A short while ago, I ran across a doozy -- this fanciful piece on the CIA's Project MKULTRA, written by an entity who calls himself David Michael Dunbar:
MK ULTRA, an acronym for Martin Luther KING, Jr. orBefore you interject: Yes, I know that Project MKULTRA was real. And no, I will not allow discussion of that project here; that is not our current purpose.
niTRAM rehtUL gniK=CIA Project MK ULTRA aka The Negro Project which began in 1953 (http://www.wanttoknow.info/050626mkultra).
The MK ULTRA program was a communist program designed to run under the guise of the civil rights movement without being detected. If detected, any criticism could be deflected with accusations of racism and the strategy of Division Fallacy accusing the critic of racism rather than addressing the actual matter.
Right now, I want you to understand one key fact: Everything Dunbar has written about the project is garbage. All of it. MKULTRA had nothing to do with King; the MK digraph was applied to all projects associated with the Technical Services Division of the CIA. Dunbar links to a source which buttresses none of what he says.
Basically, the guy is making shit up. Like many a conspiracy salesman before him, he presents conjecture as fact.
So who is this guy? There is a David Dunbar who wrote a book exposing 9/11 conspiracy myths. At first, I suspected that a denizen of wackyland has been posting bizarre material under the name of a perceived enemy -- but now it seems that there really is a second David Dunbar who writes extremely strange material, which he self-publishes.
Thanks to the efforts of this bizarre man, thousands of people will now believe that MKULTRA had something to do with Martin Luther King -- and that the CIA was in the business of promoting communism. And, of course, that King was a communist. (Back in the 1960s, the Birchers and their compatriots promoted the very same ideas.)
This is just one further example of how real history gets buried under an avalanche of inanity.
Folks, this shit has gotten out of hand. This country cannot survive if an increasing number of citizens go bonkers.
Case in point: Aurora "Truthers" are now saying that the massacre in Colorado never happened.
Jordan Ghawi, a 26-year-old firefighter and paramedic whose sister was killed in the shooting, explained to Salon how the harassment started. “I think it started with me because my presence online is a little further out there than the rest of the families,” he said, noting his active Twitter feed and website detailing his adventures skydiving and traveling.Also see this piece in the Los Angeles Times.
The first email came from a man asking, “have you ever seen your sister’s body?” He ignored it. When a second email came, Ghawi replied, saying that he wasn’t going to entertain the man’s questions, but accidentally left his phone number in his email’s signature field. Then the phone calls started: “Did you see her body? It didn’t happen, it was a government coverup, etc., etc.
“From there, it went to threatening emails that included death threats … he did threaten my life at one point,” Ghawi explained.
But beyond Capitol Hill, and outside the popular airwaves, a constant murmur of paranoid skepticism has accompanied these attacks and occasionally bubbled into public view: So-called Sandy Hook truthers believe the Newtown, Conn., massacre was staged as part of a government-media conspiracy to galvanize support for gun control.Wanna see an actual Aurora "truther" in action? Try here. As near as I can tell, this article from last September may have been the first to print the insane charge that the theater was filled with actors, and that the massacre may have been a hoax.
Some theories, tinged with anti-Semitism, said actors made up their interviews about the killings. Newtown resident Gene Rosen, who helped six students after they escaped the massacre, said he had faced phone calls and emails accusing him of being a phony.
The best response: Treat the "truthers" as sub-humans. Do not engage them on an intellectual level; they have no intellects. Ridicule -- unrelenting, merciless ridicule -- is the best way to insure that the pathogen does not spread among the young.
6 comments:
Yeah, a few years ago a coworker of mine ran around shoving a printout in everyone's faces of something he found on the internet that supposedly proved Obama was a Muslim and was out to subvert the country.
It involved the the Arabic word placed inside the wording of the Obamacare bill. It was "Dhimmitude."
Unfortunately, I was both dumbfounded at his idiocy and required to be quite because of workplace rules. We're not suppose to talk politics but when right-wingers make up the majority of the workers their side still gets out.
Ben Michaelis, Ph.D., Clinical psychologist:
Are We All Just Wired for Anxiety? (http://huff.to/WazBx9)
If [in his TED talk (http://bit.ly/WCDAnY), professional skeptic Michael] Shermer is right (and he is), and that our default setting is to see patterns where they don't exist because the cost of being wrong (that there is no pattern) is usually much higher than the cost of being right (that there is a pattern) then I have some bad news for you:
We are all just wired for anxiety…
If this tendency is our natural weakness, we must overcome it by using our natural strength: Thinking and testing our beliefs.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Nah, Joe. We're not 'going' insane; we're already there. This is what happens when you give the demented legitimacy, allow them to pollute the airways with this rot or elect the truly moronic to State and Federal office. A few moments to listening to Ryan, Rand Paul or Bachmann is enough to drive anyone crazy. Scott Walker, Rick Scott and Bobby Jindal are frigging Governors! Add Rush and Beck and the team of howling wolves to the mix and you have a toxic potion. It infects the consciousness of the fearful, the suspicious and bigoted until you have fictions touted as fact.
There's something truly disturbing when you have more people in the country who believe in the existence of angels than evolution. So the Aurora and Newtown slaughters become fictional plots to deny red-blooded Americans their guns [immigrants need not apply]. I'm waiting to hear someone claim Gabby Giffords is just acting.
Btw, I agree. It's time to bring out the humiliating laughter. Reason is useless.
Peggysue
Did you know that the last five mass shooters were all Progressive Liberal Democrats?
The emails said it, so it must be true.
Krugman:
The Ignorance Caucus
http://nyti.ms/U4WfZm
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
I think much of what goes on is poisoning the well, a classic tool of propaganda.
Yes, some of it is native to natural paranoiac tendencies, and we now have an informational environment with the internet that enables cranks and loons, especially by providing a profit motive and cult of personality motive.
However, even these are fostered by the insanity and false narratives foisted upon all of us as the conventional wisdom and accepted history.
As acceptance of the CW breaks down under its obvious contradictions, alternative views attempt to provide a differing narrative.
That process has potential to better approximate something closer to the truth, but it is grossly threatening to the promulgators of the cover stories by which they pretend to justify their actions, falsely.
So, COINTEL-style, what nuggets of truth are discovered and put out there are buried in an avalanche of absurdities, to discredit the project of dismantling the lies of their edited 'histories,' and to then leave the CW as the default remaining position.
As I say, a classic method, and one in obvious play in our times.
Cf: the continuing efforts to reinforce the Warren Commission Report, with apologetics works published every couple of years like clockwork.
XI
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