They have lied to us.

[Bjorn Against]

They lied to us. Not just once. Not just twice. Not even just a few hundred times. They lied to us continuously, over and over again for decades. They lied about global warming, they lied about Iraq, they lied about health care, they lied about Katrina, they lied about warrantless wiretapping, they lied about Valerie Plame, they lied about Walter Reed, they lied about torture, they lied about the Supreme Court, they lied about Halliburton, they lied about gays, they lied about nearly every issue you can think of.

And they continue to lie. They continue to lie, but they continue to get a free pass by a media refuses to expose any lie that doesn't have to do with blow jobs.

We know they are lying though and we don't have to listen. We can turn off our televisions, we can turn off our radios, and we can go to alternative sources. As Howard Beale told us in the film "Network":

"We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube. You eat like the tube. You raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness -- you maniacs! In God's name you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion.

"So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!!"

And turn them off we must, because the more we boost the ratings of CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX the more money we are putting into their pockets. We have a whole wealth of information surrounding us. We have the internet, we have libraries, we have YouTube, many of us have access to good independent newspapers, with the wealth of information that surrounds us most of us have no real reason to watch television "news" shows that don't even cover the news. Maybe there will be certain news broadcasts that are good and that you can support, go ahead and watch those ones but please just turn off the crap. Turn it off and leave it off, refuse to support those who spread propaganda, refuse to support those who lie to you, and refuse to watch the deceptive advertisements they want to push on you.

It is because of our corporate owned press that the American people believed that there was never any doubt that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs, it is because of our corporate media that most Americans still believe that nothing illegal happened in the Florida and Ohio elections which gave us Bush, it is because of our corporate media that people are more focused on Britney Spears than on the secret prisons our government is gathering the members of a minority religious group up in. We can not allow these people to keep setting our agenda. We must make these people irrelevant, and we must allow those that speak the truth to have a more powerful say in our national dialog.

The corporate media is not exactly in a rush to put tell us what is really going on in this world, we must support those who are willing to tell us the stories our government and our corporate toadies don't want us to hear. If we want the truth then we must stop listening to the lies.

[K Gardner]

1. K&R

[Bjorn Against]

2. If anyone is interested here is the clip from the scene in Network I quoted.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M4szU19bQVE

[NanceGreggs]

3. Oh, my!

I think I just sent this to the Greatest Page - just had a crazy feeling it belongs there.

:patriot:

[Greyhound]

4. Second "Network" reference in two days. Brilliant film, too bad nobody listened. Thanks.

It took me nearly 15 years to realize that it was all too true and to begin extricating myself from the system. I'm sure I haven't been completely successful, but the further I get away from it the better I feel about my self and the more frustrated I become with the rest of the flock.

I think it is time to watch this film again.

:kick: & R

[Cobalt-60]

11. Ned Beatty was The Man himself in that one

It was a nice step up from that role in Deliverance.
In any case, he explained that it all came down to cash.
Absolutely f*cking right.

[tavalon]

5. Already done

We don't have cable, we don't have rabbit ears, we have high speed internet.

[Sugar Smack]

6. I am going to kick this.

You are truly wonderful. So is "Network"

[kentuck]

7. I love that quote.

""We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube. You eat like the tube. You raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness -- you maniacs! In God's name you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion.

"So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!!"


K & R !

[vickitulsa]

8. Thanks for this OP -- an excellent and brutally frank indictment

of the liars, the propagandists, the machine that has long since ceased to be what it should be, what our society needs.

Instead of rooting out for us the facts about current events -- and the background that's so important for context and real understanding, the modern-day corporate media that purports to bring us news now does just about everything BUT provide us the facts and details we need to know about significant events in our world.

When I became disabled in the late 90's and found myself stuck in the house, unable to be active as I'd always loved being, my mind longed for information, input, news of my world and what was going on "out there." I had long been keen on keeping up with current events, but suddenly I had all this time on my hands -- just about the time the "all news networks" on TV reached full development. I got my first home pc about the same time, but it didn't offer what it does now and search engines were in their early stages.

I became a "news junkie," often switching between the three fulltime news networks (four if you count CNN Headline News) all day long. I'm amazed when I think of how much better these channels were ten years ago than what they are today!

By 2005, I had become so disgusted I could barely watch them at all, so I had taken to combing the Internet to get real information. That summer, thankfully, I discovered DU, and at last I had not only easy access to good sources of news, but like-minded folks with whom to discuss current events.

The only real news I watch on TV now is on the Weather Channel!

If someone had told me ten or fifteen years ago that we here in the U.S. would have only something akin to Pravda on all channels, I don't think I would have believed it. Our "fourth estate" has let the people down bigtime, and damn few on the air these days even deserve to call themselves journalists.

They make me sick, and they make me angry. They should hang their heads in shame. Instead they pimp their own programming and personnel nonstop, like they expect people to admire and trust them just because they tell us we should!

We should be as wary of them as we are of individuals we know to be pathological liars.

[Diamond Dave]

9. Welcome to life in the US under the rule of the BFEE.

We let it happen. We were warned time and again and we paid no attention and now here we are. The rest of the world is watching and waiting for "we" the people to stand up and do something.

Spears and her new younger pregnant sister, way more important, did you miss it?

The housing crisis - all the borrowers fault.

Nascar, The Super Bowl, The College Bowls, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars (did what's her name win, oh yes, Marie Osmond?)

Got it yet, are you distracted enough yet, do you not have enough time to give a shit:? Yet?

Keep on keeping on..............................

[Cobalt-60]

10. Canned TV for me

I'll admit that it was forced.
The only property I could afford to flat out purchase was blocked from both Dish and Direct.
I won't deal with the abusive thieves over at Charter.
And I'm too cheap - and tired from wage slavery - to erect a conventional mast mount antenna.
So I started watching recordings.
I had to select the three or four hours a week I wanted most and record them elsewhere.
And there's not a second of republican propaganda among them.
News comes off international radio and the internet.
And I'm a regular customer at the Dollar DVD rack.
I don't miss the propaganda or high blood pressure at all.
You are right about the tube. It has people saturated with lies.
There's no need to give it up if you can get control of the input.

[Major Hogwash]

12. Good post.

The lies have multiplied exponentially over the decades until the generation that is now in college doesn't even care.

They don't have deep convictions about anything.
Not about government.
Not about religion.
Not about anything that isn't here today and that they can reach out and touch.

By the time they wake up and realize that Bush spent their future fighting a losing cause in Iraq, he'll be long dead and gone.

And they'll be the ones left with the fucking deficit.

How many billions did Bush spend building that fortress of an embassy in Baghdad?
Can you imagine how many homes that would have built in New Orleans?
Or anywhere else, for that matter.
The number of hospitals we could have built, the number of schools, the number of anything good and beneficial for mankind that you can think of to name - spent, wasted, poured into the sands of Iraq - for nothing.

[Occam Bandage]

13. And now, a blast from one hundred fifteen years ago: "They have lied to us."

They lied to us. Not just once. Not just twice. Not even just a few hundred times. They lied to us continuously, over and over again for decades. They lied about the Philippines, they lied about Cuba, they lied about the Maine, they lied about Spain, they lied about socialists, they lied about US Steel, they lied about the Pullman strike, they lied about every issue you can think of.

And they continue to lie. They continue to lie, but they continue to get a free pass by a press that refuses to expose any lie that doesn't have to do with Washington socialites.

We know they are lying though and we don't have to read. We can throw away their papers, we can choose not to buy them, and we can go to alternative sources of news.

"We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the paper is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the paper tells you. You dress like the paper. You eat like the tupaperbe. You raise your children like the paper. You even think like the paper.

"So throw away your papers. Throw them away now!"

And throw them away we must, because the more we boost the circulation of the Post, the World, Journal, and the Examiner, the more money we are putting into their pockets. We have a whole wealth of information surrounding us. We have libraries, we have news-magazines, we have the bar, many of us have access to good traditional newspapers, with the wealth of information that surrounds us most of us have no real reason to read yellow "news" papers that don't even cover the news. Maybe there will be certain papers that are good and that you can support, go ahead and read those ones but please just throw away the crap. Throw them away and leave them away, refuse to support those who spread propaganda, refuse to support those who lie to you, and refuse to read the deceptive advertisements they want to push on you.

It is because of our corporate owned press that the American people believed that there was never any doubt that Spain destroyed the Maine, it is because of our corporate media that most Americans still believe that nothing illegal happened in Tammany Hall. it is because of our corporate media that people are more focused on tawdry crime stories than on the robber barons who are purchasing the nation's wealth. We can not allow these people to keep setting our agenda. We must make these people irrelevant, and we must allow those that speak the truth to have a more powerful say in our national dialog.

Yellow journalists are not exactly in a rush to put tell us what is really going on in this world, we must support those who are willing to tell us the stories our government and our corporate toadies don't want us to hear. If we want the truth then we must stop listening to the lies.



------

This story's as old as the press.

[earth mom]

14. Excellent Post-one of the best I've seen on DU lately.

:applause:

Once I got DSL and got rid of AOL about 4 years ago, which was about the same time I gave up cable T.V., is when I started to figure out what was really happening in this country. Suddenly, I had all the information at my fingertips and it was a rude awakening to learn just how much I'd been lied to and manipulated.


So yes....TURN OFF THE TALKING HEADS AND READ AND DO THE RESEARCH FOR YOURSELF PEOPLE!


That's the ONLY to make your own informed assessments about what's really happening in this country and the world.

[OneBlueSky]

15. and my personal favorite . . . they lied to us about 9/11 . . . n/t

.

[Perry Logan]

16. And yet most DUers continue to take their cue from the MSM. You see it here every day.

[flashl]

17. Heads up fellow addicts. Time for intervention.

T.V.
It satellite links
Our United States of Unconsciousness
Apathetic therapeutic and extremely addictive
The methadone metronome pumping out
150 channels 24 hours a day
You can flip through all of them
And still there's nothing worth watching
— Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Television, Drug of a Nation

Alright junkies, I know you don’t like staring at long strands of motionless text, and I know it’s a struggle for you to analyze and comprehend the meaning of complex sequences of words. But if you give me just a few minutes, I will let you in on a little secret that marketers and governments have been relying on for decades. That television you watch every day, your secret best friend, is an addictive opiate, and not only that, it’s one of the most potent mind control devices ever produced. And I’m not just basing this on intuition. I have the neurological evidence to prove it.

Although the definitions are vague and somewhat misleading, the word “addiction” usually refers to a psychological or physical dependence on a particular experience that must be repeated in order for a person to be comfortable. Usually, we think about this in terms of chemical addiction, which occurs when the addict’s chemical of choice reorganizes the nervous system so that it requires the presence of that chemical to operate smoothly.

Of course, not all addictions are chemical. Any behavior that leads to a pleasurable experience will be repeated, especially if that behavior requires little work. Psychologists call this pattern “positive reinforcement.” This is what we mean, technically speaking, by addiction. In this sense, television certainly fits into the category of an addictive agent.

When you watch TV, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. In fact, experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman showed that while viewers are watching television, the right hemisphere is twice as active as the left, a neurological anomaly.1 The crossover from left to right releases a surge of the body’s natural opiates: endorphins, which include beta-endorphins and enkephalins. Endorphins are structurally identical to opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.). Activities that release endorphins (also called opioid peptides) are usually habit-forming (we rarely call them addictive). These include cracking knuckles, strenuous exercise, and orgasm. External opiates act on the same receptor sites (opioid receptors) as endorphins, so there is little difference between the two.

Notes

1. Krugman, Herbert E. “Brain wave Measures of Media Involvement,” Journal of Advertising Research 11.1 (1971): 3-9. Krugman later became manager of public opinion research at General Electric.

For more on brain state changes occasioned by watching television, see: Emery, Merrelyn, The Social and Neurophysiological Effects of Television and their Implications for Marketing Practice. Doctoral dissertation. Australian National University. Canberra, 1985; Nelson, Joyce, The Perfect Machine (New Society Pub: 1992).

The Journal of Cognitive Liberties

[Greyhound]

30. Wow, I have never met another person that knows of the Heroes.

This and their re-made "California Uber Alles" were my favorites on that CD.:thumbsup:

Of course, Frank Zappa was talking about this 20 years earlier.
:kick:

[Echo In Light]

18. The corporate/state nexus has ALWAYS relied on mainline media to ....

Sell the public a movie script justification on behalf of its interests. I mean, seriously, it's a system that OWNS its own propaganda medium - the "news" - so what else would you expect them to do? The system only reports on its own sins and crimes when it must, and even then the right sort of coverage is managed and sold to the public to maintain the ruse of altruism and democracy when in fact it's not and has never been about such qualities and lofty aims at all.

[Echo In Light]

19. ...or for those who don't get it, try looking at it this way:

Remember those mondo campy govt propaganda films of the mid twentieth century that were used to manage public opinion when people went to the theater to see the movies? ...recall how absurdly propagandistic they are, oversimplified, etc? Well, the "news" of now is equally ridiculous and deceptive, but because you happen to exist during this time, familiarity prevents you from perceiving it for what it actually is.

[Echo In Light]

20. Whoops. Had an "error" message & didn't think my post went through n/t

Deleted

[Hydra]

21. It's hard to believe that we live in a dictatorship, with all the propaganda flying around

but it's easy to see if you LOOK rather than take someone else's word for it.

Remember, whenever you watch the "news," you are taking someone's word for something. They may be reporting events that NEVER HAPPENED or not reporting ones that did.

Given that fact, and all of the lies, EVERYTHING is suspect.

Use your noodle...or in the case of Pastafarianism, use several noodles!

[bluerum]

22. Great quote. Saw the movie but don't remember that specific line.

In any event - I stopped paying a cable company years ago. It is a small gesture and with-holding my $50 or so a month probably does not
hurt them much - but the benefit to my mental health and psyche is priceless!

[Bjorn Against]

24. If you have a broadband connection watch the video I posted as response #2

If you don't remember that scene, then it is definitely worth watching again. The quote I posted was just a small part of a much longer rant, and the whole rant was great. Definitely one of the best scenes in an all around great movie.

[bluerum]

27. Yes - a fabulous soliloquy.

[anitar1]

23. I turned off the MSM quite awhile ago. n/t

[Beam Me Up]

25. The media is not here for us -- it is here for their board room masters.

It is long past time we perpetuated the illusion to ourselves and one another that the mass media is responsible to any higher ideal than the bottom line. Of course there are always and have always been a few exceptions to this rule -- but rule it is. The truth is far worse than even the best or more courageous of them are willing to tell us.

[warren pease]

26. And this is why the internet must die...

The only real competition threatening corporate media's manufactured "truth" that's turning our brains into Cream of Wheat comes from the internet. As you say, we have broadband, YouTube, access to newspapers published in actual free countries... you don't seriously think the power elites can afford to allow this nonsense to continue, do you?

I mean, libraries and independent publishers and book stores are bad enough, but fortunately for "them," libraries are ill-attended, it's getting pretty unusual to publish unorthodox material in the US, and independent book stores are getting killed by the Barnes & Nobles of the world.

Not so the internet. It's become the alternate universe for hundreds of millions of people who know and understand that the official story is always and inevitably bullshit. That altruism has never been a function of governments. That governments are always at war with "the people" they pretend to watch out for. That, as the Commander Guy pointed out in a rare moment of clarity, dictatorships ARE easier to run than representative democracies. That power exists solely to perpetuate itself and, when threatened, will defend its position with anything and everything in the arsenal.

Now that's a hell of an alternate narrative, raised as we are on the American creation myth in which the US always acts out of decency and its abiding devotion to human rights. It never goes to war casually, and never attacks civilian populations -- unless it does. There was no genocide of about 15 million native Americans or a massive land theft from Mexico -- there was only manifest destiny. There was no economy based on slavery. There was only the benevolent white plantation owner who took these happy but undisciplined workers under his wing because black people are little children who just like to sing and carry on and need a strong hand to guide them. This is generally known as the white mans' burden. And so on down the line, including the insane notion that there's no such thing as CIA-sponsored terrorism or officially approved torture or any of the bizarre fairy tales that require doublethink to process.

And the internet is the conveyor belt that carries this alternative universe of actual facts, and the seditious thoughts and attitudes they inspire, around the world in less time than it takes a cat to sneeze (as one of mine just did).

Which brings us to "Endgame," as the DHS apparently calls HR 1955 / SB 1959, known officially as The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.

Among its dozens of disgusting features, this bill actually has the nerve to state:

(2) The promotion of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence exists in the United States and poses a threat to homeland security.

(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.

Um... that would be you and me, and everybody else on this and any other forum, blog or news and information site that isn't exclusively devoted to singing the praises of BushCo and all its stands for.

I somehow doubt that the intended targets here are Freerepublic, Aryan Nations, the Army of God or any of the more horrifically violent and insane right-wing web sites that promote misogyny, racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance and mass slaughter of brown and black people, all sanctified by some twisted version of religion called Christian Identity. Nope, not with this administration and this DoJ deciding who the evil doers are.



Sleep well,

wp

[SirRevolutionary]

28. Gave up tv years ago

....and I'm not going back. It's all computer for me. I don't want my head filled with spin and lies anymore.

[mac2]

29. Can I have my TV and still read books?

No I'm not turning off my TV. I do read books and magazines. Important books about our government, fiction, love, travel,etc. Magazines are visual candy for me. Newspapers are not as informative and timely as the Internet. Their news outdated and one sided. I read all sorts of Internet news and opinions.

I now know not to trust anything a politican says. They lie to get elected and then act insulted when we get angry because they fail to keep their promies. They don't represent us but big money and the elite. Since when did we make them kings and queens?

Sometimes I get so angry with too much horror and information rattling around in my brain I need to take a break. Life has to be a balance.

[Faith No More]

31. I've been off tv for three years now.

And what a difference it's made. I now have more time for other things and I'm no longer bombarded by all that crap the corporate media spews. You can walk away from it and in time, you'll no longer miss it. I use the internet for all my information and entertainment and I've never been better informed. It's like lifting a veil from your eyes and seeing reality for the first time. Give it a try, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much better your life will be.

[scytherius]

32. Americans don't care

As long as they have their guns, bigotry and their Flying Spaghetti monster . . . they don't care and will do nothing.