Every Website Needs a Resident Lazy - FAQ
How many times have you found a product you want to buy in Google, only to find it's a 2-week-expired eBay listing? Or wanted to find an item with an online store's search facility only to find that it lists only stale, unread news articles?Gone are the days of business card or brochure sized websites, every ma - and - pa business wants an eCommerce website and a CMS backend so they can continue to add products and modify content on a daily basis. The result is a large, informative and dynamic website with to-the-minute information and data. And while this generation of website is a huge step forward from the old-school static websites, there is one main drawback;How does a surfer or even a search facility find needed information when the content changes everyday?As websites grow with their companies, so do their FAQ listings, their product lists, etc. They become far too cumbersome for a surfer to browse through and the search site facilities respond to any search with pages of unrelated hits. The end results are frustrated customers, swamped sales support staff, and a high turnover of surfers.The solution of course is to have smarter search facilities. A bot that knows where to look in the database for certain information and makes the necessary queries. A module that checks the current state of the site's data when the search is taking place. A web app that has every frequently asked question under its belt, and can notify staff if it's missing one that customers want to know. And on top of all that it has to know what it's looking for from a simple, plain English question typed by the customer.I call any belonging to this new generation of search facilities a "lazy-FAQ". The users can be lazy because they can type a simple question rather than trawling through the site, and the search bot is lazy because it doesn't fetch any data until the very moment it is requested by the user. Next generation website search modules such as LiveQ+A liveqa.net know where to go to find the price of the fluffy toilet seat cover you want, can reply to the question you're trying to ask about the size of their imitation Mona Lisa's, and are happy to tell you the store's business hours when you ask if they'll be open at 3am on Sunday. And all of these responses are in plain English, and using 100% current data.The question entry box usually "lives" on a side panel of the website and because the system knows more specifically wh

The 5 Secret Elements You Never Knew About Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing creates an opportunity for a new internet marketer to finance their online ventures by promoting another persons product or service. When an online searcher buys or opts in to a lead form on the website, the merchant pays the affiliate marketer a percentage of the price and/or pays a fee for the act itself. This allows the internet marketer to make money online without the headaches of creating a unique website or product.Many merchants are more than happy to split the profits with the internet marketer since the marketer is providing the necessary work and cost to promoting.There are several e-commerce sites that the new and experienced marketer can join and begin promoting products and services immediately. Affliiate marketing has increased profit margins for some merchants by more than 15-20% and the trend shows no signs of slowing.Why participate in an affiliate program?It allows to to become a home based business owner on a part time basis while you get your feet wet. It allows anyone to build a substantial income as indicted by the many millionaires that claim to have found their fortune in affiliate marketing. These outcomes came from great training, hard work, prospecting and self motivation.If you are seriously considering affiliate marketing, don't be mistaken, your results will be directly related to what you are willing to put in it.Here are the top 5 keys to consider when choosing an affiliate program to promote:1. A product or service that you like and have interest in.In other words, would you buy it? This is one of the best indicators of knowing whether this a a good program to promote. If you think you would puchase a particular product or service, chances are someone else will too.2. Look for a program that has a few known guru testimonials on it, these will most likely be of high quality.Most gurus have a reputation they need to protect. Many multi-millionaire gurus got their start as affiliates and often create their own products. These comments give some assurance that the standards of the program are solid.3. Do a little market research on the products first.If you can track down a forum and ask the memebers their opinions on the product, do so. These user testimonials are helpful, but be sure to keep in mind that some people just buy to buy and may not give you a fair assessment. Ask a few people so you can get a good idea about the quality of the program or service.“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” -- Benjamin Franklin

That was then and this is now.

"There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarians should resemble the old. Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass deportation, is not only inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays), it is demonstrably inefficient and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers. But their methods are still crude and unscientific. -- Aldous Huxley, 1946

A Journey into Semi-enlightenment

If I can control what you see and hear, then I can control how you think, I can control what you believe, I can control how you behave. Give me control of those informational building blocks that make up your reality, and I can lead you as a parent leads a child.

Upon reflection, most people would agree with the above statement. They would not agree however, that it’s being done to them. The idea that their reality has been skewed, that they don’t know how the world really works, or who’s in control is beyond their comprehension. After all, there’s so much “news” available that they don’t have time for it all. They believe that anything of real importance will be brought to their attention. They believe that the team at “60 Minutes” is on the job, eager to bring them the unvarnished truth. They are wrong.

The product delivered to us by the mainstream media very often bears little resemblance to the real world. Even the language used to deliver that product can be misleading.

For example, as we all know, NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO involve free trade, and free trade is good. Of course we know that. The advantages of these programs are spelled out to us in the media on a regular basis. The only problem is -- it’s not true. NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO do not involve free trade; they involve managed trade (Note 1). You’re not supposed to think or use the word “managed” because then you might ask the obvious questions. Managed by whom, for whom? The people who sit around the negotiating tables—do they represent their governments or their people; or do they have corporate masters? Is trade all about economics, or is there a social and/or political agenda? Is trade being managed for the benefit of the people, or the workers, or the multi-national corporations who can make hundreds of millions of dollars based on the addition or deletion of a single paragraph in an agreement? Or is the answer (d), all of the above? Who knows? As long as they use the word “free” we don’t have to think about it. Like “liberty” or “democracy” the word “free” has a powerful positive connotation that tends to shut down our ability to think critically. That’s why it has never dawned on you – FREE trade does not require a treaty.

Let’s look at another example of how language is used to control the way you think. What is a peacekeeper? A peacekeeper is a soldier who wears a blue helmet and/or arm band, works for the United Nations or some other supranational body, defends women and children, maintains the peace, and is an all around good guy. You probably thought something like that automatically, because that’s what you were programmed to think. In fact a peacekeeper is a man with a gun who will beat you or kill you if you don’t do what he tells you to do. What he tells you to do may or may not be good, morale, ethical, or legal. In fact, scores of “Peacekeepers” have been charged with theft, rape, torture, and murder. Hundreds of millions of people around the world feel very strongly that the military operations carried out by peacekeepers have been wrong, unjust, and illegal for a variety of reasons.

Imagine if our soldiers went off to fight soldiers who were called Peacekeepers. Peace is good; therefore peacekeeping is good; therefore peacekeepers are good; therefore whatever the peacekeepers do to keep the peace must be good. So how could anyone fight a peacekeeper and be in the right? Do you see how words can be used to control your thinking?

Am I being critical of the young men and women who carry the guns, fire the missiles or drop the bombs? For the most part, no. I used to be one of them. I understand the training and the system that they are a part of. I was a paratrooper and a Ranger, and was decorated on numerous occasions for conducting state-sanctioned murder. In fact, there was a time when I probably would have killed just about anything and anyone I was told to kill. That was before I began to understand who really gives the orders, why they’re being given, and how I was being manipulated by information that was designed for that purpose.

It was only after I left the military that I began to see beyond the world as it is portrayed by TV’s talking heads. I had been interested in investments and the financial markets for most of my life. When I became a stockbroker I was very fortunate that my office had one group of brokers involved in fundamental analysis, and another that did technical analysis. I joined them both. Although we spent a great deal of time analyzing individual companies and their stocks, I found that I was more interested in the macro economic forces that moved world markets; not just in equities, but in currencies, interest rates, and commodities.

The more I studied, the more I found things that weren’t right; that they didn’t make sense. In some cases I was being asked to believe in a free lunch, or that 2+2 = 3; while in others the story was that the most brilliant financiers on earth were in fact incompetent fools who lost billions of taxpayer dollars because they were trying to “help” the less fortunate. They were just “good guys”, who had made an honest mistake (150 times). I had entered a world where business and political interests collided to create a shifting and illusionary landscape. A macro economic Twilight Zone, where it was difficult to identify the real players, even with a scorecard. In fact, the scorecards themselves were often falsified so as to hide the identity of the real players. And the real agenda was never openly discussed in the mainstream media.

“Economic hit men (EHM) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM.”

-- John Perkins (xi)

My investigation led to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Export-Import Bank, the Federal Reserve, and other central banks, where financial power was leveraged into political power, and then back into even greater financial power. The level of Machiavellian political and financial corruption in these organizations is mind-boggling. I discovered that stock, commodity and currency markets were being rigged, quasi- governmental bodies were laundering taxpayer money through countries and into multi-national corporations and banks that they controlled, and that taxpayer money was being used to initially bribe and eventually extort foreign governments into re-writing their laws so as to allow foreign domination of their economies and eventually their countries. From there it was only one step into the shadow government that stands between business and government, and that most people don’t even know exists. Trying to put all of this information together in a meaningful way was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle that had been dropped from an airplane. First you have to find the pieces, and then you have to put them together without the benefit of a picture to go by.

It didn’t take long to realize that in some cases information was being withheld, while in others false information was being promulgated. I turned my attention to the media to find out why the stories I was uncovering on a weekly basis were not making it to the general public. In some cases, sanitized versions of the stories ended up on page 12 of the Washington Post or the New York Times, and were never seen again. In other cases the stories were blacked out, and never appeared in the mainstream media at all.

One of the first statements I encountered on the media’s role in all of this was made by a former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, John Swinton. Mr. Swinton was one of the most eminent newspapermen of his day. At a New York Press Club dinner he was asked to make a toast to an independent press. This is what he said:

“There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”

-- Staff, Media Bypass, “Taking Wealth by the Horns”

When I first read that I thought that perhaps Mr. Swinton had been having a bad night. Things couldn’t be as bad as he was leading us to believe. I have since come to realize that the above statement can be taken literally.

“You are part of the most conditioned, programmed culture the world has ever known. Not only are your thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded, but your very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased. The doors of your perception are carefully and precisely regulated.”

-- Dr. Joseph Mercola, 2007

The Muckrakers

“Media power is political power. There is a dangerous change in the philosophy of the airwaves to permit the growth of corporations and the deregulation of the government to the point of decimating the consumer.” Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly

“The sad truth is that the closer a story gets to corporate power and corporate domination of our society, the less reliable the corporate news media are.” Robert McChesney, Professor in the Institute of Communications Research at University of Illinois and author of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy"

If you’re going to investigate the takeover of the American media, the easiest place to start is with the muckrakers. The term “muckraker” was used to describe a group of investigative and political reformist magazines, which gained influence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They became famous in American history by exposing the abuses made possible by monopolies and trusts, and the systematic bribery of government by bankers and industrialists. These magazines included some of the most prestigious in the country, such as Harpers, Scribners, Century, and a dozen others.

The power of the muckraker magazines became so great that they began to influence elections at the local, state, and national level. The American people demanded legislation to protect themselves from the abuses of big business. J.P. Morgan ended up in front of a congressional committee (Cujo Committee) in Washington D.C. Finally, the leaders of the financial elite struck back when a reformist President, Theodore Roosevelt was elected.

“That was too much, and in a series of abrupt acts J.P. Morgan and the Rockefeller interests simply bought controlling interest in the magazines- Harpers, Scribners, Century, and a number of others- installed their own managers, and announced that the public was tired of reading exposes of banks and business. It ended an era of American journalism and national politics.” -- Ben Bagdikian (p. 211)

The words of Congressman Oscar Callaway, taken from the United States Congressional record, February 9, 1917, bring added meaning to the above paragraph.

“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States. These 12 men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers…This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served.” -- James Perloff (p.178) and

-- G. Edward Griffen (p. 244)

In 1922 Theodore Roosevelt, a man who was famous for his straight talk, described the situation this way, “These international bankers and Rockefeller – Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or to drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”

The problems encountered by the financial elite with the American people’s influence over government (otherwise known as democracy) did not occur overnight. Nor did their solution of taking direct and indirect control of the media so as to shape public opinion. The following paragraphs clearly demonstrate that America’s true leaders and their public servants had identified the problem and the solution by 1905.

During hearings held by the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee in 1912, it was revealed that Congressman Joseph Sibley from Pennsylvania was distributing Rockefeller money to a number of obedient Congressmen. A letter was introduced to the Committee that had been written by Representative Sibley in 1905. The letter had been sent to John D. Archbold, a senior executive at Standard Oil Company who acted as Rockefeller’s bagman. In that letter Congressman Sibley said:

“An efficient literary bureau is needed, not for a day or a crisis but a permanent healthy control of the Associated Press and kindred avenues. It will cost money, but will be the cheapest in the end.”

-- Ferdinand Lundberg (p.249)

“Charles S. Mellen of the New Haven Railroad testified before Congress that his Morgan-owned railroad had more than one-thousand New England newspapers on the payroll, costing about $400,000 annually (In today’s inflated currency that would be over $8 million.). The railroad also held almost a half-million dollars in bonds issued by the Boston Herald. This web of control was multiplied by hundreds of additional companies which also were controlled by Morgan and other investment-banking houses.

-- G. Edward Griffin (p. 244)

All processes tend to be perfected over time. The process of controlling the American people by controlling their primary sources of information is no different. The following was written in 1937 by author Ferdinand Lundberg, (p. 245):

“So far as can be learned, the Rockefellers have given up their old policy of owning newspapers and magazines outright, relying now upon the publications of all camps to serve their best interests in return for the vast volume of petroleum and allied advertising under Rockefeller control. After the J.P. Morgan bloc, the Rockefellers have the most advertising of any group to dispose of. And when advertising alone i

upranational body, defends women and children, maintains the peace, and is an all around good guy. You probably thought something like that automatically, because that’s what you were programmed to think. In fact a peacekeeper is a man with a gun who will beat you or kill you if you don’t do what he tells you to do. What he tells you to do may or may not be good, morale, ethical, or legal. In fact, scores of “Peacekeepers” have been charged with theft, rape, torture, and murder. Hundreds of millions of people around the world feel very strongly that the military operations carried out by peacekeepers have been wrong, unjust, and illegal for a variety of reasons.

Imagine if our soldiers went off to fight soldiers who were called Peacekeepers. Peace is good; therefore peacekeeping is good; therefore peacekeepers are good; therefore whatever the peacekeepers do to keep the peace must be good. So how could anyone fight a peacekeeper and be in the right? Do you see how words can be used to control your thinking?

Am I being critical of the young men and women who carry the guns, fire the missiles or drop the bombs? For the most part, no. I used to be one of them. I understand the training and the system that they are a part of. I was a paratrooper and a Ranger, and was decorated on numerous occasions for conducting state-sanctioned murder. In fact, there was a time when I probably would have killed just about anything and anyone I was told to kill. That was before I began to understand who really gives the orders, why they’re being given, and how I was being manipulated by information that was designed for that purpose.

It was only after I left the military that I began to see beyond the world as it is portrayed by TV’s talking heads. I had been interested in investments and the financial markets for most of my life. When I became a stockbroker I was very fortunate that my office had one group of brokers involved in fundamental analysis, and another that did technical analysis. I joined them both. Although we spent a great deal of time analyzing individual companies and their stocks, I found that I was more interested in the macro economic forces that moved world markets; not just in equities, but in currencies, interest rates, and commodities.

The more I studied, the more I found things that weren’t right; that they didn’t make sense. In some cases I was being asked to believe in a free lunch, or that 2+2 = 3; while in others the story was that the most brilliant financiers on earth were in fact incompetent fools who lost billions of taxpayer dollars because they were trying to “help” the less fortunate. They were just “good guys”, who had made an honest mistake (150 times). I had entered a world where business and political interests collided to create a shifting and illusionary landscape. A macro economic Twilight Zone, where it was difficult to identify the real players, even with a scorecard. In fact, the scorecards themselves were often falsified so as to hide the identity of the real players. And the real agenda was never openly discussed in the mainstream media.

“Economic hit men (EHM) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM.”

-- John Perkins (xi)

My investigation led to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Export-Import Bank, the Federal Reserve, and other central banks, where financial power was leveraged into political power, and then back into even greater financial power. The level of Machiavellian political and financial corruption in these organizations is mind-boggling. I discovered that stock, commodity and currency markets were being rigged, quasi- governmental bodies were laundering taxpayer money through countries and into multi-national corporations and banks that they controlled, and that taxpayer money was being used to initially bribe and eventually extort foreign governments into re-writing their laws so as to allow foreign domination of their economies and eventually their countries. From there it was only one step into the shadow government that stands between business and government, and that most people don’t even know exists. Trying to put all of this information together in a meaningful way was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle that had been dropped from an airplane. First you have to find the pieces, and then you have to put them together without the benefit of a picture to go by.

It didn’t take long to realize that in some cases information was being withheld, while in others false information was being promulgated. I turned my attention to the media to find out why the stories I was uncovering on a weekly basis were not making it to the general public. In some cases, sanitized versions of the stories ended up on page 12 of the Washington Post or the New York Times, and were never seen again. In other cases the stories were blacked out, and never appeared in the mainstream media at all.

One of the first statements I encountered on the media’s role in all of this was made by a former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, John Swinton. Mr. Swinton was one of the most eminent newspapermen of his day. At a New York Press Club dinner he was asked to make a toast to an independent press. This is what he said:

“There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”

-- Staff, Media Bypass, “Taking Wealth by the Horns”

When I first read that I thought that perhaps Mr. Swinton had been having a bad night. Things couldn’t be as bad as he was leading us to believe. I have since come to realize that the above statement can be taken literally.

“You are part of the most conditioned, programmed culture the world has ever known. Not only are your thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded, but your very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased. The doors of your perception are carefully and precisely regulated.”

-- Dr. Joseph Mercola, 2007

The Muckrakers

“Media power is political power. There is a dangerous change in the philosophy of the airwaves to permit the growth of corporations and the deregulation of the government to the point of decimating the consumer.” Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly

“The sad truth is that the closer a story gets to corporate power and corporate domination of our society, the less reliable the corporate news media are.” Robert McChesney, Professor in the Institute of Communications Research at University of Illinois and author of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy"

If you’re going to investigate the takeover of the American media, the easiest place to start is with the muckrakers. The term “muckraker” was used to describe a group of investigative and political reformist magazines, which gained influence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They became famous in American history by exposing the abuses made possible by monopolies and trusts, and the systematic bribery of government by bankers and industrialists. These magazines included some of the most prestigious in the country, such as Harpers, Scribners, Century, and a dozen others.

The power of the muckraker magazines became so great that they began to influence elections at the local, state, and national level. The American people demanded legislation to protect themselves from the abuses of big business. J.P. Morgan ended up in front of a congressional committee (Cujo Committee) in Washington D.C. Finally, the leaders of the financial elite struck back when a reformist President, Theodore Roosevelt was elected.

“That was too much, and in a series of abrupt acts J.P. Morgan and the Rockefeller interests simply bought controlling interest in the magazines- Harpers, Scribners, Century, and a number of others- installed their own managers, and announced that the public was tired of reading exposes of banks and business. It ended an era of American journalism and national politics.” -- Ben Bagdikian (p. 211)

The words of Congressman Oscar Callaway, taken from the United States Congressional record, February 9, 1917, bring added meaning to the above paragraph.

“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States. These 12 men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers…This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served.” -- James Perloff (p.178) and

-- G. Edward Griffen (p. 244)

In 1922 Theodore Roosevelt, a man who was famous for his straight talk, described the situation this way, “These international bankers and Rockefeller – Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or to drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”

The problems encountered by the financial elite with the American people’s influence over government (otherwise known as democracy) did not occur overnight. Nor did their solution of taking direct and indirect control of the media so as to shape public opinion. The following paragraphs clearly demonstrate that America’s true leaders and their public servants had identified the problem and the solution by 1905.

During hearings held by the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee in 1912, it was revealed that Congressman Joseph Sibley from Pennsylvania was distributing Rockefeller money to a number of obedient Congressmen. A letter was introduced to the Committee that had been written by Representative Sibley in 1905. The letter had been sent to John D. Archbold, a senior executive at Standard Oil Company who acted as Rockefeller’s bagman. In that letter Congressman Sibley said:

“An efficient literary bureau is needed, not for a day or a crisis but a permanent healthy control of the Associated Press and kindred avenues. It will cost money, but will be the cheapest in the end.”

-- Ferdinand Lundberg (p.249)

“Charles S. Mellen of the New Haven Railroad testified before Congress that his Morgan-owned railroad had more than one-thousand New England newspapers on the payroll, costing about $400,000 annually (In today’s inflated currency that would be over $8 million.). The railroad also held almost a half-million dollars in bonds issued by the Boston Herald. This web of control was multiplied by hundreds of additional companies which also were controlled by Morgan and other investment-banking houses.

-- G. Edward Griffin (p. 244)

All processes tend to be perfected over time. The process of controlling the American people by controlling their primary sources of information is no different. The following was written in 1937 by author Ferdinand Lundberg, (p. 245):

“So far as can be learned, the Rockefellers have given up their old policy of owning newspapers and magazines outright, relying now upon the publications of all camps to serve their best interests in return for the vast volume of petroleum and allied advertising under Rockefeller control. After the J.P. Morgan bloc, the Rockefellers have the most advertising of any group to dispose of. And when advertising alone

t’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM.”

-- John Perkins (xi)

My investigation led to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Export-Import Bank, the Federal Reserve, and other central banks, where financial power was leveraged into political power, and then back into even greater financial power. The level of Machiavellian political and financial corruption in these organizations is mind-boggling. I discovered that stock, commodity and currency markets were being rigged, quasi- governmental bodies were laundering taxpayer money through countries and into multi-national corporations and banks that they controlled, and that taxpayer money was being used to initially bribe and eventually extort foreign governments into re-writing their laws so as to allow foreign domination of their economies and eventually their countries. From there it was only one step into the shadow government that stands between business and government, and that most people don’t even know exists. Trying to put all of this information together in a meaningful way was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle that had been dropped from an airplane. First you have to find the pieces, and then you have to put them together without the benefit of a picture to go by.

It didn’t take long to realize that in some cases information was being withheld, while in others false information was being promulgated. I turned my attention to the media to find out why the stories I was uncovering on a weekly basis were not making it to the general public. In some cases, sanitized versions of the stories ended up on page 12 of the Washington Post or the New York Times, and were never seen again. In other cases the stories were blacked out, and never appeared in the mainstream media at all.

One of the first statements I encountered on the media’s role in all of this was made by a former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, John Swinton. Mr. Swinton was one of the most eminent newspapermen of his day. At a New York Press Club dinner he was asked to make a toast to an independent press. This is what he said:

“There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”

-- Staff, Media Bypass, “Taking Wealth by the Horns”

When I first read that I thought that perhaps Mr. Swinton had been having a bad night. Things couldn’t be as bad as he was leading us to believe. I have since come to realize that the above statement can be taken literally.

“You are part of the most conditioned, programmed culture the world has ever known. Not only are your thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded, but your very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased. The doors of your perception are carefully and precisely regulated.”

-- Dr. Joseph Mercola, 2007

The Muckrakers

“Media power is political power. There is a dangerous change in the philosophy of the airwaves to permit the growth of corporations and the deregulation of the government to the point of decimating the consumer.” Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly

“The sad truth is that the closer a story gets to corporate power and corporate domination of our society, the less reliable the corporate news media are.” Robert McChesney, Professor in the Institute of Communications Research at University of Illinois and author of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy"

If you’re going to investigate the takeover of the American media, the easiest place to start is with the muckrakers. The term “muckraker” was used to describe a group of investigative and political reformist magazines, which gained influence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They became famous in American history by exposing the abuses made possible by monopolies and trusts, and the systematic bribery of government by bankers and industrialists. These magazines included some of the most prestigious in the country, such as Harpers, Scribners, Century, and a dozen others.

The power of the muckraker magazines became so great that they began to influence elections at the local, state, and national level. The American people demanded legislation to protect themselves from the abuses of big business. J.P. Morgan ended up in front of a congressional committee (Cujo Committee) in Washington D.C. Finally, the leaders of the financial elite struck back when a reformist President, Theodore Roosevelt was elected.

“That was too much, and in a series of abrupt acts J.P. Morgan and the Rockefeller interests simply bought controlling interest in the magazines- Harpers, Scribners, Century, and a number of others- installed their own managers, and announced that the public was tired of reading exposes of banks and business. It ended an era of American journalism and national politics.” -- Ben Bagdikian (p. 211)

The words of Congressman Oscar Callaway, taken from the United States Congressional record, February 9, 1917, bring added meaning to the above paragraph.

“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States. These 12 men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers…This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served.” -- James Perloff (p.178) and

-- G. Edward Griffen (p. 244)

In 1922 Theodore Roosevelt, a man who was famous for his straight talk, described the situation this way, “These international bankers and Rockefeller – Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or to drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”

The problems encountered by the financial elite with the American people’s influence over government (otherwise known as democracy) did not occur overnight. Nor did their solution of taking direct and indirect control of the media so as to shape public opinion. The following paragraphs clearly demonstrate that America’s true leaders and their public servants had identified the problem and the solution by 1905.

During hearings held by the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee in 1912, it was revealed that Congressman Joseph Sibley from Pennsylvania was distributing Rockefeller money to a number of obedient Congressmen. A letter was introduced to the Committee that had been written by Representative Sibley in 1905. The letter had been sent to John D. Archbold, a senior executive at Standard Oil Company who acted as Rockefeller’s bagman. In that letter Congressman Sibley said:

“An efficient literary bureau is needed, not for a day or a crisis but a permanent healthy control of the Associated Press and kindred avenues. It will cost money, but will be the cheapest in the end.”

-- Ferdinand Lundberg (p.249)

“Charles S. Mellen of the New Haven Railroad testified before Congress that his Morgan-owned railroad had more than one-thousand New England newspapers on the payroll, costing about $400,000 annually (In today’s inflated currency that would be over $8 million.). The railroad also held almost a half-million dollars in bonds issued by the Boston Herald. This web of control was multiplied by hundreds of additional companies which also were controlled by Morgan and other investment-banking houses.

-- G. Edward Griffin (p. 244)

All processes tend to be perfected over time. The process of controlling the American people by controlling their primary sources of information is no different. The following was written in 1937 by author Ferdinand Lundberg, (p. 245):

“So far as can be learned, the Rockefellers have given up their old policy of owning newspapers and magazines outright, relying now upon the publications of all camps to serve their best interests in return for the vast volume of petroleum and allied advertising under Rockefeller control. After the J.P. Morgan bloc, the Rockefellers have the most advertising of any group to dispose of. And when advertising alone

l prostitutes.”

-- Staff, Media Bypass, “Taking Wealth by the Horns”

When I first read that I thought that perhaps Mr. Swinton had been having a bad night. Things couldn’t be as bad as he was leading us to believe. I have since come to realize that the above statement can be taken literally.

“You are part of the most conditioned, programmed culture the world has ever known. Not only are your thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded, but your very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased. The doors of your perception are carefully and precisely regulated.”

-- Dr. Joseph Mercola, 2007

The Muckrakers

“Media power is political power. There is a dangerous change in the philosophy of the airwaves to permit the growth of corporations and the deregulation of the government to the point of decimating the consumer.” Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly

“The sad truth is that the closer a story gets to corporate power and corporate domination of our society, the less reliable the corporate news media are.” Robert McChesney, Professor in the Institute of Communications Research at University of Illinois and author of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy"

If you’re going to investigate the takeover of the American media, the easiest place to start is with the muckrakers. The term “muckraker” was used to describe a group of investigative and political reformist magazines, which gained influence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They became famous in American history by exposing the abuses made possible by monopolies and trusts, and the systematic bribery of government by bankers and industrialists. These magazines included some of the most prestigious in the country, such as Harpers, Scribners, Century, and a dozen others.

The power of the muckraker magazines became so great that they began to influence elections at the local, state, and national level. The American people demanded legislation to protect themselves from the abuses of big business. J.P. Morgan ended up in front of a congressional committee (Cujo Committee) in Washington D.C. Finally, the leaders of the financial elite struck back when a reformist President, Theodore Roosevelt was elected.

“That was too much, and in a series of abrupt acts J.P. Morgan and the Rockefeller interests simply bought controlling interest in the magazines- Harpers, Scribners, Century, and a number of others- installed their own managers, and announced that the public was tired of reading exposes of banks and business. It ended an era of American journalism and national politics.” -- Ben Bagdikian (p. 211)

The words of Congressman Oscar Callaway, taken from the United States Congressional record, February 9, 1917, bring added meaning to the above paragraph.

“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States. These 12 men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers…This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served.” -- James Perloff (p.178) and

-- G. Edward Griffen (p. 244)

In 1922 Theodore Roosevelt, a man who was famous for his straight talk, described the situation this way, “These international bankers and Rockefeller – Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or to drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”

The problems encountered by the financial elite with the American people’s influence over government (otherwise known as democracy) did not occur overnight. Nor did their solution of taking direct and indirect control of the media so as to shape public opinion. The following paragraphs clearly demonstrate that America’s true leaders and their public servants had identified the problem and the solution by 1905.

During hearings held by the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee in 1912, it was revealed that Congressman Joseph Sibley from Pennsylvania was distributing Rockefeller money to a number of obedient Congressmen. A letter was introduced to the Committee that had been written by Representative Sibley in 1905. The letter had been sent to John D. Archbold, a senior executive at Standard Oil Company who acted as Rockefeller’s bagman. In that letter Congressman Sibley said:

“An efficient literary bureau is needed, not for a day or a crisis but a permanent healthy control of the Associated Press and kindred avenues. It will cost money, but will be the cheapest in the end.”

-- Ferdinand Lundberg (p.249)

“Charles S. Mellen of the New Haven Railroad testified before Congress that his Morgan-owned railroad had more than one-thousand New England newspapers on the payroll, costing about $400,000 annually (In today’s inflated currency that would be over $8 million.). The railroad also held almost a half-million dollars in bonds issued by the Boston Herald. This web of control was multiplied by hundreds of additional companies which also were controlled by Morgan and other investment-banking houses.

-- G. Edward Griffin (p. 244)

All processes tend to be perfected over time. The process of controlling the American people by controlling their primary sources of information is no different. The following was written in 1937 by author Ferdinand Lundberg, (p. 245):

“So far as can be learned, the Rockefellers have given up their old policy of owning newspapers and magazines outright, relying now upon the publications of all camps to serve their best interests in return for the vast volume of petroleum and allied advertising under Rockefeller control. After the J.P. Morgan bloc, the Rockefellers have the most advertising of any group to dispose of. And when advertising alone

as only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers…This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served.” -- James Perloff (p.178) and

-- G. Edward Griffen (p. 244)

In 1922 Theodore Roosevelt, a man who was famous for his straight talk, described the situation this way, “These international bankers and Rockefeller – Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or to drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”

The problems encountered by the financial elite with the American people’s influence over government (otherwise known as democracy) did not occur overnight. Nor did their solution of taking direct and indirect control of the media so as to shape public opinion. The following paragraphs clearly demonstrate that America’s true leaders and their public servants had identified the problem and the solution by 1905.

During hearings held by the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee in 1912, it was revealed that Congressman Joseph Sibley from Pennsylvania was distributing Rockefeller money to a number of obedient Congressmen. A letter was introduced to the Committee that had been written by Representative Sibley in 1905. The letter had been sent to John D. Archbold, a senior executive at Standard Oil Company who acted as Rockefeller’s bagman. In that letter Congressman Sibley said:

“An efficient literary bureau is needed, not for a day or a crisis but a permanent healthy control of the Associated Press and kindred avenues. It will cost money, but will be the cheapest in the end.”

-- Ferdinand Lundberg (p.249)

“Charles S. Mellen of the New Haven Railroad testified before Congress that his Morgan-owned railroad had more than one-thousand New England newspapers on the payroll, costing about $400,000 annually (In today’s inflated currency that would be over $8 million.). The railroad also held almost a half-million dollars in bonds issued by the Boston Herald. This web of control was multiplied by hundreds of additional companies which also were controlled by Morgan and other investment-banking houses.

-- G. Edward Griffin (p. 244)

All processes tend to be perfected over time. The process of controlling the American people by controlling their primary sources of information is no different. The following was written in 1937 by author Ferdinand Lundberg, (p. 245):

“So far as can be learned, the Rockefellers have given up their old policy of owning newspapers and magazines outright, relying now upon the publications of all camps to serve their best interests in return for the vast volume of petroleum and allied advertising under Rockefeller control. After the J.P. Morgan bloc, the Rockefellers have the most advertising of any group to dispose of. And when advertising alone is not sufficient to insure the fealty of a newspaper, the Rockefeller companies have been known to make direct payments in return for a friendly editorial attitude.”

On the topic of advertising as a means of media control, Mr. Lundberg (p. 244) has this to say about J.P. Morgan:

“More advertising is controlled by the J.P. Morgan junta than by any single financial group, a factor which immediately gives the banking house the respectful attention of all alert independent publishers.”

The “stick and carrot” use of advertising dollars to control content is now a fine art. Many knowledgeable people consider it to be the primary source of media control, although that’s certainly debatable, as you shall see when we discuss corporate control. The book Conspiracy Against Freedom (Willis A. Carto, ed. 1986, Liberty lobby, Inc., Washington D.C.) documents the deliberate destruction of a syndicated radio program through the power of advertising.

Due to mergers and globalization, there are now only two huge umbrella advertising groups in the United States: Omnicam Group (the world's #1, 62,000 employees, 10.5 billion in 2005) and Interpublic Group (the world's third-largest, 43,000 employees, 6.3 billion in 2005).

“The history of Interpublic began 50 years before its incorporation in 1961. In 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court dismantled the Rockefeller Standard Oil Trust and divided it into 37 different companies. The largest of these was Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon). Harrison McCann, who had been advertising manager at the Rockefeller Trust for a number of years, opened up his own ad agency and took on Jersey Standard as his first client.”

-- Answer.com

These two companies have absorbed hundreds of subsidiaries and effectively silenced the competition to their political, social, and economic biases.

As the decades rolled by, the financial elite (elite is the word they most often use to describe themselves) that created the Business Roundtable, Council on Foreign Relations, Tri-Lateral Commission, Bilderbergers, and the Federal Reserve, also spun a web of control over the nation’s supply of information. Utilizing a combination of advertising extortion and boardroom financial control, they create their version of reality, and then put it out for mass consumption.

“These men, the ‘elite’, the ‘ruling class’, the ‘Establishment’, the ‘Insiders’, or whatever you want to call them, have learned to influence the thinking of most citizens through their control of communications and education. By such means they have shaped national and international policy”. -- Fr. James Thornton, “Faith, Family, Freedom”, (p.36)

If you really wanted to know how bad the situation was, what better person to ask than a President of the United States.