Wikipedia & Operation Mockingbird

[LilyPatToo]

Yesterday, I was alerted (by another mind control program survivor) to a "being considered for deletion" notice at the top of Wikipedia's page on Operation Mockingbird. Apparently, some spook-loving anti-conspiracy folks had decided to discredit and rid the wiki of any mention of the far-reaching CIA covert op that manipulated the minds of millions of people during the paranoid early days of the Cold War.

I immediately registered at Wikipedia in order to post a "Strong Keep" comment and apparently so did a lot of other folks. As a result, today the page simply bears a notice that "This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims" with which I can live. As I said in my comment, I have absolutely no problem with further research and verification of statements...to me, that is the strength of a wiki: nothing is written in stone and everything is subject to verification by the public.

The drawback, of course, is that "the public" includes an abundance of self-righteous spooks and spook-wannabes who believe they're doing society a favor by erasing evidence of past agency wrongdoing. And their approach in this case was to attack Alex Constantine (among others) and sneeringly infer that all the evidence for Operation Mockingbird was "conspiracy nonsense."

The truth, of course, is that solid, consensually agreed-upon evidence of covert misdeeds is going to be extremely elusive in many cases. And the likelihood that it will be "respected" researchers who uncover that evidence is slim. So the Bad Guys have learned to attack the credibility of the investigator if they cannot make a skeleton in their closet simply go away due to their own carefully contrived paucity of evidence.

If you'd like to read the comments, go here. To read the page itself, go here. I regret not copying the page with its deletion warning and I'm sorry I didn't think to post here asking for comments, too, but the comments section (first link above) is still open, I believe.

LilyPat

[judasdisney]

I immediately registered at Wikipedia in order to post a "Strong Keep" comment and apparently so did a lot of other folks.

Thanks for the alert and for bearing witness, which is the only action that safeguards truth and community.

I've personally and quietly adopted one single Wikipedia entry (which I'll abstain from identifying here, but it's along the lines of Operation Mockingbird) and every Saturday I check it to "change it back" to the facts. Whoever was filling the entry with disinfo periodically gives up, but months later the disinfo returns.

I grabbed a copy of the Wikipedia entry "List of Proven Historic Conspiracies" before it disappeared, but I wasn't able put in the time or work to battle for that entry's existence.

Recently, the Wikipedia entry for "Dirty War" was nearly taken down and I took action like Lily Pat did. For now, "Dirty War" remains up, but I expect the usual Neocon attempt to (ironically, or maybe not) "disappear" the entry, when no one's looking.

It's noteworthy which Wikipedia entries are identified with "The Neutrality of this Article is Disputed":

Nazism

Operation Condor

until recently, the entry on Bill Clinton

until recently, the entry on Hillary Rodham Clinton

until recently, the entry on Salvador Allende

Noteworthy also is that Wikipedia entries on Bush, Cheney, Rove, etc., are never disputed or under reconstruction.

It appears that Progressives don't have as much mojo as Neocons for bearing witness to their view of history. (Lily Pat exempted).

[FourthBase]

Fighting to suppress the truth takes more mojo I guess.

[LilyPatToo]

Since I've now lived for going on 24 years with a very intelligent Progressive who nonetheless has been perfectly programed to snicker at absolutely ANY subject that has the faintest whiff of "conspiracy" about it, I can answer that question about "Why Liberals are so f*cking passive" with some authority:

In my opinion, they've been manipulated into the stance of whining, powerless, impotent children. In effect, they've all had that trip to the vets where they were divested of their claws, teeth and testicles before they even knew what they were for...and they've been in deep denial of it ever since.

They gather and talk endlessly of the ways that our rights are being eroded and earnestly of the need for the Dems in the House and Senate to "grow a spine". But their own spines are vestigial. They respond to fascism with almost no action at all--most won't even take the time to sign an e-petition or write a letter--and their ever-so-intelligent-sounding commentary on really scary current affairs is often no more than a regurgitation of that week's NPR offerings.

Since I've just described the man I love and almost all of our friends, I should probably state for the record that while they may frustrate the hell out of me, I still would rather hang around with them than with any Conservative I know. The Liberals are at least able to question Authority, even if they're not capable of calling Authority to account in any Real-World-meaningful manner.

"Bearing witness" as judasdisney calls it, is what is left to those few of us who have somehow managed to slip out from under the kind of mass (or individual) mind control programming that Operation Mockingbird disseminated. We can expect to be invalidated and/or ignored by most of society and actively resented by the rest, but it's still worth doing. There's no going back to sleep once you really awaken to what's going on behind the curtain.

I love the idea of "adopting" Wikipedia articles, judasdisney--thank you! I'll suggest it to the other MC program survivors with whom I correspond.

LilyPat

[orz]

Wikipedia is beyond a total joke. If you want your view on a contentious subject to be represented you'd better be prepared to play by their rules: In other words, you need to become a 14 year old wanna-be aspergers sufferer with infinite time and energy to devote to a strange combination of totally excessive pedantic devotion to the wikipedia system, and a total lack of knowledge, intelligence or education beyond a very limited pet subject.

[FourthBase]

Unfortunately, it's probably worth that effort orz, because it's pretty much the first place the general public goes to for information about new subjects.

[John E. Nemo]

"Why Liberals are so f*cking passive":

In my opinion, they've been manipulated into the stance of whining, powerless, impotent children. In effect, they've all had that trip to the vets where they were divested of their claws, teeth and testicles before they even knew what they were for...and they've been in deep denial of it ever since.

They gather and talk endlessly of the ways that our rights are being eroded and earnestly of the need for the Dems in the House and Senate to "grow a spine". But their own spines are vestigial. They respond to fascism with almost no action at all--most won't even take the time to sign an e-petition or write a letter--and their ever-so-intelligent-sounding commentary on really scary current affairs is often no more than a regurgitation of that week's NPR offerings.

That is incredible, Lily !
You are sooooooooooooo right on, sister!

I was just arguing with a "liberal" friend of mine yesterday, who disagrees with any kind of 9/11 (or any other, barring JFK) conspiracy.
I said "The second that they print it in Harper's or say it on NPR, THEN you'll believe it, ya sheep."

I still would rather hang around with them than with any Conservative I know. The Liberals are at least able to question Authority, even if they're not capable of calling Authority to account in any Real-World-meaningful manner.

I'd rather be with the sheep than the wolves, as well.
Abbie Hoffman said something akin to "the problem with liberals is that they see everything from all sides, which leads to paralysis."

There's no going back to sleep once you really awaken to what's going on behind the curtain.

Sometimes, I would really like to take the blue pill and live in ignorant bliss.
It's hard to find people who really "get it".

If you do find people who get it, and want to do something about it, generally the ones on the left wanna "march and throw Molotov cocktails at it" and the ones on the right wanna "build a bunker and shoot at it".

LilyPat

[orz]

Yep. It really annoys me how pitiful the article for all sorts of really important and interesting subjects are... but if you wanna learn all about minor characters from Sonic the Hedgehog...

[LilyPatToo]

orz, FourthBase is right--if we let the fascists have their way with Wikipedia, we in effect hand them a victory that people like me can't afford It's harder than you can imagine to get anyone outside of the fringe to even believe in the existence of the trauma-based mind control programs--let alone that a handful of us remember being in them. And you know why? Because they lack knowledge of 99% of the other unethical and covert "black" crap that the intelligence agencies have gotten away with over the past 60 years.

The public has almost no body of basic, accurate historical knowledge upon which they can hang survivors' bizarre/horrific stories and have them be logical or believable. Even if the Wikipedia articles on related subjects like Mockingbird seem tangential and fairly tame, believe me, if the public can't access them, they'll never know enough to be able to begin to understand the milieu in which I was abused as a child. Wikipedia matters.

John E. Nomo said:

Sometimes, I would really like to take the blue pill and live in ignorant bliss.

Me too--though I hate to admit it--especially on bad days when I've tried every way I know to get friends to wrap their mainstream-news-fed minds around what's happened to me and they still respond with labored, stretched "alternate explanations" for the bizarre stuff that's happened to me, rather than accept it for what it is. Because if my memories are accurate, then they'd have to accept the unavoidable, undeniable fact that the situation is much, much worse than they've been led to believe it is. And then, they might have to actually DO SOMETHING about it

LilyPat

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Woa. Thanks for the heads up, LilyPatToo. I haven't been round here for a coupla weeks and knew I'd find something important from y'all.

That patch of history truth needs to be guarded from Langley's landscapers.
But the Doubt Doctors have succeeded partly just by getting that 'contested status' announcement stuck on the entry even if it didn't get deleted.

It is the single most important info that Americans don't know about and the spooks are trying to figure out how to keep it this way, like by embedding a fake Mockingbird op in the recent fake 'family jewels' rerun to create some identity competition and confusion.
The next day John Prados carried the lie over to Amy Goodman's show and she let him despite having 10 pages in her last book on Carl Bernstein's 1977 expose called 'The CIA and the Media.'

Bless Amy for putting it in her book but it ain't on the air. I gave Greg Palast notes on Mockingbird after a local appearance but he won't touch it.
I could list many people who should but don't like Bob Parry whose experiences trying to cover IranContra while the Mockingbird media didn't were described by Gary Webb in a speech. I'm surprised Gary Webb didn't know what to expect from the CIA media when he outed their cocaine business. Even Webb never pointed at spook media, I think.

But DEA whistleblower Michael Levine wrote in his books specifically that the media were part of the CIA's drug business by covering it up and playing along with the 'war on drugs' publicity busts. FAIR reported this in early 1988.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1190

Extra! March/April 1988

Media Censor CIA Ties With Medellin Drug Cartel

A key money-launderer for the Medellin cocaine cartel told Congress in February that he worked with the Central Intelligence Agency, but this information was not reported by the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the three major networks, even though all covered the hearings.

In testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, Ramon Milian Rodriguez acknowledged that he laundered more than $3 million for the CIA after his indictment on drug charges in 1983. New York Times correspondent Elaine Sciolino failed to mention this in her coverage of Rodriguez's testimony, which was broadcast live on CNN (2-11-88).

Sciolino's page 6 article ("Accountant Says Noriega Laundered Billions," 2-12-88) did not contain the letters CIA or the words "Central Intelligence Agency," even though Rodriguez had described his participation in CIA anti-Castro operations.
.....
The Post also failed to mention Rodriguez's assertion that he worked with US banks, and it did not include his statement about laundering moneyfor the CIA after his drug indictment.
.....
Extra! later asked Pichirallo why Rodriguez's testimony about moving dirty money for the CIA was excluded from the Post, but he was not forthcoming: "It is my policy never to discuss anything I do."

To its credit Newsday (2-12-88) reported the CIA's money shipment through Rodriguez and the cartel's $10 million gift to the contras, the elementary facts of the story which were not printed in the "newspaper of record."

Constant vigilance. Fascism is 24/7 and working hard to stay ahead of us.

[blanc]

Thanks LilyPat for being alert to that, and doing something.

[LilyPatToo]

HMW said:

"That patch of history truth needs to be guarded from Langley's landscapers."

*LOL* That gave me a sick/funny mental image of a bunch of Very Serious and Very Suspicious guys with ear-pieces and dark sunglasses, wielding pruning shears, rakes and leaf blowers and spreading TONS of manure, working out of (of course) a shiny new white van with "LANGLEY LANDSCAPING" emblazoned on the side in red, white and blue

Seriously, since what you call "spook media" is absolutely key to the Bad Guys' wildly successful mass mind control program in this country, it's a little scary to go up against them publicly at all, even in a small way online. I'm still wondering if I'd have been brave enough to post what I did at Wikipedia, had not so many other people spoken out before I found out about it

blanc, had a fellow program survivor not noticed it, I'd not have known until I went there one day and it was gone. This has shown me how vast the problem of keeping up with Langley Landscaping really is--they're damn good at what they do

LilyPat

[DrVolin]

Typical misdirection. Carefully watch the right hand while the left hand does the real work.

There may very well never have been an Operation Mockingbird. But as the Church Committee tells us (and Carl Bernstein summarizes, the CIA certainly had a very developed relationship with big media. Inventing Mockingbird allows the debate to be centered on the unprovable existence of a mythical but iconic operation, whereas it should be on the very well documented relationship itself.

Look at the table of contents of the Church Committee reports (which some want to remove from Wiki) and you will see that all the headings are relevant to us.

[LilyPatToo]

DrVolin, the same problem arises when the US mind control projects are being discussed--no one I know truly can be certain that the name used for the trauma-based programs was really "Monarch"...in fact, I've heard a good case made for Mark Phillips having boasted that he made it up

Because of the ethical sticky wicket that trauma-based programs present, quibbling over the use of the world "Monarch" often lends itself to use (by skeptics and guilty parties alike) as a "straw man" that distracts everyone from the basic fact that children and young adults were brutalized by people who should have known better.

The name of any covert operation is far less important than its effects, but in order to get hold of FOIA documents, the right name is very helpful. When I saw what the "Delete" crowd was saying, that was the first thing that popped into my mind--they're going to focus upon the word "Mockingbird" in hopes of raising enough doubt that the CIA's massive media infiltration was called "Mockingbird" that they can get the information removed.

Attacking the source and attempting to start a fight over project names are, to me, tactics used by would-be censors with a stake in making CIA misdeeds disappear back into the shadows of history. Sources should be investigated and questioned and we should be as accurate with project names as we can be, but the actual events/history must not be allowed to be dismissed by fascists with an unspoken agenda of suppression.

LilyPat

[blanc]

that hightlights the problem for researchers under freedom of info acts - namely you have to know what your looking for as it is defined by the archive holders before you stand a chance of getting it. whats in a name etc

ps loved the langley landscaper image, mowing over the graves as it were.