Running On Empty...

Looking Backwards:

This article was written almost a year ago and talks about
the use of fear to gain control of a person, a society, a country.
If you didn't read it before, it's well worth reading now...

The Power of Fear….

Buried inside the Times on Saturday, when readership is lowest, the NY Times reported on a conference held at the New School in New York City devoted to the subject of fear and how it can be used as a mechanism for propaganda and political manipulation.
A number of speakers presented their points of view ranging from political scholars like George Katab and Ira Katznelson to the professions including such highly acknowledged authorities in the practice of law as professor Cass R. Sunstein. Organized by the journal Social Text and its editor Arien Mack, the introductory speech was given by Al Gore, former Vice President.

Gore raised the level of indictment of this government by asserting that the occasion of 9-11 was used to instill fear allowing Bush to control the population. The Conference speakers went on to point out that fear was employed in the past as a mechanism of propaganda to motivate support for WWII after Pearl Harbor effort and to get people to work harder. The Conference included talks on the social psychology of fear in literature and varied analyses of Bush adventurism from critics like the Nation columnist Eric Alterman and Aryah Never, the president of the Open Society Institute.

Overall, the dominant theme that emerged from the Conference was the fact that fear was being “encouraged by our government and exacerbated by our media.” Al Gore pointed out that we are being run by a powerful clique that had a ‘determined disinterest in the facts” who abused the trust of the American by manipulating their fears.

He explained how other Americans who disagreed [with the government’s findings] were thought of as “agents of treason.” Further, Mr. Gore pointed out that “the machinery of fear is out in the open, operating at full throttle [in the US today].”

Mr. Kateb, an emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, saw a conspiracy at work. He compared the president to a ‘despot.’ As he pointed out, the American government is using the war on terror “to justify the national security state.”

In its insistence on showing the other side, the NYTimes really stretched in order to underscore the extreme right’s position on the dangers to a society posed by operating without concern for fear.

The Avenging Rabbit...