Egyptians Muster for a New Protest as Crackdown Widens – NYTimes.com
Month: February 2011
It is well known that the matter, making up the tissues of our body, is in a perpetual state of decay and replenishment. We are not the same cellular material we were the week before. What I want to know is what kind of âblueprintâ do these âreplenishment cyclesâ follow ..? What keeps me from dissolving into the atmosphere at the end of the week ..? It only makes sense that some sort of âcosmic memoryâ exists to pass information from one replenishment cycle to the next. Because what Iâve been told, even the scaffolding gets demolished. While it may be incomprehensible to me, I refuse to dismiss it. Since I have no basis for it, I have to start somewhere familiar.
Embryonic journey: It is well known that the cells of our body already contain information about their destiny. Genetic material guides embryonic development from one generation to the next. Even this was a mystery until the discovery of âepigenetic memoryâ. The contents of epigenetic memory (epigenomes) are what persist in order to tell chromosomes how to express the characteristics of our ancestors. You erase epigenetic memory and you have âequipotentialityâ ..the ability start fresh and be whatever you want to be. Anyway, it wasnât until we had a set of âseer stonesâ that we could actually sense the presence of epigenetic memory (it resides in deep layers of DNA, at what are now called the sites of telemere and centromere). I hope someday we acquire a set of similar stones to penetrate the mystery of cosmic memory.
“What would you do if you were not afraid?”
If no one’s feelings would be hurt
If no ill will would come your way
If nobody else really had a say
“What would you do if you were not afraid?”
It is never as bad as you anticipate
Even if it is
You handle it
And, eventually, everything will be okay
- Labels: Labels
Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy
François Lemoyne, 1737
Truth can have a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with a particular fact or reality, or being in accord with the body of real things, real events or actualities. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common archaic usage it also meant constancy or sincerity in action or character. The direct opposite of truth is “falsehood”, which can correspondingly take logical, factual or ethical meanings.
However, language and words are essentially “tools” by which humans convey information to one another. As such, “truth” must have a beneficial use in order to be retained within language. Defining this potency and applicability can be looked upon as “criteria”, and the method used to recognize a “truth” is termed a criteria of truth. Since there is no single accepted criteria, they can all be considered “theories”.
Various theories and views of truth continue to be debated among scholars and philosophers. There are differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth; what things are truthbearers capable of being true or false; how to define and identify truth; the roles that revealed and acquired knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective, relative, objective, or absolute.
This article introduces the various perspectives and claims, both today and throughout history. (read more)
A friend wrote today asking for the secret of always being a winner. (Remember, I never lose, ie, I always win. I realise that in English never losing and always winning have different meanings, much as not guilty does not imply innocence. Read “never losing” and “always winning” in a mathematical sense, however, and you will find the meanings equivalent, if not equal. There, now that I have lost all my readers, let me continue.)
Times are very difficult right now. Wars, torture, worldwide recession (depression?), taliban making inroads into West Pakistan…I could go on, but that’s enough to make my point. I think we can all use this little story to remind ourselves of our own individual greatness.
I actually wrote this little piece as an e-mail to a depressed friend a few months ago. Today seems a good time to share it with all of you. The story is not original, of course, it has been floating around for a long time. And I should probably warn you that, OK, I bring up the subject of sex in this post. I know that among my generation of Sikhs, sex simply doesn’t exist; little Sikhlings magically spring into existence with no action from their startled parents.
I think, however, the younger generation, being highly educated and very realistic, can handle this. As can my nonSikh readers.
We Sikhs are supposed to always remain in chardi kala. This isn’t easy; we are not only plagued by all the problems of every other segment of humanity, we also have a few problems of our own. Sometimes it gets overwhelming. Like other people, sometimes we can start feeling depressed and stop feeling like winners. For when that happens (and I guarantee it will), here is a little story:
A long time ago, your father and mother had sex. Your father distributed millions of sperm into your mother.
On and on they swam, their goal: your mother’s egg. As they swam, more and more fell behind, until, reaching the egg, the weaker ones had all dropped out of the race. Only a few very strong ones reached the egg.
Now, the bravest and strongest of all those millions of sperm reached the egg first and penetrated the membrane and fertilised the egg.
That winning sperm and that winning egg…became [enter your name here]
YOU! You are already not only a winner, you are THE WINNER.
You have nothing to prove. Now, go out there and win. (Whatever winning means to you)
—
Why try to fit in? You were born to stand out.
- Labels: existence
OCCUPATION
The Exceptional and the Mundane
The dreamer and the realist
The non-conformist and the boyscout
The believer and the skeptic
The romantic and the pragmatic
The obedient and the truant
Each the antithesis of the other, not understanding but strangely drawn to each other.
seeking that which is beyond them, that which sparks their curiosity but their nature cannot allow,
The Mundane, such simplicity and satisfaction with life that mediocrity is acceptable,
The exceptional, such ambition and a thirst for excellence that nothing else is accepted or expected,
Maybe its the beauty in honesty that brings about such purity,
When pretences are put aside, and guards let down.
when people look beyond the obvious, the superficial, that which wasn’t built to last
that counterpoints allow themselves to see each other and see themselves in each other,
Falling hopelessly and hopefully for one another, one riding riding on the dreams of the other, the other finding stability in the other’s certainty.
The skeptic fascinated and at the same time awed by the believers blind faith in that which he cannot control,
the believer intrigued by the skeptics never ending questions and curiosity about that which he cannot understand,
The obedient secretly admiring the courage of the truant and openly despising his folly,
The non-conformist impressed by the discipline and obedience of the boyscout.
When we learn that we alone cannot suffice, we put away selfish pride, and learn to compromise.
the essence of life lying not in the success of the entity but rather the whole,
if only we could adopt humility, avoid the ambiguity of duplicity, encourage simplicity, and learn to live in perfect symmetry.
~ Kevin Koech
Many years ago in the days of the Reagan presidency in the United States. When Thatcher was the Prime Minister here in the UK. Reagan began talking about fighting a âlimited nuclear war in Europeâ arrangements began to be made to site cruise weapons, with nuclear warheads in the 141 US military installations in the UK. These weapons were highly mobile and could be launched from a truck.
Many of us in the UK were appalled, there could never be a limited nuclear attack, the fall out would surely pollute many areas of Europe besides which if the weapons were launched from the UK where would the Russians direct their counter attack? Was Britain really going to be used as a missile carrier for the US? Did we in the UK want weapons that we had no control over deployed here?
My answer was Hell No! Not if I could do anything about it! I joined CND and quickly became secretary for my local group, we demonstrated, marched and sang, a group set up a peace camp at Greenham Common, which was not far from where I lived, the camp, for various reasons quickly became a women only camp and I decided that I wanted to take my protest against US cruise weapons being deployed in the UK a stage further. With the support of my local CND group I took my eighteen month old son to live at Greenham Common Peace camp.
I was here that I learned about Non Violent Direct Action, we broke into the base regularly, held picnics on the silos that were built and ready for the weapons, we held a full exorcism ceremony in the base one night, common land was once open to all, to gather firewood or to put animals to graze but was fenced off and sold in the 1820âs and is said to be cursed because of this:
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steals the goose from the common
But let the greater criminal loose
That steals the common from the goose
We held a Dragon Festival, each CND group made a section of the dragons tail and I can remember watching as the very long dragons tail, with messages of hope and peace was carried past. That day the women who lived at the camp wandered through the demonstrators and, as we chatted, invited women who we thought could be trusted to a meeting in the huge tent we had hired.
At the meeting women were asked if they wanted to come into the base, were told that they would be arrested, of the rough handling they could expect from the police if they were to come in with us. The point that we were making was that the bases were not secure and that if we as a bunch of housewives could get in, what could trained and equipped people do there? Women who decided they did want to be involved could identify the peace camp women who would take them in â we would be carrying a bucket and a pair of marigolds!
Thatcherâs government were determined not to be embarrassed by a group of women so they bought in the West Highland Regiment and posted soldiers every twenty feet on the inside of the perimeter fence, there was concern as to whether the soldiers would actually shoot at us, So it had been one of my tasks, previously, to talk to the soldiers and see which way the wind blew, I had great fun walking the perimeter fence chatting to the soldiers and was enormously relieved that the answer to my question âWill you shoot at us?â had always been that a British soldier would never shoot at a British woman on British soil.
A place had been chosen to enter the camp, it was several miles away but as the break in to the camp was to be late at night we had time to make our way there. We left the meeting with our buckets and marigolds and women followed us out and into the sunshine. A helicopter buzzed us but we were just women on latrine duty, having a clean up, as women do, the soldiers were still there but relaxed, the festival atmosphere of the day, colourful banners, singing and the sunshine had left a mellowness in the air.
We made our way around the fence to the blue gate where we were to gather and wait until dark. The camp at the blue gate was more secluded, further into the woods than the other gates and less easy for the police or soldiers to watch.
It grew dark and quiet; women around the campfire sang peace songs and blessings to Mother Earth. Finally, it was time I was to bring my group, quietly we were guided to our waiting place in the wood, very close to the fence, the aim was to take as many women in as we could that night so we waited again as other women were brought in.
Four women who each had a pair of bolt cutters were given the task of cutting a line in the fence, to make a square hole as quickly as possible. As soon as they emerged from the woods the soldier there raised the alarm.
Razor wire had been laid on the ground inside the fence so women had to clamber through the fence up through the razor wire and out into the air base. I climbed through the hole and was helped through the razor wire and turned to help other women through. Pinkie, a woman who lived at the camp was heavily pregnant, her belly filled the circle of razor wire and she froze, without thinking I turned to the soldier and said âHelp her sheâs pregnantâ and to my amazement he lifted her out of the wire into the base. Many more women followed her through.
By this time there were helicopters, lights, shouting and the Ministry of Defence police arrived. However, in this confusion our plan was clear and we had another roll of razor wire to get through. We ran to it and threw a piece of carpet over, women helped others over as quickly as we could and we ran again, to the runway our destination. Paint and brushes were produced women painted the runway with signs and symbols as evidence of our entry.
Eighty women broke into Greenham Common air base that night, most of whom had never done anything remotely criminal in their lives before, we were rounded up by the MOD police and taken to their station where our names were taken and questions were asked, finally as it was getting light we were taken to a remote gate at the air base and released.
This incident was never reported in the press.
Times have moved on, and oh how innocent those far off days now seem, now we are more fragmented, there is so much to protest about, sometimes itâs hard to know where to begin, true we have the internet now, however people are more brainwashed, happier to close themselves off, stay at home and watch the TV.
Here in the UK the government are about to bring in all sorts of measures that will affect peoples lives, we are in huge debt because the government gave all our money to the banks. Inflation is high, food and energy prices, already high are set to rise again. Wages are frozen and redundancies threatened. Perhaps it is time for people to stand up, we are certainly being pushed and pushed again.
Non Violent Direct Action is not peaceful protest; it is about taking our protest to our own individual limitations what ever they may be. Non Violent yes, but realising that the forces you may come against will not be non violent, they will be aggressive, armed this time with pepper spray, tazers and guns and we will be taking them along with ourselves to the limit where ever that may be.
Itâs not time for action yet, but it is time to think about what actions we are prepared to take, what our own personal limits are. How far we will go?
For action there must beâ¦â¦â¦â¦.
- Labels: non violent direct action, non-violence
British Jewryâs relationship with Israel is undergoing seismic change. The monolithic âIsrael right or wrongâ support of the mainstream suddenly cracked when one of the communityâs most senior leaders went dramatically off-message.
As the Jewish Chronicle reported Mick Davis, chairman of the pre-eminent Anglo-Israel charity, the UJIA, and the executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, âshattered a longstanding taboo by publicly criticising the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the peace process, voicing moral reservations about some of Israelâs policies and calling for criticism of Israel to be voiced freely throughout the community.â
What followed was an âI am Spartacusâ moment. As the Israeli embassy and their cohort of diehard loyalists within Anglo-Jewry looked on aghast, one heavyweight community player after another voiced support for Mr Davis.
They included figures who have worked tirelessly throughout their professional lives to defend Jewish rights, promote Israelâs right to peace and security and neutralise the ugly sisters of anti-Zionist/anti-Semitism. Nobody could ever accuse the likes of Jon Mendelson, Gordon Brownâs chief fundraiser and former Labour Friends of Israel chairman, or Bicom chairman Poju Zabludowicz, of possessing an iota of âself-hatredâ.
Hypnosis is as old as mankind. At first it was associated with mystical, magical or occult phenomena, but as time passed it became the subject of scientific investigation. At the end of the 19th century the scientific community took a more serious interest in hypnotism and much of the “Hocus Pocus” was eliminated from the equation. When we began to understand how hypnosis works, the art of hypnosis began to flourish.
Here are the fundamentals that you need to know in order to understand how mass covert hypnosis is being used against you virtually every day:
First of all hypnosis is a special, altered state of awareness in which a person becomes more suggestible. The ideas that the hypnotist gives that person bypass normal conscious thinking and influence him/her directly at the unconscious level.
When I speak about the unconscious (sometimes referred to as the “subconscious” or “non-conscious” mind – these are all really different words for the same thing), I mean that part of you that stores your memories, feelings, hopes & dreams and is responsible for automatic behaviors – it regulates everything from your heartbeat to your habits. When you have a craving for chocolate, when you find yourself doing things automatically (like driving on the freeway – can you remember what sights you passed between your entry and your exit?) or when you choose one brand of washing powder over another – even though you have NO IDEA what the difference between them really is, that is your unconscious mind in action.
The conditions for allowing the state of hypnosis to arise are simple:
1. Fixate the attention
2. Somehow bypass or shut down the normal intellect, i.e. “critical” or “rational” thinking
Once the state is induced, a hypnotist can start planting his suggestions inside the mind. Luckily your mind is not without its defenses – we will come to these, and the ways in which some people are trying to break down your defenses every day!
Letâs look a little more closely at the traditional methods people have used for inducing hypnosis.
To fixate attention means to absorb it, to concentrate, to narrow your awareness down to a single point of attention (like tunnel vision or a single idea). This can be done in many ways. Traditionally focus points have been the “ordinary” like a light or the hypnotists finger, through to the exotic, like the rhythmic chanting ofeastern mystics, the repetition of a word or phrase (like a “mantra”) or focusing on the light of a candle.
To bypass rational thinking there are many methods. The simplest one is engaging in repetitive “non-intellectual” activities. Rhythmic drumming or whirling in circles, a mind-numbingly boring lecturer or the rhythmic chanting of “mantras” or other prayers can have this effect. Over time more sophisticated techniques evolved.
So this is the first crucial thing to remember: to induce a hypnotic trance (and open the mind to suggestion) the basic conditions are get attention and turn off the intellect.
The next thing that needs to happen is that the unconscious mind is influenced. But the unconscious mind has got defenses – for example hypnosis alone cannot be used to force someone to break their own moral code. No one can hypnotize you and make you murder someone else (unless you really don’t mind killing them anyway). But they can make you see things in a way that makes killing OK – for example this is something that army indoctrination programs do. This last is an example of what are called hypnotic realities.
A hypnotic reality changes the way we think the world is, which then allows us to make “rational” choices that can be predicted. For example, if you are convinced that a certain washing powder has a special ingredient that cleans clothes better, it is rational to choose to buy it. Whether or not that magic ingredient actually exists or even works is irrelevant. The fact is that once your mind accepts that as a reality, your natural choices will take you down a predetermined path.
The same is true in politics: you will naturally withdraw your support from a politician that is corrupt – so smear campaigns started to evolve. It is natural to give your support to a politician who seems to have a clear solution in a time of crisis – which is why the outbreak of a war or a natural disaster has “saved” many flagging careers.
There are many devices for creating and installing these hypnotic realities: hypnotic stories, loaded hypnotic language, repetition, the voice of authority, trance logic. We will investigate these in order to familiarize you with the tricks being used on you until you can spot it happening and choose to stop it.
For now the stage is set for mass covert hypnosis. All you need to start a campaign of mass covert hypnosis is:
1. Reach enough people (there is an element of group dynamics that can be helpful to the hypnotist),
2. Rivet their attention for a period of time,
3. Switch off their intellect,
4. Hypnotically install a reality in which a normal, ethical person can only act in the way you want them to.
Mass Covert Hypnosis And The Media
It there are many different environments that will allow someone to create the 4 conditions for mass covert hypnosis to occur.
A cult may invite you to a meeting, talk or special seminar.
A lobby group may stage a mass rally with long speeches, the chanting of repetitive slogans and tiring marches.
A rock concert can be used to support a political message.
These activities may not be bad in themselves, but they have the potential to alter your state of consciousness enough to open your mind to mass suggestion. Whether this is done deliberately or accidentally is a mere historical footnote. The fact is your choice was taken away from you, the only individual entitled to determine the course of your life.
Luckily most of the example activities I have just mentioned are improperly stage managed so that the hypnotic effect is haphazard: whilst it is more likely that you will be influenced than not, it would still be difficult to tell the outcome in advance.
If you want to know the effectiveness of true covert mass hypnosis techniques in action when they are used with a purpose and properly stage managed, just look at Hitler’s rallies in the 1930s and the 1940s.
Hitler’s rallies were carefully crafted using every trick in the book (as they knew it then) to take a nation of decent people and make them either blind to the evil consequences of his regime (known as a negative hallucination) or embrace his twisted ideas one carefully managed step at a time.
Hitler used many people to help him in his campaign to corrupt a nation, including a drama teacher to help him deliver powerful and emotional speeches. But his most irresistible medium ever was film. Film allowed Hitler to take his message to an entire nation. If you think about it, film was ideal for a campaign of deliberate cover mass hypnosis because by its very nature it:
1. Reached millions of people at the same time
2. Forced them to sit still and pay attention for a period of time
3. Encouraged people to “Switch Off And Enjoy The Show” and
4. Bombarded them with the same (hypnotic) messages in many different ways.
The four conditions for mass covert hypnosis were satisfied. This s as true today as it was in Hitler’s day. Only now we have television as well as cinemas to contend. We have seen what Hitler’s messages bombarding a movie going nation once a week could do. Now think about how much more power a TV set has. It fulfils the 4 conditions just as well as film: its in your home (so your defenses are down) and you watch it every day!
In fact many children spend more time watching TV then they do going to school. Who do you think controls what they will be thinking when they grow up?
Still doubtful?
Well here are two studies that may shock you.
The first is by a researcher called Herbert Krugman. In his tests he found that the part of the brain responsible for the normal intellect, like rational thought, gets tuned down and other parts of the brain get stimulates into hyper activity. It literally numbs your ability to think rationally.
The second study is just a worrying. Thomas Mullholland put a bunch of children in front of a television set. The TV was wired so that it would automatically switch off when the children’s brain state switched from a normal everyday state to a more receptive state almost comatose in nature – like hypnosis.
They tried this a bunch of ways. The children were warned to keep alert. But no matter what the children did, within 30 seconds of the TV being turned on, those children entered a trance state and the television sets automatically clicked off.
30 seconds.
That’s all it takes for your mind to be switched into a hypnotically receptive mode – just 30 seconds.
How long do you watch TV?
How many messages have you let into your mind without realizing how they have shaped your thinking?
If you are feeling unsettled right now, your fears are not unfounded. Watching TV meets all the conditions for delivering a campaign of covert mass hypnosis: the studies have shown that TV focuses your attention and switches off (or at least “dumbs down”) your intellect to the point where your mind becomes easy to influence with hypnotic messages.
Now that we have discovered the basic “hypnotic” medium that is being used to make your mind vulnerable, lets have a look at the techniques that advertisers, politicians and political activists use plant Hypnotic Realities inside you so that you cannot help but do what they want you to do.
Covert Mass Hypnosis Strategies
The enemy of covert mass hypnosis is rational thinking. If you could reason logically whilst the messages are being implanted in your mind, you could deliberately block the process quite easily. It is more difficult to go in and root out a Hypnotic Reality that has already grown into full bloom inside your mind. It can be done, but prevention is a much better remedy than a cure!
So of course on of the primary strategies that a gifted covert hypnotist will use is to systematically break down your ability to reason. And there are many ways to do this.
Stir Up Primitive Drives
You may have thought that you have only one brain. Well it turns out that you have at least three, and each one does a different job. These brains are divided into 3 “shells” that grow around each other.
At the centre we have what is called the “R-complex”. The R-complex is made up of the brain stem and the cerebellum. Now the closest thing that resembles this brain in nature is the brains of reptiles. Both a reptileâs brain and the R-complex have the same function: survival instincts. The basics are eat, sleep, mate, fight and run away.
The next “brain” is a layer called the limbic system. Sometimes its referred to as the “mammalian brain” because it looks and acts a lot like the kinds of brains we find in lower mammals (like cats and dogs.) It basically regulates your emotions, some aspects of your personal identity and some aspects of your memory.
The topmost layer is the most complex. It is called the “neo-cortex” or sometimes the “cerebral cortex”. We share this structure with our primate cousins, though our version of it is ridiculously large in comparison. This is where our “higher” functions come from. We can socialize, reason, plan and speak thanks to this part of our brain.
Now normally the three brains work in balance. But as soon as the basic function of one of the lower brains is threatened, it short circuits the functions of the higher ones. So the first thing to go in stressful situations is our reason, our ability to speak coherently and plan ahead.
When your safety is threatened, the R-complex kicks in and makes you run on autopilot to keep you safe (by running away or fighting). When your emotions are stimulated to a high degree (e.g. when you’re in love or when you’re angry) again you loose the ability to reason or plan ahead properly.
Enter the mass manipulators. Did you ever hear a politician paint you a grim picture about rising crime rates (lack of safety) or rising unemployment (lack of food and shelter)? If their words hit home, then chances are pretty good that your ability to reason afterwards was impaired. All you know is that you want the problem to go away. You stop thinking the issues through clearly and the politician gets away with making bold claims without any real logic behind them.
This is a trick that Hitler had perfected. As a mass manipulator, he was lucky to live at a time when unemployment and food shortages swept through Germany. People where desperate and reason was in short supply. Hitler’s speeches hit the R-complex square in its needs, and the rest (as they say) is history.
The same is true of political activists. Look at the scare surrounding the climate change problem. How many of the messages you are being pumped full of are actual reasoned arguments? How much of it is designed to just make you feel afraid?
Whilst their cause might be a decent one, to keep our planet from harm, their methods are at times as sinister as Hitler or Stalin’s propaganda machine.
The news and politicians tend to thrive on the attention that they get from stimulating the R-complex. War, death, disaster, disease, corruption, evil, atrocities… these things sell papers or make you tune in to CNN. We think that the world is a terrible and evil place because that is the message that is being pumped at us – either to get us to look (e.g. the news) or to make us desperate for a political change.
Of course the general sense of unease that we are left with (in some cases it develops into a full blown paranoia) is the price we pay for their successful campaign to dominate our thinking.
Advertisers are also no strangers to manipulating our R-complex. We all know that sex sells.
Why do we see a sexually alluring woman draping herself across the bonnet (hood for our American friends) of a car?
Because men are aroused by the sight at some level. The R-complex kicks in and wants to mate. Whilst we may mask the desire from ourselves or under a social veneer, we still buy the message: car means sex. Buy car have sex.
The logic of the idea is atrocious. But we’re not thinking logically any more. Advertisers may (for the most part) be using more pleasant images, but they are still controlling your impulses to limit your choices down to one: do as we say!
The price we pay for this kind of associational logic that we have been exposed pretty much since birth is that we have a pretty warped sense of what we want from the world.
There was a time when our basic needs (eat, sleep, procreate) could be satisfied by living on a small farm in the middle of nowhere. It could be satisfied living in a city or town. There were more ways to find happiness because our choices where not narrowed down.
Ironically with the birth of industry we have more choice than ever in terms of what products we can use. The problem is that as our choice of things increase, our choices of lifestyles decrease. Men desire women with movie star looks and women need cosmetic surgery to feel desirable.
There must be something wrong with this?
The problem is whilst our thinking is restricted to the R-complex, so cleverly stimulated by the media industry as a whole, we don’t have a chance to think for ourselves.
The Mood Manipulators
There is another consequence of the Triune Brain model we just discussed. Apart from using fear to cripple our ability to think for ourselves, we can be swayed by any strong emotional response.
Again we turn to advertising. You’re watching TV (good boy, keep watching the hypnosis box), you’re receptive, an advert comes up with alluring images (R-complex starts overriding things) cue music and emotionally laden images.
Just as stimulating the need for sex, food or safety, so developing a strong emotional response in someone will short circuit their ability to think straight.
Cue nostalgic music. A handsome grandfather plays with his adorable granddaughter. They have a fun day, the little girl shows an expression of pure love for grandfather. He gives her a little treat, sweets from an old candy jar. Impossibly the little girls expression lights up even more. We are filled with happiness and delight with the privilege of witnessing this scene. Cue the cheap plastic bag of candy you can get for 99 cents in any drug store.
We unconsciously accept the message: to feel loved eat this candy.
Or: buy the pure love of children, bribe them with these sweets.
Consciously it doesn’t make sense. But when do you find yourself in the drugstore searching out the brand of “happy candy”?
When you’ve had a bad day and need some love and affection.
Ask any therapist and you will hear that the most common underlying problem driving obesity is unhappiness. A feeling of loneliness, or that you are not loveable. When we are down and out we grasp at the magic pill to make us happy again. Logically we know it won’t make us happy – just fat. But who is capable of logic anymore?
The hypnotic principle being employed here is “to change someone’s mind change their mood.”
Next time you watch TV just notice how much of what you are seeing and hearing is designed to manipulate your mood so that your unconscious makes similar mistakes in their favour!
Hypnotic Language Patterns
Consider this little item that could come from any political rally:
“We deserve to live happily, we have the right to be free from fear, we need to ensure that our children are safe in our homes and on our streets and we will do whatever it takes to make sure that happens”
Rousing stuff? Maybe.
But have a look at what is actually being said. Do you have any idea what this politician is on about?
The truth is if you ask 10 different people, you’ll get 10 different answers. The politician in question has made a statement that is a piece of hypnotic genius: we find our own meanings in it. Because we find our own meanings, we think that he’s speaking to us about our own needs
This is the power of hypnotic language. Hypnotic language can turn off your reasoning process, it can make you identify with the speakers message as though it were your own and accept his conclusions despite the lack of evidence (or even evidence to the contrary).
You’re watching a political broadcast. The guest speaker starts with a grim piece of news:
“Yesterday Mary X was walking with her children in the park. A gang of thugs raped and killed her whilst the children watched and cried…”
My apologies for this grim piece of language. If you are feeling disturbed just reading this, then you have just felt your R-complex being activated. The politician telling this grim story has just switched off your ability to reason. If he is good, he can convince you of anything now – the death penalty, more taxes (for a bigger police force or more prisons), even changes in the law that end up infringing your own civil liberties.
He doesn’t have to prove a thing. He has caught your mind so firmly with his hypnotic language that he can make you believe almost anything now. All he has to do is follow the hypnotic principles one step at a time and you’ll be caught – unless you can see what he’s doing and refuse to let him lead you around by the nose!
Now the topic of hypnotic language is vast. These examples were just the tip of a very large iceberg. And politicians and other cult leaders are particularly good at using it to subtly control what you think and don’t even consider.
The Law Of Repetition
This one is a hypnosis classic. The more often you say something the more you’ll believe it. The more a message is repeated to you, the more real it seems to become. This is partly because your memory finds more examples of it, and partly because of the way that your mind tries to reconstruct reality.
Repeat a message often enough and in different guises, and it is accepted as truth. At one stage in our history we all believed that the world was flat. Then came Galileo and was almost burned at the stake for suggesting it was round.
Now we all know it is round.
Or do we?
Ask yourself this: how do you KNOW that the world is round?
Now I am not from the Flat Earth Society. I have no wish to convince you that the world is flat. I just want you to think for a moment: how do you know what you know?
Chances are that unless you are a doctor of mathematics, an astrophysicist or an actual astronaut you have never worked this fact out for yourself through personal observation or mathematical measurements.
You believed other people. Enough people told you it was so and you believed them.
Imagine what would happen if all the papers tomorrow said “Scientific Scam – The World Is Not Round” and told you that rebel scientists have decided to break the great secret on pain of death. At first you wouldn’t be sure whether to believe the story. But it gets run again on the news. They interview some of these rebel scientists. They show photos that demonstrate how the curvature of the earth is an optical illusion. The evidence seems to pile up. How long would you hold out before you started to doubt what you now consider to be a cast-iron fact?
Politicians know this. They know that they can insinuate an idea in your mind. Come back to it time and time again. Build you up until you’re ready to accept it as the truth just on their say so – with absolutely no reasonable evidence to back it up.
Just think of the “Weapons of mass destruction” debacle that both the UK Prime Minister and the US President found themselves in. We believed them without a shred of evidence.
Why did we do it?
Because they kept telling us the same thing, over and over again, on TV when our mental defenses were down.
Did we really have a chance?
Specialist Techniques
There are many more techniques from the field of hypnosis and covert hypnosis that are being used more and more each day to influence you. Hypnotic stories (yes they exist!), shock & confusion, core drives and needs…
Sadly I do not have the time or the space to break each one of these specialist techniques down for you here. However there is one technique that is so subtle, so undetectable and so powerful that I feel obliged to make sure you know about it.
It is known as the “interspersal technique” or more commonly as “embedded commands”
An embedded command is a hypnotic command hidden inside of a normal, innocent sounding comment. Consider this:
“I need to tell you that ACME Product has just hit the shelves. By now you’ll have heard that there was a small delay to get it in shops, but we’re pleased to announce that we can get it there NOW without any problems. We feel proud to have done so at last.”
This sounds like an innocent announcement you could hear on the radio or in a TV slot somewhere right?
Now take another look at the statement with the message I have italicized for you:
“I need to tell you that ACME Product has just hit the shelves. By [buy] now you’ll have heard that there was a small delay to get it in shops, but we’re pleased to announce that we can get it there NOW without any problems. We feel proud to have done so at last.”
This gives you the following set of instructions:
“Need ACME Product , [buy] now, get it in shops, get it there NOW , feel proud to have done so at last.”
An embedded command allows you to use a special gesture, change of tone or other hypnotic trick to alert the unconscious mind to the secret message hidden inside the ordinary comment. Consciously we hear the normal comment and don’t think too much of it. Unconsciously we here the true message, and if the conditions were set up correctly, we get the “spontaneous” feeling that we really need another ACME product.
This is a powerful hypnotic technique that politicians and advertisement executives are learning all over the world now. It is almost impossible to spot, unless you know what to look for. And it is devastatingly effective.
Break The Trance
I hope that I have given you a solid foundation for understanding how covert mass hypnosis is being used against you. With all the conflicting hypnotic messages we are bombarded with every day, it is no wonder that more and more people are confused about what they want out of life.
We are being manipulated into believing things, wanting things and feeling bad about things that we otherwise would not care about in the least. When we leave our minds open to anyone, we cannot be surprised if we end up getting something that isn’t really any good for us.
We have a responsibility to choose our own way. We can take all these messages and examine them with our full reasoning abilities. Some of them will actually be worthwhile. You can the chose to let these in. Others will be unmasked for the destructive and manipulative things that they are. We can chose to expel those.
To prevent a negative suggestion taking hold in your mind is easy. As you hear it, consider what it really means. When the politician tells you that crime is out of control, what are his sources? Are things really any worse in your neighbourhood? Have things, in your own experience, been getting better over the years?
If the politician’s or the adverts message doesn’t match your experience then they had better have a damned good argument – with real facts to back it up. Not some emotional jujitsu, and not some random statistic thrown in without any explanation of how it was arrived at. Remember 80% of statistics are made up – including that one 🙂
Be careful what you watch on TV. If you watch the news, then take at least an equal measure of time to think about all the things that are NOT going wrong in the world.
My personal preference is to simply avoid the news altogether (actually I don’t watch any TV at all – apart from having a clearer sense of what my life is about, I have so many more hours to enjoy it in!) If anything really important happens – like the outbreak of war or the change in oil prices – I am sure to find that out from other people. In the last 7 years I have not missed one major event. But I have saved myself countless hours of needless anxiety.
And my mind is my own!
Published by Clifford Mee & Igor Ledochowski
- Labels: big brother, freedom, hypnosis, mind control
WE KNOW itâs been a very long time since we last wrote to you and indeed, we wouldnt be bothering you now, at a time when you are so hectically busy, if we didnt truly believe that you were our last hope. As youre probably well aware, given that the NPN (North Pole News) covered the story in graphic detail, things havenât been great in Ireland for some time now, but of late, weâve reached an all-time low.
Firstly however, we feel we must point out that although you saw fit to give us nothing but coal in our Christmas stockings for the last couple of years, we assure you that unlike Portugal, Spain and Greece, the Irish people were most grateful for your gift as without it, we may not even have survived the last few bitter winters of discontent.
Of course, you of all people, will know if weâve been naughty or nice over the past 12 months but we beg you to be particularly forgiving and understanding this Christmas, given that our nerves are somewhat frayed and frazzled after three years of austerity, hardship and deprivation.
Now, just to be crystal clear about this Santa, where we are beseeching you to look on us favourably, this is not a begging letter as such, as we no longer covet luxury goods such as private jets, helicopters, four-wheel drives, minimalist mansions and designer clothes. In fact, weve gone clean off all of that stuff of late.
Indeed, if we had one magic Christmas wish, it would be to turn back the clock to 2005 (a year before things got completely out of control) where we would auction off every single square inch of our little island to the highest international bidders and convert the sale proceeds into gold bars, which weâd then hide under the beds in our (rented) homes. Needless to say, weâd also have astutely avoided investing in bank shares, pension funds and property syndicates. But since itâs unlikely that even you, Santa Claus, can turn back the clock, we ask instead for the following:
If you could possible spell it out clearly to the Irish Government, the IMF, EU and the ECB that our national economic mess and our bank crash are two separate and distinct problems and should not be bundled together for the sake of saving the euro.
You might also remind them that there are limits to how much pain we can take, all in the name of saving our corrupt lending institutions. And forcing us to pay 5.8 per cent interest on our loan in the hope that such a punitive fee will put off other countries from following our lead is simply ridiculous, as no sovereign state in its right mind would purposely choose to go down this rocky route…….read more
THIS IS WHAT THE POLICE DID TO JODY McINTYRE !
People of the Rainbow Tribe……….DANCE………become the Ghost Dancer……they won’t stand a chance……..against our LOVE
……..and dance, dance, dance like a Dervish…….
Jody Williams
Jody Williams was born on October 9, 1950 in Brattleboro, Vermont. Her brother was deaf and suffered from schizophrenia. On account of his disabilities, he was incessantly tormented by his classmates. Williams was deeply touched by her brotherâs plight. An indication of Williamsâ concern about world issues was the that that as a teenager she was aware of the consequences of American military involvement in Southeast Asia and became involved in the anti-war effort during the Vietnam War.
Williams is the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), an organization that began in October of 1992. She has overseen the growth of the ICBL to more than 1,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in more than sixty countries. She has served as the chief strategist and public representative for this campaign. Working extensively with many non-governmental organization (NGOs) and receptive governments, the ICBL ultimately achieved its goal of an international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines during the diplomatic conference held in Oslo in September 1997. For this monumental effort Williams was awarded the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize along with the campaign she worked for. It should be noted that governments of the United States, Russia and China refused to be signatories to this treaty.
The life that she lived that led up to this monumental achievement was a life dedicated to service. Williams first trained as a teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL), receiving a BA from the University of Vermont in 1972 and a Master’s degree in teaching Spanish and ESL from the School for International Training (also in Vermont) in 1974. She taught ESL in Mexico, the United Kingdom, and finally Washington, D.C.. During her stay in Mexico, she had her first real experience of what constitutes grinding poverty. In 1984, she received a second M.A. in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
On learning about the U.S. involvement in the civil war in El Salvador, she began to devote her attentions to this situation. For two years she led delegations to Central America as coordinator of the Nicaragua-Honduras Education Project where she was an aid worker from 1984 to 1986. She also served as the deputy director of the organization Medical Aid for El Salvador where she developed and directed humanitarian relief projects. She was particularly concerned about the deleterious impact of U.S. policy in Central America; Williams held this position until she took up her role within the newly formed ICBL.
In late 1991, Bobby Muller, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, called Williams to see if she was interested in coordinating a new effort to ban landmines worldwide. She proceeded to mobilize non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to press this worthwhile cause. Millions of these explosive devices remain buried in the ground in war-torn countries around the world long after the initial conflicts had ended.
In October 1992, the ICBL was formally launched. The ICBL called for an end to the âuse, production, trade, and stockpiling of mines.â As the ICBLâs chief strategist, Williams took every opportunity to speak and write about this issue and was insistent on calling for a total ban.
Their efforts got another boost in 1996, when a meeting hosted by the Canadian government agreed to draw up an international treaty banning landmines. In December 1997, the treaty was signed , with the support of 122 countries. In little more than five years, Jody Williams and the ICBL had achieved their goal of raising public awareness about landmines and affecting a landmine ban.
Together with Shawn Roberts, she co-authored After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines (VVAF, 1995). Their book detailed the more hidden costs of landmine use, such as the long-term effects of land mines. Williams expressed her concerns in the following way, âBesides the costs of treating landmine victims, the mines mean that people cannot travel or work safely. Land goes unused, causing unemployment and poverty.â
“People have this idea that land-mined fields are set off with barbed wire like they are in World War II movies, but that is not how it is,” Williams once told a reporter. “They put them where people go. They put them next to watering holes, along the banks of the river, in the fields. It is not realistic for people to stay out of those areas.”
To achieve her monumental goal, Williams developed an approach that capitalized on the power of numbers, for her cause struck a strong and sympathetic chord in many individuals throughout the world, who were horrified to hear of the impact of landmines on innocent people. In her own words, Williams said, âImagine trying to get hundreds of organizations â each one independent and working on many, many issues â to feel that each is a critical element of the development of a new movement. I wanted each to feel that what they had to say about campaign planning, thinking, programs, actions was important. So, instead of sending letters, Iâd send everyone faxes. People got in the habit of faxing back. This served two purposes â people would really have to think about what they were committing to doing before writing it down, and we have a permanent, written record of almost everything in the development of the campaign from day one.â
Williams continues to serve the ICBL as a campaign ambassador and editor of the organization’s landmine report, and, since 2003, has held a faculty position as a distinguished professor of social work and global justice at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Her publications include:
⢠After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines, Shawn Roberts and Jody Williams, Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, Washington, D.C., 1995.
⢠“Landmines and measures to eliminate them,” International Review of the Red Cross, July-August 1995. No. 307.
⢠“Landmines: Dealing with the Environmental Impact,” Environment Security, 1997, Vol. 1. No. 2.
⢠“Social Consequences of Widespread Use of Landmines,” Landmine Symposium, International Committee of the Red Cross, Montreux, Switzerland, April 1993.
⢠“The Protection of Children Against Landmines and Unexploded Ordinance,” Impact of Armed Conflict on Children: Report of the Expert Group of the Secretary-General, Ms. Graca Machel, A/51/306, 26 August 1996.
In 2006, Williams was one of the founders of The Nobel Women’s Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates Rigoberta Menchu, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire. Six women representing North America and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa decided to bring together their experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality. It is the goal of the Nobel Women’s Initiative to help strengthen work being done in support of women’s rights around the world.
She was the Head of the High-Level Mission dispatched by the Human Rights Council to report on the situation of human rights in Darfur and the needs of Sudan. The Mission issued its report on 7 March 2007. In addition, Williams was invited to participate in the UNâs Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict of Children that was led by Graca Machel former first lady of Mozambique.
In conferring the Nobel Peace Prize to Williams and the ICBL, Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said, “There are those among us who are unswerving in their faith that things can be done to make our world a better, safer, and more humane place and who also, even when the tasks appear overwhelming, have the courage to tackle them… You have helped to rouse public opinion all over the world against the use of an arms technology that strikes quite randomly at the most innocent and most defenseless.”
To date, more than 156 countries have signed the landmine ban treaty. The following is an excerpt taken from her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, âThe desire to ban land mines is not new. In the late 1970s, the International Committee of the Red Cross, along with a handful of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) pressed the world to look at weapons that were particularly injurious and/or indiscriminate. One of the weapons of special concern was landmines. People often ask why the focus on this one weapon. How is the landmine different from any other conventional weapon?
âLandmines distinguish themselves because once they have been sown, once the soldier walks away from the weapon, the landmine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian — a woman, a child, a grandmother going out to collect firewood to make the family meal. The crux of the problem is that while the use of the weapon might be militarily justifiable during the day of the battle, or even the two weeks of the battle, or maybe even the two months of the battle, once peace is declared the landmine does not recognize that peace. The landmine is eternally prepared to take victims. In common parlance, it is the perfect soldier, the “eternal sentry.” The war ends, the landmine goes on killing.
âSince World War II most of the conflicts in the world have been internal conflicts. The weapon of choice in those wars has all too often been landmines — to such a degree that what we find today are tens of millions of landmines contaminating approximately 70 countries around the world. The overwhelming majority of those countries are found in the developing world, primarily in those countries that do not have the resources to clean up the mess, to care for the tens of thousands of landmine victims. The end result is an international community now faced with a global humanitarian crisis.â
Jody Williams has worked tirelessly for the causes of peace and social justice. She is now assisting the ICBL in its efforts to promote a new Cluster Munitions Treaty. Her actions and those who have participated in these efforts with her have undoubtedly saved countless lives and helped craft a safer world for many of the worldâs children.
- Labels: Labels