Alex Jones: The Pied Piper of Extremism Who Brands “Truth-Seeking” as Mental Illness

Excellent article on Alex Jones from the editors of the “Signs of the Times” site. I left out the pictures and embedded YouTube videos.

There is a disinformation program literally for everyone. No matter who you are – what your interests are, what your beliefs are, which way you’re focusing – there is a website set up just for you to take you in and to vector your thinking and your attention into thinking the way that they want you to think. – Laura Knight-Jadczyk

A recent article in The Salon is another in a series of pieces that draws attention to the rantings of Alex Jones, through his web TV show and websites, infowars and prisionplanet. Psychology Today‘s September edition (pictured left) also fans the flames, it is entitled Dark Minds: When does incredulity become paranoia. With Alex Jones the centerpiece, it makes the case that those seeking the truth are essentially a product of mental instability, by elevating him to ‘Conspiracy King’ status and associating his readers as mentally ill.

In a similar vein, The Salon article presents a parental concern that their son had become sucked into “the Internet conspiracy black hole created by some guy named Alex Jones.” The request for help to guide their nephew “away from this cultish fear-monger” is met with this advice:

“I do not want to conclude without making explicit that if he has dyslexia or some kind of attention-deficit disorder, those are things that should be diagnosed and treated on their own. If his mother’s coddling has prevented him from facing up to these possible problems, that could be adding to his anxiety. So I would definitely, in addition to the camping trip, or wilderness expedition, do what you can to bring to light any organic, diagnosable and treatable conditions he may have.”

In both of these articles we have the suggestion that: Alternative views to the mainstream media found on the internet have been created and led by Alex Jones; and people who are attracted to these views have some form of learning difficulty or psychological disorder.

At the same time there has also been a great deal of recent press coverage on Charlie Sheen’s recent partnership questioning the official 9/11 story. The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail reported an almost identical article:

Sheen, who appears in the hit comedy series Two And A Half Men, made his claims in the transcript of a fictional encounter with Mr Obama, called Twenty Minutes With The President. It was published on the website of radio show host Alex Jones, two days ahead of Sheen’s appearance on Jones’s show today. Most of his observations make up the basis of all the conspiracy theories surrounding the terror attack. Those who support the theories in the U.S. are known as Truthers.

Both are considered right wing newspapers supporting a conservative/Republican agenda. They normally shy away from reporting any stories that question the official conspiracy that the government is complicit.

Why now is Alex Jones getting so much media attention?
Why Is Alex Jones being portrayed as THE spokesman for alternative views?
Why are readers of his material being linked to mental health disorders?

Is it because he has become the pied piper of extremist truth seeking that brands all the rest as a mental illness?

A false champion of truth

Alex Jones is, in the opinion of Sott.net, part of a limited hang out campaign whereby the attention and energies of those people who have the capacity to realise that something is very wrong with our world are directed towards issues that are either dead ends or which, if pursued, will lead to their own destruction. Jones’ “take back the government” shtick is one such issue. If Jones were worthy of his position as a leading figure in the 9/11 etc. truth community he would be directing people’s attention towards reading between the lines of current world events. He would not be encouraging a survivalist and revolutionary attitude which ultimately plays directly into the hands of the powers that be and facilitates the ramping up of police brutality.

As a reader of this article, you will be aware that America now has all the hallmarks of a Police State, as recent harassment of protesters at the G20 Summit in Pittsburg clearly show. Waving a protest flag at a CS-gas-wielding military personnel is (pardon the pun) likely to end in tears, but this confrontational behaviour is the proposed AJ solution.

Secret Support

Websites such as SOTT.net routinely encounter discriminatory censorship at the hands of the market-leading search engine Google (The Disappeared: SOTT.net and Google’s conspicuous omissions). Other sites that do their best to present an objective picture of the orchestration of world events also suffer. See: Google censors pro-Palestinian news sites and Google’s censors: The cat is out of the bag: Uruknet.info. As Orwell said, lies of omission are the worst and by contrast, Prisonplanet, which avoids mentioning the negative influence of the Israeli lobby and Zionist atrocities, manages to have its ‘news’ articles appear in Google News listings. [Just search one of their favourite topics 'Bilderberg' to see for yourself]. Since it is so easy for Google to decide which information will receive the most attention, doesn’t it make you wonder why the censorship toolbox isn’t switched on for Jones’ views? Instead his presence is inflated across the alternative spectrum. His talent for self-promotion plays a part in this, but the propaganda matrix against which he rails provides him the stage.

Other red flags include the subtle references to infowars on mainstream TV channels, which suspiciously seem aimed to encourage attention. The following news clip is a good example. From around a minute in the report becomes a subtle infomercial – almost like a Guerrilla marketing campaign.

The fact that Jones is now being given significant exposure and airtime by the mainstream media – specifically by disinformation-central Fox News – also does not seem to have raised any question marks among his faithful followers.

Fundamentalist Revolution

Jones’ message is one of fear and revolutionary reaction. ‘Revolt and take your government back’ would be his mantra. However, ‘The government’ cannot be ‘taken back’. ‘The government’ is not what Americans were told it is in grade school. Things have changed. Or rather, they were never the old way to begin with. America’s history is a myth, like all national histories are a myth generated to control people through their belief centers. The American myth revolves around two documents: the American Constitution and the Bible. Jones’ constitutional brigade is right to remind people that laws meant to regulate everyone’s behaviour are being ignored by the few who regard themselves above the rule of law. But his stance as an “aggressive constitutionalist” is akin to the zealous worship with which his fundamentalist Christian neighbours treat the Bible. While these documents have educational value for understanding history, they have long been turned into tools of propaganda. The indoctrination surrounding them has transformed them into idols of worship for people whose moral exo-skeleton requires they place faith in an order of values that lies outside of them. Just as monothesitic religions offer a pseudo-morality to those who need to be told by society to keep on the straight and narrow path, so a cult of ignorance has grown up around the US Constitution as the fount of American civic wisdom.

Our point is not to demean the value of having a social charter by which all can abide, but to highlight the inherent flaw of rallying around a document that means nothing to psychopaths whose worldview lies entirely beyond its boundaries. People can agree that there are minimal rights granted them by nature. But if they do not take into account the existence of their intra-species predator and fast recognise how their emotional investment in a moral order that is not their own disempowers them, their good intentions will be rendered into their opposite by the laws of ponerogenesis – the infection and spread of evil.

As noted, Jones is a gun enthusiast and has spent a lot of energy whipping up support for the maintenance of the right to bear arms in the USA. While he may not have (yet) explicitly said so, it is quite clear that his message is that “Obama’s socialist dictatorship” must be resisted by US citizens by force of arms.

What’s implied here is the dangerous notion that by remaining armed they present a strategic problem to the powers that be, who could never subvert them against their will so long as they remain armed. It’s the kind of MAD paranoia that emanated from the Military-Industrial Complex down throughout society in the Cold War era: so long as we maintain a stockpile of nuclear weapons, the Soviets will never attack us because we would react and everybody could be certain of only one thing: mutually assured destruction (MAD).

The suggestive threat of violence is ever present in both Jones’ manner and words. He hints of bloody revolution at the beginning of one of his blockbusters (appropriately called Endgame), with a quote from HG Wells:

Countless people will hate the New World Order and will die protesting against it.

This is precisely where paranoid characters come in. Standing in front of the Bilderberg meeting in Canada in 2006, Jones grandstands the following through his customary bullhorn:

God is on our side. I stand before the creator of the universe and I ask the creator of the universe, as our founding fathers did in 1776 to lead, guide and direct us and to give us the power and the foresight and the understanding and the will to stand against your entire agenda, including your final plan of world population reduction of 80% that Henry Kissinger penned in 1973. Why do you put mercury in the vaccines? [inaudible] sodium fluoride in the water? Why? Why do you put cancer viruses in the vaccines? Why have you used depleted uranium now in four separate nations? You’re arrogant. You have the sickness that elites have had throughout history in their figurative and in some cases literal ivory towers. You believe that you’re invincible. You will and you are failing now. Your New World Order will fall. Humanity will defeat you. The answer to 1984 is 1776.

1776. What happened in 1776? There was violent revolution in the soon-to-be USA.

Jones has got a deep religious fundamentalist connection – not least with one Texe Marrs, who sees in every event the prophecy of biblical Revelations – he’s a gun totin’ “survivalist”. Do people actually think that he’s going to rant lies to attract followers? Of course not! He’s going to hit every emotional button he can in a whole lot of people who are disenfranchised, downwardly adjusted, and frustrated as heck.

The “9/11 Truth Movement” – vested in the flag, the constitution, guns and Christianity – is being married with the “Moral Majority” – also vested in the flag, guns and Sarah Palin, whose Army of God is bent on establishing a totalitarian theocracy before the coming of their messiah – to form a front of revved up avengers on a crusade to defend their beliefs from crumbling as history brings us closer to reality. It’s an impossible challenge of course, but their determination to hold onto their idols is unyielding and threatening to corral their followers into the trap set for the American people.

Alex Jones and Sarah Palin; now there’s a marriage made in heaven! An interesting footnote to this is Jones’ alleged membership of a fundamentalist Christian church (now disbanded) called Remnant Saints Inter-Continental Congress. Its motto was: Toward the Establishment of the Government of God on Earth. Jones denied ever being a member, although the church disputed this.

Ponerization

From his earliest days ranting on Austin’s public access tv network, Jones has understood the importance of ratings. It doesn’t matter what people say about you, so long as the camera is on you.

The attention fostered on Jones creates the impression in those amenable to his material that he is The Messenger, where in fact he becomes the pied piper of extremist truth-seeking that brands all those who seek to understand the societal re-ordering humanity is undergoing as suffering from mental illness.

There is in fact a psychological disorder at play here. Political Ponerology has this to say about the young angry white males that laud Jones’ pathological behaviour and purchase his DVDs because it’s more in line with their TV culture where reading was never worth the effort:

If various circumstances combine, including a given society’s deficient psychological worldview, individuals are forced to exercise functions which do not make full use of his or her talents. When this happens, said person’s productivity is no better, and often even worse, than that of a worker with satisfactory talents. Such an individual then feels cheated and inunndated by duties which prevent him from achieving self-realization. His thoughts wander from his duties into a world of fantasy, or into matters which are of greater interest to him; in his daydream world, he is what he should and deserves to be. Such a person always knows if his social and professional adjustment has taken a downward direction; at the same time, however, if he fails to develop a healthy critical faculty concerning the upper limits of his own talents, his daydreams may “fix on” an unfair world where “all you need is power”. Revolutionary and radical ideas find fertile soil among such people in downward social adaptations. It is in society’s best interests to correct such conditions not only for better productivity, but to avoid tragedies. [...]

Development or involution in all areas of cultural, economic and political life depend on the extent to which this talent pool is properly ultilized. In the final analysis, it also determines whether there will be evolution or revolution.

Jones’ “truth movement” bears many of the symptoms of what Lobaczewski and his fellow researchers so accurately described as a ponerogenic union:

One phenomenon all ponerogenic groups and associations have in common is the fact that their members lose (or have already lost) the capacity to perceive pathological individuals as such, interpreting their behavior in a fascinated, heroic, or melodramatic way. The opinions, ideas, and judgments of people carrying various psychological deficits are endowed with an importance at least equal to that of outstanding individuals among normal people. The atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic. Let us call this the first criterion of ponerogenesis.

The American people are in danger of being taken over by the process of ponerization even more than they already have because of the unravelling of safety nets and institutions. Pensions are disappearing, unemployment is increasing, the financial system may collapse, the housing market is falling apart and cities are crumbling as public utilities are sold off and disaster capitalism devours what’s left of the public domain.

Conditions are certainly ripe in the US for a pied piper to vector all that rage generated by the psychopaths in power in a way that ultimately endangers all who work to educate their fellow countrymen and women.

The earlier phase of the union’s activity is usually dominated by characteropathic, particularly paranoid, individuals, who often play an inspirational or spellbinding role in the ponerization process.

Any human group affected by the process [of ponerization] is characterized by its increasing regression as regards natural common sense and the ability to perceive psychological reality. Someone treating this in traditional categories could consider it an instance of “turning into half-wittedness” or the growing of intellectual deficiencies and moral failings.

Once a group has inhaled a sufficient dose of pathological material to give birth to the conviction that these not-quite-normal people are unique geniuses, it starts subjecting its more normal members to pressure characterized by corresponding paralogical and paramoral elements, as expected.

In other words, the group begins to behave no differently than the establishment against which it rails – in this case, the US government.

Paranoid character disorders:

It is characteristic of paranoid behavior for people to be capable of relatively correct reasoning and discussion as long as the conversation involves minor differences of opinion. This stops abruptly when the partner’s arguments begin to undermine their overvalued ideas, crush their long-held stereotypes of reasoning, or force them to accept a conclusion they had subconsciously rejected before.

Such a stimulus unleashes upon the partner a torrent of pseudo-logical, largely paramoralistic, often insulting utterances which always contain some degree of suggestion.

Utterances like these inspire aversion among cultivated and logical people, but they enslave less critical minds, e.g. people with other kinds of psychological deficiencies, who were earlier the objects of the egotistical influence of individuals with character disorders, and in particular a large part of the young.

A [working class person] may perceive this to be a kind of victory over higher-class people and thus take the paranoid person’s side. However, this is not the normal reaction among the common people, where perception of psychological reality occurs no less often than among intellectuals.

In sum then, the response of accepting paranoid argumentation is qualitatively more frequent in reverse proportion to the civilization level of the community in question, although it never approaches the majority.

Nevertheless, paranoid individuals become aware of their enslaving influence through experience and attempt to take advantage thereof in a pathologically egotistic manner.

Political Ponerology – Andrej Lobaczewski

Does that remind you of anyone?

The Secret Team and COINTELPRO

In order to shield themselves from humanity seeing how their pathological influence has coloured everything, the powers that be have manoeuvered voices like Jones into positions of visibility. In doing so, they effectively ordained him “Minister of Truth” over a flock of “Truthers”, and whose church is the “9/11 Truth Movement.” These terms of reference did not come out of nowhere. They were chosen for the dual purpose of vectoring genuine truth seekers to dead ends, where anger hype and paranoia endlessly stress the seeker and those around him or her, and to facilitate the mainstream media’s task of branding those who ask questions of authority and the true nature of reality as insane.

We find it interesting that Jones is now lambasting his “attackers” as “George Soros funded”. There’s no reason to think Jones was aware that this smear tactic has already been used to defame people when he recently employed it in his defense, but it is suggestive of some kind of meme floating around that certain pathological types readily absorb and use to their advantage.

The way Alex Jones presents himself has a great deal to do with his inflated ego. However, that is not the only factor. The media attention he is getting is in many ways quite bewildering until one digs deeper and understands that this doesn’t happen for no reason. Sites and individuals that legitimately seek the truth are ignored and suppressed. Sites and individuals that serve a useful purpose are supported and championed.

The strategy of supporting sides that at first glance appear to be in direct opposition is similar to the way things are staged by the “Secret Team”. L Fletcher Prouty described in great detail how the flow of information is successfully managed by few hands to produce precisely the reaction the powers that be require from their unwitting targets. The best minds running government departments and the best journalists reporting events can be supplied information in a fashion and style tailored specifically for them because the Secret Team knows they will respond to specific information. They know each response because they know every detail about a public person’s life and thus have psychological profiles that tell them exactly how that person is programmed to think. Now consider that if they can manoeuver presidents, generals and technocrats – men and women at the top of their game in public office – to function just how they want them to function, how difficult would it be for them to micromanage someone as brash as Alex Jones?

We cannot emphasise enough that people read Prouty’s works in order to guage the sophistication of a system of information control that is always several steps ahead of the players. The Secret Team now sits atop a gargantuan reaction machine, developed over decades of counter-intelligence programs. It is our experience that cool heads are required to counter some of the negative effects of its mind games. Reactionary individuals only contribute to improving the machine’s efficiency.

Over the years we have made clear our opinion that there is good reason to suspect that Alex Jones is part of a COINTELPRO operation. What people fail to understand however is that serious COINTELPRO operations are never obviously COINTELPRO. They are by definition very closely aligned with that which they seek to subvert and destroy because they would not get very far at infiltration and subversion if they were not. The fact that Alex Jones is an outspoken critic of government and that he exposes all manner of hidden government agendas cannot be taken as evidence that he is not COINTELPRO. In fact, in the crazy world of government agents and agencies, when taken along with other evidence, the fact that Jones exposes government schemes – and extraordinarily loudly at that – becomes evidence that he may well be COINTELPRO. Please note that the important part of that last sentence is “when taken along with other evidence”, some of which we outlined above. To come to a decision on the honest intentions (or otherwise) of Jones and his ilk, we must look for more subtle clues and one of the most useful barometers are the fruits of his labor.

Alex Jones’ infowars.com bio awards him the mantle of “grandfather of the 9/11 Truth movement”. Watch the following clips and decide for yourself whether Alex Jones is a man who seeks Truth or an agent of hate:

Still undecided? Wait, there’s more:

The fact of the matter is that the current economic crisis in the US and the continuing imposition of a global police state, led by the forces of the American empire, are but two of the very serious problems that face humanity today, and Jones and most other alleged truth-seekers seem content to focus only on the superficial aspects of those problems. We will have to wait and see the fate of those hooked on the alternative-media-pied-pipers’ tune. In the meantime, Sott.net has, and always will, play our own tune as we look deeper to uncover the many layers that lie beneath the surface. We ask that those of you who have ears… to listen.

Article on CDC’s swine flu jab PR machine

The Public Relations Machine for the Vaccine Complex, by Richard Gale and Gary Null

One hard lesson we should have learned after Wall Street’s collapse and the government’s handling of the bailout is that there is no reason, whatsoever, for us to sacrifice our good faith and trust in former bankers who now run the Treasury and Federal Reserve. And now as the flu season gets ready to kick off amidst much fanfare and predictions of doom due to a new H1N1 influenza virus, there is emerging sufficient information to raise very serious doubts whether our nation’s health authorities are truly serving the public health instead of commercial interests.

If the flu season goes according to schedule, the vaccine industrial complex will be poised to join Wall Street for record year rip-off profits. We will also likely witness huge Pharma executive bonuses and perhaps gold-plated toilets. Even if the CDC statisticians’ crystal ball used to forecast rampant swine flu infections turns into a complete bust—which would only be one more added to many other failed flu predictions back to 1976—it will nevertheless be a very profitable failure as was the economic collapse for the banking cartel. The vaccine industry has now received orders in the range of 3 billion doses during the course of the coming flu season. The World Health Organization would like to vaccinate two thirds (4 billion) of the global community, and the US alone is spending $2 billion to stockpile the nation with upwards to 250 million doses.

In the US, such profits could never be accomplished without a dynamic, marketing initiative to convince Americans that vaccines will keep them protected and alive. And what better public relations machine for the vaccine complex, and all its supporters in health insurance and professional medical institutions, than our very own Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services. Even better, our tax dollars are there to pay for it all. We pay for the comfort in knowing that the CDC’s disinformation campaign will continue to scare us over the major networks and the New York Times. We can also assure vaccine makers that once and for all they are protected from liability in the event of serious flu vaccine injuries.

Nevertheless, the government has a lot of vaccine vials to distribute, therefore, the CDC needs to sustain the fiction of numerous elderly dying in nursing homes, unvaccinated pregnant moms and children facing life threatening complications, and scores of sick and dead burnt into our national subconscious. It is all part of the CDC’s script to get citizens rushing to their doctors and Wal-Marts to be vaccinated.

Peter Doshi, while at Harvard in the mid-2000s, published a devastating study in the British Medical Journal that systematically unveils the flawed predictive science used to publicize our health agencies’ influenza statistics and mortality rates. His analysis shook up enough health authorities to warrant twelve scientists from the CDC and National Institutes of Health to unsuccessfully take him on. Now at MIT, Doshi continues his analysis of a century’s worth of influenza mortality data and government manipulation of influenza data, such as the annual figure of 36,000 influenza deaths we hear and read repeatedly.[1] Although this magical number was for all practical purposes alchemically conjured up via mathematical modeling back in 2003, it continues to be the most holy number in the CDC’s PR vocabulary every flu season. Doshi draws the conclusion, published in the American Journal of Public Health, that commercial interests are playing the role of science in both industry and government.[2]

Deconstruction of the CDC’s cherry-picked science and a growing anti-vaccination community are just some of the obstacles health authorities face. Therefore, no public relations strategy can have a solid multimedia punch on American citizens without opinion leaders serving as the gnomes for the vaccine complex and our heavily invested government health agencies, which are about to be buried in millions of purchased vaccine vials eager for distribution. This effort requires shock troopers, such as the pro-vaccine prophet Dr. Paul Offit, the creator of the rotavirus vaccine and a staunch critic against any scientist who discovers an association between vaccines and severe neurological disorders. Dr. Offit is on record for an audacious comment that children can tolerate 100,000 vaccinations (yes, you read that number correctly).[3]

However, during this particular flu season, government health officials’ may have a more difficult time convincing Americans to be vaccinated for swine flu if recent polls are reliable indicators. The latest Consumers Union poll released on September 30 shows almost two-thirds of parents will withhold vaccinating their children; fifty percent of respondents’ rationale is that the vaccine has not been tested thoroughly for safety.[4] A poll of pregnant mothers conducted by the internet parent support group Mumsnet.com indicates women are turning more suspicious about the flu vaccine’s true efficacy and safety. The survey of 1500 respondents found only 6 percent of pregnant women “definitely” taking the shot, while 48 percent said they “definitely” wouldn’t. A parallel poll revealed only 5 percent would definitely vaccinate their children.[5] A more recent San Francisco Chronicle survey finds 54 percent saying the H1N1 flu is nothing to be worried about.[6]

A separate study conducted by Harvard’s School of Public Health showed that among the 41 percent who would not get the shot, 44 percent of parents are uncertain they would allow their children to receive it. Aside from many who expressed a fear of the vaccine’s side effects, the poll found 31 percent expressing a distrust in our public health officials providing accurate information on vaccine safety.[7] Therefore, expect an aggressive government public relations campaign during the coming weeks and even months, while our tax dollars are spent on 250 million shots that independent epidemiological evidence is showing may be ineffective at best, and dangerous at worst.

European polls indicate that our neighbors on the other side of the great pond are less nervous about the H1N1 strain’s severity and far more suspicious towards health officials’ rationale for hyping dire warnings of swine flu’s dangers. In France, Le Figaro conducted a poll of 12,050 people showing 69 percent will refuse the vaccination. In a separate French survey, one third of 4,752 doctors, nurses and healthcare workers surveyed would not be inoculated.[8] Twenty-nine percent of Germans surveyed said they would refuse it “under any circumstance” and an additional 33 percent would likely refuse it. In the region of Bavaria and Baden Wurttemburg, only 10 percent of those polled said they would submit their arms to injection. In the UK, a couple polls reported in the Daily Mail last August, showed half of family physicians and a third of UK nurses do not want the swine flu vaccination. Seventy-one percent do not believe the vaccine has been tested enough for safety and the swine flu is much milder than health authorities are saying.

During the course of the CDC’s media war to push forward the vaccine industry’s greed for profit, science and reflective caution are being sacrificed. An important peer-reviewed study appearing in the June 2009 issue of Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry shows a causal relationship between the amounts of ethylmercury (thimerosal) found in inoculations for infants, when administered to monkeys, and cellular toxicity resulting in mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative reduction activity and degeneration and death in neuronal and fetal cells.[9] These are all indicative signs found in some ASD. But health officials prefer to ignore such results. For the future health of American children, the study’s findings arrive at a bad time when a recent Harvard study now reports autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) has risen to 1 in 91 people compared to the earlier 1 in 150 estimate. But since the study was sponsored by the CDC, the press release makes no indication that just maybe the over-vaccination of children with dozens of injections by the age of 5 years might be a causal factor behind this national epidemic of ASD and other neurological disorders.

During the course of interviewing many parents of autistic children for our documentaries Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in the USA, the personal stories we filmed repeatedly were that of a once perfectly healthy and joyful child who, shortly after a vaccination or a series of injections, simply vanished from normality. However, national health policy today seems to have almost legislated by divine decree that there is no relationship between vaccine ingredients and autism. Besides, further independent research and first-hand personal stories would only interfere with the propaganda machine and the CDC’s “Seven Step Recipe for Generating Interest In, and Demand for, Flu Vaccination.”

Peter Doshi first brought public attention to the CDC’s PR influenza strategy known as the Seven Step Recipe. Glen Nowak, now the Director of the CDC’s Media Relations, outlined a concise public relations template while serving as the communications spokesperson for the National Immunization Program. Speaking at the 2004 National Influenza Vaccine Summit, he presented the CDC’s seven steps. After a careful review of Nowak’s Powerpoint presentation we discover a very detailed and concerted PR and multimedia campaign that includes the following (quotes are from CDC’s materials):

• To encourage the belief that influenza infection can “occur among people for whom influenza is not generally perceived to cause serious complications (e.g., children, healthy adults, healthy seniors).” In other words, promote flu vaccination to those who don’t really need it.

• In order to “foster the demand for flu vaccinations” the CDC should target “medical experts and public health authorities publicly (e.g., via media) [to] state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)—and urge influenza vaccination.”

• By focusing on the message of dire health threats and human casualties upon those who don’t really need to be vaccinated, the CDC will reach its milestone of “framing of the flu season in terms that motivate behavior (e.g., as “very severe,” “more severe than last or past years,” “deadly”).”

• Throughout the flu season, the campaign would continue issuing reports “from health officials and media” to emphasize that “influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people—helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.”

• Of course, no marketing strategy is thorough without images. Ergo another ingredient in the recipe is to use “visible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) and people getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce).”

The CDC’s “key points” indicate we are now in that critical timeframe for the CDC to distribute materials to “a variety of partners.” This includes aggressively disseminating all medical reports, studies and PR spins to the soporific media and corporate-funded medical associations to support the government’s mass vaccination efforts. Come November, we will begin to see reports on “pediatric deaths” due to influenza—although Dr. Martin Meltzer, a CDC expert in health economics, has stated “almost nobody dies of the flu” and “deaths [are] associated with flu, but not necessarily caused by flu.”[10] Apparently, the folks over in the various CDC departments and our different federal health agencies don’t communicate with each other very well.

So why should our tax dollars go towards fabricating and/or ignoring science in order to vaccinate Americans? Nowak publicly stated the CDC’s reasons on National Public Radio, “… the manufacturers were telling us that they weren’t receiving a lot of orders for vaccine for use in November or even December … It really did look like we [CDC] needed to do something to encourage people to get a flu shot.[11]

At this moment, we are witnessing a steady flow press releases and articles in the media to convert Americans to the wisdom of national health vaccination policy. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has issued preliminary positive results from an uncompleted clinical trial testing the H1N1 vaccine on children and young people between 6 months and 17 years of age. The fact that the entire study only enrolled 70 individuals covering this age range should alone raise red flags about any reliable conclusions after the study is completed. Moreover, the study is specifically designed for measuring the necessary immune response to protect youth from the swine flu. It is not a safety study. We usually expect that sound scientific ethics demand clinical trials to be reported after a final analysis of research data, however, the CDC’s Seven Step Recipe is not concerned with scientific facts, or rigorous research protocol. It is simply part of the PR game plan to get people vaccinated and to do it fast.

Donald McNeil, a shill for the vaccine complex writing for the New York Times has printed two recent articles aligned with CDC propaganda. He quotes Dr. Jay Butler, chief of the swine flu vaccine task force at the CDC in order to relieve fears about flu vaccine adverse effects, especially to pregnant women. Dr. Butler said, “There are about 2,400 miscarriages a day in the US. You’ll see things that would have happened anyway. But the vaccine doesn’t cause miscarriages. It also doesn’t cause auto accidents, but they happen.”[12] I hope that is reassuring to all those expectant mothers across the country, especially since none of the approved H1N1 vaccines have undergone rigorous clinical safety trials on pregnant women or the potential adverse effects of mercury-laced vaccines and other ingredients, such as spermacide, detergent and cosmetics, on the developing fetus. Germany on the other hand announced it is now taking preventative measures. Agreeing that the verdict on ethylmercury and squalene safety for children is unsettled, Germany is requiring the vaccine industry to return to their plants and provide adjuvant- and mercury preservative-free vaccine lots.

McNeil’s more recent article in October 7th’s New York Times should be read alongside the Seven Step Recipe for a clear visual unfolding of the CDC’s PR strategy in action. McNeil downplays the growing medical realization that the swine flu is in all likelihood much milder than seasonal flu in order to convince us to roll up our sleeves. Following the CDC script, we see the picture of little 3 year old Clayton being vaccinated, while McNeill compares the swine flu death of an 18 year old Tibetan woman in China with a story of joyful young Brandon and his 9 year old sister gleefully surrendering their nostrils for a blast of live-attenuated H1N1 virus.[13]

While finalizing this article, Peter Doshi replied to an email and drew attention to an event in his Harper’s article that should force us to pause before rolling up our sleeves. Briefly, the 2004 flu season was a debacle for the vaccine complex and federal health officials after 50 million doses of flu vaccine promised by Chiron Corporation were made unavailable, therefore, putting the health industry into a panic. In order to lessen the frenzy previously stirred by its public fear tactics, the CDC downgraded the flu’s urgency to “an annoying illness”, and “stressed the protective benefits of regular hand washing.”[14]

Now that is a national policy I can support. I would much prefer the CDC funding Americans’ soap bills to ward off an uncertain swine flu pandemic rather than using taxes for unsubstantiated threats from the CDC’s national vaccine marketing campaign.

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the genomic industry. Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in the USA.

Notes

[1] Doshi, Peter. “Viral Marketing: The Selling of the Flu Vaccine.” Harpers Magazine. March. 2006.
[2] “MIT grad student’s study challenges notions of pandemic flu” MIT Tech Talk. April 16, 2008.
[3] Kalb, Claudia. “Stomping through a medical minefield” Newsweek. October 25, 2008.
[4] “Majority of US parents wary of H1N1 vaccine: poll” Reuters Health. October 1, 2009.
[5] http://www.mumsnet.com
[6] Allday, Erin. “Swine flu draws a shrug, field poll shows.” SF Gate. October 6, 2009.
[7] “Just 40 percent of adults ‘absolutely certain’ they will get H1N1 vaccine, survey finds” Science Daily. October 2, 2009.
[8] “Grippe A: des blouses blanches anti-vaccin” SFR, France. September 18, 2009 info.sfr.fr/france/grippe-a-des-blouses-blanches-anti-vaccin,115335
[9] Geier D, King P, Geier M. “Mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative-reduction activity, degeneration, and death in human neuronal and fetal cells induced by low level exposure to thimerosal and other metal compounds.” Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry. Volume 91, Issue 4, June 2009.
[10] Manning, Anita. “Study: Annual flu death toll could be overstated.” USA Today. December 11, 2005.
[11] Doshi, Peter. “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” BMJ 2005; 331:1412 (10 December)
[12] McNeil, Donald. “Don’t blame flu shots for all ills, officials say” New York Times. September 28, 2009.
[13] McNeil, Donald. “Swine flu vaccinations start as officials attack myths.” New York Times. October 7, 2009.
[14] Doshi, Peter. “Viral Marketing: The Selling of the Flu Vaccine.” Harpers Magazine. March. 2006.

Richard Cook on “The End of Money and the Future of Civilization,” credit clearing and setting up alternative currency and trading systems

This is long, so I’ve bolded the highlights of the essay. I’m glad to see that there may be a solution out of our current economic debacle.

Thomas Greco’s “The End of Money and the Future of Civilization”: A Review by Richard C. Cook

It’s too late for anyone to pretend that the U.S. government, whether under President Barack Obama or anyone else, can divert our nation from long-term economic decline. The U.S. is increasingly in a state of political, economic, and moral paralysis, caught as it were between the “rock” of protracted recession and the “hard place” of terminal government debt.

Even if the stock market can be shored up by more government borrowing for “stimulus” spending, it’s a temporary reprieve, because nothing can bring back the consumer purchasing power that was lost when the banks stopped pumping money into the economy through out-of-control mortgage lending. We simply no longer have the job base for people to earn the income they need to live.

The underlying cause of the crisis is in fact the debt-based monetary system, whereby the U.S. ruling class long ago sold out our nation and its people to the international banking cartel of which the Rockefeller and Morgan interests have been the chief representatives for over a century. It was lending on a previously unheard of scale for overpriced assets to people and businesses unable to repay that created the bubbles that burst in 2008, not only in the housing market but also in such areas as commercial real estate, equities, commodities, and derivatives. It was an explosion that reverberated throughout the world.

The Obama administration’s response to the crisis has been to print Treasury bonds both for the financial system bailouts and the sputtering Keynesian stimulus that so far has gone substantially into military infrastructure. This bond bubble is what I have referred to as “Obama’s Last Picture Show.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12512

Government debt is fundamentally inflationary. For a generation, the U.S. dollar has been inflating at an increasing rate, with the economy being kept in a growth posture by selling our debt instruments abroad or allowing foreigners holding dollars to purchase property and other assets on our own soil. The website EconomyinCrisis.org reports that in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, “foreign entities spent $267.8 billion to acquire or establish U.S. businesses.” http://www.economyincrisis.org/articles/show/2801

Foreigners are spending their dollars as fast as possible, because they are now plummeting in value. It’s increasingly clear that sooner rather than later, the dollar will be dumped by foreign purchasers of bonds, particularly China, and possibly even the oil-producing nations.

These nations know full well that bonds denominated in dollars can never be completely repaid, even if the bonds can be rolled over into fresh debt. It’s this dynamic that is dragging the U.S. economy to the cliff, because real economic growth stopped long ago when our manufacturing jobs were exported. This is because most of the growth since Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 has been only on paper through financial bubbles. This included the dot.com bubble of the Clinton years that blew up in 2000-2001.

Now, after the Treasury bond bubble of 2009, there is nothing left in America to inflate. With so many jobs gone, the American family home was the last thing of value we owned.

So the air is going out of the tires. Americans who are struggling to work for a living are passive spectators as their jobs, savings, health insurance, pensions, and homes continue to erode in value or even disappear. Last Sunday the Washington Post reported a massive crisis in state and local government pensions. Reporter David Cho wrote, “The financial crisis has blown a hole in the rosy forecasts of pension funds that cover teachers, police officers and other government employees, casting into doubt as never before whether these public systems will be able to keep their promises to future generations of retirees.”

So what, if anything, can be done about it?

Well, the first thing an intelligent physician does is diagnose the disease. Thomas Greco, in his new book The End of Money and the Future of Civilization (Chelsea Green: 2009) , outlines the increasingly familiar story of how things got so bad, and he tells it as well as anyone has ever done. His style is precise and sometimes academic. Behind it, though, is a passion for truth and the type of rock-solid integrity that refuses to sugar-coat a very bitter pill.

More than that, Greco writes about how to change what has gone wrong. His credentials as an engineer, college professor, author, and consultant are impeccable. His book is among the most important written in this decade. It is truly a book that can alter the world and, if taken seriously, give large numbers of people a practical way to survive the gathering catastrophe.

But unlike most commentators, what Greco offers is not another phony prescription for what the financiers and government should do for us, whether through “restarting” lending or another round of stimulus spending. Rather it’s what we should do for ourselves, and could do much better, if we understood what to do and if big banking and big government just got out of the way.

As I said, at the root is the monetary system, whose failure cannot be understood without a history lesson. So Greco writes about the struggle between banking and democracy that took place in the 1790s when the ink on our new national constitution was barely dry.

It was Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, who compromised the new nation, through what he admitted was “corruption,” by giving the wealthy speculators in Revolutionary War bonds the benefit of federally-sponsored redemption and then by establishing the First Bank of the United States. This early drift toward elitist rule was opposed by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others who figured in the creation of what later became the Democratic Party.

Greco writes: “While Jefferson favored a stronger union than that which emerged under the Articles of Confederation, he was vehemently opposed to the reconstruction of monarchic government on the American continent.” Hamilton had said frankly that the British monarchy was the best system of government known to man. Part of the monarchic system was the Bank of England, which Hamilton copied when setting up the First Bank.

But Jefferson, who repudiated Hamilton’s elitist platform, was elected president in what was then called “The Revolution of 1800.” Congress refused to renew the Bank’s charter by a single vote when it was up for renewal in 1811.

But the Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816 due to the government debt left behind from the War of 1812 against Great Britain. Thus was set up what became known as the “Bank War.”

It was President Andrew Jackson who dethroned the bankers from power by pulling government funds out of the Second Bank in 1833. Greco writes that in Jackson’s view: “The ‘Bank War’ was a contest for rulership—would the United States be governed by the people through their elected president and representatives, or by an unelected financial elite through their central bank instrument?”

The modern takeover began in earnest during the Civil War when Congress passed the National Banking Acts in 1863-64 which mandated use of government bonds as bank lending reserves, thereby creating a direct linkage between bank profits and the debt the government was starting to load on the shoulders of taxpayers.

The nation’s fate was sealed with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. The deal was that the bankers would control the currency, and thereby the nation’s economy, while the government would be provided with an unlimited amount of inflated dollars to fight its wars.

The bookkeeper’s trick of creating money out of thin air, charging interest for its use, then forcing it down the throats of weaker nations by threat of violence, is what has allowed the Anglo-American empire, since the founding of the Bank of England in 1696, gradually to conquer the world. Though President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law, he saw what that action meant. Greco cites Wilson as writing: “There has come about an extraordinary and very sinister concentration in the control of business in the country….The great monopoly in this country is the monopoly of big credits.”

Among other ill effects, the system has ruined the value of the currency. The inflation caused by large issues of bank-created loans is seized upon by the government which goes along because inflation reduces the cost of its deficits. Investors buy Treasury bonds denominated in Federal Reserve Notes then watch their value evaporate over time. In fact Federal Reserve Notes have lost over 95 percent of their value since they were first introduced.

Moreover, it’s additional inflation caused by bank-generated interest that drives up the costs of goods and services, forcing everyone in the economy to try to defend themselves by raising their prices to the max. Greco spells this out too, which almost every economist in the world, with the exception perhaps of Australia’s James Cumes, overlooks.

Bank interest has other tragic effects. It was high interest rates, for instance, that destroyed the Idaho potato industry. A farmer from that region told me at a conference a few years ago that when interest rates skyrocketed in the early 1980s, he asked the president of one of the Federal Reserve Banks why they did it. The answer was they were “ordered” to raise interest rates by the international banking system.

Make no mistake, it’s the banking system, facilitated by the Fed, not unwary borrowers, who brought on the collapse of 2008.

Now, in 2009, the bankers, mainly those in the U.S., have so shattered the world economy by debt mounted on debt that there may be no reprieve except the creation of a slave society based on rule by the rich over the masses of whatever peons should happen to survive the downturn and its tragic effects on employment, health, the food and water supply, and even our ability to cope with climate change.

The political establishment, expressing itself in pronouncements by organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations, see a future, not of economic democracy or increased financial pluralism, but consolidation of world currencies into a small number overseen at the top by the world’s financial oligarchy. Citing the writings of Benn Steil, the CFR’s Director of International Economics, Greco writes: “The ostensible plan is to reduce global exchange media to three—one each for Europe, the Americas, and Asia. One might reasonably suppose that at a later stage, those three would be combined into one currency also under the control of the global banking elite.”

Greco concludes: “The New World Order is upon us.”

With ample justification, he even goes apocalyptic, citing The Book of Revelation in demonstrating the import on a spiritual plane of the elitist takeover: And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. (Revelation 13: 16-17)

But is it really the end, or is there a new world waiting to be born? Greco thinks so. He speaks of the end of an era when unlimited economic growth fed by massive influxes of debt-based money is no longer sustainable. He writes: “That our global civilization cannot continue on its current path seems evident….But I think our collective consciousness is beginning to change. We are becoming aware of limits and are reaching that part of our evolutionary program that says, ‘Stop!’”

Part of the awareness of how to stop must focus on the institutions responsible for the crisis. Greco praises Ron Paul for calling out the Federal Reserve in the 2008 presidential campaign. He cites a statement Paul made to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in a 2004 hearing where Paul told Greenspan that the power of the Fed “challenges the whole concept of freedom and liberty and sound money.” Thus Paul and other monetary reformers, though largely ignored by the mainstream media and political establishment, have made it clear that change must start with what really lies at the bottom of elite control: how money is made and who makes it.

Unfortunately, few progressive economists, including Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Robert Reich comprehend the monetary causes of today’s disasters. Instead of demanding reforms that would make money the proper servant of a sustainable economy, most call for more stimulus spending; i.e., more government debt, along with “reform” of a financial system that is corrupt down to its very DNA.

So do we really need the bankers’ fake currency, today backed by nothing but a federal deficit of $12 trillion and growing by the day?

Greco says we don’t, and this is what his book about. But it’s not about doing without the necessities of life, or heading for the hills with a gun and backpack. Nor is it about important efforts at macro-level monetary reform like those of the American Monetary Institute, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, or advocates for a basic income guarantee. Rather it’s about individuals, groups, and communities taking control of the monetary system at the grassroots level and creating an entirely new basis for trade than bank-owed debt.

Greco writes about “a new paradigm approach to the exchange function.” The solution, he says, “is to provide interest-free credit to producers within the process of mutual credit clearing. That is the process of offsetting purchases against sales within an association of merchants, manufacturers, and workers. It will eventually include everyone who buys and sells, or makes and receives disbursements of any kind.”

Greco is one of the world’s leading experts in describing alternative or complementary currencies. These are self-regulating systems that facilitate “reciprocal exchange,” not using government legal tender but which are still allowed under the currency laws so long as taxes are not evaded.

Greco discusses the large and growing worldwide “LETS” movement—Local Exchange Trading Systems, like the Ithaca HOURS system in Ithaca, New York.  He describes the Swiss WIR Bank, the longest-running credit clearing system in the world, with over 70,000 members. He writes about the national and international barter exchanges that involve over 400,000 businesses trading at an annual level of $10 billion.

Greco also describes the world-famous Mondragon Cooperatives from the Basque region of Northern Spain. Started by a Roman Catholic priest in 1941, the Mondragon system, he says, is “the hub of what is probably the most successful and progressive social cooperative economy in modern history.”

He also tells the inspiring story of the Argentine trading clubs—the trueques—which, when used with “provincial bonds” issued by regional governments, rescued that country during the 2001 economic collapse brought on by the collusion between the Argentine government and the International Monetary Fund.

Credit clearing is not new. Greco traces it to the medieval European fairs. These exchanges are like banking clearing houses. The world’s largest is the automated clearing house—ACH—operated by the Federal Reserve.

But as Greco points out: “The clearing process need not be restricted to banks; it can be applied directly to transactions between buyers and sellers of goods and services. The LETS systems that have proliferated in communities around the world use the credit clearing process, as do commercial trade exchanges. Credit clearing systems are, in essence, clearing houses—but their members are businesses and individuals instead of banks.”

Alternative currency and trading systems, says Greco, are the wave of the future. Even though most only mount up to partial local successes, they show what can be done. Greco likens these efforts to the Wright Brothers’ first flight that covered 120 feet. They show, he says, that the potential exists for local, regional, then national and international money-free exchanges that eventually could be joined by a single web-based trading platform. This could eventually get rid of the corruption of debt-money altogether.

Chapter 16 of the book is about “A Regional Economic Development Plan Based on Credit Clearing” that shows the potential. Greco writes, “The credit clearing exchange is the key element that enables a community to develop a sustainable economy under local control and to maintain a high standard of living and quality of life.”

This would be a real revolution. What can governments do to help? Perhaps only by removing, as Greco recommends, the privileged position of bank debt-money as legal tender. Instead, let bank money compete with market-based alternative currencies and credit exchanges, if it can.

Greco’s book is a how-to-do-it manual that updates and expands on his previous books, Money and Debt: A Solution to the Global Crisis, New Money for Healthy Communities, and Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender. Greco also operates a website that offers advice and support to worthwhile community initiatives. See http://circ2.home.mindspring.com/

My own view is that no one should wait to see who takes the lead in creating the monetary and credit-clearing systems of the future. The time is now. There is no more reason to delay. If the people of the world do not join together in this kind of action, they can likely kiss their economic future and perhaps their livelihoods good-bye. The controllers of the world, those with the big money, the ones who run the banking systems, who own the global corporations, and who finance politicians like Obama, the Bushes, and the Clintons, are now poised in their blindness to extinguish the light of democracy on the planet for good.

Greco is implying that the power of the elite is not only dated but illusory. Thus the way to proceed is not just to oppose them. If they are opposed, they’ll do what they always do, which is to roll out the SWAT teams, the military in the streets, the tear gas, the sound cannon, the concentration camps, the Patriot Acts, the torture chambers, because that is all they know, and it’s what they do best.

The money monopoly translates into a monopoly on violence on an ascending scale. We know that the U.S. sells more weapons abroad than any other nation, and we know that it is war above all that makes the bankers rich.

So let them have their weapons and wars. With all due respect to those brave enough to protest, it’s time for people simply to walk away and set up their own economic and monetary systems as a prelude to a rebirth of humanity as ethical beings in sustainable communities of choice.

The keys, says Greco, are simple: “Promote the establishment of private complementary exchange systems—and use them. Buy from your friends and neighbors wherever possible. Contribute your time, energy, and money to whatever moves things in the right direction.”

Greco also recommends that the unit of exchange for alternative currencies be based on the value of commodities—not necessarily gold or silver, which bankers and governments manipulate, but those commodities readily available within a trading system. State and local governments should do everything possible to protect, encourage, nourish, and participate in these systems.

The irony is that what may appear on the surface to be technical changes in how the exchange of goods and services takes place can have such profound effects. The answer is that systems of exchange reflect entirely different perceptions of the world. Bank-money exchange reflects and creates a system of elite control and human slavery. Reciprocal credit exchange reflects and creates a democratic system on a level monetary playing field.

The difference points to the fact that such reform is, above all, a spiritual endeavor. Thomas Greco has devoted decades to this quest and is one of its foremost visionaries. In an Epilogue he writes: “We will either learn to put aside sectarian differences, to recognize all life as one life, to cooperate in sharing earth’s bounty, and yield control to a higher power—or we will find ourselves embroiled in ever-more destructive conflicts that will leave the planet in ruins and avail only the meanest form of existence for the few, if any, who survive.”

It’s a vision we can all strive to embrace.