Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) is the modern term for what used to be called propaganda. Its origins, certainly in modern English history, can be traced back to the 2nd Boer War in 1899 and later to World War I when the British Government officially created the Ministry Of Information to control the spread of information during international conflicts. Of course, the use of propaganda per se stretches back to the most ancient records of human conflict and can be observed in the historical documents of early Persian and Roman military campaigns.
Rather fittingly, the word ‘propaganda’ originates from the Vatican. In 1422, Pope Gregory V founded a group called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Spreading of the Faith) tasked with the job of spreading Catholic doctrines as far and wide as possible. The group continues its work to this day, although it has undergone one or two marketing makeovers to make it appear more palatable to a modern international community.
It wasn’t until the end of World War I that the word ‘propaganda’ began to really take on negative connotations. People were beginning to understand that propaganda was not just a weapon that their government used against ‘the enemy’; it was something they frequently used against their own people. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Britain resurrected The Ministry Of Information (MOI) to once more regulate and manipulate news flow. It was while working for the MOI that a certain Mr. Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, was inspired to create the terrifying vision of the Ministry of Truth in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell had grown increasingly disillusioned with the MOI’s warped news coverage and eventually resigned in disgust. The fascist ideals and practices of a Britain that claimed to be open and democratic were to become a powerful theme in Orwell’s written works. In 1946, Orwell said, “Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Orwell had first-hand experience of how the news was routinely rewritten to align with official government fables. Ironically, we have since learned from official MI5 documents released in September 2007, that Orwell was himself the subject of regular surveillance by UK secret services for more than 13 years.
Through the bleak uncertainties of the early 1940’s, a small but increasingly literate portion of the population were beginning to question what was appearing in their newspapers and on their radios. Anyone who was fortunate enough to have had any formal education (not to be taken for granted at that time) was able to see, by way of basic reasoning and critical analysis, that the news was at best, prejudiced and inaccurate. Often, it was simply untrue. To combat this the government enforced news blackouts backed by ‘gag orders’ that legally restricted the publication of certain information. Violators of gag orders could be subject to imprisonment or even execution, should the infringement fall under the classification of a threat to national security. Rather a vague categorization in war time. Independent news blackouts are still commonly used today and were perhaps most plainly visible during The Gulf War in 1990. Often, major TV networks were only able to rebroadcast officially sanctioned US government footage of what was actually occurring in Iraq. According to a poll conducted by the University of Massachusetts/Amherst researchers, the responses of selected Denver residents suggested that “heavy TV watchers were more likely to support the war”. They were also less likely to be well informed about its causes and consequences. Put simply, researchers concluded that the more TV people watched, the less they knew. Consider that in the context of the official TV blanket coverage during and after the events of 11th September 2001.
The WMD Fairy Tale
PSYOPS is designed to influence a target audience's emotional and behavioural impulses, so as to establish a desired response in line with the originator’s agenda. Depending on the scenario, it seeks to dehumanize, create bias or fantasy or propagate misinformation. It places fake images in the mind of the common man.
The best recent PSYOPS example is to be found in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Bush and Blair told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that could reach us. It was essential that our troops go in and stop the monstrous Saddam Hussein from using them. On further investigation, it turned out that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Official UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix stated that the U.S. and British governments were dramatising the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in order to strengthen the case for the 2003 war against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Bush and Blair (and their cronies) knew there were no WMDs. They were lying to us. The government sought to persuade the people further by publishing a dossier (purportedly collated by the Joint Intelligence Committee) on WMDs. Renowned UK weapons expert Dr. David Kelly was asked to proofread the document. He found serious flaws in it and disputed several claims, particularly the infamous claim that Iraq was capable of deploying biological or chemical weapons within 45 minutes of an order to launch.
Following the ground invasion phase, Kelly was asked to join a UN inspection team tasked with finding evidence of WMDs or WMD programmes. Kelly was asked to view and photograph the two alleged “mobile weapons laboratories”. He was unhappy with the description of the trailers and later spoke off the record to The Observer newspaper, which quoted Kelly (anonymously at first) as having said, “They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.”
Kelly had a secret meeting with BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan at a hotel in London. They agreed to talk on an unattributable basis, which allowed the BBC to report what was said, but not to identify the source. Kelly expressed his grave doubts over the dossier and the inclusion of the inflammatory “45 minute claim” which he attributed to Blair’s iniquitous Director Of Communications, Alastair Campbell. Gilligan later broadcast his report on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and it caused a deep political storm. Eventually, the Ministry Of Defence purposefully gave sufficient clues to journalists and media savvy pundits that Dr. Kelly was Gilligan’s source. Kelly was soon asked to appear before two investigative committees in the House Of Commons, one of them was publicly televised. He was aggressively and sometimes disrespectfully questioned by members of the committee.
On 17th July 2003, Kelly was working as usual from his home in Oxfordshire. Knowing that he’d been under tremendous pressure, Kelly had received many supportive e-mails from friends. One e-mail he sent that day was to New York Times journalist Judith Miller, who had used Kelly as a source in a book on bioterrorism, to whom Kelly mentioned “many dark actors playing games.” Later that day he told his wife that he was going for his daily walk. He did not come back. Dr. Kelly was found dead early the next morning in an area of woodland known as Harrowdown Hill, about a mile from his home. He had allegedly ingested a large amount of painkillers and cut his left wrist.
Perhaps because Kelly had previously worked closely with MI6 (SIS), the UK government thought he would follow the party line. He didn’t, so they killed him. The disgraceful sham investigation that later followed – The Hutton Inquiry – delivered a verdict of suicide. Case closed.
Evidence uncovered in late 2007 casts serious doubt on the verdict of suicide. Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who is writing a book on Kelly, revealed (via the Freedom of Information Act) that the penknife Dr Kelly apparently used to slash his wrist did not carry his own fingerprints. Baker said: "The angle you pick up a knife to kill yourself means there would be fingerprints. Someone who wanted to kill themselves wouldn't go to the lengths of wiping the knife clean of fingerprints. It is just very suspicious. It is one of the things that makes me think Dr Kelly was murdered. The case should be re-opened."
Independent doctors have said neither the cut to Dr Kelly's wrist nor the drugs found in his body were enough to kill him. They claimed the official cause of death, a severed ulnar artery in the wrist, was extremely unlikely to be fatal. It just didn't add up. Dr. Kelly's family and friends insist he had shown no sign of feeling suicidal. Emails and the minutes of meetings he attended also showed him behaving perfectly normally - and he was looking forward to his daughter's wedding.
Some have a far broader perspective. Former IRA member Danny Morrison wrote in The Guardian, “Although in the Belfast high court (Lord) Hutton occasionally acquitted republicans and dismissed the appeals of soldiers, nationalists generally considered him a hanging judge and the guardian angel of soldiers and police officers. I was amused at the response of sections of the media and British public [to Hutton's exonerating the Blair government]. Do they know anything about how the establishment works?”
Winston Churchill And The Order Of Druids
No it’s not a new Harry Potter book. During World War II, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was setup to be an iconic patriot and a man of steel and honour. Despite diverse and consistent criticism, Churchill was stage managed into a father figure for the largely uneducated rabble. He was the face of victory and English pride on the 8th May 1945 as we waved his cigar to massive crowds gathered at Whitehall to celebrate the end of the war. Even in 2002, the BBC polled over 1.6 million morons to find the Greatest Briton Of All Time – Winston Churchill was the man at the top of the list. A PSYOPS triumph that has stood the test of time.
Little was made of Churchill’s membership of the Freemasons and The Ancient Order Of Druids. Involvement in secret and occult groups was not part of the marketing plan. Even less was said of his well known disregard for the common man. Churchill rejected Hitler's proposal to spare civilian targets. Instead, he goaded Hitler into bombing London by hitting Berlin and other civilian targets first. Hitler was said to be anxious to reach an agreement with Britain that confined military bombardment from aircraft to battle zones only. What followed were equal horrors of British and German bombing campaigns in which tens of thousands of non-military personnel perished. In September 1940, after visiting the first ruined houses and the people standing on piles of bricks, Churchill commented, “They cheered me as if I'd given them victory, instead of getting their houses bombed to bits.” From the 13th – 15th February 1945, allied forces dropped 3900 tons of high explosives on Dresden, killing up to 40,000 civilians. Though the British claimed Dresden was a legitimate military target, critics have since argued that the city did not have a military garrison, most of the industry was in the outskirts (and not in the targeted city centre), and that the enormous cultural significance of the city should have precluded the Allies from bombing it. Ultimate responsibility for the British part of the attack lay with Churchill. German historian Jörg Friedrich claims that, “Winston Churchill's decision to [area] bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime.” British philosopher A. C. Grayling has described this kind of British area bombardment as an “immoral act” and “moral crime” because “destroying everything contravenes every moral and humanitarian principle debated in connection with the just conduct of war.” Günter Grass, a German novelist and 1999 Nobel prize winner, called the bombing of Dresden a war crime.
It is unthinkable that a man who could conceivably commit a war crime would later be dubbed the Greatest Briton Of All Time. The only answer is PSYOPS. Brainwashing. Churchill ain’t who we thought he was.
Black Ops & False Flags
Black Ops (Black Operations) are covert missions that usually fall into the ‘deniability’ category, where governments will not claim responsibility for the actions. Secret wars, drug running, assassinations, experimental weapons programmes etc. False Flag operations are used when governments fund, set-up, and execute their own covert terror operations and blame scapegoat nations or “alleged” terror groups like Al Qaeda. This also has the agreeable knock-on effect of mustering support for further military operations. Both these tactics are commonly used where international legality and ethical considerations are questionable. Consequently, funding for Black Ops and False Flag events is always “off the books”.
Black Ops and False Flag tactics go hand in hand with PSYOPS. Well documented modern examples include:-
- The burning down of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building
- Prior knowledge that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor
- The Gulf Of Tonkin incident
- Operation Northwoods - a US government plan to stage the assassination of civilians and blame it on Communist Cuba
- CIA drug running in Nicaragua
- Al Qaeda created by CIA
- Bombing of the Israeli embassy in London
- Phony Al Qaeda Cell (Mossad) in Palestine
- 911
Black Ops also encompass regular covert assassinations of troublemakers, quite regardless of nationality or political affiliation. Some are more obvious than others: Gandhi, JFK, Che Guevara, Princess Diana, Dr. David Kelly, Robin Cook MP, Benazir Bhutto. Remember, False Flag tactics are as viable with individual assassinations as they are with bombings or military campaigns. Often, a plausible scapegoat/patsy is essential for a successful high profile assassination. In recent times, apparent suicides, car accidents and heart attacks are more the MO of Black Ops teams rather than old fashioned shootings. And these things go on all the time. That’s what CIA, MI6 (SIS) and Mossad (Israeli intelligence) are for. What our politicians tell us about National Security is a smokescreen. Most wars are straight power grabs. Illegal invasions for mass resource domination and financial profit. Though PSYOPS will always tell the people the correct way to think about these things.
This is most absurdly palpable each time we see PSYOPS name an actual military operation. In modern US warfare for example, I cringe (as do a billion others) each time a new campaign name is unveiled: Operation Valiant Strike, Operation Provide Comfort, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Uphold Democracy and, most insultingly of all - Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Sad but true. And should we wonder at the sheer transparency of these brainless lunges to divert our attention from the truth, let us remember the words of that master of mass hypnosis, and archetypal bad guy - Adolf Hitler, “All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.”
You can detect PSYOPS methods after a little while. When Home Secretary Jacqui Smith starts spouting off about the increasing terror threats and plots against the country – I know she is being primed (knowingly or unknowingly), playing her part to pass on the be afraid meme so new anti-freedom laws can be rushed in. Fake reality. Fake news.
To end, let us absorb the words of one intelligent and authentic human being, Bill Hicks. “I love talking about the Kennedy assassination. The reason I do is because I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated that our government could lie to us so blatantly, so obviously for so long, and we do absolutely nothing about it. I think that's interesting in what is ostensibly a democracy. Sarcasm - come on in.”
It wasn’t until the end of World War I that the word ‘propaganda’ began to really take on negative connotations. People were beginning to understand that propaganda was not just a weapon that their government used against ‘the enemy’; it was something they frequently used against their own people. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Britain resurrected The Ministry Of Information (MOI) to once more regulate and manipulate news flow. It was while working for the MOI that a certain Mr. Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, was inspired to create the terrifying vision of the Ministry of Truth in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell had grown increasingly disillusioned with the MOI’s warped news coverage and eventually resigned in disgust. The fascist ideals and practices of a Britain that claimed to be open and democratic were to become a powerful theme in Orwell’s written works. In 1946, Orwell said, “Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Orwell had first-hand experience of how the news was routinely rewritten to align with official government fables. Ironically, we have since learned from official MI5 documents released in September 2007, that Orwell was himself the subject of regular surveillance by UK secret services for more than 13 years.
