Selling Fear

One of our highly intelligent readers asked me to address the COVID operation from a marketing standpoint, which was an intriguing and irresistible topic.  Marketing, and its slightly more respectable older sibling Public Relations, are essentially psychological tools (weapons) that control mass desires and perceptions.

There are three primary forms of mass media: textual, visual, and audio.  Each is capable of telling a complete story by itself, but more interestingly, they can be combined to tell three different but related stories at the same time.  As a fun experiment, the reader should try watching a newscast, first with just the video, then just the audio, and note any differences in your perception of stories when you separate the two.

That said, let's take a look at how COVID is sold and programmed to manipulate a mass audience.  We will look at the tricks used to sell COVID, how it is packaged, and the motives of those selling it.

Let's ask ourselves what we really know about COVID.  We are told it is a virus, that it originated in Wuhan, China, and that it is deadly.  When we seek proof of these three propositions, most of us have no means to prove the existence of a virus, so we depend on "experts" to tell us that the cause of some set of symtoms is a virus.  We depend on the "experts" to tell us that the first known cases were in Wuhan.  We depend on "experts" to explain the connection between certain events (infection, progression, mortality) and the virus we cannot see.

The entire COVID narrative depends entirely on a small group of individuals with credentials we are told make them "experts" telling us how to connect certain dots to form the picture they want to paint in our minds.

You and I have been trained since birth to accept the authority of certain individuals and organizations on certain topics.  We rarely, if ever, question our underlying assumptions, which make us vulnerable to all kinds of marketing and PR.

If I take a middle-aged male with a soothing voice, put him in a lab coat and stick a stethoscope in his pocket, and place him in a vaguely clinical setting, then add a voice-over saying, "Nine out of ten doctors believe/recommend/choose...," most people would not only assume the man is a doctor, but that what he is saying is authoritative and true.

This effect depends heavily on the human propensity to delegate authority to someone else so we don't have to do all the work involved for ourselves.  This effect is commonly called "suspension of disbelief," and mass media is built on it.

If we take a performer with a certain (scientifically determined) look and vocal range, dress them up and place them on a vaguely "newsy"' looking set, we tend to delegate authority to them as "employees" assigned to find, digest and deliver information to us in a compact and packaged format.

Because we have delegated certain authority to these performers, we accept uncritically any random person they trot out as an authority on some topic.  We assume the performer has done the work necessary to vet the "expert" credentials.  We never see the expert's diploma or transcript, nor do we ever personally interview those who conferred "expert" status on them.  We base our assumptions about the expert on assumptions about the performer on assumptions about institutions.  We are at the mercy of multiple layers of assumptions that few of us examine on a regular basis.

When the performer trots out an expert who says a deadly virus is sweeping the planet, most of us have no way to verify the patient from whom samples were taken and scanned under an electron microscope and compared to the list of known viruses and determine whether the virus is indeed the cause of the sumptoms in the patient.  We assume that all the experts being presented to us have done all the work to verify the information they are telling us, and that their motives are pure and benign.

When I search for images of the SARS-COVID-2 virus, what I get looks very much like images of the seven other corona viruses that afflict humans, and since the images are generated by a computer counting the electrons bouncing off the surface of the virus, the images are in fact generated by an algorithm.  I have no means at my disposal to analyze those images, nor the computer and algorithms that produced them, so I am dependent on "experts" to interpret that data for me.

This doesn't begin to address all the tricks used - color, composition, lighting, music, etc. - but being aware of the use of "experts" is important to understanding how COVID is packaged.

COVID is packaged as an imminent and existential threat to every human being on the planet.  It is packaged as a virus, which none of us can see, and we are told that someone is infected by use of a test that none of us can verify (theory, design, processing).  A certain set of symptoms (matching several influenza and corona viruses) is a sign of infection by this virus.  And finally, it is all "wrapped" in a package labelled "SCIENCE".

Please forget that SCIENCE is a methodology for testing facts and assumptions, and NOT a belief system designed to stamp "authority" all over information, based entirely on a nested set of assumptions.

The packaging of COVID is designed to increase our credulity.  If "authorities" and "experts" and SCIENCE are all over the packaging, it must be true.  On a simple level, if you put French's common yellow mustard in a jar with French words all over it, you can double the price.  If you put a skull and cross-bones on the label, most people will not taste it to verify whether the contents are poisonous.  Thus, if we take an invisible threat, wrap it in "authority" and "expert," and stamp SCIENCE all over the label, not many people will question the information's veracity.

Let's take hydroxichloroquine, or HCQ, as an example.  Here is a drug that has been used by millions of people across the planet for decades, and is listed by the US government as being safer than aspirin (widely sold on the shelf of any convenience store).  It is frequently used to treat dengue fever, which is caused by one of four different viruses, so we know for a fact that it is effective against at least some viruses.

So, we have a cheap, common and safe drug with a long history of effectively treating some viruses.  Those are facts.  Now ask yourself, what is your perception of HCQ.  If terms like "side effects," "heart problems" and "poison" come to mind, then you have been watching mass media.  Whether you believe that information or not is irrelevant.  If your doctor wants to prescribe it for you, you will immediately react with fear.  Giving in to that fear or suppressing it depends entirely on your cognitive capacity and access to alternative information.

Ultimately, we are being manipulated by and with FEAR.  Fear is a very powerful emotion that is rooted deep in our minds.  It shuts down our reasoning capacity and causes us to react on instinct.  No one can stop fear, but we can suppress it, but it takes a significant conscious effort.

When we strip away all the unknown or unverified (unverifiable) information available on COVID, what we are left with is FEAR, wrapped in AUTHORITY and stamped with SCIENCE.  Quite simply, these three concepts are at the root of the entire global phenomenon we generally call COVID.

The FEAR is generated by the unknown and the uncertain.  We are unwilling or unable to verify the threat, so like the skull and cross-bones on the label, we won't question the contents out of FEAR we may be wrong.

We may be wrong because AUTHORITY has certified that our FEAR is warranted.  We read the label and saw the warning, and now some guy in a lab coat with a stethoscope in his pocket is verifying our FEAR.  He has lots of letters after his name, and other AUTHORITY figures confirm his AUTHORITY.  Thus, we give in to the FEAR.

This brings us to SCIENCE, a term which should never be confused with science, which is a set of rational rules for testing and verifying facts.  Rather, SCIENCE is itself a set of assumptions and beliefs that act as a modern theology.  It generates myths and deities that we are taught to hold sacrosanct.

SCIENCE has a high priesthood called AUTHORITY, which is telling us to FEAR.  If we cannot question SCIENCE, then none of the propositions built on it can be questioned, either.

If we want to unravel the marketing effort known as COVID, we must first examine our FEAR.  Where is it coming from?  What is generating it?  Who is selling it?  What is their motivation?  Once the FEAR is addressed, the rest of the illusion will crumble, in the same way that being on the set of a commercial and meeting the actor in the lab coat destroys the illusion that he is a medical professional.

We now turn to the last question - What is their motive?

The answer to this is a bit more difficult, because we must discern what is in the heads of a complex set of characters - individuals and institutions - and why.

The first thing we ask ourselves when unravelling a marketing campaign is, "What are they selling?"  The answer is either an action or a belief.  They want us to buy a product, or believe something about it.  This is not always easy, and involves another set of nested assuptions.

In order to get us to buy Air Jordans, we must first be convinced that Michael Jordan is an honorable and believable person worthy of trust and emulation, that he has intimate knowledge of shoe technology, that he genuinely believes in the product he hawks, and that some part of his skills in basketball are due to his shoes and that we can purchase those skills with no more effort than a visit to Foot Locker.

In the same way, to believe the COVID narrative, we must first believe there is a virus, that the AUTHORITY has perfect knowledge of this virus, that they know how to mitigate the virus, and that if we buy what they are selling we can escape harm and reduce FEAR.

What has the AUTHORITY sold us to mitigate FEAR?  Do not trust our friends and neighbors.  Wear a face covering.  Do not attempt to treat yourself.  Only a new (as yet uninvented) medication can stop the FEAR.  Only listen to AUTHORITY, no one else can possibly understand what is happening.

If we sum up the messages, it would seem that we are being channeled toward global AUTHORITY and that daily contact with the people around us will somehow weaken or undermine this transition (personal experience).  SCIENCE is the only way to understand the nature of the threat.  Only AUTHORITY can interpret SCIENCE.

Taken together, it seems that we are being sold a command and control system that the average human cannot and should not question.  The punishment for not following orders is death from an invisible bogeyman called COVID.

The result is billions of humans acting entirely on instinct and FEAR.  When humans do this, they tend to rally to leaders, or AUTHORITY.  This is the "circle the wagons" effect, and it is so effective that it is ubiquitous.  Humans herd when threatened, and herds conform to whatever the leaders tell them.  It is built into our psyches and it at the heart of almost all marketing.  People buy products to conform to social norms so they can be accepted into the group to receive the protection from the unknown (FEAR) that they crave.

We are being herded.  FEAR is the sheepdog.  AUTHORITY is the shepherd.  SCIENCE is the slaughterhouse.  Our individual identity, will and independence are the targets.  The marketing team wants full control over what goes into and onto, and how we use our most primordial possession - our Selves.

In other words, the marketers want Perfect Consumers.

Der Struwwelpeter Ins Zimmer

According to Giggle, total global military spending in 2016 was US$1.7 trillion, and that's just the above-board, budgeted, audited amount.  Who really knows how much we humans spend on killing each other?  That's roughly US$243 for every man, woman and child on the planet.

That'll buy a lot of death, that will.

Add to that the costs of burials, medical care, relocation, rebuilding, and lost productivity and pretty soon, you're talking real money here.

Suppose we took that money and gave it back to the folks it was stolen from.  I know, I know, governments never give it back.  More realistically, suppose we took all that stolen loot and...say, irrigated otherwise unproductive land for farming?  Built houses and produced clothing at subsidized prices?  Provided global health insurance?  Mounted an international effort to colonize other planets?

Keep in mind that a fair chunk of the, let's say, US$2 trillion spent on destruction never gets used.  It just sits in a barn as a deterrent to other folks from using their war money.  For the sake of argument, let's assume constant dollars since 1960...that's about US$112 TRILLION that could have been put to much better use.  The real number is anyone's guess, but I'm willing to believe this is a fair estimation in 2017 dollars, and we are not even counting the cultural losses of historical items and landmarks to future generations.

Multiply that money by all of recorded history and we are probably looking at being decades, if not centuries ahead of where we are now.  The actual damage to humanity is incalculable.  Hell, just the destruction of the Library at Alexandria due to war set our species back at least a hundred years.

Let's narrow the focus a bit.  Let's take the US$112 trillion since the Dawn of the Space Age.  We know the Apollo Moon Program cost about US$20 billion at that time.  Whether the world got what it paid for is another discussion.  Let's just take it at face value for the time being.

That US$112 trillion would have bought the Apollo program a little over 50x.  That's a hell of a lot of space exploration.  We;d be vacationing on the Moon and Mars about now.  Braver souls would be spelunking on Ganymede, or hiking the ruins on Iapetus.  With that kind of money, we might even be preparing the first interstellar trip to Proxima Centauri.

We would likely be harvesting food in the Gobi and Sahara deserts.  Most people who wanted one could have a nice little house with a picket fence and a postage stamp-sized lawn.  The only naked people would be those who like it.  Most diseases would just be scary bedtime stories for children to warn them of the evils of military spending.  The 110th birthday party would actually be a full section of the Hallmark greeting-card rack.  Amputees would be regrowing limbs.  Dogs and cats living together, for gods' sakes.

There are somewhere in the neighborhood of seven billion people on this Earth, with maybe two or three million actively involved in destroying humanity.  Without doing any actual calculations, that's around 300-to-1 odds in a fist fight to stop those evil bastards.  So why do we put up with this crap?

As Franklin Roosevelt reminded us in his first (of four) inaugural addresses, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  That is exactly what the evil bastards keep selling us...FEAR.  As long as we are all quaking in our boots at imaginary Struwwelpeter, we will never stop this insipid madness and get on with real human achievement.

One reason I am so disgusted with so-called Social Justice Warriors is that they waste so much of our collective resources on tiny self-defined minorities and half-witted balderdash like pronouns, when there are so many bigger fish to fry.

We have the power not only to control the Masters of War, but to refocus our efforts on meaningful and beneficial issues.  It's high time we take back what is ours from those who kill for greed and control with fear.  It's time to re-task our species' efforts and dedicate our resources toward advancing humanity, rather than continually resetting it to factory defaults.

Just a little daily effort - two or three minutes - to harass the Powers That Be and let them know WE are in charge would have astounding benefits in a generation.

Which would you rather do?  Pick up body parts and scrounge for family heirlooms in rubble heaps?
 Or pack the family bags for that week-long excursion to the ruins on Mars?

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Outsourcing Your Security

When someone says "smart home monitoring" to me, I immediately think of a very intelligent person watching out for their own stuff with a big gun.  But, I suppose other people have other ideas.  For instance, watch this video that I picked up off of Joseph Farrell's website:



Disturbing, I know.  Gave me the willies.  And Joseph does a good job of analyzing the implications of such a technology, but I want to look at the audio/visual programming and psychological underpinning of this video.

The first thing that struck me was the red background.  Red, of course, has cultural connotations of 'danger' and 'fear'.  They could just have as easily chosen blue, which would have implied comfort and relaxation.  So you are immediately hit with a fear trigger from the first frame.  Granted, you may not have been conscious of this reaction, but that's the whole point.  Propaganda works best when it slides underneath our filters and conscious reactions.

The next thing that hit me was the music.  It sounds like the old 'Peanuts' theme music.  It's bright and bouncy and just slightly industrial implying that everyone in the video is busy and productive.  Obviously, the service being sold is for people who are too busy to look after their own affairs   In fact, they are so busy they don't have time to worry about their kids.  They need their house to do it for them.

The next image that hits you is the generic house.  It's a colonial cottage style that is obviously middle class suburban America.  Nowhere else on Earth looks like that.  So we know the target audience here: busy white middle class American breeders who are so busy trying to keep their heads above water financially that they need their house to do all the work for them.  How do we know they are white?  Look closely at all the human figures and ask yourself what race they are.  Plenty of clues.

And that brings us to the next weird thing about this video.  There are no people, only shadows.  There's no individuation or identity, just silhouettes going through the motions of life.  In other words, the people who would use this system have no individuality.  They are just demographic cogs in a larger machine, unwilling or unable to stand out from the masses.  The people in this video have no substance.  Even the narrator's voice is a kind of bland all-American accent with a 30-something timbre to it.

The first image that really creeped me out was the one that goes with the line, "...is supported by two networks simultaneously."  The house is shown with rays coming out of the top of it, one set white, the other black.  What are they telling us here?  That one network is good and in the open, while the other is covert?  Why don't the rays go in the same direction, implying both being controlled by the same party?  This tells me that one of the networks is being monitored by someone else, and not necessarily for good purposes.

The next line really irritates me: "...giving you absolute peace of mind when it comes to keeping your home protected."  What?  No lingering doubts whatsoever?  There is no possible way to bypass this system?  There are no variables that can cause failure, such as blackouts, sunspots, cutting cables, etc.?  Just look up the word 'absolute' in the dictionary.

And why just my home?  Look at the video.  The only things in there that are distiguishable and have any character and detail at all are the home and the technology.  The people and stuff in the home are just consequential, and all of it is subservient to the bells and whistles in a box.  And who are these 'trained security personnel'?  TSA?

Then there's that strange shot of the family running out the door with all their gear on their backs while a shadowy character with something on his head that looks like a ski mask and holding a pair of bolt cutters is kneeling next to a utility box of some kind.  Since no action is taken to stop this character, we can only assume that it is a government 'authority' or 'trained security personnel'.

And while all of this is going on, we see the 'central monitoring center' with a couple of guys standing around a monitor looking as if they are watching your daughter in the shower.  Hmmm...maybe it IS TSA, then.  Or Catholic priests.

At any rate, there is never any sign that the 'central monitoring center' takes any action, such as call the police or send a patrol around.  They just monitor the situation.  Great.  A lot of help that is.  I could have done the same things with my Smith & Wesson .357 double action revolver.

Now we are told that we can monitor our home in real time from our computer, smartphone or the touch-pad.  To me, that says that anyone can hack into my home because anything sending out that much information on that many channels is far too easy to cut into.  The nerdy kid across the street could be having the time of his life turning your home on and off while you're away.

I feel so secure now.

Now let's look at all the emotional hot buttons this video is pushing in order to make you feel afraid.

First, of course, is the classic 'children' ruse.  Threaten the children and people will do almost anything to protect them.  It's the old circle-the-wagons effect.  This has been used with great effect in the last 50 years or so, with things like Amber alerts and little Adam Walsh (remember him?).  This is a really easy button to push.

Next, they threaten your home.  Well, naturally that'll get your hackles up and make you want to do anything to protect your stuff.  After you've spent yourself into a hole to buy the house and fill it with gee-gaws, you certainly are afraid to lose it all, especially since you won't finish paying for it all until you are 90 or so.

The video then goes on to create a whole new fear for you: carbon monoxide.  Now, how many people do you know sit around wringing their hands over carbon monoxide levels in their houses?  I can't think of one in 51 years of experience.  But gosh, your home could be full of the stuff.  And if one odorless, invisible gas is filling your home, how many others?  And does the system monitor those, as well?  That one line could turn anyone into a full-fledged worry-wart.

But not to worry.  All these wires, networks, touch-pads, smartphones, computer terminals, 'trained security personnel', and 'monitoring centers' are there to give you 'peace of mind', 'security' and 'safety'.

Frankly, everything about it scares the shit out of me.

The video is so well done that you even think that all this will save you money, too!  That's right, paying thousands of dollars to amass all the crap you need to make this system work for you will save you a few pennies a month on your electric bill.  WOW!  What a deal!  No word if it will stop the leaky faucet or the running toilet, though.  That would save me some extra pennies on the water bill, too.  And how about gas leaks?  Didn't mention gas leaks, did they?

Another joke?  When the kid comes home, the home sends an alert to the woman's (not the man's) phone to say, "The front door was opened at 4:01 PM."  We are supposed to assume that the woman automatically knows this is her kid?  Or maybe the kid is wearing a ID chip that the rest of the text message gives the kid's identity heart rate, adrenaline levels, and urine output for the day.

There are so many things wrong with this video, none being the quality of the production or the propaganda being transmitted.  It is a high-quality piece and carefully crafted to scare you into submission.  And every bit of it was done with full awareness of what they are trying to achieve and the messages being sent.  How do I know that?

Well, a committee was formed by the client.  They determined what they wanted to say and how they wanted to say it.  They put the package out to bid and found a production company that 'got it' and presented a proposal that said as much.  All of this was vetted by executive managment at key milestones along the way, and the final product was approved by marketing, sales, executives, and legal.  Every image, word and idea was thoroughly parsed to say exactly what the company wanted you to see, hear and feel.

So everything I've just explored, plus what Joseph Farrell stated, were all clearly and deliberately intended by both the client (the company) and the production house that created it.

Now doesn't that make you feel more secure?

Countdown To Armageddon

The Mayan Calendar

Well, here we are, counting down to whatever it is we are counting down to.

To hear some folks talk, by this time next year, the Earth will be a cinder, all Mankind will be extinct, civilization will vanish, and it will all be because of some carved stone wheels in Mexico.

Rubbish.

It is the nature of all entrenched power elites to make people afraid of some external force, from which they will protect us...at a price.  Fear is a great motivator, and when used as a weapon, can cause great numbers of people to do really stupid things, like trust someone else to watch out for their interests.  It never occurs to us individually that anyone we put in a position to guard our safety is going to watch out for their own safety first.

The great Roman poet and historian Ovid famously said, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?"  Who will watch the watchers?  Once you establish an individual or group to protect your interests, then you must place another over them to watch them, and yet more over them to watch the former.  It's an endless cycle of layers of watchers checking on other watchers, and in the end, the only one who is truly motivated to keep me safe is me.

If I have a pile of gold and I hire someone to watch it for me, eventually they will figure out that job security comes from keeping me afraid of losing my gold.  But at some point, I will become paranoid and hire someone else to keep an eye on the first one.  And on it goes ad infinitum.  The watchers will inevitably place their own self-interests above mine.

If we expand this to a global scale, then we have certain minorities who have been placed in positions of trust to watch out for our interests.  To protect their interests, they have instituted various programs to keep us afraid, and thus continue paying them to watch our interests.  When they are caught red-handed lying and dissembling, we blythely pay more to install another layer of minorities to watch the first group, who in turn ally themselves with the first layer in order to enrich themselves at our expense.  We call this process 'government'.

In the age of the 'security' state, we the sheeple herded around by the noses by a small group of people who use our fears as weapons against us.  By its nature, fear is irrational because it rarely rises to the level of our expectations.  Yet the mere anticipation of something bad happening causes us to become pliant and docile at the hands of anyone who will promise to protect us.

The state apparatus has a vested interest in keeping us afraid.  It doesn't matter what the fear is, so long as a sufficient majority of the masses are afraid of it.  It also helps if the fear is something that is much larger and inevitable that we are powerless to change.  We will still throw money and power at anyone who steps up and says they have a plan to protect us.

Global cooling, global warming, Y2K, 2012, Apocalypse...name your irrational fear, and you will find some group standing up to take money to protect us from it.

Pandora's Box

Climate change?  Well, we have this anonymous group of 'scientists,' without names or faces, who are working diligently with their laptops and recording stations to do what we all can do by standing outside.

Apocalypse?  We have this massive bureaucracy called a church that claims to intercede on behalf of all Mankind with an angry and wrathful God to prevent His wiping out Humanity.  This particular gig is very effective, since it's lasted about 500 years or so.  Never mind that wrath and vengence are two of the seven deadly sins, and it makes no logical sense what-so-ever that this God would act on them.

2012?  This one is particularly rich, since no one seems to take the time to read about seven or eight paragraphs in a scholarly paper on Mayan calendars.  It's particularly effective, since people can project just about any fear they have on to it, and it has grown to encompass climate change, apocalypse, space invasions, and pretty much all the other fears and expectations of our collective subconscious.

In simplest terms, the Maya envisioned all of time as a series of interwoven cycles running endlessly into the future.  Each progressing cycle was exponentially longer than the first, with the final cycle lasting a bit over 5,000 years.  This final cycle had 13 iterations before it would itself recycle.  The whole thing was based on various celestial events, particularly the movements of Venus, Moon and Sun.

The cycles also coincided with Maya myths and legends regarding various Ages, not unlike the Yugas in Hindu tradition.  In fact, a brief effort on the part of the curious reader will reveal that the recycling of the Mayan calendar, as well as the Hindu tradition, and even the Bible itself, call for the beginning of a new Golden Age, when Mankind will become enlightened once again, and will throw off the fear and loathing that has kept Him in darkness and ignorance.

According to some scholarship, that new Golden Age begins about this time next year.

So what are we afraid of?  Could it be that all this fear-mongering is actually a reflection of the watchers' internal struggle to keep us all compliant and fearful in the face of a new Awakening?  Are they trying to engineer a new Dark Age in which they are the Masters of All They Survey, while we are the writhing masses cowering at their feet?

If all your wealth and power were the result of everyone around you being deathly afraid of their own shadows, and you knew that they were waking up and taking back their birthright, what would you do?  Considering you will lose everything and most likely all those people will lash out in anger at you for what you've done, my guess is that you would do everything in your power to keep them ignorant, fearful and dependent.

In fact, every tradition, without exception, that forecasts a violent and nasty cataclysm states that this event is the birth pangs of a new Golden Age of Humanity.  We will finally conquer our fears and self-loathing, and usher in an Age when Mankind will appear god-like, when peace and harmony will reign, when we no longer live in ignorance.  All of them, be they Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Mayan, Hindu, Greco-Roman, Cherokee, Hopi...doesn't matter, they all predict that the destruction of the Old Ways will lead to new glories for our species.

The Golden Age

So, when you look at it the right way, what we are seeing is deep, agonizing fear on the part of the watchers who are losing their power and status.  The only weapon they have is to transfer that fear onto the vast majority of humanity to keep us dependent on them.  Every one of the traditions hold that this will happen, that the entrenched powers will utter destroy themselves in their effort to maintain their positions.  In the end, the Enlightenment always wins.

2012 will likely be an eventful year.  There will be some remarkable events in the heavens and on Earth.  But the only people who have something to fear are the one who benefit most from fear.  Because, when fear is conquered, they no longer have power nor status.  They will no longer be able to manipulate the masses, since all their tools and tricks will have been rendered useless.

Every winter brings death, but spring is not far behind.  What was hidden by the snow will be revealed by the thaw.

Fear And Loathing

The big weather news of the week?  No, not the dozen or so who died in a typhoon in the Phillipines, but Brad and Muffy had to flee the Hamptons for some piss-ant rain storm.  Reportedly, Muffy's hair got mussed by a mild breeze caused by the rush to evacuate.

Hunter S. Thompson would be proud.  Richard C. Hoagland calls it "fear porn," and a more apt name we are hard-pressed to develop.  It's an old trick, but it is very effective.  What is surprising is how many people fall for it, even though there are repeated examples of the manipulation.

The use of fear as a weapon is a simple, yet effective tactic.  It is the basis of the concept of 'terrorism,' which is to frighten people to the point of submission.  The reason terrorism can ONLY be government sponsored is that people's fear response doesn't serve any other interest.

People, despite all our sophistication, have basic and primitive responses to certain stimulae.  One of the strongest and most basic is the fear response.  When faced with a threat, people will automatically 'circle the wagons.'  There's an instinctual rally behind leaders and a desire to protect vulnerable individuals and institutions.  Not that the instinct is bad, but the manipulation of it for socio/political ends is quite evil.

As a technique for manipulating large groups of people, the concept is very old.  Even the telling of ghost stories around the camp fire is a means of keeping more impressionable souls close to camp.  After a good ghost story, kids won't wander off in the night, to fall prey to accident or attack.

On a larger scale, such thinkers as Sun Tsu and Machiavelli wrote at length on the use of fear for political and strategic goals.  Using imaginary, manufactured or even actual enemies is a tool that causes the masses to cling to 'thought leaders' and gate-keepers' (politicians and media) to receive 'information' on how to react, and 'protection' from the threat.

A prime example of this technique in practice is the recent events surrounding hurricane Irene.  Anyone who has sufficient experience with big storms knows that you lock down for hurricanes and run from tornadoes.  One assumes that 'experts' would know this.  So why the week and a half of fear mongering and orders to flee?  It can only serve one purpose, that of generating fear in the masses and causing them to turn to PTB and media as the purveyors of 'information' and 'protection.'

The same technique was used quite effectively on a global basis after 9/11.  The fear of an unforeseen attack by mysterious enemies capable of destroying large and unthinkable targets has caused a global fear instinct to kick in that is still reverberating 10 years later.  The use of that fear has caused great numbers of people to willingly hand over their personal power and responsibility to a group of self-serving power mongers.

Even things as small as 'Amber Alerts' serve the PTB.  Amber Alerts are a program of media warnings in the US that are triggered when a child is reported missing.  Children, of course, are the most effective tool of those who would make the masses submit.  The idea of a child in danger causes and very strong and primitive reaction in people to drop what they are doing and circle the wagons, waiting for word from the 'authorities.'  It is very subtly fed to people by inducing the fear of 'it could happen to your child.'

Children are used by the PTB to create some of the most egregious violations of personal freedom known to Man.  Organizations such as 'Child Protective Services,' which are nothing they claim to be in that name, get other people to feel justified and proper in stealing people's children and farming them out to the highest bidders.

So-called 'public education' functions on the fear that your child won't have a chance in the 'real' world if they don't receive the full 12 years of indoctrination at the hands of evil manipulators.  This is despite the fact that some of the greatest thinkers in history had little or no 'formal' education.  Sitting in a classroom no more guarantees an education than having an open book on your desk, yet the fear that your child will be deprived causes you to submit your child to the brain butchers.

Mass vaccinations operate on fear.  If you don't take the jab, you will die a horrible and painful death from some vicious disease, even though more people statistically drown in buckets of water every year, than die of the supposed plague du jour being used to 'fear' you into submission.

The Cold War, global warming, nuclear holocaust, viral epidemics, killer storms, cometary impacts and the like are all tools of fear-mongering that are in play in our culture.  Who benefits from the fear that is generated?  Why, the very people who are telling us to be afraid, of course.

Fear of poverty keeps the middle classes in line.  Fear of Second Comings and Eternal Damnation keep the faithful in line.  Fear of depriving our children of some vague opportunity keeps parents in line.  Fear of death keeps nearly everyone in line.

There is a reason that the great adepts have all, without exception, taught that conquering fear is the first and most important step in freeing ourselves from bondage.  When we no longer act out of fear and subdue our innate panic response, then we are finally free to open our minds to greater Truths and Spiritual Development.

The Truth shall set us free, and the Truth is, there is nothing to fear.

We must train ourselves to stop acting without reasoning first.  It's not easy.  There are very primitive parts of our brains that startle at the unknown.  We create phantoms in our minds that cause us waste our lives reacting to possibilities, rather than focusing on reality.

It is fear that causes us to surrender our personal responsibility to anyone who presents themselves as a 'leader,' when in fact those 'leaders' are using their knowledge of the truth to present themselves as fearless.  It's a vicious circle that keeps us submissive and subservient to those who generate and manipulate fear as a weapon.

Observation of animals will quickly inform us about the basic human condition.  That lemmings will panic en masse and follow each other over a cliff is a trite but effective metaphor.  Both sheep and cows are excellent examples of blind submission to 'leaders.'  The Judas goat is a classic example.  The goat is trained to walk through the corral, and the sheep blindly follow it to their certain doom, or at least a good sheering.  A herd of thousands of cows can be managed by a handful of cowboys by simply guiding the lead cow.

In human 'society,' the lead cow is called a 'news anchor.'  It is their job to boldly march into butcher's hands, and they willingly do so because they know they will be spared to lead the next group.  Those who follow, though, are not so lucky.

There is hope.  Stories about people ignoring evacuation orders and going to the beaches despite threats of punishment and certain doom tells us that the power of the 'opinion leaders' is waning.  After all, the right of the individual to do anything they want to themselves is supreme above all other powers.  If Joe Sixpack wants to ride the storm surge on his boogy board, so be it.  If a man wants to ride out a storm on his property to protect it from looters and public 'authorities,' more power to him.  These people are taking personal risks that they feel are warranted, for whatever reason and reward they perceive.

Anyone who invests in the markets knows that the greater the financial risk, the greater the reward.  It is the fear of loss or ruin that keeps most people out of such things.  Those who take the risks are personally responsible for informing themselves of the benefits and dangers of such actions.  It is not for us to decide whether or not they should take those risks, and it is not for us to mediate their losses, should they fail to properly calculate the risks.

In the same way, it is not for us to decide if a storm is dangerous or not for any given individual.  That is their choice.  They have information on storm tracks, wind speeds and expected rainfall.  They, as reasoning beings, are personally responsible for deciding to stay put or flee, and they must accept both rewards and losses for their decisions.

If we find this a reasonable argument, then what can possibly be the benefit to some group to inculcate fear in large groups of people?

Training mass numbers of people to respond in certain ways makes them predicable, and thus controllable.  It also keeps them from depending on themselves and their friends and families.  Rather, it indoctrinates them into the concept of clinging to 'thought leaders' and 'gate-keepers' as sole arbiters of right action.  When people are afraid, they follow anyone who appears to have an idea what to do.  It causes us to doubt our own capacity to decide the odds and what we should do to mitigate risk.

We are implanted with 'behavioral templates' in the media that cause us to use pre-programmed responses to various stimulae.    The PTB use this for their entertainment.  It's amusing to them to herb masses around and watch the terror in their eyes as they run from a summer rain hardly more than a Texas gully-washer.

Anyone who has faced their fear and survived knows the feeling of empowerment it brings.  If the Self can conquer the animal flight instinct and face down the things that makes Self afraid, then Self is rewarded with the knowledge that Self is powerful and capable and independent.

That is the greatest fear of those who would control us.  That we should become empowered and conquer our fear and learn self-reliance makes us impossible to control, impossible to herd.  The empowered individual does not need a leader, he IS the leader.  He doesn't need to pay taxes, or depend on government agencies and hand-outs.  He is his own authority.  He doesn't need to share his reward and doesn't ask others to re-mediate his losses.

Does that sound like the kind of individual that governments and 'authorities' try to create?  Or does the quivering, indecisive lump of fearful animal flesh seem more to their liking?

Despite all his faults, FDR did come out with a great line that is worth remembering: "There is nothing to fear, but Fear Itself."  Knowledge that we are eternal beings incapable of real death, and fearless in the face of danger, real or imagined, is the remedy to our current predicament.

Those who stand and fight, whether natural or man-made dangers, are self-empowered and self-reliant, and truly free individuals. 

The PTB are deathly afraid of one thing, the self-actualized human being.  Their power, wealth and control are completely and inextricably dependent on our fear.  Whether it's religions, political institutions or just plain bullies, they eat fear and thrive on it.  The complete lack of fear is kryptonite to their super-powers.

Ask yourself this: Why do the 'authorities' tell everyone to run, but allow supercilious air-heads to remain in the face of danger to report it to us?  Very simple.  It creates in our minds the impression that the media have the favor of the 'authorities,' and we instinctively admire their bravery and fearlessness in the face of certain doom.  We, therefore, naturally transfer our allegiance to the media because they have no fear, whether of Nature or 'authorities'.  Thus, we become willing pawns of the PTB mouthpieces.

Every time someone tells you to fear and run, the first question in your mind should be, "Why?  What do you have to gain from my fear?"  That simple thought deflates their power and brings them down to our level.  Don't be fooled by follow-on stories about the folks who didn't listen and died.  People always die.  It is the nature of life.  It is no less tragic, but it should not cause us fear.

Freedom comes through two tasks.  Uninstall the fear, and conquer it's cousin, guilt.  If we deprogram those two things, then we are powerful and free.  The hardest part is accepting the consequences of our actions, no matter what our choices.

The true heroes are the ones who stand and face their fears, not the uniformed baboons who show up later to clean up the mess.

TEOTWAWKI

Do you sense it?

Do you have that feeling that something big is about to happen? Does it seem like the world is holding its breath waiting for that next big "whatever it is?"

In Europe, France and Greece are in melt-down. The UK is collapsing. Spain and Italy are in slow-motion dissolution.

In America, the dollar is dying, the people are losing their way of life and the so-called 'president' hasn't a clue how to fix the drip, much less the flood. Foreclosures are becoming epidemic. Jobs are gone and not coming back. Even the 'Fed' admits that.

In Asia, China has become a black hole of resources, and has even felt ready to challenge Japan for territorial claims. Thailand has experienced political problems. The Koreas are threatening to take their war hot again. India and Pakistan are beating the drums over Kashmir.

In the Middle East, the illegal rogue nation of Israel appears hell-bent on destroying everything it cannot steal. Iraq, Iran and Afganistan look to be forming a close working relationship through mutual hatred of America and its NATO puppets.

Through it all, there seems to be a growing awareness in the global population that we are being had by a bunch of 'they.' There are myriad definitions for who 'they' are, but a good functioning handle is 'The Powers That Be,' or PTB. This PTB, through the use of something called the Hegelian Dialectic, which is deceptively simple in theory and diabolically effective in practice.

Simply put, the dialectic is a group (PTB) determines a goal that it wants to achieve. It then formulates that goal into a set of actions. Finally, it creates a problem and offers its solution as the answer. For instance, the PTB wanted to implement the despicable set of laws now known as The USA Patriot Act. The legislation was drafted, probably years in advance. Then a massive terrorist attack was perpetrated and within weeks a multi-thousand page law was introduced, ostensibly to solve the problem (which it doesn't, but that wasn't the point). Hitler did the exact same maneuver with the Reichstag fire, which produced a remarkablly similar document to the USA Patriot Act, called the Enabling Act.

Though the global economic melt-down appears to be chaotic and unmanageable, make no mistake: it it being orchestrated at the highest levels in order to usher in order to offer the pre-packages solution already formulated for decades, of centralized global governance, single world currency and a host of other distasteful 'solutions.'

Of course, the whole thing is a sham, a farce and a ballywick. If you look at it, the greed of bankers have caused the problem, and now they stand poised to offer us their solution, as being the only viable solution.

We, the global mind, the inhabitants of Earth, the people have been carefully and purposefully guided over centuries to accept what the PTB are offering us. The roadmaps to this debacle have been openly published: Machiavelli's The Prince, Marx's Das Kapital, even Sun Tzu's The Art of War and the Protocols of Zion. They are all part of the development of this Grand Scheme to enslave the masses, and enrich and empower the very few at the top. It is even enshrined on the reverse of the $1 Federal Reserve note: the pyramid (us) and the All-Seeing Eye (them).

Even our response to becoming aware of this Plot has been effectively defanged. We have been taught, nay indoctrinated, to believe that that way we change things is through protest, strikes and activism. In fact, these are red herrings designed to effectively release the anger and power of the masses in a completely impotent manner. Just like the old American maxim of 'write your congress-thing.' Ineffective and toothless tools given to us by those who seek to rule us, designed to make us think we have the power to effect change, when in fact it saps our true strength.

Furthermore, we have been sold 'fear' as a means to herd us en masse in any direction the PTB choose. Fear of poverty, fear of terrorism, fear of the unknow. Y2K, 911, 2012. They are all tools to make us afraid and to seek answers from 'authorities.' And of course the answers we are given guide us inexorably in the direction 'they' wish us to go: the slaughterhouse.

Yes, the economic system is, and will continue to be, crashed. 'They' must place us in a position in which we have no choice but to accept 'their' solution so that we can eat again, have our TV and amusements again, return to our comfortable couches and absorb the propaganda again. Make no mistake, every man, woman and child on Earth will be put over the economic barrel until we submit to 'their' solutions.

The answer is so deceptively simple that most people simply overlook it. The answer doesn't require legislation, it doesn't require fear and it doesn't even require action. On the contrary, just the opposite: do NOTHING. That's right, stop buying into the system that wants to enslave you. Don't vote. Don't protest. Don't consume the mass propaganda. The one thing the PTB fear the most is that no one takes them seriously. 'They' wake up at night in cold sweats fearing that one thing. The one thing 'they' can't abide is that we wander away and stop listening and following.

Here's your real solution: start forming collectives and use barter and alternative currencies like gold and silver for private commerce. Don't borrow money from the banks and stop spending money at the corporate outlets. All the protesting and voting and striking is taking our energy and channeling it into pressure valves, effectively wasting our time. Don't protest. Don't vote (it only encourages them, as Will Rogers pointed out). I mean, imagine the hand-wringing and utter terror 'they' would face if 'they' held an election and simply no one showed up. 'They' could not claim any legitimacy to power at all. A simple and elegant solution that requires absolutely no action or energy on your part at all!

The only reason a leader can exist is because someone follows him. If we simply stop following and start developing our own lives, if we stop buying the corporate output and start making our own, if we just ignore the insecure little bastards that are The Powers That Be, 'they' would quickly shrivel up and die. Make no mistake. 'They' will fight. 'They' will create wars and famines and any number of horrors to get us to run back to 'their' solutions. But, instead of fearing that, look at it with pity. Pity those poor little minds that cannot handle people being truly powerful, of being their own leaders, of producing their own needs. Those poor Rothschild/Rockefeller/Zionist/Tri-Lateralists/Masons, etc. You can choose your own bugbears, but 'they' are all the same behind the curtain. 'They' are bullies, whose power comes from us being afraid. If we are not, 'they' wither and shink back into the hole where 'they' came from.

The real solution is so simple. Instead of taking energy, it requires nothing...literally. We all just walk away and ignore 'them.' We find our own solutions, grow our own food, use our own money, create our own world free of fear and control. The first shot we can fire over the bow is November 2, in America. Don't vote. Very simple. Don't vote Democrat, or Republican, or Libertarian, or Green, or Socialist, or Tea Party, or anything. Don't go, don't pull a lever and don't care. I laugh to think what would happen the next day. No one would have power. 'They' would be in an absolute panic. 'They' would be powerless overnight with not a single calorie being burned on your part. It is the ultimate 'none-of-the-above.'

There is so much more to this issue. There are a great number of writers, speakers and populations who are 'waking up' and seeing that the whole thing is a sham. So of those people are quite eloquent and others are, well, just more of the same trying to steal our energy and freedom by offering more of the same with different packaging. One very succinct video I have come across lately is a David Icke interview. You don't have to like him or believe him or follow him, but I think he clearly illuminates the situation and provides a healthy meal of 'food for thought.' This video acts as a very good primer for some Big Pictures that can then be researched and acted upon with further meditation. Just open your mind to the possibilities, without forming judgement. See if you don't hear some real truth in it. But, in order to truly free yourself, you can't give up one leader to be replaced by another. Don't follow anyone. Research, pray and find your own truth. You are far better at leading yourself than anyone 'outside' of you can ever be.

Yes, it's all about to come crashing down. Yes, it will be nasty. Yes, many people will die or be hurt. It is inevitable. What we do have control over is the outcome. Either we have more of 'them,' only far worse, or we find our own solutions, ones that empower and free us from what we have been force-fed for centuries now. We don't need leaders, we are leaders!

In America, there is an expression that 'a man's home is his castle.' By extension, every man is his own king. Now is the time to act like it. Take back the power you have given away. The beauty of it is that to take it back, you really need to do NOTHING. The rest will sort itself out.

Life's a hologram and then you die.

On Traveling and Touring

In life, there are two basic kinds of people. All behavior, all personalities, all characters can be distilled down into one of these. Unlike other classification systems, there is little or no cross-over. You are absolutely one or the other.

In essence, all people are either travelers or tourists. You may not think there is a difference, but bear with me on this. When I am finished, you will see that this system is a fine way to classify anyone, and there is no need for such things as matrices, since there are only two ans ince they are absolute.

On the one hand are Travelers. Travelers are the group that include adventurers, thrill-seekers, life-long learners, entrepreneurs, and people for whom safety zones are confining and restrictive. This group would include pioneers, discoverers and people for whom pushing the envelope is just starting to get fun. A traveler avoids major highways and interstates like the plague. For them, going to "popular" tourist destinations is the antithesis of excitement. If millions have done it, then what's the point in emulating their experience?

Travelers are easy to identify. They commonly carry multi-function tools every day of their lives. At the airport, train station or boat landing, they are often alone and all of their baggage is highly practical, completely portable and doesn't require checking anything for handling. If you were to examine their baggage, you would find everything in it to be of multiple use, and most likely they will be carrying a towel (a tourist expects towels to be provided wherever they go).

A travelers will rarely interact with natives of their own land. They prefer to mix with locals, learn the language and eat the same food and in the same manner as those of the host country.

Travelers rarely carry cameras. Where they go is for their own memories, not for entertaining the meek back home. Furthermore, they don't want to attract the wrong people to the places they like to go, so they don't advertise the locations and experiences. Even with photos to proves it, most people wouldn't believe their stories anyway. A location where a traveler is most unlikely to meet others of their kind are the places that attract them. Travelers prefer the experiences that no one else but the natives have experienced.

The Tourist, on the other hand, is the polar opposite, and comprises the vast majority of people on Earth. These are the people who have made America what it is: purveyor of the repeatable experience. These are the people who go to Paris, meet only with other folks from the home country, require guides, stay in Holiday Inn, eat at McDonald's, and then go home and say that they have been to Paris.

The Ugle American is the quintessential tourist. They only speak Merican and think the whole world does. If a local doesn't understand, they speak louder and slower, thinking that will solve the problem. They can't imagine that anyone would want to be anything but like themselves. They want to go to the Eifel Tower, because somehow the millions of photos spanning the entire history of the object is not enough. They must go and touch it like a million other people. Tourists think that a somewhat stable pile of steel girders is a worthy object of pilgrimage. They can't wait to get home and regale their friends with tales and photos of what it was like to ride the elevator to the top, as if that is different from any other elevator ride available up the street at home.

The tourist is easy to spot. They wear garish clothes and, at the sirport or train station, they are the ones with a trolly loaded six feet high with baggage. To them, losing the make-up kit is a major catastophe that threatens the stability of the Free World.

The tourists wants a repeatable experience. They want the hotel, meal or tour that they are comforable with at home, and have experienced many times. Their biggest thrill in life is to be able to say, "Me too!" Their entire goal in going on a trip is to take a photo of themselves in front of some landmark. They wake up at night in a cold sweat at the thought of running out of traveler's cheques.

The traveler and the tourist both collect souvenirs, but the objects the traveler finds are mostly meaningless to anyone but themselves. The tourist buys the little key chains and paper-weights and refrigerator magnets. The travelers spend most of their lives far outside their comfort zones, where tourists have never even explored the limits of theirs. A traveler will try some unknown food where the tourist is shocked if the local KFC doesn't serve original recipe.

In short, the tourist goes to the Grand Canyon and looks down in the hole from the safety of the Kodak Moment overlook, while the traveler hikes deep into it with only minimal concern for life and limb.

So, what does all this have to do with the price of tea in China, you ask? Good question. The The next time you hear some "authority" give dire warnings of terrorism and offer to take away your freedoms to save you, check your reaction. If you think it's a good idea, you're a tourist in life. If you immediately have a desire to go to the heart of the 'danger zone' to prove it's all bullshit, then you're a traveler. The traveler knows that the real terrorist is the one who tries to manipulate you with fear.

The great Merican Imperialist, FDR said it best, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."