George Soros is right on the money in his epilogue in the book "What Orwell Didn't Know"

[EV_Ares]

Soros reiterates Szántó's point in his own epilogue to the book:

"What I find most troubling is that the American people seem so susceptible to manipulation. The outstanding example is the War on Terror, which has imposed a false and misleading interpretation of the threat presented by the terrorist attack of 9/11. The general public has bought into that interpretation so completely that even though it criticizes the war in Iraq, it is loath to challenge the War on Terror as a false metaphor. This is not the only case where public opinion has been successfully manipulated. Political discourse is rife with examples: the Clear Skies Act actually relaxes the rules on air pollution; the Healthy Forest Restoration Act actually permits clear-cutting; and the No Child Left Behind Act imposes testing standards without providing the necessary funds. Needless to say, both sides of American politics engage in deliberate deception at election time. How could propaganda methods reminiscent of Orwell’s worst fears prove so successful in contemporary America? How could the public be so badly misled?"<187,188>

Link: http://thejournal.epluribusmedia.net/index.php/book-reviews/38-all-reviews/46-taking-back-america

We have all commented on the MSM and how they frame the issues and we can see it in action on the constant media manipulation of the Reverend Wright episode of this primary season. The dems can't let them pick our candidate for us and the American people need to start thinking for themselves more instead of just listening to sound bites and dissect more of what they hear and read.

[JohnyCanuck]

1. One way of shutting down dissent

is to label any dissenter from the establishment's view as just another "conspiracy theorist". Works like a charm. How can you not be a conspiracy theorist these days, is what I would like to know.

[orangerevolution]

2. Which conspiracy are you talking about? n/t

[Echo In Light]

3. Take your pick!!! Basically, the Biggie is that the U.S. is a "force for good."

Absolute bunkum. The reality of the U.S. is here, while the fairytale, propagandized version is aeons over there ... if ya follow.

[JohnyCanuck]

11. Let's start with the murdering, war criminal PNAC fuckwads conspiracy to take over the planet.

Of Gods and Mortals and Empire
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 21 February 2003

SNIP

Two events brought PNAC into the mainstream of American government: the disputed election of George W. Bush, and the attacks of September 11th. When Bush assumed the Presidency, the men who created and nurtured the imperial dreams of PNAC became the men who run the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the White House. When the Towers came down, these men saw, at long last, their chance to turn their White Papers into substantive policy.

Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the ideological father of the group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

PNAC is staffed by men who previously served with groups like Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America, which supported America's bloody gamesmanship in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and with groups like The Committee for the Present Danger, which spent years advocating that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was "winnable."

PNAC has recently given birth to a new group, The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in order to formulate a plan to "educate" the American populace about the need for war in Iraq. CLI has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to support the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi heir presumptive, Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court in 1992 to 22 years in prison for bank fraud after the collapse of Petra Bank, which he founded in 1977. Chalabi has not set foot in Iraq since 1956, but his Enron-like business credentials apparently make him a good match for the Bush administration's plans.

PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" report is the institutionalization of plans and ideologies that have been formulated for decades by the men currently running American government. The PNAC Statement of Principles is signed by Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, as well as by Eliot Abrams, Jeb Bush, Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, and many others. William Kristol, famed conservative writer for the Weekly Standard, is also a co-founder of the group. The Weekly Standard is owned by Ruppert Murdoch, who also owns international media giant Fox News.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/022203A.htm

[Echo In Light]

4. Interesting...I was @Barnes & Noble recently and thumbed through this book

I may have to score it...

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

5. Soros has fabulous wealth, and if he tried, he could get passed our MSM, even buy some of it up

to get the truth out there. Why isn't he doing that?

[EV_Ares]

7. I have always wondered that, when Gore bought Current, I was hoping they

would go in together with others possibly & do something where they could counter the right wing news like Fox & keep the others honest, also some papers would be good so they could just counter Murdoch who owns Fox and a conglomeration of newspapers.

[KoKo]

15. He spent tons of money on GOTV in '04....when he could have maybe pried MNBC out of GE's hands.

Much as Soros seems to try to do good...I often wonder if he isn't just the "charitable voice" for the Big Money Powers that Be. A way to maybe let us think that "cornering the currency market" which he did to make his money...wasn't so bad when he can do good.

I wonder about Bill Gates and all his charity projects. I look at the man..and the way he's operated his business and I see just another power hungry manipulator. Although I do thank him and his fellow "garage boys" for Win-95...because it did give us a chance to expose the Media Lies and politically organize in ways to push back at the Powers that Be.

Who knows...maybe Soros has some ideas ....but it would be nice if he had put his money into Media which is our problem here in the US. And, year by year the control gets worse.

[xchrom]

6. recommend -- i love brilliant people and soro's

is certainly brilliant -- and spot on here as well szantos.

[Ghost Dog]

8. Absolutely. The deliberate dumbing-down, misinformation, downright lies and propaganda

in (most of) your (mainstream commercial) media is in practice, as far as I can see from here, the heart, root and branch of all your current evils.

5th rec.

[L. Coyote]

10. Like Dan Abrams said, "Let's keep it simple." See the film "Studitity" if you have not yet.

It explains a lot.

[Summer93]

9. Today I work harder to get less but it is worth it to me

Who would have expected that the children of the flower power generation would buy into such wholesale consumption. The kids these days must purchase clothing that advertises for the "big name-brand" guys. I am so not into using my body to advertise for a corporation. It is such a challenge to purchase anything these days that does not have a brand blazoned upon it - no space to make it one's own. Corporations have taken a child's imagination and used it for these purposes - and parents pay for it!

That we are exhorted to spend money that we don't have to consume everything we don't need has robbed us of our peace of mind.

I saw through the "war on terror" because I had watched for the success of the "war on drugs" same old same old,....

Clear Skies, Healthy Forest, No Child Left Behind all mottoes of a consumer mindset - if you tag it with a cool saying, a snappy jingle you can sell garbage to anyone. A vine ripened tomato - HA!

[Hydra]

12. The establishment's best ally is most of the people in America

I frequently decry all of our behavior, from allowing 9/11 to occur to invading foreign countries to torture to domestic spying.

You know who shouts me down? Most of the people in this country.

Later, of course, it comes out that what I said was the bare truth. Do I get an apology? No. I still get ignored, while those same people wax poetically about what they can't do to stop it all, and how they couldn't have known.

I think the propaganda works because people don't want to take responsibility for their actions. The propaganda gives them the excuse to let others run their lives, and they always have the out of "I didn't know! I trusted ____"

Sure you did. I doubt Heaven's gatekeeper will buy that, though.

[FiveGoodMen]

13. "propaganda works because people don't want to take responsibility"

Yup. The adults are definitely NOT in charge ... anywhere.

[Hydra]

14. There are "Adults" that exist on Earth?

I've seen plenty of evidence to the contrary.

[JohnyCanuck]

16. Just came across these quotes

at a web page filled with links to various stories on media control.

"I have the greatest admiration for your propaganda. Propaganda in the West is carried out by experts who have had the best training in the world -- in the field of advertizing -- and have mastered the techniques with exceptional proficiency ... Yours are subtle and persuasive; ours are crude and obvious ... I think that the fundamental difference between our worlds, with respect to propaganda, is quite simple. You tend to believe yours ... and we tend to disbelieve ours." a Soviet correspondent based five years in the U.S.

"The Gulf War ... was made popular by an immense propaganda barrage unleashed by the Pentagon, the media, and government, creating an ideological milieu in which 45 percent of the population said it would be prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iraq. Military actions were, transformed into a grotesque national spectacle, a great celebration of war-making." Carl Boggs

"The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of people, who are innately obedient to authority. This obedience-truth will then become a consensus-truth accepted by many individuals unable to stand alone against the majority. In this way, the truth promulgated by the propaganda system - however irrational - stands a good chance of becoming the consensus, and may come to seem self-evident common sense." David Edwards, author of Burning All Illusions

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_control_propaganda/Media_Control.html