'Weaponized Media' Turns Up Heat, Targets Dissident Thought

We’ve all seen those glossy full-color magazines which clutter store-checkout shelves which purport to “tackle” unsolved crimes, while repeatedly regaling us with the triumphs and tragedies of the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, the British Monarchy, Princess Diana, Martin Luther King, etc. 

The publishers pass off their content as “Official Truth” which sets a supposed “standard” against which everything else must be measured.

Well, a new and especially troubling specimen of these “coffee table” magazines published by Time Life books, entitled, “Modern Day Conspiracy Theories,” strongly suggests that the Time Life media empire—created by Yale grad Henry R. Luce, a multi-media mogul who saw no conflict in collaborating with U.S. intelligence figures—has ascended to a new level of literal informational warfare against dissident thought.

And we mustn’t overlook Luce’s membership in “322,” the notorious Skull and Bones fraternity on the Yale grounds in New Haven, Conn., which empowered three generations of the Bush family. Other “Bonesmen” include current U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and bevy of other notables groomed for key positions in the power pyramid.

Oops. Writing that Skull and Bones snippet just lobbed this article into the realm of “conspiracy theory.” That makes this writer an automatic heretic who’s incapable of rational thought and should not be allowed to speak or ask questions.

But before we go any further, let’s get something straight. The cryptologists operating today’s orthodox media machinery should be called “accidentalists,” since they relish in spraying the pejorative word “conspiracists” like machine gun fire against any skeptics who venture beyond the accepted comfort zone.

Basically, the accidentalists of the world proclaim that there are no enduring, organized causes of political upheaval beyond episodic events, and that it’s supposedly impossible for organized classes or groups to construct and control the essential levers of the world: Political, economic, cultural, scientific, educational and so on.

Thus, at least outwardly, “they” portray the world as a more or less random construct which came into accidental existence through “the big bang” and haphazardly evolved into a political nightmare with no script and no agenda. It’s just a bunch of powerful people, with all the money and incentive in the world to engineer plots, going around avoiding plots and doing largely random things for no reason beyond Epicurean gratification. Right.

In its 95-page “Conspiracy Theories” salvo, Time Life’s apparent attempt at mass libel not only spouts expected terms like “antigovernment” but also “culture of mistrust” amongst other verbal ammunition being deployed by an increasingly weaponized media. Note the message: If everyone would simply trust the central state, all would be nirvana.

In Texas, another publication, the San Antonio News-Express, immediately after the reported death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, mimicked Time Life’s approach with an online piece which deplored “conspiracy theories.” Simply put, this Hearst Corporation newspaper sought to smear anyone asking harder questions about a veteran justice unexpectedly dying of unconfirmed “natural causes” at a remote Texas ranch, having been so quickly embalmed that even a meaningful autopsy was rendered impossible. There also was a ditzy lady judge declaring, by phone, that Scalia died of natural causes and deciding, by phone, that no autopsy was needed. Nothing to see here.

All of the foregoing is why this writer, having naively assumed that the press is supposed to ask hard questions, not ridicule others who ask them, couldn’t resist purchasing this Time Life conspiracy edition after spotting a reference to American Free Press (AFP) on Page 25. Ironically, AFP was cited as a skeptical source of the claim that the Sandy Hook School shooting was, to whatever degree, a hoax or otherwise grossly misreported.

Time Life’s mention of AFP quotes an article (written by a reporter who no longer writes for AFP) that referred to Lenny Pozner, whose young son, Noah, was reportedly shot by alleged Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza. Yet, AFP, having since looked deeper at Sandy Hook, has adopted a more skeptical stance regarding the official Sandy Hook narrative.

Beyond Sandy Hook, Time Life’s conspiracy edition targets everything from whether the original Paul McCartney died or not, to whether some youthful-looking movie stars are quasi-immortal “reptilians,” to those who question the official Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory on 9-11, the Oklahoma City bombing, the RFK shooting, the Waco raid, celebrity deaths—and much more. Throwing together such widely divergent material tends to “pour water in the soup,” so to speak, and make it that much harder to distinguish between conspiracy “theory” and conspiracy fact.
Yet, you needn’t read beyond the editors’ introduction in the Time Life publication to see what this special edition is about. 

The non-bylined introduction—take note that all the publication’s articles lack bylines—states:

Today, simmering conspiracy theories have come to full boil, thanks to . . . the internet. Every day like-minded people . . . gather virtually, to spread and expand on what they believe are shady doings in politics and business. Does fluoride in water render citizens passive? Was the moon landing faked? Who really killed President JFK? . . . . Modern Day Conspiracy Theories takes a close-up look at this culture of mistrust and its enduring influence.

However, the fluoride dissenters this writer has interviewed simply see the fluoride debate as a serious public policy dispute—arguing that most municipalities disregard sound scientific research about the serious health consequences of fluoride ingestion. Some critics cite collusion between municipalities and fluoride suppliers, but they rarely call it an outright “conspiracy.”

“Climate change dissenters” get no quarter, either. On Page 62 of the Time Life publication, a sub-headline reads: “While glaciers melt and seas rise, a dogged population of conspiracists can’t wrap their heads around climate change.”

Ah, if only thick-headed dissenters would get in line and goosestep, then “climate change” could be conquered.

Yet, above that sub-head, the main headline uses the words “Global Warming,” meaning the big media wants the verbal leeway to say the climate is warming, or simply changing (warming or cooling) depending on the narrative that’s needed at any given time. That some science does not support global warming is not mentioned, much like the subject of fluoride. So, the state-aligned media simply define disbelief in climate change as heretical. The same goes for those who reject the wonders of fluoride by pointing to evidence that its use results in a loss of bone density, among many other negative health effects, apart from the ethical breach of putting something supposedly medicinal into the common water supply while knowing full well that different people responded differently to a given substance. Fluoride dissenters simply contend that those who want fluoridated water can buy it in bottles at the store and that tap water should be fluoride-free. But even that dose of common sense is too strong for the state-aligned media.

And since a key monopolistic-media tactic is to mix factual plots and real public policy problems with unsubstantiated or outlandish claims, the public’s view of reality becomes degraded and all “information rebels” are thus packaged together as a highly misguided lot who should be shunned and isolated—and perhaps labeled “domestic terrorists”—especially considering that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has, in its own reports, equated political activism with “conspiracism” (whatever that is) and with potential “rebel violence” against the central state.

More Texas Matters

Texan Ronald F. Avery, who’s suing Hearst’s Houston Chronicle for libel over the paper erroneously implying that he’s a secessionist, argues in the lawsuit that such broadside reporting risks criminalizing his activities and that of other Texas patriots.

Avery remarked: “What we have to look out for is the presumption behind all this,” referring to the media encouraging public animosity against perceived dissenters. “They [the media] can encourage law enforcement to act. This is very serious stuff the media is dabbling in.”

Avery is not a member of the Republic of Texas, a group which holds that Texas never officially joined the United States in 1845 in the first place—an interesting contention given that March of 2016 is 180th birthday of the Lone Star State’s birth, based on the March 1836 Battle of the Alamo.

The ultimate victory of the “Texians” at that battle gave Texas its own “nationhood” from 1836 to 1845. But when Avery addressed the Republic of Texas in April 2015, that Houston daily newspaper framed the story as if Ron was a member of the Republic of Texas (wrong), that everyone in the room was a secessionist who wants Texas to divorce the U.S. government (wrong again) and that secessionists were in league with Russian leader Vladimir Putin—a virtual enemy of the U.S. government who has been quoted as saying that he wants Texas to leave the U.S. union.

The Chronicle’s online version of that story even added a Department of Homeland Security link to imply that anyone entertaining secession is a would-be domestic terrorist, amid the fact that soon after the U.S. “Civil War”—which others call the War of Northern Aggression—secession was declared illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you piece this all together, you’ve got Time Life and other major media organs, in an increasingly belligerent fashion, painting just the sort of picture that the modern “spy-state” needs to brand anyone a dissident and set them up for surveillance, arrest and possible armed raids.

And given the penchant of much of the UK and European press to do the same thing, it appears we indeed have a widespread weaponized media against the citizenry. This media apparatus claims to speak truth to power, when in fact the mainstream press is an appendage of the power center it purports to monitor. If the major media have decided to be both judge and jury, it won’t be long before the executioners kick or shoot their way in.

This article by American Free Press Roving Editor Mark Anderson, who covers the Bilderberg meetings and the U.S. Congress for that newspaper, is an excerpt from his book now in progress called “Weaponized Media.” Stay tuned for more developments on the book’s completion and availability. To directly contact Anderson, email truthhound2@yahoo.com