(Link) 70th Anniv. of Classic "War of the Worlds" alien invasion radio broadcast

[Destructavator]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081028/ts_afp/usradiomediahistoryyear_081028213344

According to this, 70 years ago from sometime this week is when the original radio broadcast of a fictitious alien invasion took place over the radio system, one that fooled people into thinking a real invasion by aliens was taking place.  (This was back before everyone had televisions, and listening to radio shows was entertainment, from what I've heard.)  Apparently many were fooled into believing the fake broadcast because they tuned in late and missed the disclaimer at the beginning of the program.

I didn't read the whole article, but from other sources I've heard it caused so much panic some people were committing suicide because of this, thinking the "invasion" was real.

[EchizenR]

Coincidentally, I found this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkpT-gSSS54

which presents the view that the War of the Worlds scare could have been a social experiment, for something more outlandish, aided by technology, to be perpetrated in future. Right now, not only do we have the technological capability to project holograms in space (not outer space, but physical space), but the ability to beam a message into peoples' brains through EM waves and also the capacity to influence moods also through EM means. Which means that it is possible to induce widespread hysteria if the powers that be want to create global panic. Who would benefit from such a scenario? (Hmm...)

[Destructavator]

I didn't look at the YouTube video yet, but I can tell you from my own brief experience working in a law enforcement-related job and from reading credible science articles in the past that reading and manipulating thoughts and brain functions is real and nothing new - A while back they made public information about a lie detector that works by reading brain activity - forget the polygraph and similar devices - this one can't be fooled.  (I've heard of cases where one can be mentally trained to fool the polygraph, although I don't really know any details on how it is done.)

Also, I know for a fact that there are already people in power who are pushing things further in motion to eventually have law enforcement be able to monitor thinking and emotions of people.  Yes, at some point we will indeed have the "Thought Police."  (Personally, I hope it gets pushed back by mass protest and other backlash long enough that I'm dead from old age by then, although I don't think I'll be that lucky.)

The human brain actually generates and uses a substantial amount of electricity and other energy - a typical brain can make enough electricity alone to power an electric model train.

[BTAxis]

(Personally, I hope it gets pushed back by mass protest and other backlash long enough that I'm dead from old age by then, although I don't think I'll be that lucky.)

Why, you thinking dangerous thoughts?

Seriously though, I don't believe in thought police. The human brain is a big mystery to us, and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out we can inherently never understand how it works because the human brain can't model itself (in the same way that the Peano axioms can't be used to prove their own mathematical consistency). Sure, we could possibly do small things like detect lies or emotions or even induce things like fear or pleasure, but reading actual thoughts? Bollocks. I've nothing to substantiate this claim, but this is what I firmly believe.

[Destructavator]

Seriously though, I don't believe in thought police. The human brain is a big mystery to us, and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out we can inherently never understand how it works because the human brain can't model itself (in the same way that the Peano axioms can't be used to prove their own mathematical consistency). Sure, we could possibly do small things like detect lies or emotions or even induce things like fear or pleasure, but reading actual thoughts? Bollocks. I've nothing to substantiate this claim, but this is what I firmly believe.

I sincerely hope you turn out to be right.

Why, you thinking dangerous thoughts?

This brings to mind some amusing and contrasensical scenarios:

"That's it, you're under arrest on charges of first degree hating against another individual."

"Freeze! Don't move, or I'll loathe you!"

"All right, this is a robbery!  Everybody get down on the floor or I'll start imagining things!  I'm warning you, I'm very good at envisioning terrible and painful things happening to others!  That's right, I'm fully psyched up, and I'm not afraid to think!"

"Noooo!  Please don't think badly of me!  I'll do anything!  I'll give you whatever you want!  Ahhhh!"

"Don't worry - You're safe with me, I have a very tough mentality of not giving a s***..."

[EchizenR]

Why, you thinking dangerous thoughts?

Dangerous thoughts? Dangerous to who? The CIA has already been caught spying on peaceful activists not only recently

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10540

, but even during the Vietnam War.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/print/1/displaymode/1098/

Jefferson said that "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Unfortunately, this dissent is being criminalised with legislation like HR 1955- "The Violent Radicalisation and Homegrown Terrorism Act" which could define dissent as terrorism. (Force and violence are mentioned separately; check the various definitions of force). Tyranny is slowly being forced on the American people as they even get arrested for reading the Constitution

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2007/021007_reading_constitution.htm

, government spying on their phone calls

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/ABC_NSA_agents_admit_spying_on_1009.html

, and even preparation for martial law. Surely someone has heard that the 1st BCT of the 3rd Infantry Division has been deployed on US soil

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10366

, violating Posse Comitatus. And this is a fraction of the tyranny that is being perpetrated under the phoney War on (OF) Terror

Seriously though, I don't believe in thought police. The human brain is a big mystery to us, and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out we can inherently never understand how it works because the human brain can't model itself (in the same way that the Peano axioms can't be used to prove their own mathematical consistency). Sure, we could possibly do small things like detect lies or emotions or even induce things like fear or pleasure, but reading actual thoughts? Bollocks. I've nothing to substantiate this claim, but this is what I firmly believe.

Well, actually, the ruling establishment doesn't need Orwell's Thoughtpolice. Why force people when as Aldous Huxley said,

"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution."

More pertinently, there isn't a necessity for a Thoughtpolice because people are perfectly capable of crimestop (For those unfamiliar with 1984, crimestop is a mental technique to stop short of any politically unacceptable ideas). Why should someone who is perfectly contented with society take on a worldview that condemns and exposes the fraudulent society he is living in? Why come to the realisation that the elections are a farce, that who comes to power doesnt make a damn difference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IfJzpS_F-4

, when it would alienate you from your peers? In that sense, it is peer pressure. Even though 125 powerful business and political elites meet at the annual Bilderberg Meeting under armed guard for secretive meetings, which is never mentioned by the mainstream media, though the farcical G8 is, why would someone want to believe it, even though its true, and risk challenging his entire worldview? Orwell wrote,

"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."

Unfortunately, in the real world, a minority of one (figuratively) means you are mad, no matter how right you are. Edgar Allen Poe wrote this in one of his essays, (one of my favourite quotes):

"Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong."

Sorry if I digressed, couldn't help it. Anyway, I think that the brain can be read, scientists have already experimented with detecting specific parts of the brain that are activated upon thinking of a particular word (though I couldn't locate the URL for that), but Orwell's lobotomy scene comes to mind when I read this article on how scientists managed to erase portions of a mouse's memory.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081022/hl_hsn/scientistserasespecificmemoriesinmice

But certainly, our brain waves can be manipulated to put us into certain states of mind.

Mind Control by Cell Phone
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=25420

However, such things aren't that necessary when you got the greatest social engineering tool available to Man, the TV. Edward Bernays wrote that "We are governed, our minds moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of". And TV as well as education, perform this job extremely well. To avoid going into the details, for I know I've rambled on for too long, I'll just provide any one interested in this subject with several links.

Television May Be Doing Your Thinking
http://www.naturalnews.com/024530.html

The Corporate Media Survival Guide
http://www.frostcloud.com/forum/blog.php?b=45

The Rise of the Technocracy (This one is really good, explains how society was engineered through the deliberate use of education to produce docile, obedient workers, not thinkers.)
http://oldthinkernews.com/Articles/oldthinker%20news/rise_of_the_technocracy.htm

P.S Has anyone seen that Youtube video? Talks about some really far-fetch'd stuff which are technologically possible, but politically shocking if it were carried out. I always try to maintain an open mind. After all, if you think someone or something's a crackpot conspiracy theorist (or theory), do you really know that? Or are you just conditioned to think that?

[BTAxis]

More pertinently, there isn't a necessity for a Thoughtpolice because people are perfectly capable of crimestop (For those unfamiliar with 1984, crimestop is a mental technique to stop short of any politically unacceptable ideas). Why should someone who is perfectly contented with society take on a worldview that condemns and exposes the fraudulent society he is living in?

While this reasoning is logical, it's also somewhat short sighted (remember that 1984 was a political novel. It's not the last word on human society). It assumes that all crime is a result of social dissatisfiaction and (political) ideology. This is simply not true. Crime happens for many different reasons, some of which simply can't be controlled by government policy, such as psychological afflictions and compulsions. To pen in all of it, to REALLY stamp out all crime, you have to basically strap down all of your citizens so they can't actually move.

[EchizenR]

BT, you seem to have misinterpreted my post. I did not mean "crime" as in the normal sense of stealing, killing etc. I meant it as in "Thoughtcrime", in the political sense that Orwell meant.

In the sense of my previous post, I was trying to point out that peoples' unwillingness to challenge the status quo is the reason for ignorance about the impeding tyranny. After all, who wants to believe that a cabal of internationalists are working towards a totalitarian world government, even though in 1991 David Rockefeller said:

"The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."

And the reason for such wilful ignorance is the constraining influence of groupthink. And thats why I tried to emphasis on social engineering in my previous post.

On the other hand, it is interesting to think about why do people commit crimes. But I think that will be too complicated for me to handle at the moment.
'

[BTAxis]

I'll admit to misunderstanding you given your clarification, but the discussion prior to that was much broader than just the sort of thoughts you describe. It was about everyday crime and suppression thereof.

[EchizenR]

Haha, I apologise. Seems I interpreted out of context. For me, Thought Police= Suppression of political deviants as in 1984, whereas Destructavotor meant a Minority Report kind of situation. Still, both are representation of dystopias. However, what I'm outlining is no dystopia, but the nightmare we actually live in. Would you agree?

[EchizenR]

“War of the Worlds”: Let’s Take Another Look.
http://www.brainsturbator.com/articles/war_of_the_worlds_take_another_look/