Review: The Telescreen – An Empirical and Philosophical Study of the Destruction of Consciousness in America

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Communications, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Public), Iraq, Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
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Jeffrey Grupp

5.0 out of 5 stars You need a brain to read this book; if you have one, the book will scare you,February 17, 2012

I have been keeping in touch with “alternative” sources for some time, ever since I realized in about 1988 that neither the US secret intelligence world nor the US media were at all reliable — they are each very good at what they choose to do, but that does not include the public interest.

The author refers very often to his 2007 book, Corporatism: The Secret Government of the New World Order, to the point that I do recommend that be bought and read before this book.

I am hugely impressed by this author. He does detailed, meticulously documented research and the presentation is excellent. I especially like footnotes I can see while reading the body instead of endnotes.

The author makes only one mistake I am certain of, when he describes me as a very high-ranking CIA officer. I was not. I was a GS-12, the equivalent of a Major, and despite being selected for Mid-Career Course 101 (the CIA mini-war college), I was controversial. When the Marine Corps offered me a two-grade promotion to GM-14 to create the Marine Corps Intelligence Center, I jumped. I am a very outspoken former CIA officer who NEVER violates his lifetime secrecy agreement, but who is very outspoken and perhaps the foremost proponent for intelligence reform toward transparency, truth, and trust using legal and ethical open sources and engaging in multinational information-sharing and sense-making.

I think so much of this book that in addition to the ten links that Amazon allows here, I am creating a testimonial to this author by adding to my copy of the review as posted to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, a complete list, with links to all of the cited books–and there are many.

Everything in this book resonates with me, including the very scary detailed documentation of how humans, who have uniquely huge brains not necessarily evolved from chimpanzees, are being “dumbed down” with great deliberation, by a combination of food, medicine, television and other media, and really rotten rote education. See also: Poisons on Our Plates: The Real Food Safety Problem in the United States (Politics and the Environment) and Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling

I am shocked by the author's suggestion that the various school shootings are staged, part of a larger plan to eventually disarm the public. While I am not sure I agree with this, I do see how the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11 were part of a larger mosaic of make it happen or let it happen. See also: Harvest Of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Only The Beginning and 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA.

The author covers Iraq as an example of brainwashing. While I am personally familiar with the 935 lies that are documented at Truthdig and discussed in Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq, this book is for me largely a detailed documented indictment of all media, media that creates distracting non-news rather than discovering or covering real world news. The author is especially strong (and surprises me) with his detailed indictment of both the History Channel and the National Georgraphic Channel, two of my favorites. On the specific points he makes, he is compelling.

The author considers both Al Al Qaeda and Hezbollah to be creations of the CIA. I have no direct knowledge, but from secondary reading I can certainly see how CIA has a history of doing very bad things. See for example: Edward Lansdale's Cold War (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War) and Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.

Two lists are provided in the book, each item with its own explanation — buy the book.

Eight Cultural Features of the USA
01 We are suspicious of each other
02 We are uncritical thinkers
03 We are feafrul
04 We trust authority
05 We have short memories (of lies told)
06 We are entertainment-oriented
07 We are uninterested in learning about reality
08 We are addicts

Ten Tools of Brainwashing
01 Ignoring details
02 “Straw person” claims or “adjustments”
03 Using famous people and TV personalities to convey distorted or false picture
04 Flat-out deny evidence
05 Change the subject (and do so in a non-obvious way)
06 Load up the news with non-news, and with tabloid and soap opera stories
07 Cover stories or debates that are not at the heart of the matter, or that are completely irrelevant
08 Get an “expert” on television to express a belief (i.e. to confidently express a non-evidential account)
09 Create a contradiction
10 Name-calling

The section on how the corporate state is taking over the patriot and truth movements is troubling, but when the author points out that Ann Coulter is supporting Ron Paul, I lose all respect for Ron Paul. Now that is SCARY. I have been tracking the Republican primary fraud, and all evidence now points to total fraud and to a deliberately dead-locked convention that nominates Jeb Bush. Both Romney and Ron Paul are being played, in my view, but even if Romney is elected, one look at his foreign policy advisers made clear to me that he will be both irrelevant as a President, and listening to the wrong people.

QUOTE (146): The fight is the fight for the truth. I have my own new book coming out, THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, and Trust {I am not allowed to link to it), and frankly, this author scares me in the sense that I have been treating public intelligence as a challenge but not been contemplating the reality that the last thing the corporate state wants is public intelligence.

The author slams Chomsky for avoiding the half of the truth that would call into question the corporate state. I read Chomsky and credit him and his co-author with the original work on this topic, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, so I am a bit taken aback, but I have no doubt of the author's formidable skills at both research and at presenting his findings.

The book ends with a call for organized NON-VIOLENCE, for a national movement to become self-sufficient (the avant guard calls that sustainable resilience), and for a national movement to strive toward educating the public in ways that are not now possible via our rote schools and corrupt media.

The author's bibliography is WORLD-CLASS, and I am so impressed by it that I am going to spend a couple of hours replicating that bibliography, with links to the Amazon page for each of his cited sources. I cannot do that here, so look for it at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.

All in all, a very good read — and an afterthought–this book was published in 2009, it forecast the hyberinflation that we are about to experience, a hyperinflation that is deliberate and perhaps moving toward a single global currency. I personally do not think it will happen, but I am concerned about the possibility that even Brazil, China, and Russia may be under a form of central banking and banking family control. 2012 may or may not be the transformative year we all hope for, but it is certainly helped along by this book. Buy it share it. My copy is going to the Oakton Virginia Public Library.

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To Be Added: Bibliography with links

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