Pentagon Papers, '08
THE TRUTH ABOUT TV MILITARY ANALYSIS OF
WAR NEWS
And How the Reptile Mind Rules
I.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html
April 20, 2008
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
By David Barstow
In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantanamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.
The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.
Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.
Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Gonzales Hadley.
In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.
A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.
“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.
Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.
As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.
“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”
II. Reptile minds feed on blood
A. see "Cheney Speaks to the Reptile Mind".
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0817-13.htm
B. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051002115557.htm
First Evidence Of Brain Abnormalities Found In Pathological Liars
ScienceDaily (Oct. 2, 2005) —
A University of Southern California study has found the first proof of structural brain abnormalities in people who habitually lie, cheat and manipulate others.
While previous research has shown that there is heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex – the area of the brain that enables most people to feel remorse or learn moral behavior – when normal people lie, this is the first study to provide evidence of structural differences in that area among pathological liars.
.....
Pathological liars can't always tell truth from falsehood and contradict themselves in an interview. They are manipulative and they admit they prey on people. They are very brazen in terms of their manner, but very cool when talking about this."
.....
It's almost mind reading. You have to be able to understand the mindset of the other person. You also have to suppress your emotions or regulate them because you don't want to appear nervous. There's quite a lot to do there. You've got to suppress the truth.
"Our argument is that the more networking there is in the prefrontal cortex, the more the person has an upper hand in lying. Their verbal skills are higher. They've almost got a natural advantage."
******
C. The reptile mind constantly sniffs the air and scans the neighborhood for threats to territory and security (enemy: fight or flight), and pussy (rape). These enter consciousness as signals, devoid of distracting quality but attuned to smell. Thus, the upper cortical brain systems receive signals to ATTACK! (aggressively defend) or SCREW!. The behavioral manifestations of these may be indistinguishable. For those with foreheads full of white instead of grey matter nothing evokes remorse of conscience so they seem smarter, know how to deal with the smells (btw, episodes of epidemic mass hysteria are often triggered by someone smelling a strange odor in the classroom, gym, etc.)
The WHIGS in the White House (really Tories; leetle joke there) and OSP (Office of Special Plans) in the Pentagon were the smart "masterminds" of The Reptile. This passed through the minds of Blackwater contractors, Renditionists, Military TV analysts and vampire Fox News personnel.
<>
Then, after putting the military puppets on TV, trot-line trolls are assigned to monitor blog sites with key forums whose job is to reduce whatever issues come along to reptile brain categories; others will slap a Mosaic distinction onto some schizoid declaration (split-off half truth), and there you will have it once more.
****
1. Some of us were able to figure out what was going on, instinctively understanding its falsehood by the sheer fishiness and constant gaps in the story. Finally a gut reaction to "oh no, not another..." sets in as the on going process spreads, deepens, saturates and poisons the atmosphere.
2. In the three brain-center analysis of consciousness proposed here, Brain 3, the Reptile, goes directly to Brain 1, the intellectual, by-passing Brain 2, the feeling/emotional or "soul" brain. It's site would be the locus coerulous; this would link to the portion of the neocortex shown in the Yang-Riale USC experiments to be a conditioning factor in feeling remorse. Both resonating would constitute experiencing remorse-of-conscience, for those who can. .
3. Impulses from signals from Brain 3 (Freud's Id) compete in Brain 1 (Ego) with the impulses proceeding from the mammalian brain, with a different agenda for completing their function (generally speaking, those of gestation and motherhood (Jung's Anima). The agency Freud called "superego", a conceptual development from the notion of "Ego Ideal", i.e., what is early-on internalized as the way a child wants to see themselves, and to judge themselves by -- often harshly -- through the parental imagos. The psychodynamic
'pull' between the SuperEgo and the Id, as an inner struggle, is the choice Brain 1 makes in response to Brain 2's impulse to completion. This would be intellectual center chosing the soul for completion through (Ego) consciousness ("sublimtion") vs, subordination of its choices to reptilian ends. In other terms, this would be the Way of the Father, reflected through the Sun, source of Warmth (origin of myth of snake-sun worship); confluent with the Way of the Mother, reflected through the Moon (origin of myth of metaphysical Lunar/female periodicity). The confluence of these two streams of brain processes, Animus and Anima in Jung's analytic psychology. Over time, taken to extremes converting into their opposite, a latent personal individuality blending both is born. A child of the Divine Wedding.
4. THESE REFUTATIONS CANNOT CONTINUE TO BE IGNORED
WAR NEWS
And How the Reptile Mind Rules
I.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html
April 20, 2008
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
By David Barstow
In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantanamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.
The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.
Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.
Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Gonzales Hadley.
In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.
A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.
“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.
Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.
As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.
“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”
II. Reptile minds feed on blood
A. see "Cheney Speaks to the Reptile Mind".
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0817-13.htm
B. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051002115557.htm
First Evidence Of Brain Abnormalities Found In Pathological Liars
ScienceDaily (Oct. 2, 2005) —
A University of Southern California study has found the first proof of structural brain abnormalities in people who habitually lie, cheat and manipulate others.
While previous research has shown that there is heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex – the area of the brain that enables most people to feel remorse or learn moral behavior – when normal people lie, this is the first study to provide evidence of structural differences in that area among pathological liars.
.....
Pathological liars can't always tell truth from falsehood and contradict themselves in an interview. They are manipulative and they admit they prey on people. They are very brazen in terms of their manner, but very cool when talking about this."
.....
It's almost mind reading. You have to be able to understand the mindset of the other person. You also have to suppress your emotions or regulate them because you don't want to appear nervous. There's quite a lot to do there. You've got to suppress the truth.
"Our argument is that the more networking there is in the prefrontal cortex, the more the person has an upper hand in lying. Their verbal skills are higher. They've almost got a natural advantage."
******
C. The reptile mind constantly sniffs the air and scans the neighborhood for threats to territory and security (enemy: fight or flight), and pussy (rape). These enter consciousness as signals, devoid of distracting quality but attuned to smell. Thus, the upper cortical brain systems receive signals to ATTACK! (aggressively defend) or SCREW!. The behavioral manifestations of these may be indistinguishable. For those with foreheads full of white instead of grey matter nothing evokes remorse of conscience so they seem smarter, know how to deal with the smells (btw, episodes of epidemic mass hysteria are often triggered by someone smelling a strange odor in the classroom, gym, etc.)
The WHIGS in the White House (really Tories; leetle joke there) and OSP (Office of Special Plans) in the Pentagon were the smart "masterminds" of The Reptile. This passed through the minds of Blackwater contractors, Renditionists, Military TV analysts and vampire Fox News personnel.
<
Then, after putting the military puppets on TV, trot-line trolls are assigned to monitor blog sites with key forums whose job is to reduce whatever issues come along to reptile brain categories; others will slap a Mosaic distinction onto some schizoid declaration (split-off half truth), and there you will have it once more.
****
1. Some of us were able to figure out what was going on, instinctively understanding its falsehood by the sheer fishiness and constant gaps in the story. Finally a gut reaction to "oh no, not another..." sets in as the on going process spreads, deepens, saturates and poisons the atmosphere.
2. In the three brain-center analysis of consciousness proposed here, Brain 3, the Reptile, goes directly to Brain 1, the intellectual, by-passing Brain 2, the feeling/emotional or "soul" brain. It's site would be the locus coerulous; this would link to the portion of the neocortex shown in the Yang-Riale USC experiments to be a conditioning factor in feeling remorse. Both resonating would constitute experiencing remorse-of-conscience, for those who can. .
3. Impulses from signals from Brain 3 (Freud's Id) compete in Brain 1 (Ego) with the impulses proceeding from the mammalian brain, with a different agenda for completing their function (generally speaking, those of gestation and motherhood (Jung's Anima). The agency Freud called "superego", a conceptual development from the notion of "Ego Ideal", i.e., what is early-on internalized as the way a child wants to see themselves, and to judge themselves by -- often harshly -- through the parental imagos. The psychodynamic
'pull' between the SuperEgo and the Id, as an inner struggle, is the choice Brain 1 makes in response to Brain 2's impulse to completion. This would be intellectual center chosing the soul for completion through (Ego) consciousness ("sublimtion") vs, subordination of its choices to reptilian ends. In other terms, this would be the Way of the Father, reflected through the Sun, source of Warmth (origin of myth of snake-sun worship); confluent with the Way of the Mother, reflected through the Moon (origin of myth of metaphysical Lunar/female periodicity). The confluence of these two streams of brain processes, Animus and Anima in Jung's analytic psychology. Over time, taken to extremes converting into their opposite, a latent personal individuality blending both is born. A child of the Divine Wedding.
4. THESE REFUTATIONS CANNOT CONTINUE TO BE IGNORED
posted by Sid Thomas | 10:33 PM
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