How a "Free" People with a "Free" Press are propagandized

The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than purposely or consciously evil ... therefore ... they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big.                                 -Adolph Hitler from Mein Kampf

Study a map of the world. Note the large areas where most of the natural resources are located, which is undeveloped and impoverished, and which consumes only 14% of the world's resources. Note the small area of the world which has few resources, is developed, wealthy and powerful and which consumes 86% of the world's resources.[47] Obviously the major share of the natural wealth of the impoverished world is being claimed by a small but powerful allied group of nations.

The purpose of most violence around the world is to control those resources and thus control the wealth-producing-process. People are taught to be good, are good, and would not tolerate dishonesty and violence in their name. Thus governments of powerful nations must hide this theft of others wealth through lying to their people.

After WWII, a shattered Europe no longer had the wealth and power to control its colonies providing the resources to be transformed into Europe 's wealth. If those colonies breaking free gained control of their destiny, their resources would be converted into products and wealth for themselves. They would become wealthy while Europe , without resources, would become impoverished. This was a serious threat to what all nations term their "National Security."

After that war, most of the world's industrial and financial wealth was in America . Instead of championing the freedom of their sister colonies, the powerful and wealthy in America chose to support her war-shattered ethnic and religious cousins in Europe through suppressing the world's break for freedom. That suppression required the use of massive military power that killed very large numbers of people. From the perspective of the people of the developing world, those suppressions of their freedom were terrifying. The same practices against the "free" world by any nation or any group would have been labeled "terrorism."

Although most emerging nations looked to America as their political model and for support in their break for freedom, they now recognized that it was this culture that was suppressing their freedom and began looking elsewhere for support. Any successful coalition outside the Western political and economic system would become a beacon to the emerging world. Thus, if the colonial world's break for freedom was to be suppressed, containing the rapidly developing Soviet Union became central to that policy.

Even if a small country like Cuba gained its freedom and its living standards rose, the rest of the world would understand its dependency was maintaining its poverty and would demand its freedom. Hence began the otherwise incomprehensible destruction by the world's most powerful nations of small weak nations such as Korea , Vietnam , Chile , Nicaragua , El Salvador , Angola , Mozambique , the Congo , and Yugoslavia which all came close to gaining their freedom. The drumbeat of the West being under imminent threat of attack by these nations was a strategy-of-tension so the citizens of these powerful nations would support the extremely violent and terrorizing suppressions of those countries' breaks for freedom.

Few in the West realize the true dimension of covert violence and intrigue that has gone into controlling its own and other "free" societies. Many will not believe that the covert and overt violent events we enumerate resulted from the national security policies of the "free" world. Therefore, we provide below a brief outline of how an image of a dangerous world was created so citizens-trained in the belief in their nation's goodness-remained unaware of, ignored, or accepted, those covert activities.

The deeper history-economic, financial, covert, and overt-is hidden only from citizens in the West. Having experienced it, the alert within societies targeted with covert wholesale (state) terrorism by the "free" West are very aware. When the West becomes a target of violence, it is rightly called terrorism. But the West insists it is not practicing terrorism when it targets others at a much higher level of violence.

The CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer Suppressing the World's break for Freedom

Americans (and Europeans) have heard of their freedom, rights, and free press all their lives and to believe America had, and has, a propaganda system far more extensive than any empire in history is hard to accept. But, if our thoughts are to be totally free, we must understand the process of protecting wealth and power through controlling the thoughts of the masses.

Peter Coleman describes how the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a worldwide writers' support group that had been covertly established and funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), created a belief system (a social-control paradigm or “framework of orientation”) within Western populations that they were about to lose their freedom to terrorist totalitarian dictators:

Five years after their victory in 1945, the Western democracies were about to lose the battle for Europe , but this time to Stalinist totalitarianism instead of Nazis. To combat this prospect, an intellectual guerrilla group was formed: over one hundred European and American writers and intellectuals met in Berlin to establish the Congress for Cultural Freedom to resist the Kremlin's sustained assault on Western and liberal values. During the 1950s the Congress spread throughout the world, creating a network of affiliated national committees, a worldwide community of liberal intellectuals fiercely committed to democratic governance, but supported by grants which, unknown to most of them, originated in the Central Intelligence Agency. Through the Congress's influential publications, conferences, and international protests, it kept the issues of Soviet totalitarianism and liberal anti-Communism alive in a largely hostile environment.... It was finally dissolved in 1967 amid the revelations of its funding by the CIA.[48]

Frances Stoner Saunders, in The Cultural Cold War: the CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, tells us how every aspect of culture was covertly orchestrated to inoculate the so-called free world against any thoughts which might lead to a restructuring of the philosophical or legal base that was the foundation of current wealth and power:

Whether they liked it or not, whether they knew it or not, there were few writers, poets, artists, historians, scientists or critics in post-war Europe whose names were not in some way linked to this covert enterprise.... Defining the Cold War as a 'battle for men's' minds' it stockpiled a vast arsenal of cultural weapons: journals, books, conferences, seminars, art exhibitions, concerts, awards.... Endorsed and subsidized by powerful institutions, this non-Communist group became as much a cartel in the intellectual life of the West as Communism had been a few years earlier (and [since it was the intellectual left that was being targeted for control through the establishment of a Non-Communist left] it included many of the same people).... It spied on tens of thousands of Americans, harassed democratically elected governments abroad, plotted assassinations, denied these activities to Congress, and, in the process, elevated the art of lying to new heights.[49]

All will deny it but, according to Frances Stoner Saunders and others cited, leading columnists, reporters, and politicians (Stewart Alsop, Walter Lippman, Averell Harriman, the Bundy brothers, and others) were social friends of CIA leaders, such as William Colby and Frank Wisner, and were in on the Grand Strategy of misinforming the public to prepare them for the Cold War. Frequently reporters were given news scoops for publishing CIA wordsmiths' distortions of reality. The Pike and Church Committee hearings of 1975 and 1976 exposed over 400 reporters as being on the CIA payroll (at $200 a month, they were cheaper than prostitutes). Other reporters would follow up on those creations of reality and government agencies, usually listed only as a trusted source, were all primed to support those fictions. With the CIA's listening posts all over the world, these propagandists (building what Eric Fromm called a “framework of orientation” for society to function within) reputations grew ever larger.

The CIA's strategy-of-tension to create fear so citizens would support the militarization of America was for their wordsmiths to create tens of thousands of editorials which were sent to newspapers around the world for editors to restructure and use as their own. Many dozens of think-tanks and institutes were created, some associated with universities and some independent. These were funded and staffed with ideologically pure editors to polarize Americans through fear. All this was done under the cover of protecting peace, freedom, justice, human rights, and majority rule.

The propaganda budget to create this "framework of orientation" absorbed most of the CIA's billions in funding. Those costs were greater than the budgets of AP, Reuters, and UPI even as those "free press" news agencies were the primary carriers of intelligence agencies creations. The American Federation of Labor, the Marshall Plan, and over 170 foundations (many created by the CIA) funneled propaganda money all over the world.

The writings of Peter Coleman (it is his exposure of the Congress for Cultural Freedom cited above), Henry Luce, Isaiah Berlin, Arthur Koestler, Sidney Hook, Reinhold Neibuhr, Robert Conquest, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Schlesinger, and many more, actually hundreds and possibly thousands more, were covertly coordinated to spread the same fear.[v] Some of their books were bought by the tens of thousands by the CIA and spread around the world. "A central feature of building this “framework of orientation” was to advance the claim that it [propaganda] did not exist."[50]

Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and the Voice of America, with 100 transmitters each, and stations beaming to Asia , the Middle East , and Latin America were CIA creations. As they were being run by occupation armies, news of political importance disseminated within Japan and Germany , including comic books, was primarily that of CIA wordsmiths.[51] The largest news agency in Germany and major media (radio stations, magazines, newspapers) in many countries were established by the CIA and staffed with ideologically pure editors. Wire services and publishing companies were covertly established, funded, and controlled to spread the Cold War story further. Attorney William Schapp says the CIA

alone-not to mention its counterparts in the rest of the American intelligence community-owned or controlled some 2,500 media entities all over the world. In addition, it has people ranging from stringers to highly visible journalists and editors in virtually every major media organization.[52] [To that we must add those controlled by the intelligence services of other nations.]

Dissident voices had to be silenced. Over 300 Hollywood stars and writers were blacklisted and their careers were destroyed. This was pointed out during the March 21, 1999, Academy Awards when the recipient of an Oscar was acknowledged by all major media as having testified against his friends to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

This hints to the thousands of professors and intellectuals whose careers were destroyed or badly damaged. Columbia University fired every professor accused under McCarthyism. Meanwhile the careers of those using the fabrications of CIA wordsmiths building this “framework of orientation” blossomed. The overseers of this massive propaganda operation knew what they were doing; sincere professors researched this fraudulent history, wrote syntheses of that history, and then referenced each other as reliable sources. In the created climate of fear, opposing views were unsaleable, thus unwritten. Over time, the CIA version became the only history inside or outside the university classroom.

Corporate-Funded Think-Tanks Backed the CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer

The lead article in CovertAction Quarterly, Fall 2002, by Heather Cottin, is titled "Imperial Wizard: Soros is not just doling out cash-he's fleecing entire countries." This is a must-read for serious researchers on how propaganda works. While being portrayed, and portraying himself as a great philanthropist, George Soros is obviously working closely with the IMF, the World Bank, the National Endowment for Democracy, and many other offshoots of American intelligence to subvert the economies of entire nations. He and others then pick up prime assets in those targeted countries for pennies on the dollar. The system of maintaining control over what citizens hear, read, and think addressed in this chapter is the propaganda process Soros' and others' destabilization foundations are deeply involved in.

The process of keeping tight control on what is thought and what is written is now overseen by conservative foundations through selective funding and, with the "framework of orientation" of enemies lurking in every corner of the world firmly established, is even more effective than when controlled primarily by intelligence services:

Spearheading the assault has been a core group of 12 conservative foundations: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable foundations, the Phillip M. McKenna Foundation, The JM Foundation, The John M. Olin Foundation, the Henry Salvatori Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.... From 1992-94, they awarded $300-million in grants, and targeted $210-million to support a wide array of projects and institutions…. The 12 have mounted an impressively coherent and concerted effort to shape public policy by undermining-and ultimately redirecting-what they regard as the institutional strongholds of modern American liberalism: academia, Congress, the judiciary, executive branch agencies, major media, religious institutions, and philanthropy itself. They channeled some $80-million to right-wing policy institutions actively promoting an anti-government unregulated market agenda. Another $80-million supported conservative scholars and academic programs, with $27-million targeted to recruit and train the next generation of right-wing leaders in conservative legal principles, free-market economics, political journalism and policy analysis. And $41.5-million was invested to build a conservative media apparatus, support pro-market legal organizations, fund state-level think-tanks and advocacy organizations, and mobilize new philanthropic resources for conservative policy change.... Conservative foundations also provided $2,734,263 to four right-of-center magazines between 1990 and 1993, including The National Interest, The Public Interest, The New Criterion, and The American Spectator.[53]

"With millions of dollars in funding at their fingertips, conservative institutions have taken"

the political offensive on key social, economic, and regulatory policy issues....These institutions have effectively repositioned the boundaries of national policy discussion, redefining key concepts, molding public opinion, and pushing for a variety of specific policy reforms.... These groups flood the media with hundreds of opinion editorials. Their top staff appears as political pundits and policy experts on dozens of television and radio shows across the country. And their lobbyists work the legislative arenas, distributing policy proposals, briefing papers, and position statements.... [The American Enterprise Institute has] ghost writers for scholars to produce op-ed articles that are sent to the one hundred and one cooperating newspapers-three pieces every two weeks.'... The Hoover Institution's public affairs office ... links to 900 media centers across the U.S. and abroad. The Reason Foundation ... had 359 television and radio appearances in 1995 and more than 1,500 citations in national newspapers and magazines. The Manhattan Institute has held more than 600 forums or briefings for journalists and policy makers on multiple public policy issues and concerns, from tort reform to federal welfare policy.... The Free Congress Foundation, in addition to its National Empowerment Television, is publishing NetNewsNow, a broadcast fax letter sent around the country to more than 400 radio producers and news editors.[54]

Corporations established and funded these think-tanks to control both domestic policy and foreign policy.[55] Karen Rothmyer expands on Sally Covington's research on locking society between permitted-parameters-of-debate:

'Layer upon layer of seminars, studies, conferences, and interviews [can] do much to push along, if not create, the issues, which then become the national agenda of debate.... By multiplying the authorities to whom the media are prepared to give friendly hearing, [conservative donors] have helped to create an illusion of diversity where none exists. The result could be an increasing number of one-sided debates in which the challengers are far outnumbered, if indeed they are heard at all.'... [The Heartland Institute] introduced Policy Fax  ... a revolutionary public policy fax-on-demand research service that enables you to receive, by fax, the full text of thousands of documents from more than one hundred of the nation's leading think-tanks, publications, and trade associations. Policy Fax is easy to use and it's free for elected officials and journalists.... The American Legislative Exchange Council and the newer State Policy Network provide technical assistance, develop model legislation, and report about communications activities and conferences. ALEC, well funded by private foundations and corporate contributors, is a powerful and growing membership organization, with almost 26,000 state legislators-more than one-third of the nation's total. The organization, which has a staff of 30, responds to 700 information requests each month, and has developed more than 150 pieces of model legislation ranging from education to tax policy. It maintains legislative task forces on every important state policy issue, including education, health care, tax and fiscal policy, and criminal justice.[56] [w]

Corporations buy up newspapers, TV stations, have started picking up radio stations, and fund a massive array of think-tanks to feed that media. When these media conglomerates are sold, ownership only moves to another center of economic power with the same security interests of protection of their wealth and power.

True exposés of monopolies, such as Henry George's Progress and Poverty, have a very limited market while heavily funded schools of thought become a society's "framework of orientation". As a society based on the theft of the wealth of the weak cannot function under two primary belief systems, all other beliefs are crowded to the margins.

But powerbrokers know that progressive thoughts are out there. Today's neo-liberal philosophy was put in place specifically to suppress the fast expanding belief in Henry George's very sensible philosophy of society collecting the landrent as discussed in Chapter 1. That philosophy was suppressd through eliminating land as one of the three primary elements of production (land [ natural resources], labor, and capital [industrial and financial]). Land was lumped with industrial capital and economic philosophy as now taught does not require land proper, only labor and "capital". Both land and industrial capital had disappeared into "capital".[57]

When revolution overwhelmed Czarist Russia in 1917, Kerensky's caretaker government offered to convert the economy to the philosophy of Henry George. So most of the powerful know philosophies which provide for full rights to all people are available; which of course means they know their governments do not provide full rights. The revolutionists, following their own philosophy, overthrew the provisional government, and took over. No matter which philosophy Russia had adopted, communism or the philosophies of America 's Henry George, it would have been a threat to capitalist nations, would have been tagged as a dictatorship, and it would have been contained.

In late February 2002, the establishment within the Pentagon of an Office of Strategic Influence (office of disinformation) to plant fraudulent and distorted news in the world press to control Muslim opinion worldwide was exposed.[x] Every intelligence service (the U.S. has at least 14 such services, most countries have several) and state departments of major countries build “frameworks of orientation.” Corporations and politicians also build "frameworks of orientation" to control who will be elected and what laws will be written. To protect wealth and power, control of public opinion through massive funds spent on intelligence services and highly corrupt, at the least highly biased, think-tanks are primary features of "democratic" societies.

Very few corporations will be directly involved in covertly controlling thoughts of others. But there is a hard center-a core-that does. Trace the covert and overt foreign policy violence to its source and you arrive at that hard core. The violence of unnecessary poverty is imposed internally on the weak and unfortunate. Trace the funding of the think-tanks which pour out the fraudulent books and articles and the lobbyists who essentially write our laws and you will arrive at the door of this same core. So David Korten's book title, When Corporations rule the World, is quite accurate.

Academia and the Media cannot escape an established Social-Control-Paradigm (Framework of Orientation)

The restoration of the reputation of those persecuted under McCarthyism after the Cold War is proof that the very people sworn to provide the nation with an honest education knew they were teaching a fabricated and fraudulent reality. University managers provided leaves of absence for professors to go to Washington and set up these mind-controlling black-ops and accepted them back when they returned. As it was a creation of beliefs (a "framework of orientation") instead of a description of reality, all who knew and failed to inform others became propagandists just as surely as those within the massive intelligence system that had used the university to set up this propaganda system.[58]

Enough films were produced by the CIA to "rival Hollywood studios."[59] Thousands of propaganda newsreels were produced and provided free to movie theatres for the public to watch. (Older American citizens will remember those newsreels. They were shown in every movie theatre.) Think-tanks were created, funded, and staffed by ideologues. These think-tanks and professors were coached and subsidized by intelligence agencies of several countries to write thousands of books. Tens of thousands of partly fraudulent to totally fraudulent articles were created by CIA wordsmiths and planted all over the world (700 articles were planted worldwide to control the world's view on the overthrow and assassination of Allende in Chile ). Reporters became leading columnists by being provided news scoops in exchange for publication of this nonsense passed off as unfolding history.With many news scoops that reporter would quickly rise to the top in his or her profession.

Thousands of books were written by sincere academics reading and citing that fraudulent literature. Novels and movies by authors with no connection to governments were written and they deepened the beliefs and hysteria of that propagandized audience. These books, articles, and movies became reality to Western citizens. Believing they were under imminent threat of attack by dictatorial, violent, and powerful communists, the propagandized masses, including mainstream media and most academics, gave their full support for the Cold War.[60]

All major Western governments of the allied imperial-centers-of-capital were busy creating the same social-control-belief-systems by writing the same distorted history. Social scientists are still using those fraudulent books and articles as the foundation of their research as they write today's textbooks. Sincere academics sued to have the titles of those fictions released. But the Supreme Court ruled that this would endanger the national security. Academia has never refuted the false history they created and that “framework of orientation” rules within the University system yet today.

History books teach us that, with the exception of communist nations, all countries in the world were free after WWII. This was never true; we will be documenting thoroughly that most of the colonial world was unable to break free.

The use of buzzwords are the foundations of social-control-paradigms ("frameworks of orientation"). Through the CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer's use of buzzwords reality could be reversed: Emerging democracies attempting to provide their citizens with even more equality and rights than Western "democracies" were targeted and buzzword labels of dangerous and violent people were used to describe them.[y] While defending themselves from subversion, governments, some equally as democratic as America or even more democratic, became labeled communist dictators, tyrants, subversives, and extremists. The very nations destabilizing others worldwide labeled themselves with the buzzwords of good; peace, freedom, democracy, justice, and equal rights. Puppet dictators were placed in power after those destabilizations. Many imposed extreme violence upon their citizens but had their image softened with the buzzword authoritarian. The reader will recognize many more and the media faithfully parroted all buzzwords.

The reader will recognize those, and other, buzzwords in use yet today. McCarthyism has not disappeared. The enemies created during the Cold War by those buzzwords (building a framework of orientation) to retain the loyalty of the masses for these worldwide suppressions of freedom remain in our history. They are parroted in our daily news yet today and thus have immense impact on the way a citizenry views the world.

Death Squads: Rising Democratic Leaders must be eliminated

In nations fighting for their freedom, post-coup dictators were heavily funded, reactionary newspapers were established and funded, and still it appeared true democracy might triumph. Those who could not be controlled and who were gaining popularity and might be elected to higher offices in those countries had to be eliminated. Death squads were capitalism's response to that threat of emerging democracies.

For years people have been organizing protests against the School of the Americas (nicknamed the School of Assassins and School of Coups ) established in Panama in 1946. Note that this was one year before the CIA was established. So the establishment of America 's premier covert intelligence service was an expansion supporting policies-of-state already in place. This training camp for death squad and coup leaders was booted out of Panama in 1984, moved to Fort Benning Georgia, and renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Operations. That name is only a cover for its real purpose: extreme insecurity for emerging true democracies throughout Latin America . For several years grandmothers, grandfathers, veterans, nuns, priests, students and others have been sentenced to prison for protesting at the gates of that death squad training (terrorist training) center operating in America and 86 more are being tried and sentenced as this is written (January 2003 [more yet in November/December 2004]). The contradiction of a terrorist training camp in the U.S. even as America is waging its War on Terrorism goes unnoticed by the major media.

Talking to ex-CIA agent Ralph McGehee, I said, " America established and orchestrated those death squads." His instant response was, "Of course we did." December 3, 2001 , President Vicente Fox of Mexico admitted that Mexico kidnapped, tortured, and murdered hundreds of "leftists" during the sixties and seventies. Leftists in any country, of course, are any other than the established right to hard-right political powers who may gain a political following and change a nation’s “framework of orientation.”.[z]

Feisal Mansoor of Sri Lanka informs us that "idealistic youths were being murdered by the SL state in 1987-1992, the elite did not move until one of their own (Richard De Zoysa, journalist and doyen of Colombo society) was taken away from his home at night and found the next morning shot through the head on a beach South of Colombo." Like the Inquisitions of the Middle Ages, the tortures and deaths abated when it reached into the ruling classes. Obviously orchestrated death squads were operating in many more countries than those we have addressed.

Due to indoctrination through the Mighty Wurlitzer, otherwise idealistic and honest people-such as you and I but who had not learned better-established and orchestrated death squads which assassinated thousands of teachers, professors, labor leaders, cooperative leaders, and church leaders, the budding Washingtons, Jeffersons, Madisons, Lenins, Gandhis, and Martin Luther Kings of those countries. These were very courageous, totally non-violent people who, knowing their names would go on a terrorist death squad list, still stood up to lead. But the CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer recorded many of these brave people in history (that "framework of orientation") as some of the world's worst people.

 Strategies-of-Tension (“Frameworks of Orientation”) Controlling a "Free Press" and a 'free" Nation

To protect their wealth and power, powerbrokers control governments which in turn design strategies-of-tension through which a "free" citizenry will support those policies. Those policies-of-state creating a belief system of fear are promoted through a "free" press.

To position themselves to be the first to obtain breaking news, major media personalities socialize with the major movers and shakers of government. These columnists, editors, and media owners dare not repeat any of the nation's secrets they learn from these social friends. To do so, would be to immediately be excluded from those social circles and their most precious resource, access to breaking news, would be lost. There was not much danger anyway; the managers-of-state designing this Cold War functioned just as you and I would if we had power. Most, if not all, allowed within the inner circles of power were already ideologically on the same wavelength.                                                                                                                              

As discussed above, many media personalities allowed within the inner circle of managers-of-state knew the plan was to misinform the public so as to gain support for the planned Cold War. These media giants then knowingly planted those created realities (Soviet aggression, missile gaps, under imminent threat of attack, potential loss of your freedom, et al.) designed to place fear in the hearts of all in the Western world.

Reporters accredited to the highest levels of government instinctively knew their accreditation would be withdrawn if they challenged the official view. When briefed, those reporters would dash for the phone to be the first to get the news out. This sensationalized news would immediately become lead articles in all media. In one day, whatever the government wanted the people to believe (a “framework of orientation”) would be firmly implanted in the public mind. Only a few on the fringes would dare challenge what had now become accepted reality by an entire nation and of course no one listens to a voice on the fringes of society.

Once the belief system that the West was under imminent threat was firmly in place, the careers of any mainstream reporter that dared a serious exposé of the propaganda system would have been at high risk. Any media that dared publish a serious exposé would face a massive loss of both readers and advertising. No established reporter or media will choose obvious suicide over survival and both monetary and reputation rewards by going with the flow.

Thus, once the desired fear was established in the public mind, maintaining that tension was not only easy, finding opposing views in the media of record ranged from difficult to impossible. Multiply these carefully crafted versions of world events by thousands of times and one arrives at today's view of the world. Only on the extreme margins of society can one find media personalities and writers who speak of the terrors (thousands tortured and killed) endured by people facing the direct actions of the West's national security policies.

Depicting one's own society as good goes hand in hand with strategies-of-tension depicting others as a threat to a nation's security. While the Western world was bathed in a view of their generosity and efforts for world peace, the worldwide covert destabilizations were terrifying to those facing the brunt of America 's national security policy.[61]

The World was Breaking Free

When China won its revolution in 1949, the powerbrokers felt they were in imminent danger of losing control of the world's resources and the wealth-producing-process. To retain that control, National Security Council Directive 68 (NSC-68) was signed by President Truman on April 12, 1950 . That master plan (actually only an affirmation and expansion of the top secret policies of 1947; NSC-4, NSC-4A and NSC-10/2) officially became America 's secret policy of covert and overt financial, economic, political, and military, warfare.[62]

This directive called for increasing the U.S. arms budget from $13.5-billion to $46.5-billion (350%). Allowing for inflation, that is the same $300-billion annual budget (1990 dollars) with which America suppressed the world's break for freedom.

Dean Acheson's memoir, Present at the Creation, unwittingly exposes NSC-68 as a Grand Strategy for increasing the military budget of the United States by 350% to wage covert and overt wars to suppress the colonial world's break for freedom:

Western Europe ... shattered by its civil war, was disintegrating politically, economically, socially, and psychologically. Every effort to bestir itself was paralyzed by two devastating winters and the overshadowing fear of the Soviet Union no longer contained by the stoppers on the east, west, and south-Japan, Germany, and British India.... It was in this period [the first 3 years after the beginning of the Cold War] that we awakened fully to the facts of the surrounding world and to the scope and kind of action required by the interests of the United States; the second period, that of President Truman's second administration, became the time for full action upon those conclusions and for meeting the whole gamut of reactions-favorable, hostile, and merely recalcitrant foreign and domestic-that they produced. In the first period, the main lines of policy were set and begun; in the second, they were put into full effect amid the smoke and confusion of battle.... The purpose of NSC-68 [the master plan for the Cold War] was to so bludgeon the mass mind of "top government" that not only could the president make a decision but that the decision could be carried out.[63] (Emphasis added.)

Career CIA agent Ralph McGehee concluded:

"The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President's foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting "intelligence" justifying those activities. It shapes its intelligence ... to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies."[64]

To retain the support of the citizenry through misinformation, Congress (even those with security clearances), academia, and the media must also be fed a fictitious view of the world. McGehee, whose job was in part testifying to congressional committees, claimed he had "never once seen a CIA official tell the truth to Congress. Instead there is a steady stream of lies."[65] Thus good people in government are misinformed (a “framework of orientation”) and unwittingly impose violence on innocent people.

There are just and necessary covert operations such as those by the Office of Strategic Studies (OSS) during World War II. However OSS officers, the primary designers of post-WWII covert actions, and other Western intelligence services had been carrying out major post WWII covert operations to suppress the freedom of colonial nations well before the CIA was officially established.

These operations carried out just before and just after the end of WWII do not have the moral justification of those carried out in the Great War. Greece : thousands of patriots who had kept 2/3 of Greece out of German hands were slaughtered. The French in Vietnam : 20,000 Vietnamese killed in Haiphong Harbor alone and another million killed before America took over to slaughter another 3-million. The Dutch reclaiming Indonesia : 150,000 died. Britain reclaiming Malaysia : thousands killed. There were other suppressions worldwide: 90,000 killed in one bombardment alone in Madagascar 's suppression of its bid for freedom. Powerful nations do not admit mistakes or aggressions. These and the destabilizations described in the next three chapters are wholesale state terrorism that simply cannot be admitted or discussed.

China , one-fifth of the world's people, gained their freedom in 1949 creating consternation among American managers-of-state. They knew well they stood to lose control of the world's resources and the wealth-producing-process if those breaks for freedom succeeded. The State Department studied hard through the fall and winter and the learning experiences while suppressing insurgencies since 1945 were codified on April 12, 1950 into NSC-68.

But the world was "supposedly" at peace and neither the American Congress nor the American people would accept an increase of even $1-billion a year for military purposes and NSC-68 called for an additional $33-billion per year ($300-billion in 1990 dollars).[66]

Immediate action was required and NSC-68 was the marching order. All within two months of the finalization of NSC-68, the master plan for the Cold War in 1950, the Congress for Cultural Freedom to control the belief systems of the imperial centers was established; McCarthyism-to suppress dissenters in academia, in the media, in films, and in the government-surfaced and the Korean War, proving communists were bent on world conquest, broke loose.[67]These were not accidental events, they were each a part of the Grand Strategy to create fear and tension (strategies-of-tension, "frameworks of orientation") so as to obtain the backing of the Western world's citizens for covert and overt wars they knew were going to cost a lot in lives and wealth.

People are moral and good. The fact that America was embarking on a very violent foreign policy had therefore to be hidden from the citizens of Western societies. Their success can be measured by this policy being unknown to even the citizens of parts of the world upon which that violence was imposed.

The CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer and McCarthyism, painting any dissenting opinion as communist, meant anyone courageous enough to be objective and intellectually balanced faced political, social, and career suicide. Even today, 13 years after the Cold War was theoretically over, the political spectrum of discourse remains narrow in the United States . Under the War on Terrorism and the post-9/11 Patriot Act those voices may get smaller yet. On the other hand, with the Internet serving as an alternative source of news, powerbrokers face high risk if the world is suddenly free to say "the king (the empire) has no clothes."

Controlling Elections in the shattered Empires of Europe and Asia

The potential loss of the old imperial-centers-of-capital (most of Europe and Japan ) by the vote required controlling elections, especially in France and Italy . Though financing another nation's election is illegal in America and every other nation, massive funds were spent for that control and it required more than money.

Communist partisans had fought the Germans and Mussolini and these heroes would easily win post WWII elections. To prevent the only effective political force left in Italy from ruling, Mafia leaders were released from Mussolini's prisons, armed, and placed in charge of the cities as the allies marched up the Italian peninsula.[68]

The CIA funded programs to discredit Italian labor politicians while supplying money to hard-right politicians. Operation Gladio, practicing a terrorist strategy-of-tension through planting bombs and blaming it on the "Reds" was a CIA operation. When uncovered, this covert operation was found to have 139 buried caches of explosives and weapons. The bombing of the Bologna railway station, killing 84 people, was only one of hundreds of Gladio bombings that killed several hundred people and injured many more.[69]

Operation Statewatch, which oversaw Operation Gladio, numbered from a high of 2,000 operatives in Italy to a low of 400 in Belgium and operated worldwide using the same 'strategies-of-tension' to discredit socialist elements throughout Europe, Japan, and other nations.[70]As virtually no one in the upper echelons of government thought the Soviet Union was going to invade Western Europe or anybody else, these were not stay-behind-forces to overthrow an invasion as claimed when exposed. These covert forces were to control elections and take back governments by force if lost by the vote.

These are not isolated events: 'strategies-of-tension' blaming the opposition for mayhem (right by CIA training manuals) is standard operating procedure.[71]After WWI, labor was poised to rule Italy and managers-of-state decided in secret to place Mussolini in power. The famed march of the black shirts three days later was the strategy-of-tension which provided cover for that transfer of power. Germany 's famous Reichstag fire which polarized support for Hitler was several months after he had been given power in a secret January meeting of German powerbrokers. Under cover of that strategy-of-tension German legislators voted in Hitler's Enabling Act (the defining guidelines of Fascism) under which thousands of labor leaders and opposing political leaders were arrested. President George Bush's Patriot Act is a direct copy of that Enabling Act and was enacted under the cover of the 9/11/2001 terrorist attack on America.

Strategies-of-tensionto gain the loyalty of the citizenry in elections or wars is an old political trick. We will be addressing later how the Korean war, where this author spent his military service, was strictly a strategy-of-tension so voters would accept the massive expenditures and loss of life that would be required to suppress the world's break for freedom as laid out in the master plan for the Cold War-NSC-68 which had been finalized only two months earlier. Cold War planners knew what they were doing. The military costs for the Cold War were very high. But the cost to the impoverished world was even greater. Loss of life for the state-sponsored terrorism (wholesale terrorism) was between 12-million and 15-million. Hundreds of millions more died from starvation and disease due to destruction of their economies, billions remained impoverished, and that war is yet on-going.[aa]

The ease with which poverty can be eliminated through democratic-cooperative-(supercharged)-capitalism, as will be demonstrated in the concluding chapters, proves that control of resources and the wealth-producing-process through military power is the direct cause of the world's poverty.

Destabilizing Dissenting Political Groups

Preventing other political voices from being heard required destabilizing progressive internal political groups in all allied countries:

The House Un-American Activities Committee and McCarthyism and the FBI's Operation COINTELPRO were replays of the post-WWI shattering of the forming solid labor front (the destruction of the Wobblies [International Workers of the World, IWW]). CHAOS, Cable Splicer, and Garden Plot were American internal destabilizations by military intelligence services carried out in cooperation with the FBI. This synchronized efforts of political police became urgent when over 500 periodicals critical of the Vietnam War, with a peak circulation of 7-million, sprang up. Through agent provocateurs, counterfeited letters, planted narcotics, false arrests, poison-pen letters, malicious articles planted in the press, blacklisting from jobs, harassment, electronic surveillance, burglary, mail tampering, and other internal strategies of terrorist tension, hundreds of budding political groupings were destabilized. In March 1998, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) won a 15-year legal battle against the FBI for decades of spying, harassment, and disruptions as just described. During that trial, these two groups-out of hundreds that were spied upon and/or destabilized-proved that the FBI had conducted 20,000 days of wiretaps and 12,000 days of listening "bugs" between 1943 and 1963 as well as 208 burglaries of offices and homes of their members with the photographing or theft of 9,864 private documents. This is only two groups out of hundreds and only the events that were proven. The American government was ordered to pay Fred Hampton's family $3-million when it was proven in court that his December 4, 1969 death in Chicago was a political assassination resulting from these suppressions. [Some claim 18 Black Panthers were assassinated under the same Operation COINTELPRO] After 27 years in a California prison, Geronimo Pratt was ordered released and he collected $4.5-million when, though other excuses were used by the courts, he essentially proved that his arraignment and conviction for murder was a conspiracy between the FBI and the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. The FBI had him under surveillance and knew he was 400 miles away at the time of the murder and the prosecutor knew that his witnesses were government informers with no credibility. Proving these conspiracies required some of the longest court cases in American History. As few such targeted people had either resources or determined people behind them, many more innocent people had their lives destroyed by what can only properly be called America 's political police, surely some of those totally innocent political prisoners died there and others are still there.[72]

Serious dissident political groups within an imperial-center-of-capital cannot be permitted. Once they gain substantial followers, they will be elected to local, state, and national office and their independent voices will be on local and national media, heard by the masses, and will challenge and weaken the “framework of orientation” put in place to protect wealth and power. Dissident voices over the mass media would seriously impede the ability of managers-of-state to suppress either internal dissent or the periphery's break for freedom. Thus, for exercising their democratic rights, these innocent people were systematically monitored, systematically destabilized, some were sent to prison, and their voices were silenced.

Opposing philosophies (opposing “frameworks of orientation”) were not permitted by either Cold War bloc. Alternative thoughts were taught negatively and as dictatorial, impractical, and violent. Loyalty oaths and the threat of job loss, as well as peer pressure, assured the weeding out of professors with critical independent thought.

These gross fabrications are now not only a major part of Western literature and history; they are Western literature and history. After the Cold War, major universities officially restored the good name of those whose careers were destroyed, proving their innocence was known from the beginning.

One would think the organs of social power (academia, politics, and the media) would now be recovering from that suppression of free speech and free thought. But the parroting of the creations of intelligence service wordsmiths by all media during the destabilization and shattering of Yugoslavia addressed below, the hysteria after the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks on America, and the propaganda push that justified the current war with Iraq give no indication that either true free speech or true free thought will be permitted.

America having a propaganda system far more extensive than most empires in history is hard to accept. But, after reading this book, read Mark Lane's Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK; L. Fletcher Prouty's JFK: The CIA, Vietnam And The Plot to Kill Kennedy; Philip Willan's Puppet Masters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, and William F. Pepper's An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King.   

In Prouty's solidly researched and authoritative books (he was 1-of-3 who wrote the how-to book on U.S. covert actions) one will learn how staged violence (a strategy-of-tension) is used worldwide to control the beliefs of voters so as to control elections both on the periphery of empire and within the imperial centers. When a strategy-of-tension fails and a power-structure is faced with loss of power actual violence is used-including assassinations of leaders of nations.

Public knowledge of each violent event is controlled through carefully crafted press releases before, during, and following those implementations of policies-of-state. Lee Harvey Oswald was fingered as the culprit even though the FBI had quickly ascertained the identities of President Kennedy's actual CIA assassins (see below). Because the plotters obviously reached high into government circles and the entire government would come crashing down if it were known, neither media nor officials dared to move on this information.[bb]

Members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations sat on this same information when they learned the same names from the same sources in 1978. And America's vaunted institutions-the Justice Department, the courts, the media, the universities, and its political leaders-failed to inform the public even when everything the FBI and the House Select Committee knew was proven in a court of law when one of the assassins sued the Spotlight for publishing his name as one of those professional killers.

Those assassins were named in the courtroom of Judge James W. Kehoe (verdict February 5, 1985), United States District Court, Miami, Florida, case number 80-1121-civ-JWK, E Howard Hunt [of Watergate fame], plaintiff, versus Liberty Lobby, defendant.

It was actually CIA agent E Howard Hunt's lawyers that irretrievably damaged their own client by asking specifically who the assassins were and what the witness knew of their activities and whereabouts as they organized and carried out the assassination. Claudia Furiati came up with the same names as the assassins when she was allowed access to Cuban intelligence files to write her book, ZR Rifle: The Plot to Kill Kennedy and Castro.

Part of the CIA's plans to overthrow the Cuban government included control of information reaching the people as that overthrow unfolded and all was in place for history to be written that this externally coached and financed invasion was an internal Cuban revolution.

When the Cuban overthrow collapsed at the Bay of Pigs and President Kennedy refused to rescue that covert operation with American air power, the Cubans of Miami and their CIA handlers were furious. To them President Kennedy was a traitor to what they viewed as a fight for the survival of the world as they knew it.

Being hardened to orchestrating death squad activity worldwide these angry agents, under orders from higher up, assassinated President Kennedy just as they had orchestrated the assassination of thousands of other independent thinkers worldwide so the imperial nations would not lose control of the world. The same propaganda machinery in place to control the world's belief in the fiction of how the intended overthrow of the Cuban government was an internal event was turned to controlling the world's belief in who assassinated President Kennedy.

We address the suppression of the truth of this assassination in some depth only because believing that such social-control-paradigms (belief-systems) are in place in an acclaimed "free country" is so hard to accept even when it is solidly proven in a court of law. By reading this book and the above-listed books one can understand how and why the so-called "free press" failed to inform its readers and listeners. Mark Lane explains how, when the above trial concluded, the jury foreman, Leslie Armstrong "simply, eloquently, and painstakingly" explained to waiting print, radio, and television reporters that

the evidence was clear  ...  the CIA had killed President Kennedy, Hunt had been a part of it, and the evidence, so painstakingly presented, should now be examined by the relevant institutions of the United States Government so that those responsible for the assassinations might be brought to justice.[73]

Lane points out that a Miami television station that evening reported only that Hunt had lost a libel case and had ignored her eloquent description of the historic importance of this case. Armstrong challenged that station on their reporting. It was then accurately reported by that one station but was ignored by all other media, local and national. In contrast, Hunt's winning of the first trial where none of this explosive testimony was given and which was of no historic importance to anyone was widely reported.

William F. Pepper's An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King was released just before this manuscript went to the printer. Here too we learn that, in a suit brought by the King family against one of the assassins and others unnamed, it had been proven in Judge Swearingen's Courtroom in Memphis , Tennessee , between November 15, 1999 and March 2000, that Martin Luther King had been assassinated by elements of the Memphis police with the entire operation overseen by Army Intelligence.[74]

King's assassination was a part of the now well-known Operation COINTELPRO which was established specifically to destabilize rising political groups. William F. Pepper was the King family's lawyer and we encourage the reader to read the story of the 70-plus witnesses bringing the assassination to light. One can only conclude that aristocracy's violent suppression of any who threaten their wealth and power is alive and well in Western "democracies."

After Mark Lane 's exposure of the CIA being behind President Kennedy's assassination I dismissed the other theorists cited below. However, the dynamite testimony of President Johnson's mistress (never used by Pepper so as to avoid the taint of conspiracy theorists) makes it clear their instincts were right. Each had been tracing a few of the many threads of power directly involved in that assassination.

Some of those same powerbrokers were behind both Kennedy's and King's assassination. Those movers and shakers were meeting to plan King's demise less then a month after the threat of President Kennedy shutting down their war plans was eliminated.[75] The media was just as silent on this exposure of silencing America 's prominent black leaders as they were about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 

Assassinations of up and coming leaders in periphery countries by death squads has been standard practice and we now know that this is also occasionally practiced within the imperial centers. Units within the intelligence communities are specially trained for these jobs, the relevant government structures stand ready to cover it up (plausible denial, the title of Lane's book, but better explained in Pepper's); and the media, local police, regional police, the judicial system, and aware politicians are, just as you and I would be, too cowed to expose what they know.

Bobby Kennedy was loved by Americans as much as John F. Kennedy. If he was elected president (and he had just won the California primary the eve he was assassinated) he would have had the will, the knowledge, and the power to expose the true assassins of his brother. That could not be permitted.[76]

How and why the true assassins got away with this can be summed up in two sentences: In Economic Democracy: The political struggle of the 21st-Century, we learned that anyone who exposed that Japan was running a pure mercantilist controlled economy they and their company would be totally ostracized and both company and whistle blower would be destroyed. In the same way if anyone in the media or academia were ever a threat to exposing the system they would be immediately face the full force of the system and be ostracized to the margins of society or (as we see by the Kennedy and King assassinations) worse.

By studying the above books and this author's major work, Economic Democracy one will more fully understand how elite-protective "frameworks of orientation" are imposed upon an acclaimed "free press" and academia who then, largely unwittingly, impose it upon a population whose government, educational institutions, and press claim to be honest recorders of history. Perhaps the most illuminating aspect of the Kennedy assassination is how the media practice self-censorship whenever a reality surfaces that threatens the foundation beliefs of society.[cc]

We understand why it is so hard to believe that a free media does not inform the public. But that they do not is reality. In The Best Democracy that Money can Buy (2003), Greg Palast provides many examples with solid evidence of massive corruption that would have ended the careers of important politicians if exposed but were glossed over and ignored by the media. Through his efforts these stories get on British television but do not get on Americas . Any American who wants to stay fully informed in their own country should study his website, www.gregpalast.com.

Professors, Intellectuals, and the Masses are locked into Protecting Empire

During the Cold War, dissident professors were silenced.[77] Due to peer pressure, desire for advancement, and even job security, most progressive professors in the university still will not challenge the official line. Professors are conscientious and sincere. But if anyone has any doubts about residual McCarthyism and peer pressure controlling what is researched and taught in our universities, consider the statement of an assistant professor who was approached by another professor to help research the hidden economic history exposed in this author's major work, Economic Democracy. His reply, "It would be suicidal for him to research those concepts" exposes the implicit limits to freedom of political and economic thought within academia.

French economic students understood that economic theory as taught had no relation to reality and in the fall of 2000 they revolted and academic administrators agreed to address what heretofore had been "controversial" subjects. Twenty-seven Ph.D. economic students at the University of Cambridge, UK, signed a similar, but milder, letter of protest in 2001.

Before the 9/11/2001 terrorist attack on America, alternative thoughts were surfacing. However those stirring thoughts were only a whisper against the thunder of social-control-paradigms that have been carefully cultivated by the managers-of-state of powerful nations for 50 years. The terror unleashed by that bombing may regress society back to the silence of the Cold War.

A Few of the Many Mighty Wurlitzers in History

Every society has its enemies and its friends. The belief in an enemy is consistently strengthened by the use of demeaning buzzwords-infidels, savages, the red peril, dictators, terrorists, et al. These buzzwords, building a "framework of orientation," function as a social-survival-mechanism. Many, actually almost all, gentle cultures that did not follow those rules of defense of their culture do not exist today. They were displaced by violent cultures. It is survival of the meanest not necessarily survival of the fittest.

Also crucial for survival of a society are gentle, kind, and proud words to describe themselves and one's friends. From each society's perspective, they are right and good. But, from the other society's perspective, it is they who are good and it is your society that is bad. The common belief is that these differences are religious, cultural, and ideological. But this and our previous books have demonstrated that the causes are really economics, wealth, and power.

The Inquisitions.The terrors of the Middle Ages Inquisitions were created by the Mighty Wurlitzer of the church. Roman emperors Constantine and Theodosius I, in the 4th-Century AD, made the Catholic Church the Roman State religion. Over about 700 years, all high offices of the church, bishops, cardinals, and the Pope, were taken over by aristocracy. The First and Second Estates had become one. Through that alliance of aristocratic and religious powers, the practice of purchasing one's way out of purgatory was rampant.

In the 11th and 12th centuries, returning Crusaders brought back with them branches of Christianity that did not require the purchase of one's salvation. The Church stood to shrink rapidly so long as other Christian churches offered free salvation. The enormous wealth and power of the church was at stake.

The largest of these cults and heresies were the Cathars and Waldensians. Isolated burning at the stake of heretics eventually coalesced in the 12th-Century into the founding of the Franciscan and Dominican Mendicant Orders to preach against heresy. In the 13th-Century, the Lantern Council listed "clause by clause" heretical interpretations of the faith and the formal Inquisition was born.

Heresy, of course, was primarily targeted at those who believed in those threatening competing Christian sects. Under the cries of infidels, heretics, and more, many were killed in battles to take over their property (remember, it was an alliance of Church and state), over 500,000 were burned at the stake, the Cathars disappeared and only a few Waldensians were left. Jews survived modestly and the Muslims grew strong but only outside the borders of Christianity. "Only the fear of losing power acquired over a period of a thousand years can satisfactorily explain such violent reactions."[78]

The Eradication of the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar formed in 1119 to protect pilgrims to the Holy Land . No group could claim more loyalty to the Church. Over time, they became very powerful and immense wealth was bestowed upon them by the Church and secular powers. Later kings and nobles became jealous of the wealth and power bestowed upon the Templars by their ancestors. In 1305, King Philip IV of France and other nobles gained the backing of the Pope for the destruction of the Templars. They spread vicious rumors and

on the night of the 13th of October, [1307], all the Templars in the French dominions were simultaneously arrested.... They were accused of worshipping an idol covered with an old skin, embalmed, having the appearance of a piece of polished oil-cloth. "In this idol," we are assured, "there were two carbuncles for eyes, bright as the brightness of heaven, and it is certain that all hope of the Templars was placed in it: it was their sovereign god, and they trusted in it with all their heart." They are accused of burning the bodies of the deceased brethren, and making the ashes into a powder, which they administered to the younger brethren in their food and drink, to make them hold fast their faith and idolatry; of cooking and roasting infants, and anointing their idols with the fat; of celebrating hidden rites and mysteries, to which the young and tender virgins were introduced, and of a variety of abominations too absurd and horrible to be named.[79]

Few citizens will stand up to the power of Church and government. Through being portrayed as an enemy, and over 2,000 confessing under torture, the powerful and beloved Templars were destroyed in only nine years. Just as with the elimination of Cathars and Waldensians, the suppressors now owned those valuable properties.

The Inquisitorial Suppression of the Illuminati. In 1776, the year of the American Revolution, Professor Adam Weishaupt of the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria ( Germany ) established the Bavarian Illuminati ("enlightened ones"). Rather than a terrorist group threatening one's peace, the Illuminati were attempting to expand the rights of the people just as was the American Revolution. In 1789, the French Revolution portended even far greater gains in rights for the masses.

As a gain in rights for the masses meant a lowering of the excessive rights (and wealth) of the church and aristocracy, the church and allied secular powers again faced a crisis. The war cry went out: "Look out for the Illuminati! Look out for the Illuminati! They want to take over your country! Your church! The world!" Of course, all who lived through WWII and the Cold War will recognize that the Germans heard the same words against different enemies and that the "free" West heard the same words against Germans and later against the Soviet Union .[80]

To lay claim to their wealth and gain the loyalty of the masses, the Czarist Secret Police demonized the Jews. This was only the umpteenth time a power-structure had done that. But it was they who created The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, outlining the Jewish plan to rule the world, which extremists use yet today to demonize the Jews.[81]

Every leader who is a major threat is demonized as wanting to rule the world. Napoleon was so demonized by aristocracy and the Church and he is recorded so in history yet today. But who ruled the world; aristocracy and the Church of course.[dd] When Britain did rule, Germany was so demonized. During the first half of the 20th-Century, those now-allied imperial-centers-of-capital were then demonizing each other as wanting to rule the world. When the allied imperial-centers ruled (the second half of the 20th-Century), the embattled Soviet Union was demonized as wanting to rule the world.

One need not give any more examples. It is the history of the world. Almost every nation or allied group of nations gains the loyalty of their people by portraying another country as an implacable enemy. Almost universally, the party thundering the loudest is not really being threatened by anyone. It is they who are suppressing others; almost always it is they who are appropriating someone else's wealth and that thunder of an enemy is only to maintain the loyalty of the masses to protect that wealth appropriation process. It is the loss of control of the wealth-producing-process and others gaining their share of that wealth that is the real threat.

With the passage of America 's Patriot Act, knowledge of how propaganda works in the world's so-called "free" press is sobering. The post 9-11-2003 Patriot Act is a recreation of Germany 's post Reichstag fire Enabling Act under which Hitler took all rights away from targeted people before they were jailed and executed. That act defined Fascism. The parallels are apparent. Entire ethnic groups are targeted, databases of potential enemies are created and those enemies are watched by a newly reorganized or newly created internal intelligence service. Neighbors are asked to report on neighbors, people disappear with-as of this writing-no rights to lawyers. Torture of suspects is openly discussed, obviously practiced, but not admitted. We must remember that the overwhelming masses of the German people were not targeted, were instead told that it was they under threat, and it was not until Fascism was defeated that the excesses and abuses of other people-very similar to the abuses of other societies and other cultures we are addressing-were exposed.