[k_semler]

I just came across these sites, and I think that they are very useful in detecting propaganda regardless of the source. After reading these websites and understanding them, it will become easier to disseminate propaganda from fact.

Scrutinizing Propaganda
Department of Propaganda.
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis

[kykeon]

I like the "Card Stacking Device" best. I can identify this one every time I turn on the news here in the u.s.

Logic should be a required course in high school and college. I don't know of any better tool for evaluating truth.

Here's another good link on logical fallacies:
[url=http://www.vaz1.net/bill/anarchism/Fallacies.html]
Dictionary of Logical Fallacies
[/url]

TV is probably the best propaganda/brainwashing device. From http://dieoff.org/page24.htm
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')"The fact that TV is a source not actively or critically attended to was made dramatically evident in the late 1960s by an experiment that rocked the world of political and product advertising and forever changed the ways in which the television medium would be used. The results of the experiment still reverberate through the industry long after its somewhat primitive methods have been perfected.

"In November 1969, a researcher named Herbert Krugman, who later became manager of public-opinion research at General Electric headquarters in Connecticut, decided to try to discover what goes on physiologically in the brain of a person watching TV. He elicited the co-operation of a twenty-two-year-old secretary and taped a single electrode to the back of her head. The wire from this electrode connected to a Grass Model 7 Polygraph, which in turn interfaced with a Honeywell 7600 computer and a CAT 400B computer.

"Flicking on the TV, Krugman began monitoring the brain-waves of the subject What he found through repeated trials was that within about thirty seconds, the brain-waves switched from predominantly beta waves, indicating alert and conscious attention, to predominantly alpha waves, indicating an unfocused, receptive lack of attention: the state of aimless fantasy and daydreaming below the threshold of consciousness. When Krugman's subject turned to reading through a magazine, beta waves reappeared, indicating that conscious and alert attentiveness had replaced the daydreaming state.

"What surprised Krugman, who had set out to test some McLuhanesque hypotheses about the nature of TV-viewing, was how rapidly the alpha-state emerged. Further research revealed that the brain's left hemisphere, which processes information logically and analytically, tunes out while the person is watching TV. This tuning-out allows the right hemisphere of the brain, which processes information emotionally and noncritically, to function unimpeded. 'It appears,' wrote Krugman in a report of his findings, 'that the mode of response to television is more or less constant and very different from the response to print. That is, the basic electrical response of the brain is clearly to the medium and not to content difference.... [Television is] a communication medium that effortlessly transmits huge quantities of information not thought about at the time of exposure.'
...

[hymalaia]

Interesting links and good post about TV. It is simply not a medium that is good for comprehending information. And yet the majority of the population uses it for just that! They think it's the best way! I wonder if they think that because it makes hard news easier to take, seeing as your brain is in the more passive state. Would 9-11 been more difficult or easier to deal with if the image wasn't ingrained into all of our heads? I'm willing to bet being able to "see" it on TV did a lot to quell the fear of the masses. But that's just speculation.

The late Neil Postman did a lot of great writing on this sort of thing.

[k_semler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kykeon', '
')TV is probably the best propaganda/brainwashing device. From http://dieoff.org/page24.htm
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')"The fact that TV is a source not actively or critically attended to was made dramatically evident in the late 1960s by an experiment that rocked the world of political and product advertising and forever changed the ways in which the television medium would be used. The results of the experiment still reverberate through the industry long after its somewhat primitive methods have been perfected.

"In November 1969, a researcher named Herbert Krugman, who later became manager of public-opinion research at General Electric headquarters in Connecticut, decided to try to discover what goes on physiologically in the brain of a person watching TV. He elicited the co-operation of a twenty-two-year-old secretary and taped a single electrode to the back of her head. The wire from this electrode connected to a Grass Model 7 Polygraph, which in turn interfaced with a Honeywell 7600 computer and a CAT 400B computer.

"Flicking on the TV, Krugman began monitoring the brain-waves of the subject What he found through repeated trials was that within about thirty seconds, the brain-waves switched from predominantly beta waves, indicating alert and conscious attention, to predominantly alpha waves, indicating an unfocused, receptive lack of attention: the state of aimless fantasy and daydreaming below the threshold of consciousness. When Krugman's subject turned to reading through a magazine, beta waves reappeared, indicating that conscious and alert attentiveness had replaced the daydreaming state.

"What surprised Krugman, who had set out to test some McLuhanesque hypotheses about the nature of TV-viewing, was how rapidly the alpha-state emerged. Further research revealed that the brain's left hemisphere, which processes information logically and analytically, tunes out while the person is watching TV. This tuning-out allows the right hemisphere of the brain, which processes information emotionally and non critically, to function unimpeded. 'It appears,' wrote Krugman in a report of his findings, 'that the mode of response to television is more or less constant and very different from the response to print. That is, the basic electrical response of the brain is clearly to the medium and not to content difference.... [Television is] a communication medium that effortlessly transmits huge quantities of information not thought about at the time of exposure.'
...

[OilBurner]

I'm intending to restrict my childs viewing of TV until they're teenagers.
I don't doubt they'll hate me for it, but it's the only reasonable way.
Apparently, TV may actually harm brain development of under twos:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/412227.stm

The biggest problem is weaning me and my wife off TV first!!

[notacornucopian]

I am glad to see that there are other people on the board who understand how television manipulates and pacifies. I rarely watch any television anymore, certainly not news programs, and, try as I might to get my wife and kids to watch less, I have so far not succeeded in the least. I remember reading another suggestion of how television manages to become a difficult to break habit. Apparently, not only does the brain switch to the right hemisphere, we also receive a dose of those similar to opiate endorphins and the like when watching television. That would certainly explain the addictive nature of television.
With my tin foil hat firmly in place, I will now attempt to stimulate discussion on the " prior knowledge " scenario of the current administration ( with respect to 9/11 ). Assuming that the freedom hating hijackers were trying to inflict as much damage as possible on that fateful day, why not fly flight 11/175 into a nuclear plant rather than the twin towers ? I have forgotten the name of the plant, but is there not a major plant located on the Hudson ?
In the context of the discussion so far in this thread, it is quite easy to speculate that if you wanted to convince the masses of the neccessity to wage war, a visual cortex stimulated trauma would be most effective. A fuzzy picture from some sort of mega zoom lens of a burning nuclear plant ( if anyone could even get close enough for that ) just would not have the same effect as the shockingly clear video repeated over and over of the twin towers tragedy. In other words, television was used to great effect as a propaganda tool in this admittedly highly speculative scenario.
Comments ?

[WaterBearer]

Comments?

The column of Truth has a hole in it.

We know for a fact that the 9/11 attacks were carefully orchestrated. It takes planning to hijack several plans at once in a coordinated attack. We actually know very very little about how they were orchestrated, who was doing the orchestration, who the contributing players were, or even what the bad guys' ultimate objectives really are or were. What we do know is that we are now engaged in a nebulous War on Terror, which has of course included the occupation of at least one nation-state completely unrelated to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. We also know that the majority of the American people were indoctrinated by this admnistration through the use of Televesion into believing that Saddam Hussein was somehow morally culpable for the attacks of 9/11.

You can take off your tinfoil hat, unless of course you think it may help you avoid the draft.

[Chichis]

[quote="notacornucopian"]is there not a major plant located on the Hudson ?[quote]

Indian Point

[KiddieKorral]

On the subject of TV...

OilBurner, the best way to wean yourself off of TV is to not bother with weaning yourself and go cold turkey. For example, when I went to New Hampshire in January to volunteer for the Dean campaign, I was exhausted once I got back to my hotel every night. I didn't watch any TV for nine days, because all I wanted to do after working all day was sleep. When I came home after that, I had no desire to watch TV. I didn't watch again until about mid-February, when I fell off the bandwagon .

So basically, the best way to break a TV addiction is to unplug the thing and leave it in the garage to collect dust.

[Pops]

Nota, that glare from your head is making it hard to think logically!

It’s interesting to see how often those 10 techniques are used - I’m sure in an innocent way, right here on this board.

Many posters are inclined to the Card Stacking style of evasion when debating a particular point. I tend to concede the argument when my points are either ignored or met with a rebuttal that is actually an attack on a different topic. The most effective (and infuriating ) are when my points are taken one by one, dissected and proved wrong. I hate that when that happens.

[Guest]

Water Bearaer and Nota:

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I can guaran-damn-tee you that if everybody had read about the attacks in the paper and not seen them on TV, you would see people asking a lot more hard questions, a lot sooner.

As far as am radio: I completely agree. I would also add in the internet too.

If you think about how news was disseminated back in the days of the founding fathers, it was much more similiar to talk radio and the internet of today then big, corporate owned news conglomerates such as Clear Channel, AOL-Time Warner, etc. . .

How did people get their news back in 1776? Well, there would be some small time individual ala Thomas Paine who would publish a pamphlet on a shoe string budget. Then people would read it and discuss it in the taverns.

Today we have internet sites and forums such as this that perform the same functions.

A while back I went about 6 weeks with no television. This was mostly because of time constraints, not voluntary weening myself off.

Nonetheless, when I came back and turned on Fox it felt totally different. I don't know how to explain it, but I had this weird feeling that can best be described as a sense of, "Hahahaha - that silly coporate/governement propaganda channel. What won't they say? Hahahaha."

Matt

[Guest]

Excellent post!

The best of it is that many techniques can actually be detected on thise site! With people trying to convince others of the 'dangers' of peak oil. Thus, the peak oil problem is taken from being a major world concern, into a doomsday prayer!

I sure hope others see this fact and start to land on the ground.

[gg3]

Before there was television, Hitler and Goebbels made much of the fact that radio was such a spectacularly effective propaganda machine. They even issued Reich Radios to the German people: radios that could only receive one station, the Nazi propaganda machine. After a while they made it a capital offense to be caught in possession of a radio that could receive "enemy" stations, and even to be found listening to foreign broadcasts.

Most if not all of the propaganda and deception techniques that work on television also work on radio, with minor adjustments for the lack of visual information and the pervasiveness of radio as a medium. Radios in cars, portable radios whilst walking down the street, radios on the job, radios in every store, pub, restaurant, and doctors' waiting room, (oh wait, the latter has Muzak!:-), radios practically everywhere: during the course of your day, count the number of radios you can see or hear in your environment (directly and indirectly: a radio station used as music-on-hold on the phone is an example), and I guarantee it will surprise you.

For just one example of the emotional manipulation of the audience, both radio and television engage in what I call "mourn porn" with their local news broadcasts: the exploitation of tears and crying. Victims' families are the most common prey, hence the excessive coverage of murder trials and suchlike. The big prize is to capture a sobbing father, but a sobbing mother is almost as "useful." Television will focus on the facial expressions, radio will focus on the voice at the moment it breaks down into sobs. For sheer emotional provocation, this kind of stuff ranks second only to explicit sex and violence. And it has become nearly universal. Try this exercise: count the number of cases you hear during an average day; and also count the number of times an announcer refers to "crying," "tears," or their synonyms. You will be shocked.

Radio talk shows are an enormous propaganda industry. First, the host has the means to produce what appears to be a dialogue but is in fact highly controlled: callers are pre-screened, and *subtly but very importantly,* are connected via a speakerphone arrangement that allows the host to *silence them* by "talking over them." While the host is talking, the guest's signal is muted, in the same manner as when you are using a speakerphone in your home or office.

That is, if a guest starts to say something the host finds objectionable, the host merely talks in a *slightly* louder voice, and the gain-switching in the system simply makes the guest's voice *disappear* while the host is speaking. To the casual listener it appears that the guest has stopped speaking while the host speaks, creating the subtle impression that the quality of the host's arguement has caused the guest to be dumbstruck with the host's superior intelligence, reasoning, etc. However, if you listen carefully you will hear the gain-switching and the cutoff of the guest in mid-syllable.

The host always has the most airtime for his/her own views, and the differing views of various guests tend to cancel in the viewer's mind. And, last but not least, the host always has the last word. Both of these points are psychologically potent: beneath the appearance of a public forum, is the reality of a contrivance designed to support and reinforce the host's point of view and the fiction that it is superior or is shared by the vast majority. Those who go along, are given the smug satisfactions of identification with a celebrity and banishment of inferior opposition.

We'll be right back after a few words from our sponsors.

[LaLaLand]

It's all about perpetuation of a narrow perception when it comes to controlling American thought via the mass media. It's essential that minds be shaped and trained into accepting the American military industrial complex's fabricated goal of "spreading freedom" into the Middle East via Iraq, by means of gunpoint capitalism, is a good thing.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp ... 1000760609

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '&')quot;Talking point" cards for military personnel, meanwhile, are being updated regularly as the war progresses -- often as much as once a week -- to keep up with the conflict's changing issues and the proximity of embedded reporters. Among the current talking points: "We are a values-based, people-focused team that strives to uphold the dignity and respect of all."

[KiddieKorral]

And, of course, it's considered okay by the media because Smirky McDeficit has an R after his name.

[directinfo]

Carbon Man is that special person who was born on oil, lives on oil and knows no other life other than oil and natural gas. For the most part, carbon man doesn’t realize that he is carbon man. He wakes up in his peak oil clothes, uses his peak oil utilities, eats his peak oil foods and off to his peak oil work he goes.

From his credit card to his airplane ticket, he uses peak oil so thoroughly and exclusively to get things done. His whole world is powered by, made by and exists primarily because oil and natural gas exist. Even the raw tomato that he eats is mostly brought into existence with the power of oil so how much more so are his big box shopping sprees?

From the toenail to the hair on his head, he is peak oil through and through. And he doesn’t even realize it.

In fact, he scoffs at the idea that oil will possibly run out one day. He ridicules anyone as a doomsayer if they suggest that his way of life has a time limit. Oh, he will readily accept that his way of life will end someday, far – far in the future. This he will accept and nod in agreement and fold his hands in his lap. But if you dare suggest that his way of life will end on his watch, then watch out. And if he has children you might want to be careful about saying that it might end in their lifetime. However, if you say that it will end on his unborn grandkids then he won’t mind at all. And if you want to be really safe, stay beyond the 2nd generation. Suggest that the age of carbon man and all of it’s unspoken presumptions will end during the lifetimes of the kids of our grandkids. Nobody cares about them because they aren’t born. And that gives us free reign to act as we want and throw our cares to the wind while multiplying, polluting, buying and selling and inventing ever more non-producing or entertainment-based market segments to distract us and extend our minds ever further out from reality.

After all, we make our own reality don’t we? If we want something hard enough then it will be as we want. Isn’t that what all the personal development gurus are saying? Isn’t that what the New Age religion is founded upon? Isn’t that also coming pretty close to original sin? Do whatever you want, and Genesis 3:5 “…ye shall be as gods…”

And Satan continues to give us the very same bad advice today, saying through those who get close to him, "Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" – coined by Aleister Crowley in his "The Book of the Law".

And this is the way of man. Carbon man has shown us these ways. And how stiff necked is carbon man to change. Using his free will, he drives onward and into the hell on earth he creates for himself. If only he considered what his works were actually doing to the earth.

This next article is a propaganda piece. It is meant to placate carbon man with a sweet sounding lullaby, sung to the tune of his own desires.

No doubt it will work. Let’s count the ways.

News Story is here: http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/international/index.ssf?/base/international-24/1118301110170440.xml&storylist=international

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')op Saudi Says Kingdom Has Plenty of Oil

[Taskforce_Unity]

Very strong piece, i really enjoyed reading it. Thx

[Raxozanne]

Carbon man is in for a very big surprise.

[Ludi]

Oh now, no fair picking on Aleister Crowley, and don't quote the Law unless you understand Thelema, which you apparently don't.

[I_Like_Plants]

Very cool post! Well done!