They Are Lying to US & It Will Continue Until You Say "Enough!" ("Herding the Sheep")

I've said it before and I will not stop until the lying stops.

Sure, William K. Black - professor of economics and law, and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis - says that that the government's entire strategy now - as during the S&L crisis - is to cover up how bad things are ("the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts").

Admittedly, 7 out of the 8 giant, money center banks went bankrupt in the 1980's during the "Latin American Crisis," and the government's response was to cover up their insolvency. It's true that Business Week wrote on May 23, 2006:

President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. I can't deny that the Tarp Inspector General said that Paulson and Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving Tarp money were healthy, when they were not.

If you don't believe me . . . .

Financial insider and commentator Yves Smith wrote an essay last week entitled "MSM Reporting as Propaganda" arguing that the government has been using propaganda to make people think that things are getting better, no one is angry, and - therefore - no one should get upset:

The message, quite overtly, is: if you are pissed, you are in a minority. The country has moved on. Things are getting better, get with the program . . . .

Per the social psychology research, this “you are in a minority, you are wrong” message DOES dissuade a lot of people. It is remarkably poisonous. And it discourages people from taking concrete action.

Is Smith right? And even if she is, isn't "propaganda" too strong a word?

. . . Granted, famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA has already bought and paid for many successful journalists.

And sure, the New York Times discusses in a matter-of-fact way the use of mainstream writers by the CIA to spread messages.

True, a 4-part BBC documentary called the "Century of the Self" shows that an American - Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays - created the modern field of manipulation of public perceptions, and the U.S. government has extensively used his techniques (but the BBC isn't American, so it doesn't count).

I won't deny that the Independent discusses allegations of American propaganda (but that's a British paper, doesn't count).

And (ho hum) one of the premier writers on journalism says the U.S. has used widespread propaganda.

And (are we still talking about this?) an expert on propaganda testified under oath during trial that the CIA employs THOUSANDS of reporters and OWNS its own media organizations (the expert has an impressive background).

And (I can't believe we're still talking about this) while the U.S. government has repeatedly claimed that it was launching propaganda programs solely at foreign enemies, it has actually used them against American citizens.

Please continue this unknown to the masses exposé here.

Barbara Ehrenreich has addressed the idea of "thinking positively" in her latest book, Bright-Sided, as a negative American characteristic that points us out to the rest of the really thinking world as naifs (or knowing criminals).

I have to agree. When you travel throughout the rest of the world, people no longer are amazed at the Ugly Americans. They just avoid us (if possible) or talk down to us (if they have to speak at all) - until one mentions how stoopidly the American experiment has worked out for almost everybody. And then international good-natured comaraderie breaks out.

And, yes, people do love the American largesse given at times of great physical catastrophe. The trouble starts when they begin to speak of the price everyone has had to pay.

Suzan __________________