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World Affairs Brief, February 13, 2004 Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.JoelSkousen.com).

HOW TO ANALYZE THE NEWS AND WHAT GOES ON AROUND YOU

Critical analysis of current events is a complex process that is not systematized or rigid. All the information you see or gather is, generally, a combination of truth, half-truths, and error. Filtering out the truth begins with finding reliable sources, as well as critically scrutinizing sources that are known to have a specific bias.

Reliable Sources: No journalist or historian bases his writings on original material, except when relating what he or she personally experiences. This world is much too big with much too much going on for anyone to directly witness anything but a small fraction of life’s happenings. Thus, we all have to rely on sources of information. As all of my readers know, most of the world has become heavily reliant upon the establishment media. People are busy, with little time to study and analyze current events. So they scan the front page each day, or watch the TV evening news, relying on these easy, quick sound bites to "inform" them about the world.

Almost everyone who gets this minimum dose of daily news thinks that they know what is going on in the world. This is not so, even though the media rarely tells an outright lie. What writers and editors do is purposefully omit key pieces of information that would significantly change people’s opinion about what is being presented. This brings up the first rule in finding reliable sources. Search for someone who is skeptical of the official version, and who searches out key information that has been withheld by establishment sources.

It is fascinating to see how uniform the evening news is. No matter which channel you turn to, the same stories appear with the same general emphasis, even with regard to local stories. A common illusion today is that Fox News is significantly more conservative than the other big three networks. Not so. Fox is merely playing the role of the pro-government cheerleader, just like CNN did during the Gulf War, when it came out of obscurity to become an instant major player. That never happens without government ties. Meanwhile, the other three majors are doing their part. They criticize the current administration mildly, enough to satisfy the liberal opposition. In reality, however, they are part of the same machine designed to protect any insider administration, whether Democratic or Republican, from its strongest critics on the constitutional right. They make sure they keep the most damaging evidences of conspiracy out of the public eye.

Virtually every major metropolitan area in the US has a major liberal, establishment newspaper which promotes this hidden agenda. In turn, every state of the Union is more or less controlled by the concentration of voters in those liberal metro areas. Even though most states have a sizeable body of rural conservatives, their voice is rarely heard at the polls.

The one thing you can learn from the liberal and controlled media, including arch liberal newspapers like the Washington Post, NY Times, and LA Times, is the direction in which the conspiracy against liberty is going. I spend about a third of my time watching what the opposition does. When they start uniformly promoting certain issues in all the liberal journals (global warming, smart growth, gun control, etc.), it is obvious that there is some coordination going on. But remember, you can only learn to see through the selectively filtered news dispensed by the establishment media if you have other sources that feed you the missing pieces.

So where do you look for good alternative news sources? First off, don’t believe everything on the Internet. Just because an alternative news source appears anti-establishment does not mean it is honest or a true advocate for liberty. In fact, many of the most well known and well funded alternative news media outlets are leftist. Oddly enough, this does not mean that these sites are the most dangerous opponents to liberty. Even though I reject their big government socialism, many have recently become allies in the fight to ferret out useful information on the betrayal of US interests by the Bush administration (which the left believes has a "right wing" agenda).

The most dangerous sites are those supposedly on the "right" (posing as conservative), but which are actually shilling for the Bush administration. Some of them are sincere but blind, while others are manipulated by their hidden funding sources. Newsmax.com, for example, is funded in part by establishment insiders like Richard Mellon Scaife, and is predictably and unabashedly uncritical of nearly everything Bush does. Chris Ruddy, who runs Newsmax, should know better after publishing a book on the evidence surrounding the Vince Foster murder. But he is strangely silent about evils and deceptions of the Bush administration. WorldNetDaily.com is much better, but it still puts out occasion garbage. NewsWithViews.com is the site I think shows the best judgment about a broad range of issues.

The Washington Times, owned by the Mooneys, is pro-Bush to a fault, and never even allows a hint of conspiracy issues or evidence to surface in its articles. Its sister publication, Insight Magazine, seems to be a bit more independent and rigorous. Insight does some first class investigative reporting, but still holds back on criticizing Bush. I’ve always suspected that the Mooneys, with their seemingly bottomless pit of money, are fronting for a government organization, perhaps the CIA. The dark side of the US government is expert in funding both sides of the political spectrum, thus controlling both sides.

The establishment has also secretly funded or taken over most conservative talk radio stations. Rush Limbaugh was "turned" early on. He was rewarded with millions in salary increases. I knew when it happened. He suddenly switched from open discussion of conspiracy issues to deriding and denigrating anyone who called in expressing thoughts on conspiracy. Now, there are very few truly independent, conservative voices on talk radio left. Almost all radio stations in the country are owned by one of the four or five major broadcast companies like Clear Channel, Citadel, Cumulous, and Intercom. Slowly, the most hard-hitting and independent conservative talk show hosts are being pushed out or fired. Even Christian radio stations are letting go of hosts who dare challenge President Bush.

To me, the Bush betrayal of liberty and constitutional principles has become so open and blatant, that anyone claiming to be a champion of liberty can no longer stand with Bush, at least unconditionally. This is a key litmus test of whether or not you can trust sources who claim to be conservative. All of the major Christian leaders who support Bush unconditionally are either willfully blind or sold out to the lure of popular appeal. They know that to criticize Bush is to court financial disaster. Still, there are a few on the Christian right who have the courage to criticize the Bush administration. Gary Bauer for a time was caught up in the pro-Bush euphoria, but has now retreated. The most consistently insightful Christian critic of the Bush administration is Chuck Baldwin. He is worth listening to on www.chuckbaldwinlive.com.

On the left, the CIA directly cultivates journalists who can be relied on to publish key leaks and slanted information—a practice that is illegal but done anyway. Some journalists, I am told, are even on secret monthly retainers. One thing you can count on. There isn’t a single investigative journalist who regularly comes out with blockbuster revelations from inside government, who isn’t on the receiving end of regular, purposeful, government leaks. There are even a few on the right that receive leaks from sources in government claiming to be patriotic. However, these sources only leak information confirming and supporting the Bush justifications for war and intervention. It is strange that we rarely see any whistleblowers emerge from the CIA anymore. The dark side has apparently eliminated all opposition within that agency. The FBI still has a few that break ranks, but since the Justice Department refuses to give them a hearing, I think any others contemplating blowing the whistle will decide instead to remain silent or resign.

This much is for sure. No truly patriotic CIA agent or FBI agent is allowed to leak critical information about illegal government activities or conspiracy for long. They are hunted down and rousted out of the government, and are often prosecuted like criminals by federal agencies eager to discredit and silence them. Dozens of whistleblowing agents from all federal agencies are languishing in US federal prisons on trumped up charges.

In a similar vein, watch out for the many up-and-coming "private" intelligence sources, like Stratfor.com, Debka.com or Geostrategy-Direct. When organizations with a world-wide intelligence reach suddenly appear out of nowhere, with no substantial traceable sources of funding, you can be assured they are almost always tapping into government sources. Stratfor was started by a college professor, and almost at its inception had an instant worldwide presence of top notch economic and geo-political intelligence. The analyses on that site are suspiciously skewed along lines that would mask the real motives behind world events. Debka.com is run by an Israeli business journalist who openly admitted to me that his sources are all government insiders. The trouble with that kind of arrangement is that a one or two man shop, even if sincere, can’t possible check up on whether they are being fed disinformation or not. Sometimes they can tell, but usually they cannot.

Another example is the Northeast Intelligence Network (NEIN), which also claims to know too much for a group that is truly private—especially one that claims to be on the right side of the political spectrum (which is specifically excluded from true insider information). In making warnings about terrorism, this outfit claims to have analyzed thousands of telephone intercepts. No private source has access to this kind of information. Either they are making it up or they are tapping into government intelligence directly, which makes them no more private than government covert mercenary corporations like DynCorp, MPRI, and Vinelli. Yes, NEIN may have a few military types who feed them information. I too have a few who occasionally let me in on what they observe, none of which is specifically classified or illegal to disclose. However, no one in the military leaking the kind of info NEIN publishes can do so regularly without being caught—especially when NEIN has an internet presence that openly publishes these claims. In like manner, watch out for Al Martin and Sherman Skolnick. They both claim more than they can know without having government sources feeding them.

Insider connected corporations and wealthy individuals also control think tanks on both the right and the left. The Hoover Institution, American Enterprise Institute, and National Review, even though they have done good research in the past, have become shills for neo-conservative globalist intervention. The Heritage Foundation used to be really conservative and hard hitting until it started to receive funding from establishment sources. Now it is relatively benign. Rarely does it criticize the Bush administration. The only exception to the corruption by funding trend has been the libertarian Cato Institute. Despite receiving major funding from establishment sources, it still resists control, and has not strayed far from its libertarian roots - except that it will never accuse the government of conspiracy. That seems to be the universal requirement for keeping an organization free from establishment attacks. No one is allowed to play with the majors if they present evidence of conspiracy.

On the left, we still have with us organizations that grew out of Communist or Marxist influence within tax exempt foundations. Early on, the left targeted and gained control of the Carnegie, Brookings, and Ford Foundations. Even younger foundations like the Wallace, MacArthur, and Pew Charitable Trust are run with a liberal agenda. Some, like the Rand Corporation, Wackenhut Corrections and BCCI, are suspected of being outright government operations, dressed in civilian garb.

Then there are the traditional globalist organizations like the CFR, Trilateral Commission and Aspen Institute. Although each of these organizations takes great pains to include in their membership up and coming middle-of-the-roaders, along with a few unthinking conservatives, to mask their hidden agenda, it is my opinion that these organizations are where the really dangerous people, who actively work toward the subversion of American constitutional sovereignty, congregate. Keep an eye on the top leaders of these organizations. I have noted that since the Iraq war, the media has been calling upon spokesmen from the CFR much more frequently than in prior years. I suspect the media is trying to bring the CFR into the mainstream consciousness of Americans in a subtle, positive way.

Education and Experience: I don’t accept anything in the news at face value without comparing it to what I already know is true. The greater the body of true knowledge that you possess, the easier it is to see fallacies and falsehoods. The more shallow your store of "facts" and true experiences, the harder it is to scrutinize new information, especially when it falls outside your limited area of expertise or experience. Those who come from a home where learning is a continuing affair enriched by good books and alternative news, and not confined to television and establishment schools exclusively, have a head start in this process. In public schools students develop a body of "knowledge" in the social sciences and historical areas that is politically skewed and largely distorted. Because these "truths" are repeated by everyone and assumed true, even good people can sometimes become resistant to changing their minds. All of you who have tried to introduce others to evidence of conspiracy and corruption in government know what I mean.

Regardless of your background, the best way to become a critical thinker is to start reading argument-oriented commentaries on various subjects. The best source of such commentaries is transcripts of debates where contrasting presentations are given on two opposing issues, followed by a counter to each view and lastly a counter to the counter. That’s what it takes to really see error. States that publish voter pamphlets often use this format for initiatives. Also, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) each month publishes "Ideas on Liberty," a collection of confrontational essays directly countering bad ideas in economics, law and politics. It makes for stimulating reading, and is not difficult to understand. See www.fee.org on the web.

Personal experience in various aspects of life can also be an analytical tool. Often, my ability to see something false in a statement by government is due to my understanding of how government works, not only because of my political science training, but also due to my experience working in Washington, DC and in the military. The most valuable type of experience is not obvious, however. Sometimes it’s more important to be able to figure out what CAN’T be known so that you can detect sources that are lying. Having had a "top secret" clearance myself, and having also done FOIA searches to try to penetrate the wall of government secrecy (often used improperly to cover for illegal acts), I have a pretty good idea of what secrets one can and cannot get access to, without being a "deep cover" disinformation agent. This kind of experiential knowledge is especially useful in identifying gaps and falsehoods in alternative news and private intelligence analysis.

Common knowledge about how life works is also essential to see through pie-in-the-sky and too-good-to-be-true claims and schemes. One of the best ways to gain this kind of experience is to be determined to become well rounded in life, both in skills and in knowledge. You have to go out of your way to do so, as the world demands ever more specialization. Yes, everyone has to specialize in something to set themselves somewhat apart from others in the job market, but that shouldn’t stop you from using your spare time to learn a little about a lot of other things. Self learning through books is the most economical way to do this. Even if your children don’t go to college, make sure they learn enough about practical physics, electricity, chemistry, and other fields so they can make intelligent choices in life.

For example, I took several shop classes in high school as electives, and found that I thoroughly enjoyed building things and working with my hands. I knew I should pursue a different field in order to make a living, but I intuitively knew these skills were also essential in life, especially for a family man. Later, in college, I continued to expand my skills in the manual trades with classes on welding, construction, and machining. I also tried to become well-rounded in technical and professional knowledge. I studied economics, law, political science, social science, psychology and philosophy—the good and the bad in each field. The bad was what college provided; the good had to be ferreted out on my own. Most everything I learned in the social sciences in college was junk. However, being confronted with falsehoods and having to search for truth (on my own time) was invaluable.

If you have gained a broad generalist background in the sciences, and know how the natural world works, you can often spot flaws in the growing number of phony scientific claims that abound on the internet. Even if you can’t see through a particular suspicious claim, at least you can seek help from others more knowledgeable and usually understand their response. We are constantly bombarded by people pushing get-rich-quick schemes, free energy schemes, and bizarre scientific claims about doomsday scenarios. Recent threats about giant asteroids (Planet X) colliding with earth, or claims about the earth’s poles shifting on a certain date due to astronomical alignment of planets (causing the flooding of half the US continent) have all turned out to be bogus. What was paraded on the internet as "scientific" opinion backing up these claims turned out to be merely New Age visionaries and a few pseudo scientists who were tapping into spiritualist sources. Thousands of people get caught up in these frenzies of fear. We have enough real threats from globalist domination without getting stressed out over bogus claims. Educating yourself in all aspects of life is the best way to prepare yourself to distinguish the fraudulent from the real.

Using logic: It is not enough, however, to merely accumulate knowledge and facts like so many books on a shelf. You must also learn how to filter that information and assemble it into a realistic view of the world. Most people know how to draw a simple conclusion from a logical proposal: A = B and B = C. Therefore A must equal C. This is deductive reasoning. However, in a complex world filled with multiple layers of deception and sophisticated lies, it is inductive reasoning that you must master in order to analyze the news and put together a coherent view of modern history.

Inductive reasoning is much more difficult to master. It involves taking a wide sampling of seemingly random information or observations and picking out patterns of truth, sufficient to derive broader conclusions. There are several reasons why most people do so poorly at inductive reasoning. For one thing, few have access to a wide range of details to analyze in the first place. Much of the blame for this lies with the media and the school system, on which the vast majority of people are reliant for their information, and which systematically omits critical details. Even when more information and evidence is available, however, few people have the patience to remember the details, much less to sort through the conflicts and contradictions found in the details long enough to derive conclusions or see the patterns. Inductive reasoning takes a good memory and a lot of mental processing.

This is the essential art of thinking that allows a few to discover hidden conspiracies, especially when there is a lack of defectors from the higher echelons that could reveal the degree of collusion that may exist. People have little trouble seeing small conspiracies, which abound in criminal events, mafia activities, and drug dealings. But they have trouble seeing the larger hidden hand of control that links many of these groups together, if only peripherally. It is this larger element of control that is the key indicator of an over-arching conspiracy working against the interests of sovereignty and the Constitution to destroy liberty.

Here is some of the basic inductive evidence or patterns of details that should lead someone to suspect that a larger conspiracy exists:

1) With few exceptions, almost never do the "big boys" get caught or prosecuted for major crimes (Allied war crimes of WWII, Enron, WorldCom scandals, etc.). This trend indicates that higher authority protects these powerful people. When judges consistently deny the introduction of evidence that points to government collusion, we can also rightly suspect that judges are involved in this collusion.

2) Powerful interests in the West have consistently funded Communism, protected it from public exposure, defended Stalin by denying his atrocities, and given Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes to the worst perpetrators of violence and deception. One could hypothesize that this was due to the stupidly and ignorance of our leaders, if this pattern only rarely occurred. But after 50 years of aiding Communist revolutions, shipping atomic bomb plans and materials to Russia and allowing spies to roam the halls of government at will, one can rightly suspect these Harvard and Yale grads can’t be doing this out of mere ignorance.

Those who back the stupidity theory or the theory that the perpetrators are merely naïve liberals are of course partially correct. Many are. But stupidity theorists fail to acknowledge the experience of multiple anti-communist voices of reason, who confronted these leaders with their "naiveté and stupidity," protesting each and every one of these sellouts of liberty as they were occurring. They bear testimony to the hostile reaction they received after confronting our leaders with this evidence of betrayal. We can track the efforts of leaders to fire the critics, bury the evidence, and in other ways protect the guilty.

When this pattern is repeated decade after decade, despite mounting evidence of the disastrous policies that were being promulgated, it becomes increasingly more difficult for the rational mind to believe that all this is merely because of stupidity and sociological predilections (at least at the highest levels).

3) Historically, there emerges over time increasing evidence of past conspiracies for control and power. As time has passed since the killing of JFK, for example, more government whistleblowers have surfaced to tell of more official government involvement, including threats if they ever reveal what they know. This is true regarding other far-reaching conspiracies as well. Whether the subject is government collusion with the Mafia, covering for Russian and Chinese rearmament, running drugs to fund black ops in the CIA, or the purposeful allowing of illegal immigration, we see a widening picture of collusion and conspiracy at the highest levels. In reaction to the charges that do surface, government leaders uniformly blame every evil on individual rogue elements in police, or law enforcement. Yet the evidence from whistleblowers is consistent: that cover-ups and suppression of dissent increases the higher they go in the appeals process. Again, this is evidence of over-arching, top-down control in conspiracy—not simply covering up to protect the boss.

The evidence for these kinds of patterns can only be found in watching and analyzing details of events stretching over years and decades of history, then forming them into a cohesive, consistent whole. The resulting picture of the world can be described, but only superficially. Those who master the skill of inductive reasoning have the ability to form their own world view, and constantly check it against the assertions of others to filter truth from deception. Those who don’t are relegated to a dependency on others for in-depth analysis, a position fraught with risk as lies become ever more sophisticated and complex.

A Correct World View: We cannot understand how this world operates if we hold to a purely secular, evolutionary, or humanistic view. Even though the spiritual spectrum is mostly hidden to man on earth, its workings can be detected if one is sensitive to truth, and if one avoids offending the source of all truth by chronic violations of conscience. You cannot, for example, really understand the following conundrums about conspiracy without contemplating the possibility of Satanic control:

· The fact that people involved in the conspiracy for global control already have more money and power than any man can use. Why should these continue to push for global control?

· The generational affect. The conspiracy doesn’t fade or alter course after the death of key people. If the driving force were only an individual or a small group of megalomaniacs, they would be incapable of controlling the direction others would take after they are gone.

· The fact that the globalists, in prepping the world for WWIII and encouraging a Russian/Chinese nuclear preemptive strike on the West, would also destroy the wealth and power of these same powerful conspirators. Why would anyone do this?

These aspects of the conspiracy cannot be explained by conventional leftist anti-capitalist jargon about greed, power and class struggle—even though these do play a significant role. The thirst for control of oil is also part of the picture, but it doesn’t explain the globalists’ plan to risk partial destruction of the West in an effort to create a Hegelian conflict out of which people can be induced to give up national sovereignty and join in a NWO.

My only theory of explanation rests upon my belief that systematic evil really does exist in the universe and is in opposition to what God is trying to do. The head of evil spiritual forces (called Satan) is actively working to destroy God’s purposes here on earth. Only Satan has the will and the motive to do as much destruction on a global scale as we have seen in the past and are destined to experience in the future. His ability to pull other men into this greater evil agenda is based, I believe, on the fact that all evil men, even when they possess wealth and power, need protection from the looming threat of God’s judgment as well as immunity from earthly prosecution.

Satan has a pretty good track record of protecting his own on earth. Even in WWII, when major conspirators allowed some of their wealth in Europe to be destroyed, it was restored to them during the Lend Lease rebuilding process. In Iraq, corporations in collusion with the globalist government agenda are also being enriched in the corrupt process of reconstruction.

None of this is meant to say that a large number of people have direct knowledge of or knowingly participate in the Satanic aspects of this conspiracy. Only the few at the top need to know, although anyone who operates within the inner levels surely knows that there is some form of hidden power structure that controls all major government moves. The lower echelon participants are manipulated through a variety of garden variety inducements like promises of future position, power and fame. Threats are used only when necessary. Liberal intellectuals are easily induced to work for the New World Order because their academic training induces them to believe they are part of an elite corps capable of bringing order and "fairness" to a greed filled competitive world. They are blind to the hidden victims of "compassionate liberalism." Likewise, there is a growing body of conservative socialists who fail to comprehend the inherent evil behind their new-found ideas about "compassionate conservatism," which is nothing more than socialism in another clever disguise. Perhaps the most disingenuous crowd of all are the journalists, who live in the fairly tale world of assertions that: 1) they are unbiased and neutral in their work; 2) they are free from the concerns of "greedy capitalism;" and 3) they have journalistic freedom within their news rooms. The latter is only true if they are predictable liberals. All true conservatives find themselves eventually driven out or forced to toe the official line.

The biggest fools in this world are those who view themselves as the brightest—those highly educated and smart people who proudly assert that there could never be an over-arching conspiracy because there would be too many people in the know, and that the secret would slip out. Aside from those who are actually and knowingly fronting for the conspiracy, most of these naive pundits are simply showing their lack of experience in dealing with this level of sophistication and deception. Sometimes insiders do see too much and talk, but these are quickly silenced in any number of ways ranging from subtle threats to outright elimination. The higher up in the conspiracy you go, the tighter the control system is. With a lack of direct evidence and first-hand accounts of the ongoing conspiracy, we must rely on our own abilities to gather and analyze information to formulate a reliable picture of what’s going on in the world. The more accurate that picture is, the better prepared we will be to protect ourselves from the real threats that all of us will have to face.