How to stage a fake bioterror attack

by Jon Rappoport

January 31, 2018

“Imagine this. A big-time doctor from the US Biological Warfare Group waddles into a meeting room, where a collection of Army, CIA, NSA, and DHS representatives sit quietly in their chairs. He says: ‘So I understand you boys want to put on a little domestic bioterror show, to keep the natives from becoming too restless. Well, the first thing you need to know is, germs don’t obey orders. Forget all that sci-fi nonsense. Germs work and they don’t work. It’s a crapshoot. You could have a big fat dud on your hands. I can tell you how to make it work, though, if you give up on your fancy high-tech wet dreams…” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

There are future scenarios which, with enough exposure before they’re staged, can be stopped—or at least analyzed correctly when they occur.

A calculated bioterror event is one of those.

The primary fact is: no matter what kind of germ you’re talking about or where it came from, releasing it intentionally does not guarantee predictable results. Far from it.

For instance, people whose immune systems operate at different levels of strength are going to react differently.

The perpetrators may find that less than 2% of people exposed get sick or die.

But there is another strategy that should be understood:

The use of a germ as a cover story for a chemical.

In other words, there is no germ attack. It’s called a germ attack, but that’s a lie. The perps bring in researchers to the affected area, who go on to claim they have isolated a germ that is the cause of death and illness. It’s a sham. What really happened was:

The spread of a toxic chemical that can’t be detected, unless you’re looking for it.

The chemical has severe, deadly, and predictable effects for a week or two. Then it disperses and loses potency and the “epidemic” is done.

In some town, a fairly isolated community, the word goes out that people are suddenly falling ill and dying. The CDC and the Army are called in to cordon off the area and quarantine all citizens. A peremptory announcement is made, early on, that this is a biowar attack.

Major media are allowed outside the periphery. Network news anchors set up on-location and do their wall to wall broadcasts “from the scene.”

The entire nation, the entire world, is riveted on the event, 24/7.

People inside the cordon fall ill and die. Reports emerge from the town:

The networks state that “heroic doctors are taking samples of blood and the blood is being analyzed to find the germ that is causing the epidemic.” The DOD confirms over and over that this is, indeed, a biowar attack.

Human interest stories pile up. This family lost three members, that family lost everybody. Tragedy and horror produce the desired empathic response from “the world community.”

It’s a soap opera, except real people are dying.

The medical cartel promotes fear of the germ.

All controlling entities obtain their piece of the terrorist pie.

Finally, the doctors announce they have isolated the germ causing death in the small town, and researchers are rushing to develop a vaccine (which they produce in record time).

Everyone everywhere must be vaccinated, now. No choice. Do it or be quarantined or jailed.

In this declared martial law situation, the doctors are the heroes. The doctors and the Army. And the government, and even the media.

Then, after a few weeks, when the potency of the secret chemical has dispersed, it’s over.

When you think about it, this scenario is a rough approximation of what happens every day, all over the world, in doctor’s offices. The doctors are prescribing chemicals (drugs) whose effects are far more dangerous than germs that may (or may not) be causing patients to be ill.

In other words, a chem-war attack is being leveled at people all over the world all the time.

See Dr. Barbara Starfield (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health), July 26, 2000, Journal of the American Medical Association, “Is US health really the best in the world?” 106,000 people in America are killed every year by FDA-approved medical drugs. That’s over a million people per decade.

In the wake of a staged “biowar” terror attack, new laws are enacted. The State clamps down harder on basic freedoms. The right to travel is curtailed. Criticizing the authorities is viewed as highly illegal. Freedom of assembly is limited.

“Citizens must cooperate. We’re all in this together.”

A new federal law mandating the CDC schedule of vaccines for every child and adult—no exceptions permitted—is rushed through the Congress and signed by the President.

It’s all based on a lie…in the same way that the disease theory of the medical cartel is based on a lie: the strength of an individual’s immune system is the basic determinant of health or illness, not germs considered in a vacuum.

There are people who are determined to inflate the dangers of germs. They trumpet every “new” germ as the end of humankind on the planet. They especially sound the alarm when researchers claim a germ may have mutated or jumped from animals to humans.

“This is it! We’re done for!”

However, if you check into actual confirmed cases of death from recent so-called epidemics, such as West Nile, SARS, bird flu, Swine Flu, and Ebola, the numbers of deaths are incredibly low.

If political criminals, behind the scenes, wanted to stage a confined “biowar” event, they would choose a chemical, not a germ, and they would leverage such an event to curtail freedom.

Understand: researchers behind sealed doors in labs can claim, with unassailable ease, that they’ve found a germ that causes an outbreak. Almost no one challenges such an assertion.

This was the case, for example, with the vaunted SARS epidemic (a dud), in 2003, when 10 World Health Organization (WHO) labs, walled off from view, in communication with each other via closed circuit, announced they’d isolated a coronavirus as the culprit.

Later, in Canada, a WHO microbiologist, Frank Plummer, wandered off the reservation and told reporters he was puzzled by the fact that fewer and fewer SARS patients “had the coronavirus.” This was tantamount to confessing that the whole research effort had been a failure and a sham—but after a day or so of coverage, the press fell silent.

SARS was a nonsensical farce. Diagnosed patients had ordinary seasonal flu or a collection of familiar symptoms that could result from many different causes.

But the propaganda effort was a stunning success. Populations were frightened. The need for vaccines, in the public mind, was exacerbated.

Several years ago, I spoke with a biologist about the fake bioterror scenario I’ve sketched out above. His comment was: “Do you think any mainstream scientist would dare go into that cordoned-off town and actually check the area for a highly toxic chemical? He’d be blackballed, exiled, and discredited in a minute. The authorities would call him crazy. And that’s if he were lucky.”

Such is “science,” these days. A researcher can discover anything he wants to, if it’s approved. Otherwise, the door is closed.

After 30 years of covering and reporting on deep science fraud, I can tell you that most scientists know, without instructions from above, the dimensions of their “permitted territory.” They can sniff out career danger from a mile away.

GMOs? Roundup? Other toxic pesticides? Climate change? Vaccines? Medical drugs? Diagnostic medical tests? Actual environmental pollution? Mercury? Chemicals in food? Radiation? Nuclear power plants? Fracking? Fluorides? On these and a whole host of other issues, government is centrally involved as a ruling force. And there are armies of compliant scientists ready and willing to carry out preferred government (and corporate) dictates. These scientists already know the answers before the questions are even asked.

Meanwhile, propaganda rivers flow, extolling the glories of science.

It’s a dream situation, for the terminally corrupt.

A huge number of scientists, who don’t actually participate in research fraud, stand back and watch it happen and say nothing. They see the handwriting on the wall in very large letters.

In 1988, while writing my first book, AIDS INC., I interviewed a highly respected virologist at a US university. I mentioned that several molecular biologists were challenging the HIV-causation hypothesis of AIDS. He told me that he and a number of his colleagues were aware that “a serious problem” existed concerning evidence for the hypothesis, but they were all going to “let this one go.” It was too political, he said.

Yes, well, an enormous amount of science turns out to be political.

Keeping one’s head down and letting things go by may not be part of a PhD curriculum, but soon after school is out, researchers enter a different kind of training.

A main theme then pops up: do you want a career, or do you want to live in the middle of nowhere, in exile?

As it so happens, building a broad scientific consensus resting on sand is a straightforward job. It takes time and money, but the work requires no brilliance.

You just flash signs at scientists. The signs say: money; job security; status; advancement; promotion; grants; prestige; reputation; pension; exposure; censure; discrediting; exile; isolation; death.

They get the idea right away.

They would get the idea when a fake bio-attack (that was actually a chemical) occurred. Stay quiet, agree with the authorities.

“Sure, I knew it was a chemical, but I have house payments to make, and my kids are applying to expensive universities…”

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

How the press creates medical fantasies for the gullible

Jan31

How the press creates medical fantasies for the gullible

by Jon Rappoport

January 31, 2018

While avoiding deep scandals that would crack the pillars of modern medicine, the press uses a tactic to paint a glowing picture of medical research. These fantasies have one element in common:

The use of “could be,” “may be,” “possible,” and other bloviations to suggest breakthroughs are right around the corner.

This is not “new research is confirmed.” This is vague suggestion on the level of stock market predictions and long-term weather forecasts.

Let me show you.

I’m looking at medicalnewstoday.com, for January 31st. Here are headlines:

BLOCKING VITAMIN B-2 MAY STOP CANCER.

E-CIGARETTES MAY CAUSE CANCER AND HEART DISEASE.

BODY CLOCK DISRUPTIONS MAY BE AN EARLY SIGN OF ALZHEIMER’S.

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS: ‘GUARDIAN MOLECULE’ MAY LEAD TO NEW TREATMENT.

THIS PEPTIDE MAY EXPLAIN FEMALE SEXUAL BEHAVIOR.

AEROBIC EXERCISE MAY BE KEY FOR ALZHEIMER’S PREVENTION.

That’s just one day of headlines on one medical site. The use of MAY is everywhere. “This may be the case—or not.” Maybe yes, maybe no.

Why not run these headlines instead?

THIS PEPTIDE MAY NOT EXPLAIN FEMALE SEXUAL BEHAVIOR.

‘GUARDIAN MOLECULE’ MAY NOT LEAD TO NEW TREATMENT.

Over the years, I’ve read thousands of medical articles, and most of the MAYBES disappear down the memory hole with no further comment. They’re just pap. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Besides serving the function of filling up space, the articles are public relations propaganda, designed to convince readers that “the cutting edge” of research is very fertile territory, and new advances are always “on the way.”

This press gibberish is little more than, say, producing new reasons to believe people who are holding Iraqi Dinars are on the verge of becoming millionaires.

Nevertheless, large numbers of people are encouraged by these MAYBE medical stories. They want to have faith. They don’t want interruptions to their trance-state. They would say, “If a dozen ‘maybe’ stories are published, at least a few of them will pan out, and that’s a good thing.”

If you have a lot of time on your hands, copy the headlines above and track what happens over the next few years. See if any of the “possible breakthroughs” actually turns into a useful medical treatment.

Better yet, perhaps, track the thousands of articles touting new discoveries in genetic research. Keep an eagle eye out for ONE form of gene therapy that cures ANY disease across the board. I’m not talking about a claim that a single patient has experienced a remission. I mean a therapy that cures a given disease for every diagnosed patient. After all, that’s the heraldic promise.

Good hunting.

Meanwhile, maybe there is a MAYBE.

And DEFINITELY there is propaganda-riddled medical news.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

Logic and the Constitution

Jan30

Logic and the Constitution

by Jon Rappoport

January 30, 2018

Note: I include a basic logic course in my collection, The Matrix Revealed. I present an 11-hour audio section, “Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation,” in my collection, Power Outside The Matrix.

Yesterday, my article, Logic and the Declaration of Independence, traced the structure of Thomas Jefferson’s formal argument for breaking away from England.

Today’s college students would have a very difficult time perceiving that argument, since they rarely study logic at any depth.

But it would be nearly impossible for them to probe the Constitution and find the basic underlying premises.

The preamble to the Constitution contains rhetoric that gives no warning of what is to come.

Preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

To exhume the purpose of the Constitution, one would have to read it and study it, and then decide what the document is driving at.

But since logic is no longer taught as a required subject in schools, the door is open to all sorts of bizarre reactions to the presence of ANY information.

Here are four favorites:

One: grab the headline or the title of a document, make up your mind about how you “feel,” and ignore everything else.

Two: Actually read the document until you find a piece of information that appeals to you for any reason; latch on to it, and run with it in any direction. In all cases, the direction will have nothing to do with the intent of the document.

Three: From the moment you begin to read the title of the document, be in a state of “free association.” Take any word or sentence and connect it to an arbitrary thought or feeling, associate that thought with yet another arbitrary thought…and keep going until you become tired or bored.

Four: Ask the most aggressive person you can find what the document is about and accept whatever he says.

You might be surprised at how many people use these four “methods of analysis.”

The very idea that the author of the document is making a central point doesn’t really register. And certainly, the notion that the author is providing evidence for the central point and reasoning his way from A to B to C is alien.

A college liberal education? These days it could be imparted in a matter of weeks, simply by hammering a small set of values into students’ skulls—along with requisite guilt and fear at the prospect of wandering off the reservation.

Logic as a subject is viewed with grave suspicion, as if it might involuntarily take a person down the wrong track and dump him in a politically incorrect ditch—a fate to be avoided at all costs.

Therefore, the practice of rational analysis is on the way out. Too risky. Besides, the preferred method of dealing with opponents is screaming at them, shoving them off stage, and whining about “being triggered.”

Studying the Constitution reveals that its driving force is: the limiting of centralized power.

Checks and balances, separation of powers, enumerating federal powers and yielding all other powers to the individual States and the people—it’s all there, but today’s students would have a hard time seeing it, much less understanding WHY.

Today, the centralized federal government (and its corporate collusions/partnerships) is an awesome colossus. Most people take that as a given.

Unlike the Declaration of Independence, which announces every move it makes and explains why, the Constitution reveals its purpose and method from the inside, so to speak, after analyzing it.

The Constitution was a pact among the former colonies, the newly formed States. The States were not eager to submit to a central government.

The abusive experience of Europe, behind the new citizens, was Rule From Above, by tyrants. Individual rights and private property had been hard won. They had to be protected at all costs.

So: bind up the central government; set one branch against another; allow only certain specified centralized powers; leave the rest to the States; permit as much individual liberty as possible. In fact, individual liberty was at the heart of the document.

Naïve students, demanding purity and perfection in the document, will never find it. For example, the Constitution was fully ratified in 1790, and slavery was formally abolished in 1865.

The logic of the Constitution was a two-step: limit federal power; these are the ways to accomplish it.

One could argue for or against each piece—but first he would have to recognize the pieces were there. These days, attaining that recognition is a serious problem.

Who would want to teach logic to students? What a waste of time. The purpose of education these days is injecting values and slogans and attitudes; and associating those values with attractive images. For that, you don’t need a mind. You only need mush that can be shaped.

And after what passes for a high school education, the mush is there. It has no clues about processes of thought.

Nevertheless, just suppose a teacher wanted to go where no one has gone for a hundred years or so. How would he start? Where would he start?

At the bottom.

Find a coherent newspaper article about politics. Have the students read it. Then ask them: what does the first paragraph state? What is it saying?

You may be surprised at the variety of opinion.

“It says Martians will be here soon.”

“It says President Obama was born in Hawaii.”

“It says cooking rice is easy.”

“It says I’m triggered and vulnerable.”

Carry on a discussion for as long as it takes, until most of the students know what the first paragraph actually states. This may be a half-hour, a week, a month. Who knows?

Repeat the process with each paragraph of the article. If that takes a year, so be it, because you can’t move further until students understand the text. I know that is a mystical and esoteric notion, but accept it on an experimental basis.

Next step: ask the students whether the author of the article is trying to make an overall point. Ask them what that point is.

“His point is he doesn’t like working-class people.”

“He loves cats.”

“He wants everybody to move to Mars.”

“He’s political.”

“He’s asking us to give money to Marco Rubio.”

Your work is cut out for you. Keep going until the fog clears. Have the students read the article over and over until most of them see the actual point the author is trying to make.

Then—how did the author try to convince you his point was correct?

Then—did you see a hole in his attempt to convince you? A gap? A wrong move?

This is the general sequence of steps. Basically, you’re sticking the students’ noses in the text. Again and again. You’re focusing them on specifics. You’re showing them the difference between their own opinions and random associations and what the author is saying.

You’re doing the one thing they’ve avoided doing. You’re standing in for every incompetent teacher they’ve ever had. You’re reversing years of desultory derangement in classrooms.

You’re making students more intelligent. That’s a very tall order. It takes commitment. If you don’t have it, get out of the business.

Mainstream news is a wonderful source for non-logic.

Logic topples arbitrary authority.

Logic allows you to move inside a complex argument. Once inside, you can give the argument a haircut and see its essence.

The interesting thing is: once people actually know what an author is saying; once they know what conclusion he’s reaching; once they know how he’s getting there; they can see the flaws and the omissions and the insupportable inferences.

They can see the line of reasoning, from beginning to end.

The lights go on.

A heretofore mysterious territory comes into focus.

The differences between fact, lie, assumption, argument, polemic, and propaganda emerge and the mind begins to breathe.

Perhaps for the first time.

Beginning in ancient Greece, coming up through the Middle Ages, and into the 19th century, logic was one aspect of education called the Trivium (“the three”): in sequence, a student learned grammar, then logic, then rhetoric.

Except in scattered places, where people have consciously instituted a revival of the Trivium, that integrated method of teaching is gone now.

Instead, in primary and middle schools, we have superficial coasting through many academic subjects, minus the necessary exercises and drills to ensure that students grasp material. In other words, we have imposed ADHD.

Finally, studying logic gives a student an appreciation of consequences. For example, a politician announces a high-flying generalization, as a plank of his platform. Two things ought to follow. The student does his best to translate that generality into specific terms which actually mean something. Then he traces what would happen if the plank were, in fact, put into effect; what would the consequences specifically entail? There are always consequences—it’s just that most people never see them or think about them, because they haven’t the foggiest idea about how to flesh them out and map them.

Logic: one of the great contributions to civilization, left to die on the vine.

It needs to be resurrected, in full flower.

(To read about Jon’s collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

When deranged psychiatrists became social justice warriors

Jan30

When deranged psychiatrists became social justice warriors

by Jon Rappoport

January 30, 2018

I wrote and posted this article on October 11, 2012. What I revealed then is still happening now. I offer the article as an illustration of how far “social justice” can go in actually punishing people classified as victims—not helping them as advertised.

Buckle up:

It’s the latest thing. Psychiatrists are now giving children in poor neighborhoods Adderall, a dangerous medical stimulant, by making false diagnoses of ADHD, or no diagnoses at all.

Their aim? “Promote social justice,” to improve academic performance in school.

The rationale is, the drugged kids will now be able to compete with children from wealthier families who attend better schools.

Leading the way is Dr. Michael Anderson, a pediatrician in the Atlanta area. Incredibly, Anderson told the New York Times his diagnoses of ADHD are “made up,” “an excuse” to hand out the drugs.

“We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid,” Anderson said.

It would be hard to find a clearer mission statement from a psychiatrist: mind control.

A researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Ramesh Raghavan, goes even further with this chilling comment: “We are effectively forcing local community psychiatrists to use the only tool at their disposal [to “level the playing field” in low-income neighborhoods], which is psychotropic medicine.”

So pressure is being brought to bear on psychiatrists to carry out and sustain a heinous behavior modification program, using drugs, against children in inner cities.

It’s important to realize that all psychotropic stimulants, like Adderall and Ritalin, can cause aggressive behavior, violent behavior.

What we’re seeing here is a direct parallel to the old CIA program, exposed by the late journalist, Gary Webb, who detailed the importing of crack cocaine (another kind of stimulant) into South Central Los Angeles.

It is widely acknowledged, and admitted in the Times article, that the effects of ADHD drugs on children’s still-developing brains are unknown. Therefore, the risks of the drugs are great. At least one leading psychiatrist, Peter Breggin, believes there is significant evidence that these stimulants can cause atrophy of the brain.

Deploying the ADHD drugs creates symptoms which may then be treated with compounds like Risperdal, a powerful anti-psychotic, which can cause motor brain damage.

All this, in service of “social justice” for the poor.

And what about the claim that ADHD drugs can enhance school performance?

The following pronouncement makes a number of things clear: The 1994 Textbook of Psychiatry, published by the American Psychiatric Press, contains this review (Popper and Steingard): “Stimulants [given for ADHD] do not produce lasting improvements in aggressivity, conduct disorder, criminality, education achievement, job functioning, marital relationships, or long-term adjustment.”

So the whole basis for this “social justice” program in low-income communities—that the ADHD drugs will improve school performance of kids and “level the playing field,” so they can compete academically with children from wealthier families—this whole program is based on a lie to begin with.

Meddling with the brains of children via these chemicals constitutes criminal assault, and it’s time it was recognized for what it is.

In 1986, The International Journal of the Addictions published a most important literature review by Richard Scarnati. It was called “An Outline of Hazardous Side Effects of Ritalin (Methylphenidate)” [v.21(7), pp. 837-841]. Adderall and other ADHD medications are all in the same basic class; they are stimulants, amphetamine-type substances.

Scarnati listed a large number of adverse affects of Ritalin and cited published journal articles which reported each of these symptoms.

For every one of the following (selected and quoted verbatim) Ritalin effects, there is at least one confirming source in the medical literature:

* Paranoid delusions
* Paranoid psychosis
* Hypomanic and manic symptoms, amphetamine-like psychosis
* Activation of psychotic symptoms
* Toxic psychosis
* Visual hallucinations
* Auditory hallucinations
* Can surpass LSD in producing bizarre experiences
* Effects pathological thought processes
* Extreme withdrawal
* Terrified affect
* Started screaming
* Aggressiveness
* Insomnia
* Since Ritalin is considered an amphetamine-type drug, expect amphetamine-like effects
* Psychic dependence
* High-abuse potential DEA Schedule II Drug
* Decreased REM sleep
* When used with antidepressants one may see dangerous reactions including hypertension, seizures and hypothermia
* Convulsions
* Brain damage may be seen with amphetamine abuse.

In what sense are the ADHD drugs “social justice?” The reality is, they are chemical warfare. Licensed predators are preying on the poor.

The US government, through a labyrinth of rules and licensing requirements, has established psychiatry as a virtual monopoly in the arena of “mental health.” To say this act is unconstitutional would be a vast understatement.

Close to 50 years ago, psychiatry was dying out as a profession. Fewer and fewer people wanted to see a psychiatrist for help, for talk therapy. All sorts of new therapies were popping up. The competition was leaving medical psychiatry in the dust.

As Dr. Peter Breggin describes it in his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry, a deal was struck. Drug companies would bankroll psychiatry and rescue it. These companies would pour money into professional conferences, journals, research. In return, they wanted “science” that would promote mental disease as a biological/chemical fact, a gateway into scores of new drugs. Everyone would win—except the patient.

So the studies were rolled out, and the list of mental disorders expanded by leaps and bounds. The FDA was in on the deal as well, as evidenced by their drug “safety” approvals, in the face of the obvious damage these drugs were doing.

So this is how we arrived at where we are. This was the plan, and it worked.

And now, as a “humanitarian gesture,” psychiatrists are handing out ADHD drugs in poor neighborhoods, to children, without the slightest concern, in order to bring social justice to the downtrodden.

Finally, like all other so-called mental disorders, ADHD is diagnosed on the basis of behavior alone. That’s how it was, yes, invented in the first place. There are no defining diagnostic physical tests—no blood, urine, saliva tests, no brain scans, no genetic assays.

Let that sink in.

The whole business is a charade, with toxic consequences.

If that’s social justice, it only exists in the demented minds of psychiatrists.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

Explosive: a review of fake medical tests

Jan30

Explosive: a review of fake medical tests

by Jon Rappoport

January 30, 2018

Over the years, during my investigations of deep fraud, I’ve uncovered very popular medical diagnostic tests that are wrong-headed, misleading, and fallacious.

Acceptance of this shocking truth would disrupt the “disease business” like a threshing machine moving through a wheat field.

Claims of diseases, based on tests, would be routinely turned back stamped UNPROVEN and FAKE.

ONE: Antibody test. This is given to detect the presence of a specific germ in a human. Prior to 1985, a positive test was generally taken as a sign of good health: the patient’s immune system detected the germ and defeated it.

However, after 1985, public health agencies and doctors reversed field. They arbitrarily claimed a positive test showed the person was ill or was going to become ill. No true science backed up this claim.

BOTTOM LINE: The truth is, a positive antibody test says nothing about whether a person is ill, will get ill, or is healthy. The true indicator is the strength of the entire immune system, not just the antibodies—and the overall strength of the immune system is NOT measured by an antibody test. THERE IS NO MEDICAL TEST THAT MEASURES THE OVERALL CONDITION OF A PERSON’S IMMUNE SYSTEM.

TWO: The PCR test. The Polymerase Chain Reaction tests for the presence of virus in a patient. The test takes a tiny sample, which technicians assume is a genetic piece of a virus far too small to observe, and amplifies it many times, so it can be identified. But in order to cause disease in a human, a huge quantity of virus (easily observed without the PCR) needs to be present. Therefore, a PCR test-result indicates nothing about disease—except that medical personnel couldn’t find enough virus in a person, to begin with, to assume the person was ill or would become ill.

THREE: All tests resulting in a diagnosis of any of the 300 officially certified mental disorders. Why? Because there are no definitive tests. No blood or saliva or urine tests. No genetic assays. No brain scans. All so-called mental disorders are diagnosed on the basis of consulting menus of behaviors. This is pseudoscience. It’s on the level of diagnosing cancer in a patient on the basis of an interview.

FOUR: All tests designed to assess the effectiveness of vaccines. The only marker is: does the vaccine produce antibodies in a human. But as I stated above, antibodies are only one aspect of the immune system. They aren’t the whole picture. A weak immune system’s antibodies are useless.

FIVE: Unsupported claims from public health officials. No tests at all, or hidden test results. For example, at the height of the so-called Swine Flu epidemic, in the fall of 2009, the CDC secretly stopped counting cases in America. Why? Because the overwhelming percentage of samples taken from the most likely Swine Flu patients, sent to labs, were coming back with no trace of Swine Flu or any other kind of flu. In other words, the epidemic was a dud and a hoax. Based on this vacuum of evidence, the CDC went on to estimate that, in America, there were 22 MILLION cases of Swine Flu.

This gigantic scandal doesn’t just apply to Swine Flu. It applies to any kind of flu.

Dr. Peter Doshi, writing in the online BMJ (British Medical Journal), reveals a monstrosity.

As Doshi states, every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory samples are taken from flu patients in the US and tested in labs. Here is the kicker: only a small percentage of these samples show the presence of a flu virus.

This means: most of the people in America who are diagnosed by doctors with the flu have no flu virus in their bodies. So they don’t have the flu.

Therefore, even if you assume the flu vaccine is useful and safe, it couldn’t possibly prevent all those “flu cases” that aren’t flu cases.

The vaccine couldn’t possibly work.

The vaccine isn’t designed to prevent fake flu, unless pigs can fly.

Here’s the exact quote from Peter Doshi’s BMJ review, “Influenza: marketing vaccines by marketing disease” (BMJ 2013; 346:f3037):

“…even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the ‘flu’ problem because most ‘flu’ appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive.”

“…It’s no wonder so many people feel that ‘flu shots’ don’t work: for most flus, they can’t.”

Because most diagnosed cases of the flu aren’t the flu.

So even if you’re a true believer in mainstream vaccine theory, you’re on the short end of the stick here. They’re conning your socks off.

The basic flu symptoms—cough, fever, chills, sore throat, muscle aches, weakness—can be caused by a variety of factors that have nothing to do with a flu virus.

—But don’t worry, be happy. Keep your mouth shut and obey all doctors’ orders.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

Basic vaccine lies in the world of fake news

Jan29

Basic vaccine lies in the world of fake news

by Jon Rappoport

January 29, 2018

“The combined death rate from scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles among children up to fifteen shows that nearly 90 percent of the total decline in mortality between 1860 and 1965 had occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization. In part, this recession may be attributed to improved housing and to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms, but by far the most important factor was a higher host-resistance due to better nutrition.” (Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis, Bantam Books, 1977)

In many previous articles, I’ve rejected, with evidence, a whole host of false claims about vaccine safety and efficacy. Here I want to look at basic flaws in the rationale for vaccination.

First of all, a child with a strong immune system will exile illnesses like measles or flu without incident. If he does become sick, his immune defense system will swing into high gear, mount a full inflammatory response, and the acute phase of illness will fade away. There are millions of such examples throughout recent history.

If a person has a weak and compromised immune system, vaccination is not going to cure that fact.

In the best presentation of conventional vaccine theory, a shot in the arm brings on antibodies, which are scouts for the immune system. They broadcast alerts: “Invaders detected.” But if the rest of the “immune army” is weak, what good are alerts? No good at all. Thus, a compromised immune system is a problem that can’t be solved by vaccination.

These are simple and basic realities—once you clear away pseudoscientific hocus-pocus.

Over the years, I’ve interviewed a number of people who grew up with no vaccinations. They were fed good clean food. They exercised. They had loving strong parents. They thrived. They rarely got sick, and when they did, the bout was over quickly. To them the idea of vaccination was a bizarre illusion. They never needed it. Period.

And as I say, the people with weak and compromised immune systems, who are basically unhealthy, are NOT going to be cured or protected by vaccination.

Many doctors know these facts, but are afraid to speak out. They also know about the dangers of vaccines, because they’ve seen children, whom they just vaccinated, fold up with devastating neurological injuries—but the doctors are silent about that, too.

The mainstream press, with non-stop pro-vaccination propaganda, is colluding with the medical establishment and governments to silence critics.

The press is fake news. We who point out fatal flaws in vaccination are actual news.

For example, now that the CDC schedule of “necessary” vaccines has greatly expanded, where are the proper studies proving that this increased load of chemicals and germs (in the vaccines) is safe? Where? Nowhere. Does that sound acceptable? “Previously, we said X amount of chemicals and germs in vaccines was safe. Now that we’re piling on more of these substances, there is no need to prove safety. We just assume it.”

Can you name a single large mainstream news outlet that has devoted time and space to a complete and rational debate about vaccine safety and efficacy, representing both sides of the issue fairly? Can you? Of course not. Does this seem reasonable? “The science is settled.” Only fools and unthinking minds would accept that position.

Who is the culprit here? Critics of vaccination, or the delinquent imperious press?

99.9% of mainstream reporters, news anchors, and medical bureaucrats know nothing about vaccine safety or efficacy. Their skill, such as it is, consists of pretending they have acquired knowledge.

In other words, if you were watching the evening news, and a parrot in a tree kept repeating, “Get your vaccinations, get your vaccinations,” would you trust the source?

Instead of treating mainstream news as a reliable fount of information, back up a step and realize this operation has been a heavily funded and protected monopoly—and all monopolies commit egregious acts to sustain their position. They cooperate with other would-be monopolies (e.g., the medical cartel) to improve their power.

By “egregious acts,” of course, I mean: crimes. Any criminal who is in the public spotlight, day in and day out, will bend, distort, fabricate, and concoct more lies to cover up his past offenses. This is common sense. Face this fact head-on. Don’t avoid it.

The horrendous SB277 bill was passed by the California legislation, in 2015, and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown. It mandated an array of vaccines for all schoolchildren. During debate on the bill, did the legislature permit extended discussion about the dangers and ineffectiveness of vaccines? No. Why not? Were these issues somehow automatically censor-able? Sweeping them into a garbage can is called a CLUE. Major players didn’t want certain information to see the light of day. Otherwise, why not turn on the light?

Let me explain how the game works with an example. In the mid-1990s, I sat in a courtroom in Los Angeles and watched the opening of a grotesque trial, in which the federal government was prosecuting a young man for selling a nutritional supplement. The man had made health claims for the product. He told the judge he wanted to present evidence that a) the substance was produced naturally by the body, and b) it had provably beneficial effects. The judge refused to allow the defendant to present any evidence along these lines. No, the judge said. The only question was: had the defendant violated a federal rule about selling supplements? If so, he was guilty. Period.

And that was the verdict. The young man went to prison.

Evidence be damned.

Who, in his right mind, would support such a ruling?

A monopoly. That’s who.

Truth, validity, facts? Out of bounds.

This is the same approach of the mainstream news establishment, when it comes to vaccination.

It is the approach of inveterate liars.

For many reasons, a few of which I’ve listed here, the whole vaccination system is crashing. The oceanic sound of that crash hasn’t yet reached many ears tuned to the evening news.

But it’s coming.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

Logic and the Declaration of Independence

Jan29

Logic and the Declaration of Independence

—What are your premises? State them. What implications flow from your premises? State them. What conclusion do you draw? State it. In a bygone era, this used to be called a formal logical argument—

by Jon Rappoport

January 29, 2018

Note: My collection, The Matrix Revealed, contains a basic logic course. And my collection, Power Outside The Matrix, contains an extensive 11-hour audio presentation, Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation.

Logic, these days, has been replaced in schools with a mind-control apparatus that involves the following:

EVERY POINT OF VIEW IS EQUAL.

EVERYBODY HAS TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE WHOLE.

TRUE CRITICAL THINKING, WHICH IS THE EXCLUSIVE TERRITORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL, LEAVES PEOPLE OUT OF THE GROUP AND IS THEREFORE PREJUDICIAL.

If you favor this new formulation and think it’s useful, I have condos on Jupiter for sale.

The point of modern education, more and more, is:

“Good people belong to the group.”

“The Group is everything.”

“If you don’t belong to the Group, you have a mental disorder.”

Why is all this emphasis put on the Group?

The answer to that question also gives you the reason logic isn’t taught in schools anymore:

The independent self-sufficient individual is being phased out.

The independent individual who knows how to think and make lucid judgments on his own is a threat to the EMERGING RELIGION OF GLOBALISM.

Some people think education has been hijacked for the purpose of training children to become robotic workers for the State. That’s partly true, but education is also the proving ground for the religion of the Group.

This religion doesn’t need or want logic. Logic would be disruptive. It would differentiate one student from another.

A few years ago, I spoke to a teacher who was introducing his class to logic. He told me, “These are very bright kids. They’re all going to college. They said they couldn’t learn logic. They couldn’t do it. They had some kind of mental block.”

As we talked further, it became obvious that the mental block was an idea of THE GROUP. These kids had already been indoctrinated into “cooperative thought.” They instinctively realized that, if they studied logic, the Collective would break apart. Each student would have to stand on his own, and that prospect was frightening.

A person either wants to think for himself—and knows how to—or he prefers the hazy hive-like existence of belonging to something that is less than he is.

It’s that simple.

Several years ago, I came across a letter to the editor of Commentary Magazine, from its January 1979 issue. The author was a Thomas Jefferson scholar, Wilbur Samuel Howell.

Howell made several key points. As a college student, Jefferson studied philosophy and logic under Professor William Small, at William and Mary. Small had come to the college from Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had studied under William Duncan, a renowned logician and author of Elements of Logick. Indeed, Jefferson later remarked that Professor Small had gone a long way toward shaping his life.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that the Jefferson-authored Declaration of Independence would adhere to a logical structure. Indeed, the Declaration is a kind of argument from first premises, through to a conclusion.

I went back and read the Declaration, and I’ll open up its logical structure.

It begins with this:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Jefferson, in this prologue, indicates that the people should state their reasons for separating from a ruling power. Before he goes on to do that, he enunciates his first premises.

All men have rights, and to secure them, they create governments.

Second, the people have the authority to abolish any ruler that tries to destroy those rights, and, in its place, the people should institute a new government.

Third, when a long history of tyrannical abuse proves that the old government cannot be corrected, the people have a duty to overthrow it.

Here is the relevant text:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

What remains is for Jefferson to list the abuses of the British Crown; to prove, in other words, that the King has, in fact, brought on such a stream of tyrannical actions.

Well, here are the abuses—the first 20 of a longer list:

“He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

“He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

“He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

“He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

“He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

“He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

“He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

“For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

“For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

“For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

“For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

“For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

“For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

“For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies…”

At this point, Jefferson makes it clear that the colonists have tried, without success, to correct these tyrannical abuses through peaceful means. They are not acting in haste:

“In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

“Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

Jefferson then announces his conclusion, based on the prologue, the original premises of his argument, and the examples he has cited to show that the heart of these premises is true:

“We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

—Fire, passion, even poetry, held within the flow of a logical progression.

Jefferson was not only a devoted student of logic, he wanted to make the great case for freedom and independence by using its power.

In his mind, freedom and logic were connected.

If in our schools, in 2017, logic as a distinct subject has been reduced to paltry terms, how are students able to grasp the majestic nature of freedom, as expressed in the Declaration? How are they able to understand that living in freedom is more than vaguely drifting from one slogan to another, one addled piece of political rhetoric to another?

Note: James Madison, thought of by many as the father of the Constitution, studied logic intensely at the College of New Jersey. The course followed the pattern laid down in a famous 17th-century book, Logic or the Art of Thinking.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

Top 10 things progressive politicians should do to prove they’re progressive

Jan29

Top ten things progressive politicians should do to prove they’re progressive

by Jon Rappoport

January 29, 2018

It’s a simple premise: since so-called progressive politicians are incessantly meddling in other people’s business, telling them what they should and shouldn’t do, these progressives should demonstrate their own values by exemplifying them in their own lives.

Why not? If the values are virtuous, what harm could result? Only good could come of it.

One: To improve your life, to make it better, bring at least three single-male illegal immigrants, between 18 and 25 years of age, into your home to live. Provide a sanctuary. If you own several homes, settle several of these immigrants into each, as full-time residents.

Two: Give up all your guns. Fire your armed security personnel.

Three: Immediately receive all vaccinations listed on the CDC expanded schedule. Don’t worry about the aluminum, the formaldehyde, and other toxic chemicals in the shots. Ignore the fact that no proper studies have been done assessing the effects of multiple vaccinations given in combination. Just keep quiet and take the shots.

Four: Those politicians who voted for the infamous Dark Act, which effectively banned Americans from knowing whether their foods contain GMOs: eat only GMO food with its increased load of pesticides. No worries.

Five: Go to war on any battlefield when war is declared. Join the infantry. Pick up a gun. Position yourself on the front lines. Kill or be killed.

Six: Take your children out of elite private schools and send them to public schools.

Seven: No more private jets. You believe in manmade global warming. Use only public transport. Have a deep analysis done of every wasteful CO2 practice you engage in, and eliminate it. Reduce your carbon footprint. Get rid of extra homes.

Eight: Participate fully in Obamacare. Cancel any other health insurance policy you have.

Nine: Sell the home you live in, and move to a neighborhood where illegal immigrants have been newly resettled.

Ten: Divest yourself of all monies inherited or gained through investments, since these are signs of Privilege. If you’re still in the top tax bracket, pay 90% of you annual income to the federal government.

There is more—for example, since you support Antifa, refuse the help of the police under any and all circumstances—and since you champion the DOJ and the FBI, warmly accept full government surveillance of your conversations stemming from FISA court warrants—but those above ten actions will start you off in the right direction. I’m sure you’ll feel better, knowing you’re personally living the improved life you want everyone else to live.

It’s a win-win, isn’t it?

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.

Exit From The Matrix: the vital imagination-anchor effect: the key to power

Jan28

by Jon Rappoport

January 28, 2018

As my readers know, I write many articles about the power of imagination. And my collection, Exit From The Matrix, contains a number of unique imagination exercises which a person can practice every day, and thus accrue major benefits.

I want to stress this fact: a person, empowered by his own imagination, needs to use the power to form and carry out a major enterprise in the world.

After all, we’re living in this world. We’re here for action.

Imagination can be anchored to action.

Imagination participates in creating a personal vision of what you truly want to do in life. And it also participates in the strategy for achieving that vision and making it into accomplished fact.

Action without imagination falls flat. Imagination without action results in spinning your wheels in the same basic place.

Imagination plus action is the dynamic embrace.

It enables a person to step out on the bright road to his future.

It puts everything else in a new perspective.

I cover all this in great depth, in Exit From The Matrix.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

Here are the contents of Exit From The Matrix:

First, my new audio presentations:

* INTRODUCTION: HOW TO USE THE MATERIALS IN EXIT FROM THE MATRIX

* EXIT FROM THE MATRIX

* 50 IMAGINATION EXERCISES

* FURTHER IMAGINATION EXERCISES

* ANESTHESIA, BOREDOM, EXCITEMENT, ECSTASY

* ANCIENT TIBET AND THE UNIVERSE AS A PRODUCT OF MIND

* YOU THE INVENTOR, MINDSET, AND FREEDOM FROM “THE EXISTENCE PROGRAM”

* PARANORMAL EXPERIMENTS AND EXERCISES

* CHILDREN AND IMAGINATION

* THE CREATIVE LIFE AND THE MATRIX/IMAGINATION

* PICTURES OF REALITY AND ESCAPE VELOCITY FROM THE MATRIX

* THIS WOULD BE A VERY DIFFERENT FUTURE

* MODERN ZEN

* THE GREAT PASSIONS AND THE GREAT ANDROIDS

Then you will receive the following audio seminars I have previously done:

* Mind Control, Mind Freedom

* The Transformations

* Desire, Manifestation and Fulfillment

* Altered States, Consciousness, and Magic

* Beyond Structures

* The Mystery and Magic of Dialogue

* The Voyage of Merlin

* Modern Alchemy and Imagination

* Imagination and Spiritual Enlightenment

* Dissolving Stress

* The Paranormal Project

* Zen Painting for Everyone Now

* Past Lives, Archetypes, and Hidden Sources of Human Energy

* Expression of Self

* Imagination Exercises for a Lifetime

* Old Planet, New Planet, New Mind

* The Era of Magic Returns

* Your Power Revealed

* Universes Without End

* Relationships

* Building a Business for Success

I have included an additional bonus section:

* My book, The Secret Behind Secret Societies (pdf document)

* My book, The Ownership of All Life (pdf document)

* A long excerpt from my briefly published book, Full Power (pdf document)

* My 24 articles in the series, “Coaching the Coaches” (pdf document)

And these audio seminars:

* The Role of Medical Drugs in Human Illness

* Longevity One: The Mind-Body Connection

* Longevity Two: The Nutritional Factors

(All the audio presentations are mp3 files and the documents and books are pdf files. You download the files upon purchase. There is no physical ship.)

What has been called The Matrix is a series of layers. These layers compose what we call Reality. Reality is not merely the consensus people accept in their daily lives. It is also a personal and individual conception of limits. It is a perception that these limits are somehow built into existence. But this is not true.

What I’ve done here is remove the lid on those perceived limits. This isn’t an intellectual undertaking. It’s a way to open up space and step on to a new road, with new power.

Jon Rappoport

Network: the last great film about The News

Jan27

by Jon Rappoport

January 27, 2018

(To join our email list, click here.)

Network, the 1976 film written by Paddy Chayefsky, reveals what media kings would do if they unchained their basic instincts and galloped all the way into the madness of slash-and-burn Roman Circus.

The audience is jaded beyond recall. It needs new shocks to the system every day. The adrenaline must flow. The line between reporting the news and inventing it? Erase it. Celebrate the erasure. Watch ratings soar.

Why pretend anymore? Why spend countless hours preparing and broadcasting synthetic artificial news, as if it were real? Does the audience care about such niceties? The audience just wants action.

The film proceeds from these premises.

Arthur Jensen, head of the corporation that owns the Network, speaks to unhinged Network newsman, Howard Beale, who has revealed, on-air, a piece of the real power structure in a few moments of sanity: “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!! Is that clear?!… You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!”

Head of programming for the Network, Diana Christensen, shifts the whole news department over to the entertainment division.

Thus emerge new shows with soaring ratings: Howard Beale, [Religious] Prophet of the Air Waves; The Mao Tse-Tung Hour, in which a guerrilla group films itself carrying out armed bank robberies; and Sybil the Soothsayer, a Tarot reader.

Diana becomes the network’s new executive star.

There is no longer even a pretense of a need for news anchors to appear authoritative, objective, or rational.

Diana Christensen is unstoppable. She sees, with burning clarity, that audiences are bored to the point of exhaustion; they now require, as at the end of the Roman Empire, extreme entertainment. They want more violence, more insanity, out in the open. On television.

In promoting her kind of news division, she tells network executives:

“Look, we’ve got a bunch of
hobgoblin radicals called the
Ecumenical Liberation Army who
go around taking home movies
of themselves robbing banks.
Maybe they’ll take movies of
themselves kidnapping heiresses,
hijacking 747’s, bombing bridges,
assassinating ambassadors.
We’d open each week’s segment
with that authentic footage,
hire a couple of writers to
write some story behind that
footage, and we’ve got
ourselves a series…

“Did you see the overnights on the
Network News? It has an 8 in New
York and a 9 in L.A. and a 27 share
in both cities. Last night, Howard
Beale went on the air [as a newscaster] and yelled
bullshit for two minutes, and I
can tell you right now that tonight’s
show will get a 30 share at least.
I think we’ve lucked into something…

“I see Howard Beale as a latter-day
prophet, a magnificent messianic
figure, inveighing against the
hypocrisies of our times, a strip
Savonarola, Monday through Friday.
I tell you, Frank, that could just
go through the roof…Do you want to figure out
the revenues of a strip show that
sells for a hundred thousand bucks
a minute? One show like that could
pull this whole network right out
of the hole! Now, Frank, it’s being
handed to us on a plate; let’s not
blow it!”

Television in the “real world” isn’t all the way there yet, but it’s getting there.

In Network, Diana Christensen personifies the news. She is the electric, thrill-seeking, non-stop force that is terrified of silence.

She lives and feeds on adrenaline. So does the viewing public. Nothing else ultimately matters. Ratings are the top line and the bottom line. The individual and his thoughts are completely irrelevant.

Howard Beale, over the cliff, a news man screaming on-air about the insanity of the news, is perfectly acceptable, because the audience is simply responding to Beale’s inchoate outrage and their own. Nothing deeper is explored. What could have resulted in a true popular rebellion is short-circuited. Beale becomes a crazy loon, a novelty item. Yet one more distraction.

When, in a brief interlude of clarity, he begins telling his audience about the takeover of society by mega-corporations and mega-money, his show droops. Ratings collapse. Diana is no longer interested in him; she wants to sack him.

However, Arthur Jensen, the head of the corporation that owns the television network, wants to keep Beale on the air, as a messenger of the “galactic truth” about the beneficial integration of all human activity under the rubric of global money and global power. He converts Beale to his cause.

Diana sees only one way out of this ratings disaster: kill Beale; on-air; during his show. And so it is done.

Network also shows us the audience becoming actor, player, participant. The audience is jumping out of its skin to be recognized, courted, and adored as a mighty rolling force embodying no particular meaning.

Audience wants to be a star. Audience wants coverage; audience wants its actions to be shown on television. That establishes its legitimacy. Nothing else is necessary.

Diana knows it, and she is more than willing to accommodate this frantic desire, if only her bosses will let her go all the way.

The best film ever made about television’s war on the population, Network stages only a few minutes of on-air television.

The rest of the film is dialogue and monologue about television. Thus you could say that, in this case, word defeats image. Which was scriptwriter Paddy Chayefsky’s intent.

Even when showing what happens on the TV screen, Network bursts forth with lines like these, from newsman Howard Beale, at the end of his rope, on-camera, speaking to his in-studio audience and millions of people in their homes:

“So, you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television’s a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We’re in the boredom-killing business… We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God’s name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion.”

It is Beale’s language and the passion with which he delivers it that constitutes his dangerous weapon. Therefore, the Network transforms him into a cheap religious figure, whose audience slathers him with absurd adoration.

Television’s enemy is the word. Its currency is image.

Beale breaks through the image and defiles it. He cracks the egg. He stops the picture-flow. He brings back the sound and rhythm of spoken poetry. That is his true transgression against the medium that employs him.

The modern matrix has everything to do with how knowledge is acquired.

Television, in the main, does not attempt to impart knowledge. It strives to give the viewer the impression that he knows something. There is a difference.

Knowledge, once established, is external to, and independent of, the viewer. Whereas the impression of knowing is a feeling, a conviction, a belief the viewer holds, after he has watched moving images on a screen.

A basic premise of New Age thinking is: “everything is (connected to) everything.” This fits quite well with the experience of watching film or video flow.

Example: we see angry crowds on the street of a foreign city. Then young people on their cell phones sitting in an outdoor café. Then the marble lobby of a government building where men in suits are walking, standing in groups talking to each other. Then at night, rockets exploding in the sky. Then armored vehicles moving through a gate into the city. Then clouds of smoke on another street and people running, chased by police.

A flow of consecutive images. The sequence, obviously, has been assembled by a news editor, but most of the viewing audience isn’t aware of that. They’re watching the “interconnected” images and listening to a news anchor tell a story that colors (infects) every image.

Viewers thus believe they know something. Television has imparted that sensation to them.

Therefore: a short circuit occurs in the reasoning mind.

When you take this pattern out to a whole society, you are talking about a dominant method through which “knowledge” is gained.

“Did you see that fantastic video about the Iraq War? It showed that Saddam actually had bioweapons.”

“Really? How did they show that?”

“Well, I don’t exactly remember. But watch it. You’ll see.”

And that’s another feature of the modern acquisition of “knowledge”: amnesia about details.

The viewer can’t recall key features of what he saw. Or if he can, he can’t describe them, because he was in the flow. He was inside, busy building up his impression of knowing something.

Narrative-visual-television story strips out and discards conceptual analysis. And lines of reasoning? To the extent they exist, they’re wrapped around and inside the image and the narration.

Paddy Chayefsky made his pen a sword, because he was writing a movie about television, against television. He was pitting Word against Image as the primary form of knowledge.

When a technology (television) turns into a method of perception, reality is turned inside out. People watch TV through TV eyes.

Mind control is no longer something merely imposed from the outside. It is a matrix of a self-feeding, self-demanding loop.

Willing Devotees of the Image WANT images, food stamps of the programmed society.

The triumph of Network is that it makes its words win over pictures, IN a picture, IN a film.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport