Sunday, May 26, 2013

"Every Television Newscast Is a Staged Event "-Jon Rappoport

[From onebornfree & the Freedom Network: ladies and gentlemen, this great article from Jon Rapport illustrates exactly why you should always be extremely skeptical of EVERYTHING  you hear/watch on the news these days - and I mean EVERYTHING! :-) ] 

Focus on the network evening news. This is where the staging is done well.
                                
First, we have the image itself, the colors in foreground and background, the blend of restful and charged hues. The anchor and his/her smooth style.
Then we have the shifting of venue from the studio to reporters in the field, demonstrating the reach of coverage: the planet. As if this equals authenticity.
The managing editor, usually the elite anchor, chooses the stories to cover and their sequence.
The anchor goes on the air: “Our top story tonight, more signs of gridlock today on Capitol Hill, as legislators walked out of a session on federal budget negotiations…”
The viewer fills in the context for the story: “Oh yes, the government. We want the government to get something done, but they’re not. We want to government to avoid a shutdown. These people are always arguing with each other. They don’t agree. They’re in conflict. Yes, conflict, just like on the cop shows.”
The anchor: “The Chinese government reports the new flu epidemic has spread to three provinces. Forty-two people have already died, and nearly a thousand are hospitalized…”
The viewer again supplies context, such as it is: “Flu. Dangerous. Epidemic. Could it arrive here? Get my flu shot. Do the Chinese doctors know what they’re doing? Crowded cities. Maybe more cases all of a sudden. Ten thousand, a hundred thousand.”
The anchor: “A new university study states that gun owners often stock up on weapons and ammunition, and this trend has jumped quickly since the Newtown, Connecticut, school-shooting tragedy…”
The viewer: “People with guns. Why do they need a dozen weapons? People in small towns. I don’t need a gun. The police have guns. Could I kill somebody if he broke into the house?”
The anchor: “Doctors at Yale University have made a discovery that could lead to new treatments in the battle against Autism…”
Viewer: “That would be good. More research. Laboratory. Germs. The brain.”
If, at the end of the newscast, the viewer bothered to review the stories and his own reactions to them, he would realize he’d learned almost nothing. But reflection is not the game.
In fact, the flow of the news stories has washed over him and created very little except a sense of continuity.
It would never occur to him to wonder: are the squabbling political legislators really two branches of the same Party? Does government have the Constitutional right to incur this much debt? Where is all that money coming from? Taxes? Other sources? Who invents money?
Is the flu dangerous for most people? If not, why not? Do governments overstate case numbers? How do they actually test patients for the flu? Are the tests accurate? Are they just trying to convince us to get vaccines?
What happens when the government has overwhelming force and citizens have no guns?
When the researchers keep saying “may” and “could,” does that mean they’ve actually discovered something useful about Autism, or are they just hyping their own work and trying to get funding for their next project?
These are only a few of the many questions the typical viewer never considers.
Therefore, every story on the news broadcast achieves the goal of keeping the context small and narrow – night after night, year after year. The overall effect of this, yes, staging, is small viewer, small viewer’s mind, small viewer’s understanding.
Billions of dollars are spent by the networks to build a reality the size of a room in a cheap motel.
Next we come to words over pictures. More and more, news broadcasts are using the rudimentary film technique of a voice narrating what the viewer is seeing on the screen.
People are shouting and running and falling in a street. The anchor or a field reporter says: “The country is in turmoil. Parliament has suspended sessions for the third day in a row, as the government decides what to do about uprisings aimed at forcing democratic elections…”
Well, the voice must be right, because we’re seeing the pictures. If the voice said the riots were due to garbage-pickup cancellations, the viewer would believe that, too.
How about this: two-day-old footage of runners approaching the finish line of the Boston Marathon. A puff of smoke rises at the right of the screen. A runner falls down in the street. The anchor is saying: “The FBI has announced a bomb made in a pressure cooker caused the injuries and deaths.”
Must be so. We saw the pictures and heard the voice explain.
We see Building #7 of the WTC collapse. Must have been the result of a fire. The anchor tells us so. Words over pictures.
We see footage of Lee Harvey Oswald inside the Dallas police station. The anchor tells he’s about to be transferred, under heavy guard, to another location. Oswald must be guilty, because we’re seeing him in a police station, and the anchor just said “under heavy guard.”
Staged news.
It works.
Why?
Because it mirrors what the human mind, in an infantile state, is always doing: looking at the world and seeking a brief summary to explain what the world is, at any given moment.
Since the dawn of time, untold billions of people have been urging a “television anchor” to “explain the pictures.”
The news gives them that precise thing, that precise solution, every night.
“Well, Mr. Jones,” the doctor says, as he pins X-rays to a screen in his office. “See this? Right here? We’ll need to start chemo immediately, and then we may have to remove most of your brain, and as a followup, take out one eye.”
Sure, why not? The patient saw the pictures and the anchor explained them.
After watching and listening to the last year of news, the population is ready to see the president or one of his minions step up to a microphone and say, “Quantitative easing…sequester…”
Reaction? “Don’t know what it is, but it must be okay.”
Eventually, people get the idea and do it for themselves. They see things, they invent one-liners to explain them. They’re their own anchors. They short-cut and undermine their own experience with vapid summaries of what it all means.
“Here are the photos. Just look at these photos. Don’t look at any other photos. These are the killers. Here’s what it means: we’re going to send in SWAT teams and rout you out of your homes at gunpoint, we’ll search your homes, no warrants, and you’re going to comply, and when it’s over and we’ve caught them, you’ll cheer.”
“Sure. Okay. We will.”
Pictures, explanation, obedience.
The staging of reality, the staging of news; they’re the same thing.

May 10, 2013
Jon Rappoport runs No More Fake News. The author of an explosive collection, The Matrix Revealed, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.
Copyright © 2013 Jon Rappoport

Monday, May 13, 2013

50 Ways To Starve the Beast

[ Direct Actions Will Make You Freer! : I started The Freedom Network mainly for 2 reasons [1]: to meet new people who believed in personal freedom, and [2] : to help people to gain control of their own lives by showing them how to  take direct actions which do not involve having to change even one other persons point of view about _anything_, and to try to show them the error of relying on indirect actions, such as "waking people up", "changing the world for the better" or similar. Both of those phrases represent a point of view and a reliance on changing others points of view[ a very risky proposition], and the proselytizer/changer cannot ever achieve happiness until he/she has achieved their objective of changing the world and the people in it and/or "waking them all up" to whatever it is he/she feels they all need to be be "woken up" to .   The reality is that we all have enormous control over our own lives and choices {via direct actions} - on the other hand we have virtually no control over the choices/ thought processes/ beliefs of others { and only via indirect action}.  In this article, Daisy Luther of "The Organic Prepper" lists more than 50 direct actions that you can take to help "starve the beast" .  Regards, oneborfree and  The Freedom Network  .]

A term coined in 1985 by an unnamed staffer of the Reagan administration was “Starve the Beast”. This referred to a fiscally conservative political strategy to cut government spending by paying less in taxes. So, in the original sense, “the Beast” was the government, and people were to starve the beast by spending less and using loopholes, therefore paying less in taxes.

These days the Beast has a lot more tentacles than just the government. The system now consists of the government and all aspects of Big Business. Big Agri, Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Food, Big Banking and Big Oil, to name a few. It seems that now it’s the Beast doing the starving, as small businesses close because they can’t compete with Wal-Mart, the family farm is on it’s way out because it can’t compete with the huge, subsidized Monsanto mega-farms, people are going bankrupt because they can’t pay the outrageous medical bills…

Perhaps it’s time for another financial revolution – one where people group together and use the power of the boycott to starve all the arms of this Beast that would swallow us whole. If we vote with our dollars, eventually there will, of a necessity, be a paradigm shift that returns us to simpler days, when families that were willing to work hard could make a living without selling their souls to the corporate monoliths.

Everything that you buy secondhand or barter for is an item on which you won’t pay sales tax. Disassociate yourself completely with “the system” that is making Western civilization broke, overweight and unhealthy. Starve the Beast by taking as many of these steps as possible…

1. Grow your own food (this starves Big Agri and Big Pharma both)

2. Shop at local businesses with no corporate ties

3. Use natural remedies instead of pharmaceuticals whenever possible

4. Homeschool your children

5. Walk or bike instead of driving when possible

6. Get care from naturopaths and healers instead of doctors

7. Make paper logs from scraps for free heat if you have a wood-burning fireplace or stove

8. Boycott all processed foods

9. Shop at local farmer’s markets

10. Cut up your credit cards, except one for emergencies only. Use cash

11. Give vouchers as gifts for an evening of babysitting, a homemade meal, walking the dog, doing a repair, or cleaning

12. Join a CSA or farm co-op

13. Ditch television (and all the propaganda and commercials)

14. Participate in the barter system – if no money changes hands, no tax can be added

15. Buy secondhand from yard sales, Craigslist and thrift stores

16. Sell your unwanted goods by having a yard sale or putting an ad on Craigslist

17. Repair things instead of replacing them

18. Avoid fast food restaurants and chain restaurants

19. Dine at locally owned establishments if you eat out

20. Brew your own beer and wine

21. Read a book, purchased second-hand or borrowed

22. Dine at locally owned establishments if you eat out

23. Brew your own beer and wine

24. Read a book, purchased second-hand or borrowed

25. Grow or gather medicinal herbs

26. Give homemade gifts

27. Attend free local activities: lectures, concerts, play days at the park, library events

28. Dumpster dive

29. Play outside: hike, bike, picnic

30. Mend clothing

31. Invite someone over for dinner instead of meeting at a 
       
restaurant


32. Throw creative birthday parties at home for your kids instead of renting a venue

33. Camp instead of staying at a hotel

34. Bring your coffee with you in a travel mug

35. Do all of your Christmas shopping with small local businesses and artisans

36. Reduce your electricity usage with candles, solar power and non-tech entertainment

37. Drop the thermostat and put on a sweater

38. Bring your snacks and drinks in a cooler when you go on a road trip

39. Stay home – it’s way easier to avoid temptation that way

40. Pack lunches for work and school

41. Use precious metals stored at home as your savings account

42. Close your bank account or at the very least, strictly limit your balance

43. Visit u-pick berry patches and orchards, then preserve your harvest for the winter

44. Use precious metals stored at home as your savings account

45. Raise backyard chickens for your own eggs

46. If you are a smoker, roll your own cigarettes – if possible go one step further and grow tobacco

47. Live in a smaller, more efficient home

48. Use solar power for lighting or cooking

49. Collect rainwater for use in the garden

50. Learn to forage

51. Buy heavy, solid, handmade furniture instead of the flimsy imported stuff

52. At the holidays, focus on activities and traditions instead of gifts. Go for a walk or drive through the neighborhood to look at lights, get into your PJs and watch a special movie together on Christmas Eve and make certain treats that can always be expected

53. Make your own bath and body products using pure ingredients like coconut oil, essential oils, and herbal extracts



How do you Starve the Beast? Please share your suggestions…

Original article source: The Organic Prepper.