The Brainwashing Machine

April 22, 2004

"By my croc à merdre and by my bâton à phynance".

Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry

Propaganda is to democracies what the truncheon is to dictatorships

Noam Chomsky

Dictatorship is "Shut up!" Democracy is "Keep talking!"

Unknown

A few days ago my friend the mathematician Jean-Parie Souriau said to me;

Do you know that there are no more science programs on television? - No... - Archimedes disappears. E = m6 remains, but it only shows crap.

My friend Boris:

I don't know if people will end up realizing it: television and the media in general are nothing more than an instrument intended to be used to stupefy people.
What do you mean?
When Hitler had discovered the power of radio, he had started using it intensively, carefully honing its effects. The point then was to fanaticize people. Today it's different. In all democracies mafia groups have seized power. They have a stranglehold on the press organs, at every level. The watchword is then "people must be prevented from thinking". People are not idiots. They are being stupefied. It is normal for scientific programs to disappear. Science is a dangerous thing: it would encourage people to think. So it must disappear. For years we have seen more and more idiotic programs multiply, at prime listening times.
But .. the ratings?
I don't believe it's the people who are asking for those programs. I believe they are being deliberately stupefied. It's a concerted policy. In parallel, media windows are created intended to give an illusion of access to information and of objectivity. A small number of people are starting to realize this
Yes, we saw that last April 13 with the Thema program on Arte and the broadcast of that incredible documentary "September 11 did not take place".
You saw it!
I couldn't get over it. So, that channel ARTE, with its Thema programs, had the function of making us believe that there was a "space of objectivity and freedom". You could find there features on the rise of Nazism, on the role of the CIA 25-30 years ago, on the genocide perpetrated by Pol Pot, on the bacteriological weapons developed by the Japanese as early as the thirties and what not! Each time one was tempted to say to oneself "these journalists are objective and courageous".
They have every latitude to dwell on old stories, but nothing on what is happening right now and is close to power.
Absolutely. It's a way of diverting attention. For September 11 a big blow had to be struck. It was the ARTE channel that was given the job, since it is a Franco-German channel and "conspiracy theorists" are numerous in Germany. But that program was so crude that we all fell off our chairs. I asked readers to send me the recording. We will find people to digitize this exemplary document and to set up a file with excerpts, dismantling the disinformation technique used.
Do you know what you have to think of the program "Arrêt sur Image"?
There too it was a program intended to make viewers believe that television could criticize itself. But it is still a vast manipulation. If the journalist who runs that program did his job he would have his work cut out analyzing that Arte program of April 13. But one may doubt that he will do it: that program is also part of the ARTE network. You can't saw off the branch you're sitting on.
That April 13 program made people lose their last illusions.
I personally lost the ones I had left. There, the loop is closed. We know that on all sides, we are being lied to. There remains... the Internet.
Do you know the Faure bill?
The one where hosting providers would be made legally co-responsible for the content of the sites they host, which would encourage them to carry out censorship themselves. Moreover, electronic messaging would no longer be considered a private messaging service, under the pretext of the fight against terrorism. Anyone could have access to e-mails.
In any case, I believe that is already a de facto reality. But there, this violation of correspondence would become legal. It's as if anyone, at the post office, could open any letter, at any time. We find a system worthy of the most advanced totalitarian enterprises. But you don't know the best part. It dates from yesterday, April 21, 2004. A guy proposed a bill where texts posted on sites would no longer enjoy any statute of limitations. You know that the three-month statute of limitations law, which dates from 1881, is the number one protection of the press. You cannot sue a journalist for defamation if he wrote or said things more than three months earlier. It is a protection. According to the bill, that would disappear completely on the net. People could be sued for defamation on the basis of archive documents five to ten years old or more. And the hosting provider would still be co-responsible....
That's completely crazy....
The Third World War has already begun: it is the war of information.
And of disinformation.
Absolutely. The April 13 program, on ARTE, was going in that direction. All the people who would simply like an inquiry to be opened into the events of September 11 are ... conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, adversaries of democracy, etc.
In fact the "democratic powers" of the various countries realize the danger that the Internet represents, on the level of wild information. It is quite simply our first and our last space of freedom. That is why the proposed laws tend to gag this "medium" as much as possible. The Internet remains free, but for how much longer? People who talk too much get their defamation trial. I had mine. Alessandri had his too. There will be others.
Weren't you supposed to be on television in the coming days, on the program "C'est Mon Choix"?
Yes. A journalist in charge of preparing the program had contacted me more than a week earlier. The theme was supposed to revolve around new technologies. A guy had suggested to her to invite me, because of the ideas on artificial intelligence presented in my latest book "L'Année du Contact", recently published by Albin Michel.
And then?
At the same time a girl had told me "we're holding you for Friday, April 23 for a 40-minute radio debate on the program "On ne nous la fait pas", on RMC. I had immediately said OK.
And then?
Two days later she called me back to tell me that my appearance was cancelled.
Is it postponed?
No. That's how it works: an uninformed journalist thinks of inviting me and makes contact. Then when it goes up to the editorial staff where the editor-in-chief then knows who should be invited and who should not be invited, or inquires, and it's blocked.
But on "C'est mon Choix", you're on, aren't you?
A few days ago, the journalist, visibly embarrassed, had told me "as your centers of interest are very broad, we thought we would have you speak at the end of the program so that you could comment on the previous appearances". But I said I would prefer to be involved in the debates. As it is pre-recorded, that makes it possible to cut the appearance by saying "it turned out that it made it too long". They've already pulled that trick on me. I had her on the phone this morning, April 22, 2004, a few days before the recording. She told me "we only got the list of participants this morning. You've been removed". We had had four thirty-minute phone calls to prepare the program. The date had been set: recording on the 26th, in Paris, for a delayed broadcast. I had made appointments in the capital.
And they cancelled at the last moment?
She told me "it's not my fault". I know it's not her fault. It's the program's editor-in-chief who cancelled.
What do you expect, you're a nuisance.
I don't fit into the general cretinization, which is the order of the day in our media. Last year I was supposed to be on a TV program, on the occasion of the release of the film "Signs", with Mel Gibson. My participation was also cancelled, the day before.
I'm not surprised. On your site, you suggest that "Crop Circles" could correspond to tests carried out by the military and not by extraterrestrials!
I believe the record was reached in 1995 with my book "Les Enfants du Diable" on the relations between the research community and the Army. Strictly zero media coverage, across all press outlets. Minimal sales
Yet it's your best book.
That's how it is.
One wonders what will happen in the future, for example if these laws concerning Internet sites pass.
I suppose the time of clandestinity will come. Do you remember the film Fahrenheit 451?
Where books were banned and where teams riding fire engines hunted down the holders of works, hurrying to burn them?
That's it. And you remember that the resisters ended up, in order to preserve the memory of them, learning the contents of books by heart.
What are we going to do if these laws pass?
In Russia the photocopier, until the fall of the Berlin Wall, was a powerful instrument of subversion. I remember that in Moscow, twenty years ago, it was quite a saga to have a photocopy of anything. "Subversive" texts were copied by hand.
And we, how will we have to do it? Find hosting providers in distant countries?
I don't know. Some small countries live by hosting banks or by issuing "flags of convenience", for ships. But there, there is money at stake. I don't know if we will be able to find hosting providers who can free themselves from all economic pressure. The war is there, in any case, at the moment. People perhaps don't really realize that our first and last space of freedom is being attacked.
That reminds me of the story of the newspaper Actuel, twenty or thirty years ago. Bizot, who had created it, had had an idea. He had financed the arming of a boat which, anchored outside Chinese territorial waters, would have broadcast toward Mao's Empire. The Chinese simply told the Quai d'Orsay: "Tell your guy to get his boat out of there. Territorial waters or not territorial waters, if he broadcasts, we sink him.
Quite simply..
Quite simply. And Bizot's project fell through.
That's the case to say so. But the battle is not lost in advance. It is impossible, for example, to prevent the circulation of hundreds of megabytes of information in the form of CD-roms, duplicated with the help of burners.
The burner becomes the equivalent of the photocopier for the dissemination of information. There is more. One can create video documents with a digital camera and distribute conferences, elements of information, in the form of CDs or DVDs. These media can in turn be duplicated. We are going to see the equivalent of "private televisions" appear, with uncontrollable parallel circuits.
But the pitfall of the Internet is precisely the fact that people are overwhelmed by information.
People will have to learn to think for themselves. The Thema program of April 13, 2004, on ARTE was historic in that respect. It simply showed us that there was no reliable information channel. We will have to learn to doubt everything, to compare information, to cross-check it.
In short, to behave ourselves like journalists.
Since they discredit themselves a little more every day, we will have to do without them.

A reader, Laurent, reminds me of the (purely symbolic) existence of a "week without TV", from May 3 to 9.

The Brainwashing Machine

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The Brainwashing Machine

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