Huxley Is Much Scarier

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What Orwell feared were those who’d ban books. What Huxley feared was that there’d be no reason to ban a book… for no one would want to read one. Orwell feared those who’d deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who’d give us so much that it’d reduce us to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared we’d become a captive audience. Huxley feared a sea of irrelevance would drown the truth. Orwell feared that we’d become a captive culture. Huxley feared we’d become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In Brave New World, they control by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate would ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love would ruin us.

Neil Postman

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

1985

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As John Robles Sees It… Broadcasting Board of Governors to be US “Ministry of Truth”, Next Step in Information War

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In what looks like a desperate move by the US government to manipulate and misinform the US populace due to the waning popularity of Congress, the Intelligence Community, the “War” Department, and the President, on 2 July the US government quietly lifted a prohibition on allowing government-produced propaganda to be directed at Americans inside the USA. The new “modifications” to the Smith-Mundt Act will allow propaganda produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the propaganda arm of the US government, which broadcasts Voice of America and Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, to be fed to and directed at the American populace. That is, in their words, “they’ll provide access” to their “material” so Americans can see what’s being broadcast abroad.

If you’re reading this, then, you’re one of a growing number of the world’s English-reading population that’s sought news and information from non-US corporate or government-controlled entities. Whether you’re interested in hearing unbiased reporting, seeking the truth, attempting to get the whole story, or trying to get an opposing view, you’ve come to the right place. Thanks to the internet, it’s possible for people, both in the USA as well as the world, to access non-US-based independent and alternative media in order to get a real perspective about events that don’t go through American filters, which may be biased or censored.

An example of such bias might be calling Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi a dictator rather than a leader, calling foreign-import terrorists and cannibals in Syria “rebels”, or calling Edward Snowden a traitor rather than a whistleblower. Examples of censorship and blackouts are even more numerous and insidious, some examples include the complete media blackout that exists in the UK with regard to Julian Paul Assange, the limited reporting in the USA on Snowden, or the complete and almost total blackout and manipulation that exists in Serbia and on any news coming out of that country. A couple years back, US Secretary of State Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton indignantly complained that the USA was losing the global media war. Apparently, the US government thought that the internet would be an American-controlled propaganda distribution and spying tool, but unfortunately for Washington, this hasn’t been the case, as the internet allowed Americans to access alternative media and alternative views.

This latest step in the American media mind-control battle is chilling for many reasons. The extreme and violent reaction by the US government to the recent revelations of it own illegality by WikiLeaks, Bradley Edward Manning, and now Edward Snowden, to name a few, shows just how truly terrified and obsessed the US government is, now that its illegality is revealed. The Obama Administration and the US government’s war on journalists, whistleblowers, and truth-seekers and their continuing attempts to control, muzzle, and censor the internet and the American mass media hasn’t been enough apparently. Now, the USA wants to transmit propaganda to the American populace, in effect, filling the information vacuum they’re creating with their own “manufactured” content, therefore, nullifying the mission and the purpose of the Fourth Estate.

This latest move makes it appear even more as if the US government is using George Orwell’s Oceania as a blueprint for the new “Amerika” and the “Homogenous American World” planned by the Project for a New American Century… a plan that needed an event such as 9/11 to serve as a catalyst. 9/11 allowed for the total global military expansion of the USA and its surrogate NATO, in order to force the world into submission if it decides it doesn’t want to be part of a Homogenous American World. We’ve seen the endless state of war that the citizens of Oceania had to live with brought to reality with the endless “Global War on Terror”, with endless threats and fabricated battles against “evil” leaders such as Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar Hafez al-Assad, and ex-CIA asset Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, with countries destabilised and invaded by the USA as examples of how terrible the world is, and how “honourable and “just” Big Brother is in “protecting American lives” and “spreading democracy”.

We’ve also seen the complete and total surveillance state that the Oceanians had to live under realised though the internet and the NSA’s PRISM and related programmes. With the help of “Internet Giants”, the American populace has become glued to their monitors and their narcissistic social media pages ready to accept that everything they do on-line is recorded and watched by “Big Brother” in order to guarantee their own safety. Microsoft even has a patent, taken out in 2011, for something almost exactly like the Oceanian telescreen surveillance system. Even Oceania’s Ministry of Love and the constant fear of torture or secret indefinite arrest have been realised with the knowledge that the USA tortures and renditions, and maintains “Ministry of Love”-type installations in Guantánamo and Super Max. Moreover, the US government can now drone and indefinitely detain Americans without charge or trial or contact with the outside world. The only thing that was lacking, as if the corporate-controlled American mass media, which almost never goes against the government line, wasn’t enough, was an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. Orwell wrote, “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past”. With the allowing of US government manufactured propaganda to be directed at Americans, the USA now has its own internal Ministry of Truth.

The wording of the legislation and the ease by which it will be manipulated will soon make Americans the subject of Ministry of Truth-type propaganda. Not only will your news be filtered, Americans, as it is now, but now it’ll also be cleverly manufactured. At this point, the only hope for Americans is that the US State Department, which controls the BBG, is as inept as “winning the hearts and minds” of Americans as they are at winning the hearts and minds of the rest of the world. There was probably a good reason why it was illegal for the US State Department to broadcast “internally-authored news stories” that are broadcast around the world by US government-controlled and -financed broadcasters. However, in the name of “security” and “terror”, Americans have been conned into letting another right fall to the wayside through the passing of this new law. In an extreme scenario, one could view this as the death of the Fourth Estate.

The bill to change the Smith-Mundt Act was introduced by US Representatives William “Mac” McClellan Thornberry (R-TX), and David Adam Smith (D-WA). They pushed the entire security and terror reasoning to the extreme with Smith saying in 2012, “Effective strategic communication and public diplomacy should be front-and-centre, as we work to roll back al-Qaeda’s and other violent extremists’ influence among disaffected populations. An essential part of our efforts must be a coordinated, comprehensive, adequately-resourced plan to counter their radical messages and undermine their recruitment abilities. To do this, Smith-Mundt must be updated to bolster our strategic communications and public diplomacy capacity on all fronts and mediums, especially online”. We know that the USA already censors, blocks, and shuts down al-Qaeda and extremist sites worldwide and the internal American internet is almost under a complete and total lockdown. So, what’s the real reason for allowing government manufactured propaganda to be directed at the American masses? Big Brother needs a voice to maintain his power and legitimacy, this change to the Smith-Mundt Act gives it that.

Look for the Ministry of Truth, coming soon, in subtle ways, to the American populace.

17 July 2013

John Robles

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_07_17/Broadcasting-Board-of-Governors-to-be-US-Ministry-of-Truth-next-step-in-information-war-2897/

Editor’s Note:

Guess Who works for the BBG? Yep… Victor Potapov. This piece means that the BBG (and RFE/RL and VOA) are on the Centre‘s shit-list. This means that Darling Fr Victor may become persona non grata at the Centre (one can hope). Freddie M-G is part of Uncle Sugar‘s spin-machine, too… she works (or worked) for NPR as a manager. Two propagandists for the price of one! Perhaps, Hilarion Kapral should rethink allowing her to speak at ROCOR parishes, as she’s part of (or was part of) the American dezinformatsiya apparat (of course, it goes twice as much for Potapov). Let’s not forget Fatso… he’s part of the rightwing K Street slimeocracy and the Moonie crowd at the Washington Times. Well, well, well… shitbirds of a feather DO flock together. Do we really want such sorts amongst us in influential places? Interesting question, no?

One last thing… the BBG is a well-known Langley front. Do we really want those mixed up with such questionable sorts as influential clerics/figures in our Church? That’s the $64,000 Question…

BMD 

16 June 2013. Sergei Yolkin’s World. Minzdrav Snatches Away Victims from Death

Minzdrav Snatches Away Victims from Death

Sergei Yolkin

2013

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In Russian usage, “Minzdrav” is an acronym for Ministry of Health (in Russian, of course). It’s common coinage in the Russian language… for instance, Minoborony is the Ministry of Defence, and Minyust is the Ministry of Justice. American equivalents are POTUS, SecDef, and DoD. Bureaucratese IS international, after all. In Orwell’s 1984, the reader finds the Russian format for acronym formation in the Newspeak Ingsoc, Minitrue, and Miniluv (amongst others). It’s not sinister in intent… although it seems that way at times. It’s just meant to save keystrokes (no lie).

BMD   

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Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova estimates that the new anti-smoking law could save 150,000 to 200,000 Russian lives per year. Here’s how Sergei Yolkin sees it.

28 May 2013

Sergei Yolkin

RIA-Novosti

http://ria.ru/caricature/20130528/939880831.html

The Role of Traditional Values in Contemporary Society

Families, then (Tsar Aleksandr Aleksandrovich loved his wife and kids, never cheated on her, routinely commuted virtually all death sentences to life imprisonment, and hid a bottle of brandy in his boot… what’s not to like?)…

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families, now…

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Recently, the role of moral values in society has taken centre-stage in public and political discourse. Increasingly, their status as “universal” is under question, and core fundamental concepts receive new, sometimes contradictory interpretations. We must draw a clear distinction between those indisputable values that guided mankind for centuries over its journey of self-development, and the ultraliberal {“liberal” in the European sense, that is, Anglosphere “conservatism”: editor} trends that flourished in the early 21st century.

The collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc in the late 1980s took Western academe by surprise. It also led to the disappearance of the bipolar political and ideological structures that stabilised international relations throughout the 20th century, paving the way for the triumph of neoliberalism. This latter was the only game in town for some time, much as the “unipolar moment” had been. Some more idealistic researchers even started to talk about the “end of history,” meaning the end of the historic creativity of man and nations. In this regard, I can’t help but refer to the interpretation of the “end of history” by the Most Rev Rowan Williams in his book Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction (Making of the Christian Imagination). The euphoria in international relations was short-lived, because of the experience of the first decade of this century, and, then, the global financial and economic crisis. This suggests that talk of the “end of history” usually heralds serious upheavals.

Neoliberalism prompted a number of profound shifts in social development, largely endorsing principles such as political correctness, and the dictatorship of the minority. The “permissiveness” inherent in this trend led to some traditional values shared by an often acquiescent majority being squeezed out of public discourse. It’s worth noting that distinctive features of this particular “take” on liberalism included zero tolerance of dissent and radical approaches to imposing this view, often with the government’s active support. One can’t help but recall how nihilism, as it’s materialism taken to its absurd conclusion  locks human nature within a consumerist framework. George Orwell gave a convincing description of where this kind of social engineering can potentially lead.

I’d like to quote President Vladimir Putin’s address to the RF Federal Assembly. He said, “Attempts by the government to encroach on people’s beliefs and views are a manifestation of totalitarianism” and “law can’t instil morality“. Nevertheless, this is exactly what’s happening now, even though those involved formally deny it. As a result, the erosion of the cultural and moral social environment began with the replacement of its fundamental concepts. Moreover, all this is happening at a time when the role of religion has been on the rise world-wide, including in Islamic countries. At the heart of the issue lies a search for a common denominator between cultures and civilisations. This is essential for better mutual understanding in the modern world. As Madeleine Albright wrote in her book The Mighty and the Almighty (2006), all “should equally refer to such transcendental issues like history, identity, and faith”. Especially, this is so as “the three monotheistic religions provide a rich tradition of overlapping principles, ethics, and beliefs”. I believe that if we perceive society as a purely socio-mechanistic construct, if we ignore its more subtle moral and spiritual nature, it can have fatal consequences for that very society’s life, and, indeed, its future.

2 April 2013

Aleksandr Yakovenko

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/alexander_yakovenko_blog/20130402/180394557/Ambassadors-Notebook-The-Role-of-Traditional-Values-in.html

Editor’s Note:

Many Americans, in particular, are “thrown” by the fact that Russians use English differently than Americans do. For Russians, “liberal” retains its original meaning… “the absence of state controls on private affairs”. That’s to say, the Free Market Nihilism of Anglosphere “conservatives”. The US Republican Party, the Canadian and British Conservative Parties, and the Australian Liberal Party all share this adoration of the Free Market and the concomitant worship of wealth and greed.

“Liberal” in Russia (and on the Continent, as well) does NOT mean “leftist” or “social democratic”. It means a soulless and corrosive nihilistic scrapping of all constructive government regulation, and the trashing of the rights of the non-wealthy. The political parties mentioned above DO believe in the “dictatorship of the minority”… they bow down before oligarchs, gun nutters, religious kooks, economic tinkerers, stock market manipulators, and media moguls. If “law can’t instil morality” (President Putin is right, here), then, we shouldn’t be waving placards in anti-abortion marches; we should be helping unwed mothers, seeing to it that larger families have the wherewithal to raise their kids (including help from the state, of course), and opposing oligarch-inspired cuts to social benefits and wages.

When viewed sanely, with a proper viewpoint, things aren’t quite what Fox News, Pat BuKKKanan, and Rod Dreher propagate. Anyone who opposes sane government regulation and intervention is a godless nihilist… never forget that (the worst of the lot are the Evangelical poseurs, with their smarmy pseudo-religion). Also, remember that “libertarian” is nothing but a euphemism for “wilful, spoilt childishness”. We have a job to do…

BMD