Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Interview on Business Matters

Rest your eyeballs and prick up your ears: Thomas White of Business Matters gets right past the happy-shiny talk prevalent in the mass media with the help of his two guests: me and Catherine Austin Fitts.

10 comments:

New Englander said...

Can you recommend a source of information about the narco mafias you refer to? If they're going to be the new boss, I'd like to read up on them.

Thanks

forrest said...

What she says about the deliberate use of what might best be called "mind-clouding" technologies via the media.

I've generally assumed that if the most profitable corporations in the country were willing to spend significant money on the assumption that tv could be used to befuddle people... that maybe they were right, and maybe they were wrong; but I'd rather read a book, thank you. Since I really would read a book, this stance has worked out quite well.

But I do get astonished at the ability of people around me "to believe six impossible things before breakfast," without even trying. And they're so sure!

Joe said...

I've held that view like you have, for a long time. It is that even though knowledge about foundational technology, like discrete electronics, isn't profitable, I don't let the general shortsightedness out there keep me from focusing on it.

Unknown said...

When I pass close to a tv I almost allways stand there for a few seconds with the face of an autist and can´t hear other people or pay atention to anything else. This became worse when I gave away my tv some years ago.

Don´t know why, I mostly don´t like it anyway. Maybe I have a live long lasting adiction.

In an unrelated subject, since you are considering sale trade with us in the south at some point in the future and you are also paying atention to drug cartels, I wanted to ask you to write about México and America latina. Whenever you feel like it of course.
I think oil will get north even after local demand meets export capacity, contrabandists will move the oil north and bring much of USA gold, machines, etc for a period. Maybe.

wagelaborer said...

I think that the obsession with watching TV is a genetic thing. Possibly it comes from watching the campfire flicker. I can do that for a long time, also.

When we first got security cameras at work, I'm not kidding, we would all sit and watch the video monitor as it showed - nothing. Just an empty waiting room.

Bukko Boomeranger said...

First, re: how TV affects us -- one of the salient points from Al Gore's "Assault on Reason" book (and other works on the psychology of TV) was about how the VISUAL impact of televised images hits the brain. Seeing something gets you at an EMOTIONAL level. Reading things gets you at a CEREBRAL level. Emotional is "hotter" in terms of affecting behaviour than "cold" cerebral.

TV can be more potent than seeing something with your eyeballs because the physical nature of the small screen makes you focus on it. Seeing reality, your attention is often diluted a bit by the literal "big picture" of wide vision and distracting factors. Unlike real events, TV can also repeat its broadcasts, thereby reinforcing the propaganda message.

And over time, broadcasters have perfected ways of sharpening the message tactics like dramatic tones of voice, background music themes that amplify the emotional impact, flashy graphics that subliminally affect you like little image-explosions... I don't think TV producers CONSCIOUSLY set out to hypnotize people, but they just know "These are the tricks that make our programs more watchable, so that's how we roll (tape.)"

But what I really clicked in to comment about was a thought I had while listening to Kollapsnik's all-too-true doom-predictions. It was "What decade are we going back to?" (I use "decade" in the sense of how it was in North America/Europe, the milieu I'm familiar with, because a similar decade in Africa/the Middle East/Asia was far different.)

Will the world go back to the Great Depression 1930s, with SOME gasoline-powered transportation, a bit of mechanized agriculture, continued mass communications? Will it be the 1850s, a wood-and-coal-and-animal focused existence, but still a semblance of modernity? At least there was working machinery back then. Are we headed for 1600, when it was Jim Kunstler's "world made by hand" lifestyle, but at least there were metal implements widely available? I'm reading "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and it occurs to me that in Roman times, large parts of the world lacked metal, roads and running water. Are we going there?

Where we wind up is anybody's guess/everybody's fear. Humanity will still have knowledge about things like disease theory, the geography of the planet and the atomic nature of matter that were unknown to Romans. Is that knowledge going to be much help to us if we don't have the energy resources or complex social structure to employ it, though?

Fortunately, I won't be around to see the answers. I've had a good life, existing when it was possible to get on an airplane and fly to distant continents. I have enjoyed it, and been thankful for what I had, while I was having it. I might meet my end in a bitter way when it unravels (although I've taken steps to make sure I go down fighting against the darkness.) It's the generations coming after me that I feel sorry for, because they will have to live in whatever century we regress to.

The generations of the future will look back at us like we were gods. Foolish, flawed Greek gods, though, the kind of gods that had all sorts of power, but squandered it through their all-too-human foibles.

Tao said...

Is there someone who can give me a mail adress to Dmitry orlov? I want to ask him if he is familiar with the Zeitgeist movement.

Bukko Boomeranger said...

Myon, not that Kollapsnik needs anyone to speak for him, but if you listen to the recorded interview, he tells people how to e-mail him. There's even a clue on his blog page, where it says "If you want to contact me directly, my address is..."

I don't want to make it too easy for you, though. If you can't do that minimal amount of detective work, you probably shouldn't be writing. Although it might be more difficult for you, because I presume English is not your primary language.

Anonymous said...

I need another Orlov post please.
It's been to long since your last one.

William said...

I second that, Moo Moo. Thank god I have my autographed copy of Hold Your Applause to tide me over.