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POPSSeeds of Current Propaganda found in Reagan Era 
Enduring Skills Beyond these individuals, the manipulative techniques that were refined in the 1980s — especially the skill of exaggerating foreign threats — have proved durable, bringing large segments of the American population into line behind the Iraq War in 2002-03. Only now — with more than 4,100 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead — are many of these Americans realizing that were manipulated by clever propaganda, that their perceptions had been managed. For instance, the New York Times recently pried loose some 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents revealing how the Bush administration had manipulated the public debate on the Iraq War by planting friendly retired military officers on TV news shows. Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former analyst on Murdoch’s Fox News, said the Pentagon treated the retired military officers as puppets: “It was them saying, ‘we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’” [NYT, April 20,
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POPSIs The Media Smitten With McCain? It’s enough to make you lose your dinner, I tell you. Michelle Bernard claims that they are just as exultant over Obama, and Pat Buchanan insists the McCain Media love affair is “over. Done. Gone.” I’m not sure I’m buying that just yet…
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POPSWesley Clark on Face the Nation: CNN accuses Clark of “Swiftboating” So how does CNN characterize this tête-à-tête? That Wesley Clark was SWIFTBOATING John McCain! Rick Sanchez’s lead-in to his next segment just now on CNN: “Wesley Clark tried to Swiftboat John McCain today.” I’m liveblogging. He goes on to say: “It will reverberate for weeks. Wes Clark tried to diss McCain’s military record, that his service doesn’t qualify him to be president.” Rick Sanchez is mad. No, not mad…just a huge partisan hack. Now that “swift-boating” has entered the vernacular, let us remember that the original SwiftBoat Veterans for “Truth” were for the most part neither in their hope to take down Kerry’s candidacy. Has Wesley Clark in some way made any untrue allegations in saying that being a POW and a non-combat era fighter pilot does not necessarily qualify you for the highest elected office in the land?
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POPSHow having a stroke led neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor to nirvana This fascinating account goes on: Now, after brain surgery and almost a decade of recovery in which she had to relearn how to use the part of her brain that was disabled by the stroke, Taylor says her stroke-induced experience of living primarily in right brain mode — freed of the incessant "chatter" of her left brain as it attempts to organize, categorize and make sense of all it was experiencing — has transformed her into a more creative, compassionate person who feels a strong connection with all life. That sense of oneness came when the left brain's ability to declare "I am" was squelched by the stroke and Taylor lost all sense of herself as an individual. She recalled, in a speech given this past winter at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, being unable to tell where the atoms and molecules that comprised her arm stopped and the atoms and molecules that comprised the rest of the world began. Such experiences are a primary goal of some spiritual traditio
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POPSAnd they said the war wasn't for the oil “We pretend it is not a centerpiece of our motivation, yet we keep confirming that it is,” Frederick D. Barton, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “And we undermine our own veracity by citing issues like sovereignty, when we have our hands right in the middle of it.” SURPRISE, SURPRISE---NOT!
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