{"id":149728,"date":"2019-12-16T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=149728"},"modified":"2019-12-15T08:39:21","modified_gmt":"2019-12-15T08:39:21","slug":"the-art-of-doublespeak-bellingcat-and-mind-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/12\/the-art-of-doublespeak-bellingcat-and-mind-control\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Doublespeak: Bellingcat and Mind Control"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

10 Dec 2019 – <\/em>In the 1920s, the influential American intellectual Walter Lippan<\/strong> argued that the average person was incapable of seeing or understanding the world clearly and needed to be guided by experts behind the social curtain.\u00a0 In a number of books he laid out the theoretical foundations for the practical work of Edward Bernays<\/strong>, who developed \u201cpublic relations\u201d (aka propaganda) to carry out this task for the ruling elites.\u00a0 Bernays had honed his skills while working as a propagandist for the United States during World War I, and after the war he set himself up as a public relations counselor in New York City.<\/p>\n

There is a fascinating exchange at the beginning of Adam Curtis\u2019s documentary, The Century of Self<\/em>, where Bernays, then nearly 100 years old but still very sharp, reveals his manipulative mindset and that of so many of those who have followed in his wake.\u00a0 He says the reason he couldn\u2019t call his new business \u201cpropaganda\u201d was because the Germans had given propaganda a \u201cbad name,\u201d and so he came up with the euphemism \u201cpublic relations.\u201d\u00a0 He then adds that \u201cif you could use it [i.e. propaganda] for war, you certainly could use it for peace.\u201d\u00a0 Of course, he never used PR for peace but just to manipulate public opinion (he helped engineer the CIA coup against the democratically elected Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954 with fake news broadcasts). \u00a0He says \u201cthe Germans gave propaganda a bad name,\u201d not Bernays and the United States with their vast campaign of lies, mainly aimed at the American people to get their support for going to a war they opposed (think weapons of mass destruction).\u00a0 He sounds proud of his war propaganda work that resounded to his credit since it led to support for the \u201cwar to end all wars\u201d and subsequently to a hit movie about WWI, Yankee Doodle Dandy<\/em>, made in 1942 to promote another war, since the first one somehow didn\u2019t achieve its lofty goal.<\/p>\n

As Bernays has said in his book, Propaganda<\/em>,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He was a propagandist to the end. \u00a0I suspect most viewers of the film are taken in by these softly spoken words of an old man sipping a glass of wine at a dinner table with a woman who is asking him questions. I have shown this film to hundreds of students and none has noticed his legerdemain. \u00a0It is an example of the sort of hocus-pocus I will be getting to shortly, the sly insertion into seemingly liberal or matter-of-fact commentary of statements that imply a different story.\u00a0 The placement of convincing or confusing disingenuous ingredients into a truth sandwich \u2013 for Bernays knew that the bread of truth is essential to conceal untruth.<\/p>\n

In the following years, Bernays, Lippman, and their ilk were joined by social \u201cscientists,\u201d psychologists, and sundry others intent on making a sham out of the idea of democracy by developing strategies and techniques for the engineering of social consensus consonant with the wishes of the ruling classes.\u00a0 Their techniques of propaganda developed exponentially with the development of technology, the creation of the CIA, its infiltration of all the major media, and that agency\u2019s courting of what the CIA official Cord Meyer called in the 1950s \u201cthe compatible left,\u201d having already had the right in its pocket. Today most people are, as is said, \u201cwired,\u201d and they get their information from the electronic media that is mostly controlled by giant corporations in cahoots with government propagandists.\u00a0 Ask yourself: Has the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state with its propaganda and spy networks increased or decreased over your lifetime. The answer is obvious: the average people that Lippman and Bernays trashed are losing and the ruling elites are winning.<\/p>\n

This is not just because powerful propagandists are good at controlling so-called \u201caverage\u201d people\u2019s thinking, but, perhaps more importantly, because they are also adept \u2013 probably more so \u2013 at confusing or directing the thinking of those who consider themselves above average, those who still might read a book or two or have the concentration to read multiple articles that offer different perspectives on a topic.\u00a0 This is what some call the professional and intellectual classes, perhaps 15-20 % of the population, most of whom are not the ruling elites but their employees and sometimes their mouthpieces.\u00a0 It is this segment of the population that considers itself \u201cinformed,\u201d but the information they imbibe is often sprinkled with bits of misdirection, both intentional and not, that beclouds their understanding of important public matters but leaves them with the false impression that they are in the know.<\/p>\n

Recently I have noticed a group of interconnected examples of how this group of the population that exerts influence incommensurate with their numbers has contributed to the blurring of lines between fact and fiction. Within this group there are opinion makers who are often journalists, writers, and cultural producers of some sort or other, and then the larger number of the intellectual or schooled class who follow their opinions.\u00a0 This second group then passes on their received opinions to those who look up to them.<\/p>\n

There is a notorious propaganda outfit called Bellingcat<\/strong>, started by an unemployed Englishman named Eliot Higgins, that has been funded by The Atlantic Council, a think-tank with deep ties to the U.S. government, NATO, war manufacturers, and their allies, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), another infamous U.S. front organization heavily involved in so-called color revolution regime change operations all around the world, that has just won the International Emmy Award for best documentary. The film with the Orwellian title, Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World, <\/em>received its Emmy at a recent ceremony in New York City.<\/p>\n

Bellingcat is an alleged group of amateur online researchers who have spent years shilling for the U.S. instigated war against the Syrian government, blaming the Douma chemical attack and others on the Assad government, and for the anti-Russian propaganda connected to, among other things, the Skripal poisoning case in England, and the downing of flight MH17 plane in Ukraine. It has been lauded by the corporate mainstream media in the west.\u00a0 Its support for the equally fraudulent White Helmets (also funded by the US and the UK) in Syria has also been praised by the western corporate media while being dissected as propaganda by many excellent independent journalists such as Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Catte Black, among others.\u00a0 It had its work skewered by the likes of Seymour Hersh and MIT professor Theodore Postol, and its US government connections pointed out by many others, including Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal at The Gray Zone.<\/p>\n

And now we have the mainstream media\u2019s wall of silence on the leaks from the Organization for the Prohibition on Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concerning the Douma chemical attack and the doctoring of their report that led to the illegal U.S. bombing of Syria in the spring of 2018. \u00a0Bellingcat was at the forefront of providing justification for such bombing, and now the journalists Peter Hitchens, Tareq Harrad (who recently resigned from Newsweek<\/em> after accusing the publication of suppressing his revelations about the OPCW scandal) and others are fighting an uphill battle to get the truth out.<\/p>\n

Yet Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World<\/em> won the Emmy<\/strong>, fulfilling Bernays\u2019 point about films being the greatest unconscious carriers of propaganda in the world today.<\/p>\n

Who presented the Emmy Award to the film makers, but none other than the rebel journalist Chris Hedges<\/strong>.\u00a0 Why he did so, I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 But that he did so clearly sends a message to those who follow his work and trust him that it\u2019s okay to give a major cultural award to a propaganda outfit.\u00a0 But then, perhaps he doesn\u2019t consider Bellingcat to be that.<\/p>\n

Nor, one presumes, does The Intercept<\/em><\/strong>, the billionaire Pierre Omidyar owned publication associated with Glen Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, and also read by many progressive-minded people. The Intercept <\/em>that earlier this year disbanded the small team that was tasked with reviewing and releasing more of the massive trove of documents they received from Edward Snowden six years ago, a minute number of which have ever been released or probably ever will be. As Whitney Webb pointed out<\/a>, last year The Intercept<\/em> hosted a workshop for Bellingcat.\u00a0 She wrote:<\/p>\n

The Intercept, along with its parent company <\/em>First Look Media,<\/em>\u00a0recently hosted<\/em><\/a>\u00a0a workshop for pro-war, Google-funded organization Bellingcat in New York. The workshop, which<\/em>\u00a0cost $2,500 per person<\/em><\/a>\u00a0to attend and lasted five days, aimed to instruct participants in how to perform investigations using \u201copen source\u201d tools \u2014 with Bellingcat\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>past, controversial investigations<\/em><\/a>\u00a0for use as case studies\u2026Thus, while\u00a0<\/em>The Intercept\u00a0has long publicly promoted itself as an anti-interventionist and progressive media outlet, it is becoming clearer that \u2013 largely thanks to its ties to Omidyar \u2013 it is increasingly an organization that has more in common with Bellingcat, a group that launders NATO and U.S. propaganda and disguises it as \u201cindependent\u201d and \u201cinvestigative journalism.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then we have Jefferson Morley<\/strong>, the editor of The Deep State,<\/em> former Washington Post journalist, and JFK assassination researcher, who has written a praiseworthy review of the Bellingcat film and who supports Bellingcat.\u00a0 \u201cIn my experience, Bellingcat is credible,\u201d he writes in an AlterNet<\/em> article, \u201cBellingcat documentary has the pace and plot of a thriller.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Morley has also just written an article for Counterpunch<\/em> \u2013 \u201cWhy the Douma Chemical Attack Wasn\u2019t a \u2018Managed Massacre\u2019\u201d<\/a> \u2013 in which he disputes the claim that the April 7, 2018 attack in the Damascus suburb was a false flag operation carried out by Assad\u2019s opponents. \u201cI do not see any evidence proving that Douma was a false flag incident,\u201d he writes in this article that is written in a style that leaves one guessing as to what exactly he is saying.\u00a0 It sounds convincing unless one concentrates, and then his double messages emerge.\u00a0 Yet it is the kind of article that certain \u201csophisticated\u201d left-wing readers might read and feel is insightful.\u00a0 But then Morley, who has written considerably about the CIA, edits a website that advertises itself as \u201cthe thinking person\u2019s portal to the world of secret government,\u201d and recently had an exchange with former CIA Director John Brennan where \u201cBrennan put a friendly finger on my chest,\u201d said in February 2017, less than a month after Trump was sworn in as president, that:<\/p>\n

With a docile Republican majority in Congress and a demoralized Democratic Party in opposition, the leaders of the Deep State are the most\u2014perhaps the only\u2014credible check in Washington on what Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) calls Trump\u2019s “<\/em>wrecking ball presidency<\/em><\/a>.” \u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is it any wonder that some people might be a bit confused?<\/p>\n

\u201cI know what you\u2019re thinking about,\u201d said Tweedledum; \u201cbut it isn\u2019t so, nohow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cContrariwise,\u201d continued Tweedledee, \u201cif it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn\u2019t, it ain\u2019t.\u00a0 That\u2019s logic.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a final case in point, there is a recent book by Stephen Kinzer<\/strong>, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb And The CIA Search For Mind Control, t<\/em>he story of the chemist known as Dr. Death who ran the CIA\u2019s MK-ULTRA mind control project, using LSD, torture, electric shock therapy, hypnosis, etc.; developed sadistic methods of torture still used in black sites around the world; and invented various ingenious techniques for assassination, many of which were aimed at Fidel Castro. \u00a0Gottlieb was responsible for brutal prison and hospital experiments and untold death and suffering inflicted on all sorts of innocent people.\u00a0 His work was depraved in the deepest sense; he worked with Nazis who experimented on Jews despite being Jewish himself.<\/p>\n

Kinzer writes in depth about this man who considered himself a patriot and a spiritual person \u2013 a humane torturer and killer.\u00a0 It is an eye-opening book for anyone who does not know about Gottlieb, who gave the CIA the essential tools they use in their \u201corganized crime\u201d activities around the world \u2013 in the words of Douglass Valentine, the author of The CIA as Organized Crime<\/em> and The Phoenix Program<\/em>. Kinzer\u2019s book is good history on Gottlieb; however, he doesn\u2019t venture into the present activities of the CIA and Gottlieb\u2019s patriotic followers, who no doubt exist and go about their business in secret.<\/p>\n

After recounting in detail the sordid history of Gottlieb\u2019s secret work that is nauseating to read about, Kinzer leaves the reader with these strange words:<\/p>\n

Gottlieb was not a sadist, but he might well have been\u2026. Above all he was an instrument of history.\u00a0 Understanding him is a deeply disturbing way of understanding ourselves.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What possibly could this mean?\u00a0 Not a sadist?\u00a0 An instrument of history?\u00a0 Understanding ourselves? \u00a0These few sentences, dropped out of nowhere, pull the rug out from under what is generally an illuminating history and what seems like a moral indictment. This language is pure mystification.<\/p>\n

Kinzer also concludes that because Gottlieb said so, the CIA failed in their efforts to develop methods of mind control and ended MK-ULTRA\u2019s experiments long ago. Why would he believe the word of a man who personified the agency he worked for: a secret liar? He writes,<\/p>\n

When Sydney Gottlieb brough MK-ULTRA to its end in the early 1960s, he told his CIA superiors that he had found no reliable way to wipe away memory, make people abandon their consciences, or commit crimes and then forget them.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As for those who might think otherwise, Kinzer suggests they have vivid imaginations and are caught up in conspiracy thinking: \u201cThis [convincing others that the CIA had developed methods of mind control when they hadn\u2019t] is Sydney Gottlieb\u2019s most unexpected legacy,\u201d he asserts. He says this although Richard Helms, the CIA Director, destroyed all MK-Ultra records. He says that Allen Dulles, Gottlieb, and Helms themselves were caught up in a complete fantasy about mind control because they had seen too many movies and read too many books; mind control was impossible, a failure, a myth, he maintains. It is the stuff of popular culture, entertainment. In an interview with Chris Hedges, interestingly posted by Jefferson Morley at his website, The Deep State<\/em>, Hedges agrees with Kinzer.\u00a0 Gottlieb, Dulles, et al. were all deluded.\u00a0 Mind control was impossible.\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t create a Manchurian Candidate; by implication, someone like Sirhan Sirhan could not have been programmed to be a fake Manchurian Candidate and to have no memory of what he did, as he claims.\u00a0 He could not have been mind-controlled by the CIA to perform his part as the seeming assassin of Senator Robert Kennedy while the real killer shot RFK from behind. People who think like this should get real.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, as is so common in books such as Kinzer\u2019s, he repeats the canard that JFK and RFK knew about and pressured the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro. This is demonstrably false, as shown by the Church Committee and the Assassinations Record Review Board, among many others. That Kinzer takes the word of notorious liars like Richard Helms and the top-level CIA operative Samuel Halpern is simple incredible, something that is hard to consider a mistake.\u00a0 Slipped into a truth sandwich, it is devoured and passed on. But it is false. Bullshit meant to deceive.<\/p>\n

But this is how these games are played. If you look carefully, you will see them widely. \u00a0Inform, enlighten, while throwing in doubletalk and untruths.\u00a0 The small number of people who read such books and articles will come away knowing some history that has no current relevance and being misinformed on other history that does. They will then be in the know, ready to pass their \u201cwisdom\u201d on to those who care to listen. They will not think they are average.<\/p>\n

But they will be mind controlled, and the killer cat will roam freely without a bell, ready to devour the unsuspecting mice.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. Website: <\/em>Behind the Curtain<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 edwardcurtin.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S.\/U.K.\/NATO propaganda outfit Bellingcat, like all effective war-promoting intelligence agency propaganda, needs the support of left-wing intellectuals to give it credence. The CIA recognized this in the 1950s and created multiple methods to get that support, which it has done effectively up to the present day. This left-wing support is necessary to control the thinking of the portion of the population that considers itself “educated” and in the know, who in turn pass on their compromised “knowledge” to others in a sophisticated game of mind control.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1707,133,378,234,1706,372,70],"class_list":["post-149728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-bellingcat","tag-cia","tag-journalism","tag-media","tag-mind-control","tag-propaganda","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}