- Sixty-four years ago this month, six million Americans
became unwitting subjects in an experiment in psychological warfare.
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- It was the night before Halloween, 1938. At 8 p.m. CST,
the Mercury Radio on the Air began broadcasting Orson Welles' radio adaptation
of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. As is now well known, the story was
presented as if it were breaking news, with bulletins so realistic that
an estimated one million people believed the world was actually under attack
by Martians. Of that number, thousands succumbed to outright panic, not
waiting to hear Welles' explanation at the end of the program that it had
all been a Halloween prank, but fleeing into the night to escape the alien
invaders.
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- Later, psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted a study
of the effects of the broadcast and published his findings in a book, The
Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. This study explored
the power of broadcast media, particularly as it relates to the suggestibility
of human beings under the influence of fear. Cantril was affiliated with
Princeton University's Radio Research Project, which was funded in 1937
by the Rockefeller Foundation. Also affiliated with the Project was Council
on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)
executive Frank Stanton, whose network had broadcast the program. Stanton
would later go on to head the news division of CBS, and in time would become
president of the network, as well as chairman of the board of the RAND
Corporation, the influential think tank which has done groundbreaking research
on, among other things, mass brainwashing.
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- Two years later, with Rockefeller Foundation money, Cantril
established the Office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR), also at Princeton.
Among the studies conducted by the OPOR was an analysis of the effectiveness
of "psycho-political operations" (propaganda, in plain English)
of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). Then, during World War II, Cantril÷and
Rockefeller money÷assisted CFR member and CBS reporter Edward R.
Murrow in setting up the Princeton Listening Center, the purpose of which
was to study Nazi radio propaganda with the object of applying Nazi techniques
to OSS propaganda. Out of this project came a new government agency, the
Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS). The FBIS eventually became
the United States Information Agency (USIA), which is the propaganda arm
of the National Security Council.
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- Thus, by the end of the 1940s, the basic research had
been done and the propaganda apparatus of the national security state had
been set up--just in time for the Dawn of Television ...
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- Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal
that, when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the
left to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the seat of logical
thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and
critically analyzed. The right brain, however, treats incoming data uncritically,
processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical,
responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the
release of endorphins, the body's own natural opiates--thus, it is possible
to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne
out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able
to kick the television habit.
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- This numbing of the brain's cognitive function is compounded
by another shift which occurs in the brain when we watch television. Activity
in the higher brain regions (such as the neo-cortex) is diminished, while
activity in the lower brain regions (such as the limbic system) increases.
The latter, commonly referred to as the reptile brain, is associated with
more primitive mental functions, such as the "fight or flight"
response. The reptile brain is unable to distinguish between reality and
the simulated reality of television. To the reptile brain, if it looks
real, it is real. Thus, though we know on a conscious level it is "only
a film," on a conscious level we do not--the heart beats faster, for
instance, while we watch a suspenseful scene. Similarly, we know the commercial
is trying to manipulate us, but on an unconscious level the commercial
nonetheless succeeds in, say, making us feel inadequate until we buy whatever
thing is being advertised--and the effect is all the more powerful because
it is unconscious, operating on the deepest level of human response. The
reptile brain makes it possible for us to survive as biological beings,
but it also leaves us vulnerable to the manipulations of television programmers.
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- It is not just commercials that manipulate us. On television
news as well, image and sound are as carefully selected and edited to influence
human thought and behavior as in any commercial. The news anchors and reporters
themselves are chosen for their physical attractiveness--a factor which,
as numerous psychological studies have shown, contributes to our perception
of a person's trustworthiness. Under these conditions, then, the viewer
easily forgets--if, indeed, the viewer ever knew in the first place--that
the worldview presented on the evening news is a contrivance of the network
owners--owners such as General Electric (NBC) and Westinghouse (CBS), both
major defense contractors. By molding our perception of the world, they
mold our opinions. This distortion of reality is determined as much by
what is left out of the evening news as what is included--as a glance at
Project Censored's yearly list of top 25 censored news stories will reveal.
If it's not on television, it never happened. Out of sight, out of mind.
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- Under the guise of journalistic objectivity, news programs
subtly play on our emotions--chiefly fear. Network news divisions, for
instance, frequently congratulate themselves on the great service they
provide humanity by bringing such spectacles as the September 11 terror
attacks into our living rooms. We have heard this falsehood so often, we
have come to accept it as self-evident truth. However, the motivation for
live coverage of traumatic news events is not altruistic, but rather to
be found in the central focus of Cantril's War of the Worlds research--the
manipulation of the public through fear.
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- There is another way in which we are manipulated by television
news. Human beings are prone to model the behaviors they see around them,
and avoid those which might invite ridicule or censure, and in the hypnotic
state induced by television, this effect is particularly pronounced. For
instance, a lift of the eyebrow from Peter Jennings tells us precisely
what he is thinking--and by extension what we should think. In this way,
opinions not sanctioned by the corporate media can be made to seem disreputable,
while sanctioned opinions are made to seem the very essence of civilized
thought. And should your thinking stray into unsanctioned territory despite
the trusted anchor's example, a poll can be produced which shows that most
persons do not think that way--and you don't want to be different do you?
Thus, the mental wanderer is brought back into the fold.
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- This process is also at work in programs ostensibly produced
for entertainment. The "logic" works like this: Archie Bunker
is an idiot, Archie Bunker is against gun control, therefore idiots are
against gun control. Never mind the complexities of the issue. Never mind
the fact that the true purpose of the Second Amendment is not to protect
the rights of deer hunters, but to protect the citizenry against a tyrannical
government (an argument you will never hear voiced on any television program).
Monkey see, monkey do--or, in this case, monkey not do.
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- Notice, too, the way in which television programs depict
conspiracy researchers or anti-New World Order activists. On situation
comedies, they are buffoons. On dramatic programs, they are dangerous fanatics.
This imprints on the mind of the viewer the attitude that questioning the
official line or holding "anti-government" opinions is crazy,
therefore not to be emulated.
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- Another way in which entertainment programs mold opinion
can be found in the occasional television movie, which "sensitively"
deals with some "social" issue. A bad behavior is spotlighted--"hate"
crimes, for instance--in such a way that it appears to be a far more rampant
problem than it may actually be, so terrible in fact that the "only"
cure for it is more laws and government "protection." Never mind
that laws may already exist to cover these crimes--the law against murder,
for instance. Once we have seen the well-publicized murder of the young
gay man Matthew Shepherd dramatized in not one, but two, television movies
in all its heartrending horror, nothing will do but we pass a law making
the very thought behind the crime illegal.
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- People will also model behaviors from popular entertainment
which are not only dangerous to their health and could land them in jail,
but also contribute to social chaos. While this may seem to be simply a
matter of the producers giving the audience what it wants, or the artist
holding a mirror up to society, it is in fact intended to influence behavior.
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- Consider the way many films glorify drug abuse. When
a popular star playing a sympathetic character in a mainstream R-rated
film uses hard drugs with no apparent health or legal consequences (John
Travolta's use of heroin in Pulp Fiction, for instance--an R-rated film
produced for theatrical release, which now has found a permanent home on
television, via cable and video players), a certain percentage of people--particularly
the impressionable young--will perceive hard drug use as the epitome of
anti-Establishment cool and will model that behavior, contributing to an
increase in drug abuse. And who benefits?
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- As has been well documented by Gary Webb in his award-winning
series for the San Jose Mercury New, former Los Angeles narcotics detective
Michael Ruppert, and many other researchers and whistleblowers--the CIA
is the main purveyor of hard drugs in this country. The CIA also has its
hand in the "prison-industrial complex." Wackenhut Corporation,
the largest owner of private prisons, has on its board of directors many
former CIA employees, and is very likely a CIA front. Thus, films which
glorify drug abuse may be seen as recruitment ads for the slave labor-based
private prison system. Also, the social chaos and inflated crime rate which
result from the contrived drug problem contributes to the demand from a
frightened society for more prisons, more laws, and the further erosion
of civil liberties. This effect is further heightened by television news
segments and documentaries which focus on drug abuse and other crimes,
thus giving the public the misperception that crime is even higher than
it really is.
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- There is another socially debilitating process at work
in what passes for entertainment on television these days. Over the years,
there has been a steady increase in adult subject matter on programs presented
during family viewing hours. For instance, it is common for today's prime-time
situation comedies to make jokes about such matters as masturbation (Seinfeld
once devoted an entire episode to the topic), or for daytime talk shows
such as Jerry Springer's to showcase such topics as bestiality. Even worse
are the "reality" programs currently in vogue. Each new offering
in this genre seems to hit a new low. MTV, for instance, recently subjected
a couple to a Candid Camera-style prank in which, after winning a trip
to Las Vegas, they entered their hotel room to find an actor made up as
a mutilated corpse in the bathtub. Naturally, they were traumatized by
the experience and sued the network. Or, consider a new show on British
television in which contestants compete to see who can infect each other
with the most diseases--venereal diseases included.
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- It would appear, at the very least, that these programs
serve as a shill operation to strengthen the argument for censorship. There
may also be an even darker motive. These programs contribute to the general
coarsening of society we see all around us--the decline in manners and
common human decency and the acceptance of cruelty for its own sake as
a legitimate form of entertainment. Ultimately, this has the effect of
debasing human beings into savages, brutes--the better to herd them into
global slavery.
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- For the first decade or so after the Dawn of Television,
there were only a handful of channels in each market--one for each of the
three major networks and maybe one or two independents. Later, with the
advent of cable and more channels, the population pie began to be sliced
into finer pieces--or "niche markets." This development has often
been described as representing a growing diversity of choices, but in reality
it is a fine-tuning of the process of mass manipulation, a honing-in on
particular segments of the population, not only to sell them specifically-targeted
consumer products but to influence their thinking in ways advantageous
to the globalist agenda.
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- One of these "target audiences" is that portion
of the population which, after years of blatant government cover-up in
areas such as UFOs and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, maintains
a cynicism toward the official line, despite the best efforts of television
programmers to depict conspiracy research in a negative light. How to reach
this vast, disenfranchised target audience and co-opt their thinking? One
way is to put documentaries before them which mix of fact with disinformation,
thereby confusing them. Another is to take the X Files approach.
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- The heroes of X Files are investigators in a fictitious
paranormal department of the FBI whose adventures sometimes take them into
parapolitical territory. On the surface this sounds good. However, whatever
good X Files might accomplish by touching on such matters as MK-ULTRA or
the JFK assassination is cancelled out by associating them with bug-eyed
aliens and ghosts. Also, on X Files, the truth is always depicted as "out
there" somewhere--in the stars, or some other dimension, never in
brainwashing centers such as the RAND Corporation or its London counterpart,
the Tavistock Institute. This has the effect of obscuring the truth, making
it seem impossibly out-of-reach, and associating reasonable lines of political
inquiry with the fantastic and other-wordly.
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- Not that there is no connection between the parapolitical
and the paranormal. There is undoubtedly a cover-up at work with regard
to UFOs, but if we accept uncritically the notion that UFOs are anything
other than terrestrial in origin, we are falling headfirst into a carefully-set
trap. To its credit, X Files has dealt with the idea that extraterrestrials
might be a clever hoax by the government, but never decisively. The labyrinthine
plots of the show somehow manage to leave the viewer wondering if perhaps
the hoax idea is itself a hoax put out there to cover up the existence
of extraterrestrials. This is hardly helpful to a true understanding of
UFOs and associated phenomena, such as alien abductions and cattle mutilations.
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- Extraterrestrials have been a staple of popular entertainment
since The War of the Worlds (both the novel and its radio adaptation).
They have been depicted as invaders and benefactors, but rarely have they
been unequivocally depicted as a hoax. There was an episode of Outer Limits
which depicted a group of scientists staging a mock alien invasion to frighten
the world's population into uniting as one--but, again, such examples are
rare. Even in UFO documentaries on the Discovery Channel, the possibility
of a terrestrial origin for the phenomenon is conspicuous by its lack of
mention.
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- UFO researcher Jacques Vallee, the real-life model for
the French scientist in Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third
Kind, attempted to interest Spielberg in a terrestrial explanation for
the phenomenon. In an interview on Conspire.com, Vallee said, "I argued
with him that the subject was even more interesting if it wasn't extraterrestrials.
If it was real, physical, but not ET. So he said, 'You're probably right,
but that's not what the public is expecting--this is Hollywood and I want
to give people something that's close to what they expect.'"
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- How convenient that what Spielberg says the people expect
is also what the Pentagon wants them to believe.
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- In Messengers of Deception, Vallee tracks the history
of a wartime British Intelligence unit devoted to psychological operations.
Code-named (interestingly) the "Martians," it specialized in
manufacturing and distributing false intelligence to confuse the enemy.
Among its activities were the creation of phantom armies with inflatable
tanks, simulations of the sounds of military ships maneuvering in the fog,
and forged letters to lovers from phantom soldiers attached to phantom
regiments.
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- Vallee suggests that deception operations of this kind
may have extended beyond World War II, and that much of the "evidence"
for "flying saucers" is no more real than the inflatable tanks
of World War II. He writes: "The close association of many UFO sightings
with advanced military hardware (test sites like the New Mexico proving
grounds, missile silos of the northern plains, naval construction sites
like the major nuclear facility at Pascagoula and the bizarre love affairs
... between contactee groups, occult sects, and extremist political factions,
are utterly clear signals that we must exercise extreme caution."
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- Many people find it fantastic that the government would
perpetrate such a hoax, while at the same time having no difficulty entertaining
the notion that extraterrestrials are regularly traveling light years to
this planet to kidnap people out of their beds and subject them to anal
probes.
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- The military routinely puts out disinformation to obscure
its activities, and this has certainly been the case with UFOs. Consider
Paul Bennewitz, the UFO enthusiast who began studying strange lights that
would appear nightly over the Manzano Test Range outside Albuquerque. When
the Air Force learned about his study, ufologist William Moore (by his
own admission) was recruited to feed him forged military documents describing
a threat from extraterrestrials. The effect was to confuse Bennewitz--even
making him paranoid enough to be hospitalized--and discredit his research.
Evidently, those strange lights belonged to the Air Force, which does not
like outsiders inquiring into its affairs.
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- What the Air Force did to Bennewitz, it also does on
a mass scale--and popular entertainment has been complicit in this process.
Whether or not the filmmakers themselves are consciously aware of this
agenda does not matter. The notion that extraterrestrials might visit this
planet is so much a part of popular culture and modern mythology that it
hardly needs assistance from the military to propagate itself.
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- It has the effect not only of obscuring what is really
going on at research facilities such as Area 51, but of tainting UFO research
in general as "kooky"--and does the job so thoroughly that one
need only say "UFO" in the same breath with "JFK" to
discredit research in that area as well. It also may, in the end, serve
the same purpose as depicted in that Outer Limits episode--to unite the
world's population against a perceived common threat, thus offering the
pretext for one-world government.
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- The following quotes demonstrate that the idea has at
least occurred to world leaders:
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- "In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment,
we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we
need some outside, universal threat to make us realize this common bond.
I occasionally think how quickly our differences would vanish if we were
facing an alien threat from outside this world." (President Ronald
Reagan, speaking in 1987 to the United Nations.
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- "The nations of the world will have to unite, for
the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must
someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets."
General Douglas MacArthur, 1955)
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- Some one remarked that the best way to unite all the
nations on this globe would be an attack from some other planet. In the
face of such an alien enemy, people would respond with a sense of their
unity of interest and purpose." (John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy
at Columbia University, speaking at a conference sponsored by the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, 1917)
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- And where was this "alien threat" motif given
birth? Again, we find the answer in popular entertainment, and again the
earliest source is The War of the Worlds--both Wells' and Welles' versions.
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- Perhaps it is no coincidence that H. G. Wells was a founding
member of the Round Table, the think tank that gave birth to the Royal
Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) and its American cousin, the
CFR. Perhaps Wells intentionally introduced the motif as a meme which might
prove useful later in establishing the "world social democracy"
he described in his 1939 book The New World Order. Perhaps, too, another
purpose of the Orson Welles broadcast was to test of the public's willingness
to believe in extraterrestrials.
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- At any rate, it proved a popular motif, and paved the
way for countless movies and television programs to come, and has often
proven a handy device for promoting the New World Order, whether the extraterrestrials
are invaders or--in films like The Day the Earth Stood Still--benefactors
who have come to Earth to warn us to mend our ways and unite as one, or
be blown to bits.
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- We see the globalist agenda at work in Star Trek and
its spin-offs as well. Over the years, many a television viewer's mind
has been imprinted with the idea that centralized government is the solution
for our problems. Never mind the complexities of the issue--never mind
the fact that, in the real world, centralization of power leads to tyranny.
The reptile brain, hypnotized by the flickering television screen, has
seen Captain Kirk and his culturally diverse crew demonstrate time and
again that the United Federation of Planets is a good thing. Therefore,
it must be so.
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- It remains to be seen whether the Masters of Deception
will, like those scientists in The Outer Limits, stage an invasion from
space with anti-gravity machines and holograms, but, if they do, it will
surely be broadcast on television, so that anyone out of range of that
light show in the sky, will be able to see it, and all with eyes to see
will believe. It will be War of the Worlds on a grand scale.
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- Jack Kerouac once noted, while walking down a residential
street at night, glancing into living rooms lit by the gray glare of television
sets, that we have become a world of people "thinking the same thoughts
at the same time."
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- Every day, millions upon millions of human beings sit
down at the same time to watch the same football game, the same mini-series,
the same newscast. And where might all this shared experience and uniformity
of thought be taking us?
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- A recent report co-sponsored by the U.S. National Science
Foundation and the Commerce Department calls for a broad-based research
program to find ways to use nanotechnology, biotechnology, information
technology, and cognitive sciences, to achieve telepathy, machine-to-human
communication, amplified sensory experience, enhanced intellectual capacity,
and mass participation in a "hive mind." Quoting the report:
"With knowledge no longer encapsulated in individuals, the distinction
between individuals and the entirety of humanity would blur. Think Vulcan
mind-meld. We would perhaps become more of a hive mind--an enormous, single,
intelligent entity."
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- There is no doubt that we have been brought closer to
the "hive mind" by the mass media. For, what is the shared experience
of television but a type of "Vulcan mind-meld"? (Note the terminology
borrowed from Star Trek, no doubt to make the concept more familiar and
palatable. If Spock does it, it must be okay.)
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- This government report would have us believe that the
hive mind will be for our good--a wonderful leap in evolution. It is nothing
of the kind. For one thing, if the government is behind it, you may rest
assured it is not for our good. For another, common sense should tell us
that blurring the line "between individuals and the entirety of humanity"
means mass conformity, the death of human individuality. Make no mistake
about it--if humanity is to become a hive, there will be at the center
of that hive a Queen Bee, whom all the lesser "insects" will
serve. This is not evolution--this is devolution. Worse, it is the ultimate
slavery--the slavery of the mind.
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- And it is a horror first unleashed in 1938 when one million
people responded as one--as a hive--to Orson Welles' Halloween prank.
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- In a sense, those people who fled the Martians that night
were right to be afraid. They were indeed under attack. But they were wrong
about who was attacking them. It was something far worse than Martians.
Had they only known the true nature of the danger facing them, perhaps
they would have gone to the nearest radio station with torches in hand
like the villagers in those old Frankenstein movies and burned it to the
ground, or at least commandeered the new technology and turned it towards
another use--the liberation of humanity, instead of its enslavement.
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- RELEVANT LINKS
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- U.S. Government Report: Human Beings to be Merged with
Technology to Create a "Hive Mind"
- Sydney Morning Herald
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- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/20/1026898931815.html
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- To receive a free copy of Mack White's book, FACTS ABOUT
SEPTEMBER 11, write him at mackwhite@austin.rr.com with your mailing address.
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- http://memes.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=
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