The media matrix

Comment: This is an example of how "go for the jugular" the disinfo can be.


This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows. To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41073

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

The media matrix
Posted: October 26, 20041:00 a.m. EasternEditor's note: This groundbreaking expose of the "mainstream press" by WND Managing Editor David Kupelian was published originally in the October 2004 edition of Whistleblower magazine, an issue titled "POISON PRESS."
By David Kupelian
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com-->© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
When Ronald Reagan finally slipped away from this earthly life in June, most Americans were swept up in the week-long memorial, full of poignancy and praise, eulogies and processions, stories and jokes – all sustained by a deep wellspring of love for the 40th president.
Joining in the pageantry were all of the familiar stars of the news media. With "Hail to the Chief" trumpeting in the background, they memorialized Reagan's paramount role in ending the Cold War, his revitalization of America's stagnant economy after Carter's "malaise," his rekindling of Americans' faith in their country and its enduring values. And they took obvious pride in sharing stories of their personal experiences with "the Gipper."
It continued all week. Gushing references to the "Great Communicator," the "shining city on a hill," "morning in America" and "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall" flowed effortlessly from silver-tongued media orators echoing the deepest sentiments of the vast majority of Americans.
Yes, the big media loved Reagan in death. Just as they reviled and mocked him in life.
Here's what these same media icons were saying just a few short years ago, at the end of Reagan's second term as president:
"I predict historians are going to be totally baffled by how the American people fell in love with [Ronald Reagan] and followed him the way we did." – CBS News reporter Lesley Stahl, Jan. 11, 1989
"... Ronald Reagan presided over a meltdown of the federal government during the last eight years. Fundamental management was abandoned in favor of rhetoric and imagery. A cynical disregard for the art of government led to wide-scale abuse." – CBS News reporter Terence Smith, in the November 4, 1989, New York Times
"On behalf of [the Nicaraguan Contras'] cause, Reagan sold out his oath of office and subverted the Constitution. Oliver North presented himself as the immortal boy in the heroic green uniform of Peter Pan. Although wishing to be seen as a humble patriot, the colonel's testimony showed him to be a treacherous and lying agent of the national security state, willing to do anything asked of him by a president to whom he granted the powers of an oriental despot." – PBS series "America's Century," narrated by Harper's Editor Lewis Lapham, Nov. 28, 1989
"A hundred years from now – long after Ronald Reagan has been lumped with other ineffectual Dr. Feelgoods like William McKinley and Calvin Coolidge who swam with the tide of their times – the last fourth of the 20th century will be remembered for the demise of imperial communism, and the Soviet Union's president will be remembered for both making and letting it happen." – Boston Globe Washington reporter and columnist Tom Oliphant
"Ronald Reagan and Madonna. On the surface, he stood for the fundamental American values that she parodied. But underneath, they conveyed the same Horatio Alger myth: Self-image over reality. Say it or sing it enough, and any dream of yourself might come true, at least in the public's perception." – U.S. News & World Report Senior Editor Donald Baer
"The '80s were the years of excess. We swaggered through the portals and grabbed as much as we could. We were greedy and gluttonous. As long as we wore starched shirts, we could belch at the dinner table. And Ronald Reagan led us." – USA Today's Debbie Howlett on page 1, Nov. 27, 1989
"The decade had its highs (Gorbachev, Bird) ... and the decade had its lows (Reagan, AIDS)" – Boston Globe headlines over '80s reviews by the paper's columnists, Dec. 28, 1989
"Reagan, AIDS"? Whoa, hit the pause button.
The mainstream press hated Reagan, his values, his policies, and his influence on the nation. The nation, meanwhile, loved Reagan. What does this tell us?
It tells us the so-called "mainstream press" is radically out of the mainstream.
But this article is not about how the press is too "biased" or "liberal" or "left-wing." That's old news – very old. Every objective study for the past three decades has proven conclusively the profound bias that is obvious to everyone, except maybe Dan Rather and a few others.
No, the scary fact is that the media – both news and entertainment – are literally the creators and sustainers of what most of us perceive as reality, very much like the malevolent computer program in "The Matrix" film trilogy.
In "The Matrix," humans are born into a slave state in which what they think of as reality is actually a powerful computer-generated virtual-reality program. They live in constant and deep delusion. Without realizing it, these humans have been reduced to the lowest form of servitude, their life energies literally sucked out of them to fuel the insatiable needs of their rulers.
"Wait a minute," you're probably thinking. "I know the media are biased and out of touch with the mainstream. But what's this 'Matrix' stuff? You're losing me."
Ready to swallow the red pill?
Remember in the "Matrix" story when the hero, a young man named Neo, meets Morpheus for the first time? Morpheus is the leader of the tiny remnant of rebels who know the truth about the matrix and are fighting to free mankind from its enslavers ...
Morpheus: Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind – driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Neo: The matrix?
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is? (Neo nods his head.) The matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when you go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. (long pause, sighs) Unfortunately, no one can be told what the matrix is – you have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. (In his left hand, Morpheus shows a blue pill.) You take the blue pill and the story ends. You awake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. (A red pill is shown in his other hand.) You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. (Long pause; Neo begins to reach for the red pill.) Remember – all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.
(Neo takes the red pill and swallows it with a glass of water.)
'A prison for your mind'
Everyone has heard a little bit about mass manipulation, mind control, brainwashing, suggestion, hypnosis and Pavlovian conditioning – the scary stuff of far-off communist operatives, religious cults and movie thrillers like "The Manchurian Candidate." It pops up in the news now and then, as when the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped and brainwashed Patricia ("I am Tanya") Hearst, or more recently in "Stockholm Syndrome" cases, where terrified hostages come to sympathize, and in some cases actually fall in love, with the very terrorists threatening their lives.
Nevertheless, we're never quite sure how much of this mind-control stuff is objectively real, and how much is just psychobabble or science fiction. Right?
Let me help you out here. It's not only real – it's the fabric of our lives.
To demonstrate the real-life matrix programming we consider our reality, let's momentarily set aside the news media and focus on one of the most stunning and audacious real-life matrix programs currently running. I'm referring to what we call "evolution."
In the days prior to the evolution matrix program – that is, from the beginning of human life until Darwin came along in the mid-19th century – human beings would step outside their homes and survey with their eyes and minds the wonders of nature. They'd see majestic 400-year-old redwood trees, hummingbirds that were able to hover, and honeybees that somehow knew how to do a special figure-eight dance that would communicate to all of the other worker bees the precise location of the dancer's newly discovered nectar source.
Looking in every direction, we humans beheld not only fantastic complexity, diversity and order, but also the supreme intelligence behind creation, as brashly evident as the noonday sun.
This ubiquitous natural wonderland caused man to acknowledge and honor the Creator of creation, as Copernicus did when he wrote, "[The world] has been built for us by the Best and Most Orderly Workman of all." Or as Galileo wrote, "God is known ... by Nature in His works and by doctrine in His revealed word." Or as Pasteur confessed, "The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator." Or Isaac Newton: "When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance."
Did not happen by chance?
Ever since Darwin and his successors succeeded in loading the evolution matrix program on mankind – a fantastic theory for which there is no proof, and many serious problems – when we now walk outside and look at the created universe, what do many of us see? Chance!
Although our eyes survey the same wonders of God's creation that inspired faith in our predecessors, in our minds today we see only the meaningless result of millions of years of random, chance mutation. That's what our minds "see" – the eternal dance of purposeless recombination of ever-more-complex forms, but all without meaning, without spirit, without love. And by direct implication we also "see" that man is not a fallen being needful of God's saving grace, but merely the cleverest, most evolved animal of all. Since evolution by definition always results in improvement and advancement, man and all of his violent and lustful and selfish drives are perfectly normal and natural and … advanced. There is no good and evil, no Heaven and Hell – and man, as a highly evolved monkey, has no sin and no guilt – as these are logical impossibilities from the evolutionary point of view.
OK, get the idea? And that's just one matrix program.
Our eyes, our senses, work just fine. But we've been lied to so thoroughly, consistently and convincingly that we no longer perceive the meaning of what we see, nor understand what we hear.
Now that we're clear on what I mean by real-life "matrix programs," let's turn our attention to the news media and examine some of the interesting programs currently running.
Matrix program: Kerry should be president
"Let's talk about media bias here. The media, I think, want Kerry to win."
That's Newsweek's Evan Thomas candidly admitting the obvious on PBS's "Inside Washington." In fact, during the Democratic convention, New York Times columnist John Tierney asked 153 journalists whether they thought John Kerry or George W. Bush would make a "better president." Reporters from outside the beltway favored Kerry 3 to 1, while the approximately 50 Washington-based journalists polled favored Kerry over Bush by a stunning 12-to-1 margin!
This bias, of course, reached absurd levels recently when Dan Rather and CBS News pathetically stonewalled the entire world – even the rest of the "mainstream media" – arrogantly defending the obviously bogus documents Rather and "60 Minutes" had featured for the intended purpose of bringing down a U.S. president.
But that was just the time they got caught. What about the other thousands of news stories that form the fabric of confusion, cover-up and deceit that passes for "political analysis" in the establishment press?
The net result of this syndrome, as regards the 2004 election, is that somehow the truth about John Kerry never takes root in the public mind. And thus is the nation betrayed.
Let's unplug the Kerry matrix program for a few minutes and look with real eyes at the man who would be commander in chief:
Kerry says he believes human life begins at conception, but he supports unrestricted abortion on demand up until the very moment of birth, opposes bans on the horrific partial-birth abortion procedure, and opposes parental-notification laws.
Kerry says he wants to balance the budget, but he has opposed a balanced-budget amendment five times.
Kerry says he'll cut taxes on "working people," but has a long record of supporting tax increases and opposing tax cuts.
Kerry says he'll make a "stronger America" and will win the war on terror, but he is profoundly anti-military, having voted for at least seven major reductions in defense and military spending.
Kerry says he opposes same-sex marriage – but he was one of only 14 senators to vote against the Defense Of Marriage Act, which was signed into law by President Clinton.
These impossible contradictions are all easily and objectively provable – they're Kerry's Senate voting record – and yet, the public doesn't know them. Because the press, which wants Kerry to win, won't report it so it sinks in.
Kerry has made his four-month tour of duty in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign, but the best-selling book "Unfit for Command," giving voice to dozens of decorated Vietnam vets that served alongside Kerry, paints a grotesquely disturbing picture of a budding sociopath.
Kerry's Vietnam colleagues overwhelmingly portray him, as columnist David Limbaugh summarizes, "as a ruthless, self-promoting egomaniac who systematically placed his own interests above his fellow soldiers and who was obsessively involved in building his resume at all costs during the entirety of his short tour in Vietnam." Author John O'Neill, Limbaugh adds, "depicts Kerry – with mountains of documented evidence – as a pathological, unconscionable liar whose penchant for dishonesty in Vietnam was only exceeded by his brutal, unmitigated slander of his fellow soldiers when he rushed stateside to lobby against them, their superiors and the entire military establishment."
In sum, John Kerry is a dangerous fraud, whose election as president would cause unfathomable human suffering and national harm.
So, where are the media? Same place they were when Bill Clinton was trading sensitive weapons technology to the Communist Chinese in return for campaign contributions, when they learned he was having a sexual affair in the Oval Office with a woman barely older than his own daughter, when a credible allegation of forcible rape was made public, when he was subverting America's intelligence capability which later allowed 9-11 to happen, when he committed outrage after impeachable outrage right under the media's noses. The press looked the other way.
You see, corruption and even criminality on the part of a candidate don't matter with the establishment media nearly as much as that candidate's support for legalized abortion on demand, the activist homosexual agenda and the rest of the secular, big-government agenda.
Indeed, the press today share none of the concern and skepticism the Founding Fathers had over government. Rather, the media – and because of them a good deal of the population – have come to look to government as the primary problem-solvers. This is simply because the more God diminishes in our lives, the more government has to rise to take His place. As William Penn said, "Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants."
Thus, the media tend always to favor the Democratic Party and big-government solutions to all problems precisely because God isn't real to them. Please don't tell me some of them "go to church" or that this one's "a Catholic" or some other nonsense. I'm saying that when people have a real, moment-to-moment relationship – with "fear and trembling," as the Good Book says – with the Living God, they do not look to government to solve all of their problems.
One detrimental result of having such a subversive press is that it generates a low-grade hypnotic effect on the president and other leaders. Put yourself in the president's place: You're basically always surrounded by the press corps – professional on the surface, but secretly hostile to you and, in fact, hostile to the foundational values underlying Western Civilization. They're watching every move you make, recording every word that comes out of your month, looking for ways to undermine you. Remember – they want Kerry to win.
Clearly, this dynamic exerts a powerful subconscious pressure on the president (and other leaders) to please the media, and thus to bow to the agenda the media champion. After all, the media determine what much of the public will see, hear and think about the issues of the day, and about the president himself. Any president obviously wants the public to approve of him and what he's doing (not to mention getting re-elected), and this depends to a significant extent on his being portrayed favorably by the press. Thus, there is a constant and powerful pressure on elected leaders to bend, to compromise their principles, and to betray the public trust, fearing that not to do so will result in disastrously negative media coverage, and their ultimate defeat.
Why did George W. Bush come up with a budget-busting prescription drug benefit program before the 2000 election? Because Al Gore had promised a budget-busting prescription drug benefit program and the media made the public feel that any candidate that didn't offer a prescription drug benefit program hated old people and shouldn't be president. Honest reporting would have relieved Bush of the election-year pressure to mirror Gore's vote-buying giveaway promises.
In short, politicians always have the temptation to abandon their principles and fall to corruption in any of a thousand ways. The media, if they were doing their job, would not only keep politicians honest through watchdog reporting, but would also reduce leaders' temptation to stray from the Constitution by not making evil and corruption look so reasonable and attractive, and not making the Constitution and biblical principles look so unfair and mean-spirited.
OK, it gets much worse. Let's follow the trail down the rabbit-hole and see how deep it goes.
Matrix program: Abortion is a basic human right
It is because of the news media that abortion destroys 1.3 million little human lives in America every year. Most members of the establishment press want abortion to be legal, and that's why it's legal.
If you doubt my placing the blame squarely on the news media, let's review exactly how abortion became a "constitutional right" in America in the first place.
Here's how one of the pioneers of the abortion-rights movement and co-founder of the pro-abortion vanguard group NARAL, Bernard Nathanson, M.D., describes how he and his comrades used the willing news media to implement their radical agenda.
It was Nathanson who made up the original abortion-rights slogans in the early '70s, which remain virtual articles of faith for today's "pro-choice" movement: "Freedom of choice" and "Women must have control over their own bodies."
"I remember laughing when we made those slogans up," recalls Nathanson, reminiscing about the early days of the abortion-rights movement in the late '60s and early '70s. "We were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion. They were very cynical slogans then, just as all of these slogans today are very, very cynical."
"In 1968 I met Lawrence Lader," says Nathanson. "Lader had just finished a book called 'Abortion,' and in it had made the audacious demand that abortion should be legalized throughout the country. I had just finished a residency in obstetrics and gynecology and was impressed with the number of women who were coming into our clinics, wards and hospitals suffering from illegal, infected, botched abortions.
"Lader and I were perfect for each other. We sat down and plotted out the organization now known as NARAL. With Betty Friedan, we set up this organization and began working on the strategy."
"We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was a liberal, enlightened, sophisticated one," recalls the movement's co-founder. "Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60 percent of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion. This is the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority. We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000, but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000.
"Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law.
"Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1,500 percent since legalization."
'We captured the media'
In New York, the law outlawing abortion had been on the books for 140 years. "In two years of work, we at NARAL struck that law down," says Nathanson. "We lobbied the legislature, we captured the media, we spent money on public relations ... Our first year's budget was $7,500. Of that, $5,000 was allotted to a public relations firm to persuade the media of the correctness of our position. That was in 1969."
New York immediately became the abortion capital for the eastern half of the United States.
"We were inundated with applicants for abortion," says Nathanson. "To that end, I set up a clinic, the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health (C.R.A.S.H.), which operated in the east side of Manhattan. It had 10 operating rooms, 35 doctors, 85 nurses. It operated seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to midnight. We did 120 abortions every day in that clinic. At the end of the two years that I was the director, we had done 60,000 abortions. I myself, with my own hands, have done 5,000 abortions. I have supervised another 10,000 that residents have done under my direction. So I have 75,000 abortions in my life."
Wondrously and ironically, over time Nathanson became convinced of the humanity of the unborn baby and ultimately left the abortion movement. He later wrote "Aborting America" and "The Abortion Papers" and produced two movies – "The Silent Scream" and later "Eclipse of Reason" – which captured actual abortions on film. Today, Nathanson is committed to the cause of ending legalized abortion in America.
However, the news media he manipulated into embracing legalized abortion are still under its spell.
What do you think would happen if today's news media were to report accurately, objectively and courageously on abortion – as the New York Times did in the 1870s? What if reporters and editors cut through the high-flying rhetoric of "civil rights" and "constitutional freedom" and "women's health" and brought the issue down to little, perfectly formed human babies – 3,000 of them every single day, the same number of people as perished on 9-11 – being painfully ripped apart, suctioned, chemically burned, dismembered or decapitated? What if the press diligently reported on the proven and devastating physical and psychological effects abortion has on women, including the increased risk of breast cancer? What if the press actually broadcast pictures or video of abortions?
What if the press reported – not just once, equivocally and in subdued tones, as it is prone to do with facts it doesn't like but feels compelled to report – but aggressively and relentlessly, with saturation coverage, as the New York Times did day after day this year with dozens upon dozens of front-page stories on the Abu Grahib prison scandal?
Can there be any doubt as to the result? The abortion matrix program would be unplugged. Americans would see the truth once again, and the realization of the horror of abortion would seep into, and eventually permeate, the public consciousness, as it did for centuries before this generation. Abortion would not only become illegal once again, but would widely be recognized as grossly immoral and criminal.
Matrix program: Israeli 'Goliath' threatens Arab 'David'
One of the most spectacular virtual-reality mass illusions in the world today – reinforced constantly by the news media – is the widely held perception that, in the never-ending Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel is the evil aggressor "Goliath" threatening the righteous but powerless Arab "David."
How is this possible? Israel, a sliver of a country the size of New Jersey, is surrounded by 22 Arab nations with vastly more population, land, wealth, armies and oil. Israel has been attacked by its Arab neighbors five times in all-out wars of intended annihilation – the first war coming one day after Israel's 1948 founding! To this day, Israel is obligated to continue defending itself against a perpetual state of war declared by hostile neighbor nations openly sworn to destroy it – as well as constant terrorist attacks on innocent civilians by jihadist suicide bombers.
To regard the tiny Jewish state as the aggressor in the Arab-Israeli conflict, then, is delusional. It's like putting a 7-year-old in the ring with a heavyweight boxer and seeing the adult boxer as the underdog and the child as the bully.
Here's how this illusion is accomplished: Arab leaders, many of whom have from the start vowed to eliminate the Jewish state from the Middle East, have conspired to attain by guile and deceit what their militaries could not accomplish through repeated wars of aggression: They cultivated a campaign to establish a "Palestinian state" – directly on top of a vanquished Israel.
The Palestinian cause is a modern-day myth, broadcast and reinforced endlessly by the news media. The "Palestinian state" is the Trojan Horse of the Arab world, designed to get inside Israel by way of deception and promises of peace. The Palestinian leadership doesn't want peace with Israel; it wants Israel.
Like the Palestinian leadership, the other leaders of the Arab world care nothing for the Arab people who call themselves "Palestinians" – they care only for the destruction of Israel they hope the Palestinian cause will ultimately bring. As President Jimmy Carter confessed at a 1979 press conference, "I have never met an Arab leader that in private professed a desire for an independent Palestinian state. Publicly, they all espouse an independent Palestinian state ..."
Let's pull on just one thread in the fabric of the "Palestinian cause" and see what happens.
Remember the "martyrdom" death of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura?
The entire world was horrified as news broadcasts played the sensational video footage over and over again of the Palestinian boy being shot on Sept. 30, 2000, apparently by Israeli forces, dying pitifully in his father's arms.
Heart-wrenching photos of the father and son in death's grip became immortalized in posters that were plastered up and down the streets of the West Bank and Gaza, inspiring many a youthful suicide bomber to join Mohammed in "martyr's" paradise. He became the poster boy and rallying cry of the bloody intifada, which claimed hundreds of lives.
Although the Israeli military initially assumed responsibility for the incident, it soon became apparent that the Israel Defense Force could not have shot the boy, due to a large barrier between the Israeli military outpost across the remote junction in Gaza and the position of the boy and his father.
Finally, an in-depth investigation concluded that the al-Dura affair was actually a piece of Palestinian street theater, similar to the dramatic Palestinian funeral processions that were observed after the Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp. During that public spectacle, a martyred "corpse" twice fell off the stretcher, only to hop back up and retake his place in the procession. (The Palestinians had claimed 3,000 deaths in Jenin – the actual toll turned out to be 52.)
It turns out many Palestinians were "playing to the camera" on the day Mohammed al-Dura was "martyred." Israeli commentator Amnon Lord's account of the larger scene at Netzarim Junction when the boy was supposedly shot to death describes "incongruous battle scenes complete with wounded combatants and screeching ambulances played out in front of an audience of laughing onlookers, while makeshift movie directors do retakes of botched scenes."
Palestinian journalist Sami El Soudi echoes Lord's observation, revealing that:
... almost all Palestinian directors take part more or less voluntarily in these war commissions, under the official pretext that we should use all possible means, including trickery and fabulation, to fight against the tanks and airplanes the enemy has and we don't ... Our official press reported 300 wounded and dead at Netzarim junction the day when Mohammed was supposedly killed. Most of the cameramen there were Palestinians ... They willingly took part in the masquerade, filming fictional scenes, believing they were doing it out of patriotism. When a scene was well done the onlookers laughed and applauded.
"It is incredible," says French journalist Gerard Huber,
how many people were calmly filming the battle of Netzarim on September 30th, 2000. Not only professionals – some of them standing no more than 10 meters away from the al-Dura incident – but amateurs as well.
The rushes [video clips] are full of surprising incongruities: Children smile as ambulances go by. A 'wounded' Palestinian collapses and two seconds later an ambulance pulls up to take him to the hospital. It looks as if the driver had been cued in, knew in advance where the Palestinian was going to fall, or was waiting in the upper right hand corner just out of the photographic field ready to zoom in on signal.
Street theatre. The Mohammed al-Dura story – which rather than documenting Israeli brutality toward Palestinians, shows instead the Arab propaganda machine being enabled, magnified and laundered by the "mainstream press" – is but one story.
There are hundreds and hundreds of similar shabby episodes – from the "Jenin massacre" to the "murder" of Rachel Corrie – that together create and reinforce this preposterous virtual-reality illusion of Israel as the aggressor.
The truth is, the Palestinian cause is itself a giant piece of street theatre, just as the separate scenes – Mohammed al-Dura's "martyrdom," children being told they'll go to heaven if they commit mass murder, Yasser Arafat pretending to seek peace with Israel (in English) while simultaneously urging violent jihad (in Arabic) – are the little charade pieces that comprise the whole.
It takes an incredible amount of effort and energy on the part of the news media to maintain such an obviously outrageous suspension of reality.
But what would happen if the press reported accurately, objectively and courageously on the Middle East conflict? Media reports would reflect, truthfully, that Israel is a Western democracy surrounded by dozens of backwards, lying, terror-supporting Arab police states dedicated to Israel's annihilation. They'd show that Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasser Arafat is the father of modern terrorism. They'd show that the so-called "Palestinian problem" was cynically created for the precise purpose of eliminating the Jewish state by deception. The media would reveal that the Palestinian leadership is not now, nor has it ever been, interested in a separate Palestinian state next to Israel, but rather, in taking over all of Israel.
"Well, what about the West Bank?" you say. "Doesn't that belong rightfully to the Palestinians?"
When did it belong to the Palestinians? Before 1967, when Israel seized it in an unprovoked war of intended annihilation launched by neighboring Arab nations, the "West Bank" was part of Jordan. So, whence comes this idea that it belonged to the "Palestinians"? It's a myth, a lie – a matrix program – created in the Arab Middle East, and presented endlessly by the Western press as though it were reality.
"OK, OK. So you're picking out a few horror stories where the media got it wrong. What's the point?"
They're not horror stories. They're normal. They are the very fabric of the daily news coverage churned out by today's journalism organizations.
"The Arab-Israeli conflict." "Gay rights." "Abortion rights." "Gun control." "Hate crimes." "Separation of church and state." "The terror war." These are all virtual-reality constructs, sophisticated marketing products composed of lies and truth seamlessly sewn together. Poke at them a little and they burst – spilling out the half-truths, emotionalized "reasoning," marketing slogans, distortions and audacious, bald-faced lies that comprise a mind-numbing web of deceit. Whatever the focus, today's so-called "mainstream" news coverage is rooted in powerfully propagandistic impulses and results in a web of matrix-induced delusions – which most of us think of as "the real world."
So, how to break out? Let me first tell you how not to break out. With anger.
Being angry at life will only serve to lock you more deeply into the matrix programming. Oh, you may think you're moving away from the matrix at light-speed, but you're not. You're just logging on to the alternate program that's been prepared for people like you. An angry rebel is not free.
Alternate matrix program: For rebels against 'mainstream press'
"This [9-11 terror] was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder."
Those are the words of attorney Stanley Hilton, who claims he is representing 400 family members of 9-11 victims in a $7 billion lawsuit against the federal government.
Here's what Hilton said recently on the Alex Jones radio show:
Yeah, we are suing Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Mueller, etc. for complicity in personally not only allowing 9-11 to happen, but in ordering it. The hijackers, we retained, and we had a witness who is married to one of them. The hijackers were U.S. undercover agents. They were double agents, paid by the FBI and the CIA to spy on Arab groups in this country. They were controlled. Their landlord was an FBI informant in San Diego and other places. And this was a direct, covert operation, ordered, personally ordered by George W. Bush. Personally ordered.
We have incriminating evidence, documents as well as witnesses, to this effect. It's not just incompetence – in spite of the fact that he is incompetent. The fact is, he personally ordered this, knew about it. He, at one point, there were rehearsals of this. The reason why he appeared to be uninterested and nonchalant on September 11th – when those videos showed that Andrew Card whispered in his ear ... [as] he listened to kids reading the pet goat story, is that he thought this was another rehearsal. These people had dress-rehearsed this many times. He had seen simulated videos of this.
You get the idea.
There are many people who believe this dark conspiracy theory, despite its outrageous claims and total lack of evidence.
Do you know why the "Big Lie" is much more believable than the small lie, as Hitler so correctly observed? Because the "Big Lie" is shocking. And shock does something to people – it disturbs their normal logical processes. It emotionalizes them, which Hitler recognized was the key to controlling people. The "Big Lie" is both upsetting and strangely exciting. It plays on people's doubts and hidden resentments – and thus, it mysteriously feeds their ego, imparting a sense of growth.
You're especially vulnerable to the "Big Lie" type of matrix program if it can induce in you a bit of doubt. For instance, this lawyer, Stanley Hilton, reportedly used to be an aide to Sen. Bob Dole.
"Gosh, he represents all these 9-11 family members, and he used to work for Bob Dole! And Dole ran for president! Maybe there is something to this!"
If a bit of doubt can worm its way into your mind, that doubt will make you emotional. And once you're upset and emotionally off-balance, you're suggestible. And that means you're ripe to start believing things you wouldn't and couldn't have believed five minutes before.
Who would want to believe such an extraordinarily evil interpretation of reality, especially without evidence? Well, people who are extremely angry at the government.
For such people, it's emotionally exciting to believe President Bush consciously and intentionally ordered the 9-11 terror attacks. It's like a drug-induced high – you are one of the few Americans who actually possess the secret truth about 9-11 that the masses don't have.
Furthermore, when you're high on the idea that the president consciously and intentionally ordered the 9-11 terror attacks, your mind is aglow with self-righteous judgment. Whatever dim consciousness, guilt or anxiety you might have had previously regarding your own very real faults, is long gone. You are a "true believer." You see yourself as a righteous patriot, and the president and his consorts as evil incarnate – and that makes for a pretty powerful ego trip on your part.
This delusion, like the other matrix-induced beliefs, affects the way you see everything else in life. If Bush was behind the 9-11 attacks, then all the other people close to him also knew, and therefore are all supremely evil and equally guilty. By the same token, people who support the president are stupid fools, and the government is worthy of violent overthrow at any cost according to this view. People who disagree with you are somnambulistic idiots, and those who agree with you are patriots and brothers.
You're totally swept up in the matrix, while believing you're plugged into hardcore truth.
The real matrix
In truth, the news media, just like the entertainment media, politicians, the government school system, cultural leaders – in short, the "authority" class the average person looks up to as experts and role models – are themselves just pawns in a great cosmic game of deception. In a very real sense, they're also caught up in, and subject to, a "matrix program" that's been running, not only during this generation or for the past century, but for as long as man has been around.
And this real-world matrix is every bit as powerful, consuming and seemingly inescapable as that in the science-fiction thriller.
The problem, dear reader, is that the real "matrix" of deception in this world, of which the news media are only pathetic channels, is the dark spiritual dimension that "waits upon" the human race to tempt, ensnare, deceive and otherwise prevent any mortal from finding the Kingdom of Heaven.
Almost every one of us, from the time we're born, is conditioned by parents, family, friends, teachers, employers and the larger culture to become something we're not. With the promise of reward and the threat of punishment, through intimidation, seduction, cruelty, phony kindness, and endless other ways of appealing to the various hidden weaknesses in all of us, our lives are shaped by others.
In some parts of the Muslim world, children are heartlessly bred and nurtured for their highest purpose – attaching explosives to their beautiful bodies and blowing themselves up while they take with them as many innocent human lives as possible, in the insane belief they are thereby earning their way into heaven.
The thoughts and feelings and beliefs of these Muslim youngsters are not their own thoughts and feelings and beliefs. They have been cruelly injected into them, by means of the same sorts of brainwashing techniques that have been used to change loyalties of prisoners of war, or by cult leaders like Charles Manson and Jim Jones. Powerful emotions of hatred, false love, appeals to pride, lying philosophies of what God's will really is and how to please Him, and always – the brainwasher's best ally in this conversion process – the victim's own lower nature. What Christianity calls our "pride" and psychology calls "ego" is full of weaknesses that can easily be exploited.
So, the Palestinian child's desire for glory and his mortal fear of shaming his family –remember, this is a culture that literally revolves around pride and shame, rather than right and wrong – can be played like a musical instrument by a skillful practitioner. Whether you call it programming, mind control, brainwashing or hypnosis, you must admit that whatever it is, it must be very strong to induce a young person to overcome his or her own natural desire to live, to avoid pain, to have a family, to be happy.
Now, don't think for a minute this dynamic occurs only in far-off lands. It goes on right here in the good ol' U.S. of A., in your state, in your county – indeed, in your home.
Pick a behavior – say, body piercing. Do you really think millions of people independently arrived at the idea that it's a good idea to bore holes in multiple parts of their bodies and imbed metal objects there? Or is it more likely a bizarre case of mass suggestion we sugarcoat by calling it a "fashion trend"?
If you're unable to see, or even sense or suspect, your own conditioning, that means – at least for the present – you're totally consumed by it. Very simply, you're not yourself. If you are a more conscious and sincere person – introspective and honest enough to see your own flaws and how they got there – then you can break out of the matrix.
The problem is, we have a powerful component of our nature that does not want to face reality. Indeed, it could be argued that we have a dark tendency to manufacture our own matrix constantly, specially customized to "protect us" from the Truth that would set us free. Why? Because to become truly free as a child of God, living in His light, means we must "die" to the life of pride. And to many people, that is a deal-killer. No wonder the deceptions of the media are so believable.
To rise above the programming of evil – to receive God's moment-to-moment re-programming in our soul, to have the light of His life streaming through our consciousness and to act from that – requires that we face ourselves.
As the Good Book says, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). With all the religious practices we engage in, thinking we're following or praising God, we somehow manage to forget the one thing most needful:
We need to learn to be still, calm, sincere and objective. We need a willingness to stand naked in the Light and repent of our sins.
Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). The most important truth we can confront is also the hardest. That is, we need to realize that we have been deceived, that we don't really have what we thought we had, that we're more messed up than we thought, that the "love" we thought we had wasn't real love, that some cherished beliefs we had were ill-founded. Indeed, we may well have wasted most of our lives going in the wrong direction.
But it's OK, it really is. We're not condemned for realizing the truth. We're blessed. And just beyond that pain of realization, there is great hope and joy. Because if we become truly conscious of ourselves, our matrix "programming," our sins both obvious and subtle – which is possible only if we're close to our Creator and Redeemer – there is freedom just around the corner. The inner-connectedness to Truth that we've always searched for, and that is hidden so well by the "matrix" illusion-makers of this world, is waiting for us patiently.
We love fantasy stories like "The Matrix," "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Chronicles of Narnia." But these stories, despite the powerful strain of truth in them, were hatched in the mind of man. The story we ourselves are characters in, however, has been conceived in the mind of God. I'm talking about the real world in which we live, a world where good is more good and evil is more evil than in any of these spectacular fantasy stories. And our story is even full of magic and miracles. (How can an acorn become a tree? If that isn't magic, then nothing is.)
Life is real. It doesn't have to be lived in a deceitful matrix program. We can live in God's light always. The Creator of the universe can – and still does – impart His insight and revelation and life directly to His children.
It takes courage to break out of the matrix. It takes guts to sit still, alone – just ourselves and God.
Words are not necessary at this moment. God knows our hearts, and what we need before we ask.
As the brilliant 17th-century scientist, mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal put it: "All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room."
We need to do the most painful and difficult thing in all of life – which is to stand still and allow the anxiety of our wrong way of life to catch up with us. Don't run away. Feel what you feel, see what you see, observe everything, but react to nothing – all with a wordless cry to God directly from your soul: Help me. Hang on to your faith that regardless of what problems, sin and corruption you see lurking inside, God can and will help you, if you'll be faithful and watch. And somewhere, through that obedient stillness, from beyond time and space will come real understanding, and new "programming" from another dimension, called Grace.
Editor's note: "The media matrix" by David Kupelian was published originally in "POISON PRESS," the October 2004 edition of WorldNetDaily's popular monthly Whistleblower magazine.
Subscribe to Whistleblower and receive 12 powerful monthly issues, starting with "POISON PRESS."
David Kupelian is vice president and managing editor of WorldNetDaily.com and Whistleblower magazine.