An excerpt from "War of the Worlds": Behind the 1938 Radio Show Panic by Stefan Lovgen National Geographic News June 17, 2005
It was the day before Halloween, October 30, 1938. Henry Brylawski was on his way to pick up his girlfriend at her Adams Morgan apartment in Washington, D.C.
As he turned on his car radio, the 25-year-old law student heard some startling news. A huge meteorite had smashed into a New Jersey farm. New York was under attack by Martians.
"I knew it was a hoax," said Brylawski, now 92.
Others were not so sure. When he reached the apartment, Brylawski found his girlfriend's sister, who was living there, "quaking in her boots," as he puts it. "She thought the news was real," he said.
It was not. What radio listeners heard that night was an adaptation, by Orson Welles's Mercury Theater group, of a science fiction novel written 40 years earlier: The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells.
However, the radio play, narrated by Orson Welles, had been written and performed to sound like a real news broadcast about an invasion from Mars.
Thousands of people, believing they were under attack by Martians, flooded newspaper offices and radio and police stations with calls, asking how to flee their city or how they should protect themselves from "gas raids." Scores of adults reportedly required medical treatment for shock and hysteria....
I think it's fair to say that most of this blog has been devoted towards articulating the existence of a manufactured, internet zeitgeist characterised by right woos left infiltration. Arguably the two biggest blogs of the past decade have been Daily Kos and Democratic Underground. We now know that DKos has been run by a person whose original allegiance was to the right wing oligarchy from El Salvador. Markos Moulitsas actually applied for a position in the CIA, and in 2006 described it as a liberal institution with its heart in the right place. DU was formed as a branch of the triangulating Democratic Leadership Council. In short, true progressives have not been welcomed at either of those dives.
In other areas of the internet, we have witnessed even more lefty posers with their right wing suitors. Sub-tier blogs such as BradBlog, Rigorous Intuition, InfoWars, and What Really Happened can be said to be part and parcel of paranoic, conspiracy theory freakdom. This is the historical record. Once was a time when there was great hope for the internet being a communicative device for positive, social change. Stories published on the internet were scooping the mainstream media. However, as Altamont signified the end of 60's idealism, hoaxes perpetrated by lying lefties such as Jason Leopold and Brad Friedman symbolised the end of the internet having any credibility. We knew deep down that Alex Jones, Michael Rivero, Willis Carto, and other forms of right woos left were full of it. Those influences didn't actually destroy the internet. It was the Lefty Liars Club which did that. It was as if we were all rounded up into fake lefty blogs only to be ridiculed and then banned for questioning the idiocy being spewed. Now all that remains are pockets of awareness.
In this blog entry, I will examine belief systems and try to formulate why hack bloggers were able to infiltrate and destroy the blogosphere. In short, this was done because we the people form the bedrock of fakery. Wilhelm Reich was quite correct that Nazism took hold in Germany due to the social-psychology of the masses. The same applies to the United States and its current forms of fascism-lite. Of course some of us knew from the get-go that the Iraq War was criminal. However, we were only the few. Why did it take so long for the rest of society to catch up to the truth?
In regards to the net, fakery ruled the day due to there being a dearth of thoughtful discussion. Simply put, things regressed into the realm of conspiracy schlock. Bush and Cheney were demonised. More people were hearing about them being the problem rather than the system itself. The idea was pushed that Bush and Cheney were behind 9/11. Bush and Cheney truly suck, but that's preposterous. It then got even stu piddier. Bush and Cheney were plugged as being central cogs of a government sponsored, satanic, mind control, pedophile ring. That crap was making its way to the top of the Democratic Underground's most popular links. Andy Stephenson was at the forefront of peddling that specific form of insanity. Some of his best friends were Brett Kimberlin, Brad Friedman, and Larisa Alexandrovna. Alexandrovna used to co-write articles with Jason Leopold and vouched for the Speedway Bomber, going so far as to spread the disinformation that he was an exonerated, ex-political prisoner. Larry Johnson was also a part of that crowd. They controlled the moderating and zeitgeist at the top boards.
Around the time Kos got outed as being a CIA loving piece of shit, he decided to ban conspiracy talk. Fine. Whatever. But the damage was done, and the big question that needs to be asked is why do so many people feel that Daily Kos speaks for the left? Sure, it's a skeleton of what it once was. A new blog jumped in front by an incredible margin. That would be the Huffington Post. But that was no great advancement. The structure of Huffington lends itself to churning out threads with a daily turnover rate. Nothing ever remains on the front page for too long. The pages take too damn long to load. Too much entertainment rubbish is pushed. Too many of the bloggers are non-intellectual entertainers and hack writers. Censorship also exists at HuffPost. And even if one is fortunate to have any good stuff posted, whoop-de-doo. It won't ever approach becoming a pocket of awareness, since it will inevitably be circumscribed by a mountain of posts full of inane banter.
We have seen the enemy, and it is us. One of the greatest works put out by Orson Welles was a little-known documentary titled F is for Fake. Like the article above concerning War of the Worlds, this movie covered the concept of how fakery can easily become established as zeitgeist.
Here is what Welles found out. He covered the story of Elmyr de Hory, a man notorious for faking out musuems with his forgeries of art masterpieces. Now here is where the irony set in. Clifford Irving had been the one conducting interviews of the confidence man. It later turned out that Irving himself had concocted a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Like with the mass hysteria produced by War of the Worlds, Welles showed how significant numbers of society can be easily duped into believing fakeries. I think such an analysis can also be applied to the blogosphere. The same process has taken place there. Eventually such fraud does get exposed but only much later, after the damage has been done, like with Bush's War on Terror.
The same process occurred with the satanic panic, and innocent people went to jail. Opportunistic creeps such as Geraldo and Oprah lended credibility to that which deserved none. There is another example I'd like to share. It concerns the search for the Zodiac killer.
Robert Graysmith wrote a book called Zodiac. Somehow he pulled a Clifford Irving, just substitute the Zodiac killer for Howard Hughes. Graysmith ended up as a so-called expert. Such confidence men are all over the internet. Alexandrovna, Leopold, and Friedman are fake journalists. Rivero, Jones, and Carto are fake patriots. Kos and Huffington are fake liberals.
Graysmith UNMASKED 1 - The Cartoonist & His Suspect
(Don't say I never did anything for you, Donkeytale. I agree Maria Sharapova is a definite sweetie- socrates)
Much ballyhoo has accompanied this week's re-release of the Stones 1972 "Exile on Main Street," which is the fourth in the quartet of post-Brian Jones, post-Andrew Loog Oldham LPs starting in 1968 with "Beggars Banquet", followed by "Let it Bleed" and the penultimate "Sticky Fingers".
These four albums provided the soundtrack while the cities burned, hearts bled, syringes fizzled and western civilisation began its epic postmodern convulsion without end.
War, children. Its never going away.
"Banquet" came on the heels of the Beatles own career-changing "Sergeant Pepper" and is both a far different and very superiour record. This album first made evident that the Stones were also superiour musicians without much need of the cloying production gimmickry favoured by the amateurish Loog Oldham who had produced all their fake blues, British Invasion efforts. "Pepper" made all the headlines, got all the radio play and the Time Magazine covers, but the record itself rode on the back of Lennon's haunting "A Day in the Life," and little else. In my mind anyway, it has not endured, while these four Stones LPs still live.
The Beatles were exclusively a studio band and experimentation had become their buzz, which was as short-lived and irrelevant as the brief mass media drenched age of overhype known as "Flower Power". Significantly, they would return to a more organic rock sound for their final three albums before disbanding as the Sixties came to a merciful close. Lennon's first solo album heralded the dawn of a new era, a brutal tour de force of elemental rhythm tracks and savagery that explicitly condemned the grand illusions of the hippie era. Then he was pretty much done for life. McCartney? No comment on his dismal post-moptop career. None at all.
The Stones returned to the US for a tour in 1969 around the time of "Bleed's" stateside release. That tour, its essence captured in the classic rockumentary "Gimme Shelter," encapsulates the ending of an era better than any other existing artifact. Ragged, frantic, stoned, weary, sad, matching sets of tragic clowns both onstage and in the audience, who had lost control.
The good acid was long gone, replaced by a poisonous mixture of speed, rat poison and Jello concocted into something called "mescaline." The draft ended, but the mood couldn't lift as the times careened immediately into the beginning of the reactionary period that we still find ourselves trapped within to this very day.
It was in this post-sixties hangover of feeling permanently lost in a fog that the Stones released "Exile." At first, the record was widely scorned. It seemed unfinished, badly produced. Where the prior three LPs hadn't contained a single throw away track, this one contained two sides of filler sprinkled among a half dozen or so gems on a two record set.
But something else happened during those first few months of listening. The album didn't so much create a false mood, 60s style, as it captured a real feeling to which you grudgingly had to relate. There was an atmosphere more than there were tunes.
From the bleakness you recognized something new approaching that you didn't like and you didn't want: adulthood.
"Jerry Kane, who used the Internet to question federal and local government authority over him, made money holding debt-elimination seminars around the country. He had a long police record and had recently complained about being arrested at what he called a “Nazi checkpoint” near Carrizozo, N.M., where court records showed he spent three days in jail on charges of driving without a license and concealing his identity before posting a $1,500 bond."
In West Memphis, Arkansas, no less, this lifelong loooser of the infoboobtubez was killed on the interstate Thursday when he blew away two cops after a routine traffic stop on I-40, using an AK-47 to do the "revolutionary" deed.
Also killed along with Kane was his 16 year old son. See you in the sweet bye and bye, juniour.
Kane scores bonus points for throwing down a Godwin's Alert into his deadly schtick.
The stepfather of Boston Celtics guard Marquis Daniels was tased during game two of the Eastern Conference Finals. That makes three people recently put in harms way at sporting events by police. There ought to be a law against this. We're a better people than the crap our society is dishing out. Enough already. Grow up America.
Violence can be as contagious as missed free throws. Check out Dwight Howard's dirty foul on Paul Pierce. He should be suspended for a game but won't be. The NBA is a bit like Animal Farm. All people are created equal. It's just that some are more equal than others. No one should be above the law. That includes the police and star athletes. If Pierce had his skull cracked, like what happened in a hockey game a few years back, there's a good chance Howard could have been arrested. How was the following not a deliberate attempt to cause harm?
I need a good tune or two.
Wow, I just realised how racist that announcer was. Just for that, here's some Malcom X.
The following was written by Blogger Bob. The Molson is offered to him in good faith. I've only added links, images, and some very light editing to go along with his fine prose. For convenience folks are encouraged to right click for new windows. The stuff we've been on about isn't an enigma. The learning curve isn't that steep. DFQ2 is in jeopardy. Bob is having cold feet concerning being added to the blog roll. Donkeytale has threatened to go Greta Garbo on us. Speaking of which, here's some eye candy, before we get to the show.
Yes - I'm convinced that this has been an important factor in the development & propagation of Satanic Panic. You've hit a nail on the head squarely, here.
It is easy to picture Traditionalist Catholics in particular experiencing a mental meltdown when first confronted by undeniable evidence of pervasive child abuse/sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and lay order members. Their theological conceptions of reality, of "how the universe is ordered", wouldn't be able to accomodate that information...like a sci-fi robot repeating "does not compute!" over & over until their head explodes.
For such persons, there would have to be some "other power" at work behind these clergy abuse cases - and that "other power" would naturally be Satan hisself. But not Satan as a metaphor for human fallibility, rather Satan as a literal being of pure evil directing legions of satanic cult minions ala "The Exorcist".
Catholic clergy could not possibly be the worst child abusers in society, Traditionalists would likely rationalize. If Priests were guilty of abusing dozens of children, then there must be satanic cults abusing thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of children. If Priests were guilty of physically abusing children, then there must be satanic cults torturing, mutilating, murdering & eating children. There MUST be "a greater evil" out there, even if it had to be invented out of elements from the Inquisition, mythology and popular horror fiction.
Lawrence Pazder, the Canadian psychiatrist who authored "Michelle Remembers", was a devout conservative Catholic.
John DeCamp is conservative Catholic, as was Kathleen Sorenson - the Nebraska foster parent whose suggestive "questioning" of children in her care ultimately developed into the Franklin case. You can find one of Sorenson's credulous rants on the pages of Fatima Crusader:
I have some knowledge & insights about this topic because I happened to be involved in a cluster of intellectual pursuits and social networks that were impacted by the Satanic Panic as it went down in the 80's & 90's.
I was a student in the early 80's, studying Child Development, and I was a volunteer with the local Rape Crisis Centre (later called Sexual Assault Centres). That made me aware of the very real tragedy of sexual violence in our society, particularly as perpetrated against women and children of either gender.
I was also studying Comparative Religion (really, the history and practices of all the major faiths), and as a hobby I studied and researched tiny & obscure religious/spiritual/metaphysical movements & groups that have arisen (and largely, died out) over the last 500 years. This gave me insights into the realities - contrasted to hysterical fantasies - about "occult" teachings & practices, "satanism", "witchcraft", "neopaganism" & "wicca", as well as obscure offshoots from Catholicism, Mormonism and evangelical fundamentalism.
My community had problems with organized bigotry in the 80's, including serious criminal activity by neo-nazi skinhead gangs affiliated with Aryan Nations Church. I was involved in organizing protests and an anti-racist community response to these bigots, as well as anti-defamation activism on behalf of smaller subcultures such as Women's Spirituality groups. These networkings gave me access to reports of threats, vandalism & violence against a wide range of social minorities - reports that mainstream media often declined to cover.
I was a big fan of Zine culture (remember "Factsheet Five"?). Before the internet, Zines were "the everyman's media" and throughout the 80's I ordered and collected reams of self-published and small press materials including evangelical tracts from a variety of faith communities. This gave me insight into what these evangelicals were telling their followers about other groups in our society and what they were saying to each other within their own communities that they might not be saying in their public radio/tv broadcasts.
There are a couple of good academic books that recount & analyze what happened and theories/reasons why it happened, during this Satanic Panic. My perspective is not an academic analysis - it is simply an account of what I personally perceived, experienced and learned.
First there were the evangelical testimonialists - con-artists who made their living as speakers or author/speakers travelling the evangelical/charismatic/fundamentalist church circuit - giving a false "testimony" of their supposed involvement in "the occult", "satanism", "witchcraft" and/or "the illuminati", and 'warning' their audiences that secretive "reverse-christianity" satanic cults were real, powerful and active in their communities. Some began their crusades in the 70's. ALL of these people were liars & frauds. Two of the most influential were Mike Warnke and John Todd.
There were other anti-occult authors & speakers in the evangelical circuit, but these fraudulent testimonialists were important because their claims to having "come out from" supposed satanic groups made them "whistleblowers" - termed "renegades" in Hofstadter's brilliant "The Paranoid Style In American Politics". Hofstadter said: "In some part, the special authority accorded the renegade derives from the obsession with secrecy so characteristics of such movements: the renegade is the man or woman who has been in the Arcanum, and brings forth with him or her the final verification of suspicions which might otherwise have been doubted by a skeptical world".
From my own studies & research I was aware that organized "reverse-christianity" satanism has never existed in the real world. This is the "satanism" most frequently described by supposed SRA survivors. Reverse-christianity satanists supposedly believe that they serve satan by being and doing "evil". They are supposedly obsessed with "defiling" anything or anyone that a Christian would perceive to be holy, righteous or "pure" - especially symbols of the Christian faith, children and infants. (A reverse-christianity satanist would supposedly, for example, derive particular delight from raping an infant with a crucifix). All of their rites & rituals would supposedly somehow mock or "reverse" those of Christian (specifically Catholic/High Anglican) traditions. Reverse-christianity satanists supposedly perceive and measure their own actions with the same moral compass as a righteous Christian would. They would engage in "perverted" sexual acts - judging those acts with Jerry Falwell's moral yardstick and thus perceiving them to be "perverted", simply BECAUSE they are "perverted" acts and satan would supposedly be pleased by this contempt for and rebellion against "godliness".
Jimmy Swaggart- I have sinned.
Reverse-christianity satanism has only ever manifested in occasional deranged individuals or tiny, short-lived groups of mutually-supporting sociopaths. There has never been a long-term, large-scale or complex organization of reverse-christianity satanists. It would be impossible for such an organization to remain functional over even small periods of time, as many critically important organizational processes would be inherently sabotaged by the member's adherence to their own professed belief system.
No real-life religious/spiritual movement or organization accused or suspected of harboring "reverse-christianity" beliefs, motivations or practices, is actually "guilty" of doing so. The Process did not, LeVay and the Church of Satan do not, Aquino and the Temple of Set do not, Crowleyan Thelemites do not (and Aliester Crowley most definitely DID NOT), Wiccans do not, Gerald Gardner did not, etc, etc, etc.
Protestant Fundamentalists have a history of not trusting in or accepting the legitimacy of secular governments and public institutions, exemplified by the Plymouth Brethren Deacon who habitually exercised his democratic franchise by spoiling his ballot, writing "I VOTE FOR KING JESUS" across it. In America, stung by humiliating losses in public clashes with forces of modernism in the early 1900s, many swore off involving themselves in "the public sphere" entirely.
But by the 70's, especially encouraged by an Evangelical in the White House, there were movements encouraging fundamentalists to re-engage in all areas of public life - such as Falwell's Moral Majority. I saw this myself, in the form of a wave of aggressively evangelical young people in my child welfare related classes. There have always been evangelicals in child welfare, what was new about these classmates was their determination to work within and have an impact on purely secular (rather than specifically religious) child welfare institutions and agencies.
These young people were, coincidentally, part of the generation of evangelical youths targeted by and exposed to fraudulent Satanic hysteria spreaders like Mike Warnke. I first heard of him through one of these people, and learned that he and other "let's all fear the alleged satanic cults in our backyards" speakers drew great crowds at the massive new Pentacostal cathedral several times a year. This was probably happening in your community too, in the early 80's, anywhere around North America.
At the same time, there was explosive growth in some alternative spirituality movements - Women's Spirituality groups, neopaganism, wicca, traditional native-pagan revivalists, some New Age groups. Before long, my evangelical classmates began to tell me about new speakers at their church who were "a former wicca high priest" or "a former member of Transendental Meditation high council", and wouldn't you know it...these new testimonialists were claiming that Wicca and TM were really satanic cults also involved in drug trafficking, kidnappings, murders, etc.. I was beginning to understand the formula - anytime a movement not approved of by fundamentalists gains popularity & press, a fraudulent ex-member of the movement pops up to warn Christians the movement is really a satanic cult plot.
There was also a big push going for a national daycare plan, with new (secular), publicly funded daycare centres to open in communities across the country. Fundamentalist commentators were furious about this, calling the plan a plot to destroy "the family". I wondered, prophetically as it turned out, in 1983, when I would hear about an ex-satanic cult daycare operator doing the evangelical circuit.
The anti-cult movement and "cult awareness" groups that developed in the 70's seemed to spiral into overdrive after the terrible tragedy of Jonestown. The focus seemed to shift from "deprogramming" adult children involved in known groups to searching out unknown groups that might be likely candidates to be the next tragedy, "before it happens again". Some began hunting for the alleged satanic cults they had heard about from Warnke or John Todd, or later on from Bill Schnoebelen, Tom Sanguinet, Doc Marquis and others. Betraying their total ignorance of the subject, some apparently believed the word "occult" was related to the word "cult" and used them interchangeably; "the kids are involved in an occult". These were the proto satan-hunters.
Have a nice, cold glass of Kool-aid.
Meanwhile, young heavy metal and punk fans were driving some civic officials and uninformed cops into paranoid fits by spray-painting band related "satanic" graffiti all over their towns. Young heavy metal fans, in juvenile detention centres, psychiatric facilities, foster homes and other child welfare facilities were similarly driving their caregivers into paranoia with tales of the "satanism" that they & their friends were practising and which the adults around them were too uninformed to understand was almost entirely their own inventions. It is understandable that some persons who grew up with the fraudulent tales of satanic cults that never existed, from the likes of Warnke, would conclude that these teen "satanists" in their communities must be involved in the same (imaginary) satanic conspiracies, and start searching for likely ringleaders (who never existed).
I believe it was such self-appointed Satan Hunters who were responsible for the death threats against New Age booksellers, the vandalism of venues where Women's Spirituality and neopagan groups held their meetings, the anonymous "tips" to public pagan's employers that they were really "a babykilling satanist", that were reported through the anti-defamation networks I was involved with - rare, yet troubling reports in the early 80's escalating to alarming frequency by the decade's end. There was some kind of, likely spontaneous, witchhunting going on - which meant that there was probably a social panic underway in some segments of the population.
And then the sleazy tabloidesque tv "exposes" on "satanic crime" began, along with mass arrests of alleged child abuse cultists in several communities, with preposterous "reverse-christianity" satanic cult allegations, and the existence of a full-fledged social panic was confirmed.
Anything for a buck?
While still in college I opened a small "world religions" bookstore that catered to academics with interests similar to mine and practitioners of smaller faith groups. In the later 80's, I was approached by members of the local law enforcement "intelligence gathering" unit through the store. Like many, many other communities across North America, our police and child protection agencies were getting reports of alleged criminal activities involving "occult" or "satanic" groups. These police officers were essentially clueless about such topics (like 99% of the population) and were looking for:
1)genuine source documents i.e., how occult practitioners themselves described their beliefs & practices - materials which I carried. 2)someone to translate such documents into terminology/concepts they were more familiar with, and to interpret "occult"/spiritual/religious paraphenalia or symbolism found at alleged crime scenes 3)a contact who could extend invitations to practitioners of obscure religious/spiritual groups, who might be interested in meeting with law enforcement for the purpose of explaining or demonstrating their own beliefs and practices.
In return, these police officers provided me with "occult crime" "training manuals" and other "resource materials" that were being used as the basis of "satanic/occult crime" information & training seminars for law enforcement agencies, child protection agencies and other justice system or social welfare practitioners across North America at that time.
Kee MacFarlane- McMartin Preschool Satan Hunter
I was horrified by these "occult crime investigator" manuals. The idea that they were being used to train persons with real power over other people's lives was terrifying. Because, they were filled with little more than IGNORANCE, FANTASIES and SUPERSTITION.
In some cases, they referenced fraudulent con-artists like Mike Warnke as "experts" with "first-hand knowledge of criminal satanic cults today". Warnke was incapable of giving "first-hand, expert knowledge" about satanic cults because HE WAS NEVER A MEMBER OF ONE. He was only an expert on his own fantasies of what satanic cults "must" be like.
Many of these manuals revealed their author's ignorance of the subjects they were supposedly experts on, through chapters on "occult signs & symbols you might encounter at a crime scene", wherein the interpretations given to the symbols they showed were NOT their traditional meanings and were totally unrelated to the Kabbalistic systems from which the symbols were originally derived. This turned out to be not surprising, when I later learned that many of these interpretations were given to the authors by the self-styled teen satanists they had interviewed. They were some kid's personal interpretation concocted from their own imagination, not derived from scholarly sources.
Most of these manuals showed a total ignorance of the fact that historic occult rituals were derived from judeo-christian mystical traditions. They were created by god-fearing Jews and Christians, who believed they would assist them to DO GOD'S WILL by vanquishing supernatural evils in HIS name. In fact, the power that most of them call upon is the Judeo-Christian God, using mystical titles for Him. They have nothing whatsoever to do with worshipping Satan or "doing evil".
One of these "resource materials", created by a fundamentalist police officer, warned that only Christian investigators should possess books on satanism/occult themes or keep such materials in their homes, because true Christians would be protected from the demonic possession such materials could supposedly cause, but others would not be!
This reflects very revealing attitudes and assumptions underlying the involvement of evangelical testimonialists and Ministries in secular law enforcement & child welfare investigations into satanic crime allegations. From the viewpoint of some evangelical ministries, they have been more engaged in "battling the devil" in our society than the rest of us, which ought to defacto make them the only real experts on Satan & satanists (when, objectively, they only possess expertise in their own fantasies about satanists that don't actually exist). There is an ironic truth here, however. Many satanic crime allegations were derived directly from the falsehoods told by fraudulent evangelical testimonialists, and they naturally possess the greatest "expertise" on their own fantasies. People like Warnke probably expected that they could get away with their false testimony, forever. Most of the population has been completely uninterested in subjects like satanism and the occult and are therefore totally uninformed on those topics, unable to confront false statements that con-artists might make on those subjects. And since the satanic cults these frauds claim to be ex-members of don't actually exist, since "reverse-christianity" satanism doesn't actually exist, no one can prove that what they have to say about it is false.
How did satanic cult fantasies become insinuated into the statements of children making allegations of sexual abuse? They came from the Satan Hunters lurking in child welfare agencies and institutions, in church ministries and foster homes, members of religious communities that have never trusted secular governments or institutions even if they work for them, informal groupings of "concerned parents & community members" who KNOW the satanic cults are out there and are determined to turn them out through their own "investigations". Read Bruce Perry's "Satanic Panic" essay for a sickening account of how this was done in Gilmer, Texas, and you will understand how similar processes played out in other communities.
I am very much aware of the Dominionists - unfortunately. What a horrifying concept; turning North America into a Christian fundamentalist theocracy?
There is a symbiotic relationship between the Patriot/Christian Militia new world order-illuminati paranoids and the ritual abuse-mind control survivor/therapist cultists. (there are actually many direct connections between the two communities, demonstrated by the relationships between Gunderson, John DeCamp, Bo Gritz, Ken Adachi, Tim White, Brice Taylor, Ellen Lacter, Kathleen Sullivan, Paul Bonnaci,etc.)
The ritual abuse/mind control survivors derive their imaginary life histories from the mythologies of the NWO-Illuminati conspiracy theories of the Militias.
The ritual abuse/mind control survivors then function as "whistleblowers" - Hofstadter's "renegades" - for the NWO-Illuminati paranoid politics of the Militias. They function as "the living evidence", "proof", that the NWO-Illuminati conspiracy is reality and therefore that western society is hopelessly corrupted by secret societies composed of morally deranged satanic pedophile billionaires.
If that were really true, you see, it would mean that the only hope of escaping enslavement by invisible tyrannies would come from "morally righteous" people who understand "the truth" seizing control of our governments and public institutions. Or, the population could voluntarily turn over control to...the Dominionists! - with the Patriot Militias functioning as Inquisitor/religious police, rounding up all the secretly morally corrupt elements of our societies. Oh yea.
Anyone who thinks that the Patriots have been plastering the internet with ritual abuse-mind control survivor stories because they are "concerned about child abuse" is completely deluded! They do that as a propaganda & recruitment program. They hope these "survivor" stories will convince the naive average person that our institutions are hopelessly corrupted, and terrify them into joining (or at least becoming supportive of) local groups of heavily armed paranoids "for their own protection". And guess what? IT WORKS. It even works on some Progressives, apparently.
Some people who publicly trumpet being concerned about child abuse are actually exploiting that tragic issue to advance another agenda. This happens on both the Right and the Left, and it makes me furious.
For example, an alleged Progressive named Sander Hicks has been promoting his friend Nick Bryant's book "The Franklin Scandal". Bryant claims that the book is an expose of child trafficking, of rich and powerful men sexually exploiting vulnerable teens and then using their power and influence to corrupt the justice system into covering-up what they'd done.
Hicks claims to be promoting Bryant's book out of concern for abused children. I know that cannot be his real motivation, however, because Hicks has gone out of his way to promote "the cause" of not one but two CONVICTED PEDOPHILES and cast them as heroic whistleblowers!
I'm talking about Delmart Vreeland and Richard Taus. You can get their stories by googling them if you want.
The hypocrisy of someone who claims to be concerned about abused children casting pedophiles as heroes is just UNBELIEVABLE! Why would Hicks do this? Because both these persons claim to be government/intelligence agency whistleblowers exposing secret criminal conspiracies involving political leaders and intelligence agencies.
THAT is Sander Hicks real agenda - to find & promote some kind of dirt that could "discredit" our governments and public institutions in the eyes of the public. Hicks agenda, is to "discredit" governments and public institutions. That is what most of his writing and activism has been concerned with. NOT child welfare.
And that is why Sander Hicks is promoting Nick Bryant's book. NOT because Hicks is concerned about abused children - he wouldn't promote the cause of convicted pedophiles if he really was concerned about child abuse - but because The Franklin Case involves wealthy powerful men, law enforcement and government agencies being accused of corruption and pedophilic activity. Hicks promotes Bryant's book because it represents "dirt" that could "discredit" political leaders and public institutions.
If he was open & honest about his real motivation, I'd say - great, go for it! Exposing verifiable criminal misdeeds by politicians and government agencies is undeniably a good thing for society. But don't claim to be an advocate for abused children when you've promoted pedophiles as heroes.
I've talked about the satanic cult survivor mythology, but not the mind-control experiment survivor mythology. After the FBI's Ken Lanning revealed that the FBI could find no evidence of multigenerational child-abusing satanic cults, SRA as a cause of multiple personality disorder was discredited.
Colin Ross was making a killing promoting and treating MPD and weren't going to give up their golden goose, so he and his staff (such as Corydon Hammond) attempted to come to the rescue with a new "root cause" for MPD - CIA mind-control experimentation.
There's a grain of truth in that idea. The CIA really did finance mind-control experimentation in a variety of forms. They really did experiment with the possibility of creating agents who would have a second "personality" with no knowledge of their own status as a CIA operative. If they were captured while the secondary persona was activated, they couldn't betray themselves or the agency, was the idea. These experiments involved hypnosis as the means of generating a secondary persona, they had nothing to do with creating full-blown MPD via torturing little children.
The reality of these CIA funded experiments provided a plausible alternate explanation for the origin of MPD in Ross' patients. The fact that the CIA destroyed most of the records about these programs was extremely convenient, allowing an alleged victim to plausibly claim that there was no documentation of their victimization because the CIA had destroyed all the records.
But, that isn't really true. There ARE CIA funded mind-control experimentation survivors who have extensive documentation of their victimization. There are 77 Canadians who were victims of Ewan Cameron's CIA funded experimentation. Their identities are known, and their victimization so well documented that they were awarded compensation payments.
There is, however, NO evidence that any of these people; - were raised in multigenerational satanist families with ties to the CIA - had multiple personalities intentionally induced in them - were used for prostitution, pornography, sex slavery or drug-running.
The reality of the Canadian mind-control experimentation survivors does not support the fantasies of the Brice Taylors, the Kathleen Sullivans or the Paul Bonnacis of the Extreme Abuse Survivor cult.
MacGauley said something very troubling when she brushed off the possibility that she was, y'know, wrong, by saying in effect "everybody in prison proclaims their innocence."
Nothwithstanding that this trite statement too is a red herring, or the fact that there are now known/thought to be a very large number of people incarcerated "in error," it belies the troubling frame of mind that has beset miiddle class, educated white Amerikkka since roughly the 1980s.
This feeling of ease of evasion of any personal responsibility for anything whatsoever. Its all "their" fault and any non-sequitor at all will do in order to rationalize the most reprehensible acts, in this case the railroading of innocent people thru flawed law enforcement techniques promulgated by simplistic, hysterical reaction to events that are poorly understood and complex. The sexual abuse could have come from anywhere by anyone.
I don't recall but I believe there is police evidence that at least some of the kids were sexually abused?Members of the Catholic Church appear to have been actively abusing kids throughout the time period. Could SRA have been a hysterical response in part to the unspeakable, the Priest as pedophilic sexual predator, which was not yet known to be a worldwide phenomenon?
Some great degree of socialism is the way to go. Housing for all. Equal schools. Health care for all. Food for everyone. With all the money being spent on war and spy factories, you know there is enough to share. Everyone able to work should have the opportunity to earn a decent minimum wage. This is all common sense. The way to finance it is through the termination of the war industry. Only self-defense should be allowed. Peacekeeping should be what the UN is all about. Social and environmental justice should be enforced. Greed is not good. Greed for the lack of a better word is what is destroying the Earth and its people. [/anti-Gordon Gekko]
I finally checked out what the stink is with the Goldman Sachs scandal. Basically, rich fockers were using inside info concerning sub-prime loans to rip off we the people. Here's an analogy. A manager of a baseball team knows he can make decisions here and there and ensure his team loses. In the background he bets against his team. This is how pigs can lose and still win.
First thing George Bush did when he came into office was talk down the economy. The only way to keep things going was to sell those bonds. Unemployment went up. Interest rates went down. Everyone with a clue refinanced their homes.
It was Clinton who had brought the rates down to I remember as around 8 percent, maybe 7ish. He had balanced the budget. GW is the one who focked it all up. So what happened after everyone had refinanced? Well, other than new home sales, the mortgage market had dried up. That's when the selling of subprime loans picked up. That's when this Goldman Sachs thing took place, around 2005-06. Those are loans made to people who can't possibly pay them off. There were all kinds of loans being given out. An ARM is an adjustable rate mortgage. It's low at first, but based on inflation, it can sky rocket. There are balloon loans. I'm not a genius on any of this. I'm only blogging about it, because donkeytale says the left-o-sphere doesn't seem to be on it. Maybe I just wrote things that are not true. I don't think I did.
Here's a link and a movie. Knock yourselves silly.
He also gave a link to a PBS Frontline show on this stuff. I'm gonna watch it when I get the chance. I've always been an admirer of that show, back to when it first came out with Jessica Savitch.
