Seriously? CDC Workers Forbidden To Use the Word "Fetus"?

As I've noted in previous posts, savvy citizens must be mindful of how language has been altered to achieve the manipulation of minds, not just "elimination of bias.".  Language debasement and alteration for the purpose of brainwashing, propagandizing or plain disinformation can assume either passive or active forms.

The passive form would entail subtly replacing more apt (but blunt) normal terms with euphemisms that don't convey the same impact. Many of these were outed in the excellent book, 'Collateral Language'.  Examples include:

"Enhanced interrogation" for torture

"Death tax" for estate tax.

"Passing" for death.

There is the more recent  use of "scandal" to replace conspiracy. Thus, we are now supposed to accept "the Watergate scandal" as opposed to Watergate conspiracy, and the "Iran-Contra scandal" as opposed to Iran-Contra conspiracy. The intention of the sanitizers is clearly to expunge the concept of political conspiracy from public consciousness.

Passive language intervention can also take the form of a "guide" distributed to entice people to change, often in a communal setting or university.  For example, back in 2015 comedian Bill Maher  cited a "bias free language guide" issued by the University of New Hampshire - ostensibly to entice students to take more care in their use of language - and strive for 'neutrality'.

Some of the examples Maher exposed:

Senior citizens to be replaced by "people of advanced age".

Poverty-stricken to be replaced by "experiencing poverty"

Obese,  replaced by "people of size"

Rich, to be replaced by "person of material wealth"

Foreigner is replaced by  "international person"

Tomboy is replaced by "gender non-conforming"

And so on. While one can object to this wishy washy tendency to speak and write indirectly, the more onerous form of language control - which is inevitably thought control- is active intervention, Generally, this assumes the form of dictates issued for words one is forbidden to use under pain of some kind of punishment. As two former Wehrmacht soldiers informed me in May, 1985, these language prohibitions were issued by the Minister of Propaganda and  violation carried sanctions ranging from boycott of business, loss of employment or minor violence (beatings) to being sent to one of the camps designated for uncooperative German citizens, (E.g Dachau).

Nazi language suppression was massive and didn't involve merely a few forbidden words. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, took control of all forms of communication in 3rd Reich Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, and rallies, art, music, movies, and radio. Viewpoints in any way threatening to Nazi beliefs or to the regime were censored or eliminated from all media.  For example, as Dieter - one of the Wehrmacht soldiers told me - a news editor who wrote in an editorial: "Jews are basically decent people" could end up in Dachau.

The objective of all such tactics has been clear since the era of PR originator Edward Bernays, who wrote:. 'Crystallizing Public Opinion'. As the title implies, the basic goal was to drumbeat the maximum number of 'the masses' into a homogeneous and consistent consent by limiting the extent of their language, and hence their thought. . But do it without their awareness. Careful use of language was the means to do this, including subtly altering the usual meaning of words.

Five years later came Bernays' definitive work 'Propaganda' - embodying those principles  which were later adopted wholesale by Josef Goebbels and Leni Reifenstahl. It was in this book that the master betrayed his intents - if ever there was any doubt before:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country."

This is why the dedicated citizen (not merely "consumer")  must always be aware of language use, given how it molds thought and perceptions.  Not surprisingly the modern use of language alteration has also seeped in, again to try to bend minds toward acceptance. Now the latest assault on language - which is also an assault on scientific thought - is the order received by he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to avoid the use of all "forbidden words".  These words include: "fetus", "transgender", "vulnerable",  "entitlement", "diversity", "evidence based", and "science based".

Evidently, the list was revealed on Thursday in a 90 minute briefing with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget.

In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or ­“evidence-based,” the suggested  extended phrase became:

 “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” 

What's the idea? Well, as the above phrase discloses,  science would take a back seat to the sensibilities of the particular community. 

Thus,  if the CDC were to discover a Zika outbreak near Phenix City, Alabama and it was known the "community standards" were solidly anti-abortion, the CDC would not be able to suggest abortion of the "fetus" even if scans showed microcephaly.  If CDC detected an STD outbreak in another part of the Bible Belt, take your pick, there would be limits on what they could recommend in terms of prevention, e.g. no mention of "condoms".  Where, what part of the Trumpie "empire", are these directives coming from? Well, from the Department of Health and Human Services.  In the words of one HHS spokesman, Matt Lloyd, his agency "will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans".  Adding: "HHS also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and  budget decisions."   Translation: "It is up to us to decide if you really need another $300 million a year to fight Zika, or really need  to use condoms to fight STDs."

Indeed, if the italicized comment above is so, one is forced to scratch his head at the fact the HHS removed all information about LGBT Americans from its website. Instead, the HHS' Administration for Children and Families   archived a page   that gives alternative services available for LGBT people and their families.

Let's note here that the question of how to address such issues as sexual orientation, gender identity and abortion rights — all of which received significant visibility under the Obama administration — has surfaced repeatedly in federal agencies since Donnie Dotard took office. Several key departments — including HHS, as well as Justice, Education, and Housing and Urban Development — have deliberately mutated some federal policies and how they collect government information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

At the CDC, the meeting about the banned terms was led by one Alison Kelly, a career civil servant and a senior leader in the agency’s Office of Financial Services.  This according to the CDC analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to the WaPo,  because the person was not authorized to speak publicly. Kelly herself did not say why the words are being banned, according to the analyst, and told the group that she was merely relaying the information. The sentiment is that other parts of HHS are also operating under the same guidelines regarding the use of these banned words, the analyst said.

At the CDC, several offices have responsibility for work that uses some or all of of these terms. The National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention is working on ways to prevent HIV among transgender people and reduce health disparities. The CDC’s work on birth defects caused by the Zika virus includes research on the developing fetus.

The ban is supposedly related to the budget and supporting materials, but in reality is a blatant effort by the anti-science, anti-intellectual knuckle draggers to control the CDC agenda.  Given Dotard's budget for 2019 is expected to be released in early February, we can expect severe cuts to the CDC - among others.. The budget blueprint is generally shaped to reflect an administration’s priorities, and Dotard's gang - as seen with arsonist Pruitt at the EPA, is definitely not there to advance science.

What is most interesting has been the reaction of CDC employees in the meeting, all expressing degrees of incredulity.  These dedicated researchers,  epidemiologists and other workers simply could not believe they were being  hijacked by a 21st century version of Big Brother and his Newspeak from Orwell's "1984" novel.

“Incredulous,” one analyst said. “It was very much, ‘Are you serious? Are you kidding?’ ”  No one could recall anytime in recent history where actual banned words were enunciated.  According to the same CDC analyst:  "In my experience, we’ve never had any pushback from an ideological standpoint,”

Well, son, with Dotard and his dolts in power you can expect many more. And, if we ever do oust these hare-brained assholes, it will likely be years -  nay, decades- before we get the country out of the decline they've instigated.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/76759/linguistic-devolution-and-ye-ol-resistance

A Radical Idea: No National Anthem At Most Sports Events

It was Buddhist Philosopher Alan Watts in his 'Wisdom Of Insecurity', who questioned the role of conditioned behavior and responses especially in advanced Western societies like the U.S. Watts contended that if behaviors are simply adopted and practiced without reflection  they easily become habituated and mechanical, especially if tied to values like national pride. There is then the potential they can become vehicles for propaganda.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the current brouhaha over the national anthem as sports events - namely pro football- and players using it as a means to protest. At the same time, their exercise of their 1st amendment rights has triggered a ferocious backlash in some quarters, namely among militarists, nativist nationalists, American exceptionalists and others who place the value of the flag itself over the rights it is intended to represent.

This additional polarization is the last thing this nation needs given it is already up to its eyeballs in religious, political, racial and cultural polarization. No one appears to recall the famous words "united we stand, divided we fall."  So that our own internal divisions may be out ultimate security threat.

One letter appearing in The Denver Post yesterday had this to say about the issue of the national anthem at sports events, and caused me to wonder whether in fact it isn't time to drop it for most sports The key part - from James Aubrey of Denver - reads as follows:

"The deep source of my disappointment is the use of the national anthem to stir up an audience before a game of sport that doesn't have anything to do with national politics. 'The Star Spangled Banner' is appropriate enough at the Olympics, which immediately pits national teams against one another - but other athletic contests should be about athleticism, not patriotism. I'd like to see more separation between sport and state."

I believe he has made a sound point. This is apart from the fact most baseball and football fans don't really sing it anyway, they just mechanically mouth some of the words.  The fans already buying brats and beer at the concession stands don't even bother with that, they're more concerned with getting their snacks. And the ones in the rest room are more invested in voiding their bladders. "Anthem, what anthem, I gotta piss!" Let's not even get into the fact the song is inherently difficult to sing (few singers do it properly)  as pointed out recently by Prof. James McWhorter on 'AM Joy'. As he noted:

"As for the Star Spangled Banner, I don't care what anyone says, most people have not liked that song very much. It's difficult to sing and in a style that's frankly outdated  And all of a sudden it becomes this totem of being a moral American human being. when one poor man makes a statement about the most important racial issue of our time."

 MSNBC host Joy Reid observed, "it was written after the War of 1812 and has nothing to do with the founding of the country"

In other nations, say like Germany Austria and the UK, you seldom hear any anthems played at soccer matches or before a test cricket match. It just isn't done, it is uniquely American  - but one wonders why. It appears that over time (and faded memory)  it just became a habit, and is now  unthinkingly accepted as a natural part of a sports event.

You don't hear it before other events like the Academy Awards, so why baseball or football games?  Historically speaking, the first documented playing of the 'Star Spangled Banner' at a sporting event dates back to 1862.  But one is led to ask,  as Alan Watts might: At what specific event did it first become part of the national sporting fabric, such that it is now mechanically repeated each time?

Well, that appears to be the first game of the 1918 World Series, between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs (the Cubbies now nearly 100 years later contending for another Series' berth).  The time, recall, was near the end of World War I which had already been beset with propaganda thanks to Edward Bernays. 

Bernays  began his career in Woodrow Wilson's Committee on Public Information. The objective was to drumbeat millions of recalcitrants into seeing the need for War. War to 'make the world safe for democracy' - in the words forged by Bernays first PR hacks. Later, much later - PR firms and sales-marketing departments would use the CPI as a template for their own efforts to mold the American mass mind.

Of course, Bernays left much more of a foundation for manipulative deceit than merely the CPI. For example, in 1923 he published what became the official manifesto of all future public relations 'Crystallizing Public Opinion'. As the title implies, the basic goal was to drumbeat the maximum number of 'the masses' into a homogeneous and consistent consent. But do it without their awareness. The key was to frame the content in such a way the person would believe it to be 'common sense', or 'patriotism' to accept it.

In this vein, the playing of a "national anthem" at the nation's premier sporting event, fit the role nicely. A stirring song played by a band in the 7th inning, fed by sport fans' enthusiasm and swelling pride translated to fervor for World War I patriotism. What's not for a respectable warmonger to like?  Besides, the fans loved it! They sang along with gusto, and even the players stood at attention.  Observing carefully the reactions, Bosox owner Harry Frazee decided to move the pomp and pageantry to the pre-game by the time the Series switched to Boston. The 'die' had been cast.

Having beheld such a captive audience entranced by the anthem and the 'red, white and blue' it was but a small step to keep on doing it, repeating it including for other sports venues. No surprise it was augmented - literally - with the advent of World War II and loudspeakers at stadiums. In the words of Mark Clague, an expert on the 'Star Spangled Banner' at the University of Michigan:

"The ritual of the national anthem became part of the war effort on the home front and said that sport is committed to all things American. It defines sports as American."

In other words, it's good propaganda and we already know propaganda guts nuanced response in favor of engrained, single dimension reactions and beliefs. In other words, it's the ideal vehicle for the control and manipulation of the mass mind and its emotions.  Indeed, Bernays' definitive work was  'Propaganda' - whose principles were to be later adopted wholesale by Goebbels and Reifenstahl. It was in this book that the master betrayed his intent to control the minds of the masses:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country."

And here we see for the first time the term 'invisible government', which Bernays equates to 'the true ruling power of the country. Seen in this light, the anthem is a totem for propaganda and control of the mass mind. It is such that for those affected it literally eviscerates the power of reason and sober discrimination as it upends all the principles inherent in our constitution. As an example, consider this twaddle written by another letter write also on the same topic as the earlier one in The Post:

"I encourage Brandon Marshall to take a walk through Fort Logan cemetery where white tombstones stand for what they believed. They knew that when you no longer have a flag or an anthem you no longer have a country."

But, in truth, a piece of fabric - even colored red, white and blue - and a song (one written near the end of the War of 1812) absolutely do not make a country. Rather its people make a country and their conscious articulation of their rights, as enshrined in their Constitution. Because it is that abstract  document which defines the unique nature of the country and the extent of the identity via liberties it grants to its people.

Those who fail to see that, as the letter writer above, are propagandized and likely habituated to only react in a certain fixed way. They are the ones who have spawned much of the outcry at the new protests using the anthem - and with it more polarization. Since we can't expect them to change it is why we need to cease the anthem for our sporting events. As one commentator in TIME recently put it (Sept. 26, p. 18):

"If fans are going to react so strongly to someone kneeling during the anthem - as if that somehow signals a blow to America itself - it's time to re-evaluate how patriotic the gesture really is."

Alan Watts himself would argue such over-reacting people are substituting the fabric for the country, the symbol for reality. They are taking an artificial entity and inflating it to reality in the same way a mindless person in a restaurant might treat the image of a juicy steak on a menu as the real meat- cut it out and eat it (Another example Watts gives of "mistaking the map for the territory")

We can retain the anthem for the Olympics (sung after each of our wins, like in swimming or women's gymnastics) or for military and government convocations, events, displays. But we ought to ditch it for all other sporting events, lest the propagandists end up having the last laugh and converting the rest of us into semi-conscious automatons.

Bill Maher Skewers PC "Language Guide" - But There's More To It

Bill Maher, on Real Time Friday night, merits kudos for exposing a "bias free" language guide issued by the University of New Hampshire - ostensibly to entice students to take more care in their use of language - and strive for 'neutrality'. In fact, it has all the elements of political correctness,  directed more at hiding what things are (i.e.. reality) than clarifying.

Some of the examples Maher exposed:

Senior citizens is now replaced by "people of advanced age".

Sorry, but I will opt for senior citizens over that "advanced age" crap.

Poverty-stricken is now replaced by "experiencing poverty"

As Maher put it: "What the hell is the difference?"

Well, Bill, the bias-free bunch want the experiential emphasis to get us to accept poverty can be a temporary condition and hence only "experienced" for a time. This ignores the fact that for a distinct segment of society poverty does remain entrenched and there are no glorious ladders up and out of it.

Rich, is now replaced by "person of material wealth"

ROTFL! The aim here is clear: to remove what has become a derogatory (like "liberal" - converted to "progressive") and make it appear more resource neutral. Sorry, like Bill I ain't biting!

Obese, is now replaced by "people of size"

Are you kidding me? As Bill observed, "obese was the nice word". People of size? You mean like those forlorn folks shown on assorted Discovery specials with titles like "I once weighed 1,000 pounds" who have to be removed by fork lifts and trucks to be taken to hospital?

Point is "size" can mean any size, while obese simply means exceeding a specific threshold (30) defined by the BMI.

Tomboy is now replaced by "gender non-conforming"

Foreigner is now "international person"

Huh?  As Bill put it, "if this stuff didn't exist Rush Limbaugh would have to make it up - and he's already gotten fat and rich off 'liberal'."

While these examples provoke humor - and often some outrage- we must be mindful also of how language has been altered to achieve manipulation of minds, not just bias elimination.

The objective has been clear since the era of PR originator Edward Bernays, who wrote:. 'Crystallizing Public Opinion'. As the title implies, the basic goal was to drumbeat the maximum number of 'the masses' into a homogeneous and consistent consent. But do it without their awareness. Careful use of language was the means to do this, including subtly altering the usual meaning of words.

Five years later came Bernays' definitive work 'Propaganda' - embodying those principles  which were later adopted wholesale by Josef Goebbels and Leni Reifenstahl. It was in this book that the master betrayed his intents - if ever there was any doubt before:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country."

This is why one must always be aware of language use, given how it molds thought.  Not surprisingly the modern use of language alteration has also seeped in, again to try to bend minds toward acceptance. Some examples include:

"enhanced interrogation" for torture

"rendition" to remove someone to a hidden site for purposes of "enhanced interrogation"

"Collateral damage" - deaths caused to civilians when bombings or attacks are indiscriminately launched

And the classic:

"war on terror" - when one cannot make war on a mode or strategy. One makes war on a nation state.

Other examples of the uses of euphemism are well known - mostly employed by Republicans and conservatives for the purpose of mind-fucking, such as "DEATH taxes" for "estate taxes".

Also "entitlements" for Social Security and Medicare, when people have to actually pay in for the former (out of each paycheck) and have to pay nearly $250,000 over a lifetime for what Medicare doesn't cover, including dental care.

Then there is the more recent  use of"scandal" to replace "conspiracy". Thus, we are now supposed to accept "the Watergate scandal" as opposed to Watergate conspiracy, and the "Iran-Contra scandal" as opposed to Iran-Contra conspiracy. The effort here clearly to expunge the concept of political conspiracy from public consciousness.

Language alteration has even emerged in psychiatry - via the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM) - clearly in an effort to "medicalize" normal conditions thereby expanding the need for treatments and raising costs which our health care system can ill afford.  As Edward Shorter, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto,  put it ('Why Psychiatry Needs Therapy', WSJ, Feb. 27-28, 2010, p. W3):

"DSM-V accelerates the trend of making variants on the spectrum of everyday behavior into diseases: turning grief into depression, apprehension into anxiety and boyishness into hyperactivity"

Some examples:

Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria (a new definition for all children with outbursts of temper, i.e. any brat or rug rat pitching a temper tantrum)

"Intermittent explosive disorder" for episodic outbursts of extreme anger - like after your boss just fires you and says there'll be no severance pay and you have medical bills adding up

Minor Neuro-cognitive Disorder (Betrayed by any evidence of even mild cognitive decline from a previous level of performance.) Good luck to all those over 50 for whom this is expected!

Psychosis risk syndrome. the extension of paranoid schizophrenia to many more in the general population. Do you follow 'Info wars'? Then you likely have it.

Sex addiction is also under consideration for inclusion in the mental disorders, and these will be called "hyper-sexual disorder".

The more people are aware of language changes going on around them,  the more they will realize not all are benign or simply humorous - like the "bias free language-free guide".  Some are malicious or even malevolent, with the objective to fuck up your thought processes and get you to accept abominations like torture you otherwise wouldn't. Or reject needed revenue (estate taxes from the wealthy) because it's called "death taxes" and god knows you hate to tax anyone for their death!

John McAdams Tries To Rip My Review of Richard Charnin's JFK Book

McAdams about 18 years ago doing a fist bump after nearly destroying a usenet newsgroup on the JFK assassination with which he didn't agree. He's since been fired by Marquette Univ.

It appears known, long time JFK assassination conspiracy disinformationist, .John McAdams (he likes to write his name with a period in front - maybe as reminder to pause and remember which persona he will be for a day) didn't approve of my review of Richard Charnin's excellent book, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-jfk-assassination-book-all-serious.html

On one shilling -for- the- Warren Commission forum, McAdams claims to have tried to dig up material on me and learned:  "No academic appointment, he never had any job with any reputable scientific organizations - and has been an atheist for 25 years and written dozens of  articles in major newspapers and had  one-on-one debates with priests, ministers."

But if this is an indicator of his googling or research skills it shows he's beyond pathetic.  Even the most menial googler would have learned (from the All Experts site) that I've been an atheist 36 years (not that this has any relation to the JFK assassination)  and also written four atheist books, none of which McAdams mentions. But why should he have since the whole point was to demean my accomplishments and by extrapolation the book review.  Had he done more intense research as opposed to acting the part of a "hit man", however,  he might have learned I am an Emeritus member of the American Astronomical Society and a member of its Solar Physics and Dynamical Astronomy divisions. He'd  also have encountered my appointment at the Geophysical Institute - Space Physics Dept, over 1985-86 and also my appointment as a peer reviewer for the NSF in the 80s  - for space and solar physics papers.  Then my additional appointment to help in completing the most massive monograph on solar -terrestrial physics  yet published: The Solar -Terrestrial Predictions Proceedings (Meudon).  Oh, then there was my appt. as tenured physics lecturer at Harrison College, but I guess this was too "small fry" for McAdams to consider "reputable".

Conveniently, McAdams leaves out any mention of my physics books including the most recent 'Modern Physics: Notes, Problems and Solutions', and 'Selected Analyses in Solar Flare Plasma Dynamics'. But we give him a break here, because any dope that can't even correctly nail the number of years I've been an atheist assuredly wouldn't be able to grasp the use of the Landau contour - say applied to the 2-stream instability!

He then bellyaches that  "usually peer review means reviewed by a bone fide expert" - but two things here: 1) I never claimed the review was "peer-reviewed" from a "scholarly journal", and 2) I am most certainly a bona fide expert on the JFK assassination having already written one of the most extensive books of analysis ever: 'The JFK Assassination- The Final Analysis' based on more than 35 years' research.
-
To the point (1),  since the average peer- reviewed academic paper in a scholarly journal is only read by 0.12 people on average (stat from one American Physical Society survey) then why put it in such a limited venue when a more popular one assures far more readers? (And indeed, the link above for my blog review has now had over 160 hits  - not a lot - but I think 160 > 0.12!  Also, I have a review posted at amazon.com as well.)

Of course, all this deflection from the book review and huff and puff about me and my credentials is intended to buffalo readers who then won't stop to ask why this guy hasn't written a single sentence about the content of the book review.  As opposed to interjecting half-assed knowledge concerning my background, why  not instead show exactly where my use of Poisson statistics (and Charnin's by extension) is wrong?  How hard can that be IF you know what you're talking about? Why not criticize the probability basis and assumptions? Well, again, because it's much easier for a non-serious propaganda tool to use irrelevant smear tactics than to actually examine the book review and critique it!

But see, hit men and crank disinformationists like Johnny  Mac are only interested in put downs as a tool to distract readers from the truth and this has been McAdams M.O. from the time he darkened usenet JFK newsgroups with his Darth Vader persona.

Long before there was Twitter, Facebook or Blogs, there was something called Usenet where entities known as "newsgroups" sprang up to encourage debate and discussion on any number of issues, topics.  I had observed McAdams putdowns in the (un-moderated)  newsgroup alt. conspiracy.jfk for some months before actually engaging in a one on one exchange with him. This was concerning my REAL FAQ  that I had published in the newsgroup as an antidote to a pro-lone nut FAQ by frequent poster John Locke. 

In one particular and unforgettable confrontation, McAdams complained about my reference to Jackie “climbing over the limo trunk” in an effort to retrieve part of JFK’s blown out skull fragment (later inferred to be the Harper bone fragment retrieved by William Harper). He insisted "she wasn't climbing over anything" to which I then replied, "Ok, let's say she's moving across it to the rear - which shows a frontal shot".  He tried to "debunk"  this as well but a picture is worth a thousand words. And in the one below (from the Zapruder film - frames 313-14) readers can see the FACT of Jackie's trunk motion for themselves:


Now really, if a guy can't even admit reality when it's staring him in the bleeping face, why would one wish to trust him on anything?  No serious person should because a man who'd deny reality would deny anything  - and also stoop to say anything to serve his agenda.  I mean this turkey wasn't even able to get the number of years I've been an atheist correct! If he is going to use my atheism against me in an attack mode I'd at least expect him to get minimal facts correct, but even this was too much.

McAdams is such a liar and tool that even when presented with testimony from the "bible" (Warren Commission) he usually rigorously defends, he won't budge if he's been exposed as an ass.   For example, in conjunction with the issue of Jackie going across the limo trunk I added her Warren Commission Testimony (from Volume Five of the special hearings) where she says:

"You know, then, there were pictures later of me climbing out the back, but I don't remember that at all."

And from her secret testimony (excised from original version), op. cit., p. 16:

"I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I suppose there must have been. But from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on."

 But once again, this jackass McAdams disputed the WC sources and said Jackie also must have been mistaken, as there was no time at which she climbed across the trunk. SO much for  .John's "debunking" which is largely a matter of denying reality.  The trouble is, when one denies reality there is no way to support his claims.

Perhaps the best information ever assembled on John McAdams (nee, “Paul Nolan”) was put together by Jim Hargrove. The basic thrust was to answer questions concerning McAdams and his background because it so much seems to fit the sort of CIA assets described in the CIA document 1035-960.

When McAdams blabbed (as he did in one forgettable  TIME  mini-interview in Nov. 2013) : "These people think the CIA cares about them. It does not!"

He misses the point. It isn't that the CIA "cares about" anyone personally, but only to the extent it can disrupt their discussions in assorted forums discussing the assassination.  Thus conforming to the words in the CIA document  1035-960 that explicitly state as one primary objective:  "To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics".

How can this be reconciled with a guy who "just likes to brawl"? Well, if brawling consumes more time than useful communication about facts (like Jackie's limo trunk action) and files (like Oswald's  201-289248 CI/SIG) than one can say the objective has been achieved.

If McAdams has at any time been a real CIA propaganda asset, it makes sense one of his first obligations would be to neutralize any outlets for serious JFK assassination discussion he doesn’t control (like his moderated newsgroup). Thus his intrusions into the un-moderated group shed definite light on his intentions.  Consider, for example, this post from  McAdams, Date: 14 Feb 1997 22:17:02 -0700:

“You buffs have been cooperating marvelously with my scheme to make this group a shambles. And you know the bizarre part? My scheme is not a secret. I have publicly announced it. I have made it perfectly obvious.  I have rubbed you buffs' noses in it. It's blatantly obviously to everybody.”
.John

Hmmmmmm......sounds like a fuckin' CIA asset to me. 

Now, let’s clear our heads and think about this a bit: Would a normal everyday professor of Political Science be doing these things?  Spending 8-12 hours a day on usenet newsgroups to sow chaos?  Would he be bragging about leaving a Usenet newsgroup a “shambles”?  It doesn’t add up.  Any real prof worth his salt would be working on research to submit for publication to a peer-reviewed journal, not acting the part of an overgrown adolescent  (with anger issues)  for most of every day!


Jim Hargrove, in his “McAdams FAQ” provides the Charter Policy written by McAdams himself for his own moderated group. Reading its first paragraph sheds a lot of light:

CHARTER AND MODERATION POLICY

This group will be for the purpose of providing an area for serious discussion and research of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The group will be moderated to prevent the noise and chronic personal attacks which have plagued alt.conspiracy.jfk and made it nearly useless as a vehicle for intelligent research. Questions surrounding JFK's death have made this one of the most talked about and controversial issues of our generation. This will be the one usenet group which deals seriously with this important topic.

But as Hargrove observes:

“One supposes that since the noise and chronic personal attacks which have plagued the alt.conspiracy.jfk group were and are part of McAdams freely admitted plans to turn the group into a shambles, the moderated group can only be seen as his personal vehicle for selective manipulation of content”

Which is totally logical, and again, it comports with CIA doc. 1035-960!  Hargrove then quotes McAdams from a letter written to The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

“(Dr) Gary Aguilar accused me on the politics forum of being 

A CIA sponsored disinformationist because I was once the 

Marquette Official representative of the I.C.P.S.R. an utterly

 unspooky social science data archive.”

In truth, The ICPSR is housed in the Institute for

Social Research, or ISR, which itself  has been documented

as a recipient of “spook” (e.g. CIA) research grants.

 They also have a webpage:

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/

Which the interested reader can explore for himself. My own take is that it could easily be a CIA  (Clandestine Operations) front for  psy-ops intelligence operations which could easily include anti-conspiracy propaganda. We already know that the founder of American Propaganda – Edward Bernays – was steeped in the social sciences and firmly believed the public was too irrational to entrust to its own thought and conclusions and therefore had to be manipulated toward specific directions. In his own words: 

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized 

habits and opinions of masses is an important element in 

democratic society”

What better way to do that than from a networked academic consortium –

 interwoven into all the  social sciences – with access to a central data clearinghouse

 that’s amassed everything from the   latest frequency of teen pregnancies, to

 homicides by race or gender, or assorted other historical   arcania. It’s literally

 a propagandist’s dream.

Those who prefer to demur to think about this need to read Chris Hedges, 'Empire of Illusion'.

Hedges has warned (, p. 129):

 "Psychologists, in and out of government, have learned how to manipulate social behavior. "

He goes on to note that such manipulation has as its primary objective an adherence to conformity, especially of thought. (The cult of "positive psychology" is particularly involved in this, but psychologists are also part of the CIA's ongoing psych agenda, as first demonstrated in "Operation Mockingbird")

Clearly, McAdams - his mindless minions and his pathetic pseudo-history site - are part of the axis of the "unspeakable" ,  using the term from James Douglass book, JFK and the Unspeakable. Douglass notes it was originally coined by the monk,  Thomas Merton, to refer to the unspeakable evil of deliberate denial of the truth. In this case,  behind one of the most dastardly crimes ever committed - and against we, the American people.

John McAdams has a lot to answer for, at least as much as the climate change deniers who've taken our planet to the precipice by their dissembling. In McAdams' case, he's deliberately helped to smother the truth  concerning JFK's murder, while character-assassinating sundry truth tellers, enabling a festering national sore to persist over a half century.

See also:

https://ceabbate.wordpress.com/recent-controversy/

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/05/educating-australian-bloke-on-basic.html

Students, Teachers Fight Against "Vanilla" AP History in Colorado

As I noted in a previous blog post (April 26, 2013) I have little or no use for local school boards. They are politicized creatures and are part of what is degrading the educational system in the U.S. In the referenced blog post, for example, I cited way too much interference by School Boards- low level politicos and hacks - whose primary objective is to impose THEIR agenda on schools and dumb down kids.

This was the first thing that struck me on return to the U.S.in 1992 : the degree of interference in all manner of school policies, even choice of textbooks and curricula. School boards thereby sought to imprint their schools with their own biased slants, agendas and beliefs. Obviously, such micro-managed oversight kills innovation and creativity in its tracks, not to mention the ability of students to achieve an objective insight into the objects of their inquiry..

Now, as if to reinforce this, the battle is on in Jefferson County, Colorado - after a misbegotten local school board has seen fit to try to revamp AP History. This has triggered protests from thousands of students who want their history straight - not perverted, "positivized" or rendered like mush. The teachers also are in full revolt as they should be, since no teacher worth his or her salt ought to bend over to replace genuine history content with PR, and mischievous malarkey. That leads inevitably to the swill we behold from clowns like Larry Schweikart and his  '48 Liberal Lies About American History - when he's the one doing the lying!

Anyway, here's the backstory: like 6 other states Colorado law allows local school boards to override school districts and impose their own history content, such as for AP studies, courses.  Taking advantage of this, the Jefferson County school board held a closed door meeting (wherein most nefarious deeds get hatched) last Thursday.

At the meeting, Board Vice President Julie Williams proposed that a committee be formed to review the current Advanced Placement History Curriculum and change it. She wrote in her goofy proposal:

"Materials should not encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law. Instructional materials should present positive aspects of the United States and its heritage."

Of course, thinking teachers and students mocked this gibberish via Twitter. Two of the tweets:

"Roe vs. Wade was about the best way to cross a river."

"The Declaration of Independence refers to a song by Beyoncé"


These takes are spot on, given if one only teaches the positive aspects of American History one ends up with propaganda, muddled bilge or worse,  pabulum fit only for kindergarteners, and no genuine comprehension of the opposing forces that shaped our history. How, for example, would you portray the Civil War? As just a bunch of opposing armies getting together to sing songs and sign agreements?

If the JeffCo proposal were to succeed, students would never learn about:

- The basis for the American Revolution, or be allowed to read Thomas Paine's fiery 'Common Sense'

- The Haymarket Massacre and the influence of labor unions in U.S, history

- The Civil War and its bloodiest battles such as Shiloh and Antietam

- The Sand Creek Massacre and the betrayal by the U.S. gov't of its signed treaties with the Indians - to take their land.

- The use of propaganda by Edward Bernays to goad the U.S. into WWI

- The assassination of John Kennedy and the role of the CIA, national security state.

- The pretext for the Vietnam War in the Tonkin Gulf Resolution wherein it was falsely claimed that the U.S. fired in N. Vietnamese gunboats in international waters after being fired on first.

- The false pretext for the Iraq war and "Operation Iraqi Freedom"  pushed by Bush, Cheney and the Neocons like Paul Wolfowitz,

The omission of any or all of these would reduce AP history in JeffCo to mush, suitable only for history dummies and  FOX News broadcasters, but not serious students of history. Worse, it would instill false consciousness in any student that accepts it, see e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/09/class-consciousness-or-false.html

Let's also be aware it was propagandist and PR maestro Edward Bernays himself who wrote in his booklet, Propaganda:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.”


If the curriculum proposed by the JeffCo School Board and Julie Williams doesn't follow Bernays' odious playbook, then I don't know what does.

As for civil disobedience, as one Denver Post letter writer put it (Sept. 24):

"We have seen throughout our history that acts of civil disobedience such as the American Revolution, the labor movement, women's rights, and the civil rights movements often spur needed change."

Indeed! So if Rosa Parks had just sat like a zombie and never moved to the front of that bus in Alabama, there never would have been a bus boycott or much else. She knew she had to choose civil disobedience and in doing so helped create history.  If Martin Luther King had not led marches in Selma and Montgomery, same thing. Ditto for the revolutionaries dumping tea into Boston Harbor. Similarly, if all the Vietnam War protestors had just watched TV all day that illegal war might have gone on years longer with many thousands more deaths.

It follows that schools must therefore not be repositories of false facts or omitted events, lest they become vehicles for creating mere consumers as opposed to citizens, As authors D. Stanley Eitzen and Maxine Baca-Zinn note in their wonderful book, 'In Conflict and Order', p. 443:


"The schools perform several vital functions for the maintenance of the prevailing social, political and economic order.  Through their curricula, testing, and bureaucratic control, and emphasis on competition, the schools reflect the social class 'structure' of society  by processing youth to fit into economic slots similar to those of their parents.."

 Schools thereby became  Agents of Corporate False Consciousness.

Now with actual deliberate AP history curriculum changes proposed, with a conscious effort to hide or blind students to their nation's actual history, the costs and stakes have become much higher. We are now very near, in JeffCo, to what the German students suffered during the reign of Hitler and the Third Reich: the selective  'canned' teaching of history to promote and emphasize "patriotism and respect for authority" over historical truth.  

As D. Stanley EItzen and Ms. Baca-Zinn have observed(ibid.) , respect for authority (the "order" paradigm)  has its place but not in all  arenas and venues.  If one only conformed to authority no change would ever come. Rosa Parks would have remained in her place and not violated "authority" by moving to the front of a bus in Montgomery.  Martin Luther King would have remained in his church and wrote sermons and never taken to the streets.  Vietnam protestors would have stayed in their university classrooms and never made a single protest sign or marched. Oh, and a President like JFK would never have printed $4.2 billion in U.S. Notes outside the Federal Reserve system,  e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/07/yes-those-us-notes-were-real.html

or sought a rapprochement with Fidel Castro (including secretly sending medical aid, etc.) while his Joint Chiefs wanted to oust the Cuban leader.

Stephanie Rossi, who teaches AP History at a Jefferson County school put it very well this morning when interviewed on CBS Early Show:

"If we can't talk about the struggles that people go through history, to gain a greater equality, a greater America how can we convey a true story and a complete picture to our students?"

In fact, we cannot, and would only be left with a pseudo-history more to the liking of the Larry Schwiekarts of the world and their clueless followers. 

Fortunately, the protests have forced the JeffCo board members to table the proposal for now but every real citizen needs to pay attention to see if the board will try again to sneak them through.