Richard K. Moore retired from Silicon Valley in 1994 and moved to Ireland, and since then has been trying to understand “how the world works.” That’s quite a task, not unlike trying to understand plate tectonics while standing in a corn field in Iowa. There is only so much the human mind can grasp. By definition all of our understandings of the complicated human affairs around us are reductionist. Still, we must try.

Moore’s piece from late last year, Mind Control: Orwell, Huxley, and Today’s Reality, has sat in my basket for quite a while, Post-It flags sticking out of it like quills on a porcupine. Here are a few insightful passages:

One of the first large-scale deployments of cult technology, informed by this [mind control, aka MKULTRA] research, was the creation of the Jihad movement by the CIA. The immediate purpose was to destabilize the Soviet regime, by tying it down in a quagmire in Afghanistan. This operation was quite successful. Since then, the Jihad cult movement – aka Taliban, Al Qaeda, Kosovo Liberation Army, ISIS, etc. – has proven to be an extremely useful tool for the purpose of destabilizing regimes, in pursuit of US geopolitical objectives. These destabilization operations in turn provide an excuse for direct US intervention, as we’ve seen recently in Libya and Iraq, and as we may soon see in Syria.

It is perhaps best not to hit you, dear reader, which such a far-reaching idea so early on. It would help to read the whole article, a mere 4,000 words or so. But indeed, the CIA after after World War II did embark on mind control experimentation, leading to psychiatric abuses rivaling anything credited to the Nazis, and experimentation with drugs, including introduction of LSD into the mainstream consciousness during the 1960’s.

That is more or less where I left off, and Moore now fills the picture for me. I knew that Jonestown was a cult experiment followed by a mass murder (not suicide). To what end I could not fathom. To begin to broaden my picture, and see the Jihad movements, color revolutions, and now ISIS, as the result of decades of research and experimentation by our spooks … is not comforting. But it does speak to the nature of people, the need to follow, trusting that someone has better and deeper knowledge. We are tribal beasts.

We see this same multi-cult dynamic operating in the US, in the divisiveness between liberals and conservatives. Liberals are kept in the fold by stories of conservative folly, and conservatives are kept in the fold by stories of liberal folly. In a propaganda-only system of control, there would be one party line for everyone. In this multi-cult system, there are two party lines, which we might characterize as CNN vs. FOX.

While the two party lines have many differences, in order to keep the two cults separated, they in fact share basic essentials in common. They both sustain the myth that state policy is a response to public sentiment, and they blame the other cult for providing support for the ‘bad’ policies. In fact US policy is made outside of government, by financial elites, and the state aims to control public sentiment, not respond to it. In this way we can see CNN and FOX as collaborators, sharing the common goal of hiding this fundamental truth from the people. The Democratic and Republican parties collaborate toward this same goal, using Congress as a stage, where they carry on a theater of divisiveness, providing the appearance of a democratic decision-making process.

This part I get. I used to watch the Daily Show religiously every evening, taking delight in the crisp, smart humor. But then I thought … who listens to this stuff but the choir? FOX followers, the object of much of the humor, don’t watch the Daily Show. They are busy talking about liberals, making fun of them in the same manner, though FOX people are not very funny. Still, it is inner-directed group reinforcing behavior, nothing more, solidifying group identification and that of the enemy.

The Barack Obama phenomenon provides an excellent example of cult tactics in action. Obama himself is obviously a natural cult leader, articulate and charismatic. He came onto the scene offering an inspiring core belief in deep reform, “The ground of politics has changed; Yes we Can!”. The dramatic effect was intense, as if we were witnessing the Second Coming. Campaign volunteers became the core of the budding Obama cult, and they were given lots of work to do, binding their identity to Obama and his professed mission. … The success of this mind-control operation was truly amazing. Obama in fact proceeded to carry on and expand everything Bush had been doing; the ground of politics hadn’t changed at all. But the cult binding was so strong that his support continued, by the very people who had hated Bush because of the same policies. Packaged arguments were put forward, to keep people in the cult, blaming Obama’s performance on Republican opposition – the standard divisiveness tactic. Even today there remain legions of Obama loyalists. Once bound to a cult, leaving becomes psychologically difficult.

Well, I have no doubt lost all readers by this point, so I’ll write the rest of this to myself. No worries about offending anyone.

Mormons are a cult. Any religion is, but Mormons are the best example because they openly practice what others do only subtly, indoctrinating their youth, expelling any bad-thinkers, and making sure that the authority of the Elders is never, ever questioned. We all know about that. The thing that strikes me about the Mormons that I know is that they are so goddamned happy. They don’t have to think.

There’s another word that Moore uses that struck me as useful: Immunization. I know about this, having been brought up Catholic. Not only was I indoctrinated, I was immunized. Anyone who spoke against Catholics was doing the work of the devil, and I knew to avoid them.

There is another form of immunization going on in our society, and it is aimed at the likes of me and Moore and any others who have freed their minds, escaped, so to speak. It is the “conspiracy theory meme.” Moore writes quite a few paragraphs about it. Here is his close:

Thus for the majority of the population we have a tightly controlled, two-tier, mind-control regime. The thoughtcrime dynamic governs what the media says, and the conspiracy-theory dynamic immunizes people against other views. For the majority, the party line (either CNN or FOX) is ‘truth’, as in Orwell’s world, but without the need for Big Brother’s extreme methods.

Thus do I marvel at the mountains of important writing and research done by smart people with inquiring minds and scholarly habits, and how people who imagine themselves smart instantly reject and avoid it as a “conspiracy theory.” Thus is our most important information hidden in broad daylight. That is an amazing thought control accomplishment.

It is sheer genius. There’s no winning in our greater Latter Day Saint world. We’re mostly Mormons in the spirit. Consequently, I don’t worry about convincing people, converting people, or doing anything to advance the cause of free thought.

You either get it, or you don’t. If you do, then you understand what I am about to say: Life is beautiful, interesting, and intriguing. It is fun. And we cannot be fixed.

Life is interesting. I don’t know how to get that across to people who are living down below, down in that place where truth is handed you on a platter, where nothing is understood until explained by a two-dimensional talking head possessed of a one-dimensional brain. I wonder what it was like before television.

We reflect our environment. Americans have no reason to wonder why they revere certain facial structures, such as Lincoln or Washington, and abhor others, such as Hitler or Osama bin Laden. They don’t realize that it is merely stimuli used to control their thoughts.

Perhaps two thousand years ago, certain leaders realized the state of the average human, and sought to bring order to chaos by introducing fables and symbols. No one understood the nature of the sun, the giver of life, so it became a god, the big deity alongside other minor ones like the moon (Meres, or Mary), the five wandering planets. Each year in the northern hemisphere, where most of us live, the sun would each day move further away on the horizon, and it got cold and plants withered and died. It kept moving away, but then stopped, and appeared by optical illusion to rest in place for three days. And then journey back. The son rose again.

Without that return journey, humans were doomed. The solstice was a celebration of the son’s return. People imagined it had faces and personality and powers, and that it even cared about us.

Roman leaders realized that if they could place human faces on those symbols that people would bow to people instead of planets, and could thereby be controlled. Thus did the Roman empire adopt Christianity as the one true religion, destroying all the remnants of any other it could find, along with the people who believed otherwise.

It’s a practice that repeats in other parts of life. Concepts that are too large for the average mind to grasp, like security in resources, elimination of underclasses, encirclement of potential enemies, and power for its own sake – no leader will appear on the TV screen and admit these to be the true objectives of wars and conquests. Instead, human faces have to be put on the concepts, making them into deities of a sort. In recent times, the desire to control resources became Osama bin Laden, the need to eliminate lesser beings the hooded “terrorist,” and the encirclement of potential enemies is now called “Putin.” These symbols become our reality, sublimely suggested to us day in and out on our electronic screens. Thus are our minds under control of the state.

We’ve had a bit of a blog kerfuffle these past few days over the attacks in France, whatever substance lie beneath. It’s mere imagery, the use of the “terrorist”, the mindless robot who kills without reason and out of sheer hatred and who therefore must be himself killed. It’s timeliness is undisputed, as it comes at a time when the President of France and those around him were deviating from control, making nice with Russia. That the actors were available, the script written in advance, and that it is all understood from one capital to another – befuddles people. Surely they cannot manufacture events of this magnitude on a dime! Surely it is a random event, unplanned, and unpurposed.

Step back, jump on a cloud, get above it all. Of course they can and do. The leading classes and their armies of technicians, and planners, and hired thugs can put on plays of this type almost at will, as their resources, experience and technical skills are almost unbounded. The politicians whom we imagine to be our elected leaders are just actors, themselves scared of the power that manifests around them. They play along to survive.

It’s a complicated world, but an interesting one too. Think of it this way: If they can make you believe, really believe in virgin births and men who rise from the dead and reside in your brain and need to be conversed with daily, can they not make you believe anything? They do have power over your perceptions, and they do have control of the TV screen. They do own your reality.

Alex Carey, the Australian writer/psychologist, wrote that the greatest achievement of American propaganda is that is has convinced Americans that there is no American propaganda.

That may be. It’s a good insight. But as I look around me and the horrors that American foreign policy has visited on the world in my lifetime, I offer up a second-place candidate:

American propaganda has convinced Americans that Americans are the victims of terrorism, rather than the major perpetrators.

“This man appears to be wholly devoid of any imaginative facilities. His percepts are predominantly the most common. His range of interest and achievements is quite limited, seen in his very narrow associational content. He takes little note of rare and unusual stimuli in his environment. His mental functioning is highly stereotyped. In conformity, he is within the limits of the average in that his thinking corresponds with that of the community at large. However, he proceeds occasionally with alogical reactions.”

The above words were written by a psychiatrist about a police officer who was eventually hired and went on to become famous. They were the result of a Rorschach test. I’ve stripped all of the context from it because it so well describes the typical American sitting in front of his TV watching “news,” and also sums up the content of blog comments too.

The events at Charlie Hebdo have all the markings of a covert operation, far more likely an intelligence operation than a random act of terror. To wit:

• It is insane. It serves no operational purpose, advances no cause. It merely inflames anger. It’s utterly stupid.
• It is solved without investigation. We immediately know the perps. Now it’s just a matter of killing or silencing them, Tsarnaev style.
• The press was prepped in advance with the story, and immediately solved it. The talking heads all speak with barely concealed contempt for the aggressors, instantly known to them.
• We’re learning now that the supposed suspects have been on a “terror watch list” for a decades, that is, they’ve been babysat.

To what end? Some time read about “Operation Gladio,” the US/NATO terror operation in Europe that was exposed in the 1990’s, but is oddly buried in broad daylight. Agents of NATO bombed a train station in Bologna, the Piazza Fontana in Milano, randomly shot shoppers in Belgium, a car bombing … ultimately, the assassination of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Mora in 1978. NATO was behind this. NATO, and the CIA committed random acts of terrorism designed to discredit left-wing groups.

Of course, with the attack in France, we don’t know anything yet. There’s been no investigation. There will be no trial. The accused will never get their day in court. But we live in a time when “instant information” produces a demand for an instant solution to crimes. We can’t wait for the patient, painstaking search for background, clues, evidence, interrogation, and finally the adversarial proceeding where everything is laid bare before a group of skeptical inquirers.

This is the nature of … not news, but agitprop. That is all this is, agitation propaganda, the strategy of tension. And it works so well because it fuels hatred.

Every generation has its focal point for hatred. In the early days of our country, it might have been Native Americans, savages. Later came freed slaves, still a focal point, and later still various immigrant groups, most recently Hispanics. But American foreign policy is set now to dominate the oil fields of the Middle East, and so for decades has been using Muslim extremists as the focal point. Muslims, no more or less violent than anyone else, have become archetypical villains feeding our nightmares, our television sets and computer screens supplying the sublime imagery.

Intelligences agencies, who are linked to each other without regard to country of origin, have stables of post-MKULTRA patsies available for any desired outcome, be they Saudi faux-pilots or Chechen rebels, or in this case two Algerians, Cherif and Said Kouachi.

It is fashionable these days to openly hate Muslims, and these staged events are successful because they feed hatred. Imagine the perpetrators were instead Mossad agents, would American jets be lined to to drop bombs on Tel Aviv? No. It is no longer fashionable to hate Jews in the manner we are allowed to hate Muslims. But if I were looking for the real perpetrators of this small massacre, I’d be looking to Tel Aviv and Langley first, and Paris suburbs last.

That’s how we roll in the Gladio era.
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Some absurdity: From Agence-France Presse, carried on MSN.Com:

Cherif Kouachi was a known jihadist convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq.

That’s insanely funny, as without our brains so deeply soaked in agitprop and nationalism, we would easily recognize 2003 forward as a time when a certain country was sending tens of thousands of terrorists to Iraq to destroy the place and murder its citizens. The doctrine of “worthy victimhood” stands. Iraqis do not qualify. French citizens do.

And one final absurdity: I watched Bill Maher on the Jimmy Kimmel show the other night. Bill too had solved the crime, but since, as Kimmel mentioned, Bill is so intelligent, his take was a little different. The event, he said, was the result of a religion that espouses open hatred.

Doug Feith, step aside. Bill Maher is the stupidest fucking man alive.