[world-vedic] WAR ON TRUTH

[Guest guest]

THIS EGROUP IS DEDICATED TO THE TRUTH, THEREFORE IT IS VERY IMPORTANT

THAT WE UNDERSTAND THE OBSTACLES THAT ARE STOPPING THE TRUTH FROM BEING

EFFECTIVELY PRESENTED. THE INFO BELOW IS VERY ENLIGHTENING ABOUT THE

CURRENT WAR AGAINST TRUTH. THIS WAR INCLUDES THE SUBJUGATION OF VEDIC

TRUTHS AND THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA'S CONSTANT AND ONGOING CAMPAIGN OF

DISINFORMATION ABOUT INDIA AND THE WORLD'S ANCIENT VEDIC CULTURE.

INSTEAD THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS CONTINUE THEIR CAMPAIGNS OF PROPAGANDA

CONVINCING THE YOUTH THAT OUR ANSCESTORS WERE NOTHING BUT CAVEMEN, AND

THAT HISTORY IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN ONGOING STORY OF LUST, GREED AND

DEGRADATION.

 

THESE THEORIES ARE DEBUNKED BY THE OBVIOUS EVIDENCES OF PAST GREATNESS.

FROM THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT TO MEXICO, STONEHENGE, TIAHUANACO,SOUTH

INDIA, ANGKOR, ETC. WE CAN SEE THE TRUTH THAT HUMANITY'S PAST IS

GLORIOUS AND MYSTICAL. THE FACT THAT MODERN SOCIETY CAN'T EVEN

DUPLICATE THE TECHNICAL ACHEIVEMENTS OF THE ANCIENTS, IS A SOBERING AND

HUMBLING FACT AND IT PROVES THAT TRUE HUMAN CIVILIZATION HAS DECLINED

DRAMATICALLY.

 

 

WAR ON TRUTH

The Secret Battle for the American Mind

 

Australian academic Alex Carey once wrote that “The 20th century has

been characterized by 3 developments of great political importance: the

growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of

corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate against

democracy.”

 

In societies like ours, corporate propaganda is delivered through

advertising and public relations. Most people recognize that

advertising is propaganda. We understand that whoever paid for and

designed an ad wants us to think or feel a certain way, vote for a

certain candidate, or purchase a certain product. Public relations, on

the other hand is much more insidious. Because it is disguised as

information, we often don’t realize that we are being influenced by

public relation. But this multi-billion-dollar transnational industry’s

propaganda campaigns effect our private and public lives everyday. PR

firms that most people have never heard of (such as Burson-Marsteller,

Hill & Knowlton, and Ketchum) are working on behalf of myriad powerful

interests, from dictatorships to the cosmetics industry, manipulating

public opinion, policy making and the flow of information.

 

As editor of the quarterly investigative journal PR WATCH, John Stauber

exposes how public relations works and helps people to understand it.

He hasn’t always been a watchdog journalist, though. He worked for over

20 years as an activist and organizer for various causes: the

environment, peace, social justice, neighborhood concerns. Eventually

it dawned on him that public opinion on every issue he cared about was

being managed by influential, politically connected PR operatives with

nearly limitless budgets. “ Public Relations is a perversion of the

democratic process,”he says,” I knew I had to fight it.”

 

In addition to starting PR WATCH, Stauber founded the Center for Media

and Democracy, the first and only organization dedicated to monitoring

and exposing the PR propaganda. In 1995, Common Courage Press published

a book by Stauber and his colleague Sheldon Rampton titled ‘Toxic

Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations

Industry’. Their second book ‘Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare happen

Here?’ came out in 1997 and examined the public relations cover-up of

the risk mad-cow disease in the US.

 

What follows is an interview with Stauber that took place in his home

in Madison, Wisconsin.

 

JENSEN (INTERVIEWRER): How is the Propaganda War waged?

 

STAUBER: The key is invisibility. Once propaganda becomes visible, it’s

less effective. Public relations is effective in manipulating

opinion-and thus public policy- only if the people believe that the

message covertly delivered by the PR campaign is not propaganda at all

but simply common sense or accepted reality. For instance, there is a

consensus within the scientific community that global warming is real

and that the burning of fossil fuels is a major cause of the problem.

But to the petroleum industry, the automobile industry, the coal

industry, and other industries that profit from fossil-fuel

consumption, this is merely an inconvenient message that needs to be

“debunked” because it could lead to public policies that reduce their

profits. So, with the help of PR firms, these vested interests create

and fund industry front groups such as the Global Climate Coalition.

The coalition then selects, promotes, and publics scientists who

proclaim global warming a myth and characterize hard evidence of global

climate change as “junk Science” being pushed by self-serving

environmental groups out to scare the public for fund-raising purposes.

 

Another industry front group is the Hudson Institute, a prominent far

right think-tank that espousing the view that global climate change

will be beneficial! The Hudson Institute is funded by the American

Trucking Association, The Ford Motor Company, Allison Engine Company,

Bombadirer, and Mcdonnel Douglas, among others. The Global Climate

Coalition and the Hudson Institute are routinely quoted in the news

media where they promote their message of’ "Don’t Worry, burn lots of

oil, gas and coal.” In order to confuse the public and manipulate

opinion and policy to their advantage, corporations spend billions of

dollars a year hiring PR firms to cultivate the press, discredit their

critics, spy on and co-opt citizens’ groups, and use polls to find out

what images and messages will resonate with target audiences.

 

For obvious reasons, public relations is a secretive industry. PR firms

don’t like to reveal their clients. Some of them, though, can be

identified. Here is a list of just a tiny fraction of the clients

represented by Burson-Marsteller, the world’s largest PR firm: NBC,

Philip Morris, Trump Enterprises, Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA rebels in

Angola, Occidental Petroleum, American Airlines, the State of Alaska,

Genentech, the Ford Motor Company, the Times Mirror Company, MCI, the

National Restaurant Association, Coca-Cola, the British Columbia timber

industry, Dow Corning, General Electric, Hydro-Quebec, Monsanto, AT&T,

British Telecom, Chevron, DuPont, IBM, Warner-Lambert, Visa, Seagram,

SmithKline Beecham, Reebok, Proctor&Gamble, Glaxo, Cambell’s Soup, the

Olympics, Nestle, Motorola, Gerber, Eli Lilly, Caterpillar, Sears,

Beretta, Pfizer, Metropolitan Life, McDonnell Douglass, and the

governments of Kenya, Indonesia, Argentina. El Salvador, the Bahamas,

Italy, Mexico, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria.

 

INTERVIEWER: That list encompasses everything from biotechnology to

genocide to jet-skis.

 

STAUBER: In its latest reporting year, Burson-Marsteller claimed more

than a quarter of a billion dollars in net fees from its clients. And

it’s only one of a number of PR firms owned by the Young & Rubicom

advertising agency. Other top-ten PR firms include Hill & Knowlton,

Shandwick, Porter/Novelli, Fleishman-Hillard, Edelman, and

Ketchum-companies that most of us had never heard of, but whose

influence we have all felt.

 

Burson-Marsteller alone has twenty-two hundred PR flacks-that’s slang

for a public relations practitioner- in more than thirty countries. In

its promotional materials, the firm says its international operations

are “linked together electronically and philosophically to deliver a

single standard of excellence.” It claims that “ the role of

communications is to manage perceptions which motivate behaviors that

create business results,” and that its mission is to help clients”

manage issues by influencing – in the right combination – public

attitude, public perceptions, public behavior, and public policy.”

 

INTERVIEWER: WHY DON’T WE READ MORE ABOUT THESE HIDDEN MANIPULATIONS IN

THE NEWS?

 

STAUBER: Primarily because the mainstream, corporate media are

dependent on public relations. Half of everything in the news actually

originates from a PR firm. If you’re a lazy journalist, editor, or news

director, its easy to simply regurgitate the dozens of press releases

and stories that come in every day, for free, from PR firms.

 

Remember, the media’s primary source of income is the more than $100

billion year corporations spend on advertising. The PR firms are owned

by the advertising agencies, so the same companies that are producing

billions of dollars in advertising are the ones pitching stories to the

news media, cultivating relationships with reporters, and controlling

reporters’ access to the executives and companies they represent. In

fact, of the 160,000 or so PR flacks in the U.S. maybe a third began

their careers as journalists. Who better to manipulate the media than

former reporters and editors? Investigative journalist Mark Dowie

estimates that professional PR flacks actually outnumber real working

journalist in the U.S.

END PART ONE