PrintMay 6, 2009
Gullible America
As the gullible of the world start to relax after being told that the swine flu may not become a pandemic, the rest of us marvel at the breadth of their naïveté. One would think they'd recall the similar hysteria in 2002 over SARS. The same so-called clinical experts were intimating that it would be disaster like the 1918 flu epidemic that took 40 million lives. That fear campaign fizzled out eventually and there were no deaths in the U.S.
Nevertheless, the world continues to swallow the global warming, end of the world scenario, but never bothers to wonder who's profiteering from all these scare reports.
It's obvious that the mainstream media has abdicated all objectivity so it's up to novelists to come up with possible explanations to this deliberate fear campaign.
A few years ago, I met the wonderful Michael Crichton at an award luncheon and he graciously signed my copy of his book "State of Fear." This thriller about eco-terrorists could never be made into a film because too many Hollywood denizens would recognize their own stupidity and hypocrisy described in the novel. While I can't recommend the book as an easy read, it is exhaustedly researched and the facts within are compelling and eye opening.
Crichton's villains, however, are not as credible as the ones in David Baldacci's "The Whole Truth." It was reading this suspense novel that I first saw the phrase, "perception manipulators." The novel centers around a megalomaniac billionaire who fancies himself able to control world events. He contracts a PM (perceptual manipulation) firm to do his bidding by using the Internet and the media to create chaotic events which in turn him benefit him monetarily. These firms are highly paid to establish information and frequently misinformation all over the globe.
Throughout the novel I kept imagining George Soros as the man pulling the world strings because he is the man behind many of the leftwing Internet websites and community organizations. The public seems to forget that he has been dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England." Soros has a knack for pulling out his funds just before a financial crisis. Recently he was quoted in the Daily Mail, U.K. as saying, "I am having a very good "crisis."
Another similarity between George Soros and the villain in Baldacci's thriller is that the billionaires are both are generous philanthropists. Soros has donated about four billion dollars through his foundations. Baldacci's villain hides his nefarious deeds through the PM agency which cloaks all transactions through a web of intricate maneuvers ensuring that nothing will track back to the billionaire.
Soros has been a huge supporter of the Democratic Party. He funds sites like Moveon.org., which has been hostile to all things Republican and might even take credit for the 2006 takeover of Congress by the Democrats. It goes without saying that Soros supported Barack Obama. His one big failure, however, was in attempting to oust President Bush in 2004.
According to an article (Money Man) by Jane Mayer in the Oct.16-18, 2004 New Yorker magazine, George Soros met with other Democrats at a clandestine summit meeting at the Aspen Institute. The August 6th meeting consisted of five billionaires and a half a dozen liberal leaders to discuss the future of progressive politics, Mayer writes that they "shared a common goal: to use their fortunes to engineer the defeat of President George W. Bush in the 2004 election."
There has been a puzzling aspect about the media's Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), which defies logic until you pose the age-old guide -- Follow the Money. It's simply inconceivable that the mainstream media has collectively lost its mind unless you inject money into the equation. Good investigative journalists long ago would have inquired into how much the global warming hysteria has enriched former V.P. Al Gore. They would be asking questions today about which politicians are holding stock in flu vaccine pharmaceutical companies.
Videos of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters and other Democrats extolling the virtues of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and insisting that the Bush administration is wrong about regulating them have drawn millions of hits on You Tube. It's apparent, however, that no one at the New York Times or the Washington Post thinks there's a story there, even though all of these blunderers are now in charge of the economy.
Megalomaniacs exist on both sides of the political spectrum and that is something that makes us vulnerable to deception. Thanks to the Internet and an integrity-challenged media our perception of everyday events can be easily manipulated to support the personal agenda of those with very big bucks. Today, swine flu; what crisis will tomorrow bring?
