Scott Loughrey / IndyMedia – 2005-02-06 13:21:54

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/01/309292.shtml

(January 26, 2005) — To someone with schizophrenia, the brain is over-stimulated. Emotions, ideas and the makeup of personality clash, rendering the individual helpless to achieve peace of mind. That more or less describes the state of the progressive movements in the US at this writing as well.

The media that progressives are exposed to isn’t simply skewing debate and favoring powerful institutions. It is also successfully indoctrinating the anti-war movement. PsyOps is being waged on all of us, in a wide variety of areas and scope. As a result the US progressive community is too indoctrinated to understand how to effectively fight the menace in Washington.

Inauguration PsyOps
The day (1/21/05) after George Bush’s inauguration for a second term the Washington Post published a photograph (in its print edition) depicting the swearing-in ceremony from an aerial view. The Post openly admitted that the photo was doctored; i.e., the caption said it was “created by combining multiple digital images taken in succession” (The Washington Post).

When looking at the photo, it is quite obvious that the crowd size is wildly over-represented. For example, the grandstand overflowing with people in the top left of the image doesn’t look remotely real. So, not only is the Washington Post publishing doctored photos to elevate Bush’s importance, but the fakery is obvious. In addition, the Post‘s caption suggests the current editors feel no reason to conceal its lack of objectivity when covering the public rituals of the US government.

A similar view of the swearing-in scene appears in a very brief video clip that was aired by Democracy Now in its post-Inaugural coverage (1/21/05). The crowd size looks significantly smaller than what appears in the Washington Post‘s image.

This episode of Democracy Now, hosted (as ever) by the ubiquitous Amy Goodman, is noteworthy for many reasons. For one, it opens with extended video clips of Bush at the Inauguration ceremony. Democracy Now airs video clips of Bush that show him at his most confident and statesmanlike, as he recites the oath of office and kisses his wife and two pretty twin daughters.

How does Democracy Now continue to broadcast extended video clips that flatter powerful figures while still retaining its enormous stature within the progressive community?

Later in the same episode, Democracy Now’s producer/correspondent Jeremy Scahill explains how the DN crew managed to document one of the most sensational episodes that took place throughout the busy day. Scahill tells us that Democracy Now “got caught in some of the more violent exchanges that occurred…at the heart of the scene [between police and inaugural protesters]”.

Scruffy and unflappable, Scahill describes how police employed pepper spray and metal whips against the defenseless protesters. Scahill indicates that some of the Black Bloc protesters were actually police infiltrators. Scahill concludes the curiously brief segment with Democracy Now’s pledge to publish some of the photographs of these police infiltrators. (At this writing only one photograph appears on the site, and the alleged infiltrator is hardly recognizable. Also, none of the highly-charged photos show either him or Amy Goodman at the scene.)

Why does DN spend so much time in the beginning of its program (1/21/05) showing favorable video clips of Bush speaking at the Inaugural ceremony? Why doesn’t Democracy Now lead instead with the story of how Goodman and Scahill risked their necks in order to witness the police attacking the street protesters?

One explanation is that the entire street confrontation between the Black Bloc, the police and the two Democracy Now correspondents was staged. This would enable Democracy Now to begin its broadcast with video that makes the President look good. Then to retain its credibility with the groups resisting Bush the street scene could have been acted out (with the cooperation of the DC police and a small crowd of actors.)

Because of its track record, no one should rule out the possibility that this episode of Democracy Now was a PsyOps campaign. After all, the same program recently helped facilitate the electoral coup d’etat of 2004 and the subsequent massacre of Fallujah last November.

9/11 News Media Hoax
9/11 was undoubtedly the greatest day of visual indoctrination in world history. The horrific video footage of planes striking the World Trade Center was repeatedly broadcast on television on 9/11/01 and seen by millions around the globe. In the days that followed these clips were taken off the airwaves. They have hardly been seen on television since.

Meanwhile, a discussion has been raging on the Internet for the last several years about whether this video was actually fake. One advocate of the idea that the planes shown on television were not real is the Webfairy. She provides this pictorial representation to argue that the North Tower was not hit by an actual plane:

(The images come from the documentary 911, from Gedeon and Jules Naudet. Note that the magnification increases as the sequence progresses. Also, note that a new version of this footage has been recently published.)

Most people can see that this blurry object could not possibly be a Boeing 767 colliding with the North Tower. The anti-war movement needs to begin to visualize the considerable power behind critically reintroducing the 9/11 images. Within this video footage, lies a unique opportunity to reverse the indoctrination of millions of people. Reexamining the official story of 9/11 could enable the Left to transcend political ideologies in order to galvanize the masses like no other message the anti-war movement can offer.

The incentive for attacking the official story of 9/11 should be obvious. September 11th has been employed as the catalyst for the Bush administration’s imperialistic wars and domestic repression. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the USA PATRIOT Act, the concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the daily assault on civil liberties have all been accomplished by invoking the terror of 9/11.

Considering the propaganda benefit that 9/11 is to the Bush Regime it behooves the anti-war movement to reexamine the video the TV networks aired that day.

Will the anti-war movement reverse its own indoctrination in time to stop the Bush Regime? Stay tuned.