peaccenicked
19th February 2002, 16:44
Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."
— General William Westmoreland
United States Army
"In war, truth is the first casualty."
— Aeschylus
525-456 B.C.
"[The corporate mass-media] serve to divert the unwashed masses and reinforce the basic social values: passivity, submissiveness to authority, the overriding virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of concern for others, fear of real or imagined enemies, etc.
"The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered. It's unnecessary for them to trouble themselves with what's happening in the world. In fact, it's undesirable — if they see too much of reality they may set themselves to change it."
— Noam Chomsky
M.I.T. professor of linguistics
prolific author & U.S. foreign policy critic
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
"Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice.
"Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all."
— Michael Rivero
WhatReallyHappened.com
"Failure by the people, media and government to face the reality of high crimes and cover-ups is corrupting the heart and soul of America. Our nation is dying of its own cowardice.
"Brenneke has told the same story as Ari Ben-Menashe, Jack Terrell, Celerino Castillo, Mike Levine, Fred Kempe and Terry Reed, and this [article] is only a once-over lightly of the mountain of evidence. So, how has CIA, Mossad, Mafia drug-dealing through [Mena Airport, Arkansas] been kept effectively as a "secret"?
"How has the CIA-crack story of Gary Webb at the San Jose Mercury News of August 1996 already begun to drift into the fog of DC and Wall Street daily scandals?
"Because America is losing its mind.
"The two-party system has been utterly homogenized by corrupt money. The mob and Mossad have cut a deal with Wall Street and the CIA to run the world as a global plantation for the benefit of the global plutocracy.
"Only impoverished presses like the PFP, some talk radio and the Internet are yet outside the hegemonic power of transnational corporate fascism. However, when the Imperial pigs succeed in driving 80 percent of the world into the new serfdom, they will probably wish they had not let their greed glands run wild.
"When the middle class discovers that they are part of the impoverished and imprisoned rather than the privileged, they will lead the 'underclass' in a revolution against the plutocracy and its gun thugs."
— Ace R. Hayes
"New York Mob at Mena"
Portland Free Press
January/February 1997
"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the [U.S.] media."
— Noam Chomsky
co-author Manufacturing Consent
"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity — much less dissent.
"Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions..."
— Gore Vidal
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.
"When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular."
— David Hume
Of the First Principles of Government
1758
quoted in Gore Vidal's
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
"The owners and managers of the press determine which person, which facts, which version of the facts, and which ideas shall reach the public."
Report by the Commission on Freedom of the Press
quoted in Democracy for the Few, by Michael Parenti
and Don't Blame the People, by Robert Cirino
"At any given moment, there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts."
— George Orwell
author of the book 1984
"When I was Times bureau chief in Washington, I was a member of the League of Gentlemen [i.e., the established elite]; otherwise I never would have been bureau chief. Time after time, good reporters ... complained about not being able to get stories in the paper. And time after time I said to them, 'You're just not going to get that in the New York Times... it's too reliant on your judgement rather than on official judgement, it's too complex, it contradicts the official record more flagrantly than the conventions of daily journalism allow.'"
— Tom Wicker
New York Times columnist
Guardian (London)
February 13, 1985
quoted in Democracy for the Few, by Michael Parenti
and "'League of Gentlemen' Rates Media," by Kevin Kelly
"Following the same course that virtually every other major industry has in the last two decades, a relentless series of mergers and corporate takeovers has consolidated control of the media into the hands of a few corporate behemoths.
"The result has been that an increasingly authoritarian agenda has been sold to the American people by a massive, multi-tentacled media machine that has become, for all intents and purposes, a propaganda organ of the state."
— David McGowan
from the introduction to Derailing Democracy
"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play."
— Joseph Goebbels
Nazi Propaganda Minister
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
"If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread.
"You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press.
"We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men.
"We are intellectual prostitutes."
— John Swinton
New York Times editor
in a speech before the New York Press Club
1953
"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them."
— Albert Einstein
letter to Sigmund Freud
July 30, 1932
"...the corporate ownership of the country has absolute control of the populist pulpit — 'the media' — as well as of the schoolroom."
— Gore Vidal
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
"Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness."
— George Orwell
author of the book 1984
"A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government."
— Kenneth Boulding
University of Michigan
— General William Westmoreland
United States Army
"In war, truth is the first casualty."
— Aeschylus
525-456 B.C.
"[The corporate mass-media] serve to divert the unwashed masses and reinforce the basic social values: passivity, submissiveness to authority, the overriding virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of concern for others, fear of real or imagined enemies, etc.
"The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered. It's unnecessary for them to trouble themselves with what's happening in the world. In fact, it's undesirable — if they see too much of reality they may set themselves to change it."
— Noam Chomsky
M.I.T. professor of linguistics
prolific author & U.S. foreign policy critic
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
"Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice.
"Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all."
— Michael Rivero
WhatReallyHappened.com
"Failure by the people, media and government to face the reality of high crimes and cover-ups is corrupting the heart and soul of America. Our nation is dying of its own cowardice.
"Brenneke has told the same story as Ari Ben-Menashe, Jack Terrell, Celerino Castillo, Mike Levine, Fred Kempe and Terry Reed, and this [article] is only a once-over lightly of the mountain of evidence. So, how has CIA, Mossad, Mafia drug-dealing through [Mena Airport, Arkansas] been kept effectively as a "secret"?
"How has the CIA-crack story of Gary Webb at the San Jose Mercury News of August 1996 already begun to drift into the fog of DC and Wall Street daily scandals?
"Because America is losing its mind.
"The two-party system has been utterly homogenized by corrupt money. The mob and Mossad have cut a deal with Wall Street and the CIA to run the world as a global plantation for the benefit of the global plutocracy.
"Only impoverished presses like the PFP, some talk radio and the Internet are yet outside the hegemonic power of transnational corporate fascism. However, when the Imperial pigs succeed in driving 80 percent of the world into the new serfdom, they will probably wish they had not let their greed glands run wild.
"When the middle class discovers that they are part of the impoverished and imprisoned rather than the privileged, they will lead the 'underclass' in a revolution against the plutocracy and its gun thugs."
— Ace R. Hayes
"New York Mob at Mena"
Portland Free Press
January/February 1997
"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the [U.S.] media."
— Noam Chomsky
co-author Manufacturing Consent
"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity — much less dissent.
"Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions..."
— Gore Vidal
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.
"When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular."
— David Hume
Of the First Principles of Government
1758
quoted in Gore Vidal's
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
"The owners and managers of the press determine which person, which facts, which version of the facts, and which ideas shall reach the public."
Report by the Commission on Freedom of the Press
quoted in Democracy for the Few, by Michael Parenti
and Don't Blame the People, by Robert Cirino
"At any given moment, there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts."
— George Orwell
author of the book 1984
"When I was Times bureau chief in Washington, I was a member of the League of Gentlemen [i.e., the established elite]; otherwise I never would have been bureau chief. Time after time, good reporters ... complained about not being able to get stories in the paper. And time after time I said to them, 'You're just not going to get that in the New York Times... it's too reliant on your judgement rather than on official judgement, it's too complex, it contradicts the official record more flagrantly than the conventions of daily journalism allow.'"
— Tom Wicker
New York Times columnist
Guardian (London)
February 13, 1985
quoted in Democracy for the Few, by Michael Parenti
and "'League of Gentlemen' Rates Media," by Kevin Kelly
"Following the same course that virtually every other major industry has in the last two decades, a relentless series of mergers and corporate takeovers has consolidated control of the media into the hands of a few corporate behemoths.
"The result has been that an increasingly authoritarian agenda has been sold to the American people by a massive, multi-tentacled media machine that has become, for all intents and purposes, a propaganda organ of the state."
— David McGowan
from the introduction to Derailing Democracy
"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play."
— Joseph Goebbels
Nazi Propaganda Minister
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
"If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread.
"You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press.
"We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men.
"We are intellectual prostitutes."
— John Swinton
New York Times editor
in a speech before the New York Press Club
1953
"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them."
— Albert Einstein
letter to Sigmund Freud
July 30, 1932
"...the corporate ownership of the country has absolute control of the populist pulpit — 'the media' — as well as of the schoolroom."
— Gore Vidal
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
"Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness."
— George Orwell
author of the book 1984
"A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government."
— Kenneth Boulding
University of Michigan