jones and related indices, would have lost two thirds of their value, and prices would be set accordingly.
On Day Three, the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC and other related agencies would recommend to the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve that all markets be closed. That would be on the morning of Day Three. Eleven a.m., the Federal Reserve would then order all domestic banks closed. All of the twelve Federal Reserve district banks would (30 minutes later) have special U.S. forces parachuted in and around them to secure whatever gold bullion reserves they had left.
Day Three, 9:00 p.m., the President of the United States would declare a state of martial law. All financial transactions would come to an end. The Treasury would act to formally de-monetize the U.S. dollar and declare it worthless.
This would be totally unprecedented. In the past, collapses have been temporary and have been brought back up. But what we're talking about now is the end.
These protocols that I'm referring to aren't even all that secret. They were publicly available all through the Clinton era. These are Treasury protocols that were instituted mostly in the late 1970s when the Treasury and Federal Reserve began to feel that it was important to have an emergency-collapse protocol in place.
What precipitated the timing of this was the inflationary spiral of the late 1970s. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve were both concerned that this inflationary spiral, which was occurring not only domestically but globally, might lead to a global, uncontrollable hyper-inflation that the Federal Reserve or major central banks could not stop by traditional means, i.e., by raising interest rates and contracting money supply.
There was also the recognition, of course, that global central reserve bank bullion inventories had been so depleted over the previous 30 years that any re-institution of a species currency, even on a temporary basis, and even within a regional or individual nation-state basis, was no longer possible.
This is an analogy. In a military scenario, it's like the President of the United States pushing the final red button -- the commit button. The Treasury Secretary of the United States has a similar mechanism. It's called the yellow button, the commit button. The Secretary of Defense has the same system. This is what happens. Computer program starts to institute these protocols. Imagine the complexity of trying the manage all this. I think it's going to happen all simultaneously. There are hundreds of different agencies involved, both domestically and internationally. In order to maintain liquidity for as long as possible, it has to be extremely well-coordinated, and there must be existing collapse protocols that can be used.
The reason I was familiar with them was because I used to see the U.S. Treasury 6900 Series Collapse Protocol, 6903, 6904 there'll be A, B, and so on which keyed in to the Department of Defense to be incorporated within the Department of Defense's own World War III scenario and various types of military/ political/ social instability/ war/ pestilence, chaos, etc. scenarios.
All federal agencies had individual collapse protocols that ultimately got coordinated through the Department of Defense. Obviously, the Department of Defense would be the ultimate coordinator because it would need to have special forces available, on a stand-by basis, ready, that could quickly parachute into areas all over the country, into the cities particularly, to secure federal properties and assets.
And that's literally how it would begin. By the end of the third day, it would be all over -- a state of martial law. We're not talking about war, now; this is just economic collapse.
There's no military implication here, no political, no social implication or policy directive thereunto. This is strictly economic collapse. By the end of Day Three, effectively, all banks in the world will be shut down, all paper currencies will become valueless. Martial law would be declared. There would be no continuing transactions, at least for a period of time, of commodities. All providers of fuels and foods would be shut down automatically.
They have this in great detail too. U.S. Department of Defense Special 117th Assault Unit would parachute in to seize control of the cattle yards in Oklahoma City. This is how well it's planned. In other words, economic collapse would automatically involve expansive military action and control.
By the end of the third day, when you no longer have a domestic medium of exchange, you have to have secured food and fuel stocks. You've got to have troops that have secured distribution points where there is food and fuel stocks, warehouses, tanks, etc. Otherwise people are just going to go get them, and the people have to know that if they try to go break into that store and steal that loaf of bread, they're going to be shot.
Protocols for environmental disasters are called 'scaling-circle scenarios.' 'Scaling circles' is a Department of Defense euphemism. It's also used in FEMA, OEM and other emergency management services. In environmental catastrophes, which are going to become national or global, it's got to start someplace. It's going to start in one very small, specific area. Therefore what happens is that the immediate force containment is the greatest in the first circle, to try to contain the spread of the disaster and keep it within that circle.
The environmental problem, to whatever extent it's possible, before it spreads, will be neutralized or mitigated, in order to keep that catastrophe within that circle, or, if it is likely that it is to escape that circle, to attack whatever it is in such a fashion as to mitigate its strength and its ability to contaminate or otherwise affect other areas.
In the case of earthquakes, for instance, affecting the west coast, beginning at Mt. Rainier and moving southward -- that's a different type of scenario. That does not include as much Department of Defense involvement. It includes separate protocols, wherein mostly FEMA and OEM act as the senior coordinating agencies between municipal, county and state disaster and containment, which is called Disaster and Containment Units. Federal troops would only be brought in for the purposes of maintaining control.
In a military or economic collapse situation, National Guard units would provide any spare help they could in combating whatever the problem is. Federal troops would be used in order to have the specific authority simply to shoot anyone. There are plans for all sorts of scenarios. The economic-disaster scenario is the one I always found the most intriguing because it is the one that is least understood by the American people.
Military control would be necessary when lines begin to form at the banks, people trying to access their money. But that wasn't even anticipated as a big problem. Lines would form at the banks, but it was not even envisioned until sometime on Day Three because the American people wouldn't get it. It would be announced that the stock markets are down 2000 or 3000 points, and since we've always been taught they'll come back, the people would still be buying stocks.
You could count on everybody remaining in ignorance all the way down because the American people have never been taught Economics 101. The American people wouldn't realize the full extent of it until the markets were closed on the third day, or until the time when they went down to cash a check and the bank was closed with soldiers out in front. Then they would go down and see the gas station's closed. They see the local supermarket has been shuttered, and there's federal troops in front of it. Then they might begin to catch on. And remember -- it's not just federal troops. In emergency-collapse protocols, even before the declaration of a formal state of emergency or a state of martial law, the local military authorities within any given county or jurisdiction have the ability to essentially militarize anyone, that is, any civilian. This would be more than just deputizing civilians. It's federal. In other words, they would have the ability to militarize and give military authority to a civilian force. This would include not only police and the sheriffs and state police, but all local law enforcement that exists below the state level would be immediately militarized. They wouldn't take just anybody like they did in Iraq. It would be like the military when they call for volunteers. Then they'd have everybody and their brother-in-law volunteering, waving around the American flag and so on.
You've got a lot of pickup-driving guys in this country with the gun racks in the back and the Confederate flag flying. So you start waving the American flag in front of their face and say, Hey, you're going to get your chance you always wanted -- to fit your potbelly inside an army uniform and carry a gun and shoot people. How appealing would that be?
And besides, if you do this, then you're going to get to eat.
In other words, this is how it would unfold over three days, but, in fact, very few Americans would know what to do about it or how to take any precautions. They wouldn't have a clue because they don't understand enough about economics to know what is happening. So that's what it is -- Economic Armageddon. If the Bush-Cheney regime is re- installed into power, that is effectively what Comptroller General David Walker is saying.
In conclusion, since there is very little the people of the United States can do to protect themselves. We're not going to make any suggestions of how to protect yourselves because there's very little you can do.
We could tell you to go out and buy gold coins and bury them in the coffee can in the back yard and go to your nearest survivalist store, but, frankly, that's useless. In the last analysis, it's a lot of hype. There is very little the average US citizen could do.
The only thing that can prevent this, as the Comptroller alluded to when he was asked by Barbara Walters, How do we prevent reaching the problem by 2009? He said simply, "A change of regimes."
So how do you prevent it? Don't vote for Bush and Cheney -- and hope that Bush does not use his emergency powers to cancel or postpone the election by edict, powers which you, the flag-waving citizens, have given him.
All flag-waving citizens, be warned. If you want to vote for Bush- Cheney again, make sure you got plenty of Spam on hand.
Here's an interesting and humorous aside. A couple of days ago, Hormel Foods, which makes Spam, announced that in the last six months there have been record sales of Spam in the United States the survivalists' food of choice. After all, they pride themselves on the fact, as the spokesman for Hormel said, "It is the only food product you can buy with an expiration that's 50 years."
When everything goes to hell, when all that man has created has turned to dust again, the final legacy is going to be Spam. It will be the last surviving item -- when the anthropologists of 20 thousand years from now are digging sites and they see these enormous mountains of unopened cans of Spam They'll have monuments to the past out of Spam.
So if Bush-Cheney has a second term in office, there will be some sort of currency restriction, like Nixon did in 1971. On April 13, 2004, Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary John Boine talked about potential currency restrictions. He used the word that's going to fuel the flames of the survivalist and gloom-and-doom collapse people.
It's very, very telling that the U.S. Treasury may institute a restriction on the amount of U.S. dollars that can be converted into gold.
Furthermore, he intimated (and I suspected that this was coming, although this wouldn't actually become law until Bush-Cheney was in office for second term one way or another) that the Bush-Cheney regime determines that the Gold Confiscation Act gives to Treasury the power for so-called forced disclosure of gold holdings.
I'm not quite sure of the language of the Gold Confiscation Act from 1933. It just says, "compelled", as in citizens are lawfully compelled to redeem gold for script. I don't think there was any such provision, which he was inferring that there is. That was FDR's "Raw Deal" of 1934, when people were coerced into giving up their gold. But nowhere in this act does it specifically authorize the Treasury to mandate citizens to report their gold holdings. So if this gets any press at all, particularly within the circles of gold bugs and so on, watch out.
Furthermore, on Washington Journal they were talking about how FEMA has recommended to the Office of Homeland Security to have increased restrictions regarding citizen hoarding of long-term food and fuel supplies. That's pretty sinister too.
What they're talking about is the purchase of long-term so-called stores of survival food. FEMA was talking about some sort of restriction preventing people from accumulating food stores; putting it simply, that's what it means. The second point was to increase restrictions that already exist.
FEMA was recommending even tighter restrictions on citizens building their own private property underground storage tanks for the purposes of long-term storage of fuel. The real intent of this is is threefold: a) to restrict citizens' ability to hoard food; b) restrict citizens' ability to hoard long-term storage of fuel; c) the forced identification of citizens to reveal food and fuel stocks they may be hoarding.
And that, in my opinion, is the real essence. The Bush-Cheney regime was scared of having the FEMA angle put into the equation because they knew what it means and how people would interpret it.
They have tried to use environmental legislation to restrict people's ability to build fuel storage facilities on their own property -- to get around what the true intent of that was.
But the bigger picture is that if you start to limit citizens' ability to hoard fuel and food and shake them up by potential forced identification of gold holdings or forced redemption.
In other words, what you don't want is citizens who have the ability to store a lot of food and fuel and to own gold because they would be able to resist state control in the future.
You've got to have every citizen on a rationing card to control the civilian population. You can't have citizens out there hoarding food and fuel because then people can say to government,"I ain't taking a rationing card, baby, with my national ID card. I don't have to. You can't control me through food and fuel and ever-worthless paper currency."
I used to make fun of these people. But now, things have come full circle on this debate. The Bush-Cheney regime is making it increasingly clear through their small changes in policy. Not a lot of people monitor these decisions, but I do. And the pattern is becoming increasingly clear.
In fact, I would believe that those of the survivalist mentality (the food, fuel, the gold coins in the coffee can in the back yard) people who think that way will be ultimately vindicated - if George Bush has a second term in office.
People should quit making fun of them because they would be vindicated - even though they were all burned out, twenty-dollared to death, buying books and tapes, and discredited by mainstream media. It may sound like a hollow victory, but it won't be a hollow victory for them - them that's got the Spam...
NOTE: Elements within the U.S. Government have been threating web site administrators all over the internet and forcing them to take down the following article because it's exposes the Bush/Cheney cabal's involvement in the coming economic collapse of 2008.
Everyone make copies of this article and send it everywhere so everyone will be fully aware of how the economic collapse was engineered to happen on purpose. -----------------------
"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That's how it goes, Everybody knows" - Leonard Cohen
PROTOCOLS FOR ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN AMERICA by Al Martin
And this is how the U.S. Treasury would handle an economic collapse. It's called the 6900 series of protocols. It would start with declaring a force majeure, which would immediately be interpreted by the marketplaces as a de facto repudiation of debt. Then the SEC and the various regulatory exchanges would anticipate the market's decline, hour by hour -- when Japan's markets opened the next day, what would happen when the European markets, and all the inter- linkages of the global markets. On the second day, US Special Forces would be dropped in by parachute in the cities where the twelve Federal Reserve district banks are located.
The origin of these protocols comes from the Department of Defense. This is contingency planning for a variety of post-collapse scenarios. Those scenarios would include, obviously, military collapse, World War III, in other words, and its aftermath. What we're talking about now is aftermath -- how the aftermath would be handled.
One does not necessarily know how the events would transpire that would cause the collapse, whether it's military collapse or economic collapse. In World War III, it would become obvious -- when the mushroom cloud started to appear over cities.
Economic collapse scenarios were always premised on the basis of a US declaration of force majeure on debt service. It's a very extensive scenario. The scenarios are all together, i.e., military, economic, political and social complete destabilization leading to collapse. Then they break down individual scenarios. In the economic collapse scenario, the starting point would be the United States Treasury declaring a force majeure on debt service, which is de facto repudiation, and that's how it would be interpreted by the world's capital marketplaces. Then the scenario goes on from there. The US Treasury would obviously declare a force majeure sometime after the European markets had settled down. In other words, they had gone out on the day, which means 11:38 a.m. EDT, our time. They'd wait until the European markets closed, and the US markets had been open for a couple of hours. That's when they'd determine how to begin the process of unwinding or controlling the collapse to the best extent possible, mainly because they know that the greatest hedge pressure would be people seeking to use other markets to hedge their long exposure in the United States and that the US would be the biggest seller in all the rest of the world's markets. Therefore you would want to declare the force majeure when the rest of the world's markets closed. The declaration of force majeure would be precipitated by the declaration that the United States is no longer able to service its debt. That's pretty simple. Who makes that decision? The Treasury Department. The President does not make that decision. The Secretary of the Treasury does. He has that authority. You might ask -- wouldn't he have his arm twisted not to do that?
The answer is that if there isn't any money left to service the debt, it doesn't make any difference what the current regime might want to do.
The day of reckoning is now coming. What has happened in the interim, from 2001 to present, is dynamic, global economic deterioration. The economic deterioration visited upon the United States by Bushonomics is not a localized event. It is, in fact, global. We have a planet now that is sinking into a sea of red ink.
The United States is consuming 80% of the planet's savings rate to finance its debt. The central banks of Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia are no longer the powerhouses they used to be. Their reserves have now been substantially depleted. They can, therefore, no longer hide the fact that they own a certain number, likely in the trillions of dollars, of U.S. Treasury debt that isn't being serviced, because they can't hide it through bookkeeping tricks anymore because their reserves are so depleted.
Therefore somebody has covertly been putting demands on the Bush- Cheney regime for payment. Why do you think 2900 metric tons of gold is depleted from U.S. inventory since March of `01?
Why do you think that $2 billion in currency seized from Iraq last May is now unaccounted for?
Someone is putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime. Someone is saying to the Bushonian Cabal that -- You've got to start servicing this debt because we, foreign central banks, are in nations - European and Asian - whose reserves are now nearly exhausted.
Who could be putting that kind of pressure on them?
It has to be coming from whoever is organizing this thing at the very top, which I would tend to think has got to be most likely a cabal of people that would involve Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George Schultz, possibly William Simon. It would be somebody at the very top that is familiar with how to do this. It would have to be someone familiar with finances.
So would this be one faction of a cabal blackmailing or forcing another faction? No, it's not really blackmailing. It's being done out of desperation. The German, Japanese and Saudi central banks are saying to the Bushonian cabal, You've got to start servicing this debt because we don't have the reserves to cover you anymore. We can no longer make it appear that the debt is being serviced because our own reserves are so substantively depleted. Therefore you must begin to cover this debt. If you don't, then, at some point, we will have to publicly admit in order to save our own necks -- that we were the end buyers of a lot of stealth debt, a lot of debt that your Treasury issued illegally and has never serviced. That would then expose the whole cabal.
The Kissinger-Baker faction are at the top of how this was done on the economic side of the equation. They were not the original insiders so much, but the managers of the conspiracy from the U.S. Treasury, to wit, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve role-play the part.
Take Henry Kissinger. It may not have occurred to anyone why in the last 3 years Henry Kissinger has been back in Washington more than he has in the last 30 years. And why are all these quiet meetings in Washington with alleged senior Bush-Cheney regime officials, as foreign news services endlessly put it. It's because Kissinger is the point man. He's the one that is telling them the disposition of other foreign central banks.
Kissinger would probably also be involved in transfer or hypothecation of any assets from the cabal. In other words, they're being stolen from the American people by the Bush-Cheney regime and the Bushonian Cabal, and they are being used to hypothecate, transfer, service, or otherwise carry this debt held by certain foreign central banks.
The process of unraveling has already begun because of ever-spiraling Bushonian budget deficits. The Bush-Cheney regime, even in its overt policies (now they're overt political, economic, social and military policies) is generating $600-billion-plus deficit per year, which is consuming 80% of the planet's net savings rate.
It doesn't have the slack. In other words, it can't refinance stealth debt by issuing more stealth debt anymore. Nor can they bleed money out of the system like they could in the 1980s by hiding it when the overt policies of the Bush-Cheney regime are already producing a budget deficit of 6% of Gross Domestic Product. There is no other mechanism that they could use anymore to hide expansion of debt that could be used to service said stealth debt, and they are, frankly, running out of assets that they can steal from the American people.
So the proverbial day of reckoning is coming. The Bush-Cheney regime (and I give them credit for this) are telling the American people what's coming, knowing the American people are too stupid to understand. They are telling the American people about the re- institution of the Gold Confiscation Act and the sudden scrapping of the Treasury's emergency post-collapse gold note scheme to maintain domestic liquidity.
David Walker, US Comptroller General and chief of the GAO has said that should the Bush-Cheney regime be re-ensconced into power and, hence, the scourge of Bushonomics persist, that the United States could no longer service its debt beyond 2009. They're not hiding it from anybody anymore. They are telling you what's happening. Now, what does that mean? The key is in what Walker is saying when he says the debt can no longer be serviced. I've been asked this on the radio shows. People have noticed what Walker said because he's out in the news more often than he used to be. It's unusual for the Comptroller General of the United States, which is a rather arcane position, to be out in the news so much.
It simply means that when he says the United States will no longer be able to sustain Bushonian budget deficits, he means that by 2009, if Bush-Cheney have a second term in office, the United States will be consuming 100% of the planet's savings rate to finance Bushonian budget deficits.
Therefore, if the planet can no longer generate any more liquidity to lend to the United States, one of three things have to happen: A) There has to be a sudden and dramatic reduction in federal spending. There are only two places that can come from. There would have to be an immediate $100-billion cut in defense spending, which would end any hopes the Republicans had of getting into office for years to come because it would destroy any confidence the NFWCs (Naïve Flag Waving Crowd) had in them. Or you would have to scrap the multi-trillion- dollar Bushonian tax cuts for the Republican rich, something that's equally unpalatable.
The other option, B, as Paul O'Neill mentioned, is a dramatic increase in the rate of federal income taxation from the current nominal rate of 28% to 65%, which is what the Treasury Department estimated would be required post-2009 to provide the U.S. Treasury with sufficient revenues to continue to service debt.
The third option, or C, becomes the declaration of a force majeure on credit service of U.S. Treasury debt by the United States Treasury, which is tantamount and would be accurately construed as de facto debt repudiation by the United States of America.
There are other signs to look for. They're not going to happen now, but if Bush-Cheney is re-elected, you'll begin to see more signs that the end is coming. I know a lot of people may disagree, but you wait and see. If Bush-Cheney has a second term, see if they do not institute some currency expatriation control. See if that doesn't come in the way Nixon tried it in May-June of 1971.
In the second term, there will be some sort of currency expatriation control in the United States, but there will also be loopholes that will allow the large money to escape. The restrictions will apply to the 10- and 20-thousand-dollar people. It ain't going to apply to the 10- and 20-million-dollar people. It would be self-defeating to do that.
When that day comes, in other words, when the U.S. Treasury declares a force majeure on debt, it wouldn't be broad-cast on mainstream media. There's no sense because the American people don't even understand what it means. But the announcement would actually be put on the Federal Reserve wire system, which would, of course, immediately be picked up by all media outlets anyway.
The U.S. Treasury would declare a force majeure on debt after the Asian and European markets closed, probably at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The reason why that hour was always selected is because Asian and European markets close. It's also the lunch hour for the markets. It's when you're going to have the fewest people on the floor of the exchanges. That would be the ideal time to make such an announcement.
A few seconds after that announcement was made, all United States markets, both equities debt and commodities i.e., stock, bonds, commodities, that have trading collars or permissible daily limits would all be limit-offered with pools. Limit-offered means that there are more sellers at the limit i.e., limit down, than there are buyers.
So-called 'pools' would immediately begin to form, probably a thousand contracts every few minutes. 'Limit-offered with pools' - this is trader language. Pools to sell 2,000 lots, 3,000 lots. That means, the number of sellers over and above the available buyers at the limit- offered price. That would begin to build.
By 1:00, the news would begin to sink in because it would take awhile before panic selling would arise from the public. This news is being released at lunch hour.
A lot of the American people initially would not even understand the temerity of the news. You would see professional selling first, and as that professional selling intensified over the afternoon, the SEC, the CFTC, NASDAQ, and various market regulatory authorities would begin to institute certain emergency market protocols. This would be the installation of the so-called 'declaration of fast market conditions,' for instance; the declaration of 'no more stop orders,' the declaration of 'fill at any price,' etc. in a desperate bid to maintain liquidity.
That first day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related indices on a percentage basis would lose about 20% of their value by the close of business that day. The real impact would come overnight when the American people found out what this was all about and when it was explained to them.
At 7:30 a.m. EDT, the Tokyo markets would open, and no price would be affixed for probably three or four hours into the session due to the avalanche of selling. Once prices were established, the government of Japan would close all of its financial markets. Europe would not even open. All European governments would close all capital exchanges the next day.
The United States would, in order to accommodate global electronic trading, attempt to open the market on the second day, which they would do, regardless of price, just to maintain some liquidity. At the end of Day Two, the Dow Jones and related indices, would have lost two thirds of their value, and prices would be set accordingly.
On Day Three, the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC and other related agencies would recommend to the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve that all markets be closed. That would be on the morning of Day Three. Eleven a.m., the Federal Reserve would then order all domestic banks closed. All of the twelve Federal Reserve district banks would (30 minutes later) have special U.S. forces parachuted in and around them to secure whatever gold bullion reserves they had left.
Day Three, 9:00 p.m., the President of the United States would declare a state of martial law. All financial transactions would come to an end. The Treasury would act to formally de-monetize the U.S. dollar and declare it worthless.
This would be totally unprecedented. In the past, collapses have been temporary and have been brought back up. But what we're talking about now is the end.
These protocols that I'm referring to aren't even all that secret. They were publicly available all through the Clinton era. These are Treasury protocols that were instituted mostly in the late 1970s when the Treasury and Federal Reserve began to feel that it was important to have an emergency-collapse protocol in place.
What precipitated the timing of this was the inflationary spiral of the late 1970s. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve were both concerned that this inflationary spiral, which was occurring not only domestically but globally, might lead to a global, uncontrollable hyper-inflation that the Federal Reserve or major central banks could not stop by traditional means, i.e., by raising interest rates and contracting money supply.
There was also the recognition, of course, that global central reserve bank bullion inventories had been so depleted over the previous 30 years that any re-institution of a species currency, even on a temporary basis, and even within a regional or individual nation-state basis, was no longer possible.
This is an analogy. In a military scenario, it's like the President of the United States pushing the final red button -- the commit button. The Treasury Secretary of the United States has a similar mechanism. It's called the yellow button, the commit button. The Secretary of Defense has the same system. This is what happens. Computer program starts to institute these protocols. Imagine the complexity of trying the manage all this. I think it's going to happen all simultaneously. There are hundreds of different agencies involved, both domestically and internationally. In order to maintain liquidity for as long as possible, it has to be extremely well-coordinated, and there must be existing collapse protocols that can be used.
The reason I was familiar with them was because I used to see the U.S. Treasury 6900 Series Collapse Protocol, 6903, 6904 there'll be A, B, and so on which keyed in to the Department of Defense to be incorporated within the Department of Defense's own World War III scenario and various types of military/ political/ social instability/ war/ pestilence, chaos, etc. scenarios.
All federal agencies had individual collapse protocols that ultimately got coordinated through the Department of Defense. Obviously, the Department of Defense would be the ultimate coordinator because it would need to have special forces available, on a stand-by basis, ready, that could quickly parachute into areas all over the country, into the cities particularly, to secure federal properties and assets.
And that's literally how it would begin. By the end of the third day, it would be all over -- a state of martial law. We're not talking about war, now; this is just economic collapse.
There's no military implication here, no political, no social implication or policy directive thereunto. This is strictly economic collapse. By the end of Day Three, effectively, all banks in the world will be shut down, all paper currencies will become valueless. Martial law would be declared. There would be no continuing transactions, at least for a period of time, of commodities. All providers of fuels and foods would be shut down automatically.
They have this in great detail too. U.S. Department of Defense Special 117th Assault Unit would parachute in to seize control of the cattle yards in Oklahoma City. This is how well it's planned. In other words, economic collapse would automatically involve expansive military action and control.
By the end of the third day, when you no longer have a domestic medium of exchange, you have to have secured food and fuel stocks. You've got to have troops that have secured distribution points where there is food and fuel stocks, warehouses, tanks, etc. Otherwise people are just going to go get them, and the people have to know that if they try to go break into that store and steal that loaf of bread, they're going to be shot.
Protocols for environmental disasters are called 'scaling-circle scenarios.' 'Scaling circles' is a Department of Defense euphemism. It's also used in FEMA, OEM and other emergency management services. In environmental catastrophes, which are going to become national or global, it's got to start someplace. It's going to start in one very small, specific area. Therefore what happens is that the immediate force containment is the greatest in the first circle, to try to contain the spread of the disaster and keep it within that circle.
The environmental problem, to whatever extent it's possible, before it spreads, will be neutralized or mitigated, in order to keep that catastrophe within that circle, or, if it is likely that it is to escape that circle, to attack whatever it is in such a fashion as to mitigate its strength and its ability to contaminate or otherwise affect other areas.
In the case of earthquakes, for instance, affecting the west coast, beginning at Mt. Rainier and moving southward -- that's a different type of scenario. That does not include as much Department of Defense involvement. It includes separate protocols, wherein mostly FEMA and OEM act as the senior coordinating agencies between municipal, county and state disaster and containment, which is called Disaster and Containment Units. Federal troops would only be brought in for the purposes of maintaining control.
In a military or economic collapse situation, National Guard units would provide any spare help they could in combating whatever the problem is. Federal troops would be used in order to have the specific authority simply to shoot anyone. There are plans for all sorts of scenarios. The economic-disaster scenario is the one I always found the most intriguing because it is the one that is least understood by the American people.
Military control would be necessary when lines begin to form at the banks, people trying to access their money. But that wasn't even anticipated as a big problem. Lines would form at the banks, but it was not even envisioned until sometime on Day Three because the American people wouldn't get it. It would be announced that the stock markets are down 2000 or 3000 points, and since we've always been taught they'll come back, the people would still be buying stocks.
You could count on everybody remaining in ignorance all the way down because the American people have never been taught Economics 101. The American people wouldn't realize the full extent of it until the markets were closed on the third day, or until the time when they went down to cash a check and the bank was closed with soldiers out in front. Then they would go down and see the gas station's closed. They see the local supermarket has been shuttered, and there's federal troops in front of it. Then they might begin to catch on. And remember -- it's not just federal troops. In emergency-collapse protocols, even before the declaration of a formal state of emergency or a state of martial law, the local military authorities within any given county or jurisdiction have the ability to essentially militarize anyone, that is, any civilian. This would be more than just deputizing civilians. It's federal. In other words, they would have the ability to militarize and give military authority to a civilian force. This would include not only police and the sheriffs and state police, but all local law enforcement that exists below the state level would be immediately militarized. They wouldn't take just anybody like they did in Iraq. It would be like the military when they call for volunteers. Then they'd have everybody and their brother-in-law volunteering, waving around the American flag and so on.
You've got a lot of pickup-driving guys in this country with the gun racks in the back and the Confederate flag flying. So you start waving the American flag in front of their face and say, Hey, you're going to get your chance you always wanted -- to fit your potbelly inside an army uniform and carry a gun and shoot people. How appealing would that be?
And besides, if you do this, then you're going to get to eat.
In other words, this is how it would unfold over three days, but, in fact, very few Americans would know what to do about it or how to take any precautions. They wouldn't have a clue because they don't understand enough about economics to know what is happening. So that's what it is -- Economic Armageddon. If the Bush-Cheney regime is re- installed into power, that is effectively what Comptroller General David Walker is saying.
In conclusion, since there is very little the people of the United States can do to protect themselves. We're not going to make any suggestions of how to protect yourselves because there's very little you can do.
We could tell you to go out and buy gold coins and bury them in the coffee can in the back yard and go to your nearest survivalist store, but, frankly, that's useless. In the last analysis, it's a lot of hype. There is very little the average US citizen could do.
The only thing that can prevent this, as the Comptroller alluded to when he was asked by Barbara Walters, How do we prevent reaching the problem by 2009? He said simply, "A change of regimes."
So how do you prevent it? Don't vote for Bush and Cheney -- and hope that Bush does not use his emergency powers to cancel or postpone the election by edict, powers which you, the flag-waving citizens, have given him.
All flag-waving citizens, be warned. If you want to vote for Bush- Cheney again, make sure you got plenty of Spam on hand.
Here's an interesting and humorous aside. A couple of days ago, Hormel Foods, which makes Spam, announced that in the last six months there have been record sales of Spam in the United States the survivalists' food of choice. After all, they pride themselves on the fact, as the spokesman for Hormel said, "It is the only food product you can buy with an expiration that's 50 years."
When everything goes to hell, when all that man has created has turned to dust again, the final legacy is going to be Spam. It will be the last surviving item -- when the anthropologists of 20 thousand years from now are digging sites and they see these enormous mountains of unopened cans of Spam They'll have monuments to the past out of Spam.
So if Bush-Cheney has a second term in office, there will be some sort of currency restriction, like Nixon did in 1971. On April 13, 2004, Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary John Boine talked about potential currency restrictions. He used the word that's going to fuel the flames of the survivalist and gloom-and-doom collapse people.
It's very, very telling that the U.S. Treasury may institute a restriction on the amount of U.S. dollars that can be converted into gold.
Furthermore, he intimated (and I suspected that this was coming, although this wouldn't actually become law until Bush-Cheney was in office for second term one way or another) that the Bush-Cheney regime determines that the Gold Confiscation Act gives to Treasury the power for so-called forced disclosure of gold holdings.
I'm not quite sure of the language of the Gold Confiscation Act from 1933. It just says, "compelled", as in citizens are lawfully compelled to redeem gold for script. I don't think there was any such provision, which he was inferring that there is. That was FDR's "Raw Deal" of 1934, when people were coerced into giving up their gold. But nowhere in this act does it specifically authorize the Treasury to mandate citizens to report their gold holdings. So if this gets any press at all, particularly within the circles of gold bugs and so on, watch out.
Furthermore, on Washington Journal they were talking about how FEMA has recommended to the Office of Homeland Security to have increased restrictions regarding citizen hoarding of long-term food and fuel supplies. That's pretty sinister too.
What they're talking about is the purchase of long-term so-called stores of survival food. FEMA was talking about some sort of restriction preventing people from accumulating food stores; putting it simply, that's what it means. The second point was to increase restrictions that already exist.
FEMA was recommending even tighter restrictions on citizens building their own private property underground storage tanks for the purposes of long-term storage of fuel. The real intent of this is is threefold: a) to restrict citizens' ability to hoard food; b) restrict citizens' ability to hoard long-term storage of fuel; c) the forced identification of citizens to reveal food and fuel stocks they may be hoarding.
And that, in my opinion, is the real essence. The Bush-Cheney regime was scared of having the FEMA angle put into the equation because they knew what it means and how people would interpret it.
They have tried to use environmental legislation to restrict people's ability to build fuel storage facilities on their own property -- to get around what the true intent of that was.
But the bigger picture is that if you start to limit citizens' ability to hoard fuel and food and shake them up by potential forced identification of gold holdings or forced redemption.
In other words, what you don't want is citizens who have the ability to store a lot of food and fuel and to own gold because they would be able to resist state control in the future.
You've got to have every citizen on a rationing card to control the civilian population. You can't have citizens out there hoarding food and fuel because then people can say to government,"I ain't taking a rationing card, baby, with my national ID card. I don't have to. You can't control me through food and fuel and ever-worthless paper currency."
I used to make fun of these people. But now, things have come full circle on this debate. The Bush-Cheney regime is making it increasingly clear through their small changes in policy. Not a lot of people monitor these decisions, but I do. And the pattern is becoming increasingly clear.
In fact, I would believe that those of the survivalist mentality (the food, fuel, the gold coins in the coffee can in the back yard) people who think that way will be ultimately vindicated - if George Bush has a second term in office.
People should quit making fun of them because they would be vindicated - even though they were all burned out, twenty-dollared to death, buying books and tapes, and discredited by mainstream media. It may sound like a hollow victory, but it won't be a hollow victory for them - them that's got the Spam...
Impeachment: If Nancy Won't, Your State Can
The MSM ignores the people. The Congress ignores the people. What do you do when the road is blocked? You go down another. The states still have the power to impeach when our normal system fails:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxCPcT7iGFA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxCPcT7iGFA&feature=related
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Cannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants
Oh by the way, did you know US government classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug, having no medicinal value, and on the other hand, they file for, and are awarded a patent on the medical use of cannabis in the treatment of a wide variety diseases including stroke, trauma, auto-immune disorders, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and HIV dementia? The US Department of Health and Human Services is the patent holder. Wow! That's hypocricy at the highest levels of the government:
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6630507
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6630507
Run From the Cure
Are his claims true? If so, I think that there's a lot questions that need to be answered like why we're not using it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjhT9282-Tw&feature=rec-fresh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjhT9282-Tw&feature=rec-fresh
Is it Time to Fly the Flag Upside Down?
I seen a truck today with two American flags upside down. I think that this man is definitely seeing the same thing that most of us are today in America:
http://www.jeffhead.com/liberty/flagdistress.htm
http://www.jeffhead.com/liberty/flagdistress.htm
The Coming Demise of American Militias
Do American Militias need to grow and change with the times to be effective against the oppressive power of the government? In other words, do you think that it's necessary to modernize the American militias in every way such as the use of the latest information technologies, future weapons, modern warfare strategies, etc.? Also, the new American Militia movement needs to win the PR battle in order to get new recruits. That will require a new political strategy that should center on the real issues such as lower taxes, reduction in the size of the federal government and holding those accountable that abuse of power by the government:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread265103/pg1
Moreover, I wanted to share these thought by Jason regarding the above link that I think are quite enlightening:
Jason says,
"Here is my personal take on the future of militias.. I believe groups will begin forming and operating much like the IRA did, and may still do. (I might anger some Brits here) The IRA is considered the most adapted and deadly terror/political militia in history.. Hezbollah, Al Quada, Hammas.. they have all said they style their attacks on the tactics used by the IRA. The tactic they wished to copy, and so far in my opinion failed at .. is the ability to act as a normal person, then when given the call, pick up arms, bombs, shoot do what ever your job is to do and then disappear into society once again. This kind of pick up and go militia, working as a network instead of a formal militia will be very hard to track down (as the IRA was and is)... this can assure that trans - national militias formed by say Mexicans or something will have armed resistance from this pick up networks if they intrude on their "protected area". As far as the government goes, if they wish to crack down on militias like this surveillance laws will have to be passed that would rival the UK or even China.. causing imo a new rise in militias themselves. If it got bad enough that a militia forms into a separatist movement, the government will be nearly helpless... no government in the world that suffers the cancer of a separatist movement can rid their problem... just look at Russia in the south, China in the west, Spain in the east, Turkey and the Kurds in the south western areas.. those areas of these countries are hard to patrol and keep a sphere of influence.. and these are once super power industrialized and up and coming industrialized nations. guerrilla (literally means small war) wars are hard to fight with a standard army. A pick up militia network would be hell for our government, allowing the forming and operation of standard militias in my opinion is safer for the government in the long run. "
Now that's a good analysis of the world that we live in today and the role militias play in it. Furthermore, here's a good link to start a militia in your area:
http://www.constitution.org/mil/how2actv.htm
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread265103/pg1
Moreover, I wanted to share these thought by Jason regarding the above link that I think are quite enlightening:
Jason says,
"Here is my personal take on the future of militias.. I believe groups will begin forming and operating much like the IRA did, and may still do. (I might anger some Brits here) The IRA is considered the most adapted and deadly terror/political militia in history.. Hezbollah, Al Quada, Hammas.. they have all said they style their attacks on the tactics used by the IRA. The tactic they wished to copy, and so far in my opinion failed at .. is the ability to act as a normal person, then when given the call, pick up arms, bombs, shoot do what ever your job is to do and then disappear into society once again. This kind of pick up and go militia, working as a network instead of a formal militia will be very hard to track down (as the IRA was and is)... this can assure that trans - national militias formed by say Mexicans or something will have armed resistance from this pick up networks if they intrude on their "protected area". As far as the government goes, if they wish to crack down on militias like this surveillance laws will have to be passed that would rival the UK or even China.. causing imo a new rise in militias themselves. If it got bad enough that a militia forms into a separatist movement, the government will be nearly helpless... no government in the world that suffers the cancer of a separatist movement can rid their problem... just look at Russia in the south, China in the west, Spain in the east, Turkey and the Kurds in the south western areas.. those areas of these countries are hard to patrol and keep a sphere of influence.. and these are once super power industrialized and up and coming industrialized nations. guerrilla (literally means small war) wars are hard to fight with a standard army. A pick up militia network would be hell for our government, allowing the forming and operation of standard militias in my opinion is safer for the government in the long run. "
Now that's a good analysis of the world that we live in today and the role militias play in it. Furthermore, here's a good link to start a militia in your area:
http://www.constitution.org/mil/how2actv.htm
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